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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 882 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: sam-h-step-four-and-five-inventory-workshop-ca-date-unknown-archive-882.mp3 Duration: 00:54:34
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Okay, here we go. Um, I want to finish up with the third step prayer that we were talking about, um, and try to get you to understand what it is, what you just did, okay? Um, I love how they waited and put that afterwards and we thought, well, before we took this step, I'll be forever grateful that they did it that way because, uh, that would have been an out that I was looking for, uh, back in the day. But what you have just done is you've entered into a new agreement with your Creator, right? No matter where you're at, no matter what that agreement was that you made this morning, um, this one is in effect today.
That's why I get up each morning and I say the third step prayer again, right? Because I understand what I'm doing here. I'm entering into a covenant. Uh, I, I have entered into this covenant with my, with my Creator telling Him that He can build with me and do with me as He sees fit and does not need my permission. All right? My life, your life is no longer yours, right? And you can't, I hear people say, uh, take it back, right? I take my will back. Um, I heard, uh, a speaker, Don C, uh, one time, he's Native American and he talked about it and, uh, I thought it was the greatest, uh, analogy I've ever heard. He said, you know, the whole deal about the three frogs on a log, right? Make a decision, there's still three frogs, right? He said, but the one that makes the decision turns into an orange frog and now he's an orange frog, right? And whenever we, uh, we don't take our will back from Creator, whenever we get sidetracked in this stuff and, uh, and no longer are being directed by spiritual principles, um, we're still an orange frog. We're just a pissed off orange frog. Okay? So you're an orange frog. That's the good news. Okay? Um, but you see, we've entered into this agreement with our Creator. And so now we go out and we place ourselves. Now we go out into the, into the universe, uh, and live like that.
It's not about us anymore. Um, it says, the wording, of course, is quite optional. So long as we express the idea of voicing it without reservation. This was only a beginning, though, if honestly and humbly made, in effect, sometimes a great one was felt at once. Now, I don't know about y'all, but you can, I talked to a couple of people during the break there and, man, I'm stoked, right? I didn't even want to take a break. And thank God for Sarah for, for putting that out there, man, because I was, I was pushing forward. And I noticed out of the corner of my eye she didn't sit down. So I was like, maybe she's trying to tell me something. So if you need to stand up, move around, you know, stretch your legs while I'm talking, uh, do it by all means. Do that. If you need to get up and go to the restroom, go. You know, everybody. Not all at once. Anyway, very important stuff. Here we go. Here we go. Um, next we launched out onto a course of vigorous action. The first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once, followed by strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions. I got a little note over here. It says third step, uh, question. Are you willing to do the four through 12 to get us out of self and allow God to start managing our lives? You see, if you don't make that admission to yourself, um, then you're not going to be able to be honest about the work that we're getting ready to do. It talks about that, um, uh, that this is a fact finding and fact facing process, right? Um, it is an effort to discover the truth about the stock and trade. To disclose damaged and unsellable goods. To get rid of them promptly and without regret. In other words, I get rid of old behavior without regret. I don't want to sit around going, oh man, you mean I'm never going to get to drink again? Oh man. You mean I'm never going to get to hawk my personal belongings so I can go buy some more dope again? Oh man. No, we do it without regret knowing that the better than the best we've ever experienced in great measure is waiting for us. First we search out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Being convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us. Are you convinced? Are you convinced that
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you are the root of your trouble? Regentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have not only been mentally and physically ill, but we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. When the spiritual stuff gets in place, then the mental and physical stuff gets added on to us. But what have I been saying since I've been here? You've got to get this going on first. First things first.
Seek ye first the kingdom. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry. In most cases we found out our self esteem, our pocket books, our ambitions, our personal relationships, including sex, were hurt or threatened. So we were sore. We were burned up. On our grudge list, we set opposite each name our injuries. Was it our self esteem, our security, our ambition, our personal or sex relations which had been interfered with?
And this is what I was wanting to get to. We are usually as definite as this example. So, when you write inventory, I've got a little composition notebook. This is what I use right here. I turn to a blank page. It's got these lovely red lines on them. And I use them as columns. This is column 1. Why is it column 1? Because all you're going to put in there is a name. You don't need a big whole page for a name. Column 2 will be the cause and column 3 will be over here. And then I've got all of this for 4. I've got 2 pages for 4, my part.
Then I turn the page and I start with column 1 again. So I'm going to do a little example up here as I do that. But I'm as definite as this. I title my columns and this is a new experience with me because I'm trying to stay in my current experience. So I am as definite as this. I used to write column 1. Now I write, I'm resentful at colon. I even include the colon. I'm as definite as this. The next column is the cause.
