Steps 8 and 9 at the 10th Fellowship of the Spirit, NY at the Graymoor Spiritual Retreat Center in Garrison, NY

Start like, like now. I'm Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bob. Welcome back. Now, since there's not everybody's here, I can unleash the secret. Yes,

I'm such a wise guy

One before we move on to step 8-9, which I think are the really big deals in AAI, wanted to

comment on the seven step prayer in the middle of page 76. And it is a reminder when we say to God,

I, I am now willing for you to have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant may strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. We've then completed step seven. I'm not asking him for anything that will serve me.

That Alcoholics Anonymous is not a selfish program. It's not a self help program. It's not a program of self improvement. It's a program of self abandoned

and service. I'm asking God to take the things away that stand in the way of my usefulness. Period. And I don't even get an opinion of what those are.

I am advocating along with my will, my judgment and perception and opinion of everything. And now it's in his hands. And I just trust that He will remove the things that stand in the way of me helping his kids. And I think Alcoholics Anonymous is a process where by which I am divinely crafted by my sickness

and defects to be uniquely and divinely useful to other people that are exactly like me.

And when that's why an alcoholic son is, it says later on that where our real purpose is to fit. And sometimes I think and refit and refit ourselves to be a maximum service to God, the people about us, because we have a primary #1 purpose in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that is to help other Alcoholics, people like us. And in in the carrying out of that primary purpose, I get free from the bondage of self

and I get free for me and mine. God's able to move in in my absence absence and and start doing amazing things in my life. Amazing things.

No one in Alcoholics Anonymous is rendered white as snow, not even Bill Wilson. I have AI have a tremendous letter here written to it was a response written from Bill Wilson to a group in Chicago that really raked Bill over the coals and took his inventory very harshly. And Bill was not perfect, but in his imperfection, he had a degree of humility that is just amazing.

And here's his response to being raked over the coals. And listen to what he says to this group in Chicago in 1960. He says that you seem disillusioned with me personally.

Maybe a new and painful experience for you, but many members have had that experience with me. Most of their pain has been caused not only by my several shortcomings, but by their own insistence on placing me, a drunk trying to get along with other folks, upon a completely illusionary pedestal,

a station which no fallible person could possibly occupy. I'm sure you'll understand that I've never heard held myself out to anyone as either a St. or a Superman. I have repeatedly and truthfully said that a A is full of people who have made spiritual progress than I ever or can make that in some areas of living I have made some decided gains and in others I seem to have stood still

and instill. In others I may have even gone backwards.

I am sorry you are disillusioned, but I am happy that even I have found a life here.

Bill Wilson, 1960. He never defended himself once.

When you're surrendered, you don't have to be defended.

That's where the real humility is not in humility is not in perfection. It's in an honest recognition of God's grace in your life and who you are and what a tremendous, tremendous thing. And Bill, like anyone who, if you and, and I know that there's people in this room that do a lot of service. And if you do a lot of service consistently, somewhere along the line, you realize you got a target on your back

and that's just the way it is.

And people will fire at you and they'll accuse you of doing it for wrong reasons. And they'll cure all kinds of stuff. My sponsor is Clancy. I, I go, I go travel around the world and I mention his name. And people just will go out of their way to tell me. And they've never met him. But they got all kinds of judgments against him. I said we ever had coffee with him. Well, no, but he's about it. I said, really? Is he? What's your source of information? Oh, I just know.

Really.

Wow. Psychic members of A A

I worked on the docks in Maine and on lobster boats for a while. And I was years ago when I was drinking. Good job for a drinker. And on all the lobster boats, they have a, a basket that's about this high and about this big around. And what happens is we pull the traps, we get crabs, get in the traps and the lobster fishermen don't want the crabs. So they just throw them in this bucket and it will fill up in a day. It will fill, it'll have like 100 and 5200

crabs and, and they don't put a lid on it and they're scrambling to get out and they're climbing up the sides and I'm watching it and these crabs are getting right up to the edge. And I'm telling this guy they're going to get out. And he says, I said, you need to put a cover on there. I'm telling you they're because they're climbing over each other, they're going to get out. He says, Nah. I said, look, they're they're almost out now. I'm telling you, he says. Watch.

