The Brentwood Beginners Workshop Part 2 of 5

Can you help me out here right at the beginning? Were those who held up their hands as newcomers, those who were not here last week, would they hold their nets up? Oh hell. This class is always beginning. Well, I tell you when we started to start here last week, first thing that we why not to use that?

So I stand up here wearing a jacket and my hair combed, and, I've got this hanging around my neck. I do not speak officially for this fellowship, nor does anybody else. This is one of the incredible things about it is that I am the founder and then ex to beat the statements about AA. What we do is to tell you what we have come to believe through our own experience and how I would like for you to think about the sessions that we're going to have started last week, tonight, and through the rest of July. It's a kind of a workshop in sobriety, things that we talk about that have made a great deal of sense to me and have helped me a great deal that I bring to my own strengths and experiences of others and put them out to you for your examination.

The theme that we were going to take and are going to follow is set up last week was the 12th Sunday next to the last paragraph of the first section of the 8 a book that said, think to it that your own house is in order and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is a great fact for us. So what we set out to do last week was to see if we could make a beginning in this month, taking some pretty giant steps each week, but it gives us a whole week in a lifetime to go back and do them again and again. But if we could answer core saving questions and see if we could build a house in which not only we could build constantly, at peace with God, with our fellow man, and above all with ourselves, but maybe a household city, so inviting you that we could invite others to share. And the first question we asked last week was what I believe is the end of all of our recovery from alcoholism.

It's the fact that art has to be the foundation of this policy. And that question is what is the point of sobriety? And I'm gonna quickly review that for you new partners here tonight. And then if there are morning coming next week, I don't know. You'll have to tell them.

What I quickly I'll just quickly review that one of the oldest ideas, that all of us come here with, because they come with it out of our culture, is that sobriety is a virtue, and since it is a virtue and the practice of it is virtuous, then we logically conclude that, a, we must be virtuous in order to do it, and 2, if we practice disturbing virtue like that, buybackers should have a reward. And this is where we come in, and this is where all the trouble starts. Because if you're an alcoholic, this state, whether it's been happy or miserable, is no longer something that you're going to decide, well, I'll do that. It and then you name your list of rewards. It has become as necessary to you as insulin is to the diabetes, for an example.

And it's to quickly get across to the point that I started to make last week. I think I can make this more visualized it better for you. If you would assume, instead of being an alcoholic, that you are a diabetic, you have been to a physician. He has concluded this. He has sent and concluded this diagnosis and says that you have it, and there isn't any doubt about it.

And all the evidence points to the fact that you have that you are a diabetic, and the diabetes diabetes is fatal, that it gets worse, and that if something isn't done by it, it ends in death. And you feel very depressed about this, And then you could go, hey, do you think all is not lost? This can all come to a halt. You can lead a normal life, a normal life, able to do anything that's either every day or so many times a week. And you'd say, okay.

Fine. I'll visit that doctor. And you go away. And after a while, you come back to the doctor, and you say, I have decided not to take the insulin or maybe don't even go back. I said, if you are a diabetic alcoholic, you would announce it to somebody.

But you go back medicine, you go back to the Why, Bill? Why is it no longer any point of taking insulin? My wife doesn't love me any more than she did before. I don't get along any better with my boss. I still have these fears.

I still hate people. I still hate myself. I still hate the fear. Everything is wrong. Nothing is any better.

Life isn't worth living. So what's the point of taking the insulin, doctor? And that's when he says, the point of taking the insulin, Joe, is that if you want to live, you take it. I didn't when I gave it to you, I didn't tell you that it would automatically change you into a better person. Now if you're an alcoholic and you can have thought the idea that you're an alcoholic, and you can finally get this in your mind, survival sobriety is an end in itself, an indispensable requirement for the rest of your life.

If if if you if you want to wake up and you're not the right thing, you're past the point when you can be allowed to choose about this. Because you can only choose either the big drums or the silver. You can't choose any type of medium. That half of medium, they have sawn you, so you gotta choose to be either drunk or silver. So and you will decide in favor of sobriety only if and when you value being sober more than you value being drunk.

