Step Nine and Making Amends – Big Book Workshop – Part 10 of 10 – Bob D. and Chris S. – Bob Darrell and Chris Schroeder

Good morning. Morning, God's out here in Alcoholics. Give me a moment of silence and we'll start with a prayer. Lord, help me set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I thinking I know myself, everything I know I think about others, and everything I thing I know my own recovery, All for a new experience in you, Lord. A new experience in myself. A new experience in my fellows. And a much needed new experience in my own recovery. We started we started like that pause uh first I thought about step nine and was the most overwhelming step to me. It scared me. And I, you know, I would go to meetings and hear people talk about nice stuff, and these guys had wives and kids and jobs, and they were nice people. But I gotta tell you, I didn't lie years on the streets like an animal. There, when I started thinking about it, it overwhelmed me. You know, You know, I was, I'm a real alcoholic, but I had a couple years as a real desperado heroin addict on the streets and where I carried weapons and I did some things that I'm, they're very, I don't know how I'd ever make it right. Every guy, I never found him that he'll never be the same. I think I might have known for the brain about that long ago from his chest. You know, I've never been able to find him to pick him in. I stole his way of life. I mean, I had to every single day. I couldn't work and I had come up with money. And in later years the amount of money I had to come up became a little less but it was more pathetic because now it's wine money or, you know, And 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 and steal your change and then change seats and move somewhere else for the party. I just wondered things like that, like going into my pathetic, awful, disgusting community and going to gas stations and hammer on the cigarette machine I gave you a pack telling them I put money in when I knew I didn't, you know. And I stopped lifting. Oh, and I never worked anywhere. I would steal something. If your car was unlocked, I'd steal your 8-track tape 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, I did not. 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 it. I mean this is, I want to leave. I just think, well I'll stay here and I'll go to your meetings and I don't drink but this is too big. I mean it's just not. I remember at one point thinking to myself if I could do a good job and work for the rest of my life And I used every dime I made towards the minutes. I don't think I could fit touch everything. It was so overwhelming to me. But that's what the ego does when it gets involved in this stuff. You've got to always remember, and I say I haven't been far enough in this sector 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 if there's a thing that happens in your life, you see it evidence in the stories you will hear in the rooms, in the lives of 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 things it's going to actualize your faith in Christ and God if you watch God's hand work in this people's lives. The thing you see at the end is called synchronicity. I believe Carl Jung was the first person, at least that I know about, that talks about synchonicity. And the synchronistic view of the universe is a universe that is motivated by love and accommodation and opportunity. And in a syncretistic universe, if you are in a place that I was in, where you know you should get from point A to point B, which is through your meds, and make these amends that seem absolutely impossible, from the moment of desire, and I mean of the desire to change things, the words desire sounds to me like old English, it means of the Father. And if you have the 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. And then, you know, you don't have to go to AA eating very long to be here to see incredible stories of people getting their kids back and where they were supposed to get their kids back. People having things open up to them. And so as I moved into Stets, some things started happening to me. One of the things, you know, one of the different things that has a lot learning to go. And I've learned a couple of little things this autumn. They're not necessarily 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. The way that he kind of just named me on an intuitive level years ago is I was sponsoring guys that were right to me. They had overwhelming rifts of arms. Overwhelming. And so I started thinking about it, and I said, you know, from the moment we take step three, our lives break into my business and God's business. It's no different than in step eight and nine. It's in steps six and seven. It' s in step four and five. There's my business, there's God's businesses. And you can tell that God's a business, and my business can be an action for me to take and prayers for me say to incur God's part in this deal, right? So, in step 8-9, it says, in Step 8, it said, we made a list. Last month, as a matter of fact, on page 76, it kind of implies an argument when you put things into it. So I'm pulling the names off of my fourth step and putting them where they're going on my eighth step list. So I made a list of all persons in your heart, and became willing to make amends to all. So that's God's business, and we have no such business because there's a prayer here that is innocent. It's a very strong prayer because it just doesn't sound exactly as you asked, John. It's like we ask and so we have to learn to do it. We ask and still it comes. So, in other words, the book is asking you to put this as a consistent piece of spiritual business until the willingness has come. So, an eight-step major, my business, make it a list, it's God's business to provide the willingness. An eight-stepped nine, major estimate, it is my business wherever possible. That's God'S business. I have people who say, I've never been able to make students, I don't know where they are. I couldn't find them. Except when the detail went into their marauders, and that's a confessing between me and God my sponsor pretty much. So when I started telling guys who were like me to add overwhelming lists, 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 You have one set of index cards where you have the willingness, and that'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 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. You have some kind of demonstration of good will. Column number two, you have the wherever. You know what's wrong. You know where the harm is. You know whatever it are, but you don't have the willingness. And you know that because you keep putting it off. You keep procrastinating. So, in column number two, you don't actually have to go make your list today. But you have to keep it as a piece of spiritual business and you pray for the willingness that it's all comes. In column number three, you have the willingness. And you haven't determined it. You can picture yourself in no BS of going there right now. But you don' t know where it goes. 