Mark H. and Dave F. at the Fellowship of the spirit convention at St. John's University, Queens in New York July 27th

If you if you really want to get taken to a place of letting go, touch the fact that fear is at the very fabric of your being.
Touch that at some point in time and
my experience was is is in in waking up to that seeing that I had been afraid my entire life, regardless of what I was projecting, right seeing that and experiencing that is is finally where I said
I cannot and I will not live this way anymore. And somewhere in the middle that I guess is when I realized I had been in self-reliance my whole life and even those years in a A and somewhere in the middle of the realization that fear was at the fabric of my being. I just said I quit. I no longer makes any difference. If I got a job, fine. If I don't find if I got good health, that's fine. If I I just don't care anymore.
But I couldn't have that experience until I woke up to the fact that fear was at the fabric of my being,
drove me in every area of my life, all the time. I was paralyzed with fear, which accounted for a lot of years of drinking and then accounted for a lot of years of depression in Alcoholics Anonymous.
So, so again, let's let's go on with this this issue. And it says I'm in the world to play the role that he assigned. Now we just did some stuff in in theater of the life. Here's what's different for me today.
I'm in touch with my beingness,
my spirituality, if you will, and I take that into the role that God has assigned, but I'm not attached to the role. You see the difference?
You're either going to fulfill the role in which you are currently assigned
based on self, will and self-reliance, or you're going to have done the work necessary to fulfill the role God has assigned and take your beingness into the role. But you're not attached to the role.
Understand what I'm saying?
I'm going to go on a little bit more and I'll point out what I mean.
To the extent that I do as I think God would have me and humbly rely on God, does God enable me to match calamity with serenity? Any role in which God has a sign that you are performing. If self will is involved, you cannot practice that last sentence.
And it goes on to say
that spirituality is the way of strength. The verdict of the ages is faith means courage. All men and women of faith have courage. Here's the definition of trust their God. They trust their God. And what they do is they let God demonstrate through them what God can do.
See, unbeknownst to me as taking this course of action allows me to be a channel so God can demonstrate through me what God can do in all of the roles that God has assigned. I'm not the doer. It is sneezing me.
You understand what I'm saying here. See, it is sneezing me. I mean, it's no different than
here's the preparation Dave and I did to come here and spend this weekend with you. We we went through the first three steps. We wrote some pitiful inventory
because we're such spiritual giants. And we,
we spent nine hours alternating between laughing hysterically and crying, you know, and, and we left there and knew each other better and knew God better. And then we did some work with six and seven and we made our list and we've made some amends. And then he and I, in addition to what we do on a daily basis, we go downstairs before we start the day and we meditate 2-3 minutes and we say a prayer and give each other a hug and come up here.
We did requires no preparation. It requires nothing. Why
God has assigned Dave and IA role here this weekend, right? All this is, is a space suit in which he gets to come through and perform the role that he has a sign. You understand what I'm saying?
Every role that God has a sign that you have, It could be a mother or father, it could be a husband or wife or a member of AA. You do this work and God will demonstrate to you what God can do. See what I'm saying? See, I would have absolutely no power to get in front of a hundred, 120 of the most judgmental humans on the planet
and talk about these steps and talk about, you understand, I don't have any power to do that kind of stuff. I don't have the power to keep myself sober one day. So you do this work and then God against begins to demonstrate through you what God can do.
And that's what you begin to take into every area of your life. You take it into your work, you take it into AA, you take it into your relationships with people,
see, and then the tools of 10 or 11 is just to watch when you're demonstrating your will versus God's will. And fear is always the the, the quickest litmus test for whether or not you've got self will going on in the respective role in which you are playing for somebody you see.
And then it gives you a tool
when you're awake to the fact that you're afraid, which I wasn't for a long time. I'm going to ask him to remove my fear and drug my attention what he would have me be. There's the word be. And go back to your third step decision. I'm going to be his child. I'm going to be his agent. I'm going to be his employee, right? And I'm going to be his actor. So any situation I'm in, I begin to experience fear
and the prayers. God remove the fear and what would you have me be?
And you touch that your beingness again. So you take you take what God would have you be into what you're doing. That's completely different than thinking you're you're doing. You see what I'm saying?
Fear is the great is the great corroding thread to ever begin into experience God, which is love. You know, there's another book that I I think that makes it fairly easy to look at where you're at. It just deals with two emotions. It says basically you're either into fear or love, which is it going to be? And that's easy for me to work with because if I'm experiencing fear, I once again am into self will.
If I'm experiencing love, I'm letting God demonstrate through me what God can do.
Air inventory. A lot of different ways. I've done very simple two column fair inventory.
I have written 4 column free inventories in which I put the fear in column one. What I was afraid of in column two. How self-reliance. How was I relying on self in column three And in the fourth column, what would God have me be around this fear? I've done done it a lot of different ways. I normally boil it down
my experience as I see here today. It may be different a year from now
is there's only one fear. It's the fear of death of something.
It's the fear of death of something. Could be a relationship, physical body image. It doesn't make any difference. There's one fear is what all my inventories constantly take me down to is I'm afraid of the death of something.
My my ego seems preoccupied hourly with death, the death of something That mind made false sense of self, right mind made false sense of self.
Every time I write fear inventory, whatever they are, you know, Guywella, I got to fear of drinking again. Well, what's that the fear of Well, it's a fear of the death of being a sober member of AA, right? Or say you have a fear of
financials, financial problems. What's that about? Well, that's a fear that I won't get what I want. The debt, the death of me not getting. You follow what I'm saying.
There's there's a gentleman is some of his works have influenced me named Stuart Wild. And one of the things I like about him is he said, if you're a spiritual philosophy cannot be described in 10 words or less, you might consider getting another one.
And I like that. You know, I was raised on a farm in Iowa. I'm actually fairly simple guy. So the idea that I can boil it down in anytime I'm afraid, I ask myself one question. What is the fear of death right now that you're up against? You follow me. All my image, how I look, see what I'm saying. That makes it easy. Then I can just just see the one. But that's some of my some of my experiences with fear inventory, written a lot of fear inventory
and it was at the fabric of my being.
It is a horrible way
to experience this incredible thing called life. It is a horrible way and you and I know about it at levels most people can't even imagine.
I I drank, I drank every day and large amounts of alcohol to not experience the fears in my life. What I was asleep to was the reason I am so afraid is I've always gone through life continually relying on Mark, my agnosticism, my current agnosticism. Once again,
I'm telling you, I believe in God, but relying on Mark. And the reason I know that is because I'm still experiencing fear in some areas. So I said to you, if you want to touch where God is not in your life, ask yourself where in the last week, what are the fears that keep coming up for you? And based on my experience, if, if you have several areas in which fear keeps coming up, those are the areas in which you are completely reliant on self and God is not a part of the picture. So consider looking at that.
Thanks, Mark.
