The steps 5 through 9 at a step Workshop in New Bern, NC

What's being passed around is an outline for today and something that we're going to use today. I was informed since I didn't do it two weeks ago and I had to write myself a note, but I forgot to write myself a note this time, so I'm going to introduce myself 1st instead of near the end of the it's almost going to say lead. By the way, this is not an AA meeting, OK? It's a workshop on a A. It's a workshop basically going to be of my opinion, but that opinion is drawn on

experience in marking the steps in my study of the Big book. Good sponsorship, good Home group

and the like. But nonetheless, it is my opinion. And so if it conflicts with anybody knowledge, I'm going to ask you to do one thing. Don't, don't throw it out right away. Please sit and meditate on what I say because most of what I say, and I like to believe that all of what I'm going to say is going to be reflected in the big book where you can find it or in the experience of the founders. And I'll hopefully cite exactly what I mean as we go along. But my name is Chris

Dilemma recovered alcoholic and and welcome. Welcome to everyone. Before we start, I usually say the set aside for it. I say this prayer before I read any of the work that comes before me

and when I'm on my journey and I'm on my journey, hopefully 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and set aside prayer. If we have a moment of silence,

God, please help me set aside everything I think I know about myself,

my disease, these steps, and especially I'll.

I pray for an open mind.

That must be the edited form that I don't have in my big book, and my apologies.

We can screw up right, Right, right away.

I that's right. I did give it out last week.

OK, well, I hope hopefully I'm more prepared than that.

Over the last three weeks, we hit the first three steps, the first four steps and the first step being one of hopeless, truly hopeless that we're alcoholic. It's not that we can't drink, it's that we're alcoholic and that's our first step in in recovery. We finally take our inventory and singing our alcoholism

for what it is and what it's been doing to us and how I see that I am hopeless to do anything alone away from my God, which is the natural awareness that one comes from when we take our first step inventory. All all our living out there has been to build up resistance, denial and a defense against that knowledge

that we are hopeless in the inability not to drink.

That's why one of the things that we're told when we first come around program don't drink is really inapplicable to the alcoholic because I have, I don't, I lack the ability of choice. I cannot not drink. So therefore telling me not to drink

is really irrelevant. And that's why in the early days of a A, they tried to get the prospect through the steps

even before they went to their first meeting. They tried to acquaint them with the powerlessness. Because see, once I start putting some time under my belt, the delusion comes back in that I'm doing it myself. Even though I'm biting the bullet, white knuckling and what not. I don't have the ability to sustain sobriety if if I identify myself as a real alcoholic. And we talked about that.

My second step is the awareness that since I can't do it by myself, I need something more powerful than myself.

All right. And to me, it's not the doorknob. Although in early sobriety I thought it was a radiator. I was going to ask my

no, if you listen, this is how I was going to use the radiator. I was going to ask my wife at the time to handcuff me to the radiator because I fear drinking now. A radiator would have been my higher power, OK, at that particular time. It does not work. OK. It hasn't worked for me. That's my experience. That's the experience to the founders,

the start steps and most of this is an internal, but hopefully work through with a sponsor, the awarenesses and the understanding. And then I have the biggest decision in my life to make over that first inventory that I make. And that first inventory that I'm going to make is me being an alcoholic.

The answer to that inventory is that I need God in my life. My third action in program is to see that and sit and take fores and truly ask myself

if I want to stop drinking for the rest of my life. And based on my first step experience, am I willing to turn my will in my life over and do anything?

