Thomas Jefferson Was on My Resentment Inventory — Have You Read That Guy’s Life Story 🤣 – Earl H.
About This Speaker Tape
Earl H. leads a Big Book step study workshop covering Steps 3 through 5, drawing on his 22 years of sobriety and 16 years of chronic alcoholism and drug abuse. He describes Step 3 as a terrifying leap of faith — he was furious at Higher Power when he arrived in AA, yet had to get on his knees and turn his will over to a Higher Power he didn't understand. He compares the moment to the top of a roller coaster: the clicking stops, and you're committed to the ride.
Earl brings the room to life with stories of memorable AA characters. There's Fred Ellis, the man whose calm presence felt like 20 milligrams of Valium, and whom Earl was too afraid to approach — so he stood behind Fred and "burglarized" his conversations with sponsees. There's Mike Ross, the gruff old-timer who wouldn't speak to anyone with less than ten years, who cut through endless fourth-step debate by simply asking, "Has anybody in here read this?" And Jack Prose, who at 43 years sober blew the top off Earl's head talking about Step 1 when Earl thought he had it completely figured out.
On Step 4, Earl advocates a practical, action-oriented approach: make a list of resentments, fears, and sexual conduct using the four-column method from the Big Book, and just do it. He discovered that all his fears boiled down to two things — rejection and abandonment — and that self-centered fear was the chief activator of every defect. He even put Thomas Jefferson on his resentment inventory. His first sponsor Donald's initial direction was simple: "We don't kill people here, one day at a time."
For Step 5, Earl insists on giving it all to one person rather than compartmentalizing, because hiding pieces of himself in separate compartments was the disease itself. He describes reading his inventory across in rows rather than down columns, which revealed a devastating pattern of powerlessness. The healing came not from the content but from the experience: telling the complete truth about himself and not being thrown away for it.
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Timestamps
Full Transcript
Any questions so far?
How could there be?
Sure.
I don't know.
Ask it, basket.
That's what we need.
We have one.
Okay.
No one has any questions so far?
Yes, ma'am.
Hi, Amanda.
The question is,
who gives a hoot
what kind of alcoholic we...
How could there be?
Sure.
I don't know.
Ask it, basket.
That's what we need.
We have one.
Okay.
No one has any questions so far?
Yes, ma'am.
Hi, Amanda.
The question is,
who gives a hoot
what kind of alcoholic we...
Any questions so far?
How could there be?
Sure.
I don't know.
Ask it, basket.
That's what we need.
We have one.
Okay.
No one has any questions so far?
Yes, ma'am.
Hi, Amanda.
The question is,
who gives a hoot
what kind of alcoholic we are?
Why should we have to fit into any particular category?
Excellent question.
Seconded by this woman over here.
And I agree with you.
All that stuff is in the beginning, I think,
is people can say,
oh, well, I identify with that
or identify with that a little bit
or identify with that.
And it just allows you to move on.
You'll hear people in meetings say,
oh, hi, my name is Bob.
I'm a real alcoholic.
Or, you know,
I mean, as opposed to the rest of us, you know,
who thought AA sounded like fun.
We'd just come.
You know?
Alcoholic.
You know?
I agree with you.
We never, well, we can't point to anybody else and say,
you know, I'm an alcoholic.
Well, actually, in a meeting I did here one time,
it was one of the greatest things I ever saw in an AA meeting.
I was at my home group on a Monday night
and they asked for anybody that's new
to stand and give us your name and the nature of your disease
so we can get to know you better at the break, right?
And at my meeting, we actually do that, right?
And this guy gets, anybody new in this camp,
you know, he's a good guy.
He's a good guy.
He comes up and this guy stands up.
My name is Claude and I'm an alcoholic.
And he goes,
and so's that guy over there.
And sits back down, right?
I thought that was the greatest thing I ever said.
You know, he's right.
That guy is.
I've heard him say it before.
I love that stuff, right?
Yeah.
It's just, it's just,
it's just stuff that you can go,
yeah, well, that's me.
Carry on.
You know, I'm an alcoholic.
Who identifies me as an alcoholic is me.
Nobody else.
You, nobody else.
You know, what we identify with,
how we come to that, you know,
is how we come to that.
A lot of us knew it before we got here.
It's amazing for me,
because I'm a low-bottom,
damn near dead drunk
when I got here.
I mean, there was, I got here and went,
yep, that's me, yep, that's me,
yep, that's me, yep, that's,
you know what I mean?
There was no question.
What I, it was amazing to me,
because it's outside my own experience,
but I see it happen,
are the ones that come to A
that aren't convinced,
have somehow gotten here,
not yet convinced
that this is where they need to be.
It must have something to do
with the amount of education
that's gone on in our communities
over the last 25 years
that they find their way in here.
You know, they got the nudge from the judge,
you know what I mean,
or a family member's forced them in,
or, you know, they're here under threat
of some terrible event, you know.
And they go through this process
and discover that they are.
You know, I,
it's just, it's just amazing to me
to watch that happen.
I love watching that happen.
It happened to a guy
I'm sponsoring right now.
Let's see, he's got to have
about 57 days now.
Yeah, 57 days.
He's very funny, too.
We were at a meeting.
He had, the last meeting
I was at with him,
he had 51 days,
and there was a guy who'd shared
right before him who had 41 days.
So he had 10 days more than this guy.
So the guy's sharing about, you know,
his plight as a recovering alcoholic
at 41 days, right?
And the guy's going through a lot.
And my guy raises his hand,
you know, Dave, alcoholic,
and he looks at the other guy
and he goes,
and I got 51 days.
And brother, I got to tell you,
I've been there.
Yeah, last week, you were there.
Oh, God, we're classic, aren't we?
So, did I help with the question?
Thank you.
We all right over here?
All right, good.
Any more questions?
We've covered so much.
All right.
All right.
Step three.
Made a decision, right?
Turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
I mean, to keep this one simple,
for me, some people have,
apparently have no problem with this step.
They come in with a significant
spiritual life in place.
It's odd that the normie thinks,
how can you be an alcoholic
and have a spiritual life at the same time?
Easy.
You have a profound faith in God
and you drink uncontrollably.
That's how you do that.
That's how that happened.
But the third step for me was very scary.
This was a very scary step
because I knew going into this process
that my life was on the line.
I knew that I was in the last house on the block.
I knew that if this didn't work for me,
I was a dead man.
I knew that there wasn't another,
there wasn't another game
that I was going to get in
that was going to help me with this.
This was going to have to work
or I was screwed.
Because I was so angry at God when I got here,
what the third step meant to me was,
was I going to become willing
to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I was incredibly angry at?
Was I willing to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I saw as an unjust and unforgiving God?
Was I willing to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I may or may not understand?
I may or may not believe in?
That this is all up for grabs.
This unseen, unknown, untouchable presence.
This experience where I had yet to meet the individual
who could tell me about the face of God.
I didn't, this was really an alarming leap
into the abyss, if you will,
for somebody like me.
The beauty of this thing though is,
is that on the one side I had my experience
of 16 years of chronic alcoholism and drug abuse.
And on this end,
I had a bad relationship.
I jumped.
I pulled the trigger.
I got down on my knees
and to the best of my ability
turned my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I did not understand.
That was the best I could do.
The best I could do is,
I don't understand.
If this God thing,
if this is what I must seek
to relieve me of these problems,
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
How can this be the same God
that I've had these other, right?
There was so much self.
There was so much self
inflicted upon this relationship.
There was so much willful behavior
inflicted upon this relationship.
There was so much dogma
that was in my head
that I was inflicting this relationship with
that I couldn't see it for what it was.
It was so befuddled and enmeshed.
I couldn't just let it be what it was.
So, I did this.
I turned my will and my life over to the care of,
by getting on my knees
and saying the third step prayer
and getting to the third step prayer.
And getting back up.
And how that felt was,
and I felt it was spooky.
Right?
I mean, what I basically felt was
is that my life is on the line.
I just took a pair of dice
and I don't even know what the game is we're playing.
And I threw them out on the board.
Having no idea what to expect.
That was the leap of faith.
Right?
In spite of my own experiences,
I must go this way.
In spite of my own crippled belief system,
I must go this way.
Those who have what I want
are saying go this way.
See, that's the amazing thing about Alcoholics Anonymous
is I'm sitting around in meetings
and there's guys like the late Fred Ellis.
Right?
In these meetings.
And this man would talk
and I believed everything that man said.
If I stood next to him,
if I felt like I'd taken 20 milligrams of Valium,
I'd just...
Nice.
Fred makes me feel good.
Now, I was too afraid to talk to Fred.
Right?
So, at the Thursday Night Beginners Workshop
in Brentwood, California,
Fred was always there.
At the end of the meeting,
Fred would stand up,
like right over here by the podium,
and guys would come up and talk to Fred.
Guys he sponsored would check in with him
and ask questions
and Fred would share his experience,
strength, and hope with him.
And I would stand behind Fred
and burglarize their conversation.
Right?
Just...
Just...
I did this for many, many weeks.
And then one day,
Fred was talking to these guys
and all of a sudden,
Fred turned around and went,
Hi, Earl.
How are you?
Stuck out his hand.
