The Common Thread That Keeps Coursing Through the Fifth Step – Bob

What you believe, and it's about finding the truth. We talked about people, institutions, and principles, and we talked about four columns. So let's talk about the fear inventory, because that comes next. The book indicates that we're all full of fear. I've never met an alcoholic that wasn't terrified. So, you know, the idea that we deny that is pretty absurd. And the business about it being an evil and corroding threat is true. Fear truly is evil. And people go, well, what if there's a rabid dog in front of me? That's something else. The fear that they're talking about in Alcoholics Anonymous for the most part is ungrounded, unfounded fear. And it's almost the fear of what might happen under the right set of circumstances. And we have a tendency to involve ourselves in useless speculation. Here's how I dealt with that. Someone told me, as an aside, on one occasion that if I ever wrote down everything I was most afraid of, that I'd find out over time that none of it happened. So I did. I'm willing to challenge that. And I had a day timer. Actually, I had one of those little flip calendars. And every day for six months, I wrote down the thing I was more afraid of. at the end of the six months I went back through it and none of those things had happened so there's a line in the book that says to the precise extent that we allow these allow allow that means we participate in it okay to the precise extent we allow these do we otherwise squander the hours which might have been useful. So what's that mean? That means if we're sitting there allowing resentment and fear into our lives, that those hours are gone. And that is a portion of your life that was wasted and that you will never ever get back. Truly resentment is the gun that shoots backwards. If we indulge ourselves in resentment because we like the feeling, we're the ones who suffer. First it takes our time away from us. Then it puts us in danger of drinking. And so to the precise extent that we allow those kinds of emotions, do we otherwise squander the hours that have been useful? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not up to squandering a lot of hours these days. And the reason why is because there's so many more positive things I can do about my life than sitting around trying to figure out why I'm mad at somebody. Okay? One of the reasons why I chose to decide who and what I wanted to be and what my principles are is so I can avoid that. Because I always believed that if someone told me that I was something, there must be some foundation in what they said. And so I would go into all this introspective BS about maybe I really am that. See, one of the things that you'll learn here if you do this long enough is that this whole process is a two-edged sword. AA is very introspectative, which means that we do a lot of self-examination. Self-examation is wonderful until it just becomes navel-gazing. And as soon as we indulge ourselves in that, we have gone over the line. And if we're just sort of sitting there staring at ourselves for the fun of staring at ourselves, which is not fun, it's another paradox, it becomes self-destructive in itself. So one of the things that happens in here that we need to put some balance on is about being introspective. If I spend all the time... It's like people... We have people in Denver who never stop writing inventory. I mean, they write an inventory and then they write another inventory and then они пишут еще одно инвентарие и они скрывают характерный недостаток под хорошим цельом. And what they're saying is I'll find the truth and I'll be more spiritual than you are. Actually, it's a deal about spiritual pride which is just as dangerous as any other kind of pride. and they're going, you know, I'm really in the trenches in AA. And the truth about that is that too much of it is not good either. So go in there and take a good look. One of the really important phrases in the book is go on about the business of living. If all you do is sit in here and do all this introspection and you never go out and start living, what the hell's the point? This is really about going on about the business of living. This is about taking us, people who are unprepared for life, basically, or ill-prepared for Life, and putting us back in the mainstream. I had serious doubts about whether I could operate in the main stream. Actually, I do it very well. And you can too. I mean, there's nothing, this isn't rocket science. It's just about getting out there with the right perspective. So let's talk about fears. When you write inventory, actually in the example, they will put fear in parentheses when they do that. I do that too if I have some fear connected with a resentment, okay? And if you have trouble getting started in your fear inventory, if you make notations in your resentment inventory, you have a whole list of things to start on. If I wrote that inventory or when I wrote that inventory about my relationship with my ex-wife, one of my fears would have been being inadequate to any relationship. about re-experiencing indifference or contempt. I would be afraid of all those things, so I can key a lot of my fear inventory right off of my resentment inventory. It's helpful