Willingness and Making Amends – 12 Step Workshop – Cortez, CO – Part 2 of 2 – Clint H.

And over here I put a little minus sign in the upper right hand corner and down here I wrote the harm that I had done. And the reason there is this minus sign over here is because Step 8 said, made a list of everyone we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And this is this little willing mark in the upper right-hand corner and if it's a minus, if I'm not willing to make that amend, I have to tell the truth about that. And if I am willing, I turn it into a plus sign. But until I'm willing, I leave it a minus sign and the reason that I do it is because the prayer changes now. Now, the prayer is, take me to my next amends and give me the power to make it. Because I need the power to do that. And the power has to come from a state of willingness at step eight. And willingness is, of course, what we also ask for. I want to be gladly ready to make this amends. And they're not always easy to be gladly ready to makes. It's sometimes a very tricky business. But the second tier of my mission is to be on as good terms with other people as far as possible. First tier, to have a good relationship with God. The second tier, and we all have this in common, the second tier of my mission in life is to being on good terms with my fellow man as far at possible. And then there's a third tier of the mission that's my personal mission that is really a description of what happens at the point where the talent I most love using meets the needs of the world around me. And perhaps we'll get into that a little bit later on. It's a fascinating thing to discover your own personal mission in life. And it takes a little thought and a little looking at your life. But we're now getting to a point, if we're talking 8 and 9, and 10, 11, and 12, where we must begin to have a purpose for our lives. one that we have chosen, one that has been given that's consistent with our very best relationship with God and the people around us and consistent with service. If I write down the harm here, then I'm clear on the harm. Now I have then a stack of three by five cards and the reason that they told me to put them in this format was because as soon as I had made an amends, I could throw the card away And so I have an ever-diminishing list of pile of cards. And I would know exactly all the time where I am with my amends. And I kept that pile out on a desk with a rubber band around it or in a drawer. But I knew, I had an eye on it. It would remind me, make the prayer, take me to my next amends and give me the power to make it. It was just there as a physical reminder that I had gotten that far, that God's grace had taken me a long way and that I had some more work to do. So, they also told me that there are five... They broke it down. They made it as simple as they could for me. They kind of developed a way of doing this that didn't leave much to chance. and I'm glad they did that because, yes sir right, good question thanks the question was what did you do with the ones that you're not willing to make and the answer is as I but I'll take care of this right now the answer is very simple Once you've made two or three of these amends, and then you go back through the cards, you discover, oh, all right, I'll make that amend. I'm now willing to make that amendment. I'm into it now. And you can see as you review the remaining cards, I am willing to do that. Okay, I will make that amend. And the reason that you need to know whether you're willing or not is because if we try to make an amend where we're not willing to it, it where we haven't forgiven that other person their part of it, where we're still holding a grudge, where we expect to hear back from them, well, I guess it was more my fault than yours. You don't hear that as often as you want to hear it, you know? It's like they don't think that way. And if we're waiting for that, we can have a tendency to be a little bit off track in the amends and it's such a touchy area anyway that we've got to be squeaky clean going into it and we don't want to be carrying the extra burden of not being willing. So they told me, don't make amends, especially at the beginning where you think you might not be willing. You start with where you're willing. And by that time, after the first eight steps, there were some, maybe half of them, that I was willing to clean up. I knew I had caused trouble and I knew that the trouble I caused was a load that I was carrying around. But I found out that gradually over the course of making amends you can begin to draw a little vertical sign and turn that minus sign into a plus sign, so gradually. There was a couple that I had not—I remember coming back from one amends. I hadn't expected to see the guy that day, and I got back home that night to pull his card out of my list because I'd made amends to him. I looked at the card and it still had the minus on it, but he was there and I didn't even question whether I was willing or not. It was just time to do it. I could not have thought back and said, oh, I'm not willing to do this. It's an intuitive process, and I did it. I just sat with him. Any other comments or questions? The format they gave me was this. Contact the person and tell them you'd like to see them, and make an appointment in a neutral place. If you can avoid going to their home or their office or avoid having them come to your home or office and you can do it in a neutral place, it's probably better. Making an amends doesn't take long. Telling the truth doesn't takes long. We think, oh, we're going to have this two-hour deal. No, it's a two-minute deal or five-minute meal. That's what it is. And so you don't want to