Why the Result of an Amend Is Not the Response – Bill H.

all right folks let's go to step nine uh one of the i think one of the things uh we included in the handout leslie did we include this observations regarding willingness in the handouts the last week or two yeah it was related to six and seven if you all got the hand outs you'll have it but i wanted to touch on a couple things um willingness is the word we use to describe the ability god gave us as human beings to make choices willingness is about making choices the willingness to ask for help is a choice the willingness To ask for Help that I don't know what kind of help I'm going to get is a choice in the face of uncertainty willingness to ask god for help when i'm just starting to begin to have a trusting relationship with the god of my understanding is to make a choice to walk into the unknown a little bit and everything about eight nine is really about willingness choices that's why willingness is emphasized so much on page 76 He says, if we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. To me, that's over and over and over again. God help me with this. God help may be willing to consider doing it the way my sponsor suggested. God help maybe willing to not do it. My sponsor suggested no, I don't think you should do that. willingness also includes setting priorities with the help of my sponsor i've got this step eight list now i've made a list to the best of my ability going back to janet kreischauer in the second grade and the people from the friday morning workshop have heard me talk about janet before. She was on my resentment inventory, Noel. Now we're second grade. What are you, seven years old? Eight years old in second grade? Her dad had the nerve to move to New Mexico and took the family with him. Left Maplewood, Missouri and took, I'm second grade, took the first love of my life with him, so I'm doing my second or third resentment inventory and I'm about 42 or 43 years old. And would you believe Janet Kreishauer and her father show up on my resentment list? It was in my handwriting, so I must have written it. Well, okay, we got through that. My sponsor had a good laugh and we get to step eight and I wrote Janet's name down because when I found out she was leaving, I was a butthead on the playground. In other words, if you're going to hurt me, I'm going to hurt you back. I didn't know I knew how to do that when I was seven or eight years old. I sure as hell wasn't drinking yet. But I knew how to exercise withholding affection, revengeful behavior, punishment, because you hurt my feelings ten years before I started drinking. i illustrate that i i bring this up on the blackboard today i had to write down janet kane i was wrong when i treated you poorly because your father left town took a better job at los alamos new mexico and i blamed you for leaving and treated you accordingly. Now, I have never made a direct amend to Janet. My sponsor and I decided a long time ago that trying to find her, going to the exercise of trying to make that direct amend was not that significant. I'm sure she won't remember it. But believe it or not, even though that was a little tiny childhood incident, the very fact that it hit the resentment inventory, and I was willing to put it on the eight-step list, meant one more little thing was taken out of the blocking me from the sunlight of the spirit. So it may sound silly. Some of you may say, oh, I got bigger problems than that. At least my problem is what I did or didn't do to somebody in second grade, and I agree. That is the single most innocent trivial item that ever showed up on my four-step for my age step. But who knows which of the bricks in the wall blocking me from the help I need from God, who knows what's going on? Who knows which one of the sticks is the one holding up the big ones? Which is why I encourage people to put everything down, no matter how trivial, no matter insignificant, or in the case of they're dead and gone long ago, probably never going to make a direct amendment and never do a night step with them anyway. Put it down on step eight. So we get to step nine. Look back on page 63 of the big book for a minute, please. Remember in the step three prayer? Yes, I reference the step 3 prayer a lot because that's where all this begins. Everything we're doing is action on our part to help God answer in our life what we ask for in step three. Everything we're doing in these steps is to help God help us answer what we asked him for in step three. Relieve me the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will. I am never going to be free of self. It doesn't say I'm going to become the hole in the donut. It does say the bondages of self too much self. Page 62, selfishness, self-centeredness that we think is a root of our trouble. Still is, present tense, still is today. In page 71, he said, we hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will blocked you off from him. When we get into step eight and nine, particularly step nine, we're going to find another big chunk of self- will is going to be removed, whether we like it or not, because we're gonna have to go before people and say I was wrong out loud. in their presence. Direct demands means face-to-face, does not mean on a text, does not lean on an email. It may mean a written letter, but we'll get to that. It definitely, probably, almost hardly, although there would be exceptions, probably doesn't mean on Zoom. Do I want to promise? Do I need to promise or do I want the payoff then