I started watching every time a crab would get right to the point where it's just about to get out, the other crabs couldn't stand it and they'd pull him back down.

I think we I think this is one of the biggest crab pots in the United in the world right here.

So when it says are you willing to go to any lengths to serve God and help his kids,

sometimes you have to be like Bill Wilson. You have to get people take shots at you. We never defend ourselves,

we just look to the next person we can help.

Now I get to talk a little bit about Step 8.

I think this is the hardest thing we ever do. I, I mean objectively up until this point in the process, there is nothing I've really had to do that puts me at very high risk. I mean, I've had to a little bit of risk in the 5th step. But you know, we check these people out. We're pretty sure we're not taking our fifth step with a gossip. You know, we've checked it out. There's we've, we've minimized our exposure here pretty good.

But step eight and nine, man going out and seeking out all the people I've ripped off, the guys I've dimed out,

the people I've really hurt and stolen from them. I got situations that we're going to put me in prison

and people are talking about me facing all this stuff and it I would hear people talk about immense. I just want to bolt out of a a when I was new, I it was just too big. It was too much. I can't First of all, I'm not going to live long enough to ever make enough money to pay back what I owed. I'm not. It's more money and I will make in a lifetime.

I mean, for God's sakes, if I knew I was gonna have to pay this stuff back, I wouldn't have stolen so much. I mean, that's really,

and my experience with looking at Step 8-9 as a newcomer was very similar. I would imagine that this experience of a kid, say in the 4th or 5th grade that were to sit down and look at the exams he must pass in order to graduate from high school. A kid in the 4th or 5th grade looking at those exams was going to feel like he might as well just quit school. I'm never going to understand those questions, but a funny thing happens if he shows up every day and does his next

and his next homework, by the time he gets to the end of the 12th grade, he has everything in place within him to pass those tests in. Alcoholics Anonymous is a synchronistic place. We talk in AA about the realm of the spirit. In the realm of the spirit, the impossible just takes a little longer.

We have a principle called synchronicity that Carl Jung was the first person to ever talk about it. And asynchronistic universe is a universe that is ultimately accommodating. It's a view of a universe that let's say you're at point A and you need to get to point B and you can't.

There's an abyss between A&B that makes it impossible. Throw your hands up. It's hopeless. I can't get there and yet I need to get there. From the moment of desire. And the word desire comes from 2 Greek words that have passed into the Old English that means of the father. From the moment of desire, the universe starts rearranging itself slowly

until the impossible becomes possible. You don't have to sit in a a meetings very long to hear synchronistic stories of God's grace,

of people that could never had restraining orders, never see their kids. And now that you see them in the meeting, they had their kids with them

and you hear that was impossible.

We hear story. We we take it for granted the miracles. And a how many times we hear people say, you know, you go to coffee with a bunch of people, say, hey, remember Joe, the guy was living in the bushes behind the AA club. Yeah. You know, he bought a house. Yeah, Yeah. What's for dinner? I mean, you know, yeah, we it's almost blase after a while,

but God's grace works

and Alcoholics Anonymous that feared that I had a face in the amends but I had nowhere to go

has been with us ever since the beginning. As a matter of fact, I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous was actually formed on one man's eighth step

in Mother's Day weekend 1935. A desperate stockbroker who was sober less than 1/2. Less than six months. Just, I think 5 months probably.

I just had his, his whole world fall apart. His one chance to get back on his feet. He had no sponsor, no a meetings, no nothing. He's in a strange town. He's just about out of money as enough for maybe to get drunk if he wanted to, but not even really enough to pay his hotel bill and get back to New York.

