The Ego Would Rather Be Right and Dead Than Wrong and Sober — Sandy B.

public service announcement if you have cell phones turn them so they don't ring and i'll tell you why i'm not trying to tell you what to do this is a public service announce i'll show you why we say that here because we know how god works he's god sometimes has gets out the bozo the clown nose and just screws with us and he's got a great sense of humor if you leave your cell phone on, you can bet in the middle of the meeting it will go off. Everybody sitting around you will turn and stare at you. You'll spend the rest of the day having conversations in your head with the people that stared at you, and why do you have your phone on? I know, I know you secretly suspect that your ex is going to come to their senses in the Middle of This Meeting and realize how wrong they were and call you, but it's not going to happen during the meeting. Trust me. It ain't going to happen. So you might as well just save yourself. If you have some serious thing, somebody going into surgery or something, keep it on silent and watch it. But they used to tell me when I was new, try to keep your mind where your butt is, right here. so what this fourth step is is is so simple in the book but it's not simple into the in the look until after you do it it's one of the most misunderstood uh steps in in the in alcoholic synonymous and i'm a literalist i'm going to go through this exactly as it talks about in thebook i i don't have i don' t you won't see me add stuff that's not there, and you're not going to see me leave out stuff that's in there. We're going to go through it. I learned how to help guys with the steps by sitting down with the book and literally just doing everything that it says to do. And what's it start out? It starts out on page 64. It says we had to get down to causes and conditions. Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory this was step four a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke now check these implications this bill's trying to paint a picture of what we're going to do here he says taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding in other words you're going to find some facts about yourself the implication is that maybe you didn't know and a fact facing and you're gonna face some things about yourself you never faced before process. It's an effort to discover the truth about stock and trade. When I did the two previous fourth steps, and I wrote my whole life story and everything I was ashamed of I mean, I shared some secrets with another person, but honest to God there was nothing on there I didn't know. I didn' t find and face any facts about myself I didn'd know. I didn''t discover any truth. I shared some secrets with someone else. When I did the one out of the 12 steps and 12 traditions, same thing. It was an interesting prospect. But there was no new information. There was no as my sponsor talks about this being a disease of perception there was not a change in my perception. The goal is I should come out of this thing different. And let's see what happens if we do this. Some of you, if you've never done it out of the book, you're going to be amazed. And some of you have done it. Maybe you'll find little ways to make it more effective with the people you sponsor. One object is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods to get rid of them promptly and without regret. This is a process of getting rid of. This isn't learning or getting knowledge about yourself. This is getting rid of crap. We approach God, this is not by self-reduction and subtraction, not by acquisition. This is about getting rid OF stuff. If the owner of a business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values. Oh, if you're like me, I fooled myself about so much. I listened to all these little stories in my head about my life, and they weren't even true. These cases I'd build against people. So it says we do exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Being convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations. The book said earlier in the chapter that the real root of the trouble was selfishness and self-centeredness. So we're going to start looking for the manifestations of the enemy, of self. The thing that we're in the bondage of, that we are hostage to. To see where this stuff has defeated us. So we considered its common manifestations. And here's the first one is resentment. The inventory is in three parts, resentments, fears, and sex conduct. And oddly enough, those three areas will crisscross across our entire lives and our entire being and our entirely approach to the world. We will uncover, discover, and discard all the calamity and the sources of it, the pomp and the sources of it and the things that we worship or became obsessed with. We are going to, as my grand sponsor used to say, enter this process of uncovering, discovering, and discarding. We're removing the blockage between me and God and me and others and me in my ability to carry out the decision in step three. Resentment is the number one offender. I didn't know what resentment was. I thought it was anger Because it kind of looks like anger But it's not really anger It comes from a Latin word Resentire Meaning to resensitize To re-feel To replay I don't know if you guys have I don' t watch much You guys have football and soccer here I think it's a little different Than we have at the States But it may be viewed on TV the same Do you guys Have the instant replays? Right, okay We got that. And that's what a resentment is. A resentment is there's somebody is smashed up pretty good and then they replay it with a commentary who just, the commentator will tell you about what a real, oh this, that must have really hurt. You know, I mean he'll say those things and he, and what's