Steps 7-9 at the Primary Purpose Group in Seaford, NY – February 19th 2011

989 My pleasure to bring familiar back.

Hi, my name is Damon, I'm an alcoholic.

I want to thank you again for asking me to speak here, for getting me this opportunity.

It's been a real pleasure to be doing this and I'm looking forward to tonight and to next week.

I think I went a little, I got a little hung up last week by trying to recap first. I'm not going to make that mistake this week. I'm going to roll right into seven. So the, the one thing I'll say is, you know,

having that willingness in the six steps,

and I did talk about this last week, but

recognizing that this is not about me having a job to do now, that this isn't about me having to go out and work on these defects was a really important part of this process for me. You know, because that's what I had always been trying to do throughout my life is trying to work on myself and trying to like get in there and grab a hold of the things that were going on in me and reshape them and, and, and make myself into something different. You know, and what these steps were suggesting is that instead of having to

continue to struggle in that way, instead of having to continue to try to manage, all I needed to do at this point was to ask for these things to be taken. And I really love talking about the second step because I feel like it's something that gets over complicated

painfully commonly, you know,

it's like 6 and seven together are like a paragraph or so in our book, you know, and, and it's very simple. It says when I get to the place

where I'm willing to have these defects taken. And so at this point now I've done this inventory

and I've looked at what's all the stuff inside of me that's blocking me off from this power that also is deep down within me. You know, this is the stuff now that I'm seeing that is going to lead to my drinking again. This is the stuff that's going to lead to my death because it's my only shot as an alcoholic is a connection with this power. And this is the stuff that blocks me off with this power,

then I'm looking right here at the reasons for my relapse. You know, we can talk a lot about

oh, well, you know, I relapsed because I lost my job. My girlfriend broke up with me. I have the people at the meeting didn't respect, you know, whatever it is. And

none of those things are the truth. You know, it was pointed out to me, my, my sponsor and we were taking a look at the four staff. He pointed out a section where it talks about,

you know, resentment, cutting ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. And he said that's the first stage of the relapse.

And it says the insanity of alcohol returns again, right? Because if it's God that's protecting me from the insanity of alcohol, and I'm now cut off from God, well then, now the insanity returns. So that's the next stage of the relapse. It says the insanity returns and then we drink again. And so there's the next leg of the relapse. So I'm looking on this page at all of the stuff that is going to be the cause of my relapse.

And now the question is, am I willing to be rid of it? And so if that's the case, now I can ask Dog Dodd, please take this from me.

Umm, I can twist a lot of this stuff around. You know, the book is just the book and there's words on paper and my ego can get in there and do all kinds of stuff with those words and, and I can set myself up for some real fear and danger, depending on what I do with this, you know? And so I can take that seven steps and I can say this prayer and I can go into it with the idea that, Oh well, you know, just because I ask

doesn't mean that God's going to take this stuff.

See, there's my time and there's God's time. And even though I want this stuff gone, maybe God's not ready for these defects to be gone.

I need a God that makes sense. The whole problem that I had with other people's conceptions of God that I was given is they didn't make any sense to me when I really sat and thought about. And so now here's this proposition that will wait a minute. So I'm asking God to do God's will. I'm saying, listen, my life is yours. I'm going to do your will. You tell me what you want me to do,

but here are these things that are in the way and so I need you to take them from me. How can it make sense

that God wouldn't want to take them? And you know, I've used the analogy with guys that I worked with before. I say, you know, if you were at my place and I said to you, hey, can you take my car and and go round down to the gas station and fill my tank up? And you said, OK, well, so I'll need your car keys. And I said, well, no, I'm not going to give them to you.

So could you take my car and go get gas? You know, And that's the, that's the vision that we have of God sometimes of like I'm saying, God, you tell me what to do.

And now God told me what to do. And I'm saying, but God, in order for me to go do it, here's what I need from you. I can't just go do this thing. There's stuff that's blocking me off. I've got these defects. I need you to take this stuff. Bless you.

God's got to take it. You know, I, I love in the, I have a copy of the text of the original manuscript, you know, before they went in and edited things out and said, well, what's going to scare people off and what's going to, you know, And I, and I love digging into it because I can really get some more insight into the program at times.

And there's a line when it talks about the third step in our text today, it says, you know, we had a new employer being all powerful. He provided what we needed

in the original manuscript. They said being all powerful, he must necessarily provide what we need. And I get so much hope and strength out of that, that realization that if if what I'm honestly asking for is to be able to do what God wants me to do, the only possibility is that God's going to give me the strength to do it. And so now I need to recognize if I'm asking for these defects to be removed and they're still showing up in my life, I've got 2

possibilities of how I could perceive that either it's God's fault or it's mine.

