Third Step Without a Fourth Step Is Just Spiritual Constipation – Carrie

Hi, I'm Carrie. I'm an alcoholic. Okay, so I'm going to leave my phone here because apparently I ramble and I don't want to take you all hostage to keep an eye on the time. So it's here. If it pings, I'm ignoring it, but I just felt like it was important that I value your time as much as my own. So I hope you all had a good rest and I had a nice morning and ready to get in here and talk about some pretty intensive spiritual concepts. I know last night we talked a lot about the first step and we talked about it in terms of alcohol, but most of all we talked about it in terms of ourselves. And I was in conversation with people and we were talking about it saying that recognizing my relationship with alcohol is my ticket to victory. And recognizing my relationship with myself, with you and my higher power is my ticket to freedom. So when we talk about this stuff, we're going to talk a lot about the spiritual condition. We're going to talk a lot about how that is addressed in Alcoholics Anonymous. And we're going to talk a lot about what sanity looks like in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if you have any questions... If there's anything I'm talking about and you're like, I'm not entirely understanding or can you elaborate? Pipe up man. Let me know because this is your weekend and I'm here to be of service to you. One of the things that was interesting, one of the conversations I had was about personal responsibility and outcomes. When I talk about it's our responsibility once we recognize our condition to show up and do some work about it, that's absolutely true. But the result... Or what that looks like or the outcome of that is in God's hands. And that's really what we're going to get into in terms of 6 and 7, 8, 9 and 10, 11 and 12. You know, because I don't know what my spiritual awakening or my spiritual experience looks like. My book says it's a rearrangement of essentially my personality, a rearrangement of my values, a rearrangement of my internal condition. But how that shows up in our life, that's an individual thing. And that outcome... The person I thought I was going to be is not going to be the person I thought I was going to be. The person I thought I was going to be is not going to be the person I thought I was going to be. And the person I have become are two very different things. And my book tells me, and it says it in working with others, and it talks about it again in A Vision for You. It says that often we underestimate the power of God. And that what my ideas about what being recovered looks like and what it really is are often two very different things. That God often has much more compassion and love for me than I could ever have for myself. So when I think about this and I think about saying, you know, I came here for my drinking and I stayed for a multitude of other reasons. You know, it's that multitude of other reasons that is like the variable for every single one of us. So some of us come here and we have this incredible spiritual experience. And God uses us in ways. And uses Mr. Lorenz. And has him with people all over the world. You know, telling everybody about his mistakes in recovery. Right? That's how God uses him. And in multiple other ways. Some of us, God uses us, you know, in our districts. Some of us, God uses us in the Salvation Army pulling drunks out of the gutters. Sometimes God uses us, you know, and how that shows up or what our service looks like in our Cosmonauts is going to be different for you. Sometimes it's going to be different for each one of us. There's a book. And again, it's non-conference approved. But it's called The Prayer of Jabez. And the prayer is, give me more service for you, Lord. The Prayer of what? Jabez. Oh, yeah. And again, non-conference approved. But that book really helped me to understand. It's like, give me more ministry. Give me more service. Instead of saying to God, give me this. So that I can be happy. Instead, help me to serve you. And by service, I am happy. And fulfilled. I'm just trying to be funny. Does any prayer conference approve? True. I'm going to use that the next time somebody gives me crap about that. File that away. I will give you credit the first ten times and then it's mine. But you're right. So, you know, what I really want to say is, what I really wanted to address this morning, and what I think is on the agenda, is to talk about that spiritual malady. And then talk about how we address it. Why do you think the fourth step, and we were talking about this too, is that our fourth step, people have come up to me and said, Carrie, when do I start making my list of resentments? Do I start when I started drinking? And I said, no, when you started being an ass. That's true. Our inventory is earned about our drinking. Or about who we are. And how we show up. How suffering we are. How selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, fear show up in our relationships, in our lives. You know, we have a resentment, we have a fear, and we have a conduct inventory for a reason. Because it's about how I feel and behave, how I think, and how those things translate into my relationships. You know, so, we don't write inventory on our drinking. We don't write inventory. We don't keep a tally. That's not an inventory that we take. The inventory that we take is on us. So that tells me that my real problem isn't the bottle. My real problem is me. So, I was taught that I am my problem, you're my solution. Meaning that I'm the problem, and the solution to my problem is being of service to you. So, when we're talking about this, when we're talking about this spiritual matter, there's an argument. Now, I got into a heated debate, that's the word I'm using, with a wonderful man from California, who told me that this is only a two-fold disease. And that the spiritual matter doesn't exist, because once you stop drinking, you stop being a jerk. I was well behaved. I would point out that he hadn't had a drink in so many 37 years, and he was still a jerk. Not the kid. No, actually he had some really good points. And so, this is a bone of contention. Now, the book says that we have a malady. It talks about the devilments. It talks about selfishness. It talks about resentment. It talks about fear. It talks about dishonesty. It talks about being driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, and self-pity. So, whatever label you want to put on that, that's fine. Because we get into those debates. And we're the great debating society. We all recover from alcoholism, right? Our lives are saved, and we're great, so we're going to argue as to what Bill meant when he said be and thou are the big book. We're going to lawyer it up, which is fine. Except we're missing the point. And the point is that there's spiritual freedom from doing this work. And it starts out as work, and it starts out as I have to, and it gets to be I get to, and now it's I want to, and I feel incredibly privileged to. You know? And this is how this happens, is that what seems like an insurmountable thing at the very beginning, the first time I wrote Inventory, I thought I was going to find out that I was evil. You know? I really did. I believed that when I wrote Inventory and I really looked at myself, that I was not going to like what I saw. I didn't. But I didn't feel evil. And I didn't find out that secretly I was an ax murderer or any of those things. What I found out was that I was a person who was driven by a lot of fear, who made some really bad decisions, and this fear ruled my life. Now, again, 90% of what you hear is really me telling you what somebody else taught me because I'm not that smart. I'll tell you I'm not smart, but the truth is I'm not. Fear and faith can exist at the same time. They can. Because that's how we walk through fear, is with faith. But I can't worship fear. And worship God. And trust God. That can't exist. Because I hear people tell me all the time, they're like, well, I've heard people tell me, and they're like, I have no fears. I have completely and utterly gotten to the spiritual point where I'm never afraid of anything. And I think that's awesome for you, man. But I think you just call it something else. You know? Fear... Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. I love it. Yeah. I think everybody says, like, I have conquered fear. I'm like, wonderful. You know what? Like, the M.C., the Buddha, Muhammad... I don't know. They conquered it too, right? That's why they, you know... You know, we create these ideas, we create these labels that confuse us. You know, because, and as I was telling you about the doctor's opinion, when we said that we create these stories in order to rationalize or justify where we are, to explain ourselves to ourselves, and then they become our reality. So, when we're talking about this stuff, when we're talking about these concepts of fear, you can have fear and have faith. You can. I'm afraid all the time. I'm afraid to come in here. I am socially awkward and incredibly shy. I am so shy it's ridiculous. I twitch in a corner most of the time. And then I sit down and read a big book and another person shows up and it has nothing to do with me. But getting here, I'm thinking, like, well, what if I'm stupid the whole weekend? What if I don't have anything interesting to say? What if I say the F word too many times? What if? What if? What if? And then I sit here and I go away. And God takes over, mostly. And it is what it is. So we're always afraid. And it's okay that we are. And if you weren't afraid, you wouldn't be alive. God gave us instincts. And the 12 and 12. Some people who are big book people despise the 12 and 12. I don't. I did for a very long time. Until I read it. After I read it. I used to do that. I'd be like, I hate the 12 and 12. I just need my big book. Right? And then I somehow, like, it happened to be, I don't know how it happened, but I ended up going to this 12 and 12 meeting in my town. And there was a rehab that was going there and I was fishing. You know, we go to meetings to fish. Right? I go to meetings to carry a message. Right? So I was fishing at this meeting and it happened to be a 12 and 12 meeting. And I hadn't read the 12 and 12 because I resented it. For a very long time. Only an alcoholic would resent a book. What does fishing mean? When I'm fishing it means that I am carrying a message looking for sponsees. Fishing. I'm fishing. Casting out. We call it trolling. Trolling. You guys call it trolling. Trolling for drugs. On the fly. I'm fishing. So I used to go to this meeting. It was a 12 and 12 meeting. And I used to go there to fish. And I was like, I'll go show them that they're looking at the wrong book. Like, that was my intention. To go there and inform those newcomers that they're looking at the wrong book. And in the process of sitting in that meeting, I was hearing stuff. And I was like, damn. That makes sense. And then I realized, and then when I look back and I said, oh, Bill wrote this at this point in time in his life. And I said, oh, Bill wrote this at this point in time in his sobriety. And is it possible that these are his reflections on his experience with the steps and not the instructions? And maybe if I actually worked the steps and then read the 12 and 12, it would make sense to me instead of reading the 12 and 12 and thinking about the steps. There's a difference. So when I first got introduced to the 12 and 12, I read the 12 and 12 and thought about the steps. And my big book was a coaster. When you read the big book, you read the 12 and 12 and go, yeah. So there's actually a thing in there. And he talks about instincts run wild, meaning that the things that we call character defects are not actually defects of character. What they are is God-given instincts that we misuse. So when we look at this and we look at this inventory and we're looking at the damaged and unsaleable goods, when we're looking at the things that are blocking me off from my usefulness to God and my fellows, and I say, well, you know, I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm not going to be able to do this. This thing might be useful in this place, but it's not here. A certain, and I'll give you an example. I grew up in an extremely abusive household and very violent. So hiding under tables and in closets was very, very useful to me as a child. But I found in early recovery that when people would get mad, I would have the urge to run. And I would find myself like hiding from angry people. Now, the problem is, is I had a lot of angry people in my life. So I was forever in a closet or a bathroom or under a table, you know, metaphorically under the table, but mostly in the closet or the bathroom. And what happened was, is I never spoke to people and told them how I felt. I didn't communicate. You got angry. I ran away. And then I just didn't ever talk to you again. Or I avoided you. Or I never talked about what was going on. I never addressed it. I never trusted you. And all I did was protect myself. As a child. Hiding in a closet when there's a drunken brawl in your living room and, you know, and silverware and, you know, China are flying, that's a smart move. A 25-year-old who's hiding in a closet because somebody's mad at her, that's not an effective move anymore. So when we're looking at this stuff and we say, this belief system worked then, the question I want you to ask yourself is, is it working now? Is it helping you to be more of what you want to be, which is to live as if you're a child of God? Or is it keeping you from being effective in your life? If it's keeping you from being effective, this is what we're talking about, the spirituality of subtraction. I thought the spirituality of subtraction, when I used to hear that, I used to think it was God was going to take stuff away from me. And we actually were talking about that yesterday, about how, like, I had this belief system that if I liked stuff, that God would take it away from me. And I thought, well, I'm going to do it. I like stuff that God is going to take it away. So my thing was to pretend like I didn't like anything. I thought all attachments were bad. You know, because you say, well, you know, that's, you go to your sponsor and you say, I'm having a problem with this. Usually when I'm having a problem with this, it's because I haven't written inventory, nor taken it into prayer, nor... So I'm just presenting you with my broken toy, saying, fix it, without actually taking any action to address the broken toy. So I would go to my sponsor and I would present this. And the response I would get was, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, you have an attachment to that. And I'd be