The topic of step 9 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

To set the tone for this meeting, I will read an extract from Chapter One Bill Story, page 13.

UMM. My schoolmate visited me and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrongs. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to write all such matters to the utmost of my ability.

The topic of tonight's meeting is working step nine with a sponsee and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim.

Hi, Tim, our colleague. Can you hear me? All right, Alastair? Yeah. Good. So I haven't drunk since last week, which is a very good thing. So I must be doing something right. Not even beer.

So by the time you've got your little Swansea to Step 9, they've either completed their step eight list or they've had, they've made a start on it and they've processed enough amends,

enough step 8:00 to be able to start making amends.

As I said last week,

a bit of insight and reality really helps in Step 8, and a lot of that insight and reality comes in Step 9. So

it can really help with a lot of people to get them to do a few amends before completing everything in Step 8.

There may be a willingness in principle to make amends to everyone. Of course, that must be there, but in terms of the detailed processing of these relationships,

the reality, the contact with reality in Step 9 is immensely helpful and it's much quicker to get people to get some experience of Step nine first and then start to look at the rest of the detail in Step 8.

So we're now at the position of starting to make amends and I get people to

go through

their, let's say you've got a pile of amends to make. You go through the pile and you assess each one on with reference to two criteria in the 1st 1:00. AM I able to make this amend? And this means you're clear. You're clear on what to say,

where they are, how to contact them. It's all tickety, Boo,

and willingness means you're being you're internally prepared to. If someone handed them the handed you the phone, would you be willing to make the call right now

to go through and to so to sort all of the step eights in the pile between ones you're able to do, ones you're not able to do, ones you're willing to do, ones you're not willing to do,

and to start with the ones where you're willing and able. And the reason to do this is no point in hitting yourself over the head with amends where you feel unable or you think you're unable for some reason or you're unwilling. If you make the ones where you're able and willing, you'll find all sorts of amends appear now to be within grasp in terms of either understanding what to do or being

internally prepared

to do it. So. So pick the low hanging fruit first. If you're cleaning, clearing a cupboard, you clear the items at the front first. You don't reach past them and try and Scrabble things from the back. So start with the easiest ones or what you think are going to be the easiest ones.

And what I get people to do is to do a mental walk through of the amend, so how they're going to approach the person, what they're going to say,

what spirit they're going to do it in, how much detail to go into. And a lot of questions come out of this. And often people think they're unwilling. And they're not unwilling. It's just they anticipate problems arising, very specific problems arising if they make the amend as they're anticipating to do it. And those are very often legitimate and need to be dealt with.

And so the answer there is not to work on willingness and to pray for willingness, but to look at what the concrete objections are, to work through those. And then you suddenly discover

you're willing, so they do a walk through. Now

I'm going to be terribly rude about speaker tapes. I hope you don't mind. There's rather a sort of

a disagreeable tone that people sometimes take in speaker tapes on Step 9, a little bit sarcastic when they talk about their relationship with their sponsor. And they say, well, I went to my sponsor and said, well, can I make this amend over the phone?

And the sponsor says, well, did you harm them over the phone?

And you've got to, you know, if you, if you it says made amends directly so and it doesn't have heard people say it doesn't count unless it's physically in front of them.

Now, I'm not going to go into detail why that's all deeply unhelpful, but I'm going to say what is helpful.

First of all, let's look at what it says in steps 89. It talks about making direct amends. What that means very clearly from the literature given that in the step mind reading in the big book, it talks about writing letters to people. What it means is you somehow address the topic with the person rather than just generally trying to be a nicer

or chap S. So direct means to the person, not with the universe in general. The phrase in person was available in 1939 but was not chosen. If what was meant was in person, they would have said in person.

So direct means you're dealing with it, with the situation, with the person. Now the question of mode.

