Why Step 5 Ends the Anxious Apartness – Sandy B.

Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the Saturday Morning Live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing this morning? It's great to see everybody here this morning and on behalf of the group we want to extend a special welcome to anybody who hasn't been here before. If you haven't been to this meeting, why, we hope you get something out of it and find it useful. And if you're new to AA, if you are just arriving in this fellowship apply everybody here wants you to make it they know exactly how you feel each one of us has been through that just arriving here feeling when you're sure you're in the wrong place and i don't want to be involved in this thing and these people are too fanatical and i'm not really an alcoholic i just have a minor wine problem and then i'm sure i can deal with that in some other fashion and feeling fear and resentment and i Don't Want People Telling Me How To Live My Life and all of those incredible emotional roller coasters that are going on in your body and mind right now that's just the way it goes and everybody went through that and all we can say is please ignore all that and stay here there is a lot of wonderful things in store for you if you will stick with this crowd of people that you find in aa and they're going to take you down a road you're going to be delighted that you went. And the problem is if you don't choose this alternative, the other one is awful because whatever has happened so far will get worse. That's what alcoholism is. The journey just gets worse and worse. So please disregard your better judgment if you're new and stick around because there's a lot of great things in store for you. It's customary to start our meetings with our preamble. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting to our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Does not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. And if you're new, you'll hear that read at just about every meeting and it serves as a wonderful reminder of exactly what we're all doing here this morning and what people are doing at about 250 other AA meetings today in the Washington, D.C. area. So every day there's that many meetings. So if you're new, there's meetings near where you live, where you work, women's meetings, midnight meetings, noon meetings, discussion meetings, whatever. And it's a wonderful system that now exists in Alcoholics Anonymous. We're on step five today. And we just go through them one at a time. We get to step 12 and then we have one week on the traditions of AA and spend the whole hour talking about all the traditions at once. and then two weeks on the history of AA, which is my favorite part, the incredible story of how this thing got put together. And then we start all over again. So we're on step five today. But before getting to step five, there's always new people in here and I like to just say, make a few comments about the steps in general and then go into the step that we're On. For the benefit of those of you that are new, If somebody were to ask you, well, what is Alcoholics Anonymous? The answer is it's the 12 steps. That is the AA program. That is how individual members of AlcoholicsAnonymous stay happy and sober. And you have to do both. You've got to have a program that enables the alcoholic to be happy and sober. Not drinking, going on the wagon produces sobriety, but you don't see many people on the wagon who are happy and sober. And therefore, they get off the wagon because it ain't no fun up there. You walk around not drinking and you meet somebody and go, what are you doing? I'm not drinking! And you can see the neck muscles about to pop out because it's such a sacrifice and they're not happy not drinking. They're just not drinking, and so that won't last. It's very difficult to stay sober and miserable for an extended period of time it's just some people have a lot of willpower and they can walk around miserable all the time and not drink but most of us can't do that and so this these 12 steps that's exactly what they're designed to do is to produce a happy sobriety and i was told a long time ago if you've been in aa any amount of time and you're not happy, you're doing it wrong. How's that? That's heavy stuff. You're doing it wrong! You're just not taking advantage of what's here and allowing the program to come in because that is what will arrive is happy sobriety. It is the power to be reasonably happy in all circumstances so that our happiness and serenity is not dependent on a set of circumstances, I will get this promotion, she will love me, he will love me or whatever all these things are. That can be going all up and down and we're given access to a way of life that will give us serenity and happiness no matter what's going on. Now if that sounds suspect to anyone who is new here, what you mean there's some way to get happy no matter what's gone on? That doesn't sound possible to me, of all the people in the world that shouldn't doubt this, it's drunks. What were we doing before we got here? We had found a way of getting happy no matter what the circumstances were. Do you remember that? A bartender, you've got to think back there to make me happy. And then he served up something and we went, thank you. And we got happy no matter what our