Steps 5, 6 and 7 at the first annual Stay Sober for Keeps workshop in Laguna Niguel, CA

Well, I do want to kind of talk about that resentment stuff and, and, and for just a second, because

I where where it talks about, it's kind of like we all have these resentments and we think that we can wish them away and wish them away. And we're not talking about even when we're just come in. Let's talk about when we're three months down the line or six months or five years down the line and we all of a sudden we're more sober and we're smarter and better. And look at me, I'm so successful in a a right. I was like, I've arrived.

But we we start getting these little resentments and we think we can wish them away and we can't. And we really need to be real clear on that. I cannot wish resentments away. So it says that this is our course of action. See, it says to be free to live. If we were to live, we had to be free of this anger because see, one resentment is going to cut us off from the sunlight of the Spirit and the insanity to drink is going to return and we will drink. And for us

drink is to die. And so we have to be free of this anger. It doesn't say you might want to think about it. It says we must be free of this. And who's going to make this possible but God. And so we have a definite course to take now. And in talking about that resentment prayer, I love. I love people. I think get a little bit confused

because I I hear a lot of times, well, I pray for them.

I'm not

because I don't really care what happens to them, right? What I need changed is me. I have to change. My sponsor set me straight on this pretty quick and says, here's our course. Now we realize that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. And a lot of us, we like to stop right there, right? We like to go well, they're sick, bless their hearts,

because we don't want to read on. It says the because my sponsor will look at he goes like you, Julie, love you, but you're sick too, right? And and so we realized that they're spiritually sick. Now, though we do not like their symptoms, like spiritual symptoms can seep out different ways you can we can be arrogant, we can be critical. We can be, you know, whatever it is these spiritual symptoms can. And when they disturb me,

right, If it disturbs me, I don't like that. But then I have to go. Well, they, like ourselves, are sick too, so they're no different from me. I do not get to place myself above anybody. When I do that. I become arrogant if I think because your symptoms are sicker than mine,

I'm worse than you are because then I'm in judgment.

So it says to, it says we ask God to help us. Who are we going to ask God to help us? Show them the same tolerance, pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. Now, sometimes this is quite difficult, especially if we've had somebody that has really, really harmed us, right? So, so, so that's why I say sometimes I don't give a rat's ass if that person lives or dies. And I'm going to be honest

about that. At least I'm honest

because this is what I need to do. It says when a person offended we said to ourselves, Hey God, this is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him?

I can be helpful by not saying a word. I can be helpful by leaving. I can be helpful by never talking to them again. If I can't be patient, kindly and tolerant, right? This is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done. See, who am I asking God to change

me? Am I asking God to change that

guy? Absolutely not, because my world should not matter if they change or not. See, I need to get okay with whether you change or not. The deal is that if I don't change, I'm going to drink again. If my attitude doesn't change, I'm going to drink again. What? What's going to cut me off from the sunlight of the Spirit? But one resentment, right? So I've got to be free of that anger. I've got to be free of it

for me to live and walk free. It doesn't matter what people in this world do, say, think or feel. I get to walk free of that. I have a course of action to get there, though. It's not about me sitting around and going turn it over. I turned it over and then I took it back. Well, really? Then you really didn't get on a course of action. Because if you get on a course of action, I guarantee you, you will be

of this. Does that make sense

going on in the Fear? Is that good? You have anything else on that?

Moving on, on the fear thing, I don't know about y'all, but

I was always one of those friends that everybody would call me for advice, drunk or not like. And and I always considered myself a pretty strong woman. And so when they, when they said you need to write down your fears and I thought that is funny because I am, I fear nothing. I'm afraid of nothing. Or like Audrey said, I will plow through you in a minute

to get what I need. I started writing my fears and I had a book

of fears. And that's why I say this is just a matter of getting pen to paper and we get honest with the paper. I mean, I I wrote down every single fear that I couldn't believe how much stuff, how many decisions, how much you played a part in every decision I made and how afraid I

