Step 9 and Making Amends – D. and Chris S. – Big Book Workshop – Austin, TX – Part 6 of 10 – Bob D,Tom I

had to every single day. I couldn't work, and I had to come up with money. And in later years, the amount of money I had come up became a little less, but it was more pathetic because now it's wine money or, you know, I did horrible things just as a way of life. Like if I was in the bar with you and you went to the bathroom, I would drink your drink your drink and steal your change, and then change seats, you know, and move somewhere else in the bar. And I just wondered things like that, like going to, in my pathetic, awful, disgusting community, going to gas stations and hammer on the cigarette machine as if they gave me a pack telling them I put money in when I really didn't, you now, and I stopped lifting, and oh, I never worked anywhere. I would steal something. If your car was unlocked, I'd steal your 8-track, same player, you know. I just never went to life with these folks. There were people that I knew were going to kill me if they saw me. I mean, you're right. These were not nice people. I mean I did some stuff, oh my god. So I sit in meetings and listen to you talk about amends and I want to leave. I just think, well, I'll stay here, and I'll go to your meetings. It's too big. I mean, this is a, I don't know, one point I think to myself, if I could do a good job, and it would work for the rest of my life, and I use every dime I need towards the meetings, I don' t think I should be catching everything. It was so overwhelming to me. But that's what the ego does when it gets involved in this stuff. I've got to always remember, and I know I haven't been far enough in this text yet to get it, but there is an ultimate authority here. And not only is it the ultimate authority, it is the one with all power. And there's a thing that happens when you see evidence, you see an evidence in the stories you will hear in the rooms, in the lives of the people you sponsor. That's why sponsoring people, I'm saying if you're not sponsoring anybody or trying to step up and be trying to sponsor people, you're missing something. You're missing the thing that's going to actualize your faith in Christ and God if you watch God's hand work in those people's lives. The thing you see in it is called synchronicity. I believe Carl Jung was the first person, at least that I know about, that talked about synchonicity. And the synchronistic view of the universe is a universe that's motivated by love and accommodation and opportunity. And in a syncretistic universe, if you are in a place that I will sit, where you know you should get from point A to point B, which is through your meds, and make these amends, it seems absolutely impossible. From the moment of desire, and I mean of the desire to chase things, the words desire sounds to me like old English, it means of the Father. And if you have a desire to move in that direction, along spiritual lines, from the moment of desire the universe will start making slow, subtle, incremental shifts that will eventually accommodate the transition you need to make. I mean, you know, you don't have to go to A&E very long to hear the synchronicity stories of people getting their kids back when they were supposed to get their kids back and people having things open up to them. And so as I moved through the steps, some things started happening to me. One of the things, you now, one of the different things that has a lot of times changed the learning to go. And I've learned a couple of little things this fall. They're not next level in the book when it comes to step-based, but it seems to help people. Now, I know Chris was talking about the index cards. That's a cool one, isn't it? The way that he kind of just named me on an intuitive level years ago as I was sponsoring guys that were right There's an overwhelming list of harms. Overwhelming. And so I started thinking about it, and I said, you know, from the moment we take Step 3, our lives break into my business and God's business. It is no joke that in Step 8 and 9, it's in Step 6 and 7, it is in Step 4 and 5, there's my business, and there's God's Business. And you can tell that God gives this to my business because it's actions for me to take and prayers for me to say to incur God's part in this deal, right? So, in step eight and nine, in step eight it says we need to lift what is my business as a matter of fact on page 76 it's the claim when you put things into it. So I'm pulling the names off of my fourth step and I'm putting them where they're going on my age checklist. So I made a list of all persons, you know, and became willing to make a list as well. So that's God's business. And we have no such business because there's a prayer here this weekend. It's a very, it's a strong prayer because it's just like the saying, in fasting, we ask God. It says, we have consult. We have the will to do it. We ask until it comes. So, in other words, the book is asking you to put this consistent piece of spiritual business until the willingness has come. So, an eight-step major, my business making a list is God's business to provide the willingness. An eight-stepped nine major estimate is my business wherever possible. That's God's justice. I have people who say I've never been able to make amends to because I don't know where they are. I can't find them. Except when you do so with Indian Amerindians, and that's a comp essay between me and God my sponsor pretty much. So what I started telling guys that were like me to add overwhelming risks. Let's break it into four parts because we have two elements to cross over. You have column number one, or if you want to use index cards, you have one set of index cards that where you have the willingness, and let's not pretend fantasy willingness. I mean, you're right now ready to go shoot a card over there because willingness without action is supposed to be fantasy. So you actually have the williness, and you have to wherever. You know where the person has lived, and how to get hold of them. If it's a money thing, you have a small little down payment, even if it's like a bank down payment. You have some kind of demonstration of goodwill. Column number two. You have the wherever. You know what's wrong. You know where the harm is. You know whatever they are. But you don't have the willingness. And you know that because you keep putting it off. It keeps you from putting it off. It keeps procrastinating. So, in column number two, you don't actually have to go make your list, okay? But you have to keep it as a piece of spiritual business and you pray for the willingness to its own cost. In column number three, you have the willingness and you haven't determined that you can picture yourself in no BS of going there right now. But you know the word though. You don't have the wherever. so you wait for God to get in, and it's in your life. I've had a lot of them like that where people, and I'm not saying God's hand is perfect. His timing and choreography is perfected. I've got people I look for in my first four and five years of sobriety, could not find them, and then they'll just pop up. I had one gal pop up at 17 years sober, And it was so weird watching this pop up, and the way it popped up, it was just like, it was odd. It was very, very odd. And I found out later that if he popped up as 17 years sober, it's because there was another guy who I used to, who saw me as a bad drunk, he was throwing me out of his bar, that now had just came out of the treatment center at 17 years over where he was far from ready to come to AA at 5 years sober. And my hooking up with her and making that amends since that time secretly, secretly opened the door for him to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was amazing. It was an amazing experience and closet of