it, you zoom the camera on the guy's leg getting snapped and you kind of fade out the other stuff till you just really get it right. Oh my God, look at that. And that's what a resentment is, is I replay this stuff in my mind. But I replay it with the mind of a chronic alcoholic. A mind that is just ego-driven and self-serving and wants to be right and wants them to be wrong. So if you're like me, every time I replay it, I zoom the camera of my mind a little more on what they did. And I kind of shade out anything that's really not important. And I know I did that. Let's look here, right here, right here. Look what they did. Look what they did, my God. And I'll replay it and every time I replay it I make them a little worse and me a little better and them a little worse, and me a little better until by the time most of us get to Alcoholics Anonymous we're just, oh my God, no one's ever done so much for so many so often for so little. We end up feeling like victims, right? And who's, we're the victimizers. So resentment's the number one offender. You know, when I was new, I wouldn't have thought that. I would have thought it should have been guilt or remorse because I was plagued with it. But in actuality, guilt and remorse just ends up being a little bit of the sphere inventory. Resentment really is the number one offender because nothing will alter your perception and your relationship to life more than a resentment. Think about it. If you're like me, from the moment you get a resentment, someone hurts you deeply. From the moment they hurt you, did you ever notice how you're shifting this shift in your perception? From that moment on, they can't do anything right, can they? they can't it's it's like what happened it's they could it's as if these are always all the time 24 7 bad people now well nobody's like that i mean we're silly in the way we think in our perceptions kind of silly isn't it but yet from the moment you hurt me you'll never do anything right again i will only a be able to observe what you do wrong and i'll keep score oh i'll keep a little book and i'll just watch you i'll watch you closely sometimes because i need i need more evidence i need more in the book here right i'll Just build these cases on you because i want to be right and then maybe years later what if maybe you get sober before i do and you come making amends to me or maybe you do something nice and altruistic and giving what's the ego say It goes, don't trust them. They're just showing off because my ego wants to be right about you. It doesn't care if I'm alone, if I am miserable. It doesn' t care. It just wants me to be... It wants to do the right thing. It wants me right. I don't think my ego cares if it kills me. As long as after I'm dead, everybody realizes how right I was. and so resentment will alter my very perception of reality it keeps me hostage it keeps me locked up in here and everybody's everybody I've ever known has ever had a deep resentment you're it owns you it's got you right up in here grinding away with the scenarios of I should say this to them and they'll say that and I'll say this and they will say that. It owns you. It's got you hostage. So it is the number one offender. The book says it destroys more alcoholics than anything else. Wow, really? More than alcohol? I think so. I think so. I know that when Tim at 31 and a half years of sobriety put the pistol to his head sober he had about 10 years of undealt with resentments that he accumulated and he thought he was right about all of them when Richie with a little over 20 years killed himself he never could or would work the steps when he was 10 years sober he went through a terrible breakup and his wife ended up going with some old timer in AA and he could not let go of it he asked me to sponsor him we got him right up to step four and when it got to the part where it says we look at these from an entirely different angle he ain't coming he wants to be right he will not back off of it and it killed him he took his own life a little over 20 years sober he'd grind away by the time he killed himself People wouldn't even have anything to do with him. They wouldn't ever call on him on meetings because he's still talking about the crap from years before. They're tired of it. He's bad-rapping people now that are very well-respected and Alcoholics Anonymous. Not perfect people, people that make mistakes, but he won't let go of it, it killed him. Destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From its stem all forms of spiritual dis-ease. for we've not only been mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. And this next line I think is one of the most beautiful and dynamic promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physical. You know, when I was in my early, you know, by the time I was 24 years old, I felt like I was 80 years old I felt I was like dying From this disease And I was sick all the time I was weak all the Time, I couldn't even hold a Job, I was so Debilitated by my physical Emotional and spiritual condition I was a mess The vitality, the physical Vitality that has come To me as a result of working the steps Of Alcoholics Anonymous is amazing and the mental i spent years with psychiatrists dying being diagnosed as all kinds of stuff and i haven't i'm alcohol alcoholics anonymous has come true for me when the spiritual malady is overcome you will you will everything that you couldn't do in therapy will happen for you if you'll just do it. If you'll just do it. It almost seems like how could this simple process do for me what these learned psychiatrists couldn't do and all those medications and all that therapy? The proof's in the pudding. Of the guys I sponsor, I bet you there's close to 20 of them that had been hostage of the mental health system for years. Psychiatrists and