Steps 6 through 11 at the Men Among Men group's conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

The guy that was up here this morning looked a lot like me, didn't he?

He was filthy,

clothes stunk, so we jacked him up, drove a new guy under him, and here I am. My name is Larry Scott and I'm an alcoholic and I'm free this morning or this afternoon, whatever time it is.

It's morning where I'm from. Say good morning.

All right, Sammy wrapped up

step 8.

No, she didn't. She wrapped up Step 5.

Bear with me.

And after you've done

step five, you do this fifth step prayer and it says we thank God from the bottom of his heart, from our heart that we know him better. And then it says we take this book down from our shelf. I sponsor guys who will actually go home, take the book, put it on a shelf, reach up and take it down. We're that exact about this work. I know a guy in Tennessee. The book says we write a four step in in black and white.

He actually told me that if someone showed up at his house with a yellow legal pad and blue ink, he made him go home and rewrite it. That's a little extreme, but my guys put the book on the shelf, take it down and it says that we carefully

read the 1st 5 proposals, one through 5 and and we ask, and this could be you're asking yourself or God for inspiration. It says we ask if we've omitted anything because we're building this archway picture, if you will, an arch through which we're going to pass free people.

And it says, are we trying to build

this foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand?

Chris alluded to it last night. We have a, the book calls it a cement. The first part of that cement is the common problem. That's why we're here. And we have a common solution and that solution is found here in the 1st 164 pages.

The solution for me will work for the women, the men, it doesn't matter. It's a common solution. And we can absolutely agree those are promises from the book. And it says, have we tried to make mortar without sin? And then on page 76 it says if we can answer to our satisfaction, then we look at step 6.

Step 6 isn't a working step. I mean you look at it and it starts out. The first word is were past tense entirely ready to do what? Have God remove all these defects of character.

The way it was explained to me and the way I hook up with it is it says

it's the only time I reference this book. Nothing wrong with this book, but the directions are in this other book says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

We're entirely ready. You've sat with another person for a piece of time.

My longest four step or fifth step with a guy was 17 hours

defense attorney out of Chapel Hill, NC and he wore me out. But at the end of it he had admitted time and time and time and time and time and time again how dishonest, how fearful, how selfish, how self-centered, self seeking and how inconsiderate he had been throughout the entirety of his life. So my opinion and the way I hook up with this, we're entirely ready. He is hit a bottom with those behaviors.

If you hadn't hit a bottom with your alcoholism and those behaviors

couldn't be here today, you'd be out there just not drinking. But we've hit a bottom with that. So we come in here to find the help. We're entirely ready. That's the question you got to ask yourself. And it says the book is only got 2 paragraphs on two steps. Wilson later on in years in the 50s, he came back and he wrote this. He said, whoa, wait a minute, there's a lot more meat to those two steps. I need to give it a little more, a little more gas. So he printed

a better version of

what these steps mean in this book.

So you pray,

you say if we still cling to something, we'll not let go. We ask God to be willing to let it go. Step 6

And then it goes. When I'm ready, I say something like this, my creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, the good and the bad.

I love the way my friend Kip Collins puts it. All the character flaws that I walked in here with are still with me there. I talked about it this morning. They're with me. They're convenient, they're familiar. It's easier for me to tell you a lie than it is for the truth, because that's the way I live. It's easy. If I walk into a convenience store and I'm looking for a pack of gum or a pack of mints and there's a line people buying lottery, it's so easy for me to pick that box of mints up, stick it in my pocket, and sashay out the door. I'm a thief.

It takes effort for me to wait and have that acceptance and tolerance. I don't use the P word

man, patience is a bitch, but I I use acceptance and tolerance of those that are wanting to gamble. And I wait, knowing I got to be at the meeting at 8:00 to pay for the mints. So all of me, the good and the bad. My character flaws are just below the surface and they're so familiar. They're so convenient. I can pull one out and use it.

A lot of people don't know it. I do.

I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character that what stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.