facts. And these little threads that go through the universe that are all God, part of God, that weigh things to connect. It's amazing. I still have some today that are in the list if I have the willingness. I don't know how to contact people. And sometimes direct amends is optimum, but sometimes when you really get it that this may very well not be possible when you can't pay it back so you try to pay it forward. Because I got a debt here. I got debt. I said you pay it forward, and if you pay forward and the person talks up, you need to direct them in. Still, it's not rocket science. It's been a last call on this. I don't have the mindfulness and I don'y have the wherever. And I pray and wait for opportunity. The reason that this seems to help people is when a new guy is doing this And he realizes all he has to do is make a mess right now. The only thing on his plate is column number one. It's like, oh, okay, I can do that. But if you look at the whole thing, it looks like overwhelming. And my ego wants to look at thin pictures, because it could be so big that I don't end up doing anything. So I had to learn to make lists sometimes when I had my business Because I had so many things on the plate that if I just sat there and looked at everything that had to be done, I wouldn't do anything because I'd sit there and become worn out just thinking about it. So you do the next thing. And another thing I tell guys all the time is the ministry. If you've got three minutes or you're going to make this week, do the hardest one first. With the natural tendency in self-centered, healing-focused people like me, if you want to put the difficult, hard thing to the back and do it left, well if you do that, your climate of hell, man, is if you've got the worst thing, the difficult thing ahead of you, you hit the difficult stuff in order. You hit them according to resistance. And you gain energy and momentum every time you knock off the hardest one. It's like, yeah! And you go to the next hardest one, and you're gaining momentum as you go through it. And the other way is it becomes more tedious and more difficult, hard enough to heal towards the worst words. I want to tell you about two quick little amends that I had to make. You know, when I was sober, I was trying to live with the shame and the remorse that I felt towards what I had done to my mother and father. And I really hurt them a lot. I mean, and they loved me. And they were good people. You know? I used to try to sell myself for the bill of goods and how screwed up they were. It was a hard sell. Because they really loved me, and they never mistreated me, you know, I tried to say, well, they just rode their shoe at me. And you have a hard time telling yourself that when someone loves you consistently, boy, it's a tough sell to try to make them the wrong person. You know, they would have nothing to do with me. I've stolen so much from my daddy. He became friends with a guy who owns a pawn shop in the town I lived in If the body don't clap back, I just embarrass them so often. My dad was involved with pretty high up in state government. And it's a wear on him. My name would be in the paper for an arrest or something. He'd have to go to work and answer the questions about his son. And my mother worked for mental health, and she'd have TO go to working and answer the questions of that man. And I know it was very, very hard on them. You know, to save their own sanity in marriage and life, they hadn't put me out of their life completely, but they couldn't put you out of your heart. And I knew from my sister that my mother took medication and saw a therapist, and my father's left 15 hours a day. That was the only coping skills they had to deal with the broken heart. Their oldest son, that they had put them out of their lives. So I get sober, and people in A is funny. They want to butt into your business. I said, so where's my father? He said, oh, yeah, where do they live? Oh, I bet you have a lot of amends to make to them, don't you? Oh, no. They don't talk to me anymore. Oh, this is going to be good! You know, I find it... I find those flames in someone that there's this quick thing they need to make amends to their past that I understand what they're saying but it's too late. You know maybe a couple years ago before I had smashed down the wooden church over there there, all the colors and stuff clinging to my dad that just terrified him. Maybe before I did that, maybe before I sold some of the stuff that was my grandmother's, all my mom had, or part of what my mom had from her. Maybe if I, maybe if before I embarrassed them so much. Maybe a couple years ago I could have made amends, but it's too late now. And People in AA really have never, to this day, rarely think my opinion of anything is very good. I don't know why. I'm the smartest guy I know. They don't think so, and they want me to start mentioning this to my parents. The first thing they told me was, I never would have occurred to me if you're wanting to call your mother every week and don't call collect, I would have never occurred to be. I don't know why, I think I sometimes self-centered, sensitive entitlement or something like, why can't I pay for the call, you know? I'm seriously, like, they might have more money than I do. I fancy myself some kind of weird Robin Hood of get from the rich and get to me. I'm afraid to call that. And so the first time I ever called my mother, it was so weird. She answers the phone, and she hears my voice. It's just really uptight. I said, what do you want? She goes, oh, my God, where are you? You're in Pennsylvania, aren't you? I said no, Mom, I'm in Nevada. She says, you're in Nevada? Why didn't you ask me to call you for a call? I said No, Mom. I need you for the call tonight. She goes like, wow! I couldn't believe it. And she still was very hostile towards me and very often we'll shut off our phones pretty quick. And I just kept going, and I started calling every week, and after this one, it didn't warm up to me quickly. And when you think about it, you know, my God, you've read somebody's heart over and over and again for decades, and all of a sudden they want to make up. If you accept them back in your life and trust them, There's something wrong with your mental health. And they shouldn't have accepted me. My parents were pretty well adjusted, and they did it perfect. I was told to send them cards and never miss a Father's Day or Mother's Day, their anniversary, their birthdays, and Christmas. And I had to get money, and I don't have good job work. My first couple of years, I was still there several years before I made $5 an hour. I mean, my first job since surviving were minimum wage and it was $3 something an hour in those days. And I remember the first Christmas, I had to buy my mom and dad something. You know, I did a lot of guilt with my dad. And I wasn't afforded getting no necktie. I mean, a knick-knack. This is pathetic. It's a little $10 knick knack. I mean if I gave my father a brand new Bentley, it's not going to scratch the surface of how far behind I am with him. You know what I'm saying? I'm pathetic every single time. And it let him up. He, for a brief little window he warmed up to me and then his defense mechanisms came back. I started doing that, and when I was about a year sober, my mother and father decided to come out to Nevada and eyeball me. Because they're getting all this stuff in the mail and on the phone and everything, but they're very skeptical. And Keenan's in Nevada with this attitude, you know, he's probably a bum who's trying to con us again. But we've never been to Las Vegas. The whole thing, complete loss. And they flew out to Las Vegas and I met them with Garrett Horton, someone from their own town and I took him out to dinner with my sponsor and his wife and it was so weird. I took