The Spiritual Law of Order – Emotional Sobriety – the Next Step – Part 3 of 4 – Bob D.

Thank you very much. talking about the precise, specific, clear-cut instructions in the big book that is designed to do one thing, bring power into our lives so we can do the kind of things that he just spent talking about. I mean, I was sitting here thinking to myself, as usual, we get the cart in front of the horse. We spend the whole weekend talking about methodology when, in fact, we're supposed to be living our life. Yet at the same time, if we don't talk about the precise specific clear course of action, you don't have any power to live the life anyhow. Now, I think what would be fabulous would be a whole weekend on, all right, we have power. Now, how do we live that? And workshops on money, workshops on relationships. You know, it's a lot of the stuff Dave talked about, sanity, the 10-step, soundness of mind. See, I'm a single man, but I have a will. I left enough debris around when I was alive. I live in Texas. is there's no immediate family anywhere without a will if i died the first cry i've got i've created harm immediately like what do we do with this stiffs body there's there's nobody around there's not all the states involved in the end you know it's just um that's it's just soundness of mind uh all the stuff he talked about i was laughing to myself see some of you're probably serious saying well geez how i mean how does he do on his power he just gets drunk and is an idiot see he what he is sharing with you is is he took this course of action and was given power and now he comes back and he's reporting on on how god demonstrates through him in his life his relationship with his children his job is his is all of that so you know that when you move to the 10 steps soundness sanity see everything he just described if you're going to be married is about sanity, you know, life insurance and medical insurance. And, you Know, does the car run? Is it tuned up? And what we do is we take the power that has been given to us into our dull, mundane lives and we're able to live lives based on spiritual principles within the workplace, within our relationships, you Now, in all those areas. So, but that's why I was laughing about how God does this because He takes off and he's talking about all this and what he's talking about is the life he's been given but you see on his own power again so he can't do any of that I was talking to a lady earlier on the break and one of the first exercises I like to give people is there's what's called the spiritual law of order if you walked into my home my closets everything is very well organized in my house about every three to six months I go through everything including books and if not using I give them away I didn't have the power to be able to do that. Just the simplest things, but you get given great gifts in here, but most of all, power to do those things, to beable to use the spiritual law of order in your home. See, the ego always operates on the premise that mother's going to come along and clean up afterwards. So there is a spiritual law or order. There is just so much work to do in your own home, let alone going out into the world, right? I mean, start with that which you can impact immediately. When you leave here this weekend, I'll throw out a challenge. Look at your home. Is it cluttered? Is it messy? Emmett Fox says that my whole life, everything in my home, my car, is an outward manifestation of my inward life. Don't worry about getting enlightened when you go home today. Worry about is your bathroom straight? You know, is your living room clean? Is there clutter everywhere? Are you doing what I did for 15 years, which is I move, take these same boxes that I've never opened and put them in storage again? It's like I have to have power to let that go. You know, last time I went through, I realized I gave away about 10, 12 pairs of shoes. Ten of them I haven't worn in 10 years. Every move I make, you know, go to the container store and get a shoe rack for a pair of shoes you haven't wore. It's like, I don't even have the power to give away shoes I don'T need anymore. So when you leave here, begin to work with this in the place in which you need to work with it, which is within your own home, within your own sanctuary. Start with simple things, you know, use the spiritual law of order, organize your house. For some of you, I'm talking here probably about a three to six month project. And you're sitting here about, see, you will transmit what you have if you have a lot of clutter in your life that's probably what you're going to transmit so go back to to again uh becoming a beacon with within your own begin to look at your home and and and literally go into every room and ask yourself is it is the spiritual law of order going on i can walk into a person's home and really get a feel for their spiritual life if you will you see because everything gets connected in that sense but everything dave was talking about is has been a manifestation in his life of what happened as a result of taking the action of the steps that he and I are here talking with you about this weekend. So, I mean, that's what this whole thing is about, is there's only one reason why I'm going to do the work in 1 through 9, work with 10 and 11, to be able to live the kind of life that I live today, from the time I get up in my dull, mundane life. My home is in spiritual order, and you go work out, and I get involved with this company that I work with and these people that are there. And then I go back home at night, and then I have some people I work with in AA, and that's what this has been designed to do, getting this power, this process of the steps. So I thought it was great how we kind of took off there, but this would be, I think, a fascinating whole weekend devoted to now that we've done the steps and have some power, now let's talk about, well, how do we make that work? Simple things like, what does your house look like? Financial workshops, you know? the stuff that he talked about uh when we begin steel and steel it's the same when was the last time you had a physical a what yeah a physical you know you you know your physical you're you know you we're amazing we we sit here and we get all caught up in in all this enlightenment in in the most stuff right in front of our face just trots on by us and we don't pay any any attention to it but uh having said that let's let's talk i want to talk a little bit at the fifth step by virtue of time what i'm just going to share with you is experiences uh here would be a great consideration if if the power evaporated all big books today could you transmit this message uh great question right what i do in a fifth step whether i'm reading it or or otherwise I like to read from the bottom of page 70 to 75, and I read it in first person because that's preparation, and I get very clear on why I'm doing a fifth step. As Dave and I found out who you do a fifth step with, I don't know if it's critical necessarily in your first one, but you get a little time in this program, who you do a sixth step with is very, very, very, very important. I look for people who understand and improve what I'm driving at. I look for people that have experience. I've worked for several years with multiple fifth steps. I take a piece of inventory, I read it to two, three, four different people. I've done two fifth steps with men of religion. That's a whole different experience. My experience is the big book is absolutely right. It says the fifth step is about life and death. It's about the death of my selfishness. It's a life of my spirit. And so I read and review all that stuff. and then it gets down to we pocket our pride and go to it, eliminating every twist of character every dark cranny. I close the book and then I begin to read the inventory. Now whether I'm reading or listening, let's say that I'm listening to a fifth step I am very actively involved in that fifth step. I ask God to guide me I ask a lot of questions I am Very Actively Involved I'm not a passive listener I've also learned when Dave and I did that when I was asleep, I had no idea of this concept of energy and what happened. And people, I'd do a fifth step, and for about a week, I felt like I had ick stuck to me. And so what I do now is I always burn sage, and I purify the house and purify myself. And then once that individual leaves, I turn around and I do that again. There's a ceremony. Some of that I learned from Native American. For me, there's a testimony in all this stuff when i do it and i always follow the ceremony i like to begin with seven to ten minutes of meditation i burn sage to purify myself in the individual they read pages 70 to 75 and then they start talking a couple other things that that i do in fifth steps when i'm listening let's say you got 100 resentments if you believe that i'm going to sit there and listen to four columns of resentment inventory about you you are wrong uh what i am going to do is listen to about 10 or 15 of them, and we're going to go at it every way in the world so that I can pull you away from ego, wake you up so you can see yourself, your false sense of self. Thereafter, I'm going to have you read a few names, read the second column, and I'll say to you, tell me the why in that. You'll tell me we're gonna move to fear inventory. I'm not about to give your ego more entertainment value. I had my years in which I would spend 12 to 90 hours listening to fifth steps, and And I realized how insane that was. I have a selfish, self-centered human being and I'm going to give them 24 hours to talk about themselves again. No, no, I don't think so. I missed something. The intent of inventory in the fifth step is to examine the exact nature of your defects. I don' t need to listen to 100 resentments to identify that. I mean, if you just work with