Workshop titled "The Big Book experience" in Dundee, Scotland

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654321 Blast off. My names Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic. Hi, Bob.

Welcome back

I was. I got sober in 1978 at a time in AAA when people

where I lived were not talking very much about the Big Book every

everyone was trying to figure out how to apply the steps from the 12 by 12, which is a great book. It's it's a series of essays about the steps, but unfortunately it's not a set of directions. So it's very confusing. And I tried my first four years of sobriety to do a several fourth steps. I did the life story. I did the 30 some questions out of the 12 by 12

and it wasn't until I was a little over four years sober that I finally got work, the steps out of the book and my life started to really change.

And what sustained me in a state of abstinence for my first

four years was a lot of service and a lot of activity and Alcoholics honest. I went to 15 meetings a week. I did a lot of 12 step work. I went to hospitals to carry the message. I went into jails to carry the message. I was on a lot of committees. I was on convention committees, roundup committees, as as if I

could outrun my alcoholism by a lot of activity. And you can for a while,

I and everybody that I know, every alcoholic I know has a fuse. I had a even with a lot of activity in the fellowship, I had a four year fuse. I've sponsored people. I sponsor a guy now that's 30 years sober who had a 23 year fuse. He was able to stay physically sober without the steps for 23 years.

Wow, he was a little crazy.

Everyone that knew him encouraged him to drink on a regular basis.

You can. They just was uptight, miserable guy. But he was sober that

and so Jerry had a 23 year fuse. I mean, I think if if there was a Guinness Book of World Records on untreated alcoholism, Jerry may get his picture in there one day. But he's doing very, very well today. He's a very happy man. He works the steps. He's free,

but in my early sobriety I was insane.

Even going to 15 meetings a week and doing all that service. I'm still nuts from time to time. I still suffer from depression. I still, I'm overwhelmed with bouts of anxiety that are crippling. I I would call my sponsor up. It seemed like every other day with a whole new series of they're not problems, you have problems. I have

tragedies. I mean, I

there they say there's no big deals. That's only true for you.

So I called my sponsor up with and I'd just be nuts and I'd, I'd be, and I'd been thinking deeply and I, I'd call him up and I'd say I said that that job I got, it's that I don't think those people like me, they're looking at me funny. I think they were talking behind my back. I think I'm going to lose that job. Then I won't have a job. Then I won't be able to pay rent. And then I'll be homeless. And I don't know if I can be sober and be homeless and I'll be living on the streets and it's not very good out there on the streets. And I don't know what's going to happen to me. And maybe I'll get arrested for vagrancy and then I'll end up in jail and I don't know if I can stay

over in jail and, and, and I think I have a brain tumor. And he'd go. He'd go whoa, whoa, whoa. He'd say

whoa. He'd say, listen, is everything OK right this moment?

Yeah, but by next week, I won't have a he says. No, listen, it's everything OK? Right this second.

Well, yeah. He said good, Good, good, good, good. He said, listen, let's hang on to that when it's no longer OK? Right this second. He said you and I are going to have something to work with then,

but let's stop solving problems that haven't occurred yet.

As Scott has a wonderful saying, let's stop trying to clear up the wreckage of your future.

And he's trying to bring me to the only place that you'll ever find God. It's talks about it in chapter 5. It's read at every meeting. There is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him in a place that Alcoholics seldom visit.

Now.

Now, even as I'm saying that, you're not here. You're thinking, what page is that on? Who? I can't wait to tell Joe about that. You know, isn't that clever? You're not even here. Now what? I'm saying that right,

And God is right here, right now. He's the

as it says on page 55,

about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the page, it says something very amazing.

Towards the end of the second, third full paragraph, it says we found the great reality deep down within us. And when

in the last analysis it is only there that he may be found, it is so with us in the last analysis. Which means that if you're sober and Alcoholics Anonymous for a number of years and you've looked for power and security

and validation everywhere else,

you're about par for the course.

Because I did that. And a lot of us do that. And we don't do it out of out of malice. We do it sometimes out of ignorance.