That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to fit myself to be of maximum service to God and to you. If I'm still living in those, on all that stuff that we discovered back in four and five, not going to be very effective, am I? I'm passing along the mess instead of the message.

Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.

And then it's got the word Amen. We've completed that step

now we need more action. I thought we'd let up on that, didn't you? Well, this comes out of the chapter into action,

not into thinking.

We're still doing the work here. And it says we look at steps 8:00 and 9:00. Samantha covered your eight step list. When you made your four step, you got all the you got the grudge list, you got the people you hurt, your sex, and you got a list of people and and things that you harmed and it harms inventory.

So aid is done.

My experience, we sat down, I sit down with my God, my guys sit down with me and we go through that because at this point, I know the cause of these of these resentments and these harms and these sexual things. And we make a list and, and what I do, I'm not going to draw. It takes too much time. There's four columns. Got it from Joe and Charlie. Now, the ones that I'm willing to do now, those are usually the tough ones like

Mom,

your best friend,

all those are going to go, oh, Larry, it wasn't that bad.

So we go out and we do these. We do the ones that we can do now. Now also means those that are convenient. I sponsor a lot of guys are from there that are from outside Atlanta. They're from other states. And those guys that they've got to go back to their home and make the amends. They go in the next column, which is later.

Then there's that third column. It's maybe, I'm not sure if I'm going to make amends to these people yet. And then you got that fourth column. That's never, I'm never talking to that son of a bitch. Screw them. I don't know what I'm going to miss. He hurt me too. She hurt me too. But what happens? It's a trickery. I love this because when you get done with the now column, the maybes move over.

No, the laters move over, the maybes move over and the microphone and and then the the nevers move over to maybes. You see where it's going here because what happens once you've got experience

in that 9th step immense process,

you realize it's not the big booger bear that you thought it was. Now, I'm not going to stand up here and, and, and, and, and insult your intelligence saying that, oh, the 9th step is a walk in the park is it's not I've been thrown out of people's offices. Why? Because I harm those people to a degree that they could not find forgiveness. And it's OK. It's not about how they take the amends, how they receive it. It's how I how I carry the amends, how I deliver it, because it's my side of the street that I got to get cleaned off.

I want to be free.

I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this because we've got all sorts of events.

I mean, we got Home Depot back at back home. I don't know if you got them in this country, but there were there were years that I would walk in and I would steal something

that was worth 50 bucks. I'd take it back to another Home Depot, get the money for it, and go get what I had to have.

Makes sense. So I harmed Who Did I harm? Home Depot? Yeah. But did I harm you? You betcha. Because if enough dope fiend Alcoholics like me are going in there doing the same thing, prices are going to go up. They're going to have to buy more security cameras. I'm harming a lot of people by my by my behaviors.

There's one I'm going to share with you and I'm not. I'm not sharing this as a suggestion, it's my experience.

I have a sister-in-law.

I harmed my brother and his family for years in a lot of ways.

She married up. It's my opinion. She she came from a lower class kind of family and she married him. And this guy's got enough money to burn a wet dog. I mean, he's got big cash. So she marries into this family and she's observing my behaviors back in the day and I'm running with her oldest son.

We're out shooting dope, drinking liquor, wrecking cars, doing what we do. And she blamed me for that.

He caught the bullet too. He's got the genetic thing, but she doesn't know that. She lives in a world of ignorance and misunderstanding. So it's my fault that he's a dope fiend alcoholic, right?

Well, what she did is she drove a wedge between me and my family. She would not allow me to to come to that home.

She did not and this is my fault. I'm not blaming her, I created this. But what it did is it divided me from from my family that I love dearly,

my sick mind. I wanted to do that amends with her face to face by God, my way. And when I got done, I wanted to say, oh, Larry, it's OK. Come over Sunday, I'm going to fry some chicken and we'll have fun like we always did. I knew damn good and well I wasn't going to happen because I would see her at family events, reunions and funerals and that. And I could not approach her. She would not allow it.