What he just described there, that's basically the second step proposition exercise. The areas that you're experiencing fear, those are the areas that you haven't given over to God. All right, A friend of mine who's here tonight, he's talking to me about his second step proposition exercise. I gave it to him a while ago and
all suddenly his eyes light up and as he's describing this, he says, you know, I got it right here in my wallet. He says, do you remember when you gave that to me? And I said, yeah. He says, you know, I haven't had a panic attack since I wrote that exercise. And he was absolutely asleep that he has not had a panic attack since he started using the second step proposition exercise. Pretty amazing stuff.
In the in the guide on page 12 is fears
all right?
One of the techniques I do, since my goal is to find fear and since fear is what my, the tool my ego is going to use to drag me to the bar,
I want to find any kind of fear I can. So I've written column four question for right. We did the four column inventory, which is where was I frightened? So I've got every fear that's related to resentment. So the only other fear is I need to find are fears that aren't related to resentment, fear of heights, fear, fear of spiders, fear of AIDS, fear of whatever. All right, So I take column four, question four and I transfer it over into the fear column which is column one there
a tool that I use is a lot of times I'm afraid of something I'm also afraid of its opposite. So when I look at my fear column,
I look at my fears and I look at my opposite fears to see if maybe by chance I'm afraid of the opposite. And I'm not awake to it. It's just an idea for how to come up with extra fears to make sure you don't miss any because the fear you miss is the fear your ego is going to 0 out on to kill you. All right. Then the next instruction is why am I afraid? And that's the boil down process. And I write down why am I afraid of rejection? And I just fill it out. Then I put the three slashes and the three, everything after the three slashes lets me know that that relates to the second, the opposite fear.
All right. And then I'm looking for recurring themes when I get done with that middle piece there of column two of what am I afraid of? What are the fears that kept repeating over and over and over again? And that's where I come up with the boil down process. And that's what that extra column is. And when I'm finally done with this whole process, I end up with 10 to 15 fears of the average alcoholic in my experience, ends up with about 10 or 15 years. And I call that the Hit Parade
column. One may start out with 300 Fears
by the time I've done the spiritual work and I boiled it down, I boil it down to 15 fears. All 300 fears are just different little variants of the 15 fears. So if I can get rid of those 15 fears, guess what? I'm getting rid of all 300 fears. And if I get rid of all 300 fears, there's nothing for resentment to sit on. I've taken the foundation out from from resentment. I can't be blocked from God. So the hit parade for me is absolutely critical. And that card that I showed you earlier that I carry in my money clip with me,
that's my hit parade. On the left side is my hit parade. And my right side of that card is what does God want me to be? Because there's times in my life where I'm pretty current, where I basically have given almost every area of my life over to God. And I may not see the area of my life that I'm blocked from when I'm recognized and I'm restless, irritable, and discontented. So I slam on the brakes because I'm awake today and I realize, wait a minute, I'm not looking at a character, but I can feel it in my gut. Something is wrong. I go to my money clip, I whip out my hit parade and I say which one of these
fears has woken up. I find the fear and I go right to what does God want me to and I do the tool on page 68. God, please remove this fear. The big book is real big on vision.
Instead of just telling me what not to do, I better be looking at what I'm supposed to be going to. I need to have an image in my mind. You know, if I tell everybody in this room, don't think about a pink elephant, guess what? You all have a mental image of a pink elephant and now it's in your head. You can't get rid of it unless I replace that image with something else. It's the same deal with fear. If I tell you don't be afraid of being unloved, I need to give you something to focus on that's going to take its place. So I'm looking for what does God want me to be? We're going to
place that and then I'm going to send you out on an exercise to go do that, whatever that happens to be. How can I do whatever that is right now? What does guy want me to be right here, right now? Oh, wait a minute. If I'm doing that right here right now, guess what? I'm president. I'm conscious, I'm awake, I'm aware my spirit's awake. I'm plugged into God. Fear doesn't own me. My ego can't own me because I'm back in the present being of service for God, doing what God wants me to be. It's really a simple deal. We took how many hours to teach it to you to talk about it? But when you boil it all down, it's really a
deal. How can I get back to doing what God wants me to do? That's the whole shooting match. All right,
there's some instructions we blew right past. How many people in the room with a raise of hands believe that between column three and column 4? Oops. The Big Book tells you to pray for the bastards.
Let's see,
does the big is your instructions in the big book that says all these people that we're upset with that we're supposed to pray for them?
Let me see if I can have a shift. I'm going to need a truly open mind on this one. Let's go to the instruction in the book between columns 3 and column four.
Let's start on page 66. Colon 3.
All right, remember, there's another instruction that we covered already. It says nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. Do you think Bill Wilson meant that when you're dealing with inventory, nothing counts but thoroughness and honesty? So if you look at me and you say, well, it's going to take too many hours to write out this fear inventory, 3 hours. Big deal if it takes you 3 hours. I mean, we'd sit in a cesspool, you know, if we can spend 3 hours there, if we get a bottle of beer when we're drinking, you know,
we'd walk across broken glass to get a bottle of beer. What's right in a little bit inventory It's nothing all right
66 colon three we turn back to the list for it held the key to the future. Remember linguistics what's the IT they're talking about the list right. I think that's important. This 4th step is the key to my future. We're prepared to look at it from entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us in that state. The wrongdoing of others fancied or real. I don't care if it's a real threat or it's just an imaginary fear. It has the power to actually kill you, all right.
How can you escape? We saw that these resentments must be mattered. But how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. This is our course. We realize that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick,
though we did not not like their symptoms. Column one, excuse me, Column two, and the way they disturbed this column three, they, like ourselves, were six. Two, right, Here comes the deal, we ask God. Here's a prayer to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patient that we truthfully grant a sick friend. Linguistics, exercise, people. Who are we praying for? We're praying for ourselves.
We're not praying for the sick bastards.
We're praying for us, for God to come into us and soften our heart, to rip the cover off our golf ball to help us unwind that strapping that's hiding the kernel of love that's underneath. Our problem is our ego has taken us into column 3, into the theater, and it's holding us hostage there so that we can't soften our heart for others. And we're going to whip ourselves with this and beat up on ourselves.
We God has to come in and soften our hearts. We're praying for ourselves. It does not go against what's written in the 11th step.
It says we should not pray for ourselves only. It's OK to pray for ourselves if others will be helped.
Really important deal. All right, we and and we, we blasted right past this, you know, and then it gives on some more instructions. We avoid retaliation and argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy a chance of being helpful. We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly intolerant view of each and everyone. God is going to come into your heart and show you how to take the kind and tolerant view.
Once again, you're not praying for them, you're praying for yourself. Both of those statements confirm that it's you that needs the help. If you're still looking at the sick bastards you can't get from three to four, that'll hang you up every time. You'll get stuck in column three and you'll go but, but, but, but look what they did to me.
If you pray to God, God will soften your heart and you'll be able to see the truth that you are at fault. Your problems are of your own making. It's your selfishness, it's your dishonesty that's causing this problem. Once you can see that, then you can get free. Then you can move on with the rest of the exercise. All right, at the bottom Mark described his his way of doing inventory. This did not used to be in the guide. This is something I just added because I had people have told me to write 4 column inventory on fears before and I could never figure out how to do it. And there's that little block at the bottom of page 12,
you know, and that's basically what he described
and he wrote it out in paragraph arm. You know, what was his fear? What was his belief system with regard to the fear? You know, where was the fear taken him? Basically, how is self-reliance failed him with regard to this fear? Why didn't the fear work for him? And what roles or characters did his ego assign with the fear? And then what does God want him to be? All right.
