The topic of step 10 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

Thank you. To set the tone for the meeting, I will read an extract from chapter one Bill Story page third pages 13 and 14.

I I was to test my my thinking by the by the new God. Consciousness within common sense would thus become uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me.

Never was I to pray for myself except as my request bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive, but that would be in great measure. My friend promised. When these things were done, I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator, that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain a new order of things where the essential requirements

and the topic of tonight's meeting is working. Step 10 with a Swansea and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be opened for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim.

Thank you, everyone. Can you hear me, Alistair?

Good, thanks. So step 10 is slightly problematical because if you look at page 59 or the wall scrolls, you've got 10. Continue to take personal inventory and when we were when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. And you've got a 12 and 12 which has got its own take on step 12, on step 10 rather, which I'm not going to go into.

And then you've got what happens in, in a, a, in general,

you'll usually hear people sharing. Well, I did a step turn last night and what they did is they did a very sort of long written analysis of some emotional turmoil. That's what it usually means,

like a mini step four or something at night. And I think it's important, I've said it before, it's important to remember with any of the steps that the this little summary on page

59 is just that. It's simply an aid memoir for what the step contains. It is not a set of instructions for how to do the step. And as someone rightly said that if you do the steps off the wall,

if you do the program off the wall, you'll have an off the wall program. So if you try to do and people do that, they try to divide what a step is just looking at that. So that's all I need. I don't need anything else.

So you get these complex analysis of shortcomings versus defect to character. And people are saying this is though, people are just going on what it says in step six and seven on the wall or on page 59 and there's no other information available. So we've just got to divine it from the words. And of course that won't do. It's, it's like if you've got a recipe book and in, in the recipe book it says it's got sort of page 17

quiche Lorraine,

page 18 Black Forest gateau. You might have something of an idea of what the recipe is, but that falls very far short of knowing how to make a quiche Lorraine or a Black Forest gateau. And you wouldn't want to try and make up the recipe based on your sort of general knowledge of, of, of what a quiche Lorraine from Tesco's is like. Well, particularly the quiche Lorraine from Tesco's,

let alone the Black Forest gateau. Don't get me going on British versions of French cooking. But anyway,

um, that's possibly a digression, although not necessarily So

what does step 10 mean in practice? Well, I it's very clear

that, well, first of all, if you've done a step four, that's not it for inventory for the rest of your life. We're going to have to do something. And as far as actual instructions in the book for step

ten are concerned, they're actually contained in Step 10 proper. We'll call it pages age 4 to 85. And then there is an implementation of the idea of Step 10 continues to take personal inventory and so-called nightly review

when we retire at night on page 86. And then there's the principle of step 12 which says we practice these principles, which principles, the above principles in the preceding 11 steps in all our affairs. In other words, we continue to practice all of the steps as and when needed when the situation arises. So whatever tools are available, you use them as needed. So the question, you know, if one doesn't in depth inventory either of one's whole life

on a particular area

or either on your whole life or on a particular area, you know, are you doing another step four? Are you doing step 10? I think the answer is yes, you're doing step 10 in the form of using the Step 4 instructions as your method of doing it. But the step you're actually practising is step 10, but it's employing Step 4 methods. So

you've really got three ways of doing inventory in a A. There's page 84 to 85, which I'll come to. There's the Step 11 review,

and there's the Step 4 method. And I don't know about your sponsees, but mine occasionally have a tiny little tendency to be a little bit self absorbed

and I have a tiny little tendency to be a little bit self absorbed at times. I have to be very careful with inventory that it doesn't become socially acceptable form of self obsession.

So the first principle I introduce with people is, yes, you're going to need to continue to take inventory.

But what we want to do, it's like with, it's like if you've got a bacterial infection, they first of all give you the standard antibiotic. And if that doesn't work, they'll escalate to a more potent one. And if you really, if you're really struggling, they'll go to the special cupboard and get the very, very special antibiotic which they don't want to release,

you know, and have create

resistant bacteria so that it's under very controlled conditions that they will administer certain bacteria and I think certain antibiotics. And I think it's the same with the continuing to take personal inventory. I think one should adopt the Step 10 practice per the Big Book very, very frequently,

the nightly review with a lightness of touch, but we'll come to that when we do Step 11

and the Step 4 style inventory, either resembling inventory, the page 67 questions, the fear inventory, the sex inventory, and the construction of the sane and sound ideal only infrequently.