therapists and medications and all kinds of in and out of mental hospitals. And these are free men today. These are, I mean, free men. Unbelievable. It's hard to believe when you don't really trust God, it's hard to believe God could do that for you, isn't it? But he can. sometimes our god's not big enough sometimes our fear is a lot bigger than our god so what do we do okay here's here's the nuts and bolts of it the book's asking us to do six things in the resentment section six things first number one it corresponds to the column number one on the left on page 65 It says, we listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. Can you see that in the book? Four lines up from the bottom on page 64 if those of you are following it. First thing we do, we list it. People, institutions or principles. Now, in my experience over the years, 95 to 98% of it's people. But you might have some institutions. There's one institution in the United States that comes up on almost every inventory and that's the IRS, the tax people. They come up on almost every single... The police are there quite a bit. But often, when you look more specifically, it really wasn't the police, it was that one cop. The one cop that beat the crap out of me. And then we find out later, why did he beat the crack out of you? Well, I have this tendency to counsel policemen when I'm drunk. They don't like that. So the first thing I do is list the people, institutions, or principles with whom I'm angry. Number two, the second thing, I ask myself why. And that's column number two on page 65, why. So I got who, column number one, why, column member two. And if you notice in page 65 in column number 2, very small bullet points. not a lot of just not a lot of talk here not a lot of verbiage because we're not we do not want to go into building the case to make the person you're reading this to understand that these person deserve to be resented you know this is just the facts just the facts brief to the point second grade teacher why embarrass me in front of the class for not doing my homework I don't have to go in to the fact that she was a nun and her vow of chastity made her hate boys and I don't have to get into all that. I don' t have to tell you what she did to the other kids in the class to justify my hating her. I don''t have to talk to her I don ''t have tell you about her bad attitude about the sports team I really liked how she disrespected people What actually happened? My ego got humiliated because I was embarrassed in front of the class and I hated her from that moment on She couldn't do anything right. The third thing, the third column has a little more verbiage to describe what we're doing in column number three because this is where we're starting to look for the first time for the manifestations of self. And the way you can tell that is if you change the pronoun at the bottom of the page. Now, the book was written in the third person because it's written about a group of people called alcoholics. But if you're going to personalize it, let's make it about us and see how it fits. On the bottom of the page, it says, we ask ourselves why we are angry. In most cases, it was found that my first person self-esteem, my pocketbook, my ambitions, my personal relationships, including sex. And then here's some of the words that we're goingto look at were hurt or threatened. So we were sore, burned up on our grudge list. we set up at the opposite each name are injuries so so far we got three we got three words that are describing what we're looking for we're looking for what was hurt we're looking for our injuries or what was injured and then it goes on with two more it says was it our self-esteem was it my security was it my ambitions which is a great way of saying get my way me getting my way my ambitions. Was it my way? Was it my personal or sex relationships which had been interfered with? So we're looking for what was hurt, aspects of self that were hurt, that were threatened that were injured, that we're interfered with and then the top of the third column says affected or what was affected and Bill has tremendous economy in his word smithing and he doesn't waste words and I've read everything I can get my hands on written by Bill Wilson and he's a remarkable writer by a lot of standards in English literature they could easily critique him but he has economy of scale and when he mentions something he mentions it for a reason so when i ask myself uh of these things that it lists sex relations self-esteem ambitions pride security etc etc what was affected in some resentments i don't i don'T GET IT I'M AFFECTED I DON'T KNOW I DONT REALLY SEE IT AND THEN I HAVE TO ASK MYSELF WELL OKAY WHAT WAS INTERFERED WITH i'm still not really getting it either what was injured i'm getting closer what was threatened oh you threatened my pride you threatened my relationship here you threaten my job or maybe what was hurt oh you hurt my pride you hurt me I'm sorry I didn't mean to hurt you I didn' t mean to my security and every word it's like looking at something from different angles and you pick and then you finally I use the one that goes oh that's it was it was pride oh it was self-esteem and a lot of a lot of the resentments especially that long termed ones the deep ones it's almost everything was hurt threatened affected injured or interfered with so we got these three columns okay this is not the end this is just this is this a horrid format of victimization that we actually have to put on paper in order to do the real work of setting ourselves free which occurs on the next two pages And on the bottom of page 65, after making the list of the three columns, who, why, and what was affected, threatened, etc., it says we went back through our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we were finished, the first three columns. When we Were Finished, We Considered These Three Columns Carefully. The first thing, apparent, was that this world and its people are often quite wrong. Very apparent to me. Oh yeah. They're really wrong. Isn't that what we're doing here? The first three columns, isn't it really a list of people that are wrong? People that if there was any justice, they would owe you an amends, wouldn't they? They'd owe the world an amens, probably. These are the out-of-line people. These are the stupid people. These are the wrong people. Let's see. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. Well, how'd that work out? Well, the book says the usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. So you can change towns. Did you ever notice, did you ever change towns and you're away from those assholes and their cousins show up in the new town oh my god they're growing them out in the desert somewhere they're the same people different faces it's the same conflict now here I am angst up again locked in that pissed off position because when nothing changes in here nothing changes out here I will duplicate and replicate the same crap no matter where I go because wherever I go there I am that's the problem take me with me so people continued to wrong me and i stayed store sometimes it was remorse and it was Remorse a lot for me i would attack i would do all this stuff i'd try to manage and arrange and then i just implode sometimes it Was Remorse and then we were sword ourselves but the more we fought and tried to have our own way the worse matters god as in war the only The victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived. Now, the next two paragraphs, I'm not going to read them, but the book is heavy-handed here. There's seven death threats in the next two paragraphs. I mean, it's brutal. Resentments lead to futility and unhappiness. They're fatal. they're infinitely grave they shut us off from the sunlight of the spirit the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink and we die, we die we die they're poison it's just like okay, alright, stop it I get it, they're fatal alright, alright I get it and then it says something very very important the second line in the last full paragraph it says we are prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle and this is the introduction to a change of perception that the book's going to facilitate in the next couple paragraphs but objectively what would that look like an entirely looking at them from an entirely different perspective from an entire different angle well I think reasonably in order to see what 180 degrees is from one point, I have to kind of see the point that I'm starting from in order to measure 100. In order to see an entirely different angle, I have to kind of be very genuine about how I'm looking at this to begin with in order to see it from an entirely different angle. So how are you looking at these resentments? Would it be fair to say that you're looking at them from the perspective of a prosecuting attorney? You got column one, you got the perpetrator. Column number two, the heinous acts. Column no. 3, the damage that was done. And you got your cases built pretty good here. So if you've got to look at this from an... If you've gotta be prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle, wouldn't that be to get up and cross the courtroom and sit down on the defense table and start pleading their case. Start looking at it through their eyes. Start seeing at the way they saw it. Start having dialogue about what it looked like to them. Now, I don't know anything about the particulars of your particular resentments, but I can bet one thing. I'll bet you that the person you hate, if they were explaining what happened between you and them, their version of it would be different than yours. Now the ego rears up automatically and says, well, of course it was because they're stupid and my version's right. Well, eh, maybe, maybe not. Are you prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle? Do you want to be free or do you want to be right? It's your choice. Every alcoholic says, well, I want to be both. Well, it doesn't work that way. I mean, you can't be both, you can't, wouldn't it be nice? It'd be great if I could be free and right but I got a choice here, what do I want to be? Do I value my peace of mind and my freedom more than I value this case I've built against these people? Am I willing to entertain a possibility? that my perception might not have been right? Is it possible? Is it impossible that my memory of what happened between me and them might be tainted a little bit by years of tweaking and replaying? You ever sat down with a sibling, someone raised in the same house you were in, and talk about your childhood? I did that with my sister. It drove me crazy. She kept saying things. I kept thinking, oh, it didn't happen like that. No. I almost said something to her. I was sober several years, and she's telling stories about stuff in our child. And I remember completely, and I almost did that. I almost read something, and I thought, I think this was God. The idea came to my mind, well, Bob, if one of the two perceptions here is wrong, what are the, with your track record, Bob? What are the chances of it being her? And I tell you, to this day, there's some things she thinks happen. When we were kids, I remember it completely different. But I'm willing to consider that maybe she was right. I just had a thing happen to me not too long ago. I was in the middle of talking about a story of something that happened to me 35 years ago, over 35 years old. And in the midst of the story, it was like this veil lifted and I stopped and I thought, oh that didn't even happen. Oh my God, it didn't even, I'd been telling that story to make myself look good for over 