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

Once you go for it right now, is your mic on

test? I'm Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic. Hi Bob,

I want to talk about a couple of Mens that some some of you may identify with.

One of the When I first got sober,

I had done so much damage with my mother and father that we hadn't talked in quite a while

and they would not take my calls anymore. I can. I know I called from a county jail

and when the operator asked him to take the cost, they hung up.

They wouldn't, they wouldn't help me anymore. I was not welcome in their house. And it wasn't that my parents didn't love me. I had just broke their heart repeatedly over and over and over and over again. And my they were able to physically cut me out of their life, but they could never emotionally cut me out of their heart. So consequently, my mother saw a therapist and took medication and my father slept 15 hours, 16 hours a day.

And I did that to them

and I had really hurt their life. I almost destroyed their marriage.

My it was I stole so much before my parents cut me out of their life. I stole so much from my father that he became eventually became friends with the guy who owned the pawn shop in our town from buying his own stuff back then when he became friends with the guy, the guy wouldn't he wouldn't buy nothing from me no more. And and I did that to them. And when I get sober,

people in AAA are telling me that I need to make amends to my parents. And I I understand. I'm not dumb. I understand what they're trying to say. But see, they don't understand that it's too late for that. And I am very grateful that the people and Alcoholics Anonymous never gave much credence to my opinion of things. And they just gave me actions to take that I didn't believe in or believed would work.

And first thing, first action they gave me, they told me to start calling my mother and don't call collect.

I remember the first time I called my mom, I called it, she answered the phone. I say mom how you doing? And she says,

she says, are you in Pennsylvania? I said, no, I'm in Nevada. Well, the operator didn't come on and ask me to pay for the call. I said, no, mom, I paid for the call. And her voice shot up an octave. She went, you paid for the call? She couldn't believe it. I had always called collect. It was like I had some kind of sick sense of entitlement, right? With my parents.

I used them. I had that all that stuff going on and I and, and she did not receive my call. Well, it was kind of like, what do you want? And I,

I was told to start sending my mom and dad cards, call every week and pay for the call.

Don't ever miss a anniversary, a birthday, a Mother's Day, a Father's Day of Christmas take. I wasn't making much money. I had a little job making minimum wage. And I, I would buy cards and I would send them two of them. And, and I did that for a year regularly. And I did it and they rejected me through the whole year. They weren't warned. They didn't warm up to me.

And when you think of it objectively, after all, I put my parents to through for them to warm up to me easily, there would be something wrong with their mental health. After all I did to them. And when I was about a year sober, they decided to come out to Las Vegas and and eyeball me. And they they came out to Las Vegas with this attitude. You know, he's probably

still a bum trying to con us,

but you know, we've never been to Vegas. It won't be a total loss if we go out there and he's a bum, right? So they came out to Las Vegas with that attitude, really. And I met him at the airport and I took him out to dinner with my sponsor and his wife and took him to my Home group. And they got to see me

with with you. And I've never been better. And they couldn't have seen me anywhere better than in my Home group. And they got to see me with around. The old timers used to pick on us and make fun of us. And then the guys I was trying to help the newer people, I pick on them because it's Alcoholics, honest works in the first rule of plumbing crap runs downhill. And they got to see me with the guys I run around with. And I was taking meetings into a detox

and a halfway house and the guys I run around with to do that.

And I saw the laughter and they saw the

emotion and the sincerity and the genuineness of Alcoholics Anonymous. They didn't understand it, but they liked what they saw. And I took them. They went to a meeting with me just about every night. I think that they were there and they loved

and right before they were to go back to Pennsylvania, I met them in the coffee shop at the Stardust where they were staying. I had my thing all fixed out with I owed my dad a lot of money. I mean a lot of money. I mean, this is was years of, of having fines and if I don't pay them, I'm going to go to jail and he'd loan me the money. Years of not having the rent and if I don't, I'm going to be thrown in the street. So give me enough money, years of transmissions going out in cars and I can't. I need the car fixed to go to work. And he'd loan me the money

and I never paid him back a dime. And I sit, I sat down, I figured it up to the best of my ability and it was going to take 12 1/2 years of payments to make it right. It's a lot of money

and I sat down the coffee shop with him with my game plan. I was going to start making payments and he looked at my mom and then he said to me, he said kind of smiled each other And my dad said to me he says, look, Rob, we don't want you to pay the money. We are delighted that you're sober. This is the first time in years that we had any hope You're going to be OK. We don't understand this anything but just keep going to it. It's done something good for you.