Am I willing to do anything to stay sober? See that anything, the underlying operative word is anything is because I'm going to kill my ego as I know it. I'm going to kill myself as I know it. All the things that I think I know, I have to be willing to throw out the window. All right, because everything I know

only did one thing for me, even though I knew a lot of quote, good things and I don't really believe in good or bad things, They were things that were inappropriately used. And that's what we're going to go across today in six and seven steps

is the things that I use to keep me out there. That was very effective at it. So I did a good job out there because I kept that awareness out of my consciousness, and I went down the road into alcoholism because I was a strong person,

not a weak one. The weak ones die long before they get here. OK? You know, they say we're a bunch of weak people. They. OK, All right, I dare wanted them to get up at 6:00 in the morning after getting home at 5, shower and go to work. I dare them. That's not a weak person. OK. All right, So what we put ourselves through is implicit. Although I come in here with the thought that I'm a weak person,

there's the duality, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's the misconception, there's the misconception of me, the alcoholic, that I can live in the same world, think of me in two different ways,

that I'm weak, but yet proved and I'm strong in all those areas. OK, So the decision that I make is that I'm willing to go to any length and I'm going to turn my will in my life over to God. Now my will is my thinking, my life is my actions. All right. Now, that doesn't mean that all I'm going to do is go to a, a meeting, OK? And I fulfilled that obligation in my third step.

The obligation in the third step is that I am willing to change all my thinking and think along the lines of what I perceive my God would do,

and then I am going to live by that knowledge. That's a big, strong statement. It's not just turn, turn it over, turn it over. All right? That's a commitment. There's my third step. It's a commitment to God, to myself and to the human being that I am, and to everybody in my life and to the world at large that I'm going to change who I am.

That's a strong, powerful,

insightful, but yet awesome task to do.

Because see, I came in, he is self-centered

and hopefully I'll put that aside just like the two year old. It's totally self-centered that when Mama leaves the room

that Mamma Musta died and she there all alone, OK? That's how I came in here. Is that little baby OK On a lot of levels. Even though I could belly up to the bar, go back-to-back in a fight, All right, That didn't prove my manhood, just proved that I had a certain male testosterone in me. OK,

And and today I walked the walk of following my truth

and I'm the man that I knew I was all along, but couldn't do it because I was in denial of what I needed to do. And what I needed to do was surrender and accept that fact in my first three steps. So the first three steps of the foundation steps, as we talked about,

my first step is the foundation, the second step is the cornerstone, and my third step is the keystone. It holds the arch that I'm going to walk through to freedom. We went over to 4th step last week. The 4th step is going to identify a preponderance of or the grocer handicaps of what I brought into program. And what I brought into program was a lot of fear, rage, anger, resentment, and that kept me out and also the guilt of the harms that I did and I never addressed them. That's what we looked at last week in our fourth step,

All right. And as I'm going to be redundant here and repeat what I said, the basic thing is to get it done all right. You bring into it honest, open and willing. And no matter if you do it that way and you write it down, or you sit with a sponsor, they write it down and you come into the fifth step with a full or at least an understanding

of who you are and what you brought into program that is sufficient for your 4th step. It does not have to be perfect because if it's going to be perfect, I'll never get around to completing it. And then I, I don't and then I don't have to change,

all right, because I am a passive aggressive SOB and I have

perfected my resistance to change. That's who I am. And this is the awareness that it's going to come about. So when I committed the paper or I finally own it to another human being, if I can't write, I'm illiterate. And there's been people that come in here that are truly illiterate and can't write. We help them with that. That's what we're about. Would it be a service to people and a willingness to be the service to people, which means that I have to do away with myself centeredness. And if I can't understand what makes me self-centered and display those character

in my life, I am not going to understand what I need to change. These middle steps

five through 9 contrary to some other beliefs in a a they say that we do the steps over and over again. Well, these middle steps, as I understand them to be is to clear up the wreckage of the past in the process. All right. And I'll, I'll reaffirm that, especially when we get into the 10th step. OK, but I'll give you a little peek. The 10th step says

our new stuff that we've become aware of. So it's not about repeating the old stuff.

OK. That doesn't mean if you think that it's possible, you don't sit down and write. That's not what that means. What it means is that these middle steps are what I'm going to clear up to become new. I like liken it to a forge. All right? I am going to put me in that forge and I'm going to create steel of sobriety,

All right? That means I have to burn my way into that steel of sobriety, but I don't temper it until I get to the 10th step.