I need put in the best work I can And that means almost always face to face. Because I do want to be free of the self-will that's blocking me from the help I need from God. On page 72, he said, we've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator and to discover the obstacles in our path. Not going to people and admitting when we've done wrong is a huge obstacle in my path to help from God's. too much self too much selfishness too much worrying about what they're going to think too much worried about what they're gonna hold me accountable for I'd rather not go talk to them at all and then on page 76 once again if we still cling to something we will not let go we ask God to help us be willing notice the promise in that prayer I guarantee you there are still things I cling to today. I don't even know what they are right now, but they will arise. They will crop up. They will make me feel uncomfortable or uneasy or just a little edgy. I'll start getting restless, irritable, discontent in him. If we still cling to something, we ask God to help us be willing willingness is how I deal with my powerlessness really notice once again page 76 now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past if we haven't the will to do this we ask until it comes out to our fellows we're going to go knock on their door we're gonna make an appointment to meet him at the coffee shop we're to visit her at the laundromat we're gonna see her in the parking lot after school and we're gonna go one at a time one at a time with the names on that eight step list that my sponsor has agreed with me, yes, you need to go make this direct commitment. And I'm going to sit down and say I was wrong when I left you and the children. Period. There may be more, but the amend itself the amend itself will not necessarily repair the relationship we're trying to repair the damage done in the past by taking responsibility for our part in it we are not capable of repairing the damage in another person's life our amend is not designed necessarily to make them feel better so we cannot expect any kind of response it may be positive it may be forgiving it may being different it maybe please go away I never want to see you again I've had a couple of those it maybe if you want to make an amend to me die that's extreme but yes, it has happened. So do not, please do not and work with your sponsor, work with your sponsees if you don't believe it. Repair the damage done in the past is not putting me in the form of St. Francis or I'm going to heal the person I'm meeting with. This does not call me to become Mother Teresa. I can only take responsibility for my part, take sincere responsibility for admitting that to another person and leave the results to God. It's a big deal. We've already talked about the top of page 77. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God the people about us does anybody do that perfectly is anybody doing page 77 perfectly today no if you raise your hand i don't think you understood the question what does this treat this little living guideline right in the middle right in the beginning of the step eight and nine discussion. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be. What do other people do with it? We pray for them. We may pray with them. Well, what happens to them in our amend is between them and God. What happens to them, how they feel about it, how they respond to our amend is between them and God. It is not, I'll be as kind as I can, I will be as forgiving as I can going in, I will take responsibility for all the wrong and harm I did and that's the best I can do. On page 77 we've already read, we go to him or her in a helpful and forgiving spirit. This was the person we started out hating so bad, we didn't even want to put them on the list. You realize how much willingness, praying, how much God helped me, praying it takes to move from hating a person so strongly, we don't even wanna put them in the list. And because we're doing the top of page 67 and the other prayers, we at least dial back the hate enough. We dial back the resentment and the anger enough to at least consider a little bit of a helpful and forgiving spirit. Even though Bill lists this category first in the order of the five categories we've touched on of the kind to make amends to it's probably the most difficult and not necessarily the first one we're going to do but look what happens if we do that prayer in preparation for the tough ones we develop a helpful and forgiving spirit let me ask you is a helpful and forgiving Spirit gonna help you get along with every other part of your life better is a helpful and forgiving spirit going to help you in whatever you face today it sure does me i don't come by helpful and forgiven naturally i told you what my natural response was with janet kreishar in the second grade for him and by the way i hope if janet's on here raise your hand who knows she may have a last name now She'll be pushing 80. Well, she's as old as I am. She'll Be 78, George. You know, I've always wondered that. What if somebody from 70 years ago shows up in a meeting and says, I've been wanting to talk to you, USOB. Well, you know what I'll do? I'll say, I want you to talk to my sponsor first. He's on here, and Craig's always ready. So Janet, if you're on here raise your hand, sweetheart. I love you. I always have. That was just a little upset day I had on the playground in 1950. Lord have mercy. I don't know where that came from. It just flew in as a stray butterfly landed. Never