Keep hanging around with those people.

I just stay sober and forget about the money. Well, I just got out of 12 1/2 years of payments. I mean, I just hit the, a, the recovery lottery and man, I'm delighted. And I, I'm, I'm leaving there to go over to my sponsors office to tell him the good news, man. And I'm just excited. I'm thinking about other people I owe money to, how I could convince them to see the light like my parents did

way over there. And I get to my sponsor's office, I tell them the good news. My dad said I didn't have to pay him. And my sponsor said to me, it doesn't matter.

It's your debt you have, it's your integrity, it's your debt. You have to make this right. And I thought, what are you talking to my dad? There's no way to do it. There's no way. If I send my father a little check every month, he's not going to, he's probably not going to cash it won't. He doesn't need the money really. I didn't know what to do. And my sponsor just said, I believe if you're willing, God will show you away.

And the universe started moving around

and I was working as a cashier in a store and I got an inspiration one day. And it was just a thought. Sometimes inspiration is really from God is silly little thoughts you don't give much credence to until you start acting on them and you realize they're life changing. And the little thought was, well, you know, I run this cash register, and this is in the late 70s. Every single day

we would get silver coins, wheat pennies, war nickels,

silver certificates, gold certificates. There was still a lot of that stuff, half dollars, a lot of that stuff was still in circulation. And every day some of that would come through those registers. And I thought, my dad has one hobby that he's it's almost an obsessive hobby. He's really into it. He collects those kind of coins, all that stuff. He'd sit for hours at the kitchen table with that stuff. Almost was like his deal.

And I thought, you know, maybe if I, I would talk to my boss and maybe I could start buying this stuff and putting it aside,

imagining that I could cure the whole debt. I mean, that would be too much. But maybe I could one day give a bunch like, you know, some of it $1000 worth of coins and stuff to my dad or something like that. You know, and I talked to my boss and he said fine. And I started moving along that line. And it's a funny thing when you start moving towards towards God's will for you, the universe becomes a very accommodating place.

And some synchronistic things started happening. One is I I started getting raises and bonuses.

There was a guy named that had a moving business used to pay me 100 bucks cash just for a couple hours work moving furniture and

it was amazing. But in about four years or so, I saved up at face value the entire debt in in silver coins and gold certificates, silver certificates. I there was a couple times $100 bills would come through the old gold certificates and I'd have to stick it away and might take me almost a month to get the money to actually buy it for my bosses safe. And it for years. I took all that stuff and I was able to give it to my father. He came out to Vegas and I gave it all to him.

He had a hard time getting it back on the plane actually

was a bags of stuff and I think it cost him about 100 probably I don't know. It cost him a bunch to get it back and

when I gave him that something changed. Now I've been communicating with my father and mother by this time white weekly or biweekly for several years. There was no doubt in my mind prior to paying my dad that giving my dad that money. There was no doubt in my mind that my dad forgave me, and there was no doubt in my mind my dad loved me.

When I gave him that money, for the first time in my life, my dad started to respect me.

I think I became a man in his eyes. I think prior to that he loved me. But I was Bob.

You know, Bob

got to make allowances for Bob, right? I was, I was that guy. I was the guy that, yeah, we love Bob, but you know, he's Bob.

And when I gave my dad that money, I I think I earned his respect. There's an old saying around a that you you sell out your own integrity and self respect and nickel and a dime at a time and you buy it back a nickel and a dime at a time.

And amends are not made in a like amends don't work sometimes like four shots at tequila. Sometimes you pay and you pay and you just chip away at this stuff and you chip away and you chip away.

