Why True Faith Is the Result of Action – Mike M.

up tonight and we are actually ready to start the chapter at 6 on into action and we spent quite a bit of time on the chapter how it works at least stuff we've recorded because I started the recordings when we were on page 64 looking at resentment we went through the instructions in great detail I have some handouts here for people who want to work the steps i have a resentment inventory fear inventory and sex inventory handout that might be helpful i tried to record that the instructions from the big book and i haven't listened to it i hope it was of help went through that and so people could do the fourth step we had a great observation uh and lori mentioned it about this destruction of the ego and we like to talk about surrender we surrender our ego but the steps are how we destroy it and and the steps were called ego deflation at depth deflating my ego so how do you destroy the ego i mean you hit it with a hammer? You know, do you burn it? And I thought about a lot. It's really, it's the whole deal. What I need is power. And I sent a couple people Sandy Beach on Letting Go, which is really one of the best of his talks. I think I might play it here, but it's about an hour. It's just great. It''s on recovery audio. If you look at top rated tapes, it''s the last one of the 200 and it's just great he made the point that that um the whole a program has talked about letting go we're letting go of our old ideas our stories what we think whatever is in blocking us from the now with god and so how do i destroy my ego i don't destroy it but i unplug it i don't let it have power over me anymore and the steps are how we see the truth about ourselves so we can uh we're not attached to our fears and our resentments anymore and our conduct changes and so the ego doesn't have power if i don'T GIVE IT POWER and sandy beach said a very profound thing he says you find god in the present moment and then the present moment you find your truth about you and you live on truth in the president moment and you're with god so if you're in fear or resentment you're not in the presence moment and the only power we have is in the now in the moment and then ego has no power so the steps are designed And one, two, and three, to understand that I can't play God anymore when I do that, then my ego is running my life and my old ideas. So I make a decision that I'm not going to play God any more. And then steps four through nine is how I look at my thinking when my ego's talking to me and tells me something that it's not true. My resentments aren't true. My fears aren't real. And then I'm able to look at my conduct in sex relationships and other relationships to see how my ego and my self-centeredness caused me to harm myself and others in relationships. And so I don't want to live on that truth anymore. So now I can recognize when I have anger that it's not true. It's not me. I don'T have to hold on to it. I DON'T have TO be angry. I don't have to be afraid. And I don' t have to harm people anymore with my conduct. So the fourth and fifth step, which we're looking at into action tonight, which is the instructions on the fifth step is how I'm going to see the truth about my story when I did the fourth step and how I' m going to use that information so that it doesn' t Have power over me anymore. So that my resentments don' T have power over Me and my fears don' Te have power Over Me. And whenever I'm angry and fearful and I have conduct, it's going to be bad. And I'm going to harm people. And then in six and seven, I'm gonna say, God, I want you to take away all my defects of character. They're blocking me from you. And that they're not me. They're not the real me. They're Not Michael. And I don't want to be that person anymore. And so my defects are going to start to lose power over me because whenever I start being inconsiderate or judging, I understand that that's not the way it really should be seen. It's not The Person God Made. I'm seeing it through self-centered glasses. I want to stop, say, God, help me be considerate. Help me be tolerant. And so I don't have to have power of my character defects anymore over me, and I don't have to have power of my thinking over me that's self-centered. And then in 8 and 9, we make amends so we're not afraid of any of the people we harmed anymore and we're at peace with the world. So if you've done 4 through 9, you've learned a lot of truth about yourself and you're able to have spiritual tools so that the story you brought in here isn't having power over you anymore. so you destroy the ego by not giving it power so it fizzles out now the ego doesn't give up so it'll keep telling you things all the time and then you have to say well stupid ego or say what's your source of information I get a lot of ideas I don't know where they come from and then I have to tell myself well what's the source of that information and then the other thing I heard is you let the train go through you just don't pay attention we don't have to pay attention to the ego anymore now that's hard to do when you're new but when you are around a while you don't want to feel bad like Linda talked about emotional sobriety at her birthday and we want to have peace and we wanna feel love and tolerance for our fellow human beings and so we don' t want to live that way anymore so the steps are spiritual exercises Mark Houston said designed to destroy our ego. And the thing that new people don't understand is that it's going to go on the rest of your life as long as you're awake. As long as we're awake, God gave us free will so that we can turn away from him at any point, but we don't have to anymore. And we don' t want to do that as alcoholics because if we turn away from God to our ego, then we have no power not to drink. and so if we live a non-spiritual life and we get back to self-centeredness for an alcoholic we won't have any power not to drink now, a lot of people are sober a long time, so it takes a while to live separated from God before you may drink again