My first four years of sobriety, I look for power and I look for security everywhere else. I and it was only after I looked everywhere else and I was at the end of my rope, did I do the journey within. Or is, Chuck Chamberlain would say, the process of uncovering, discovering and discarding the things which had been blocking me

from the great reality deep down within me? And isn't that what steps 4 through 9 are about? Uncovering, discovering and discarding. It's where we're jettisoning. We're jettisoning ballast from a balloon that won't take off, that's stuck to the ground.

We're getting rid of the things that are blocking us. What I was

about

three couple years sober, maybe three years at the most sober. I was working for an employer who was trying to salvage me as an employee. In my first four years of sobriety, I went through nine jobs. Now that's a picture in itself, right? And it's never my fault. You ever notice how it's never your fault, right? I always get good jobs. It's just after I'm not there very long and they just turn into idiots. And they're, they're stupid

taken advantage of me and, and I'm always the guy that's leaving

and I'm working for this guy and he sees some potential in me and he's, he gives me a set of tapes to listen to. And it's not a a tapes. They're motivational tapes by a guy named Earl Nightingale, a set of tapes called Lead the field. And they're, they're designed to take self-centered, unproductive people in light of fire in them and make them more productive.

And Earl tells a story on this tape. And when I I heard it, it just blew my mind. And he said it was true. And I just was talking to a guy at the break that's going to South Africa. And the story, according to Earl, takes place in South Africa back in the 1800s. And there was this gentleman who had inherited a ranch from his father. And it was a nice ranch, the kind of ranch that he could have

sustained a very nice living for him and his family for generations.

But the problem was he inherited the ranch at during the diamond boom in South Africa, when there were men becoming Bill Gates rich overnight. And the more he heard of their discovery of diamonds and their abundance, the more dissatisfied he became with what he had.

And after a while, he got so dissatisfied that he sold his ranch. He took the money from the sale and he went out into the Bush obsessed with striking it rich, obsessed with finding diamonds. I've, I've since I've heard those tapes, I've read two accounts of this guy's story. One of them, one account was that he never did find any diamonds and he eventually committed suicide. He threw himself into the ocean. Another account that I read said that he just simply died out in the Bush,

broke, bitter and alone and disgusted.

And it came to pass, according to Earl Nightingale, that these this ranch was sold to these two brothers. And they were developers and they were clearing some rocks away one day trying to clear some land and develop some, some of this ranch and, and they found these unusual rocks and they didn't know what they were. They took them to a guy and the guy said, well, those are uncut diamonds. And they discovered that this ranch was the largest diamond deposit ever recorded in South Africa.

And these two brothers overnight become to the richest men in the world.

And it's it's it's amazing. And and they don't know what to do. They have to form this giant company that's going to mine and cut and market and distribute these diamonds all over the world. And one day they're sitting down and they're saying we need to name our company something. And the one brother says to the other, he says, hey, why don't we name it after that poor SOB that we bought the ranch from? What was his name? And the other brother says, wasn't it De Beers?

And I'm listening to this tape and I'm thinking,

I'm that idiot. I'm looking everywhere else for what I'm looking for. And it's right with me every single day, every single day of my life. I go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and they read the same thing at every meeting. And these are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery.

I think I need a motorcycle. These are the steps we took which are suggested as a program recovery.

Oh, I need a relationship with her. These are the steps we took which are suggested as a program recovery. I need to make more money. These are the steps we took which are suggested as a program recovery. I need to buy a house. These are the steps we took which are suggested as a program recovery. I need more sponsees. These are the steps we took which are suggested as a program recovery. I need new, better meetings. These are the steps we took

which are suggested as a program recovery.

There is nothing else suggested. And isn't it odd that a guy like me, only in the last analysis, after I've looked everywhere else for power, for security and for sustenance, will I take the last lonely journey, the journey through myself to a power greater than myself.

Scott. Thanks, Bob. I love that story. Here. Here are gifts from two friends of mine in my Home group. A friend of mine says I work this program to the best of my willingness.

