The topics of Resentments and Fear at the 10th Fellowship of the Spirit, NY at the Graymoor Spiritual Retreat Center in Garrison, NY

My name is Scott Lee and I'm an alcoholic. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming back. We love you dearly. Let's let's open with a few moments of silence if you would. I always like to invite God to the meeting.

Amen. Thank you. Continuing on Step 4,

we are

at the top of page, actually at the bottom of page 67, we realized the people who were wronged us, or perhaps spiritually sick. This the beginning of the forgiveness process which is contained in Step 4, which you probably won't find if all you do is write. And it says though we did not like their symptoms, the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. And then here is the first of several prayers in step four. We ask God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we cheerfully grant a sick friend.

I have very prayerfully approached this. Most of my teachers got sober on the second edition,

but I refer to the back of the book as the God will constantly disclose more to you and us.

And on page 552,

there's an interesting prayer that I find useful and I think it's in that category. We're going to start the bottom of 551 ladies talking about a resentment against her mother and she says one morning, however, I realized I had to get rid of it. That's a that's a resentment against her mother from my reprieve. If you look up reprieve, it's a stay of execution. There's another death threat. We try to keep them coming. My reprieve was running out If I didn't get if I didn't get rid of it, I was going to get drunk and I didn't want to get drunk anymore. My prayers that morning I asked God to point out to me some way to be free of this resentment during the day. A friend of mine brought me some magazines to take to

group I was interested in. I looked through them. A banner across one featured article by a prominent clergyman in which I caught the word of resentment. Before I go on, I want to observe the sequence of events because I believe that this is a predictable sequence of events. I see something about me that needs work. Not something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with us, We're God's kids. There are things that need work. I pray about it. I like to add in that I talk to spiritual advisor of some kind. And then what she did was she got focused helping somebody else. I don't know what kind of a hospital group,

but she's out of herself, going to help somebody else, and her answer falls out of the sky on her. That is a predictable sequence of events and I love it when I see it in somebody I sponsor. I always point, I said, hey, it happened again, right? You prayed about it. You talked to me. You took a meeting into the jail. When you came out, your answer was laying on the hood of your car. It happens over and over and over again. Continuing, he says. He said, in effect, if you have a resentment you want to be free of. That's an interesting question. Do you want to be free? Did we make our sale? We killed

times. Are you willing to pay the price because it's high? If you will pray for the person or thing you resent, you'll be free. If you'll ask in prayer for everything you want to be for yourself, to be given to them, you'll be free for their happiness, their health, their prosperity, and you will be free even when you don't really want it for them. And your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. That goes on to say that'll work in two weeks. You're starting out with 409 resentments. Probably 2 weeks is a little bit on the optimistic side.

I think the shortest resentment list I ever saw I thought was complete was around 40 as a young man and he just wasn't very mad.

The longest one I ever saw was over 600 and it was incomplete. This guy hated everybody and he wished there was more of them. I, I, I had never seen anybody in love with hate like this guy was.

So what I like to do with this is I like to add those two together. And it is I observe that this prayer in 67 ask God to help me show them tolerance, pity and patience like I would grant a sick friend. And then on the other prayer, I'm praying for them.

So it would look something like this. I'm the guy is continuing with 30 minute sessions, beginning of the 1st 5 minutes talking about the worst things he's ever done. He spends the next 25 minutes in prayer. In addition, I want you to pray in the shower, driving the car, whenever you think about him day or night. Let's stay in prayer over this thing. And so the prayer might go something like this first name on the list, Fred. God help me show Fred the same tolerance, pity, and patience I would cheerily grant a sick friend. And also pray that

that Fred's hair doesn't fall out and that he gets promoted at work, that his kids go to school in scholarship, that his wife is fabulous in bed. That his lawn grows lush and green, but it grows so slowly he only has to mow it once a year. OK, Hang it right out over the edge. I don't think you can be too creative on this one. And then afterward, I, I say you ask yourself a simple question. Do I mean that? That's not an essay question,

that's a yes or no. Either mean that or you don't.

