Steps 4 through 7 at the CPH12 v8 convention in Copenhagen, Denmark

Okay. We're about to start again. I hope you had something to eat, and you're in good shape for this afternoon. Please remember to turn off your phones again. Make them shake.

And, I have a few practical information if somebody just came now and has not been here before. The wardrobe and the toilets are in the hallway just next to the coffee stand out there, and, users of both are on your own sake. We got an information stand just inside of the door, and, feel free to ask them anything you might If they don't have their answer, then, ask God in your morning meditation. We have a 4 hour session now until we have a dinner break, and we do it, like, we have breaks approximately every hour, so you can go out and smoke some coffee or whatever you feel like. Smoking is not allowed inside the building and please use the ashtrays outside or you'll get a brush to clean up after you.

So I'll, I'll leave the word now to, Richard, who will read the promises. No. Not the promises. Traditions in the short form. Richard, alcoholic.

The 12 traditions. 1, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends on AA unity. 2, for our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a loving god as he may express himself in our group conscious. Our leaders are but trusted servants.

They do not govern. 3, the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. 4, each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole. 5, each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 6, an AA group would never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

Tradition 7, every AA group ought to be fully self supporting, declining outside contributions. 8, Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. 9, AA, as such, ought never to be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. 10, Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues. Hence, the AA name ought never to be drawn into public controversy.

Tradition 11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. 12, anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. Thank you, Richard.

I'm Henrik. I'm an alcoholic. We do this, we do, Bob will do approximately an hour, then we'll have a break, and then Kerry will do an hour, and then we'll have a session with questions and answers. And there's a basket in the back, labeled questions. So if you have any questions, please write them down and put them in the basket so, they will do their best to answer them.

And remember, it's not a chalk it's a question you need to put in. So I will give the word to Bob now, and he'll talk about step 4. Thank you. I'm Bob Darrow, and I am alcoholic. Alcoholic.

When I was newly sober, I had a surrender experience. I was surrendered by the bottle in my own state of hopelessness and a lack of alternatives. And my experience in early sobriety is very similar to the experiences that were documented by William James in the Varieties of Religious Experience, which oddly enough was the first book Bill Wilson ever read when he got sober. He read it in town's hospital. And William James, studied made a study of people who had had conversion, spiritual, born again experiences.

And he found that those people, those experiences had 2 things in common. 1, that people who had those experiences, they never had them when their life was going well. You never just got a promotion, your marriage is wonderful. People love you, and you you decide you need god. It's never like that.

It's always when you're broken and demoralized and things are bad. And then the second thing that he discovered that these experiences invariably had in common is that they were transitory experiences, which means that in time, the shine of them wears off. And the old behavior and the old personality eventually reasserts itself. And that's a very common experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. I once at a workshop, I asked for just on a on a whim, I I asked for a show of hands of people who had been saved and then drank again after that.

And I was amazed about a 3rd of the room raised their hand. Because something wears off, and then I'm back to being me again. And that was my experience with this early surrender to my own hopeless condition of mind and body. I'd gotten enough of me kicked out of me that I was open to an infusion of grace, an infusion of something I wasn't conscious about, but my life started to become different. But what happened to me is what happens to most of us.

Self started to to inundate itself again into my life incrementally, bit by bit. I became more centered on me, more obsessed with me, and my feelings, and my relationships. The surrender wore off. And by the time I was 4 years sober, physically, I was suffering a lot from depression. I was anxious, and I worried a lot.

I had a mind that would not stop and would not leave me alone. I had problems with relationships. I I couldn't I couldn't have a relationship. I'd been through a whole series of rejections. I I was working at my 9th job in 4 years.

That's not a good sign. And I'm I'm dying of alcoholism, and I I'm very close to either drinking again, taking some sort of medication, or blowing my brains out at 4 years of sobriety. And I found this passage in the 12 by 12. And when I read this, it just nailed me. And this is in step 5, and it it talks about the symptoms that are that if they're present, it means that you haven't really cleaned house.

And here's what it says. It says some people are unable to stay sober at all. Others will relapse periodically until they really clean house. Even AA old timers, sober for years, which I thought, 4 years, I must be an AA old timer. Even AA old timers sober for years often paid dearly for skipping this step.