16 years passed. I'm dying inside. All my amends were made. Her whole family,

some of them went well, some of them didn't go so well, but they were done. And she's hanging out there, eating my guts out, renting all this space.

So I call my sponsor years. And I said, Bill, I don't know what to do, he said. Write a letter

because I wanted it done my way. Finally, 16 years I went, God spit, just killing me. So I called. Billy says write the letter. I said OK, OK, so I write the letter. Two paragraphs, very to the point, very simple. I call my sponsor, I read the letter, he said mail it. Now here's what happened. My experience. I walked out of my house, licked the envelope, put a stamp on it, open the door, Very, very vital. Stuck the letter and shut the door. Everything's still cool, but here's the trick, guys.

When I raised the flag on that mailbox, boom, I was free.

Because here's why I had no expectations of fried chicken on Saturday.

I had no expectations. She was going to call me up and say, oh Larry, you're the greatest guy in the world.

Never happened. But my expectation level had been diminished to a point to where I'm OK with me. I've run into her since. She still won't let me approach her, but I'm cool with that.

Do you see where I'm going here? It ain't about their freedom. They don't care if you ever make amends. Some of them do, but it's about us being free. I don't know what you want. I want all the goodies that are in this book. There's hundreds of promises in here.

I want the mall.

Typically, I want to know

and I'm going to go into this financial thing. We, the book says that many Alcoholics owe money. Well, blood. Who to thunk it? Well, the financial thing, the book lays out some general ideas. They're not going to pinpoint your situation. They might, but they give a general idea of the way we approach this process. But the the the best idea that it gives us, we approach these people with money in hand

and it says making the best deal we can. I'll give you an example. This little guy's Hunter I talked about this morning, 98 days.

He met with his dad Wednesday night. This is so cool. Hunter has he and I had walked through the immense process with his family. He says I, I, I calculate that I owe them about $3000. I said cool. So he goes to meet his dad and he says dad, I'm really sorry about all the money I manipulated and stole and da da da da da. I. My calculation says it's about 3 grand.

His father has his laptop and he does this. He goes, well let's see here

he says my calculations. Is this more like 7?

So hunters got a blank contract that we drew out

and the contract says, you know, data. I, Hunter Dean, estimate that a blank amount of money and I plan to pay back X amount over X amount of time. So they filled in the blanks. They both signed it and his dad called me the next day, says I don't know what you did with my kid.

He says I've been paying for treatment Centers for years for this kid. He says what did you do to him? I said I didn't do anything. I showed him what I did, I took him, I showed him what I did and God intervened. Could have thunk it.

So he arranged the best deal he could.

He will stick to that deal. And guess what? God's got him. There's so many different forms of amends. And the last one I'm going to touch on is that sex thing says it. Say, say that we've been unfaithful to the one, to the to the number one. Do we tell them

my rule is no because you're creating yet more harm and if I lose you here, stop me. Because this is very key. Especially the women.

Why would I go back and share an infidelity with the woman that I profess to love? To get the bullshit guilt off of me? To make her to To make me feel better and harm her more,

the book says. We think not,

and I don't know about you.

My life has been nothing but thievery and sexual misconduct, and I stand here to die free, telling you that for 22 years. That is not my story anymore, not at my hand. It's from the intervention of a power greater than me

at the end of this step. I don't. Do you guys read the night step promises in your meetings?

You do? Is that a yes? Good.

Thank God I have an opinion up at the podium. I have an opinion about that. I don't know why the fellowship chose those promises to read at meetings because my experience was I came in here and I'm just making and shaking and they're reading all this stuff. There's 12 of this and 12 of that. And then they read this thing and it says you're going to be amazed before you're halfway through. And I'm going really halfway through with what? The meeting this coffee halfway home. I had no idea. You got new people coming in here. They don't know what the hell that means. And where do you find it? All the way back 80

into the text. Just my opinion because the book that we've already read about 150 promises up to this point if you've taken your people through this.

Spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. Thank God each each morning in prayer meditation, we ask our Creator to show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.