them to a really nice restaurant. I'd been on the streets for so long I had no idea what a really good restaurant cost. I had to borrow money from my sponsor to pay for it because twice as I went home, you know. And he did that and my sponsor came up with the idea and invited them. This was his idea to my home group. And what a beautiful idea that was. I wouldn't have thought of that. Matter of fact, I felt a little odd about it, aren't you? And they came to my Home Group. My Home Group for making people's homes. And there were quite a few members of my group that had gay houses, concealed houses, and you'd come in to see people. And the people in these homes, you'd get there sometimes 45 minutes, an hour early before the meeting and there was a lot of socialization and you would stay after the meeting and sometimes a whole bunch of people would go out to dinner before or after the after the meeting. It was a group that had a nice broad section of alcoholics. The wives of a lot of guys came here. Alamo's would come there to the meetings, but it was an open meeting. And you have guys that were sober a long time, guys that are sober a medium length, and then a lot new guys like myself that were in that year-to-maybe ten months to a year-and-a-half range. bunch of us, we used to run as a pack. But they just got to see me in this environment. And you know something? I've never been better than when I'm with you. I mean, I've always been better with you than I've ever been anywhere. And they got to see me like that. In my home group, the old-timers used to pick on the newer guys like me. And today, the guy that's my sponsor would needle us, and he'd just say, they would just, like, goof on us and laugh like hell. We don't think it's funny. All right? They just get the biggest shit out of our problems. And so what happens is the newer guys we're trying to work with, they're like 38, so we're just out at the spare unit or the EOB. And so we'd pick on them and we'd goof on them because AA functions are the first rule of clubbing and crap runs downhill. And they got to see us with the camaraderie, and they really liked it. They didn't understand it but they liked it and right before we were to fly back to Pennsylvania I had on a tablet I had made up a list of the things I owed my father financially. And it was considerable. It was a lot of times of having fines that I didn't have the money to pay, and he'd loan it to me, and I don't have money for rent, I don' t have money to fix my car, and I didn' t get paid because I didn''t go to work, and this was years of this stuff, and then I put it down on paper and figured it out, and that's when I was requested to go to him with a payment plan which I thought was lame. I don't know about you, but I like to hit the lottery and there's not anyone who knows. They were explaining to me that I sold my integrity to nickel and dime at a time and then I'd fly back on to nickel at a dime at another time. You know, I didn't want to make the payments. It was humiliating. So I died of my death. But that's what I was told to do. I sat down at the coffee shop and started to tell them what they were saying. Went over the list with him and tell him, I said, if there's anything I've left off, please tell me. When I was done telling him about the plan, it was a 12-and-a-half-year payment claim. And that was making the best payment site for many 12-an-a‑half years. You know, some of you that are new, So, just being on 12 1⁄2 years of payments, it's like a lifetime. I mean, it was such a heavy weight. And my dad listened to my family and said to me, he says, Listen, Rob, we don't want you to pay back the money. We're just delighted you're sober. This is the first time in years we thought you had any hope for you. We don't understand AA that much, but if you want something good for you, All we want to do is stay sober, keep doing that AA, and forget about the money. Well, my God, I just hit the recovery lottery. I just got out of 12 and a half years of payments. This is good. I thought, oh, man, I love this stuff. This is great. I'm on the pink cloud. I'm jagging across town in my sponsor's office telling them the good news. Father and daughter, financial and bank I owe, and whether I can get them to see the light also. And I go into his office, and I tell him he couldn't do it, but he has to pay me. He said, see, it doesn't matter what your dad says. It's your debt. This is just spiritual growth. This is your integrity. You've got to make it right. And there are times when you know you've dealt the most possible. And I said, well, I don't know what to do about it. My son, you know, has got to go to school every month. He's not going to have time for this. This is the same crazy thing he said to me the next day. He says, I do not know when a way will be shown. I said I don t know if a way would be shown here. I said no. And he said, I am not sure. And I was like, what are you talking about? What are you saying? And he goes, I'm not sure what that means. I'm just trying to figure out how to do it. And I told him, you're right. I don't know. I don' t know, but whatever we should do. That's huge. I had a lot there and I didn't think much about it for a little while. And all of the sudden one day I'm at work. And I'm working. It's an entire year in a retail store. A high volume retail store and I'm like this. And I said to her, and I noticed that every day back in the late 70s He used to sell a lot of silver coins and wheat pennies and silver certificates in the K-12 Gold Street Divisions in circulation. My dad collected that almost at seven. He loved that stuff. He'd sit for hours at the table with the coins and the books, and he'd put some in bags and some in little slots and things and stuff. And he just loved that. And here I am in a situation where I get stuff that comes through my register every day. So I thought, if my boss would let me buy this stuff out of here, I could eventually one day give my dad a really nice gift. Never imagining that I could bring in a debt as well for the half year debt with that energy center. But I could give him a nice gift and I thought this would be cool. And then I asked my boss and he started buying that stuff out the registry. It's true, there were times that I'd be used to having these $100 pay-to-the-bearer and gold certificates that would still circulate in the late 70s. And occasionally a couple of those come through there. I've lost that. I've been sitting in his safe for maybe three or four weeks so I have enough money to buy them. And from the moment I started down this road of trying to do this for my father And at the same time, I'm sticking away a couple other amends, financial amends. It feels like I've started to get lucky financially. I mean, I started getting raises and bonuses. I was actually in a better job with much more money. I built a diner who had a moving truck. And he would schedule a lot of his moves around my schedule. So I would help him, and he'd give me $100 for just a few hours' work, moving furniture. $100 in those days is a lot of money. And I found myself in a position in about four, a little over four years, about four years where I had accumulated, at face value, the total debt. It was amazing. I had bags of silver quarters, and I had a shoebox full of bills, silver and gold certificates. And I went back to Pennsylvania with the mother of my daughter. We were together at that time, and we took all that stuff to my dad. It changed things a lot. I know prior to paying that money giving that to my dad there was no doubt we developed a nice relationship there was not doubt in my mind my dad loved me there was now doubt in mine my father had forgiven me but I was Bob you know Bob Bob goes to a 12 step program I was special bus Bob I don't Wow, Bob's been rich. Bob's in his 12-step room. You know, there's allowances for Bob. Oh, our daughter Marge, she wants to eat. She graduated from a great university and Bob's in his12-steproom. You know? I don't like that. And when I see that money back of my father, something changed in him. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, he started to respect me. I became a man in his eyes. you know I was no like he died about almost a year later and I'm saying that last year with him was sweet I missed him very much when he died but I was able to fly back to Pennsylvania and be there for my mother and my sister and we buried him and I was even with him there was no regrets I know what it's like to bury someone with regret when my grandmother died, I wasn't sober and I was overwhelmed with the ghosts and I wish I would have never done that. I wish, same with my grandfather. We'll have a way of addressing that in alcohol and some people can't be seen. So we write them an honest letter and I've done all that with the people that I couldn't see because they passed away. Sometimes people, you can't see people because they just will not see you and they will stonewall you. It's the last, almost default position when you've tried everything to make the eyeball-to-eyeball amends, you can send them an honest letter. My friend, Clint, I heard it. I was just getting out of this chat. Clint Hodges. Here's a good chance to listen to one of his names. He was a wonderful man. We've been sitting very closely. Clint was telling one of the guys he sponsored one time, it was so funny. The guy says, sir, I made the amends over the phone. He says, did you do the harm over the phones? You can only get the message over the phone if you're a telemarketer, I think. No, just kidding. This stuff changes you. There's a principle in the universe that I didn't understand for a long time. It comes out of the East and it's called karma. It originally comes out of the Hindu faith. And karma, I thought for a long year, it was, you know, what comes around goes around. I thought karma without the universe would thank you for being bad, like how you're, you know, that kind of thing. But actually, the word karma was translated into English as the word doing. In other words, you've hurt a bunch of people and you never made it right. You will find something bizarre. Your life will be turning to crap over here and over here, and you don't know why that's happening, and it appears to you to be bad luck, but I'm telling you it's not. It's your doing. Somehow, and you won't be able to see it, you're doing that. You're shifting and positioning yourself to life to bring that bad crap to you. It's you're do-ing. And one of the things that gets to happen to us as we make amends is we get to change our karma. I think one ofthe problems inherent in me and that God, you know, in page 55 it says we will find God deep down within me. Well, the problem is that God within me knows. You can have people that you have hurt or ripped off and they don't know you did it and nobody knows you did. But there's one person that knows who did it, and it's the worst possible person that you'll know. It's the one person who can most effectively use it against you. And that's you. And they say a lot about how we will sabotage our life. And we're asleep to it. I don't get it. I mean, I don' see why that's happening. How do you even do that? Oh no, no. And yet when you make the amends, it turns right around. around. It's just just. If the books, if the books say that it's true that there's a connection, that we are all all of this, everything here is really from one. Then what I've done to you there's reckoning within me because we are connected. When the illusions were separate. The illusion is that me and God are separate and the illusion is me and you are separate. But if you step back from your life, and you look at the cost and effect, that's not true. You can see the cost of the effect that applies and implies to your activity. And so I make it right with you when I get right with me. I make a right with God's kids, I get right with the Father. I'm amazed in Alcoholics Nervous about most of the actions I take that bring me closer to God actually aren't directed to bring me closer to Jesus. the direction to bring me closer to you, and consequently I end up closer to God. And it's a bizarre kind of deal because I am you and you are me and it's all, there's no separation. That's the ego's big joke it plays on us. It's very effective. It's a great trickster. So if you're sober a number of years And you're having relationship problems, or you're having employment problems, you're having money problems, check your eight-step list. And I've watched guys for years pour immense energy and effort into fixing these problems. And the more energy they pour in to fix them, the worse they get because they're not fixing the real thing. They're functioning under a paradigm But the problem is the business. We know the problem that you owe people money over here, and you don't even get it because you're the one that's ruining your business. I know you can't see it, but trust me, find help. It is terrific. Pay off the financial amends, and then see what happens to your business and check it out. Chris? You know, the 9th step was remarkable for me. Like many of these spiritual exercises, it's very, very difficult to predict accurately what's going to happen when you take them. No other step, I think, did I have more of a negative outlook on what was going to going to happen within the next step, I wasn't sure that making these direct amends was going to cause me more problems. I was really worried that it would make me feel small in front of people's eyes and really, you know, the reverse was true. Keep a couple of experiences and then we'll move on to step 7. I've had a sponsor who is still my sponsor, who he was one of those tough alcoholics. He's been in well over 10 treatment centers, starting at 15 years old. He's about 35 at this point in time And he shows up, so he pushes him in my direction. And I bring him over to the house and we start working through the steps. Now, we get to the ninth step. And what he was really worried about, he didn't mind making amends for where he had done it. He didn't insult the people or whatever. But he was very concerned about these financial amends because he also had a lot of them. But he wasn't trying to. And the first one he did was he robbed a lawnmower from a church and sold it to get the lawyers. And, you know, I'm saying, well, let's figure out how to do this. You need to go back to that minister and make direct comments. And he did. He went off and he made direct comments, and then he basically said what can I do to make this right at the end of it? candidate. And the minister said, well, what I want you to do is I want to pay for the lawnmower with about $300, but I also want you do something else. And he goes, but what's that? He goes, I want you to write a letter about what's happened in your life so that I can read it to my congregation. And he put this wonderful letter together. You know, he let me read it before he sent it to the reverend, which I like. The main letter's going out. I like to see them first. You know, I've learned many things. And he sent this letter to this preacher who read it to his congregation. And it probably renewed a number of people's hope in the goodness of humanity. Something like that. It's true with the repentance. And he had a business that was really struggling. He was a broker, and he had a business that was really struggling, and that's one of the reasons why he was really worried about these financial amends. Well, he makes those financial amends, and something very good happens in the business. He picks up some extra business. And he started making these financial amenders. I