to do that, so I make little notes. And then when I start my fear imagery, I go in there and I pull all those notes up first. And usually then you've got a little head of steam and you can get on into your other fears. Do you have any questions about fear inventory? One of the questions in the book is, wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Yeah. Boy, I'll say. The book says that we should stop being self-reliant and we should start being God-reluent. So the real question here is, If I'm standing with God, do I have anything to fear? And the answer is no. Yeah. I just have a comment. I just had kind of a neat experience with fear inventory recently. After I read this inventory, it occurred to me that, like the part about how has self-reliance failed me And some of the things that I did in pursuit of self-will, like the way that my fear drove me to do certain things, that really hit me hard that that's also sort of like forthcoming and stuff. Because in the process, the ways that I was driven by fear affected other people. and in many ways driven by my fear I stepped on a lot of people's toes and I caused a lot of harm because I was driven by fear and did for me what I did it was an incredible revelation really was and I was just all four times my nose was but it just that's not easy stuff There's a line in the book that says, if we've done as well, we've swallowed some large chunks of truth about ourselves. I think that's a very graphic description of that process, and most of them are unpalatable. This is stuff I don't want to see. Bob? I'm Bob Elmott. Bob? I found in doing peer inventory, I get to the bottom line, and usually I'm afraid that not going to be all right and then i that's when i have to turn myself back again going back to the second step we went back into the higher quality and realizing that i'm going to be okay regardless of what happens right so it's fate for me to go from that fear fear, that's the way I get back into my faith and know I'm going to be okay. And I'm able to work through that fear that way. It's a very different fear because I find that I will be alright regardless of what happens. I may not always like it, but that's how the world works, and I'll be okay." I have a ten-step friend who has a favorite saying, which coincides with what you just mentioned. And that saying is that the hardest thing about trusting God is trusting God. Go ahead. Thank you for all the time I've spent in that call. Not a line of my fear. You know, we try to condense things down to the lowest of that. Squeezing out too much essence? That's what I get because I'll get a little older and I can't lie as well, so I've got to be sure. All my fear, all my fear is really confessed after practicing the actions of God in my life. That's really what it is. And that's really a lie. probably the presence of God could not be absent I didn't need no place no place nowhere in certain states either in my head or in reality where God is not always there that's what I found for me faith is not enough I have that trust to me that trust in God is actually turning over letting go and having a wonderful, convincing experience with God is when you just do this stuff. It's called trust. It's call succession. It requires a little risk-taking. Yes. That's how it's been. Thank you. Thank you? You know, truly, there's an awful lot of things in here that are acts of faith where you just have to try it. For me today, my concern or my fear is not about whether there is a God. My fear is, what's he up to? So, see, my greatest difficulties come when God's will and my will aren't in concert. And God will go, Bob, I want you to change this. And I'll go, no. And he'll say, Bob, look, I need to move you to a better place. And I'll go, I don't want to move. You'll have to excuse this. I'm sorry that I... But it's the only way I can explain it. It's called my pile of shit. Right? And I... The argument there is, it may be a pile of ship, but at least it's my pile as shit. And so we remain in circumstances which are offensive and degrading and all sorts of things because we're at least familiar with it. Okay? And so, we will stay in the lap of familiarity to avoid the new. And unless we agree to change, God won't take us there. So somehow, we have to find the willingness to let go of those things that we have been resolutely hanging on to in spite of the harm that's being caused by staying in those circumstances and trusting that God will take us to a better place. That's a tough thing to do, okay? I've got to tell you, though, you don't have to settle for second best day anything. And the hard part about that is submitting to God to allow Him to take you to a better place. It's my view, it's my opinion that if we allow God to, if we invite Him to make the changes in our life, He will take us to places that we never even considered. To places that are so superior to anything that we've experienced that we haven't even come to consider them. I have a list of things because of all the difficulties I've had in the last year. I have a list of things that I take down when my kids come over, but I put them on my bathroom mirror. And it's the truth about God because what happens is when we get in difficult circumstances, we forget what