I've never worked it to the best of my ability. I sit here guilty of that myself. And this is a gift from a lady friend of mine who you've probably heard some of the songs she's written. She reduced what we do to what she calls the Four ups. Get up, give up, show up, fess up

pretty well rips it up. The page 35, I think answers asks, and then on page 36 answers one of the great questions, and the question is in the first paragraph, page 35. What sort of thinking dominates, not sort of mildly disconcerts on rare occasion. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? It's a pretty good question. It gives us a long set up and the answer actually begins

top of page 36. It says, yet he got drunk again. We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened. This is his story. I'd like to observe the difference here. What we asked was tell us exactly what happened. What we got was his story. You understand the difference between what happened in his story, right? They're not necessarily congruent. And if Bob would take the part of Fred,

well, I came to work on Tuesday morning. What happened to Monday?

A lot of people work on Monday. Do they work on Monday here? A lot of play. They work on Monday. What happened to Monday? OK, we missed Monday. All right, go ahead. I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for concern I had once owned. Irritated. How about bent? How about your undies are in a permanent wad? How about the veins on your forehead throb when you think about how angry you are about you used to own this place and now you're just a flunky. But please continue with your story.

I had a few words with the boss, Nothing serious. Oh, you think you had a fight with a boss that wasn't serious.

Fights with the boss. Art, by definition, always serious. There are no exceptions to that whatsoever. But please continue. So then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car. Well, that's where they all are. I mean, they never come into the showroom. You just have to go sort of turning over, knocking on doors out in the rural areas. OK, so so here's the kind of thinking we're working with. And then we skip down to the italics to find another thought in that chain.

Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk, it couldn't hurt me on a full stomach. The exact same kind of thinking. And it's the reason why I need a sponsor. Someone needs to hear this insanity that goes inside my head to help me to say, what do you mean you came to work on Tuesday, What happened on Monday, etcetera. And I think it's one of the reasons that that I got here with newcomer thinking

terminal case. I was going to die from it if I didn't get some help with it

because so many things were running around in here. And my history was if I think that I have to do it because if I think it must be a grand idea wasn't necessarily true. Page 60 for the balance of our time together. The perspectives that I'm going to use are how I take a new man through these 12 steps and an interesting conversation at the break. I take people who are not in a a through these 12 steps. I'm happy to do it for anybody, to give them the basis of what goes on in here, to carry it back to another

fellowship. And it's something that my mentor told me to do and I found it to be very beneficial for me. Then I like to think they're getting. So if it sounds like I'm telling you what to do, I'm not. This is just how I tell a new man who's asked me to sponsor him to do it. And we begin with the ABC's aid that we were alcoholic and manage your own lives. So I ask that's two parts. So the characteristics of an alcoholic that we describe in the text are

once you begin to drink, you have little control over the amount you take,

which is to say you get drunk by accident. You ever get drunk accidentally? It didn't really mean to. As his sponsor says, you were carelessly over served by an irresponsible bartender, something like that, right? Or you quit forever and really mean at this time and don't stay quit if you have either of those. So I asked him to talk to me about that. Which do you have either of those? If you have them, tell me some instances about it, because what we have him doing here is setting his own cornerstones, and I think the longer he talks about those

characteristics in himself in detail, the better. And then the second part could not manage our own lives. What happens when you manage your life?

You're currently not living at home, right? You're key no longer fits in the door. I understand. Got fired from how many? What? Let's talk about what happens when you manage your life. I want to hear it. And then B, Probably no human power could have relieved alcoholism. Let's talk about who tried. Cops, courts, judges. For example, psychologists, psychiatrists,

parents, siblings, wife. Oh, forgive me, wives,

you who tried to relieve your alcoholism and given the fact that those people, some of them at least theoretically well qualified, were unable to relieve it, and I'll tell you now, I can't, is it logical to deduce that no human power will be able to in the future? And we talk about that. And then I like from there. I like to go to page 12,

and I believe, as I said earlier, that when the text gives me something twice, it's terribly important. This for me is one of the absolute foundation stones of of this thing that we do here. And it's a gift from Abby Thatcher, who was sober only a few months,

and he called his friend Bill Wilson and came to visit him. Slightly above the center of the page, my friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, why don't you choose your own conception of God?