Something that I didn't talk about is 17 area inventory.
Mark and I went through this time and I mentioned it when we first started this deal. There's an article from the Grapevine that was written by Paul M from Chicago. He's got 50 plus years of sobriety and he wrote an article in the Grapevine. And he said from his experience, one of the things he found is that an inventory he likes to cover various areas in, in, in a sponsee's life to look at how these resentments and stuff have affected him. And he listed in the Grapevine article the 17 areas that he talked about. And it's he starts with the basic inventories, the resentment, the fear,
harm is done to others that the big book gives us. But then he looks at the seven deadly sins come out of the 12 and 12 and he looks at a couple other areas. So
I wrote up this little inventory with the 17 topics of the headings that Paul gave us. And there's copies of that floating around over there on the table. Do not do this inventory if it's your first inventory. I probably wouldn't do it if it's my second or third inventory. But if you're long term sober and you're really looking at cracking the nut, getting down to the real root cause, We looked at Mark and I looked at 17 areas of our life besides just resentment, fear and and sex harms. And we looked at
specific. Your ego doesn't want to take a look at it. You might want to admit that I'm being dishonest. Yeah, I'm dishonest, but that's all you want to look at. And then we go into eight areas of your life. Well, how have you been been dishonest in your home life? In specifics, you write out I've been dishonest to my wife by not telling her what I'm going to be doing. You know, if she doesn't ask a direct question, she doesn't get a direct answer. You know, I've been dishonest at work because I've been cutting out 15 minutes early for years,
you know, and you're right out the specifics, exactly how your ego has been taken hold of you in those areas,
man. It'll split you open like a ripe watermelon. 17 area inventory, powerful stuff. I throw that out there for you so that you can see that there's there's more to this deal. One other thing I want to talk about with relationships, I talked a little bit about the inside of the wall. Outside of the wall, one of the things that we're trying to get to is the kernel that's inside of us. Love, pure unconditional love. At least that's how I can conceptualize it in my own heart.
There's a book by Gary Chapman. It's called The Five Love Languages
has changed my life.
I like to be loved in a certain way. For me, my primary love language is physical touch. I love to hug. I love and that's why I express love. If I'm really care about you, I'll reach up and I'll patch you on the back. You know, I'll give you a little attaboy that type of deal. Other people have a different love language. They may like you to do things for them. Little other people like gifts. When you give them gifts, they go, oh, you know, that's how that's how they know that they that you love them.
My problem was I was asleep. I was going through my life expecting
people that loved me would show me the language, the love and the language I was listening for, you know? And that's what I was doing with them. And I realized, and I'm trying to love you in my language. I'll come up and throw my arms around you. But if you're one of these big burly guys and you don't like people hugging you, what's my message to you? It's not love. You're like, get the hell away from me. But I'm being as love as I loving as possibly could. So if you're interested in taking any relationship to the next level,
I suggest that he writes that he wrote it for for children.
He's got one. I've been using it with my kids. He's got one for teenagers. 5 Languages of Love in dealing with teenagers.
Powerful stuff. It's changed my life. Gary Chapman 5 Languages of Love was on the best seller list for for a long time.
Here's the deal for you
if you choose to get that book, do the tornado exercise with that book to everybody in your life and figure out all the important people in your life. What's their love language? So you know how to love people the right way
that'll change your life. How many people live in here, think they have an open mind?
You guys want a real challenge
this next break? Here's your exercise. And this is a real strong gauntlet.
I want you to go up to somebody that you don't know, introduce yourself to them, find out something about them, right? We're all children of God, right? Then I want you to look in their eyes, look into the window of their soul,
and express how you feel about them. I love you because you're a child of God. Has anybody
told you that I love you today? I love you, Nobody else loves you, I love you today. Try that and see what that does inside your heart. It'll scare the hell out of you. We're talking about fear inventory, but it feels good. That's what we're looking for. We're looking to fill this hole in our soul. We've been looking for it for a whole sobriety. Fear has blocked us off all over the place. If you can develop that technique, there's a convention over here. We're at the at the hotel we're staying at. It's this huge family. They're having a family get together.
I've met some of the neatest people in the elevator going up and down. And that elevator, I'm looking at, hey, how you doing? Where are you from today? And they're looking at me. And these are African Americans. And here's this big white guy, you know, and he's towering over him saying, hey, how you doing today? You know, and I'm looking him in the eye. I'm connecting with the window of the soul. And next thing you know, their spirits are open. And this one woman, she's looking at me. She's going. Well, I left Georgia this morning and I was really having the plane was late and I was having a bad day.
When she walked off that elevator, she had a smile on her face and I had a smile in my heart. What did it cost me? Nothing.
So if we can't learn to love each other in the rooms, how are we going to do it outside of the rooms? How are we going to bring these principles home?
So let's try it with each other. We love each other. We're a spiritual body. We all share the same. If nothing else, we got one thing in common. So let's play off of that. Let's start to defeat fear because not just knowing the fear is the problem. We need to substitute it with something else. Nothing works better than love. That's the kernel. That's the goal. And in the process, we become instruments of God. All right, that's, that's it. And fears for me.
Let's take a 15 minute break.
OK. If you guys look at in your seats, we'll go ahead and kick this thing back off.
Sit anywhere. Sit right there, Bill, I don't care.
No, You can take it any place you want.
All right,
it was it easy to do
for some people, the people that are saying it wasn't easy to do, there's God has got your attention.
Why wasn't it easy to do? Because it's new. It's the we you're digging your heels in. It's change you don't like change. If you can do it, the more you can do it, the easier it becomes. The things we practice we become right. So practice that, you know, particularly if there's some issue, if you have a prejudice of any kind. This is the deal. If you got trouble with African Americans then seek them out, be friends and find out the children of God. If you got problems with religion,
you know,
let's,
there's a candidate.
If you got problems with, let's say with Muslims, you know, a lot of people have problems with Muslims. You know, I, I worked with a guy, he's, he was a rabbinical college, right, studying to be a rabbi. And he came up to me and on his inventory was some stuff about what's happened to his, his, the people of his belief. And he had a real hard time with that. And I've been trying to encourage him to see that it was some people did some things in the past. His ego wanted to continue to use that.
You know, go meet people that are here today. Don't blame everybody because of something that happened in the past. Go have your own experience and find out that we're all children of God. You know, as Mark was saying, it's not the color of our skin, it's not the religion. It's we are children of God and we have one common denominator. No matter what you are, I don't care if you're green, purple, it doesn't matter to me. Pink polka dotted. You got the kernel inside, and I can connect with you at that level, and we can build from that foundation.