I've already made this deal because I've changed from all those iron Nuggets and whatnot that they put into that forge, and I come out with a beam of steel,

and then for the rest of my life I'm going to hammer it and form it into a life of service.

That's what, my 10th, 11th, and 12th before, and we'll get into that next week. All right, so these middle steps are all those veterans out there. It's akin to basic training in AIT. You don't get into the stuff of freewheeling in that tank until you go through basic and AIT. So it's the same thing. These middle steps are a basic change of character from civilian life into where we're going

all right, or from a drunk life into a new life. This is what we're going to form. These are what those middle steps and that's how I come to understand them.

And then we maintain what we have and enhance it and Polish it and hone it in our 10th, 11th and 12th because they continue to take an inventory and so on. OK, so we're up to the fifth step and that starts on page 72.

And if you haven't guessed already, I'm an advocate of the Little Red Book. And the Little Red Book, for those that haven't been here before, is a publication started in pamphlet form in the 40s, was made, as far as I can determine, in the mid 50s into a book. And then it's the last date that I have on. It was apparently changed in the 70s,

but the the book was called in pamphlet form the interpretation

for the orthodox interpretation of the 12 steps and as I went over in the first step is that they took their program seriously. They had fun. They didn't take themselves seriously, but they took their program seriously. I just want to give you a little indication of what they thought of about Step 5. If we have an honest and thorough with our personal inventory, we have listed and analyzed our character defects and have recorded the harm we have caused others.

We have a list of our greater handicaps and imperfections and also the names of people who have suffered as a result of our unmanageable lives and insane behavior. The exact nature of our wrongs is now admitted to God on ourselves. And then talk over with a third person. That's no fifth step. Alcoholic rationalization books

at this honest procedure discounting the need of admitting anything to another human being.

But he also understood the resistance all right. But anytime we see resistance in our program or anytime I see resistance in my program, what I have to do is go back to my first step and I see that I told myself in my first step that I was willing to go to any life. So if I'm willing to go to any length,

resistance be damned, the speed bump of light be damned, I put it aside and I pocket my pride. I happen to have when I did my fifth step. I'd already talked to my sponsor. My sponsor was living up in Montreal.

I said I'm ready to do it. And he starts to go into, and I lived in Brooklyn and he goes into about the thing about the selection of it.

There's no selection. Walter got my fifth step. I drove up to Montreal. It wasn't because I was hiding anything. One of the things that I pinned out is that I'm loyal.

He took me through the steps, the first three and the 4th. He's going to get my test.

To me it was that simple,

but the selection process

shouldn't be too much more difficult than that. You need somebody that understands where you're coming from, even if they you have to teach them where you're coming from. And it's perfectly OK to teach somebody what you're about because you need to acquaint and hopefully somebody that is spiritually based. So if you feel if the meditation that you need to go to a priest, you go to a priest.

That's what we do in a program. We take inventory, we see the solution, we go take it. That's all our program is about. So if you feel whatever, whoever it is that you take your 5th step or give your 5th step, you don't take it, you give it and hopefully the benefit will start coming back. OK on

72 two this actual in actual practice, we usually find a solitary self appraisal insufficient. Many of us thought necessary to go much further.

We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons for it. OK, there's the problem and it's we said before, once we come up with a problem in a big book, they're going to give us the solution. And here's the solution. If we skip this step, this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. OK, it's simple. All right. Remember your first step. Promise that you're willing to go to any length to get sober.

All right on page top of page 73, first paragraph. Not the first paragraph, but the top paragraph, the continuation from the page before. Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell.

We think the reason that they never completed their house cleaning, and this is going to be a part and parcel of the completion of our housekeeping. They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. What's that shame, Fear. That's what we're supposed to identify in our thing. The only thought they had lost their egoism and fear. They only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough humility, Fearlessness and honesty.

And humble humility feels. And honesty really is

to prod that that willingness to go to any length overcomes. And in this sentence we find it necessary until someone they told someone else all their life story and another way is saying all their truth. Because that's what moral is. A moral inventory is the truth about me. All right, you don't go into a store and take inventory in the store and say you have 3 shelves full of stuff when there's nothing on the shelves. And conversely, you don't say that there's only one thing on the shelf when there's 10 things on the shelf.

