Steps 5, 6 & 7 at the Stateline Retreat in Primm, NV

From Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hi. I'm Bob Dezans and I'm an alcoholic. Sober to the grace of God in the age of 10th December, 1967. And for that, I'm very grateful.

It is a I wanna thank Bob, for the opportunity of being here, and it is a privilege to be amongst the other presenters that I am. This is nice. There's a nice feeling in the room, and I think everybody's kind of plugged in. As a preliminary, in some ways we're being asked to do something that I don't think you can do, which is, you know, tell me how you did 5, 6, and 7. A is changing a little bit.

We probably have more teaching around a than we've ever had since I've been around. You know, we do have more big book studies. You go out there and we have tapes on lots of people doing the 12 steps. And we've always been an oral society, and, which is better than being an anal society. But, maybe we've been both But every organization made of human beings has a tendency to move towards orthodoxy.

And over the last number of years, I've seen a tendency in our fellowship to move to orthodoxy. And I don't know that there's anything particularly wrong with that because we were devoted to our big book and our big book is our text. But part of what goes along with orthodoxy is you start to get the feeling something that I never used to hear much in AA is that this is right. And if you're not doing it this way, prize. Steps are spiritual in nature.

They are not mechanical. If they were mechanical, every time we had a problem, all we'd have to do is click our heels and say the 3rd step prayer and we'd be back in Kansas. For those of us that have been around for a while, sometimes when you click your heels and say the 3rd step prayer, you don't always get the relief or the change that you'd like to get. So and I don't in any way want to, I don't wanna be on the other side of, you know, our book. For goodness sakes, that's our text.

But I think we gotta be careful about how we share some of the stuff we do. I mean, we used to a lot of it was just to react to how people would beat you up with the bible. You know, how people would take certain things that, you know, this is the answer. It's right here. It's in black and white.

And I hope we don't ever get to the point where we beat each other with our book. It's an extraordinary thing. I'm a little nervous. And this isn't an interesting thing. I'm nervous about giving this presentation.

I've been sober 39 years. It's come Sunday, if I stay sober. And I've gone through the steps many times and what's got me nervous is my ego. So I'm gonna do my very best to ignore that. Because our book our book in a way is our menu.

And you can starve to death eating the menu. The book is what brings you someplace. By doing what the book says, you have an experience. Okay? It isn't quite as simple.

I don't think it's, you know, it's the instructions like boiling water. You know, I always think Sandy, if there was a You you know, if I got a book on how to fly a jet airplane and it was 500 pages long and I read that book 50 times, and talked to Sandy and talked to half a dozen or maybe a dozen jet plane pilots, which Sandy was, and heard stories about all the experiences they've had and knew every word in that book, I have an idea that if I walked up to a jet plane and put a key in the damn thing, if there is such a key, and turn the engine on, I'd have a little trouble flying it. And our book is about living life. And life is fired at you at point blank range. There is an absolute preparation.

You know, that's why it's so demanding. I mean, if it was as simple as understanding the words on a in a 164 pages, none of us would have the issues that we are in this room having. So I'm going to talk mostly about change. 5, 6, and 7 I think are really about change. It's my sponsor.

Kind of told us. There isn't anybody in this room that has that down perfectly. You can't own the territory. It is not, you know, we don't have any experts. We don't have any Tiger Woods, you know, who can do it better than anybody.

We have people who do it well. We have people who are good player coaches and they put the principles and action in their life. But the measure of what it is to be a good AA is still what you do in your life. And you live your life in relationships. And those of us that are married know that marriage is not always a perfectly even keel.

And those of us that have children, or have tried to raise kids, we know that you're not always in control in that process. Relationships are pretty pithy, arenas to live life in. And so all of us are a little bit like fish out of water when we take these principles and go to apply them because it's a, 5th step, you know, I mean to God, to ourselves, another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs is probably one of the great rights of passage in alcoholic Anonymous. I think most of us, once we've done a 4th and 5th step, feel like we're more a real member of AA than we ever have, you know, have been. And time and time and time again this weekend, you've heard people talk about having walls built around them, how we feel separate, how we feel different, how we don't feel part of, that we've had those feelings before we even started to drink and even while we drank.