And I write the cause. The next column affects my, and yes, I use the colon again. I don't know. It's a little thing, surrender thing. I'm in the world to play the role he assigns. Maybe I ought to just follow some instruction for a change. Talks about, in dealing with resentment, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions, and principles. So the first thing we do is we make a list. Now then, the way it was explained to me is what better way to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him in this moment than to allow Him to help write my inventory for me.
So I do meditation. I do prayer and meditation on this. I pray and I ask God, I say, God, I want to thank you for showing me the names that you would have me take a look at. And I think the wording is very important. I'm here to take a look at this inventory. I'm looking at the stuff that He would have me look at right now. So I do that, got a little ahead of myself here on the board, a little excited.
Now that third step stuff rocked my world. I don't know about y'all, man, but I am stoked. But this is without coffee, right? So we make a list. And if you notice, when you make your grocery list at home, what do you do? You say, I need apples, I need bananas, I need, you know, lunch meat. You don't write apples, green, red, you know, bananas, green ones, lunch meat, ham, turkey. No. You make a list.
So we take it to prayer and meditation. We ask God, God, please reveal to me the names that you would have me look at. You do some meditation. I usually do two minutes. We're not going to do that here today because we're kind of pressed for time. But we, you take that into prayer and meditation. You say, God, show me the names
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you'd have me take a look at. Then as you, you have your pencil and your paper ready. Okay? Everybody got their pencil and paper ready? Not that one I handed out to you, just, you know, anything, alright? You can flip it over, write it on the back, whatever you want to do. I'm just going to do a few seconds of meditation. And what the idea is, is when you hear the timer go off, just start writing the list, the names of people, places, institutions that you are having trouble with today, right?
And when you have to stop and think about it and go, who was that son of a, oh man, stop writing, put the pen down. Okay? Because now you're in the self will, right? Just write whatever name comes to you. And if it comes to you more than once, because we're going to do it more than once, write it down more than once, right? Maybe God's going to get you to look at something then. Okay? So let me set this.
I'm just going to do like, I got it, you know what? We'll do 20 seconds of meditation. Oh, and our job in meditation, I was going to save this for the 11 step stuff, but you know what? Our job in meditation, all our job in meditation is, is to sit still. All right? Let the tape play. Don't have to listen to it though, right? Because that takes energy to listen to that tape as it's playing in your head.
Just let it go. God will quiet the mind and bring the answers when he sees fit. Because I was telling my sponsor, I said, Mark man, I'm having a hard time quieting my mind. And he laughed at me, you know, and he goes, Sam, that's not your job. Your job is to just sit still. God will quiet your mind. Okay? So we're saying that, pencil, paper, ready. Have it ready. Do 20 seconds of meditation and just write down whatever comes.
Okay. I got it. Everybody got it? Okay. I encourage you when you're doing this at home, this is how I do inventory, to do that more than once. Okay? To make sure you get all the names. Now, I had to write something up here. Sarah really isn't in my column one, but she could be. Anyway, so do it more than once. Okay? Now, what you do, after you've compiled your list, after you're satisfied in your due diligence that you have the list that God would have you look at, you take the first entity off that list, whether it be person, institution, principal, whatever it is.
Okay? And you put it over here in I am resentful at column. Okay? Everybody do that. Well, if you've got the paper to do. We're actually going to do fifth step here, by the way. And you can thank Sarah for that. I see people adding names. Yep. Go for it. Okay. So, we've got the name. Now then, we're going to do the same little exercise that I just said. Right? And the wording is important here. Right?
You want to ask God. You say, God, show me what you would have me look at as the reason why, the cause that I have with this person. Right? Because my ego will have me, will try to distract me, right? That's why it's important that you get up and when you do this exercise, you write what comes to you and you get up and you move away for a second and you come back.
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I try not to, when I'm doing inventory, I try not to get so involved in it that I sit down and for two hours I do nothing but write. So we'll do the same exercise here, I'm going to do it a little bit longer though, and when it goes off, just write, take the first name, write it in a column, and just write whatever comes to you, okay? And when you have to start thinking about it, put your pen down, quit writing.
Anybody need a little more time? Everybody done? Okay. Okay. The handouts that I gave you are not approved literature. They are very helpful tools that I use when I am working with people in inventory, because it helped me the first few times that I wrote inventory to get the juices flowing, because if you're anything like me, when I came into the fellowship, I didn't know what self-esteem meant, right?
