The Trap of Knowledge and the Spiritual Life – Mike B.

As I said, I hope that everybody will remember Gene in your prayers. Gene's feeling real bad. He's ill. And so is Carter and Ruth. Now, Carter and Roth have been coming to this conference for many, many years. They usually sit right here in these two chairs. And so they're feeling under the weather these days too. So let's remember all those folks. With all that said and done, I don't think I've forgotten anything. I hope I haven't. I would like to introduce one of my best friends, Mr. Charlie Y. My name's Charlie Younger. I'm an alcoholic. It's certainly my privilege to be here tonight, safe and sane and sober, and I'd like to open this meeting with a serenity prayer, please. Before, know what you're in for and those of you that have not hang on to your seats because it's really one heck of a weekend. I would just like to know is there anybody that has about a size 8 1⁄2 or 9 dress shoe? I came off from Louisville and forgot my shoes but that's okay. It's alright. one of the wives of a spiritual giant and one of my heroes in the program told me that Joe did the same thing one time so I feel okay about that right now Ann would say that is typical speaking of Ann she's not here with me again this weekend so she's promised that she'll be able to come with with me and join us in November when we meet again. We got a little, her daughter Hannah's a little sick so she's staying home with Hannah. And speaking of Hannah, Hannah Marie Younger, I'd like to announce, got her two-year chip. May the 15th, she's got two years of continuous with sobriety. But that's the way it is in our house today. I'm here to introduce a guy tonight that I've never met before tonight. I asked him a while ago how he would like to be introduced. He said, just, you know, introduce me. He says, do you usually take an hour? I said, well, take what you need. He said, don't tell me that. He said, I'm not that well yet. He said, you give me a finger and I'll take an arm. So in the short three and a half hours that I've given him tonight to share with you folks, all kidding aside, I would just like to introduce you and ask you to give a warm Baghdad, Kentucky welcome to Mike B from Denver, Colorado. I have a tendency to want to kind of rest on my laurels with respect to my alcoholism and a tendency to tell myself that you can't expect much more from an alcoholic. And at this point in my life, I think not only I but the people around me and God expects more of me than that I used to expect from myself. And I'm willing to take the responsibility of saying that I am a recovered alcoholic because the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works. so that's what I am I'm a recovered alcoholic I also in the last several years have been kind of disdainful if you will of hearing people get up at these podiums and talk about their drinking I've heard a lot of funny stories and I've read a lot of terrible tragic things said and uh and i've enjoyed a lot of it and um but you know there's a direction in the big book that talks about uh telling what it was like what happened and what it's like now and mostly what i hear is what it Was Like What It Was Like, What It was Like, and What It Is Like and I'm not going to tell you all that i'll just spend a few minutes telling you how i got here and what my drinking was like but the rest of it is going to be what it's like now and uh what i do now and have done in alcoholics anonymous in this spiritual way of life for some time now so it may not be funny uh but it's not going tobe a drunk a lot let me tell you first of all that I started drinking at a very early age because I was raised in a family that drank a lot and they were all social drinkers and they had no idea that there was anything bad about putting alcohol into my system and I guess for several years there wasn't anything bad about it it was just fine so as a baby I always had access to alcohol and as a child, as a grade schooler I always had access to alcohol. I started drinking alcoholically in my early teens. And I started having really serious difficulties with alcohol, although I didn't know that by the time I was 16. I mean, I was having blackouts and began to have hallucinations, and it started interfering substantially in my life. And as it interfered substantially in My Life, I began to get the idea that it was My Life. and that just continued until I didn't do it anymore. A typical day in my life before I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in the last couple of years before I Got Here was something like this. I would go to bed between 12 and 3 o'clock in the morning, often not remembering it, drunk. And the alarm went off at 6 and I was in a business where I had a partner who was sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I had commitments to make before I met him at the office at 8. And I would wake up slowly, sick. Sometimes I would throw up, sometimes I wouldn't because sometimes I still had plenty of alcohol in my system. If I'd gone to bed at 3 drunk, you know, I wouldn'T really... I mean, it was just 3 hours. But I would never feel exactly straight. And when I got up in my home, I had a wife and 2 children, I knew I had to get out of there. I don't know why I had to get off of there, I just knew I have to get on the road and I had to get out of there. So, I mean, it was a quick shower and a quick shave and pray that I didn't cut my throat and go out and see if my car had any dents in it or my pickup truck and see if it was there and then if it had any dents in it and then drive it downtown and try to stop someplace and give myself a cup of coffee or some orange juice or even try to eat something if I could. And at 7 o'clock, I had to be out doing things for my business. And at 8 o'clock, I'd meet my partner at the office. And shortly after we met at the office, we'd go have coffee. And often as not some of his buddies showed up. Well, all his buddies were members of Alcoholics Anonymous. He didn't have any other friends. And so we'd go have copy. And then we'd attend to our business. And 10 o' clock, we would go have coffee. Often as not, some of these buddies would show up and we'd have coffee with them. And sometime between 10 and 12, the alcohol I had in my system from the night before would start to wear off a little bit. And at noon we'd go have lunch, and often as not some of his buddies would show up and we'd—we'd go out to lunch. And I'd usually have at least a couple of beers at lunch. And I was listening to all this stuff. I mean, you know, I was odd man out, so I didn't talk an awful lot, but I heard a lot about Alcoholics Anonymous. And I thought it was a very interesting sociological phenomena and was kind of curious about it, but that was about all. And 3 o'clock would roll around and it was time for another coffee break and we'd go have coffee and likely as not there'd be a couple of alcoholics show up to have coffee with us. And 4 o' clock, I mean these guys didn't know anything about anything. All they knew is who was a drunk, who wasn't, and we hang around with the drunks and that's all we know how to talk about except when my partner and I were talking about business. and at four o'clock i would usually call my wife and promise her that tonight i would be home for dinner at six o'clock because one of the things i would have sworn to myself at six o' clock in the morning was that tonight what i really have to do is go home and go to bed and get some rest because uh the reason i feel so shitty is because i haven't had enough sleep and i can't continue to do this without getting more rest so i would call her about four and say I'll be home in time for dinner at 6. And at 5 o'clock, we'd go check out all our locations and collect the money and make sure everything was set for the evening and all that, and my partner would go home and I would go into the Bratskeller, which is a bar that was pretty close to where we had our