So it's in that sort of ascending order

of severity. So not immediately to leap to doing a daily step four. I've met people that have done that drives them completely mad.

Every day is sit down, do half an hour of very complex written analysis and they find themselves writing the same things over and over and over. So sometimes you have to deprogram people from that. Obsessive compulsive. So nitpicking at oneself

and it's like these, you know, people sometimes obsessive compulsive disorder, I'm told to manifest it in in sort of scratching the same piece of skin again and again and again until it becomes

sort of red and raw. Maybe Claire can enlighten us on whether that's an accurate portrayal of that particular symptom. Not because she suffers it from herself. I think she may have some professional insight into that, but you know what I mean? I think inventory can become like that. So you need to let people off the hook really in a sense. And then let's go to 84. So what it actually say,

this thought brings us to Step 10, which suggests we can take, we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. So this is giving us a general guide to what Step 10 is about. And if you want an image,

you're adjusting the steering wheel so you're not getting out of the car, you're not taking the car to the garage every 5 minutes, you're adjusting the steering wheel as you go along. But that's not an action instructions, just a sort of concept of of what the step involves. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. So to me, this is the point at which we start to clean up the past is in Step 4. So I give people the principles of 1011 and 12 as soon as they

start step 4IN other words, as soon as they take step three, their life goes on 2 tracks as the overall arc of four through 9. And then there's the daily arc of 1011 and 12. We've entered the world of the Spirit where our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. Now that's again just a general

description of what we're undertaking here. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime.

So again, this is step 10. Sometimes because I've completed the steps and I'm I think you complete the first nine steps, but I'm not sure you can complete

the last three.

I acquaintance of mine and a a many years ago talked about how she was so a fair amount of 1314 years very involved in intergroup

and she said how she'd got the end of the steps with her sponsor and they got a little cake and they put a candle on the cake and they lit the candle and they blew it out. I don't know what significance this had and said to mark the fact that we completed the steps and within about two years we never saw her again. So she

's so completed them she left a a. You don't want to do that. You don't want to think you've completed the steps with or without a candle.

Um, you know, I'm afraid you're sort of rather locked into this. This is why in step three, you get people to think very carefully before they take step three. I, I do you want to do this for the rest of your life And now you only have to swallow it a day at a time. It's like with laundry or, you know, do commit to doing laundry for the rest of your life. Do you commit to brushing your teeth for the rest of your life? Yes, But you don't have to pre brush your teeth for the next 60 years. You just have to commit to the daily actions.

Um, now here it actually begins to get into instructions. So continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Now, these are the only four that it asks us to look for, but very clearly

the spirit of this is to be looking out for any defective character. It can't possibly be their intention

to

simply watch for these. But you know, if you got a problem, I don't know, with sort of punching people in the face or something, well, don't worry about that. It's not on the list of fours. So you can do that. You can go to to to then quick save in existing, but you can go to Lidl and punch people in the queue if you want. But that's all right. It's not on the list, so you're fine. We must have none of that legalism. So everything falls under those categories. What I get people to look for is to consider resentment in this context,

to be any upset, any emotional upset or negative reaction to the present of the past, fancied or real.

So a lot of people get very upset about things which aren't really there. Now the upset is real, but I said I should have told the story before. I said to Jonathan once about something, but it's my lived experience. He said yes, but that doesn't mean it's real. So you watch out for any form of upset about the past or the past or the present. That's resentment.

Any form of upset about the future, that's fear, dishonesty. You've got, I think, 4 basic types of dishonesty. Concealment, distortion, fabrication and

underhand behaviour. Scheming so,

and those four are quite distinct. So the first three are about representations of the truth.