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 let's say God's hand is perfect His timing and choreography is perfect 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 It's 17 years sober, and it was so weird why he just popped up, and the way he popped up it was just like, it was odd. It was very, very odd, and I found out later that if he popped off at 17 years sober, it's because there was another guy who I used to, who saw me as a bad drunk and just drove me out of his bar, that now I just came out of the treatment center at 17-years-sober where he was far from ready to come to AA at 5-years sober, And my hooking up with her and making that a message, 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 connect. It's amazing. I still have some today that are in the list if I have the willingness but I I really don't know how to contact the 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. It says, I got a debt here. I got debt. And then you pay it foward, and after paying it forward, and the person talks up, he makes a direct amendment. Still it says, you know, it's not rocket science. It's been the last call on this. I don't have the openness and I don'y have the wherever. And I pray and wait for opportunity. And the reason that this seems to help people is when a new guy is doing this and he realizes all he has to do 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've learned to get glitz sometimes when I have my business because I have so many things on a plate that if I just sat there and looked at them, I wouldn't be able to If I just sat there and looked at everything that had to be done, I wouldn't do anything because I'd sit here and become worn out just thinking about it. So you do the next thing. And another thing I tell guys all the time with the ministry is you've got three amendments you're going to make this week. Do the hardest one first. When the mental tendency in self-centered, healing-focused people like me is you want to put the difficult, hard thing to the back and do it left. Well if you do that, you're climbing a hill, man. 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, trying to get up the hill 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 try to say, well, they were just doing me, you know. 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. And I just think we have nothing to do with me. I've stolen so much from my dad. He became friends with a guy who owns a pawn shop in the town I lived in, but buddy don't clap back. I just embarrass them so often. My dad is 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 and 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 work and answer the questions about me. And I know it was very, very hard on them. You know, I never mentioned it, but to save their own sanity in marriage and life, they had to put me out of their life completely. But they couldn't put me under their heart. And I knew from my sister that my mother took medication and saw a therapist. And my father slept 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 aid are funny. They want to butt into your business. I said, so where's mother and father? They said, oh, yeah. Where do they live? I asked them where he is. 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 thought about believing someone that there's this one thing you need to make a meds 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 thought I was praising someone that there's this fucking need to make a med to my kids that I understand what they're saying but it's too late. You know maybe a couple years ago before I had smashed that wooden chair over his head and stopped that my dad, that Jesus 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, uh, 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 I 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 making amends for my parents. The first thing they told me was, Oh, you never would have occurred to me if it wasn't to call your mother every week and don't call collect. I would have never occurred to be. I almost called for like, I don't know why, I think I sometimes self-centered things that entitle me or something like, why did I pay for the call, you know? I'm still seeing my statement. I'm more likely not doing it because I see myself some kind of weird Robin Hood, a hit from the rich and gets a knee. I'm afraid to call you out. 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 like, what do you want? I said, 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? Well, I didn't ask them to call. I said don't, Mom. I need to call too late. She goes, hey, Mom! 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 ever 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 a good job. For the first couple of years, I used to, over several years before, I made $5 an hour. I mean, my first job since the bridegroom minimum wage was $3-something an hour in those days. I remember the first Christmas, I had to buy my mom and dad something. Now, I've done a lot of guilt with my dad. And I wasn't afforded getting him a necktie. I mean... A necktIE? This is pathetic. It's a little $10 nix. 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 just a guy that needs to be taught. And he 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 out on the phone and everything, but they're very skeptical. And he's in Nevada with this attitude, you know, he's probably a bum who's trying to calm us again. But we've never been to Las Vegas. He's a complete loss. They blew out the Las Vegas, and I met him at the airport in some of their own town, and I took him out to dinner with my sponsor and his wife, and it was so weird. I took him to a really nice restaurant. I'd been on the streets for so long, I had no idea what a really nice restaurant cost. I had to borrow money from my sponsor to pay for it because that's like the prices I want. You know, he did that and my sponsor came up with the idea and invited them. It was his idea to my home group and what a beautiful idea that was. I wouldn't have thought of them. I think I know a little odd about it, aren't you? And they came to my home group. My home group made people's homes. And there were quite a few members in my group that had gay houses. Concealed houses. They would come and see people. And the people in this home, you'd get there sometimes 45 minutes, an hour early before the meeting and there was a lot of socialization and you'd stay after the meeting and sometimes a whole bunch a whole bunch of people go out to dinner before or after the meeting. There was a group that had a nice cloth section of alcoholics, and it also had the wives of a lot of guys come there. 