What's more likely? You know, so I could say, Oh well, yeah, I'm perfectly willing, but God doesn't want to have this stuff gone yet. Or I could get honest and say, is it possible that I'm still getting something from this particular defect? Is it possible that I'm not as willing as I'm trying to sound? You know,

I love the fact that right now tonight, 7 is paired with eight and nine. You know, we usually sort of think of like four and five together and six and seven together. And but seven really does leave very directly into 8-9 and, and, and I make much more of a connection with those things. We say that seven step prayer and it says we've not, we've completed step 7,

but now we need action.

Faith without works is dead. We need action, right? And So what that's saying is I can say this seven step prayer

and maybe I don't have faith that God is going to take all my defects away. And so of course then I'm not going to get a whole lot of results out of that prayer. But maybe I do have the faith. Maybe I have faith that God's going to take all this stuff away. And so the next thing they point out to me is, yeah, but faith without works is dead.

And so I can say the seven step prayer and have the faith that God is going to take this stuff, but if I stop right there, I'm not going to have an experience. I need to go out and now clean up the past. The best way for me to experience that these defects are gone is for me to go out and clean up the harms that were caused by me acting out of these defects. That's how I get to experience so clearly that they're not there anymore.

I, I, I have my own twist or my own take on those nine step promises. You know, there's no, there's all these things that they say. OK, so now we're going out and we're making these amends and we're going to be amazed before we're halfway through. We find a new piece and a new serenity and

here people and of economic insecurity will leave us and all these different things. And I think

I don't see them as being the promises in the ninth step. Those are the promises of the 7th step.

If I ask for God to take all these things away, well then that's the result of God taking this stuff away. But the catch is, I have no way of knowing that they're gone until I do 8:00 and 9:00.

If my fear of economic insecurity hadn't been taken, how is it that I was able to sit across the table from this person and give them the money back that I had stolen?

If I'm in fear of economic insecurity or if I've got fear of people, how is it that I sit in front of the person that's put me down, you know, so many different times in my life, but I still have the courage. And I have no idea how they're going to respond to what I'm about to say to them.

But I still find myself sitting in front of them and owning up to my wrongs. You know, that fear had already been removed,

but I get to experience it by doing 89.

One of the things that can happen is I go out into the world in bad habits. You know, I I've been used to living life a certain way for a long, long time, You know, So a situation comes up in my first impulse is to lie. My first impulse is to use. My first impulse is to manipulate, to steal to, you know, all these different things.

The defects are not my abilities to do those things. The defects are the fact that I don't have a choice. The defect is that I have no say in my own behavior. I can't help but lie. I can't help but manipulate. I can't help but steal.

I asked to have those defects removed. Now God gives me freedom.

Now I'm free. I can behave, I can lie or not lie. I can feel or not steal. I've got that freedom to make choices in my life now. And what happens is I need to be conscious throughout my day of what's going on so that I don't start doing the same old stuff, not even realizing that I don't have to, you know, And it's sort of like

another example that I think about, you know, I, there was a cat that I, that I had a pet for a long, long time, you know,

and she loved to eat the bottom of my cereal. You know, when I was done with my cereal, I put the bowl on the floor and let her have the rest of it, you know, and I was so in the habit of doing that, that after she passed, I would find myself, you know, I eat cereal and I and I go down and I put the bowl on the floor

and there was no need for me to do that anymore. But I was doing it because I wasn't thinking about what was going on in my day.

And I can do the same thing with these defects of character. You know, I asked God to take them, and God takes the defect. God takes the need to do this stuff. There's no need for me to lie anymore. God's taken it.

But if I'm not thinking about what's going on in my day, if I'm just running around, I can end up lying even though I no longer need to. And so that also leads into the 10th step, you know, the, the continuing to take inventory of being conscious about my actions. So there's all kinds of things that can lead me to believe that 7's not working.

Am I willing to have that faith? Am I willing to have that concept of God that makes sense and say I'm looking for God to give me the power to do what God wants me to do?

I say that prayer and now I need to get up and go out and act in willingness.