And he

believed something. He believed that maybe if he could find someone to help, he would be OK. And he started calling people and he found this woman who knew a Doctor Who really was in bad shape. And he couldn't see that doctor at the moment. He was taking a nap under the dining room table. But he said tomorrow, come by that I'll bring get him over. He will you come over to the Cyberlink gatehouse where I'm living now. And she's always estranged from her husband living in the gatehouse. And

I'll have him here. And they came over there and met. He didn't want to go. His

his son Smitty was Smitty Junior was a really good friend of mine. He'd spent time at my house at a couple of occasions and I used to love to hear him talk about the stories. He drove the car with his dad in the back seat and his mom sitting in front. His dad didn't want to go. He was guilty. He just drunk up Mother's Day. I mean, he really screwed the pooch on this one. I mean, he was really in a lot of trouble and Ann was a strong woman, so he don't want to go. But he's gone. You know, he's going to go. Listen to this Yankee talk to him about his drinking. He

want to go. He said don't 15 minutes. Please don't leave me in there more than 15 minutes. So that guy talking to me about my drinking, don't 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They went into the library, this little tiny room in the Cyberlink gatehouse. And it's almost 4 hours later, I think that they came out and and Bob came out with his arm around Bill Wilson and he was lit up. He was lit up. And he said to Anne and his son were still sitting there. He said, I've never heard anybody talk like this. He said this guy knows his business.

He went in there and never heard anything like it because Bill Wilson never once talked to Bob about Bob's drink. And Bill Wilson talked to Bill, to Bob about Bill Wilson's drinking. And for the first time, something, a miraculous happened. An alcoholic that was all alone and different and unique and hopeless connected with another alcoholic. And it was. And it lit him up and, and he, Bill started outlining this, this newly formed program he was kind of putting together. He's gleaning from

things Silkworth had told him and things he'd found in the Oxford group. He was putting this deal together. And Bob liked it all. He liked the prayer meditation. He liked the confession of shortcomings. He liked the help in others. But he refused to do the immense thing. He dug his heels in. He said, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a proctologist and doctor in this town. I've ruined half, just about ruined my reputation. I'm just going to leave that stuff alone.

And consequently, Doctor Bob Smith drank again. And on he went to a convention in Atlantic City. He was so drunk coming back that the he was a comatose. That conductor didn't want to know what to know what to do with him. So they just laid him on the ground of the platforms. The laid him on the platform of the Akron station. His office manager came down to the rescue again as she had many times before

and got him up got him back to this eventually back to the house on Ardmore St.

He's out of it. He came to on what most historians and that some of them don't agree On this date. They've I know some guys did research in a shirts. It must be a different date, but the accepted date was he came too early in the morning and June 10th 1935 came to like, like I come to after a long drinking around the clock, you know, shaking, jumping out of your skin kind of deal

bad shape. He says, what day is it? And they say June 10th And he says, Oh my God, he can't be June 10th. I have a surgery to perform the morning and June 10th

Doctor Bob was a proctologist. You can use your imagination about what kind of surgery it might have been and and he's like this and Bill Wilson doesn't know what to do with him. So Bill gets him a couple sedatives, gives him a sedative and some couple bottles of beer just to because he you know, you he could he could thread a a needle in a sewing machine. He was shaking so bad could can't send a guy like that mention the patient laying there watching your doctor come in like that. So they gave just enough to calm his nerves down. It was frightening thing and

set him into the surgery and that surgery was over fairly, fairly quickly.

Nobody knows what happened to the patient. Now it says somewhere in a literature he lived. I don't know. I'd like to know, Did he whistle when he walked or what? We don't know,

but he came out of that surgery still in the early, fairly early in the morning of June 10th and he disappeared and he didn't come back all that morning, all that afternoon, all that evening. And it was close to midnight when Doctor Bob Smith came back to the house on Ardmore St. And his son said he came back and he looked different.

Something was different. And everybody had been afraid all day that he went out drinking. You know, sure, they gave him a cup, beers and said he made, you know, he probably set him off. But he wasn't drinking. He hadn't drank at all. Not a drop. He was out spending the whole day searching out everyone that he owed amends to and facing, walking through the fear and facing them. And consequently, Doctor Bob Smith never took another drink again the rest of his natural life. And in the in the mere

decade and 1/2 that he lived before his death, he low estimates as he helped over 5000 people personally. And then they helped people who helped people who helped people. And I would venture to guess that we are in this room indirectly as a result of one man finally becoming willing to go to any lengths. And when it says in the book on page

76 at the bottom of the second to last paragraph

in italics, it says, remember, it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol. They're talking about step 8:00 and 9:00. Now treatment centers over the years and diff well-intentioned people have turned that into being willing to go to any lengths means being willing not to drink and go to meetings. But that's not really what they're talking about. They're talking about really the most difficult part, I think of this process

is willing to go out and face people that you don't know if they're going to hit you with a baseball bat, you're going to and and you're, you're going to have to start paying them money. And I don't know, isn't it, it's a funny dynamic. They don't wait until you're flush to pay people back. They always you got to pay them back when you're really struggling the most, right. And every alcohol, everybody wants to say, well, maybe one day if I hit the lottery,

well, you probably won't stay sober long enough to do that if you don't start chipping away at this stuff.