They will tell how they tried to carry the load alone. At that point in my life, everything was very serious. Everything was very heavy. There was a lot of self righteousness in me. I had all the symptoms of the self obsessed, and and seriousness is a very is symptomatic of the self obsessed.

Someone in an AA meeting accused me of having my sense of humor surgically removed. I mean, it was because because self ego centered people have every have an inability to laugh easily at themselves or at life. And life is hilarious. God has a tremendous sense of humor. Tremend if you don't think so, look around you at what he made.

He's he's he's hilarious. I mean, he's hilarious. You know what? The the license plate of my car is rule 62. Don't take yourself too damn seriously.

From the 12 by 12. The next symptom it talks about, it says how they suffered from irritability. Now it's not that I'm really irritable. I can't help it if I can see how stupid people are. It's not that I'm irritable.

I just have this heightened awareness of what's wrong with everybody, and everybody just bugs the crap out of me. The next symptom, how they suffered of anxiety. I was anxious and apprehensive all the time. A feeling like the other shoe was about to drop. A feeling I heard it described in an a meeting of impending doom.

A sense that something is about to go wrong and you don't know what it is, but you can kind of feel you're apprehensive about it. I used to wake up at that time in my life, I would wake up afraid. And I couldn't tell you what I was afraid of. But I would just wake up and my head would be it's like my head woke up before I did. And I would wake up and it would just start telling me about what's gonna go wrong at the work today, and how life's gonna be terrible.

And one of the things I learned to do in early sobriety was, was to start praying immediately when I became conscious in the morning. Because I used to what I originally wanted to do was to have a cup of coffee first and wake up before I prayed. If you wait that long, it's too late. Because by that time, you're by that time, I have a brain tumor, my job's terrible, life sucks, nobody likes me, and it's gonna be like this forever. You know, it's so so I gotta I gotta get me out of the way right away.

How we suffered from remorse. When you're irritable and people rub you the wrong way and you're restless, you need to tell them what's wrong with them. And then I would have the remorse of of of telling someone off. And if you've ever told someone off, whether it's in a store or in traffic, where you wave at someone and you only use one finger, you know, all that stuff, it's horrible. I always feel terrible.

Because what happens? What remorse is, is remorse is, I've just acted like the kind of person I don't like. Right? I Right? I've just acted like someone who I wouldn't like someone who acted like that.

And depression is a symptom, it says. How they suffered of depression. And how unconsciously seeking relief, they would sometimes accuse even their best friends of the very character defects they themselves were trying to conceal. And that was the way I was. I was the guy who knew what was wrong with everybody.

I could see all my defects of character in you, but I couldn't see them in myself. And I I knew it was time to do some work, and I I by this time it was funny because by this time, I had I had actually taken a through the 4th step in the big book, and I hadn't actually done it yet. But I helped him to do it. And the the Hindus have a saying that the student doesn't learn the lesson till he becomes the teacher. And I took this guy, I sat with him in the book and we went through it and he he was able to do a 4 step out of the book, and in no time at all, he was doing better than I was, which I don't like that.

That's not good. That's I hate it when that happens. And so I knew that I needed to do this, and I never did it. And one of the hardest things for me to do was to admit to myself that I hadn't done it. My ego had been telling everybody I'd done a 4th step.

And in my heart, I was coming to the realization that I never really did it. And I didn't want to admit that. But I was being backed into a corner by my own untreated alcoholism, and I didn't have a choice. And so what what what I started to do is is I first, I started on the resentment section. And in the resentment section, it asks you to do 6 things.

Very important. Six things. The first thing it says is that we list. We make a list of the people, principles and institutions with whom we were angry. Now sometimes guys I just had this experience a few years ago.

About 6 years ago, I had a guy that was 23 years sober asked me to sponsor him. And he's 23 years sober, and he's never worked a step. And he is he thinks obsessively about putting a pistol in his mouth and blowing his brains out. And this guy is in a lot of trouble. And this guy Jerry comes to me and Jerry says, will you work with me?

And I he's demoralized and he's depressed. And I said, if you'll do everything I tell you to do. And he said, okay. And we just we I walked him all the way up through the 3rd step prayer, and we just did the 3rd step. And I said to Jerry, I said, Jerry, you need to now make a list of your resentments.