was of what you thought of me because it clearly showed on the paper. See, we can sit around and think all we want and being the self delusion of what we think we are and who we think we are. But when we get to the paper, and that's what this four step is all about. It's fact finding fact facing to discover the truth about us. It's not to discover the drama. It's to discover the truth about. I don't care how it got. It's kind of like a friend of mine always says, you know, it's, it's like

the sour milk, right? You got, if you're in a store and there's sour milk, I don't care how the sour milk got sour. It's sour. How are we going to discard it and get rid of it promptly without regret? Okay, I don't know about y'all, but that's the coolest promise right there. In the beginning. We're going to discard this and get rid of it promptly and without regret. Meaning, look, when we write this stuff out, it looks ugly.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm sitting here writing. Especially when she gets to the next inventory, that sex inventory. I'm like, I Ouch, right? And so I'm going okey, okey, okey. And to tell me that in the beginning, before I even start putting this to paper, that I promise you, I promise you, and you better promise your protegees promise you as you write this. I promise you, you can get rid of this promptly and without regret,

and God will take this to a different place and let you use it. See, I know that when I made that third step and it's going to be followed up later, I nothing in my life happened because it happened for me. It happened so that I can be of service to Him. How cool is that? I think I'm good.

All right, so back on 68 down at the bottom, we're going to roll into some sex inventory. Where are we at

11:30? So we're getting 1145. OK, All right, so now about sex. Many of us need in an overhauling there. Raise your hands. I'm just kidding. Some of you just voluntarily

take me. We're going to do some sex inventory. But it says above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. I tell you what, I've never heard so many opinions in my home. And when we get down to some sex inventory and really what this is looking like,

how am I interacting with other people and what does that really look like? That's that's the question. When we're looking at this inventory. So it says it's easy to get way off track here. We find human opinions highlight human opinions, running to extremes, absurd, extreme, perhaps

one set of voices, Christ. Sex is the lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the races are race are traceable to sex causes. We don't have enough of it. It's not the right kind. They see significance everywhere. One school when amount would allow man no flavor for his fair, and the other would have us all in straight pepper diet. It's kind of like a spectrum. There are those of us out here who believe in monogamy,

heterosexual relationships. There are those of us that believe in anything goes and you will find a variation anywhere on that spectrum. It matters none. So not interested in your beliefs? Not one bit. When I sit down to look at sex conduct inventory because that's the word conduct, how am I conducting myself inside of these engagements and interactions? I don't care what Julie's thoughts are on marriage.

I really don't. I need to know where are you seeing me

manifesting sickness by my character defects? Where am I showing up? That's what I need to know. I don't care if you think it's OK to be gay. I don't care if you think it's OK to to have sex before marriage. I don't care. And then I'm not here to tell you all the freaky stuff I've done. I've done some freaky stuff,

right? So is, and then it's funny and and there's sometimes that, that you've got some, some pain around that you've got some shame around it and you want to admit some of that to your sponsor. Have at it. You need to get some stuff off your chest. So cool, go for it.

Understand it's not about confession. That's not what it is. I don't need a list of everybody you've ever slept with. I'm not impressed. No one is. I've got to look for causes and conditions inside the confines of these interactions. And so we're going to get down to it. So since I'm not going to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct that is so important as a sponsor, you better get with that. I'm not the arbiter of your sex conduct. I can't believe you had sex before you were married. No,

not OK. We all have sex problems. What a relief. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them? So this is where I get down to, to looking at some, you know, 4th column, so to speak, in sex inventory. So it says we reviewed our own conduct over the years past. I'm not here to talk to you about those men, those situations and what they did to me. I'm here to talk to you about how I showed up and interacted within it. Right? I'm going to review my conduct over the years past. Where

selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate. So this is kind of a repeat of the resentment inventory and what it looked like. Where was I selfish in these relationships? Now I've got to look at that and write that out. I don't check off I was selfish, check, dishonest check. I I need to see it for what it is. So whom had we hurt? My first inclination is to say me, I got hurt and maybe the the other person,

but you want to see a ripple in a pond, get into some sex conduct inventory. Who picked up the pieces when the relationship

