The Double Life and Dishonesty – Big Book Workshop Jan – Part 4 of 6 – Scott L and Matt C

Well, in my own self-centeredness is that I will put my wanting not to be alone. I will putting my sex, I will my emotional security. I'll put my financial security. I'll all the aspects of self first and consequently people get harmed. when you when you come to the table and you don't feel very good about yourself it's like you have a sense secretly that you're coming from behind it alters the way you approach this arena in the real estate market if your finances aren't that great and your credit's not great you look to buy a house you go get a fixer-upper that's hard in relationships to get a fixer-upper. And in AA, we often end up with two fixer uppers who think they got fixer upper's, right? And that's a dance that you don't want to get into. That's a bad deal. I can't fix up anybody. I need God's grace just to nudge me a little bit off of what I've been. And where does that come from? It comes from this thing inside me that tells me I'm not enough. One of the things that hurts more people in the relationship arena, it seems to be dishonesty. And what I've discovered is, in myself and in the people I've sponsored, is that we don't lie because we're liars. We lie because мы're afraid. See, I believe this old idea. and the old idea is if you really knew me and if I was really 100% genuine with you, you wouldn't love me. So I have to enhance me. I have be a little cooler than I really am. I have a little more affectionate than I am. I have more giving than I'm. I have been more than what I really are because I secretly believe if I were who I am, you wouldn�t love me.� The problem with writing checks you can't cash is that's not you. You can do that for a while, but eventually you can keep being something you're not. Scott has a great saying he says, I would rather be despised for who I am than love for who am not. And there's a part earlier in the book it talks about living the double life, having a certain reputation we want others to think we are and then secretly inside myself in the hell i live in the person i know i really am and alcoholics anonymous is trying to bring me genuinely to myself as is as is and what often happens is uh people i i know my first couple relationships, and I've gotten a lot better with this, is not to be genuine because I was afraid. You know, I'm afraid of rejection. So I'll try to... And it's not a great dishonesty. It's a subtle dishonesty because what I would present myself with, it's kind of Bob, but it's Bob on his very best day in really good shape on steroids Bob, right? You know what I'm saying? And it's not really Bob, it's like Bob if everything was perfect and he could maintain this kind of Bob. But that isn't Bob because Bob is that and Bob is self-centered and Bob often is everything. It's the whole package. And consequently I've discovered a lot of harm comes from misrepresentation. I know a couple who, they were engaged to be married and it was time for, because they're entering into a partnership, it was time to have the money talk. The money talk is a very important talk. Most people don't want to have the money talk, but it's a very important talk because you're entering into a partnership. And they started having the money talk and he says to her, he says, so how are you with credit cards? Well, she had heard him tell people he sponsors that you never carry a balance on a credit card that that's chump interest you can't do that and so she says oh I don't have any but I never carry balance on it credit card well she had three credit cards maxed out right he says if you ever had a bankruptcy she says oh no I never had a bankrupt see well if she doesn't get married she's gonna have her second one right and so she says all that and what happens is they get married and all of it comes to the surface right at all it's not going anywhere you can't in alcoholics we're funny people we think we can drive on a flat tire like it'll go away or something you know what i mean you know i mean like this it's weird like that right you know and it doesn't go away and it comes to the surface and now what happens is destroys their marriage and the part here's the here's this sad tragic thing about this as the marriage is is ruined she thinks it's because he wouldn't love her after he found out the truth no that's not the truth at all he could he found that he couldn't trust her scott has a great saying trust is either yes or no it's either all or nothing right and the marriage was dissolved not because of the credit thing and the bankruptcy is because she couldn't be genuine see i know this guy and i know that if she would have said to him you know i've got these three credit cards that are maxed out and i've had a bankruptcy and i'm not doing very well financially i i know that he would have said well all right we can work with this we'll we'll pay all this stuff off we'll make all this right i think maybe i should handle the money from now on but we're gonna we're going to make we can live with this and she would have gotten to find out the sweetest thing she'd ever find out is that there's actually someone who loved her as is she never found that out because she couldn't risk it. She couldn't risk it and what happened is the old idea, the old lie got enhanced rather than diminished. There's one of my old favorite, I have a friend who used to say that there's only two forces in human nature that drive people, one is the force of love and the other one is force of fear. And I think Alcoholics Anonymous is a transitionary program we're trying to move the drivers in our life from fear into love from self-centered into other centered from from self reliant into god reliant and god dependent and that one of my favorite stories most of you has heard it i heard it oh god 30 years ago it's been on the internet the last seven eight years it's about this old uh indian wise man the shaman that a tribe he's come to one of the young braves comes to him and he says old man i have some problems i don't understand what's going on and the old man says what what's going on what's the problem and he said well he said some days i really feel a tremendous love for the people in the tribe i feel the presence of the of the great spirit i i just want to run with the braves and help the old women and i just i feel i love it it's wonderful and then other days i just I'm angry and I'm resentful And I'm annoyed by everything And I just feel like I want to get away from everybody And I hate everybody And why am I these two things And the old man said well son Your life is like two dogs Trapped in a sack In mortal combat One dog representing love and light And the great spirit And the other one representing self and fear And the young brave says Which one wins And the old man says, the one that you feed. Now, the problem with people who have a spiritual malady who inherently cannot manage their own life, it's because when the pressure is on me, my natural inclination is to feed the wrong dog. It doesn't make me a bad guy. It's just you... When I'm having a really bad, depressed, spiritual bad hair day, it is not my inclination to go down to the detox and sit and talk to some guy. It's my inclension to buy a new car, to try, you know, all kinds of self, self, self, stuff. And my inclation is always to feed the wrong dog. And that's why I have a sponsor. And that' s why I try to do so. And I sponsor people. And I tell you, if you sponsor a lot of guys, you can't feed the wrong dog much. I'll tell you that dog, you got to throw it a bone every once in a while. But you can live a life of feeding it because you end up being such a bad example to the guys you sponsor, right? You can't do it. You just can't. You just don't know how to do it and that's really what this is about And the line in the book about we ask God to mold our ideals in the sex deal is, I didn't say that prayer until I was 15 years sober. And it's funny. I had asked other guys I sponsored to say it, but I wouldn't say it. And it was by avoidance. It wasn't like I was consciously not saying it, but I avoided it. And I think I avoided because I was afraid that God's ideal about sex and mine were probably not going to be very even close. I mean, I just, and I was reserving the right to manage some things in this area. And let me tell you something, you do that for a while and you'll become humbly ready to do something different. And I said that prayer and I'll tell you what happened. God