Now for our purposes, we've got to assume that you have made that decision, because if you haven't made that decision, the rest of the weeks and the rest of the things we talked about are really, as far as you're concerned, they're just exercises in air. There's no point in them. You ought to go someplace else. Go to the ball game, and, sit outside and help me. Because there's no point there's no point in getting around here and birdie and turning this rigorous honesty in on yourself and coming up with all kinds of horrible answers if you have not decided that you would rather be sober than drunk.

If you haven't thought this, that's whether or not you're gonna get any any richer, any happier, any more beautiful or more handsome, whether people gonna like you better or you're gonna like people whether you, sobriety is an end in itself, That virtue is not connected with it at all. That all that is connected with it is staying away from the first screen. This is how you stay sober. You don't stay sober by contemplating the sunset, by doing any of these other things that I need to do, and stay strong. You just stay away from the first screen, and you do not have to be walking with your man in God in order to do this.

What you have to do is just don't open the bottle and don't taste the thing. You see, they were so strongly in my mind that sobriety was a virtue in the milieu and the background from which I came that I had to balance a very clear alternative. If you were not in the state of grace, then the only other state to be in was the state of justice. There was no middle ground. Is San Francisco.

They did it touch with me very clearly. They still don't understand why I'm staying sober because they contend I am no better than they are. And they are right. I just value to Brian Dean, and I haven't got it mixed up any longer with the state of grace. You just don't have to do this, ladies and gentlemen.

I said that wrong. The alternative to being virtue is virtuous is not to be drunk, and the alternative to being sinful is not to be drunk. Now, let's try it's it's we can take that now. The views are very overworked, but I think very accurate, Jay. And, I think it I think it really points it out.

I think that the Alpha College, that the bright and finding has to come, It's like soil to the farmer. If the farmer by that has got to bring in a crop, our method happens to go slow. And you have the farm in your good soil. It's there. Now he has to cultivate it.

He has to let it lie foul. He has to feed it. He had to there has to be some rain, and finally, there is a harbor, but without the soil, without the ground, without the earth, nothing would happen. And yet, the earth of itself cannot bring forth a harvest. And this, I think, is the way you can keep this in your mind.

Sobriety is the foundation of the rest of your life, the point of sobriety for an alcoholic in life itself. But it cannot, of its self bring you very much more than good health and a better brain to think with, not that they should be minimized, I understand, because they can take you far. And I'll try to why don't we take another question tonight? Doesn't logically follow? What are we doing here in AA if really all you have to do is stay sober.

To stay sober, it's the same way from the first screen. And this is a legitimate question. And I have given myself many, many times, and others have acted themselves, I'm sure. Because it's been no matter I I hope this I'm shocking with this because I think this is in your head. You can you can get all confused with whether or not you're having a spiritual experience or a spiritual awakening, or whether or not you're doing it right.

Well, are whether you're working the program, whether you're on the program or off the program. And next thing you know, it's all added up to you. Well, there's nothing else to do but to get drunk. And see, there's no reason in the world to get drunk. You know, there's nobody so bad that you can't stay away from the first drink, and nobody's so good, no no alcoholic's so good that he can't afford not to, because they're so full of fat.

Now, let's take our second question then tonight. If this is the case, is a spiritual experience necessary to surprise you? I've answered it factually, no. And remember, I'm speaking only for myself, but I hope that you think about this a lot because if if you can buy this, if you can take it, then your sobriety is as secure as the air that you breathe because it's independent of anything now. Anything now.

It's just call it call it just in the fog. It's simply you're sending away from first things, something as simple as fact. And if you're all in here sober tonight, you are doing it so you know it can be done. There's there's no doubt in your mind that it can't be done. Now if that's the case then, why would it come to me right there?

Why would we have this book? Why would we have 12 steps? What are these the points of this whole business? Why couldn't we all just go home the hot night and some other things we could be doing? Well, first, I think, in order to follow that up, you've gotta ask yourself, finally, there comes a question, why did I drink?

What made it necessary for me to become an alcoholic? Why was it when I found out, as we all found out somewhere along the line, that this liquid or these pills or whatever it was, this chemical substance that we were using, When we found out that it was doing a lot more than we bargained for, why didn't we leave it alone? Now the answers are as numerous as the people who drank. There's a lot of them, look, come down to maybe 5, 6, 7 answers. Answers.