like, gosh, I guess. All right, I have an attachment. Is that bad? And I would get, it's not good or it's bad. It is. Is that attachment serving you? Or is it preventing you from being useful to God and your fellows? And that's the real question here. Attachments aren't bad. The problem is, is when my attachments are inflexible. I love my children. I would lay down my life for them. I don't know who I would be if I didn't have them. I love my husband. One of the things we're going to talk about and people in my life know is I actually went through a very, very difficult time in the past five years in my marriage. And I was separated for a year. And my husband and I just got back together at the end of last August and September. And we're still rebuilding our relationship. And one of the biggest resentments I had and one of the things I had to work hardest on is he did something. He did it. It sucked. It was a pretty icky thing to do. And I was more angry at him not for the action he took but for the fact that he took my family away. Because I couldn't forgive him because it was an icky thing he did in my mind. And I was almost like it was like I was either going to forgive or I was going to forgive. I was going to forgive. I was going to forgive. And forgive and have my family which is what I wanted. Or I was going to be angry or not forgive and I was not going to have my family. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to not forgive because I still wanted to be in the right. And I wanted my family and I couldn't have them. Something had to give. And for me not forgiving was more worth than forgiving. And it happened. And it didn't happen because I did it. It happened because God did it. God showed me that I was working so hard at keeping the not forgiveness out of my heart, the unforgiveness out of my heart. That forgiving was much easier than keeping him out here. It wasn't a really hard thing to do because what happened was a very, very difficult thing for me to go through. But it was that attachment to the not forgiveness. I needed to be in this place of you did something really bad to me. And therefore in my mind. And therefore I was the attachment to that kept me in the unforgiveness. And the anger that he took my family away. And what I came to terms with wasn't that he took my family away. It was that I was keeping my family apart for my lack of forgiveness. But the attachments, the things that we have in our lives are not bad. But they need to be forgiven. But they need to be flexible. And when they're not working, we need to be willing to replace them with something that does. So the not forgiveness worked for a while because it protected me. The unforgiveness works because I have my family the way that I want it to be. And I feel whole and complete. My life is beautiful. It's a matter of being flexible with these things. And this is really what the third step is all about. You know, is turning our world and our life over the care of a power greater than ourselves. Which is a guiding set of principles. So, when we talk about this spiritual malady. We talk about why we have to do this work. There's a lot of stuff in this book that really, really touches on it. You know, we talked about the bedevilments. Who here knows what the bedevilments are? Okay. The bedevilments are found on page 52. And basically it's a description of untreated alcoholism. And real quickly we'll run through them. And this is something, this is like, you know what we said? I said the big book is full of tests. That like, you can evaluate and say, you know, is this my current experience or where is this showing up in my life? And we can take this stuff and say, you know, what do I, where can I go deeper? So on page 52 it asks us some questions. It says we're having trouble with our personal relationships. Question one. Am I? I can't control my emotional nature. Am I? I'm prey to misery and depression. I can't make a living. That doesn't mean money, guys. It means having the kind of life that you want to have. Is my life, am I showing up and is what's going on in my life the kind of life that I want to be living? You know, basically am I living in my values? You know, that's what, when we write all those ideals and we write the, you know, the fourth column of our fear inventory. When we write what could we have done differently on our conduct inventory. We're creating an ideal of value, a set of values saying this is what was happening in my life and how I showed up and what didn't work for me. And this is what I would like to be able to bring to the table. Asking God to help us to be able to make, take these ideals. Take these ideas which are in our head and translate them into our experiences which comes out between you and I. Right? So, that question, am I, you know, you know, it says I can't make a living. And what I want you to ask yourself is am I living a life that's based on the values and the ideals that I have been shown through inventory? We have feelings of uselessness. You ever, ever, ever get to think you're helping somebody and it turns out you make it worse? Yeah. So, it's not just that I am useless. I mean, God, we're useful all the time. But I feel like, you know, when I'm putting my hands in it, I'm creating chaos rather than harmony. Right? And it says we're full of fear. That's pretty self-explanatory. We're unhappy. We can't seem to be of real help to other people. Meaning that the help that I show up with, you know, like I show up with a hammer when I need a screwdriver. I show up with a screwdriver when I need a jackhammer. Right? So, I'm showing up. But what I show up with isn't creating the spiritual healing that needs to be happening in my life. So, this is a self-diagnostic tool and this shows us, are there any given day, could I be in one or more aspects of this? Yeah. You know, this isn't an all or nothing, oh, you're in the bedouinments and therefore you're bad. This is a, where am I at? What's really going on in my spiritual life? Because this is a description of untreated alcoholism. Notice it doesn't say anything about drinking. You know, the book told us to leave aside our drink problem several pages ago. It says, putting aside the drink problem, we're going to look at the real reasons why we are the way we are. And what I really love about this paragraph and this page says, it starts out and it talks about rockets to the moon. And of course we giggle. We're like, wow, man. You know, at this point they're selling trips to the moon, to space as like, I'm a multi-billionaire. I want a vacation. I'm going to go to space. So, we look at it and we say, that's really funny. But I think about this and it's something that kind of resonates with me. Who here, I don't know. Who here is old enough to remember what it's like to not have a cell phone? Okay, right. So we have like no reception up in here, right? We got Wi-Fi like in three spots. And we're all wandering around with our phone going, do you got Wi-Fi? There was a time when it was like, eh, don't leave a message on my answering machine. Right? So we acclimate to new ideas. That work. I mean, my life is significantly better because I have access to a cell phone. In fact, we were Googling Emmet Fox this morning. You know? I mean, like my life is better because I have access to this. Yes, it is an incredibly useful tool. So, I mean, when I get this new idea, this new thing, this new gadget, which allows me to be more effective and useful in my life, I grab onto it. Right? We don't know, who even has a GPS anymore? Exactly. We have phones. Oh, you do a couple. But most of the time we don't have a GPS. Most of the time, there's an app for that. Right? You know? And it used to be, when I first started doing this talk, or this specific talk, it was, who has a map in their car? You know? And then everybody's like, no, I have GPS. And now I'm like, we don't even have GPS anymore. We don't even have a map anymore. We just have our phones. Right? So when something is new and useful to us, we embrace it. Technologically. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. We embrace it. Technologically. But, you know, when an idea or a concept or an attachment or letting go of something or changing ourselves on an intrinsic level is new and useful to us, we get really, mm-mm. Don't mess with that. Because that's the attachment. That's the identity that's invested in that specific belief system. Right? So Bill says, hey, let's look at your experience. Right? Bill's gonna, Bill does that over and over again. He says, look, this is an idea. It's interesting. Take a look at it. You don't like it? Let's go look at it and see how things are working out for you without that idea, without that concept. How's that going for you? Not so good? You might want to think about it. And Bill does this throughout the book. And I really like that because he's not telling us. He's not saying, you should. He's saying, okay. You don't want to do that? Bop till you drop. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. You don't want to do that? Bop till you drop. It's okay. Because alcohol and alcoholism will beat you into a state of reasonableness. It absolutely will. And what's more humbling and what's harder for most of us is when alcoholism beats us into a state of reasonableness without a drink in our body. Because then I can't externalize and say, it's the booze that makes me do the stupid stuff I do. Instead it's, I do stupid stuff. And it's my, it's me. It's that hole in the soul. It's me. It's that sucking void that is inside of me that has me do the stupid stuff that I do. So we look at this, and we say, is this our experience? This is a great tool for looking at where we are spiritually, or what we need to work on. Typically, when I have somebody who has already been through the work, come to me and wants to do some work with me, this is the first thing I have them do before I even. I ask them those three questions. Do you have cravings? What happens when you start drinking? how much you drink. When you're not drinking, are you okay? Are you irritable, restless, and discontent? When you're controlling your drinking, do you enjoy it? When you're not controlling your drinking, do bad things happen? Once you start, can you stop? I ask these simple questions. Very simple. Control and enjoy, enjoy and control. Once they answer those questions to our satisfaction, which is a five-minute conversation, I put them right here. Because this is the stuck-on-the-dash stuff. This is the unmanageability. And this is how agnosticisms show up in our lives. It doesn't show up in a bottle anymore. It shows up in our wallet. It shows up in our relationships. It shows up in our belief system. So this is where we get to take a look at it. And this really helps us, who may be abstinent from alcohol, to be able to get in touch with that desperateness in the first step. Because the first step requires desperation. Now, alcohol produces that very nicely. So does alcoholism. The problem with us is we think our alcoholism is everybody else's problem and isn't ours. So part of what we need to do in terms of a first step with somebody who has some experience with the steps is get them in touch with how alcoholism and unmanageability is showing up in their lives. And this is a good place to do it. Who here has done a second step proposition? Awesome! Fresh meat! Okay. Now, in We Agnostics, on the very next page, Bill is so smart. Like I told you, like, grammar aside, Bill is brilliant in the way that he presents arguments, the way he presents ideas and concepts. So he starts out saying, okay, rockets to the moon, isn't that crazy? But on the other hand, we think that it's possible that might happen. And then he says, well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to have to do it. And then he goes, well, and by the way, if you're not going to be open-minded about that, let's look at how not being open-minded has been working out for you. And then he finishes it up and says that we saw other people solve their problems by a simple reliance on the spirit of the universe. We had to stop down on the power of God. Our ideas didn't work. God's ideas did. That, by the way, is the main idea of this book. And if you want, there's a handful of places where if you said this is the sentence or a main idea or, again, non-conference-approved. He said that the main thesis of Alcoholics Anonymous is that we, alcoholics, are not God. That makes sense, because it actually tells us that over and over again in our book. By the way, you're not God. Stop playing it. Get out of the way, right? Right? But here it says that our ideas didn't work, that God's idea did. So it goes on to the next page and it says, by the way, just in case you're not convinced of that, in the very middle, of page 53, it says, And that's a really, really salient point. Because we can't, you know, a middle-of-the-road solution doesn't work for us. You know, our book said over and over again, die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis. Die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis. These are not easier alternatives. Unfortunately, they're the only alternatives that we have. And it says, point blank, that there is no middle-of-the-road solution. Right? We're either all in or we're all out. So then when we come here, we say, God either is or he isn't. And here's the deal. You can work the steps and believe that there is no God. Absolutely. Absolutely. You can. And you can have a spiritual experience. You're not going to call it that. But you can do that. You can work the steps and believe that there is a God. But when you're sitting on the fence, that's when you have some trouble. So the real question here that we ask ourselves is, how is that showing up for us in our lives? And a very simple exercise that we can do is say, where am I sitting on that fence? Where am I saying God exists in my relationship with alcohol, but he doesn't exist in my marriage? God exists in my marriage, but he doesn't exist in my relationship with my children. The question is not to ask ourselves where God exists, but where God doesn't. Where is God, or where are we preventing God or spiritual experiences, or the spirit of the universe, whatever you want to call it, where are we preventing that from showing up in our lives? And write it down. So if you think about it, it's a very simple, simple prospect, or very simple thing with the second step proposition, is we sit there and say, what a good way to do it. And have you guys ever heard of something called the tornado exercise? I love it. Okay. So, you know in the ninth step, when it talks about the guy who comes out of the cyclone cellar and says, oh, ain't it grand, the