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 kind of length, and then a lot of new guys like myself that were in that year, year to maybe ten months to a year and a year and a half range. There was a bunch of us, we used to run as a pack. And that's 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'm always better with you than I've ever been anywhere. And they have to see 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 goop on us and laugh like hell. We don't think it's funny. They just get the biggest kick out of our problems. And so what happens is the newer guys, we're starting to work with. They're like 38, so we're just out at the scary unit or the EOB, and so we pick on them, and we goofed on them because AA functions are the first rule of plumbing and crap runs downhill. And they went 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 made up a list of the things I owed my father 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 the money for rent, I don' have the to fix my car, and if I don''t get it fixed, I shouldn't go to work. And this is years of this stuff, and then I put it down on paper and figured it out. out, and that's the only thing I knew. I was requested to go to him with a painted plane which I thought was lame. I don't know if I paid it but I had to hit the lottery and there's a page, you know. And he explained to me that I sold my integrity to nickel and dime at a time and I'd buy back on the nickel and the dime at the time. And I didn't want I think the painting was humiliating. So, a guy of my death. But that's what I was told to do. And I went and sat down at the coffee shop in the Stardust Hotel with them where they were staying. 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 them about the plan, it was a 12-and-a-half year payment claim. And I was making the best payments I could make in 12 and a half years. Some of you that are new, just being on 12 and half years of payments is like a lifetime. I mean, it's such a heavy weight. And my dad's listening to my family and saying 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 it. If we had any hope for you, we'd understand AA that much, but if it's doing something good for you all we want you 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 great. I thought, oh man, I love stuff. This is GREAT! I'm on the pink cloud. I'm dashin' across town to my sponsor's office to tell him the good news. Sponsor his daughter a financial emergency order in order I could get them to see the light also. And I go into his office and I tell him, you couldn't do it because you didn't have the paintings to see. It doesn't matter what your dad says. It's your death. 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 done the wrong stuff. And he goes, how can you talk about raining on a night parade? I mean, that's the matter, young man, right? And I say to him, I said, well, I don't know what to do about it. My son is a pathetic little twat every month. He's not even going to catch me. This is some crazy thing he said to me the next day. He says, I don' t know, but a way will be shown. I said, I dunno, but way will you show me that? Sweet. I'm out there and I didn't think much about it for a little while. And all of a sudden, one day I'm at work. Aaron Burch is an ad here at a retail store, a high-volume retail store. And I look at this ad register, and I'm noticing that every day back in the late 70s, you know, a lot of silver coins and wheat pennies and silver certificates in the K-12 Gold Series that he gets in circulation. My dad collected that almost at 7. 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 stuff. And here I am in a situation where I get this stuff 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 create a debt as well for the half of your debt with that RV 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 of the registry. There were times, if I believe you, I had these $100 pay-to-the-bearer and gold certificates that were still in circulation in the late 70s. And occasionally a couple of those come through there. I bought that because I think it was safe for maybe three or four weeks so I had 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 eventually got 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 and 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 know about Bob, but Henry's mom is in a 12-step program. It's allowances for Bob. Oh, our daughter Marge, she graduated from a great university and Bob's in a 12-stepper program. You know, kind of like that. And when I paid that money back to 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... He died about almost a year later, and I'll tell you 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'm here. 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. I wish I would have never done that. Same with my grandfather. We'll have a way of addressing that in Alcoholics Zone. 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 you can't see people because they They just will not see you, and they will stonewall you with 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 supposed to email this guy, Clint Hodges. He was a wonderful man. We became very close. 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. Did you keep a heart over the phone? So, if you don't want to get the money over the hole, 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's referred to, 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 lot of years, you know, what comes around goes around. I thought karma without the universe would thank you for being bad, like how you're, you don't know that kind of thing. But actually the word karma was translated into the 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. 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 as you're doing it. And one of the things that just happens to us is we make amends because we get to change our karma. I think one of the problems inherent in the God, well in page 55 it says we will find God deep down within me. Well the God you, the problem is the 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 they can most effectively use it against you. And that's you. And this is not how we will sabotage our life. And we're asleep to it. I don't get it. I don' see why. And yet, when you make the amends, it turns right around. It's just . It looks as if the Buddhists and the Hindus say that it is true that there's a connection, that the connectedness, that we are 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 you're losing it, you're separate. You lose it if me and God are separate, then you lose it just because me and you are separate. But if you step back from your life and you look at the cause and effect, that's not true. You can see the cause of the effect that applies in twice your activity. And so I make it right with you when I get right with me. I make them right with God's kids when I make right with the Father. I'm amazed and alcohol is nervous about most of the actions I take that bring me closer to God actually aren't directed to bring me closer to god, they're directed to bring me close 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. And 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 have employment problems, you're having money problems, check your eight-step list. I've watched guys for years pour immense energy and effort into fixing these problems, and the more energy they pour into fixing them the worst they get because they're not fixing the real, they're approaching it under a paradigm that the problem is the business. We know the problem if 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, take