Drinking was the only thing that kind of diluted that and made us feel part of. That's part of the reason we shared that. We probably come in with the most profound sense of uniqueness that you could come in anywhere. And if you don't lose some of that sense of uniqueness, you will not stay because you will look for the differences rather than the similarities. That's got to be reduced in some manner, shape, or form The thinking that when I'm behind the wall, I said, this is if you like me, but you only like what I'll let you see about me.

If you could see everything about me, you'd hate me because I hate me, and who knows more what a lousy, crummy, insufficient person I am than me. I'm walking around comparing my inside with your outside. When we come into AA, maybe you just started for me the first time I started to crumble that wall and take it down was maybe when I called Alcoholics Anonymous. And then when I got my sponsor and I started to have conversations with him, little by little, I started to chip away at that wall. And when I took my first step, my well, when I took my 4th step, when I started my well, when I took my 4th step and I started to get into some conversations with my sponsor, and then when I took my 5th step, I the wall came all the way down.

And for the first time in my life, I shared the whole deck of cards with someone. I had never done that before. And I would kill you with the peace you didn't have. Say, Bob, this is what's wrong. This is what I think you should do.

And in my mind, I'd say, well, that you think I should do that because of what you know, but there's a heck of a lot about me you don't know. There's items about me that no one knows. I'm not gonna tell you. So I could neutralize whatever you said to me because you didn't know that. When I tore the whole wall down and I shared the whole deck of cards in my fist up, I made a discovery.

Unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my feelings, not my experience. And I'm a guy that always had trouble. It seemed like what worked for other people. It didn't work for me. I came from a nice family and kind of screwed up my life.

I went to a nice school and kind of screwed up it. I was the only one of my high school 12 of us went to this college and I was the only one of the 12 who didn't finish, kind of the story of my life. And, and isn't that kind of all our stories? You know, we can do the spectacular. We can fly airplanes.

We just have trouble keeping jobs, balancing checkbooks, staying married, you know, raising children, earning the living. You know, we have trouble with taking life on in life's terms. And yet, as talent goes, none of us seem to be under equipped in the business of mechanism. When I came to AA, what I expected and hoped to find was a group was someone who was so smart and had so much insight that he could look right find was a group was someone who was so smart and had so much insight that he could look right through me and see my soul and tell me what was really going on. And I never found that.

What happened to me is I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I surrendered. And I when I surrendered, Bob became less, a lot less important. And what became important to me is I was an alcoholic. And when being an alcoholic was the most important thing, all of a sudden, I had a 100 people around me who could teach me. They knew a heck of a lot more about alcoholism, a heck of a lot more about recovery of alcoholism than I did.

So probably for the 1st 8 or 9 months in AA, I'd ask give me an answer. I have an answer. In about 8 or 9 months, my ego started to return. And I wasn't so sure that I had an answer. Process, and I want to reiterate that we're assuming when you're taking step 5 that you've done 1 through 4.

Well, I say that especially for people who've been around for a while. One of the things I see in our area, we 95% of our meetings are closed up discussion meetings in Minnesota. We're you know, we really work a lot on what we try to focus on the solution. I see a heck of a lot of people who are in trouble who go, you know, they go do an inventory. And they assume that they've got steps 123 active and available to them.

And I, you know, I think a lot, you know, how we always talked about if you're having trouble with step 4, go to step 3. If you're having trouble with step 3, go to step 2. I think a lot of us that are in later recovery, don't have steps 1 through 3. And we kind of it's a fascinating thing that in Alcoholics Anonymous, after you get a certain amount of sobriety, you can start to use your sobriety as an excuse not to work the program. And I think a lot of us that are in later recovery, don't have steps 1 through 3.

And we kind of it's a fascinating thing that in Alcoholics Anonymous, after you get a certain amount of sobriety, you can start to use your sobriety as an excuse not to work the program. And can start to use your sobriety as an excuse not to work the program. Because you've got you've got enough prima facie evidence that what you do works. So if you've got 15 or 20 years of sobriety, I mean, you've got the right arm patch on it. So I mean, if anybody really gets in your face, you're you know, kind of a veteran journeyman and Alcoholics Anonymous.