business, to have a beer. And usually sometime after 6 o' clock I would realize I was still there having a beer and I was not home again and sometimes I would call my wife and tell her I'd be right home and sometimes I would not. And it didn't make any difference because in any event, I just sat there and drank. Sometimes I would leave that bar and go to another bar. Sometimes I was drunk and sometimes I would stay in that bar and at 2 o'clock in the morning somebody would be shaking me by the shoulder and telling me it was time to go home. The lights would be on and so sometime between midnight and 3 o' clock I would go home drunk and go back and at 6 o' lock in the evening the alarm would go off and you know, I mean that was my life. that's all i'm going to tell you about that that's the way i did it that was the way i did just about every day of the last year i drank and uh you could not have told me anything about it uh you couldn't have approached me face on with it because i already knew everything And as the saying goes, you cannot teach a man something he already knows. And I already knew. I mean, I knew everything. And I didn't have any idea that I was alcoholic, but I knew it all. This program is very definitely a program of attraction and not promotion. None of these people that I met while I was drinking that were members of Alcoholics Anonymous ever, ever, ever laid anything on me. And I think they probably didn't because they probably had some sneaking hunch that it would not have worked. And so they never laid a thing on me, ever. They never suggested to me that I ought to try this. They never made any smart cracks about whether I was hungover. Nobody ever said anything to me. They just hung around and talked about AA and working the steps and going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and I hung around. And that was the way it was. And I could have hung around or not. It didn't make any difference to them. But ultimately I got attracted to this. So I got into AlcoholicsAnonymous, to make a long story short. One day they asked me if I'd be interested in going to an AA meeting, and I said yes, and so I did that. I'm not going to tell you about how I stumbled through the first four or five years trying to work the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I will tell you this, that I did no work in AlcoholicsAnonymous for the first three months I was in it. I just went to AA meetings, and then I drank. and then I drank and went to AA meetings for another two and a half months and one day I was at an AA meeting and a guy came up and I spoke I mean I'd say anything right I mean you know I'm an alcoholic so I mean I mean the first meeting I ever went to I had no idea that I was an alcoholic or whether this was for me but I knew it was a closed AA meeting and by then I knew what it was and I said my name is Mike I'm not an alcoholic I mean, that's what you're supposed to say at a closed-day meeting, right? And, you know, it never bothered me to get up and talk to people. And by the time I was around Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with all my background, I could give you a pretty good pitch. I knew, you Know, I knew all the lingo. I mean it's not, the ligo is not hard to pick up. The book is written for a sixth grader. I mean It's not hard To pick that stuff up. And I was Around these people all the time anyway, so I knew how to talk. So I got up. I had been drunk the night before and got up at a podium at this afternoon meeting and gave him a pitch and told him how nice it was to have discovered God and to have had my life cleaned up and to be able to have some hope and all that and the guy came up to me afterwards who at that time had about 21 years he died last year with he was an old timer he was a long time sober then and shook my hand and said boy sure it's nice to have you here and I'm sure glad you found AA and you did a nice job and that was a good talk and on and on and I nodded and smiled and shook my head at him and shook his hand and that night I did not get in the lotus position and I did NOT spend 7 hours on my head and I didn't do any of that stuff but something happened up here and I knew I was no longer going to be able to do that I knew I was no longer going to be able to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and drink and I figured I was going to have to stop doing one or the other and with very, very little intention, motivation thought or anything like that as I remember it I decided to stop drinking and try to go that way and in 12 days that will have been 21 years ago and that's the way it happened for me I had no faith I had no belief I didn't know I was alcoholic when I did find out I was alcoholic I didn' believe the program of Alcoholics Anonymous would work for me. I didn''t believe that I could get to God. I kind of had the idea this that I had never stayed with anything in my entire life ever I mean, I was a quitter. So no matter what I tried to do, as soon as I got bored with it, I'd quit. And this went for various courses in school, went for jobs, went for girlfriends, went für religion, went for anything, anything that I did. And I had the idea that Alcoholics Anonymous was not going to be any different. I finally, after a year or so, got the idea that if a person would stay in AA and would keep coming back to this thing and work the steps and do all this stuff, that perhaps they might be able to stay sober. The thing that I knew about myself is that I would not do that, that the day would come when I would simply say, I've had enough of this, and I would go get drunk because I had never been able to do anything in my life with the kind of longevity necessary to give it a shot, you know, to make it worthwhile. And I have often said, and i believe this to be true, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous did not make sense to me. Frankly, it doesn't make sense to me today. You know, when I came here I had a lot of problems. I had physical problems I'd been bleeding from the rectum for a year. I'd had financial problems. You don't drink three gallons of beer and a quart of whiskey every day and not have financial problems.I was not independently wealthy I was not getting enough rest My wife had been threatening to go home to mother and I was saying promises, promises and my kids didn't know me And I was frightening them. I mean, I had all the problems. I'd been cut off in the bedroom. I just had a lot of trouble. And to come to a place like Alcoholics Anonymous and the room that I came to when I first went to a meeting, it had a bunch of these kind of antique fluorescent fixtures that blinked on and off with all the ballast shot and early Salvation Army furniture in it and the springs popping out of the old overstuffed sofas that somebody found in the alley. And, I mean, you know, it was not a... This was not A Country Club. I wasn't a joiner anyway, and if I was going to join something, it didn't look to me like Alcoholics Anonymous was what I wanted to join, if I WAS going to joined something. It was not my idea of a red-hot Saturday night. And then to top it all off, what they suggested to me is that if I needed a solution for my problems, that this is what I would... This is what i ought to do, and I ought to admit that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable and then come to believe in this fairy tale that I had long since decided was a fairy tale and then to say this prayer and then go write all this stuff down on a piece of paper that I never was going to tell anybody and then tell it to somebody and then say some more prayers and then make a list of all the people that I had harmed it was going to be a short list and then go out and straighten it all out and then continue to do this on a regular basis over some consistent period of time all the while not drinking and then learn how to meditate and then become some kind of proselytizer well, I can tell you this for