do it, they told me, around a meal. Go to a coffee shop, but don't make a meal of it. It's coffee. and it's a short conversation unless there is such a healing that it develops into a long conversation. Then you can have some options with what you do with that other time. But it's like, and you can't of course call a person and say you're going to fit him in between 3 and 310 at Joe's Diner. That's not going to work either. You call them up and you say, if they're in AA, you say I'm in Step 9 and I need to make amends to you and I'd like to do it in person. They were big on doing it in person. Can I make amens by phone? Did you do the harm by phone well? No. And they said meet him in person. This is direct amends. I didn't hear much about living amends, I heard about direct amends because if you do the harm directly. We are right in the middle of their lives usually when we are doing our harm, and so we have to sit with them. The ego says, good time for you to circle back to step one and do the first eight steps again. You have to set that aside. Ask for them to take me to my next demands and give me the power to make it. So you make the appointment they said to me. And if they're not in AA, you say, you know, I've been going back through my life and I've had some concerns about the way I've treated people. And you're one of the people that I feel bad about how I treated you. And I'm wondering if we can sit down just briefly. I'd like to clean that up with you. I would like to clear that up for you." And they said after the person agrees, most of them will, sometimes they'll say, You know I really don't want to see you. Then I'll be writing you a letter for now, and I hope someday we can meet." But we don't push it in the sense of, if they don't want to see us, that's pretty much the end of the story. You can't barge into their lives. All you can do is get permission to send them a letter, if that's the way it has to be done. And if they don't want you to send them a letter, you have to say, can you give me about three more minutes on the phone? Well, okay, what is it? And now you really have to be squeaky clean. Now you really need to tell them enough that they know that you mean business. And this inevitably requires that you say in detail the harm that was done, the detail we don't wanna deal with. not detail that is going to hurt them not detail that is gonna make them aware of something that we did that they did not know about but the detail if you remember that night that I hit you I have never forgotten that and how bad I felt about that do you remember that night I pushed our little boy do you member that night I just want you to know and I don't blame you for not wanting to see me or even get a letter but I am so very sorry for that I just I just want you to know that if I can do anything to set that right, I will do that. And I'd like to talk to the little boy too someday, if that's possible. That's all you can do on the phone, and you can be much more in person if they're willing to see you. But we want to set this right in any way we can, and in the most kindly way we can, and in the way that really lets them know that we would heal it up if we can. Because our own healing and our own usefulness to the world and to God really ride on this, and it's critically important. So the next step in this whole business, and we'll take a little break here in a minute, is that after we contact them, and after we We make an appointment to see them. We meet with them and we thank them for meeting with us, and then we say, I'm here because I harmed you, and this is the harm that I see that I did, and whatever it is, specific harm. And they will listen usually, And then we have to ask, do you need to tell me how any of this made you feel? And sometimes they have a lot to say about that. And then WE have to listen without interrupting because so much needs to be heard. And then, we say, is there any harm that hasn't been discussed yet that you can think of that I haven't brought up? And then listen and they will tell us. And the last question, the question with the marching orders attached to it is this. What can I do to make this right? What can i do? What would you have me do to make this right? And sometimes they will tell you and sometimes if they're parents they say well I just want you to be happy." But we have to honor that, because these are our marching orders. There is something sacred about what they say that they want us to do, and we must at long last be willing to do it. Don has been so useful and helpful to me. His mother said, you to be happy." And he got it. Now he goes and visits her every week, and he's happy. He lets her see that he's HAPPY. He doesn't go moping around there. He's HAP-PY. Such is the great burden of AA. He has to be HAPPY in order to be. And so then we set out to do them, and I'll talk next hour on my personal experience with those men. Yes, we have a question here before the break. Okay, I'll give you that. Well, we'll go over them after the break, I will repeat those five, is that fine with you? Yeah. Okay, let's do that, so everybody has that sequence of five things, in fact I'll write it on the board. Okay, lets take a break. Come back at 9.35. Okay, show the instructions. I wrote them up here, but make an appointment if possible. You can't make an appointments with everybody. There are people that you don't know where they are or they're dead, or they won't see you, but you make an appointment. You thank them for meeting with you when you sit down, I appreciate this time with you. You admit the harm, you ask them for their idea of other harm, and you ask him if they need to say how any of that made him feel, and