If you don't mean it, go to the next name, Don't stay there. If you do mean it, put a check mark in the margin and go to the next name. And when we get to the end of the list, we'll start again with the ones that aren't checked. And we're going to do this until you're finished. And I really couldn't care any less how long it takes. I'm working with a guy right now that's got about 10 years, has never done the book, and he's down to three, having started with a couple of around 300 about five months ago.

I don't care how long this takes.

I don't know of anything more important that we do there. There's a there's a prayer that we pray at the end of a lot of meetings in my part of the world, actually all over the country that has a phrase in it. And the phrase is forgive us our trespasses as we forgive. And I believe what that says is if I don't forgive them, don't you forgive me. My sponsor said what you really want is mercy for you and justice for everybody else. And the package is mercy for everybody or justice for everybody.

And you are part of everybody and you get to choose.

I'm not in a position to face justice. So I've chosen mercy for everybody. And to me, this, this approach, as I said earlier, and I believe the English language has it wrong. Sure does. In my case, forgiveness is something I do. It's something I receive. I get here locked up like this. And what you've taught me to do is to open to receive the gifts that I've always been here has never been God's unwillingness to give. It's been my inability to receive

that's been the problem, and I think of resentment as ice around my heart

and what I do with these two prayers combined as I hold the icy heart up to the sunlight of the Spirit

and the ice has the thickness. I think based on the severity of the events, how long ago they were, how much I've nurtured them,

and the sunlight will always melt ice, and maybe the time period has to do with how close I can hold it and how long. I don't know the answers to any of those questions. I know this this works.

There's a wonderful workshop a man that I sponsor does on going through the forgiveness process for the man that killed his son.

This is some powerful stuff. All right, Don't discount this. So forgive isn't something I do. It's something I receive. And what what this process did for me was it opened me up to receive the gift of not hating you anymore. You come to me and tell me you want to be a close friends with me and us to be really close. But by the way, you hate my children, that's not going to work, is it? Now I'm going to God and say I want to be close to you, but meanwhile I'm going to hate some of your children.

That package doesn't make any sense to me. And so this for me is the forgiveness process. And I say if we, if we do something more important than this, I don't know what it is,

This, this is beyond this, just somewhat more important than life or death.

That's my experience with it. And my experience is that it works and it works every time. It takes some time. This particular guy and I have his permission to talk to you. This particular guy prayed his list 2 1/2 times before he checked off the first night.

That's not unusual. I don't care. Been nurturing these things for a long time. We're digging the poison out of your soul. That's not poetry, that's exact description of what we do here. And this is where it happens between the 3rd and 4th columns of resentment inventory

and then

I continue at the top of 67 gives me my marching orders from now on. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him? Here's another prayer. God saved me from being angry. Thy will be done. That's what I do when you bug me now

and then. It says we avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. Interesting. Page 77 at the top. For those of you who read the Big Book regularly, you'll laugh when I say you have to read it all the time to catch all the new stuff because you know they sneak into your bedroom and they change it. They had some stuff. They added this about 2 1/2 years ago for those of you who may have missed it. Now those of you are new. They don't rewrite the Big Book, but we read it with new eyes

and

third line 77, our real purpose to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to God, the people about us. And understood for the longest time that I was supposed to be a maximum service to God and the people about me. And that's not what it says at all,

is to fit myself,

is for me to do the work on me as best I can, to go through this forgiveness process, to be available to stay as cleaned out as I can so I can be the best tool. His job to use me. My job is to keep the tool sharp. Continuing on 67,

here's another powerful promise. We cannot be helpful to all people. At least God will show us how to take a kindly, intolerant view of each and everyone. Is that a promise? My goodness, that's all these people we hated,

and Bob covered it so beautifully, putting, referring to our listing and putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done. I can't do that if I still hate them, by the way, how am I going to do that if I still hate them? I don't think it's possible to think about somebody I still hate and put out of my mind what they did. So it's important for me to go through this forgiveness process 1st and get that piece of poison dug out of my soul. We resolutely look for our own mistakes, not our part.

That's a terrible thing. Not looking for my part at all.