somebody who drank for about 15 years alcoholically of the 28 years of his life to show me that kind of a solution for my problems did not make any sense. I mean, this computer was overloaded. I mean that just did not made any sense and I have said before that Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing I ever did in my whole life up until this moment that never made any since to me. I mean if you threatened me when I was drinking it made perfect sense to lie and if you threatened me harder it made perfectly sense to hit you and if you continue to threaten me I might have to kill you hit you with a chair or do something and that's all very logical to me it makes very good sense to this computer I have up here the program of Alcoholics Anonymous did not and it's the only thing I ever did in my life that did not make sense And frankly, my friends, it's the only thing in my life that I ever did that ever worked. So, so much for what I think is logical or sensible or what have you. What I want to talk about in the time that we have left is the proper use of the will and the line in the book that says the spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it. And the idea that Alcoholics Anonymous is not about the right answers, it's about finding the right questions for my consideration. It's about carrying the vision of God's will into all of my activities. You know Well, I was raised to worship knowledge. I was raising to find out what the right answers were. And the right answer would get you where you needed to be because it seemed to me that the world was based on whether or not you knew the right answers. I mean all of you when you were in school the way you got to be successful in school was to know the right questions and the right answers. And see it was easy for me to find out the right answers. By the time I was in Alcoholics Anonymous a year, I had a good portion of the first 164 pages of the big book memorized, and I knew the answers. I knew the right answer. You ask me a question, I'll give you the right answer. And I believed then that that was valuable. I believed that that had worked, that that had power, that knowledge was power. And I was just wrong. You know, I mean, I've been wrong about a lot of things, and I was just wrong about that. It was not a, you know, it was not a big dramatic thing. It was just a mistake. It was only killing me, but I mean, you knows, it's just a mistake. The biggest difficulty I have right now today is my head. And it's a problem I've had all during Alcoholics Anonymous. The problem is that I know what's in the big book. And I know how to work the steps. and i know how to not drink alcohol and i know what the solution is i know what i'm doing here and you can't teach somebody something that they already know and there's a guy that wrote a series of books here not long ago called carlos castaneda and one of his characters in there made a statement one time that i thought was very appropriate for me and i've always remembered it and it is that it is called the trap of knowledge and the trap of knowledge is the thing that has kept me going through thick and thin most of my life and today because I know all the stuff that I know and can remember all the stuff that I can remember I need to take opportunities like this to go a word at a time, a phrase at a time and ask myself what this means to me. What does it mean to me? And instead of giving myself the right answer, to make the consideration of if that means something to me, how do I live with respect to that thing that I think means something for me? I mean, do I still have this spiritual life somehow in the abstract in my head or is it what I do? And unfortunately for me i'm not uh although recovered and i'm not cured and consequently i have occasion uh often to make those considerations and believe that probably i'm not doing this thing the way i say i am watching what i do the spiritual life for me is a matter of choices decisions um the program of alcoholics anonymous for me is what is contained in the first 164 pages of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous I believe that that book was put together by the first group conscience the first hundred alcoholics or so that got sober and it was passed around the manuscript was and passed on and edited probably about the same way as group consciences operate today probably about five percent of the people really put it together and about 95% of the people read and said it's fine let it go but nonetheless it was a group conscience and i think probably the first one and that's good enough for me and of all the possible spiritual paths i chose ultimately to take the spiritual path of alcoholics anonymous and it was choice based on the consideration of my first step which is either i can control my drinking or i can't now you know there's nothing complicated about that right either i can control my drinking where i can either i can keep myself sober when i am sober or if i do drink i can moderate what i drink now either i can do that or i and if i can do that then i need to decide if i want to do anything about it but if i can do that then that's simple i just go off and do that how do i make that consideration today i may go when i get up in the morning when i get up in the morning today it's not because i've gone to bed between midnight and three o'clock drunk and sometimes in a blackout when i Get Up In The Morning Today I Know What I Did Last Night I Know A Time I Went To Bed I Went to Bed In A Whole Different Way Than I Did When I Was Drinking And Then I Did When i Was Early In The Program I Wake Up In The Morning And I Immediately Begin To Think About God I Start To Pray The First Thing I do when I wake up in the morning is pray. I told a friend of mine the other day that I do two things every day I absolutely despise. One of them is go to bed and the other one is get up. So I need to pray when I get up because it's not something that I wanted to do in the first place. So when I do get up, I say a prayer. It usually goes something like, I'm no longer running the show. I will not mind being done. You've heard that before. It came out of the big book. It's not a big deal. I don't fall down on my knees. I don't, you know, do all that stuff. But I begin. I begin. And that is the way I choose today that I either can control my drinking or I can't. That's the way I do it today. I do not try to go over my last drunk. I remember what it was like. You know, the pain goes away. Any of you mothers in the room know. You know, I mean, if you tried to practice birth control by remembering the pain of your last childbirth, you know how that would work. The idea somehow... I don't speak from experience, but somebody said you don't have to have cancer in order to treat it. And I have an idea after having been a party to that from time to time that in any event the remembrance of that if you do remember it is not going to keep you from ever doing that again. and so I don't do that you know what I mean I don' t sit around remembering what it was like I can tell you what it as like and if you come to me and ask me to help you I might tell you what it is like for me in order to give you some identification or to identify myself to you I remember the pertinent salient points but I cannot bring to memory the thing that happened three days ago with enough force to keep me from drinking today so as far as I am concerned with respect to what I do today that doesn't have any value you know it happened and ultimately it's what got me here but it doesn't any value for me today but today I choose you know there's a line in that early part of the big book that says something like we had but two alternatives to go on to the bitter end blotting out the consciousness of our situation as best we could or to accept spiritual health well what's my choice it's another choice it is another decision what am i going to do about that i mean what kind of a consideration