Step 4 Strips Away Two False Selves Until Only the Real One Remains – Fr. M.

Good evening. This is the fourth in our series, and it's on the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. It kind of gets really serious now, because the looks and the thoughts turn inward. In the first three, we were kind of, well, we did look inward, obviously, but we were focusing on this God out there. Now, the addict looks at self. A.A., in his Twelve Principles, lays down a perfect pattern of how to live. Prepare before you execute. For example, admit you're sick, take on the rules to get well. Come into a room and look, come to believe you can get that way. Make a decision to turn your life over to God, spend the rest of your life doing it. Now, the alcoholic, the drug addict, is asked to take an inventory of self. In the fifth step, make it known. Become willing to have defects removed, ask to have them removed. Make a list and become willing to make amends, ask to do it. It is a classic, almost architectural pattern of living. Now, Dr. Bob summarized all twelve steps into these six words. Steps one, two, and three. Trust God. Steps four through eleven, clean house. Step twelve, help others. Isn't it significant that the major portion of the twelve steps has to do with correcting what's wrong in here? Immediately after sobriety, I can't handle it, God can, I think I'll get in touch, now comes the cleanup act. Made a searching act. And fearless, moral inventory of ourselves. Ladies and gentlemen, there is not a therapy on earth as complete as AA is. It's almost popular in the so-called scientific world to deny what we call the spiritual life, the world of morality, and everything else. We are no more than animals who determine our own destiny. There is such a thing as morality. Wherever you see this word, moral, it has to do with the rightness or wrongness of human behavior. And AA was the first purely scientific organization on earth to recognize that the moral side of the human animal has to be faced and handled. If we are to achieve any kind of mental, spiritual, mental, emotional health. Please make this distinction or you'll just drag your heels in the mud. The disease is not immoral. That happens. The disease is a purely physical thing. It is a biochemical addiction to a drug. It results in added damage to the mind, emotion, and mind. It results in added damage to the mind, emotion, and mind. It results in added damage to the mind, emotion, and mind. It results in added damage to the body, mind, and soul. And so we call it a three-fold disease of body, mind, and soul. The behavior of the addict is always, to a greater or lesser degree, immoral. And that's why we're asked to take a moral inventory so we can correct those things. The disease is not immoral. That happens. What it makes us do is pretty bad. That acts so bad. You've all heard family therapists go into what happens. Infidelity, incest, wife abuse, child abuse, husband abuse, emotional battering, spiritual damage, name it, it's all there. Who but the alcoholic gets drunk and takes his daughter to bed? Who but the alcoholic shows up drunk at her mother's funeral? Who but the alcoholic is drunk at the daughter's graduation? Who but the alcoholic... Who but the alcoholic... Who but the alcoholic is drunk at the daughter's graduation? Who but the alcoholic... Who but the alcoholic... Who but the alcoholic... A parabolic alienates his kids to such a degree that they're afraid to bring their schoolmates home. It could go on forever. I was in a Midwestern state, and I gave that talk about family and all the horrible things that happen as a result of this disease in the lives of others. A woman came up to me afterwards. She said, Father, you missed one. I said, well, what do you mean? She said, my husband was a good man from the beginning. He was a good man when he drank. But she said, never abused us physically, never abused us verbally, never abused us financially. We never wanted for a dime. However, he drank and slept. He just disappeared from this family and lived in a world of unconsciousness. He didn't pick up one responsibility. He didn't pick up one responsibility toward this family at all. He drank and slept. The behavior of the addict is always immoral. You know what the alcoholic and the drug addict is now asked to do? It's not to wipe that out. That's there. It's to resolve the guilt of the past because you cannot live with guilt sober. Dr. Bob proved this in the very beginnings of AA. He and Bill got together. They started this thing unconsciously. And he went on a medical seminar or something in Atlantic City and he drank. And he realized that he could not stay sober until he cleaned up his past. Because he said it's impossible to look at it through sober eyes and be able to stand it. And this is why, my friends, right after steps one, two, and three, this comes right away. He did that. He took a moral inventory of his life. He admitted to God himself and another human being and he was able to go on. In a lot of treatment centers, you hear counselors say things like, you've got to get rid of the garbage. And they have you write out all of your past sins, put them in a bag and go and burn the bag. It does nothing. You will never get rid of your past. It's there. Mine is there. Yours is there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. It's there. You cannot change one iota of it and you don't get rid of it. What you do is resolve the guilt about it. A good friend of mine, a man from whom I learned most of what I know, said this. He said, after I got well and I did my fourth and fifth steps, he said, I could walk into practically any hotel in the land. He was a writer. He used to write for newspapers. And he said, under any potted palm could be an old doozer who could look me right in the eye and say, Ripley, you are an SOB. And he said, I'd look him right back in the eye and say, everything you say about me was true. No more. Unresolved remorse will destroy you. And so we are asked to take an inventory. That's a very wise word. You know what we're asked to do? We're asked to try to find out what this is. This I that I've spoken about. All my life. Every one of us in this room, my friends, is three. I am who you think I am. 16,000 miles off center. I am who I think I am. A little bit closer. I've lived with me for a lot of years. The third me is the real me. And very often in the life of any individual, the real me escapes oneself for a lot of years until honesty sets in. Have you ever honestly believed that all your misery is caused by everybody else? The wife, the husband, the children, the circumstances, the neighborhood, the family, the weather, anything. I'm not responsible for me or the goofy state I'm in. It's always somebody else's fault. There was a couple who went to West Point once to watch their kid graduate. The entire quarter. Our corps was marching by. The wife nudges the husband and says, Isn't that wonderful, Henry? 