If what if I have a foundation of complete willingness? I'm willing to take the risk. And you know what? Nobody has the power to hurt me
because God is my protector, right? You may be able to hurt the exterior, but does that change what's inside me? No, can't hurt that. It's always going to be there no matter what, all right? The true essence of what I am is not going to change. One of the other things that I did not talk about talking about inventory, when we start talking about column three, I tried to tone it down, but I get harsh and abusive with my language, right?
We don't write inventory by saying, oh, she harmed me. You say that bleepity, bleepity, bleep. In my mind, because I'm talking about a woman. I'm going to use terms that are very degrading and condescending and all the rest because that's what goes on here. The voices are talking in here. That's what it's saying. And now Hollywood's not going to let that out normally, but that's the voice that's in here. By the time I get to column four, that is not who and what I am. You are children of God. And if I have offended you because of using that word,
those type of words, it's not intentional because that's what the voice in here is doing. When I get into column three, I start thinking in the terms of column three. You think very arrogant and pompous in talking down and all the slangs and the slurs, the real nasty things,
all the nastiness you can think of. That's the kind of stuff that goes on in our minds, you know. So when you hear back here, it's not gender specific, but when I'm talking about a woman, the committee in here is talking in terms that are not
pleasant. And so I hope I didn't offend anybody with that, but a number of people I can tell her are agitated by that. So that's been brought to my attention. Anything that happens up here is I'm trying to share my experience and that's what's going on. There's some people here, I'm sure somebody came up to me and shared with me the fact that I talked about God, you know, and that we're, we're sharing so much about and generally basically Christianity, we're using Christian type terms.
And they were reacting to that because that's not their belief. And then they wrote some inventory on it today, thank goodness. And they saw that they invited us here to share our experience. You're going to hear our experience with our donkeys. Doesn't mean our donkeys are better than your donkeys. You know, get off your donkey. I'll get off my donkey and I'll look you in the eye and we'll share at the level of love. That's the important deal. We are all the same, you know, what are the fingers pointing to? Where is the donkey taking us? The views the same All right.
And lastly, I wanted to talk about forgiveness. I hate to to transition out of resentment and fear without talking about forgiveness and one of the greatest
descriptions of forgiveness comes from Emmet Fox. If you guys haven't got it, I highly recommend this book around the year with Emma Fox. It's a compilation is a little daily reading for each one of his for every day and extremely powerful. And and the reason I mentioned it from the podium is Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob used it extensively.
When you read this in here, you'll say, hey, that's in the big book
Bill stole from Emmett. There it is. You know,
you know,
Bill and Bill Wilson knew Emmett secretary little history. He knew Emmett secretary. And so they'd get insurance at at when he would be preaching in New York City. He'd have, you know, one of his revival meetings and he'd be talking in in there. And and so they'd go to their a meeting after their meeting and I'd say, hey, you know, the secretary got him some tickets. They'd all run down there and they'd go sit in his meetings. So it was that was required reading in early A a was Emmet Fox
all right? He says the forgiveness of others is the vestibule of heaven.
You have to get rid of all resentment and condemnation of others and not least self condemnation and remorse. You have to forgive yourself, but cannot forgive yourself sincerely until you have forgiven others first. Of course, nothing in all the world is easier than to forgive people who have not heard us very much. But what the law of being requires of us is that we forgive the very things that are so hard to forgive that at first seems impossible to do it all.
Setting others freeze means setting yourself free because resentment is really a form of attachment.
It is a cosmic truth that it takes two to make a prisoner a prisoner and a jailer. There is no such thing as being a prisoner in one's own account. Moreover, the jailer is as much a prisoner as his charge. When you hold resentment against anyone, you are bound to that person by mental chain. You were tied by a cosmic tie to the thing that you hate.
The one person, perhaps in the whole world, whom you disliked is the very one to whom you are attached to yourself by hooks that are stronger than steel.
The object of your resentment will be drawn again into your life, perhaps to work further havoc. By forgiveness you set yourself free. You save your own soul. That's what we've been talking about in this deal.
The closer we get to the inside of your wall, the harder it is to forgive. We're about to start the sex inventory, right? It's going to require a change in your perception.
Everybody's sitting. Who's sitting here? Do you believe that you're moving?
You're sitting here, you're stationary, right? But are we all right? Let's see if there's a possibility here. When Mark starts talking about sex inventory and the harms others have done to us. Let's see if there's a possibility that maybe there's something. We know there's a side to it. We're not seeing that maybe there's a shift. This is a little page that I ripped out from. I believe it was the upper room. It's either upper Room or the daily Bread. I think it's the upper room.
So scientific measurements indicate that we are moving even when we are standing still.
The service of the Earth at the equator rotates at about 1000 mph. The Earth is orbiting the sun at about 67,000 miles an hour. Our solar system whirls around the center of our Galaxy at 490,000 mph, and it zooms along at 43,000 miles an hour in the direction of the star Vega in the constellation Lira. But that's not all. Our Milky Way Galaxy is hurtling through space at 1.3 million mph.
The man lying on his back in a quiet park on a closed on a cloudless summer day
may feel as though all time and movement have stopped under the hot rays of the noonday sun. But the scientists and the godly person know otherwise. Just as we are hurtling through the heavens at unimaginable speeds, so too we were moving from here to eternity. Our days and opportunities to live for the Lord pass so rapidly that we cannot afford to waste any of them.
The fact that we're sitting here in this atrium, we're moving at 1.3 million miles an hour as our universe is expanding. According to scientists, it's a different shift in your perception. But I'm not moving. I'm sitting in a chair. Why don't I see it? Why don't I feel it? There's a shift that happens in these rooms. God's grace last only as long as ignorance. We're going to steal some more ignorance from you and show you God's grace. There's a shift. She didn't leave you. You drove her away.
You know They didn't do it to you. You did it to yourself.
You're in prison because you're the jailer, not because anything they did. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Mark.
I'm Mark, alcoholic.
I want to open with a little prayer.
Oh, that you would bless us indeed in enlarge our territory. That your hand would be with us, That you would keep us from evil, that we may not cause pain.
I want to comment on 234 things before I talk about sex.
This had to do with the the prayer. Well, first of all, I want to talk about words
to show you again the ego at work and separation.
You know, it's like that's a chair there. And the word chair does not conjure up necessarily probably a lot of prejudice or whatever. And then you start words like, well, God or Father or Buddha or
and it's so I find it so fascinating that my ego will take something which is a word and based on a lot of old prejudice or a lot of old ideas. I hear that word and then I instantly close myself off like there's any like there's anything to the word itself.
So again, when it gets back to a person made the mistake of asking me the other day if I was a Christian and
I, I said yes, and I'm a Buddhist and a Muslim and Native American and atheist. And they said I'm leaving now.
I, you know,
I see anything, anything that speaks to me of separation is not of God because there's nothing but oneness. So
I was telling a gentleman earlier, most of the time people do not know where I live.
You understand what I just said? Their little story,
Man in India, holy man, he's living with this woman. And
she was very difficult to get along with all the time. And his friends would come over and he would watch him interact with this woman or vice versa. And she'd leave and they'd turn to her and they'd say, how in God's name do you live with that woman? And he looked at him and smiled and said, she doesn't know where I live.