35, it was like that didn'T even happen I created that lie, that story there's like a little tiny element of truth and then I build it up into this thing that made me look very tough and very cool and everything, it DIDN'T even happen. It's amazing, isn't it? And I told it so many times to you and told it to myself that I believed it. I believed it. So we're prepared to look at these from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominate us. In that state, the wrongdoings of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill. Some alcoholics die over imagined wrongs. I could take you to prisons in the United States where I've taken meetings and introduce you to people who are going to be there for the rest of their life because they killed someone based on something they thought the person did and found out later it was the wrong person that that person didn't even do that and they played the game of let's bet your life the ego wants to be right so much it doesn't care if it ruins you it wants to me right this idea that my perception could be fancy that my resentments in these cases I build against people could be partially fantasy is a hard thing to swallow if you've been entrenched in being right all your life. I had something happen to me in my first couple years that really affected me and I'll tell you this story and maybe you've had something happened to you like this. There was a guy named Billy Taylor. Billy was one of the old timers in AA and he's a good guy. He used to like to go out to coffee with newer people and talk about AA and coffee shops. I got a lot of my early AA in coffee shops, and one night after a late-night meeting, I was in this coffee shop with Billy. It was just him and I in this booth. A couple other guys had left, and he's an easy guy to talk to, and because he was an easy guys to talk too, I found myself sharing a couple deep, dark secrets with him. You know those things that you come in that you're really, really ashamed of? You don't want anybody to know the things you want to take to the grave kind of things and I shared those things with Billy because he's easy to talk to and he seemed to take it pretty well I got to tell you though he never said yeah me too that would have helped he never had said that instead he gave me something I remember in the back of my mind felt a little bit like the AA party line like he said well I'm sure you're not the only one that's ever done that and someday that might help somebody you know, that kind of thing. But he didn't reject me. He took it well. He didn't seem to have any disdain or and I went home that night and I got my shift changed at work. Well all of a sudden my whole meeting schedule is upside down and now I'm not going to late night meetings anymore. I'm going to noon meetings and I'm going to midnight meetings because I don't, I work, I'm working until midnight every night. So we had these new 12-15 meetings at night I went to. So a good part of a year went by, and I didn't see this guy, Billy, for anywhere because I don't go where he goes anymore. And then I was working six days a week. I only had one night off, and on my one night off, I went to a meeting I normally wouldn't go to. And the meeting's getting ready to start, and I look across the room, and Billy's there. And I was very delighted to see him, as we all are with people in our early sobriety that it affected us. He was one of the guys, he was one of my go-to guys, and I said, hey, Billy, Billy. Hey, how you doing? And he looked at me with this pained look on his face and he doesn't even say hi to me. He just turns away as if as if his whole demeanor and body language was saying, oh, you just turned away. And he sat down and the meeting starts and I'm sitting there and I can't hear what's going on in the meeting because I'm having a conversation with him in my head. And I know what's going on. I know this guy's judging me for that crap. And there's a part of me that doesn't blame him, really. You know, God knows I've surely judged myself harshly for that stuff all my life. And I guess I always secretly believed that if you knew those things about me that I know about me, you'd feel about me the way I feel about you. And that's not good. And I thought that he was condemning me and judging me für that stuff. And I sat there and I was very hurt by it But I don't stay hurt. I get these hardwired defects or defense mechanisms like anger. You hurt me, I just snap into anger and I start getting pissed. I'm sitting there building my case. I'm thinking that hypocritical, phony son of a, you know, saying it was all right. Crap. And then I had this epiphany. It was like, wait a minute. the reason he can't even look me in the eye and say oh my god he's been telling people that crap and it became so clear to me I had just asked a girl out to coffee and she would not go out to coffee with me and he's friends with her I knew he told her that disgusting stuff I told him oh my God and then now I think about it his buddy who he runs around with has been very distant to me oh my god he's taught he's been telling it and now i am so angst up by the end of the meeting i'm gonna go over and i'm going to beat the crap out of him and he's going to deserve every single bit of it because if he's doing that to me he's probably doing it to other new people he's ruining Alcoholics Anonymous somebody ought to beat the crap out of him so I'm angst up and I'm ready to go and they're getting to the end of the meeting and the chairman says before we close does anybody have a burning desire and Billy raises his hand and he tells everybody in the room that the biopsy came back and the tumor is stage 4 and malignant and he has no, very little time to live. And I remember sitting there hearing that and it was like I came out of a daydream. It was