So the mode of communication is relevant here. And there are all sorts of different categories. So I walk people through these. First of all, you've got people you're seeing on a daily basis or a weekly basis or a regular basis. And with those, because you're seeing them the whole time anyway, you might as well just grab them when you see them. Say, you know, Susan, do you have 5 minutes

and approach them that way because they're used to interacting with you. But frankly,

a lot of people that I had to make amends to, Well, I wasn't a very nice person when I was drinking. I wasn't particularly mean except when I was trying to be funny. But I was horribly negligent with people and they were having none of it. They didn't want anything to do with me. And the last thing that would have been right to do with these people is to insist

on a personal audience with them

as though, you know, I, I'm in a position to command such a thing. And I'm absolutely not. What it talks about in the book, which is the reference point, is tact and consideration. And on page 90, there's a brilliant line it says, and it's on step 12, but it's pertinent to step nine. It says you put yourself in their shoes and say how would you like to be approached if the tables were turned?

And a number of people have very kindly made amends to me in AA over the years. None of them needed to but that they that they, I showed up on their step eight list so that they wanted to make amends. And well, what did I want as someone who is an amendee? Most of all, I wanted the process to be over as quickly as possible and the phone would do

a text messages frankly good enough. I just a little acknowledgement that you were wrong doesn't go amiss. But really, I don't want, you know, people have phoned up and said, hey,

like people I barely know say, hey, do you want to meet for a coffee? No, no, I don't want to meet for a coffee. I'm not sure who you are

and also like I don't have enough time to have coffee with some of my best friends, so no, I did. Can we what do you? And then it turns, oh, they want to make amends. Fine. So

or will you be at this meeting? Or will you be? No, no, no. What you do, you say to the person, I would like to make a I would like to make amends to you. You don't go in with let's have a coffee. Let's go for dinner

upfront first. Out of the gate, you say I would like I've treated you badly. I would like to make amends to you. Ideally, I'd love to be able to see you face to face. I totally get you won't have the time or even necessarily the inclination. So I'm going to put it in your hands, you know,

face to face, video call, telephone call,

WhatsApp message, Raven, skywriting, You pick, you pick. It's the person that has been made amends to that gets to pick the mode. I don't have absolutely don't have the right to insist yet. Now, as I said, we've got two types of people here. People were in regular contact with

and who we see the whole time and then people we've lost contact with.

I've already dealt with the people wearing regular contact, but the ones that we're not must be approached. The initial approach must be in writing. Occasionally a phone call will be appropriate. I don't know about you. I don't like phone calls out of the blue particularly. I'm always in the middle of something and if some, if it's a phone call out of the blue from someone I haven't spoken to for for years,

my defences go up. Yeah, I had a slightly tricky childhood. My defences go up.

I'm like, what's going on here? It's not my ideal mode of contact and a lot of people are like this. Maybe it's a British thing, I don't know,

you know, maybe we'd all prefer just for people to take out adverts in the Times if they want to contact us, you know, that might be the best way.

So I approach people in writing, I get people to do the same, to say. And it's, it's basically it's sort of to move

maneuver. So the first move is the approach in writing to say, I would like to make amends. Here are the options. I'll wait to hear from you. And then if I don't hear from you within a couple of weeks, I'm going to send you a letter on whatever the channel as if it's WhatsApp on WhatsApp, if it's on Messenger, on messenger. If it's e-mail by e-mail, I'm going to send you an amend contained in a document and you can read that or you can just delete it. The

marvelous thing about this is

there have been some

tricky people in my life

now. None of them have made amends to me and I don't need them to. Is it fine but, but, but if they were to, I'm not sure I would want to read a letter even with some of them, as I wouldn't necessarily. I'd think very carefully before reading material from certain people.

I don't know if you've ever received an e-mail or a letter

and four lines in, you know you should delete it straight away and you wish you hadn't read those first three or four lines. Just the first three or four lines totally set you off.

So the, the brilliance of this approach, which was given to me, so I pass it on to other people, is if you're warning them that the next communication is going to contain the amend letter with all of the tricky stuff in it, it gives them the option to delete it without reading it and without discovering any of the content.