We, most of us sell our integrity and nickel at a dime at a time. We buy it back a nickel and a dime at a time. And it's a struggle in early sobriety

and I think sometimes it's supposed to be. I think this is in step 8-9 is when I really

start to exercise my trust muscle with God.

It's where I really learned that I some there's something here that's got my back. When I push myself aside and face people that I'm terrified of facing and pay money that I'm afraid to pay because I need it, it seems so desperately because I got so much financial insecurity.

But those of us that are able to do this great, great, great things come to pass Great things.

I

tell you a bunch of stories on step. I gotta pick one real quick. We're gonna let this bleed over. Oh, we are. OK, Never mind.

It was we were willing to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.

Page 79 is a paragraph that if I think if they were ever to make a sales pamphlet in order to sell people on the idea of making amends, this would be the anti sales pamphlet for for some people, says the top of 79 says although these reparations take innumerable forms, there are some general principles we find guiding.

Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths.

There it is again to find a spiritual experience, We ask that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing. And here's here's the part that's a little frightening. No matter what the personal consequences may be. That mean I'm not part of others. Yeah, that's right. Where somebody years ago saw a loophole, loopholes was well, aren't I another? Except when to do so would harm them or others. Aren't I another? No other is other than you,

right?

We may lose our position or reputation or face jail,

but we are willing. We have to be. We must not shrink in anything.

Tough step. I think this is really where you find out if your trust in God and your willingness in a A is talk or not.

It's really, this is really, you know, I know Father Ed Dowling says step 6 separates the men from the boys. You know, I think where the rubber meets the road, it's really step 8, wheelbarrow step.

It's the, this is where you get in the wheelbarrow. This is really where you get in the wheelbarrow. Are you willing to, are you willing to act as if that if you do the right thing, that you're going to be safe and protected even though your head's exploding on you about how awful it's going to be?

And I'll tell you something I've discovered over the years. The more fear that I have to walk through in order to make the amends, the greater reward.

And I've seen that consistently and myself, and also in the people I've sponsored and other people I know around a A.

I don't know why it's like that. There's not a great reward to making amends to people. I know we're already going to take it well and it's not a big deal.

Where the great things happen is were the ones I'm afraid to face. And then I finally trust God enough to face them and I get to be wrong. What a miraculous thing. I get to be wrong again because my head told me they're going to beat me up. My head told me I'm going to go to prison. My head told me I can't survive these payments. My head, my head is never been right and I get to be wrong again.

And I, I and what's the great call? What's the great cry of every alcoholic when faced with these propositions?

Well, yeah, that's all fine. But what about me? When somebody going to make amends to me? When's Amy going to pay me some money? Right. That's a self-centered in the extreme. That's I think that's our default position. Is me

an alcoholic synonymous? Is asking me to a self-centered guy to do something very hard is to set myself aside?

You can serve yourself and get what you always get when you serve yourself, or you can serve a power and a set of principles and an ethic and a purpose greater than yourself. But if you're an alcoholic of my type, I'm telling you, you're going to serve something. And if you don't serve something greater than yourself, whether it's a set of principles and a purpose and a power, then you're going to serve yourself. But I don't think we have a choice.

I think we must serve something, and

most of us have served ourselves for most of our lives.

The great question, if you've been doing that to ask yourself is simply

how's that been working?

How's that been working? Been going real well for you.

Happy joys, free

great relationships with people.

Life keeps soaring.

How's that working for you? And if you're an alcoholic of my type and you have the spirituality I got and you're reaping what you reap, the same thing I reap when I'm running my life on self will, The answer is, oh, it's not working very well.