broke or when it went through all the troubled waters based on your selfishness? That other person's coworkers when they couldn't show up sufficiently at work? Your family who had to listen to it for years? Your children who were neglected because you were running into yourself, so to speak, in this relationship? Get honest about that. Who got hurt? I've got to know the truth. Did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? This is not always about the act of sex. It can certainly play out in the bedroom, but it's not always about the act of sex

part. Did you play trying to get your way? Where did you call suspicion? Are you shady around the checkbook? Are you deleting text messages so they don't go through your phone? Where are you bitterness? Can you let go of anything? Are you consistently bringing that up? Are you consistently playing the role of the victim trying to shame people into feeling bad? We're a self pity playing a role in your life and in your relationships.

Jealousy. That's about the easiest one to see. What are what have you been jealous of? What have you caused?

Jealousy and other people bound. I know it irritates him when I spend all my time with my mother, so I just do it despite him,

right? That's not about the bedroom, that's about me, right? This is so not about sex. It's really not. It's about the engagement you have with another human being. Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? So this is a point in which my little stage characters come in live and live in color, and I get to see what I did, what I really did. Because most of us, especially all the women in this room, we've been harmed. That's the mentality that we walk into this with. Let me tell you what they did

right. Why'd you stay?

What role did that play? How did that serve you? Wow. Oh, I got to cry about it on everybody's shoulder. I got to be the victim. I got to elude sympathy from the people around me. If you felt sorry for me, I felt OK. Wow. Did you did you slaughter this other person's character in in in the meantime? Absolutely every single time. What role did you play? I've got to look at it since we got this down on paper and looked at it, so it can be just as simplistic as this. I have women that

right out that relationship, write the name, write this. The next question, where were you selfish and jotted down just as simple as we did in the fourth column of the resentment inventory. Where were you dishonest and considerate? Whom got hurt? You will see more stuff pop up here, more pain pop up here. And here's the deal. I've never seen anything more redundant in my whole life. All these relationships, oh, they're all very different. No, they're not.

No, they have different names and different faces, but you are the same

consistently in all these relationships. The way you interact in the way that you try to get your way looks the same. It's kind of like we're all fighting for the power. We're all fighting to be on top of it. And if I can control it, manage it, manifest what I think I need, I'll be OK. Were you? How'd that work? Well, I've got 15 broken relationships on my inventory. Didn't pan out very well.

Didn't pan out very well. It's important to see what does that really look like

because here's the deal, if you want to get somewhere different, you better know where you're at.

Well, I didn't handle relationships very well, but you know, God will fix that later. No, no, get down to it. You want, you want to show up differently, see where you're at, Right. So it says in this way, we tried to shape, oh, it's fluid shape, a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. See, at this point, I'm making a Santa Claus list of all the stuff that I want in a relationship. Julie, who I hate when she does it, she marks through stuff she's written in my book. She's marked through stuff I've written on paper.

Super irritating, but I made like a whole list of I'm shaping sane and sound future ideals. This is what I need in a man and it looked like physical characteristics. It looked like he better be from the South. It, I mean, a whole bunch of she starts marking them off and I'm like, I don't think you're supposed to do that,

you know? But here's the thing, she said. Don't

make a Santa Claus list. Wait on what God's got for you sane and sound ideals looks like. What do I want to bring to our relationship? It is better be the complete opposite of what I just saw on sex inventory. What do I need a partner to bring to a relationship? I'm looking at characteristics. I'm looking at values. I'm looking at core belief systems. The cool stuff, the stuff that matters, right not? Does he or she drive a BMW?

Well they tolerate my smoking. Wow,

really? I remember one of the first first things I tried to shape. There were four things on it. That's how poorly I showed up in sex conduct is that I can only think of four things trying to shape a sane and sound. But we neither one of us could be in a relationship because I'm notorious for sleeping with your boyfriend, right? That that was one. There had to be some sort of emotional involvement because I'm notorious also for kicking a mountain. Nice to meet you.

