Steps 5, 6 and 7 at the Fellowship of the Spirit in Conyers, GA

Welcome back Books,

my radio voice.

So we're going to start this session and talk about 567

because I got tired of 16 hour fifth steps,

eight hour.

I don't have ADHD

but I do have a pain threshold

and maybe it's not as great great as others. But seriously,

there's some distinctions about the fist step says what it is exactly we're sharing about,

And right up front,

it's a checklist.

Up to this point.

Page 72 into action, Chapter 6. Having made a personal inventory, what shall we do about it? Have I done that?

We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator. Steps two and three correct

and to discover the obstacles in our path for we admitted certain defects. Well, wait a minute, we haven't done a fist stuff. What do you mean we've made a certain defects

when that happened?

OK, let me take you back a little bit here to

67

second paragraph near the bottom

where it talks about. We placed them before us in black and white. You all see that.

By the way, that's the instruction for the 4th column. For all those people are still arguing in Denver.

There it is in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly. We were willing to set these matters straight.

Every admission I've been taught to do in A is always about doing it with somebody else.

And so when we finished, when we finished a resentment inventory,

we read it or we, we, we reads it to me, OK.

And so

would shorten the 5th step process. OK,

now and then I realize

this is comes from experience of sponsoring people that after I give an instruction, right column one, I wanted to come back to me and they're going to give me all their all their stuff in one. Then I give instructions on two. I might help them do a couple of couple of them get get going. And then when they're done, they come back to me and they read everything in two. Do three, do four. Do the same thing with fears. Do the same things with with sex.

What have we just done?

We've got just about everything done already and, and there's really no need to redo right to be redundant with that. You've already done it. He's done the admission. I was there, I heard it. Unless there's something else right? And that's something else the book is clear about.

We have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory. Now these are about to be cast out,

Cast out. This is the difference between our program and virtually every other 12 step recovery type program. And that is we're talking about casting out. We're talking about dealing with, coping with working on getting relief from. This is about cast out

and anybody that knows, it's been trying to work on their problems, deal with their problems, this, this, this stuff. This could be causing conditions of spiritual malady. What you know is that relief gets shorter and shorter and shorter. The ability to deal with gets less and less and less. And I don't know how much of that stuff I can I can live with before I take another drink alcohol or it takes me right out of here. So this is about casting out. This requires action on our part, which, when completed, will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves,

and to another human being. The exact nature

of our defense,

the exact nature of my defects, is reliance on self.

OK, there's really not much else to talk about,

right?

Because most of it has already been covered in the continual reviewing of the of the four step as they as they write it. This is short. This has brought my fifth steps down from 8 hours, 16 hours down to two 3-4 hours at the most. It's all the same information as if they had sat in my couch for 16 hours, never having talked about anything at all. The inventory is clear. What they wrote. They realized what they wrote. They understand what they wrote. They haven't forgotten about what they wrote or why they wrote it.

You know, it's all it's, it's all very clear, all very fresh.

Says that I'm just going to skip down here in the middle of this paragraph where it says why you should be the reason, the best reason we should be doing inventory or fifth steps. The best reason first is if we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably, they got drunk.

Now catch this really sneaky line in here.

Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell.

There are a ton of people and Alcoholics Anonymous that have shorted this step or that step

and are telling you they've had a spiritual awakening as a result of 12 steps.

OK. And it doesn't take long to and it doesn't really matter until I'm asking them for help or they're asking me for help.

OK, but you better find out if your life's on the line. I mean, it is. It's your life on the line. Life's on the line. It may not be their life that's on the line. If you're a real alcoholic in your life's on the line and you better find out

OK, because there's a lot of people that perceive persevere with the rest of the program.

In short, this step short that step and claim to have a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and really that they had a spiritual awakened result of four steps, 3 1/2 steps,

an 8 step in a few of their men's better find out right? Your life's on, your life's on the line,

and we're going to drink again, right? Very likely

they took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. The only thought they had lost their egoism in fear. They only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty in the sense that we find it necessary. That's a long word for must

until they told someone else all their life story. So what's left? The nooks and the crannies, right? My my first missed step with my sponsor

was much like Mike describes, just like this confession and like you've heard before me say before it was, you know, he's a local

minister in local Church of Christ. And so

when the book talks about going to the such people, I have both rolled into one So

and so it was, it was really beneficial for me.