You're either a concealing the truth to yourself or to others, you're distorting it, or you're making up something which isn't there. The 4th one is to do with honest dealings, I think, and this comes under various headings, that there can be active scheming and plotting to get one over on someone else. But also manipulation falls under this category. Now the difficulty here is, is with politeness. So politeness is a form of deceit,

manipulation. So when you say you know, I'd be terribly pleased if you could find a moment to do dot, dot, dot. It's not strictly honest. It's a manipulative way. Or I'd be so grateful if you did sense it's a manipulation. But it's a socially acceptable 1, which is part of the culture that exhibit. So etiquette and politeness require a certain amount of effectively manipulation, deception about your true intent and your true feelings about a situation.

We're not talking about that. We're talking about

something which crosses the line in terms of manipulation or scheming or deception of another person. And selfishness is a very, very big bag indeed, which hold, which contains everything else to every other defect of character is essentially a form of selfishness, putting self, putting oneself in formal

ahead of someone else.

The two things I would add to this list which are I mean they are comprised within it one way or another, but particular mental habits to watch out for

are fantasy and nostalgia.

You can slot them in usually whether you slot them under dishonest, steel, selfish and it doesn't really matter, but I find it can be very helpful to keep a particular eye out for those and to also recognize that that these come in sometimes unrecognized forms. So,

say fear can come in the form of fretting and worrying and brooding.

What else? Selfishness can come in the form of all of the plots and schemes to fix, change, and control another person.

Plan, scheme, plot, fix, change, control.

Resentment can come in the form of grumbling and and moaning and griping and criticizing and judging and all of those things. So really, one must be watching out for the full range of everything one is capable of. Now the question is, there's an important principle here to convey.

I've had Swansea's object understandably to steps 10 and 11, particularly the review part of 10:10 and 11:00

or 10 or 11 rather the nightly review. So I'm a bit tired this evening. So I'm slightly all over the place. People object to those steps on the basis that while we're being hard on ourselves, been very, very hard on ourselves. And one of my people will say one of my character defects is beating myself up, and another one is perfectionism

and aren't. I'm just, I'm not going to do this because it's just beating myself up

and it's just being perfectionistic.

If your arm was broken, you wouldn't say, well, I'm not, I don't want to seek perfect restoration of the motor function in my left arm because that's just being perfectionistic. So I shall put up with a broken arm. One wouldn't do that. And also one wouldn't it if he went to doctors and you had

a you had, you had an X-ray done. The the

doctor said, well, you got a fracture of the, I don't know the, the, the distal epithetsis of your ulna. You wouldn't say you're being really hard on me. You're beating me up. No, the doctors just diagnosed what's wrong with you. Do you want to get it fixed or don't you? Now, and this is relevant here. When you're watching, you are the watcher. You are not the thing that you're watching. You are watching for these charac

cropping up where in your belief, your beliefs, your thinking, your behavior. So what you're looking at is the tools that you're using for living

and who wouldn't want better tools? Who who wouldn't want to wear better clothes? Who wouldn't want to to eat better food? So this is the way I was explaining it is, is you're keeping an eye on this stuff so that your life will improve. These are not defects of yours in that they're not, they're not you, they're what you're carrying around and don't want to be. So it's always in your interest to spot these,

but to treat the faculty of watching as being like one of those

antivirus programs which is constantly running in the background, scanning this and scanning that. But if if you if you're at least if your computer is powerful enough, it doesn't slow down the running of your computer and the performance of your daily tasks, you're still able to do everything that without any compromise whatsoever. So any flags up a problem, if there is one, you're not constantly obsessed with yourself.

It's developing the ability as developing a sense of mindfulness towards one's own beliefs, thinking and behaviour, particularly the thinking as it proceeds in real time.

When these crop up, we analyzed them at great. Oh no, it doesn't say that. It says we ask God at once to remove them because this, of course, what everyone does.

You'll say I need to talk to you about my resentment. And you're like, how do you know that? I know you've got one? How do you know you need to talk about the resentment? Maybe you just need to ask God to remove it or do the prayers on page 67 or, you know, I don't know, go and eat a cake or something.