then you ask him what I can do to set this right. And there is no way to describe what the energy is going on there, because it is a time that you've asked for power. It's a time that you have gone through. If you've noticed in Step 8 in the big book, it says setting aside what they have done. And in Step 8 in 12 and 12, it talks at length about forgiveness. At length about forgiveness. And we must have let it go. We must of let it go. Forgiveness is a tricky thing and I think there was a minister in New York in the 30s that was a friend of Bill's and this minister wrote some books. One of the ones he wrote, his name is Fox, Emmett Fox, and he wrote a book called Sermon on the Mount. And in SermON on the Mountain Dr. Fox as part of the book dissects the Lord's Prayer and there is a chapter in there on forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors or trespassers, whatever he uses. And it is a very, very touching account of why it's so important for us to forgive. And he makes the point that there's hardly any of us that hasn't had taken a little trifling hit and can't rise above it. But there's also hardly any of use that haven't been hurt so bad that we think will never let it go. Can't let it go. Because if I let this go, I'm more vulnerable than ever to getting whacked again. And it's usually somebody that's been close to us. It might be a stranger, a rape or something like that. But there's hardly anybody that hasn't been hurt in that way and hurt badly in that way. Hurt in and we come to AA in that wounded state and although we know that God enters through the wound, we still don't want to heal it up in a way. We want to hang on to our anger against that person. I want to hand on to my anger against my dad. I want hang on my anger against my grandma and my mom. I want hand on it because it just feels like it's my way of getting even in some way. It just feels like it's my way of having a ready excuse for why I don't live my life out 100%. That was such a peace for me as I discovered through this thing. I took some wax when I was a kid and I deserved a lot that I got, but not all of it. And I felt that I had been permanently harmed. I didn't even admit that to myself because I didn't think it was the right image to have, to walk around with sort of a mopiness to me. But I really believed at core that I had been permanently harmed by that. And one day in this process, I realized, well, it harmed me, but it wasn't permanent. I felt like I'd been crimped, like I could live my life 70% instead of 100%. and I had a little 40% life to live instead of living the life I had been given. And so I kind of didn't really reach, I didn't really get a full plate. I didn' t want all your love because I wasn' t going to give and all of that stuff. I sponsored a guy it was so funny he was raised in an orphanage talk about old ideas, it was funny. He told me that at the table when they were eating, he would say, if you said please pass the potatoes, the answer came back, eat something you can reach. Which is a cold shot, man, but you don't reach, you know, and you just kind of eat your little stuff right around there because you want to be able to stay indoors that night. And it was kind of like I hear a lot of people say, well, I have to make amends to my staff. I haven't seen you about that, but I'd like to hear what you have to say about that. About me? Making amends to me? Yeah. Oh. They told me not to put that name on the list. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know what it is. I think that if I did that, I would... It's like how I've lived my whole life. When I get mine, I'll then have enough to share with you. And if my first task is to make amends to me, I'll make amendments to you. I think I'll be done with mine to me next year maybe, something like that. Maybe I got you scheduled for 2007. until then I'll be concentrating on myself and thank you very much I don't see any reason for that have I harmed myself? yeah do I need to let myself off the hook for that? sure which is why we're talking about forgiveness now and I have heard people that I respect say make amends to yourself first that is not my experience and I never got to a point because by the time we get done with this process if we have done it thoroughly there isn't any sense of impoverishment that I have there's no sense of diminution and I realize that the whole process is about somebody that I am no longer I'm just not that person anymore and perhaps never was I'm like a guy that added on all of these old ideas and all of this conduct like a guy put on a pair of shoulder pads in football. And then I, after practice is over, I forget to take them off. I think I still need them. But nothing ever fits real well after that, you know? It just doesn't fit. It's inconsistent with reality. So I agree with you. I don't think there's... And there's nothing in this book about that. And I looked. I was hoping that I'd find that so I could make amends to myself because I've been hurt so much. I went, damn, I can't find it. I've got a question about that first portion there of working that step is if someone across country and I really don't have plans to go there, do I need to go ahead and make those arrangements and go make that happen or do I need to, you know, I don't know. How would you approach that? Well, it depends on how thorough you want to be. I did. I did." Gary and I were talking this morning. I picked up my messages last night and a guy that we sit with is on it and he doesn't have any money, but he saved up some money and he went back to the East Coast where he had his early sobriety and where he grew up and he sat with a lot of people in the last three weeks and