The Actor and Current Agnosticism – Big Book Workshop – Part 4 of 4 – Katie C.

Morning everybody, I'm Charlie Parker. I'm an alcoholic. Have we started already? Okay, well, you know, he said about wearing your name tags. I got a hot tip for this conference and a lot of other conferences you go to. How many people have you walked up to in their name tags on backwards this weekend? Write your name on both sides. It took me 33 years to figure that out. I'll pass that along to you for free It works great I'm full of bright ideas You know I'm really happy It's always encouraging to see people come back There's always This fear that you're going to walk in the next morning And go there's nobody here But It's good to see all you guys Good to see Tom and Alice They just moved here from Pennsylvania They've been down here since January, so make them welcome. They say they love the AA here, but stand up so they can look at you guys. Come on. They are old friends of ours from Pennsylvania, and he's been transferred down here for a while. But, you know, and I'm going to cover a little housekeeping while we're here. You may have seen people coming up and signing the e-mail list. That's wonderful. we'll get those typed in sometime within the next nine months and I have a big bundle of stuff that I send out we don't carry a ton of literature with us around to conferences mainly because it's heavy and you have to pay for printing and stuff so we just send out this huge bundle of staff afterwards it has written stuff some stuff I've written most of it is just stuff that I agree with there's some links to some recorded stuff and mark houston recordings and uh different things um you may have seen us stamping the big book and uh you might wonder what what are they doing is that just a silly exercise where we get to meet everybody well there is that i enjoy that sometimes it's a tough during a break because i don't get to pee uh you know yeah we take a 10 minute break i spend the whole time stamping books but uh what are we doing with that you know and i wanted i want to say it before i forget about it because and hopefully later when we get to uh some of the um 10th and 11th step now you might want to you know i think katie said it last time but you know we used to do one start at step one and go through and what we found is by the time we got to 10 and 11 people were fried and they were shot and and so just intuitively on time katie says i always start with step one she said i'm going to do the 10th step tonight because uh so many people need a to kick that up a notch a friend of mine in new jersey says we should put the word actually in front of the steps you know it would say like actually made amends to all persons we had harmed you know you know actually continued to take personal inventory you know like no kidding we really did it you know we didn't just approve of it in theory we were actually doing it you know and and so uh katie did a great job with 10 last night but this this thing about the circle and triangle um it was an ancient symbol it was taken for and it was taken out of the big book mid 1994 between some copy for some copyright violations and it turns out that if you have a patent you can decide whether you want to defend it or not if you think somebody with a copyright they were duty bound to defend and this this circle and triangle is kind of an ancient spiritual symbol and it's but you see it on the lids at gas stations and all different places you know but they wind up spending a bunch of money suing the chip companies and stuff and we're not trying to get into all that in AA and they formed an ad hoc committee you know another thing it took me 30 years to figure out an ad hawk committee is a committee that has just got one item that they're focused on they make a little committee for that it didn't go through the literature committee it didn's go through anything like that they just went on this little committee and they came out and said you know what we're pulling it and they pulled it out of the big book midnight and how many people here have i saw one last i have a book that has it from the factory see not not that many there was a years last night had it from 1990 they didn't take it out because they disapprove of it or it's going against their values or anything they just took it out so they didn'T have to argue with anybody we're putting it back in the bigbook one book at a time well you know with this with this little stamp and and you know it's it has the three side you know it's funny one of my sponsors makes fun of me for saying uh the three-sided triangle it's like he goes you know charlie that's the best kind of triangle there is you know as a three- sided triangle but but uh but the three sides of the triangle make up the 36 spiritual principles of alcoholics anonymous and you've got on the left side you have unity and And that's the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 spiritual principles. And if you come up during the break, you can take a picture of that page out of my book or something. Because I like to write this in there because on the left side for unity it says the body. Because it's body, mind, and spirit. Found in the fellowship and the twelve spiritual principles that govern the fellowship side are the twelve traditions of Alcoholic Anonymous. And then on the other side you have service. It says the spirit carrying the message, and the 12 spiritual principles that govern that