And I went...
Paralyzed.
My God.
He knows my name.
You know?
Which was entirely too close
to a relationship for me
in early sobriety.
Right?
And there he was.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Got to go now.
You know, run home.
Pace.
Jesus Christ.
Fred knows my name.
Ah.
So I did this step.
It felt like...
You know when you get on the roller coaster
and you're going up the thing
and it's going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.
The third step is where you feel the...
You hear the click and stop.
It's like,
well,
buckle your seatbelt.
Here we go.
You're on the ride now, pal.
And that's how it felt to me.
It felt to me
because as soon as I did it,
it felt a little spooky.
It felt like,
wow, man.
I really did that.
I did that
as well as I could do it at that time.
And I got back in my seat
and the book...
Basically, the book says at that point,
we were hoping you're serious
about what you just did.
It's like,
oh, now you tell me.
Couldn't you have said,
you better be serious
before you do this.
Right?
That would have...
I could have hovered right there
at the brink of fear.
Three for several years
having heard that.
But it said,
we hope you were serious
about what you did
because, see,
now we have to embark upon
a plan of rigorous action.
Right?
Or this is all
just a conversation.
Right?
A lot of guys
sitting around in the bars,
you know,
going,
you know,
that third step is a bitch.
Anybody in here
ever heard of a guy
named Mike Ross?
It's apparent
I need to tell you
about Mike Ross.
Now, one hand went up.
Mike Ross was bigger than life
in every respect.
Big man.
I think when I got sober,
Mike must have had,
I don't know,
you know,
like 1,100 years of sobriety.
He'd been sober forever.
He was this old guy,
gruff, gruff man.
And we used to love the guy.
My friend Christopher and I,
we would go to this one meeting
where Mike always went.
And if he didn't have 10 years,
he wouldn't even talk to you.
You know what I mean?
Because he figured
you could die at any moment.
There's no point
in investing any time in you.
I mean,
he's just this hard-edged guy.
But what we loved,
we didn't care.
You know what I mean?
What we loved about the guy
was what he shared in meetings
and the way he would say goodnight.
Because, I mean,
every time you'd see Mike
and he'd be walking off
towards the door to leave
and we'd be behind him
and we'd go,
goodnight, Mike.
And Mike would think
that a friend of his
was calling out to him
and Mike would turn around
and say goodbye
to a friend of his.
And he'd just dismiss us.
You're not even worth
saying goodnight to.
You know,
we only had like eight years,
you know.
The guy was hysterical,
but he saved my life
more than one time.
We would be sitting in
a step study.
I remember going to this one
step study,
brand new,
and I mean,
my head's on fire.
I'm in flames.
Just nobody can see it.
You know what I mean?
I'm walking into a meeting
and I'm like,
you're going to see
Mike Gacy.
I'm going to sit him
and say,
we're going to talk about this step.
We're going to talk about this step.
Okay, good, good, good, good.
Apparently steps are a big thing.
We'll talk about steps.
Four step.
Ah, four step.
Haven't done that yet.
Let's hear all about it.
Great, great, great, great.
I just,
you know,
sit in a meeting.
I'm like,
out of my mind,
but you know,
people are walking up to me
and I'm like,
how you doing?
Fine.
How you doing?
Fine.
My newcomer mantra.
You know,
how you doing?
Fine.
Fine.
You know,
in my head,
I'm thinking things like,
you're not being attacked.
You're not being attacked.
He just said hello.
You're not being attacked.
Mayday, mayday.
Person coming at me.
Dicey in my head.
And I'm sitting down
and a guy shares about the four step.
Talks about the four step.
Great length.
Great detail.
Minutia.
Just,
I mean,
just,
God,
could there be any more
about this step?
It's brilliant.
I remember thinking,
God,
I get to get guys.
Fabulous.
Fabulous.
Fabulous.
Broke the step down.
What more could I need to know?
Next guy,
ready?
This is his hand.
Goes on for five minutes
about the four step.
Just fabulous.
It's just unbelievable.
Couldn't be less like
what the last guy talked about,
but delightful.
Very entertaining.
Great stuff.
Thinking,
okay,
all right,
we got two,
we got two ways to do this now.
If I have the fifth guy,
you know,
I'm thinking to myself,
okay,
well,
I don't need to buy a new gun
because I'm only going to use it once.
I'm ready.
This is it.
I can't do this.
And all of a sudden,
in the back,
a big mitt goes up in the air
and the guy calls in here,
Mike Alcoholic.
Here comes Mike Ross, right?
And he goes like this.
And I go,
geez,
maybe he knows,
an old guy,
you know what I mean?
And I see this go up.
It goes like this.
I got to ask,
has anybody in here read this?
I don't know.
And I just went,
thank God for this guy, right?
And he just basically says,
when you do your fourth step
is when you're done with the third.
I got that.
That sounds good to me.
He made it very clear.
When should I do my fourth step?
Did you do the third?
Yep.
Get on it.
Make a list.
Make a list.
Oh, okay, okay.
The guy just had a,
it's just,
don't want to go round and round and round.
Want to move.
Want to move.
Want to carry through this process.
Because here's the thing about this whole thing.
You are not going to get this right,
according to Mike,
in your first pass.
This isn't about getting it right.
This is about getting it.
Doing it.
Having an experience as a result of the process.
The cool part about the steps is,
you know,
you're not like,
okay,
has everyone in here recognized that
you're allowed to do the steps once?
We don't allow you to do it any more than one time.
So you better get it right the first time.
Because if you don't,
you're screwed.
You know?
You will be relegated to the half measures room.
And there you must stay
until one day,
mercifully,
you just drink.
Now,
if I do the steps to the best of my ability,
I'm doing something.
I'm taking an action.
As a result of the action,
an experience comes.
As a result of the experience,
I change.
So that when I come back,
to step one,
I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
It's a new step.
Right?
I remember going into a meeting.
I was 11 years sober.
And there's a guy.
I was meeting this woman at this meeting.
And I go in there.
I'm not going to a meeting.
I'm going to meet her.
Right?
And I slide in.
And right before the meeting starts,
and there's one seat.
She's got a seat for me in the front row.
Oh, good.
All right.
Now, the front row
is six feet from the speaker.
Because it's just a table.
You know,
a fold-down table.
And there's the leader
and the speaker sitting there.
And this guy,
Jack,
is going to talk on
step one for 20 minutes.
Oh, Christ.
You know?
And I'm in the front row.
And I can't just go,
can't hang with you, Jack,
and run out the door.
You know what I mean?
I'm stuck.
I'm going to have to sit and listen.
Now, I've got to live in your sobriety
at this time, right?
You can't tell me a thing about step one.
I have done step one.
Done.
Put it to bed.
Case closed.
One hundred percent.
Done.
Step one.
You're not going to...
I don't want...
This is hell.
I'm in hell.
I've got to listen to this guy
go on about step one.
Well, it turns out
the guy was Jack Prose
who had 43 years of sobriety
at the time.
He talked for 20 minutes
on step one
and blew the top of my head off.
He was talking about
concepts and ideas
and a level of awareness
that had never even
occurred to me before.
Just talking about the step.
Just kind of tripping on
where he was at with it, right?
And when the meeting was over,
I looked at my friend and said,
she said,
well, what step are you on?
I went, well, one.
Apparently, I'm on step one.
And the cool thing about AA
is that if you hang around here
and actually pay attention,
that's going to happen all the time.
All the time.
I thought AA was very cool with God
until a woman...
I was about 16 years sober
and a woman with two and a half years
got up at the podium
and started to talk about
her relationship with God.
Blew my mind.
It was great.
That's what goes on around here.
Different people
coming at it
from different perspectives
and different directions.
So if you're thinking
about doing it,
if you do the book,
you come up to me
at the end of this and go,
delightful, Earl,
very entertaining.
However, I do it
a completely different way.
Okay.
That's my response.
Okay, good.
That means more dialogue.
What I love is people
who get up here...
Occasionally, we'll do
this sort of stuff
and somebody will come up
to me and go,
Earl, I find your comments
on the process of recovery
disturbing.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're
killing alcoholics, Earl.
For Christ's sake,
you need to do it this way.
Here's my workbook
that I've developed
over the last eight months.
And I'd like you
to take this workbook
and explore
what I've seen
as the relationship
between God, self, and others.
Okay, cool.
And Earl, please,
for God's sake,
just, you know,
don't talk in AA anymore
until you've read my book.
All right.
Thanks for sharing that with me.
That's lovely.
And I love how pissed off
people get about this stuff.
It's hysterical to me.
I'm standing...
I'm standing in a room
with a bunch of dead people
sitting up pretending
they're paying attention to me.
Right?
We're alcoholics and drug addicts
and we're arguing over
how to develop
a relationship with God.
It's like,
I can't get too upset
about this, all right?
It's just...
It's crazy, right?
What we're doing...
We're wrestling
with the concept of God here.
Right?
In this third step.
I wrestle with the concept...
That's what Israel...
Israel means one
who wrestles with God.
Right?
I'm not...
It says...
The book...
It says to me
in the portion of chapter 5
that I've heard
God knows how many times
in 22 years.
God couldn't would
if He were sought.