I had an experience early on. I

had lost, you know, lots of jobs in my first year of sobriety. And and so once again, here I was, you know, needing to go out and look for work and, and I wasn't doing it, you know, and I talked to the sponsor that I had at the time

and he said, OK, we need to pray for the willingness, you know, ask for the willingness to go out and apply for these jobs. And So what I would do is I get up in the morning and I'd hit my knees and I pray God grant me the willingness to go search for a job today. You know, when I do that prayer and then I get up and I go over and I turn the computer on and I play solitaire and I wait for God. OK, when's it coming? You know, God's going to. And I said this to him and he said no, that's not how it works. Like

you need to pray and nothing. Wait for God to swoop down and take over, but pray and act like a guy who asked for help,

you know? And it's not act as if you know, that's just more pretending. I spent my whole life pretending, you know, it's not act as if something has taken place. It's half faith and act because something has taken place. I just got down on my knees and asked this power that I've been willing to believe in. Give me the strength. And so let me get up and see what happens.

And when I would do that,

I found all kinds of things took place, You know, in my first seven steps, I would find myself in conversation with somebody and I'd be, I'd be talking to somebody and it was like I would sort of float above the conversation momentarily and, and like I'm watching it and I could while my mouth is moving and I'm talking to you, I can go, I'm being dishonest right now. I'm in manipulation, I'm in fear. And I can see the stuff in black and white for my inventory, you know, my in my own handwriting on the page.

And I had that moment of like,

what do I do?

And I'd find a moment to excuse myself from the situation. I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back, you know, and I go and I'd say the prayer. And what I try to do is say, not God, please, please take these things from me. I already asked that God, remind me that you've taken this from me. Remind me, grant me the faith and the, and the willingness. Grant me the courage to trust that you have taken this for me and, and, and let me go back into the situation

and do something different. And so I walk back in and I'd say I must have the ability to be honest now. And so I'd walk out and I tell the truth and I had these amazing, amazing experiences. And what happened is things change so drastically for me that what's, what's the next logical thing to do? Sit still and say I got it from here, you know, and I stopped. I stopped moving because that things are great. Why should I do any work?

No, and that's why I got to experience that

safe without works is dead. You know, things started to drop off a little slowly for me at first and then more more rapidly, you know, now this was my first pass through and this was not out of out of the book really. And so, you know, the, the guidance that I had wasn't necessarily as strong as, as the second time I went through the steps,

but it was when I, it was when I got up and got to work again that things, you know, began to change. And so, OK, so now here I go into 8:00 and 9:00.

Umm, I've got to make this list of all the people that I've harmed. But the beautiful thing is they say in the book, we already have the list. You know, we made it when we took inventory, right? If I've made this list of all these resentments and now in each one of them I've stepped back and said, let me disregard the other person entirely and look at where I've been wrong,

Well, now I have this whole list of all these people

that I've been wrong in relationship with them. And so now there's lots of things that I can that I can go down this list and say, OK, well,

did I cause harm in this situation?

It wasn't necessarily the case in every single situation. You know, there are times when like when the wrong was was really between me and God. And maybe, you know, in this particular thing, like this person wasn't affected in any way, or maybe they had no idea that it was even going on. You know, I was in judgment about somebody that didn't even know who I was, you know, So of course, OK, well, that person wasn't harmed, but there were a lot of other people on this list that had been harmed. And I also had to take some time and sit with,

is there anybody that I've harmed that didn't make my resentment list? Because what happened is I came across some really wonderful people in in my active years and before I even started drinking, you know, that I had no reason whatsoever to resent them. And yet I had harmed them because I was running around on selfishness and fear, you know, so I got to add some names to the list as well.

And, and now I needed to go through and do some meditation and say, you know, am I willing to

make all of these amends?

Umm, you know, I hear a lot of talk at meetings and I had questions myself about amends that like, well, is it possible that these amends shouldn't be made or these amends can't be made? You know, whether it's someone that's passed on or maybe it's like a violent drug dealer or maybe it's a legal situation or maybe it's an ex-girlfriend or whatever. There could be all kinds of things that maybe it's questionable as to am I actually going to go out and make this amend or not. But the thing that I appreciate

in eight is it saying we become willing to make amends to all of them. You know, if there's a violent drug dealer that I'm not necessarily going to go back and make amends to, that doesn't mean that I just skipped the part where I'm willing to do it. I really do need to sit down and come to that place in prayer and meditation where, you know what,

I'm past the ego that's holding me back from it. I'm past fear that's coming me back from it. And if this is what God wants from me, I would be willing to go and do this thing. You know, and I really appreciate the way that eight and nine are laid out in our book, that there's all these example after example of different things that these guys experience, you know, different situations that they were in. And I got to see things like people saying, you know, here's a situation where I might go to jail.