When I started doing the work differently, more thoroughly, fall in the directions like we've been outlining here, like I said, I was one of the first persons in my first people in in my, a community that I was aware of that was doing this with the steps, doing this with the four step. What were we doing? Fall in the directions. OK. And so the suggestion to me was to go find three people to fist up with and then Joe would listen to it. He was, he believed in the multiple

steps because over here on page 74 talks about it.

This is rightly and naturally we think well before we choose the person or persons with whom to take this intimate and confidential step. And he thought it was important that I shared this with the people that I hang around with, you know, be open with them. The more people I'm open with, the more people open I become.

And I picked people that I that may not be doing what I was doing, but had a lot of time and recover and I would, would understand what I was getting at. And that's another caveat into deciding who's going to listen to your fist and can they keep the confidence? Can they be unaffected and do they understand what we're driving at? Are they not going to try to change my plan?

And every single old timer that I went to that I thought would be

to do this with

was not. This was a foreign thing to them. I didn't judge it. I just walked away from it. Now, I would have been really easy for me to just check a box and say, hey Joe, this is what happened. Can I visit with you?

No, I fissed up with the guys I was sponsoring

because they were in, they were, they were in this. They were doing it. They knew. They knew. They knew where I was at too, right? We were already on this stuff. So I ended up just stepping with, I ended up fisting with them and then I ended up fisting with Joe,

now my first sponsor. After I fist up with him, he was married to a lady in the program and they pillow talked and I was back in the fellowship at a noon meeting the next day and I heard my fist up coming out of her mouth.

I've shared that story since that happened. And inevitably somebody will come up to me and they say, boy, I hope you don't talk to him anymore. And they went like this shunning, right? And I didn't do that.

He wasn't my sponsor anymore. It wasn't the only thing, but it was one of the straws on the camel's back. But

but when he when that when that happened,

the really amazing thing happened to me.

And that was

I really got in this place, this nearness of my creator, this and really feeling like

it. I don't care what people know about me.

My first inclination was I just wire his mouth shut, right? Teach him a lesson. And that's as far as it went, right? It's like,

who cares? God knows he's good, he's OK with it, He's brought me this far. What do I care for? Anybody else knows

it's good enough for God. It's good enough for anybody else where they like it or not. And I realized I was free.

That's free.

Talks about, again, talks about changing. What's the plan here? The plan is a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. I can take it to somebody else. Am I going to give somebody else the power to change that plan? This plan is bigger than the person I'm trying to fist up with.

OK?

Just get out of the way, all right? I'm not going to let you do that. My life's on the line. Yours may not be,

but my life's on the line. And the truth is it's the it's a life and death matter on both sides of the equation.

The person listening, the person getting

OK and it's and it's and it's.

I don't know who I was talking to about frustration and sponsoring people, but sometimes I want to ask that I not some. Almost always I ask them, but why are we doing this?

And it's frustrating sometimes when we get here and we've probably already read it a million times, right? At least they've heard it in a meeting of big was say that's a life and death errand. And I want to hear that come out of their mouth. And when it doesn't, it drives me up a wall.

It's like they have no connection to this as being a life and death there. And it's like, what have we done the last four steps? Why are we doing this? Because there's a life and death, you know?

After doing this in, in taking the hour, like the books, like the book suggests, one of the things that

my sponsor suggested was to consider how I'm having an experience with each of the 5th step promises not to just check it off like, Oh yeah, that's happening to me. And

one of the things that came to me in the, in the after my first step was

that in like in four,

because of the realization in this transition from the 3rd to the 4th column, I began to have a forgiveness for, for the people I resented that I could never come up with on my own right. I wanted to, I wasn't raised to hate my parents. I wasn't raised to hate the people in my church. And I wasn't raised that way. And I never wanted to feel that way and think that way about them. But I just never bring myself back to some sort of forgiveness or letting go. And when I, when I came into the fistip and I was done with the fistip, one of the first things about this nearness of the Creator

hand in hand with God and all that other stuff, which I really didn't care about. One of my first step, but it began to happen was that I realized that God had forgiven me long before I did this, that God had forgiven me. Bottom line,

right? And the only person that hadn't forgiven me was me. I was still carrying around this club going

like this. You know,

one of the things also was that we may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience.

And this was on another fifth step. But what a sponsor asked me was,

remember when you asked God honestly means to you?

You got to this conception and that became an initial belief system, your first conscious relation. How's that transition to an experience now, three steps later

wants to hear that. Am I, am I in tune with my own step work? Am I in tune with my own spiritual progress? OK, and that's all. There's no right or wrong answer. Where am I at with it? Am I in tune or am I just going through the motions? That's the big thing. Am I just giving my sponsor lip service or am I really in TuneIn doing this thing?