It doesn't say
God couldn't would
if He were found.
God couldn't would
if He were sought.
Then I must seek God.
I'm given very, very
specific instructions
on how to go about doing that
later on in the step.
I must seek God.
But what I've got to do
at first is throw myself
at it.
To open up my arms
and say,
I let go.
I let God.
I surrender.
I can't.
God can.
I'll let Him.
God could.
Restore me to sanity.
Soundness of mind.
Relieve me of the obsession
of drink.
Now, what's interesting
is that these actions...
The action of these steps
where I seek this God
is remarkable to me.
That...
That...
It's about my willingness
to get the stuff
that I place between me
and God
and me and my fellows
out of the way.
I put it there.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I don't ask God
to get rid of it.
I do it.
I don't ask you to do it.
I do it.
I do it.
I don't sit in my apartment
and wait for life
to come knock on the door.
I must get up
and go outside.
I had a sponsor,
my second sponsor
after Donald died.
I had a second sponsor
for six years.
He's a great friend of mine
and I love him dearly,
Al F.
He's the guy that...
Get between those.
Right?
He's a big meditation guy.
It's very difficult
to talk to
because he's just
being there
while you're...
while you're talking to him.
He's a fantastic example.
You know,
he's a sponsor.
You don't do what he says.
You just watch him
and feel him.
You know what I mean?
Just right there.
He's just...
He's an amazing human being.
Absolutely amazing.
But he said,
you know,
Earl,
if you give your life to God
and sit in the closet,
what you get is coat hangers.
Right?
It took me six months
to wrap my head around that.
It's like,
all right,
I'll be back
when I have any idea
what that means.
You know?
Donald used to say to me,
Earl,
God comes in shoe leather.
Okay.
Apparently God
is a shoe salesman.
I don't...
So I get it, right?
There's these actions
I take
to open myself up
to this experience
of a power
greater than myself.
I can assure you
I do not understand God.
I pray to a God
I don't understand.
But I do pray to a God
that I see the evidence of
in my life
on a daily basis.
On a daily basis.
You know?
It's there
if I want to.
That's a lot of
what the big buzz is for me.
These sudden realizations
that if I just
stand still
and feel the life
that is around me
that there's something
quite remarkable
going on
all the time.
That's the cool thing, man.
It's better than
any drug I ever took.
I took so much LSD
that I was classified
legally insane
by the military.
Right?
And this buzz is better.
You know?
This buzz is better.
You know?
I've done enough heroin
in one night
to sit around
and just talk about it.
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
I'm checking my pulse.
Just...
Yeah.
There it goes again.
Good.
I've slowed it
way down.
I've drank enough alcohol
to come to
in different cities.
Right?
No buzz better
than that
the clarity
of being completely
present in a moment
and feeling
the presence of God.
That's an amazing
and amazing
amazing event.
And this is
the only way
that this buzz
that that's available.
How I begin that process
is by being willing
to turn my will and life
over the care of God
as I understand Him
or don't understand Him.
To get out on my knees
and say the third step prayer.
If you have...
And I mean literally
get down on my knees.
Not figuratively speaking.
For me, literally.
I literally get down on my knees
and say that prayer.
The reason I do that
is it's...
I've got to humble myself.
Humility is the willingness
to learn.
For me.
And I have to
present myself
willingly.
And that way
I know for a fact
there's no mistaking.
I can't say,
well, I feel willing
as I stand there
with my chest out.
But if I'm willing
to get down on my knees
and just do it
from a position...
I'm not being submissive.
I'm relinquishing power.
I'm relinquishing control.
Come on.
I'm here.
I'm willing.
If I ask,
God will come
with the book set.
I have to ask.
I've got to ask.
So I do.
So that's the way
Step 3 for me.
Nice and simple.
Easy.
It's about the experience of it.
It's about gathering
an experience.
It's about creating
an opportunity for
a deeper and more
meaningful experience.
That's what it is.
Step 4.
I just pulled the trigger
in Step 3.
Boom.
I'm in.
The ride stopped clicking.
Here we go.
Right?
It says I must immediately...
I get up from Step 3
and I embark upon
a plan of action
immediately.
What's the action plan?
For me,
4 through 9.
4 through 9.
4 and 5 is me.
6 and 7 is God.
8 and 9 is you.
Nobody else to play with.
That's everybody.
We're all covered.
What do I do in 4?
Well, according to this,
according to this,
I do a resentment inventory,
a fear inventory,
and a sex inventory.
Why do I do it
on those three things?
Because if you want to see
where I can
lead you,
if you want to see
where I can leave
the playing field,
those are three pretty good areas
to take a look at.
We're going to see
a pattern develop here
that a blind man could see.
All right?
Then that's why I do it.
And I just do it
out of the book.
I do a resentment inventory.
Right?
I do it in four columns.
There are those
that will tell you
it's three columns.
There are those
that will tell you
you need...
There's four columns,
but three of the columns
are broken down
into four specific areas.
There are others
that will tell you
that there are two columns
that are broken down
into one into three areas,
and one into two.
There's others
that will say
we do it in black and white,
so when you do
your fourth column,
we suggest you use
these four things
and write a sentence
detailing specifically
how those things
have come into being.
To all of this,
I say,
okay.
Sure.
Whatever floats your boat.
Whatever you can look at
and go,
well, you know,
that makes sense to me.
I can see that.
Great.
Then dive into that.
Just do it.
Just do it.
Just do it.
The first inventory I did,
I went to my sponsor
who was not a big book guy.
Donald wasn't a big book guy.
He used to rant and rave at us.
He called us
little book-thumpers.
Your little book-thumpers.
He goes,
before there was a book,
there was one alcoholic
down in the dirt
sharing his experience,
strength, and hope
with another alcoholic.
Well, that's true.
We're going back to the book now.
And you get into the book.
And my first inventory,
I said,
what do you want me to do?
Get rid of the garbage.
So I wrote 27 pages of garbage and told them about it.
And I got my first direction from my sponsor.
And hey, my first direction was we don't kill people here one day at a time.
Which I thought was very reasonable, doable.
One day at a time, just today.
And I haven't killed anybody one day at a time.
I was actually planning a murder when I came to AA.
So he felt compelled to tell me immediately.
We don't do that.
My best thinking again.
So I do a resentment inventory.
I make a list.
And it talks about it in the book.
I mean, if you guys want me to, I can waste a lot of time up here,
put my glasses on and read it to you.
Exactly what it says and why you do it that way.
But I'm figuring these are readily available.
You know, these are readily available.
You want to see precisely how it is in here?
Go here and look, read it.
What I'm telling you is what I did was I went here.
And when I finally did an inventory that was out of this book,
that's when things changed for me.
The getting rid of the garbage was great.
It made it possible for me to take action
that suggested I was making a commitment to being here.
That was a value.
Doing it completely different than the book told me to do it
was a value.
Absolutely a value.
I think what that did was it allowed me to then feel like
I'd earned the seat I was sitting in.
I was an active member.
I'd written 27 pages of this stuff down on paper.
I was doing something in support of my own life,
in support of my own recovery.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my solution.
I wasn't quietly slipping off the couch to my knees,
saying the third step prayer and popping back up.
I was actually at the direction of another human being,
my sponsor, writing down all my secrets,
all the stuff I was going to my grave with.
It was really, really valuable.
Did it change my life?
Yeah.
Did doing it out of the book have a more profound effect
on my life than that?
Yeah.
Much more so.
Much more so.
Because I was able,
I was able in this inventory out of the book
to see the pattern of behavior in my life.
When I looked at my inventory,
when I looked at my side of the street,
when I looked at how resentment,
fear,
my sexual behavior
was isolating me in the world,
when you looked at my whole inventory,
I saw one word,
powerlessness.
A powerlessness to be effective in the world.
Powerlessness in terms of my own individual well-being.
Powerlessness in terms of my relationships with other people.
That I was in a position to say,
I was in fact a self-centered, frightened man
and that this was ruling my life.
In my sexual relationships,
I was either completely in control
or totally unavailable.
Right?
Never in the middle.
Never an equal participant.
Unable.
Completely unable to do that.
My relationship with God,
I already told you about that.
That wasn't doing so well.
Relationship with self,
filled with self-loathing.
All of my relationships were just in the trash can.
This was a painful experience.
I listed my resentments.
I listed the individuals that I resented.
I listed the institutions that I resented.
I listed the principles that I had great objection to.
You know?
Loving and being loved.
Being on time.
Being accountable for my actions.
Hated all that stuff.
And when I did my...
When I got to this enough,
I realized,
I just got out my address book.
Because it basically got down to...
Because the question I ask myself
when doing an inventory is,
how free do you want to be?
How free do you want to be?
When that thing goes by and you go,
well, not really, right?
Eh, well, if it floated by, write it down.
We can discuss it later,
whether or not it's pertinent, right?
And people always ask me,
Earl, can you have a resentment in your life
that you have no part in?
And my answer to that is,
probably.
There weren't any in mine.
But I have actually sponsored a couple of guys
that had some things listed.
And there was...
They had no part in it.
Right?
They had no part in it.
There are circumstances that can occur in life
that can cause you great deep-seated resentment
that you have no part in.