I was so limited and if I can find that, the word shape would have lost its value

because my sane and sound ideals today are not what they were 6 1/2 years ago. Thank God they have been molded and added to and taken from and and conformed. Right. So I'm going to shape this. It says we subjected each relation to the test. Was it selfish or not? Here's the first sex player. We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them. I'm not out shopping. I'm I'm trying to be everything I said I wanted in a partner. I'm trying to be that.

I'm trying to get with some honesty. I'm trying to roll with some integrity.

I'm trying to be the child of God I was designed to be.

Get with that. More often than not, what we see is an early sobriety. We're all looking for somebody to fix us. Don't. Not because it's a rule from the Big Book, but because don't rob yourself of the experience of what God can do with you first and then let the cool stuff come at you. It's the neatest thing to watch. Watch these men and women in sobriety, since we remember always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathe. And you're going to see that in sex inventory that you've used your sex powers lightly

and selfishly. Do you flirt just because you can? Absolutely. You bend over just a little to the left, make sure he saw it, and pick up the pen off the floor. You know, I love that women always in sobriety complaining about the men are staring me down, right? But you're getting up in the middle of the meeting to go get coffee, shaking your ass right by him. Really, what do you expect? That's right.

It's the truth. And women are we're just as bad if that's right

than the men right? Stop complaining about that stuff because you're using your sex powers lightly and selfishly. Selfishly, I got to get down with it and look at it. Whatever our ideals turn out to be, we must be willing to grow towards it, which means I'm going to stumble and we're going to talk about that in a minute too. I'm going to fall. I made lots of mistakes. I flirted with people, I did all kinds of nonsense. And Julie be like, come on back, let's do the book. He's engaged. See the ring, let's go. Right. I didn't know what I was doing. That's what a sponsor they going to hold you

in and back to the book, but she let me make a bunch of mistakes and bust my butt and run into myself to see what this text was talking about. I'm going to have these ideals and I'll be willing to grow towards them. So it says at the bottom up paragraph. This is your second prayer in meditation. We ask God what we should do about each specific matter. I love this. The right answer will come circle if we want it right. I'm telling you what I've never, I've never been around a bunch of people that had more, you know, God-given intuition who wanted to ignore.

It you know it because it's going against the grain every single time. I know I need to not be doing this or I know I need to jump headlong in this, but just I don't want to. Well then stay where you're at,

Sad. Stay where you're at if you want it. You're about to get taken to another level, a whole another level. But it says God alone can judge our sex situation. That's the truth. Counsel with other persons is often desirable, but we let God be the final judge. I'm telling you, I love nothing better than bounce stuff off of people.

Women in the fellowship, men in the fellowship, My sponsor, my grand sponsor. Let's talk about this stuff. Let's wrestle with these ideas. Cool. Who's going to be the final judge? My creator? Period. End of sentence. End of sentence. Because if you begin to make decisions based on what people tell you they think you ought to do, where will your reliance be?

Always on them. Always on them. If I'd have done every single thing that Julie ever thought I should have done,

I would have had to go to her every time and said, what do you think? What should I do? Should I leave? Should I stay? Should I date this one? Should I not? Her job, her job to get me connected to the power of God so that God can direct me. And if I'm awake, I hear it. And if I'm willing not to go back to step one, I listen to that stuff.

So it says I lost my page. It says we realize that some people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. So we've got all these opinions. The last thing you ever want from a drunk is an opinion, I assure you. Right. I'm going to go to go to the source, which is my God. Since we avoid hysterical thinking or advice. I can promise you this guys, God does not come hysterically.

He does. Those thoughts that you have that are hysterical come from you. He's the one I got to get him right. That's you.

That's not the gentle urging of your creator. Are you flashing back?

She's sponsored me for too long. But those, those hysterite thoughts come from your peers, They come from your family. They come from a lot of well meaning intention people who go no, no, no, don't, don't, don't

get with God. Follow those those nudging's I challenge you to so it says supporting even our own those we got some hysterical thinking. So pubs we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble. Suppose is a big old funny word in that book. You will you'll fall short and you'll stumble because you're still human. You're not going to walk on water because you got sober. Does this mean we're going to get drunk? Some people tell us so A lot of people will tell you so. You made a mistake, you're sick, you're an untreated alcoholic, and you're about to get drunk.