I do put my book on a shelf

and I do take it down.

You know,

I don't want to miss an instruction, right? I don't want the one. I don't want to be there to be an instruction that I missed.

And I somehow drink again and wonder. I wonder if that's the one, right?

And we call this thing a spiritual kit of tools, right? And, and I work with all kinds of Craftsman, tradesmen all day long, right? They claim to be carpenters right?

Some some might be able to put a window in. OK, but then there's real legitimate carpenters that can build a dam, build a bridge, same same basic set of tools, just the different skill level. But they all claim to be in the same skill level,

right? And this comes down to how proficient, how effective do I and how understanding do I want to be of my with this tool,

right? Isn't this later on some about going and understanding and effectiveness, right? Going more understanding of God, this program Why? So it can be more effective with you, period. And the people in front of me, not just you, you next my son, my employer, my sons mother, Sancho, whatever. OK

so such as a derogatory term for the guy that cop blocks you?

As if cock blocking wasn't derogatory enough,

we're a monster.

OK,

I'm going to tell you. Here's here's what I do with step 6.

It talks about the things that are objectionable. I look at things that are objectionable in my inventory in three perspectives.

A Is it objectionable to me? When I review my inventory, is it objectionable to me?

Yes, Yes. Just I'm crossing them out, right? Yes, Yes, yes, yes.

And then I might still have some leftover.

Is it objectionable to the spiritual basis of life that I'm trying to live here?

Yes. Do I want to hold on to it? No.

Then there's another one.

Is it objectionable to the people that are closest to me? Do I have people that I sponsor my family, my coming up to me and say did when you do this or when you act this way, it is harmful. It hurts us. It's drives us crazy. Am I going to be so selfish as to hold on to something like that? That is objectionable? The people that I love the most, that is hurting them,

even though I may not see it as such,

right? Or am I going to hold on to it and say

right?

Most times I'm willing. If I'm not,

the book gives me a prayer about what I'm clinging on to, asking God to become willing right now. This is where there seems to be some dispute.

So do you just go on and do seven or can you not go on to seven until you are completely, entirely willing?

So the

whether God removes my defective character or not,

whatever degree of Williams I'm bringing to that isn't necessarily going to invoke him to remove.

My position on this is that I make the prayer

God

very short. It's like a phrase, right?

If we still click on something he we will not let go. We ask God to help us be willing

and my inclination is is to keep moving

and trust that God will make me willing and move right into that seven step prayer.

OK, If if God removes defects based on my willingness, I'd be a St.

right? Or my at least my my my projected willingness to look good that I want to be this

why is snow person right be perceived as such. And as much vigor as I may want to come to this program or just come to the spiritual way of life and have certain defects removed doesn't always make it so. And and then the consideration in the seven step prayer is made that you know God's going to move the things that he wants to remove. He's going to leave the things that he thinks are helpful to him and and my fellows. Now I can't use that as an excuse or as a as a cop out.

Right.

But

you know, I

I tend to be abrasive

in confrontational and challenging, sometimes unapproachable in AI. Don't like that about myself,

Ivan. Like that I have had a hard time unifying with the fellowship of alcohol. Synonymous not with the fellowship that I crave like you guys, but

I mean sort of like when I came to a, it was not a love fest for me.

It was like, I'm looking around the rooms like I don't want what you got. OK, I don't want to catch that shit,

but

and as much as I would like to be hold hands and live and let live and till the point of apathy, I, I just can't get there, okay.

And I would love to be able to do that. I would love to drop something. I'd like to think that it has kind of edged off or smoothed out on you.

But

on the backside of it, when I look, when I look back,

there's an entire group of big book people in Fresno, a Fresno. If I wasn't willing to break away and say

this town needs a meeting like this,

right? And so

that's all I got. Thanks,

thank you. One of the things in the 5th step it talks about is that the alcoholic leads a double life.

More so than most others, right?

One of the reasons I happen to know that there are people in this group right here that do multiple fifth steps. In other words, they continuously go through the steps and they also fist up with more than one.

Because I'm going to tell you that sometimes you can leave double life and you don't even know it. You're not awake to it yet, all right? You just not awake to it,

Paul Martin. And for those of you that don't know who Paul Martin, Paul Martin was my sponsor. Sponsor

toward the his last 20 years of his life,

Paul Martin died at 62 years sobriety. Paul Martin was sad at the table with Bill and Lois almost every night for dinner

and knew him at that,

you know, level. Paul had a group and just outside of Chicago, IL and here's what his group did. His group met every Saturday morning and they worked the first step, read out the book, then they worked the second step and every week they took a new step. Every single time they hit four, everybody in the group

wrote an inventory

of present stuff. Not going way back.