All this it is, is the truth. And there is nothing that we put down on that four step that we didn't know already. It's just that we didn't see it all at once. And that's what it's about.

And they give an example. He pushes these memories and that's on 73 two far outside himself hope they will never see the day of light. He is under constant fear and tension that makes for more drinking. Now there is a caveat in there. And again, going to the point of perfection,

we deny things so many times and so often that we become immune to what the truth is. So we're not going to know it at times. At this point in our sobriety, it's going to take maybe 1-10, twenty, 110 steps, OK. And one of the things that I, I've been very fortunate enough, I do a lot of 12 stepping

is that during those 12 steps, I start remembering when the denial, the resistance

and son of a gun, you know, that's better than an inventory sometimes, you know.

At the bottom, 73, four we must, is an operative word, must entirely honest, be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world. Rightly and naturally, we think well before the choice of the person, of persons with whom we should take this intimate and confidential step, because that's what it is.

All right. So yes, we need to be cautious, but we don't need to be neurotically where we're resistant to any change.

OK, and there's a rule on the last sentence in 74 one. The rule is we must be hard on ourselves, but always considerate of others. Well, this is our inventory. OK, It's not what I did because up all right. And when we own it to this other person,

we stick to our own responsibilities, not anybody elses. Page 75 One when we find that person,

when we decide is who to hear the story, we waste no time. Again, it's time effective. There's the direction. We waste no time.

75 two gives us the 5th step promises. We hear the other promises almost every time we go to an A a meeting.

Once we have taken a step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace with an ease Alfie is fall from us. We feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. And here's where the spiritual experience comes from. Not the relief of not drinking,

but here's where the spiritual experience truly begins.

The feeling that that drink problem has disappeared.

OK, we don't not drink. The drink problem disappears.

We feel we are on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe.

All right and truly you will or I had felt that and the people that I have the sense of relief, the sense of connectedness comes from being honest. There's the operative word and there's the result and there's the promises that the 5th step gives us and it gives us directions upon when we complete it in the next paragraph, page 75 three. We thank God for the second star line that third line down. We thank God from the bottom of our hearts that we

Him better taking this book down from our shelf. We turn the page which contains the 12 steps carefully reading the 1st 5 proposals. We ask, OK, and anytime you ask, the natural thing is, is that a prayer?

All right, when you see the word ask in the big Book, that's the prayer. Rereading the 1st 5 proposals and proposals of principles and principles of steps. So you go back to page 58 and you look at all of them and you ask have we omitted anything?

For we are building a notch. There's another metaphor for what we're doing through which we shall walk a free man. At last we ask ourselves to the stones properly placed. Those are the steps. The cement is the action we have done and and the mortar is made out of the is what's going to hold the bricks together. And that's our God, the power of God. OK. Is all that put together?

OK, again, what is it doing? It's asking us to do an inventory of what we just did, which is an inventory in the sharing of our inventory.

All right, So old dummy here says, my goodness, they're asking me to do inventory. And that's what we do. We do inventory constantly. Look at ourselves.

If you haven't felt any one of these things and felt relief, OK. When I left my sponsor, I was up in Montreal. I didn't have a shelf to pull it down. I was very anal, you know? Should I put it up on the shelf and take it down? So I follow the directions. OK,

but with that honesty, OK, I sound now, but at the time, should I look for a shelf? Did not seem so silly. All right. And I and I and I went to one of the finer restaurants up in Montreal and I sat down and had myself a steak while I reviewed the book and I reviewed my what? That's to see if I, you know, so I had to give myself some pleasure. So maybe that's where I had my spiritual experience.

All right,

when we're satisfied with that, we come to sex. OK, Step 6 and step 7, and that's on page 76.