started working through me and some things that at one time I could do all of a sudden I couldn't stand myself if I even attempted to do them and some Things that I uh I couldn't do all of a Sudden I was able to trust enough to try and things started to change in my life and I think I I think God molds a guy like me by moving the way I feel. A lot of this thing in finding God's will is a lot like the guy who goes into the doctor and says, Doc, it hurts when I go like this. And the doctor says, Don't go like that. Right? But if you're asleep, you go likethis, and you keep going like this, and you don't get it, that this is what's hurting. Something's hurting me, right? It's to wake up, wake up to what's making my spirit sick and what's making my Spirit lit up. Two little pieces. Page 70. If you have done what someone alleged to you was a four-step and you can't answer that you, yeah, that you have don these things in this last paragraph on 70, I'd like to recommend that you try the actual four-stepped. I'm also asked occasionally when I think about people writing an autobiography, I want to tell you I think it's a fabulous idea. I hope you do a four-step also. I think you'll find that the four-stepped will change your life. I don't know if the autobiography will. It says, If we've been thorough about our personal inventory, we've written down a lot. Well, if you've written everything that we found to write, probably wrote it down a lot, have listed and analyzed our resentments, right? Remember the list? We did some analysis, some observations. We've begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. Yeah, we killed me seven times on one page. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We did that. We begin to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill to all ordinary men, even our enemies. I remember that. For we look on them as sick people. Yeah, I think we covered that twice. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. We saw that at the end of the resentment inventory and we saw it at the bottom of page 69 toward the middle of the sexual misconduct inventory. So I hope you can say that you've done all those things. If you haven't, try this one. And then it says in this book you read again and again Faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you're convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him. If you've already made a decision, that would be the third step decision we talked about, and an inventory of your gross or handicaps, you've made a good beginning. That being so, you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself. I studied biology. I know what happens after swallow and digest, right? That stuff is out of here. And I believe step four is about out of hier. and we are out of here for 9 minutes and 41 seconds. And we are a full hour behind. I am alcoholic. Hi Scott! And it's, thanks for coming back. Thanks for those of you who are still coming back. And let's open if we could with a couple of moments of silence. Thank you. Amen. Thank you. Moving right along, page 73, it talks on the first full paragraph about the alcoholic leading the double life, very much the actor. And one of the things I've discovered is that the actors don't get sober, that what I have to do is quit doing the act and try to become who I really am. and that's a tricky thing. Don used to say that the alcoholic is like an electromagnet that's been dragged through the junkyard of life and we've got all these rusty, sharp, jagged things stuck all over us and what we do with these steps is we very slowly turn the power down and eventually off and all that nastiness falls away and this beautiful thing I've always really been on the inside sort of emerges that we're not here to change me into anything but to help me quit being who I'm not and who I really am will emerge. And I think he's right about that. So I had to quit being an actor, and I'm not batting 1,000 on that today. I'm so much better than I ever was. This thing at the bottom of the page, psychologists agree with us that we've spent thousands of dollars in examinations, but few instances where we have given these doctors a fair break. We have seldom told them the whole truth nor have we followed their advice. My wife says that she thinks alcoholics should go to veterinarians instead of MDs because they're used to trying to guess what's wrong with their patients because they ain't telling them, and we don't either. And on page 74, it talks about who can hear your fifth step, and there aren't any rules in AA, and мы all know that. And the first one is mentioned here on page 75, and on page 72, the last paragraph begins with notwithstanding. If you count up a couple of lines, this is the rule is we must be hard on ourselves but always consider it of others so there's one of the rules we don't have um one ofthe other ones that we don' have just for fun is on page 101 or 102 rather no 101 um two-thirds of the way down so our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drinking if we have legitimate reason to be there goes on to say if our spiritual condition is right and we're not trying to get vicarious pleasure but there's another rule and there's another one on page 118. There's just the ones I've found so far. There may be others. Paragraph against the middle of the page with we women, if you count up three lines it says live and let live is the rule. So we have a few rules. The book talks about the idea that my mother can't hear my fifth step. There has to be someone who will be unaffected by it. And the men I sponsor are free to do their fifth step with anybody they want to and me and uh and and once again it's because i need to be there it's because among other things i'm going to hear things in there that need to Be on their eighth step list that they're going to miss that's very consistent and um i um i used to do some part-time work in a treatment facility my sponsor was running and we were trying to paste a guy back together on a Monday morning. He had chosen to do his fifth step with his preacher on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning with him sitting in the front row of the congregation with his wife, his preacher delivered his fifthstep to the congregation with his name tied to it. You might want to give some very serious consideration to who hears your fifthstep. Very serious consideration. And that's just one of the things that I saw. So I see it looks to me like we've got a one-sentence direction on how to do a fifth step. It's on the next page, 75-second paragraph. It says, We pocket our pride and go to it illuminating. That means to shine light into. Illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. That's a confession. And this is how I do that. I don't let him schedule his fifth step until he's completed four. I'm not going to let him bash himself into finishing the fourth step because he has an appointment to do his fifth. I think that's a poor way to approach it. When he's finished with it, we schedule a time and we turn off the phones. We've got Kleenex. We've Got Water. We have bathroom facilities. And I begin asking him to pray for clarity and courage and to invite God to join us because that's what it says. And page 13 gives me some freedom to do something. Paragraph begins near the bottom of the page. actually the last paragraph begins with my friend on page 13 if you count up four lines it says never was I to pray for myself except as my request borne my usefulness to others then only might I expect to receive but that would be in great measure and when I sit to hear a fifth step I ask God to make me perfect for that time and that I might be open and I promise him that I'll trust what feels like guidance to me and it's amazing some of the things that I know to do that I'm just not that good and i think that prayer is answered when it's for him not for me and uh once we've done our prayers uh and i just started this a couple of years ago i don't remember where i heard it but it's really helped the process for me as we finished the prayers i said to him uh the first thing i want to know is is he nervous if this is his first fifth step and he's not nervous we are wasting our time because he already knows what he's nicht going to tell me he's got a decision in place and uh i shared that with a guy that i sponsored about to hear his first fifth step and he asked the guy are you nervous he said no he said you already know what you're not going to tell me and he said the guy disintegrated