this experiment, pay off the financial emergency and let's see what happens to your business, check it out. Chris? Well, one of the things that I think is really 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 happen in the next step. I wasn't sure that making these direct amendments could 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. So, just a couple of experiences, and then we'll move on to step seven. I have a sponsor who is still my sponsor, who he was a relapse, and he was one of those tough, tough alcoholics. I mean, he's been in well over 10 treatment centers, but he's starting at like 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 stole it to get the lawns. And, you know, I'm saying, well, let's figure out how to do this. You need to go back to that minister, you now, and make direct amends. And he did. He went off and he made direct amendes. And then he basically said, what can I do to make this right at the end of it? And then he said, well, what I want you to do is I want you to pay for the lawnmower with about $300. But I also want you to do something else. And he goes, well 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. I like to get the men's letters going out. I like the see them first, you know. I've learned so 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, you know, something like that, something with a repentance. And he had a business that was going strong. 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 amens, and something very good happens in the business. He picks up some extra business. And he starts making these financial amendments. I mean, he paid for cars. He would take cars from parties and drive them to the front window of high schools. It sounds like nothing. And there was a lot of damage that was done in the past. And he goes around tracking these people, kind of making really, 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 know, is that going to happen to all of us? I don't know. But like 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? So I'd get really drunk and I would say things to this And maybe she reminded me of myself, you know. She was dysfunctional and had very critical personality defects. She reminded me in me. And so anything that reminded me to me I immediately disliked. So I said things to her that an uncle just wouldn't say to me. So here I am. I'm looking at my A-step and I know I need to talk to her. 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 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 that a little bit. But she was blown away. You know, I've never had anybody do this. This is pretty extraordinary, you now. 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, on the smooth side, by taking drugs, he tried to OD or something, and he was in a psych ward. Now, did she call her mother? Did she call her father? No. She called me because she knew I would understand. Now we weren't even on speaking terms before this and that. And I was in a position because some of the people I knew to point her toward really appropriate professional help. Which was really clear enough that I was able to re-hear 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. So she went and she started to get counseling. And she's had a really, really good life, I would say. 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 events 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 generosity response. I might have had 50 generous responses, but nix of them is going to go bad. You know, that's just out of the way. I know it's never gone down before, but it's gonna go bad this time. And that's kind of the I have, but there's been many amends where people have said, you know, my brother, or you know 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 amends. 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. You know, do you want to continue to be walking around with money in your pocket that's not yours? You know 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 mental problem. These promises are read 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 10 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, sitting there being with myself, so I would turn the TV on. I'd have the stereo on. I had this car in my lap. I'd be practicing scales and I'd been 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 quit 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 doing this stuff, have you ever been walking down the street and all of a sudden you're thinking something you did like 10 years ago and you go like, oh, you don't know. I've had so many of these things. I've done hundreds of these events and these wrongs these things that I was chained 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 thing 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 because it improved 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 a vodka did was it convinced me that alcohol had won and I needed to surrender to this. And I need surrender. I'm not just talking about going to the meeting and pretending, you now, this is great. I'm just going there and getting active. I'm still 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 step. And don't allow your ego or your self-centered fear to block you off from this stuff. If you have deprivation, if you just have 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 so forth. To give somebody a unique space as we go along, we 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 a commensurate way of living and we've cleaned up the dust. We've entered the world of the spirit. Our last function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Earlier on in this book it asks us to ask ourselves what these spiritual terms mean to us. What is entering the world with 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. You know what 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 selflessness 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 the little bit about right and wrong, knowing, well, maybe I shouldn't do this, or, you know, 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 relationships 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 them. 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 us but watch for them. They're going to crop up. Just because you've gone to this level does not mean some stuff is going to rear its ugly head in front of you. We're going 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 wrongs, 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 your affairs. The steps can really point 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-tape rears its ugly head 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 and quite possible 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. I don't know about you guys, but I've been to meetings where people have said, you know, they told me it was work when I came You know, I would have left. Even when people are speaking like that, our misunderstanding how much we don't care whether they were left or not, you know? But I used to hear that kind of stuff all the time. Word! You know? I like that word work. This is work. We need to become disciplined This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a 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, you know, this is where a phone is very, very helpful. There's not... there's a lot of places where a is not helpful, you know, in recovery. But with these immediate ladies, it is. A lot of my guys, 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 to you. 