4,000 cadets and our little Georgie is the only one in step. Well, I mean, when the whole world's out of step with me, maybe I am. You know what you're asked to do in treatment? Look into a mirror and keep staring. Till you see what's there. You pare away what everybody thinks about and you look at yourself. Honestly, starkly. That is why they use these two words. Searching. Fearless. Right or wrong list of what I've done in my life. And you know what I'm going to discover? What every human being has to. The good. The bad. And the ugly. The ugly. What I've got. What I haven't got. And what has to go. I've got talents and so do you. Don't hand me this phony humility. Oh, I'm a nothing. See, this is a goofiness of the alcoholic or the drug addict when he comes into treatment. His estimation of self is so low that it is not accurate. It's not accurate. Have you ever met the phony humility of people? These... Okay, you go to an AA meeting. Some guy gives a brilliant talk. And you go up to him after and say, God, that was magnificent. You really helped me. And he says, Oh, it was really off the cuff. I wasn't really prepared. Next time you hear that, just say, Geez, you know, on second thought, it did stink. You want to find out if somebody's on it. You know what really kills me? You get one of these absolutely luscious, beautiful young starlings. It appears on the Johnny Carson show. Oh, I'm always been an ugly duckling. My left side's my bad one, you know. That's as phony as it can get. The next time you hear someone knocking himself, agree. Just agree. Did you ever go to a party and you want to sing songs and there's a piano player there and you say, Hey, would you mind playing for us? Oh, I don't play very well. Just say, Excuse me, I thought you did. And walk away. Seriously, you'll find out that there's a whole lot of phoniness in the world. Ladies and gentlemen, humility is not a denial of truth. It is stark truth. God grant me the serenity to accept every gift and talent that he has given me. The courage to accept it and want to use it as it ought to be used and the wisdom to know how. I've got plenty of talents and so do you. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you were handpicked for sobriety because there's something in you God wants to use? To deny what God has given you is to insult him. It's almost to spit in his face and say, No, you didn't. There are a lot of things I don't have. Have you ever found no talent people? That, you know, a person that thinks he can sing and can't? You know, there's a fellow, a friend of mine, he said whenever he got drunk he sang. He thought he was the world's gift to the operatic world. On one of his last drunks somebody taped him and played it to him the next day and he left for Tahiti. I've got a lot and there's a lot that I don't have that other people do. I've got to find out what I've got because the good Lord is going to ask me to use it someday to help somebody else. And you know if we're honest enough, and humility is stark truth. If I recognize what I've got and I recognize what God has given me, I'm going to be able to do it. If I recognize what you've got and we pool our resources, maybe together we can help somebody else. But the real me, the real me, I am asked to find out what that real me is and who he is. What's a moral inventory? If you don't know how to take one, get one of the marvelous pamphlets they have out. Try the Ten Commandments. I think we all function according to those rules. Live and let live. Do unto others and then cut out. Do unto others and then as you would have them do unto you. Take these normal rules of human behavior. I think that there are pamphlets out that have an entire examination of self that is very thorough and very complete. Get one. Go through it. Be honest enough to acknowledge these things. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're like me, I've done some wonderful things in my life. I've done a lot of things I'm very proud of. I've done an awful lot of things I'm terribly ashamed of. And I have failed to do a whole lot of things. All I'm asked to do is to list them. So that somewhere along the line I can find the real me. There was a... On Sunday afternoon they used to have something about the National Football League. And it was like an hour to a half hour before the games. And one Sunday they had the hobbies. And one of the San Francisco 49ers used to buy old farmhouses about a hundred years old and restore them. And live in them. Until the bug bit again. He'd buy another one and restore it and they'd live in it. But you know the very first thing he did when he bought a house? He had to find out what it had, what it didn't have, and what had to go. And he found out what it had. A few good timbers, a good chimney. It didn't have, let's say, a solarium or a sun deck. Or whatever. And he found out all the rotten things that had to go. And when he cleared that out he could then begin to rebuild. And I think that a lot of you have come into treatment. There's a lot of damage there. There's a lot of good there. Let's find out what it is that we have to build on and do the building. But please remember it takes great courage to do this step. And we get the strength to do anything. From a power. From a power greater than ourselves. All we have to do is cooperate with it. Thank you and good night.