he drove back and he was driving back over to Mississippi when he called me and he's got one more left in that area and one in Arizona and then he'll be home and he sounded good he sounded great yeah You know, it's sort of like somebody said to me, they said, Clint, you've got the rest of your life to become the person you really want to be or to defend who you are. And that's a choice every day. So we want to believe, and it says in the book, if we are thorough and painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we're halfway through. and it seemed like that and I'll get into the specifics of my own little trip down this way but and it seems like if you're new relatively new and you are at step one or at step two you haven't really picked up the power to see man my life has stopped being any of my business and what do I care if I can somehow manage the means to go back there if I'm not if I don't care if I set aside a little bit God has been so good to me and I'm making money that I never made before and I paid back money here. How much does it really take to get on a plane and go back? And if you want to delay it, you just book flights on United and then you never have to go back. I shouldn't get into that. That's an outside issue, I think, isn't it? It only comes up because Gary and I are booked back on United today and we may be here with you for a couple of weeks. We don't know. I've got to start over now. You made me forget my place. My name is Clint and I... Forgiveness is a very important thing. Forgiveness is letting that other person off the hook because until I can do that, I'm tied to that person by a cord of what Fox calls a cord or something. A cord of steel. I'm tied to them Because I'm never quite I hang on to them in a hateful or angry way And if they come into my sight Then I get angry again If they come onto my sight And the ones The trifling hurts The ones that we want to rise above The one I don't even want to let her know She hurt my feelings with that Because she'll do it again if she knows You know how they are You know how they are. I don't make hands. They say that men are up front with their power and hide their wounds and women are up front with the hurts and hide their power and it's probably true. That's why the men never see the power that women have. We miss it. We mistake the wound for no power. They got power. Thank God, because that is such a sweet thing. But we don't get that sometimes. Isn't there a tribe that has a council? Historically it was a council of elders that are male and they can make all the decisions in the world they want. But in order to implement those decisions, they have to go to a council of elder women, Uruquay Nation, and until the women sign off on it. That just acknowledges that remarkable wisdom and power that is in the tribe that would otherwise go unacknowledged and unused, and they'll send it back and say, you know what? Don't go there. No, the men in the tribe of Desa... Yeah, don't go where they're from. Don't do that. Yeah. There's a great, great deep wisdom to that. And we are in a society where the women have enormous wisdom and power. And for us not to get that is a huge mistake. Huge mistake. I was back in Omaha last weekend with a man and his wife like we have here with Pat and Joe and working together they get a lot done a lot and her wisdom is an important piece of it in any case we hang on to these old hurts and we want to rise above the trifling ones instead of knowing I have to forgive her for that too a couple of months ago my wife. I was embellishing a story in front of other people, and my wife had the bad manners to correct me, to actually tell the truth about the story that I was embellished. And I can't tell you why. I think it was because of who the other two people were, but I really got my feelings hurt over it. And I hate to admit that my feelings are hurt. And And I wanted to have a little chit-chat with her about that. But you feel so dumb, you know. After a while, you can't get by with saying, you know, that crap about telling the truth in front of other people isn't going to work for me. A little hard to say. And so you pick a fight in some other way, you now. That's all you've got left to do is be unfair. Better no retaliation at all, isn't it? So, the first task was to forgive it. To let her off the hook. To acknowledge that whatever she had to say, she wanted to say her truth about it. And it was not designed to humiliate me. It was not design to embarrass me. It was designed to have everybody think she is smarter or more truthful than I am. It was simply, she remembered it in another way. And she had that to say about it. Nobody but me gave it a second thought. You know, I'm the one that lost sleep that night. Nobody else. These other people went home and they had a good time being with us. And she, I noticed, went sound asleep real quick. And the task is to forgive it. The task is for her to forgive. To forgive it? Are you going to let it go or not? And it's not that hard, provided that we're willing to forgive it. We're willing to forgive it. And if it's about ourselves, we have to be the same thing. Emmett Fox in this chapter in a book called Sermon on the Mount says, and I won't go through all of this, but he says the technique of forgiveness is simple enough and not very difficult to manage when you understand how. The only thing that is essential is willingness to forgive. Providing you desire to forgive the offender the greater part of the work is already done. People have been under the impression that to forgive someone means you have to like them. Not true. If you don't like them, you are not required to. The task, of course, is to love