So it was great to get this little handout, this little sheet of paper that says that self-esteem is how I see or feel about myself. Oh, now I know, okay, now I see what we're talking about, okay? So you can either take them with you, you can throw them in the garbage, you can leave them on the table, whatever you want to do, I just, it's a tool that I use that I find helpful. Same thing with the other thing, and I'll get to that other handout about the evening reviews here in a minute and share some of my experience with that.
Okay, so I got Sarah on column one. I got the cause, because she doesn't want to pay me for this workshop, right? You know? Come on, man, you know?
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Fancy the real, okay. So now we move into the next column, and you do the same exercise. What this little piece of paper does, we call this the extended third column, right? In the book, it tells us sex relations, self-esteem, bracketed with fear, and that sort of stuff, and if you want to do that, you can do that. As for me, I like to put a little more information down there, because I have found that the more information I put in column three, the freer I get at the end of the exercise.
So, one other thing I'll say about this little piece of paper that I handed out. The first two, self-esteem and pride. Even when we walk into these rooms as beat up as we are, we do not suffer from low self-pride and low self-esteem, all right? Because even though I'm the victim, I'm the best damn victim that's ever walked the face of this earth, okay? You don't understand, I have been knocked down, drugged through, worse than anything you've ever seen, okay?
That's what I'm talking about. Those first two is where we get to play God, all right? Because most areas of our life, we've been playing God in those realms anyway. Self-esteem is how I see or feel about myself, and pride is how I feel others should see about me, or think about me, right? Really none of my business, either one of them. But, we don't suffer. And the way that looks to me is effects, right?
And I do my proper prayer and meditation with this as well. Like I tell you, I do two minutes, I have my pen and paper ready, I come out, I write, okay? I'm going to give you a little example of what really works for me. All right, I'm doing my prayer and meditation, I got myself ready, I come, timer goes off. Self-esteem, how I see or feel about myself. And I'm not going to write this out loud, I am the greatest workshop conductor that has ever held a workshop.
That's why I should be paid, right? Pride, how I think others should see. I think others should see that I am going to show them truth like they've never seen before, right? Let it go, man. This is where you get to play God. This is where you get to lay it on the line, man. This is why I'm pissed and this is why I should be pissed. Okay? Let it go. And then, see, now then, one thing I have found is that in my resentment inventory is not every area of my life is affected by every resentment that I hold.
I can have a resentment and it doesn't affect my ambition. I can have a resentment and it doesn't affect my security. Okay? So that's why I say, if you notice, they don't have them all listed in every single one in the example as well. Okay? My ambition is affected. You know, if I don't get paid for this, nobody's going to ask me to do this again. Right? Security, what I need to be okay. I need some green, I need some dead presidents, you know what I'm saying?
Personal relations, my beliefs on relationships, how they're supposed to look. Real friends always pay their friends for doing a workshop. You know? You know, because this resentment is darkness inside of me that I'm trying to take a look at. Right? This may sound far-fetched, but truth is revealed through this stuff. Right? A pocketbook, how does it affect my finances? Well, if I could do this as a part-time gig, you know, that helps me make my financial amends and I get set straight a little bit sooner than not.
Right? And trust me, I do not expect to get paid for this. I would have not signed up for this if I expected to get paid for this. This is all fabricated. I'm not resentful at Sarah for very much. I mean, nothing. So, to continue our exercise, you can use this sheet if you would like, or you can just write down, just like I have in the book here, you can just write down, my self-esteem is affected, my pride is affected, so that we can keep moving in this exercise so we can bring it to its consummation.
So, let's do a little quiet time. Get your pen and paper ready.
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Get your pen and paper ready. Okay. Oh, God. Some of what I was talking about there in filling out these three columns is I'm going to read while you all finish up your writing here. It says, if we were to live, we had to be free of anger, the grouse and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but to alcoholics, these things are poison. We turned back to the list for a healthy key to the future.
We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. I don't know if anybody has ever explained inventory work such as this, but maybe you have. We began to see the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrongdoing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than we could alcohol.
This was our course. We realized that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. This is not a judgment. This is an exercise. As you encounter people that disturb you, realize that it is not them that is disturbing you. Nobody has the power to disturb me today. Only I can choose to give up my serenity. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.
What that line does right there is that evens the playing field. We're all sick. At one time or another, as we go through the day, we're all sick. We ask God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. Cheerfully being the key. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry.