At the end of that step or at the end of the work, it says we should. And this is some clear cut direction when you're out there making these direct amends as I look you in the eye because I need to see how you're receiving the amends that I'm bringing.

Internet bullshit, phone calls bullshit because people on the other end of the phone going yeah, whatever,

whatever. I need to see the way you're receiving this. So from that day forward, I know how to what I where our relationship really is you with me here. Direct amends,

just the way I do it says that we should be sensible, tactful, consider it humble, without being servile or striping. Do you know what? Do you understand what servile means?

And big on words. I love words. Love these little dictionaries.

I could spew out what I think it means but here we go. Slave like an attitude,

submissive feeling less than when I got here. I'm a shoe guy. I walk, I step up in front of you. I could tell you what color your shoes were, but I had no idea what your face looked like. So that's that's survival today. I can stand on my own 2 feet and I can, I can, I can look you in the eye. And that's one of the promises from the book. And it says scraping. Scraping is irritating. Horse quarrelsome, aggravating.

You walk up and you go, here's your damn money.

It's not the way it's done

that's scraping.

So if you do that, we come to the 9th step promises. This is what happens after you have embarked. I didn't say completed, embarked on the nine step process.

Bear with me because I'm going to break this down a little bit because I don't know what happens for you when they read that or what happened or how it works. But when I hear those things in a meeting, I hear

because you hear it over and over again. But do we ever pause to think about what they're saying here? If we are painstaking, Painstaking is busting your ass on any length to get this done, about this phase of our development, the night step phase,

you're going to be amazed before you're halfway through with this process. You're going to know a new freedom. That's what I'm looking for and a new happiness. I didn't know what the hell happiness was when I got here. There ain't a lot of happiness in a dumpster cardboard box in the cold.

We're not regret. The pastor wish to shut the door on it. My past. If I can draw from my past, it helps catapult me into a future because I remember where I came from. I never want to forget that.

You'll hear about that tonight. December 31st, 1987 was a. It says we're going to comprehend the word serenity.

Yeah, I saw it in you. But now I'm beginning to comprehend it because I'm doing the work. I'm going to know peace. I know what? I know what that is. Peace and freedom for me are about the same thing. There's nothing inside me rolling around and and driving me crazy anymore, beating me over the head. No matter how far down the scale we've gone, we're going to see how our experience can benefit others. I run into Larry Scott's on a regular basis. I bet that's your story, too. Guys will come up to you and you got. You look at him and they're shaking and snaking and you go

boy, this is going to be a rough one and you start digging into the work and you find out they're just like you.

Damn, I got this 22 year old kid. The only difference is he's got hair,

he's a little taller and he's got youth on his side. But our paths are the same. He thought he drank, he used, he, he, he, he, he did the same things I did. He's facing the same consequences. I love this kid.

That feeling of uselessness and self pity. That's that third column of the inventory. That self esteem stuff will disappear. We're going to lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

What can I do to make your life better?

That's what it's all about.

Self seeking will slip away. I'll give you a ride to the damn meeting, but when you put gas in my car,

yeah, I'll get you a coffee, but you're going to owe me one.

Selfless. We walked in here, the most selfish sons of bitches on the planet. The goal is to become selfless and I'm going to go ahead and beat this horse right now and get it out of the way.

There are people all over the all over the world that e-mail me or call me because of this.

One lady in Scottsdale, GI Genie is threatening to put up a website called the Larry Scott Shopping Cart website. You know, you go to the grocery or you go someplace and they, they, they loan you a shopping cart, right? You with me? Y'all got those over here? And you go in and you buy a 24 pack of toilet paper

and you buy a case of dog food or Coca-Cola and you fill this thing up. Well, they loaned you that cart so that you can have ease and getting those goods back to your car. It's not your cart. They loaned it to you. And here's what we do. We get it to the car, we unload all the stuff and here's the look. We go,

and then we jacked the wheels up on the curb.