do i make about that uh you know am i willing to take my chances this morning maybe i'll get up and say screw it i don't want to stay for today am i unwilling to take the chance well i'm not willing to take the change that's the way i consider the first and second step these decisions god is either everything or he's nothing god either is or he isn't what is my choice to be what is my choice to be you know nobody's laying this on me i choose it i choose god as either everything or god is nothing i choose it i'm the one that will live or die i'm the one who will live the spiritual life or not but what if i have the right answer oh yes god is everything you know that's just words that's his words will i will i do anything about that what am i willing to do about it well today I'm willing to get up in the morning and pray when I open my eyes and I'm willing to go take a shower and shave and get myself awake which is not easy for me to do and upon awakening I'm willing to be awake I'm going to go into the 11th step of Alcoholics Anonymous and consider my plans for the day and begin to do that in the moring before I go out and cause havoc in my world and why do I do that? because I made a choice a long time ago, and I do this to make the choice again today that God is everything. That God is. That God has given me God is God and I'm the alcoholic. That I have no power and I can't manage my life. This is a program of 12 steps. I can remember a time in my life when my mother was trying to get me to eat the right kind of food. and she'd put stuff in front of me and I'd say, I don't like that and she would say, eat it, it's good for you you've got a bad attitude eat it it's a good thing I didn't care whether it was good for me or not I don' t like it what if I come to the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous or the fourth step or the fifth step or the ninth step and say, eh this is not a cafeteria these are not as you may have heard from time to time twelve suggested steps if you don't believe me go home read your big book this is a program of 12 steps it's a suggested program of12steps i believe for me and by the way anything you can't reconcile what's in your big book that you hear here tonight disregard it i am as likely as anybody in the whole world to say something that cannot be justified in there but if you're if you question it don't ask somebody go read your big book somebody said to me a long time ago don't play poker if you don't know the rules and you don' let somebody else read the rules for you you read your own rules but what if you know I get to the fifth step and I decide I don't want to do that I don' like that stuff so I'm not going to eat it this is not cafeteria this is NOT the place where you take the pie and you take the ice cream and you leave the salad and you'll leave the stuff that's good for you, that's not what it is. That's not Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous for me as a suggested program of 12 steps. So where do I go if I decide if I choose that there is a power greater than me that can indeed solve my problem? Does that take care of it? I am home free. I can keep it in my head. I can get up in the morning and remind myself or remember my last drunk or keeping a diamond or 20 cents or whatever it costs now in my pocket to call my sponsor in case I feel like I'm a drink is coming on well I don't trust myself I mean you guys might trust yourself but I don t trust myself to do that once I make up my mind to drink first of all I'm not gonna call any of you I mean if I make out my mind a drink the last people I'm going to call I'm going to be doing something else I'm NOT going to spend 20 cents on a telephone that's not the way my mind works if I get to the place where I'm willing to choose God is everything whether I believe it or not and I have to tell you I did not believe it but I had an alternative and it was given to me just like that so do you have a choice you can decide right now this minute that God is either everything or he's nothing God either is or he isn't and it's your choice it's not my choice for you this is what I was told you know it's not anybody else's choice for you and it doesn't make any difference what their choices because if you don't make the choice you're the only one that can act on a choice so you decide you get to pick what do you want you want your I go to this movie tonight you want to go to that movie tonight you want God is everything you want god is nothing you want got is or you want God isn't. Then there was this kind of long, involved discussion on the part of these two people that I was dealing with at the time about how something called self-will in their lives had messed them all up and it resulted in their questioning me or giving me some questions for my consideration and my immediate tendency was to answer all their questions yeah I've done that yeah that happened to me it and one of these guys said shut up we don't care we don' t care this is for you to consider the answers are easy you make the considerations about this and you're going to have to go do something about it so it doesn't make any difference what the answer is there's no right answer what are the questions the questions are simple have I had a successful life have I have I been an extreme example of self will run riot though I usually don't think so have I tried to run the whole show have I tried to arrange the lights the ballet the scenery and the player the rest of players in my own way. Have I done that? And how has it worked? And they insisted to me that you don't say it hasn't worked very well, you wonder. Look back on your life. How has it worked? How has the question, how has a work? How does it work? You either know or you don't know. Well, I knew and I was not mistaken by what I knew. I knew then they suggested to me that perhaps I would like to take a different attitude towards this, and that I had another alternative. And that was that either I was going to take my chances and continue to be the director of this big show, or I was gonna let this higher power that I hoped existed be the Director of the show. Hereafter in this drama of life, God is gonna be director next we decided we decided hereafter in this drama of life God is going to be the director do I want to decide that it's for my consideration it's four minutes not for you do I wanna decide that I didn't believe it they said you don't need to believe it I said I don't understand they said you don't mean to understand you have an alternative you either don't decide that and we remain friends and you go on and do whatever you're going to do or you do decide that and then we go do whatever you're gonna do I allowed is how I was willing to decide the God hereafter in this drama of my life was going to be my director they informed me that that was wonderful but that was only a beginning that it was meaningless if I didn't act on it that a decision like that with no action is not a decision at all it's a resolution and had I ever made any resolutions in my life well I'd made a couple of New Year's resolutions a couple of times a couple times I've resolved to go home and spend time with my kids and I resolved to pay my debts and I resolve to go the doctor and I resolved to get more exercise, and I resolved to never drink alone. I resolved to stop lying to my wife, and that had a lot of resolutions. I knew about resolutions, and they allowed us how if I made this a resolution that perhaps it would be just like all the other resolutions, and I knew immediately Alcoholics Anonymous would not work for me because without question this would be like all the other resolutions I'd ever made that I called decisions and one of these guys quoted for me there was no book at this place one of these guys quoted for may that our decision though a vital and crucial step could have little permanent effect unless it once followed by strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us