Thy will be done. A little prayer right there. We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. We do. We destroy our chance of being helpful. We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. Referring to our list again, putting out of the minds wrongs others have done, we resolutely look for our own mistake.
Okay, here's where the fourth column comes to life, right? A four-column inventory. I know you all heard about that, right? Where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Okay, so what I do is I take every area, every cause that I have written out of every name that I have off of my list, and I answer those questions. I ask myself, where had I been selfish? Where had I been dishonest?
Where had I been self-seeking and where had I been frightened or afraid or fearful, right? This is how we begin to start looking at it from an entirely different angle because up until that time I've never looked at that. If y'all just did what I told you to do, everything would be alright.
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Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's. When we saw our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly. We're willing to set these matters straight. We saw our faults and listed them. That's where column four comes in.
What's been my experience is my ego will not allow me to see all of my faults. It will not allow me to look at my truths. That's why the fifth step says that solitary self-appraisal is insufficient. Now then, we've got to column three. We know what column four is. You can go ahead as I continue to read about the fears inventory. You can jot down some stuff. I'll give you a couple of minutes here to write down some stuff in column four.
Take your cause. Look at your cause and answer those four questions. Maybe you're all of them in the cause or maybe you're none of them. I'll give you a couple of minutes. Generally, when I'm doing a fifth step, I'll look back at this line right here about the inventory was ours, not the other man's. We try to disregard the other person involved entirely. When I'm in the fifth step and I'm getting ready to listen to the person's inventory, I will tell them that we're not going to spend much time.
I'll give them a little latitude but not much talking about the person in column one because it's not their inventory and I don't sponsor them. I don't spend a whole lot of time listening to that because it distracts us from the work at hand. Notice that the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with Mr. Brown, Mrs. Jones and the employer and the wife. This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.
It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstance which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did we not ourselves set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them.
We asked ourselves why we had them. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Isn't it our fear when we're caught up in the whole fear and faith thing? Isn't it when we're caught up in a fear and we're feeding energy to that fear? It's because we've effectively taken God out of the equation. I'm back relying on self. I'm trying to manage myself. Self-reliance was good as far as it went but it didn't go far enough.
Some of us once had great self-confidence but it didn't fully solve the fear problem or any other. When it made us cocky it was worse. Perhaps there's a better way. We think so. For we are now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role that He assigns. Just to the extent we think He would have us and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity?
What you've got to be clear on is the areas of your life that you're back running the show again. These are where I have found my fears develop from. What we do, we need to make a mother list. I do the same. We're not going to get into it here. I'm just trying to get to the fifth step. What I do is I do the same exact thing. I do prayer and meditation. I ask God to reveal to me the fears that are running my life that He would have me take a look at.
Then I make my list. I write it down. I get my mother list. This latest exercise that I did with my sponsor, he asked me to write a prayer before I made my mother list.
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He said, write a prayer to God. Write it as though you were going to die tonight and that nobody will ever read this prayer. I know it's not in the book, but I encourage you. It was a great experience for me. We never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator. We laugh at those who think spirituality is a way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is a way of strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage.
All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead, we let Him demonstrate through us what He can do. We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear. Again, it was just pointed out to me recently. I've read this thousands of times. It says to ask Him to show us what He would have us be, not do.
Because we're human beings. We're not human doings. Now about sets. Many of us needed an overhauling there. But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. Some of the important stuff here in the sex inventory. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. We all have sex problems. I do not tell the men and women I sponsor whether or not to get in a relationship. That's none of my business.
What my business is is to support you in whatever decision you feel your God is directing you to do. If you feel like you need to get into a relationship and it works out, we're high-fiving. And I'm happy as hell for you. Right? And we'll see where it takes you. If you get in a relationship and it doesn't work out, well, guess what? Me and you are going to be sitting down putting pen to paper and finding your part in it.
Not her part or his part, but your part. That's my job as a spiritual advisor in relationships. Now then, the next thing, as you go into your sex inventory, it says we all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What do we do about them? Here it is. We reviewed our conduct over the years past. It doesn't say anything about making a list of all the women that I slept with. All two of them.
Right? Because, you know, that's just ego. Ego. I don't need to make a list. So, we reviewed our conduct. Okay? So, we take into prayer and meditation. We ask God to show us what our conduct looks like in our relationships with our significant others. What that conduct kind of looks like. And again, we're talking about our current experience. Wherever you're at, if you've been through the steps before, you haven't been through the steps, this is all about your current experience.