I but but just drop it. Just drop it. I'm sure you've seen the Bob Newhart sketch. Stop it. If you haven't seen the Bob Newhart sketch, stop it. Go and watch it immediately after this. Get a YouTube Bob Newhart Newhart and stop it. So we've already proved in step four that resentment is futile and fatal. We've already proved that fear is nonsense created

out of the illusion that we are physical beings, so we don't need to reanalyze them as a caveat later on. I'll come to that. So basically what we want to do is immediately adjust back to the present, back to awareness of the presence of God, back to the task at hand. So when it says now, it does say we just discussed them with someone immediately and make amends quickly. If we have harmed

anyone, now we discussed them with someone immediately. The caveat, if you have a novel situation which requires negotiation, then you might need to discuss it with someone else. If you've got a practical course of action that you're uncertain of in terms of how to fix something, then of course you have to discuss it with someone else. But I found even in my early years, the need, the actual needs to do this was infrequent.

I did need to do daily debriefing with friends and I still do,

but uh,

I only call people during the day or interrupt them with a rapid fire troubleshooting round of right. This is the situation. How should I look at it? What should I do then immediately get back to the task at hand.

The last clause of that phrase, of that sentence. We discussed them with someone immediately and make amends quickly. If we have harmed anyone, there is ambiguity. Unfortunately, the ambiguity is the scope of the conditional clause. So if we have harmed anyone, does that govern just

we make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone or we discuss and may commends quickly if we've harmed anyone? I take the first one. So we discuss anything of importance for someone, but they're making amends quickly is obviously only if we've harmed someone. So we do get to discuss things even if we haven't harmed someone. So harming someone is not the only condition for discussion.

Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code

now. Sometimes this operates at 2 levels. The first level at which this operates is sometimes

I fall into some complacency of some description and I just are. I'm just not. I'm not going to enough meetings, I'm not talking to enough people, I'm not making enough effort with my service. There's always little extra bits of service you can do if you put your mind to it. Sometimes the turning of thoughts

means turning your thoughts to the task at hand from which someone will benefit. So you repurpose the task at hand as being something for the benefit of the person that is ultimately for or

sometimes what you can do. And this is a very good trick. Whatever you're going through, imagine when you're next to the meeting, how you'll share about how you're currently using the program to address this situation and turn it round with God's help.

So you're immediately repurposing the very cause of the upset or whatever it is

to being something that you can use to help other people. And so this comes straight from the big book where it talks about capitalising. When trouble comes, we capitalise it, using it as an opportunity to demonstrate God's omnipotence. And you can activate that straight away. And remember, I, I, I did that when, you know, So when, when I don't know the word disaster or catastrophe

weren't very serious events have occurred, particularly in my family

to immediately lock, you know, you lock onto that method and say, right, this is the test. It was always coming. I'm going to use this as a test of can I remember and apply the program and recall as much as possible of what is going on. That I can then use this in meetings to demonstrate how the program works completely changes your attitude to the crisis situation.

Now the next passage is strictly a set of promises,

what I encourage people to do. There are a couple of things here that I can use. I can turn them into instructions. So the one tries to make the most out is we have ceased fighting anything or anyone. And to practice using this as a corrective measure. Who in my life am I currently in conflict with? What would happen if I stopped fighting? And fighting can come in all sorts of forms. It can come in the form of arguing, answering back,

fix, change, control.

It can come in the form of

repeated requests when one request would do, like if you request something once and the person doesn't do it, they, you know, emphasize, I haven't been heard. No, they've heard you. They just don't. They're just not going to do it and so you don't. So fighting can take all sorts of different forms just to leave things be.

Other good examples of how you can encourage people to do this is

someone, someone, I don't know where this tape is going, but well, I'm just going to go for it. Someone called me a few I don't know a couple of years ago about their Home group and they said the group consciences were going on for like 2 hours and they had a back hanging a group conscience once or twice a month. And they had a backlog of about four months of suggestions from people about how to change the group and ceasing fighting can be just go to your Home group share for three minutes and keep your mouth shut

in business meetings and group conference meetings. There's nothing worse than a group where you've got sort of 47 people trying to basically fight the reality of what the group is and trying to change it the whole time. So just to leave as many things be as possible, leave as many people be as possible, reserve, keep your powder dry, and

pick your battles.

What else can we

look at here? We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected.