But when you put them all, all of these hundreds of answers, there's a few significant ones into a bunsen burner and distiller comes down to the get the reason you drank and the reason I drank and the every other body every other other alcoholic drank through alcoholics instead was for one reason and one reason only. We wanted to change our reaction to what we thought was reality. I would say we wanted to change our reaction to reality, but you will find out at the background, though, that you really didn't even know what reality was. There was always some kind of a change to both. We we wanted to get from where we were emotionally or mentally to some place else, and it didn't matter whether it was that we were were happy, we wanted to get it happier.

If we were miserable, we wanted to be more miserable. We were never take consent to stay where we were in reality. It was move over here, a move over there, a change had to be involved. If we were being peaceful, we wanted to be uproarious. If we were being uproarious, we wanted to be parallel.

If we were in good health, we wanted to be sick. If we were in sick, we wanted to be healthy. And we always took this move in order to change our reaction because we found out that the reality didn't change. Our attitudes toward it changed. That's what changed.

So what are we gonna do here in NA? That is simply what we're gonna strive to do and follow for the rest of our lives, really, is to come out with a non chemical technique, a non chemical substance, a non, any kind of outside of ingestion of any material thing, we will change our attitude and our lives, our attitude towards waste and create value without any chemical means. This is what we're going to have to learn to do and what we try to do. Now along those lines, let's define our term there. What is a spiritual experience?

When I turned into AA, the appendix to this book had not yet been written, and that's what I will read to you. You'll find out that the current spiritual experience and spiritual awakening, this was said with a great deal of awe. There were always quotes around us that really were they quivered like papers. And you said them softly, call the citizens, the city of United Club used to call manifestation studies. They just started reading.

And my god, they came in there all hours of because this is it. We didn't nobody's been fed, but just stay away from the first dream. And if you never have a physical experience for the rest of your life, if if you go on hating yourself and the whole world around you for the rest of your natural life, you can still do it sober. You know? A lot of times, you think, hey.

A lot better sober. There's got things to do to decide people crazy, you know? And you don't get caught so often either. But the new fellow would get the feeling that he was gonna have to wake up on a mountain top. He was gonna have to feel a clean wind sweeping through him.

He was gonna have to one day stand there and never see that light, And then after that, everything would be alright. Now it was kind of sad too because in those days, a lot of people who the the clean wind was sweeping through them was sweeping them out too. The terms spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which, upon careful reading, shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms. Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes are that his experiences must be in the nature of such and spectacular upheaval, happily for everyone. This conclusion is erroneous.

In the first few chapters, a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described. Though it was not our intention to re express an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless included. In order to recover, they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming god consciousness, followed at once by a back pain in feeling and outlook. Among our rapid and growing membership of thousands of alcoholics like me, Such transformations, though, frequently are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what psychologist William James called the educational variety because they developed polish over period of time.

Quite often, friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before this is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reactions to life. Now from here on in, let's use that thing as our definition of the term spiritual experience or spiritual life. A change in your response in your attitude to life. A change, a non chemical change in how you respond to the world around you, the people in it, and to yourself.

Now if we take that as a definition, the next question is what happens to go about it. This is where the therapy of AA has been. Where So our framing must be something we can't think. Faith against the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. And this wisdom comes very quickly because after looking back upon a lifetime, a time to change others, I think one of the first things that can be gotten across to you here is that this is pretty impossible, and that the person who's going to have to be changed is you, die.

These principles that work in a a f are not new. I doubt if there's well, maybe there's a few people that come to AA from their complete undiscovered world. I I don't see how this could be because they're they're as old as our civilization, they're as old as as the deutofist civilization and and traditions, and certainly, they have been the basic principles of every kind of spiritual approach to life. What is the new thing that AA founded at Avid? Probably without knowing that they had found it, but as they went along, knowing that it was a beach belt.

The things that probably we have never done before, that we're gonna try to learn through here, could be tied up in the phrase that you will hear over and over and over again in meetings in Southern California, but he says it is contained in the preamble of chapter 5. It says rigorous self. It wasn't too impossible for us us as practicing alcoholics and people getting ready to be alcoholics to stand back a lot of times and size up the situation as it applied to other people, and as it applied to other facts. If it had been totally impossible for us to do this, we probably wouldn't have earned the living. We wouldn't have been successful at all.