Umm, and also if you're warning them that you're going to give it two weeks and then send it, it saves you having to pester them. It means there's a maximum of two communications and then you're done.

A lot of people just don't want to be heard. They they don't want to be contact

message can be an intrusion

2:00 as long as you've warned with the 1st is going to be fine. Now back to this in person business, frankly, ideally from despite what I've said, ideally

in person is sort of communication takes place

in person,

which doesn't take place in other channels.

So it's good to lead with that. I would love to meet you, but I have to say there are lots of situations where other modes can actually be better. And it's very interesting. It's a Course in Miracles teacher in America who does one to one sessions and he identifies what his position is. Now, historically he would only do this was over Skype. So before the whole Age of

Aquarius or Zoom or whatever,

on Skype he he would only do audio calls. He wouldn't do video calls, He said. The video is distracting. You hear a lot more what's going on in people's voice over the phone. There's more communication over the phone than face to face.

Very interesting. I think there's a lot in that. So

by letter as well,

I suggest to a lot of people that they put the amend sometimes to put the amend in a letter that in the letter say, I would love to meet to discuss further. Now what this is doing is it's opening the door. If the other person wants to

make it to be spoken to face to face, to have a discussion, it's opening the door to that. But

I don't know if you've ever had conversations with tricky people where you're very clear before the conversation begins what you want to say, but as soon as you start speaking, they take over and take the conversation in another direction. And even if you manage to say like physically, you know, pronounce the words you want to say, the other person is already

set off. They're already in their own little fantasy world and they're not going to hear it anyway. So the point, the point of them is not a form. So if you've said the words in person, you've done the job. No, the job is to communicate. The question is which mode is going to communicate most effectively?

Letters can be extremely intimate

forms of communication. They are not necessarily avoidance. Sometimes the avoidant thing to do is to have the face to face conversation,

whereas putting it in black and white,

it also when it's in writing, it gives the endeavor a sense of gravity, your gravitas, your pinning your colors to the mast. So it's a very brave thing to it's braver sometimes to do it in writing because they can show the letter to someone. Whereas if you have a conversation with someone, if they report it to someone, the person will think, well, maybe they said that, maybe they didn't, I wasn't there.

So it's a very brave thing to put it in writing. It has a tone of formality.

It means I'm serious about what I'm doing here. So there are all sorts of advantages to doing it in writing. And it's absolutely not to preclude a phone call, a video call, a face to face conversation, a meeting. If they jump, you say how high, but it's getting the message across. If you do it in writing, you can be very sure that you're wording it correctly.

I'm not going to name any names, but I'm in conversation with someone at the moment that is needing to apologize to various people in their life

for some, some events, shall we say. And I've said to him,

start off in writing and it's all gone terribly well so far. So that the method is working.

Start off in writing. But I want you to send me, I want you to send me the draft WhatsApp message before you send it. And I get the first draft. Oh Jesus, you can't say that. And it gets reworded and sent back and it all the ones which have gone out have gone down. I think they've gone down, but there's one I haven't heard back about. They all seem to have gone down very well.

Point being,

unless someone is a very good actor in learning lines that that, who knows what you're going to say in the heat of the moment, Things can come. Have you ever had something come out wrong? I have,

whereas when it's in writing, you can put it past someone else and they can they can suck their teeth. I wouldn't say that.

So you can make sure that you're absolutely communicating what you want to communicate. And a second reason why a lot of amends need to be in writing.

Have you ever had a WhatsApp conversation with someone?

Where you say something and then the other person reacts in a WhatsApp message and you look at the reaction and you're like, did you even read what I said? And you go back and you say, oh, can you reread what I said? I think you may have misread it. And they go, oh, I'm so sorry. You're totally right. Now,

if that's an oral conversation, have you ever tried to say no, you misheard what I said or you they said no, I didn't. I know I know what you said. I know what I heard

so and then all hell breaks loose. So if there is a miss, if you've got someone who is prone to hearing things their own way, do not have a conversation unless it's absolutely unavoidable. Put it in writing as they can read it and re read it and re read it and show it to their friend Sally. And Sally can say, actually, I think that's a pretty reasonable message.

