The step 2 through 4 at a step Workshop in New Bern, NC

Any questions from last week Just I have somewhat of an apology to make. I understand that I was going a little bit fast last week and building the foundation is a very large prospect for me. We built the first three steps are building the foundation of our recovery and it has one heck of a lot of information that I need and I need it in the beginning to do what it is that I do today. You know, I've been sober since I first

around in 77 and that's because I had a foundation by the time I hit that first meeting. So for me, I'm taking my experience, strength and hope. My experience is with the work. My strength is in my working of the program and my hope is in the trust that I have in my God and that's how I work it today. So I'm going to go a little bit slower, but we're going to be covering two and three, which is a volume

four is actually easy. And I know you've heard that four is terrible,

something to avoid, but if you've done the first step, that's the biggest inventory you're going to take.

That's what we do in program. We inventory out of our inventory, we find the solution and out of that solution we form an action that we take. That's our old program. In three sentences. You got some handouts I've put out and the first thing on your handout should be the set aside prayer. Now with the set aside prayer does, and I do it every time I read the book,

is that when I go back into the book I read the set aside prayer. I don't want to relearn what I already know.

What I want to do is experience a new experience with the work that I'm about to read. That means I take what I've learned, what I've practiced up until that moment, and put it to the test of what I'm reading today. And that's what the Set Aside set sets us up to have a new experience with the work. And if we can have a moment of silence,

dear God, please set aside everything we think we know about ourselves. The big book,

alcoholism, the steps and in spiritual terms, especially you, God Father, yes, that we have a truly open mind. So we might have a new experience with these things. Please help us see the truth. Amen. OK, just a little reminder, this is not a regular a a meeting. OK, as you can see, I'm going to be doing all the talking,

but if I, if I happen to outpace somebody, raise your hand, whistle, do something, I'll repeat it.

One of the things that I found is after I take people through the work this way and they highlight, they do it and they go back and read the work, they will start seeing it. If you see it this week, you'll see it different than you saw it last week. OK. So hopefully you all will have a new experience with what we do and what we practice our program.

The simplicity of the program

requires just one

word, and that's the one word of how honest, open and willingness. All right, if we come into the work with that, it's all downhill. And hopefully the yanis open and willingness is given to us, and we're the only ones that can experience that first step. And it's given us to us by what happens to us when we drank, the misery and suffering that we go through. And what we're afraid of is the pain of change

and the pain of change in the awareness. That's why the first step is such a

a monumental inventory, if you will, because what we have to do is we have to balance what we're going to learn in the first step with what we've been doing all our lives. And that is to build up a system of denial, a system of resistance. Everything I hear, I'm going to reject if it's not going to get me to my next drink. So that's what I do in as a drunk.

Anything that you try to impede in me.

That's why the word suggested is very interesting because it's meant to hit. It's not meant to go around to go straight forth a fight. You have a a definition of suggested on your handout. I don't have it in on my handout. What's the right suggested to introduce indirectly to the mind? So when they say suggested, it's not an option. OK, what they're trying to do is get behind my denial

and that's what it is. Because I'm so used to you coming up to me and saying something about my drinking, I'm going to instantly react. I don't have to think about it anymore. That's the unmanageability that we saw in the first step, the unmanageability of fighting. And you have a brief synopsis in your on your handouts for step one. OK, but basically it's the resistance to change the to continuation. The problem that I have is in my mind,

and I have no other alternative except to continue down a path of the way I've been going. I can't do it. There's no way that I can do it. I try to drink normal. I resist the fact that I'm abnormal when it comes to alcohol. That's my first step. Not that I'm a bad person. It's not that I am a willfully bad person, but I do things that are inconsistent with who I am and then I deny those things.

That's the essence in a nutshell of what step one is. I'm resistant to hearing the truth about who I am. Now, when it when we come into program, we're asked to take an inventory of ourselves. As far as the first step is concerned, I I am informed that it's a disease,

OK, and that when I look at myself, it has a pathology, it has a chronicity and it gets worse untreated overtime. That's what the disease is. It also says where the disease resides, and the disease does not reside in the bottle. It resides between my ears. It resides down deep inside of me. My resistance to that change, that denial, that anger that forces me to get irritable, restless and discontent.