side of the triangle are the 12 concepts of world service. And then at the base of it is recovery, the mind, and that's found in the big book from pages 25 to 164, in Roman numeral 25 to164. And the 12 Spiritual Principles that govern That are the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So you have three sides, and you have 12 Spiritual principles for each side. So the circle represents 36 spiritual principles that make up our whole thing. And if you get those three things working together, body, mind, and spirit, we become whole. And there's been tons of people that have tried to stay sober on one side of the triangle, maybe just going to the meetings. And if You're Like Me, that works right up until it quits working. And you get to live in the bedevilments until you drink or blow your brains out. It's a wonderful package, and the bonus part of it is everybody associated with you gets to be miserable too. It's just an all-encompassing package. But I've seen people try to stay sober just off of service, you know, and they're super active in service, and all they're doing is service, and once they rotate out of their last position, they have a hard time falling back into just being a rank-and-file AA member. And then there's people that are just doing it. But the problem I had for a long time was I was working one side of the triangle, but I was hoping for the results of all three. And later when we get into the deal – no, I'm going to do it right now. I talk about this circle and triangle exercise I do with my guys. I've talked last night about the common solution meeting at my house on Thursday nights. And a lot of times what we'll do is we'll just do a little circle and rectangle check-in where we go, Tony, do a circle and diagonal check-In. You know, and the guys will go, okay, let's see, unity. I went to Bridge to Shore this week. I went To Northland. I went The Primary Purpose Group. I think I went four meetings this week and went to coffee with the guys after two of them. So, you know, that's where I'm at with fellowship. And then service. I'm the coffee maker at PPG. I'm a treasurer at this, you now, and I'm sponsoring four guys and stuff like, you kno, I do a service commitment out at the so-and-so treatment center on Wednesdays. that's where i'm at with service and then recovery let's see i did uh four evening reviews this week and and probably six morning meditations and and i think i did two 10 steps this week and you can get a pretty good beat on where a guy's at um by doing a little circle and triangle check in it's a it's an interesting exercise to do because it's funny i can't even tell you how many times i mean sometimes sponsors make stuff sound so simple and uh it's insulting you know i am and but it's um it's amazing how many times a guy will call me he's struggling and we'll talk about what he's got going on and we do the circle and triangle and i go now let me see if i get this straight you're not doing anything and you don't feel very good and they're like well i would have told the story a little different than that but you know i you know don't you hate it when the sponsor doesn't really listen to the story you know I mean I had one tell me a long story the other day and I pointed out how selfish and thoughtless and inconsiderate it was and he goes okay hold up he goes I'm going to tell the story one more time and pay attention this time because this is really simple you know you're going to see that it was not my fault you know so So let's get rolling. Katie, we did a little step one, a little bit of step two. We don't spend a ton of time in step two, there's a whole lot of, but don't skip the chapter, we agnostics, just because you're not agnostic. It's one of the most powerful pieces of spiritual literature out there and it just goes deeper and deeper the more you read it. Can everybody hear me okay? So what we're going to try to roll into today is right in the third step. Yes. Good morning, darling. My God, you look amazing. Okay. Some of you guys, how many people were not here last night? Okay. Well, welcome. We're super glad you're here. And how many in the room today have less than six months of sobriety? Welcome. Yeah, yeah. Now. Okay. How many have between six months and five years by a show of hands? All right. How about between five years and ten years? Excellent. Ten to 20. That's a big jump. Nice. Okay. And 20 to 30? That's nice. And how about over 30 years? That's awesome. Thank you so much, everyone. I think that's the fastest sobriety countdown I've ever done. Hey, I'm burning up minutes up here. Yeah, I wanted to do the circle and triangle and the name tags off-timer, but I swear one time somebody fell off the end of the stage and we're like, oh, is that going to count against my time? you know that's oh great yeah all the attention's on them now you know and their broken leg one time katie was speaking at a treatment center and a guy in the third row had a grand mal seizure and uh and i swear to god when the guys looks at katie goes just go ahead and keep talking she's like oh sure yeah we're all going to be really focused on me yeah um let me get out my glasses okay morning everybody let's get this party started you know one of the things that's exciting about i you know like i said i had my biggest spiritual awakening at 17 years of sobriety and that sounds crazy but uh but we're going to talk about that a lot and having a new experience. We're all about kicking