It's working so good that I was standing on a bridge not too long ago trying to figure, get enough courage to kill myself. And that's how well it was working.

That's how well it was working. Scott, go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, Bob. I I was reminded of a of a great truth in my own case. I heard someone else say one time when I first got here, what I wanted to do is to work the promises and hope the steps came true

that

that my history, my history is to find out who I think you want me to be and then go be that. So I hear him reading the nights that promises. So I'm going to go be the guy that's that way. See, because I just I don't have any idea what I'm doing it twice in this chapter it talks. It references this idea of going to any links. I've been to a lot of meetings that talk about going to any links and it misses, I think what's a relatively important piece of that same sentence on page 58

says if you've decided you want what we have and I want to go in to get it, then they tell us what that length is. It says then you are ready to take certain steps.

I wonder what steps they could possibly be referring to. Is there any chance at all that it's these 12

that that is the any length that we're talking about?

I find 5 prayers

in the reading. The the text sort of blends steps 8:00 and 9:00 together. I find 5 prayers, the first one's on page 76 immediately before that.

It used to be there. Oh, yeah, yeah. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. That's a prayer.

There's another one on page 79 that he that he just covered.

We ask that we be given the strength and direction to do the right thing. There's one at the top of page 80 in the second line. Am I going fast enough? OK, good. Thank you. Good. If we have obtained permission, consulted with others, ask God to help and the drastic step is indicated. We must not shrink. This is where somebody else could be involved.

There's another one on page 82 about 8 lines down. This one is one of my favorites. That what a perspective. Listen to the perspective in this thing

each might pray about. They're referencing where somebody's been unfaithful and now we're trying to come back together. Each might pray about it with this perspective having the other ones happiness uppermost in mind. What a perspective for prayer. Wow. And then on the facing page, the same distance down, it says, So we clean House of the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.

So there are five prayers that I found. Not saying there aren't more of those are, just what I found so far.

This is part of how I work with a new guy on this thing. I remind him once he's got his eight step list and we're going to get down and we're going to go over that list one at a time. I want to know what the harm was you did to this person because that's what you have to amend is the harm that you did. A lot of times there people on this list, they didn't hurt. I've had people come up to me and make amends to me because they said I thought I was a jerk in the past.

I didn't get much out of that. And so I don't need you to go do that to somebody.

What was the harm? And then let's talk about what that amend would look like. What does that look like? And this, this is my, this is red flags, this is me. I think if you take the 4th breath when you're making amends, you've already said too much. Amends is not a lecture course. Do not mess this amend up with an excuse. And if you talk long enough, you're going to give them an excuse and it's going to take all the power away.

I restrict them and I sponsor from using the word sorry, they don't believe you anymore.

You wore that out decades before I met you. You will say I was wrong or I believe I harmed you or both of those together. It's a nice combination and and I say your mother doesn't need to hear your footstep.

I made some mistakes. I believe I've done some damage to you. I'd like to make it right. Would you tell me how simple enough we are not asking you to turn your willing life over to the care of someone who may roundly hate you?

That person is not final authority on what this amend is. I as your sponsor and final authority on that. If you'd gone to Big Ken Sweeney to make amends to him before he gets over, he would have bashed you for the rest of your life, right? So we're not asking you to do that.

And

if he tells you what it needs to be and it makes sense to you, I empower you. Go get it. If not, you say, I'll talk to my sponsor and get back to you and we'll talk about it. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

I like to start guys sponsoring when I get them to step 9. That's where I start them sponsoring it if I haven't started them before. And sometimes I do and I, I trust the guidance. I believe God bless his sponsorship. And by this time he's really got a message. He's, he's got some, he can coach somebody into this part that he's done.

He's got a message to Carrie. And there's American philosopher named William Glasser said that the human being has these needs to give love, to receive love, to do something that matters and to get some kind of credit for having done something that matters. And I believe sometimes that credit can just come from God when I keep it quiet myself, when I really do anonymity, which is keeping it quiet.

So he's he's ready to give at this point.