Well, Jerry is kind of a tough guy. And Jerry is one of those guys that's full of a lot of bluster and Jerry says, resentments. I don't got any resentments. Nobody bothers me. Well, you could you can watch Jerry for a 100 yards away and know he's up tight about something.

You know what I mean? He just looks like a guy. He acts like a guy. He's got a lot of resent. And I said, you don't have any resentments?

And he said, no. No. I don't have any resentment. I just let it all go. Wow.

I said to him, I said, okay, Jerry. In your case, I don't want you to make a list of resentments. I make I want you to make a list of people you feel smugly superior to. And he gets this look on his face like, Oh, my God. Is that gonna be a long list?

See, he didn't he was afraid to even admit that someone could hurt him, that someone could actually get to him. And his defense mechanism was superiority. That smug superiority, from the people he he that had hurt him. So we make a list of all the people that we resent. This resentment, this resentire, resensitize, re feel, replay, all the cases we've built on all the people that are out of line.

You could think in a sense that your resentment list is a is really a list of people that you suspect owe you an amends, a list of people who are out of line. And then it says the next thing it says, the second thing, it's we ask ourselves why we were resentful. Column number 2, the cause. And it's always something very to the point, slept with my girlfriend, stole money from me, something very to the point. And then the third thing, it says we ask ourselves and the book uses 5 words.

We're looking for the things that are hurt, that are threatened, that are interfered with, that are injured, or affected. And I believe that the book uses those 5 words to talk about the 3rd column because those 5 words are like circling a building. Sometimes I would have a resentment. I would ask myself, what was affected? I don't know.

I have no idea. What was hurt? And it's like moving around the building. I don't know. What was injured?

I'm not sure. And then I get, what was interfered with? And all of a sudden, it's like I'm on the front of the building. I can see the sign, hardware store. Oh, it was my pride.

It was my ambitions, my getting my own way that was interfered with. So I'm looking at what manifestations of self self interest that have been hurt, threatened, affected, injured, or interfered with. Now that in and of itself is not the 4th step, But that is the essential part that is necessary in order to do the real work of the 4th step. And then after after you do those first three three things, those first three columns, the book spends a whole page telling you that you gotta be free from this stuff. You have to, or it's gonna kill you.

It shuts you off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol will return. It talks that these things are poison. And then at the very bottom, it says, we saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how we could not wish them away any more than alcohol. And that is so painfully true.

And there's a there's a a destructive game we play here. And what the game is, you learn in early sobriety that resentments are bad and you're not supposed to have them. That that that is the that is what makes that's a that's a good that's a good recipe for suicide or homicide. So what happens is I I just pretend I'm like Jerry. Resentments.

No. I don't have any resentments. Well, that doesn't change anything. So what happens if you can't wish them away any more than alcohol, and yet, once again, I am in a trap I cannot spring. I must be free from these things, and yet I can't.

And if you've ever tried to wish them away, or if you've ever had a deep seated resentment and you say to yourself, okay. I'm just gonna let it go, never think about it again. Well, how do you do that? It's like fly paper. How how do you stop thinking about something you can't stop thinking about?

Right? I've tried a lot of things in therapy to get free of resentments. I beat pillows. I've tried the Gestalt chair. I've done all that stuff to no avail, and nothing changed.

And here's what it says at the very towards the bottom of the page, it talks about 2 different things. It says, first of all, we were prepared to look at them from an entirely different angle. Well, if if the first three columns really is my case, if I'm it's kind of like taking the position of the prosecuting attorney. I'm listing I'm listing them exactly what they did that was out of line and wrong and what was hurt, threatened, affected. This is my case.

So if I were to look at that from an entirely different angle, what would be an entirely different angle? Would it be to cross the courtroom and sit on the defense table and start to look at it through their eyes, through the eyes of the person that I hurt, that hurt me, or the eyes of the person that I resent, what would this situation look like to them? And that's exactly what it asks us to do. And the And that's exactly what it asked us to do in the bottom paragraph. You know, it spends this whole page on page 66 telling us where it's gonna kill us, and then it gives one solution.

It says, this was our course. And it's asking me to realize something. That is to make something real inside of me that has never been real before. In other words, I must connect the dots about something in a and see the picture differently than I've ever seen it before. And it's asking me to realize that the people or the person who had harmed me, who had wronged me, was perhaps spiritually sick.