before his eyes and dumped the whole bucket before they even got to the prayer so he said he was done and um so if he's nervous he's either going to tell me or he's not sure i'll take either one that's fair enough because i'm gonna get it out of him we'd be doing okay on that and uh but i i begin by saying i want you now to tell me the single worst thing you ever did let's start there what I've discovered if I just say okay start telling me about it we could be here for days going through all the little penny candy I stole when I was in the third grade on the way to the big stuff if we do the big step first the fifth steps are running right at two hours now and I've seen them run days it's not necessary that's just my experience with it I mean whatever you're doing suits me fine and so he tells me about the worst thing he did and then i don't see in my literature any directions on how to hear a fifth step so all i have is what my lineage has passed to me and in my lineage we do not hear fifth steps we exchange them so he tells me the worst thing he didn't and i tell him when i did that and the odds are very good and then and then he tells mason right now i want the next worst thing you ever did and he tells me that and i'd tell him what i did and and we do that until he can't think of any and then I tell him the other worst things in my inventory that he didn't do, and that happens. And then we refute to his four-step and look around and see if there's anything else. It's a confession. And when that is completed, when he thinks he's finished, I ask him a series of questions. And the questions are, have you harmed an animal or a human? Have you had a homosexual experience? Have you Had sex with a family member or an animal? Have You been involved in an abortion? and I know that's a big, hot political topic. Well, it ain't for me. For a lot of us, that's the heavy thing that we're carrying and I'll leave that there or is there anything you had decided not to tell me or that you were unsure whether you'd tell me that I haven't heard and I say congratulations. I think you've done a fine fifth step and I forgive you and I believe that God forgives you. I believe it all in my heart and I'm sure and I do believe by the time we finish the ninth step you will have forgiven yourself i then read him the fifth step promises here in the middle of page 75 which they're there so i'm going to assume you can read them and then i send him home with the next paragraph it says returning home and so now you need to go home and i want you to go home in a quiet automobile don't turn on your cell phone don't turned on the radio don't even play one of my cds real commitment on my part here to his recovery don't you think and uh and maybe he doesn't have a home where he can be saved well he can stay here and it says we're gonna he's gonna take an hour and review what he's done that's the first five steps there's a prayer thank god from the bottom of our heart that we know him better because see when i didn't go running out of the room when he told me the worst things he'd done he knows his god better because he was sure i was gonna things have changed for him taking the book down from our shelf well you'll need to go home and put your book up on a shelf it will need to be shoulder level or higher so you can take it down that's what it says I expect to hear that tomorrow and then there's this building the arch analogy again carefully reading the first five proposals we ask, that's a prayer if we've omitted anything building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last is our work solid so far are the stones properly in place Have we skimped? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? And I tell them something approaching about half of the time I get a phone call within the next 24 hours from somebody, he just forgot something. About half the time. Doesn't mean you've done a poor job. It means you just forgot someone. Call me. We'll talk about it. Be happy to. Don't worry about it." Turning the page, strangely enough, it says if we can answer to our satisfaction, that's those questions at the bottom of the preceding page about was I thorough, if we can answer to our satisfaction we then look at step six oh five and six are done the same day we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable are we now ready to let God remove from us all of the things we've admitted are objectionable can you take them all every one and then we have here a very cleverly concealed sixth step prayer if we still cling to something we will not let go we ask God to help us be willing and when ready oh my goodness five, six, and seven are done the same way we say something like this my creator i'm now willing that you should have all of me good and bad i pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows grant me strength as i go out from here to do your bidding amen we have then completed step seven for those of you who who note the changes in the big book they changed a seven-step prayer about two and a half years ago i swear it wasn't here and it used i thought it used to say, pray that you not remove from me every single defect of character, grant me strength. And it only says that I'm asking him to remove just the ones that stand in the way of my usefulness. It hadn't occurred to me that I had defects of character that did not stand in the wayof my usefuless and that I was not asking to have those removed. And it occurred to be the day that I watched God use one of my character defects as a tool to help me what we do up here is kind of a dangerous thing we lose some people who speak a lot at conferences it it can feed something in me that needs to be starved and it's it's okay if you think one of us is really great it's not okay if we think that and i got to where i was thinking that and I found myself in a situation about to do some things that that would have shattered me spiritually and um and I watched God use that character defect to bring me down off of my pedestal i'm not up there now i'm just a puking drunk from nashville that's making good today that's all it's okay if you think different it's not okay if i do but i watch god use that character defect of mine to change and save my life big deal my sponsor told me that steps six and seven don't say a thing about me removing my own defects of character or working on them when i'm working on my defects of characters i am living in the problem classic example of living in the problem and i've got three things i call my spiritual barometers and when i was two years sober i was working on these and it was giving me a brain hernia and and it Was just a terrible thing and they are uh swearing and lying well not actually lying improving the truth really maybe just a little bit around the edge to make it prettier and um and lying and um And my attitude toward those of you who got your driver's licenses out of Cracker Jacks boxes. And if one of those gets out, if I look, they're all out. And I can't change me. And this is what Mike told me. He says, my priority is not what I say it is. My priority is what I do. If I want to know what my priorities are, I don't listen to my words about the future. I look at my actions in the recent past. What was accomplished was a priority. What was not accomplished was not a priority, and anything that I am saying to the contrary is a lie that I'm telling me. And I hated that when I heard it because I was saying a bunch of things were priorities and I wasn't doing anything about them. And when I hear me swearing or lying or when I'm angry in traffic, if I look back over the last few days, there are holes in my spiritual program because when there aren't, I don't do those things. And if I looked, the one that I usually lose is the morning prayer and meditation. a very very noted well a clergyman and you would recognize his name uh if i can remember it um once was asked one time how much time he spent in prayer and meditation the morning he said an hour unless i'm really really busy in which case i spend two hours so i got that one on upside down i don't know about you and if i let that go for a few days in a row i go crazy but but when i am angry in traffic or swearing or lying there's something wrong with my spiritual program and I've cut off prayer and meditation. I'm not taking meetings into the jail. There's something wrong and I inventory my program over the last week or so and find that hole and plug it and two days later you can cut me off in traffic and almost hit