And they said

we thought that the person should have been willing, you know, yes, we need to be willing to go to jail. Another situation where the guy says, you know, if I stand up in front of my town and acknowledge this thing, I might destroy my reputation. What's that going to do to my family? You know? And the guy says, but I realized if I need this relationship with God, I can't put anything before that. I can't say, well, I'm, I need a relationship with God. But if it means that my reputation might get harmed, if it means that I might lose my job,

well then that I'm not willing to do.

I need to go in and face What am I really willing to do for this new experience? What am I really willing to do for this relationship and

what I got to find the questions that I needed to ask were not do I trust this person? You know, it's not about if I go and make amends to this guy, is he going to find some way to hold it over my head? If I go and make amends to this boss, am I going to lose my job? You know, all these different things. It's not about trusting the human being that I'm going to make the amend to.

It's about recognizing I have no idea what they're going to do and it's none of my business. It's do I trust this power? Do I trust this God?

There's,

you know, a little bit of a tangent, but, you know, around the subject of anonymity. There's a woman that I know on this fellowship

who I think is a fantastic example of these principles. And she's a judge. And she talks about how she's fully open about her being a recovered alcoholic with, you know, the other judges, the prosecuting attorney, the District Attorney, all these people. Everyone knows that she is a recovered alcoholic

and she says I don't believe that God picked me up out of the mud and cleaned me off just to let me fall back in it because I choose to be honest with people about who and what I am. You know, now this is somebody that was able to act as a demonstration to me that it's not about trusting her fellow judges or her fellow lawyers or whatever it is. It's about trucking this power. And I need to do that same thing in 8-9 or I'm not going to be willing to do half of these because so many of them could come back to bite me in some way.

Umm, so now that I've, now that I've become willing, you know, what happened with me as I sat down with the sponsor and, and we talked about these different events and I got some guidance as to how to do these particular things. You know, what was appropriate to say and not say what,

what maybe needed a little more prayer, meditation and what I was ready to go out and do right then.

I've had a couple of different sponsors in this process. And so I, I got to benefit from a couple of different points of view. And one that I appreciated is one of my sponsors said

in, in, in our book, it talks about, you know, it talks about when somebody has had extramarital affairs, you know, and, and should they necessarily like go and tell their wife about the stuff and how is that whole thing going to be handled? And what they say is no outsider could appraise such an intimate situation.

And when we were reading over that, he pointed out to me, he said, you know, I'm an outsider in this. You know, I can't presume to tell you what you need to do to clear things up between you and the power of your understanding. And so he had the faith not in me, but in this process of the steps and in that power that if I had really been giving myself over to this so far, that I would have the ability to go into meditation

now, you know, do I? Is this something that I need to do? Is God? What's that voice trying to say? But he helped to reflect back to me what came up for me.

So regardless of who it is that I was working with, you know, each of these sponsors would guide me. And so I got to go out and have some really fantastic, really powerful experiences.

You know, some of them were more personal than others. Some of them were more emotionally intense than others.

You know, I had situations like I went back to a library that, you know, before I was, before I was drinking, you know, before I was an active alcoholic, but with someone with a spiritual malady that was driven by fear, selfishness, you know, all these, all the, the things that make up the self-centered personality. I would go to the library and I'd say, you know, I never seem to be able to return books on time, but I know I'm going to bring them back.

And So what I'll do is I'll just take this book. I'm not going to check it out. I just

take it and I'll bring it back at some point when I'm done with it, you know? Well, of course, like they never made it back to the library, you know. And so now here I am with this box of, you know, this host of books like, you know, from years of going to this library. And, and this is the kind of stuff that like every time I plan stuff at one on the shelf, there was just that little twinge somewhere, you know,

And this is the kind of stuff I mean, 8:00 and 9:00 for me, the power of them is,

you know, I believe in a God that's forgiving, right? And that I have been forgiven. God has forgiven me for this stuff. Even in the moment that I was doing it, God forgave it.

The problem is I'm not as forgiving as God is. I don't forgive myself for this stuff. And as long as I haven't cleaned this stuff up, I'm not going to accept the beautiful life that's, that's, that's opening up before me in a, a I'm not going to accept the gifts that God's trying to give me because somewhere in the back of my head, I'm like, you did it. You, you succeeded in the con. You got away with the stuff. And there's that little scumbag still in there that I, that I still feel like I'm still that same guy,

you know? And every time I saw one of those books, I saw the little cold, you know, the little Dewey Decimal thing at the bottom, you know? And I was like,

so I show up at the library with this box of books, you know, and I set them down on the counter, you know, And I'm like,

I'm an alcoholic.

I'm an alcoholic who has found this program of recovery. You know, I've been taught that I need a spiritual way of life in order to survive. And what I need to do as part of that is to clean up the wrongs that I've done. And so I took these books, you know, over the years, and I'm here to return them. And the thing that was really, I mean, these people were like, I had no idea what to do with this.