the truth is. And we get caught up in a bunch of silliness. We get caught in a lot of things and we get got up in a bunch o' thought and ideas that are all destructive. So I have this list on my bathroom wall. it says you almost died. That's the first one. And I was in a corroding, toxic relationship. And it wasn't only to me, it was to my ex-wife too. I mean, Ima wasn't the only person that was suffering from the nature of that relationship. So the second thing that I've got up there is you were irrelevant. And I was, to my ex-wife. I was not relevant to her at all in any respect. And I don't like to be irrelevant. It makes me feel bad. But see, what I was looking at was I was irrelevant to her, but I'm extremely relevant to my children. I'm extremly relevant to people who are friends and who are fellow AA members members and all the rest of that. Remember the thing about the 24 good things and the one bad thing? That's the one bad thing. But I was irrelevant, which means I don't belong there anymore. The third one says you can't God can't, will not move you to a better place unless you agree. So God's got to have my agreement. If I'm tired to being there. And I know I'm just staying there for the familiarity and I want to move to a new place, I've got to tell them, God, I'm ready to leave now. It may be a little painful, I'm willing to go through it. Okay? I'd rather sit through two years of pain than the rest of my life. You know, I knew what I was going to pay coming out of that marriage and I'm paying it and I knew it. and but I also know that that is finite in terms of its length and so I would rather I would rather take a beating for two years instead of take a beating for the rest of my life the next one is the most rewarding years of your existence lie ahead straight out of the book well I haven't found anything in that book that isn't true. And if I am on a spiritual path, the most rewarding years of my existence lie ahead. The last one is be patient. God has wonderful surprises in store. You know what? There are two things that don't occur in the spiritual world. One is time. The other one's money. Now think about how you guide your life with time and money. Those are the major issues in everyone's life, time and Money. And they don't exist in the spiritual world. Now, you're going, what world are you talking about? When I die, I'm not taking any money with me. And I'm going to go off into infinity somewhere, I suppose. I don't know. But those two things cease to be relevant. And so why am I tying so much importance to them today? Well, because I like to drive nice cars and live in clean houses and do stuff like that. But that should not be the center of my life. The center of My Life should be the consciousness of the presence of God. Usually, a lot of times when we're in fear, we're afraid about time and money. I think that it's a useless exercise. When I got sober, I owed $14,000 and it took me two and a half years to pay it off. When I ran into this huge crisis when I was seven years sober, I had to close a business. I had another business that worked real well, but I owed 125,000 bucks and I was in despair of ever paying that. And nine months later, it was all paid. And I went to my sponsor and I said, how the hell do you explain that? And he said, doesn't need explanation. And I said why not? He said because God's got all the money he needs. Okay? I don't know. I don' t think that there is a challenge that I will ever face in my life that God isn't strong enough to stand there with me and take care of it. A lot of times the challenges are in my own perspective. So sometimes I just need to change my perspective, and God will go, hey, stupid. Not really. You know, I think God treats us like I treat my kids. I don't call them stupid. I've never called them stupid, but you know what I tell my kids? I go, you're handsome. You're smart. You're really nice. you've got a good set of values you're going to go anywhere you want to go you can be anything you want and they believe it and they believe it because I'm their dad and so that's what I tell them, and if kids grow up believing that they do, really interesting deal well sex inventory um Anybody want to talk about sex inventory? You think it's about sex and it isn't. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Were we selfish or not? We need to look at each one of our relationships and see what we were up to. Where are we here? Actually, it says now about sex, which is interesting because from my point of view, it's as much about how we interact with other people as anything else. We reviewed our conduct over the years past. Where have we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? whom had we hurt do you know sometimes you hurt people that are out of the direct sphere of what you're up to do you see that that um sometimes i would go have a get in a relationship when i was drunk and it didn't make any difference to me if they were married single or anything else and I would harm people out two steps from who I was with. They may have had children, certainly the spouse. There could be a peripheral effect way out there, and we need to see how far out the harm went when we were doing that. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness, which were my tools? That's what I did. And I did it because I didn't want people to see me. I didn'T want the woman that I was with to get a good look. And so I'd use them to keep them off balance. Always have them on their heels, okay? And if you always had them on your heels, they never could get their act together enough to get an easy look at you and see who they were messing with. And I would use anything that I could think of to pull that off, including being really mean. And then we cry because we're unsuccessful in our relationships. Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? You know, the answer to what should wehave done instead, in many cases, is shouldn't even have gone there. Shouldn't have done it. You know, I had something in my head that told me that was going to be fun and I didn't look at the consequences. Let me give you a little clue. If there's a little voice in the back of your head that says, don't do that, don't go. Don't do it. That's your intuitive thought talking to you. And I can't tell you how many times I have challenged that intuitive thought and gone ahead and did it anyway. And I found that at some point in the past I had made a decision based on self which later placed me in a position to be heard, okay? I mean, because the natural consequence of doing that is that you're going to get your butt handed to you, okay. We got this all down on paper and looked at it. In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relationship to this test. Was it selfish or not? We asked God to mold our ideals and help us live up to them. We write sexual ideals because I want to know what kind of a relationship I'm getting into. I want To Know Where I Want That to Go. So I write a sexual ideal, And the ideal has to be loving, considerate, caring, communicating. There's a long description that I write about what I want relationships to look like and then I try to live up to that. And if it doesn't look like that, I don't want to do it. You know, I'm too damn old and too damn tired. I can't go through that again. You know all those silly games that people play and they play push-pull and do all this bullshit? I don't want to do it. I'm done with it. If you can't have a real one, I don' t want to have it. And I can live just as easily by myself as I can with someone else. So that's that. Okay. Okay, so it says suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble. If you don't know what the ideal is, how are you going to know if you fell short? Okay. It said one of the things that's in here, and I don't exactly know where it is, is it says that if we continue to harm others, we're sure to drink. Well, I know it's in that sex inventory somewhere. And that means that if we're out there... I had a guy that I sponsored that came up to me about a week ago and said, I'm in the middle of an affair. What should I do? And I said, Why are you asking me? You're already in it. And he said, Well, you know, this and that, and explained why I was in this affair. And I asked him, And I answered, Okay. And he answered, Well, what do you think? And I replied, Good luck. And, you know, I wasn't mad at them, and I was concerned for it. And the reason why is those things don't work. If you're trying to juggle too many balls in the air, they're going to start falling, and usually when one goes down, they all go down. And if you are lying to one person, actually, in those cases, you're generally lying to everyone. at some point in some point it all caves and it is truly unmanageable whereas it's like having two wives God what an awful thought it isn't about what I think about women it's what I think about trying relationships and especially for alcoholics apparently are extremely difficult. Relationships by their nature are difficult and the idea of juggling more than one at one time is really asking for a beating. So this guy said, what do you think I should do? And I said, pray about it and do what you think. and he said okay and he prayed about it and he went and told this woman that he didn't think that was a spiritual thing to do and a week later he's back doing it see I don't know you just and I don' t always follow this but at least the best course of action is finish something up before you get into the next one and I'll tell you what If you're in a marriage that doesn't work or something and you go out and you have an affair because it's more fun and it's more exciting and it isn't the same old stuff and all the rest of that, at least in my experience, you will destroy any possibility you ever have of making the marriage whole. So that's an opinion, by the way. You know, maybe you can pull it off. I can't. Alright, so So let's say there's one other thing, and that usually is to take it to the grave stuff. These are things that we are so embarrassed by and so guilty over, and we would not tell anyone under any circumstances what we did. The book says that we had to tell someone our whole life story. That doesn't say you write a life story. That just means you tell someone everything, and most especially those things that you feel guilty or embarrassed about. I have done that. I was afraid of doing it, but I'm more afraid of drinking. when I told my sponsor I was absolutely certain he