me and I will smile at you from the depths of my soul and I'll wave at you and I wave my entire hand, wave the whole thing and it's very important to wave at all And I'll say, God, go with that child today. And thank you so much that I spotted that he was going to change lanes without his blinker on. Thank you so mucho. I saw that and got on my break. It was not in an accident. It would have been his fault, but I'm still in an incident. Thank you. And go with the child. Go with that kid. Go with the kid. Go with your child today, it looks like he could use some help. See, I make mistakes like that too. Thank you, and I can't change me from the raving maniac two days ago. and this is what mike told me that i can't work on my character defects but he said my character defects are all self-centered there are no exceptions to that and self can't push self out of the center if it could it would leave a vacuum and so the answer to my character defects is not for me to work on them the answer for my character defect is for me to do the things that you've taught me to do to leave a spiritual life and as i do that what happens is that the character defects just recede i don't take power over them what i do is i invite the the light in and the darkness flees because the darkness can't exist in the light so focus on the darkness doesn't help me a bit the invitation to the light is what changes me pop thank you scott i'm bob still an alcoholic hey bob I was in Jacksonville, Florida not too long ago at a retreat and I got there late Friday night and I was going to have to talk Friday night then all day Saturday and I finally got into the room where the meeting was going be and one whole wall of the room was windows ceiling to floor and I it's nighttime outside and so they're telling me what a great view it is of these outside the windows are these gardens and there's a river and there supposedly some trees with moss hanging down it's supposed to be beautiful well it's dark out and I look at the at the windows and i just see me i see my reflection and if i try to see past me i see kind of weird shadows and stuff nothing that looks too attractive to me kind of creepy stuff actually and the problem is is that i i can't see past myself to what's really there because there's no light and the next day when the light was present it was everything they said it was beautiful and i and when the light was present and i looked there i didn't see myself anymore i could see what was really there and not my own reflection and spiritual growth is often like that when i uh when i came to six and seven uh my real problem is in six um and i don't i i think that a lot of of the problems that i've found in my sobriety come back to step six i i'm surprised how many guys i sponsor sober over 20 years that come to me with a problem and it's a six-step problem it's all of a sudden they're not entirely ready anymore for to let go of something and chamberlain used to say that this was a process of uncovering discovering and discarding we call it an awakening when you awaken to the truth it's easy they say the truth will set you free the truth does set you free because when you see the truth, you're no longer vested in the illusion. And most defects of character are vested in an illusion. An illusion that they provide security. An illusion that they'll defend you or support you or protect you from a life that I secretly believe is threatening and are vacant or boring or empty or lonely or whatever. And they're really defective defense mechanisms that I hang on to. And maybe at one time they worked for one day, but even a broken clock's right twice a day doesn't mean it works. There was a TV show when I was a little kid that was on television called Rescue 8. Some of you might remember Rescue 8, And it was about these paramedics that worked out of a firehouse, and they would go out on these calls, and people would be in trouble, and everything from a cat up a tree to someone in an automobile accident. And this one episode, I remembered it when I got sober in it because it sort of ties in with step six. And these two paramedrics go out On This Call, and They arrive on the scene, and there's this little girl, cute little girl. and she's hysterical and she has her arm stuck in a vending machine it's wedged up and they can't get it out and her parents are there and they're freaking out now and they are upset and everybody is nuts and this little girl is crying and now the fire trucks pull up and now they are pulling saws and torches off the trucks to cut the door off the vending machine which is making everybody even more upset, more hysterical and the one paramedic just standing there watching it all And he finally says to the little girl, he says, sweetheart, you got something in your hand. And she says, uh-huh. What do you got in your hands? A candy bar? Would you let go? It's my candy bar! It's mine! It's a candy bar, it's my... But sweetheart, you gotta let go of the candy bar. It's MY candy bar!! I'm not letting go of that candy bar!!! And he says to her, he says sweetheart, if you will let go with that candy bar. I promise you, I will get you two candy bars. She looks at him and says, really? And he says, I promise ya. And he trusts her. She trusts him, rather. And so she lets go of the candy bar, and her arm slides out of the vending machine. What's your candy bar? what's your candy bar uncover discover and discard and that's the problem i hang on to something because i trust the old idea more than i trust god will god really make give me something better if i let go of this thing that i've been using to try to prop me up and secure me what is anger except a defense mechanism against the world that's i'm threatened by if i really my fear is if i realmente let god take my anger and he did then who's going to stand up for me who's gonna protect me wouldn't people roll over me what would happen to me if i didn't ever have anger if I never what would happen to me maybe God would have to take care of me what about my lust what if I asked God to remove my lust and he did god that'd be a bad deal wouldn't it but what is my lust except a defense mechanism it's it's more than sex it's a defense mechanism against the life that I'm afraid is going to be lonely and desolate and vacant. Against being a person that doesn't feel valid or alive or excited. Against a life that, I'm afraid, will be boring and desolate. How often alcoholics settle for lust because we don't know how to do the intimacy. all my defects of character just simply defense mechanisms that don't work and when i see the illusion of value and really see the truth and shine some light on it and i see this is just it's not it doesn't work then it's a lot easier to give it to god it's very much like drinking and there's a they parallel this our defects of characterized to the obsession to drink in the 12 by 12 when they ask the question how come that none of us are ever rendered white as snow we god doesn't take all of our defects and it answers the question because we can't seem to hit the same bottom with all of them that we hit with alcohol and when you think about it i was not ready to come to alcoholics anonymous and surrender to your program and really bring my drinking here and surrender this obsession to drink to you and to god until i had wrung all the fun out of it When I finally got to the place where I knew the truth, and the truth is that this party's over, and I've had to get to the same thing with some of these defects of character when I realize that some of the things that I think are protecting me and defending me and gratifying me are actually leaving me more afraid, more vacant, more alone, and they don't help me. They ruin me. there's there's an old story about a guy who goes to the psychiatrist's office and he's just crazy and he says doc you gotta help me i don't know what to do my life's a mess and the doc says well what's wrong and he said well doc my brother-in-law lives with me he's insane doc he's insane he thinks he's a chicken every morning when the sun comes up he runs up and down the block naked flapping his arms cocking like a bird the police are over all the time the neighbors won't talk to me my life's a mess please help me and the psychiatrist said well that's not a problem here sign these papers i'll put your brother-in-law in the state mental hospital your problems are over guy says oh doc i don't know if i could live without the eggs there's eggs there's a candy bar there's something we don't