but you're certainly going to be miserable and so the point of AA starts out about not drinking which is a very good idea steps work better sober but we want emotional sobriety. We want to have peace under all circumstances. We want to be able to live in harmony with the world and our fellow men. And so that's, that's the deal. So we really we want to surrender our will. But we want it to destroy the ego all the time. And it's a continued process. Now, that ties in with the fifth step. Now the way the big books written And they talk about the four steps for many pages, 63 to 71. And to tie into how the first paragraph makes sense on page 72, I'm going to read again the summary of the four step on page 70. These are the four-step promises. So on page seventy it summarizes and the way the book's written is that you could, they They wanted you to read this and do it yourself, the fourth step. They had the instructions because there was no AA when the book was written. So they didn't know that you could find somebody to do it. It was written in 1939. They had 40 or 50 people sober. They had a group in New York and a group an Akron and a Group in Cleveland. And so they wrote this so that you can follow these instructions in step four and then take this information to someone and they're going to tell you who, and then you could share this because they knew that just doing the instructions yourself from the book is not going to be able to give you the insight you need to see the truth. And so that's why the book is different than it's applied today because they were writing in a different world. It was written in 1938. So it says if you've been thorough about your personal inventory, I've written down a lot. So it's a written inventory. It isn't a talking inventory. it says I've listed and analyzed my resentments and so I've listed and analyze all my negative feelings that I've had for others and here we go got the book, great, welcome glad you're here and it says I've begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality I could see how my resentions were just a waste of time they separated me from God they didn't make my life better and they weren't true they may have started on truth but in my mind they were altered so that I could justify my behavior and my anger and they're fatal in many ways they may kill me through causing me to drink but they will kill me spiritually and so I will be separated from God and I will have an existence that nobody wants. When you came in here, we were sick of drinking, but we were also sick of living the way we were. And we don't want to go back to that. But it can be fatal. They say behind every resentment is a drink, and I think that's true. And so most of the people who are new who don't stay, they come in and out, they just have a lot of resentments and they don't know how to... They don't have the tools yet, so they get angry a lot and then they say well i tried aa screw it uh i'm gonna drink and it's it's not good or bad that they're alcoholics just like i am and so you have to um it takes a really pretty thorough fourth step to see the truth about your anger because remember anger is never justified right and it'S THE DUBIOUS LUXURY OF NORMAL PEOPLE BUT FOR AN ALCOHOLIC it says it's poison so in case you're wondering that's bad and resentment is when i drink poison hoping you die and remember you're in your basement stewing plotting somebody's execution and they're home watching big bang and how's that working for you and we did that and it made sense to us and that's the stories we told ourselves in our head we don't want to do that anymore and we've tried to we've learned tolerance patience and goodwill towards all men even my enemies. We did that by looking at the list, changing the way we see it, saying the prayers, getting a kind and tolerant view of everyone no matter how much they had done to us. We forgive everybody. We don't have to excuse everybody but we want to forgive. We do not want them to have power over us anymore. When I forgive them, it saves me because it is all about me and my relationship with god and it says then we looked at the people hurt by our conduct and willing to straighten out the past if we can it says in this book you read again again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves that's the theme so a lot of people confuse belief with faith and sometimes in the big book he interchanges them but the belief is the belief that something can happen that there's a power that can do something faith is when you have knowledge that it's done it for you so you can't have faith if you haven't uh done the steps theoretically because that's true knowledge of god that's why we have a chapter on we agnostics those without knowledge of God so I can believe in God pray on God tell God keep me sober today get in my car and start running my life so i can ask god to keep me sober and mean it but unless i prepare myself for god to direct me and i use the spiritual tools so i'm not running the show it's not gonna it's nicht going to work so true faith is the result of the actions that's why the next chapter is called into action we start with willingness we want to change anybody wanted to change when they come in here we wanted willingness to change we were desperate We couldn't go on the way we were. Then we believe we can change, and that's the second step. But we believe that because we see people who have changed. And that's why birthdays are really important, to see for new people that people can change. And then we make a decision to change. It's very important to make a decisions to change, and it has to be a decision at the depth of your soul. But then you're still where you are. You haven't changed yet. So the change comes from the actions. the steps four through nine, and then living in ten and eleven, and practicing the principles in twelve. And then once you've changed and done the actions, you have faith. So I know now that when I'm afraid, if I say, I'm running the show here, God, I'm managing this area, it's