therefore we started upon a personal inventory this was step four I thought oh shit here we go here's the hook here is the hook how do I do that today what does that have to do with today it has this to do with today. It has resentment as the number one offender to do with today, it has to do with today that a business that takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. It has to do with today we cannot fool ourselves about values. It has to do with the tenth step today, it has to do with watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. How can I watch for those things if I have never written inventory about them? I cannot, I I don't know what they are. I don' t know how the operation of my ego works in my life unless I've written inventory about it. It's the only place I find out. I can't find this out by sitting around in the vacuum of my own head. I mean, you know, I believed for a long period of time that the truth lie in the conversations I had with myself because I would never say anything that wasn't true. You know, if I said it and if I set it back and forth to myself then it must be true. I mean that was my standard for what is true because I was never saying anything that was not true. Well, it was another mistake. And there's something about the fourth step, about making a decision to turn my life and will over the care of God, asking God's direction, putting myself in this process which enables me to find the truth about the stock and trade with the help of God in a way I was never able to do it before. But my experience with this is only the stuff that I find in the fourth step that I'm able to deal with in the tenth step. So trying to watch for my own selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear and the subtle ways my ego has of doing these things, I cannot find them out unless I have already written inventory on it. Well then you may say what about all those ways you have learned to do this that you don't already know about? Well I say a business that takes no regular inventory usually goes broke and although i own a store and today i'm selling caviar in a in a target neighborhood and have to get rid of it because it's unsaleable that doesn't mean that i don't make the same mistake next year i mean next year it may be rice krispies and everybody's eating oat bran and if i believe that all i have to do is do this one time my ego picks right up on that And I spend the rest of my life dealing in the tenth step with the kinds of selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear and the way that operates that I learned about the first time I wrote Inventory and all the new things that my ego has discovered and ways to fool me since that time I never even see, so I don't like loving myself. If I can get away with that, I can justify it. I don' t have to look at you. I work the tenth stuff. I try to pay attention to what I'm doing. as these things crop up I try to deal with them I find in the 11th step in the morning that if I intend as part of my morning meditation to work the 10th step during the day I work the10th step during the night if I slough it off or don't intend to do it it doesn't happen to me accidentally I also find that if i sit down to constructively review my day in the evening in the eleventh step that if have not worked the 10 step during the day I don't remember what I did if i haven't carried the vision of god's will into my activities i don't remember what i did if i hadn't given my worth to that i don'T REMEMBER WHAT I DID so i work the tenth step but the tenth step is meaningless without working the fourth step so all the time every day i always know my days are numbered. What I have right now is I am living in this space between the last time I wrote inventory and the next time I write inventory. It's simple, it's simple. But I have to choose to do that. Will I consider the possibility that perhaps I can find the truth about the stock and trade by going through this process and depending and relying on God? well i'll either choose to do that or not and if i don't choose to do that then my third step becomes a resolution chances are i'll die drunk i didn't make the rule don't look at me i mean that's just the way it is you know alcoholism alcoholism is a fatal disease i didn' t make it up i don' t even like it but it's true it's true. After I have my inventory done, after I have written down and analyzed, and I know a lot of people don't like that word, but it too comes out of the book, found out in the third column of my inventory how this affects my self-esteem and my personal relations and my sex relations and my pocketbook and my security and my ambition. And after I have turned back to the list and asked myself, where have I been wrong and who have I harmed and what did I do to harm them? Then am I willing to go tell somebody these things that I never intended to see the light of day? Am I willing to tell somebody my whole life story? Can I choose to do that well maybe i'll choose not to do that maybe it'll be like the salad at the cafeteria line i don't like that i'm not going to eat it i don' t want it i'll have the cake instead well i can do that although there is something in the book that says we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient but i don''t need to pay any attention to that i mean what the hell do they know there's also something in this book that say if we skip this step that Almost invariably, the people that do that get drunk. Probably not me. I'm an exceptional individual. I mean, I'm smarter than most of the people I ever met today, eh? I read faster, I've read more, you know. I'm more refined, I're more sophisticated, I understand things better. I mean that's for those people, maybe not for me. Well, maybe. But maybe it is that I haven't discovered what I need to discover in the fourth step. Maybe I haven' t discovered the damage that I've done. Maybe I ha' n't discovered that my troubles are of my own making. Or maybe I've discovered that, but maybe I' ve changed my mind about the third step. Maybe I don' t want to do that after all. There's a movie out several years ago called Oliver. Some of you have seen it. And there was a song in there sung by a guy by the name of Ron Moody who I always thought was right on target. The name of the song was I'm Reviewing the Situation. And when I sit down and wonder whether or not I still want to abide by the decision I made in my first third step, I never do that without thinking about Ron Moody and his song about I'm reviewing the situation. I think I better think it out again. So if I do that, there's another very interesting line in the book and it says that those who don't do this have not discovered enough of honesty fearlessness and humility in the sense we mean it until we have told someone else all our life story well great so when i first come to a and i first go through this work i'll tell somebody all my life story that'll take care of it no problem i don't know about you guys but I can tell you that my life story today is a damn sight different than my life's story was the first time I wrote inventory and in trying to rest on that that I did then is not going to keep me going today my life story has changed there's something in the tenth step that says you know our next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness well if If my life story has not changed since the first time I wrote Inventory, I probably haven't grown much in understanding. I mean, I was still certifiably insane when I wrote inventory the first Time. And either this program works, in which case I know a hell of a lot more not only about that but about what's going on in my life now, or I don't, in which caso the program doesn't work, I shouldn't be here anyway. I think I'll go home. I'll see you guys later. there's another thing about that line about discovering something about honesty fearlessness and humility I'm going to need it when I humbly go to