mean, he paid for cars. He would take cars from parties and drive them to the front window of high schools. This was a nut. And there was a lot of damage that was done in the past. And he goes around tracking these people down and making really, really, you know, really serious financial amends. Every single time he does it, more money is coming into the business. About six months after he was done with his financial amending, this company was doing $2 billion in sales. Now, you don't know, is that going to happen to all of us? I don't no. But like what Bob said, there is a synchronicity to these spiritual practices. I don't know exactly how they work, but I basically think that if you're acting appropriately in your world, appropriate things happen to you. If you're compassionate in your own world, compassionate things happen too. There is a cause and effect. There's been a number of events in my life that you never know how important they're going to be. some of them are routine, and some of them are extraordinary, and you don't know until you actually do. I had a niece and she would come for holidays and I was always drunk out of my mind at holidays. I had several holiday drinks. I drank Johnny Walker Black. That was my holiday drink. Anybody else have holiday drinks out there yet? So, you know, I'd get really drunk and I would say things to this maybe she reminded me of myself, you know. She was dysfunctional and, you know, she had a person that's very critical in her personality. These guys just reminded me in me. And so the main thing that reminded me to me I immediately disliked. So I said things to her that, you know, an uncle just didn't say to me. So here I am. I'm looking at my A-step. And I know I need to talk to her. So I make arrangements to see her, and I sit down and I make the best amends that I can make at that point in time. I cleared...I basically told her what I did wrong. I asked her, you know, is there any other harms that I haven't covered that I'm unclear on? Gave her a chance to talk about it down a little bit, but at the end she was blown away. She was like, I've never had anybody do this. This is pretty extraordinary. You know, I appreciate this a lot. And he went off back to New York State where she was going to school. Now about six months later, I get a phone call from her. What had happened was he had gotten into some type of a depression or whatever and tried to, in a smooth sense, by taking drugs, he tried to O.D. herself. And she was in a psych ward. Now did he call her mother? Did he call his father? and know that she called me because she knew I would understand. Now, we weren't even on speaking terms before this event. And I was in a position, because of some of the people I knew, to point her toward really, really appropriate professional help, which was really clear enough that I was able to reaffirm her about professional help because my wife at that time had been in therapy for 15 years. I said, don't watch that. Don't watch it. Yeah. So she went and she started to get counseling, and she's had a really, really good life. I would say that she wasn't an alcoholic. And she has issues that need to be dealt with. Now, I didn't know that that amends would lead to this series of situations. Many of my amends led to situations where somebody said, you know, thank you so much for doing this. It's almost always a generous response. Even though I think it's going to be a debacle, it's almost Always a Generous Response. I might have had 50 generous responses, but nits of nans is going to go bad. You know, that's just the other way. I know it's never gone down before, but it's gonna go bad this time. And that's the other kind of way it went. But there's been many events where people have said, you know, my brother or, you know. well, my son, or listen, I think I've got a drinking problem. And I was inadvertently placing myself in a position to be helpful to others through making this a mess. As far as financial amends, most of the people I start to work with don't like this, but I'll share it. If you owe money out there in the world, the money in your pocket isn't yours. It's theirs. Do you want to continue to be walking around with money in your pocket that's not yours? We need to start setting right some of this. Because as we set this right, this helps us. This helps our spiritual condition is really, really improved. A little bit of a nice little problem. Pete Thomas has been ready at practically every meeting I went to when I was early on. And I think kind of inappropriately, because I believe that they were hanging out there like a carrot and there was very, very few people that were explaining how these promises manifest, how you need to work for these, where they occur in the recovery process. and it almost seemed like people were waiting for those promises to come through as they went to AA meetings without really getting involved in the recovery process. Like, where am I going to get mine? You know, I don't know who's free, who's going to do what happens. Well, you have to tell them how to get to work. And there are some pretty extraordinary promises. We will know peace. I don' t know about anybody else in here, but I did not know any peace in my last ten years. A typical event would happen with me where I would start drinking, but I couldn't be with myself. It was a hostile environment, you know, just sitting there being with myself, so I would turn the TV on. I'd have the stereo on. I'd be as far as my lap. I'd been practicing scales, and I'd bee reading a magazine, hoping somebody would call on the phone. You know, that is a desperate individual trying to escape from something that is really painful. And what was really painful was being critched in the state that I was in. So having that promise out there that we'll know peace, you know, the promise that we will not regret the past. I was loathe in guilt and shame and remorse. Listen, I don't believe we're the type of people who, I don' t believe we are evil people. You know, we do evil things. And I don''t believe most of us at least are not stupid people, but we do incredibly stupid and tragic things. And we suffer from this. I've never met an alcoholic that didn't have a conscience And they didn't suffer, you know, grievously from the wrongs that they've caused. And I couldn't get away from this. You know, prior to this, I've never been around walking down the street and all of a sudden you think of something you did like 10 years ago and you go like, oh, shit. I've had so many of these things. I've had hundreds of these events and these wars and these things that I was scammed up. And I couldn't escape them. They would roll through my mind, you know, like a train. And to be able to be free of those, it's an important part of knowing peace, an important heart of not regretting the past. You know, many of the things that i did got me to where i am today. some of the things that I thought were the absolutely most tragic events that could have transpired ended up being assets, you know? But I had to recover from alcoholism first, and that's what these things were about. My relapse, the day that I decided it would be a good idea to buy a gallon of vodka to improve my sobriety, and I went on a five-month bear. I mean, if you would have asked me in, you know, early 1990, what was the worst thing that's ever happened to you, I would have said, buy him that gallon of vodka. But what that gallon vodka did was it convinced me that alcohol had won and I needed to surrender to this. And I need to surrender. I'm not just talking about going to the meeting and pretending, you Know, this is great. I'm just going there and getting active. Just not showing up. Going early, staying late. You know, when somebody asked me to eat something, I would do it. That's what that