There's my first step and I am hopeless. I cannot do anything about it. So when I take that inventory and sitting there and know that I'm hopeless in and of myself, I have nothing else to do except one thing. What is the solution? And that's where we come into step two. OK, so you have an, an overview for those who might have missed last week on your handouts about what step one is the requirements. People say that there are no requirements, but there are a lot of requirements in the

so suggested is meant to get around the denial and Bill was a salesman and he knows if he turned around and told you to do something, you wouldn't do it. But if he suggests it to you, you might have a little open ear. So he knew the drunk, him in the first 100 knew the drunk. And that's what this program is all about. The people say that it's a we program. Well, it's not a we program until I do what they did.

The we up there when it starts off as we

it's the people telling me what they did. Our big book is a 12 step in print. It was meant to go out to others that they couldn't touch personally. So everything is in the book that I need to get. Well, my 12 steps are on the 1st 103 pages. I know people say that the steps our program is in 164 pages.

Well, anything after 103 is their experience,

but not the steps. Anything I say up here by the way is my opinion. If the conflicts with a sponsor itself, well, go and see your sponsor, OK?

I don't want to get into a war. I get into enough of them ignorantly. This brings us to step two. I've taken an inventory. I've seen that I'm hopeless. I see that I cannot do anything.

I've strayed away from either my church, my God, or never had one. So I'm basically most alcoholic. Come in here.

And that's why they have a whole chapter to it. And by the way, everything up until page 44 in your big book, and if you can open up to 44, we'll start there. Up to page 44 is Step 1. The founders thought it's necessary to do over 40 odd pages of step one. That is our foundation. Our Step 2 is our cornerstone.

Two that foundation. You cannot build anything without setting a good cornerstone because that has to be plum and square

foundation. And that's what the metaphor for our Step 2 is, is the cornerstone for the building of an arch that we're going to walk through to freedom.

OK. Step 2. Step 2, Step one, by the way, is not about not drinking. Never had a choice, never will have a choice.

Agnostic, as you see on your handouts, is one who denies any knowledge of the ultimate nature of things. This is out of the 37 dictionary. Now, what that really means is that I really don't know if there is a God. I don't deny that there may be one and especially since my step one tells me that I've been playing God, I'm really there's been no room for even thinking along the lines that there may be another God.

This chapter is to reinforce that there is something beyond me. So we're going to be seek a power that we lack.

And chapter 4 is devoted to that cornerstone and to that second step. All right, it starts off though is saying that we've learned something of alcoholism that's in the 44 one. And when I put the second number there, it's according to the paragraph. Now here's the first thing that they're going to ask you. They're going to set up a question. The step one question is if you honestly, and we're going to hear that over and over again, that word honestly,

what we have,

would you find that you cannot quit entirely? OK, now quitting entirely, How many times have you heard?

Oh, I stop all the time. Well, it isn't about stopping from time to time. You want to stop and we'll get to it in the 12th step. But if you want to stop entirely for the rest of your life, this is what we've done. It's not about quitting a day at a time. I take life at a day at a time, but I don't take my program a day at a time on my drinking.

That problem has been removed when I do the steps. If you honestly want to and you cannot quit entirely or when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take. You are probably alcoholic. This is reinforcing your first step. It also goes on that it's suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. It's setting us up to tell us what the program is all about and our program is a spiritual solution for our

alcoholism. Now they on 44 two it gives us the either or proposition we are either doomed to an alcoholic death or live on its spiritual basis. Again, it's setting us up for what the program truly is all right and it reaffirms that in 44 three halfway through the the paragraph and here is a requirement for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. We must find a spiritual basis of

life now one of the things that you're going to do and again what we said last week is that the founders knew how to 12 step. They will repeat things over and over again to get it through my thick mixed skull. All right, page 45 with all these things. It's right up at the top. So it's 45 O things with all our might, but we needed a power that wasn't there. It's talking about our struggle with alcohol that we couldn't overcome it. It's

our lack of power. And then right in 45, one lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. Now that's another requirement. When you see the word had, it's not a suggestion. It's not a well, if you want to.