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 to someone, and also we recommend quickly if it's hard on you. This is really important, and I found this kind of hard to put into my business 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 good 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 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 do all this stuff. And before I even take care of this, is he going to having me running all around? I'm just going to do it. So I did it because we said that in the principal he gave me a whole lot of crap for it. And then, you know, I was walking away. I was thinking, this is not good. This is, you Know, this isn't good. I need to do advanced step-ups. And I didn't. You know, so what happened was the situation deteriorated, it got worse, more people got involved. And you know, funnily as I say, I needed to go to the guy and he didn't explain to me why I was wrong. You know? I was WRONG not to include you in the decision. This is YOUR fault. I want to stop the momentum of all the downhill crap that was in my life, you know? When I apply these things, they make my life easier. They make it more apparent to other people that, you now, I'm going to be as cross as I can be. I'm gonna be as forthright. You know, I am going to consider you as much as possible. And it just makes my life a lot easier when I apply these principles to the test. When I don't, if this hasn't become difficult, 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. Do you want to be effective? Do you wanna go through life as smoothly as we possibly can? we can. If you do, then these are really great disciplines. You can stop something from becoming worse with this mindset. Maybe that's one of our questions. Someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. You know, that's easy to be, isn't it? Love and others being our code. What's the something that you 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 like mentally defective and happy, is giving. There's a sense of charity, and a sense of compassion and a service ethic 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 first read it, you know, that seems eugenic. But when you experience it, there's nothing is so, 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. It's exciting 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 called me with one day. And he keeps fucking 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. 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 says, no, if he keeps talking anything or any one, you haven't recovered. I'm like, oh my gosh. 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, 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, you're just going to have to come to terms with that truth because it's going to haunt you if it doesn't. You know, stage three is maybe you start to apply some of this knowledge in a positive way in your life. And state four is, you are 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 character for me, but it's what I just found sad that he will have returned. That's a great promise. I see some really cool promises in Step 10. They're some of my favorite promises. We'll tilt the interest in liquor, attempt it, we will recoil from it as it hits a high plane. These are the alcohol promises. Now, I warn a lot of people, I see a lot relapses, I've seen a lot people running in and out of AA. They're like taxidermists, really, it's what they are. They circle around AA and land every once in a while. They're not really in this deal. And I think you can tell them that, you know, the place where the book says your faith are protected is in step 10. Have you done the first nine steps? And then they look at me like I'm an alien. You know, that doesn't really compute 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, normally we'll punch it and talk about it. And actually we'll sit with our new attitude toward liquor and give it up for a while. And we sort of have it 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 the spiritual condition of 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 single person 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 it basically relates directly to one's spiritual condition. How 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 10th or 11th step disciplines. They haven't really gone through, really actually gone through the step. And then sometimes people look directly at it and see the cause as they stop going to meetings. But the issue is, if you stop going into meetings before you stop doing the 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 spiritual 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 it and every single day we have to participate in the maintenance of it we need to stay disciplined we needと stay consistent and we need то 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, and listen, this is a real, 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 I think the 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 consistently 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 still work at the station, you've got four days to drink it. You know, that's not how it happens. It happens suddenly. Suddenly the thought crosses your mind that all those years you spent in AA was a bunch of crap. You know, and, you know, 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 the 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 condition. 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 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 you know i won' activate active alcoholism i know i am still alcoholic you give me a pint of bourbon right now and you know, forget about it. I know, you know 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 cured of it, but I'm recovered from it and that's the way I explain it and it's non-scientific and it is it's Christology but that's the way all of God every day is a day Well, 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 to bring that conscious presence of God into my thought life, into my behaviors. I try and do it as much as I'm consciously able. It's just a good practice for me. And not only does it help me maintain my spiritual condition, it brings me comfort. So I've found over the years that I really try to do that. My thoughts are forever stretching in that direction. We can exercise our willpower along this line when we wish it's the proper use of the will. What is the proper usage of the well? Understanding that we need connection to our higher power and we need to be about the business and the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Bob, what are you going to do? Take a seven-minute break.