Step 10 at a Men's OA Tool Time Retreat in Oceanside, CA

So that's, that's the end of step nine. And then the very next paragraph is the, the core part of step 10. Step 10 has, has one paragraph. That's the core part. And then there's the 10 step promises over that after that. And then there's the, the thing that I read part of this to you before, but I'll read it again here. So this paragraph right here, this first paragraph of step 10, this is the core of step 10. And you know, a lot of people have said that, you know, steps 1011 and 12 are the maintenance steps. That's where we maintain our spiritual awakening.

We're going to find out in this, in this, in this reading here that these steps are the growth steps. This is how you grow your spiritual awakening. You know, you get through the middle of step 9, you've had a certain amount of spiritual awakening because some of those promises are coming true in your life. Steps 1011 and 12 is where you grow that spiritual awakening and make more of those nine step promises become true.

So step 10 suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set any new mistakes we as we go along. Actually, I should read for step 10 first, continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. First of all, notice it says when we were wrong, not if we were wrong. I mean, we are going to be wrong quite often. So it's when we are wrong, we promptly admitted it

that so this brings the step 10, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to sit right any wrong,

any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. So right there is talking about growing our spiritual, spiritual awakening is is from coming from steps 10 and 11:00 and 12:00. So it's not just maintaining our spiritual awakening

and it goes on. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. So we're going to continue to grow our spiritual awakening throughout our whole life. Now this is the, this is the core of step 10, the daily, the, the on the spot inventory. The next sentence is continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. Those are the four character defects. They're all related to selfishness and self-centredness. Remember, fear is fear about what's going to happen to me in the future. Resentment is about what somebody did to me. The past

dishonesty means I'm trying to protect myself by lying in some situation.

And then selfishness is the other character defect. And what these character defects is usually brings up some kind of negative emotion. And so they say continue to watch for that means from a software engineering point of view, it would be like setting a watchdog timer that's going to go off every second and check to see, hey, am I experiencing selfishness, dishonesty, resentment or fear? And if I am, then wake up and do the 10th step. So that's the way we got to get our mind to do. I mean, what actually happens most of the time is that we're on automatic pilot

and you know, we experience the emotion and we get deep into it and yell at somebody or give somebody the finger on the freeway, whatever it is. You know, we're we're deep into it before we notice it. But the idea is to try to notice it as soon as possible and try to notice it sooner rather than later. And, and once you've noticed that you have have experienced one of these character defects having an effect on your life right now, it's having an effect on your life. That's what you're trying to notice about your getting pissed off at somebody or being afraid

or that you just told a lie. You know, any of those kinds of things. Once you notice, notice that the next step is when these crop up. We ask God at once to remove them. So that's the very first thing you do. As soon as you notice that you ask God to remove it because you're as powerless over your character defect as you over are over compulsive over eating. So he asked God to remove it.

And then it says we discussed them with someone immediately. And you know, I used to think that, OK, discussing it with somebody immediately. Yeah, that's necessary. If I'm not sure if I may, if I need to make an amends, or maybe I do, maybe I don't. You know, when I get around to it, I'll, I'll, I'll call my sponsor and see if I need to make an amends. And

this says we discussed this with someone immediately. And it's not equivocal, doesn't say sometimes we discuss it with someone immediately.

We should always discuss it with someone immediately. So this is only about six or seven months ago, somebody was sharing at a meeting and they made the statement that this is not optional. This part of it is not optional because if you skip this part, you're skipping the step five part of the 10th step. So the first part of the 10th step is the start part four part where you notice that you have a character defect arising here. Then the next thing you do is you ask God to remove it. That's step 6:00 and 7:00. So you've done 4/6 and seven.

If you skip discussing it with someone immediately, you've skipped Step 5. And remember what we read about step five, that if you, if you skip step five, you may not recover. Again, the reason for discussing this with someone immediately is the same as the reason for doing Step 5 on all your other character defects from Step 4, which is to to air out the fact that, you know, I've been a jerk. So basically when I text my sponsor and tell him, basically, I've been a jerk. I did this thing that I shouldn't have done or I gave somebody the finger,

that's admitting that I have in some sense failed. And what I was trying to do, I was trying to be loving and supporting of everybody. Instead, I was giving people a finger. So it's, it's, it's admitting, you know, that we're not perfect, that I'm, I'm not living up to my ideals. And so that's what we need to do. We need to, and, and it's a lot easier these days than it used to be back in the 70s and 80s because I can just text my sponsor, not while I'm driving, but you know, as soon as I can, I can text my sponsor about step 10.

And then we make amends quickly. If we have harmed anyone,

then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. But first of all, we make amends quickly. So you know, as quickly as you can, if you've left a situation, come back and do it. I'll give an example. This is early on in my 12 years of recovery here in the last 12 years, early on in that I went to a, a coffee, it was a coffee shop, not a Starbucks. It was another brand like Starbucks. I went there and I ordered my drink

and I was running late for the meeting.

And so I was waiting, waiting for the drink to be made. And somebody who was behind me in line got their drink before I got my drink. So I kind of questioned the barista, you know, what happened to my drink? You know, they were behind the line. Oh, we, we had trouble pulling the the shots. You know, I'm sorry. And and I was pissed. I, he could tell I was pissed. I could see by his reaction that he knew that I was pissed at him for doing that. And when he finally handed me the drink, I just grabbed it. OK. I ran off and went to the meeting.