We have very little interest in what you actually think you believe. You're probably confused about what you think you believe. We have no interest in that. We have no interest in what they told you about God. And I don't care how qualified they claim to be. We're asking you to choose Page 93,

4 lines down from the top of page 93.

Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make an emphatic he does not have to agree with your conception of God. Here it comes. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him.

So twice we've told you we've invited you to choose a conception of God. I got here terrified that there might be a God. I am guilty as charged. And when I was a child, well, Mama, why did Grandma die? Well, it was God's will. Sounds dangerous to me.

And so I caught my wife who's in the other room who says God's will is a good deal. See, I got here not believing that I was afraid there might be a God and so.

So I need to get a God that, as she says, is bigger than all the monsters under the bed.

I've got to have a God whose hand I can confidently hold as I walk into what appear to be the dark cave of steps four and five. And it actually isn't what you've been in there, but from the outside looking in, it's terrifying. Probably the easiest steps we have little bit on the long side, but quite easy. And we're going to talk about that in these next few sessions. So I've got to have a guy that works for me. So I tell him, we're going to, we're going to now sit down and design a God

that will work for you.

What characteristics would you like for God to have? Because we're asking you to choose. And I ask them to use single words or short phrases and let's write them down. And I tell them that I will. As we do this, I'm going to make some suggestions. If I suggest something and you'd like it, write it down. If I suggest something and you don't like it, don't take it. Don't let me sell this to you. This is what would you like God to be? And they usually start out with forgiving

and I tell them that was insufficient for me.

I'm a little bit too guilty for forgiving. I needed a God that was eager to forgive. Just forgiving was short. And that's just for me. But if forgiving, you want that, then fine, write it down. Powerful. How about all powerful, gentle, loving I How about has a sense of humor? I want a God that laughs.

I want a God that laughs. I mean this. This is the God that invented the duck Bill Platypus. I mean, come on, Does he not have a sense of humor,

right. And, and the God who wants what's best for me. And how about this? A God that's available to me

anytime?

How about creative?

And and so and so we write these things down and then I say to him, I'm not going to ask you to believe this. I don't think you can. All my life religious people say believe this. Well, how we'll just believe it. Well, how Well, they can't tell me and I can't tell you either. There's another gift from my Home group. Faith is simply hope. With a track record, you can have hope. You see this working for so many of us. Clearly you can hope,

and once you've hoped for a while and done what we do,

that hope will evolve into faith. So I'm not asking you to believe this. I'm going to ask you to do what the scientists call a working hypothesis. And what that means is we have reason to believe something may be true. We're going to apply it in all cases and find out what happens. Simple enough. So what I'm going to ask you is how would you conduct yourself? Best you can figure if you believe this is what God was,

conduct yourself that way and let's find out what happens. Not asking you to believe it, but not asking you simply how would you conduct yourself if you believe that?

Let's do that. See what happens. Page 60

see that God could and would if he were sought. Well, God could. We've got him down as all powerful. So I'd say he could do about anything and would. Well, let's see, he's eager to forgive me. He loves me. He has a sense of humor. He's available to me. So I'd say he would and and I think it's so powerful. The the language I don't believe in this book is by mistake. If he were sought, it doesn't say if he were found.

Item one. God is not lost, does not have to be found,

but simply sought. I like the analogy that God is rather like the mother of a four year old playing hide and seek with their child. Or does she hide? She hides where the child can find her, right? All he has to do is seek. This is my heavenly parent who has hidden where I can find him, if only I will seek. Page 57.

I love this part of the work so much.

Very top of page 57, save for a few brief moments of temptation. The thought of drinkers never returned, and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity. I find two places in the book and I'm going to give you the page number. Please don't turn to it. We're going to stay right here. It's also mentioned on pages 84 and 85 where they promised me sanity, but I can't find a place in this book and I've read it a couple of times that promises me manageability.

My life does not become more or less manageable.