I have mentally a sort of space I can go to which is a place of complete neutrality, which I'm safe and protected. And I encourage people to visualize this themselves, particularly in the minutes before going to sleep. Imagining not like your, your being, your spirit, your aura, whatever you want to call it, travelling to this place which is real reality

with this realm being like a shadow land or a stage, and the other place being real reality where everything is neutral, where everything is safe, where you're protected. And I'm in a position now because I've done this such a lot, I can just go like that and be there and I'm fine. It's a very helpful thing to foster. So this stuff will happen automatically, but it doesn't hurt to give it a helping hand.

So there's no there's no

conflict between turning everything over to God and doing your bit. And the principle here is God will do for you what you can't do for yourself, but God won't do for you what you can do for yourself.

It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action. Rest on our laurels.

I think it's well said that the laurels are the sense of achievement from having completed the first nine steps. Sometimes people say they're resting on their laurels. Now. Unless you finish the first nine steps, it ain't your laurels you're resting on. It's something else you might want. I don't want to alarm you, but you might want to just stand up and see what you're sitting in.

Is it? It ain't laurels.

We're headed for trouble if we do. For alcohol as a subtle favour not cured of alcoholism. What we really have as a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And now it's that's, that's all lovely, blah blah. Now we have the instructions. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. I get an exercise. I get people to do. I don't know if I mentioned this

before, but it won't hurt to mention it again because we've all got goldfish brains.

The book talks about the same and sound ideal on page 69 as a problem solving tool. Here it talks about the vision of God's will

in the 12 and 12 and step 11 it talks about if an architect is going to build a building, he has to visualize it first, otherwise nothing is going to get built. And on page 83 talks about there is a long period of reconstruction ahead, and of course, reconstruction can't take place without a vision. Now, I think there's a balance here between, on one hand, asking God what to do in the moment

and being flexible and adaptable and all of those things. But I think it's also important when I get to the end of a step 9 process with people,

I get them to do something that I do whenever I'm in trouble in an area is to have a sane and sound ideal straight vision of God's will for for me in that area. So those beliefs, thinking patterns and behaviour patterns which act as corrective measures to current problems so that I've got a sense of what I'm trying to do. So one of the things I've had with sponsorship, which I'm gradually getting better at is is I'm, I'm a little more patient than I used to be.

So

when the phone is ringing, when I sit ringing,

the vision of the saying, the sound line deal, the vision of God's will is to to be patient, to try to sit down rather than pace,

all sorts of other little tricks to make sure that I'm responding as measured away as I can master on the day in question. So, so I'm not just going into things situations blindly. I'm going in with a sense of what I should be. Now, the progress towards those same sound ideals, if you're anything like me, is painfully and embarrassingly slow,

but it's better than nothing. And it's I don't know what the alternative is other than to have that vision of God's will. How can I best serve thee, thy will, not mine be done. That's a very powerful restorative for a situation where I give this to people outline as a restorative when they're in a situation involving other people, particularly work,

family, Home group, where they're all in a tizzy and all mentally separated from anyone. Everyone around them is stuck in their own head. Bizarre. I do this. I remember to family situation.

In my family, situations throw us together in the same room on occasion,

very infrequently, but when they do, none of us know what to say to each other and we can just about put names to faces. But it's awkward, it's embarrassing. People make the most appalling small talk. I mean small talk, but people have to leave the room. They're so embarrassed about how trivial and unreal it is. I remember a particular panel going on for about 20 minutes

one year about whether or not we have they have Christmas crackers in France and someone actually could not stand there, had to leave the room because they were going to explode. And I, these situations are so tense. I just say no. Now I just don't go. It's everything's much happier. But in situations like that, I would as soon as I said, God, how can I best serve the thy will not mind be done, I can start to contribute more constructively and humanly to the situation.

These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. So I I think step 10 is a game of two halves. You're on one hand spotting all the stuff you shouldn't be doing, particularly with your mind. People get quite good at behaviour after a while in a a, but the mind seems to be the thing which takes the longest time to catch up. So on one hand, on page 84 you're spotting all the problems and it instead

10 on page 85 you're saying, well, what's the solution? The solution

is to be constantly thinking, what can I constructively contribute to this situation so

we can exercise our willpower along this line. All we wish is the proper use of the world. So this results a question of if I let go, does that mean I sit there like a potato? No, you, you, you engage vigorously in the world. And there's a line earlier on that we're intelligent agents of God's ever advancing creation. So it doesn't mean that one's not vigorously active. It's just the power, the direction for the vigorous activity. And the power comes from God rather than selfish demands.