My dad died that next year and I was able to fly back to Pennsylvania and be there for my mother and sister and, and something started happening that was just crazy. I was the black sheet of the sheep of the family and I became the pillar. And my whole family eventually moved to Las Vegas to be around me. Right,

amazing. And I was the outcast. The power of God is strong. And I didn't do any of that. I I just did what people in a told me to do. I'll tell you what, one more imagine it was probably one of the most difficult ones I ever had to make. And the reason it was difficult, it was for something I did sober. And you know, for the stuff you do when you're drinking, there's a little self exoneration in the fact that, well, I was drunk. I mean, you know,

messed up. I wasn't sober yet. You know, you kind of get yourself a little bit of relief by hanging it on that hook. But what do you do about this stuff that's that's kind of slimy that you did as a sober member of alcoholic synonymous. When I was about, when I was early in sobriety, I was working as I said, I was working as a cashier in the store and

I, I smoked. I had a heavy, heavy nicotine addiction. I was,

I was better than 3 packs a day. I would light cigarettes off cigarettes. I was that guy. And I went through a lot of cigarettes and I was struggling trying to make some amends and I was struggling trying to get by just to pay rent. I was not making very much money at the time when I first started doing that. And one Thursday, I ran out of cigarettes in the middle of my shift, and I'm broke until the next day, Friday, when I get my paycheck.

And so one of the things we sold in the store was cigarettes. So I thought to myself, that's usually the way I do it. I thought to myself, well,

I'll take a pack of cigarettes and then tomorrow when I get my paycheck, I'll cash it like we usually do it the work there in out of the register and then I'll ring it up. It seemed like a reasonable proposition, not stealing. I'm just, I'm just going to take bar this pack of cigarettes. I'll pay for it tomorrow when I get my paycheck. Well, tomorrow came and I got my paycheck and I cashed it out of the register. And the thought goes through my mind. You know, you need to ring up those cigarettes.

And immediately I started, I thought to myself, you know,

I come early, I wait, I stay late. I work harder than anybody else here.

I I mean, for God's sakes, it's only a pack of cigarettes. Everybody does some of this stuff. It's probably factored into the cost of operation.

And I never rang those cigarettes up in it. From that moment on. I don't think I bought another pack of cigarettes and I started stealing all my cigarettes out of there. And then what? You know, You know how that is, man, once you roll down that road and you got that door open, next thing I know I'm, I'm taking a six pack of Diet Coke,

right?

In the realm of the spirit,

when you get sick, you don't initially get the connection to your actions and how you're starting to feel and your experience in life. And sometimes in the realm of the spirit, you do something over here and you start, you don't initially get sick over there. Sometimes you get sick over here and then over there and then eventually it shows up here too. And I started getting real sick. And I don't know what's wrong with me, but I start going to meetings and it seemed like I, people were just irritating me in a a, it seemed like everybody was phony.

Everybody was just trying to be something they weren't. You know what I mean? Everybody was a liar in a a No, I don't understand that. I'm projecting sort of this judgment of myself on these people because I'm the guy that's doing that really. But I started judging my way right out of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was dating a girl at the time and I started to pick her apart. I started to get depressed at times. I started to get

anxious about stuff. You know that those nameless fears that you just, you ever like wake up with just a feeling of apprehension

and you can't, you can't say what you don't, can't really put your finger on what you're afraid of. But I'm afraid a lot. I'm anxious a lot, free floating anxiety. And I was starting to get some of that again. And then eventually I started picking my boss apart. And the guy I worked for was a good guy. I mean, he never mistreated me. He was really a good man. And and I started picking him apart the way we can. Do you know, you get that mindset. You could pick apart Mother Teresa with the right mind alcoholic mindset.

And I started doing that to him. And I'm getting sicker and sicker and more and more into my head and emotions are more and more wacky. And one night I get down on my knees to to thank God for that day of sobriety, as I've been structured and taught to do. And on my knees in this little apartment,

I yelled out something. And I just yelled out, God, what the Hell's going on?

The minute the moment I ask the question in my pit of my stomach, I knew the answer. I knew what was happening. I just, it was like, it was just like that clarity. The reason I'm getting so sick here and I'm on my way to drinking again is because I'm stealing from my boss. I'm a liar, I'm a cheat and I'm a thief. And I'm trying to pretend and misrepresent myself as a some kind of honest member of alcoholic sonomas. I've become the guy who talks about the beginning of the chapter.