And and, you know, you can start telling people how you did it and you can talk about your 25 years sobriety. And I don't wanna diss anybody's amount of sobriety. I think it's important. But we use that on ourselves to exempt ourselves from doing some of the work that we felt we automatically had to do when we were earlier in our sobriety. We let ourselves get by with crap that we wouldn't let get by with crap that we wouldn't let get by.

Crap that we wouldn't let sponsees get by. Nevada, but we do, you know, I know. I know that you do. And, I, most many of you in the audience have heard my talk. I came in AA when I was 23 years old.

I had my last drink week after my 24th birthday. I drink a lot for a young guy. My drinking experience isn't long. It isn't just dramatic as some people's, but it was enough to get me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I almost killed myself a number of different times.

I came in AA. I found a killed myself a number of different times. I came in AA. I found a man who's still my sponsor today. His name is Warren M, and he's got 52 years of sobriety, and he's 87 years old, and he was the most active member of AA in the group that I had the privilege to do a told me, somewhat similarly to what Clancy said, he said, alcohol was your problem, stopping drinking would solve your problem.

Have you ever stopped drinking? Yes. Did it work? So it didn't work for any of us. So what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous once we take our last drink or drug is we take the 12 steps and apply them in our lives to find a different way to live that's sufficiently better than we the way we lived before.

Alcoholism is physical, but it's also mental and spiritual. Once you cross the line from problem drinking into alcoholism, your alcoholism affects you all the time. Idea that my alcoholism could affect me when I was not drinking was a brand new idea. I came in and I was, you know, I went to a meeting every day. The gift for me is I like to a I work with a lot of young people, and I had trouble getting them to go to meetings.

That was not my issue. The gift I liked it. It's been hard for me to do the work, but it's never been hard for me to stay in the been hard for me to do the work, but it's never been hard for me to stay in the air. So my first for the first 8 or 9 months when I had my wall down and I was surrendered, it was one of the most magical periods I had even though the circumstances of my life were Then when I started to my ego started to reassert itself, I started to become aware. When I did a 4 step when I was about 2 and a half months sober and and a fist step.

And my first fist step, I did in the form of a general confession. I'm a Catholic and kind of did what the book said. I read the 12 and 12 and I read the big book. But I most it's interesting. I love Scott's presentation today.

It's fascinating that she knows me that well. I am, to let you know that I'm a real alcoholic, I was spending about 20% of the time comparing myself to Scott. It's intimidating when you're into people who are that familiar with the book. It's intimidating when you see someone take a good mind and a good ability to communicate and dissect our 4 step with that type of clarity. I have never taken a 4 step with the level of clarity which we presented it with this morning.

I've done 15 or 20 of them in my almost 39 years. Why should I be neurotic? You can only do what you can do. You do your best with the steps. You, you know, it isn't like I didn't try.

And And if you took everybody in this room, only a certain portion of the people in this room could go through the process he described. I think it would take I don't know if it would take a certain personality, whatever it is. And please don't hear in any way that I'm in any way being critical of the process you go through. I'm an admirer of what I heard this morning. I'm an admirer of what I heard this morning.

I'm an admirer of what I heard this morning. I'm an admirer of what I heard this morning. I'm an admirer of what you go through. I'm an admirer of what I heard this morning. And, but my sponsor was a, mailman.

And he was, the king of the 12 steppers. And he took me through the 4th 5th step, but mostly it was, here's what I want. You know, I did the first three steps, the same thing as who was Charlie was talking today. And he told me that basically he felt I had done the first three steps because I would go in the meetings and doing all the things that I, you know, had done and he kind of, you know, took me. He said, I think you can do the first three steps sitting on your seat.

And then they sent me home and I started to do the 4th step. And then when I had a little trouble, I'd come back and I'd talk to him about it and then I did the 5th step. And I had a pretty good response with my 5th step. It wasn't but I didn't have much insight with my 4th step because I didn't go through it with the level of detail that you would describe. What I did is I got rid of most of the things that I thought made me a moral leper and the things that I was afraid to tell anybody.

Pretty good sense that I was involved in a program that could help remove some of the problems that were in my life. Those were the 2 dominant feelings I got when I walked out of that priest's office on the way back. And, what happened to me over a period of time is, as I started to go to meetings and as I continued to take the steps, it wasn't until my 2nd year that I really had started to have a list of the defects of character that I had. I did not have much insight into the causes and conditions of my alcoholism. Now my experience with my alcoholism, the physical part went away.