I just that they've at least got if they want to look at it sanely,

they've got the evidence in front of them. If it's an oral conversation, the way it goes into their memory is their first interpretation of what you said. It is not the words that you said. So even if they try and process the conversation afterwards with a friend, they won't be reporting accurately what the amending person said. So in writing is a super way to do it.

As I said, it's not to preclude some sort of face to face, but you want to edge back into people's lives,

not launch on some self important expedition, knocking on the door without knocking on the door without warning.

Umm, until people are confident with their immense approaches, the written approach and then maybe the written amendment. If, if the written amend is going to be the beginning of the conversation with the person. I get people to run all of those past me until they're kind of it's like things in the washing machine until, until the waters running clear until the clothes are coming out clean. If there's any sense that things are going off tangent on,

then absolutely, you know, bring them back again and again and again,

because it's bad enough to get the harm to do the harm. It's doubly injurious to get the apology wrong. And I can tell you in my life, in the people around me, I see people more upset by bodged apologies and amends than by the original offence.

People are pretty forgiving about things done in haste or passion or in reaction, but badly thought through amends. And in particular, when you're getting someone to do the walk through, and particularly when they're with your reading the message, what you want to do for your sponsee is put yourself in the shoes of the person who is going to hear the amend or read the amend and say,

if you were that person and you were really suspicious and difficult and having a bad day, what would you, what would you find wrong with this? What would if you were just that? There's a, there's a sketch many years ago where someone is in a restaurant and the waiter deliberately misconstrues everything that the

diner says.

And

so the, for instance, the, the, the diner will say, does the chicken come with vegetables? And the waiter says, it doesn't come, we bring it. And So what? And the whole conversation is like that. So you read the amend letter as though you're like, as though you're that waiter, as though you're just the most difficult person,

difficult and touchy and prone to reading things into statements.

So you want to read it from that point of view. And if you do it like that, if you imagine yourself at your worst, then your what? Again, you want it to be rewritten and rewritten until you would not be able to find a problem with it as the legitimately find a problem with it as a recipient. And that's a really good way of a really good way of doing it. But you're also testing

against the three principles of step 9. The except when to do so would injure them or others.

Don't reveal new information unless the new information reduces the injury.

Don't

involve a third party without their permission, and don't take any action which is going to impair your ability to be useful with the new information. Occasionally there are situations where new information reveals an action to be far more innocent than it was thought to be at the time, and that can be helpful. But the danger of going into any explanations about

why the bad thing happened

is as soon as you're explaining it, you're pointing the finger away from you towards the explanatory circumstances. So, well, it wasn't really me that said the bad thing or did the bad thing. It was the bad day that I was having. That's the real culprit here. And

nothing aggravates amendees more than unwanted and unnecessary explanations. What people want to hear is generally

is this.

I should. I did XY and Z. It's taken me far too long to apologize for this. I was wrong for doing it.

I regret doing it. I would like to make things right with you. How can I do that? Anyone that does want to know all the gory details of the person's state of mind at the time is probably not a good person to share that stuff with anyway.

Why do they care? Usually it's because what some people are very intrusive at receiving amends,

although they're intrusive back in relation to the person making the amends.

It's usually because they're minded to retain the grievance and they want more ammunition and you don't want to give them the ammunition.

So to watch out for it when reading the draft amends. Now, if someone is going to, even when someone is going to make an amend face to face, I get people to write out what they're going to say and read it out.

And again, all sorts of stuff comes out when they read it out that you think you can't say this, you can't say that. And in general the whole thing gets compressed down. The one thing people need training on as well is how to write a letter.

Umm. In other words, how to top and tail the letter, How to top the tail, top and tail the amend.

Sometimes people's first draft amend letters

are like, it's like opening a door and an elephant charges through the door, like you're just not expecting what's coming and Boo. And then it's all gone. It's like within two lines, the whole thing is over. Bye.