the seven deadly sins which are a part of all humans that I know of, that's probably good enough. Some people use the term pattern All it is, is the manifestation of the defect. And you'll begin to see it in a repetitive fashion over and over again. All that's changed is some name in the first column. But it remains the same. And so we go into those three inventories. You know, I read those. Excuse me. At the end of that, I like to ask the question, if you omitted something, it's always sexual, every time. Or if I observe that the man is real jittery on the front end, I say to them, why don't we talk about what it is that you're nervous about and weren't going to probably tell me about now so that we can get it out of the way. And again, it's normally sexual nature. I asked a priest one time, do you ever hear anything new? And I said, well, I don't either. There's only so many ways, you know, you can chase chickens and do all the other stuff you do. I guess the point I want to make is any one of us sitting in this room, get over yourself in terms of no one else has ever done that. That's probably not true. And here's what's funny about that is I'm afraid to tell you about something I did when I was asleep dreaming I was awake and couldn't have done any different. You see what I'm saying? So that's what I do on Fifth steps it is important to me who i read to uh and the longer i'm sober the more important it is because my ego just has new faces you know you you like dave and i and uh it was critical that he and i uh swapped fifth steps with each other based on our experience and in so far what had happened to us because he and I both needed someone with a lot of experience to wade through this this stuff and say wait a minute look at this look atthislookatthis So that's how I handle that. When I get done with that process, the sixth step, which is about taking a look at your defects, the tool that I work with is called the Sacraments of Penance. I can't believe I didn't bring any with me. I have a book in my car that I got it from. And all the Sacriments of penance are, they're an Episcopalian Catholic tool. They take the seven deadly sins and they embellish them in a way I'd never seen before. In other words, it's a tool to look at you character defects, if you will. So once I get done doing my fifth step, I take a timer and the book says I'm going to sit for an hour and I'm going to answer some questions. There's a series of questions in the bottom of page 75. And I like to sit with each one of those questions. It starts out and saying that I'm gonna carefully review what I've just done. So I like to close my eyes and I like the review this inventory that I've just read. And i do that for about five to seven minutes. Then the next question is I'm going to thank God from the bottom of my heart that I know God better. Now, that's an interesting statement that the book is making. That led me to a logical question. How am I supposed to know God better after reading this pitiful inventory? Well, what I came to discover is as I read the inventory and it is in the fifth step you begin to get disconnected from ego. So then I begin to know more of God because really I'm discovering who I'm not. My inventory is a reflection of who I'm not. And that's how come I thank God from the bottom of my heart that I know him better after reading the fifth step. And I haven't even talked about the fifth-step promises, they're some of the most incredible ones in the whole book. There's nine or ten of them when you get done with that fifth step and then it talks about again turning to page 58, you're going to review these first five steps proposals and ask yourself have I left anything out and I like to sit with each of the five and go through them in my mind then it begins to ask you some very very interesting questions that unless you're a construction worker make no sense unless someone's taking you through the book that has experience it says crazy stuff like this are your stones properly in place i can't tell you how many people i've worked with long time sober and i'll ask them about their stones and they just give you that flat line look and because the second step is my cornerstone and the third step is my keystone. And if you've gone through the work and someone hasn't pointed that out, that sentence makes absolutely no sense. They ask you another construction question. Is your foundation in place? Have you tried to make mortar without sand? I mean, you're sitting here trying to have a spiritual experience and they're asking you building questions, right? But of course, that's what we're doing, aren't we? And when I get done answering those questions, you turn the page and then I like to pull out the sacraments of penance. Once my hour is done, this is pretty much what I do. If I'm not really exhausted, I will immediately pick up the sacraments of penance and they will start with, say, pride. And they give the definition of pride, putting self in the place of God, etc. And all I do is based on the inventory, for example, that I'd read to Dave, I just go through and I say guilty or not guilty. I pronounce myself. Based on that inventory, am I guilty of placing myself ahead of God? Guilty. And I go through that whole process. because it is such an incredible tool to help me identify the exact nature of my defects. For any of you that have any semblance of spiritual pride, it's a great tool because it'll pull it from you. It'll strip it from You. And I'll tell you what the Sacraments of Penance did for me in the sixth step that no other tool ever used. I somehow would do a sixth step and leave away from there beating up on myself, that I'd fallen short or somehow that was the feeling or the experience I would get behind it. And from the very first time I used the sacraments of penance to this moment, what happened for me in the sixth step is I saw that here's a man who loves God with all of his heart with great intentions and I saw how much I fall short and he loves me and you. And if that happens for me, that happens forever. That happens for every human being on the planet Earth. And I'm sitting here walking around being angry at people who are just like me, who fall just as much short in thought, word and deed every single day. Just like me. And how there's this merciful God that loves us all in spite of ourselves. And what would I be if I did not have God in the face of what I'm seeing? You know, I want to go to God, as I said, in a halo and white robes. I mean, you know, and Dave and I do this thing, and I'm sure he had the same experience I did. You know, I go to God with tears in my eyes and say, you know what, where is this coming from? You know? Forgive me. Help me. You know. Giving this thing my very, very best shot. And that was a tool in which I stopped beating myself up and saw my nature and saw why I need God so much. And I begin to develop so much compassion for myself and for you. I mean, the arrogance of me getting upset with another human being who's just like me with these basic things that are inherent in them running loose. It seems like the longer that I embrace spiritual living, the less... See, the firing mechanism for your character defect is what? What's the firing mechanisim for our character defects? Ego, self-will, selfishness. The more that the firing mechanism gets removed, the less the defect manifests. This is what came to me about two years ago. I don't know if a single defect that lies within me has ever been removed. I'm beginning to believe that the hiring mechanism for the defect is no longer there so you don't see it and I don' t experience it. Because everything that I've ever read tells me that every human being, the nature of who we are is going, we're bound up in these seven deadly sins. That's the nature of being a human being. You know, the ones the book talks about. By the way, sin just means miss the mark for any of you who get uncomfortable hearing that word. Just means miss the Mark. That is inherent. Those seven pride, greed, sloth, lust, and you know, that's in every human being that I've ever met. That lies within me. and I'm beginning to see that what the steps have done and meditation and getting out of myself have done is the firing mechanism has been removed. But yet they're there. The reason I say they're still there, if I fall asleep and you put me in a certain situation, you're going to see a defect. You follow? So that's what I do with the sixth step. Seventh step for me, I like to get down on my knees. And I like to say that seventh step prayer. By the way, I do not play with six or seven or analyze. God either is or he isn't. If it's to be removed or if the firing mechanism is diminished, that has either happened or it has not happened. I have ceased fighting anybody or anything, including what gets removed and what does not get removed. That is not within my jurisdiction. I offer that to God. I'm firmly convinced sometimes your self-will run riot is God's will for me. you understand what i just said sometimes another human being self will run riot is god's will for you so i don't play games with what gets removed and what doesn't get removed i'm absolutely convinced my defects have probably brought more people to god than my virtues well here's what i mean a lot of times the reason i write inventory is because i got to live with another person's defects and boy it got me to god because i Got So Damn Mad I Picked Up A Pin in paper and wrote some inventory did step five six seven eight and if i had to went made amends you follow me so i don't know i guess we need to be as thankful for the defects as we are for the virtues you know which is probably in the seventh step why it says i offer all of myself to god i think there was another great thing that happened for me in the sixth step and this has to do with um the realization