ridiculous, it's not even true, it'S not even happening right now. It's some ridiculous fear that my egos stewed up to get me to have power. and I say, it's just, God, I don't want to go there anymore. I don' t want to waste another second on this nonsense. And so I'll say, God remove my fear of direct attention to how I should be. I should grateful, I should loving, I should turn my thoughts right now to someone I can help. What can I do to be of service to God and others? It doesn' t take that long. So I can get out of fear in about 30 seconds or I could spend all day in it. All day in the fear doesn' T work well for me anymore. I don''t enjoy it anymore. So I have a God box and I have rule if it's more than 24 hours, it goes in the God box. So I had this old idea that I would wait 24 hours so now I decided why don't I wait maybe an hour and do it in the god box? Anybody get that sense of humor? And so I've changed the rules. I may make it 30 minutes but I don't have too much in the guy box anymore because I just don't want to be afraid anymore. I don�t know about you but fear is just horrible. And then the fear leads to anger because I'm angry about whatever's happening that I'm afraid hasn't even happened yet. So if that makes any sense, I hope it does. It's just a cycle that was a killer for me. Now no matter how long you're sober, you're still going to wake up with an alcoholic mind and so you have to treat the alcoholic mind through the steps all day long in step 10. But I watch all day long for the resentment, selfishness, dishonesty and fear. Watch with God. And I say, God here comes a fear and I ask God who wants to remove it. I don't have to wait for it to come, I can watch for it. And so that's worked really well and you start the process with that, with the fourth step. It says we hope you're now convinced that God can remove from me whatever self-will has blocked you off from him. we're actually looking at the blockages in the somebody at the noon meeting today said the dam in their head that was blocking and they put a dam in their heads so they could accumulate all these fears of resentments you know they didn't want to get out and then we have to unblock the dam because god can't have power when i'm in fear or resentment and so i am convinced that god can remove it and the sad thing is even though I'm convinced of it I could still have self-will for a while and it can come any time who knows on the way home could happen during the meeting and you have to watch for it all the time but just you turn the God so this is where Emmet Fox made a profound impact on AA and they studied Emmett Fox the Sermon on the Mount he was a a theologian in the 30s who was very popular he had a lot of views that but he published a thing on prayer called the golden key and bill w and dr bob read that and it's two pages that i'm going to copy it and bring it to maybe next week i can get it on a pdf and he said the key is to turn away from whatever is dominating your thoughts to God. It seems so simple. Now, in the big book, you notice turn is used several times. We turn away form whatever the ego is producing and we turn to God and we have it lose power over us. It's so simple, he says it's a simple key to prayer. So in AA, it's different than praying. We don't pray for a new car or this or that. we're supposed to pray for god's will for us and the power to carry that out and we turn our thoughts away constantly from the things that are taking me away from god and turn to god it's a simple concept it's so simple and it's easy and then it says a price has to be paid remember the destruction of selfishness and you destroy your selfishness when you turn away from it and it says if you've already made a decision that's the third step in an inventory of your grosser handicaps you made a good beginning that being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about myself and then i mean we could go on and on about what are some of the truths about myself the truth is that i was very selfish i was full of fear i wasn't honest and i harmed a lot of people in myself and i don't have to be that way anymore and i could see that uh I caused almost all my resentments and that my fears were all because of me managing the world and in my conduct I used people and things to build ego and to try to get what I wanted and it was all the result my whole living was the result of this delusion that if I could manage the world well I would rest satisfaction happiness I believe that I thought it was true that was an old idea that killed me and so i had to see all that and be willing to change and i've done several four steps and now i do them all the time when i'm taking people through the steps you're constantly uh going through the fear and resentment and you're constant so if you if you want to keep doing the steps sponsor people and that's how you stay fresh so it says chapter six into action now a lot of people says it's into thinking that's a different book that's not this book it's not into into thinking or into understanding it's interaction we this is a program of action and if we take the actions we change the way we think and so Chuck Saban says we act our way into right thinking and what we act our way is into the right thinking is God's thinking the way God sees it and we get out of the way we saw it so it and I realized now reading this paragraph you know a lot of people say well you know there are only two paragraphs on step six and seven why they do that they're the most important steps in the book the steps to change you page 76 so I realize now from reading what we just read and going through the fourth step, and we're going to read about the fifth step, that the fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh were meant to be done all together. That the result of doing a fourth and sixth step, admitting to God and others the exact nature of your wrongs, you're actually willing, when you've seen it and admitted it, to have God take them away. And so it's a continuous process. That's why