I'm looking for my mistakes because if I've gone through this forgiveness process, nobody else has a part. All we have left is my mistake. Where have we been? Selfish, dishonest, self seeking and frightened. Those are the earmarks of the emergence of self. Selfish, I want it my way. Dishonest, I don't care if I have to lie to get it my way. Self seeking, very similar to selfish. Frightened. I'm afraid I may not get my way. It's it's the RE emergency cell. And that list is all over this book and I'm going to hit just a couple of the places. Page 84,

about 10 or 12 lines from the bottom in the 10th step inventory. We'll touch on this a little bit later. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. That sounds familiar. Top of 86 and we retire at night. Constructively rearve where we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid. There's a similar list. Here's one at the top of page 88.

We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity or foolish decisions. A somewhat different list, but very similar. Page 1:45. AM I going fast enough?

Page 145. Where's that Lady did that?

Yes, thank you. We have enemies. They're described very clearly on page 145. Paragraph begins in the middle of the page. The greatest enemies of us Alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration and fear. Not the exact same list, but very, very close. And those are all the earmarks of the re emergence of self. It always comes back to self

continuing on 67.

It tells us twice to disregard what they say. And then I look for for my mistakes

and and I love this thing. At the on the last sentence, we admitted our wrongs honestly, and we're willing to set these matters straight. Gee, that sounds like step 8, doesn't it? Yeah, very much so. And then I'm going to leave some of this for Bob. But we indict fear in the next paragraph. Generally speaking, it's not a good thing. And on page 68, it says we reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them. What that tells me is that I have some fears that have resentment connected and then I have some that don't.

I kind of got two categories. I can find some of them by reviewing the resentment inventory. Others I may need some help with. And I have what I am doing in the spiral notebook is turned 5 or 6 pages. Make a big dog here so you can find it. So you can add the other resentments as you find them. And then let's have a list of fears. Now I've got some very close friends who come up with a four column inventory out of out of this part of it.

You know what? I missed something on the page before tonight. Yo, excuse me, let's go back to 67.

This paragraph begins with referring to our list again, putting our mind. We look for our own where I'm looking for my mistakes. I like to use that for 1/4 column and there's not much room over there. You got a half a page, 2 lines, all you got left. So it's this is not a big long written beat me up kind of thing. I'm just looking for my mistakes. So let's put them down. What did I do wrong next to she girl left me for another guy?

Well I was saying some other girls myself got caught. Maybe that's partially my fault.

The professor that gave me the bad grades, well, I didn't study and I didn't show up for class that much. He didn't actually give me the grade. I earned it. High school football coach did me play me as much as I said I deserved. Well, I go back and look at it. When I went to practice, I didn't practice very hard. In addition to which, there are other guys in that position that played better than I did. They got go back and look at the truth on these things. I don't have to like it. I do have to look at it. So for me, that's the 4th column. I'm glad we picked that back up.

Continuing here on page 68,

even though we had no resentment connection, we asked ourselves why we had them. I'm so grateful. They tell me I had no idea why I had fears. No idea. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? And I, I what I asked them to do is to go down your fear list and ask yourself a question one at a time. If I were totally God reliant, would I have this fear? It's a good question and I think that we'll show you that it is self-reliance that generates the fears.

Next paragraph. Perhaps there is a better way. We think so. We're now on a different basis, basis of trusting and relying upon God. That seemed redundant to me.

Roman numeral 16. Forward to the second edition.

One of the most powerful concepts I've found in this book. It just screamed at me one day. For those of you who brought your book, we're pretty close to the front. And it's his second or third edition. XBI

Bill Wilson's about leave the Oxford Groups, and he's not taking everything they got, but he's taken some of it, about 10 lines from the top. Though he could not accept all the tenants of the Oxford Groups, he was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personality defects, restitution of those harmed, which might be different from an apology, helpfulness to others, and listen to this last phrase. And then necessity. I wonder if that's important, the necessity

of belief in and dependence upon God.

And the thing that strikes me on that is it's possible to believe in God and not have a higher power.