that every human being that i that i know is giving me their best shot based on how spiritually awake they are. And when you begin to understand that, you get free of judgment. You totally get free of judgment and my experience is you get taken to a place where you begin to love people exactly as they are needing nothing in them to change. Who they are is just fine. See, if I can't love you in the way in which God loves you then all that's involved again is my selfishness. I must love you as God loves me loves you and in my experience with with God who is nothing but love and power the great I am is that he loves me exactly as I am and absolutely nothing to me needs to change so that better be the way I love you if I'm not loving you that way it's not love it is absolutely not love it is more along the lines of what I call emotionalism or even more importantly if you'll only change on one of the breaks I couldn't help over here someone was talking about how they wanted to do all this and do all this and the relationship, and the other person didn't. So if they didn't, that's who they are. God bless you. Go in peace. Hit the door. Move on to the next one, right? You understand the point that I'm making? If I cannot love you as exactly as you are, if I'm not in condition to do that, then I just need to move on down the road because that person is doing just fine. That's the peace I've come to understand. See, that's how God loves. Nobody in this room has to change anything. God loves us exactly as we are. So I need to love you that way, free of judgment, understanding you like me, you're giving it the best shot you got with your sense of spiritual understanding and wisdom and those types of things. See, the other thing that can happen is when you reach the place where you don't need anything from anybody, then you can love them. You see? See, Dave and I don't need anything form anybody. We're here to give to you. And then here's the paradox. When you no longer need anything and all you're willing to do is give, you get back more than you can handle. See, I'm like Dave. I've experienced so much love from you all this weekend. Just so much. So much love. I mean, one of the reasons he and I have been moved to tears so much is in you. I don't know if you're conscious of this, but he andI have been experiencing incredible love fromyou guys. Incredible love. And that happens because we didn't need anything fromyou. We're just here to give, give, give, give, you know, everywhere you go. And then see, that's the paradox of this whole deal. When I show up with, with no motive, but, but to give and to love you and to try and understand you, I get back more than I ever bargained for. But if I show, if I don't show up expecting or wanting to get something there in lies, the paradox, then it, then it's not going to happen. So that's what I do with steps five, six, seven. okay here we go um wow i what i was trying to do here just a second ago the the place there's only one place that i know of that still prints the uh episcopalian prayer book that mark's talking about it's a place called holy cross monastery up in new york and uh i was told that the area code changed and i couldn't find the area codes so i'll try to get the number for you so You guys have a way to get a hold of the, it's called St. Augustine's Prayer Book. And the Catholic version is the Augustinian Prayer Book, and that was printed in Villanova. And it was limited printing only for priests. So, I mean, I've tried the bibliophile, and I've read all over the place. And I ended up having to go to my wife's uncle who's a Catholic priest, and he got ahold of one for me. Tough to find. That 17-area inventory, the descriptions in the top of the top block comes from the Sacrament of Penance. for each of those i'm currently in the process of writing it's a you know mike always laughs at me because uh he says aa for me stands for anal alcoholic when i was writing this inventory this 17 area inventory that because mark had given me the idea for it and to try something new and uh i was actually in the act of writing that inventory taking it for myself and i was sitting over in a hotel room in london and for three days in a row I could not stop obsessing about this inventory and, and I'm going, God, I don't leave me alone. I'm trying to do my inventory and it's driving me nuts. And I kept getting this vision of taking the sacraments of penance and turning an inventory. So it's there's 70 principles in the sacrament of penants. So It's, it's a 70 area inventory and It's on 30 pages and It'S going to end up being hardcore. And so I don'T know if I'M ever going to take it. I DON'T know if I have that much guts, but you'll be hearing more about that somewhere down the road. Mark talked about the principles that I've been talking about this weekend. I think early next year, you're going to see a workshop happen up at the Wilson House on exactly that. It is not going to be a workshop though. It's going to be a spiritual retreat and it's not going be anything like I've ever done before. It will be we get together, we pray and meditate. You're not going to hear me talk a whole bunch. I'm going to talk a little bit, give a little bit of background and give you a homework assignment. So you got 30 minutes, be back in 30 minutes with the work done. Boom, up to your room, you do your deal. We come back, we pray and meditate, give you another assignment, go do it. Boom. And we're going to work through the steps that way. Um, so there'll be more out on that if it, when God's time, I don't know that it's going to come to pass, but it would, if it were going to happen in the past, my calendar looks like it's gonna be early next year if it happens up at the Wilson house. Um. Second thing, I can't emphasize what Mark was talking about enough. I moved from one house to another. I had been in my new house for seven years and at seven years, I rented a dumpster, went down, took anything that was in a box that I haven't used in seven years. I took whatever was of value and gave it to the church next door or took it down to the Salvation Army and everything else went in the trash. I moved, packed up and moved garbage. Stuff that I know is broken that someday I might ever attempt to fix this and repair it in the garbage. Boom, done. Cleaning up your life is a good deal. And you can take it down to the nth degree. I mean, there's people here that were talking about on the break about finances because I mentioned finances. How is the money in your wallet? Is it all crumpled and stuffed into your pocket? That shows you the value of it. You know, I got to the point where my sponsor said he saw me taking crumple money out when I was new in recovery. You know what I was all wadded up and he's like, you probably lose more money than you've got. So he had me start, and it sounds very anal, but it's really got me into getting order in my life. All the money is in ranking order, right? I used to be one of those guys where the biggest bill was always on the outside of my money clip. No, the biggest deal goes on the inside of the money clip, so nobody knows how much money you've got. All the heads go in the same direction, right. So when you're flipping through, you'll pick up on the fact. Because if you're used to seeing the backs and the fronts all mixed together, you can't tell. You may grab two bills and send it out at the same time. It's just good financial principles. So you don't make a mistake, give away too much money, you know, when you are paying for something. Just simple things like that. Yeah, is it anal? A little bit? But let me tell you, you get your life into order, and then, you now, what's that pony that Mark is riding? You got to get into that order. There's got to be some order. And if we don't start with practice, what you practice, you become. That's the deal. As far as fifth step, the construction references that Mark was talking about that you're going to need in a quiet hour, they're on page two of the guide. The fifth step stuff is on page 17 of the Guide, and there's a lot of instructions in the big book, and I'm not going to waste a whole bunch of time. I start out with the five � with the fifth step warnings. Bill Wilson gives us seven warnings for if you don't do a fifth step. You're not going to overcome drinking. You may not learn enough humility. You're going to be plagued with egoism and fear. You cannot expect to live long, and you're not gonna be happy. Is that important? Kind of got my attention, you know? You break that nice little paragraph that everybody just kind of skips through into sentences and take a look at the meaning of what he's saying in each sentence, and it changes your life. You know? On the break, I was given a tremendous gift. A guy came up to me, And I get one of these every time I do a workshop. What do I start the workshop off with? Listen to the message and not the messenger. And without fail, God gives me this gift. And it was wonderful. He comes up to me and he says, you know, when you first started here on the first night, you were a pompous a-hole. You know? And he says and then I started to hear what you were saying and not listening to your presentation of how you were seeing it. And I started getting touched and my mind started to open up. And now I can hear what I need to hear. God came into his life. Mark's talking about the tremendous love we get back. A lot of people had questions, and I could see it in your faces when I started talking about the mirror. Hopefully you now know what the mirror is because you've experienced it. We throw our love this way, and you throw it right back, even if you don't see that you're doing it. Have you noticed that most of the people's eyes in here have started to change? There's more sparkling eyes in hier by far than when we started. Most everybody's been