Actions Leads a double life that I want to have a certain reputation. I want people to think I am and secretly inside myself, I know what I am

and I'm on my way to drinking again. And I, it's in all this, it just became so clear to me. And it scared me. And I, I started figuring out what it was, how much. And I'd been stealing for a long time by now.

And it just overwhelmed me, was a lot of money. And I don't have the money. And I'm gonna have to go to my boss and I'm gonna have to tell him what happened. And he has zero tolerance for employee theft. I mean, and in retail, that's the way it is. He has zero. I'm gonna lose my job. He's gonna throw me out of the store. I watched him do that here. I watched him really get angry at a guy and throw him out.

I hope he doesn't prosecute me. I'm going to. I don't have the money to pay him. I'm gonna have to try to get another job. Now I get another, another void on my resume. And I had a bunch of voids that are kind of hard to explain where I didn't work for long periods of time, and another one I can't talk about or I'm afraid to tell people that he's going to check with him because they're going to say don't hire him, he's a thief.

And the worst part of all, I think, was the guy that I had to go face had heard me

ramble on about my rigorous program of honesty in a A

I couldn't stand myself.

Sometimes great things come from a place you get to or you get to that point you can't stand yourself.

And I went and talked to him and I told him what had happened and he did not take it well. He started yelling at me and I just stood there and took it because I knew I owed it. I deserved it.

And he didn't fire me, surprised me, he did not fire me. And so I made-up my mind. I told him I will pay back every cent of this. And I figured out to the best of my ability the amount. Then I added on another 10% and then I added on another $50.00. And the reason I did that is I know how I am. If I'm going to misjudge the amount, it's probably not going to be in his favor,

right? You know, and I was at a point where I wanted to be free of this so desperately. I would rather over I would chance over paying it

and get clean in here than to screw around here and might miss it the other way.

And I started making payments on this on this guy and within no time at all, man, I liked working there again. Within no time at all. I'm doing good. The book says in the night step promise will be amazed before we're halfway through

and I started paying this back and oddly enough within 30 days of my making the last payment, about 30 days after that, I was not looking for another job. I was very happy there. A guy came to me and offered me a job with opportunity for management and another in a simple related business and it was more, much more, considerably more money.

And I, I said, yeah, absolutely. And I put my notice in and I went to work for this new gun. I never stole a dime from him, never even took home a ballpoint pen.

And I did what Chuck Chamberlain had taught me. I went to work for one reason and one reason only, and that was to help God's kids. I went to work trying to forget about myself and think about the customers and the other employees to be of service. And in no time at all, I was running that joint. I was getting bonuses, I was making a lot more money, which was helping me facilitate other immense.

After a while, I'm at a restaurant, Denny's restaurant one night and I run into the guy I'd stolen from and paid back the guy, my old boss, and he's there with his wife and I I started talking to him. He said, yeah, how you doing? He said, well, he said I'm I'm not doing that. He says I'm all right, I guess, but I kind of a little disappointed. I, you may have heard I was going to sell, sell my store. I said, yeah, I'd heard something about that. And he said, well, it fell through because of the slot machines and everything. The guy couldn't get a pass, the licensing investigation. And he said, I, I thought I was going to be able to retire and

free and I got it back in my lap again. And he said, I guess it's just not the cards for right now. Maybe I'll find something, something else will happen. And I had an out of body experience. I stood there and I heard myself say to him, it was embarrassing. I heard myself say to him, oh man, I'd like to buy your store. The minute I heard the words come out of my mouth, I started back pill when I was I was embarrassed. Then I went, oh, I don't know why I said that. I don't have any money. I'm just kidding. And, and I was, I couldn't believe I said it.

And he's asked me some questions and one of them was, what's your day off? And I told him, he said, meet me here. And I remember walking into the Denny's, he's sitting in a booth and he's got these papers laid out on the booth next to him. And he, I sit down across from and he makes me a proposition. He says

he said if you put your notice in and come back and work for me and run my business, he said it's not doing very well right now. Or the guy's kind of running into the ground that I thought I was selling it to because he took it over for a while and he's not doing very well. But if you can get it back towards rocking and rolling again up, get the numbers up and it's profitable, out of those profits you will get 10% of the business every year at the end of five years, he says. I'm out of here, let the business makes a few payments after that and we're done.