Really. Or are you human making mistakes because you're living life? I love for a woman to tell me. Oh my God, Audrey, I swear, I just feel like I'm making so many mistakes. Good. That means you're living. You've been sitting alone drinking in the garage for seven years. You're you're out here stepping on toes and making mistakes. Awesome, awesome. Welcome to learning how to live. Absolutely welcome to growing up in sobriety. Says this is only a half truth. It depends on us and our motives. Here's the key point. If we're sorry for what we've done and have the honest desire,

let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven, and we'll have learned our lesson. Let me get transparent with you for a moment.

An early sobriety, I was having a sexual relationship with a man who was engaged. I was and Julie said to me, here's here's what the text says. I'm concerned about you. I want to show you what the book says and I want to talk about it. And we did. I didn't get drunk. I was sorry for what I had done. And when I when I was convicted by the power of God, not by my sponsor,

she didn't berate me. She didn't make me feel like the scum of the earth. She didn't do that. But it was in the moments of aloneness when I realized who I had become. I had become the woman that I judged right. That came from my creator who said, Audrey,

you don't want to do that anymore. And I got up and I never did it again. And to this day I've never done it again. But that's not about her saying you better not you better don't speak to him. No, that's about a reliance and an experience with the power of God.

Don't force your proteges to act right.

Don't let them have an experience with it. And if I'd have needed to bust in my butt and drank over it, that's what I needed to do. But be smart enough to get out of the path of self will. Don't interrupt that. Don't interrupt that. That's where the experience is to be found. Can y'all get with that All right? It's hard. It's a hard sometimes it's a beating. So it says. If we are not sorry and our conduct continues to harm others, we're quite sure to drink. If something's brought into my awareness and I continue to choose over and over and over to do what I want to do,

what the literature says is I'm quite sure to drink if I'm not willing to do something different. We're not theorizing. These are facts out of our experiences. You know, many bodies they stepped over to get that experience. Tons, tons. So it says. To sum up about sex, here's your third sex prayer. We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity. That's a good one, and for the strength to do the right thing. Nothing harder than knowing what the right thing is to do

and and having a hard time doing it. What it is like a out of body experience to watch yourself do the right thing.

Some of us for the very first time, it is a powerful experience to step back and go, Oh my God, I continue to make the right decisions even though I didn't want to. How cool is that? That's Alcoholics Anonymous. That's that's what we're talking about. It says if sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. So if relationships,

relations, this kind of dating, your marriage, if you're having problems, don't sit and fix it alone because that's what we do. I don't know why we do that, but we sure do. I'm having an issue. Let me get in the corner and think about it and talk to anybody about analyze it logically. Don't go down to the halfway house and see if there's a man or a woman you can talk to. Go down to the 24 hour club. I don't know if they have those in California. Go to go to a treatment center, a detox, a jail. Go Share your story with a busted drunk,

right? You go to work on them, God goes to work on your issues. Don't fix it,

don't fix it. That's what we always want to do. I'm sober now, let me go to work on don't. Your tool kit is still shady. Don't know what you're doing? Put it down. What you can do is go work with another alcoholic and watch God take care of your problems. We think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge when to yield would mean heartaches, and then they're going to wrap some stuff up. They're talking about inventory in general. Since we've begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality,

we've commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. This is the promise of the resentment prayer. We've begun to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We've listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.

In this book, you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you're convinced now that God can remove whatever self will has blocked you off from him. And it's funny that you came in here not to be drinking. You're trying to get free of the bottle. And what we're they're driving at is you really need to get free of you. That's what we're looking for. Self will run riot. If you've made a decision, meaning that third step commitment and an inventory of your grocer handicaps, meaning your large largest handicaps, you've made a good beginning.

It's like, Dang, I thought I just did something. No, you made a good beginning. There's still a lot left to be done. That being so, you swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself, right? So self has me blocked from the sunlight. 4 step is about getting down to causes and conditions of this so that when I walk into a fist step, I can see the truth and then subsequently get free of it. That's what we're looking at. That's what we're looking at now that we've broken it down. Doesn't seem so big and bad and scary.