circumstances were, you know. You didn't have the rent money, you only had half of it. So you got a few drinks and you said, hey, set up the house. You know, I don't care. Eat, drink, and be merry. Tomorrow you'll be dead. That was sort of the day-at-a-time philosophy of the practicing alcoholic. But we certainly knew about what it is to have access to a power to transform us from the inside out so that we could be comfortable no matter what was going on. That power was alcohol. But it was the wrong power. And it had terrible side effects, and it ends up killing us if we don't do something about it. But it certainly appeared to be the answer. That's what made me an alcoholic. Alcohol was the answer, wasn't the problem. It was the Answer. And so when we say in the program that we have a plan for living that will enable us to get access to a power that will do exactly that and a hundred times more, that's what we're talking about. So, what are these steps? They're a game plan for living to replace your plan. And that's the biggest thing that happens when you arrive in AA is because your plan, based on a lot of you new people I haven't met, but just casual observation, okay? Just a casual observation. I don't think your plan's working too well. That's my own just opinion, that people don't get here on a roll. You know what I'm talking about? They don't come to AA to improve their resume. Well, in addition to being an engineer, I'm in AA. People come here on the way down. Things are going terrible. And as a result, when you arrive here, you are nothing to brag about. You know What I'm Talking About? In other words, if we were to put you up on the stage or in your first week in AA and say, we have learned everything about this man's way of life and put it into a book, I don't think we could sell too many copies unless we got rid of you. Because the theory may be wonderful, but the results have been terrible. And that's what is required when we get here is to take an honest assessment of our own lives and see that perhaps something is wrong. We puke a lot, we think it's suicide, we have no close friends, our family doesn't want to talk to us, we're worried about financial things, we can't sleep, we feel guilty, we're angry at the world, we're full of resentment, but we don't want To change anything. You know, the plan basically is sound, it's just the world is screwed up. and so we come in here and what we're saying is the biggest thing that happens when you try the 12 steps is you stop that other plan you just abandon it and everybody comes here the smartest person in the world whether it's street smarts or college smarts you are secretly superior to everybody you just don't tell them that because it upsets them but you know that you know more about you than anyone else and that's very important And so that is one of the great things that happens is we stop doing what has been causing these terrible results. We have to abandon. Our ego doesn't want to do it, and it just ends up being a terrible struggle. But that's the biggest plus initially to the 12 steps is that we stop working the old plan. Now, the second thing is that this plan is not an intellectual plan, so it doesn't look right. And it will always seem confusing to us as we approach it with our problems. It's a spiritual plan. It is a spiritual plant. These are spiritual principles, and the trouble with a spiritual planet is when you study it, your mind will tell you that it won't work. That's the problem with this. When you look at the 12 steps, and I'm sure everybody, if you've been here a while, probably your sponsor wants you to read these things and you go home and you read them and then you try to connect them. They're very interesting. I had to admit that as soon as I read it. I said, that's very interesting and admirable. I think I even threw that in. I said this is very admirable but totally irrelevant to my problem. You know what I'm saying? There was no, I mean, where was the step with the $2,000 loan? That wasn't in there. And that was the most pressing thing as far as I was concerned. I mean, there were real things that I had to deal with. And once I dealt with them, we could deal with these abstractions, you know, prayer and meditation and character building and all those wonderful things. So your mind will never see the connection between your current problem and these 12 steps. So that's one of the illusions or one of the problems in visualizing with your intellectual mind a spiritual plan. So it has to be done in order to be seen. It has to be done in order to be seen. In order to see how AA works, you have to do it. And then you see it clearly because you see it in the results that occur in your life. And you experience sobriety, but you never understand it. You just experience it. That's why you get AA members that are sober for years and years, and you say, well, how does AA work? And we sit around and argue with each other. I don't know. You're just going to the goddamn meetings, and it works. But we can't really explain it in any sense. We can just say these are the actions that are taken, and then certain results occur. Now, if this sounds like it's all mumbo-jumbo, did any of you understand how drinking worked? Could you on a blackboard explain why after three drinks the world looked wonderful? No, you couldn't. But