hold on to objectionable destructive behavior for no reason and ferreting out and seeing the truth and shining light on it and realizing the truth is a lot of this. We talk about spiritual awakenings in Alcoholics Anonymous. I think 90% of every awakening is I just pull my head out of my butt and really get what's going on. Bill, in his story, talks about Steps 6 and 7 differently than he does anywhere else in AA literature. And he refers to coming to his creator and asking him to remove these things. and he says removing them root and branch as if there are two parts to every defective character and that sure works with me because i think there is two parts there's the branch which i want god to take which is poking the eye but there's a root and the root is what the good is the illusion to pay off. I want God to take away the consequences of the defect, but I want to keep the part that I secretly suspect has value. And they're connected. They're a package. You can't separate. That's like saying, God, take away my hangovers, but let me drink. Right? You can'T do that. It's a package, and when I wake up to the truth, it's pretty easy to become willing that prayer that Scott mentioned is a prayer that I overlooked for a long time in my sobriety I said the seventh and if you say the seventh step prayer without saying the sixth step prayer and you're like me and you have the kind of ego that I have that eventually no matter what you do it always comes back is that I take a stance for a number of years in Alcoholics Anonymous that I am going to beat my defects of character and what they're my experience is my defects of character when you're trying to willfully conquer them they seem to get stronger and they'll come out in other areas it's almost like it's always like your your bastard stepchildren you don't want your neighbors and friends to know you have and you lock them in the back bedroom the problem is they crawl out the window and flatten the tires of your company right they always they always come out somewhere else and i there is no there there is no way i can do that on will and what happened is i whatever i use whatever i try to beat on willpower i become the reformed that guy whatever that is i become the reform that guy uh if i one of my one of the i'll give you an example one of the defects that i ran into and it was so apparent on my resentment list uh when i was four years sober is that i was so judgmental i would sit in meetings and just crit in my mind critique everything everybody shared i was just i was oh it was when you really look at it it's pathetic it was really pathetic right and i i decided i'm never i'm not going to be that way anymore and you know what happened i became the guy who was very judgmental of people who were very judgmentable which makes me exactly like them, right? What changed? Nothing. It just shifted and took a different form. That's all. Confucius in the Tao said that the chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken. In other words, if you're beating something with self-will and you're a reformed whatever, you're just as much a hostage to it as when you were participating in the behavior. The reformed smoker who's always arguing, yelling at people for smoking cigarettes is just as such a person and just as as much a hostage to the cigarettes as he was when he was smoking them. That's not freedom and we're talking in Alcoholics Anonymous about freedom not not willfully not willfully getting off of something. You know, I think eventually what happens as I move, as I become... It's a funny thing. As I start to really, through this process of cleaning house, really get me, as I startto understand and see two things, that there are two forces in my life. There's self, the ego, which the book tells us is the seat, the root of our problems. and then there's God. And I'm amazed over the years how like those two forces are. They have certain similarities, and one thing that's very similar between God and the ego is that I never see either one of them directly, but I see their manifestations. I see God's manifestation, when I get out of the way and surrender, I see his hand in my life. And consequently, I start to get a sense and a feeling about God in my life. I never see the ego directly, but I see its manifestations in the fear and the resentments and the dishonesty and the controlling and running the universe. I see its manifestations. I'm an avid reader and I'm also a musician and there's, I'll tell you something, there's certain songwriters that I've learned every song they've ever written and there are certain authors that I have read every book they've every written and I have never met those people but I gotta tell you somethin', I feel very strongly like I know them And I think if you can really look and get the creation, you start to get a sense of the creator. And I Think that's what happens in this awakening in Alcoholics Anonymous is I have a tremendous sense of God today from his creation and from his hand. And I also have a, I've become very, very awake to my ego over the years and its manifestations in my life. And I feel like I am in a big tug-of-war between the two. And my goal is to feed the right dog to stay on the right side. You never get rid of it. The ego never... Every time I've ever heard anybody in a meeting talk about how they once and for all got rid of that stuff, it's, oh, look out. You don't get rid off it. But it is part and parcel of who I am. And I've immersed myself in a way of life that is fantastic because it protects me from the worst sides of me. And that's really, we have a sign at the place I got sober on the wall that says we've met the enemy, and it is us. And Alcoholics Anonymous has protected Bob from Bob. continues to protect Bob from Bob by and what a tremendous thing that is keeping my life out of the hands of an idiot you want go ahead and start on eight step eight and nine I'm gonna tie I'm gonna what time we're gonna break okay I love talking about step eight because I I think Alcoholics Anonymous was founded with Step 8. Those of you who know a little bit about the history of how AA came about, Mother's Day weekend 1935, a guy who was barely sober five months, who had never succeeded at getting anyone sober and not from a lack of trying, he tried with many, many people finds himself finally after being out of work for years and having to rely on his wife's meager salary working at macy's as a clerk finally has an opportunity to get back on his feet financially and he goes to akron ohio uh for this opportunity that was going to just write everything in his life, and it fell apart. And he ended up in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel, broke. He had a few dollars in his pocket, not even enough to pay his hotel bill, and not enough to get back to New York. And he's in that lobby, and he's pacing back and forth, and he has no sponsor. He has nobody to call. There's no meetings. There're no book to read. There is nothing he's totally alone out on a limb all by himself and there's a bar there and the loneliness is on him and he hears the the chatter and the laughter in the bar and the thought comes to him that my god if he just maybe could go in there and make an acquaintance he just wanted somebody to talk to and maybe he could sit there and have a ginger ale and then the thought was maybe he could have one drink and then in the minute he thought that he got scared and he he believed something that was divinely put in him in town's hospital. And it was the idea that if he helped other alcoholics, that maybe he could stay sober. And he went to a phone in the lobby of that hotel, a phone I've called people on from that lobby on many occasions. And started calling churches and people from the church directory. And through a guy named Tungst, he gets a hold of a woman who was a member of the oxford group her name was henrietta cyberling and she got excited when he called and she says oh we got this drunken proctologist who we've been trying to get sober we've Been praying for help you god sent you and bill doesn't know what she's talking about he just needs to talk to a drunk and he's talked to a junk right now and and she Says you well she says i'll call you right back and she calls the smith residence on arbor street and ann answers the phone, and she tells Ann the good news. She said, well, you can't really see Bob right now. He's taking a nap under the dining room table. It kind of makes him endearing, doesn't it? I just love