It remains unmanageable by me. Period. I have fired me as general manager of my own life based on my performance. Yeah, I could be right. A good manager would have fired me decades ago. And one of the first things I did when I woke up this morning, because I invited God in to run my life today, not give me some help and I'll take it from here. Not, not here's your. I always want to be God's coach, big fella. Take a knee, you know, here. And. And here's your assignment for today. And what about that lottery ticket and,

and, and all of that stuff? And I was literally trying to be God's coach and, and, and what I have learned is in those days when I did pray, as I said last night, the pre a a prayers help me pass this test. I didn't study for. Please don't let her be pregnant. And God Get Me Out of this and I'll never do it again.

Those are the pre A a prayers in my experience that those times when I did pray, I was trying to make him my God. And what they've taught me here is how to make me his man.

The difference is that this one works. But I don't find a place that promises me sanity, manageability. I'm not going to get to manage it. I don't want to manage it anymore. I've seen what happens when I manage it. I, I don't know how much more that I could survive. And I don't want what I want anymore. I want what God wants me to have. I don't know what it is. I know how to get it. And it's by doing the things you've taught me each day and been by the by that definition, I have it right now. What a gift it is for me to be here in Scotland with you.

This is this is what I get when I simply try to be a tool in his hand. That's my job.

So here on page 57, we've promised insanity. It says, What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its elements are simple circumstances made him willing to believe. Or in a case like mine, that means I worked myself into a crack I couldn't lie my way out of

and says he humbly offered himself to his maker. Then he knew it doesn't say he asked for a little help Get Me Out of this and I'll never do it again. He said take me. He signed carte blanche. It means white paper means I signed the bottom of the rest of my life and held it up to God and say whatever you want to fill in on this suits me fine. I'm not asking any questions about it. There's a story that came out of the Pacific at the end of World War 2. Douglas MacArthur was the commanding officer of the Allied forces. He met on the battleship Missouri to accept the surrender from the

delegation. They're all in their formal regalia and the the lead, and I do not know who it was of the Japanese delegation in his tuxedo with all this stuff on it, walked up to the surrender documents and began to read. MacArthur said to him, Don't read it, just sign it.

Yeah, your beat. Just sign it. That's where I am. I'm beat. I'm signing it. That's what we're talking about here. We're no longer. I was always afraid I worked to God too hard. I'll tell you what, I'll cover sex and money. He can get the rest.

I don't believe that's the package

continuing on page 57. He humbly offered himself to his Maker. Then he knew. Even so, has God restored us all to our right minds to this man? The revelation was sudden. Some of us grew into it more slowly. Here's a promise. But he has come to all who have honestly sought him.

When we drew near to him, he disclosed himself to us. What a powerful, powerful set of promises. Continuing on page 60. And I've wished for a long time that when we read this portion of Chapter 5, we'd pick up this next phrase

says being convinced we were at Step 3. Convinced of what? How about AB and C?

Our AB and C True for you. Welcome to Step 3. It's that hard, which is that we decided to turn our willing our life over to God as we understood him. In the short form of the step. It says over to the care of God. When I use the phrase short form of the step, I'm talking about what you see on the wall here.

The expanded form is kind of a lot deeper,

and I don't have an editorial on that. It's just I just happen to notice it. But I do observe this. Step 3 is not where we turn out well in life. Over to God or over to the care of God? Clearly not. It's where we decide to. I learned this from Bob at one of these sessions a couple of years ago. The word decision comes from the Latin word Cesare, which means to cut.

It's the same root word as word for scissors or incision. A decision is when I cut away the other options and act on the one that I have decided.

So if it's step three, I decide to turn my well in life over to God or over to the care of God, whichever you prefer. Then the question becomes how do I accomplish that decision? And I believe the answers are numbered 4 through 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result, spiritually awakened people have done all they can to turn their will and lives over to the care of God. And that that for me, that ties it all together.

My sponsor explained it this way. He said there are three frogs sitting on a log in the middle of a lake to decide to jump into the water. How many does that leave on the log? And I said one. And he said no, no, three. They've just decided they haven't jumped yet.

So 3 is where I decide to jump, 4 is where I begin to jump. Continuing on page 60, just what do we mean to the by this and just what do we do? The first requirement. Aha, there are requirements and there must be more than one if there's a first.