ask God to remove my defects of character I'm gonna need it if I don't want to spend three months at the seventh step wondering how I'm gonna get humble tells me how I am gonna get humbled I tell somebody all my life story I probably will have discovered enough of honesty, fearlessness, and humility in the sense they mean it. They say it in the since we mean it that's where I find it out okay so I get to choose whether or not I'm going to do this am I going to go through this? am I not going to? I tell you what the first time I went through this thing I didn't have any choice when I finished my inventory I had a list of people that I was going to fifth step with there were about six starting with the guy that showed me how to write inventory who I thought at the time was my sponsor, although at this point it was relatively informal. And I called him up and he couldn't see me. He was busy or there wasn't seven days down the road we could have an appointment. I don't know. Anyway, it didn't work. And I call everybody on the list and nobody could hear my fifth step. And I thought, what the hell is going on here? I mean, maybe I ought to go back and write inventory again. You know, maybe Iím not ready for this. And I sat around my office for about a half an hour and ruminated about this and got more and more nervous. And I knew I was not going to be able to do this. I knew i was going to have to take that someplace in fifth step. I went to a local AA club and i was walking up the front steps and some guy was walking out the front door and he said how are you and i said i'm fine and i don't remember our exact conversation but the upshot of it was we ended up over his house and i took a fifth step and by the way the guy's in the room today and I don't think I've seen him for probably 12 years or something like that 13 years uh and that's the way that happened for me I didn't have a real choice that I knew of in taking that and fifth stepping it on the other hand today I have a real choice you know it seems like today I had an awful lot more to lose then I didn'T have very much to lose I didn'T HAVE anything but today the idea of rocking that boat seems to me a whole different ball of wax and today for somebody who's been sober as long as i have and has pounded the big book as much as i have and has told it the way the hog ate the cabbage as much as i had you know and i'm obviously you know by now not a shrinking violet and and you know with me propounding this stuff for years for me to go to one of my trusted friends and read the same old crap that my ego is up to. My selfishness, my dishonesty, my lies, my cons, my little petty resentment, my fear. I have to choose that today. It doesn't happen automatically. I need to choose to change. I needto choose the spiritual life. I needtoto choose God in order to do that today I finish all that and I love the 6th step because it doesn't tell you to do anything it says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character the considerations in this step are really great are you ready? or not ready or not well I had reservations about whether I was ready but I got to pick am I ready or not maybe I misunderstand maybe I'm not ready maybe I misunderstood the stuff that I just read in my fifth step maybe I misunderstand the stuff I wrote in my fourth step Maybe I misunderstand what I said in my first step. Maybe I misunderstood, maybe I'm not really an alcoholic, maybe I'm NOT a real alcoholic. Maybe I just had a lot of problems coping with my life and I ended up here by accident and maybe that's not my problem. Am I ready? Am I ready to have God remove these defects of character? Some of these defects of character are fun. You didn't have fun doing your defects of character. I did. Some of These Defects Were Fun. If you don't think that, you know, some pipsqueaks smarten off to me when I'm drunk and crazy and absolutely fearless and I punch him out. If you don't thing that's fun, you're nuts. It's fun. It's fun. And if you don't think staying out all night getting drunk and raised in hell and ended up in jail and all that stuff is not fun, it's fun. I mean, sure, when you're sick and shaking and all that, that's not fun. But I mean I didn't drink for that. I drank for the fun and I had a lot of fun drinking. You know, I didn'T spend all those years in absolute despair and discontent and all that depression. I didn'T. I had A lot of fun with alcohol. Am I ready? am i entirely ready to have god remove these defects of character what am i gonna do if i don't have these things to protect me with i believe i'm protecting myself with this what about my anger you're here today you know you gotta give in to your anger you gotta get in touch with your anger shit i never had any problem getting in touch of my anger. I mean, that was the least of my problems. I loved it. I knew it and I could feel it, that adrenaline rush. Man, I knew about that. I'd be getting in touch with it. I know about my anger." Am I entirely ready to have God remove these things? Well, if I have gotten to a place where I have admitted to God and to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs, I am ready to have God remove these defects of character. And when I haven't gotten to that place and don't know the exact natureof my wrongs I'm not. And if I don'tknow the exactnatureofmywrongs I probably need to go back and rewritemyinventory or at least add something to it or make some more considerations. Or maybe I know the exact natureofmy wrongs and I decideI don't want to do this anyway. You know, this is a little bit too spooky for me. It's too open-ended. God only knows what he's going to do with me. And I just like to have a little bit more security about this thing, you know, give me a roadmap and I'll consider it. Well, maybe I changed my mind about the third step. Maybe I don't want to do this after all. I get to choose. I call my sponsor up and say, what should I do? Say, do whatever you want. No, you don't understand. What am I supposed to do here? What do you want to do? What did you decide to do? Yeah, but I'm not sure if I do. Well, you know, decide not to. You know, it's all the same to me. I'm not sure I can. I're not sure I can, you know, there's a line in the book that says those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this program. You know what the funny thing is about that? I insist that if I cannot do it that somehow another that makes it better I mean if I come to you and I say God I'd love to be able to do this but I can't do it doesn't that give me some leeway doesn't it give me space and slack doesn't that mitigate it doesn' t that make it easier doesn't have to kind of relieve me of having to die from this thing I die anyway It makes no difference whether I cannot or will not. If I do not, I'd die drunk. God, I don't like that responsibility. I don' t like the responsibility of making those choices, making those decisions, doing those actions, living this thing. Am I ready? I'm ready. You bet. Am I read today? Do I like it? not always but am I ready you bet now can I humbly ask God to remove these shortcomings these defects I can if I have discovered enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty in the sense they mean it in the fifth step I can trust then if I've done that that if I ask God to remove this I'm doing it humbly listen, I don't know about you but it's never been a big problem for me to get humble after taking the fourth and fifth step I don' t have to think about whether I'm humble or not that's the state I'm in and if I'm ready to have these things removed it's pretty tough for me to do that in some kind of position of false pride or arrogance so do I need to spend three months asking for humility no all that is is delaying the agony and delaying the opportunity to get on with it so I say the prayer I say the prayer it's a turning point for me I say the prayer looking backward over what I've done up until then I say the prayer asking for help to go out into the world and turning into the world and going out to try to straighten out the damage that I've done and try to live this spiritual life funny thing about this this is one of those prayers that I use daily I don't know why whether it's you know, I don' t think there's value in words but I think it has an indication for me that I am maintaining the attitude that I need to maintain in order to have this daily reprieve and they're wonderful prayers And the third step prayer is a very formal prayer, and the seventh step prayer is a Very Formal Prayer. And I use these prayers a lot. I have a real love affair with what is in the Big Book. These prayers are in the big book. That's not to say there aren't good other prayers. Don't get me wrong. But I really have a soft spot in my heart for these prayers. So I say these prayers allot. And I say the seventh-step prayer a lot because the world scares me. You know, people have a tendency to frighten me. And I have to deal with this a lot in the 10th step. I am a man who has not easily gotten over his tendency to be frightened. You know, it's really funny. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I weighed 265 pounds. And if I was drunk, I was fearless. I mean, I wasn't drunk. I was fearlessly. And nobody ever hurt me. And I got in a lot of trouble and a lot fistfights and a whole lot of brawls and I never ever got hurt. And if you had asked me if I was frightened, I would have said, You must be kidding. You must быть kidding. I wasn't afraid of anything. I mean, I would walk the streets at 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning on Skid Row in Denver, Colorado, and nobody ever bothered me, and I was not frightened of anything." I simply was not threatened. I didn't know what fear was. I have always been frightened. I was so frightened it was dangerous. I mean it's a lot more dangerous to come across somebody who is frightened than it is somebody who's not. So I have a tendency to have those kinds of things in my life today. And if I don't work the tenth step with respect to these things, and if I do not continue to say these prayers, and ask God for courage, and ask Him for the strength to go out and do what I need to do and to relieve me of these defects of character, you know, I can find myself in trouble. the next thing on my agenda is this wonderful eight step list that's another reason i don't like to take the seventh step is because if i can delay taking it i have to do the eighth step and i know someplace in the back of my head that if i don'T DO THE EIGHTH STEP I DON'T HAVE TO DO THE NINTH STEP so if i CAN DELAY THIS I'LL DELay IT how long can you delay the sixth step are you ready? I mean, how long can I delay that? How long can I delay if I'm ready? Do it. How long can I do it? Well, I can kid myself into a lot of things, but as I stand here right now, I can't get myself. Once I say the prayer asking God's direction, what have I got to lose? I mean, I bet my life on everything up to this point, what have I got to lose? And besides that, maybe I'll find that I make the eight-step and I don't owe any amends. Well, I don't want to burst anybody's balloon, but that never happened to me. So somebody told me once, your eight- step list is in your inventory. And in the big book it says we have the list, we made it when we took the inventory. Well this may come as a shock to some of you, but the instructions in writing Inventory and the Big Book suggest two or three different lists. One of those lists is a list of people that I have harmed. One of those list is a grudge list. I don't think they're the same list. My experience is that they're not the same. By the time I have written inventory in fifth step, I do indeed have a list with people that are harmed to whom I owe amends. This This is not about owing amends to people that I can't make amends too. This is about oing amends where I owe amends. Even the people that don't know where they are or are dead, or people to whom if I made amends I would cause more trouble than I've already caused, they all go on my list because the list is the people I owe them amends and am willing to make. What if I can? What if I know I can't make those amends? That's not the eighth step. The eighth step is to make a list of the people I will amend to. Make the list of the people that I have harmed and become willing to make amends to them. Okay, well, I make the list and then I think I'm not willing to make these amends. Well, I wonder how long I can delay this. If I am not willing to make the amends after having made the list, after asking God's help and direction in removing from me my defects of character, and after having admitted that I was ready to have these defects of characters removed, and after admitting in the fifth step the exact nature of my wrongs and writing them down on the fourth step and having made a decision to abandon myself utterly to the care of God as I understand Him and coming to believe in a power greater than myself and admitting that I cannot manage my life when I'm powerless over alcohol, I'll probably die drunk. Probably not alcoholic. So to make a long story short, I do it. I make the list and I say to myself, I'm willing. I have another choice. I got another choice either you're willing or you're not am I willing? I'm willy I say I'm willing again I'll say anything I'm not making amends I go to my sponsor I say I'm not making amends he says why I say I'm frightened he says go make your amends I say okay are you willing to make your amends I'm willing how do I know I'm willing that's how I know I'm willing when that's the front door that's what that's all I know I'm going to make amends that's my office door that's a front door that's why I'm not willing it sounds funny it sounds like a knock no it's not something I have to sit around and worry about in the middle of my head when I'm willing it sounds like this Sometimes it sounds like a bell. Sometimes it sounds like a busy signal. But that's what it sounds like. You can't miss it. You can not mistake willingness to make amends. You absolutely know in a minute if you're willing to make amens. Sometimes it even sounds like a pen scratching across a piece of paper. You cannot mistake willingness to make aments. There is no way. so I go do that I could talk to you for hours about stories about making amends I think anybody who has ever been through this thing could probably do the same I'm not unique I will tell you if you have never done it you have missed one of the most unbelievable experiences of your life alcoholic, Al-Anon whatever doesn't make any difference if you have never stepped through your defenses, trusted God in the middle of your fear and gone and done this, you have missed one of the all-time unbelievable experiences of your life. And that's just a shame. But if you haven't done it, do it. Do it. Then you have a whole bunch of promises. And you will this and you will that and we will this and we Will that and this will happen and that will happen and you will and et cetera, et cetera. You know, a lot of places these are kind of held up like the carrot and the donkey to motivate you to go through the work. Well, I tell you what, when I'm in the middle of writing my four-step inventory I forget about those blasted promises. I mean, I can't bring them to mind. You know it's like trying to remember the pain of last night when I am going out to have a beer today. I mean it doesn't have anything to do with anything. It is nice in the abstract but when I'm in the middle of trying to get honest with myself the promises are meaningless to me I don't think they're going to happen anyway you know, I mean, I'm taking this on faith because some other drunk told it to me I mean that's crazy but that's what I do so I've never spent very much time with the promises the only thing I've known about the promises is in retrospect there's one thing in that material right there in the big book that