mind. We have to quit taking ourselves so seriously. We haveと quit worrying so much about what other people think of us. most people are going to be grateful when we go to them in a helpful and forgiving spirit they we don't have to say i'm coming to you in a hopeful and forgiving spirit no no no you don't broadcast it let it come out on its own just a small little aura but if i have been praying to god to become more helpful or less unhelpful and if i've been praying the god to become more forgiving or just less judgmental believe me it shows it comes across it's uncomfortable it's awkward it's new but it's real it's that underlying thing that starts to come out from the inside it's a huge promise we go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit nothing he did nothing she did that made us feel this hatred has gone away It doesn't erase the past. My helpful, forgiving spirit puts my past in a whole different light. Amends don't change the past, amends change my perception and my feeling and my thinking about the past and step nine seals the deal that I do with the list and the willingness in step eight. I change in preparing for and making direct amends. I change if I'm asking God to help me with it. If I'm not doing it that way, if I're not asking for forgiveness, if I've not asking for help, if I'm just doing it to get my sponsor off my back so I can get these damn steps over with and get on with my life so I Can graduate from AA or Al-Anon or whatever 12 step program I'm probably not going to change on the inside like I'd like to. We go to him in a helpful forgiving spirit may be the reason Bill put this hardest person first in the list. nothing we are going to do in step eight and nine is going to improve upon me becoming a helpful and forgiving person. Nothing is going be better than that. That is a wonderful, wonderful promise that I did not know was going to happen. I did not see it coming and I did not know it was happening. And of course along with it is we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. Again, it does not mean change the past, this is a great promise in step nine. We're not here to change the past, we're not hear to rewrite the past we're now here to change somebody else's memory of what I did wrong. They may forgive us people have forgiven me people have forgiven me during the correct demand. It has happened it's right up there with two Irishmen walked past a bar and kept going it could happen I can see only a handful of you got that Mary W. got it, good for you Mary I'm not here to change the past, I'm here to take responsibility for the past and put me on a path that says I'm going to try real hard with God's help not to do that stuff again they may or may not like it they may not accept it but I guarantee you as I work these first nine steps with sincerity and commitment with God's help the idea of a drink gets further and further away from my reality page 78 and by the way we got this man we hated on 77 we got alcoholics owe money so we got all these debtors all these people we have financial commitments to that we have shall we say fallen short that's the next category of people he talks about on page 78 he talks about a calm frank and open manner we will be gratified with the result not necessarily with their response the result does not mean their response on the top of page 78, we will be gratified with the result of how well we handle their response no matter what it is. Top of page 68, we would be gratifying with the results means we have gone in honestly, calmly, openly. We will be gratitude with the way we feel after the amendment regardless of how they respond to it. We're disconnecting ourself from my character defect of how I feel depends on how I think you're treating me. We'RE disconnecting from that defect of mine that says how I FEEL depends on what I THINK you think of me. WE'RE disconnectING. I'm disconnecting here from a defect I didn't even know I had the first six or seven times I did a mass. I did not know how much of my opinion of me depended on what I thought you thought of me. Disconnecting from their response to my amend begins to treat that defect that some of my Al-Anon friends call codependency. We got the alcoholics owing money, we must lose our fear of creditors if we're afraid to face them. How about that promise? is there anybody in your life today that you're afraid to face about anything is there anybody in your life today that you are afraid to face if you're in Walmart or Macy's or wherever you may be and you run in and you see her across the room and you can't turn around and run away fast enough probably nobody here today has anybody in their life that they're afraid to face but just in the long shot that maybe one or two of you do ask yourself and it may not be a fear of a creditor, it may be fear of somebody for something else entirely different why are you afraid what is it about them that you haven't made an demand or you're afraid they're going to find out about you or whatever I can tell you in my life and I have been at this a little while, so I've made a pretty good beginning. I'm told there's something like 7.3 billion people in the world today. That's a lot of people, by the way. I can't really picture 7 billion anything. I do not know of one of those 7 billion people I'm afraid to run into today. Now, obviously, most of them I don't know in the first place. There are probably a couple I'd be afraid of if I did see them. i'm not afraid of seeing anybody anywhere anytime