this thing up a notch that there's more available and stuff like that. Is it possible? That's why we were over in Spain. Believe me sometimes it's undershirt Iowa and armpit Indiana but I mean there's some that are pretty cool and we got to go to Spain to do a thing and it was amazing they were not down with the big book at all or God And I'm like, what do you call your meetings? It's funny because you heard people there. There was a movement there for a while going, we should not talk so much about God because you'll run off the newcomers and stuff. And I am like, all we have to offer is that identification that we talked about last night of one alcoholic identified and power. I mean, that's our stock and trade, identification and power, And I was like, if we're going to compromise one of our basic tenets to keep from running off newcomers, maybe we should lighten up on the not drinking part of AA. You know? It's like, that runs off more newcomers than anything. You know, it's like just don't drink so much. You know. But we were over there and it kind of developed over the weekend. It was like how many of you are currently married? And it was a shockingly low number. We didn't see that coming. And then later on, it was like, how many of you know somebody that's drank with long-term sobriety? And lots of them. And then how many know somebody who's committed suicide in sobrietry? A lot. And it Was a bunch, you know. And so we were like, because these people were not down with the book. And what are these yanks going to tell us about the book and stuff? And we're like, well, but if we can't be in a relationship successfully, I mean, personally, I've proven I'm not afraid to commit. I've been married four times. But if we can't be successful in a relationship, if we're drinking with long-term sobriety, if we'RE blowing our brains out, is it possible that there might be more available than what we're getting out of just going to the meetings? And we were able to soften some of them up. I mean, these guys were like... It was a tough crowd over there. And one girl started the women's meeting and she goes up. And we're not going to use the big book or God in this meeting because the big book is outdated and irrelevant. We're like, okay, that's another one where you're going, what do you call these meetings then? But anyway, when you meet somebody, my target audience a lot of times is either people, the people I seem to wind up working with are people that have been in and out of AA for a long time or people that are in AA for awhile and they're not doing very well that's a big market there's a lot of message for the newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous but I'm sick of losing what we call middle management the 5 to 20 year people that drift away and bad things happen and to be able to tell that person that there's more available is a big message you know and having had that experience uh it's you have to figure out how can i get around the ego how can you we that's why we use the path of consideration and those some of those sorts of things where we go is it possible that or i'd like to offer for your consideration that maybe because when you come at me if you come to me with something that differs from my belief system, or God forbid you come at me with something that differs from what my beloved sponsor taught me, my ego goes into self-defense. And so now it's not about the issue anymore. It's the ego fighting for its life. Because when you come up with something different, I only got two ways to go with it. I either can consider what you're saying, or I can blow you up. And I can promise you it's easier for me to blow you out. My dad had a defense for any argument. Didn't matter What we were talking about, if it got to an uncomfortable point, he'd just go, oh, bull. We're done. So what is involved in this? I talked about my first approach to the steps last night where it was just are you alcoholic? Do you believe there could be a God? Let's get you down on your knees and do a third step prayer. And then right in the inventory, I didn't really know what I was looking for. So now what are we talking about doing? And that's what we want to get into today is this new experience. What is it? Because I missed this for 17 years. So when we have that piece of AA called How It Works that we read in, I call it the most often read, least listened to portion of the big book. We read How It Works at every meeting. And most of us, a lot of us it's the closest we ever come to meditation because my mind about the time they go, rarely have we seen a person fail. you know i go out into the ether and then about the time they go b that probably no human power could have relieved her and i think that's why they've started chanting you know at the at the end of it is to wake us up you know as i go come on come on back to the room you know i don't have time to talk about the chanting but i might at some point i'm i'm not a big fan i haven't heard a lot of it here but you know a lot means they started going like i don' t know what somewhere along the line we started chanting like a bunch of kids at summer camp you know and And, you know, it's like, you know, God could have whatever principles before personalities and, and, uh, you know, um, and then like at the end, I said I wasn't going to talk about it. I'm talking about it, um you know and then like at the end of the Lord's Prayer, you know, I mean I always picture the new guy