And that dependence for me is the difference. Belief in God and dependence upon God are separate concepts

and that's what we're talking about here back on 68

basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. Where in the world to play the role he assigned step one, section B My life is unmanageable. I'm here to play the role God of science,

and I love the analogy that God created a particular animal and he gave that animal taste only for the leaves that grow at the top of a particular kind of tree. And he also gave the giraffe along next so we could get to them. I have a long neck for God's will for me. I'm designed for it. But I, I had to get the poison out. I had to get the self out of the way first so that that could happen. Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him. Does he enable us to match calamity with serenity just as I do, as I think he would have me? I don't always know,

don't always know what God wants me to do. But if I'm trying to do what I think he wants me to do next, I still make mistakes, but I make a finer quality mistake than I've ever made before in my life. And that is in fact what progress is.

All of my life, they've been telling me would learn from our mistakes. Not so. Have we learned from our mistakes? How did Alcoholics Anonymous possibly form? I don't learn from my mistakes, never did. What I learned from is living with the results of my mistakes.

We got five steps out of 12 that address that. 4589 and 10 are all about me embracing the results of my mistakes and that's where the learning occurs. I'm let the unlike the dog that wets on the rug, what did he learn? Absolutely nothing. When did he Start learning? When he rubbed his nose in it. Me and the dog have that in common. We like to have our noses rubbed in it because that's where I learned

and as I insist upon living with the results of my mistakes, I was told that's what freedom is. Freedom isn't getting away with it. Freedom is one eye gleefully embrace the results of all of my own decisions and actions. I'm free to do anything. I'm prepared to live with the results of this. What freedom is, and that's what this is about is me taking responsibility for my own actions. That's what this is about. That's how I get free. And the next time I'm in a similar situation and it's and I'm about to do something that's going to get me in trouble,

I think, oh, that's a mistake. No, that's not what I think. I think. Did you enjoy making amends last time you did something like this?

I hate a men's worst in communism. I got no interest in doing amends. I don't like amends at all. So I think I'll just keep my mouth shut this time and I won't have to do amends. And that's where the learning occurs for me.

I I've discovered something for me, and that's I have discovered the source of all anger for me. Anger for me comes from being right. I have never been angry when I wasn't also right.

I have been right when I wasn't angry, but I hadn't been angry when I wasn't right. If I'm angry, what you would try in traffic, I'm right. You shouldn't be driving that way. And it it wherever it occurs, when I'm angry, it's because I'm right. And my being right is based on my judgment. And it comes back to me getting out of the judgment business. When I get out of the judgment business, I don't get mad. I think everybody has a good motive. Somebody asked Al Capone one time why he was involved in drugs and prostitution and gambling and illegal alcohol, all those things,

he said. I was just trying to get people the things they wanted. Al Capone had a good motive,

OK? That's why guys like me got to get out of the motive business, because I'm fully capable of that. That's why I got to stay involved in principle. But when I grant that you have a good motive, but if you're all the way on one side politically, if you will grant that the people on the other side have good motive, you have to be angry with them anymore. They gave me a tremendous freedom. I disagree with the principles, but I'm not angry with them anymore. A gift. What? A gift? Because I'm free. I got free.

This sentence is permission to make a mistake. Just the incentive. We do as we think he would have us. I don't always know. It's OK that I make mistakes. It's my job.

It's my assignment. In my own particular religious beliefs, the job of being perfect is already taken. Somebody's got that. There's not like an address where I can mail a resume, get interviewed. Now I can be perfect. If it's not my job to be perfect, is it not logically my job to make mistakes? And I'm good at it, right? And the learning process occurs for me as I live with the results of those mistakes.

Because I believe the mistakes and the lessons are paired. If I had the lesson I wouldn't have made the mistake. The reason I made the mistake is it points me at a lesson and when I get that lesson, I don't always get it the first time. But when I get that lesson, my next assignment is to make the next mistake. It should be a better one than the last one. My mistakes are getting better and better. I got my buddy Chainsaw Mike. Y'all get it? One of his CDs, Chainsaw Mike, says I got Cadillac problems.

You know, that's right, that the better mistakes I make today,

the better problems I have tomorrow

because that's where they all come from. So here's permission to make a mistake. At the alanine side of that is have I got a string on you holding you in line and you jump out, you pull me with you. When I can let go of that string, it becomes OK with me that you make mistakes. That's the other half of the freedom. That's my experience with it

continuing on 68. We never that's not very often. We never apologize to anyone for depending on our creator. It tells me that twice and that men of faith has courage. I'm kind of skipping down a little bit says they trust their God. We never apologize for God. We let him demonstrate through us what he can do. We ask him aha, this looks like a prayer to me. Four steps, a series of lists, observations and prayers. The list I don't writing the list. I don't know that has any effect at all. The observations, a few of which are written, most are not and the prayers are life changing.