OK, now I gave out a handout. If you look on the column side,

you'll you won't find that in the big book all right, but this is a compilation of a bunch that I picked up. I've mixed and matched,

but basically this is what six and seven steps are about. Remember, I gave you the it's the basic training of the forge that's going to fire the steel,

all right? And this is what we do. We start looking at those things #1 aggressive. Why am I aggressive? OK, I have identified that because it's on my field list. That's my defense against you. They're coming in and rattling my cage. I'm going to keep you away with aggression, all right? Some people think it's my New York attitude. No, it's my aggression, you know,

I've tempered it, trust me. And if you don't, anyway,

that's what I mean, we can take ourselves. We don't have to take ourselves serious. But I do take my program serious and I do try to bring into my life of love and service and our code love and tolerance. I'm not perfect at it by any means, but that's what the program is asking me to do. And how am I going to identify the specific things? And this is important for me to identify the specific things that I use

to keep the sunlight of the Spirit out of my life.

So all those things on the left column, the floors of the character defects, these are the things we're going to give to God.

Very simple. Just like we gave our drink problem to God, we're going to give these to God.

All right? Now there's a vacuum created, and the vacuum is that I need to replace it with something nice and simple, isn't it? Program ain't for rocket science, you know,

I'm going to apply those things in my life. So if I'm if I can see myself as aggressive, belligerent, I'm going to work on my good naturedness and my gentle forgiving. Okay, now I know it's not edited too well because if you look down here under resentful, on the other side is bitter and hateful. OK, but there is the last one forgiving.

All right. So when I edited, I split them up, but I didn't split them up perfectly

so. But I'm sure if you sit in meditation, you'll see that resentful, bitter and hateful should be on the left column. OK,

Just just I, I'm sure unless as we identified in in step one, that the barriers to success was brain, that one of them was brain damage, you know, so let's just brain damage. I I'm pretty sure we will now. They they banter back and forth about character defects and character shortcomings. What's this? Bill said it's

needed to make up another one and this and that and all that. I don't know what's true. I've asked

and so I just put it down as simple as this shortcomings, the things that I am not doing that I need to do, and that's on the back of that page and defects of those things that I'm doing that I need to stop,

quite simple. Now, if I'm being aggressive, that's a defect.

If I'm procrastinating, that's a shortcoming. OK, you see something that I'm not doing that I should be doing. I'm being resistant. I'm dragging my feet. That's a shortcoming. I'm not doing something when I'm doing something

that keeps the sunlight of the spirit out. All right? And the reason for this list is not to say, Oh my goodness, what a long list I have. All right, what it is

is to be able to specifically identify because just putting fears down and understanding that I am fearful without identifying the source or a label to it at another level for me has been insufficient. I need to get down to causes and conditions, how I truly keep people away, keep God away from my life,

how I've acted in my past

and with what and what tools. Because actually, character traits are tools and character traits are those that keep the sunlight of the Spirit away from me. And knows that opened me up to receiving that

all right. So

that's why it's somewhat of an extent. And then I gave the caveat at the end. Any other dysfunctional ways of acting, feeling or thinking which cause others or me pain?

Because me being the creative rationalization person that I am, I'll come up with one that's not on the liability list and say, oh, I can keep that one all right.

Also, when people come in or when I came in, there was a certain element, even though I had slight hubris and an ego, I also was suffering low self esteem. All right. Now my low self esteem told me that I didn't have many assets

so I needed those character defects to help me through light. Well see my prayer and meditation I come up with the fact that God has made me perfect. God has made me whole,

so there is nothing that I lack to overcome the deficiencies that I wish to give. My God and my 6th and 7th step. I am a perfect human being

and I give God my negative like I gave God my drinking problem

and when I worked fervently at that,

these go away. When I bring in the lack of trust of my God, when I bring into my life my fears and my resentment, these come back to me. So these are the principles that I'm going to start to develop today to be able to practice in my 12th, the third part of my 12th step. These are the principles of working and reworking who I am.

This is where the bulk of the work comes.

Even though I'm doing away with what I brought in from the past, these things are going to crop up and that's where my maintenance steps will come in and we will see that next week.