Now, I'm a guy with no education.

I'm a guy whose resume includes telemarketing, selling blood, selling drugs, digging ditches and washing dishes, and running a cash register.

I mean, this is beyond anything I could have imagined. And I said absolutely. And I went. I started running that joint and I started doing everything A told me to do.

And when I took that business over, it was doing about 600,000 a year and I started opening other stores and expanding the business out in other areas. And I think at one point we're doing almost 10 million.

And I bought and ended up owning all the real estate that came with the company and the commercial properties. And I sold that company about five or six years ago. And I was able to retire very well and with a financial freedom that gave me the ability to do things I've always wanted to do. I'm singing and playing with a Blues band and I writing music and I'm producing TV shows. And I'm, I'm doing and I'm doing this for fun. And it may turn out to be very profitable, it may not. It

I'm just doing it because it lights me up and I like the way I feel when I do it. And I think I stood at a turning point and it's in a cheap little 200 and some dollar a month apartment in Las Vegas.

Or I could have went right or left, right. Maybe I would have drank. I don't know. But I went left and I, I bit the bullet and I walked through the fear and I made the amends and it changed my life.

And I didn't, I didn't expect that. All I did want to do was I just didn't. I wanted to get this thing off of me

and it was on me and it was on me bad and I wanted to get free of it. And sometimes, sometimes the hardest to men's to make are the ones that are where the fear is the greatest. I, I have guys come to me a lot who are sober 1520 years, 25 years, even longer sometimes in their financial disaster areas. And they, some of them have really good jobs and the more money they make, the more in debt they become,

right? And they just burn their life to the ground financially. And they don't know what's wrong. And they come to me for, for weird motives, because they see the, the 12 cylinder Mercedes in the house and all that stuff, right? And they think I'm going to teach them some kind of financial trick or something, you know, like some kind of voodoo thing. And and to this day, every single case, we always find there's unmade financial amends

that keep them stuck.

Maybe there are men's where they got away with it because the person didn't want to, wanted to be a nice guy and say, oh, just forget about it. You don't have to pay me. But it never changed. The thing in here

are, are people they'd hurt and ripped off and they never knew that they ripped them off. They think they got away with it. The problem is, you know how it is. We never get away with anything because the one person, the worst person that could ever know you did it, knows you did it. And that's you. That's the problem. That's the worst person that could ever know. You did it as you

and you can't escape you. And that's the problem. You can't escape you. And the God within me always knows what I am because it's he's more of me than I am.

And so we start to we start to do this, clean this stuff up. And I've watched guys lives just turn right around page this and I'll turn it back over to Scott. Page 127 is a is a statement of spiritual cause and effect. It's it's almost a promise.

And I think it has a lot of relevance for those of us who have lived in a lot of

financial insecurity and fear and anxiety about material stuff and money right dead in the center of the page. It says, although financial recovery is on the way for many of us, we found we could not place money first. We must play spiritual principles first. For us, material well-being always followed spiritual progress. It never preceded it. Now I know,

I know, I know several people actually that have been sober a fair amount of years and have made millions and millions of dollars. And I got to tell you something. They have no material well-being. They're driven,

anxious, uptight people about money and they have more than they'd ever need and it's never enough and they can never have enough and they're they're just their most miserable people when it comes to that. They never enjoy 1 dime of it. I know other guys that make very little bit of money, but they've sacrificed and they've paid back all their debt and they're they have more an amazing level of material and financial well-being

because they know that they're free now and they know that there's nothing inhibiting them from from receiving God's grace. There's a promise in the third step and it says we have a new employer and being all powerful.

Remember there is one who has all power and if there's one who has all power, that means you don't got any because there ain't none left. There's one who has all power and there's being all powerful. He will provide what we needed if we can do two things if I can keep close to him and perform his work well

and keeping close to him means I have to clear away the stuff between me and God. I have to make the amends. I have to, I have to jettison the, the things that the defects and the judgments and the aspects of self that are between me and God. And I have to help his kids because it if you read this book over and over again, the, the spirit, the, the, the absolute default position in the realm of the spirit is always the same thing. We turn our attention to to who we can help.