Not really. You'll hear a lot of that in the meetings too. Oh my God, you're on your four step. Bless your heart. Don't scare the newcomer with stuff like that. And that's nonsense. It's the most freeing exercise you can do before you roll into some amends and and get into to living in the sunlight of spirit. Julie, what do you got? Well, that's such a good point. You know, we always sit around at meetings and we hear, oh, I'm on the 4th step, the dreaded 4 step, the dreaded 4 step and such a bias because that. I mean, the whole thing about the four step is just to bring light to,

to these, to us, the truth about us. And, and, and the cool thing is, is that for the first time, I actually saw who I really was. I mean, I am sitting there, I actually saw I'm, Oh my God, I'm arrogant. Like I didn't know that. I just thought I was strong. I just, you know, and, and I mean, all these things start coming to light and start coming to light

and, and

that sex inventory and on each inventory. Here's one thing about the four step is that there's so many and I know there's so many different ways that people do it. And, and the book lays it out so beautifully and simply. All you need is the big book. You don't even

and a piece of paper and a pen and but there's different and I don't really give a rat's patootie how you do it. Just get her done, get her done. And I don't care how many resentments you have. I don't care. Just give me your top ten. You know, I mean, people are like I had 70, like I had 130. I'm like, really, I don't know that many people,

but that's all right. And then they're all like, Oh my God, I have to go back to the to the very first person.

Johnny on the playground hit me with a rock. If Johnny on the playground that hit you with the rock doesn't bother you today, I don't care about Johnny on the playground. Does that make sense? It's kind of like everybody wants to do it so thorough that they go way overboard. We're such extremists. God, I love us. And so just get her done. I always say get on your Nike shoes and get her done. Just do it.

But we get to that sex inventory and, and there we go with those opinions and, and I really just want one more time to express that this is about me finding my truth.

This is not about my sponsor pointing out my truth. This is not about my sponsor taking me to a different place. This is about me letting God take me to a different place. Nobody, nobody. Nobody gets to tell me what is right or what is wrong.

Nobody,

Only God does. Nobody gets to be my judge.

Nobody.

Don't you dare sit in front of another human being and do their fist step and judge them. If you're going to do that, get out because that's the worst thing we can do. That is none of our business. It is a business of getting them connected to God. That's our business so that God can take them to a different place if he sees fit.

God alone can judge, period. I can, I can get advice from you guys, 'cause I know y'all think like I do and I know y'all like are on the same page with me. But you know what? When I get quiet with God, that's who gives me my direction. Nobody else does. Because let me tell you, I've had some, I've had some stuff go on and, and when it came to, I had a little, I literally put out next to the sex inventory because that hurt worse than anything.

I was in a relationship, an abusive relationship with a man. I was married to him. And, and when after I did all the inventory, I saw how I put myself in that position and it hurt and it hurt. I saw how I was, my mistakes that I made, I wasn't all to blame. We're not always all to blame, but we have to look for our own mistakes. Where was I wrong? Where, where were my mistakes? Why? Because we got to put the other person

aside, totally putting them out of our minds, right? Putting their mistakes out of our minds. Where did I resolutely make the mistakes so that I can take that to God later and let him deal with me? Does that make sense? So we're looking for the truth about who me I got. This is my inventory, not anyone else's. How free do you want to be? That's the question. How free do you want to be? Do you want to walk free from this anger?

Yeah, We'll come on. We can do it. All right. I think we're breaking for life. On page 72, we're talking about the fish step. So we've just gotten done with that four step and we've written it out and we're like, ow, holy cow, this hurts. I don't like myself. We're like these wounded dogs, you know? And I always say it's it's amazing to me what God does because I believe that truly we're shown a little by little by little. Because if we saw all the truth at once, we'd be like open wounded dogs who couldn't

lick themselves well. So that's why, that's why you're

stuck with us for a lifetime. We got a lifetime of learning of our truth. But in the beginning here it says having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? Here's the question. We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our Creator and to discover the obstacles in our path. That's the goal. The goal is to get a new attitude. Like my old attitude sucked.