You ever do that? They loan you the damn court. The best thing you can do is take it back. I don't care if it's snowing. I don't care if it's cold. I don't care if it's raining. They loan you the cart in in in the United States, we got these little cart corrals. They're convenient. I've seen people park next to one and leave the damn cart in the middle of the parking space. Take the damn cart back.

I don't understand it. I I don't understand it. If you ever go on the my I got a Facebook page going there. You'll see me pushing shopping carts in in in Jamaica.

I got Charlie y'all sitting in a in a shopping cart wearing a Harley helm and a Harley, Sir, big guy. Anyway, take the damn shopping carts back. I have our whole attitude when we come here, we're trying to change our attitudes about three things. The book uses the word attitude throughout our attitudes about ourselves. We're not really pieces of dirt. Our attitude about our fellows, because I don't think you like me, therefore I don't like you.

Flawed thinking. And the third attitude is about our Creator

God. As you understand God change of attitude, it says our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Life ain't out to get me, man. Life ain't changed just because Larry Scott quit pouring drinks, drugs and alcohol in his in his body. I haven't you know, life ain't changed. Life still deals me the same hand that dealt me back then. I'm just dealing with it raw today.

Fear of people in an economic insecurity will leave us. I don't have fear of you today. I had, I had. I am. Chris knows this. I live in economic insecurity on a regular basis because I'm self-employed,

but the trade off is worth it because when it's rolling, I'm free. But when it's not and I'm in the financial and security, I understand that God's there and he's going to come and grab me and he's going to pull me through. He always has, and I have undying faith that he always will. I call my sponsor and he says, how you doing? I said, well, you know, I don't know if I can pay my bills this month. I know God's coming. I just wish the hell he'd look at his wristwatch.

He says God made watches, he doesn't need to look at him.

That's my guy.

So I have economic insecurity. I just don't have the fear of it because my faith has overrode the fear. Makes sense.

We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. When I get that letter from the Internal Revenue Services, A, you got back taxes, I call them. I don't shut my, my, my drapes and go pull the covers over my head. I deal with it. We'll suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. Doesn't say gradually, it says suddenly, why? Because you've done the work to this point. That's why these promises are here. And then the early fellowship,

the authors of the book asked, the early fellowship says, are these extravagant promises? And they they respond by saying, we think not.

I don't know about in this country, in our country, we have that Channing thing going on, but they're not talking to you. They're talking to the early fellowship. And it says they are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them again. I don't want, I've never done one of anything. I've never had a little bit of anything. I want it all. I like double S triples. Give me, give me, give me, give me. My favorite thing is more

so why the hell would I play with this when you've promised me a freedom beyond my wildest imagination?

Why would I just dibble with it? I've been screwing with Henry Care ever since he's rolling these little tiny pin sized cigarettes. Roll a fatty man, get it out of the way. Let's get this thing done, you know? I mean come on, you can't use your little machine, but hell man, spin it up. Let's go. I used to take double wide papers, man. I had to have a spliff, you know what I'm saying? Let's go. I don't like a little bit of nothing.

I mean, I want it all.

All right, so that wraps up step 9 and it says this thought brings us to step 10, which suggests the Fellowship will tell you that 1011 and 12 are maintenance steps. My book doesn't say that. My book says are growth steps. I don't want to do this. I don't want to get done with nine and get to right here and just go like this. I want to keep doing this. I want to keep rocketing,

says We continue to take personal inventory and continue. They use the word continue four times in this paragraph

says continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.

We vigorously not kind of dragging your ass, vigorously

commence this way of living as we cleaned up the past. So you're out there making the amends, but you're already intent. You're already intent. You don't finish your night step events before you start this ten step process.

You know you hurt somebody out there and you're and you're going. Well, I'm not to 10 yet, so I'll just come back and see you later. No, now now

says this is not an overnight matter. There's a time frame.

It should continue for how long? For a lifetime. This is the way we're going to live from now on.

The book is now going to take you through the majority of the steps and here you go. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Step 4, when these crop up. Now if when these crop up, we pray step six and seven, we ask God at once, not tonight to remove them. If I come out there right now and I walk up to Smart with a 38 and I shoot him in the foot, are you going to wait till like 8:00 tonight?