you knew what to do. You knew what the steps were to take in order to achieve those results. And what if we had been the Doubting Thomases about alcohol? Somebody said, look, I know you're afraid to ask that girl to dance. Drink this. You will know how to dance And you won't be afraid. Are you kidding? I poured this in and I don't know how to dance? Are you telling me that dancing lessons are in a glass? Is that what you're trying to tell me? That we can bypass Arthur Murray and just drink this and my feet will know how... That's the most preposterous story I ever heard. And, you know, if you never drank, you could be doubting that to this day because you had to actually do it. and then when you did it, you were out there, right? And you remember that? It's like, whoa! You intuitively knew how to handle situations that used to baffle you. And that's exactly what happens here. But you have to sort of say that up front. Otherwise, people go home and try to study the AA program like you're getting ready for an exam. And it'll never make sense intellectually. So I tell you that ahead of time. That's one of the great differences with a spiritual plan compared to an intellectual plan. There is no problem solving here. We never understand anything. It's called problem removing. That's the difference between problem solving and problem removing what we do here is we take certain actions that remove problems they just get lifted away and when they're gone and that's what happens to our drinking. One day at a time, that's what they talk about in our day-at-a-time step. What we really have is the daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition. What that means is we take certain actions that we don't believe in. That's what Clancy calls the 12 steps. Twelve actions that We Take That We Don't Believe In. And then after we take them, then we believe in them. So it's a leap of faith and we do it because we see other people who came here before us. if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length, which are these 12 steps. And I lost my train of thought so probably wasn't going anywhere anyway. Maybe we'll get to step five soon. I was just trying to make some general comments about the difference between this type of life plan and the one we've had before we got here. Now, the second thing that I'll comment, and then I'll get to step five, is in order to get into this plan, in order, the entrance way, there's only one way. You can't come in through any other way into this way of life. It's the first step. And the way you get in here to totally have it work and to totally have all the rewards is by surrendering. That's how you get in. And so it's absolutely essential that we understand that you're powerless over alcohol. And that's what our first step talks about. And in order, that's one of the more spiritual words there is, is powerless because you may not understand it when you first say, well, I'm powerless over alcoholic. That's all you've really said, possibly, is, well, I have a lot of problems when I drink alcohol, so I'm powerless over alcohol. But when we study the word powerless, we're going to see that it means a great deal more than that. What are the implications of being powerless over alcohol? What it really means is unless there's a higher power, you're screwed. That's what powerless means, right? Because it doesn't say I'm ignorant about alcohol, therefore I have to go study and learn a lot about alcohol and then I'll be all right. It doesn't says that. It says you are powerless over alcohol, which means you will never be able to live without taking the first drink. That's what it says. It means you, just you on your own, will always take the first drink. And if you do, then all the rest of that stuff is going to happen. You do not have the power. That's what it says. I'm powerless over alcohol. And it's much more than just being powerless every time you drink you get all screwed up. That's not a problem. That is not a problema. If your only problem is whenever you drink you get All Screwed Up, you don't need AA. You don't even need help. All you have to do is not drink and your problem won't appear. But isn't that funny? Suddenly you go, well, maybe I have more of a problem than that. And I'll tell you what it is. It's the same problem that I had. Our real problem wasn't the fact that when we drank, we got all screwed up. Our real problems was when we didn't drink, we were sober all the time. That's the real problem. When you don't drink you're sober and then you go around you go, hey, if I don't ever drink, I'm going to be sober forever. I'll be sober tonight and tomorrow and next year and the year after that. And whenever I'm sober, I'M FRIGHTENED AND I'M VULNERABLE AND I NEED SOMETHING TO HELP ME BECAUSE I DON'T FIT IN TOO WELL AND I DONT GET ALONG AND THERE'S A LOT OF CONFLICT. AND ALCOHOL FIXES THAT PROBLEM. Whatever that problem is, that's what alcohol fixed and that's what made us alcoholics. So if we say we're powerless, we mean we're powerless when we have no alcohol in our system. Oddly enough, the real problem occurs when there's no alcohol in the picture at all. Isn't that strange? The real problem of alcoholism occurs when there is no alcohol anywhere in sight. Zero blood alcohol content. It's right up here. It's right in our brain, and