So
to the experiences that I've had, I've gotten free of words and
around the idea of God or creator or whatever that is, or many other things, gender and race and everything that that somehow my mind along the way used to separate me from you, which it was always at work. You keep doing this long enough and they'll all drop. They'll just drop and they'll drop and they'll drop
till you experience the essence of what what we are, which which is love.
So I want, I want to go back to something
to, to forgiveness. And this idea of that prayer before you'd write a fourth column, but
you know, you, you write this inventory column, one column, two third column.
Then the book says, Mark, I want to talk to you now about the key to your entire future.
And I mean, I want you to think about those words, the key to your entire future. And here's what it is, Mark, is that perhaps those people who wronged you are spiritually sick now. I like to stop there.
See, here's absolutely what I know. In my heart of hearts today. There is nothing but oneness. There's just the illusion of separation. So here's what I know.
Any human being quote that has ever done anything that I either resent or quote that I think is harmed me did that because they are spiritually sick, sound asleep, dreaming they're awake, going through life, being driven. Now who's sicker? Me without awareness for judging them or them.
Any person that I have ever written inventory, any, any person who I ever at one time had some perception that wronged me. I promise you never once did they wake up and say, you know, I've got nothing else to do today. I think I'm going to take a course of action to hurt Mark that never happened. And I never once in my life have ever awakened and said, you know, I think what I'll do today is take a course of action to hurt somebody.
The extent to which you are asleep, IE spiritual sick, is the extent to which you will make mistakes.
That is true of everything that shows up in your inventory. So the book is trying to under make you understand something that in the book is free of judgment. You know, there's a lot of things that happen to us in the second column. We didn't have any part in things that happen as a child, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Horrible things,
horrible things are done by people who are sound asleep, who are spiritually sick. And the books trying to make you understand that Mark for you to sit in judgment on them. You are sick like them too.
So it uses that prayer. God, please help me show this sick person the same tolerance, pity and patience I would cheerfully grant a sick friend. And you begin to look at everybody that you've ever written inventory on from that viewpoint. I don't care what visual you use. Take a friend who who is dying of some disease. I don't care what it is.
And let's say that they go off on you, call your names, slammed you. I don't care whatever it is that quote you think has hurt you
and they're in this bed and they're dying from this horrible disease.
Do you think you would get upset with him? I don't think so. You would have compassion and love and understanding and you would say to yourself, that's happening because they're so physically ill. Well, guess what our big book is trying to do is trying to say the very, very same thing is trying to say, Mark, this person did that because they're spiritually sick. Mark, there are what? They're asleep
and so it gives us that beautiful prayer to work with that right. And it talks about Mark, avoid retaliation and anger. And then the book goes on to say something else. It says that I can be kind and loving toward anyone. I can be helpful at anyone. And then it shifts you into why don't you just take a look at your 4th column? Where are you selfish, self seeking, dishonest and or afraid?
You know you, you pick up the paper, you have your own life to look at. And there's great sadness and compassion to my heart at times for people who are sick. Just like I have to have compassion for myself for the times I have been absolutely sound asleep, took a course of action that produced harm in another human being.
You see for which is why it's so easy for me to operate with forgiveness.
The extent to which you are having a difficult time forgiving is the extent to which you are still asleep.
There's another book God Calling. I like what it says better about forgiveness. It says that what really has to happen is that part of South that felt wrong to begin with must die. Then there's nothing to forgive.
You understand that that part of that part of you that feels it was wrong actually needs to die, and that can happen the processes of inventory, and therefore there's nothing to forgive.
So you might consider some of that relative to
relative to to people that you still have some hardness in your heart. You might you might extend to them the fact that they're spiritually sick. You know, if you had a for years, I had this inventory around my mother and father and I considered a day and tell you that their pictures are are on the are on the altar. I have an altar at home and that I thank God every day for my mother and father and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt they gave me their best shot
based on how awake they were and I am so grateful that they were the ones that I had that I had no others. Now, that is not where it started when I begin writing inventory.
There's so much love in my heart for those people, see, just as there's love for myself, for all the mistakes that I made. When I'm sound asleep, dreaming, I'm awake going through life driven. See, God has to be the creator. The Goddess I'm going to try and appease, you know,
would have to be, based on my experience, nothing but love or mercy.
What kind of a God would punish people who are sound asleep, dream in their wake making mistakes? So those of you that are continually beating yourself up over and over again for things that you have done when you are asleep need to get over it.
Remorse is spiritual pride. Let it go. Get present with your life right now. Let it go. If you knew better, you'd have done better. Let it go. Let them go. Get present now. The the reality of your life is one thing I want to talk about. Here's another. A couple people, several people have asked me about meditation and I'm going to talk more about that. I am going to tell you around meditation that discipline is
horse. I ride
and I just want to say this so I don't forget it.
This is ties back to you and I drank for the effect produced by alcohol non the last year I had a realization
come at everything in my life and I expect the effect produced by alcohol, which is instantaneous to manifest in every area of my life and when it doesn't, I'm angry or and I give it up, which is why we're sprinters. I'm going to meditate 3 days and I'm not enlightened so I quit.
You know, I'm going to work the work the steps one time, but I'm not free of resentment. So AA must not work. See, I'm going to get in this relationship and and after two weeks I have a fight. Well, I'm going to leave. It's just there's some I did not realize that I took the effect I go to work for a company I'm not CEO in a week.
The effect produced by alcohol, which is instantaneous when you the more self-centered you are, the more you take that effect into every single area of your life. See if you here's the deal. If you want what I have, go as long as I have without drinking and do what I Isn't there an easier way?
I don't want to do what he does. You kidding me? See, we're sprinters. 100 yard dash for 10 yards, baby. I'll give you all I got. See, Nick can't. Can't finish anything,
you know, and wanting this instantaneous you know, we joined the gym. We go 2 weeks and not carved out don't look like Arnolds equipped, you know, and and that's how we are. I I don't know how we got that way, but but but we're that way. So
I the key is to do it.
There are, there are some of the doctrines of Taoism which are really, really love because one of them that they say that that I relate to is it says we don't care what your spiritual practice is,
do it. If you did it today, you won and if you didn't, you lost. I can work with that. I'm a simple guy, right? So if I did the disciplines of 10/11/12 today I won. If I didn't, I lost. It's that simple, right? They also have very profound stuff they that says stuff like this. It says the instance of spirituality is not in profound awakenings. Here's the essence of spirituality. You get up, you use the bathroom, you urinate, do anything else, you eat, you go to work, you do whatever you do
the day you go to bed at night. That spirituality. Wow, I can, I can look on to that. See, we're, we're Big Bang Theory people. You know, it's like you, I got to go to this retreat and this place and no, no, no, God is to be experienced in the moment. See where, where do you not experience God? And it shifts you out of this. Got to go to some special place and some special teacher and, and you know that, that, that kind of a stuff. But I I'm going to talk more about discipline
because discipline is the horse that I ride. I've done it today, so I've won. If I didn't, I lost. It's that simple. But day in, day out, over and over and over, then you begin to to have that experience, if you will.