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self will can hardly be a success. And I ask that as a question. Are you convinced not just your life, but any life that's universal. Have you ever seen one? My family likes to watch reality television. We watch The Apprentices of Family and I've been watching Donald Trump for three or four years and I'd like to trade wallets with him, but I've never seen him smile. I mean, I've seen his lips do what what appears to be one, but I don't see him smile

that that doesn't look like a success to me. Financial success. I'm certain that it is. But but this is the kind of success I need and I've never seen someone with this kind of success in here

that was run on self will have you. Let's talk about it. And as a new guy, I want let's let's talk about that. This is a requirement. Then it says on that basis, we're almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Collision, Bam, bent metal, broken glass, blood screaming. That's collision. That's different from like mild disagreement on rare occasion collision. And this is even though our motives are good. See, I've been hearing people in meetings for 23 years. They check your motives

and here it says very clearly that won't work. A lot of the popular things we hear in meetings don't don't hold the one of the one of my favorites is no major decisions the first year. I look at that third step. If that's not a major decision, I wouldn't know which way to turn out of the driveway to go to look for one. Are we telling a woman who's getting beaten up four nights a week by a drunk and husband not to make a decision that holds no water whatsoever? I need to get off that soapbox. But the

this thing about motives is important to me, and I learned this lesson. I was sober a couple of years

and I'm a sales Rep and I call on major accounts in the US selling merchandise. There was a particular purchasing agent at a major account who represented about a third of my income. And I was making a lot of money in those days and he could have easily doubled or tripled how much he bought from me. We were personal friends, our wives, our friends were guests in each other's homes. We have spiritual discussions, never religious, when he was an amazing guy. And I get a phone call from him one day and he said we're at Vanderbilt Hospital. My wife has just given birth

two months early and the news is not good. Would you come down here and pray over this child?

I said you bet. And I got in the car and I drove down to that hospital doing what I'd been told. I'm checking my motives and I can't answer the question. I don't know if I'm going down to pray over that child, to bring spiritual help to this family or to get close to this guy so he'll make me so he'll put more money in my pocket. I can't find my motive. And I did what you taught me. I prayed about it. And this is what I believe. When I can't get an answer,

one of two things is in place. Either I've asked the wrong question

and by the way, the right question on the wrong day, still the wrong question, yeah.

Or it's OK that I make a mistake here

so that I can get a lesson or so that someone else can maybe watch me who couldn't have gotten the lesson because I signed the carte blanche. I said, you can fill this in any way you want to. All the lessons aren't for me. And so anyway, I prayed and I said, God, I need some help here. I can't, I can't answer a question and I'm not going to ask you to believe when I'm about to tell you came from God. I want you to know that I believe it. And the next thing I got was a very clear question in my mind. And the question was, does going into a hospital to pray over a sick child violate any of your?

And the answer was number. It doesn't. There are no wrong reasons for doing the right thing.

There are likewise no right reasons for doing the wrong thing. And that's what motive is about. Motive is one of the ways I play God. When I operate from motive, I'm trying to govern the outcome. When I operate from principle, I'm using. I'm doing what God I think he wants me to do. I'm leaving the outcome in his hands. I don't get gazing Jews and Satan's means I I give you an example.

These these two married people have feel like they've lost the spark in their relationship. They both have excellent jobs. Their kids both play in a high school band. They have plenty of extra money. They have plenty of vacation time. They eat. They both decide to take a Thursday afternoon off and spend it in a holiday in a motel to try to and the kids have a safe ride home

to try. To recap, their motive is to recapture the spark from the early relationship. I think everybody here would say that's a good motive, right?

Everybody go to that. So we're probably in pretty good ground here. Oh, did I leave out the detail that they're not married to each other? Did I miss that? Did I forget that? OK, I am fully capable of that kind of thinking.

I am fully capable of that. And that's why I have to operate from principle rather than motive and that, but that's what it says here. On that basis, we're almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. I have to get out of the motive business. It doesn't matter what my motive. I had a fella, actually a guy, every man in my Home group has sponsored this guy a couple of times. And he was back one more time. And

there was a young lady had just moved to Nashville from out of state.