And the next bit is a bit of blah blah is very nice blah blah but it is by no instructions in it. But

much has already been said about receiving a strength, inspiration and direction from him who has all knowledge and power.

Umm so

when people have

a a problematical conception of God, I say just write down what you think your concept of God is an item to rip up the piece of paper and say go with this. So who is God? God is that which has all knowledge and power and is the source of strength, inspiration, direction.

Go with that for five years, 10 years, and then come back and see how that works. It's a great definition of the higher power. What is God? The sort that the repository of all knowledge and all power. What do you get from God's strength, inspiration, direction? And you can turn it into a prayer. Oh, you who have all knowledge and power, please give me strength, inspiration and direction. And that's not a bad prep.

And the next bit, you have to caution people. If we have carefully followed directions, we've begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us

to some extent. We have become God conscious. We have begun to develop this vital 6th sense. Now what some people understand this to mean is that you sort of have some paranormal experience. And if you're not having a paranormal experience with the presence of the actual creator of the universe in your living room with you or inside you, then if you don't have that experience, well, I'm obviously doing something wrong. And there are some lovely people in a A who wax very lyrical

about very conscious experiences of God. That is very good. But I don't know if what they're experiencing is that or if it's something else. It may be I'm experiencing it, but just terming it very differently. As I mentioned before, sometimes you leave the house in the morning and you realize I'm having a nice day, sun shining. Walking as a squirrel over there is nice, just having a nice time. Other people might characterize that as feeling the presence of God, whereas I think of it as seeing a squirrel thinking that's nice. Could be

with this exactly the same actual experience but which has been construed and communication in a different way. So just because the sponsee doesn't feel the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit moving within him doesn't mean something has gone wrong. And in fact if they do, it could be a sign of a mental health issue, which indeed sometimes it is. So I had someone once who

started to experience God very in a very kind of real and tangible way

and

the the vision started to become sexualized, which I don't think is help. I don't think that's part of the program. Now, if that happens, you might want to tone down the step 11 and just keep it super practical.

So you've got to be slightly careful with that. Now, the question is, well, what does it mean? It means that you are more likely than otherwise to remember to call your mother.

You realize. You start to realize two days before the laundry tablets run out that you need to go and buy some new ones. Rather than only realizing once they've run out,

it's remembering to do the things you said you were going to do.

It's it's saying something particularly acidic and for the first time in your life, realizing, oh, I shouldn't have said that. I'm going to apologize right now. So you think that

the flow of God's spirit into you is some sort of uplifting, you know, like being lifted on Angel wings very often it's a sudden and new sense of responsibility and guilt for things undone. That's how you know God is your your when you now feel guilty for things which are wrong, which you wouldn't have batted an eye lap I I lit. What do you bat, eyelids, eyelashes, whatever, that you wouldn't have batted

that six months ago, but suddenly you're wet, you narrow, you're, you're, you're now aware your effect on other people. I think that it's awareness of reality. That's what happens. And generally having better ideas than you did before. So I think that's probably all I've got on step 10. So Alistair, do you want to turn it over for questions?

Thank you very much, Tim. Yeah. And with that

and open up the meeting for for questions, which can be done by the raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function and I can ask Tim directly. If all else fails, please just wave your hand at the camera and I will try to come to you and we'll try to close on the hour mark. Sometimes we run a bit over for questions,

Seamus.

Hi, Am I on muted? Yes, OK, thank you. Thank you, Tim.

I've got two questions actually. One is kind of like

one I baked earlier, so to speak. It was on my mind before the session and what I'm going to ask right now is more of a technical nature.

There's the the pre baked question relates more to the 12:00 and 12:00. I won't ask that unless

unless we have time. But the technical question is,

is to do with the big four. So we've got to continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and and fear. I've always found a very helpful list. And you're trying to simplify people's approach to Step 4. You know, look, look no further. These are the big ones. But there is something a bit odd about which I never really understood, never really dared to articulate my uncertainty about it, which is that the,

the list is in a different order from what we had in Step 4, where we're told that resentment is #1 offender and lying behind that is selfishness, dishonesty, self seeking and fear. So that's a, that's a different list. And then and then again, if you go back to step three, you've got first selfishness, which is defined as being. I lost the place.