I got to get a new one, a new relationship. It didn't say you didn't have a relationship.

It's like, how's that working for you? Let's try a new one. You know, we're going to get a new relationship with this creator and to discover the obstacles in the path and find out what is that self will that blocked me off from him.

It's it's and it also goes on to say we've admitted certain defects, right? Like, come on, haven't we all in our lifetime? I I love I we walked down the street and we can put our finger on the rough items in our life and we can kind of say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that's wrong with me or yeah, yeah, I know I do that. And and that's that's as far as we get. And we just keep walking, right?

Here's the cool thing about this. It says now these are about to be cast out.

What a great promise that is. They're going to be cast out. And this requires action on our part. So we're going to have to do something which one completed will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our defects. And I always say this is not about our sponsor. This is not, I

have to admit this to another human being, but this isn't about the human being that's sitting across from me. This is about me and God, I just need that vessel that's sitting across from me because otherwise I'm not getting humble. Because for I don't know about you all, but I was like one of those super women. I have the big S on my chest. I did it all drunk, but I did it all right. I mean, I, I can do everything and better than you.

So what's going to happen is that we've got to get the S off the chest. We got to get the all that stuff broken down and get to who I am for reals.

It talks about how this is difficult, right? Who likes to say? Who likes to admit their mistakes? I don't know, maybe y'all like woohoo, not not me

I. So it's difficult. They knew it was difficult back then. We know it's difficult today, especially discussing our defects with another person. We think we've done well enough admitting these things to ourselves,

right?

Thought so, but there's doubt about that in actual practice. We find a solitary self appraisal insufficient. Many of us thought it was necessary to go much further.

We will be more reconciled in discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons why we should do so. When I see a good reason, I don't ever, ever want to drink again. That's a good reason.

That's the only reason I need right now.

If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking in time and time. Newer comers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. It's it's crazy because I remember telling my sponsor the one thing that I said I would take to the grave, the one thing that absolutely nobody on this earth would ever know.

And I told it and I admitted it.

And he he kind of chuckled and he said you're not the only one.

And how are we leaving? Was that I'm not the only one. And I it was the deep dark secret that I thought I was so bad and how cool is this, that this gets to be cast out

trying to avoid this humbling experience. They have turned it easier methods. How many times did we all just sit in the rooms trying to avoid this experience

or what? Whatever it is, How many easier methods do we? I don't know about y'all, I went to Doctor Phil. I took this, I did that, right? All these easier methods, therapy, whatever it was that I didn't have to do this. Anything but this.

Oh, but they got drunk, Hey. Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell. And we think the reason is that they never completed the house cleaning. They took inventory, all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had lost their egoism. Unfair. And they only thought they had humbled themselves. Here's the kicker. That's what this whole stuff is about. That's why I've got a sponsor in front of me, because it's about humbling myself,

losing my fear, losing my ego, getting down to the nitty gritty

and busting me up.

Not for them, but for me to get connected to this power. Because most people lead double lives, right? It's like the whole actor, I call it that. The mask that we wear, I was so good at it,

right? We think we are I put on that. Here's the soccer mom mask. Here's here's the church lady mask. Here's here's the the, the bar mask, right. We have all these different lives that we lead and then and then in our hearts, we know we don't deserve it. I was driving over here this morning with the girls and, and I was talking to, you know, those little ladies in church and Oh my God, I love them and I still love them and I have friends like that and they're just

sweet and they, I'm, I'm loud, right? I know y'all know I can't help it

I'm just loud and and I always wanted to be one of those sweet how they talk like this They just they just talk like this and they get their point of I'm like.

I want, I want to be like, I thought that's how I should be. All through I kept thinking, that's what it means, that's how I need to be.

That's not how God made me.

God made me loud. I don't know why.

And so I I put on that mask and I try to be this and I try to be this and, and with all my will and all my mind, I try to be something I'm not. Why? To impress you.

So we've got it. We got to let through this step. What happens is we let God takedown all those masks and mold us into that person He intended us to be in the 1st place. Yes, Julie, you are loud.