Yeah. I can see that. They're sick, and they're idiots too. I mean, they really but that's not all it says. That's just the beginning.

And then the next line is what's what got hooked me. It says, though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us, and then it says something interesting. It says, they, them, like myself, were sick too. Like myself? Oh, no.

They're not like I'm not like them. No. No. No. No.

No. No. They're assholes. They're not I'm not like that at all. But the book's asking me to realize how I possibly, on the right day, could be driven by emotions and fears that my spirit could could easily be sick enough at times that I could do to someone else what they did to me.

Can I get that? Can I real can I get off my high horse of judgment? Can I push my ego aside and look at this objectively? Can I wake up to the reality that there is a little bit of me in them, that if I was raised the way they were raised, if I was afraid the way they were afraid, if I was drunk or stoned on drugs or whatever is going on inside of them when they did this, could I understand that if that was going on inside of me, that I would have probably done the same thing they did? And out of that realization, all also comes a secondary realization.

And the realization is and if I did that, what would be the price I would pay in here. And I started to realize that everyone that ever hurt me, that they probably, as a result of those actions, felt and reaped for themselves and about themselves, the exact same feelings that I would have towards myself if I had done that to someone else. And that they, like me, covered it up with defense mechanisms and bluster, but there is no free lunch. And for the when I started to do this with all my resentments, what happened is I started to dismantle this judgment machine will. The thing this really is the thing that's blocking me from getting close to people.

God. Because there is no there there is no connection with God, where it's me and God alone. Isn't it funny how everywhere in the book, when it talks about enlarging your spiritual life or talks about getting closer to God, it always talks about helping others. You can measure my distance from God from my distance from people. Bet that I am very apart from God.

Because there is no view of there is no there is no no credible view of spirituality, where it's me and God are good together, but you're all. You can't do that. That's that's that's the the spiritual psychosis of guys like Jim Jones and David Koresh, and and, you know, all those crazy people. So I am starting to dismantle this separation between me and you. I'm starting to awaken awaken to the fact that you are me.

I think Einstein said it best when he said the great illusion of mankind was that there was more than one of us here. Let me tell you something. You work with enough people. You listen to enough 5th steps. You start to get it.

This it's the same person. Everyone. It's the it's the same person. I haven't I've listened to probably close to 200 5th steps. I haven't heard an I haven't heard anything new in 20 7 years, 8 years.

I'd like to I mean, I would I would love to have somebody come with something new. Vibrating lawn rake or something interesting. It's never that. It's always the same person. It's always the same empty, vacant, scared, insecure, driven person who's frantically trying to fill their own vacancies and gratify themselves and stepping on the toes of everyone around them in the process.

It's the same guy every single time. Nothing changes. You see, I am you, and you are me. And anything else is an illusion of the ego. All separation is an illusion of the ego.

The set the idea that God and I are separate is an illusion of the ego. The idea that you and I are separate is an illusion of the ego. See, there is no separation. Only in an ego driven life. And that is the nature.

That that is the nature of my illness. When it says in the book that selfishness, self centeredness is the root of our troubles. They're not kidding. It is the source of the separation. And this this is not stuff that that we realize and let go of easily because the ego wants to be right.

It doesn't care if it kills you in the process, as long as after you're dead, everybody realizes you were right. Right? That's all it cares about. It wants you to be want to be right. And this is what it wanna be right.

And this is really about facing the exact nature of my wrongs. How wrong I'd been about all these people. I'll tell you a little quick little story. I got a couple of them, but I'll use one about it's personal to me. I have another one from a guy's sponsor.

But when I was in my 11th year of sobriety, I was married. I'd been married a couple years to a gal, and and, I had a little baby daughter, Katie, who's the love of my life. I'm gonna bring her to Europe this August, and she's now she's now 19 years old. She's in college, university. Wonderful kid.

And she was I don't know that I've ever, in my life, loved anything or anyone like I've loved my daughter. And I'm, 11 years almost 11 years sober, and my wife, came to me and wanted a divorce. And I didn't understand what was going on. And I had a a guy that I sponsored named Craig, who was one of my confidantes. My my sponsor had been gone on on vacation, like, for 6 months, traveling around the country.