Yeah,

to do with

self centeredness, resentments and self pity and then selfishness

being driven by 100 forms of fear, self delusion, self seeking and self pity. Now I can almost hear the answer ringing my ears that you know these are these are concepts which are inevitably fuzzy at the edges, you know overlapping. They don't lend themselves to to to crisp definition, but I have to the certainly been times in my

own recovery and I've been trying to help other people. Perhaps when I'd have given my it through a Venn diagram.

If the big book had been written by the Harvard Business School at some point, it would have been a Venn diagram showing how these how these concepts overlap and kind of interlock with each other.

So that's my question really. Is there any significant at all to be attached to the varying orders? And just one, one further point on that,

when you're talking about dishonest, you didn't specifically mention self delusion. And I've always thought that self delusion seems to be the source of the problem more than almost anything else in the people of time. I find myself dealing with it. So stories I tell themselves, which are very often, you know, completely wrong when you point that out to oh, I haven't realised that, you know, sort of end of problem. So I'll stop there. OK. So there are lots of questions there. So

just in the order that I remember them. This is like the generation game with the conveyor belt.

Um, if any of you are old enough to remember that or British enough to remember that,

so the yeah. So those forms of

dishonesty

you've got concealment, distortion, fabrication, those can be towards oneself or towards other people so as equal opportunities, but the the same scheme applies to both concealment distortional fabrication.

So I think that covers that one with the order. I'd be extremely

hesitant to read an order into them without further evidence

there. There is what? There are some places where there are extraordinary coincidences with order. I'll give you one. It talks about when the spiritual condition clears up. Let me just get the exact quotation. I want to get the exact quotation out

on page 64. Where is it

when the spiritual malady is overcome so spiritual we straighten out mentally, mentally and physically? Physically, spiritually, mentally, physically, Mind, spirit, mind, body.

So you get spiritually straight 1st and your mind clears up. Then your your circumstances clear up third. And it echoes that later on the big book, that spiritual, the spiritual comes first, the material comes second. And in step 11 on page 86, when you ask God, what you ask God for is inspiration and intuitive thought or a decision which mirror those 3 levels of spirit, mind, body in that specific order. So there are occasional coincidences there. I've not

any particular significance to the ordering of resentment, fear, selfishness and dishonesty. There. There is that. There are those little quartets which appear all the way through the big book. Another one is patient, tolerant, kind and loving. And that occurs with some variation throughout the book. The orders, the order changes. One of the words changes at a particular point, so

I'm hesitant to read too much into it. When Bill wants to point something out,

he'll he'll usually do it overtly. Those other little coincidences, I suspect,

are inadvertent manifestations of his underlying design rather than treasures which are hidden in the style of The Da Vinci Code.

Because people read all sorts of stuff into the big book as though there's buried treasure which has been left there on purpose. And Bill is giggling behind his hands, trying to work out which smart aleck is going to, is going to, to, to join the dots and, you know,

solve the Riddle. I don't think it's riddles now with selfishness.

You've got you've got three big places where it gets described. The first one is that little passage on 61 where it talks about let's, well, let's get the passage. Where is it?

Or 62 rather, selfishness, self-centredness, and I mean there. It's presenting them as as effective synonyms. That being one thing, it doesn't say those so that we think is the root of our troubles earlier on. It gives self-centred and egocentric as synonyms. By the way, the way Bill uses dashes is to say the thing before the dash is

the same as the thing after the dash, or the thing after the dash is entailed by the thing before the dash. So in step one, powerlessness entails our manageability. They're not too unrelated motions.

One entails the other and because that's just how Bill uses dashes. So he's doing exactly the same there. Selfishness, self-centredness, and then it's got these other. Then it's got the subdivisions of fierce of delusion, self seeking and self pity. So you've got that little cluster there. You've got the page 67 questions which very clearly overlap. So on page 67, when you say what my mistakes, if you accurately answer what are all of my mistakes,