Meetings of alcohol. It isn't alcoholism. It's alcoholism. I'm still dealing with the mental and emotional and spiritual aspects of my disease, daily. So during the next 4 or 5 years, not only did I get a better list of what my defects of character was, I started started to get some insight into the causes and conditions of my alcoholism.

In addition to that, I identified about 6 or 7 behaviors that were just killing me. Work. I had I had trouble getting up to go to work. I had trouble getting up, which I found out had to do with when I went to bed. I didn't know that, for quite a while.

But I had trouble getting to work. I had a little trouble staying at work, and I had some trouble working at work. Other than that, I was a good worker. I had that problem for 7 years. Now you think a guy who was fairly smart, who took the steps, who did that, wouldn't have that problem for 7 years.

I had it for 7 years. I had a gambling problem. I know that's that much of a issue out in this area, but it was we had some problems in Minnesota. And it was it was more of a hobby. 6 or 7 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week.

It wasn't I mean, it was But I was making 8 or $9 a year playing backgammon and it seemed like a second job. I spent more money than I made. I had children that I was sometimes violent with. I was loud, impatient, angry, and sometimes violent with my kids. And, that was my life.

And I had all those defects of character and did not do enough of a detailed inventory when I was when I did my first one to notice it. But as I did my second one, and especially when I did my third one in 7 years, I had a I was so familiar with my defective character, I was thinking about ending my life. I'm a great starter, but I'm a poor finisher. And I found myself increasingly, as I started to go through AA, that I was having problems that I didn't think I should have. And it almost killed me, you know, because I felt like it was my pattern.

My pattern to be a good starter and then I just start to run into issues and then I never make it, you know, through the bend. The wall that I tore down in my first 5th step and when we look in the book, in the 12 and 12, we look in the, you know, it starts to talk about that sense of isolation's gonna go away. You're gonna have a sense that you can be forgiven. You're gonna have a sense that you can forgive others. You know, you're gonna your first kind of really true, profound influence of humility is gonna start to happen with you.

And, you know, those things happen to me. That. That's extraordinary. Charlie, you know, so brick by brick, I built my wall back up sober going to 5 millions of alcohol. It's anonymous a week.

Thank you very much for helping my drinking problem. Stay out of my sex life. Thank you very much for helping my drinking problem. Stay out of my finances. Marriage.

Stay out of my parenting. Stay out of my job. Stay out of my gambling. Brick by Brick. And I didn't do it intentionally.

I was telling my sponsors 65 or 70% of what was going on. And I know you guys do a 100. I really I wanna know I I know you do it. I I really think that's you're you're to be congratulated. The fact was I was to only telling myself 65% of what was going on.

You you don't see it when you're going through it. You can see it. You know, life's lived forward, but you look but you understand it backwards. So I could look back and start to see my patterns, and I could look back and see what didn't work. But I had, I don't know.

I was trying as hard as I knew how, but I didn't seem to be making the progress. I felt like I was going backwards more than I was going forwards. My pigeons were making more progress at that stage in my sobriety than I was. Which again, is, you know, we make extraordinary progress in the 1st year or 2 of our sobriety. We come in here with clear away a lot of, a lot of big stuff in a relatively short period of time.

But I think you can't get it all done in the first couple of years. And you can't have all the insights that you're supposed to have in the first couple of years. And I found myself with 6 7 years of sobriety order. And I was pretty upset with myself for not feeling very good my AA program. I thought, my God, if I had to go to another program for every problem I had, you know, spenders anonymous, gamblers anonymous, anger anonymous, I'd be a pretty busy.

And, and then, you know, I'm an idealist. So I have the same problem that Bill talks about in the 12 and 12, is if God gives us the grace in and to be perfectly relieved of our of our physical part of our alcoholism, why wouldn't you expect if we have that big a change by going through the steps that we couldn't have the change with the other prob the living problems that we have in our life? And Bill goes on to say that he felt that the reason for that was the reason that, he got that kind of relief was his surrender. That he was beaten up so badly by the disease of alcoholism that at that point in time, he was open who did, who wonderfully did step 1, 2, and 3, when I hear Clancy talk, I get a sense he didn't surrender. He was surrendered.