like somebody poured a bucket of water on me. I remember sinking down into my chair and just going, oh my God. What I saw in him that I thought was about me wasn't about me. On the day he found out he was terminally ill he was so afraid I'm sure as I would be he didn't even see me the pain in his face was the fear he was feeling it had nothing to do with me I mean oh my god I remember sitting there just feeling like so horrible it was like a postcard from God dear Bob you don't know crap love God right when it says in here that the wrongdoings of others fancy to real had the power to actually kill oh my god what would have become of me if i would have attacked a man who did nothing but love me and try to help me on the lowest day of his life and then found out later that i just what I did how could I have ever come back to Alcoholics Anonymous in rooms where he was so loved I would have been condemned it would have been a mortal blow to my soul I would've gone and drank myself to death I couldn't have faced it and I would have died a horrible horrible alcoholic death over nothing over something that was imagined and if that was true for billy taylor when i time i got to my resentment list is it possible that this kind of situation could be true to some degree for some of these other people is it impossible and the towards the bottom of the page it says what do we do it says how can we escape we saw that these resentments must be mastered but how we could not wish them away any more than alcohol before I ever did the fourth step, I'm helping a guy do the fourth step and we're going through every line of the book and this guy has got a lot of resentments and they're killing him and we get to this line, they have to be mastered but how you can't wish them way any more then alcohol and this guys looks at me And he goes, my God, what do I do? And Joe and Charlie never covered this. They never talked about it. They went right from the third column into the fourth column. They never talking about it again. They never talk about the stuff in between. And I didn't know what to tell him. I didn' t know. I have nothing here. I don' t now. How do you get free of this? I don't know. Just look for your part. I mean that doesn' t seem hardly enough. How do You get free Of this stuff that' s killing You? this cancer inside you that's eating your heart out how do you get free of it and I don't know what to tell him and I'm just looking down at the page and I swear to God that seemed like the next four words were in neon and it says I said to him this was our course as if I knew I don' t know I'm ad-libbing here reading This was our course. And I started to read the next two lines, and we started to talk about them. And the book's asking me innermost self stuff. It's asking мне to make a realization that encompasses a tremendous shift in perception and consciousness. It's asked me to realize that the people on my resentment list that I have the cases built against, that these people who wronged me were perhaps spiritually sick. well that's easy enough they're sick they're assholes I get it somebody should punish them I understand but it it's the next line that that changed my world and the next line says though we do not like their symptoms what symptoms column number two if they weren't spiritually sick if they were right with themselves and right with God would they have done what they did in column number two? They couldn't have. Oh my God, look at all the stuff I did that hurt people as a result of how sick I was. So even though I did not like their symptoms, column number three, and the way these disturbed me, what's that about? Column number three. The pride, the self-esteem, the pocketbook, the ambitions. That even though I didn't like their symptoms and the ways their symptoms disturbed me. And here's the kicker. I must realize that they, these people on my list, like myself, were sick too. Well, what does that mean? That means that I've got to get off my high horse. I've Got to get Off the Throne of Judgment and come down until I'm looking right across the table at these people eyeball to eyeball and understand the truth. the truth is that if i was afraid like they were afraid if i'd been raised like they were raised if i've been hurt and abused and scared like they were hurt and accused and scared if i was drunk and frustrated and resentful the way they were if i had everything going on within me that was going on within them can i get it that i could have easily been driven by the sickness inside me to do to someone else what they did to me? Can I get that? Can I see that if I had the same stuff driving me insane that I could have done to someone else what they did to me? Or do I need to remain smugly superior? And I started to see something that was remarkable to me. I started to see myself in the people that I built these cases against. And it was a remarkable thing. There was a movie years ago that when I saw it, I thought, oh my God, that's exactly what's going on in the big book when it talks about this was our course. And the movie was The Bucket List. And if you saw The Buckets List, it was an incredible movie. There was beautiful scene in there where Now, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson have been both diagnosed as terminally ill with cancer. And they're both being given this last-ditch effort of extreme chemotherapy. Just a shot in the dark trying to fix them. And they are not given the chemo on the same day. So what happens is the one guy is sick, sick awful from the chemо. and the other guy's not doing so bad because it's been a couple days since he's had it and then as the one guy gets over it they give it to the other guys and there's this one scene where the one guy's kind of recovered and bounced back a little bit and he's not as sick