And I didn't have really have an active sponsor for a while because he'd call about once a month. I'd talk to him. And so my my sponsor, he became my confidant through all these marriage problems, and we went to some marriage counseling and everything. My wife came to me one day, and she said, I don't wanna do the counseling anymore. I just want a divorce.

And I I live in a city, Las Vegas, where you can get divorced quick. I mean, you can get divorced so fast that you haven't even gotten the Visa bill for the divorce yet, and you're already single 2 weeks. I mean, it's that quick. And and I got a divorce on a Thursday. And the next day, Friday, I find out that my daughter and my just ex wife moved in with Craig, my best friend.

And I find out they've been sleeping together for the whole last year of my marriage and everybody knew about it except me. Now here I am. I'm almost 11 years sober. You guys have been telling me for 11 years, there's no such thing as a justifiable resentment. Well, I got one now.

Matter of fact, I could find people I could find old timers and a that'll agree with me. And, you know, I'll tell them all about it. They'll go, Oh, Bob. And didn't you just buy her a car? And I go, Yes.

I did. And the the nail holes in my hands would open up a little wider from the cross, you know. And and you know, when you're if you've ever been that kind of and it's all of that when you victimize yourself like that, there is a little ego attention and the suffering. But if you're an alcoholic like I am, you start to get real sick in that state. Real sick.

Scary, scary sick. And my life is on the line. And I'm I'm I'm close to doing something that will end my life. It may be through ending someone else's, and it's dangerous. And I went back through this process, and I knew that the answer was in this.

And thank God I'd I'd done I'd done a couple 4 steps out of the book by this time. And when I when I put both of their names down, and I put what they did and I put what was hurt, threatened, affected, injured, or interfered with everything, Every aspect of self, pride was devastated. Security, emotional security, material security, my pocketbook, my ambitions, my way it was not my way. I I was happy. I thought things should have stayed the way they were.

Everything in me was hurt, threatened, affected, interfered with. And then the book says something interesting. It says, this was our course. I had to realize how the people who had hurt me were perhaps like me. And so there's a prayer in here.

And the prayer is we ask God to help us to show them, which means demonstrate towards them, act towards them With the same tolerance, pity, and patience, I would cheerfully grant a sick friend. And I started saying that prayer, and I started trying to realize what was going on inside of them. In other words, to look at it through their eyes from an entirely different angle. And I've looked at it through my own self centered vision and perception. But what did it look like to them?

And I'll tell you what I saw I didn't wanna see, and it was very embarrassing. I saw that I had married I saw that I married a woman who was not involved in AA like I was. Her whole life was this marriage. And in no time at all, she built this whole life around this relationship, and she found herself married in short order to a guy who worked 70 hours a week trying to build this business. A guy who went to a lot of AA meetings, who sponsored a lot of guys, who was on every committee and service position in AA.

Essentially, she found herself married to a guy who wasn't there very much. And also, when I was there, I was I was what they call they talk about in the family afterwards, emotionally inaccessible. See, my problem is is that I I don't know how to do intimacy. I'm real good the first 6 months of a relationship until I run out of stories to tell you. And now I've run out of stories, and I don't know what to talk about anymore.

And I can't stand the silence, so I stay busy. And I work 70 hours a week. I get involved in AA because I don't know what else to do. Because this vacancy, this incompleteness inside me just drives on me. How to teach.

I didn't know how to to respond and act towards a spouse like I would a guy sponsor. I didn't even know how to do that. And so, I worked a lot. And I could I started to realize the desolation and the loneliness that my wife experienced in that marriage. And I saw I started to see a truth that I didn't wanna see, that I was really where it counted.

I was a lousy husband. I I used to pride myself on being I was a good provider and gave her everything she needed, and and I never cheated on her, and I would pat myself on the back. But where it really counted, I wasn't there, And I didn't know how to be. So I rolled over it and stayed busy. Awaken to that reality, I had this epiphany experience.

And the epiphany experience was, oh, my God. How did she stay in that marriage as long as she did in that loneliness and that desolation? And I thought to myself, my God, I would have probably had an affair too. See, I was getting my needs met in in the work place and in AA, but she didn't have that. And the emptiness in her life was overwhelming.