our brain is saying, time for a drink. There's the problem. Time for a drinking. Why don't we stop saying that? Did you ever try to get rid of that obsession with alcohol on your own? Okay, no more thinking about drinking. That's my New Year's resolution. I'm not going to think about drinking starting now. Okay, Budweiser. Yes, there it is. And the harder you try to get free from the thinking about alcohol, the more it comes in. I mean, it's a self-defeating exercise. So powerless over alcohol is when we're sober, there's no defense against the first drink. And the only answer to that is some kind of a power that will help us with this powerless situation And the entire AA journey is to put us in touch with a personal higher power that will take care of this powerless problem. And as a fringe benefit, it changes our entire life, gives us happiness, serenity, and a vision of the world that we never dreamed we'd ever have, all because we were drunk. One of the ironies of this great program, because we thought we were singled out for this adversity and it turns out we were signaled out for this wonderful reward. It's one of the great paradoxes of being an alcoholic. You know, the chosen people were the drunks and it's a real irony and when it happens to you, you're going to understand that. If a big cop pulls you over for drunk driving, at the time, you saw him as an interference later on you're going to see him as a messenger from God who was sent down to pull you out of the hell hole you've been living in and send you on this great road called sobriety but when it happens it doesn't look like that my sponsors didn't look like a great messenger from anywhere I thought he was the force from hell you know what I mean so anyway we said that's the doorway through so the rest of the steps take us down this journey and initially this higher power may be our aa group it may be your sponsor or whatever it is but it's got to be something beyond ourselves but ironically even though we cannot stay sober on our own we alone are the only thing that's going to keep us sober it's one of those paradoxes There's a sentence somewhere where it says, you alone can't do it, but you alone must do it. So on your own, there's no way you can stay sober, but You're the only one that can get you to a meeting. You're The Only One Who Can Do The Steps. So it's totally up to me to take these actions where I will be given the gift of sobriety, but there's No Way That I Can Stay Sober On My Own. So it's one of these things where I've got to do it, but I can't do it by myself. And so we start down this road through these 12 steps to find this higher power after we decide that we're going to give this a shot in the second step and we make a decision that this has to be a top priority. The top priority has to been AA, sobriety, learning how and taking the actions to give us access to a power to produce this sobriety. And we go, well now where am I going to find this power? Whatever it is. And of course for those of you that are new let me say this there is no AA God. AA does not try to convince you of the existence of God. We don't try to teach you about who God is. Our specialty is to convince you of the need for God. That's our specialty. And we just show you what it is to be an alcoholic and to be powerless and to being caught in a position where you either have to change your mind about a higher power or go down the tube. I mean, that's sort of where we are when we arrive here. So we go through the intellectual debate of am I going to change my mind about a high power? Oh my God, what a struggle that is. And then later on we see how funny it was that we would have this huge debate. And then we find out we don't have to go anywhere. We don't need to go off to Tibet or off to anywhere to find this higher power, that it's the fundamental idea of a higher power was inside of us all along. It's been there since we were little kids. It was born in us. We talk about alcohol being a threefold illness, mental, physical, and spiritual, and it goes after all three parts of us. And the AA program goes after the spiritual side and works on that first, and it's amazing how everything else seems to straighten out. So we have that dimension to ourselves, the mental, physical, and spiritual. It's just that we ignored the spiritual. We dismissed it. We said, I'm not interested in that. I've got to get a million bucks. I'll get around to that later. And we left that part of ourselves sort of unattended. Many of us denied that we even had that part. Ah, I're not that kind of a person. I'm just about Bobby Badass. and I just go around and I'm not into that. But the problem was, we were. The problem was there was part of us that didn't like the way we were living. That's why we felt so bad at night. We'd try to stay, I don't care, I can live any way I want. But there was a part of unsupported that said, no you can't. This isn't good. You're not living the way you should be. You're NOT the kind of person. And that was the part of US that was our conscience or the spiritual side or whatever you want to call it, that's the part that the program is going to go after now. So this fundamental idea of a higher power is inside of us. And the steps simply remove all the blockages to this. It's not a complicated thing we don't have to go into. It's like