from the chemo but his roommate is in the grip of it and he'S throwing up and heS cursing and he' s just irritable he'S like awful he'S really sick and driven by and his roommate IS not looking at him like he'S out of line he'S not looking at him like he's, he's like an idiot. He's looking at him with love and compassion because he gets it. He sees past the symptoms of the chemo to what's really going on and how that guy feels because it was him three days before. And so what the book's asking me to do here is to see past the facades. It's asking me to get people in a way I've never got them before. The Buddhists bow to each other and they say something, they say nom niste, which one translation of that is, is that the God in me sees and recognizes the God and you. I think it's even more than that. I think it's that I see you. I get you because you're me. Some of you are me on a very bad day, but you're mean. You're me when I'm afraid. The guy that's giving you a hard time in traffic or in the grocery store, that's me when i'm scared. That's me one i've been hurt earlier in the day and I'm thrashing out at people. That's me when I'm too angry, hungry, lonely, tired. Isn't it odd? When I'm having a bad day, I want the whole world to just line up with compassion and understanding. But yet I won't give it. And this is the part of this process where you get forgiveness. Tolerance, acceptance, love, and understanding are for the giving, forgiving. Resentment and judgment are for the takers. And this is where I get to forgive. This is where I gets to understand. And forgiveness always seems to come through understanding. This is where I started to develop something that a self-centered guy like me doesn't have at all. And that's compassion. it comes from two latin words come meaning with and passio pain in other words i'm starting to be able to sit with your pain i get you i see you later this would make me so effective with people i would sponsor because now i understand them at a level that nobody's ever understood them before i understand what happened to you when you beat your kids your dad beat you didn't I know, I know. I know how you feel about yourself from doing that. It's the same way that your dad felt about himself, isn't it? He covered it up with a facade of bravado because he didn't know how to handle it. We start to understand people at a level we'd never imagined before. We never imagined because we're starting to understand ourselves. it's remarkable to me that I grow closer to God and closer to myself by growing closer to you there was a poem in the grapevine years ago and it said I sought myself and could not see I sought my God he eluded me so I sought my brother and I found all three It is in this part of this process that some of us start to realize that we could be forgiven by God because we're starting to forgive and understand others. I'm starting to see these people I've hated the way God has seen them with the compassion and the tolerance and the love. I'm started to wake up. The veils of self are starting to come and fall away and I'm starting to see what other people, and when I started to look at a lot of things in my life from other people's point of view, oh my God. You know, all of a sudden I understood why my parents would have, just how I burnt them out, they would have nothing to do with me. I resented them for cutting me off. I started seeing it through their eyes. I remember thinking, oh my god, how did they love me? Oh, they did all that for me for so many years. How did they last as long as they did? I started understanding why the bosses fired me. Because I'm looking at it through their eyes. I'd have fired me too. I'd Have Fired Me Quicker Than They Did. One of the things that was kind of pathetic, I realized is that people have had a lot more tolerance with me than I would have had with them if the tables were turned. The truth, that truth. I understood why there were people I was in relationships would eventually leave me and dump me. My God, you look at it through their eyes. Oh my God. I think this is the beginning of a real awakening here. I think real awakenings is you just pull your head out of your butt and you see what everybody else has seen all along. It's just like, I get it, I got it. There's now I'm not a victim anymore. I see it. Now I know. and i tell the guys i sponsor and they all say you come back to me a year or two later how true this is if you really process this stuff in the book like this you'll be able to go to meetings of alcoholics anonymous anywhere in the world and talk to people or listen to them share and in a very short time you'll know whether they've ever done this or not because it changes you one of the things that will happen is you'll never ever ever ever be able to sell yourself the crap that you're a victim again, you'll start to see the truth. You'll start to see how, what's the book say earlier? We made decisions based on self which later placed us in that position to be hurt. We'll start seeing how selfishly we signed up for this stuff. And then there's the fifth thing we do is a prayer. after the fourth thing is the realization the fifth thing is the prayer and it's a call for action it's a beautiful prayer it's i am asking god to help me to show them well show them implies action that i'm going to demonstrate i'm going to show them i'm going to act towards them with the same tolerance the same pity and the same patience i would cheerfully grant a sick friend wouldn't it be true that if they hadn't done what they did in column number too that they possibly could have been my friend. A lot of people on my resentment list, at one time I had loved them until they cheated on me or until they did this or they did that or they did... Is it true that I if I really understood that they were sick and