I mean, he was broken. The disease was so profound that it got him in a state of reasonableness where when he talks about I started to do things that other people wouldn't do. I think I my surrender I had to surrender when I first came in, but I had to find another surrender. I started to take it back. And, I had to find another surrender.

I started to take it back. And, and I think that's, you know, over and over, Bill talks about how these steps are a lifelong process. It's interesting, the differences in the 12 and 12. You know, most of us, an awful lot of the conservative members in the program, think the pro the only text that we have in Alcoholist Anonymous is the big book. They think God wrote the big book.

They think that Bill wrote the 12 and 12 in his office. And they don't hold much they don't hold as much stock. Enormously helpful. I think Bill with 7 or 8 years of sobriety, started to experience the frustration. You know, he was an idealist.

You know, he wasn't experiencing the perfection in his life. He struggled with deep depression all the way through, almost all the way up and through the time that he wrote the 12 and 12. And so we see a different, you know, where we have 2 paragraphs in the big book on 6 and 7. You know, we've got, you know, 2 pretty significant chapters in the big in the in the 12 and 12. Talk about the only way to take a fit to take a 4 step is, you know, with the columns.

Well, he didn't use the columns when he's in the 12 and 12. He starts to talk about, you know, our the problems that we have with instincts. So, the problems that we have with instincts. So most of us, I think, come in to sobriety. And in our early and middle sobriety, we start to expect that we put these principles and action in our lives.

Our lives are gonna get okay. I had that. That was you know what I thought sobriety what I thought recovery was? I thought recovery was the absence of problems. Now, I made that up.

But literally, that's what I started, you know, with I I had this idea of perfection that if I really got my act together. And I so admired certain people in the AA that I almost did to see their problems, which is nuts. I'm over at my sponsor's house. I see how he gets I mean, he and his wife would occasionally snipe at each other, and I knew him as a human being, you know, not as anything else. But I just overlooked his problems.

It was my problems that I was more focused on. So I think this problem of not being able to perfectly, you know, to have the type of change and have the change in-depth that many of us want is one of the most Bill calls it a riddle. He thinks it's, you know, was the major riddle in our recovery. Pretend for a moment that I'm working with a guy who's having trouble with doing a 4 step with the Collins. And he's 40 years old, married with children.

Tell this guy, look, I know you're having a problem with the book. It gets a little complicated with all the columns. Don't just don't worry about that. Get your wife and your mom and dad, and your sister and your brother and your boss. And you're kids and a couple of guys from your group and bring them over to the house.

And here's what I want you to say to I want you to say that we have a step in Alcoholics Anonymous where we try to get in touch with our defects of character, and I'm having trouble identifying mine. And I was I was wondering if you'd help, and then hand out tablets and paper and and leave the room. You'd have a hell of a start on an inventory. But most of us wouldn't call that meeting, because we're afraid. We don't want you know, a lot of the things that we're dealing with, but it's even worse than that.

We don't want to know. We start to train the other people in our lives as to what they can talk about and what they can't talk about. You know, you you look at your wife and you say, you wanna have that conversation? It's gonna be a tough conversation. Nod your head up and down if you understand that.

You'll get into that arena with me and it's gonna be a tough conversation. You train your kids as to what they can say and can't say to you. You train your boss and co workers into what they can say and can't say to you. People get the message as to what we're really be willing to be in front of what we're willing not to be in front of. It is a program of change.

But I think many of us are so afraid of change. We so identify with some of the behaviors that are in our lives. We think they're who we are, not what we do. We have collapsed that distinction. Are.

It is what we do. It is indicative of our character. And it is indicative that there are problems. But if we're supposed to find out what doesn't work in our in our lives, how the heck are we supposed to find it out? You're gonna find it out through your wife.

You're gonna find it out through your boss. You're gonna find it out through your kids. You're gonna find it out through your sponsor. You're gonna find it out through people in the group. Get that input.

You know, look, I'll make you a deal. I won't call you on your crap. You don't call me on mine. You know, we'll go out and we'll talk about the steps and the traditions. You stay out of my face.

I'll stay out of yours. Deal? Bad deal. Not a not a good deal. When I came in AA, during my first 4 or 5 years, I tried like heck to change some of those lists of defects of character that I told you about.