We wouldn't have managed it all. Somewhere back at an early age, we would have probably been under the to institutionalize because we would have been out of touch with reality. We would not have been able to deal with it. So however, ineffectively or in a crippled manner we were dealing with it, we dealt with it to to a successful, at least a catastrophic story. Where we ended our candid FY was when we turned this evaluation in upon ourselves.

When we tried to assess our role, when we tried to look at ourselves and fit ourselves trick of what we call growing up emotional maturity is the acceptance of self, which finally leads to the correct evaluation of self, which would finally as lead with both the self esteem. So really, the new thing that has been added in any way, not that this felt not that this was entirely new, which it wasn't thought up 30 years ago, the British Empire. It was that a therapy arose whereby people would apply this one to the other because that's how it began. It didn't begin in a full. It didn't begin in a great, very huge meeting like this.

It didn't begin with somebody like me standing up with a with a med microphone and messing with the words. It began with 2 frightened, terribly ashamed, terribly guilty, terribly confused, and terribly despairing human beings who got together and because they were so frightened, so full of fear, so at the breaking point that they began to tell the truth to each other. They told the truth to each other, and this telling of the truth from one human being to another on a man to man, individual to individual basis, without benefit of sacraments or priests or ministers, without any ritual, without any kind of dogma or doctrine, the 2 human beings fitting themselves naked in front of each other and therefore trusting each other, becoming willing to become totally intolerable, becoming willing to stand there before another human being to those things here often, and saying, this is me. This is everything that I wish to God that I wasn't. This is me.

And I'm telling to you, and I trust you, and I hope that you won't hurt me. This is how it began, and this is the way I think people have to continue because this is the way to get ready for it. To be the very epitome of the 12 principles of AA are contained in the 4th and 5th step. Everything prior to that is preparation for those steps, and everything after is the implementation of what we found and what we decide. Let's go back now real quickly and take the first, the second, and the third steps that they are preparation.

Nobody can work any of the 8 steps for you. It's a personal experience. It's those who see that you are willing to go, and and like every therapy, like the patient in analysis or any other kinds of of psychotherapy, This is a is a case where the patient is always the doctor. The patient sets the pace. The patient says how far it'll go, how much therapy will be applied, and how well he will get.

Nobody can push him because he has to do it himself. So is he assigned to say, I admit that that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life was unmanageable? This has to be something that's easy. Now I found that and maybe today, this is becoming more and more commonplace. Now admit that my life was unmanageable, I didn't thought it didn't bother me.

I thought it was really inaccurate because as a matter of fact, but then I got a admitting things didn't bother me at all. I I was just, you know, wanting the admitting to start training some results. That was all I was looking for because I had finished admitting now for a long, long time. Although, I know this would have been, not sacramentally, but with you people, because you all didn't count so much. But if, as I did, you found it was a little inaccurate to say that your life was unmanageable, then I found that if I substituted a word, that was much more effective for me.

Because it was what I was trying to teach kids. And I changed it this way. Not that it made any difference to me. Not that the other was difficult. It was just easier for me.

It was more accurate as far as I was concerned. I said to myself, I admit that I am powerless over alcohol and that my emotions are unmanageable. This is what I never could really predict. I could predict that I would be at work, but I could never predict how I was gonna feel. I can never predict how I was to to what was going on around me that finally became completely and totally unmanageable.

So unmanageable, it seemed to me the only alternative was to try to withdraw from life. And the only way the only acceptable way for me was my religious background and belief was that I real I didn't do this. I I realize now I did it quite as hard to say, but it was to die in the trunk because there's always a chance to see that you will be done for something else. And, as a matter of fact, that's why I always used to like to specify a sanitarium close to Saint Ambrose Church on Fairfax. Because I I if if if if after the sanitarium was only 2 blocks away, it's why it all worked out one day that the doctor arrived with a shot of corraldehyde and father O'Toole came with the last specimens all at the same time, he'd all come out east, and I would be what it's called safe.

That makes made more sense to me to say that my notions were unmatchable. Then, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves nobody can take this step for you. In AA, we don't attempt to define this power. I came in with a very, very, arranged god. He has been around for some centuries.