I could see myself in them and see what drove them can I understand that they could no more help being as bad as they were when they were as bad as they where as I could help being as bad as I was when I was as bad as I was I had a long eight step list of people I'd hurt honest to God there was not one person on that list that I set out intentionally to hurt but I hurt them just the same if that's true for me couldn't that be true for them were they as asleep in their own life driven by self and fear as I was when I stepped on the toes of my fellows in the Lord's prayer which we say in the US at the end of meetings it was the only prayer that Bill Wilson really thought lined up with principles of the 12 steps unlike the serenity prayer the serenity prayer doesn't line up too much with step 11 because it's not only for knowledge of his will for us serenely prayer you're giving god direction you're telling him what to do but in the lord's prayer not only does it say thy will be done but it says forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us you want to be free depression i want to free a beat of self-loathing self-pity take them off the hook an amazing thing will happen you'll end up off the book forgive us our trespasses as if you want forgiveness for others you have if you for yourself you have to forgive others and i don't want to see the ego hates that here's what i want i'd like to be able to forgive myself and feel really good about myself and still think you're all a bunch of jerks but you can't do that it doesn't work like that because we are connected and so i'm asking god to help me to act towards these people to show them the same tolerance the same pity and patience that i would cheerfully grant a person who had a brain tumor and it made him act bad and he couldn't help it because i'm starting to see that they the emotional the deformities and the defects and the sickness within them, they could no more help me in the way they were than I could help be in theway I was. I'm starting to wake up. And then the last thing, the sixth thing, is where this is really where I claim myself. I take the responsibility. And it's odd. In the middle paragraph on 67, this is often referred to as the place where we look for our part it doesn't say that here's what it says referring to our list the first thing it says is putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done wow a couple lines down it says the same thing again but bill wilson says the same thing twice in one paragraph you know he's serious and he always uses different words to say it because he wants to make sure you get it so he comes at it from a couple different angles he says it again he says though a situation had not been entirely our fault we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely entirely is like more than half i mean entirely so we're putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done and we're disregarding what they did entirely so this is not parts because if you look for your part there's an implication unconscious implication okay here's my part what's the implication there's another part right there's parts as parts which means I'm reserving the right to think that they're wrong I'm not really taking them off the hook I'm nicht disregarding and the ego hates this you know why Because when you can't hide your own selfish, squirmy, self-serving, vengeful, vindictive behavior in the shadow of what they did wrong, and you've got to look at it square on. It's like now what kind of, well, now Bob can't look at what your parents did wrong. What kind of a son were you? Oh God, I was horrid. I was a self-centered selfish oh inconsiderate me me me lying cheating little oh little crap I had to look at it I couldn't you and I hid it I used to look I used to glare at the things that my I found imperfect in my parents to hide my stuff Now, if I have to look at what kind of a boyfriend I was or what kind of a husband I was, look dead on. I can't look at the imperfections of the other person. It's not too pretty. They say the truth will set you free, but I'll tell you, I think it ruins your day first. I can't really I can let God take me to becoming something different in God's idea of Bob until I squarely look at Bob's idea of Bob you can't change a problem that you don't know you have There's nothing you can do with it. That's like so many of us, we couldn't get sober as long as we denied our alcoholism and I can't change this stuff until I look square at it. And I can change it anyway, it's going to have to be God. But I bring it out into the light of day. I bring in the light. I bring an out out of the darkness. I bring out when even I can see it. And things look different now. Now when I ask myself the questions where had I been selfish? wow where had i been dishonest i was so i lived a whole lifestyle of dishonesty nobody ever even met me they met the facade of bob and why would i be that dishonest because i'm a liar it looks like it doesn't it no i'm just afraid i'm so afraid that you're not going to like me or you're not going to love me or you're not going to accept me that I misrepresent I create a facade of me and I put it out there in the world and you hide behind that facade long enough you don't even know who you are we try to be so many things to so many people that we don't even know who we are anymore I remember when I first got sober people would ask me what kind of music do you like what kind do you like I mean I don't know. I mean, the first time you ever gotten a date with someone and sober, try to pick a restaurant. You have two people that don't know who they are. What kind of food do you like? Oh, I don't Know. What Kind of Food Do You Like? Well, I Don't Know What Kind Of Food. Where Do Where do you want to go? I don't know. Where do you want