So on page 76, the beginning, because it is the shortest of the steps,

all right, you have two steps on one page and me, the drunk will tell you, hey, don't have to worry about it, all right? It's just a short 2 paragraphs, 3 paragraphs. What do I need to do it for?

In very real actuality, it is the bulk of what we do. We're changing a lifetime of behavior.

We're changing our basic makeup. And remember, a complete conversion of thought, as we saw in the earlier chapters under the first step, that that's what I need to do

to turn around and recreate Dow Del. And the reason I need to recreate myself is because of who I became because of my disease. And I again, I am willing to do anything and everything to get wealth

bar nothing.

Step 6, right at the top,

and it starts off when we can answer to our satisfaction, and that is when we sit and meditate over the 1st 5 proposals and when I can answer to the satisfaction of the questions in the previous paragraph.

Then we look at step six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove all these things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all every once? If we still cling to something we will not let go, We ask God to help us become willing.

So they already see and the founders were intuitive that my aggression

in the in the case that it being on the first one on the list, I was not truly willing to let go of that for a while.

Intellectually, I said, OK, I'm willing to be Melba milk toast. OK,

Between the preamble and the our father, I still got to live outside in that real world out there that these turkeys don't know nothing about. All right, Started being nice to the neighbors. Now that was contradictory, you know, to who I've been. I started saying hello to the paperboy. You know, these are the things I do step by step because I prayed for the willingness to do it.

I didn't use my alcohol denial to say screw that. I know what I need to do, just not drink and go to meetings. Because see, it's about a life transforming way of life, not to remain the same. Because how many times do you hear somebody say, I want to change, I want to change and they're not willing to change. No change, no change. It's as simple as that. All right,

so we asked God to help us to become willing and it's going to show.

You know, it's like Fonzie sometimes, you know, I don't like to say I'm sorry, You know, I'm so whatever finds me, did you know I get up there and I swallow my pride because that's what is my pride is because I don't want you to think I'm something that I don't even know who I am. But when we get to learn who I am, I get more comfortable with who I am, and I have trust in my God.

And it's not that I don't care what you think of me, OK?

Because I do. I ask people to take my inventory.

Sometimes I make a mistake at that.

All right,

now they tell me what I don't want to hear.

You know, I only wanted you to tell me the good stuff. But the stuff I've already dealt with that I don't care about, that's the one that I'm currently okay.

When I'm ready, I say something like this. And this is actually the 7th step prayer, All right? So I'm becoming willing to let go of my shortcomings. And this is where I'm going to give my God my defect. And if we can all say it together,

my Creator, I am now willing that you shall have all of me good. And dare I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellow. Grant me strength to go well from here to do your baby. Amen. We have been completed. Step 7

OK, the step is a step that doesn't mean the work is completed.

I say the 7th step prayer with my love a lot. And because we know each other so well, we know ourselves so well. Now we go. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect because I know myself. I am reluctant on everything. You know, there are some things that I have prided myself into, but I need to reinforce that everything,

the essence of it is to know.

And that's what the list is for, to know what you're turning over. So if you stick that list in this page as we go on, if you see a character trait that you seem to be exhibiting and that you know that you need to do something with, identify it before you give it away because it's important or I found it to be very important.

Now this brings us to step 8:00 and 9:00.

Funny how it follows right and the

right after that,

and we're going to repair,

restore, reparate, compensate. That's what we're going to do to the people that we've harmed

on your handout. They take some basic categories and they're going to be in here, but I just called them out of the reading.

We've already made the list. There's no real separate list, but you're going to break down the list a little bit different, at least to understand it a little bit more, because those are your character traits. And the basic categories of the list of those that we've harmed are those we hate to resent because we usually have done something to them,

those we owe monetary reparations to, those which were the incidences of some criminal or crime behavior that I might have caused, and domestic. And domestic includes friends, family, sisters, brothers and whatnot. Society as a whole, all right? And those are the four categories they usually fall under.