He had been painted and drawn and interpreted and he was found in books and every place else. And, I was sure his servant, and I was scared to death. The I said I loved him, and, I was everything that was going fine. And I realized now after 16 years of sobriety and brought a little bit of therapy and work along with the years of sobriety, that I don't know anything at all about this power greater than myself. I don't know whether I understand him or not.

I have a feeling if I understood him, he wouldn't be god. He and I would just be kinda funny. He would be just mister glad, I guess. Or mister so I can tell you I used to be able to give you a product dissertation. Just mention God, and if you showed any kind of doubt, I could take you off and straighten you out.

I don't know that I understand you at all. I don't understand you. I don't ever expect to, but I am content to choose to believe that if he is around, he understands me. And that should keep him occupied as well. So I'm willing to take my chances with you, and I have evidence in my life that he can restore you to vanity.

However he goes about it or whether he's involved or not, if you go along and you keep taking one more step and you don't throw in the towel no matter how much you want to sooner or later, More sanity than I ever had before, King. And that's quite a bit. Now make a decision to turn your will and your life over the care of God if you understand him. I that's the thing I know. Again, I thought I had been doing, with deafening regularity all of my life.

I did it every morning. He said those mornings, of course, actually, when I was in the state of sin. There's no use turning your life over to god. You keep it for yourself for those. Here he is, Ally, and go and let guy or mister Hyde life I had going.

That was just like changing underwear, except part of the divestment stuff. I knew what suit I was wearing. But what do we mean when we say turn our will and our life over to it? If we understand whatever our understanding is, our understanding is, our opinion or any yet, what does that mean? Well, I tell you what I it kind of constantly mean to me, and it didn't then, but it does now.

It doesn't mean, as I used to think, that I have been from that moment forward, had to kind of sit and wait until little celestial feet beats the heat through and just go left, go right, get up, sit down, butt work, come home. You know? It's, because things really got into this terribly static position for me for a while. I I finally just meant that I was to use whatever gifts I had been given. I was going to have to work with the clay that I have.

I, all my life, was really like a sculptor who knew he could sculpt and wanted to sculpt better than more than anything else in the world, but he always felt that he couldn't find the right clay. And he could just find a better grade of clay, and he could sculpt something worthy of his effort and worthy of his talent, the worthy of him. So he spent a lifetime looking for the clay. And finally, one day, he died, and there wasn't even an epitaph for him. Maybe the epitaph was he didn't find the clay.

So I finally decided that if I am going to turn my will and my life over the care of God, and I am where I am, on that particular day, in that particular situation, in that particular state of mind, that must be where I'm going to have to begin. I'm going to have to begin where he has me now if we're gonna say that he put me there. The Catholics have a wonderful way of getting around this because they say, you know, if if you say, well, why did God let that happen? Well, God doesn't always will everything, but something he permits. So wherever I was on that particular day, I figured that's where I am and that's where he wanted me to begin.

And that's where I think that any human being has to begin. Wherever he is, you can't go back and start out where you wish you could. You have to do it right where you are. The journey has to begin from where you are now, and it has to keep on beginning there. Every time there's a snag or every time the ship bounces a little bit or gets blown off course, you have to begin again from where you are.

And now this leads us finally to the 4th and the 5th sale. There's all kinds of rules and guides and parts that are very, carefully treated in the, books and certainly in the 12 and 12 suggestions, recommendations on how to make your first inventory. There's 2 things that I would wanna add to that. First, don't don't overlook writing. It says to write it, and I didn't write it because I had been in the habit of not writing it.

I mean, I had been taking inventories all my life, and, my books were always so current that it never did really bother me. I had to, you know, just see I just carried them around on my back. So, the files are always in my head always being gone through and, but there is a terrific a terrific prompt that you need to put down in black and white and try to spare yourself the euphemisms that you will want to come up with. The beautiful sweet term that you will want to use instead of saying that you kick the hell out of your wife. You will want to say, you know, little marital difficulty.

Syllable. And if your work is so you can look at it in words of 1 syllable. And if you were if you say I don't know what to do or I don't know how to begin, begin with when you started feeling guilty, and that will be a long and long So give yourself a lot of paper and a lot of time and go someplace and do this. I would suggest that if you're a newcomer, don't do this. Don't try it for at least 30 days.