wind stopped blowing, right? Okay. So, what I was taught to do with this second step proposition is to do a tornado exercise, and kind of start at ground zero, meaning the people who are closest to me and move out, and take a look at my relationships. What's my relationships with my sponsees like? What's my relationship with my sponsor like? What's my relationship with my home group like? Am I making deacon? Do I go with them and say, you know, AA would be better if I run it? I have. What's my marriage like? What's my relationship with my brothers and sisters like? What's my relationship with my closest friends? What's my relationship with my coworkers? Let's take a look at that. Let's look at those relationships. If you can kind of take, and literally do the spiral out. So, we kind of do this and say, let's spiral out. We're at ground zero. Here we are, right? And we spiral out and look at these relationships and say, where are people on this grid? So, maybe my husband and children are here, right? Work is over here. My parents are over there, right? And I say, what's my relationship with my family? And they say, what's my relationship like with them? How is that? How am I showing up there? Are my great-grandchildren interfered with? Is there static in these? And you don't know. You don't get that thing in the middle of your stomach, right? You don't get that minute, that thing. Like, think of somebody that you have had conflict with in the past month. Did your stomach just get a little droppy? All right, see? Your gut will tell you. We have a bite of success. Your gut's going to tell you. That's what I need to look at. So, we do this tornado exercise. We take the names, right? And we'll say, what areas are that? So, this isn't a four-set inventory. This is sort of a life inventory. And say, okay, if I do this tornado exercise, and most of the relationships that I get that little bit of a gut drop with are in my home, then on my second step proposition, I put, home. I put work, finances, romances, whatever that is. And then what we do is we take the other side of it. So, you guys tell me, what areas do you struggle with? What areas do you struggle with letting God into or allowing spiritual principles to pervade? Kids. Okay. Finances. Okay. So, we'll put here, we'll say, finances, we'll put money, kids. So, we ask for some money. We'll say, what are you afraid of? What fear prevents you from allowing or trusting God? Because remember, I said that faith and fear can exist at the same time, but I cannot worship them both. So, if I'm in here and there's no God in this area, then fear is my God. So, what fear is attached to money? Not making ends meet. Okay. So, what's the real fear? I'm not making ends meet. What's the real fear? What will I have to do? What's going to happen after if I don't make ends meet? Which is? Leave your home. Home. What else? What happens if you leave your home? You don't make ends meet. What are you going to have to do? Rewind other people. Ask for help. And what happens if you ask for help? What will people think of you? You'll think. Thank you. Those are my fears. That's why God can't come in. Kids, what are your fears? Don't screw up. Ah. Why? Why? Because they're making bad choices. Why? Because I screw up. Thank you. No! But now. You're going to say things we're going to think I'm weak and stupid, right? I failed, and I'm going to fail. Yeah. Yeah. That's all about me. That's judgment. Yeah. And this tells me, and this little second step proposition shows me one of my rare reliances. What? You don't believe me. I said that we're all spiritual mirrors. And that's absolutely true. And that's absolutely 100% true. For good and for bad. Look. We can all go off in caves and have spiritual experiences with ourselves. I mean, people do that all the time. That's easy. You give me some prayer beads and like, you know, a cool little monk's outfit and some rites and gruel and I don't have to deal with anybody and I get to pray and meditate all the time and do whatever I want. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I can pray and meditate all the time and do whatever it is that I do in there. I'm all good. I can be alone. My problem is being with you because you reflect back to me my insecurities. You reflect back to me my fears. You reflect back to me my今日sism. You reflect back to me. And the truth is, is this, is you reflect back to me what I'm truly afraid of myself. So here's the deal is I have these ideas about me. fears that might be true. We came down to it. I feel weak, ineffectual, I'll be judged, people will have power over me. I can't trust. So what it comes down to is the belief or a fear that there's something broken inside of me or that if I have to ask for help, that there's something wrong with me. Now, here's the problem is I go through my life editing all the time looking for you to confirm or deny this deep down belief that I have about myself. So I walk around with these beliefs and I don't tell you I have them. I tell you I'm a shiny, happy person and here's my big book and I'm awesome and God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, right? Meanwhile, deep down inside, what I'm really saying is please don't notice that I'm really effed up, right? So I walk around with this and I'm waiting. I'm totally afraid. I'm waiting for the confirmation that the belief or the agreements that I made with myself about myself are true. So when I'm in my spiritual cave, it's real easy for me to be spiritual because you ain't here telling me that I'm not. But when I'm not in my spiritual cave and I'm walking around and I'm getting pissed off at you and I'm reacting to you and I'm envious of you and you're prettier than me, you're thinner than me, your hair is nicer than mine and I'm sitting here comparing my insides with your outsides. What I'm really doing is I'm confirming these nebulous belief systems that I have in myself that prevent me from relying on God. There's a line in our book. It says that we are children of God. We are not servile or scraping. We stand on our feet. We bow before no one. We crawl before no one. Why does it say that we are children of God? It's right in the book. It's in the ninth step. I'll go right, I'll tell you the page. It says that we are children of God. We stand on our feet. We crawl before no one. Are you whispering? Oh, okay. Yeah, thank you, page 88. I have a teacher's edition, which makes it very hard for me to find anything. Yes. So the idea here is that we walk through our life as children of God. That's part of what we need to bring to the table. The issue is that there are these belief systems that are operating inside of me, these fears, these agnosticisms that prevent me from living as if that is true. Now, these old dogs, they've been beaten the hell out of. I'll come with this insurmountable problem. Again, if I have an insurmountable problem, it's just because I've made up a story that told me that this problem's insurmountable. I come and I lay it at the feet. I think I got one. I'm going to stump that bastard. I'm going to come. I'm going to stump that bastard. I'm going to come and I'm going to stump that bastard. up with this incredibly difficult thing and lay it at their feet. And they just look at me and they say, okay. And I'm like, well, aren't you going to fix it? And they're like, no. That's not my