So now let's talk about sex.
You'll notice the
two out of the three theater lies happen to do with this matter.
I shared with you some some pals of mine who who I love dearly back drinking this year.
These were some men who
have done this work. Umm,
behind relationships, right? And this is this is what we're going to talk about on page 68, The Big Book. I'd like to review a few things.
Says it now about sex. Says many of us need an overhauling there.
I want to be clear to make sure everyone understands the difference between a tune up and an overhauling.
She saw it
in an overhauling. We're going to take everything apart. We're going to lay it all out and we're going to replace some stuff, clean up some stuff and then put it back together again. That is a a whole different process than going into quickie Lube for an oil change, OK. But it says that many of us need an overhauling there.
I've never met an alcoholic that did not need an overhauling in this particular area. And they they talk about the idea of trying to be a sensible to getting off the track. The idea of human opinions are going to take us to to the extremes
two sets of voices, both of which are in our mind. Sex is a less of a lower nature based necessity procreation voices who cry for sex and more sex bewailing institution of marriage
think the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes. Well, at one school says I don't have enough of it or hitting the right kind. I see its significance everywhere. One school allows man no flavor for his fair and the other has its own A straight pepper diet says we want to stay out of this controversy. We do not to be the arbiter of anyone sex conduct.
Arbiter is a judge of so to speak, and I am not the arbiter of anyone sex conduct. Now for those of you who are enlightened, this next sentence may not apply. It says we all have sex problems,
that that means all of us in this room,
we all have sex problems. See, if you can't experience and demonstrate that love that Dave has been talking about, you're going to have sex problems because your motives are going to be selfish. So it says in here that we all have sex problems. We'd be hardly human if we didn't. So what we do about these problems? And now I begin to get instructions for this inventory I'm going to write,
and I like to make a list. It says. Again, I reviewed my own conduct over the years past
and then there's some questions that I'm going to ask in relationship to this conduct.
Where are my selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Who did I hurt and justify be aroused? Jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Where am I at fault? What should I have done instead? I'm going to get this all down on paper. I'm going to look at it
and then out of that I'm going to try and shape a seined. Or is that word seine again? Seine means soundness of mind
and a sound ideal for my future sex life where you could say future relationship and I'm going to subject each relations to this test
selfish or is it not selfish. Then you get some prayers about this scene and sound idea. You're going to ask God to mold your ideals and help you live up to them. You're going to remember always sex powers God-given and good neither to be used lightly herself as he nor to be despised and load. I'm just going to share some of my experiences in this this area. I want to talk a little bit about my most current experience with this.
I've written a lot of inventories in this area because I needed an overhauling there.
You know, I can only speak for myself, but
male growing up in, in our society and culture, you're not given a whole lot of instructions or whatever. And you begin to get a lot of real insane belief systems, either by watching parents or television or every other
mode of communication out there. And out of that, you begin to develop some sex ideals and some sexual belief systems and you begin to develop deep seated belief systems around women and and then around men. And then the end result of there is so much power associated with your sexual energy that it at times will drive you and have you compromise your moral and philosophical convictions beyond anything that you ever could have imagined.
That's my experience and the experience of every alcoholic I personally have ever worked with. So that's the reason why you want to sit down and you want to take a hard, hard look at this. And I like to think of more of it of, of, of my sexual energy would be a way to say that. And how is that manifested in my life? And how do I want that to, to look today? And so this inventory is once again another manifestation of selfishness.
And once again, they ask us to write a list and then they ask us to answer some questions
and to write out some stuff and then out of that to develop A and a sound ideal.
And I want to share with you a little bit of my current experience with this. I've been single for quite a few years. And
so Dave and I sat down and, and, and we got into this area and
for whatever reason, I really went back and I really took a look at history in, in my history in this area. And I just, I felt very compelled. And, and then we begin to go through this thing, this fifth step experience that I, that I had with him in this area. And this is about see, when I go through the steps and I write inventory again, I'm going to say this, I go into the 4th step with these belief systems intact
and that I am not quite sure about. So here's these belief systems that I have in tech as I go into this inventory is well, I've been single a long time, probably going to go to my grave that way. And that's the way it is. And you know, it's okay. And you know, and, and kind of that's kind of how it was. So we,
we get done with this thing. And so he looks at me and he gives me some considerations. And one of the things he gave me as a consideration is he said,
he said, I want you to consider that I, that I have a sense that that there is a very deep intimate relationship that will be available to you that I think God has in store for you and that that's going to be an essential part of your sense of wholeness and healing and completeness. And so when someone gives me considerations, then I sit with that. I don't respond to that, right. So let me Fast forward a little bit
to as I sit here today and tell you what's happened in that area.
I had written a sane and sound ideal.
And what I want to tell you is, is I I met a woman who
who so far transcends my sane and sound ideal and experience that I'm having right now is not of me. And those belief systems that I had a little over a month ago have been totally stripped away. And now I'm getting to look at a whole new set of things that that, that I'm either going to trust God and move forward on or I'm going to turn back and rely on self. And
it's,
it's just amazing to me. I, I was talking with Dave because
it's so fabulous when you do a fifth step with someone because he sat with me when I'm in this place in this state of consciousness. And then I said Alham last night and I said, let me tell you what's happened in the last month or so. All right. And it's a it's absolutely incredible. This stuff is so transforming for you
and in my experience is is the creator has a plan, has a plan for us in this area. I do know
I think one of the greatest things has come out of my work in this area that has to do with with men and women both. Because to me, this inventory is about a lot more than relationships with the opposite sex.
Is my capacity to love you just as you are and not needing anything to change? See if there's anyone in your life in which you need something within them to change. That's about you and not them. So make a simple decision. Either stay with it, be comfortable with it, or don't
you follow me. Most people that I know, who they are is who they are and what you see is what you get.
But I've learned today to to love people is exactly as they are and I don't need them to change. And here's why. I don't need anything from them
there to have someone change. The greater your need, you follow me when you you can get taken to a place. I'll say it again. The greater your desire to have someone in your life, a significant other change, the greater that desire is, the deeper your selfishness is embedded, if you will. Do you understand?
Because here's what I mean. What is the reason you want them to change? To satisfy self right?
Was talking with with my pal Chris earlier and for me and there's been this has happened a couple of times of sitting here and looking at a woman in my life and getting very clear on who this woman is and asking myself this question. Do you want to grow old with that person? Not a judgmental question, a simple question. The answer is no, then move on. No judgment, no nothing. You understand what I'm saying? Don't need them to change a single bit because they may not
get to make a decision then around that area, but nothing had to change there. Perceptions, those kinds of things. So profound stuff can happen if you go through and work with this. I
I'm always amazed we so seldom talk about this in our rooms, yet any of you have sponsored or anyone knows that it's at the heart of most dialogues that you ever have with anyone that you work with.
And my the women and friends, I have an A tell me the same thing with the ladies that they sponsor, yet we don't talk about this much in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Lot of people drink behind relationships. There's a lot of pain behind relationships.