the best analogy I can think of is you're in a hospital, you've got the best doctors in the world, they got you in an oxygen tent and one of your visitors is standing on the hose. And we're trying to, the doctors are all going, what's wrong? You're there trying to breathe and we're kind of figure out, my God, we better get more experts in here and figure out this person may die soon. We got this serious thing and we are trying to understand what it is and then somebody says, he's stepping on the host and then as soon as he gets his foot off of there, the oxygen comes in, everything is fine. That's where we are spiritually. We have stepped on our own oxygen hose. And then we misdiagnose that. Oh God, do we misbiagnose that. My problem is not a stepped on hose. My problem is my parents were mean to me. My problem is she left me. My problem is society doesn't understand me. My problem is... And then we go, no, I think that somebody's on your hose over here. That's just... So all through the rest of your sobriety we're going to find that people are going to say, before you analyze anything, check the hose. All through the resto of your sobiety. That's what first things first means. Check the spiritual condition first is somebody on the hose because sometimes if we go unblock the hose there aren't any problems left. There aren't many problems left. This is what spirituality is like. It's just we go open up the channel and then the problems aren't there anymore because we had misdiagnosed them. It really wasn't all these other things it was simply we had been deprived of the resources that we needed in order to see that everything was all right and when that was drained from us we started seeing that everything wasn't all right you see what i mean left where it's just me looking at the world it looks threatening intimidating confusing doesn't make sense i have no purpose in life i don't understand what's going on and then somebody says oh anybody on your hose and then we go straighten that out and that's what we do in the steps. It turns out we don't have to go anywhere except to find out what's blocking us and in AA, we inventory these blockages. We call them character defects. You can call them anything you want. The end result is they block out a higher power. That is it bottom line. You can feel guilty about your character defects if you want You can claim you don't have any if you want, but the point is they're there. They are given to all human beings. We talked about these last week. They come from our basic instinctual drives which were put in us when we arrived here as little babies. And these drives are there to make sure that we move ahead as human beings and they're there. They're the drive for sex, for a place in society and the drive to feel secure and everybody has those. They came out. Now these drives as they provide us the raw energy to be human beings sometimes get out of control and they end up being in charge and so we intended to work all afternoon but the sexual drive said why don't we take the afternoon off and then we had to lie about where we were and then he got fired and then I do that and who was in charge one of our drives was in charged and it's a very complicated process where the drives are no longer in charge but the human being is and this process is very foreign to AA members it's called growing up and this is not a trademark of AA members. People don't serve AAA. Very grown up, very grown up. Because we found a shortcut to growing up. It was called drinking. And why, you know, you just boom. And so what we're inventorying is where these instinctual drives, character defects are out of control. Where they're just on a rampage. And in chapter, step four in the 12 and 12, instincts on the rampage balk at investigation. They don't really want to be looked at. So last week we were looking at what these blockages are. Fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves. And we listed down the standard character defects. See, everybody has the standard ones. You don't have a unique one. I mean, there's just so many. You can list sex, security, society, or pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth. Whatever way you want. The seven deadly sins as Bill suggests. These are just different ways of looking at where I'm out of harmony with other people, where I am being blocked, where I have no control of my life and my emotions are just taking me in all kinds of different directions. And so that's what we did last week. was inventory all of this, and we said at the end of this fearless moral inventory, very often at the top of this written list that we have written down in all these blockages is a word called rationalization. Well, if rationalization is at the tip of the iceberg, at the bottom of the list, how could the list be worth anything? I mean, what value? And that's why the fourth step doesn't really produce any great elation or any great thing. There are certain landmark steps It's an AA where, boom, there are results that you feel in your sobriety. And step four isn't one of them. Sometimes you end up with that thing and you just go, God, there's a lot wrong. You know, you're almost going to have a little bit of a depression at the end of doing this and you've got to keep hanging in there because this isn't, you don't learn anything. The point isn't to learn anything, the point is to follow instructions because we're going to take certain actions to enable these to be removed. Remember, this is what's going to happen. We're not going to understand them. We don't have anything to do about getting rid of them. We just take these steps and then they will be removed and the beginning of getting them removed is in the step five. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. That's what we're talking about. We did this inventory. now we're going to admit to God ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Clearly, it doesn't take anybody... I don't care if you've only been here a week. You can spot the flaw in the fifth step. The hard part, right? Another human being. That's the hard part of the fifth steps. It would be a much easier step and it really would be a lot better if it just said admit it to ourselves and to God the exact natural of our own wrongs Wouldn't it be a lot easier step to take than to involve another human being. Such is the power of the ego that doesn't want to go talk to another human Being and let them find out that there might be something wrong with me. We end up with a thing called secrets and each person has some secrets and these are distressing memories or things that have happened or that we've done and we, in our own mind, have made a judgment that these secrets It's ought to go to the grave with us, just for the sake of society. You know what I'm saying? So the world won't know they had this horrible person in their midst. And so we have things that we just have never shared. And they become burdens. They become a great threat to our sobriety. Bill writes in the big book, End of 12 and 12, that people who don't take a fifth step are really... The first thing that's liable to happen is they won't keep staying sober Because this burden becomes heavier and heavier the longer we stay sober. The reason this burden is so heavy is that we have said this is a heavy burden because it can't be shared. What makes these incidents, or whatever you want to call them, terrible is the fact that we said they couldn't be shared. As soon as they're shared, they go into another category. Well, it must not have been so bad because I was able to share it. I mean, it's just a mind game that we've played with ourselves, but that's one of the immediate things that happens. Now, Bill writes in the 12 and 12 that very often we'll try and find a way around this. And I think if I could paraphrase what he suggests, he said very often this is what we'll do in an attempt to take a fifth step. And I'll take my fifth step with all of you this morning, if you don't mind. So here it comes. You name it, I did it. Boy, feels great to get that off my chest. I'll tell you that. I've been carrying that burden around for years and it's just felt wonderful. And about this time somebody in the back of the room goes, could you be a little more specific? no, no I don't really get it you know hell you know people do these things I did it I mean God you just you know I can't imagine anything that I haven't done so we feel right we make a general admission of things hoping to avoid sitting down and talking what are we liable to get out of this I mean it boils down to making an appointment with someone and taking our four step list and going over and sitting down and saying, I'm here. I'm in and out if it's not an AA member. I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous. This is how you stay sober. I've inventory. So you're comfortable with this whole thing. But the point is to eventually get our courage together and go over and share. And Bill Wright said, so where are we going to get out of this? What is the thing? Number one was this get rid of this tremendous sense of isolation. Almost every alcoholic that I've run into and that we hear about in AA develops this sense of isolation, that somehow we just withdraw and we're not quite in, and we don't fit in like it looks like other people are fitting in. And step five is where we get rid of this tremendous sense of insulation. We may think we got rid of it by just going to meetings. Sometimes when you come into AA, you have that feeling, oh, I don't belong anywhere, and then you join AA. and there's almost this that newcomer and everybody hugs you and says oh susie we're so glad you're here it's wonderful everybody sue this is susie she's new get her a cup of coffee sit down here's my phone number yeah well we'll get you the meeting and you go now this is more like it this is the way the world ought to be you know what i mean and you just sort of feel i belong i have that wonderful sense of belonging and boy pete that group is just hugging you But you get about three months of this. And then Larry joins the group. And all of a sudden, these two-faced clowns abandon you and they're all hugging Larry. And then you go, I knew that wasn't going to last. I knew there wasn't gonna last. And so that sense of belonging, now it's replaced with, Bill writes in here, anxious apartness. I'm in, but I'm not really in. Well, this fifth step is a wonderful device to get rid of this sense of isolation. And the second thing was an ability to not only forgive other people, but to forgive ourselves takes place in this fifth steps. That is one of the great things that happens is the