would reject me out of hand and he didn't you know how much you want to be free how much you want to live a spiritual life how willing are you to walk past your ego what are you willing to do to get sober what do you have to do to come back and join the living you know if you're so afraid I have people blurt these things out to me because I tell them Jesus don't hang on to that stuff I don't care what it is this woman told me the other day she said I'm so afraid I don' t know what to do anymore and I can't talk about it and she's just dying she always had a grimace on her face and I said you're hanging on to something that's killing you and tell somebody I don't care who you tell it to but tell somebody and she said well I'll tell you and I said go ahead and she said I'm afraid I have AIDS and I said why don't you go get tested oh and I said you want to live the rest of your life in that and she goes yeah and I said, aren't you married? And she said, yeah. And I said, do you have a relationship with your husband? She went, yep. And then I said how long have you been doing that? And she said I was afraid I got AIDS two years ago when I was messing around. Okay. And I said no. If you had AIDS it would have already showed up in either you or your husband. So the idea that you have AIDS at all is pretty preposterous. I'm still afraid. And I said, talk to your sponsor. Tell her to take you to a clinic and have you tested. And, I can tell you that the likelihood that you have HIV is less than 2%, because the symptoms of AIDS in that long a period of time would've shown up. So she went and got tested, and one day I saw her walk in. She had brought a smile on her face I ever And I said, got the results? And she said, yeah. And she says, I don't have it. And I say, that was like dragging an anchor, wasn't it? And she say, yeah, it was. You know, if you're afraid of something, most of the time it's ridiculous. It doesn't feel ridiculous, but most of time it is. And if you want to do a spiritual life, you want live a spiritual live, you cannot be detracted by things you fear. and you've got to tell somebody about it, okay? Now, I don't care what you've done or how often you've done it or who or what you're doing it with. I don'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT STUFF. THERE AIN'T NOTHING YOU'VE DONE THAT A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE IN THIS ROOM HAVEN'T DONE, OKAY? AND THEY WERE JUST AS EMBARRASSED ABOUT TALKING ABOUT IT AS YOU ARE. SO THE TRICK IS TO GET OUT FROM UNDER THAT AND FIND OUT THAT YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER PERSON, JUST LIKE I AM, OKAY. You know, the truth about this is you're just another drunk and I'm just another drunk. And our experience is parallel. And the only difference between me and you is I've been doing it longer. Okay? But that's the only difference. So we go to fist up this stuff and we need to be clear about it. And we sit down with someone and we're prepared for a long conversation. And we go ahead and fifth step it now, which is that we read it. And when we read it, sometimes some sponsors will give you feedback. My inclination is to listen closely because these things always have threads in them. They always have it's almost like there's specific subject matter in there that keeps coursing through this whole fifth step. And I'll sit there and I'll try and count all this stuff up and then when we get done and they have to go home and do six and seven, I'm clear about where they see the problems lying. And in that case, I think that I can be helpful to people who are fifth stepping with me. For the most part, in my experience, when you fifth step, you just read what you wrote. And you can be embarrassed by it. You can be belittled by it, only by yourself in my experience. You can feel terrible about it. You can do all the rest of it, but it's like a Nike ad, just do it. A lot of this program is walking on unfamiliar ground. In fact, all of it is for us. And the trick is, okay, but do it And if you haven't done part of this, go out and do it. What you'll find out is that there is nothing in here that implies a threat or contains a threat to anything except our ego. That's it. So we read this whole thing out and if you've got some take-it-to-the-grave stuff, do it in the front. Because otherwise you won't hear what you're saying all the way through because all you'll do is sit there in fear of what's going to happen at the end. So if you want to be effective in this, take the worst stuff and talk about it first. And then you can get past it and you can pay attention to what the rest of your inventory looks like. Anybody want to talk about that fifth step? Got any questions? You want to share some experience or do anything like that? How long? Do you just leave it up to the person to have as much or as little inventory to fix up with you as they have? I've actually spent like 19 straight hours in this. No. shortest inventory I've heard is probably an hour the longest one is two 16-hour days and I will never ever do that again and it was just massive repetition and I thought I was being impolite by not being available to that this isn't about abuse you know if you got 32 hours of real stuff i'll listen to it most people don't