You know, before when they came time to 5th step, you fist up with 10 to 15 people in your group, right? So you're doing a fourth and 5th step every single 12 weeks is what you're doing. And I sat down with Paul, Paul. Paul liked extremes. I mean, he didn't even think you were meditating unless you did it 2 hours a day. I mean, that's the way he was.

And I told him, Paul, I have a job. I can't,

but I asked him, I says why do you do it this way? I mean, the groups I come from, we go through the steps about an average of once a year. And he said, because the reason most people that get some time after a period of time drink is because they start to lead a double life.

And it's got to be out here. People need to know me from that. Now, my first fest up was a confessional fist up with Frank. And at the very end, it was sort of funny looking back on it. He asked me at the end of my fist up, is there anything you left out? And I just put my head straight down, you know? And he goes, what, what, what, what is it? He said, I know it ain't sex. I mean, God, you're my hero.

But

he

and I said is criminal. And I had really forgotten by this time that Frank was an attorney. So he said, do you have a dollar? And I said, yeah. And he said, give me a dollar. I gave him a dollar. He wrote it out of receipt. He says, I'm now your lawyer. Now tell me the rest of it. Now I'm going to tell you something that goes on in Alcoholics Anonymous. A guy named Gary Kay, who was recently out here,

was a trustee for Alcoholic Anonymous, and there's some things that I found out

and I've heard these things over the years. Do not 5th step with somebody. It's going to be hurt by your fifth step.

It's about picking the right person. Pick somebody that's been through this deal

and the book calls him a closed mouth, trusted friend, right? Don't fist up with somebody who's going to get hurt by this.

Also, if you're going, if you're going to confess to a crime, you may not want to do it with somebody that doesn't have protection. You may want to go do it with somebody like an attorney.

There's a case in California two years ago

where Dave comes from in Southern California. They have huge meetings, right? Two, nothing like, you know, if this happened at the Pacific Group and how many go there? 1200 people, 1500 people every week. And there was a District Attorney

who was going to the Pacific Group, and he saw a guy come in that they had been looking at for a homicide.

He waited until this guy had fist stepped,

went to the guys sponsor,

brought him into the police station and said, you're going to tell us what he said. We don't have privilege, folks. I'm here to tell you that right now. Now personally, me probably because I'm older, I'll go to jail, take me to jail. I ain't going to give it up. But that's the way I am. All right. So if you're going to do something like that, if you got some pretty serious shit in your past, which I had,

you may want to go to the proper appointed authority. However, the rest of the people that I have always, 5th Step have always been Alcoholics in my group, people that that I need to get to know. Olson and I have Fifth Step and 10 Step with each other for so long. We don't hide anything

if you can't 5th step and if you can't, when we get to the 10th step, if you don't have 10 step buddies, I'll tell you why you don't. It's because you're protecting your ego,

that's all. See, it isn't the big shit. I care that you know about me. I don't care that you know I beat the shit out of the San Francisco cop. Makes me look good, right?

I'll tell you what I don't want you to know about me is that my feelings get hurt because Red walked into the meeting and didn't say hi to me.

That's not really what happened. But I'm telling you, I don't want you to know what a petty little guy I can really be.

And that's the stuff that I protect. It's not the big stuff. I've never seen an Elkie fade away from the big stuff. And we start to lead this double life where we want you to see us a certain way. And then back here, I'm living a whole different life. I happen to know pretty well a guy who's used to be no longer around was on the circuit. This guy could pack a stadium

in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I spoke with him on numerous occasions,

and he was married.

And if they wanted to fill a convention, they'd call this guy. And he was bringing in little new girls from his group in the backroom of the back door of the hotel. It's called the double life. I can't live that way, right? It can be as simple as I want you to see me in a certain light.