smiling. Most everybody has been laughing. And there's people doing inventories. There's a guy over there at the table writing his sex inventory. Barefoot Bill came up to me and says, yeah, I was dozing off last night. Some guy came pounding on my door and wanted to do a fist step. You know? There's woman in the back. She flew up from Virginia, and I hooked her up with somebody to do inventory because she had some real stuff. They were up until 430 in the morning. A member of AA worked until 440 in the moring to hear a fist tap. She's a different woman here. I'm driving down the road and I see her and I beep and then I wave to her on the way over here this morning. She comes in the next red light and the window rolls down and she's like, it was a bomb! A bomb went off! I'm a changed person! She's screaming out through the window. You know? People are changing in this room. Can you feel the presence? You know, who do you do a fifth step with? Somebody who's got experience. There's nobody in this room unless there is any merchant marines in here? Any submariners that go in a submarine for three months under the ocean? There is nobody in this room that qualifies for not doing a fifth step. And if you do fall into that category, the moment the boat docks, the big book says, you go out and seek somebody to do your fifth step with. You know that line in the big books about Eskimo coming over the hill at the North Pole? I fly with the military up to the North pole. There's a fantastic meeting up at the north pole. I'm serious. There is an AA meeting up there. It's a really great meeting. It is at the airbase at Thule Greenland, you know. So there's really no excuse today to not be able to get yourself to a meeting, not beable to hook up with somebody you can fist step with. I've fist stepped with clergy. I mean, don't knock it till you tried it. That's the basic principle. If you want to knock your socks off, go do a multiple inventory. Sit down, take one piece of inventory, read it to five people. Change your life. You want to go to the next level? Take your inventory, grab another guy and swap fifth steps. Change your life. Are you just hearing it? You're sharing your stuff, and your ego wants to start doing one-upsmanship. Well, I can beat that. That kind of sick stuff. And you end up laughing and having a good time. You want to go to the next level? Grab somebody that you're spiritually connected with. Set up an appointment to swap fifth steps, and each of you bring a new guy with you. A guy of three months, one of your sponsees. Because the other guy, you guys are spiritual buddies, and he doesn't want you to really nail him and you don't really don't want to nail him that you may something might slip through the cracks but i guarantee if your sponsee has an opportunity to pin your ears back nothing's getting by nothing you know i did that a while back and and uh this guy's wife was downstairs and she swore for days that we weren't fifth step because we were upstairs just laughing hysterically and itching and scratching just having a good old time we were reading inventory It was hilarious, absolutely hilarious. The fifth step rule, it's on page 18 of the guide. There's three rules in AA, believe it or not, come right out of the big book, and this is the fifth step role. It applies. Once you've taken a fifth step, this rule applies for the rest of your life. We must always be hard on ourselves and always considerate of others, period. Especially when you come into amends. You can't save your skin by dumping your problems on somebody else. You know, what came full force in this inventory was that I had been scumbagging people. Huge in this inventory. I can't run up to you and you don't know that I've been scambagging you and run up to you And say, you know what? I've Been scumbaging you behind your back. I'm really sorry because I just dumped a big load in your lap. Now the hamster's on your wheel going, what was he saying? Why did he say this? Who did he save it to? You know? So I'm sitting there with Mark telling him I'm scumbags and I want to go make these amends and he said, well, stop, stop. stop. You got to go back to every single person you scumbag that person to and make amends to each one of those people. And in that process, one of the guys that I went to and I made amends with, he happens to be sitting in here in the front row laughing hysterically. He looked at me and he said, you know, I understand that you scum bagged this other person. He says from this point forward, whenever you see him do something right, I want you to publicly acknowledge that. So instead of tearing them down, I want you to build it up. Man, did he raise the bar on me? I had to sit with that. I'm still sitting with it. It's changing me. It is changing how I think. I am just an alcoholic. If you don't believe that, I am about to bring that home for you in just a second. You will see how sick I really can be. Quiet hour. Anytime I do step work, I do a quiet hour. When I leave this workshop, I go back to the hotel room. I spend a quiet hour i go through the construction references i look at my steps i look at my stones i thank god because i know i'm better then i pray and meditate and then i go to bed that kind of deal don't miss the quiet hour if you're so last night i was so emotionally drained you know doing one of these workshops is like 150 people sticking a straw up your butt sucking everything out of you you know it emotionally i'm i'm energetic up here until the moment i put the mic down i walk out the door and then it's like somebody hit me with a baseball bat in the abdomen. Even so, I'm so tired, I go home and do the quiet hour. If I'm so tired that I can't even do that, because when you share your fifth step, it's a lot of energy. You burn energy doing that deal. If you can't do it that night, do it the next morning. First thing, do not miss the quiet hour. I've had more spiritual experience and change occur in the quiet hour than any part of a fifth step. Extremely important. All right? To show you guys that I am pompous and egotistical, and to show you what this deal is really like i want to share a piece of inventory with you because this is what at almost 20 years of sobriety we're still all the same i'm just another alcoholic get me off the spiritual beam i will lie i will cheat i will steal i will drink if you get me far enough off the spiritual beam so column one over dependence most alcoholics don't know how to write about principles so i chose a principle for you guys the longer you're sober the more principles you'll be writing about. When you're first newly sober, it's all people. They did it, they did it. The longer you're sober, you know you're not supposed to be resentful of people so you'll write that inventory in your 10th step but the principles creep in. So the principle is over-dependence, column one. Column two, why I'm angry. When sponsees act over-dependent and call way too much, it wastes my time and disturbs my family. What character did you just hear? Already we got the victim, right? Self-esteem. I deserve not to be hassled by their inadequacies. My time is valuable, and they don't need me to nursemaid them. I know they want what I have, but they have to do their own friggin' work and get it. I'm not their mother. Ambition. I want to be a good sponsor and a good A, but I hate the fuckin' hassles. I don't want to nag to death. The next thing you know, they'll want me to wipe their asses. I want reasonable prot�g�s who respect my limits and reasonable boundaries. personal relations i want to be friendly but they're constant nagging wasting my time leaves me wanting to avoid them uh sex sex relations i bitched to my wife about the pain in the asses and btk gets upset because the phone never stops ringing protege shouldn't affect my relationships like that security i need to sponsor and carry the message but these fucking guys don't understand basic boundaries i need freedom to have semi-normal existence without their hassles And Mark and I were joking, you know, you go in there into the urinal and they're talking to you from behind you at the urunal. It's like basic boundaries for alcoholics. We just don't get it. If there's one thing my wife could say about alcoholics, she's always saying to me, she'll look me right in the eye and she'll go, you just don'T get it! Dave and I are going to have a hard time using the urina alone now. all right uh security uh i need to i need a sponsor and carry the message oh did this one already yeah they already did that once uh pride if i really tell them how i i feel i'll look bad i want to be seen as a good sponsor but the price is too high i i feels like a dupe if i put up with their bullshit in a hard ass if i lay uh reasonable boundaries on these fucking guys pardon for the i'm sorry that i'm swearing so much but that's the characters that's who's writing right and then i take a look at the characters you know after i after i write this when i'm fifth step and we're looking at who's speaking you know you got you got the spiritual man who's supposed to be this guru and and leading these people on but it really doesn't you got this lazy sloth who wants to do absolutely nothing you know i want the benefits but i don't want to do the work there's the victim when i you know there's the husband and the husband in the victim come run into my wife and say oh you wouldn't believe it you're nagging me you know what you know that kind of deal all these characters are going to kill me they're going to kill my ass all right now let's look at the real truth self-esteem where am i selfish i'm selfish because i want hassle-free living i want my time to be valuable where am what am i self-seeking in that i want control respect admiration without hassles where am I dishonest i project my image and it's not what i feel i project like i'm