that. He is my guy. So the next day, Bill walked several, I think it was 80-some blocks from the Mayflower Hotel over to the gatehouse at the Cyberling Mansion to talk to Bob Smith. He walked he was so desperate and he got over there and he's in dr bob is is being pulled i mean she wasn't literally pulled by his ear but i think emotionally it was because he's guilty he screwed mother's day up which is in a long succession of things he's of oops kind of deals he's done you know he's he's coming from behind and his wife was ann was a strong woman and i his son uh was him and i became very good friends he sat in my living room and told a bunch of us the story one time of how his dad was balking please all right i'll go but please don't make me stay in there more than 15 minutes listen to that yankee talk to me about my drinking and he goes over there they go in the library and to his amazement uh bill wilson never talked to bob about bob's drinking bill wilсон talked to Bob about Bill Wilson's drinking and his alcoholism and for the first time in bob's life and he'd been talked to about his drinking by some a lot of people for the first Time he started to connect and he stayed in there over four hours because he couldn't get enough in this wilderness in this desolation of alcoholism to connect with another alcoholic and the loneliness of alcohol ism is a tremendous thing and he came out of there with his arm around these left hand and smitty jr in the little sitting out there came out with his arm around dr around bill and they were best friends and he said this guy knows what he's talking about and asked ann can we can he come over and stay at our house and ann said yeah and he says bill would you come over since bill couldn't pay his hotel room i'm sure he said yeah i think i will i um went over and he lived at the ardmore house arbor street house for quite some time and he they talked about this program that he was bill was trying to put together that he'd gleaned from some things from silkworth and some things from the oxford group and also his experience and conviction of helping other alcoholics that he that was inspired in him and towns hospital and and bob loved it all except for the immense part and he said to he said to Bill he says nah he says you don't know I'm a physician in this town I've already hurt my reputation enough's enough I'll do everything except that he dug his heels in wouldn't do it and Dr. Bob drank again came back from a medical convention in Atlantic City so drunk that they he was comatose by the time they hit the Akron station conductor didn't know what to do so they just laid him on the platform and somebody called his office manager and she came down as she's come to rescue him in the past and got him back on it got him up and carried him out of there somehow they got him put him to bed in art the house on ardmore street bill still there he comes to on what most uh historians believe was june 10th there are some that dispute that because of some things they discovered but anyway what most most people accept is the morning early in the morning of june10th 1935 he comes too as i would come to shaken wanting to jump out of your skin just vibrating. Sick, sick, sick. He says, what day is it? They say it's June 10th. He says, oh my God, it can't be the morning of June 10. I got a surgery to perform on June 10th and Bill didn't know what to do. Bill gave him a sedative and some couple bottles of beer and pushed him into the surgery. Imagine being the patient watching your doctor coming into smelling of alcohol and shaking at the same time man all it says anyway no I know historians Bill Pittman researched all the hospital records trying to find out because all we know about the patient is he lived we don't know any details like we don'T know we DON'T know if he whistled when he walked or anything we DONT KNOW Bob gets it was a quick little cancer surgery and he gets done that surgery is still early in the morning and disappears. Doesn't come home and doesn't come back. He comes home all that afternoon, all that evening, almost midnight. He comes back to the house on Ardmore Street and everyone was afraid he'd been drinking. Only he came back bright eyed and something was different. And he hadn't been drinking, he'd be out searching out everyone he was afraid to face. He finally became willing to go to any links and it says that on page 76 at the bottom of the third paragraph it says remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol this is in step eight that's kind of been over the years i don't know where this has come from the idea that willing to go to many lengths is willing not to try not to drink and go to meetings what they're really talking about is the amends they're talking about step eight when it's willing to go to any lengths and there's a prayer in there it says if we haven't the will to do this we ask and we ask until it comes as a result of dr bob's going out and seeking out all those people he never took another drink again the rest of his natural life and in just a meager 15 years of sobriety before he died low estimates is he personally helped over 5 000 alcoholics who came into a lay of life of helping other alcoholics who helped other alcoholists and I'd venture to guess that we are all in this room indirectly as a result of one person's finally becoming willing to go to any lengths one man's eighth step and it rippled through history and it's changed the world I've been to meetings in 20 some different countries and Alcoholics Anonymous This is as vital in the most exotic, strangest, weirdest places as it is in your hometown and in your home group. And it all came from that one moment when a guy finally threw up his hands and was willing to go out and face and walk through the fear. The hand of God was all over that. There's nothing in me that would suggest that Dr. Bob could have dug his heels in and refused to make those amends and stayed sober. Why would I think that? He didn't before. that is the single difference between mother's day weekend 1935 and june 10th 1935 the single difference was an action was his eighth and ninth step he's he went out and he sought out those people and i i think that this is the step you know in the 12 by 12 it says that step six separates the men from the boys i think this is really the deal here this isthe hardest thing we do. It terrified me. It scared me. I liked it. I thought I could intellectually, I understood the importance of amends. I thought, oh, that's a good thing. You people in AA should definitely do that. Yeah, but I mean, I lived on the streets like an animal. There were guys from motorcycle gangs that went to prison as a result of my actions. I mean there were people that have never been the same as a result of things i did to them it's a guy i've never found i've hired to tab search for him i've had people in aa that thought they could help find him never found him who i stabbed i uh opened his chest up with a knife and he'll he'll never be the same uh i i thought to myself it's too much i remember thinking about the money and thinking oh, my God, listen, I wouldn't have taken all that if I had known I had to pay it back someday. I'm not going to live long enough. But my fear of the amends would have been very similar to the fear of a kid in the fifth grade that looked at the tests he would have to pass in order to graduate from high school. A kid in fifth grade is going to look at those tests and figure I might as well quit school. I'll never pass those tests but there's a synchronistic process that if he keeps going to school and doing his homework by the time he gets to the back of the 12th grade he has everything to pass those tasks and there's the thing in AA that's the same way it's God's grace it comes to us incrementally it moves us it makes the impossible just take a little longer and if you can sign up for the ride and you do the next thing and you follow what your sponsor says and you do and you what you find out you'll find something one day you'll find yourself facing some people that you knew you would never be able to face how does that happen except the hand of god's in your life working changing you changing everything i i have the guys i sponsor make their eight step list in four columns because i think there's four aspects of it makes sense to me there's the guys there's the men and the people that I know where they are I have the wherever and I'm willing column number one column number two I know where they're at where they