job. That's God's job. And I'm waiting for the answer. And they were just like, write the inventory, show up, make the amends. I'm like, no, no, no. This is a very difficult problem. It's very complex. You don't understand. Just writing inventory is not going to fix this problem. And they say, well, I didn't tell you to just write inventory. I told you to write inventory. I told you to fist deck it. I told you to go to God with it. I told you to make the amends. That's not going to fix it. Because this problem is way more complicated than that process. And they laugh. And then I do what they tell me to do after I squabble for a bit. And I run the show until the wheels fall off and I'm broken. And then I come and I finally give in. And I do this stupid inventory. And I do the stupid fist deck. And I do the stupid amends. And the problem's gone away. Now, these old dogs know this. They know this from their experience because they've been doing this so long. They do it in their sleep. For somebody like me, I think I'm new and unique. I think I'm a new brand of alcoholism. You know? I got cancer. I got heriism. You know? So, you know, sometimes I need a little bit of something to kind of wake my little hiney up to say, hey, you know, this isn't new and unique, man. This is just called alcoholism. The problem is, is if you think because you're you that you have a special brand and the stuff that we all do to treat our alcoholism doesn't apply to you. You know? And that's what my ego will create. And that's why sometimes taking some of these little statements from the big book and writing them out. Writing out where the bedevilment show up in my life. Writing out where God is, where I am playing God, where God is not showing up. And it's not because God's not there. It's because I'm not letting him. My sponsor always told me that her higher power was polite. He never went where he wasn't invited. And I think that's a pretty, pretty salient thing. Because we have free will. And God loves us enough to let us bang ourselves. You know, like, you know, I've been in a lot of decks over the years, and a lot of times we've had a divorce. And a lot of times we've had a divorce, although sometimes, you know, we've been there, because the divorce is in the past and the truck's not there yet. When I was in the dibujing class, I went to the plural schools and worked with high school students. And when I went there it wasто like receiving a bonus for being stash. You know, I've talked about this all the time. I've done this for a long time. And then during the year when I was with you know, and short of bodily damage, we let our kids do what they have to do because they need to learn. Because I can tell you, and mom says, and you won't believe it, you have the experience of being hot, you'll take off those layers and the fireman hat. And all I did with my son is pack, I put his sneakers and his short-sleeved shirt in his backpack with a note saying to the teacher, I tried. And they know me, so they're like, Ms. Andrek, we know. They know my kids. Because I have kind of a free-range theory with my children. That's a completely different thing. But one of the things that I try really hard to do is to not raise my, not to make my children be in my image and what I want them to be, but to allow them to be their own individuals. And sometimes that means that they're doing things that I don't necessarily like or agree with. But isn't that what God does for me? God tells me. All the time, Carrie, probably you won't want to do that. But on the other hand, he also lets me do it if I absolutely feel that I need to. And he loves me enough to help me clean up the mess when I'm done. So when we talk about, we say, our father, and we said, you know, God is the father, we are the child. Isn't that really what we're asking God to do for us? So what happens is if we ask for that, and then when we get it, we go, see, God won't fix my money problems. I'm not winning the lottery. Right? So it's one of those things. It's buyer beware, be careful what you ask for. So we say these prayers, right? And Bill says it. I love that he gives us a third step prayer. And then he says, then we think well. Because he knows. And we thought well before we did it. We ain't doing it. He knows. So we read it. We do it. And then he says, think well about it. Too bad it's done. Oops, Bill. You're gods. And I love it. There's a, there's, there's that little story about the three frogs on the log. And we all know that story, right? Except for my friend Jameson changed it a little bit. He said there's three frogs on the log. One makes a decision to jump in the water. How many frogs are on the log? Three. Right? He said, but once you make that decision, you're an orange frog. You change. On a fundamental level. Because I can make a decision, but if I don't back it up with action, I'm going to be really gosh darn uncomfortable. And an orange frog is bright. And, you know, birds see it from the sky. And want to eat it. So now that frog is fighting for its life. So when we make that decision and we don't back it up with the action that's necessary in order for us to recover and develop that spiritual experience, we're very gosh darn uncomfortable. And we're more uncomfortable than if we didn't make that decision in the first place. Because then there's the information or the knowing that I made a decision, but I didn't back it up with action. Now we're planners because we're alcoholics. We've done a lot of things. Like we've conquered, you know, poverty while sitting in the barstool. You know, I've written three or four magnum opuses. You know, like we're idea people. This is not an idea program. This is an action program for a reason. Because we make decisions. I have gone on a diet three times this week. I haven't lost any weight because I keep eating cookies. Because I can make a decision and go on a diet. But on the other hand, I've got stuff in the cookies. Do you think God wants to work on you and make that decision even if you don't follow your own reaction? Hell yeah. And what he does is we pay for it existentially. Meaning, when we make that decision, think about this. Who here has procrastinated while writing inventory? How comfortable were you? How crazy were you? Spiritual constipation. Hell yeah. What was it? Somebody told me I was like making the third step decision and not writing a fourth step is like eating a box of Ex-Lax and not taking a shit. Only I would find a spiritual way of talking about poop, right? Well, Mike started it. We're not going there. But it's honestly true. We get spiritual constipation. So what happens when we're constipated? We're uncomfortable. Our body, nature is telling us that there are things that we need to be rid of. To face and be rid of, right? And there are things that we need to do to remedy the situation. And that's exactly what we're talking about. So yeah, God will work on you. Because you asked him to. You know, and this is kind of like, you know, when we talk about this Thursday, people make such a big deal about it, man. They talk about it and they go, you know, I gave my will up and I took it away. And nowhere in this book does it say we give up our will. It says we align our will. It says we turn our will and our life over to the care of. Nowhere does it say, you know, you know, oh, I have no will. I am now a jellyfish. And