relapse convinced me I needed to do. So once that relapsed, really a bad thing. You know? I understand that promise today. It's manifested in my life. You know. Don't shortchange yourself with this death. And don't allow your ego or your self-centered fear to block you off from this stuff. It's not preservation, it's just hesitation or anxiety about any particular event. Start the prayer work. You know, finish up the events that you can finish up. There will come a time when you can address this. Again, how free do you want to be? We continue to take personal inventory, where did we learn how to do that, and stuff for. So if you give us some idea of what it takes when we go along, we'll try to learn both of them. Hopefully, you know, we've done some amends by the time we get to September. It's 84, sorry. We've been written in a commensurate way of living and we've cleaned up the dust. We've entered the world with a spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Earlier on in this book, it asks us what these spiritual terms mean to us. What is entering the world as a spirit? You certainly have woken up spiritually. That's a big part of it. But there are some things that start to become operational in my life as I recover from alcoholism. One of them is that sense of intuition. Your intuition is... To intuitively know something is acting to know it without conscious thought. It's not a debate. It's just something that comes naturally. Well, I started to develop that intuition that I had smothered through sort of living the life of selfishness and self-centeredness and alcoholism. I snuffed that intuition out, and I was just motoring on the way I wanted to motor on. But I always had a sense of intuition, of knowing a little bit about right and wrong, knowing, well, maybe I shouldn't do this, or I probably should do that. that sense of intuition wakes up I think that has a lot to do with entering the world of the spirit and you know the one place it operates the best for me is when I'm working with others I intuitively know how to handle somebody and I'm not smart enough to be able to do it but somehow I'm like guided that guidance I think is part of being in the world of the Spirit. And we open ourselves up to this. We take away the things that are blocking us off from this spiritual guidance as we go through these steps. We become much more effective living the life. We become a lot better at not blowing up, relating to death, or shooting ourselves in the foot when we get to this point. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. And here's his thanks to watch for. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. You know, where did we learn how to deal with those? You know basically in steps 4 through 7 or so we learned how to deal with them. But watch for them. They're going to crop up. Keep going through this chapter but it's not me since something's been reared in front of you. We're going to continue to be challenged. And when I look at Stetson, I see it as kind of an amalgam of the rest of the steps. And it's basically teaching us the discipline of reactivity. In other words, how do we react in any given situation? These are some skill sets that we've really learned experientially as we move through the steps, Step 10 is now asking us to watch through these things. It's asking us for inventory, it's asking us to separate the rules, it is asking us to pray for guidance. The things that we've learned in the step process, we're supposed to apply them in a reactive way. You don't just go through the steps and then go about your life. You need to start practicing these principles in all of your affairs. The steps that really points to that, it really shines the light on as we move through the day, there are going to be challenges. There are goingto be times when we need to apply these steps. And just by not to apply some of our old tools, you know, they've already been proven to be defective. Let's use some of these new tools that we've learned and see how they work. And to the extent that I use Step 10 is to the extent that i'm effective in my life. When, for one reason or another, because you know, my self-esteem clears and suddenly ends and I choose to ignore these principles, that's usually when I get into trouble. That's usually when I start setting up a situation that's going to end up being emotionally painful and quite possibly harmful to other people. So, again, the spiritual life, you need to look at it as a discipline. We need to become disciplined with this stuff. And that means work. You know, I'm sorry to say that word work. You know what I mean? I don't know about you guys, but I've been to meetings where people have said, you know, if they told me it was work when I came in, you know how I would have left. Even people who say things like that are misunderstanding how much we don't care whether we're left or not. You know? But I used to hear all this stuff all the time. Word, you know? I like that word work. This is, you now, this is work. We need to become disciplined a little bit. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. We discuss no resentment, dishonesty, selfishness and fear. We discuss them with someone immediately. And make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. This is where a phone is very, very helpful. There's a lot of places where a telephone is not helpful in recovery. But for these immediate ladies, it is a lot of my guys and myself included have immediately people. We've got people that we're good, that we feel comfortable about calling up, who we give a spiritual license to, to be honest with us. And, you know, to call somebody up with one of these is a good practice to get used to. Sometimes the sponsor's not going to be available, so sometimes you have to kind of spread your network out a little bit. It's part of being, you know, a good fellowship member. But it's helping us to talk about these things. Then we recommend it to someone, and also we recommend quickly if it's hard for anyone. This is really important, and I found this kind of hard to put into my business plan at first, but it's become much easier because of the positive results. I'll give you just one instance of where I really felt sorry with this. I was a facilities manager at a school system, and that's a crazy job, and there's all kinds of stuff going on, and there are 15 people who think they're your boss, and it's just nuts. But there was a situation that happened at this high school, and I figured, you know what? I think I could probably cover this with the principal. And I thought, well, if I cover it with the Principal, he'll have seven or eight problems with it. He goes, I'm going to have to go do all this stuff, and before I even take care of this, he's going to be running all around. I'm just going to do it. So I did it because we sent him, and the principal, he gave me a whole lot of crap for it. And then, you know, I was walking away, and I was thinking, this is not good. This is, you now, this isn't good. I need to do, I need a new test step on this. And I didn't. You know, so what happened was the situation deteriorated. It got worse. More people got involved. And, you know, finally, as I say, I needed to go to the guy and he didn't explain to me what was wrong. You know? I was wrong not to include you in the decision. This is your fault. And that stopped the momentum of all the downhill crap that was running my way, you know? When I apply these things, they make my life easier. They make it more apparent to other people that, you know, I'm going to be as honest as I can be. I'm gonna be as forthright. You know, I'm gunna consider you as much as possible. And it just makes my life a lot easier when I apply these principles in the test. Now, when I don't, if I get decided upon differently, What's