coming in going, God, I'd like to quit drinking whiskey but do I really have to do all this shave and a haircut, two bits, you know, and you know because when I came in it was like they'd finish the Lordís Prayer and they'd go keep coming back and then after a little while they start going keep coming Back It Works and you're like okay keep coming Back It Work if you work it and you worth it so work it oh for God's sake I'm just going to say this one time turns out Amen is a kick ass way to end a prayer for the new people I'm just saying you don't have to do it it's optional I don't do it it's funny when I say amen and sometimes but she's like I ain't saying it, I ain'T down with it and even some of my crew at home started saying stay and that's kind of powerful but I'm like but that's still chanting You know, I mean, you're all in or all out. You know? So I had to, you know, the guys did not like it when I came down on that one. But what are we talking about? Because I'll talk about some of that later. Oh, my God. I'm just warming up back for Katie. You know she's bringing the heat. I always say Katie is like getting a drink from a fire hose. You know, sometimes you get a little more than you were expecting, you know. But I've been fascinated by Katie for 34 years. I mean, we were literally best friends for 20 years and then to be a couple. And I have guys come up to me all the time after she'll give a talk. Guys will come and go, oh, I couldn't handle Katie. And I'm like, that's too bad, dude. She's an excellent wife. I mean you're probably right. You probably couldn't hand her, you Know. I mean, I seem a little wimpy to me. Thanks for saying that, though. That's just tacky, isn't it? Actually, I like that. Yeah, yeah. Well, should I start my timer now? No. Okay. So when somebody comes to me, my favorite example was Katie was giving a talk somewhere in Oklahoma one time. When we talk about untreated alcoholism, If I suffer from alcoholism the way it's described in this book, and the only treatment that we know of for this is working the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous on a continuous basis, and all I'm doing is occasionally going to meetings, I'm not treating my alcoholism. So it makes sense that I would be displaying signs of untreated alcoholism, and what are we talking about? Because it's not a small thing, you know, we forget something because we have so much fun in these meetings, And I love drunks. I love the people of Alcoholics Anonymous. You are my tribe. I mean, I can feel people in this room. There was a guy here last night. I said, I'm going to give you the highest compliment I can give to anybody I meet in AA. And that's when I look at somebody and go, oh, I believe I would have drank with that guy. You can feel it from across the room. But Katie gave this talk one time, and this guy came up to me, and he said, can we talk? And I said sure. I said what's going on? And he says, well, I'm 16 years sober, and I'm not thinking about drinking. But I can't shake this thought of killing myself. And I said, we should go sit down. And, I mean, that's the way untreated alcoholism shows up in some of our real cases, you know. And so when we went and sat down, I went through the steps. I have a little exercise I do called working the steps backwards. Where I sat down with this guy, and so I start from 12. And I go, tell me, are you sponsoring anybody? You got anything? No. No, it's been a while since I sponsored anybody. What about your prayer and meditation? Do you do any kind of evening review? No. No. Any kind of prayer and mediation? Well, every once in a while I'll read the 24-hour day book, you know, but, I mean, not much. And then I go – do you do anything kind of a spot check inventory in the 10th step? Do you have any guys you call and talk about when you get scared or resentful or afraid? I mean selfish. No. And I go, tell me about your men's process. He goes, well, I made the ones to like my wife and my mother and stuff. But most of them are still there. And we don't even need to talk about six and seven. But I said, how long since you wrote inventory? And he said, 16 years. You know, and I had the same sponsorship. You know. My first sponsor said, you only ever write one inventory. If you write more than one inventory, you're just bragging and stuff like that. And you don't have to tell a guy like me that more than once. I'm like, I'm out, you know. I didn't enjoy the first one that much, you know. And while it's true that if you did a thorough four-column four-step, did a great fifth step for somebody who can really dig deep, carry those observations into six and seven, take it to God, go out and make amends for everything, and then do a tenth step throughout every day, and any time those four things pop up, you act on it just like it says in the book, and dann you take that in the evening review and the next morning you do morning meditation and you go out spiritually connected you could never have to do another four column inventory for the rest of your life and if you do that we will build a statue in your honor in front of the general service office in New York because most of us I had one guy who said well I don't resent my partner he goes I mean it kind of bugs me that I give him half a million dollars a year and he doesn't do anything And I said, well, then let's do a Bugs Me inventory, you know, because the ego is a shapeshifter. You know, it knows I'm not supposed to be