so i encourage people to be precise not to be repetitive which isn't i encourage them not to leave anything out but if if some things are just repetitive they just have different names on them So, no, I won't sit through that again. It's just people always accuse me of falling asleep listening to Fifth Steps. It's because they're so damn boring. They really are. I mean, people are sitting there and they're sweating bullets and they are afraid of what you are going to think and they do all the rest of it and I'm going... I'm listening to Fifth Steps. I've experienced what you're saying there, is that there's a common thread. Yes. Or character defect, or whatever you call it. And the people I go through with, I listen long enough to find that common thread, and then everything else is superfluous because that common threat is what you look for. Right. You've got to have some information going into 6 and 7, right? And the information is what were the areas that were keeping me out of the sunlight of the Spirit? What did I see in there that is preventing me from being close to God? And that's the kind of information you want to take into 6th and 7th because 6th is about having the willingness to be rid of these things And seven's about asking Him to take it away. Now, that's the shortest thing in the whole book is six and seven. It doesn't lack importance. It's just that it's fairly precise. So if I'm going to ask God to be rid of the things that He found objectionable, if I am going to find the willingness to be read of those things, I've got to know what they are. It's really about information. It's about being clear. It's About Clarity. So I need to know what I'm asking God to remove. I'd say, well, here's what I found. And in the seventh step, I ask Him to remove anything that stands in the way of usefulness to God and my fellows. So I know I need to know what to ask about. And that's why sponsors or whoever you do your fifth step with are helpful if they can nail a bunch of this stuff when you're going through your fifth steps. Do you know about... This book describes this process of fact-finding, fact-facing. They're talking about this is like a commercial inventory where you find out about your stock and trade. It's like somebody in a grocery store finding dented cans. That's what this is about. To make it outrageously personal is a mistake. This is about fact-finding, fact-facing. It's real basic. It's about saying this doesn't work and this does. And if this doesn'T work, why am I messing with it? And then putting that in front of God and say, I've got some inventory here. I have some things on my shelves here that are unsaleable goods. They don't work. And I'd like you to remove those so I can put good stuff on. You can't fill a full cup. So somehow we have to remove those things from us that stood in the way of our usefulness. You wanted to say something? My name is Andrew. Yeah, I recently went through that. And essentially what I did was I sat through three different sessions with my sponsor. And we found the common thread with different events. And after the third session, he really didn't want to sit and listen to it anymore. And I don't blame him. Me either. God bless him. But the point is, he cut me off. He said, okay, that worked out. We don't keep that history before we text. Yes. And I didn't ask about that. You know, I just went back and I thought about it and I looked at the book here as illuminating every piece of character. Every dark cranny of the past. Right. So I'm thinking I need to go through every event. So I found somebody else. Okay. And completed my fifth session. All right. I didnít know the sponsor number one that I had done that. I still have it. Okay. But I was wondering, is that the point you were trying to make, that it's okay to do that to cut somebody off? Once you've identified... No, I don't allow them to get there in the first place. Because once you've written it, you want somebody to hear it. And to tell people after they've written it that you don't want to hear, that's one thing. Precise. And so it's like telling people what the rules are before you start. then everybody's clear about what everybody's doing. And so if I ask you to be precise and you write an inventory, I'll bet you write it shorter than the one you did. And that way we avoid the whole thing. Sometimes, you know what the worst thing you can do is? Assume anything. Assumption is a mistake. Well, I assumed you knew. Knew what? If we're not clear, it's important for me in business to know that too. I mean, this works all the way across the spectrum. And that is, was everybody clear? And sometimes people are offended by me demanding clarity because it looks like you don't practice trust. But the real truth about it is if you're asking someone to do something that they find difficult or offensive. And then you don't do your end of the bargain at the end like listening to a fifth step. They can get pretty offended. You unscrew you, I'll go tell somebody else. Okay? So what you do is you try and get in front of that and avoid it. Camille, you wanted to say something? Yeah, one of the things that I found is that it was very helpful for me be with somebody that would fear themselves because they can see right through