them in the sense that we wish them well. But we don't love everybody that we see and we don' t like everybody that we feel has offended us and the task is not and to avoid forgiveness because now I've got to start to like him isn't the case at all. It's to just simply let them off the hook he says the method is this get by yourself and become quiet repeat you can look at this I'll leave it out but just kind of be with me as I read this repeat any prayer or treatment that appeals to you or read a chapter of the Bible and then quietly say I freely, fully and freely forgive Linda and I loose her and I let her go I completely forgive the whole business in question. As far as I am concerned, it's finished forever. I cast the burden of resentment upon God within me. That person is free. I am free too. I wish her well in any phase of her life or him well. That incident is finished. God has set us both free. Thank God. And then get up and go about your business. On no account repeat this act of forgiveness. You've done it once and for all. And if you did it again, it would be to say, Well, I didn't do it right the first time. when the memory of the offender or the offense comes to your mind bless that person God love them and dismiss the thought do this however many times the thought may come back after a few days it will return less and less often until you forget it all together and perhaps after an interval shorter or longer the old trouble may come back to memory once more but you will find that now all bitterness and resentment has disappeared and you're both free with the perfect freedom of the children of God your forgiveness is complete the result of the policy is that very soon you will find yourself cleared of resentment. There is what we're caught up with in this since the prayer is forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us it really conditions my forgiveness on my willingness to forgive who I think has harmed me and sometimes that's me sometimes that's me God I was so stupid when I slept through that entrance exam for Yale University I can't let myself off the hook for that I blamed everybody I knew for that but harboring a deep resentment that I had been that dumb that I hadn't seen how important it was that I just had this notion that my life would be different because I knew I'd just smoke that test and all that kind of stuff So I had to let myself off the hook. And there's nothing wrong with that. And we do it little bit and little bit, but we have to first be willing to do it because if I am using that as an excuse for not living a 100% life, then I better let myself off the hook for it. And that's how I'll use it. That's the only reason I cling to it. I get something out of it. excuse for my own personal limitation out of not letting myself off the hook. Oh, if I'd have done that, I would have gone to Yale. I would've done this. Boy, I'd had this now and all that. Now, look at me. I just have this little trashy 25% life. Forgiveness is a big thing. There is not one of us in the room that doesn't want to be forgiven. I want to be forgiven for all of it. I want the forgiveness of God. I want my own forgiveness. And sometimes we hold a grudge against the race, against the political party, against another group in AA, against a person that doesn't agree with it. And we have to forgive it. I don't want to get into any idea of being mad at somebody that thinks they have to make amends to themselves first. Let it go. Let it go. That's none of my business. I agree that that's, I wouldn't want to be observing that little kind of a notion, but that's... And if it irks me and I think they're somehow, see what I'll do is make some self-righteous, I usually hang on to it in a self- righteous way. Why, they're killing people over there in that group doing that crap. Really? Which one has died? Have We've got a list of those that are dead now because of it. Oh, they're killing people. We love that now. Like, we're killing the people over there. But then they say that about the Pacific group too, so we have a public burrow every month just to make them happy. We publish a list. Here are the people that have died because of what we're doing in this group. It makes them happy again. They read it at General Service office. okay so the forgiveness is an important thing yes sir I just am I wrong in my thinking next question ask someone for forgiveness and they turn to you and go working your seven stuff are we and we're thinking they're a bitch for doing that so you asked somebody to forgive you and she turned to you and said working our seven the only possible response is you haven't read the seventh step recently well that you know that really it's one thing to apologize to somebody. It's another thing to ask them to forgive you for whatever it was. It requires something of them that they are clearly not prepared to do, which invites more rancor, really. We don't have that right to intrude again. We've intruded once. They didn't like it. then we go back and forgive them but really we have a guy in our group that just was driving everybody normal because he was saying he'd pick a fight with a woman in a meeting and then he'd call her at midnight to apologize and want to talk to her for an hour you know and it got pretty transparent after a while that he was just being intrusive and didn't really want to clean it up at all it was just his excuse to call him under the guise of being a good AA so we can't go there with that If you want to apologize, if we have something to say to clean it up with somebody in a step 10 thing, when we're wrong, promptly admit it. We do that, but we do it promptly. You know what? I shouldn't have said that to you. I'm