are but I'm not willing you know how to know if you're not willing because you're not driving up to their house because willingness without action is fantasy not really willing the book says we pray we ask for the willingness we ask until it comes That's all I got to do in column number two. Column number three, I have the willingness. The guy is stabbed. I havethe willingness. I'll tell you if I could find out tomorrow where he lived, I'd be on the next plane. I could get on to go there and make that right. But I don't know where he is. I have to wait for God to create the opportunity to provide the means. There's my business and there's God's business. It's mybusiness to make the list. I did it in step four. And pray for the willingness and it's God's business to provide the willingness and it is God's business to make it possible and then it is my business to direct amends when he has made it possible. But he has to make a promise that it is possible. And then the third column is the people I don't know where the fourth column, I don't know where they are and if I did, screw them, I ain't going. I wait and pray. And you know what happens in my experience? The people in the second column, third column fourth column end up in the first column and the first column is the only one i actually have to make amends to right now the rest of them i have to i pray for or wait for opportunity and let god do what god does best and bob does what bob can do best there's an old adage and it's a part it really is a partnership there's a old adge that without him i can't but without me he won't and it' s a deal here Scott? Page 58. Once again, in the most read, least listened to portion of our literature. Second paragraph, our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. And here's a portion that's quoted all the time. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it. I've been in more meetings where that was the topic. and I never heard the solution which is very cleverly concealed in the balance of that sentence says then you're ready to take certain steps I've always wondered what steps they might be talking about possibly somebody can catch me at a break if you have an idea on that there it is and I can tell you what I had to do to get sober it was the things I was not willing to do it is really that simple that is just how it was for me talking a little bit um page 76 i find uh the book runs steps eight and nine together in the in the descriptions on how to go about it and i don't have any problem with that but i find five different prayers in this portion of the work the the first is on page 76 last paragraph begins with probably if you count up about four lines it says if we haven't the will to do this we ask until it comes so now we know what to ask and we know how long as long as you have to page 79 there's a lot of great stuff in here I hope you'll dig it out page 79 first full paragraph although these reparations take innumerable forms there are several guiding principles which you find I'm sorry there are several general principles which we find guiding here it is reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find the spiritual experience we ask that's a prayer that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be. I hear people trying to work themselves into others. You know what I'm talking about in the short form of the step, unless it hurts somebody else? Well, I'm not part of others, very clearly. Very clearly not part OF that. Page 80, first full paragraph, before taking drastic action which might implicate other people, we secure their consent. If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, that might be a sponsor, ask God to help, there's a prayer, and a drastic step has indicated we must not shrink page 82 i have six or eight lines down i think i think this is one of the most beautiful perspectives for prayer i've ever run across it says each might pray about it having the other one's happiness uppermost in mind what a perspective for a prayer of any kind that i'm taking that out of context because it's it's in the context of somebody's been unfaithful and they're talking about all that but but i think that sentence stands alone beautifully each might pray about it having the other one's happiness uppermost in mind what a perspective for prayer and then on the facing page about six lines down so we clean the house with the family asking there's a prayer each morning in meditation that our creator show us the way of patience tolerance kindness and love so there's set of prayers all having to do with this willingness this thing pretty much i walked out of a meeting one time and a guy whose sponsor i sponsor stopped me and said i disagree with something you said in the meeting and what i had said was that my amends to my children would never be complete and he said that's not right he said did you go to your children and tell them what you had done wrong did you ask how you could repair the damage did they tell you did you do it did you asked for their forgiveness did they give it i said yes to all of that. He said, you're trying to be the best father you can be today is not ninth step work, it's twelfth. It's the principles in all your affairs. And if you think it's ninth stepwork, you have not accepted God's forgiveness or theirs or your own and you have work to do. And I don't find, if your sponsor's got you doing them, it really is okay with me, but I don'T find the term living amends in this text. And I DON'T personally believe in it. I'm being the best dad I can be today it ain't nine-step work it's 12 because spiritually awakened people who have children endeavor to be good parents i came down off the cross that day and i share that only in the hopes that maybe somebody else will because i have sure watched some teenage and older children manipulate us into some very sick behaviors under the banner of you were a bad parent in the past yeah and and i got to get out of that business because it's not healthy for either one of us I think it's just so critically important that my amends are complete but I'm still trying to be a good dad but it's not out of the sense of guilt it's out ofthe sense of I must remain spiritually awake and the only way I can do that is to do these things that you've taught me and we're going to go ahead and take wow an even number we're gonna take a 12 minute break and we are gonna run late into this next session we'll finish about 5.30 and we'll probably slip the evening session later when we start, just sort of as a planning thing. And so we have 11 minutes and 40 seconds now. My name is Scott Lee, and I am an alcoholic. Let's open, if we could, with a few moments of silence. Amen. thank you I'm going to continue on step 9 for the balance of this session and probably into the first and after supper I haven't told you something and that's that the last session we do on Sunday is my favorite of all that we do it's where we get to pick up pieces and tell stories that we can't work in anywhere else and I hope you can stay because it is my favorite session and I know some people have things they have to go do and that's fine but uh that just let you know that's my favorite i'm going to uh talk for a couple of minutes here um about my own personal experiences with step nine um there is a fella in my industry and uh he was doing some things he shouldn't have done and i and uh and he and i were very close and i i knew about it and uh i was drunk one night and i told somebody else about it and get back to him. And I, of course, lied my way out of it. And now I get sober and I realize what I have to do and what I didn't tell you is this guy was a Green Beret. A combat Green Berets. Not a peacetime one. And had been in countries I don't think we're supposed to name for long periods of time. Yeah. And I don' t think he knows how many times he's killed with his hands. And this is the guy I have to go face. And he called me one time, and he was coming to my hometown for a trade show. And I thought, okay, here it is. And I said, listen, I've got to talk to you. Can I come to your hotel room? And he said, sure. And we made an appointment. And I can remember standing out in the hall inviting God to go with me, knowing that I could be dead in the next couple of minutes and there's nothing I could have done about it. If he decided to kill me, there's no way in the world I had any hope of stopping that. And I just walked in and told them what I'd done. A few months later, my wife and I were