Yeah, I've actually seen it
and I'd be happy to discuss with anybody
at one of these breaks that we have along the way.
For you smokers,
of which I am now a proud non-member of that group.
Yeah, the smokers.
No, here's the smokers.
Anyway.
So you do the inventory, right?
I list my resentments.
I resent my father.
Call him too.
Why do I resent him?
What's my specific resentment against my father?
Well, I've got 54 resentments against my father.
Right?
54.
List them.
1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, or 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1, 57.
1-57.
I've got 57 resentments against my father.
Specifically.
What areas of my life are affected by this?
I use the seven things that I was taught
to come up in the book.
It affects my personal relations,
sexual relations, pride, self-esteem,
security, ambition, pocketbook.
Yeah, that's seven.
Right?
I list...
Any or all of those that are affected
as a result of this specific relationship.
What's my part in it?
List four things in the book.
Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened.
What are these things that aren't in the book?
And specifically, how did this come about in my life?
Next.
Now, other guys break it down way more than that.
One other guy that I hold in high regard,
adore him,
has now come to the belief that there is no fourth column.
That it's a three-column inventory.
I have yet to discuss this with him.
I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
But I'm willing to listen.
I'm not going to reject it out of hand.
Fine, you got another way of doing it?
Let's hear it.
If it works for me, I'll give it a shot.
Because this isn't about this way.
It's about doing it.
It's about getting this stuff down on paper
and being relieved of this.
This is the stuff that I put between me and you
and me and God.
So I get out my phone book
because basically I realized at one point,
my address book,
if I knew you well enough to put your name
and phone number in my address book,
at some point you had frightened me.
And if you frightened me,
you probably would have frightened me.
You pissed me off.
You frightened me, I resent you.
Now, early on,
all you had to do to frighten me
was walk up and say,
how's it going?
Well, what the hell are you asking me that for?
How the hell am I supposed to know what's going on?
I don't know what's going on.
And clearly you don't either
or you wouldn't be asking me.
I hate you.
I hate you.
This is all entirely too much work talking to you.
Write them down.
I had Thomas Jefferson on my inventory.
Have you ever read this guy's life story?
The stuff that he did?
Who could live up to this?
Hated that man.
Institutions, groups of people.
And what you write down,
it doesn't have to look good.
You don't have to say,
oh, you know,
I don't really like that I feel that way.
Write it down.
That's your best way out of it.
Right?
You may discover that you're a bigot,
a racist,
a liar,
a thief.
You may discover that you're all of them
and that you don't like that about you.
Maybe those lessons your daddy taught you
are not lessons you should have embraced
or cared to embrace.
And you've gotten to a point where
to be who you really are,
which is not a racist,
not a bigot,
not a thief,
not a liar,
that the ills of your father,
that you can say,
no, this is not who I am.
I disagree with this.
That you can get to a place
in order to save your own life
where you can make your own father wrong.
Not easy to do for a lot of us.
But we get there in this process.
We write it down
and see the pattern of your own life.
See it right there.
I resent this stuff, right?
Fear inventory.
What am I afraid of?
Fear of flying.
Why?
Because I crash.
I'm afraid of being crashed.
Right?
It's not a,
what do they call it
when it's just,
it's not a phobia.
Thank you.
He gets an extra bagel.
It's not a phobia.
It's based on my experience.
Right?
That I'm afraid of flying.
Right?
Why am I afraid of crash?
And then move through your inventory.
Move through.
Basically, what I've discovered
is I'm afraid of two things.
I'm afraid of rejection
and I'm afraid of abandonment.
That's what I'm afraid of.
Pretty much every fear I've got
you can put under one category or the other.
Right?
In the 12 and 12,
in the seventh step,
right?
Second to the last page,
it says,
self-centered fear is the chief activator
of all my defects of character.
Either I'm not going to get something I want
or I'm going to lose something I already have.
Rejection and abandonment.
And it gets real, real simple
so that when I'm functioning in my life,
I don't have this blanket,
vague,
unexamined wall of fear
that I can throw up in the world.
You know what I mean?
So when you walk up to me
and suddenly you're confronting me,
oh, I hate your discussion about step three.
Wall of fear.
Now lob things over the wall
until this person goes away.
Yeah, well, I don't like your clothes.
I don't like your discussion on step four.
I hate you.
I don't like you either.
Screw you.
Lob and stuff like that.
Make him go away.
He's scaring me.
Then the person goes away.
But if I recognize all I'm afraid of is fear.
I have a fear of not getting what I want
or losing something I have.
I'm afraid of two things, right?
So you come up and you scare me
and I throw up my wall of fear
and I just go, huh.
Well, that didn't work.
I got to take a deep breath and go,
what am I afraid of here?
I'm afraid I'm not going to get something I want
to be accepted by you
or I'm going to lose something I already have.
A reason for being here.
Or just fill in your own blank.
Whatever it may be.
What works for you, right?
And it's just silly.
And so then you say, you know,
I don't like your thing on step three.
And I go, well, you know what?
Let me take you back to the room back there.
There's a whole bunch of tapes and stuff
of other guys back there.
Some of whom I think are really good
at talking about the book.
Maybe one of them has got a way
of breaking down step three or step four
that you like.
May I suggest Joe and Charlie?
Right?
It's got nothing to do with me.
You don't like it?
No?
Okay.
Fine.
I personally delight in the way I do this.
Find your own way.
Find your own way.
This is just one little glimpse of it.
I don't have this thing wrapped up.
I'll come back here next year,
sit down and go,
remember that time I was out here?
You got a tape of that last one?
Burn it.
We got a whole new way of doing it.
What would that mean?
Would that mean that I was wrong today?
No.
No.
It would mean that I've continued
to explore the process.
I have another way of communicating it.
I have a different experience of it now
which requires yet another way
of communicating it.
So you just find your way through.
Some of you are going to become
big Joe and Charlie fans.
Those are going to be your guys.
So that guy and that guy and that guy?
Crap!
Then you're going to pick up a Joe H. guy.
The rest of us are peasants.
Find your own way.
It's all good.
Because what you are,
if you're prescribing
to a particular,
is that you're saying,
I'm an alcoholic
and I seek this thing.
I seek this process.
I seek this unfolding
in my own life.
And that's what it's about.
So that's all we're doing here today
is wrestling with it this way today.
Alright?
So, I do these four column inventories
on resentment, fear, and sex.
Right?
Now, in step five,
I'm supposed to reveal these
before God to another human being.
I'm supposed to sit down with somebody
and get it out.
I would suggest doing that.
Really, it's not that deep.
Do you know what I mean?
What you have to do.
The specific way you go about it.
The book will suggest,
the 12 and 12 will suggest,
the book will suggest
this is how you go about it.
Right?
You sit down with somebody,
the 12 and 12,
Bill talks about all kinds of stuff
in the fourth step.
He talks about,
only thing in the 12 and 12
I disagree on,
it's just me.
I actually disagree
with something he says.
He says,
well, if you got a bunch
of really, really heavy stuff
that you're reading
most of them,
it's your sponsor
and then you go to another person,
there's one paragraph,
and talk about the rest of it
with somebody else.
I don't go for that personally.
I was so good
at compartmentalizing my life
when I was out there.
That was one of my major problems
was that nobody knew
the whole story.
This guy knows a little bit,
she knows a little bit,
that guy knows a little bit,
she knows a little bit,
but nobody knows Earl really.
Nobody knows the whole deal.
And there's pieces
in each of those compartments
that say an awful lot
about who I am.
So I had to find me,
that's just me,
I had to find,
I had to find a place
where I could give it all up.
All of it in one place.
So that's what I did.
Before God to another human being.
And I sat down
and I laid out my four columns
in resentment inventory
and I did it in columns,
right,
and I read it in rows.
Right?
I wrote my resentment list
until it was done,
then I went to column two
and answered the stuff
in column two.
When that was done,
I went to column three.
When I read it
to the individual
that I read it to,
I read it across in the rows.
One, one,
one, two,
one, three,
one, four,
one, five,
until one was done
and then I went to two
and I read across.
And that was how
it became a completely
different document.
Doing it that way.
Instead of just this way,
all of a sudden
I'm doing it in another way
and this incredible pattern
of behavior in my life
is revealed to me.
Right?
When I saw,
so that was the fifth step.
I sat down and I did it.
Was I happy about this?
No.
Was it a comfortable experience?
Was it a good experience for me?
Absolutely not.
Did I have a lot of discussion
with my sponsor
as I was reading it to him?
No.
Anything that was said
in that meeting
other than what I had written down
was conversation
that he introduced.
My job was to show up
and read what I had written.
Not offer further explanation.
Not get,
read what was written.
Not,
not an occasional
preemptive strike
where I would sit and go,
now this next one.
Let me discuss this next one
with you.
I want to restate
that I was not in my right mind.
That I personally
do not consider this
to be an example
of who I am.
None of that.
He just shut up
and read it.
And I read it
and occasionally he would say,
time out.
Right?
Read that last one again.
I loved that one.
And he would,
he would do that to me.
Or he would do
the wonderful,
loving sponsor type thing
where he would say,
that reminds me of a story
because he'd see that I'd read one
that I was particularly ashamed of.