sorry. I shouldn' t have grabbed your seat. I knew it was yours. I'm going to move on. No, no, no. I understand what you're making at this point. Okay. All right. Good. something we get in and get out of but they require some specific response on their part is usually to prolong the tension and it's not doesn't really take us where we want to go Well, yeah, first of all, The act of forgiveness is really a step-eight act. That's the principle of step-8 forgiveness. And it's a very personal thing. I, for example, in that story I told you about Linda Tellen, I did not go to her and forgive her for that at all. First of all, I behaved myself while we were with those people. Secondly, when we got home, I was cheerful and didn't pout about it because I've been down this road before And I know that for me to withhold communication or withhold approval Or withhold good wishes, withhold comfort because of something like that Isn't how I want to live And I Know That The Problem Is Never Out There I Know It's My Problem And That The Answer Is In Here Too And So I Couldn't Get To Sleep And I'm Chewing On This And Chewing on it and trying somehow the best I can to make her wrong. And finally, I came to forgiveness on it, and I let it go. But she never did know. She doesn't know to this day. And I know none of you will report this terrible thing. Don't let her see these tapes, God. It's not that. It isn't about going to them and forgiving them. It's about forgiving them in your heart and letting them off the hook at step eight. and it is not at step 9 about asking them to forgive you that's not here it is what can I do to set this right whether they're going to forgive us is another matter that is going to be up to them but asking forgiveness is not part of this step it isn't that Yeah, yeah, all right. Okay, well, yes sir. In this stuff we've been kind of taking around so I'm just kind of thinking about it. How does this relate to what you're saying or how, what is your understanding of this where in the 12 and 12 and 8 it says that they, about the emotional in many instances we shall find that though the harm done to others has not been great the emotional harm we have done or so has buried deep sometimes quite forgotten damaging emotional conflicts which persist below a level of consciousness at that time because of these occurrences they may have given our emotions violent twists and you spoke about that early on yesterday I think you were writing which has discolored our personalities and altered our lives and work So in step A, does that apply to me or just certain people that are pretty bad off in the program? I relate them to, you know, I act a certain way or do a certain thing in a certain situation not knowing anymore because that's just my defense. Yeah. And it is something that comes up in step six, in step five, really. You'll see, God, I've been swinging at guys all my life for that insult my dad gave me. And, it's gotten me in a lot of trouble and it's caused me to do a lot of harm. And so my reaction if a guy looks at me cross-eyed is to swing. Now do I really want to, because I think if a guys has a certain look on his face he is going to harm me and I'm going to tag him first. Because when my dad had that look on his face. He smacked me at four years of age, and I thought my life was over because I thought my dad liked me up until that time. So the old idea is sort of like male authority figures attack you suddenly and without any reason. And then you sense it in a bar or from a cop or from a guy that's just, you know, and boom, you're on the way out the door. And we don't want to be at the effect of that, especially here where guys come in and they're raw and they look and if we can't treat them in a loving way we have to at least stay away from them so we don' t do them any harm. And the old idea comes up at step four and five. And then at step six, we sort of identify it. And then it steps and asks, am I willing to let that go? Am I willing for me to see that that's just my notion of what that look means, and let it go? So I don't have to misinterpret that look every time I see it. Because some guys were just wounded ducks and they got that look. But it doesn't mean they're even, you know. And if the answer to that is yes, and if we've got a God that's big enough to take it away, we ask Him to do that. And so then we come into step eight and we say, you Know, that old idea caused some harm. Caused some harm, I gave my brother a pretty good whooping one day for that and he didn't have it coming and I've got to go clean that up. That's how it kind of flows through there. But the sometimes quite forgotten insult of long ago that's changed our personality for the worst is in Step 8 in the 12 and 12, but it really kind of falls along more in 4, 5, 6, and 7 in the big book. Those two books were written 12 years apart. One is an inspired book. I mean, Wilson was only four years old when he wrote the big book. And I don't think he wrote it. I think he just held the pen, you know? There's just too much inspired stuff in there for him to have consciously worked that through in the way that he did. And then he's 12 years sober and he's gone through his own depressions and he comes back to the steps and sees if he can't analyze them in a more intellectual way, in a way that we might understand. But in the big book, it's not an intellectual process so much. And when we read that big book we don't really hang on to its language. It's almost impossible to trap that language and then burp it up in a meeting. You don't hear it much unless somebody's gone to a lot of trouble to memorize it because it's non-intellectual. It just triggers us at a completely