This is the beginnings of setting the cornerstone for our sobriety

on 45 Two. It lays out what the purpose of the steps are. Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral. The definition of moral is true.

What is the truth?

OK, so without thinking that's the problem

and it's not really a decision. You're also seeing the solution and that comes from the inventory that you've already taken. The hottest inventory any drunk will take is to see that he's alcoholic, see that he can't do it and see that he needs to do something different. And I'm a sexist sometimes, so that he is also a she, which comes to 46 the top of the page

about old ideas. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems and inexplicable calamities,

deep skepticism. We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly.

OK, what You're telling us there that I usually turn around and I compare myself with others. I can see the faults in others, but yet I don't correct the same in myself. And this is what it's telling me. That's what my old ideas was. I went around comparing myself with others and I did not turn around and start identifying nor wish to grow. That kept me in the same place of unmanageability

or the examples of the unmanageability because it was my mind that was doing it. The examples of unmanageability are when I get thrown over the car, the

put of the police car. That's an example of my unmanageability. The unmanageability is how what thinking got me there and the thinking that told me it was OK after I got there. OK, that's the unmanageability. And as it says, the problem is in our mind on 46 one another requirement. But these are the second step questions.

We found that if I'm going to ask somebody and I, and this is another 12 step aspect,

are you willing to lay aside your prejudice?

And then once you do, if you are willing to set express even a willingness to believe in the power. OK, She doesn't say you have to believe. It says just let me be different than I was yesterday. Just a willingness to believe that there may be something more powerful than me. There's a promise right there. We commence to get results once we even admitted that, and we'll see a lot of promises today.

4046 paragraph 2

Much to our relief, we can discovered we did not need to consider anothers conception of God. Our own conception, no matter how inadequate, was sufficient. As soon as we admitted the possibility of the existence of a creative, intelligent, and here's your second step here, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense

of power and direction

provided we took other simple steps. So in that one little paragraph, you get a promise, you have your second step. As soon as I admitted that there was a power greater than myself and I started and I needed to, and I got the power and direction and all that I needed to do is take a few other simple steps. Programs, not hard, didn't even tell them this. And they're setting us up for it to be OK. And by the way, our second step promised sanity

on page 84 three, there's a promise. And if you look at the promise on 84 three,

you will see that the promise says after we work the steps, it's one of the 10th step promises. So just because I'm willing to believe doesn't restore me to sanity. I have to work the steps and then as a ten step promise, I get restored to sanity. OK. And the 10th step is after a bunch of others that come before it, just in case somebody here is deficient in counting.

The sanity though begins here

because before I did not believe that a power greater than myself. So if I just change my course just a little bit and come to believe that there may be a power, I'm starting to get a little saner than when I denied it. This is the breaking down. Okay, so continuation of the surrender of self and an element of humility that we have. OK. And here begins the humility. OK, breaking down my denial, the surrender.

OK, when Japan surrendered on the Missouri, they didn't say, OK, I quit. That's it. They had to go about dismantling their offensive weapons,

burn their guns, and do all the other things. Well, we're like that. We need, if we're going to surrender, we have to start dismantling our denial system. And it begins here by humbly saying that I am not the center of the universe, right at the bottom. To us, the realm of the Spirit is abroad and roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek.

Earnestly is another way of staying honest. If I'm going to seek, I'm going to get it on top of page 4747. One, your own conception of God. Here's the redundancy of our founders teaching us that it's about you and how you see your God, not how I see my God that you should do it. My wife, 47. Two

is the cornerstone. Do I believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself?