All right. Now our right step says to become willing. All right. And again,

as with our and I don't mean to give anybody a back door, we're not going to be totally willing. As I said last week or the week before, when I, I came in with the first three steps, I fully believe under my belt when I came into my first a, a meeting because I was 12 steps in a way that after I finished, I was willing to go to any lengths, including go to these meetings, which I had no idea about. And I was willing to rely on a higher power to deal with my drinking only because I could.

And but I was willing to go to any length. And in my first meeting, I saw that 9th step. And that's the only one that my intellectual rationalization couldn't get around because it's dead sure that you go make amends to the people you harmed. You know, the other ones. I could finagle God in my understanding. Well, yeah, I know God. Whatever. All right. But that one I couldn't get around.

Why? Because I was resistant,

I was guilty and I was still full of rage. Some of the people out there, in my opinion,

deserve what I gave them.

See, I always rationalized and justified my behavior. I would never give you the same courtesy. All right? So if that was the rule for me to go to any lengths, I was already having my doubts that I was going to be able to do it. So when you come to this step, you put the categories that we just talked about into three separate columns,

the ones that we can do immediately,

and that's on the back there. The ones that were resistant on,

but we're still willing to do it. But it throws up some fear and trepidation,

OK. And then those that are willing that there ain't no way in hell that I'm going to do it. All right,

that's realistic to what we bring in and it it, it is covered in here and we're going to go over it. But I just wanted to lay that out for you. The reason being is that

when I was willing to go to any lengths when I first came in, you wouldn't have me going into a jail talking to convicts like I do today. Wouldn't do it. Wouldn't have thought of doing it

because still, I was still full of judgment, remorse, condemnation, and I was still playing God on a lot of levels.

And my God had to remove it.

And it was only removed because I was willing

to have it removed,

but it didn't come overnight. So these three columns that you put them in and the first column is usually the simplest 1. And so that's the usually the simplest because the guilt stimulates me to be a good father and a good son, yadda, yadda, yadda. Sometimes, not all the time,

but it's the restitution of the immediate people in your

last circle of friends that you have before you came into the program. OK,

because if you like me, I've left a lot of circles back there. You know your wife, OK, Because I wasn't the most pleasant person near the end of my drinking. But anyway, I'm talking about the literal circle of friends that I had at the end. Those were the people that stuck with me. But probably if I take inventory on their part, they were my enablers. Those are basically the only ones that the drunk at the end of their drinking has around them. Because

if they ain't an enabler and you ain't helping me drink, I don't want you around me because you're not going to give me what I want. And what I want is to continue drinking. So those those friends are usually the ones that I also step and run through the life of This talks about as a tornado.

All right, so that's an overview of eight and nine. And we're going to do 8:00 and 9:00 now. Now we need more action. And we were on 76 paragraph 3, without which we find that faith without works is dead. Let's look at step 8-9. We have a list of all persons we have harmed into whom we are willing to make amends. We make it. When we took inventory, we subjected ourselves to a drastic self appraisal.

Now we go into, we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the past.

Now this is also setting up view for the maintenance steps. You're starting to clear up the past. The maintenance is the current way we live. This is for our past deeds. Although when I take inventory in my 10th step today and see that I've done a harm earlier that day,

technically that's in the past also. But we bring the principles that we learned in this step

into the making right in our 10th step.

All right, Of course, I'll when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Implicit in that admission is the willingness to repair the harm that I've done. And that's my 10th step. We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of our effort to live on self will and run the show ourselves. That's playing God and we haven't the will to do this. We ask until it comes. Remember, it was agreed at the

we would go to any lengths for our victory over alcohol. So what are they saying? When you become willing or if you're resistant to become willing, you pray and you go back to your first step. Remember your first step. Remember the first day you walked in here just to act of gumming in here with something that you didn't want to do, but it was in any length just to breach the doorway? OK?

So it's with the same tenacity, the same attitude, and the same love that you have for yourself today to do the work

or I have for me.

Step 9 is a humbling step.

That's one of the principles we practice in our 12th step, humility,