One of the things I didn't know was if you can't live without him, you can't live with him. And when you can live without him, it's OK to live with him.
For people like us, you can't ever put the cart in front of the horse. See, when you can get taken to a place that you can live without a woman and be at peace, probably that part point in time, you can live with a woman and be at peace.
See, I think that's why it uses the word driven, driven, driven, that kind of stuff. So that's some of my, some of my experiences with this area. This inventory can have a profound impact on your life.
You can come out of it with a sane and sound ideal, an idea of what you're going to take into the relationship. This is an area that the book warns you that if you're selfish actions continue, you're quite sure to drink.
It's very, very clear that this is an area that you can drink alcohol behind. So it's an area worth taking a a hard, hard look at. So that's all I got for now, Dave.
What Mark just shared with you was extremely toned down compared to what happened in that first step.
Because we're talking and he's looking at me and he says, hell, I've been married four times, Meriden divorced four times. I'll never be in. I heard the word never, man, When I hear the word never, here we come, the bullseye. The beauty of this fist step that we shared was
the areas that I've spent at least 15 years a hard intensive labor working on are the areas that Mark has been having just these awakenings and he's having hard, hard time with and vice versa. The areas that I'm having a hard time with, he's got a lot of experience in. You know,
don't write one of these inventories and then go fist step it with somebody that has absolutely no idea what the hell it is that you're talking about because their ego will talk you out. Oh, you don't need to make them. That was justified. Don't worry about that. Oh, yeah, I had that. You know, they were wrong. That kind of deal,
go to where you need to go. If you see somebody that's got something you want and it's on your inventory and you're having a hard time with it, go to them.
I've been to war.
I've never been in Vietnam. I can't say that I have that experience. Somebody comes to me and it's all wrapped around the axle about a Vietnam story. I can share with them my experience about going to war, but I'm going to hand them off to him because I know he was in Vietnam and he wasn't in the Gulf War, so he doesn't have any experience on that.
Go to where the experience is. You know, I've worked with literally dozens and dozens and dozens of men
who have molestation in their past. I was never molested. I will hear that. We will talk about it. I'll help them as far as I can go. But it gets to a certain point. I've got no more experience with that. But I got dozens of resources to hand them off to go talk to him. He can help you with that. I had a woman come to me recently and, and she had this information, as you heard me share, I couldn't hear her fist step. And she's got these huge sexual issues coming out of, of behavior in the rooms.
And it's, it's repeated in the past in the rooms of AA and she's at a crisis point in her life. And she's like, what do I do? And I said, you know, I can't help you there. I can steer you to a woman who I know has got similar issues, you know, And then I called up Mark and I said, Hey, I got this woman. Do you know anybody, any woman that's got these specific issues? And he said, yeah, here's a phone number. I cleared it first. I said, Are you sure? I got spiritual license that I can call you no problem. She's so I called her up and I checked it out with her and said, Hey, I got the who's, this is who I am, this
what I got. Would you be willing to accept a phone call? And then I put the two together, you know, so they can talk and clear this stuff up. I have resources today only because I've been around a while. You need those resources in your quiver, you know, if you're going to be able to deal with this stuff.
Me personally, the sex ideal and sex inventory work profound changes in my life.
I was scared to death of Catholicism,
yet the 1st, 5th step I did happened to be with a Catholic. I didn't know he was a Catholic priest. He was an old guy at an AA meeting and he had a wonderful spirituality. And I said, hey, can I read a fifth step? And he said, yeah, I live right next to the church in town. I showed up and he's wearing a collar. And I'm like, I start laughing. Where you going, Leo? You going to a costume party? That's how thick I was, right?
But when the time came and I needed help and I was in a relationship and my parents had abandoned me and they said, you know, if you marry her, you're cut out of the will, you know, and and they did all this stuff, which is all drama. But at the time I needed help and I needed to decide, am I going to be in this relationship? And I don't know where to go. And I went to Leo and my wife, current relationship, right? We survived. We went to this priest and we counseled with the priest. And then my ego's telling me, what is this man going to tell me about how to have a relationship? He's single. He has no idea.
He gave me one instruction which Mark already talked about. He said, Dave, I can't help you if you're expecting something to change.
Can you accept her, the good and the bad as if she never changes from right this point. If you can do that, we can work. If you can't do that, walk away. And I had to sit with that for like 3 weeks. Could I take her the good and the I wanted the good, but man, I didn't want the bad. You know, an expectation is a reservation for a resentment. If you got an expectation, guess what? If your play doesn't come off well, you're going to have some theater to lie going on.
It's going to happen.
The sexual arena when you're doing the sex inventory is to look for themes. You don't have to go out and hear this again. You do not have to go out and have another bad relationship in AA. It is not a prerequisite. Everybody in this room right now has had enough experience that you don't have to go have another bad experience to test it out. Learn from the experience you've already got. That's the purpose of the sex inventory.
We're going back and looking for themes. One of the things that I always say, and it's not out of the big book, it's above and beyond that, is how did you meet?
When I started doing that, I found out that every woman that I was ever involved with, it was love at first sight. I saw him across a crowded room. I knew that she was the one for me. I pursued her to the gates of insanity and death and all I was interested in was one thing. Get in her pants as fast as I can and then get the hell away from her.
That's what I was about. And when I was drinking, I was a whore, no bones about it. That's what I did. One thing, one thing. I was trying to put the pain out that was inside me with, with with sex. It wasn't working with the men I work with. If our egos are big enough that we're not going to drink again, what are we going to do? We're going to act. I call it the hairy eyeball. We're going to get the hairy eyeball. We're going to get on the Internet. All right, Start doing the Internet deal. We're going to start mentally undressing everybody we see and started having these mental
disease. You know, of course, we're not going to get rid of the relationship we got because that every once in a while we do get some over there, but you know, we're going to take it out to the NTH degree. All right? If that doesn't work, guess what else we're going to do? If we can't access sex and use sex as a way to sex is just like drinking. We pursue it, we think about it, we obsess it, we go for it. Once we got it, we get a high out of it and guess what happens when we're done? If it's not honest, we feel guilt, shame and remorse. What's the difference between that and drinking
nothing and the next time it comes around, guess what delusion this time is going to be different. So we pursue it again in the exact same result happens we put ourselves back on the stove yet again. All right going through the inventory process we're looking at what have we done have we unnecessarily aroused jealousy and and these sort of things. One of the things that hit me very profoundly in relationships is we don't just arouse jealousy as
sexual jealousy.
In an intimate relationship, we have these little competitions and it's always trying to one up each other. Guess what that means? There's if there's a winner, there's a loser. You're arousing a jealousy and you're underlying. Your ego is starting to underline, undermine your relationship. You're creating a harm. I didn't know that until I was maybe 15 years sober. I was always having these little competitions, you know, sick behavior. I was blind to it. Now I can't do that stuff,
even by accident
without it causing excruciating pain. The longer you're sober, the narrower the road is going to get. I used to be out of whack for for weeks, months at a time, and that was OK because I had 12 steps and I knew I'd get to eventually. And then the road got narrower and narrower and narrower. If I'm out of whack now for a couple of hours, I'm in absolute excruciating misery. Because why? God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. So you go through the instructions, you write out the answers to the 9 questions. All right,
if there was something, one of the things I'd like to ask is also not out of the big book. Tell me some of the good things about your relationship. Oh, we had something in common. It was a good thing
that transfers straight across to a sex ideal. If it was something good about a past relationship, it would be good in a next relationship, right? Logical. If having sex on the first date always ended in disaster. Reverse that and it transfers straight across to your sex ideal. Someone with whom I won't have sex on the first date with.