There is another redundancy from the page before. And here's the question you ask your pigeons. Do you believe or are you willing to believe that there is a power greater than you? And the answer is yes. He's starting to set the cornerstone. And one of the things is, is that when you come to this with someone, you ask them be still. Ask yourself, are you really willing? It's like the question of conceding to yourself in the first step.

These are propositions that you're going or that you are signing off on.

It's not something to say, OK, I quit. All right, Yeah, there's a God. These are the foundations of our program. And this is what's going to stimulate you for the rest of your lives, or that's what stimulated me for the rest of my lives. They talk about on page 48, the blocks, the spiritual growth right at the top, obstinacy, sensitivities and unreasoning prejudice. Unreasoning prejudice means I don't take it for what it is.

I, I start using my denial system and I don't sit down and reason out the thought, OK, and I come in here with a lot of them. One of them I can think of right off the top of my head. Never trust a man that doesn't drink

but I never follow through with that and say, would I trust me now you can trust me back-to-back belly to belly in a bar to take you back that you might have trusted me with. There's a lot of other things I wouldn't have trusted me with on page bottom page 49. This is how we used to and some carry this and all carriers into program. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically

dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritual minded persons of all races,

callers and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Okay, again, it's being redundant and saying lay aside your prejudice, put down your denial, start seeing it for what it is. You can't do it. You can't play God. Let's see. Or we found that we couldn't continue to play God because remember, it's our founders talking to us,

OK? And again, it's a reminder that we find our God,

each and everyone of us. OK, and my God can be your God, but doesn't have to be.

OK. There's the uniqueness of our program. You start from where you are, not where when somebody else wants you to be or where you think you should be. OK. And we'll talk about those in our character defects the way we should on ourselves. It also tells us on page 50, paragraph 2, of what the stories in the back of the book are. OK, And it's a repeat from page 29. Two, that each teller approaches and conceives of the power

which is greater than himself. So that's what the stories are in the back. Gives you a promise. We need not be worried at the end of that. OK? The questions that each person will settle for himself. 53 Everyone has gained access to believes in a power greater than himself. This power has, in each case, accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible.

In other words, it's giving you promised death.

What I said was on page 50, paragraph two, that it's a redundancy from page 29 to that each teller approaches and conceives of the power which is greater than himself. Then at the bottom of that is a small little promise that we need not be worried for. Each individual is to settle the question for themselves,

OK, And that's what it is. You settle your guard problem inside yourselves. And we're going to talk more about that in a minute.

50, paragraph three, everyone has gained access to, not most everyone has gained access to believes in a power greater than himself. In each case has accomplished the miraculous and the humanly impossible. OK, there's the beginnings of a couple of promises, and it's going to be some a little bit later, they flatly declare. And this is in paragraph 4 on page 50,

that they have come to believe in a power greater themselves. That Step 2,

to take certain attitude towards that power, which we'll talk about today is step three. And to do certain simple things, those simple things. Again, the other word, simple, the program is not hard or complex, it's simple. There has been simple things. And that steps 4 through 12 has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. That's a spiritual awakening

and at the end it says they have found a new power, peace, happiness, sense of direction

into them.

Those are your second step promises. At the end, they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements and other redundancy through the steps. Here's some direction on top of page 51. They show how change have overcome them. They say that the consciousness of the presence of God is the most important fact of their lives.

OK, in other words, way of doing that is I live the prayer today.

The prayer is sobriety. Let me do your service to others on page 52,

paragraph 2 going to put down on there. You can put down a dry drunk because this is what happens to us to get irritable, restless and discontent. But it also happens to us if we don't work the program.

Okay, but we need to have the and here's the direction on the 1st sentence. Change our point of view. That's another way of saying change our whole consciousness and thoughts about what it is that I need to do. OK,

and here's the signs of being a dry drunk having trouble with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We were afraid to misery and depression. We could make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn't seem to be of real help to other people.

OK. It's also called the governments, but these are the things that we need to keep an eye on the solution,

OK. And again, there was the problem, the solution of these, the governments were more important than whether we should see the newsreels of flights, OK? So they're going to give us the solution, which is on 52 paragraph 3,

to solve the problems by a simple reliance on a spirity universe. We had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God idea did.