different level and that's what its power is because we're reacting from a completely different level. And the healing needs to take place there too. And our mind does shift when we begin to see how this stuff works out. But it's not, but the 12 and, and so I know the 12 in 12 to some extent, but I have the intimate experience with the big book more. Do you think that just talking about the big books I was going to step in and say that the fundamental twist of the alcoholic, does that arise out of some of the same things that you all read there about our sometimes subconscious twisted emotional takes on certain events in life and how we react to those things? We have a fundamental twist towards things that's almost an indescribable frame of mind. when i know in step two when i was after reviewing my drunk along and seeing how how things were when i would sober the problem wasn't when i was drunk the problem was when i was sobering incapable i was of living comfortably within my own skin sober which always led to the next drinking foul stuff and for some reason i tie those two together that my particular peculiar mental twist is somehow related to those subconscious malformations or malfunctions that I somehow acquired through growing up and through wherever. I think that's true. Wilson talks about a peculiar mental twist in terms of, that takes us to drinking. But as you say, that doesn't exactly go back to sleep when we're not drinking. In fact, we feel it even more. The peculiar mental twisted is what places us beyond human aid. The peculiar mental twist says, I can't get my power except from an outside source, and when I find booze, that's it. And the peculiar mental twisted takes me back to booze and booze and booize and booiz. I think it's really, as you suggest, the basis of chronic untreated alcoholism. After years of sobriety, my peculiar mental twits means that I am not going to live comfortably in this world something else is the matter with me. And it's up here in this mind with all of these old ideas. And it is so complex, it defies any kind of teasing out those old ideas in a psychiatrist's office. It really, they despair of ever helping us. They really just, first of all we can't tell them the truth and even if we could, we don't want to, you know. And if they are one of these mm-hmm guys, they put you on the mm-hm machine and it never goes anywhere. We just start circling the drain. It isn't until we tap into this spiritual principle that we get some loosening up of that tight ball enough that we can begin to pluck out these old ideas and taken together, I think those old ideas create that peculiar mental twist. And twist is an interesting word, isn't it? I mean, I don't like to think I have a twisted mind, but he doesn't leave me with much else to conclude. Yeah? I just wanted to add something real quick. So what I understand what you said is, you know, I don't want to have to keep making amends for the same thing over and over. And if I keep hurting different people the same way over and again, then there's something I need to go back into four or five Or what under there that I have to beat somebody up every time they look at me funny and the next thing I go, oh I'm sorry I beat you up this week. Yeah, I have visit a lot of hospitals that way. Sure, you can go from the alcoholism ward and the 12-step call right over to the orthopedic ward and see the guy there in the cast. Sure, it's exactly what we're doing. As I said, I'm like 23 years sober when the dawn comes. I'd been married twice in drinking, twice in sobriety. I'd had several other long-term three and four year relationships. And it's like after a while even a guy as defended as I am gets sort of a clue that I'm the common denominator in all of this and I don't know how I caused the trouble. I don't even know how I bring them into my life. I don' t know how to run them off. I don''t have the bulk on me that I pop guys in the head. That has not worked out real well for me when I've tried it. I usually go home with my nose over here under my... But we all have our ways of hurting people. All have our way of getting even with the old hurts. The old hurts and you're very right to be concerned about, look, I don't feel so hot about how that went. And I don' t want to have to be living a life where I'm making amends and where I' m always saying I shouldn' t have done that. So there' s a core that needs to change. It goes like this. I got a lemon tree in my backyard and I walk out into the back and I notice that the leaves are turning brown. the fruit is turning a little bit brown and so I go get a step ladder and I pail of water and I put that ladder out there and I climb up and I take a little spoon and I start putting water on that brown lemon and you'd say there may not be where you want to go with that because then there's going to be another brown lemon over here and then you go and then you look back and notice that that lemon is still brown even though you watered and that's not quite and so the steps really allow us to notice that there is a root problem a root problems and we can water that and then the whole thing is fine and the fruit we bear is sweet and that is what you want and that was a nice analogy I gave I am so pleased about it I never heard myself say that before well, well,well My question is along the same lines. There's several stories and there's several men and there was one particular person that showed up and I'm not separated from this cosmic fighting and I don't know how to be done with it. I'm afraid about it I've attempted to make amends Boy, I'm glad you asked that question because there is an answer and the answer is forgiveness and we don't know how to