ability not only to forgive ourself, but to understand other human beings and to be able to forgive them. and to see the dynamics of being a human being and the power of forgiveness in making us comfortable. And the last thing was humility. This is the beginning of our first contact with one of the precious things in the program called humility. And in Step 5, Bill Wright said about it's sort of a full awareness of who we are and who we can become. It's sortof being able to see both things at once. where I am and where I can be. And this is to recognize the limits of where I can be as a human and how far I can go if I'm willing to accept a higher power. And we just get to see that for the first time in step five. I like to think about step five this way, and it's one of the great lessons that I think we learn in AA, and it has to do with sharing. Let's face it. This step is heavy-duty sharing. And even when you're new, you've learned about sharing. You start blurting out your whole drinking story for the first time. Do you remember the freedom of that when you finally found somebody who drank like you did and you said, oh my God, well I hit booze in the toilet too. And boy, do you remember the wonderful feeling when that came rushing out and you shared about yourself and you were totally accepted even though you had totally shared and it changed our whole... And that was just with drinking. Now we're going to do it with all the rest of our lives. When I was in the Marine Corps and I was flying, I was doing a photo squatter. Now let's talk about the photo squattering because the photo interpreters told us we need you guys to go up and take these pictures but they got an overlap. I think they were like 90% overlap and the cameras just went click, click, cluck as you went along. Then they brought them back and they'd lay two pictures of the same thing just taken slightly different angles just a split second later and when they put the two of them there and they could look through the viewer, they could see the third dimension. They could measure heights and that's how 3D movies work. They got two projectors and then you put on the thing and you start ducking all the stuff that's coming out of there and if you don't have the glasses on, if you won't be ducking anything, what is all this? Because you're only able to see two dimensions and the same thing with a four-step list. You can look at that till the cows come home by yourself and you'll only see two dimensions. But when we take this on a fifth step to another human being, we will see, it will be disclosed to us the true perspective of the entire list and things we thought were earth-shattering will turn out to be nothing and things that we were sort of ignoring will turn up to be things that will jump up that are absolutely essential to look at And we will recognize that for the rest of our lives, the only way we'll ever be able to see the truth about ourselves is by sharing. That you just can't see the proof alone. It has to be bounced off. I like to do comedy. I like the spiritual law of comedy. You cannot tell if a joke is funny alone. You may think it's funny. You think up a funny joke. And you know how you tell if a joke is funny? You just go, and then you tell it, and then they laugh. Or they don't laugh, and they look back and go, not funny. Not funny. And that's it. That is how it works. It is a very powerful thing to learn. And that is what the fifth step sets us up for. And in closing, let me just read a couple of little paragraphs out of our literature to show you some of the rewards. No, I'm in the wrong step. Here we go. Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The damned-up emotions of years break out of their confinement and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, something else of great moment is apt to occur. Many an AA, once agnostic or atheist, tells us it was during this stage of Step 5 that he first actually felt the presence of God. And then in the big book, We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step withholding nothing, we're delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. we begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had a certain spiritual belief, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we're on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the universe. So step five, like step nine, has, I think, a set of promises, the mini-promises that go along with it. And it's not by accident that the two big steps where you sort of have these promises are steps that involve other people making amends and sharing in the fifth step. So if you want to know the secret to getting the fourth and fifth step done, if you're new, now check with your sponsor, but I'll give you my own advice. pick out who you're going to take the fifth step with and make an appointment everything else will take care of itself you will end up with your fourth step done and you will show up and you'll get this thing done do it this is not something to wait a couple of years just get on this because it is tremendous rewards for your sobriety we're at the end of the time we've got a great way to wrap this up with the Lord's Prayer for anybody who would care to join in Christ in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Keep coming back. It works if you work it.