We ask Him to remove our fair and direct our attention to what He would have us do.

And boy, is that ever not what that says, what he would have us be. Yeah, be not do. And I wonder, well, what would he have me be? Well, I found the answer. It's in the book 133 third line. We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous and free. And I think anything that I can add to that list that fits

is within the master's will for me. Happy Joy is free and trying to be a good father. Yep. Yep. Happy Joy is free and letting people in in traffic. Yeah, I think so. Happy Joy is free and. And attending a lot of a A meetings. Yeah. Happy Joy is free and cheating on my taxes.

Ouch. Try it.

My my mentor Don used to say if he was unsure whether or not to do something, he'd pray this prayer. God, if I go to do this, will you go with me? Well, I don't pray that if you don't want the answer,

you will get it. And then it says, it says at once we commence to outgrow fear.

It seems to me that if it's possible for me to outgrow fear, fear must be a lack of growth. I'm going to guess spiritual growth. I'll tell a fear story. Lady friend of mine in Nashville, been in recovery a long time. Was standing in line at a bank to cash a check and all of a sudden there was a hairy arm around her throat and a pistol in her ear and she's a hostage in a bank robbery. She talked about it later and she said all of her fears were in the future,

that as she stood there moment by moment, she was not free to go about her business. She was physically bit uncomfortable, but her fear was that he would abduct her or that he would shoot her. But if she could have stayed in the moment, moment by moment, she was really OK. Crystallized it for me. Any time I'm in fear, I'm in the future anytime. And, and so, so what's the answer to that? The answer to that isn't to don't be afraid for me. The answer to that is to get into today. I learned this from Bob a couple of years ago. We've been doing one of these

and, and how it works, there's this marvelous phrase, there's one who has all power. May you find him now, Bob said. Now isn't when I find God, it's where

that I have to be here where he is. So how do I do that? This is an assignment I give to guys that I sponsor that having trouble with that. I have them take big sheets of paper with a Big Magic marker. Write the word today, one, one on top of the socks and the sock drawer, one on the underwear. Want one of the mirror where you shave? One on the dashboard of your car. You got a screen saver at work? I want today bouncing around there. Let's cut to the size of dollar bills. One on the inside, one on the outside. They say today, and I want you to use that word as much as you can, not only in your speech,

but also in your prayers and especially in your thoughts. See, my disease isn't very creative. It keeps hitting me with the same old junk. And when it hits me with one of those, they're always the what ifs. You know, Jason, the the permutations in the future. When it hits me with one of those, if I tag the word today under the end of the question, it takes all the power away, right? It's not what am I going to do if

it's what am I going to do if today. If I can get the Today word into that, it takes all the power away

and helps me stay here, which is where I need to be.

Fear is an evil and corroding threat. The other thing I wanted to talk about is acceptance. It was explained to me that I did not have to approve of something to accept it. Acceptance does not. It can, but it doesn't have to include approval. If anybody here was abused as a child, I want to tell you right now that I do not approve of that. I think that's a terrible thing, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that and it wasn't right. It's not ever going to be right.

No child deserves that. You didn't deserve it. It's not right. It's just not right.

But I've learned to accept that that happened to me. And what acceptance means is that on a heart level, I have quit fighting something over which I have no power.

That I don't mean I'm inviting evilly. And it doesn't mean if somebody's bashing me, I don't have to defend myself in some way. It means that I need to quit fighting those things over which I have no power. That's what acceptance is, is when I let go of those things and just be at peace. There was a

I read a book a number of years ago and I'm sorry, I can't call. I think it was entitled King Baby and it was written by a this guy was a PhD psychologist, psychiatrist, one of the other, and he was also an ordained minister in one of the mainline president Faith's Presbyterian method is somewhere along an air and he was the chaplain of an insane asylum and he got a wild hero one day. I'm not sure that's exactly how the book presented it, but and and he

inventoried the patients and asked him one question. Would you rather be right or would you rather be free?