oh i'm the spirit come anytime come see me and i'm lying through my teeth You know, I want control. And when I get it, I complain. I'm really slothful and lazy. What am I frightened? I'm afraid of looking bad. I'm scared of over dependence, being out of control and getting my wife mad. Right. Ambition, wanting sponsorship awards. No hassles. I want reasonableness, admiration without without dependence. What am myself seeking something for nothing? Respect, admiration, control, respect and guru status. Where am I dishonest? I want the respect and admiration without the hassles, using up my time. I'm not a guru, and my gifts are God's grace, and it's nothing that I possess. Where am i frightened? I'm afraid of looking bad, not getting my way, disrespect, being out of control, no admiration, no limits, impositions, getting my wife mad, hurting those I love, being hurt and letting down fellow AAs. All right. And with each one of these that I go through in this in the margin, I also write down who am i lying to and each one of these i'm lying to myself first and foremost because i believe this bullcrap i'm flying to god because i took a third step decision and he's in control not me what i want doesn't matter and i'm line to every single person on the interface when it comes to one of these i've lined up my sponsees because i'm presenting projecting a false image i'm lining to my wife because i mean listening her sympathy because she loves me when the reality is i created my own problem my problems are of my own making you know um sex relations i'm selfish because i I want peace at home, respect and recognition. I want my wife's respect and undying love. I want intimacy. I want sex. I want love, understanding God's approval, and I want to impress others. Where's the dishonesty in that? I want the credit but not the work. I'm disingenuine. I have no integrity, and I'm egotistical. When you finally cut to the chase, this stuff is hard. It cuts you open from the inside out when you see how sick you can still be without God. This whole thing hinges on God If I don't have God, I am drunk. Absolutely. There's no question if I don' t have a God in my life. And if I'm disconnected from God and I haven't gotten drunk, it's just because God's grace is shining down on me. Because when I'm not plugged in, all I need is suddenly or a strange mental blank spot and I'm back off to the races. I'm a walking dead man. I'll read one more. I don'T want to take the whole time up here. Pride, ego. I'm selfish because I want life on my terms. I'm self-seeking. I'm looking for respect. I'm looking for God's approval. How sick is that? And I want admiration. I'm dishonest because I work for God and he gets the credit, not me. I'm an egotist and I'm insincere. And what am I frightened of? I'm afraid of hurting God. I'm affraid of letting others down, looking bad, being disingenuine, no integrity, unloved, getting found out, alone, being a bad sponsor, no fellowship, letting down AA, not repaying my debt for what has been given to God through AA. Hardcore stuff. That's almost 20 years sober, writing an inventory constantly, virtually. That's how quick we can get out of whack. You need somebody who can sit across the table from you that's doing this kind of work, that can look at you and point the finger at you and say, hey, you're missing something here, who loves you enough to hurt your feelings and not sign your death warrant, who's not going to co-sign your bull crap and send you out into society to hurt more people. When I used to hear women's inventories, a lot of times I'd get them on the rebound. They'd go fifth step and they realized they missed something and they'd continue to do the behavior until they hurt bad enough and then they'd come walking up to me with this inventory and I'd say, would you listen to this? And they'd start telling me their inventory and I said, well, you fifth stepped this once already, right? And they're like, yeah. And I said what did they tell you? Well, they told me this was okay, that's what had happened to them so don't worry about it. Not with me. You know? One of my favorite sayings, and I haven't said it here, I don't think this weekend is the only problem with the truth is you get instant results right and if you think about that and work with that for a while it will change your life and for dishonest people as us we need all the truth we can get now there's a caveat to that there's an interesting there's fine line between the truth and stupidity you can use it as a weapon I'm not saying go out and use it as a weapons but hold yourself to that high standard you know that's what that book The Four Agreements is all about it's one of those things have integrity do the best you can with integrity and you can be effective for god in this world you know mark talked about you can never give away as much as you give it away since i've been in sobriety carrying this message i'm trying to square my debt with god saying god i i owe you so much let me help my brothers and sisters the problem is every time i do that he gives me more grace so my debt gets bigger so i have to give away more and my debt getting bigger and at the same time I'm getting in debt to God, I'm getting so much back. He's just giving and giving and giving. You can never give away as much as you get by giving it away. That's it for me on step five. Step six is in the guide, what I use. I'm real big on vision. There's that sheet. I look at an inventory. I qualify for everything on that inventory on the six-step sheet. On the left-hand side of the page, it's on page 19 of the guide. Some point in my sobriety, I qualify for everything. Don't just go down and check off every single one of those, you'll see a theme from this inventory. Which one of these character defects come jumping out? For example, egotism jumped out huge on this one. Sloth came out. But gluttony didn't. Impatience, yeah, kind of with that last resentment, a little bit of impatience. But really it was my sloth that was generating the impatience, right? So I wouldn't have checked off impatience but I would definitely have checked up sloth. So I check off the areas that are really affected me by this inventory and then i ask god to remove those from me but i'm asking them to replace it what's on the other side don't just create a vacuum god abhors a vacuum nature abhores a vacuum don't just ask him to remove this from me leave a hole in my soul you know it's that great parable of the bible if you do that the next thing you know instead of getting rid of one demon you're gonna end up with seven living in the same hole so if i'm going to ask god To remove something i want something for him to replace It with you know that's what that buddhist meditation was this morning, get us focused on love and put something good in the hole that's in all of it. It's a human hole in our soul. Put something good into that hole. So ask him to remove this. Look for this. You know? So now I have a vision for what I'm trying to bring back into my life. This doesn't take a long time. You know, how many times you've been in an A meeting? People are saying, I'm working on my character defects. They've missed the whole program. You're powerless. this. You cannot work on your own. You cannot solve the problem with the problem. It's impossible to solve a problem with a problem, and our problem centers in our minds. You can't think your way out of AA. It'll kill you, absolutely kill you. Your mind will kill you. So sacrament of penance is a phenomenal tool. I don't just ask myself guilty or not guilty now. I write it out. How am I guilty? And that's what this inventory that I'm writing now is going to be, this 30-page inventory. It is going to be the exact same thing as a 17-ary inventory, which that's what that's for, is to write in those blanks, how have I been with money? Well, I've been bad with money and how have I been in my home life? When an extra $100 comes in the front door through the military, I don't tell my wife about it. I don' t give her 50% of that. I don''t tithe 10% of dat. Am I being dishonest with that? Yeah. You write that kind of stuff in the blanks. Instead of just saying, am I guilty of dishonesty around money? Yes. No. Let's look at where and specifically how and shine the sunlight of the Spirit on it. Shine the light of truth on that because God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. And once I know I'm doing it, I cannot continue to live that way. All right? Make sense? That's basically it. Step seven is a prayer. Ask God to remove this stuff. Ask Him to bring this stuff into your life. Get rid of the bad. Bring in the new. It's that simple. And I'm done. Let's take a 15-minute break and come back in last session. I had several questions on the breaks, and some really good stuff came out. I've gotten at least ten people talking to me about old inventories. Well, I wrote this inventory so-and-so, so-so. My answer is, are you that person that wrote that inventory? No. Don't worry about old inventories. Write a new one. What happens if something comes up from an old inventory that I wrote five years ago? You just got done getting off your knees asking God to show you what you need to write about. If the thought comes into your head, write about it. I always keep a blank piece of paper. And after I'm done with what I think I'm doing with column one, I meditate and say, God, is there anything I've missed? And I sit there for maybe five minutes. Just pen in hand and I free associate. Anything that comes out, I write it down. And it hit me, Statue of Liberty, Dad. I'm sitting in Germany in a military base and I'm writing inventory. And I'm going, what the hell does this mean? statue that I sat on and I had to meditate on it. My father has made it onto every single inventory I've ever written except one. This last one. I'm