they didn't have specific directions on 6 and 7 because the directions are in 4, and then you admit in 5, and then You Ask God to Remove. So it continues, and that's why it's written away because it says, having made my personal inventory, so I've written it down, what shall I do about it? So remember, it wasn't written today. A lot of people do four steps differently, each person, the sponsors. I don't know if I'm doing it right or wrong, But in general, when I have somebody new, we read about resentment. We do the resentment inventory. We do that. We do it for the first three columns. Then we learn how to say the prayer and forgive everybody. And then we look at our mistakes. And then when we're done with that, we do fear. And then мы look at the sex inventory. Because I think doing it alone and then coming and sitting and listening for 10 hours to somebody doing it can be good. But have they done it right? And then, you know, have they understood what they're doing? It's not right or wrong. So I've just done it that way. A lot of people do it different ways. There's no right or long. Whatever works, whatever helps get the information across so the person can change. It says we and it tells you what you're trying to do. So here's a spiritual principle. And I try to do this all day long. It says I've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with my creator and to discover the obstacles in my path. Now, we do that initially at step four, but I do that every day. I wake up in the morning and I say a prayer. God direct my thinking. Divorce it from selfishness out of self-seeking motives. I meditate on 84-88. I want to try to live a spiritual life and practice love, patience, tolerance. And then I want a new relationship with my creator. I want him to be my creator, and I want to be his child. And I don't want to play God anymore. And I want it. And I wanted to discover the obstacles of my path each day, which are my character defects to come up. Oh, there's Missy. Hi, dear. Welcome, Matt. And so it says on page 25 about this new attitude, because you can ask yourself what's your old attitude and what's my new attitude. On page 25 in the paragraphs there is a solution. In the second paragraph there it says the great fact is just this and nothing less that I've had deep and effective spiritual experiences. And this experience, the result of doing the steps have revolutionized my whole attitude towards life. So you could ask what was your old attitude towards life? I was thinking about what could it have been. Well my old attitude with life was that I would wrest satisfaction and happiness out of it if I managed well. And that I was doing the best I can to get what I wanted that I thought would make me happy. Well that didn't work. My attitude now is to follow God's plan for me, to be of service to God and others, and not worry about what I'm getting because I'll get more than I need. My new attitude is that God will provide everything I need if I stay close to Him and do His work well. So if I prepare myself to be led by God, I'll have everything I'll need, and I'll be happy under any circumstances. My fellows, we're all God's kids. We all fall short of the glory. I have to be considerate of everybody and towards God's universe. And then the central fact of my life today is the absolute certainty that my Creator has entered into my heart and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. His comments to accomplish those things for me which I could never do for myself. And you ask yourself, is that the central factor of your life today? If it isn't, find somebody, do the steps and see if it is. And then he accomplishes for me things I can't do for myself because I can see now my thinking. I can See How It's Wrong, and I don't have to act on it anymore. And I don' t have to live in fear, andI don't haveto be angry, and Idon't haveto be disturbed, and Ido not have to harm anybody anymore. And so then at night when you go to sleep, you can feel good about your day and yourself. It says, we have admitted certain defects and so that's what we call the fourth column. That's the mistakes in my behavior and there are four in the big book, selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate and afraid. And then in the sex inventory they add inconsiderant. And then all the other character defects come from that, being judgmental, intolerant, envious, jealous, self-pity. We have a whole card. You can go on and on but they're all the result of being self-centered and being self seeking. And so I can see that now because I can how all my fears are caused by that and all my anger is caused by it. And then I harm people. It says we've ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is, and the trouble was I was playing God. I was trying to run the world and whenever I did that it triggered all these character defects. It wasn't pretty. It's not. I mean, it's not something you want to be proud about or share on CNN. But I don't have to be – I don' know, you change your attitude when you look back so that it says you will not regret the past or shut the door on it and I know that the person that did that had the wrong director. It was me and my motives I thought were good but they were wrong and so it led to bad things. So I don''t have to do that anymore. And that's how I forgave myself because I wasn't a bad person, I just had the wrong director and the wrong motives. And I thought I was doing the best I could. It says self-reliance failed us, anybody remember that line? Well when I read that I realized well gee, I wasnít bad, I was just relying on me to try to fix the world for at least an hour or so would be okay. And so, or get something or achieve something or own something or be recognized as something. It never worked. And so we don't have to live that way anymore. And so We Want to Stop Playing God, right? And We Want To Stop Our Character Defects From Being Activated On. So we put a finger in the weak items in our personal inventory. So you've learned a lot when you've done