That's not only a solution, but it's also a requirement. If you look at it. OK, they didn't beat around the Bush. This was serious business. Now on page 53, paragraph two, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing. God is, either is or He isn't. What was our choice to be? So they're asking you in your second step to make a choice,

all right? And that's what the choice is. And these are action steps. If I take an inventory in, my first step is my inventory. It's an action.

It's something to do. It's not a passive thing where, oh, I just surrender. All right, I know a lot of people in the room say that the first steps you don't have to really do anything. When you saw last week there's a lot to do, take an inventory was not comfortable. I had to take a look at what my alcoholism was doing to me. And here I have to seek out my power

and be willing to turn my will and life over in my third step. That is not a non action activity.

OK, now they're talking going to be talking to us agnostics in Page 55 and it's an answer to the question that was proposed on page 45. Actually, we were fooling ourselves. But deep down in every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. And they go on to say that it may be obscured, etcetera, but that's where we look because it asks where and how in the question earlier in the chapter

come up with the solution. The where is deep inside of us, we're going to find our God. Third paragraph, we finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of of our makeup. So it was a part of us, our faith in God. That's what we denied. And what we saw in our first step, God was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality deep down with inside of us. And that means we stop our minds and start looking and feeling our soul,

OK, which we do in our eleven steps. There's only there that God may be found. It was so with us again. They're telling you their lead. 55 paragraph 4. If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, it is that other word again encourages you to search diligently within yourself. Then, if you wish, you can join us on the Broad Highway.

Here's another promise for you. This with this attitude, you cannot fail.

So they're promising us a lot of things if we do the simple program. Honestly, the last promise is on page 57,

paragraph A, the last sentence. When we drew near to him, he disclosed himself to us. OK, there's another promise and it ends the chapter to the agnostics, but it's not the end of step two. One of the ones, and if you wanted just e-mail me, is a prayer of surrender.

OK? What I'm doing here with the second step is I'm beginning the process of surrender and turning over my life, and it's by Thomas Merton, my Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that desire

to please you does in fact please you, and hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire, and I know if I do this, you will lead me through the right Rd. though I may not know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always. Though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are forever with me. If you will never leave me to face peril alone. There's my second step completion for you up to page 58, which begins how it works. How many times have you heard

in the rooms? I don't know how it works, but we have a whole chapter on how it works. Beginning with rarely have we seen a person fail. I have truly never seen a person fail. I've seen a person resistant where they thought they could get away with things. When I first came around I used to hammer people that came back from relapses because they wanted to find out what they did or didn't do.

I remember one time somebody said leave the guy alone.

I says no, he's going, he's going to tell me what he did, you know? Anyway, I wanted to stay well, and they held the key and everyone held back somewhere. Everyone did not fulfill their steps. And they basically knew it at the time they did it, but it got lost to where when they usually came back in the rooms, they said people would ask them.

Well, what happened? I stopped going to meetings.

Well, that's right before the drunk started. The original Big Book said that they thoroughly followed our path.

Our said thoroughly followed our direction. Those in the beginning, wisely enough, knew that if they threw direction in, nobody is following. So all right, So they changed it from direction to path. Thoroughly

is perfect

and complete. That's what the definition of thoroughly means. It doesn't mean half assed. OK, but yet if I'm sitting in and having surrendered and haven't turned thought to turn my will over and that don't believe that I am still God, I am going to dice words. But thoroughly is complete. By the way,

Steelers is intrepid and bold. It's not without some anxiety.

Moral is your behavior, the inner meaning, the truth.

Honesty is sincere, honorable and fair.