And so they're like, and really like, they found it quite annoying because now they've got this giant box of books that they have to deal with

and they're trying to check them back in and they're looking and they're like, we don't even use this coding system anymore. Like they couldn't even enter the book into the system, you know, So, but that was, you know, but that was one more piece of freedom, you know, now I could look at my bookshelf and not have to feel that.

And, and you know, I'll say on that too, I got some freedom out of that, but that was not the point of having done it. I got confused because I go to a lot of step meetings

and you know, where they were reading out of the 12 and 12 and I'd go to meetings that they said, OK, this is a nine step meeting. And I hear lots of different things. And, and it was an experience that caused me, you know, when when I looked in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and it said, we've discovered a common solution that was such a powerful promise to me because I would be at meetings and hear the the solutions that I didn't hear, that I heard were not common. I hear all kinds of different things. One person would say, Oh, well, you know, in the ninth step

about me feeling better, this is about setting the other person free, you know, of setting them free of the harms that I've caused. And then another, I'd be at another nine cent meeting and somebody would say, this isn't about them. This is about I need to be released of these burdens so that I can live this way of life. You know, when I hear these,

when I was taken through the book, I got to see neither one of those things is true. I got to see very clearly in black and white what they have to say about the point of these amends. They say our real purpose is to fit ourselves, to be of maximum service to God and the people around us. You know, it's got nothing to do with whether I feel any better, and it's got nothing to do with whether the person in front of me feels any better.

Now certainly that's the ideal situation, you know, but what's really taking place in the process of those men's is I'm getting to experience,

I'm going out in faith and saying God has taken these things away. And so let me perform an act of faith and go out and heal this thing. And by my going out and doing that, I now on the other side of that amend and more fit to be of service to God and my fellows. I don't have the same level of fear anymore. And at the very least, here's one human being that I may possibly be able to be helpful to now that prior to that, maybe we didn't want anything to do with each other.

Some of my most powerful amends were to ex girlfriends.

You know, I've heard people at meetings, I heard a guy share, you know, who had a bunch of sponsors and he said, I don't make amends to exes. And I tell all my sponsors that they're not to make amends to their exes.

You know, in our 4th step in the sex inventory, it it says, you know, when we're going to talk about getting the stuff down on paper, it says we were willing to set these matters straight. You know,

I think a lot of the reason that there's so much apprehension about making amends to exes is because a lot of times it can go South,

you know? And the reason it goes S is because my motives may not be too pure, right? Maybe I'm there to try to get the relationship going again,

maybe I don't. Maybe I just want to show that I've gotten better. And look, I'm not that same guy, you know what I mean? And like, there could be all kinds of different motivations. The problem is done to making amends to the X. The problem is that I've got all their motives going on,

and that is going to be an issue no matter who I'm making the amendment to. If I'm going to an old boss

and I'm there because I want the job back or because I want the boss to see that I'm doing better than I used to be, it's going to be just as much trouble. If I'm going to make an amendment to my parents because now it needs money from them, or because I want them to see that in spite of all their screw ups, I'm doing really well. You know what I mean?

It's not the relationship that's the problem, you know. So I need to now, it may mean that I need to do more work to get clear on that, to prepare myself for it,

but it doesn't excuse me from the amend. And I'm telling you, that has been some of the most powerful stuff because that's where I really got deep inside of somebody and did some real damage, you know, And that's the stuff that when I'm sitting here and looking at my life today and saying, do I deserve this or not? Those are the things that haunt me,

the person that was bawling their eyes out in front of me, you know, because of how deeply that I had hurt them.

I want to keep going, but I'm not going to.

I'll just say going through the process of this immense, you know, I got to see little by little by little more and more freedom. And each experience of that freedom gave me more power and motivation. I saw more stuff flowing through me that enabled me to do the next thing, you know, And I'm a momentum got built up. And I heard it explain, you know, this is like Domino's

when the dominoes are stacked close together, you hit one and they all start falling down. But if there's space between them, one falls and it misses the next one, you know, And so if that momentum is going, I need to keep moving. It can be a really dangerous thing to sit still for a little while. And I've been in that place, you know, I got stuck and there was some more that I was sitting on. And I just recently picked back up a couple of cards that had not gotten, you know, had not gotten addressed for a while. And and I'm getting to find out that there's even more freedom

than I had imagined. So I'm glad to be able to connect with that because now maybe on the motivation, go home and look at the next one. And I'm looking forward to hearing from you. So thank you.