I do absolutely nothing. And I just sit here waiting for God to fix me while I sit here. No. It says next we launched in the biggest course of action. So, yes. There was a story about a nun praying to God that she really needs money for the church. And she's just been praying about winning the lottery and everything. And why is he not helping? And she's been, you know, doing everything. And he responds and says, yes, my dear, but first you need to buy a ticket. And he says, yes, but first you need to buy a ticket. And she says, no, I don't have a ticket. And he says, no, I don't have a ticket. And she says, no, I don't have a ticket. And he says, no, I don't have a ticket. And she says, no, I don't have a ticket. So when we look at this and we said that we broke down the second step proposition and we said what are our fears? To kind of just put a tail on that and go into this. The next thing we do is we ask ourselves what would God have us be? So what we're doing is we're taking a look at it and saying, okay, well, if this is where God, I am not allowing God to show up, what would we create an ideal of saying? What would this situation, what would this area of my life look like if I did? If I got out of the way, what would my money situation look like? If I got out of the way, what would my relationship with my children look like? What would God have us be? Not do, be. Because those are the principles. So basically what this second step proposition does for us is it shows us what principles we need to start working with. What principles we're struggling with. It also gives you a really, really, really good idea of what's going to show up on your fourth step. Because we do this before we write it. We do a second step proposition and then we do a third step. And then we write a fourth step. So when we do it like that, what we're doing is God is showing us where the first step is showing up in our lives. The second step is a matter of being willing to put aside, what I believe or what I think I know about myself and you and God in order to have an experience with the steps. And basically we agnostics is an argument to that point. There's a lot of fantastic things in there. There's actually a line in there where it talks about, it says that we ask ourselves what the spiritual principles in the book mean to us. And me being the crazy person that I am, I decide, you know, and this was like, this was, like my home group was like, we were like, like think about like being big book thumpers on spiritual meth. Like we would be at home thinking of exercises and things to do. It's like, I know how I can make the fourth step harder. You know, you never take it away. We can certainly add. And we would add, we were like, well, what if we wrote this inventory? You know, if we wrote the fourth column this way, what if we wrote it standing on our heads? What if we did a multiple fifth step? What if we swapped multiple fifth steps and all five of us did it together? We threw up on the table. And like, that was what my home group was like. And that's why it was, it was awesome because there was always somebody thinking of something saying, what, how will this work? And that was the girl. Like I was the only girl in the group who was there. Right. And they were all boys. And so it was always like, well, does it work on girls too? Cause we still kind of were in that spot where like, we weren't sure. Right. So like, give it to Carrie, she'll do anything. Right. That has always been the line of my life. Give it to Carrie. She'll do anything. Now, now, you know, that means something much different in alcoholics. It's anonymous. Um, and it would be, they would test it out. They'd be like, Hey, I came up with the 17 area inventory. Let's give it to Carrie. See if she goes crazy. You know, you know, so we, we would, we'd be sitting around and then we'd be like, we'd take lines from this book. We'd use the consideration method. Cause that's really what we're doing is turning the statements in this book and the questions and saying, it's not my experience. So there's a line in the agnostics. It says. We ask ourselves what the spiritual terms in this book means to us. So what if he did, what if you started on the very beginning, the title page of this book and you went through and you underlined every single one of the spiritual terms that, you know, spirit of the universe, czar of the heavens, you know, all of these spiritual terms. And you sat with him and say, what does that mean to me? Is that my experience? Does that resonate in my spirit? Does that have value? Does that speak? Does that speak to me? I did that. And I'm going to tell you that I had a, I had an incredible experience with it. A very, my perspective on what God was before I did that. And my perspective on what God was after I did that were very different. You know, because I always read those and like, you know, Bill, Bill throws out spiritual terms, like throw a poop at a wall and see what would stick, you know? So he does that because he knows that if he keeps changing that terminology or those concepts or ideas, something will resonate with us. So, you know, if we do that, we sit with those terms and it's not spirit of the universe. Nice. Click. Check. But sit with it. And the, the term that most resonated with me was my creator. There's a list. Yeah, it's actually, you can find it online. Adel Dave, one of my favorite people in the entire world, took the time to write it down and make a list. Of all the spiritual terms in the big book, which is why we call him anal Dave. He also wrote down all of the spiritual principles found into the wives and the family afterward. Love him. I like doing it with my book and my highlighter because the big book knows change things. And my, my theory is, is never let anybody read your big book for you. So sit with it and say, what do these terms mean to me? Take it into meditation. Maybe there's a term that really like strength strikes you. So take it into meditation. For a couple of days, when you go through your day, instead of calling God, God, Paul, God, whatever that is, when you're thinking about it, use that term when you're sitting with it. So for me, my creator was a term that just, you know, like it penetrated my soul because I always thought I created myself. And when I create myself, I create some crappy stuff. I did what you suggested. One of the benefits to me was the demystification. I demystified the whole idea and I found several that I had no prejudice against. Exactly. And so it was a very cool thing. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you can find, it demystifies it. You find stuff that you have prejudice against that you want to sit with and say, hey, that's a principle. It's a principle right here. Who here forgets to put principles down on your inventory? I love this group. You know, because those are principles. That's what we're talking about. I love it when people say, I don't have, I don't have resentments against ideas, except for I hate this and I hate that. And I hate this and I hate that. Principles. Yeah. Yep. That's exactly it. So we can resent ideas and concepts. And that, and doing this exercise helps us to see what ones we struggle with. It's a little diagnostic tool. So when we, when we do this and we kind of do this a little bit of work and we come down to the third step, the third step is a pretty simple idea. We make a decision and take some action. What is our will? Our thoughts. What is our life? Our behavior. Our actions. Yeah. When I say I turn my will and my life over to the care of, what am I saying? I'm going to God. I'm going to God. Yeah. So what was that? I'm going to be guided by. I'm going to try and align myself with. Align with? Because we don't turn our will, we don't turn our cars over to and give our cars to the mechanic, do we? The mechanic has a set of expertise that I don't have. I don't give him my car. I turn my car over to the care of. I don't give him my car. I don't give him my car. I don't give him my car. I don't give him my car. I don't take care of him to fix it. And so what I'm doing in my third step is making a decision to turn my will and my life, which are broken, over to the care of the spiritual principles in steps four through nine. That's all we're asking you to do. Now there's a lot more to it spiritually once you've been through the steps a handful of times. Another great spiritual exercise for spiritual practice is to do some. Yes. Well, I'm going to be a little bit more silent here. exercise to do is to read pages, and I love it because I had to do it. I had to read pages 60 to 63 in the eye on a daily basis. Three years? You're my kind of girl. I still do. I'll be talking about it and I'll say, driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, and self-pity, I step in the toes of my fellows and they retaliate seemingly without provocation, but sometimes pass the main decision based on self-deplacement and the decision to be heard. You know, but, and here's the thing is we take this and say, and we read it, yeah, and beat it into our head, but how's this showing up? There's a line in this that I missed for years, which is, states, says that I'm trying to wrest satisfaction and happiness out of the world if only I behave. Manage one. Well, I still behave. Because that's what I'm saying. If I behave, everything will be okay. I would call my sponsor. Every time I would call my sponsor, she would have me open like a 60 to 63. And she brought it to life for me by having me put in the names and the answers. That's the two. Absolutely. People were interested and made it very real for me. Absolutely. And that's exactly what we did. And that's what we're supposed to do. That's why Bill goes through. Why wasn't this with such rigmarole writing this out? He could just say, you make bad decisions. Stop that. Simmer down. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he goes through this whole metaphor of the actor. And then he goes through this whole metaphor of the actor. And then he goes through this whole metaphor. And then he returns to it in the fifth step. Why does he do that? Because he wants us to see exactly. He wants us to place or put our current circumstances into this specific structure. And really look at it and say, how's this showing up? So when it says that I might be quite nice, or I might be mean, egotistical, and demanding, how does that show up for me? Am I really going into my life, and what am I really trying to get, or looking to what I can get out of the situation than what I can bring? Am I bringing something to the situation with an expectation of getting something out of it? You know, we stop doing the gimme, gimme, gimme. Instead, we do that, I'm so awesome, give me. Right? We know better. Like, I know better than to make the demands, but I still do it, don't I? So the question is, is how's that showing up? Now, and if you're reading this on a regular basis, and you're taking the actor out and putting Carrie, or you, or I. And circumstance, my husband, whatever. I can see very clearly where this lack of reliance on a higher power greater than myself, a lack of application of spiritual principles shows up for me. And sometimes I need that, because I told you, when I started this off, saying that your mind is going to lie to you. It's been lying to you, it's been lying to me for a very long time. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and why we're here, are often not true. So I need to be able to use a heuristic in order to evaluate that. You know, and this is an incredible tool, so that's why Bill lays it out in such great detail. He goes, and he talks about it, I mean, if you think about it, the fourth column of the Resentment Inventory is like, what, a page and a half? A page? Yet his description of the actor is three pages. Why? Because this is your God. This is your God. This is your God. This is your God. This is your God. So we're writing the fourth column. Very clearly. So what he does is he tell you what your fourth step is going to look like, and then he tells you how to write it. That's why. So when we break this down and we look at it, when we're reading this paragraph, what we're really doing is preparing to write a fourth step. So Bill tricks us. He gets us the A cheering sound effects, bureaucratic sound effects, A Bs and Cs right. He says that we're alcoholic and captivating, which makes us suck at all this work we do, which is we're thus accompanied by life. And not manage our own life. That probably no human power could relieve our alcoholism. It doesn't say stop drinking. It says relieve our alcoholism. And it says God couldn't win over her son. By the way, go seek. And then he tells us how we don't seek. And we tell ourselves we are. Right? He says, and by the way, you're going to think you're seeking. But really what you're doing is you're being driven by self-propulsion. And you're calling it something else. So don't fall for that. Don't listen to yourself. And keep moving. And he lays out what the fourth column of the resentment inventory. The fear inventory and your conduct inventory looks like. He tells us in detail right here in the after. And then he has us say a prayer. You know, he's so clever. Because if he had come at us with the whole, you must be very spiritual. And prayers and principles. And this, that, and the other thing. And Allah, Buddha. And levitate. And meditation. And, you know, we'd all be like, F that. I'm going to go drink. Right? But he doesn't do that. Instead, he spoon feeds us. And we think we're talking about one thing. And we're really talking about something entirely different. Because if he, you know, he starts out and says, by the way, your problem is craving. Nah, it's, you know what, the problem resides in the mind. By the way, the problem really resides in the spirit. Lack of power is your dilemma. Bottles are only simple. And by the way, you're selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, frightened. And you make bad decisions. You step on the toes of others and they retaliate. You're not a victim. Go write about that. If he had started off with that, none of us would be sitting here. He starts off saying, it's a physical problem, honey. It's not your fault. It's a mental problem, but that's just because booze did it to you. And God knows you tried it. Yeah. You're really virtuous. You tried. You're powerless, man. Then he tells us what our real problem is, is that you're a jackass. So he's smart about that. So what I'd like to do, because I'm trying to keep it within our timeframe, when we take like a 15 minute break, then we'll come back and we're going to do a quick wrap up of three. And really get into the meat of four. Okay?