And he says, well, I don't think I'm ready. I said, good. I hope you don't ever think you're ready. I hope you don't ever think you're ready to sponsor. I hope I don't think I am. I better get God's help on every one of these. This is important stuff. Now we're going to go and I'm not going to have any trouble at all finding a new guy for him. They're not hard. Stand in the door at your Home group and shake hands, ask questions. Oh, you don't have a sponsor. Come, let me introduce you to your temporary sponsor. He doesn't know he can say no to that. Come here,

I got a friend that's been another guy's temporary sponsor for 22 years. They're both still sober.

I have any problem with that temporary sponsor thing at all? Doesn't bother me a bit. I think it's a wonderful concept. Yeah. Because that guy can't make a commitment. He'll need a commitment. He needs a sponsor. Temporary sponsor. Change if you need to. It's not a problem with me. Here's your first assignment. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be a temporary sponsor. I'll be glad to

and, and, and then and I say to him, OK, I mean, the reason I started sponsoring is one of the problems I have is keeping him moving through step 9

right by this, by the time we get to step 9, here we are six months into this thing ballpark. His life has changed, right? He's been promoted at work. He's got money in the bank.

He can explain every dent in his car. He know where they all came from.

His key fits in the front door. When he walks in, they don't scatter. He throws the switch. The lights come on. The phone rings. That's a miracle by itself. He answers and says it's him. There's another miracle. He's sleeping in the big bed again,

right? His motivation is gone. I asked Don, not too long before he died, what changes he'd seen in a A and he said when I got here, the focus is on recovery. Today, the focus is on sobriety. The difference is sobriety is simply not drinking today. Recovery is this whole, and that doesn't necessarily contain recovery. Recovery is this whole spiritual thing that we do that always contains sobriety. And that my job as a sponsor is the integrity of the message

and to unlock. Let this guy settle for relief.

I got to get him all the way to recovery. By the time I get him to 9, he's got relief. So how do I keep him moving? I got two things that I do is when I get him sponsoring, he sees this rookie catching up with him, and he doesn't want the rookie to get through nine before he does. I'll tell you that. Yeah. And. And the other one is I apply the one day at a time concept. This is just what I do. OK. And say, OK, which one of these amends do you want to make first? And whatever he says suits me fine. I don't care. Care at all where he starts. Great. Good choice.

When can you call him and schedule an appointment?

Why can't you call him right now? Good, good. Schedule it for today or tomorrow. Ring, ring, ring. Tomorrow at 2. Great. Call me at 23230. Yeah. Ring. Ring. Hey. Yeah. How'd it go? Oh, great. He didn't remember who you were. Yeah, well, that'll probably happen again.

So the amendment. OK. Yeah, it did. Well, great. Who's next on the list? Oh yeah, that's a good choice. When can you call him and make an appointment? Why can't you call him right now?

Call me right back. I want to what it is I want within 24 hours. Oh, 2:00 tomorrow. Good. I'll be looking for a call to 2:30. It's a one day at a time concept applied to make an amends. He looks at his list. He says to himself, I can't make 160 amends. I agree with him. He can't make one today. We're only 159 days away from finishing this.

It's worked for me.

Umm, share a couple things that a little bit controversial. I would prefer not to be controversial, but I have to lay it out and this is how it is for me. I walked out of a meeting that I was in one time. I told you earlier that if I say something you disagree with that I want you to tell me 'cause I may get a chance to learn something. I'm always on the search for that constant search. Please, if you disagree, come talk to me. And I walked out of a meeting one time and a guy that I sponsor, his sponsor said, I disagree with what you said in the meeting.

And what I had said was that my immense to my children would never be complete. And he said, that's not right. He said, let me ask you questions. Did you go to your children, tell them what you thought you had done wrong? Did you ask them what you could do to repair the damage? Did you do it? Did you ask for their forgiveness? Did they give it? I said, well, yes to all that. He said you're trying to be,

He said if you can't come off that cross right now, you can't accept their forgiveness or gods or your own. You have work to do,

and that continuing to be the best father you can be is not nine step work, it's 12th. It's the principles in all your affairs.

Then he was right about that. I don't find. I'd say if your sponsors got you doing it, I'm in. I don't find living amends in this book.