guests in his home for a week. Boy, I don't doubt the power. It's an amazing thing. I talked last night about this white light spiritual experience that I had and that it came at bottom. Bob sometimes talks about this in Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I'm very impressed that Bob says he read that. I don't know if you even read it, but just to say that you read that, I think is very impressive. I'm impressed by that. It's the only reason I mention it, actually. Yeah, because I tried to read it too, and he's a better man than I. And if you're having trouble sleeping, I'd like to recommend you get a copy of that, Little Beauty. But what I've heard Bob say is that that's about people having spiritual experiences and that nobody had one on a winning streak, that they come like mine did at some sort of a spiritual low tide kind of thing. And that's where mine came. As I told you last night, I was lying there in the treatment center thinking about the worst thing I'd ever done, trying to stop the thoughts and could not. And that is when I reached bottom and my soul screamed for help and got it. I am going to talk to you now about what that thing was. And it is because of what I read to you on page 124 earlier that if I don't, somebody here might die. And I serve a powerful God, more powerful than all the things I did and more powerful that they did. And Ken reminded me of something that I love, and that's that God forgives me for everything I ever did and he loved me while I was doing it. My God got bigger the day that I heard that. And this thing I'm going to talk about is kind of a hot topic now. Please don't hear any of that, alright? I'm sharing this only because this is how it was for me. if you've done this and it's okay with you, it's okay with me. I'm not here to indict you. This is just my story and I need to share how I got free. As a young man I paid for an abortion. As far as I'm concerned, I killed one of my own children. That's what it felt like. That's What It Feels Like Now. And I drank those thoughts away. I don't know how many times. I don' t know how much time I did whatever was necessary to change that subject up here. And when I...and that's what my soul was thinking that's what i was thinking about when i screamed for forgiveness and got it and by the way for those of you who are hurt right now i wouldn't have picked this scab if i didn't have the medicine please don't leave please don'T LEAVE because i want to tell you how i got free do you notice my demeanor doesn't change as i tell this i got FREE here and that's why i'm telling this is because i WANT TO TELL YOU HOW I GOT FREE because i believe it'll work for you because i've seen it work for an awful lot of people and um so i had this big white light experience and I receive the forgiveness, so I get to step eight. I owe amends to an unborn child. I don't think it can be done. And I have been in the hands of big book people since I was sober about five months, and I'll be forever grateful. This is page 83. Third full paragraph. There may be some wrongs we can never fully right. We don't worry about them. If we can honestly say to ourselves we would write them if we could here it is some people cannot be seen we send them an honest letter and i was shown how to write that letter um i was sober about a year and there was a guy in my home group a very masculine man actually he was a drummer uh and you would know the name of the band if i said it believe me you would know it and a very masculin guy and he was crying at almost every meeting i was in and if I finally approached him I said Tony tell me about the tears and he said somebody says something beautiful in a meeting and it touches my heart and I weep and it feels so good and I said I can't cry he said I will teach you you may have noticed he was quite successful Tony was a fabulous teacher and and it took me a year a full year to get the first tear out I worked on it that long and uh and I've written it down by the way and if you'd like to learn to cry I can teach you there's a handout laying right down here and I teach several thousand a year it's just been a great joy for me because no baby was ever born unable to cry if you don't quit that crying I'll give you a reason to cry is how I learned not to cry so I'm not really learning to cry what I'm really doing is unlearning not to cry It's a different thing. And I believe that my emotions are how my spirit communicates with my mind and my body. And I can't afford to block that channel. Can't afford the block the channel. Because I've had the experience of the mind and body run on this show, qualified me to sit in closed meetings that most of the fellowships you'll ever hear of. Yeah. And so I can afford the price on that one. And Bob mentioned it earlier. Cherry Carpenter used to say, I'd rather be despised for who I actually am than loved for who I'm not. There might be people here now that disrespect me because I'm a man that cries. I hope not. I hope you like me. I really hope you Like me. And I'm okay if you don't. Didn't have that when I got here. Because if you didn't like the act, there was nothing because I thought I was garbage. Right? There was absolutely nothing if you did like the Act. And that's just tremendous changes, and I'm just kind of okay with me. So I'm offering to teach you to cry. Now, gentlemen, there's a warning that comes with this. If you start crying at appropriate times and places, guys, you'll attract a lot of very healthy women. Do not call me and complain about that, because I warned you right up front, okay? It lights them up like Chinese New Year's. It really he does and uh okay ladies i got a question for you yes or no are you sick of the john wayne act a lot of the guys are doing yes and they see right through it and they see a guy in touch with his emotions in it just well i'm gonna get off that subject but trust me i know what i'm talking about and um and my experience has been as we noticed coming through step four that although there was writing involved the writing had very little effect The observations and prayers were life-changing. It is my experience as this writing an amends letter to someone who's passed on that the writing portion has very little effect. It is the tears that are cleansing. And I put the information that I have gathered on making amends to someone whose gone on the other side of this because I've had the experience of trying to work with someone who couldn't cry and they don't get free. They get a sinus infection. I got a call a couple of years ago from a fellow, and he said he sponsored two guys that needed to write letters. And he saw us coming to a conference near him, and he didn't have the experience of what I'd sit with them while I wrote their letters. And I said, sure, I'd be happy to. And I failed to ask the question, could they cry? And we sat down to do the letters, and one of the guys could cry and one could not. And the one that could cry got free, absolutely free. He got free that day, and the other one got a sinus infection and did not get free. and I got a call a few months later from the sponsor who said that the guy had you follow the direction he learned to cry wrote another letter he got free so it's my experience that this is about the tears and I believe in writing these letters outdoors under God's sky not not indoors under man's roof and in a special place and with someone I need someone spiritual with me to do this to what do what Miss Linda calls prayerfully hold the space and I want them to bring a piece of spiritual literature to read. If they run out of prayers, they can prayerfully hold the space that way. And the instructions to them are as I begin to write this letter and if I write, I'm going to write dear unborn child, if I right the D in dear and start crying, I'm supposed to lay the pen down and cry as long as I can. To don't write and cry. It's been my experience, I've worked with a number of people on this that if I ride and cry, somehow it compresses the time frame and it doesn't get complete. And sometimes it takes more than one letter and um and sometimes it takes more than one letter anyway but um when i did my own and i was to write and to talk about what i had done and ask for forgiveness and and it's a newsie letter too i'm writing to a family member so let's tell them what's going on it's phenomenal experience and i was told every time i could cry lay the pen down and cry till the tears stop on their own and when When I was finished, I was.