getting a little bit better. I never understood why I was terrified of my dad. Always absolutely terrified of my Dad. I know he loves me, but I was still scared the hell out of him. I didn't know why. It suddenly came back to me when I was maybe five or six years old. We went to the Statue of Liberty and he was drunk and I wanted to see the view. So he picked me up and I got scared And he says, oh, what are you scared about? And he held me out over the edge of the observation deck there. And my wife, Freudian, my mom goes running over to him and says, Donald, Donald don't do that. And he let go with one hand. He says, I'm not drunk. You know, she's because she's on your drunk getting back. You know don't be afraid. Don't do this. I never understood why I couldn't trust my father. If I hadn't have free associated that, I wouldn't have written about it. I wouldn' have missed that jewel. It opened up my life. Now I can love my dad unconditionally. Before that, I couldn't love him. He's sober this year. It'll be 25 years. So allow the process. Trust the process There's magic of pen and paper. I don't know what the heck it is, but it is. A guy came to me on the break and says, I forget what he said, 18 years sober and there's a guy who's got two years of sobriety. He's been through this work. He's really doing the deal. Would it be okay if I have him take me through the work? Yes! That's what this weekend is about. If you've got a sponsor who's 30 years sober, and most of the people that have sponsors are 30 years sober, we went for the wrong reasons to get them because they're 30 years over, and they get hit by lightning. Now what do you do? You're 20 years sober and your sponsor was 30 years sober, ooh, do you have the humility to go ask the guy who's on fire who's five years sober? Hmm, interesting. My sponsor died. He was working out, dropped over dead. He has a heart attack. I went for almost three years sponsorless. Ship without a rudder and I was as sick as I've ever been in my entire life. Sicker than when I was drinking, floating around in AA. And you heard the story. I almost blew my head off at the end of it. You know? You be the judge. That's my experience. So if the guy is on fire, anybody, I don't care if he's six weeks sober, if he is on Fire, I'm going to hang around him. I'm going to pick everything I can from that guy. That's the deal. Go to where the message of God is. God speaks through all of us. So if you're hearing somebody speaking about God and it's coming out of their pores, man, go get some of that. Bring a cup. Fill it up. I'm not going to bring the thimble. I'm gonna bring a 55-gallon drum. As much as I can carry. I want that deal. That's fifth step. Do you want me to kick off 8-9? You want to do 8- 9? Bring it on. i'm mark alcoholic you know one of my teachers taught me that what dave just said you know there's times you you get around people you hear people and they hey and they might be 30 days over 30 years and god's just pouring out of them and he made a statement get as close to him as you can ask him a lot of questions and watch him then he said the minute they wake up to that God's pouring out, get the hell away from them because they're dangerous. So I'm like Dave. You get this from as many people as possible. My basic deal for the most part is do some work with someone, get to 164 and basically kick them out of the nest and say next time you want to go through the work, go find someone else because you don't develop these dependencies, if you will. Dependency is always on God. But, yeah, you get this from as many people as you can. I think there's something extremely unhealthy in this constant thing that my sponsor said. What's the book say? What's it say? What's what's the books say? You know, I work with someone and they start throwing out my name. I jerk them aside and say, excuse me. You know what it is and what is Mark's is what's what the books says. What's that kind of a deal? So, yeah, get this from as many as you can. Again, don't ever let anyone read your big book for you. And like Dave said too, you don't analyze. See, this program is about power and you start this process and pretty soon it takes you. And so you never judge that. If it comes up, you write on it. The other thing is don't get into a comparative analysis when you hear someone talk. I mean, we're the only people in the world that are going to, if someone's got 300 resentments and we've got 50, We're going to feel less than. I mean, that's absolute insanity. You know, he had 90 defects and only got four. Oh, praise God. You know? I'm telling you, we've got it all backwards. All of it's backwards. You know what? I'm not as selfish and self-centered as him. You know. So, yeah. So, you know, praise god. Then the guy that finds out he's not a drunk, you know, and he's weeping. I mean, gee, you know, you've got this fatal disease that kills you. He finds out he's not a drunk. Now he's so identified as being an AA, he doesn't know what to do, see? True story. A pal of mine I've done some work with, some of you know Floyd. I shared a guide to him who picked up a drink after, I guess, 17, 18 years. Lived down in the Houston area and sent him to Floyd. And, of course, some OFU are real alcoholics are going to understand this. What he did, he'd go to a bar, Hooters, and he would have three beers and go home. And this was his relapse. And I have no � and just three so that he wanted to be fresh the next day of work. And this is a guy who most of his life in AA has been depressed and not happy, et cetera, et cetera. And Floyd took him through the first 33 pages. Well, he's not an alcoholic. Then, you know, of course, here's what he was up against then. He had this 17- or 18-year attachment to Alcoholics Anonymous thinking I'm an alcoholic and he said to Floyd, well, who am I? You know, what do I do? And so he still wanted to stay around and Floyd said, okay, fine, Linda, we'll do the 30-day test. So, of coarse, all these people in AA and that part were just, they thought Floyd and I are nuts to be telling him this, right? We're just telling him what's in the book. So he's into this two-a-day. He's like at the 20th day and calls Floyd and says, do I really have to do this? I mean, you know, that is not anything I would have been saying. You know, he didn't want to have two a day for 30. And Floyd says, yeah, you've got to finish the test. You know? And he gets done with the test and calls Freud and says geez, I'm glad that's over. And I mean this guy had no business being in AA. And what he'd been doing is living a lie all these years. and he'd gotten sicker being around us, not better, because he's trying to live a spiritual life and it's based on a lie and not the truth. So today he doesn't go to AA and this man's probably grown more in the last six months than he did these 18 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. So, you know, I bet it's back to what I said. You know, we always do this comparative deal. By the way, I misinformed you. We have two sessions left. They have this one and then one more. So we do understand if anyone has to leave and get on with your day and get along with your life, we understand that. If we have a problem with it, we'll put your name in column one. And Dave and I, I was still laughing because when he got to that piece of inventory, I mean, that's when he and I had a laughing jag that we almost both got herniated ourselves. I mean it's like if you're either reading a fifth step or listening to one And you don't burst out in laughter with these belly laughs. I'm telling you, you are paying way too serious with this stuff. These inventories, I mean, I'm 54 and Dave is much younger than me and much more immature, but, you know, our inventory. Here's a 54-year-old man that looks like a 3-year old. Column 2, column 3. It looks like it's a 3 year old brat wrote this. How do you not laugh about that? I mean, that piece of inventory he wrote. You know, it's like we got to laughing so hard. It's like, you know, I want the state of New York and New Jersey to come up with a sponsor of the year award, and I want it, but I don't want these assholes bothering me. You know? And it's not just me. And I want my wife to emulate and love and respect me with all this work I'm doing, but it's interfering without her love and regard for it. I mean we were just on the floor laughing about all this stuff because that's the way it should be. You know the 12 in 12 is right. But, you know, they did this exhaustive survey and they found these. Here's the three tools we go through life with. Grandiose, childish, sensitive, and emotionally sensitive. Well, those are not exactly great tools to go through live, right? Grandiouse, childish and emotionally sensitivity. That's a setup for becoming a great alcoholic and that's what we all have in common. So, you Know, and link the time away from a drink does not necessarily diminish and take all those things away. But I'm having a lot more fun with myself than I ever did, and I laugh at myself a lot. And then the other side of that is I also love spending time with Mark. See, I'm alone in perfect peace and ease. I love the solitude. There was a time I could not stand to be alone with Mark, right? So that changes things. I want to talk about the eighth and ninth step. This is my experience if you read the big book. It says in the second step, it says you begin to have a spiritual experience. It says you have certain spiritual beliefs. When you do the fifth step, it said you've had certain spiritual belief, but only now do you begin to have the spiritual experience? It's in the fourth step. You identify yourself, how your ego operates. It's been the fifth and ninth step that you disconnect from ego. It is in the seventh step that you connect to God and it is in eighth and ninth steps that you can connect with your