And so the letter has to be topped and tailed with some kind of introduction. Like,

you know, it's been many years since we've spoken.

My approach to you may not be entirely welcome, but I've got a legitimate reason for contacting you in the past. I treated you very badly. And I'd like to set things right. And, and specifically the details of this are as follows. And at the end, you know,

I hope, I hope there is some way I can make this right. I'm available for contact on the following details if there if there's anything you would like to add. If I've I've done my best to analyse the past. If I've missed anything,

you know feel free to let me know because I can be very dense about my own behaviour. I can miss even very major things. So I've done my best but I I know that often fall short so. So

please feel free to tell me anything else I've done and if I don't hear from you I quite understand a lot of people will not want to respond to a letter like this. In any case, I wish you well in your future endeavours. So nicely topped and tailed. This again gives it a sense of gravitas. There's nothing worse for amendees, especially if they're savvy about 12 step recovery. Friend of mine made an amends to a bloke in A. A

is the worst.

Oh, you'd think. You'd think people in a A would be great at receiving a man's. I'm reasonably gracious these days. I'm brisk, but gracious. But some people are mean. Just

so my friend made amends to someone and they said, oh, you're making amends. I see at last, what am I #37 on the list.

So it, it, it mustn't seem like a dead exercise. It's got to have some humanity to it and something personal to it. So that's got to be in there as well. These are very, very difficult things to do and people can't do this on their own. They need a lot of hand holding with this and they get better during the process usually usually by the end that they're pretty much, you've heard of the self basting chicken. While most people are self basting

by the end of the process, but not everyone is. People come in with different degrees of damage in a A and that's fine. And we have to work with that,

with the money. I'm going to say one thing about the money. So we touched on the money situation last week. What I get people to do is tot up all of the financial amends and these or schedule them out somehow. And these fall into 3 categories.

Number one, legal debts. Debts which if not paid, will legitimize someone making a claim against you through the courts or a collection agency coming and taking your flat screen or your PUG or something.

So legal debts. Second category is debts, which people know about,

but they're not really legal debt. So friends and family or debts where as far as they're concerned it's written or you haven't paid it back. But as far as they're concerned it's it's water onto the bridge and they're not going to come after you for it in any way. The third category is debts, which no one knows about.

Now

there isn't a sort of standard algorithm for this, but you, you want people to, to, they need to know the worst

of the financial ones before they even

start to let people know they're paying back money or stop to pay back the money. Because the last thing you want to do is for them to sort of pay, you know, 10,000 lbs back to their Auntie Janice who isn't even asking for it whilst the bailiffs are knocking on the door and the children haven't got anything to eat. So you you, you've got to look at the legal debts first basically.

And the best way to do this is you point people in the direction of debt consolidation agencies and similar

and and find a way to get everything consolidate consolidated into a single affordable monthly payment. Most of those are corporate. So although it has to be paid back, it the pain

that it affects individuals at the end of a chain, but they don't feel the pain

the same way that individuals, friends and family do. So although it needs to be dealt with very urgently, it's not necessarily what you want to pay off entirely first. You want that to be on a reasonably long tail whilst you deal with category B. So you get the, the, the, the, the courts and the collection agencies and the banks and the credit card companies off your back for off your back first,

and then you can breathe. Then you've got time to consider the other things carefully.

If there are any particular egregious financial

amends or financial harms which require particularly urgent do need to be addressed very, very quickly, then obviously those go to the top. But a very good way of doing the financial amends with the 2nd tier, with the friends and family and acquaintances and so on is to work out the total work out the

monthly payment you can make without making yourself destitute, but nonetheless making it hurt. And then you divide that proportionately across all of them so you can contact all of them at once. Because I don't think it's right to make to be the one to decide to make certain people wait. There are exceptions to this is a very, very, you know, there are endless variations of this. So while there are these are general principles,

when all of the friends and family and acquaintances are paid off, then you're going to have that freeze up your finances and then you can accelerate the payments to all the corporate ones and start hacking down the list of ones that they don't know about.