for anything today and that that is really a powerful testimony for me because i live my life in fear of seeing a lot of people a lot of it because i've done wrong and i hadn't made amends for it but i take this as a promise that i can use as a principle anywhere in my life we're liable to drink if we're afraid to face them So I need to pay attention to that any time Bill says I'm liable to drink if. I'm labelled a drink if, so I need to treat whatever the if is just to increase the chances I'm not going to get so restless, so irritable and so discontent that I'm going to drink again as the only source of relief, which of course is a lie. Alcoholism lies to me on a daily basis. The next category of people he talks about is, of course, the family. After the or I'm sorry, the criminal offense business, criminal offense comes next. Page 78, page 79. He gets into the former wife and that business. We've already talked about we must not shrink in anything. And that's where the prayer for willingness comes in. he asked for forgiveness on the bottom of 79 doesn't mean he's going to get it once again if you ask someone to forgive you maybe they will if you asked someone to Forgive You in sincerity and you really want them to Forgive you which doesn't Mean forget what you did it means stop holding on to the anger that they're carrying about you. I hope you can forgive me as a legitimate request. If I've stopped doing the harmful stuff, they may not. Again, asking for forgiveness is no guarantee that I will receive forgiveness. It's also no excuse not to forgive them. In fact, it's the worst excuse in the world not to forget them. There I am in control of the outcome again. I'm completely pushing God out of way. I'm not going to forgive you until you forgive me. I'll show you. I can be so forgiving when you forgive Me. Really? Boy, that's a loving and forgiving spirit, isn't it? Come on, Bob. and so on page 80 we had the man who had embarrassed his colleague and ruined him in public he got up made that public explanation he made a direct demand in front of several hundred people in a church i've told you i made direct demands in my home group before about the only public setting i can think of where I've done that. Occasionally it's appropriate, but the most powerful thing is the promise on page 78, or page 80, making this direct amend, placing the outcome in God's hands, or he would start dreaming again. Even though we're not talking about not drinking, we're talking about growing and living in a relationship with God, Bill always ties it back to the real possibility for us alcoholics. Or you might drink again. I'm not sure what the analog is for that in the Al-Anon program. Or, you might become obsessive and try to control again. I think that's one thing that makes Al-Alanon more difficult than AA because in AA no matter what we can always fall back on, well at least I didn't drink over it. At least I I didn't drink today. That one thing is real binary. It's either on or it's off. I drank today or I didn' t. But Bill sprinkles in these cautions, particularly in step eight and nine. Or we might drink again. He does it as much in eight and nine as he did back in the resentment inventory in step four. Or we may drink again, and with us to drink is to die. I'll leave it to my Al-Anon friends to come up with if there's an analogy for that. In that way, I think it actually makes AA a little easier to stay on the beam because man, I don't want to take a drink. Not that that's the reason I do this stuff today, but because I do this stuff together, I'm not going to take it. The chances of me picking up a drink are further and further and further away. Page 81. domestic trouble another category of that people it's not just a wife or a husband domestic trouble covers a whole family it may cover five generations of the family use domestic trouble in the broad sense bottom of page 81 what a wonderful promise God willing and shall not be repeated not Bill willing Martha I'm never going to do that again I promise if I don't ask God to help me not do that again I will do that again whatever it is God willing God help me Well, thank you. I'm trying to find it. The way of good sense and loving kindness is to let bygones be bygomes. And I'm having trouble finding that on page 82. Somebody help me. Oh, there it is. It's top of the first full paragraph. it may be that both will decide that the way of good sense and loving kindness is to let bygones be bygodes. That's a form of forgiveness. It's a former letting the other person off the hook. It's reform of once you've made amends, don't be dragging up old stuff just to keep them in line or under the thumb. There's just a lot of good advice built into that and of course there's an implied promise if i'm the one bringing up bygones and she retaliates with something much worse than i brought up and all of a sudden i'm the victim again um i don't get away with it all started when she hit me back I just don't get away with that anymore. It all started when she hit me back. Let's talk about the tornado a minute, bottom of page 82. Do you all understand the story and why it is in step nine? the alcoholic by the way is the one in the story that's coming up out of the cyclone cellar that's the alcoholic the wife is not the alcoholic in this story don't be confused or if the wife isthealcoholic it sounds like she may be in recovery but he definitely is not or if he's in recovery, he's not drinking. But that's about it. How many times did I live? By the