Go get that taken care of? No, you're going to do it now. So if you're going through some emotional pain, why the hell would you wait till 8:00 meeting to go in and throw up in the meeting with that crap? You know, it says

when these crop up, we ask God to remove them. And then step 5:00 we, we discuss them with someone, someone immediately. Step 8-9, we make amends quickly. If we've harmed anyone, Step 10, then we resolutely no step 12, I'm sorry. Then we resolutely turn off to.

So they just went through those in half a paragraph.

So we're continuing to live this way of life and there's a promise. Love and tolerance of others is our code.

The love part I got. I can love the hell out of you. Tolerate you, boy. That's an order

kind of like that trust in real life thing. Then it goes on. It says we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. And here, here they're assuming says for by this time, sanity will have returned.

Insanity was our problem when we seldom will seldom be interested in liquor. These are 10 step promises that right back on the heels of the of the nine step promises.

If tempted, we recall it from it's from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally we find this will have happened automatically. And I, I love Bill is just so repetitive and he's in his promises. We'll see that our new attitude is toward liquors being given us without any thought or effort on our part. Wow, how did it happen? Think it might have happened somewhere in the early 9 steps.

Promise. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. Miracle. Something can't be explained. You do the work and it just shows up. Chris talked about it last night. You do the work. You can't stop these promises from coming through.

They're coming.

We're not fighting it, or neither were you avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. That's how I feel. I never, ever, ever ever ever think about putting something in my body as a solution to my problems. Today

I think about drinking. I'm an alcoholic. I'm supposed to think about it, but I never think about it as a solution. Big difference.

Not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. There's Bill again. Third time, it doesn't exist for us. Fourth time, we're neither cocky or we're afraid. This is our experience, the early fellowship. It's how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition,

and that's what He's going to take us into.

Up to this point

the text has taken our will away and told us that we had to align our wills with God's will.

And then it goes on to say, how can I best serve thee? This is the 10th step. Prayer. Thy will not mine be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. And here we give our will back. It says we can exercise our willpower along this line. All we wish is the proper use of the will.

We're going to go into step 11. It suggests prayer and meditation. Said we shouldn't be on this. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than us are using it constantly. It goes on. It says it would be easy to be vague about this matter, yet we believe anytime they use the word me or us, they're talking about the 1st 100.

Yet we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions. Basically what they're saying here is you, you develop your own prayer life. I don't know what Samantha prays or Orner. I have to had to develop it over time and I've I've sought out prayer method from from various religious sects and, and and people that I perceive to be spiritual and

I've landed in some strange places with some strange people on this path. Trust me. I mean, I've invited people into my house with their belief systems and

I wanted to cut their throats before they left it. But I'm, I'm a seeker is the point I'm trying to make. Because the book says we seek through prayer and meditation to do what? Improve our conscious contact with God.

In 1995

I encountered a couple of gals that had probably 15 year sobriety at the time and I watched them

in meetings. I saw him all the time and they were best friends and they always just seemed so happy, so grounded, so plugged in. And I I finally approached him one night and I said what are you guys doing? I mean what are y'all doing? They just seem to be ecstatically happy, not goofy, but happy. And through a series of conversations that happened over a month or so, I I discovered that they had both gone to the Unity Church.

Unity is pretty much a neutral

way to worship and it it it somewhat lines up with this belief system in our book and what they had discovered. There was a recovered alcoholic unity minister named Jack Bolin out in Missouri,

and Jack took

a theory

out of Matthew that says we're two or more of your gathered I'm there also. And he took the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and he boiled him down to 8

and he put it into a book called Mastermind Principle.