Anyone who rejects the finance that the repayment

then the amount still needs to go out of my pocket.

This is what I did.

I would ask the peasants to nominate a charity. And then that goes on the third list, the list of ones which are not expecting the money. Because obviously you don't want to be paying money to a charity which is not expecting it or needing it or wanting it right now whilst your Auntie Janice is waiting for her money back. But that's going to affect your relationship with Auntie Janice. The charity, it's arm's length so

but something needs to be done because and principle is it's not my money.

The other thing you need to help people do because most people will not think of this and if they think of it, they won't know how to do it. To go to a website where you just Google something like what is £100 in 1971 worth now and to add inflation into it. So whatever you're paying back now reflects the change in value of money over time.

And say one thing about living amends. I'm

slightly allergic to the term because often the notion of living amends is used, or rather, such living amends are used as a substitute for having a conversation with anyone at all. Now there are situations where the conversation can't be had for a myriad of reasons, and one has to revert to this rather indirect way of making things up to people.

But my take is

step 9 is completed when you have made all of the approaches and had all of the conversations that you can have.

After that point, there may be follow-up requested by the other person

and that could be a lifelong thing. Now, one mustn't feel that one's under some lifelong burden. It should be a lifelong privilege, frankly, to to be able to do something good in return for all, all of the harm that one has done. But one mustn't say it is that one hasn't completed step 9. So with those follow throughs, what 1 can be is permanently current. You can be current with the payments. You can be current with the other follow through actions.

So you don't feel as though you're constantly paying a debt because I don't think that's that's right. I, I think your, your debt is paid morally when your current as of today

as to sort of behaving well with people, the long period of reconstruction it talks about in Page on page 83. I think one's supposed to be doing that in step 12 anyway, practising these principles and all our affairs. So I think it's already covered in step 12. The danger and this is very commonly done in the UK. I think it's changing last few years, but historically people basically not make amends

and then so I'm making living amends. And by that they meant not being a jerk on a daily basis which is already covered it. So you're taking step 12, that not being a jerk bit of step 12 and then your double counting it and saying well that's also my step 9. So hey, I've done 2 steps at once just by being a normal person and I don't think that will do in most cases.

Oh last thing,

that on some American tapes is very common for people to say to

for it to be suggested to save someone. What can I do to make this right?

Or something to that effect.

I think one's got to be careful with that, to say that to people who are morally and psychologically sound. Because if you say that to people who are not morally and psychologically sound and then you have to not do what they've asked, you've now caused a further harm.

So one must be extremely cautious about that and deploy that tactic with only with people where it's reasonable to do so. So I think that's all the basic stuff on Step 9. So Alistair, I don't know if you want to go over to questions now. Thank you. Tim. Yes, Tim mentioned this meeting. The meeting is now open for questions which can be done by the raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function.

Open and or if nothing else works just way violently at the camera and I'll call on you and with that for questions. Thanks,

Angus.

All right, thanks. Thanks, Tim. How do you deal with

events to people that are no longer living?

OK, so this is standard procedure.

You write a letter as if they're still alive. You find an old person in a A that's someone my age or older to hear you read out the letter.

Preferably someone that, but it has to be someone that's basically completed. All their men's themselves understands this process. Someone kosher you you, you can't go to just anyone. You've got to be careful with this because it can set people off like firecrackers.

If they haven't made their amends or if there are any amends they haven't made, they will react badly to you wanting to do this with them.

But you know what one tends to find over the years, You know, people in in recovery who've been sober a long time, people in their 60s, people in their 70s. I don't know why the age thing makes a difference. It's like reading things to your grandparents. They can be a sort of safe

recipient. So you read it to them

and it's as though the person is standing in the stead of the person you're making amends to.