And he'd say,
that reminds me of a story.
And he'd tell some atrocious story
about something he'd done
that was very, very similar
to this hideous event in my life.
And it relieved me.
I mean,
there was healing that went on
as the process took place
because of who he was.
I mean,
it was just an amazing,
amazing experience.
Did I feel,
and at the end of the step,
fifth step,
I felt different.
What I felt was
remarkably exposed.
That's what I felt.
And it was remarkably uncomfortable.
But it was the only way
I was going to discover for myself
that I could tell you the truth
about who I was
and you wouldn't throw me away.
That you would just consider me more
as one of yours,
as with you,
than before.
Right?
That was it for me.
That was the only way
a guy like me was,
believing you because you told me so?
Nah.
Not like,
I got it when I did it.
When I did it,
I was in.
I was in.
I showed up.
And I looked at my sponsor
when I was done with my fifth step
and I said to him,
now all I have to do
is wait for you to die.
And he looked at me and he said,
oh, isn't that lovely?
And he walked away.
Amazing experience.
An amazing experience.
Let's take a break.
Thank you.
How could there be?
Sure.
I don't know.
Ask it, basket.
That's what we need.
We have one.
Okay.
No one has any questions so far?
Yes, ma'am.
Hi, Amanda.
The question is,
who gives a hoot
what kind of alcoholic we are?
Why should we have to fit into any particular category?
Excellent question.
Seconded by this woman over here.
And I agree with you.
All that stuff is in the beginning, I think,
is people can say,
oh, well, I identify with that
or identify with that a little bit
or identify with that.
And it just allows you to move on.
You'll hear people in meetings say,
oh, hi, my name is Bob.
I'm a real alcoholic.
Or, you know,
I mean, as opposed to the rest of us, you know,
who thought AA sounded like fun.
We'd just come.
You know?
Alcoholic.
You know?
I agree with you.
We never, well, we can't point to anybody else and say,
you know, I'm an alcoholic.
Well, actually, in a meeting I did here one time,
it was one of the greatest things I ever saw in an AA meeting.
I was at my home group on a Monday night
and they asked for anybody that's new
to stand and give us your name and the nature of your disease
so we can get to know you better at the break, right?
And at my meeting, we actually do that, right?
And this guy gets, anybody new in this camp,
you know, he's a good guy.
He's a good guy.
He comes up and this guy stands up.
My name is Claude and I'm an alcoholic.
And he goes,
and so's that guy over there.
And sits back down, right?
I thought that was the greatest thing I ever said.
You know, he's right.
That guy is.
I've heard him say it before.
I love that stuff, right?
Yeah.
It's just, it's just,
it's just stuff that you can go,
yeah, well, that's me.
Carry on.
You know, I'm an alcoholic.
Who identifies me as an alcoholic is me.
Nobody else.
You, nobody else.
You know, what we identify with,
how we come to that, you know,
is how we come to that.
A lot of us knew it before we got here.
It's amazing for me,
because I'm a low-bottom,
damn near dead drunk
when I got here.
I mean, there was, I got here and went,
yep, that's me, yep, that's me,
yep, that's me, yep, that's,
you know what I mean?
There was no question.
What I, it was amazing to me,
because it's outside my own experience,
but I see it happen,
are the ones that come to A
that aren't convinced,
have somehow gotten here,
not yet convinced
that this is where they need to be.
It must have something to do
with the amount of education
that's gone on in our communities
over the last 25 years
that they find their way in here.
You know, they got the nudge from the judge,
you know what I mean,
or a family member's forced them in,
or, you know, they're here under threat
of some terrible event, you know.
And they go through this process
and discover that they are.
You know, I,
it's just, it's just amazing to me
to watch that happen.
I love watching that happen.
It happened to a guy
I'm sponsoring right now.
Let's see, he's got to have
about 57 days now.
Yeah, 57 days.
He's very funny, too.
We were at a meeting.
He had, the last meeting
I was at with him,
he had 51 days,
and there was a guy who'd shared
right before him who had 41 days.
So he had 10 days more than this guy.
So the guy's sharing about, you know,
his plight as a recovering alcoholic
at 41 days, right?
And the guy's going through a lot.
And my guy raises his hand,
you know, Dave, alcoholic,
and he looks at the other guy
and he goes,
and I got 51 days.
And brother, I got to tell you,
I've been there.
Yeah, last week, you were there.
Oh, God, we're classic, aren't we?
So, did I help with the question?
Thank you.
We all right over here?
All right, good.
Any more questions?
We've covered so much.
All right.
All right.
Step three.
Made a decision, right?
Turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
I mean, to keep this one simple,
for me, some people have,
apparently have no problem with this step.
They come in with a significant
spiritual life in place.
It's odd that the normie thinks,
how can you be an alcoholic
and have a spiritual life at the same time?
Easy.
You have a profound faith in God
and you drink uncontrollably.
That's how you do that.
That's how that happened.
But the third step for me was very scary.
This was a very scary step
because I knew going into this process
that my life was on the line.
I knew that I was in the last house on the block.
I knew that if this didn't work for me,
I was a dead man.
I knew that there wasn't another,
there wasn't another game
that I was going to get in
that was going to help me with this.
This was going to have to work
or I was screwed.
Because I was so angry at God when I got here,
what the third step meant to me was,
was I going to become willing
to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I was incredibly angry at?
Was I willing to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I saw as an unjust and unforgiving God?
Was I willing to turn my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I may or may not understand?
I may or may not believe in?
That this is all up for grabs.
This unseen, unknown, untouchable presence.
This experience where I had yet to meet the individual
who could tell me about the face of God.
I didn't, this was really an alarming leap
into the abyss, if you will,
for somebody like me.
The beauty of this thing though is,
is that on the one side I had my experience
of 16 years of chronic alcoholism and drug abuse.
And on this end,
I had a bad relationship.
I jumped.
I pulled the trigger.
I got down on my knees
and to the best of my ability
turned my will and my life
over to the care of a God
I did not understand.
That was the best I could do.
The best I could do is,
I don't understand.
If this God thing,
if this is what I must seek
to relieve me of these problems,
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
I don't understand.
How can this be the same God
that I've had these other, right?
There was so much self.
There was so much self
inflicted upon this relationship.
There was so much willful behavior
inflicted upon this relationship.
There was so much dogma
that was in my head
that I was inflicting this relationship with
that I couldn't see it for what it was.
It was so befuddled and enmeshed.
I couldn't just let it be what it was.
So, I did this.
I turned my will and my life over to the care of,
by getting on my knees
and saying the third step prayer
and getting to the third step prayer.
And getting back up.
And how that felt was,
and I felt it was spooky.
Right?
I mean, what I basically felt was
is that my life is on the line.
I just took a pair of dice
and I don't even know what the game is we're playing.
And I threw them out on the board.
Having no idea what to expect.
That was the leap of faith.
Right?
In spite of my own experiences,
I must go this way.
In spite of my own crippled belief system,
I must go this way.
Those who have what I want
are saying go this way.
See, that's the amazing thing about Alcoholics Anonymous
is I'm sitting around in meetings
and there's guys like the late Fred Ellis.
Right?
In these meetings.
And this man would talk
and I believed everything that man said.
If I stood next to him,
if I felt like I'd taken 20 milligrams of Valium,
I'd just...
Nice.
Fred makes me feel good.
Now, I was too afraid to talk to Fred.
Right?
So, at the Thursday Night Beginners Workshop
in Brentwood, California,
Fred was always there.
At the end of the meeting,
Fred would stand up,
like right over here by the podium,
and guys would come up and talk to Fred.
Guys he sponsored would check in with him
and ask questions
and Fred would share his experience,
strength, and hope with him.
And I would stand behind Fred
and burglarize their conversation.
Right?
Just...
Just...
I did this for many, many weeks.
And then one day,
Fred was talking to these guys
and all of a sudden,
Fred turned around and went,
Hi, Earl.
How are you?
Stuck out his hand.
And I went...
Paralyzed.
My God.
He knows my name.
You know?
Which was entirely too close
to a relationship for me
in early sobriety.
Right?
And there he was.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Got to go now.
You know, run home.
Pace.
Jesus Christ.
Fred knows my name.
Ah.
So I did this step.
It felt like...
You know when you get on the roller coaster
and you're going up the thing
and it's going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.
The third step is where you feel the...
You hear the click and stop.
It's like,
well,
buckle your seatbelt.
Here we go.
You're on the ride now, pal.
And that's how it felt to me.
It felt to me
because as soon as I did it,
it felt a little spooky.
It felt like,
wow, man.
I really did that.
I did that
as well as I could do it at that time.
And I got back in my seat
and the book...
Basically, the book says at that point,
we were hoping you're serious
about what you just did.
It's like,
oh, now you tell me.
Couldn't you have said,
you better be serious
before you do this.
Right?
That would have...
I could have hovered right there
at the brink of fear.
Three for several years
having heard that.
But it said,
we hope you were serious
about what you did
because, see,
now we have to embark upon
a plan of rigorous action.
Right?
Or this is all
just a conversation.
Right?