And I started to realize exactly what had happened to her. And I, I also realized the price that she paid would be the same price that I paid. And I realized, my god, if I had done that, I'd have felt awful about myself. And Karen did. She her and I are very good friends today.

When I went to make my amends to her, I said to her how I told her how couple things I had to make amends. One was for talking bad about her after it happened. And and I demeaned her relation. I demeaned her reputation in AA. AA.

I didn't mean didn't mean to do that, but I did it. And I had to go change that. And I had to go around AA telling the truth that it was really me. And then I said to her something she'd needed to hear. I told her how sorry I was that I was such an absentee husband and such a bad husband that she was driven by that loneliness of me not being there, to doing something that she never would have ordinarily done.

And I told her how sorry I was to be a big part of that, and how I that if I would have known any better, and if I could have been the husband I should have been, I know she would have never cheated on me. And when I told her that, she started to cry. Because all she ever wanted me to do was get it. She just wanted me to get that, just to understand. She she never liked herself for what she did.

But you know something? In the book, it says we made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. If I would have went into that marriage and I would have hired the most brilliant psychiatrists, sociologists in the country. And I would have sat them down in a room, and I would have said to them, listen. I'm marrying this gal who's very loyal, very monogamous.

She's a good hearted woman. Can you give me a game plan that I could implement over the next couple years that would make her cheat on me? Could you come up with something like that? I'm telling you, they couldn't have come up with a game plan any more effective than what I did. And yet, I'm asleep at the wheel.

I don't even know I'm doing that, because I'm not awake. I'm not awake to what to the interaction of my my things I do with other people. I'm not awake to getting it, what happened, what other people's experiences. I can't see past myself. And that's the problem with people that are asleep, and and we don't understand why life is treating us this this way is that we can't see what's really going on.

I can't see past myself and my rationalizations and my justifications and the things I wanna highlight to see what's really true. And then the last part, it says, referring to our list again, we put out of our minds the wrongs others had done. We resolutely looked for our own mistakes. And then a little bit later, a couple sentences down, we try to disregard the other person involved entirely. There's a thing that goes around Alcoholics Anonymous where people refer to this part of the 4 step as looking for our part.

I'll tell you, I I think that's a dangerous approach, and I'll tell you why. And I I got this one day after a guy went out that I sponsored to make amends, and it went badly on him because he he was going out to clear up his part. See, if there's gonna be my part, there's another part implied, their part. And naturally, of course, their part's a little bigger than mine. I mean, you know.

Right? The book says doesn't say there does not mention looking for a part here. Matter of fact, it says the opposite. It says, putting out of our minds the wrongs others are done. We resolutely look for our own mistakes.

This is about where I've missed the mark. This is my inventory. There is no subconscious holding on to to the other person did something or had a part. I'm clearing up my side of the street. And when you can do that and really look at your own behavior in its own light, it's different.

See, I am a master at hiding my selfish, self centered behavior in the shadow of anything I could find that you did wrong. I think that's one of the reasons I was so judgmental, and I would just look to see what was wrong with people because then that gives me license to be selfish and dishonest and all this stuff. I was the kind of employee, If I could find some things that my boss did that weren't right, it almost was licensed to steal a little bit here and there. Or at the very least, it was a license to do a half assed job because look at the ball. Look at him.

When my I could find things wrong with my parents, so it was a license to be a lousy, selfish, self centered son. If I could if I was in a relationship, and the person I'm with with, I caught them cheating on me, that was like 5 get some free tickets. Right? Because I could use what you did wrong to justify all kinds of selfish, self centered behavior. And this this is the first time this stops right here.

It stops right here. No more. I have to be awake to the truth. This is my behavior. I'll tell you one more little resentment story.

About 7 15 or 17 years I don't even know when. It was a long time ago. I'm taking a guy through this. And he gets about a third of the way through his resentments, and he's got the worst resentment of all. And it was towards his father.

And he he came from a alcoholic home, bad, bad childhood. Ended up in the hospital a couple times. His father would go on these rages and destroy his toys. And and and then sometimes sometimes his father wouldn't be drunk, but he'd be hungover. And it was just as bad because now he's irritable, and he screamed and shut up and get to your room and you're stupid.