do that and I don't want to get pilloried for going outside conference approved literature but I've done two things in my life that don't have anything to do with AA that were enormously helpful to me one of them was go to this goofy Catholic engaged encounter with my wife before we were married because I came out of there. It was so powerful that one couple of the 50 that were there on Saturday at noon came up to the people that were running it and said, you know what? We really thank you so much for this because we just discovered we're not going to marry. We don't belong together. God, what a valuable thing that would be. It was that powerful. And for me, I came to know I want to marry Linda and I want to be with her. And what really added in for me was commitment. These people get it about commitment. They get it and I got it. And it was quite an amazing thing. It It was just God's grace working through those people. And the second thing was this book, Emmett Fox's book, Sermon on the Mount. And you're a bright guy and you pick up a copy of that book. It's at any number of bookstores or they'll order it for you. And you turn to that last part. The Lord's Prayer has seven clauses in it. And the middle clause and the pivotal clause, forgive us our debts or our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Because my forgiveness is not available to me until I forgive them. And he tells you exactly how to do it at a high price we pay, which you're talking about for not doing it. Read that thing. A guy gave me that book when I was in this process. I read it on a plane coming back from someplace. I just flipped it open to that thing and I wasn't even thinking about anything. And I realized of all the hard work I had done and all the amends I had made, there were still people that I had not ever let off the hook. I hadn't forgiven them because the way wasn't exactly lighted in the process to that. And by the time that plane landed, I had a list of 10 or 11 names of people thatI had never forgiven and I had performed an act of forgiveness as to each one of them and the guy that got off that plane was different than the guy that got on it. It's powerful stuff. And so God was loving me through that Emmett Fox thing that day. And I'm a big book nut and I believe in doing what it says here and I'm like you. I can make amends but if I haven't forgiven it, their part in it, it still rankles. And I have a tendency to go back and they say, yeah, we talked about that last year. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. But I wanted to make sure I made amends, you know. And it's like everybody's kind of, okay, fine. See you again next year. All because we haven't forgiven them. Yeah? I have a question about AA literature. I've heard a lot of old-timers criticize the 12 of those not being A-level and therefore not quite as valuable Well, I expressed my familiarity with the big book and not so much familiarity with The Twelve and Twelve. And it's, you know what it is? It gets to be, to some extent, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In a way, you see, you know, I don't really take a position on it. When I was a kid and I got baptized in the Yellowstone River, When I was like 13 in early March, we did complete immersion and we were very proud that we did complete immersion because the other church was doing something else. All I know about complete immersion in the Yellowstone River in early March when you're 13 years old as you do not find God. In fact, for about three days you don't find very much of anything. That'll scare a little Clinty, I'll tell you. And it's that way, you know. Technique and all of that. We're not really after the perfect technique. We want to develop an attitude and there is no attitude developing technique. We just want to go home. We just want to go home and if you find your way home through the 12th and 12th I'm glad for you. That was not my path but it's just a path not the destination. Yes sir? It's pretty good freedom from bondage. Oh and that story is in the back? Yeah that's another place to look freedom from bondage is one of the personal stories in the back, and it's thanks. It does have a nice exposition on forgiveness. Now I can't remember where we are back there. Are we okay? You and Don? We're at 45. Okay. You guys are asking some great questions here. Yes, sir. Did you have your hand up? No. All right. Okay, yes, yes. Your name is? Gary, I remember you from Monday night and Thursday night okay okay yeah it's like owning it is this really my old idea and you were talking about it last night I think in a little bit when you shared the idea of embarrassing people or what I can't remember exactly how towards you and it's about one is that really my old idea and where did it come from if I can trace it back I'll really notice that it's mine and number two am i willing to let it go it's a six and seven process number and then do I have a big enough God that will take it away well we know that you do you got a big guy. What would replace it? What would really please you? And then you might have to actually sit down with somebody else and say, because most of this is beyond our belief system, which means that what Gary wants for me is sometimes more than I could ever imagine I would want, because He loves me, that I could have. And what I want for Him is more than His mind could get, because what I want for him is not outside of my belief system for Him, but it may be outside of His belief system for Him. Because we kind of keep ourselves a little constricted. Oh, none for me, thanks. Oh, you go ahead, I'll be all right. You young people have your own way of doing things. I'm having a big time today.