A lot of guys
sitting around in the bars,
you know,
going,
you know,
that third step is a bitch.
Anybody in here
ever heard of a guy
named Mike Ross?
It's apparent
I need to tell you
about Mike Ross.
Now, one hand went up.
Mike Ross was bigger than life
in every respect.
Big man.
I think when I got sober,
Mike must have had,
I don't know,
you know,
like 1,100 years of sobriety.
He'd been sober forever.
He was this old guy,
gruff, gruff man.
And we used to love the guy.
My friend Christopher and I,
we would go to this one meeting
where Mike always went.
And if he didn't have 10 years,
he wouldn't even talk to you.
You know what I mean?
Because he figured
you could die at any moment.
There's no point
in investing any time in you.
I mean,
he's just this hard-edged guy.
But what we loved,
we didn't care.
You know what I mean?
What we loved about the guy
was what he shared in meetings
and the way he would say goodnight.
Because, I mean,
every time you'd see Mike
and he'd be walking off
towards the door to leave
and we'd be behind him
and we'd go,
goodnight, Mike.
And Mike would think
that a friend of his
was calling out to him
and Mike would turn around
and say goodbye
to a friend of his.
And he'd just dismiss us.
You're not even worth
saying goodnight to.
You know,
we only had like eight years,
you know.
The guy was hysterical,
but he saved my life
more than one time.
We would be sitting in
a step study.
I remember going to this one
step study,
brand new,
and I mean,
my head's on fire.
I'm in flames.
Just nobody can see it.
You know what I mean?
I'm walking into a meeting
and I'm like,
you're going to see
Mike Gacy.
I'm going to sit him
and say,
we're going to talk about this step.
We're going to talk about this step.
Okay, good, good, good, good.
Apparently steps are a big thing.
We'll talk about steps.
Four step.
Ah, four step.
Haven't done that yet.
Let's hear all about it.
Great, great, great, great.
I just,
you know,
sit in a meeting.
I'm like,
out of my mind,
but you know,
people are walking up to me
and I'm like,
how you doing?
Fine.
How you doing?
Fine.
My newcomer mantra.
You know,
how you doing?
Fine.
Fine.
You know,
in my head,
I'm thinking things like,
you're not being attacked.
You're not being attacked.
He just said hello.
You're not being attacked.
Mayday, mayday.
Person coming at me.
Dicey in my head.
And I'm sitting down
and a guy shares about the four step.
Talks about the four step.
Great length.
Great detail.
Minutia.
Just,
I mean,
just,
God,
could there be any more
about this step?
It's brilliant.
I remember thinking,
God,
I get to get guys.
Fabulous.
Fabulous.
Fabulous.
Broke the step down.
What more could I need to know?
Next guy,
ready?
This is his hand.
Goes on for five minutes
about the four step.
Just fabulous.
It's just unbelievable.
Couldn't be less like
what the last guy talked about,
but delightful.
Very entertaining.
Great stuff.
Thinking,
okay,
all right,
we got two,
we got two ways to do this now.
If I have the fifth guy,
you know,
I'm thinking to myself,
okay,
well,
I don't need to buy a new gun
because I'm only going to use it once.
I'm ready.
This is it.
I can't do this.
And all of a sudden,
in the back,
a big mitt goes up in the air
and the guy calls in here,
Mike Alcoholic.
Here comes Mike Ross, right?
And he goes like this.
And I go,
geez,
maybe he knows,
an old guy,
you know what I mean?
And I see this go up.
It goes like this.
I got to ask,
has anybody in here read this?
I don't know.
And I just went,
thank God for this guy, right?
And he just basically says,
when you do your fourth step
is when you're done with the third.
I got that.
That sounds good to me.
He made it very clear.
When should I do my fourth step?
Did you do the third?
Yep.
Get on it.
Make a list.
Make a list.
Oh, okay, okay.
The guy just had a,
it's just,
don't want to go round and round and round.
Want to move.
Want to move.
Want to carry through this process.
Because here's the thing about this whole thing.
You are not going to get this right,
according to Mike,
in your first pass.
This isn't about getting it right.
This is about getting it.
Doing it.
Having an experience as a result of the process.
The cool part about the steps is,
you know,
you're not like,
okay,
has everyone in here recognized that
you're allowed to do the steps once?
We don't allow you to do it any more than one time.
So you better get it right the first time.
Because if you don't,
you're screwed.
You know?
You will be relegated to the half measures room.
And there you must stay
until one day,
mercifully,
you just drink.
Now,
if I do the steps to the best of my ability,
I'm doing something.
I'm taking an action.
As a result of the action,
an experience comes.
As a result of the experience,
I change.
So that when I come back,
to step one,
I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
It's a new step.
Right?
I remember going into a meeting.
I was 11 years sober.
And there's a guy.
I was meeting this woman at this meeting.
And I go in there.
I'm not going to a meeting.
I'm going to meet her.
Right?
And I slide in.
And right before the meeting starts,
and there's one seat.
She's got a seat for me in the front row.
Oh, good.
All right.
Now, the front row
is six feet from the speaker.
Because it's just a table.
You know,
a fold-down table.
And there's the leader
and the speaker sitting there.
And this guy,
Jack,
is going to talk on
step one for 20 minutes.
Oh, Christ.
You know?
And I'm in the front row.
And I can't just go,
can't hang with you, Jack,
and run out the door.
You know what I mean?
I'm stuck.
I'm going to have to sit and listen.
Now, I've got to live in your sobriety
at this time, right?
You can't tell me a thing about step one.
I have done step one.
Done.
Put it to bed.
Case closed.
One hundred percent.
Done.
Step one.
You're not going to...
I don't want...
This is hell.
I'm in hell.
I've got to listen to this guy
go on about step one.
Well, it turns out
the guy was Jack Prose
who had 43 years of sobriety
at the time.
He talked for 20 minutes
on step one
and blew the top of my head off.
He was talking about
concepts and ideas
and a level of awareness
that had never even
occurred to me before.
Just talking about the step.
Just kind of tripping on
where he was at with it, right?
And when the meeting was over,
I looked at my friend and said,
she said,
well, what step are you on?
I went, well, one.
Apparently, I'm on step one.
And the cool thing about AA
is that if you hang around here
and actually pay attention,
that's going to happen all the time.
All the time.
I thought AA was very cool with God
until a woman...
I was about 16 years sober
and a woman with two and a half years
got up at the podium
and started to talk about
her relationship with God.
Blew my mind.
It was great.
That's what goes on around here.
Different people
coming at it
from different perspectives
and different directions.
So if you're thinking
about doing it,
if you do the book,
you come up to me
at the end of this and go,
delightful, Earl,
very entertaining.
However, I do it
a completely different way.
Okay.
That's my response.
Okay, good.
That means more dialogue.
What I love is people
who get up here...
Occasionally, we'll do
this sort of stuff
and somebody will come up
to me and go,
Earl, I find your comments
on the process of recovery
disturbing.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're
killing alcoholics, Earl.
For Christ's sake,
you need to do it this way.
Here's my workbook
that I've developed
over the last eight months.
And I'd like you
to take this workbook
and explore
what I've seen
as the relationship
between God, self, and others.
Okay, cool.
And Earl, please,
for God's sake,
just, you know,
don't talk in AA anymore
until you've read my book.
All right.
Thanks for sharing that with me.
That's lovely.
And I love how pissed off
people get about this stuff.
It's hysterical to me.
I'm standing...
I'm standing in a room
with a bunch of dead people
sitting up pretending
they're paying attention to me.
Right?
We're alcoholics and drug addicts
and we're arguing over
how to develop
a relationship with God.
It's like,
I can't get too upset
about this, all right?
It's just...
It's crazy, right?
What we're doing...
We're wrestling
with the concept of God here.
Right?
In this third step.
I wrestle with the concept...
That's what Israel...
Israel means one
who wrestles with God.
Right?
I'm not...
It says...
The book...
It says to me
in the portion of chapter 5
that I've heard
God knows how many times
in 22 years.
God couldn't would
if He were sought.
It doesn't say
God couldn't would
if He were found.
God couldn't would
if He were sought.
Then I must seek God.
I'm given very, very
specific instructions
on how to go about doing that
later on in the step.
I must seek God.
But what I've got to do
at first is throw myself
at it.
To open up my arms
and say,
I let go.
I let God.
I surrender.
I can't.
God can.
I'll let Him.
God could.
Restore me to sanity.
Soundness of mind.
Relieve me of the obsession
of drink.
Now, what's interesting
is that these actions...
The action of these steps
where I seek this God
is remarkable to me.
That...
That...
It's about my willingness
to get the stuff
that I place between me
and God
and me and my fellows
out of the way.
I put it there.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I get rid of it.
I don't ask God
to get rid of it.
I do it.
I don't ask you to do it.
I do it.
I do it.
I don't sit in my apartment
and wait for life
to come knock on the door.
I must get up
and go outside.
I had a sponsor,
my second sponsor
after Donald died.
I had a second sponsor
for six years.
He's a great friend of mine
and I love him dearly,
Al F.
He's the guy that...
Get between those.
Right?
He's a big meditation guy.
It's very difficult
to talk to
because he's just
being there
while you're...
while you're talking to him.