resentful, so it's smugly superior or these people bug me or that sort of thing. So in the hour I have left, well the Oklahoma guy, we went through this work And I watched him have a transforming spiritual experience as a result of this work. It hits me hard when I think about it because this guy cleaned up stuff that had been with him, you know, for a long, long time. And you watch this guy get set free and, you Know, the results of this workout, I may talk about it some during this weekend, but to be able to have something to offer is a real, either to have that experience or be able to tell somebody about that experience is a super powerful deal and for me it starts right here on page 60 and and we talk about this a lot because when i said that we went right my first sponsor we went ripe from a that were alcohol the abcs we went back to the third step prayer and it's a very common experience in alcoholic synonymous and so that's when i talked about that guy saying and he went back to his room to see if his book really said the stuff I was talking about. That's the stuff we're going to be talking about here. Look at the first line after A, B, and C. It says, being convinced, we were at step three. Being convinced of what? A,B, andC. So if being convinced of A,D, andE means I'm at step 3, that tells me that A, D, and E must do a pretty good job of summing up 1 and 2. A, that I'm alcoholic and cannot manage my own life. Now we know what that means. You know, the physical allergy coupled with the mental obsession, the mental blank spot, the spiritual malady, and then B, that probably no human power could have relieved my alcoholism. My boss, my sponsor, my wife, my best friend, my counselor are not going to be able to relieve my alcoholismo in the long run. and see that God could and would if he were sought. And it says, being convinced we were at step three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him. I love that Katie mentioned last night back on page 29, at the top of the page it says further on, clear-cut directions are given showing how we recover. That's a promise. That's one of the promises in the big book. If I got it the way you're describing it, I'm going to be interested in clear-cut directions, right? And so it goes into this and it says, a lot of times when we talk about turning statements into questions out of the big book, sometimes when I look at this stuff in the book, I think about what would be a fair question for this guy to ask, right. If I'm sitting with my newcomer guy and I go, okay, Otto, we want you to turn your will and your life over to the care of God, right, I think it would be an interesting question and I think that would be a fair way for him to go, okay, I'm willing, but what do you mean by that and what do You want me to do? I don't get it. And so it's going to spend the next two pages talking about what we mean and then it's gonna shift over to what we do. And this deal we're about to make in the third step drives the rest of my recovery from now on. But I skipped it because we went right from see that God could and would to the third-step prayer. It says the first requirement Turns out there's a requirement for step three, you know. And I'm telling you, have you ever been looking at your book and had a line just go up like that? I read this line at 17 years, and it says the first requirement. Now, I like to go first person in this paragraph. The first requirement is that Charlie be convinced that Charlie's life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Let me tell you something. Not only was I not convinced of that, that line had never touched me. And the reason, and the way you would have been able to tell that line that I wasn't convinced would have Been by following me around. If you follow me around and go, is this a guy that is convinced that his life run on self-will can hardly be a success? Or does it seem like this is a guy That thinks, boy, now that you got the booze off of me, I'll take it from here, right? You know, God's awesome. I just don't need him today. You know? I don't Need him with the IRS. I don' t need him with my marriage. I don''t need him With my thing at work. I don'T need him WITH my thing At kids. But if I ever run up against, we do a little exercise called current agnosticism sometimes at the table on Thursday nights. We'll talk about what problem areas you're having. Then the current agnosticism exercise is what areas of your life are you not bringing God into at this point? And it's an amazing exercise because you can't see a picture when you're in it, you know. And we fall sound asleep and don't even know it. And one time the boys from Colorado were in the town. We were going to the man-to-man conference the next day. And one of these guys I really like, and we did the current agnosticism exercise. He goes, my God. And we're like, what? He goes well the three areas of my life that I'm not bringing God into are my job, my marriage, and my kids. And we were like, but other than that nothing big right? You know, and so it's amazing how many times what's a problem area in my life is also on my current agnosticism list. So it says, on that basis, now basis is a word that as I study the book intently over the years, there are words that come out of the book that seem prominent, that seem like they meant a lot to Bill. One of them is basis, one of them ist principles, and one of em ist demonstrate. And I've chased those words around the book a