We turn our thoughts to who we can help. I mean, you don't have to read this book and be a rocket scientist before you get from just the repetitiveness of it that that's the point is to help God's kids. So if I can try to stay close to him and turn my consciousness towards Him on a regular basis and try to help his kids, I will never, ever, ever need for anything. And God knows more about what I need than I do. I'm telling you,

I would never have designed the life I have. I would have short changed myself.

God knows more about what's good, what's going to make light me up and make me good in here than I would ever imagine.

Thanks, Bob. I love those stories and that fabulous stuff, man. Two things that we remind you again, we're going to start at 8:30 in the morning. The schedule says nine. And the second one is the meditation workshop following what Bob and I are going to do tomorrow morning. My wife and I are going to split that. As those of you are here today know, she has a tremendous gift for guided imagery. She going to talk a lot about meditation. She's going to read some Al Anon literature. I'm going to read from the 12:00 and 12:00

and we're going to do another guided imagery. And it's the, it's one that the only way I know how to tell you is it showed up at our first men's retreat. It's not like we wrote it, but it appeared as one of the most spectacular things that ever happened to me. And I use it daily now. So anyway, a little plug for that. I go back to talking about step 9 for a minute on this letter thing. My experience has been that it's about crying when you're making amends to somebody that's dead. If you can't cry, you probably won't get free. And if you write and cry, you can press the process

and you don't get it done. Those of you picked up these handouts? No, if you've read them, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, if you want one, you're sure welcome to it and maybe come up and get them after this session. But it can take more than one letter and that information's down there. My e-mail address is at the end of it. I'm more than happy to talk to you. This is a gift from my Home group. We say you take your problems to your sponsor and you bring your solutions to your meeting

that and that has really improved the quality of the meetings in my Home group as we don't you know, I've been on the line. Anybody get a problem? The newest newcomer dumps his bucket in the next 8 newcomers tell him how to fix his life. I don't want to listen to that anymore. And so that's that's why we evolved into what we did in 9th step. It says a new freedom,

a new freedom, The old freedom, as Bob talks about four shots of tequila was a false thing and the new freedom, and I heard him do this either the last time we did this, the time before, and you didn't do it this time. The new freedom is a freedom from the only thing I've ever need to be free from, and that's the bondage of self.

And when I actually do this night step thing, that's what happens. And it says we will suddenly realize that God's doing for us we couldn't do for ourselves. It doesn't say God will suddenly begin to do for us. He will have been doing for me for a long time. My realization will be sudden.

I've had a couple of people approach me with a question. It's been the same question, so I want to talk about it for a minute. I sincerely believe that the numbers in front of the steps are important

and that it's important to take them in order. I think it's important to have a sponsor involved in amends.

I've tried to make amends before. I got a sponsor when I was new and I devastated some people. That is a horrendous mistake. They're in order for a reason. The forgiveness process in Step 4 is necessary before I go to make amends to people I have harmed. If I currently hate them, if I still hate them and go to make amends to them, it can really be a mess.

It can really be a mess. So I think it's so critically important to get through that forgiveness process that we talked about in Step 4 before I get to step nine. And then it's step nine that I'd be doing it under the tutelage of a sponsor who has already done this himself on page 84 and move on and talk a little bit about step 10. And it's not that we don't have a lot more. We could talk about the other steps. This is just, we're going to, we're going to catch what we can.

It says this thought. That brings us to Step 10, page 84,

which suggests we continue. Bill tried hard not to use the same word over and over again. He uses the word continue four times in this paragraph.

We continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. For me, that differentiates Step 10 from what I call the evening portion of Step 11. Step 10 is about me being president in my own life, moment by moment. If I wait until 11:00 at night to take inventory to notice that I screwed up at 7:15 in the morning, it takes promptly right out of it. So to me, Step 10 is about being president of my own life

and being present all the time.