So if you, if you're going to pick the person to 5th step with, pick the right person, pick a closed mouth trusted friend that you can tell everything to. And I bring up that other stuff just simply for the fact that if you do have something super serious, really I would go to the person and say to them, I've got some stuff that could incriminate me. Do you want me to 5th step with you

and let them say you better go to somebody else? All right,

there was something I was going to say. It was just super important about that. Now I forgot it, but you know, it's, it's about picking the person then sitting down and getting it all out. And I too have since the first time through, I do put a book up on the shelf and I take it down because I want to follow the rules. Now, what I was taught to do

many years ago with regards to Step 6 is

you sit down. Frank had this thing about people in sobriety, this attitude of, well, I just gave it to God and I'm just going to go forward and I just suspect it's God's will, you know,

and he would just go ballistic over this stuff. He says God's will is in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said you need to know where you're going, right? So what he had me do was he had me do this, I'd come home, I do, I'd review the the 1st 5 proposals. He had me write out every single thing on a piece of paper. He had me put a prayer at the top, draw a line down the middle

on the left hand side of the page. He had me write out every single thing that we found objectionable. OK, now when I got done with my fifth steps with him and others, there was no we knew what was objectionable. I also knew every single person I wouldn't have meant to that. There was no Gray, believe me.

So I wrote down everything that I found objectionable,

because what's a defective character?

What is it

this is? It's a survival technique. That's all it is. It's something that I've used to survive in the past that worked. It just doesn't work no more, that's all.

So I list them,

then on the right hand side of the page that line. Frank called it the guideline.

This is not stuff that he really did with his group. He did it with a bunch of us, sort of like an experiment. He liked to experiment with this stuff, and I've used it ever since because I really like it. And on the other side of that line, he had us right out.

What's the opposite of that defective character lying? What's the opposite

fear? What's the opposite selfishness? What's the opposite?

And he goes when you know you don't want to be this man on the left hand side of the page anymore and you want to go to the man on the right side of the page, say the seven step prayer.

Well, makes sense.

Didn't never took me too long. See I come out of these fifth steps. I come out of these fifth steps usually so sick of myself I can't stand it. I have thrown up in fist my own fifth steps. I have cried in my own fist steps. I I get so sick of me in my fist does

that

and I'm always ready to move on. But what by doing it this way? All of a sudden, I started to see that there's certain things I don't want to get rid of.

There, there and truly is. Now I'm going to give you a good example of this one. When I was a kid, I've told you I was raised by a drunk for a father. He's a very abusive guy,

and I learned as a kid, probably 7-8 years old, that when he grabbed the belt and start hitting you, if you just stood there and got pissed and didn't cry, he quit,

right? So guess what I did? I learned how to grow up and project an entire thing around me, sort of like just Star Trek whatever of anger. Why? Because it kept you away from me, right? And in the world I lived in, it was a good thing to have.

I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and it's not a good thing to have.

I'm not a benefit to God by keeping you way out here,

right? I'm not a benefit to God to be walking into a room and projecting this,

this attitude of screw you, I don't want to know you. That's not what God wants from me.

And when it hit me in the middle of a fifth step that it was time to let go of this one, I didn't want to let go

because I had views that for protection since I was a little kid.

And I had to pray to God

to give me the willingness to let go of that defective character of my entire aura of anger,

right?

We hit on things, folks, that I got to tell you, if you do this work long enough, you're going to hit on some stuff and it's going to blow you away. Where it came from and how you got it and why you got it and why you're doing it the way you're doing it. And I love Chuck Chamberlain because Chuck Chamberlain said in that book that somebody was lucky enough to get today new pair of glasses. I got to find out where this stuff comes from before God will remove it,

and I got to find out where it comes from.

That's why when I write belief system inventory, when I write out the belief system, the second column is where did it come from? Where did that belief come from?

So my 6th step is I do this deal and I do. I look at this thing on the left side of the page. I look at this thing on the right side of the page and ask myself, am I willing to drop this? Give it up

and move over here now. I can't do that without God. I mean, I don't have the power to do that.

And that's when I say my 7th step prayer

and I sincerely mean it from the bottom of my heart

and sometimes with huge trepidation.

I'm telling you my first time through the steps, I remember they were talking all the spiritual mumbo jumbo jazz and, and I did my fist up with Frank and I literally got for the very first time,

this piece came about me and I actually went home and there was a big thing going on around York Street that if you did a fifth step properly, you could go home and shut off everything and sit there alone in perfect peace and ease. And we would test this stuff. If it says it in the book, we test right? And I went home from my very first fifth step and I was the kind of guy that had to have the music blast into the absolute Max. And and it's second I

in the house, I turn on the TV and I mean, it was just that way. And I sat there and and I ended up sitting there for two hours alone, a perfect piece of knees after my first fist up.

We tested the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's real power here, folks. There really is. And I love the way David talked about the fact that this is about getting it removed. This is not about learning my triggers.