He's a fantastic example.
You know,
he's a sponsor.
You don't do what he says.
You just watch him
and feel him.
You know what I mean?
Just right there.
He's just...
He's an amazing human being.
Absolutely amazing.
But he said,
you know,
Earl,
if you give your life to God
and sit in the closet,
what you get is coat hangers.
Right?
It took me six months
to wrap my head around that.
It's like,
all right,
I'll be back
when I have any idea
what that means.
You know?
Donald used to say to me,
Earl,
God comes in shoe leather.
Okay.
Apparently God
is a shoe salesman.
I don't...
So I get it, right?
There's these actions
I take
to open myself up
to this experience
of a power
greater than myself.
I can assure you
I do not understand God.
I pray to a God
I don't understand.
But I do pray to a God
that I see the evidence of
in my life
on a daily basis.
On a daily basis.
You know?
It's there
if I want to.
That's a lot of
what the big buzz is for me.
These sudden realizations
that if I just
stand still
and feel the life
that is around me
that there's something
quite remarkable
going on
all the time.
That's the cool thing, man.
It's better than
any drug I ever took.
I took so much LSD
that I was classified
legally insane
by the military.
Right?
And this buzz is better.
You know?
This buzz is better.
You know?
I've done enough heroin
in one night
to sit around
and just talk about it.
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
You know?
I'm checking my pulse.
Just...
Yeah.
There it goes again.
Good.
I've slowed it
way down.
I've drank enough alcohol
to come to
in different cities.
Right?
No buzz better
than that
the clarity
of being completely
present in a moment
and feeling
the presence of God.
That's an amazing
and amazing
amazing event.
And this is
the only way
that this buzz
that that's available.
How I begin that process
is by being willing
to turn my will and life
over the care of God
as I understand Him
or don't understand Him.
To get out on my knees
and say the third step prayer.
If you have...
And I mean literally
get down on my knees.
Not figuratively speaking.
For me, literally.
I literally get down on my knees
and say that prayer.
The reason I do that
is it's...
I've got to humble myself.
Humility is the willingness
to learn.
For me.
And I have to
present myself
willingly.
And that way
I know for a fact
there's no mistaking.
I can't say,
well, I feel willing
as I stand there
with my chest out.
But if I'm willing
to get down on my knees
and just do it
from a position...
I'm not being submissive.
I'm relinquishing power.
I'm relinquishing control.
Come on.
I'm here.
I'm willing.
If I ask,
God will come
with the book set.
I have to ask.
I've got to ask.
So I do.
So that's the way
Step 3 for me.
Nice and simple.
Easy.
It's about the experience of it.
It's about gathering
an experience.
It's about creating
an opportunity for
a deeper and more
meaningful experience.
That's what it is.
Step 4.
I just pulled the trigger
in Step 3.
Boom.
I'm in.
The ride stopped clicking.
Here we go.
Right?
It says I must immediately...
I get up from Step 3
and I embark upon
a plan of action
immediately.
What's the action plan?
For me,
4 through 9.
4 through 9.
4 and 5 is me.
6 and 7 is God.
8 and 9 is you.
Nobody else to play with.
That's everybody.
We're all covered.
What do I do in 4?
Well, according to this,
according to this,
I do a resentment inventory,
a fear inventory,
and a sex inventory.
Why do I do it
on those three things?
Because if you want to see
where I can
lead you,
if you want to see
where I can leave
the playing field,
those are three pretty good areas
to take a look at.
We're going to see
a pattern develop here
that a blind man could see.
All right?
Then that's why I do it.
And I just do it
out of the book.
I do a resentment inventory.
Right?
I do it in four columns.
There are those
that will tell you
it's three columns.
There are those
that will tell you
you need...
There's four columns,
but three of the columns
are broken down
into four specific areas.
There are others
that will tell you
that there are two columns
that are broken down
into one into three areas,
and one into two.
There's others
that will say
we do it in black and white,
so when you do
your fourth column,
we suggest you use
these four things
and write a sentence
detailing specifically
how those things
have come into being.
To all of this,
I say,
okay.
Sure.
Whatever floats your boat.
Whatever you can look at
and go,
well, you know,
that makes sense to me.
I can see that.
Great.
Then dive into that.
Just do it.
Just do it.
Just do it.
The first inventory I did,
I went to my sponsor
who was not a big book guy.
Donald wasn't a big book guy.
He used to rant and rave at us.
He called us
little book-thumpers.
Your little book-thumpers.
He goes,
before there was a book,
there was one alcoholic
down in the dirt
sharing his experience,
strength, and hope
with another alcoholic.
Well, that's true.
We're going back to the book now.
And you get into the book.
And my first inventory,
I said,
what do you want me to do?
Get rid of the garbage.
So I wrote 27 pages of garbage and told them about it.
And I got my first direction from my sponsor.
And hey, my first direction was we don't kill people here one day at a time.
Which I thought was very reasonable, doable.
One day at a time, just today.
And I haven't killed anybody one day at a time.
I was actually planning a murder when I came to AA.
So he felt compelled to tell me immediately.
We don't do that.
My best thinking again.
So I do a resentment inventory.
I make a list.
And it talks about it in the book.
I mean, if you guys want me to, I can waste a lot of time up here,
put my glasses on and read it to you.
Exactly what it says and why you do it that way.
But I'm figuring these are readily available.
You know, these are readily available.
You want to see precisely how it is in here?
Go here and look, read it.
What I'm telling you is what I did was I went here.
And when I finally did an inventory that was out of this book,
that's when things changed for me.
The getting rid of the garbage was great.
It made it possible for me to take action
that suggested I was making a commitment to being here.
That was a value.
Doing it completely different than the book told me to do it
was a value.
Absolutely a value.
I think what that did was it allowed me to then feel like
I'd earned the seat I was sitting in.
I was an active member.
I'd written 27 pages of this stuff down on paper.
I was doing something in support of my own life,
in support of my own recovery.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my problem.
I wasn't acknowledging that this was my solution.
I wasn't quietly slipping off the couch to my knees,
saying the third step prayer and popping back up.
I was actually at the direction of another human being,
my sponsor, writing down all my secrets,
all the stuff I was going to my grave with.
It was really, really valuable.
Did it change my life?
Yeah.
Did doing it out of the book have a more profound effect
on my life than that?
Yeah.
Much more so.
Much more so.
Because I was able,
I was able in this inventory out of the book
to see the pattern of behavior in my life.
When I looked at my inventory,
when I looked at my side of the street,
when I looked at how resentment,
fear,
my sexual behavior
was isolating me in the world,
when you looked at my whole inventory,
I saw one word,
powerlessness.
A powerlessness to be effective in the world.
Powerlessness in terms of my own individual well-being.
Powerlessness in terms of my relationships with other people.
That I was in a position to say,
I was in fact a self-centered, frightened man
and that this was ruling my life.
In my sexual relationships,
I was either completely in control
or totally unavailable.
Right?
Never in the middle.
Never an equal participant.
Unable.
Completely unable to do that.
My relationship with God,
I already told you about that.
That wasn't doing so well.
Relationship with self,
filled with self-loathing.
All of my relationships were just in the trash can.
This was a painful experience.
I listed my resentments.
I listed the individuals that I resented.
I listed the institutions that I resented.
I listed the principles that I had great objection to.
You know?
Loving and being loved.
Being on time.
Being accountable for my actions.
Hated all that stuff.
And when I did my...
When I got to this enough,
I realized,
I just got out my address book.
Because it basically got down to...
Because the question I ask myself
when doing an inventory is,
how free do you want to be?
How free do you want to be?
When that thing goes by and you go,
well, not really, right?
Eh, well, if it floated by, write it down.
We can discuss it later,
whether or not it's pertinent, right?
And people always ask me,
Earl, can you have a resentment in your life
that you have no part in?
And my answer to that is,
probably.
There weren't any in mine.
But I have actually sponsored a couple of guys
that had some things listed.
And there was...
They had no part in it.
Right?
They had no part in it.
There are circumstances that can occur in life
that can cause you great deep-seated resentment
that you have no part in.
Yeah, I've actually seen it
and I'd be happy to discuss with anybody
at one of these breaks that we have along the way.
For you smokers,
of which I am now a proud non-member of that group.
Yeah, the smokers.
No, here's the smokers.
Anyway.
So you do the inventory, right?
I list my resentments.
I resent my father.
Call him too.
Why do I resent him?
What's my specific resentment against my father?
Well, I've got 54 resentments against my father.
Right?
54.
List them.
1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, or 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 1, 57.
1-57.
I've got 57 resentments against my father.
Specifically.
What areas of my life are affected by this?
I use the seven things that I was taught
to come up in the book.
It affects my personal relations,
sexual relations, pride, self-esteem,
security, ambition, pocketbook.
Yeah, that's seven.
Right?
I list...
Any or all of those that are affected
as a result of this specific relationship.
What's my part in it?
List four things in the book.
Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened.
What are these things that aren't in the book?
And specifically, how did this come about in my life?
Next.
Now, other guys break it down way more than that.
One other guy that I hold in high regard,
adore him,
has now come to the belief that there is no fourth column.
That it's a three-column inventory.