going to happen is I'm just going to cause a lot of turbulence out there in the world. They're going to finally walk over me, you know. And, you see, do you want to be effective? Do you want it to go through life as smoothly as we possibly can? If you do, then these are real great disciplines. You can stop something from becoming worse with this mindset. Maybe that will be some request for someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. You know, that's easy to be, isn't it? Love and intolerance of others being our code? What's the stuff you need to learn when you start making this your code? And that is, the people who are truly happy in this world, every single one of them that isn't mentally defective and happy, is giving. There's a sense of charity and a sense of compassion and a service that these people have that is directly proportional to their happiness. So why is this book telling me that love and tolerance for others is my love? You know, when you first look at this, when you're first reading it, you know, that thing's eugenic. But when you experience to it. There's nothing so directly proportional to your own true happiness in your life as a code like this. And this is good. This is where you can strip yourself up on all this stuff that's deciding what it's going to mean for you before you do it. I only learned a lot of these lessons by actually putting them into practice. Here's one that somebody He called me with one day and said, can you keep smoking anything or anyone, even alcohol? I called up this buddy of mine from Staten Island. He's a great A.A. He's been around 15 days and just, you know, his whole life is about service. And we've become really good friends. I called him up one day because I had an issue with something or somebody. I don't even remember what it was. And he goes, Chris, I need to tell you something. And I go, what, Larry? And he goes, it's not that she's funny. It's that there ain't one who hasn't recovered. I'm like, oh my God. It was like I was kicked in the head. Because I was engaged in this really emotionally propelled controversy. You know? And, you know, I've got to tell you, he was great. There was nothing wrong with my spiritual program. There was an unresolved step or principle somewhere behind all of this. And it was something like, a lot of times you don't like hearing the truth. The first thing that happens is, if you're new in here, the first thing to happen is when somebody hits you between the eyes with the truth, you're going to get pissed off at them. You know what I mean? That's stage one, you know. Stage two, hopefully, is going to have to come to terms with that truth because it's going to haunt you if it doesn't. You know, state three is maybe you start to apply some of this knowledge in a positive way in your life. And state four is you're very grateful for an old-timer who is not worried about stepping on your feelings. He's more worried about stepped on your grave. You know what I mean? I love those people who will tell you the truth. Here's a good challenge for me. So by the time sanity will have returned, that's a great promise. These are some really cool promises this has got to have. They're some of my favorite promises. We'll tell them to be interested in liquor, attempt it. We will recoil from it as it comes to high flame. These are the alcohol promises. Now I've warned a lot of people. I see a lot relapses. I've seen a lot people running in and out of AA. They're like cauldrons, really, it's what they are. They circle around anyway and land every once in a while. They're not really in the field. And I think you could tell them that, you know, the place where the book says your days are protected isn't set. Have you done the first nine steps? I mean, they look at me like I'm an alien. You know, that doesn't really conclude with them. But the fact of the matter is, is these spiritual practices lead to the exception of the mind being lifted from us, being removed from us. And we get to a place where we are safe and protected. As long as we continue to follow some simple rules, some simple practices, we can be safe and protective from alcohol. If you hear that, though, at the wrong meeting, you know, you will become the topic of the meeting very quickly. But I will say that, you now, these are promises that are in the book. We react daily and normally with lunch if we talk about it. And actually, we'll see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given up for a while. And we sort of have put on our part. We're not fighting alcohol in a face-to-face combat anymore. anymore. Did that ever work for you? It didn't work for me. What we do is we practice these spiritual principles and the problem is removed. We don't go in head-to-head combat with the bottle. We don' t take a bottle of whiskey and put it in front of us and say, I ain't drinking you. What we'd do is we practice these spiritual principles and we change And we wake up, and the problem is removed. It's amazing. We're not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe, and protected. We have not even sworn off, instead the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We're neither cocky, nor are we afraid. That is our strength. This is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. Here again, it tells us that we have a part to play here. Yes, God is absolutely necessary, I believe. But what is our part? God will not render us white as snow without our cooperation. How then do we cooperate? We need to stay in His spiritual condition. How do we do that? We use our willpower the way God intended it and align ourselves with these spiritual principles and practices. That's what we need to do. We need the same in this spiritual issue. Every single person that comes walking through the doors, almost every single person, because there are some drugs out there today that are pretty tricky. Almost every singleperson that walks through the door and raises their hand and says they're coming back is for one reason and one reason only. They may think it's because she left or she stayed. Or they may think, you know, because of this reason or that reason. But basically it relates directly to one's spiritual condition. How were you participating in the maintenance of your spiritual mission? You'll usually see that, number one, they're not working with people anymore. Number two, they are really not doing any of the same 10th or 11th step disciplines. They haven't really gone through, really actually gone through this step. And then sometimes people look directly at it and see the cause as they stop going to meetings. But the issue is you stop going to meetings before you stop going to meeting. And you do that through dropping your guard in the participation and the maintenance of your spiritual condition. Does that make any sense? It's easy to let up on the spirit or program of action and rest on our laurels. Laurels are basically yesterday's accomplishments. You know, so many of us think that because we've put a lot of meetings in the bank, you know, or we did step work back in 1935, we're going to be okay. Well, you Know, the spiritual life is not a theory we have to live with, and every single day we have so much to participate in the maintenance of it. We need to stay disciplined, we need to say consistent, and we need to keep up our momentum. The people that I really respect in Alcoholics Anonymous are the people that are more active every single year. And I think it's because they understand that over any considerable period of time, alcoholism gets worse and doesn't get better. It's a progressive illness. So the progression that they use against it is to be even more active next year. A lot of people are under the mistaken idea that if I should put time together, you can backpedal. You know? So, and