About the gambling and work and spending money and parenting and marriage and stuff. And I prayed pretty pretty hard on them, and I didn't make much progress. I tried and I failed. I tried and I failed. I tried and I failed, but it still grew.

But there comes a time, in my experience, where you either have to change or you stop growing. Where you either have to change or you stop growing. Which is a pretty dangerous thing for those of us that are in Alcoholics Anonymous because I think it's a kind of a continuous program of change and of growth. And when you dig your heels in or when I dig my heels in and say, this I can't do. I've tried.

I'm not gonna do it. What you do is you start to build an addition onto your house to accommodate the problem because it's not going away. And you start training the people in your life that you're not open to having that discussed or changed. And you start hanging out with people who are comfortable with that as as to how it is. And we plateau, which is another very dangerous thing.

And when I and I think when I when I found myself plateauing about 6 years of sobriety, and I had built my wall back up. Like I'm kind of lame, feeling like I'm not making this progress, feeling like, I'm not making this progress, feeling like I'm not making this progress, feeling like I'm not making this progress, feeling like I'm not making this progress, feeling like I don't know why that is. Why do we expect ourselves to be problem free? And why when we discover a problem do we feel worse about ourselves, rather than better that at least wouldn't looking that we identified a defect of character which we can now look on. But we don't.

We start to, you know, as soon as we identify something that isn't right, we feel badly that we've identified the damn thing. Which is exactly the opposite of how we generally would hope we would be in our program. What if Clancy's saying that I like the best is that there is no there's no pain and change. There's only pain and resistance to change. And everybody in this room has that experience, that most of us were afraid to death about coming into alcohol anonymous, afraid to death to stop drinking.

We come in. And the pain that we thought we were going to experience of not drinking was an illusion. When we finally surrendered and broke through that, it was. To character. You know, it'd be really interesting if we had a secret vote that Sandy talked about the other or whoever talked about that this morning.

If we had Oh, Scott did. When we if we had a secret vote, I mean, how many of us really believe today that the problems in our lives that we can change because the problems in our lives are not new. It's problems in our lives are not the issues that all of us have in this room are not months' so They're not 1 or 2 years. They're not 1 or 2 years. They're not 1 or 2 years.

They They're not 1 or 2 years old. They're 10 years old. They're 20 years old. They're 40 years old. And we're never gonna get rid of all of them.

But the book says that we have to, you know, take on the more serious defects of character that we have and commence to work on them in a serious manner. And I think a lot of us from periodically, I give up on that I don't you know, I just don't have the attitude. My spiritual condition isn't high enough that I'm willing to really take it on, or I don't take it on in a serious way. I find I'm willing to really take it on, or I don't take it on in a certain period. I can take anything on and I do a really good job with it.

In other periods, I'm either a little depressed or I just don't pay much attention to it and I kind of slide. I get periods of time where there isn't much growth going on. Willing to work towards a perfect goal, and the idea that we don't set that standard ourselves, that somehow within our relationship with God, that we would be open to what we think his standard would be in our lives. Think most care of God, I'd end up in China. It's just not exactly what I want.

No. But you wouldn't have any fun. You'd never get laid. You wouldn't make a lot of money. I mean, I really had an idea in my head that if you, you know, of what life would be like if you turned your will in your life, truly turned your will in your life over to the care of God the way it is right now.

Take your work issues, take your marriage issues, take your Parente. The power, when the book talks about, you know, when we get to step 6, it says we, you know, we've, we've, that the issues in our lives are now about to be expelled. What a powerful thing to say. Said they probably didn't do a housecleaning. They cleaned his house out to arrange that God could come that the grace of God could come in problems.

So you get a sense. Most of us have an expectation that you know, one of the reasons I think we like these step weekends is we feel like we're gonna learn something. And I think we do. But most of us know knowledge is not the issue that we have. It's lack of power.

In most of us, if we passed out a test, could pass the test about what we're supposed to do. Almost every guy that comes over to my house has got a problem and he sits down for that hour and, you know, hand you that bushel basket full of manure that he's got at the moment. Every once in a while, I say close your eyes. Quiet down. Pretend I just came over to your house and gave you the hour conversation you just gave me.