your fourth step. And it says now these are about to be cast out. Well, you're cast out in 6 and 7. So you see this is a continuing of when you're going to discuss with somebody. So as you're doing this fifth step in the way the big book's designed, it's obvious you don't want to be self-centered anymore. You don't wanna be dishonest and you don'T want to do that. You don'T wanna be fearful and you DON'T wanna BE inconsiderate and judgmental and intolerant. You DON'T want TO harm people. We don't want to arise jealousy and all those negative feelings in your relationships. So that's what I got out of reading it again today. So this is how you cast them out by writing them down, discussing them with another human being, and then you say the prayer. And it says, now to do this, does anybody want to change and get better, right? Well, it says – guess what it says? This requires action. Right. so if I don't take the action nothing's going to change so I had to do the written inventory and then I have to go through it with somebody so I could see the truth of it the inventory isn't designed so that you confess and you tell everybody all the terrible crap you did you can if you want and it may be part of it but what you want to do is you wantto see the truths about yourself and how you don't want to be anymore and what I learned was the person I created not God and I don't have to be that way anymore so when it says God remove my fear and direct my attention to how I should be I don' t want to be the opposite and we have our cards I brought a few these really changed you know these cards the left and right hand side and so I used to have it on my desk when I worked and then I noticed when I covered it up the day didn't go as well as when it was uncovered So if the day wasn't going well, I'd pull this out and I'd put it here. And then I may have to put it here. And I may have to do it again. I may even have to put it here. But you know, that's why I had the God pole because the God pole was when I was over on the left hand side and I had to hold the pole so I could calm down and I could practice the right hand side. And so we have to do the action. And then here's a promise. Which when completed will mean that I've admitted to God, to myself and the other human being the exact nature of my defects. So the fifth step says we made to God ourselves another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, right? So what does that mean? So the wrongs are the resentment and the fear in my actions. Resentment was wrong judgment, right? Fear is wrong belief and then I had wrong actions in my conduct. So what caused the resentment? That's why when you do the inventory in the fourth step, you start with who you're angry at. And then you work back, and that was wrong to be angry, and then you see the exact nature, which was my selfishness, dishonesty, my intolerance, my impatience, you see? So the way we inventory is we look out there and we bring it back to us. And so it's very clever the way they did it. I'm trying to read the sources, the Oxford Group and the sources they used to write the big book. And the Oxford group, that's how they kind of did it. I'm going to try to copy that Oxford – here is a pamphlet that somebody wrote about the Oxford Group, and it's really powerful. They took a lot of this from that. They just made it specifically to help alcoholics with the first three steps. And it says, the exact nature of our defects. So the wrongs, it says we look at the manifestations of self, right? And that's what we're going to inventory. And the manifestations itself, the first one they say is resentment, fear, and then our conduct. And then we look underneath it to what was the exact nurture of me that caused me to be angry all the time. Anybody angry a lot when they come in here? Yeah, and full of fear. And we harmed a lot of people. And that's because I was running the world and I was self-centered and I was full of feared and I reacted to that and then I was inconsiderate and I wasn't very judgmental I knew it was wrong with everybody. I still have some of that but I laugh about it now because it's so silly but I used to think it was one of my great strengths that I could walk into a room and know what was wrong with everybody in the room I can see now what's going on here And so that just caused me to be miserable. And so it says, this brings us to the fifth step in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapter. And so I've gone on quite a bit just to prepare us for the rest. I think I'm just going to read one or two lines and then we'll go through. I'm not going to go through it. We'll go to it next week and then open up. It's difficult perhaps discussing my defects with another person. And we think you've done well enough in admitting these things to ourselves, but I could never see the truth on my own. One of the great joys, I don't know if joy is the wrong word, but one of the Great Things is when you have a new guy and he comes in and he hates somebody and he's got like eight pages of what's wrong with him. And then if you're able to help them, in about ten minutes to see it, that their nuts weren't that bad. And you can see the light going on their eyes and all this, the way they've solved this person for years just changes and they lose the power. I can see people, I'm looking at the room that I've done that with and I had to do it myself. And then it's so free, it's such a spiritual thing. And it says we find solitary self-appraisal insufficient. That's why in the 10th step it says we discuss it immediately with someone whenever we have resentment, fear, dishonesty, self-seeking when it comes up because we don't want to keep it on our own. We may not see the truth about it and it says the best reason of doing this if we skip this step we might not overcome drinking so I'm going to end with this and next week we're going to look at these next few paragraphs they're really powerful stuff because it all ties together let me just figure out how to turn this off there you go