I think is extremely important, though. And that is that it talks about these promises being extravagant. And I thought anything that anybody told me in AA when I first got here was extravagent. And most of the things that happen to me today, I believe, are extravagante. And if you don't think from my viewpoint that my standing here this evening in this little town, in this Baptist camp in Kentucky is extravagant, I'll throw in with you. I mean, this is extravagant for me. How did I get here? How was I sober all this time? This is extravadant. This is an extravagent promise. It didn't even become extravagance or a reality until I realized that it had already taken place. In the beginning, looking at it from the other side, it's so extravagant as to be unbelievable. Now it is so extravagant as to be magnificent, and it is. It says that these promises though extravagent will always materialize if we work for them. There is a four letter word for you. Is that word allowable here? I think it is If we work for them and that thought brings us to step 10 and step 10 is about working it's about working i don't like that you know i've had the idea all my life that the only things that were important were the things that i immediately could grasp immediately figure out immediately see immediately see the juxtaposition immediately see the way two and two is four immediately grasp that you now that was okay with me but But to have to figure something out over a long period, I don't want to do that. To have to learn to do something, I Don't Want to Do That. I want to be able to sit down and play the piano. I don' t want to study how to do it for ten years. I want To Be Able To Know How To Read The First Time I Pick Up A Book. I Don' T Want To Learn How To Do It. I Don'T Want To Learn How To Spell. I Don´T Want To Learning How To Pray. I Don''t Want ToLearn HowTo Get Out Of Self-Will. I Don°T WantToLearn Spiritual Skills. I don't want to learn how to do this. I want it now. Well, tough. I didn't get here by having a daiquiri, coming in with a headache in the morning and deciding I didn'T ever want to drink anymore. You know, I drank a lot of alcohol for a long time and I didn' t get well overnight. And unfortunately, you know, it takes me a long time to learn to do most of the things I did. To learn to walk, it took me some period of time. And these spiritual skills I don't learn overnight. I don' t learn them overnight. So watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear and as these crop up deal with them. Now I have some idea what they are talking about. I wrote a fourth step. I did a fifth step. I made an eight step list. I went out and made nine step amends. By now I know something about the way I do this. I know some of the ways I do selfishness I know some of the ways I do retaliation I know how I do jealousy I know how I do envy see I know how I retaliate to you I know how I cut you off I know how I do fear I know what I do with people of the opposite sex I know what I do with people of the opposite sex or the same sex I mean I know what I do with this? So I can watch for it. And as these things crop up, did you ever see anybody crop a photograph? You know, they cut it off, side, bottom, top, and crop it. As these things crop up in my life, as I'm trying to focus on God and where I'm going and try to keep track of God is God, I'm the alcoholic, and these things start cropping up in my life? If I'm paying attention, if I'm paying attention I can spot them and if I can stop them I can do something about them immediately. I can ask God to remove them. If I've harmed somebody I can discuss them with somebody else. I can do that and if I will do that, if I choose to do that I have the power to do that. There's a line in that step that says we have entered the world of the Spirit. Well, you know, I don't know about you, but I always believed that I would know immediately what the world of the Spirit felt like, having had so much experience with it. That was another mistake I made. I just assumed because I didn't feel like I was in the world the Spirit that I wasn't in the world to do all this stuff. So, it took me a long time to be willing to risk and to be willing to believe that perhaps the people who wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous knew something about this that I did not know. Is it possible? Is it possible that a hundred alcoholics who were writing this asinine book in 1938 and 1939 know something that I don't know? Is it possible that they know something about entering the world of the spirit as a result of working the first nine steps that I don't know and is it possible that doesn't have anything to do with how it feels and I don't know what it feels like and maybe it doesn't feel any different than I felt before I was in it. Maybe it doesn' t have anything to do without. Maybe its something entirely different. Well, my experience is that it doesn''t have anything to do about it, with how I feel about it. I may like it, I may not like it. It may feel good, it may feel bad. It doesn'' t make any difference. If I go through the first nine steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I have entered the world of the Spirit. And if I have entered the world with the Spirit, I have some responsibility. Some responsibility. That's not an unknown term in Alcoholics Anonymous. Responsibility. It's a term I wish they wouldn't use in Alcoholic Anonymous, but it's not unknown. I don't like responsibility. I don' t like to be responsible for having entered the world without the Spirit That conjures up all kinds of things that I've got to do. for one it conjures up getting up this morning and taking a position immediately when I wake up that either I'm an alcoholic or I'm not and God is either God or he's not by going into my day the way the directions are in the 11th step and that's some kind of responsibility I don't like that responsibility the step says our next function is to grow How am I going to grow in understanding and effectiveness? Well, the only way I know how to do that is to continue to practice the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and to try to watch for these things and as they crop up, ask God at once to remove them. And to try to carry the vision of God's will into all of my activities and try to live this spiritual life. God, would I love to be able to do this thing in my head. God, would I like to be able to make a third step decision and have it laid on me. Would I love to be the one who's able to say okay, I'm ready to write inventory and have It up here. God, would I love somebody out there to fix me so I don't have to take responsibility so I don't have to take the power I get from God. God, as I understand Him and use it to search for God. If spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it. And every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. I am no longer running the show, thy will not mine be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. If we can exercise our willpower along these lines, all we wish it is the proper use of the will. Well, you know, I used to believe that my problem was I didn't have any willpower. And certainly with respect to alcohol, the last years of my drinking, I didn' t have any willpower, but if I have chosen the spiritual path called Alcoholics Anonymous, I have got to decide whether or not they're talking about me or talking about somebody else. This is not only the bright spot in my life, this has been the brightness of my life. This is my life! This is a way of life for me! I made that choice a long time ago and I have reconsidered it many times and I reconsider it today on a regular basis but the steps are alive for me today. Alcoholics Anonymous is alive for me today, and I really believe this thing that I never ever have gotten an opportunity to indulge myself in the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous to the degree I indulged myself in drinking.