my my wall and I could go to somebody and I can have them here my first step and then just say oh poor baby or whatever they would say and I would walk away thinking I've done a fifth step before I could go to so many that's clear and has done this step and and they could help me see my blind spot and that's why I don't go to conferences anymore now we have people that come up to connect their step with you because what I found is it unless we make the deal at the beginning they come up with a bunch of garbage and in my sponsors I won't do it I'll cut them off after I hear about if I don't sponsor them about maybe 15 minutes of it and I can see that they're so convoluted I have stopped the fifth step and I said listen you go home and you write it this is the way we do it you know and and so they're clear because there's too many people that I've seen that they'll do a fifth step, have the illusion that they have really done it and they've never gotten to the point. Have you experienced that with people? Because they'll say, well, I put out a fifth second but they've ever gotten to that point. They just said a lot of stuff. Right. Sometimes they'll write it for you. Yeah. Okay. Other times, I've had people come up and go, hey, I'm going to do a fourth step. Hey, I got a fifth set here. Will you listen to it? and on those occasions where I said yes, they'd say, well, let's see, I was born in a... Whoa, wait a minute. What is this? And they go, my life story. And you go, yeah, I won't say that. I'll tell you what you can do with your life story I did that a long, long time ago but I didn't well you know it's all wonderful and I'm sure it makes good reading that's just not the point so So, books as we go home and take the book down from the shelf, which is the common joke. And we ask for the willingness to be rid of these things that stood in the way of our useful. And so that's what we do. God, please give me the willingness. Yes? This is an odd question. When AA was in the agency, how do you think the people handled the sex scene in Georgia at that time? Today, everything's... I don't think people talked about things like them. They didn't talk about the infidelity or they just didn't talk about it. It must have been much harder for them to do a fax inventory and share it with somebody. Don't you think? Here's what happened when A was started. At least in Akron. almost all people who came into Alcoholics Anonymous, you find this in Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, you don't have to take my word for it. And you can find this in A Comes of Age, which is a book that... Do you understand why Bill Wilson wrote A Comes Of Age? Huh? Do you need a patch? initially when they were trying to get started they were always trying to raise money and so they sold stock in the works publishing company which was the company that publishes the big book and Bill Wilson, who was a promoter. You need to understand that this guy was a promoter in the worst sense of the word. Oh, God has strange bedfellows. So he went out and he sold all his stock in the Works Publishing Company, and then when AA was around 20 years and it had its feet underneath it, he went out to get the stock back because he didn't want someone else to get control of the publishing company that owned the big book. And now most of the stock was sold to people who were the initial members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Bill Wilson was out there being a big deal. And he was out here telling all kinds of stories about how AA started. And he had a lot of experience and he was, I guess the kind way to put it is embellishing the truth. And so he went to all these old-timers and said, give me that stock back so we don't have to worry about who controls the big book. And they said, we will give you the stock back, Bill, if you will write a book about the truth of how AA started and we want to review it before it's published. So that's how AA comes of age. It was written, okay? Why am I telling you that? Oh, yeah. Okay, so... When people in Akron, and I suspect in New York to some real degree also, when AA was started, they put almost everybody in the hospital first. Do you know that? Almost everyone who came into AA went into a hospital bed. And what they did was they'd get them in there and then they'd give a couple members of AA and they would go in there and they'd talk to them and they'D share their experiences about their alcoholism to help whoever this person was in this hospital bed to see about their alkalism. And then they'D ask them if they were, and this is in A Comes of Age and Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, that's how that started. And then they would ask them if they believed in God. And they would encourage them to do that and they would tell stories about how they came to believe and they'd share all this experience with them. And once the person said they were willing to believe, they'd pile them out of bed on their knees and ask them to make a third step decision, right? And as soon as they got back into bed, they were handing them a pencil and a piece of paper. and telling them to write inventory. See, because the way AA started does not look like some of AA today. When AA started, they knew