And for me, there's a slogan that applies to that. And it's easy. Does it? When I run Mach 2 with my hair on fire I don't even know when I mess up.

So I need to put the the two hardest things. I've two hardest assignments I've ever gotten are one day at a time and easy does it. To back it all the way down to that, I got a friend that says he spends too much time in his head trying to clear away the wreckage of his future.

That hit. Yeah. So the short form of step 10 continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, probably admitted it. No, I'm sorry. Wait. Promptly. Promptly admitted it. So I have to be present in my own life.

So for me, Step 10 is about being here with you as I go along. And it says we vigorously commence this way of living. As we cleaned up the past, we've entered the world of the Spirit. One know where you enter the world of the Spirit. You completed Step 9.

Our next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness. I don't think not be wrong. I'd love to be corrected on this. I, I don't think that they've asked me to understand a thing up until now. He hasn't been about understanding because I had to take out the trash first. I had to dig the poison out of my soul first. I'd like to thank the lady. I don't know where she is. Somebody came and disagreed with somebody said and I've learned something and I, it wasn't actually a disagreement, a suggestion and I appreciate that very much. I'm looking for people that disagree. I learned

now it's time for me to begin to understand and to become effective. I can't do either of those until I get the poison dug out of my soul and find out who I really AM.

This is not an overnight battery. Should continue for a lifetime. Continue. It says to watch for. Here's that list again. Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. We talked about what those are all the functions of self. If these crop up

now when? This is not an if question, this is a when question. When these crop up, what do we do? Ask God to remove them, Discuss them with some immediately. That would be spiritual advisor, sponsor, you know, somebody who's walking the path, make amends quickly if we've harmed anyone and then sit down and beat myself up because I'm not perfect. Oh, wait, excuse me, That's not what that says. I can't find permission to beat myself up. And I think beating me up is never the next right thing because it blocks my learning process.

Making mistakes doesn't do a thing for me. Realizing I've made a mistake always brings energy to me,

and I used to use it beating me. I mean really get angry with me and thrash around and kick things and all that and and that and that. What that does, it blocks my learning process because I should use that energy to get focused on where did this mistake come from? What underlies it? What can I learn here? How can I be a better guy? Far, far better way to use that.

And then says we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. There it is again, same old prescription.

Love and tolerance of others is our code. I want to tell a story. When I was sober about a year and a half my Home group started to form and there if there were not if there was one non-smoking meeting in the city of Nashville in 1985, I don't know where it was. It was smoking was so prevalent in the fellowship that in my Home group when you got a year, they gave you a Zippo lighter with your sobriety date on it

instead of a one year chip. I've still got mine. A guy that I sponsor who has never smoked has still got his and but it was just highly unusual. So we started a non-smoking meeting in the backroom of a clubhouse and we would open with the the everybody else they saw anybody who wants to have a non-smoking meeting go in the back and however many four, 5-6 or eight of us to go back there.

And this one guys name was Edward. And and Edwards would say, I'll chair. I thought, I'm going to strangle him. I just know I'm just the world will be a better place when Edward is gone. There's just not any question about it. And this guy just he just frazzled me all the time. And I kept hearing people say if you spotted, you got it.

And so one time I heard that,

you know, you know, the revelation is a revelation is when I figure out for myself something you've been trying to tell me for six months or longer,

that's a revelation. You write that down if you want to. And, and I realized that. And so I thought, OK, the next time Edward does something that bends me up, I'm going to search myself for it. Holy mackerel I found it.

And so the next time he did something that made me mad, I looked and I found it again and I started following Edward around like a puppy and I don't know if I was bending him up, but he was twisting me. And every time he did something that made me mad I searched and found it. I don't know how much I learned from him, but it was a lot. I miss him because I learned so much. He had all my character defects. He had a much worse than I did.

That's So what he said.

Love and tolerance of others is our code. I tell you, sometimes if I have to tolerate somebody, maybe I better be. Somebody told me if everybody you meet stinks, you might want to shake your mustache.

You know, it just might be on me. Yeah. OK. And we've ceased finding anything or anyone, even alcohol. The concept is so important. They tell us the same thing again at the bottom of page 103, No 113103