few times. And the word basis is an interesting term. Bill used it a lot. And the basis of something is the fundamental. We also, in our group, we have about 225 people on Tuesday night in our group. And we keep an old, like a 1936 big book era dictionary up there. So if you want to see what a word means or what it meant at the time they were writing the big book, we look it up. And one of the words was basis. And it said the fundamental principle of something or, no, the foundation of something, or its fundamental principle as its basis of Something. And he uses basis, basic, basically a lot in here. Like in the bedevilments. He doesn't say was not a solution to these bedevils. He says it was not an basic solution to this bedevilement. So we're not trimming the branches of my problems anymore. We're looking for a basic solution that will take care of all that stuff. And like in the fear of choices, we are now on a new basis. So what basis are we talking about? Here's the basis that I got this. I'm running this deal. you know and i mean it may be going poorly but i'm running it you know i mean am i the only one that sees great value in that you know you know it's like it may be terrible but i've been charged so back off you know and uh and it says on the basis of self-will or it just says on that basis we're almost always in collision with something or somebody even though our motives are good so now it brings my motives into play right and you know the thing i've seen about sponsoring a bunch of men over a bunch of years is that men hear me out on this one we don't think we should be in trouble if we weren't trying to hurt you does that make sense you know so I'm always talking about my motives you know and Katie would go you know you really hurt my feelings you know when you said that in front of all those people and embarrassed me and stuff like that and they go but I wasn't trying to hurt your feelings she's like look right in here look right look right in there you see anybody gives a flip whether you were trying to hurt my feelings or not you know but i didn't mean to does that sound familiar i didn's mean to but it doesn't matter what i meant to do or what my motives were the fact is i heard her feelings and i embarrassed her and stuff like that but that's that i work with guys all the time they're like but i wasn't trying to do that i was just so it says i'm on i'm almost always in collision even though my motives are good if you want to see good motives get punished just sometime in between meetings, go to your home group and rearrange the furniture. Just see how that goes, you know? I was just trying to get some light into the room or something, you know, I mean it's like we can't buy a new coffee pot without people throwing a fit, you know. And I used to say, I always say I used be young and resisted authority, now I'm old and I resist change, you now. It's like I want everything just like it is, you But it says now, even though my motives are good. So I can't trust... And then it says most people try to live by self-propulsion. Now, did anybody read... Am I the only one that read this actor thing and was like, what? Did anybody not get much out of this actor for a long time? Just me. Okay. Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate that. It says each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show. He's forever trying to arrange. Now, you know what I didn't understand about this actor for a long time? You know why he's such a problem? Because he's just an actor. He's not the director. He's got run in anything. His job is to stand on the X and when it's your cue, you say your line and shut up. But this guy, what does this guy do? He wants to arrange it. Imagine if we're doing a little play here and my line, when Julia Roberts comes in and she's walking over to George Clooney and I've got water, as she comes by I'm supposed to say, good morning. Would you like a glass of water? Right. That's it. And then they go action. And I look around and I go, well, hold up, hold on, hold it up. Cut, cut, cut that. You know, I don't like the way this is going. I don' t like them. I do n't like th way she's coming in there. There's too much light behind her. That dress is terrible. Uh, you know, and I really think I don t, I think I need more lines. And uh, and really if you think about it, we don't even need George Clooney. I can take it, you know, and the director's up there going, who is this Nimrod? You know, I mean, he's just supposed to say, would you like a glass of water? You know, but I want to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and everything the way I want it to go. Now you see how it's starting to be a little bit of a problem? Is it starting to feel like maybe the way we show up a little better? You know, it says the lights the ballet the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. Now, here's the second piece of this thing is my delusion. It says if his arrangements, and you know, it's funny. You hear people that'll go like, oh, you're controlling. You need to go to Al-Anon, you know? And I'm not going to say no alcoholics need to go to al-Anan, but the last thing al-Alan needs is a bunch of untreated alcoholics in their rooms trying to figure out how to manage their lives, you know what I mean? So, but listen, because see if this doesn't sound like control. It says, if his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great, right? So I know it went bad, but