Decide is to bring to conclusion or resolve and decision is the act of deciding settlement. And we're going to be coming up on our third decision to make. When a judge makes a decision, it becomes law. So when we're deciding these things,

it becomes a matter of law for me, the individual to take into my heart and start to doing OK because there's a decision on 58 two and it's about to still, we're still in the second step. If you have decided what we have, what that you want, what we have and are willing to go to any length, that's another way of saying, honestly, isn't it OK to get starting to get redundant here? Maybe

OK because they're going to tell you again right in the next paragraph, 58 three with all the earnestness at our command. Another way of saying with all the honesty that I can muster

of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start, Thoroughm is all-encompassing. It doesn't mean leaving out this, that and the other thing because I'm uncomfortable, okay? A hangover in the misery and suffering I have is uncomfortable. We have to let go, absolutely. And there's another end all and be all word. Remember, we deal with alcohol. Cunning and baffling. That's probably one of the only things I change in the big book because it's not alcohol. It's cunning and baffling. It's my alcoholism

in me that's funny and baffling. I put a bottle here, ain't going to do diddly squat until I put it inside myself. Then I become cunning and baffling. Oh, actually I was cunning and baffling to pick it up beforehand. Top of page 59. Without help, it is too much for us. And that help comes from others that have walked the walk and have experience with the steps. That's what our fellowship is about. Our fellowship has come out of the program,

and sometimes it's replaced as the program,

The one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. And here's the second step prayer right below that. We asked His protection and care with complete abandonment. By this time, I'm starting to get a sense of who I have been, what I don't want to be, how it's impacted the hopelessness that I have, and the willingness is starting to build on the solution of going to my God. It gives the suggested steps again. It was a hint.

OK to get behind my denial. It wasn't meant if you wish. Guy named Jack B, an old time drunk from the Bowery, used to say that it was like being on a plane with a parachute and the pole ring. The pole cord. Well, when the plane's going down and you jump out the plane, I suggest you pull the rip cord. It's with that same desperation

if I jump out of the plane

that I have to pull these 12 rip chords. And hopefully that desperation comes from doing a good inventory on your first step. Because if you don't have fear after you've done your first step, you haven't done it right.

Well, maybe you need to drink again. But these are the 12 propositions that they lay out for us to lead a spiritual way of life is on page 59. Again on page 60, paragraph one about midway down, willing to grow along spiritual lines,

ramming home another part of the second step, and the ABC's finish up the second step. So your second step goes from the chapter to the agnostics, page 44 to page 60 with the ABC's.

A is step 1B is step one and C is Step 2.

A that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives be there probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism

and see that God couldn't would if he were short. Now in the original manuscript of the second step here at this point it said along the words of If you are not convinced, please reread up until this point

or throw the book away. Because they knew, they intuitively knew, and they worked it for themselves that if you didn't set the foundation in the cornerstone,

the rest of the steps are not going to work for you. All right? And now if you look at what we went through last week, an hour and change and this week up until this point, another, not even an hour. For those that are working through the steps of the first step, you've just taken your first two steps. If you said the prayers you're aware of your hopelessness doesn't take long at all.

Doctor Bart took these people through the same thing in a short amount of time,

took him upstairs to the bedroom. They both got on their knees, said the third step Prayer were acquainted with their handicaps, their grocery handicaps and they were about 12 stepping within a couple of days.

That's not only how serious they took their program, but how intently and with dispatch and need to do it quickly. Could see me the drunk. If I start getting the wrinkles out of my belly, I start getting comfortable and what do I need to do all this stuff After all, ain't I sober, OK? And as I said last week, there's a distinct difference for me,

the difference between sobriety and abstinence. Sobriety is sound insane thinking absence is not having any alcohol in me. Totally two different things. OK, page 60, paragraph three, right after the AB CS being convinced we were at step three that we decided decision again decided past tense to turn our will and life over to God

and son of a gun is another requirement.

Page 60, paragraph 4, the first requirement that we'd be convinced that any life run on self will. And now here they're going to be redundant in reviewing what we just went through the 1st 2 steps to tell you what you need to take your third step, that any like run on self will can hardly be a success. Well, we proved that in our first and second stops. Page 62. It's going to be a redundancy and a forbearer of what we're going to find in our fourth step,

redundancy that we saw this in our first step 60 paragraph one, selfishness and self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles, driven by 100 forms of fear, self delusion, self taking, self pity. We step on the toes of our fellows. That is our ego. That is the problem, That is the unmanageability in the first step. And as we've learned, if they throw out a problem in the big book, they're going to come up.