It gets termed by some people approximate. The other thing you can do, and this is an and or

is to write a letter and go to a place which is significant for you and them and your relationship or significant to them or somehow reminiscent of them. So a friend of mine was making amends to someone who is Dutch who he had known in America or I think in America and somewhere in the Caribbean. And when he went to to make amends, the chap had died and

he went to the Dutch Church

in London, which is a lovely church by the way, if you're ever in, in that part of town, lovely. They often have exhibitions in there. But he went in there and he made he, he read out a letter. He had a very powerful experience. And the third thing you can do, you can say, right, God, I need to make amends for this. I will need to make indirect amends to the universe somehow.

You show me how

and I'll give you one example of where this it's not just dead people. Sometimes you can't find the person because you don't have enough of a name to go on. And there was a chat from Cardiff who I when I was 15, I treated very, very badly. I met him on a, on a orchestra course. I've never been able to trace him. A very sort of

very, very common name.

And I'd never been able to trace him. And I did my absolute best. I try, I've tried repeatedly. He's on the sort of list of can't finds

and

I push the whole thing up to my higher power. And then

through a curious set of coincidences,

someone in a A in Cardiff

who knew a friend of a friend called me and said, look, I got a problem that I need to talk to someone about from my childhood.

And he was, he was still very upset about a particular thing that had happened when he was 14 or 15. Now the story is not going to be, oh, and it was the same kid. No, it wasn't the same kid.

Just in case you won one of those, you know, podium engines. It wasn't. But the point is, I was able to help him through his to process what had happened to him at that age,

and that's maybe as close as I can get to making amends in that particular case. Maybe it'd be too incendiary for me to make amends directly to that person, which is why I haven't been able to find him. Who knows what the universe is doing there. But you will be offered an opportunity by the universe to make a meant to redress the balance, to settle the accounts with the universe, if you keep, if you're willing, and you keep your eyes peeled and your ears, if you can peel ears. I'm not sure if you can

is, but you know what I mean. You pay attention and the universe will provide you with an opportunity.

Thanks, Tim. Harry, you have a question? Hey everyone, I'm Harry. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks, Tim. So on the phrase, you just settled the settled the score with the universe.

So I understood that in my mind I have the amends as an expression of regret. Sorry. Plus an attempt to put something right. So stolen the money. I'm gonna repay the money. I've I've drunk your wine and I often repay that. You know, I'm gonna replace the thing I took, took and so on.

But on emotional harm, when I've been a real terror with someone,

most of most of the people I went out to in that category, I've just been incredibly unpleasant and rude. And I, you know, and for most of them, I did actually say, is there anything I could do to put it right? And maybe in some cases that was misjudged and almost no one took me up on it. No one said, oh, well, you can wash the car to make up for you being rude. But a couple of people who had been incredibly unpleasant to

expected as a result of my men's

that we were now going to be besties and that we I would be making amends by now being their friend, for example.

So I wondered if is is the is the apology and then sincerity of of coming out to someone the putting right itself, like I've given the opportunity to forgive me now I'm straight with the universe. Is there something I go beyond to do to put the emotional harm right? Does that make sense?

Yeah, I I think this goes to what the one of the core difficulties of amends, which is

most things you can't put right per SE. So emotional suffering can't be

reversed

except on occasion. I mean that there is such a thing as healing, and

often the other person's acknowledgement of what they did wrong is the missing ingredient which permits the person to heal.

But the problem is as though that the real harm is not the emotion at the time,

it's the sticking of that emotion in their crawl.

And

what the amend does is it removes that little bit of grit stuck in the crawl so that everything can flow again. I can't tell you how often I've seen situations where someone said I don't care, I just need them to admit they were wrong and then then we're good, then we because it's a matter of etiquette. If there's been some very bad behaviour

with old friends, I'm sure there's a Sondheim song about this somewhere.

Old friends. Yet there is the most that there is the most frightful risk of being Lombard with some crazy person because you know you've made amends to them. Now you've you know, you've really opened the door.

I think it's wise to scan your amends for high risk individuals

and to make sure that those amends are done with the greatest possible formality.

I think this is true with a lot of XS that in order to avoid one must make amends to the XS somehow. I I believe as long as it fulfills all the criteria in eight or nine,