And the inmates of the insane asylum overwhelmingly said they would rather be right. And, you know, back when I was nuts, I would rather been right also. And today I would rather be free. And I'm convinced in my case that those are exact and perfect opposites. Right and free are opposites because when I have to be right, I can't make mistakes. When I, when I, if I make a mistake, I have to beat me up and it gets ugly. And beating me up is never the next right thing ever, no matter what, because there's always a lesson there.

Till they have chosen free. I get out of the business of being right,

and what I get is a sense of peace. I get to just kind of be OK with me. See, my priority isn't what I say it is. My priority is what I do. If I want to know what my priorities are, I don't listen to my words about the future. I look at my actions in the recent past. What was accomplished was a priority. What was not accomplished was not a priority. And anything that I say to the contrary is a lie that I'm telling me.

I hated that when I heard that. Five years sober at the Mustard Seed in Chicago. Hated it

because I was saying a bunch of things were priorities and I wasn't doing anything about them.

Priority is about what I do. So if I want to know where I am, what my priorities are, I look at my actions over the last few days. I've got three things I call my spiritual barometers. At two years sober, I was working on my character defects. That's a good way to get a brain hernia. And anyway, working on my character defects is driving me crazy. And I located 3 I couldn't do anything with and they were lying.

Not actually lying. Improving the truth, actually, just around the edges to make it prettier.

Lying, swearing, and my attitude toward those of you who got your drivers licenses out of Cracker Jacks boxes. And what I discovered eventually was that if one of those got out, if I'd looked, they were all out. See, and I can't wear, I can't stop them. I I can't, I can't stop me from swearing, right? I guess duct tape can't stop me from lying. I can't change my attitude towards you. But I believe this

when my spiritual house is in order, those things aren't a problem. So when I hear me angry and cussing at you in traffic,

I don't work on that. What I do is I inventory my spiritual program over the last few days.

How long has it been since I talked to my sponsor? How long has been says I talked to my sponsee's? When's the last time you took a meeting into a jail or a treatment center? What you're the one that gets out of me is what's your morning in prayer and meditation look like? Do you still hold that commit? What's your evening permit? Are you reading your spiritual? Are you? Where's the hole in your spiritual bucket? Somethings leaking. Go back and plug that hole and two days later you can cut me off in traffic and almost hit me and I'll smile at you from the depths of my soul and I'll wave my entire hand at you. I'll wave the whole thing and

they don't do that around here.

And I'll say God go with that one, you know, and, and thank you that I saw he was going to cut me off and get on my break and I wasn't in a wreck that it would have been his fault, but I'm still in a wreck. Thank you so much and God bless that child. I make mistakes like that too. And I hope the next guy that I do that too can forgive me like I do this guy. God bless him. I can't change me from the screaming maniac. I can't change me. But when I go back and plug the holes in my spiritual bucket, those things just don't happen.

Thanks, Scott. I'm Bob, an alcoholic. Hey, Bob,

heard a guy years ago say there's only two driving forces in human nature, fear and love.

And as I go through this inventory, I start to see how much a part of my life fear was

when I saw it, fear was involved in every resentment. And when we get to the sex inventory, we'll see that it's it's involved deeply in that.

I started to realize what it means when it says we're driven by 100 forms of fear.

And yet when I I remember sitting down at the kitchen table with a legal pad and I'm going to do my first out of the book legitimate inventory and I'm trying to write. I just finished my resentments

and I'm trying to write fears and I'm sitting there and I'm drawing a blank. I can't think of anything I'm afraid.

And I went to a meeting, the end of the monthly speaker meeting. We had a speaker there from out of town and a bunch of us went out to eat after the meeting to pie shop. And sitting in this restaurant, I'm talking to this old timer. And I said, you know, I'm doing an inventory. And I got to the fear inventory and I realized I don't have any fears.

And he said, Really?

I said, yeah, I don't have any fears. He said, can I ask you some questions? I said, yes, sure. He said, are you afraid of large, angry barking dogs?

Well, everybody is. And he says, we're not talking about everybody, we're talking about you.