it's because y'all won't take your accurate pills. If I could just get everybody to act right, this thing would have been different. You know, I had these wonderful motives over here. So what happens is when we start talking about selfishness, the first place you'll be able to spot selfishness is in others. I'm blind. Oh boy, is it obvious in others? But I am blind to it in myself and you know why I can't see it in me? Because I got this funnel that I made and one side of it is my motives, right? Which I want to talk about. The other side of it, is this delusion I had that if you guys had just done right, it would have gone a lot better. Now I'm trying to create Charlie Topia, but you guys are all, you're all invited you know i got everybody cut in on this deal it would have been you know it says if only my arrangements to show it would be great everybody including me would have been pleased see that's the delusion i have is that you know so when i take this funnel made up of my motives and that delusion and i run my actions through that funnel when they come out the bottom about the worst i'm ever going to give myself is about an a minus right now the problem is when you foul up i don't run your actions through the funnel When you screw up, it's an outrage and I demand justice. Me, I want slack. You need justice. We're going to work with that a lot going through this inventory process and stuff is where I look at you. I could have been either guy in this beef. I could've been the one, but I got these sterling motives and stuff so I don't even see it until I 10th step it with somebody and they point out to me how selfish I was and that sort of thing. So it says, here comes what I call the toolkit of self-will. We're on the top of 61. Okay, good. I can move in 10 minutes. Oh, I thought you said 10. In trying to make these arrangements, our actor may be sometimes quite virtuous. This is what I called the toolkit OF SELF-WILL. This is me trying to see if any of this sounds familiar. This is my trying to get there. I'm like a halfback in the open field trying to juke and jump because it says, in trying to make these arrangements, I actually may sometimes be quite virtuous. Right? I may be kind, considerate, patient, generous, even modest and self-sacrificing. Right? Unless what? Unless that ain't working. Right? And then it says on the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest. dishonest. But as with most humans, he's more likely to have varied traits. So I'm always working this deal, you know, of trying to get things to go my way. But like this guy over here, I can yell at this guy and get him to do what an overbearing and I can, you Know, I can get him to do What I want by yelling now, Tony won't take that. So what's Tony gonna get? Tony's gonna get God dang, Tony, man, you're the one guy that understands what we're trying to do here. You You know, I just, I wish I had more friends like you. You know what I mean? Because we could really make some, if it wasn't for these knuckleheads. You know and Ray Charles can see what I'm doing. You know I mean. For the younger people, Ray Charles was a blind musician from back in. We just did a workshop in Albany, Georgia. It was the birthplace of Ray Charles. They had a statue of him playing the piano that played 24 hours a day. Anyway, anybody can see that this guy is trying to get things to go his way. You know, and it says, what usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. I swear to God, most of the time I get a 10-step call from a sponsor. We could go right here to page 61. You know? And you just go, let me guess. The show didn't come out very well today. And they're like, no, it didn't. You know. And I was trying to make things go. So, you know, and it says, so what happens? It says, I begin to think life doesn't, now look at all the stuff that I skipped for so long. It says I begin TO THINK LIFE DOESN'T TREAT ME RIGHT. How many people by a show of hands in the last two weeks have felt like you weren't treated properly? Okay. It saysI BEGIN TO THink LIFE DON'T Treat Me Right. So what do I do? I decide to exert myself more. Right? On the next, it's kind of like I talked about blowing up that marriage at four and a half years and backing up for the appropriate amount of time before I got into another relationship. 16 days, and boom, I go right into another marriage. And it says on the next occasion, I may be more generous. I decided to exert myself. I'm more demanding and more gracious. Still, the play doesn't suit me, right? Admitting I may somewhat at fault. If I was going to get rid of one term in Alcoholics Anonymous, it would be, I don't know if this would be the first one, but it would be the term my part. You hear people say, well I looked at my part like my delusional self-centered self is capable of seeing my part on an objective basis because if there's a beef between me and somebody at work, let me tell you, here's the beef and there's my part and sometimes I think if I apologize for my part that'll grease the skid so you can come with your part you know and i and have you ever made a mess to somebody and they go you think well this will make it easier for them when it starts and they goes well i'm glad you finally saw that you know you're like seriously you got nothing for me you know yeah so um this is a great place if there's just somebody i can hand this over to at this point Katie why don't you take over from here wonderful job honey hey you