What would you tell me to do? They always know what to do. They just don't have the power to do it. And that is the issue that I think we run into, those of us that have been in the program for a while, is we've got the answers, but we have difficulty applying them ongoingly in our lives with the same power that we had early in our sobriety. And that's why I say when we go back when we're taking 5, 6, and 7, you better we better make darn sure understand to some degree with respect to our emotional and spiritual condition that we still are powerless, that our life is still unmanageable, that we still have to have an ongoing belief, that that we still have to have an ongoing belief that God can restore us to sanity and wholeness, and we have to make a decision.

That's one of the things when when, someone was talking about how you find new words in the book. For some reason, the last couple of years, the word decision has seemed to me I never quite understood when they said that the 3rd step was an action step. It didn't seem to me early in my sobriety like it was an action step. But when they talk about making a decision, it seems to me they mean something a heck of a lot more than most of us mean in common lore today when we talk about making a decision. Did with another person.

You went upstairs, you got down on your knees, you said the prayer, and that was supposed to be a watershed mark, much like, you know, pretty serious when they talk about it when a new man comes over to your house if he wants to tell a story or make a decision. You know, pretty big stuff. So it's hard for us, you know, when Bill talks about I think you can see a little bit of feather dawling in the 6 and the 7th step when Bill talks about it. That he said that it separates the men from the boys or the girls from the women or the adults from the children. To be really open to having those things change in our lives takes a hell of a lot of courage.

And I think a lot of us, because we've had some of the issues in our lives for so long, we have lost hope that we can that we can effectively deal with those problems right now. And that's the thing that I have to keep reminding myself of. I've got my own list of things that I don't do very well with. And, you know, I can give up. You know, I've got 39 years of sobriety.

Rely on. But the fact is, is if I had to freeze my life right now, as grateful as I am for the for what most of what's in my life today, it's not okay. I wanna be £40 lighter. I wanna have a better relationship with money. I wanna have a better relationship with my kids.

I wanna I wanna be less burdensome. I want a lighter feeling. I want more joy in my life. My life, I'm I'm as grateful as I am, I'm heavier from time to time than I want to be in my life. I don't I want to be lighter in my life.

And I think part of the stuff I carry around and part of my judgment of myself is what makes that a little heavier. I can't even read the damn thing. Okay. So it takes, you know, one of the great questions in life is when did you stop growing? An interesting question to each of us if we asked ourselves that question.

Because that is what some of us do. We We put we only put people in our lives who are willing or able to put up with what we put out. We are only able to work someplace that will put up with what we put out. And so we start to, you know, build a life around us to accommodate some of the issues and troubles that we have. So for me, the ongoing thing in my life is being able to, you know, keep my program vital, keep it alive, and keep believing, you know, keep doing an inventory, keep you having a sense.

Is once you know, Sandy talks about he always likes it better when people when he hears someone in his group give their AA talk because it feels like they have communicated them. Our book talks about we're never going to have the freedom and the type of life we want until we have done that with another person and have that person do it with us. A sense of non forgiveness will start to disappear and we will start to have a sense of belonging. The book says that I used to have spiritual beliefs, but now I'm starting to have a spiritual experience. And our goal in AA is to deepen that experience and improve our consciousness so that we can live better in the world.

World. The There's been 1 especially in the 12 and 12, which has grown on me a lot in the last, maybe, 2 years. And the theme of the 7th step when he talks about it is almost entirely about humility. And he defines humility in step 6. He says that humility is a sense of clearly seeing who and what we are and with the willingness to become what we can become.

I'm not quoting that exactly, but that's fairly close to what the book talks about. And he and over and over again, Bill talks about that, you know, if you only have the amount of humility that allowed you to get sober, that's not enough for a happy life. It's not enough for a well balanced life. You have to have more humility because it is the bedrock in which we have in which we build our program. I think my biggest issue with change, which is what I want to have happen in 3 or 4 areas of my life, program is is generally a little bit more passive than we think it is.

I think the majority of us, you know, when a sponsor comes over to your house and he wants to know the question he always asks at the end of a session is, what do I do? Almost all of us, if we had an issue and we went Clancy or Tom or someone else to discuss it, at the end of that discussion, if we, you know, we might well ask that question. What do I do? And the program is transformational. The changes that we make are of God.