that the centerpiece for this whole thing, in fact, the total substance of this program is about following a bunch of spiritual exercises so we can get closer to God. And there wasn't any of this stuff about fellowship and we'll all hang out together and have dances and parties and eat sweet rolls and do all this stuff. it was about do these exercises so you don't have to drink anymore. And it was done in a sense of desperation and it was one right on top of another and there were no breaks in it. So we have been enormously fortunate to retain at least some semblance of that kind of activity because we have had so many different thumbprints on this program and people trying to change the nature of it into, we all belong here. You know, we don't care if they're overeaters or overthinkers or... We don't matter. We don' t care. This works for everybody. Just invite them in. We're a good operation. You do that and the next generation there won't be an Alcoholics Anonymous. This is about drinking. This isn't about anything else. Now, when people come in here and say they're an addict and an alcoholic, and please don't be offended, they don't have a very good idea about what this is about. This is not about alcohol and anything else is not relevant. So we have a lot of people who come into my home group and say their alcoholics and drug addicts and we say we don't really give a rat's ass if you're an attic. If you're over here to work on your alcoholism, we'll help you. But coming in here, it's like me saying, well, my name is Bob Olson and I'm an alcoholic and an oxygen dependent. So what the hell does that have to do with? You know, this is about alcohol. That's what it's about. And if we try and make it about anything else, we will disappear just like our predecessors did. So that's what its about. and protecting that is of prime importance to us in Alcoholics Anonymous. And as those of us who have been around for a while fade away or die or whatever we're going to do, please remember that what's held this thing together is that its focus is on alcoholism, period. Okay. Oh, now about sex. So what did they do? I'm sorry. Finally. Yeah. So what did they do? They wrote them, they jumped back in bed and they started writing the inventory. These questions that are in here about was it selfish or not or jealousy, suspicion or bitterness were in their inventory. And they had to answer the same questions that we do. And if there was infidelity going on, although that was a much much touchier subject back then, they still had to discuss it. And, you know, Bill Wilson wrote about his attempted infidelity. He suffered from assault with a dead weapon. Huh? That's what he said, anyway. So I shouldn't be saying this publicly. In the book, he wrote that even though he was apparently interested in some of these things, that he was incapable of participating. So the answer to the question is, yes they did. I'm sure it was touchier, more difficult to discuss back then because of the issues around infidelity, but they still had to. So it may have been more embarrassing, but you just can't leave that kind of stuff out. So it's my opinion, or at least from reading about all this history of AA and everything, that those people did what we do today. Perhaps more reluctantly, but they did it. Anybody else got any questions about that? Yeah? John Fossum, an alcoholic. Hey, John. Bob, when you receive a fifth step, how much of your inventory do you share? Depends on who it is. That's an interesting thing. Now, there's a group in Riverside, Illinois that does a lot of that. It's Paul Martin's group in riverside and they share inventories with it. Both the inventories go both ways when they when they first step in one does one and another one does this inventory back and I'm sure there's a lot a good reason for that. Sometimes if I see that people think that they're unique in their experiences, I'll bring my inventory with me and I'll share it with them. And essentially I do that so they see that there is nothing unique. So it's kind of a question of who I do it with. That's not a regular practice, but sometimes my intuition tells me to do that. And so I'll grab an old inventory and go in there and do it. Now, the last inventory I did, I did actually in one evening, one of the guys I sponsored sat down and fifth stepped with me and I fifth stepped with him. That same evening. So, it kind of depends on the circumstances. There's a person up there, the same guy that asked me these questions I don't like, that says, you know, Bob, every time you really believe in something that you feel that this is a set-in-concrete, well-founded belief, you're going to get it pounded up your backside. and I'm sitting there, you know what, people will say things like that to me and I file them and then wait to see what happens. And for the most part he's right. So I don't hang on to anything too tightly. Anything about procedures, anything about beliefs. I had a very strong belief that I would never sponsor women and I sponsored several in a row and I don't know what God was up to in that. I know what I wasn't up to, which is good. So I can't hold on to any of this stuff too tightly because I get it thrown in my face and it's just not worth it. Anybody else? Greg.