And I said, well, yeah, he says, good, you can put that down. He afraid of rattlesnakes. Well, I mean, everybody's afraid of rattlesnakes, for God's sake, he says. But we're talking about you.

He says Black Widow spiders, and I'm snodding my head. Then he starts getting a little personal. He says, Are you afraid of being embarrassed? Are you afraid of what other people think of you?

Are you afraid that no one will ever love you? Are you afraid of dying old alone?

Are you afraid of getting sick and you can't take care of yourself? Are you afraid that people are going to find out stuff about you that you don't want anybody to know about? Are you afraid that you'll never have a good life because you've hurt so many people that you know it's going to catch up with you? Are you afraid to really trust God because you've hurt so many of his kids? Are you afraid of getting? Are you afraid of cancer?

I God, when he said that one, I just, I had cancer every other week

in my early, I don't know how many thousands of deathbed speeches I've rehearsed in my head when I find out it wasn't a brain tumor, it was a headache. Oh, all right.

And all the people are you afraid of? What about all the people you're hurt,

afraid that's going to catch up with you?

And on and on and on. And then he finally, after hammering me with this, he finally says, so was there anything you weren't afraid of? And I thought, Oh my God, how did that happen? The book says it's an evil

in corroding thread. The fabric of my existence was shot through with it.

I can't see fear because I'm like a fish looking for water. It is the motivating aspect of self that dominates me and drives my life. And I can't see it because it is and it I it is me. It has consumed me. It's funny how I would I, you know what? Silkworth and the doctor's opinion says something that has has come through my whole life,

he says. To us, our alcoholic life seems the only normal one.

You take the alcohol away and I start thinking it's normal to wake up afraid, normal to wake up anxious and apprehensive about life,

normal to worry and spin in my head about stuff all the time. As if normal equals neurotic, right? But to me, my alcoholic life seems the only normal one.

And I found out that I was so full of fear and and then at the next line is a is an interesting statement. It says that it's talking about fears and it says it sets in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did not we ourselves set the ball rolling?

What does that mean? Well,

when I was new in sobriety, I heard a guy say, he said, you know, I've never had a problem in my life that has hurt me as much as my solutions to my problems.

Psychologists call this self fulfilling prophecies. And what is it? I get a fear and then I try to manage the fear

and what happens? I make the fear come true.

Give you, I'll give you an example, my first sober relationship, I get into it, I have no, I have no self esteem yet. I've not made all my amends. I don't. I haven't spent a dozen years sponsoring people and doing service. So I haven't really done anything to change my relationship with me yet,

or my relationship with God or you really. So what am I bringing to the table? Except the big vacancy

and a lot of and a lot of feelings of inadequacy and a lot of not enough Ness. That's all I got. Don't make me a bad guy. It's just all I got. I haven't done the work consistently and lived differently to be differently. It's all I got. So I come to the table in this relationship with a fear. What's the fear? Well, the fear is that she's going to dump me,

right? So what happens? The fear drives me. It drives me to be the possessive, smothering guy. It drives me to be watching her all the time. It drives me to be the guy who drives by her house in the middle of the night just to make sure nobody elses cars there. It drives me to that. When she hugs somebody in the meeting, I'm going. I pull the guy aside after the meeting. You don't be hugging my girlfriend.

People are looking at me like I'm a whack job, man.

When she leaves the room, I look through her purse, make sure there's no guys cards in there,

she said to me one time. She says Every time I'm in a meeting with you and I look up, you're looking at me.

I don't even know I'm doing it right. I don't even know I'm doing it. And what happened? My fear of her leaving me drove me to be the guy who literally would push her out of my life. And I remember the day that it was the day after it was over and she's now off with some other guy and I am. I feel like I've been gut shot and I wished I was dead. And my whole life is crumbling around me because she was, unbeknownst to me, became my higher power,

right?

And in the middle of that desolation, and it's horrible, there's a little voice that I can hear in my head that I've come to identify with my ego. And the little voice says,

see, you were right. I like being right. Devastated, about ready to drink, but right for God's sakes.

I've lost jobs like that because I've gone to work and made And what are my fears but judgments?

The ego says