fellow brothers and sisters. And if you don't do the eighth in the ninth step, then you are never going to be at peace around your fellow brothers and sisters. That's why the process of amends are so important. The list is the list. You get the list from a combination of inventories. I also like to sit for at least a week and in my prayer and in meditation ask God to reveal to me anything at all, any kind of harm of any kind that I put out in the universe. And then whatever comes up, I just write it down on the list. And I have experiences like Dave over the years. Uh, I'll just remember more and more and more and a couple of years ago. Um, when I was doing this, uh, I remembered that when I Was back in college, I'd gone to a party, got drunk, uh stumbled across a Volkswagen that had a set of golf clubs. I stole them, sold them to my aunt for $250. And so, you know, this was like two years ago. So I call her up and of course she just laughs and chuckles and says, you don't owe me. People who live a spiritual life to begin with, when you call with the men's, they don't even know what to do with it. They laugh. I got to go back to golf, you Know? But this is how it works. This is about, I think, God's time in the universe. So it's not my money. See, I took that money from her, compound it with a little interest, so I took the $250 and I figured it with interest because that was back in 1968, a long time ago. So I figured $350, and then another old man came up, and I called this person and found him at the same time, discovered that he was going through a lot of financial problems. So in addition to, I think it was $110 I owed him, I went ahead and sent another $350. So, I mean, that's how the whole thing works. It came up when it came up. A series of events happened. I had the money set aside. Boom, I mailed the money out there. So you have this list, and my experience is start with the ones closest to you. The reason we harm the ones close to us is because they're the closest to us. It's not complex stuff, i.e., wife, father, mother. I always tell people if you have some people who are older in your life you owe amends to, get it on and get to them. It's a lot easier making amends to them when they're still alive as opposed to saying amends at a gravesite. The big book, when I get to the ninth step, what I encourage people to do, there's six or seven pages of instructions about every kind of amend that you have to make. And it's very, very clear what they look like. They discuss the fact that you and I are going to have misgivings. They discussthe fact thatyou're going to make amendsto the man or woman you hate. They discussthefactthatyou'regoingtohavetopaybackthemoney. They discussedbusinessassociates. They discuss going to friends. They discuss the amends that have to be made, say, to a wife or to a girlfriend or to the family. Every kind of amend that you and I would have to make is discussed in there. Then they give us some guiding principles with the amens as well, reminding ourselves that we decided to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. This is what I'm willing to do. And the process that I like to follow once I have made my list, I don't mess around with this willingness stuff. Some of you have heard this before, but this is a deal from Don P., but the first time I went with him. And my first go-around with a real inventory, I had a lot of amends. Seven years I hadn't filed taxes. I had an immense amount of money. I had to pay for it. I had lots of amens. Family and I'd lived in six or seven different states. As a matter of fact, I used to write inventory on these early guys' stories in AA because they lived in the same town, never moved anywhere. And hell, they made their amends in a day. Well, I lived in six or seven different states. See? A lot of territory to cover in there. But when you get to the ninth step, keep it simple. You got your stack of amends cards. Here's the question you ask yourself. Make this amends, die an alcoholic death. Let me think. Make this Amends, Die an Alcoholic Death. Stay clear when you get to the ninth step why you're making amends, because you need power. And this is part of that process of power. I see a lot of people get to The Ninth Step and get disconnected from the first step. The ninth step should drive the first steps deeper into you, not make it further away. So, you know, a simple tool is drink whiskey or make this amends. I mean, you guys are like me. We may not be rocket scientists, but I'm not an idiot. Die an alcoholic death, pay the money back. Let me think. See, it's not rocket scientist stuff. You will find in the big book that you're warned several times that if you don't do this, you're quite sure to drink and I'll just take money. Paul M says it best. We don't he says we don't mind making amends, but we sure hate paying the money back. First of all, if you owe financial men's, you have to get clear on something. It's not your money is their money and they just want it back. So now that you're sober and you're getting a paycheck, that also is not your money. It is still their money, and you are a steward of their money. So their money will come from your employer to you and then back to them. So stay clear on whose money it is to begin with. That little paragraph is very clear. I contact people that I've been slow to pay, and there's a warning in that paragraph that if I'm afraid to face my creditors, I'm quite sure to drink. um uh did i have some fears around the irs oh yeah uh so it's well go in and see the guy at the iras once i saw a cpa an attorney uh or die an alcoholic death gosh i let me think about it but back to the willingness thing it's uh some of you know don he he doesn't let you play around with willingness you know that well i'm praying for the willingness to make the amends right And he'll say, well, you know, I tell you when you're willing. When's that? Well, you're going to hear some real strange sounds. What are you talking about? Well, strange sounds like this. That's you knocking on the door to make the amend. Or you dialing the telephone. Or you putting a stamp on a letter, right? Don't play around. I'm praying for the willingness. You know, if you stole money from somebody, you weren't praying for willingness when you went to get it. Or this cute stuff, well, I'm going to wait until I meet him in an elevator. The same energy that you put in in creating the harm, you might consider using the same kind of energy to make the amends. So I started that journey. Went to a father and went to a mother, and you start with those closest. And I want to talk about this. This has to do with identifying what does harm look like. But for any of you who, and the 12 in 12 addresses this, we had this idea we really didn't hurt people. Now, my big book says I'm like a tornado. I've lived in the Texas and Oklahoma, that area, which is a tornado alley. Watch channel back where I live, it's channel 37. And if you think you haven't created harm, I want you to go rent a video on tornadoes so that you get a feel of the truth of your life. If you're a real alcoholic, that's exactly what you're like. Watch what a tornado does. If it goes into a mobile home park or goes into a town and it gets to the other side, there's nothing left standing. Well, that is what we do. That is what we do in people's lives. You know, and back to my mother again, you know, this is a woman who for years literally would lay there wondering, is the phone going to ring and am I going to get the message that they scraped my son up off the concrete somewhere? And what I did is for years, I robbed that woman of emotional security. It had nothing to do. I found out when I made the amends, it wasn't the money that I stole or lied to get. It wasn't any of that. I robbedthat woman of emotionalsecurity day after day and hour after hour and year after year. So how do you clean that? How do you pay that back, right? But she said to me what I think a lot of mothers say, which is, Mark, stay sober and be as happy with your life as you can be. And so my mother passed away in January 2000. And from the time I got sober until she passed away, I never robbed her of emotional security. Six months before she died, through a series of events, I'd go up to Colorado and she was getting Alzheimer's. And I would spend seven to ten days with her and I would just sit with her. And if you've ever been around someone with Alzheimer's, they don't recognize you and they get afraid a lot. She wasn't afraid when I would get around her. See, our spirits had connected and I'd cleaned that up. And I can't tell you what it's like to, when you rob someone like that, to know that you don't do that anymore. That woman knew that I was solid as a rock. You know, she never had to worry about me again. And to be able to give that peace of mind back to her. God, I owed her that. You know, shit, if you don't want to stay sober for yourself, do it for these people whose hearts that you broke and who you stole from for day in and day out. There are many times when I after I sat across my mother made that amends. My ass was in a meeting because of what that woman said to me. God almighty, you know. It's just incredible what we do to people, you Know, and I made amends to my father and and, you know, my brothers. I can't tell you how many friends said, God, I just worried about you because you, you know, for so long and I, I had never connected that shit. It wasn't money. It was, I stole their, I sold their emotional security, you know? And so what I do is I stay in touch with those people. I got a guy, Clark Edwards. I, uh, I've known him since 1959. And when I made amends to him, he He said, just let me know where you're at. And so when I moved to Dallas, you know, I called him and he's learned with me. He uses an address. He uses a pencil, you Know, but he said to