Now not that you need to take this advice, but some of you who put you hog tied and kept from taking your inventory. We're looking forward to it with glee. Others will say 5 years later, they'll say, I don't know. I did something to be able to do it, which improves, of course, you see, that all you need to do is say so. Just stay away from the first dream.

They like to keep reiterating that. But why I say stay sober at least 30 days before you take the pen in hand is because for 30 days, you know, you're not sure whether you're guilty or you're not sure whether you didn't put a pause. You know. You're not sure about anything. You're not sure whether you want to stay, sit, run, or fly.

And if you wanna put it off for a little while longer, do it. But don't put it off too long. Not that you're gonna get drunk. The only thing that'll get you drunk is to take the first drink. That's what will get you drunk.

So don't say that I got drunk because I didn't take my insulin or I didn't write it or I didn't use the right chlorine. You got drunk, ladies and gentlemen, if you get it wrong because you take the drink. Doll image of you sticking pins in it. We, we've tried that in in in years. It doesn't work.

Nobody's been able to get anybody else drunk no matter how many little voodoo images we've made. This is the end of clutches. We lied with them. Them. But nobody got drunk except the people who wanted to get drunk.

So don't put it off too long, but don't do it too soon. I would let 30 days go by. That's just a real excitement. And then you say, what am I gonna put down? Well, if you start it, if you start back as far as when you began feeling guilty, then doesn't it follow that you put down what makes you feel guilty?

What makes you feel ashamed? What makes you feel so terribly disappointed in yourself? What makes you feel so very frightened? And if you can, if you're able to do it on the first go around, end up with those things that you would rather die than have any other human being know. Now they always turn out to be not nearly the terrible, horrible, reprehensible thing that immediately come into people's mind when you say this.

They always turn out to be something that has bugged you all of your life. Sometime when you were probably terribly, terribly cowardly or weak or ashamed. Stop and put keep them all in. Put them there. And then here again, it'd be a good time to sit and think about it for a while longer instead of rushing out to find somebody to do this with.

Consider for a long, long time who you're going to take this with. The only thing you stipulate is another human being. And the only thing I would add to this is is it is possible in your equation, whether it be a priest, a doctor, a lawyer, a psychologist, a friend, another AA member, try to choose somebody whom you feel will be able to help you look at this neither condoning nor condemning. Because you will tend to go one way or the other in this good sense. You've got to cut a middle row.

You can either condone or you can't do them, but one is just as important as the other. There's never enough time when you try to cover talk about the steps and certainly the point of this, which is the beginning of the ADA therapy. But we started out tonight with the question. Is a spiritual experience necessary for sobriety? I believe, and it is my opinion, that I will take to the grave based on my experience and experience of the company.

The answer to that question is no. No. So don't try to build yourself an alibi. Staying away from the first thing has nothing to do with whether or not you are having a spiritual experience or anything else. It has to do with whether or not you, as an alcoholic, value being sober more than you value being drunk.

It's as simple as that. Now then, if that's the answer to the question, then can we go on and extend the question a little bit further? If sobriety is our foundation, the indispensable foundation is the house that we're gonna try to build within the rest of our lifetime building. Is a spiritual experience necessary to raise this superstructure across ground 0? And then we can spend the rest of the time if there are any questions that you'd like to to, ask them tonight.

How does a newcomer get rid of a free loading practicing alky that's living in the same house? The practicing one is paying no rent and not willing to go through AA. Help. Well, Pete, there's one great thing left out here, and that is why is the practicing preloading algae living in the second house? Whether Whether there is benefit of clergy or what, or whether this is a relative, a friend, I'll tell you how the answer to that question is very simple.

He's nobody's gonna come and take this free loading practicing out the out of the house for you. This is not part of the, work of a Abel. Although sometimes we have individual members who volunteer for this services. You will have to solve this problem by, you know, arriving at an understanding. You will either have to leave the house.

Something's gotta get. If this is if this is driving you up the wall and you are afraid that it is weakening your resolve, if you're dream, then you're naturally gonna have to change it. But when when you know none of the circumstances of the relationship, when you know I don't know whether this person is paying. You say paying no rent. There's 2 words.