And then on a couple occasions, we suspect that maybe his father got sober, and maybe he went to AA for a brief period of time. Because there were a couple times his father would get sober with a little better attitude and he would make these promises. I'm gonna get you a bicycle. I'm gonna take you to Disneyland. But the promises never came true because he would end up drinking again, and the beatings would start again.

And the animal the monster would be back. And this was a resentment that owned this guy, and it owned it for decades. It had owned him. It it interfered with his ability to work and be a team player with and hang out with other guys. It he couldn't work for a boss.

He had to have his own little businesses because he couldn't work for people. He had this authority thing going on. It affected his ability to have relationships with women. He'd always end up somehow being like his dad. Somehow.

And he had went to therapy for years trying to get free from this. He did you know, he did all this beating and shouting and screaming and hitting pillows and everything, and nothing touched it. Nothing. And we get through this, and we get to this was our course. And I said to the guy I read him a little section out of this.

It expands on this principle in in the 10th step even more. But I and I read that part to him, and I said, you gotta realize how your father is you are like your father. And he got crazy on me, and he started yelling at me. He said, I'm not like my father. My father was a monster.

My fight he started I thought he was gonna hit me. I just woah. I backed off. I figured, this guy is not prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle. And I just backed off.

I didn't know what else to do. The rage the ray the rage that was coming out of him was very disconcerting, very threatening to me. It was scary. So he's looking at me. I said, just just go on.

And he starts reading this next resentment. And while he's reading it, I can't hear him because something is going on inside of me. And it is not of me, but through me. My friend, Bob, from Minneapolis says, I'm never I am never the well, but sometimes I get to be the pipe. And what happened next, I I I'm not smart enough to do this.

I think it happened because every time I listen to a 5th step, I get quiet and ask God to help me to be useful. And something started happening inside of me. And I stopped him. And I said I said, I wanna go back to another resentment. And he said, oh, you wanna talk more about my father?

I said, no. No. No. No. Not your father.

I wanna go back to the beginning. That relationship that that woman that you're resentful for that you lived with for a while where there's they had the kids there and everything, He said, what of it? I said, it just I was just wondering, in that relationship, if there was ever a time when you were drunk or stoned on drugs or hungover, where you might have ever done anything to hurt those kids. And he put his head down, and I don't know what's going on with him. And he and he he raises his head up, and he's got tears on his face.

And I I remember the voice in this choked whisper like it as if it came from some abyss within him. He said, I'm just like my goddamn father. I said, how did you feel about yourself when you hurt those kids? He said, I couldn't stay drunk enough. I said, do you think your dad's any different?

And he got a faraway look, and he said he said, you know, I haven't seen my father in a couple years, but my sister sees him occasionally, and he lives in this little beat up trailer. He's all alone. He has been forced to stop drinking because of liver and pancreas damage. His body will not metabolize alcohol. He's been forced into abstinence, and he's the most miserable, lonely, depressed, neurotic person.

My sister said he's just hard to be around. He's so negative. He's so he's so full of himself and fear and negativity. I said, do you think that you could be like that? And he said, maybe without God's grace in Alcoholics Anonymous, that would be a vision of my future.

And for the first time in his life, he was able to see his father differently than he was ever able to see his father before. That we don't like, so we don't like seeing it in others. I don't like it in you because I'm not seeing it in others. I don't like it in you because I'm not seeing it in you because I'm not seeing it in you. So we don't like seeing it in others.

I don't like it in you because I don't like it in me. And isn't it isn't it funny how there's nothing in Alcoholics Anonymous that shows us how to forgive ourselves directly? What happens is that I learn to understand and accept and forgive the me that is in you. And then consequently, it sneaks up and all of a sudden I realize not only have I taken you off the hook, I've taken me off the hook too. I learned to I can't love or forgive myself directly, but I can learn to love and forgive you.

And what happens consequently, cause and effect, I end up loving and forgiving myself. As it says in the Lord's Prayer, forgive us our trespasses as forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. As implies a connected process. If you wanna if you wanna take yourself off the hook and stop beating yourself up and you wanna stop being depressed, take other people off the hook. See what happens.

I can't change the way I feel about myself directly, but I can change the way I feel about you. And consequently, consequently, it sneaks up on me. See, the problem is when I unleash the dogs of judgment, they don't stop at biting you. They always come back and bite the master. See, I can't I can't have that attitude with you without having that attitude with me, because we are connected.