way, in the beginning, I thought this was the second stupidest story in the big book. I thought the stupidest one was Jim pouring milk and whiskey and I thought who would ever be such a fool to put milk and whisky like Jim the automobile salesman until I remembered how much I loved eggnog at Christmas. eggnog is fundamentally milk and I even used to put a little eggnob with my whiskey I think I had the proportions wrong Craig I had a balance issue I was out of balance in my mixology Lord have mercy and here I thought this poor old guy walking I said what's the point of that story of course the wind has stopped blowing what's she worrying about well this poor guy thinks that just because he quit drinking everybody ought to start treating him like a candidate for sainthood this by the way has been my wife's favorite story in the big book or one of them anyway for a long time and look at the masterpiece of understatement we feel a man is unthinking when he says sobriety is enough you see that four or five lines in the bottom of page 82 we feel a man is unthinking i'm thinking my eye he's selfish self-centered insensitive inconsiderate he's every negative adjective you can come up with well yeah he hadn't taken a drink that's good because this is the promise the tornado story is a setup it's a preparation for the top of page 83 we've already read it we um preston and my friend in savannah read this earlier there's a long period of reconstruction ahead we must take the lead a remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won't fill the bill at all page 83 top three lines is a promise there's a long period of reconstruction ahead is not a threat it's not a prison sentence it's the promise of the opportunity of ever increasing spiritual growth in the 12 steps yes there is a long time period of construction ahead thank god because i was the guy that came up out of the cellar and said look ma the wind has stopped blowing I don't see anything wrong here I was two years sober and quite proud of it and I'm in my mother's den one day with my mother sitting there and my wife the Al-Anon, healthy Al-Anon black belt but healthy Al Anon and my daughter And I'm parading around the room in front of these three women, bragging about my two daughters and I had become. Until my daughter, bless her heart, says, Dad, Aunt Susie's daughter just turned two and she's never had a drink either. Well, I got to tell you, that took the air out of my balloon. I was like that guy, and I still remember that. That was 37 years ago. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil is what that sentence says in the middle of the tornado story, and the promise that connects with it is atop of page 83. There is a long period of reconstruction ahead. we must take the lead. The good news is we can. If we continue the program of Alcoholics Anonymous or Al-Anon or any other 12-step program, we not only must take the lead, we can take the leave. We've gotten past that remorseful mumbling. We realize that sorry won't fill the bill because we're making direct amends. We're taking responsibility for the things we did. he says in the middle of or the top of the half middle of it page 83 the spiritual life is not a theory we have to live it that's right up there with a statement on page 45 about the purpose of the big book purpose of the 12 steps is to help us find a power greater than ourself that will solve our problem which is thinking selfishness our problem is thinking and selfishness not just drinking. And the sentence on page 77, our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be maximum service to God and the people about us. The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. That's a promise. We get to live It's a choice. It's an act of willingness. But it's a huge promise. Because he has said, our behavior will convince them more than our words. Our behavior, right on page 83, our behavior will convince them. When you walked into your first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous or if you walked in your home group this week, umpteen years sober under your belt and you see these other people still not drinking and you've heard their stories you've heard their stories in sobriety you've read what they've suffered in recovery and they're not drinking and they are asking God for help and they talk with their sponsor and they help other people in the room and you begin to realize their behavior has been convincing me more than their words for a long time and that was happening for me after my first meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't know that was happening I was believing what you did long before I believed what you said because I didn' t believe what you set you're alcoholics you're liars just like I was then I began to hang out with you go to ice cream, go to dinner, go bowling I even went playing golf with sober people imagine that I mean, imagine playing golf sober. They're the concept. Imagine bowling sober. Imagine going to a ballgame sober. I remember coming out of a ball game in Kansas City in the summer of 1981, and I realized I knew what happened after the seventh inning. I'd been in a blackout by the seventh ending for over 20 years. I never knew. your actions meant more to me than your words and that's true of everybody else in our life when we develop that sincere humility forgiving attitude we're going to close in a minute with the promises but i want to answer a couple questions that have been brought up. Oh, I thought, I mean