My immense to my children are complete. I'm trying to be the best father I can be to him today. It's not nine step work. I came down off the cross that day and I have seen, I have seen an awful lot of teenage and older children manipulating us into some very sick behaviors under the banner of you are a lousy parent in the past and that takes that right out of the equation. I believe this is one of the great truths. Anything that's right for one person involved is also right for everyone that's involved. They may or may not like it,

but it is right for them. I quit funding the party for my daughter about 15 years ago.

She didn't like it. It was right for both of us. She'll tell you that today.

So I'm trying to be the best dad that I can and that there was a great freedom that came to me with that. And that's why I wanted to share it with you. And I'm going to, I'm going to get into something else too. And that's I told you the story last night of my white light experience, that my soul hit bottom. I thought about the worst thing I've ever done. If you've done this, it's OK with you. It's OK with me not here to talk about that. What I had done as a young man is I paid for an abortion and that festered my soul. As far as I was concerned, I'd kill one of my own children.

And however you are where that suits me. I'm not here to talk about that. That's how it is for me. I'm sharing this only in hopes that somebody else who needs to get free will be able to. And I used to drink that away, the what ifs that come behind that. And I used to drink them away. And I'm laying there in the treatment center and I can't make it stop. And that's when my soul screened for forgiveness and got it. And I get to step 8 and I owe amends to an unborn child. And I don't think it can be done.

And I have been in the hands of big book people since my early days.

Thank God this is page 83. Some people cannot be seen. We send them an honest letter

and I was with people that knew that

and I was sat down and shown how to write that letter. I have captured it, I have written it down. I've got handouts if you want one.

As we discovered earlier today, although there's writing involved in Step 4, the writing isn't the significant piece. It's the observations and prayers that are life changing. And my experience, this letter, whether it's an unborn child, a grandparent, sibling, anybody that's gone,

this letter is not about writing, It is about tears. I got to you unable to cry.

And there was a very masculine man in my Home group and he was crying in almost every meeting. But he's a drummer and you'd know the name of the band if I gave it to you. And I went to him one day and I said, tell me about the tears. And he said, man, somebody says something beautiful in the meeting and it it, it touches my heart and I weep and it feels so good. And I said, man, I can't cry. He said, I will teach you. And he did. And it took me a year to get the first tear out, and now I can just let it run. And I wouldn't take anything for that

because you see,

I'm convinced that my emotions are how my spirit communicates with my mind and my body. And I can't afford to block that Channel because I've had the experience of the mind and the body run on the show. That's how I qualified to sit with you nice people. I need to have the spirit involved and that's where the emotions are. And, and he taught me to cry and I can cry and I need to. And it's good for me. When I've had a good cry, I feel like my soul's had a warm shower and dried off in the sunlight. It's just a one. I was talking to another guy here and I remember who was

just a wonderful thing, how good it is for me, and I typed that up. It's on the same piece of paper

and if you'd like to learn to cry, I can teach you. It works for everybody. I would. I need to warn the guys. However,

if you start crying at appropriate times and places, you will attract a lot of very healthy women. Do not call me and complain about this. I have, I have. I told you on the front end. I told you up front. Do not call me with that one.

And if you're married, don't worry about it. Healthy women are not a threat to a marriage. All right, ladies, I I'd like a simple answer. Yes or no. Are you sick of the John Wayne acts? And many of the guys are doing.

They see right through it, fellas. Sorry. OK. And when they see a guy that's in touch with his emotions, it lights him up like pinball machines. I'm gonna leave that alone for right now. But I'm gonna tell you that's that's that's the deal. Because they're into genuine. They really are into genuine. It's amazing. And I was shown how to write that letter and I wrote it and I got free. I got absolute. Can you see it? Can you see it on me?

I can talk about that. And these aren't, this is not paying you're seeing on me. I'm free.

I got absolutely free.

Page 124.

This painful past may be of infinite value to other families still struggling with their problem. We think each family which has been relieved owes something to those who have not. And when the occasion requires, each member of it should be only too willing to bring former mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places. That's what that was about. That's why I did that 4th column in the Sexual Misconduct inventory for you. I become two things as I do these steps. I become a caddy and I become an apprenticed messenger.

I'm an apprentice messenger in step 12 where it says we tried to carry this message. I figure if I was a messenger I'd be carrying. It says I'm trying.