And these ladies had been prayer partners and sober for 15 years. And they met routinely once a week and they would pray together. So I'm interested. And I said, would you hook me up with this? And I said, you betcha. And so they bought me the book and I'm sponsoring a guy named Greg. And we get together and we look at the book, we kind of study it a little bit. We cherry picked it and we put together a prayer format and for the last 17 years

I've routinely had a prayer partner. Not the same one. The one I've got now is my book study partner Christian

and and we routinely pray every Thursday night at 7:30 at before our Home group meeting and other men join us Now. This isn't this isn't a Jesus Christ thing. This is God as you understand him. I hold these men's hands every Thursday night

and I know the belief systems of some of these men are Catholics and some of them are Baptists and some of them are Buddhists and doesn't matter. I've been holding Christian's hand for six years, praying in this circle. I have no idea who or what he's praying to. Never ask, don't care, and will never ask him. It's none of my business. Here's what I can tell you to be fat. He has a God in his life that's manifested in every step he takes. Because he is. He's growing and blowing, baby.

He's hooked up

God as we understand them, and I share that with you, not trying to sell you my belief system because I could careless. I'm telling you what worked for me. I'm a seeker and I've sought all my life through all sorts of religious disciplines. And where I landed

is here. Is this going to stay Hell? I don't know, but it's working today. It ain't broken. I'm not going to quit doing it for a minute. I had a man asked me if he could come in and do morning meditation in the morning. You betcha. And I'm going to turn them on to this under this prayer method. Hell, I don't know, but this is this is because I want to grow. I don't want to stay where I'm at.

We doing OK. Where am I at

so far?

Damn. In this particular section of the book, there's seven prayers in two pages. So you think they think that might be important?

Again, I come down somewhat hard on the fellowship because the fellowship is is is giving us some improper information.

It, it absolutely

goes against what's in this book.

It ain't in this book. I got guys that come to me and I say, tell me about you, tell me about the program because these guys have been around for a minute. And I said, well, I do this and I do that and I'm a third step, make a prayer and I do a written test step every night. So really,

where's that in the book?

10th step in a night time deal. 10 steps of walking around step. That's a daytime deal.

The 11 step is a nighttime deal, according to my book. I don't know about the the the Icelandic version, but that's what this person says because it says when we retire at night,

Levitt step, we constructively, not destructively. God, I wish hadn't done that. I hit that guy's car door. No constructively. What did I do that was good review my day. Now, if you want to write out this inventory at night, cool, go with it.

Been around here for a minute. I can turn on the machine and I can look at my day just like a projector and I go, I shouldn't have done that. You know, I constructively look at my day.

This is the daily deal

and you ask these questions. Were you resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid? Do we owe an apology?

Have we kept something to ourselves which we should have discussed with another person

at once?

Will be kind and loving toward all.

What could we have done better?

And then ask where we end the old behavior? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?

Are we thinking of what we could do for others? Of what we could pack into the stream of life

morning. But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. We pray after making our review. We ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken taken. Continue step 11 in the morning, it says. Upon awakening, we think about the 24 hours ahead.

I've actually pull pull some excerpt from this these two pages and put it into a morning prayer that I sometimes exercise. We consider our plans for the day we before we begin. This isn't after you've had the coffee and and and check your emails. Before we begin, we probably ask God to direct our thinking, especially to be divorced from self pity, dishonest or self seeking motives.

Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all, God gave us brains to use.

I thought life, here's a promise will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.

I don't know what you've heard since you've been sitting in this room for the last two days, but what we've been talking about is the problems here is our thinking. We got flawed thinking,

wrong motives,

thinking about our day. We're still home. We may face some decision. Not sure what I'm going to do.

We not be. We may not be able to determine which course to take. And here we pray again. We ask God for inspiration and intuitive thought or decision,

and Bill has has referred to this vital 6th sense up to this point. Here's the 6th sense. What used to be the hunter, occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Things that used to just throw me in a tailspin, all of a sudden I go, oh, wow. I get, yeah, you ever have that happen? You just know that this is the right thing to do. And you wonder, damn when that came from,

because at this point you've hooked up with God. Are y'all over there talking about me again?

That's what they do.

We usually conclude this period of meditation with a prayer again, that we be shown throughout the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially from freedom for self will and are careful never to make no request for ourselves. Only