this is really a big deal on page 83. There may be some wrongs we can never fully right. The question was already raised earlier today. There are certain people, particularly in abusive situations that I may never make a nice step to and that's absolutely right. We don't worry about them if we can honestly to ourselves that we would write them if we could. You do a sincere step eight. You make a list. You pray for the willingness. Let God free you of the fear that you would make that direct amend if you could. And then you and your sponsor decide which ninth step amends are appropriate, which are not. I'll tell you about amends I've made that people are no longer living. And the most important one, the first one I ever did was my father. I was about a year sober. I was doing my second, fourth, and fifth step, eighth and ninth step with my first sponsor. My dad died a year before I started getting sober. And I owe my dad a lot of amends. And my sponsor says, after I did my eight step and wrote down all the things that I'd done wrong, all the thing's I've done to harm my dad. And I did the eight step, and he said, okay, write a letter to your dad as if you were going to talk to him. Dear Dad, I was wrong when I did this, when I do that, when . I wrote this letter. It was about three pages long. It was more than 25 words. This was a big one. I could not get it down to 25 words, but my sponsor helped me nail it down to about a page and a half. So I was still full of justification and pity, a lot of self-pity. So he did it. We got through the writing exercise. I was in Kansas City living and working with my sponsor. He was there too. I wasn't living with. And I was going back to St. Louis every other weekend to see my kids that were living with my former wife in the divorce, after the divorce and he said I want you to take that letter when you go to St. Louis this weekend and take it out there to the cemetery in Kirkwood and I want to read it to your dad. I can tell you like it was yesterday three thoughts crossed my mind immediately number one, he needs help he wants me to read a letter to my dad the cemetery. So number one, Aaron needs help. Number two, I need a new sponsor because clearly this man is off the beam. And then the third thought I had was I can't tell him my first two thoughts. I see some of you relate. If you're laughing at this, you too have a healthy relationship with your sponsor. You may think they're crazy, but you don't have to tell them. At least consider what they're suggesting. So of course I went and I took the letter with me, was not going to do it. I had planned to go back to Kansas City on Monday and lie to him at the home group and say, yeah, I did it. Everything's fine. My plan was to lie to my sponsor. but lo and behold god took charge and i actually went out to kirkwood to oak hill is it oak hill at night of course i didn't i thought sure somebody'd be watching and i got out of the car and walked up the little hill and stood there in front of my dad's grave and i took out this letter and i read the letter and i started crying i mean i cried i didn't weep i cried things inside me released i let go of stuff i did not know i had much less that i was holding on to I think I had a six, seven, eight, nine experience during that one ninth step because for me at that time, it was the first time I had really done something that I thought in recovery that I felt was totally stupid, totally meaningless and totally worthless. and up to that moment it was the single biggest moment i'd ever had in recovery which shows you how wrong i could be about what's going to really happen in recovery donna i hope that explains that there are ways to make amends to people that either are no longer with us or no longer here i have sent written letter amends to people who just i could not physically be there and i've sent them a letter and sometimes it works out well it always works out okay because i'm free of the responsibility of the secret but and i didn't tell that story about that amends to my dad for a long time because i was embarrassed about how emotional it was and how vulnerable i felt after a couple of years, I started telling him. Of course, I told Aaron what happened and he was pleased and not surprised. Again, the most important thing with 8 and 9 is to understand there are two steps. 8 is a list and a prayer of willingness to set aside whatever fear or anger or reluctance I have to become willing to make the amend if it's appropriate. we then turn to step nine and do all the things we've talked about today with our sponsor one at a time we do this in little baby steps we make direct amends one at i still carry with me an eight-step list i made when i was living in omaha in 1990 1991 with my sponsor at the time and for some reason i have held on to that eighth step list and most of the names on it are checked off some of them are not i'm willing to make amends to every one of them if they walk in the door today some of whom have died but i've gotten the benefit from the step by being willing totally willing to take responsibility for the harm i did so interestingly enough we get to the end of the discussion in the big book about step eight and nine at the bottom of page 83 and leslie you feel like reading leslie did you read before nope how about reading the the the big promises to us not the hidden ones the visible ones it's the last paragraph of page 83 to start if we are painstaking bottom of page 82 that's the alcoholic if we Are Painstaking About This Phase Of Our Development We Will Be Amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. year. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We'll intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. You will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work with them. Thank you so much. Now, do you realize, I know many of you have heard these read many times, do you realized promises themselves are a promise? That whole paragraph is a promise and it's the promise broken down and depending how you look at it a lot of people can break this down into 12 individual promises which is okay, we like 12 but the entire paragraph is a promise in answer to step 3 relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will page 63 in the big book we get into 4 and 5 and we cross the bridge and 5, 6 and 7 and we start working our way through the new territory of God's world, not my world. We're in God's World now in Step 8 and 9. We're not on Bill's World anymore. Bill's still there, but Bill's getting help from God now. That's why there's so much prayer for willingness in 8 and 8. And all of a sudden, we get to the bottom of 83 and the top of 84, and we find this sensational blossoming explosion that she just read of promises that are what happens when God answers, and I do the work, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Bottom of 83, top of 84 is what the relief of bondage of self looks like. Notice the tense, the verb tense. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. I woke up today and looked at those pages in preparation for this workshop to double check what I'm about to tell you. I awoke up today and when Leslie read just now, we will be amazed. That says there's more to come. We will know peace. We will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things. We will gain interest in our fellows, top of page 77. Our real purpose, fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude will change. Fear of people and fear of economic insecurity will leave us. And most of all, we will suddenly realize, as I did that night in that cemetery in Kirkwood, Missouri, we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us. That's still in the future today. Because no matter how much these promises have come true for you and I so far, no matter what we do, no matter if we can read this and say, and I've done this, I've been inventories based on the promises. Yep, that one's happening. And I, you know, I love these little gauges, zero to a hundred percent. I'll do a little daily inventory to say am I experiencing 50% of this, 75% of this, 100% of it and you know it's better on some than others on any given day. None of them are at zero. Every one of them I'm experiencing to some degree sometimes a lot every day but the fact that I'm already experiencing it still it's still in the future tense. I'm going to experience more. Whoa! So when you go back and look if there's a long period of reconstruction ahead, look at what can happen. The spiritual life is not a theory we have to live it. We really learn how to live it in 8 and 9 because we face the things we feared more than anybody else is what other people think of us. We actually face most of our biggest fears in step 8 and 7. What other people think of this? What are we going to do about the stuff we did wrong, we think they don't know about or they don t remember or they don t care. Well, it turns out if they do know about it, they do remember and most of them do care. And we get past that, sometimes 100%. But the promises, I look back now and realize these promises started coming through the day I walked into Alcoa Exchange. They re going to keep coming true as long as I keep spending time with people like you and keep trying to understand this book and apply it in my life when we go out from here to do your bidding as he says so I've amended the last little sentence we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves for me I say I have I do and I will continue to realize that god is doing for me way beyond anything i could ever imagine doing for myself and when we say are these extravagant promises the people in my home group know that i say they sure as hell are i understand we think not i get it i get the artistic use of the double negative and all that they are so extravagent we're at a meeting in florida one day and somebody said they're living the dream. And my wife said out loud, I never dreamed anything like this. Clancy used to say it gets gooder and gooder, and it do. So thank you all. We will actually resume next week with step 10 and 11, how we take these principles, how мы take these activities, these changes in our thinking and behavior that we've learned in the first nine steps, How we apply these in our life one day at a time and what the promises are, what the hidden promises are in steps 10 and 11. Next week, same time, God willing, same place. We will find out what it really means to enter the world of the spirit as it says further down on page 84 and we will find out again how do you stay in the world of the Spirit so that these promises can continue to grow in our lives. Thank you all very, very much and thank you Mike and everyone else who has a hand in this. God bless you all and we'll stick around a little bit for comments and questions. Thank You. You want to mute yourselves and say thank you for before we take questions on thank you thank you bill thanks so much they're awesome yes thank you and bill my two bless you bill thank you so much