Solution. Solution is a little bit further down and right after that. OK. And it also gives us an idea of what our 4th step is going to reveal to us in the last sentence of paragraph 62. One that sometime in the past we have made decisions based on self which will which later place this in a position to be hurt. How many times do I project on to others? Well, we're going to find that selfishness,

which is at the end of this session today, but that's exactly what they're doing. They always have a plan in mind. They always have the program in mind, and they intuitively know. So when they're speaking to us, they're going to be talking about things that we're going to be starting to see very shortly, and that's one of them. We're going to see in Step 4 how myself, Ishness, my sense of self and my always focusing on myself has caused misery in my life

and people retaliate and I was peeled at them, OK? Because it's them. It's always them, isn't it? It's always them. It's never me, OK? There's my ego, I want to protect it. There's the defensiveness in my first step. That's what I'm going to be surrendering to and turning my will. My will is my thinking, my life is my actions over to the care of my God, and is my third step.

OK. But it's setting us up for that 60

paragraph two. So our troubles, we think are basically of our own making. They're reinforcing that time and time again.

Halfway down in that power growth paragraph. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Oh, and turn my will in my life, which are my actions. Life is my actions. I'm from Brooklyn. Oh, we're on page 62. I know you. I I know you don't think so because I have a neutral accent.

OK, 62 One was selfishness and self-centred. That's the problem,

OK, on pay on 62 two so troubles we think are basically of our own making and they're going to start owning responsibility. OK. And that's what our program does is give me the responsibility and halfway down paragraph two above everything, we Alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. God makes that possible, and there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without God's aid.

All right, now, one of the things about people saying that they can do it by themselves, I come in here with distorted thinking, delusional thinking, as we found out in the first step. And I'm going to try to fix a problem with delusional thought. So when I add a problem plus delusional thought, I get delusional results. And yet I'll live in it because I'll think that that's good,

OK? That's why we have to be willing to change everything,

because I've noticed 11 paradox is the person that's usually not willing to change everything usually winds up changing everything. But if I become willing to change everything, I really don't have to work that hard. That's the paradox of the program. So once I become willing to do anything and everything, I usually don't have to. Very true. I've learned that to be true time and time over again. It's about one of the other promises we'll talk about later on is that the willingness to fight

the war is over, so we can't do without. Self delusion is what does not work here

We had to have God's help. That was the last sentence in paragraph two his here's the solution and the solution of self centeredness. OK 62 three and a requirement. First of all, we had operative word had to quit playing God. Next, we decided that hereafter, in this drama of life,

God was going to be our director. He is the principle. We are his agent. One of the

metaphors are thrown up in the next to last line keystone of a triumphant arch. The keystone is if we set the cornerstone and we start coming off that square cornerstone and build an arch, that middle one that holds everything together that those two sides rest on is called the keystone. All right, That's the building metaphor for what we've just done. We've set the foundation, which is up first,

the cornerstone, which is our second, and now we're setting the keystone in our third step to walk to freedom because there's the promise at the last, the last three sentences of the last three words on that page, Path to freedom, page 63. Here are the third step promises. We read the 9th step promises all the time, but there's promises when we sincerely, that means honestly

took such a position, which means that we've done all the things that we talked about.

All sorts of remarkable things have happened. We have a new employer that's all powerful. My employer provides what I need. If I keep close to him. We become less and less interested in ourselves. We become interested in seeing what we can contribute to life instead of taking from life. We felt a new power flow in. We enjoyed Peace of Mind. We discovered we could face life successfully.

We became conscious of the presence of God, and we began to lose off fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter. We were reborn. Reborn is a new beginning. Losing our fears, they're setting us up for the 4th step because that's one of the things we look at in our 4th step is our fears. That brings us to the prayer and the actual