This is not about you loving me till I love myself.

The people that truly love me tell me the truth.

They're willing to risk it.

They do it with love. They do it because they care. I have told people things that they did not want to hear.

They've told me things I don't want to hear. But the people that really care about me are willing to risk that friendship and tell me the truth about me. So that's what I do in 5-6 and seven. And the next session is going to be about 8:00 and 9:00. A couple things. Oh, I'm sorry, just a couple details.

You know at six is where this whole acceptance is the answer to all of my problems

comes to an end.

OK, I can't be looking for something that's objectionable in my inventory. If I'm in a position of acceptance is the answer to all my problems. If it's acceptable, then it's not objectionable. So you either have to choose the program out called synonymous or some sub program that doesn't work. And I'm going to tell you from my experience that that the road of this acceptance thing to is the answer to all my problems. I did get off on a tangent from six years to 8 years of sobriety because I thought maybe I'm just too in this and I

to broaden my horizons in a, you know, I got all mixed up in the 12:00 and 12:00 and all that stuff. And there's a place for the 12 and 12. It's just not the primary program. But the point was I got mixed up in this and acceptance. The answer I was trying to fit in is what I was trying to do. All right, I was trying to, I was tired of getting arrows shot in my back after every meeting. OK and

where it led me, this acceptance is the answer to all my problems is down to

apathy,

indifference.

And then it rolled into depression, self pity,

and what I called it was being patient intolerant.

OK, I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

And then it rolled into sloth and paralyzing fear. And that's where I woke up at 8-9 or sober and I went looking for different sponsorship and that's right, found Joe. And the other thing was, is that a lot of times you'll hear in in these people talking about the the road narrows in recovery. You'll never find that in this book. You'll find that in another book and it's using a completely different context. OK, I know that much for my seminary training

book talk. The book talks about a broad highway. Now here's what I came to grips with about why my sobriety seem to be becoming a narrow Rd. Because I did. It did seem like that

my experiences is that sobriety becomes the spiritual base of life may seem to be coming a narrow Rd. because I still want to live the other way.

This sheep is this you know the defect and what God wants over here. I'm still not convinced I want to be over here. I want to do both.

I want to do both. Strut,

straddle chicken right? I can remember inventories where I write in security or in or in ambitions.

I want to be free of defects of character, like defect character free, right? I thought, well, that's pretty cool. That's a nice little thought, right? There's nothing wrong with that. So the third column, it should be wholesome. Who doesn't want that?

There's a lie in there, OK? It's not that I really wanted to be free of defects of character. I just wanted to be free of consequence

because when I came out, because when it comes out in self seeking in the in the in the fourth column, it came out. I really, it's really not the defects of character. I want to go away. It's a consequences that come with it. I want to be free of the consequence, but I still want I still want my I want my cake and eat it too. So, so the why is the road seem like it's narrowing. It's in recovery or trying to walk this life, whatever is because I still want to go the other way. I still want to live the old way,

right? And people like us should never really claim that we're walking a narrow Rd. How could we? You, you look what you've been up to in four, 5-6 and seven. How can you possibly all that grace? How can you possibly claim that you're living on a narrow Rd. You know, I look at it like like I'm, I'm walking down this road that's like God's big ass bowling alley

and he puts up gutter guards for guys like me that go like this down there, the bowling lane. So I don't like bounce out of the bowling lane, you know, And

you know, I just,

I don't see how people like us can even claim that we're walking in Narrow Rd. I mean, to me, there's many mistakes as I make that it just, it's just to me, it's just a broad highway that I've never seen. I don't think I've ever seen either side. You know, that's all I got. Well, I, I got a piggyback on that

because I actually spoke at a convention with Doctor Paul who wrote that line of acceptance is the answer to all my problems that you hear quoted in so many a a meeting. And we're sitting at the speaker dinner and I looked at him and I said, Paul, I said, I just think that's bullshit.

And he looked at me and he said, quote, straight out of his mouth. He said, Mike, so do I. He said, give me a break. I was three or sober and asked to write something. And he said what I really meant was after you worked the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to accept God's will is the answer to all your problems.

And he actually tried to get it taken out of the 4th edition big book because it's been so misquoted and so misused. I'm not a believer that I personally am not a believer that nothing happens in this world by mistake. I've seen way too much to to believe that. And I think man has free will. I don't want to live in that. I want to live in God's will. Why do I want to live in God's will to be a great guy? No, I want to live in God's will because I guarantee you that God's plan for me