listen, this is a, the American Medical Society describes alcoholism as a chronically relapsing disease. Why do you think the American, look, I don't relapse anymore. Why do they say the American medical society thinks it's a chronical relapsed disease? Because so many of us relapse. You know, I don't know about you, but I paid a really, really high price back in the 80s for drinking. I can't pay that price anymore. So I strive to stay consistent with this stuff. And I pray for the willingness to stay persistent with this thing. Because I think I need the power of God even to stay inconsistent with this style. we're headed for trouble if we rest on our laurels alcohol is a subtle thug a billboard doesn't raise up in front of your house saying if you don't get back to meetings and so on, especially if you've got four days to the next session you know, that's not how it happens it happens suddenly suddenly the thought crosses your mind all those years you spent in AA was a bunch of crap You know, and you know, I mean that's how it happens. There's not a lot of warning signs. The best warning sign is a good sponsor Not you, you know We're all cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve in case of maintenance of our spiritual condition Again, it's telling us anything important in this book, it tells you at least three times. It is important to maintain our spiritual conditioning What does it mean by cured? We're not cured of alcoholism. How can we be recovered, but we're not cured? I get that all the time from people. And the way I describe it, and this is my own personal semantical explanation, is as such. Let's say you have cancer, and you're cured of cancer. The disease of cancer has been removed. But let's say we've recovered from cancer. The symptoms of cancer have been removed. Still, the underlying condition is there. The best I can hope for with alcoholism is to have the symptoms removed. But the symptoms are my problem anyway. You know, as long as I don't put a drink in my body, I won't activate active alcoholism. I know I am still an alcoholic. You give me a pint of bourbon right now and, you know, forget about it. I'm not even sure where it's going to take me, but I've got a good clue. And so I know that my alcoholism still persists. I'm no cured of it. But I'm recovered from it. And that's the way I explain it. And it's non-scientific, and it's you know... It's Chrisology, but that's the way I look at it. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done. These thoughts must go with us constantly. Here's a question for you. Does the thought, thy will not mind be done, go with you constantly? It's an instruction in the book. I try to be conscious of the presence of God as much as possible I try and bring that conscious presence of God into my thought life, into my behaviors I try do it as much as I'm consciously able it's just a good practice for me not only does it help me maintain my spiritual condition It brings me comfort, you know. So I've found over the years that I really try to do that. My thoughts are forever, you now, stretching in that direction. We can exercise our willpower along this line only when we wish it's the proper use of the will. What is the proper us of the well? Understanding that we need connection to our higher power and we need to be about the business, the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Um, Bob, what are you going to do? Take a seven-minute break. About alcohol. I was thinking this Christmas story over. It's bad. And there's a couple things within me that are a detriment to my own spiritual progress and recovery. And one of them is that I think by nature, and I don't think I'm alone in this, is I'm an acute-minded person. And an acute minded person thinks that problems, all problems are acute and can be surmounted and gotten over once and for all. The problem is I am an acute mind person with a chronic personality. A personality that recurs itself to self-centeredness. A personality that returns to front-line God. A personality, even though, mentally, I approach life as if everything's a joke. Have you ever noticed how you've looked at people, there's probably people in your life that they acted like a jerk ten years ago, and in your mind they're still a jerk? Right? as if it's once and done. And yet, reality is fluid. Reality has changed. I'm the same, I've retained a cute mentality that had a tendency to beat you up for your quietness because when you get imperfect, oh now this gets, now you're always imperfect. I turn I turn it on me. And there's only one do not in the big book of any significance. It's in chapter 5, do not use courage. So when you continue to watch for this stuff and you find that, oh my God, I'm really selfish and self-centered again. Oh, I've tried to play God and run the universe. Remember that this is natural. This is a part of being. I don't imagine the diabetic will sit down and go into a deep depression and beat himself up when his blood sugar is off. And we shouldn't do it when our spiritual condition is off because... But, it's not your fault. This is our nature, but it is your responsibility to correct this. Just like it's not the diabetic's fault that he has natural inflammation into high blood sugar, but it is his responsibility to correct it. And it is my responsibility to Correct It. You know, we now call us down to Tennessee universally now to read the Knights' promises and deeds. I guess they're the only promises. Well, that's not even near being true. They're promises from an alcohol book. And for all those, I have a friend who says, he looks down and he says, there are more than promises. There are checklists. If you've been thorough up into this part in the process, he's going to go through the promises after each one of those steps and go, yup, yup. If it's no, no, you missed something. You missed something If you can't fulfill, for the most part, the checklist. Now, keep in mind that this is chronic disease, so we never get all of this stuff once and for all. But if there hasn't been some of it coming into your life, you're missing something. And then this paragraph on page 85 that says, the first four paragraphs, is one I need and take very serious. It is easy to let up on this spiritual program and rest for a while, but then I think often we are seduced by the very fruits of our own recovery into a false sense that there's not a problem anymore. Like, if you assume mind it, you would think we've gotten over it. And because I'm self-centered, which means that I essentially judge everything on how I feel, if you feel like you've overcome this and feel like there's not a problem, everything's going your way, you haven't thought about taking a 30-year for the last six. If you could be loving, respect You put out all the major fires in your life with Step 8 and 9, things will really hit. It's very easy to feel like there's not a problem here. And consequently my actions, if I allow them, will follow the feelings. And I will start acting like there is not a problems here. And in the chapter, it talks about one of the delusions that takes a lot of us out. The delusion that we're like other people. Like now I've overcome this. But this is in a true condition now. And I've gotten over my alcoholism. I'm very good to go. And I get to meet people in this room that are functioning under that delusion. And you know how you can tell? Don't know what you think or what you feel. or your thoughts and emotions will deceive you. You have to step back from yourself, maybe with the help of your sponsor, and look at your passions. And maybe if you do that, you'll see something that could scare the hell out of you. Maybe what you'll be seeing is in your first two years or a year of sobriety, you went to a lot of meetings and you were sponsored or bored.