And partway through the meeting, he leaned over to me and he said, I think I'm going to get a map of the city and mark some of the better meetings for this lady and give it to her so she'll be able to get a good start here in town. She was over about six years. And I said, well, I think that's a really good idea. Why don't you give it to the guy that moved in from out of state also in the meeting. He hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So I got to get out of the, he had a good motive, right? I got to get out of the motive business. It I get in lots of trouble, I'm going to skip a lot of things here and leave

Bob, but I want to skip to something at the bottom of page on page 62, my sponsor said to me, I'm about to give you the best news you're ever going to get in your whole life. I said really? He said yes, right here on page 62. I said, Are you ready for some great news? I said I am. He said here it is. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

Was that it, Jerry? Yeah, that was it. I don't get it, he said. That's the best news you're ever going to get, man. Because if it really is the cops, the courts, the judges, the blacks, the Chinese, the Russians and the ex-wife, if it really is them, you're cooked because we can't do anything about them. The good news is that you are the problem. And if you'll bring some willingness to this party, we can work on it. You know, he was right. I think I might be the best news I ever got.

I'm the problem and I'll bring the willingness to the party. We can work on that

pretty powerful stuff in that paragraph. It tells me twice that I can't reduce my last sentence in that paragraph. Neither could we reduce our self-centered as much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help and actually says that twice. And that paragraph on the 4th line, it says above everything. I wonder if that's important. Above everything. That's somewhere right in the middle, right? It's above everything. We must be rid of the selfishness. And yet I can't do that myself.

In the next paragraph it says this is the how and the why. But first of all, we had to quit playing God. And I,

I had the privilege of sitting with one of my mentors. I actually had him trapped in a hotel lobby for about an out about four hours one morning. And I asked him a lot of questions. And it finally at one point he said, let me ask you a question. I thought, OK, here's my chance to shine. And he said on page 62, you agreed to quit playing God. I said, yes. He said, how'd you play God? Said I, I don't know. And he said, he said, here are some of the ways I played God. I became angry when someone died. And that's me saying I know who should die and how and when and

as me playing God. Another one is that I tried to manage my own life and the lives around me, and the closer you were to me, the harder I tried to manage your life. Another one is that I judged people and the way I know that as I had resentments. And there's only one way to get a resentment. You must judge someone, find them guilty, be angry with them, and then feel that anger again. That's what resent means. It from the Latin remains again like reread and sentiri means to feel. So it is feeling again of old anger. That's what resentment is.

He said I had resentments. I must have judged. It's the first step toward a resentment. Here's some that I have added for myself since then is that I trusted my motives. When I operate from motive, I'm playing God. I know how this should turn out, and so I am playing God when I trust my motives. Another one is that I needed to know when I asked the question why I'm playing God. Again, it's me needing to know that. It makes me crazy. Another one is that I was absolutely sure that all the things that I knew for sure were correct

and anyone who disagreed with me was clearly a fool. Boy, that's not only playing God, but it blocks my learning process completely. And another one is that I told lies. When I lie, I'm really playing God because I'm managing an outcome. That's precisely what it is. Quite a bit left on step three. I'm going to turn it over to Bob. Bob's still an alcoholic. Thank you, Scott. Great, great stuff.

On the bottom of page 60, in the top of 61, Bill uses an analogy,

an analogy. When I could see myself in it, all of a sudden I started to understand what must be surrendered because we're really in the section on Step 3, which is we made a decision to turn, first of all, our will and second of all, our lives over to the care of God.

And what is, what are we surrendering? And Bill uses the analogy in the bottom of 60 and 61, where he compares us to an actor who wants to run the whole show.

And if you, if you've ever been part of a play, imagine just a one of the members of the cast, not the star, not the not the headliner, just a member of the cast. And he's trying to tell the other actors how they should say their parts. He's trying to tell the dancers how they should dance. He's trying to tell the stagehands how they should set the stage. He's trying to tell the director how he should direct. He's trying to tell the lighting people how they should work the lights. He's probably saying, you know, you need the spotlights

on me. And if you've ever been around a person like that, they're a pain in the butt,

right? They really are. And my sponsor and early sobriety had me read this part of the book over and over again. And