So, we want to take a look at, you know, what does my conduct look like? Am I lustful in nature, right? Am I looking at the, if I'm in a relationship, am I looking at other women and fantasizing about them? You know, am I visiting social websites? You know, just to see who's available out there and that kind of stuff. You know, I have to look at these things. Because these are the things that are disturbing my soul.
Then it tells me, I look at where had I been selfish? Where had I been dishonest? Where had I been inconsiderate? These are the nine questions that we answer in our sex inventory. Whom had we hurt? Here's the first time it starts talking about making a list. This is where I start putting down the names of the people I've hurt in my current relationship. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness?
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You know, you take a look at that. Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it. In this way, we tried to shape a sane and sound idea for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test. Was it selfish or not? In other words, the relationships I get into today, am I seeing what I can bring to them or what I can get out of them?
The relationship you're in today, right? Is it what you can do for the person you're in a relationship for or what can they do for you? We ask God to mold our ideas and help us live up to them. Remember always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathed. What that looks like is, lightly means with lack of concern, selfishly, caring only for oneself, despised, to scorn or hate, and loathed means to feel intense dislike for.
So we ask God about our sex powers. When is the last time, those of you who are in a current relationship, when was the last time you and your significant other prayed before you made love? Prayed and asked God and invited Him into the middle of your bed. And then I ask you to ask yourself, why not? If our sex powers are God-given, whether you know this or not, whether you're aware of this or not, He's there.
Okay? I'll give you a little example. I'm in a relationship and I roll over, trying to get busy, right? I'm getting a cold shoulder. Now tonight I've got a headache, right? And I roll over. This is Sam Hummel. You don't turn me down. So I've caught the resentment. And I'm laying there and I'm just like, well, maybe she just didn't understand. Some are sicker than others. So I roll over there and I try to give another sign and I hear snoring, right?
And now I'm really pissed because now I know nothing's going to happen, right? So the next night comes around, right? And now I'm still holding on to this resentment, right? And I go to bed and there's a hand on my shoulder and it's like, oh no, not tonight. Really? Now I miss out on two nights, you know? You've got to pray and invite God. Try it, all right? Just try it once, okay? It's a great idea.
All I can say is after that moment of clarity that I had and I understood, I came to understand that I need to invite God into the bedroom, it's quite an experience, okay? Try it. You invite him into every other area of your life, right? Why not here? Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow towards it. We must be willing to make amends where we had done harm, provided that we do not bring more harm in doing so.
In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answers will come if we want it. That's the key. What I have found has been my experience is I get the answers and it's not the one I want to hear. I disregard it. I got married and divorced in sobriety, in early sobriety. We were married for about eight months.
All of her friends told her not to marry me and all of my friends told me not to marry her and we did it anyway, right? And then the whole time we're sitting there going, Oh God, leave no doubt in our minds that this is what you'd have us do, right? And he was telling us, no. I mean, we would argue and then we would make up and then we'd argue and then we'd make up. And then each time we would argue, I'd go, God, leave no doubt in my mind, you know.
I think he was trying to tell me something, but I didn't want to hear it.
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See, The Right Answer Came, But I Was Hell-Bent on Getting Married. God Alone Can Judge Our Sex Situation, Right? I Told You That. I'm Not the Arbiter. You Get in a Relationship, I'm There to Support You. We'll Work Through It Together. There's No Need to Get Loaded Over It, Because The Two Things That Mess Us Up the Quickest Are Finances and Romances. That's Why You Gotta Have a Seventh Tradition Stuff.
You Gotta Have a Solid Financial House in Order as Well. Suppose We Fall Short of the Chosen Idea and Stumble. Does This Mean We're Going to Get Drunk? Some People Tell Us, Oh, This is Only a Half-Truth. It Depends on Us and Our Motives. What Was Your Motives for Varying Away from Your Shame and Sound Sex Idea? Oh, Here's a Great Idea. Here's Something. Those of You Who Have Done a Current Body of Work and You Have a Safe and Sound Sex Idea Written Down, When is the Last Time You Read It?
When You Shared It With Your Sponsor After You Wrote It? Well, If This Is Your Conduct for How You're Going to Act in a Relationship, Don't You Think You Should Be More Aware of What You Have Written Down, Especially If You've Asked God to Direct Your Thinking As You Wrote It? And This Is What God Would Have You Be in a Relationship? But What I Find Is, Most People Write That Shame and Sound Sex Idea, They May or May Not Share It With Their Sponsor, and On the Bookshelf It Goes.