So I didn't do it immediately. I didn't notice it immediately there, but sitting at that meeting, I realized, Oh my God, I got to go back and make an amends to that guy. So as soon as the meeting was over, I went back to the same place there. He wasn't at the, at the barista stand anymore. I asked him where he where. I asked one of the clerks there where he was and he says, oh, he's in the back taking a break. So I kind of stepped back and I motioned it for him and he came out and I made amends right there. I said, I'm sorry that for what I said, I was very angry and I, I apologize.

And, you know, the difference would have been if I hadn't done that, if I hadn't made that amends, I probably would have never gone back to that shop again because I wouldn't have run into him. And I wouldn't have wanted to feel embarrassed about, you know, him knowing that I was a jerk. And, you know, then I'm still not admitting it. And then he'll have some feelings about me. And I would never have gone back to that same shop again because I made the amends. I went back to the same shop and we were the best of friends from then on. I mean, he would always talk to me friendly and I would talk to him and you know,

there is no, the thing was healed. You know, it was my character defect didn't cause any permanent damage because I went back there and made the amends.

So, you know, we discuss it with someone immediately, make the immense as quickly as we can. If you don't do it on the spot, you know, drive back to the store and apologize later once you've realized that you needed to do that. And then the next step is really important too. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Now, it could be us doing an outreach call within the program, you know, helping someone by doing an outreach call to them and letting them know that somebody's there for them or you know, talking to a sponsor or talking to newcomer at meeting. But it does not have to be

12 step related. It can be anything that we can do that will help someone else. And that could include, for example, slowing down the freeway and letting somebody pull into my lane who's obviously wanting to get into my lane, but I wasn't going to let them because I want to get there first. And, you know, let him go behind me, not in front of me. That that's one of my big character defects. I'm very impatient on the freeway. And so slowing down, let somebody pull in in front of me would be a way of doing it. Open the door for somebody and holding it open for a whole group of people going through that would be

doing doing something for someone else.

It's anything that you can for somebody else, you know, that's not not for you. So we, we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help and love the tolerance of of others is our code. So the other thing you know about I've been in the program for 3039 years. I guess it'll be almost 39 years. And you know, overall over most of that time, you know, once I work the steps, the first time I thought, you know, I was working my 10th step. You know, if I, if I made an amends once or twice a month,

that was good enough. I'm taking care of that. You know, those are the worst ones where I yelled at somebody or something like that. What I've come to learn from the OPP program and talking with my OAPP sponsor, if you're not doing it several times a day, you're probably not doing it enough because character defects come up often. They don't just come up once a month, they come up, you know, daily or several times a day. So now I am still not up to the point of doing this several times a day, but that's my goal. Now

that watchdog timer, I don't have it running very well yet.

It doesn't notice it until way after it's all gone and done with. So I need to, I need to step up the game here and, and do more step 10s on the spot as we go through. So this is step 10 that that's the core of step 10 right there. And then following that we have our ten step promises, which is basically some additional spiritual awakening after the 9th step promises. Going halfway through the 9th step, we we got our 9th step promises

and now we have our 10th step from doing our tent step promises and we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol or food.

For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude towards liquor has been given us without without any grace or thought on our part. So that's the grace thing that Dave was talking about, that that new

has been given to us. There

it just comes. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, the liquor. Neither are we afraid are neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react as long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

So in doing the step 10 is how you keep in that fit spiritual condition.

Now this, this next paragraph of Step 10 here is talking about how we are recovered, Recovered Alcoholics, recovered compulsive readers. And remember that recovered means that you're not cured. It just means that you're living a healthy life. It's easy to let upon the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe and food is even more subtle than alcohol. We are not cured of alcoholism and we are not cured of compulsive reading.

What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done. Now that you know. That is something that we could say every day that I will not, not not mind be done. That would be great if I would get into the practice of saying that daily, multiple times. I don't have that practice, but it would be great if I did.

These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.

We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It's the proper use of the will. The proper use of the will is to ask for God's help. That's the proper use of the will is to asking for God's help.

So that takes me through the end of step 10. And we were going to do stop steps on 11:00 and 12:00 tomorrow morning. So now we're open for discussion. Any comments about steps 9 or 10?

Well, I'll say that the, the only primary purpose point of view is that the sponsor is getting the benefit of working with the new person or the sponsee. So, you know, I get benefit by working with somebody else 'cause that's, that's where I'm getting out of my selfish and self centeredness. Because now I'm looking at what your issue is. So it's, it's not a burden for me. What I, what I tell my sponsees is call me anytime you want. If I can answer it, I will answer it. If I can't leave a voicemail and I'll call you back.

So, you know, I don't have any problem with somebody calling me and I don't get a huge number of calls.

But in fact I only have like, well, I might have a theoretical 5 sponsees, but I think it's actually only three that are doing anything right now.

So that I have three that are doing anything and

and you know, it's not, it's not been a problem. And it's it's it's what gives me the benefit is, you know, working the 12th step is where you're helping another person. That's how I get out of my selfish and self centeredness. I have to now, you know, deal with what your problem is and, you know, talk to you about it and give you the guidance of the of the of the 12 steps on whatever the situation is. And you know, it's not that I'm a great

advice giver or therapist or anything like that. It I I'm just trying to apply the principles of the program

whatever situation of the sponsee is bringing to me.