I have yet to discuss this with him.
I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about.
But I'm willing to listen.
I'm not going to reject it out of hand.
Fine, you got another way of doing it?
Let's hear it.
If it works for me, I'll give it a shot.
Because this isn't about this way.
It's about doing it.
It's about getting this stuff down on paper
and being relieved of this.
This is the stuff that I put between me and you
and me and God.
So I get out my phone book
because basically I realized at one point,
my address book,
if I knew you well enough to put your name
and phone number in my address book,
at some point you had frightened me.
And if you frightened me,
you probably would have frightened me.
You pissed me off.
You frightened me, I resent you.
Now, early on,
all you had to do to frighten me
was walk up and say,
how's it going?
Well, what the hell are you asking me that for?
How the hell am I supposed to know what's going on?
I don't know what's going on.
And clearly you don't either
or you wouldn't be asking me.
I hate you.
I hate you.
This is all entirely too much work talking to you.
Write them down.
I had Thomas Jefferson on my inventory.
Have you ever read this guy's life story?
The stuff that he did?
Who could live up to this?
Hated that man.
Institutions, groups of people.
And what you write down,
it doesn't have to look good.
You don't have to say,
oh, you know,
I don't really like that I feel that way.
Write it down.
That's your best way out of it.
Right?
You may discover that you're a bigot,
a racist,
a liar,
a thief.
You may discover that you're all of them
and that you don't like that about you.
Maybe those lessons your daddy taught you
are not lessons you should have embraced
or cared to embrace.
And you've gotten to a point where
to be who you really are,
which is not a racist,
not a bigot,
not a thief,
not a liar,
that the ills of your father,
that you can say,
no, this is not who I am.
I disagree with this.
That you can get to a place
in order to save your own life
where you can make your own father wrong.
Not easy to do for a lot of us.
But we get there in this process.
We write it down
and see the pattern of your own life.
See it right there.
I resent this stuff, right?
Fear inventory.
What am I afraid of?
Fear of flying.
Why?
Because I crash.
I'm afraid of being crashed.
Right?
It's not a,
what do they call it
when it's just,
it's not a phobia.
Thank you.
He gets an extra bagel.
It's not a phobia.
It's based on my experience.
Right?
That I'm afraid of flying.
Right?
Why am I afraid of crash?
And then move through your inventory.
Move through.
Basically, what I've discovered
is I'm afraid of two things.
I'm afraid of rejection
and I'm afraid of abandonment.
That's what I'm afraid of.
Pretty much every fear I've got
you can put under one category or the other.
Right?
In the 12 and 12,
in the seventh step,
right?
Second to the last page,
it says,
self-centered fear is the chief activator
of all my defects of character.
Either I'm not going to get something I want
or I'm going to lose something I already have.
Rejection and abandonment.
And it gets real, real simple
so that when I'm functioning in my life,
I don't have this blanket,
vague,
unexamined wall of fear
that I can throw up in the world.
You know what I mean?
So when you walk up to me
and suddenly you're confronting me,
oh, I hate your discussion about step three.
Wall of fear.
Now lob things over the wall
until this person goes away.
Yeah, well, I don't like your clothes.
I don't like your discussion on step four.
I hate you.
I don't like you either.
Screw you.
Lob and stuff like that.
Make him go away.
He's scaring me.
Then the person goes away.
But if I recognize all I'm afraid of is fear.
I have a fear of not getting what I want
or losing something I have.
I'm afraid of two things, right?
So you come up and you scare me
and I throw up my wall of fear
and I just go, huh.
Well, that didn't work.
I got to take a deep breath and go,
what am I afraid of here?
I'm afraid I'm not going to get something I want
to be accepted by you
or I'm going to lose something I already have.
A reason for being here.
Or just fill in your own blank.
Whatever it may be.
What works for you, right?
And it's just silly.
And so then you say, you know,
I don't like your thing on step three.
And I go, well, you know what?
Let me take you back to the room back there.
There's a whole bunch of tapes and stuff
of other guys back there.
Some of whom I think are really good
at talking about the book.
Maybe one of them has got a way
of breaking down step three or step four
that you like.
May I suggest Joe and Charlie?
Right?
It's got nothing to do with me.
You don't like it?
No?
Okay.
Fine.
I personally delight in the way I do this.
Find your own way.
Find your own way.
This is just one little glimpse of it.
I don't have this thing wrapped up.
I'll come back here next year,
sit down and go,
remember that time I was out here?
You got a tape of that last one?
Burn it.
We got a whole new way of doing it.
What would that mean?
Would that mean that I was wrong today?
No.
No.
It would mean that I've continued
to explore the process.
I have another way of communicating it.
I have a different experience of it now
which requires yet another way
of communicating it.
So you just find your way through.
Some of you are going to become
big Joe and Charlie fans.
Those are going to be your guys.
So that guy and that guy and that guy?
Crap!
Then you're going to pick up a Joe H. guy.
The rest of us are peasants.
Find your own way.
It's all good.
Because what you are,
if you're prescribing
to a particular,
is that you're saying,
I'm an alcoholic
and I seek this thing.
I seek this process.
I seek this unfolding
in my own life.
And that's what it's about.
So that's all we're doing here today
is wrestling with it this way today.
Alright?
So, I do these four column inventories
on resentment, fear, and sex.
Right?
Now, in step five,
I'm supposed to reveal these
before God to another human being.
I'm supposed to sit down with somebody
and get it out.
I would suggest doing that.
Really, it's not that deep.
Do you know what I mean?
What you have to do.
The specific way you go about it.
The book will suggest,
the 12 and 12 will suggest,
the book will suggest
this is how you go about it.
Right?
You sit down with somebody,
the 12 and 12,
Bill talks about all kinds of stuff
in the fourth step.
He talks about,
only thing in the 12 and 12
I disagree on,
it's just me.
I actually disagree
with something he says.
He says,
well, if you got a bunch
of really, really heavy stuff
that you're reading
most of them,
it's your sponsor
and then you go to another person,
there's one paragraph,
and talk about the rest of it
with somebody else.
I don't go for that personally.
I was so good
at compartmentalizing my life
when I was out there.
That was one of my major problems
was that nobody knew
the whole story.
This guy knows a little bit,
she knows a little bit,
that guy knows a little bit,
she knows a little bit,
but nobody knows Earl really.
Nobody knows the whole deal.
And there's pieces
in each of those compartments
that say an awful lot
about who I am.
So I had to find me,
that's just me,
I had to find,
I had to find a place
where I could give it all up.
All of it in one place.
So that's what I did.
Before God to another human being.
And I sat down
and I laid out my four columns
in resentment inventory
and I did it in columns,
right,
and I read it in rows.
Right?
I wrote my resentment list
until it was done,
then I went to column two
and answered the stuff
in column two.
When that was done,
I went to column three.
When I read it
to the individual
that I read it to,
I read it across in the rows.
One, one,
one, two,
one, three,
one, four,
one, five,
until one was done
and then I went to two
and I read across.
And that was how
it became a completely
different document.
Doing it that way.
Instead of just this way,
all of a sudden
I'm doing it in another way
and this incredible pattern
of behavior in my life
is revealed to me.
Right?
When I saw,
so that was the fifth step.
I sat down and I did it.
Was I happy about this?
No.
Was it a comfortable experience?
Was it a good experience for me?
Absolutely not.
Did I have a lot of discussion
with my sponsor
as I was reading it to him?
No.
Anything that was said
in that meeting
other than what I had written down
was conversation
that he introduced.
My job was to show up
and read what I had written.
Not offer further explanation.
Not get,
read what was written.
Not,
not an occasional
preemptive strike
where I would sit and go,
now this next one.
Let me discuss this next one
with you.
I want to restate
that I was not in my right mind.
That I personally
do not consider this
to be an example
of who I am.
None of that.
He just shut up
and read it.
And I read it
and occasionally he would say,
time out.
Right?
Read that last one again.
I loved that one.
And he would,
he would do that to me.
Or he would do
the wonderful,
loving sponsor type thing
where he would say,
that reminds me of a story
because he'd see that I'd read one
that I was particularly ashamed of.
And he'd say,
that reminds me of a story.
And he'd tell some atrocious story
about something he'd done
that was very, very similar
to this hideous event in my life.
And it relieved me.
I mean,
there was healing that went on
as the process took place
because of who he was.
I mean,
it was just an amazing,
amazing experience.
Did I feel,
and at the end of the step,
fifth step,
I felt different.
What I felt was
remarkably exposed.
That's what I felt.
And it was remarkably uncomfortable.
But it was the only way
I was going to discover for myself
that I could tell you the truth
about who I was
and you wouldn't throw me away.
That you would just consider me more
as one of yours,
as with you,
than before.
Right?
That was it for me.
That was the only way
a guy like me was,
believing you because you told me so?
Nah.
Not like,
I got it when I did it.
When I did it,
I was in.
I was in.
I showed up.
And I looked at my sponsor
when I was done with my fifth step
and I said to him,
now all I have to do
is wait for you to die.
And he looked at me and he said,
oh, isn't that lovely?
And he walked away.
Amazing experience.
An amazing experience.
Let's take a break.
Thank you.
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