They've worked a lot of times for a lot of people. Get out. And, you might find it. Are there any other questions along the lines that we've been pursuing tonight? Yes.

The question that I have asked is, once you have taken the 4th and the best step in the manner prescribed and recommended in the book and in the principles and therapies, AA, is it necessary to do it again? I'm so glad to hear about this because I think this is a very, very important question. In the book, if you take this in the way the book puts it down and recommends it, prescribes it in the way we all should, you take it from a moral viewpoint. In other words, you are reviewing your life at this stage. And for a very good reason and for a very good purpose, you are doing it from the standpoint of either moral right or immoral wrong.

Then I don't think you will ever have to do this again because there will be no longer any need to keep going back and weighing the guilt and the and the shame and all of that. I spent a lifetime picking at the source of my past, and I don't think there's anything more destructive or corrosive than this. It doesn't get rid of the gill. It doesn't exercise the gill at all. It deepens it and deepens it and deepens it.

After you've done this, as thoroughly as you can, at whatever stage of sobriety you are in, and you have written this, and you have taken this step with another human being, then forget about it. The only other use, and you will make constant use of this for the rest of your life. The only other time now you will refer back to your past is to learn from it, and you will try to do that, hopefully, I would think from a non moral viewpoint. All question of right or wrong will now be left out because you have fulfilled the condition, and now you can go back and review your life to learn from it, from the pattern of behavior. What you were after, why you were doing what you were doing, and what you were hoping to gain.

And, so as I go to the next step, it's more of a continuation of the of the 4th and this step? Yes. Of course. But it's supposed to be on a daily basis, and therefore, it shouldn't be as dramatic as an experience as the course of this step. The 5th step, I the 10th step really is a daily extension of of the basic thing that we're talking about, the new thing that was added of rigorous malignancy.

It it just keeps going along those lines. This is supposed to be a daily step. We continue to take personal inventory when we were wrong, properly, as Benedict. But as we talk, I mean, but in our next session, that's one of the things I wanna cover, and I'm so glad. Very grateful to Europe for bringing that up because this is where I think the trouble come.

A great deal of the trouble come is to keep going back, going back. How many times have you people in these meetings, the meetings I've been reading in the past, somebody has said to me, they raise their hand and say, Alan, what do you do about the guilt? What do you do about the shame? What do you do about all those things? You say, well, you have done it.

If you do the 4th and the 5th step, then the moral part of that guilt, the the any of the right or wrongness of it is you have done all that you can do, and you leave it alone. From now on, what you're gonna try to build out is to build what what was behind those things. What were you trying to do? They were not just act that you chose out of clear blue sky to claim the face of God and and man. You you chose them without knowing it.

You chose them very, very deliberately. And this is what we'll try to to, pursue in the next two sessions. And yet, yes, the question is, we use the phrase rigor itself, honesty, and we assume then that their part is, ejector. It's it's it's there, and you pick it up, and you put it on, and you got it. Well, it's true.

It doesn't work that way at all. Because if it was that easy, we would have been practicing it all of our lives. This is why the 4th and the 5th step are the beginning. Self honesty is is is way I began to to try to do it with me was the only way it could come. I knew there's there's my act.

There they were. They were in front of me. If I lost my camper, if I cut somebody down the the side, if I lanced out at somebody, if I got drunk, if I left around all of these things, there they were. There they were. And I said, oh, I did that.

Now that's on. Now where does the self honesty come in? To me, the self honesty means you try to understand why. Why? Because you have to be a lot thicker than we hope any of us are if you would look at this act as a physical, actual, factual evidence of your act and then deny them and say, no.

I didn't do it. So the self honesty to me, where the self comes in is you look inside yourself and say, why? Why did you do this? And then you have when these answers come up, this is the cells that you have been trying to keep fit, that you've been putting away, that you've not wanted anybody else to find out. Therefore, you've kept a kid in front of yourself.

The self that you have repressed all these years, the self that reacted to reality that caused it to want to drink. This is the self consciousness that you have to turn your your mind to. And this comes, I think, only from a searching analysis, practice over and over and then a why. Then, Chris, isn't this one of the most important reasons for sponsorship? Because even at 16 years of service or recently served that you probably see things about talent that were not on a year ago that you thought were on at this time.