me, he said, I just feel so good knowing where you're At, you knowing and about every six months, you Know, I call him. I had there's about 10 guys like him God that I was so close To and when I made amends it just broke my heart how much they they had worried about me over the years and they just said let me know how you're doing you know and so I pick up the phone and I make sure that they have my address and you know I went back to my 35 year reunion back in Iowa and you know they were all there and seeing these people and knowing over the years how much they love me and in my selfishness how I just so disregarded them and how they felt and you now so I stay in touch and I let those people nowhere, man. I let her know I'm doing okay. And sometimes I lie to them. Sometimes I'm not doing okay, but I tell them I'mdoing okay. You know, God, they really love me and care about me. And so, you know, you go clean that stuff up. You sit across from these family members because they were the closest to you. And I had a father. My dad died of alcoholism in 1986. My dad was a heavily decorated World War II veteran, a boxer fighter and a drunk. And he couldn't have shown an emotion if it was going to bite him in the ass. And we were raised in that family where it's either sports or fighting or whatever. And there were four boys in the family. And I had a lot of anger and resentment and stuff in there. And I made an amend to him, but that kind of a man, you can't sit down and talk about what I wanted to talk about. And so then he is aorta burst from alcoholism, and he died. And so it was about a year later, I was going up to the Fellowship of the Spirit, and I just felt I needed to do something. So I had written a letter, and I � he was buried in the Memorial Cemetery in Denver. So I'd gone and got some flowers, and I had this letter. And if you've ever been to try to find one of those, I mean, they all look the same, and there's thousands of them, and I get guided to the spot. And, you know, I spent about a half hour, and I thank my father for being my father, for giving me his best shot, you now. God, and the peace and love in my heart when that was done, you known. And shit, there wasn't anything to forgive. He was like me. He woke up each day, and he gave life his best shot. And Jesus, I'd held all that shit against him for so long. And it was an amazing deal. I told you, you know, I have pictures of my mother and father. And it Was clean. You know, i'm clean in that whole area. I went to several different states and sat across from people. And I let them know why I was there. I was clear on the actions that I had taken to create harm in their life. And, you know, I asked that all-important question, you Know, What do I have to do? What do i have to balance the books between us? And one woman said, I'm very grateful that I didn't marry you. I mean, just some interesting stuff. Some real interesting stuff comes out of that. of course then there's the amends that hurt your feelings because they don't even hardly remember you let alone what you did which means you're not very important in their life but i don't know overall uh i became i begin to unite with my fellow brother and sister through the process of amends which is i think exactly what's supposed to happen i don'T make amends too complex i i see it kind of as one child of god sitting down with another just trying to clean up a little stuff so they can go out and play and have more fun again. You know, good sponsorship or good guides, I should say. There's a lot to say about them. But I remember a few times going to Don, and some of you can relate to this. See, I was given tools and a way of living, for example, that my father never had. And so I think it was in a dialogue around him when he was still alive and I'm saying to Don well why do I have to do this? And Don looked me flat in the face and he said because you can and he can't. God, I didn't want to hear that sometimes. Because you can and he can't. Because you know about love and you know about God and you knew about forgiveness and he does not. And that's why you're going to go do this. Jeez, I did not want to hear that. So you go do this and you wind up somewhere in there being a role model to these people. When I went back to my class reunion And, you know, they, I mean, two of the guys out of my class are ministers. And I'm the guy that they ask to open and close that whole thing with God. They didn't ask, they didn't asked who were in class, you know, um, they asked me and, and I later, I said, why did you ask me? And he said, well, Mark, he said Bob and Bill, and those are the names of the two ministers. He said they're men of religion, but he said it seems to us when we get around you that this God that we all struggle with just seems to radiate from you. And that's why we ask you to do that. And because we love you and because we care about you. And, God, you know, these gifts we've been given through this process of healing. I was talking with Floyd, and this is two or three years ago, And he gave me a peace, I think, which is the truth, which is, you know, I literally stole something from the hearts of these people. When I go make these amends, I get to heal that. I get to give that back to them. See? Unfinished amends for me also were about if God isn't everywhere and everybody and I've got an unfinished amends because of either pride or whatever, then I'm blocked because there's nothing but oneness. So you go make those. I'll tell you about my The last two amends I had, 1968, I was in a paternity suit back in Iowa. And if you were from Iowa in 1968 and you were in a maternity suit, you either married the woman or he killed, the father killed you. It was pretty cut and dried. But I chose to obviously not get married. They set up certain financial things and I'd taken care of that. And then I'd gone on with my life. Somewhere in 1975, I think, I got a piece of paper with adoption, and I'd signed that and just moved on. Well, over the years, I'd made some attempts to try and find her, to try to find my son to no avail because she'd gotten married, et cetera. And this is how God works, and it don't always feel good. When in 1999, when I was going through the steps, Here's what happened when I get up to the ninth step. I get laid off from a job I'd been at seven years. My physical health cratered in on me for about two or three weeks. Several people I were pretty close to turned on me with a vengeance. I had just had all kinds of neat stuff happen as a result of working these steps, right? For those of you who think you're going to work the steps and you're going to be little sunbeams and life is going to grand, there's new stuff going to happen, but it doesn't look like what you look like. And so after I got laid off, I'm sitting there and because I was born and raised on a farm, I understand work. I've always worked. And in my meditation, the message that I get is put your stuff in storage, go up to Colorado. Your mother's not going to be here much longer. Spend some time with her. You know, that immediately produces fear because I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get laid off, my income goes down by two thirds, but my bills remain the same. That is not what I wanted to hear in my meditation. You know, I wanted to hear go here and you're going to get this great job. And but over the years, you get obedient because I know what self-will does. So I put my stuff in storage and I go up to Colorado and and I got to spend that time with my mother. And God was absolutely right, because in six months, you know, her spirit joined God. And then then I go back to Colorado or to Iowa to this 35 year class reunion. And And there was a town 16 miles away, and I had a reservation in that small town I was going to. But I get to this town, which is where I met this woman who had fathered my son, and I could not go past the hotel in that town. I mean, it was like there was an ice cream bar. There was a screen, so I stayed in the hotel. See, when you're awake, you'll act kind of bizarre. I mean I had reservation 16 miles. When I say a screen came down and said here, it's like okay. You can resist if you want, but I've done that and paid it to your price. So the next morning I get up and I do meditation, and the thing is to go down to the county clerk's office. I go down there. So I ask about some books and records. She sends me down in this old basement. So to make a long story short is I find some of the material. I find this file. And in there I find the name of the man that she had gotten married to, which I'd never had before. So I go to a phone book. There's three names in there. The first address I go through, it's a small town. She deserted the second one. It's like 1030 in the morning. This old boy my age was sitting out there. He had a tooth knocked out drinking beer, and I said, I can talk to this guy. And so, you know, I go up and introduce myself to him and told him why I was there, and this was interesting. He looked me dead in the eye and he said, Are you Chad's father? And I said yes, and he says, Well, he's in this town. And he said I've got his phone number. I don't know where his mother is. She moved out of town two or three years ago. And by the way, you need to know that they're not speaking. And so I left there and Common Sense told me I went on up to where I had to go. And Common Sense said I wanted to talk to her. And I had an idea of the town she was in. I called that town and there were two listings. The first one wasn't her. The second just waved at me. And the second one I said, is this so-and-so? And she said yes. And I said did you used to be so- and-so. and she said yes and I said well this is Mark Houston just dead silence because you know we're talking 30 years since this woman had chatted with me okay thanks for listening