And we can build from our own past experience a way of behavior, but that's still selfish. This is what I want out of a relationship. I want this, I want this, I want this. I want this self, self, self, self, self. Your sex ideal isn't just what you want, it's what you're willing to bring to the relationship. If you want fidelity, then you have to bring fidelity, right? If you want somebody that's spiritual, guess what? You got to bring spiritual.
If you want somebody that's athletic, guess what? You got to bring athletic
to the relationship. If you want somebody that's kind and caring, compassionate, guess what? You've got to bring kind, caring and compassion because why? What are they? They're a mirror. The thing in the relationship that immediately attracts you to your soul mate that you say that's the one I want. And they look back at you and they say that's the one I want. What are you looking at? Each other in each other's mirrors. There's a hole in your soul and that's what you see in their soul. The peace that's missing, where a jigsaw puzzle in the very centerpiece is falling out.
It's rattling around inside of us, but it's missing. And we see the person and we say that's the person for me because their piece is going to fit my home. You think? And you go, no pun intended, right?
So you run out and you grab this relationship and you plug their jigsaw piece puzzle right into this interview. But you know what? It's not quite a perfect fit. Almost, but not quite. And over time it starts to rattle and it starts to get worn and next thing you know, it falls out and you want to cast them aside.
What was beautiful about them that attracted to you was you were looking at something that was missing in you. If you can find what was missing in you because it's in you, then you both can be whole. And then you're 90, you're 100% perfect. That one percent, 99%, you're perfect at 1% that was missing is in you. All you have to do is find it. That piece is rattling around you. Find it, plug it into your soul, heal yourself, and then you can have the perfect relationship with the other person. Do they have to change? Not in the slightest.
The only person has to change is you. Vision. I'm real big on vision. Get some vision.
What is it that you want? What are you willing? And then get up and be that. What does God want me to be? When we start talking about 10 and 11, you'll hear me talk more about that. Consider your plans for the day. What are your plans for the day? Clean up the mess from yesterday. But what else? I want to be a better father. So I ask myself something very specific. How can I be a better father today? What can I do right now, today? Put it on my list. There's one thing I've succeeded at. I'm going to do this today to be a better father. How can I be a better husband? I'm going to do this.
How can I be a better employee? Boom, right down the line. All right? That's the purpose of a sex ideal. Most people have never seen one. They don't know how to write one. There's one in the guide. It's one mine from an old inventory. It's on page 14.
All right,
That was what I came up with. It has changed since then. I wrote that sex ideal after years of being in a relationship, a monogamous married relationship. I'm thinking, why should I write a sex ideal? Once again, my ego taken over. I know that answer to that. I've already been down this path. Why should I write it? And I wrote this. It blew me away and I held on to it. I shared it, my fist step, and I held on to it and then I couldn't take it anymore.
Why wouldn't I share that with my wife? Why wouldn't I let the wall down, let her see me?
And I went to her and I said, hey, by the way, I wrote a new ideal. And here it is. You know, she was blown away by what I was on my ideal, you know, And so why wouldn't I share it with you? Who care? Who do I care knows what's on my ideal
if I can try to live to it. I now have a goal. I have a vision of where I want to be and what I want to bring. It's something to challenge me. It's this and and this area will yield benefits better than you could ever imagine. If you start out with a spiritual process with an answer, guess what you're going to figure out through the whole process. You end up with the answer you started with. Start out with a question. What does God want me to be in a relationship?
I just recently started to do this myself and I've been asking the guys I work with. The sex ideal is such a cool thing. It's really helped me dramatically in my sex relationship.
Let's write a work ideal. What do I want out of work?
Why not not only just what I want out of work? What am I willing to bring to work? So I wrote out a work ideal,
I wrote out a program ideal, I wrote out a sponsorship ideal. What do I want for my sponsor and what am I willing to bring to my sponsor? I've now because I'm looking for vision in my life. How can I get more vision of where do I want to end up? Powerful stuff, really important stuff.
The way to get there to any, any goal. You can't start any journey unless you know where you are, where the starting point is. You got to write the inventories to know this is where I am. Then you need a goal, a vision for where you're headed to before you can figure out a path on how to get there, right? So acceptance, action, result, right? The acceptance is right out the ideal or the inventory. This is who and what I have become. It's not me anymore. I am not that person anymore
today. This is who I am.
Where do I want to go? Right out the sex ideal. Ask God to help you get there and you'll make it. It's a wonderful deal, but it takes
constant repetition. What we do repeatedly we become. What we think repeatedly we become, We are. That is, it becomes us. We manifest that in our lives. A A Comes of Age
page #250 says a single act of surrender can produce sobriety by its stopping effect upon the ego. Unfortunately, that ego will return unless the individual learns to accept a disciplined way of life. Notice it's a way of life. It has to become you. It has to be a fabric of you. It can't. You cannot remove the program from me or me from the program. It is my life. It is part of what I am in this physical shell.
Underneath is the is the kernel,
the true essence of what I really am. But in this physical plane, it's become so connected to how I live life. In this physical plane, there's no separation. It's a way of living, right? So
we have to learn to accept the disciplined way of life, which means that a tendency for our ego to come back is permanently checked. It becomes a way of life. I can keep my ego in permanent check. This is not new to a members. They have learned that a single surrender was not enough. The 12 steps, repeated inventories, not just one, and the 12 stepping itself a routine
reminder that one must work at deserving sobriety. All are essential. We have to earn the to be deserving of sobriety. We just can't come in and say I did it once and then sit on our laurels. When I share, I share about what I'm doing now, what I'm currently doing, not what I did three years ago or five years ago. What am I doing right now, right here? That's what your sex inventory should be. Clean up the past and then look at your inventory right now. What am I doing now and where am I headed?
All right, It's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a full Monte. It's a full deal.
You can't just look at the inventory and say, yeah, I was bad. Let's go make a, you know, make amends for that and stop there. I guarantee you will remanifest that stuff in your life. You have to replace it. It's back to the pink elephant. If I tell you to think about a pink elephant, unless I replace it with something else, you have nowhere to go. I can't
emphasize enough the importance of a sex ideal and how many hundreds of thousands of Alcoholics and Alcoholics Anonymous have never heard of a sex ideal, A properly written sex ideal. If you try to live and compare your life to it, it will change you for all time. So you got anything else
we got? We got one minute. We're going to change. OK, Yeah. Let's, if you guys will bear with me for just one second, we'll change and then and then we'll continue on for what, another half hour? Then go to dinner.