And They Never Revisit It, and Manner. Manner, That's Son of a… You Know? And What We Fail to Realize Is, We Are Falling Short of the Chosen Idea, Not Them. If We Are Sorry for What We Have Done and Have the Honest Desire to Allow God to Take Us to Better Things, We Believe We Will Be Forgiven and We Have Learned Our Lesson. Honest Desire Equals Learned Lesson. If I'm Just Giving It Lip Service, I'm Sorry, Very, Very Sorry, Right, But I Don't Really Mean It, Because I'm Only Telling You I'm Sorry Because It's a Good Opportunity I Get Laid Afterwards.
If We Are Not Sorry and Our Conduct Continues to Harm Others, We Are Quite Sure to Drink. We Are Not Theorizing, These Are Facts Out of Our Experience. So That Tells Me That Somebody Had to Get Loaded Over a Relationship. So If You Are On Your Way Out, If Your Current Experience Is That You Are On Your Way Out of a Relationship, I Encourage You to Get With Your Sponsor, Put Pencil to Paper, Find Your Part in It, See Where You Went Wrong, Take Ownership of That, Figure Out How You Can Enter into a Relationship on Better Grounds and Move Away from That.
Booze and Dope Are Not the Answer. To sum up about sex, we earnestly pray for the right idea, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, for the strength to do the right thing. Here's the key, I love this, this was stressed to me when that little eight-month marriage that I got out of, this was stressed to me, and this is a tool I find indispensable that I use every day for pretty much, because it says we treat sex as we would any other problem, so I use this little bit right here.
Alright, great stuff, if sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. There it is again, vital to permanent recovery. We think of their needs and work for them, this takes us out of ourselves, it quiets the impurities surged with a yield to mean and heartache, right? Because the first thing we want to do is we want to go find the understanding woman or the understanding man, right?
Further understanding, they didn't have to listen to the last six months of arguing that you and your significant other just went through, and then we want to jump right in the sack with them, why? Because it changes the way we feel immediately, it's that immediate gratification. Maybe just maybe if we were to get out of ourselves long enough and work with another, God would show us how to act correctly.
You know what's been my experience is when I'm struggling with this and I'm coming out of a relationship, God brings a bunch of guys across my path that are having troubles in their relationships. I don't know, it just works that way for me. And I get to sit there and I get to share with them my experience. And what does that do for me? That shows me where I was falling short in my relationship. If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot, we have listed and analyzed our resentments, we have begun to comprehend their futility
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and their fatality, we have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness, we have begun to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can. In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him. If you have already made a decision, third step, and you have, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so, you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself. All right. Step five. Here we go. Here is where we get to swallow some of the big chunks.
I'm just going to kind of go over a few important things because I love this little exercise that Sarah brought up. We're going to actually get to read some inventory to somebody here. I hope we have an even number of people. In actual practice, we usually find a solitary self-appraisal, or having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? We have been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator, and to discover the obstacles in our path.
We have admitted certain defects. We have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory. Now these are about to be cast out. This requires action on our part. Remember, this is a spiritual program of action. It means we will have to admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects. This brings us to the fifth step in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapter.
We think we have done well enough admitting these things to ourselves. There's doubt about that. In actual practice, we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient. Many of us thought it necessary to go much further, and I've explained why. Our ego will not allow us to look at some of that grosser stuff. All right, it says that the best reason first, if we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking or using.
Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably, they got drunk. Having persevered through the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell. We think the reason is they never completed their house cleaning. They took the inventory all right, but they hung on to some of the worst items and stuff.
They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear. They only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough humility, fearlessness, and honesty in the sense we find it necessary until they told someone else all their life story. That goes back to what I was talking about earlier. That's why we got to go back to square one. We got to go to step one. We got to teach these people that we are the closed-mouthed understanding friend that they can dump this stuff on, right?
And we listen to stuff, and we don't sit there wide-eyed with our gaunts. We are solid people today. So, we explain to our partner what we are about to do and why we have to do it. I got a little question in my, and this is for the people I work with, why are you doing this? I ask them. We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step with holding nothing, we are delighted.
And then I'm not going to read the fifth step promises yet. I want to go ahead and, those of you who wrote something down, grab the person sitting next to you and, I don't know how, if you want to do it, only if you want to do it. This is personal stuff. The whole church is empty, too. They can go wherever they want. This is personal stuff, right? If you don't feel comfortable sharing it with the person sitting next to you, you don't have to participate in this part.
I just know that there are some people who would like to do this little exercise. We will take about 20 minutes, so we can get back in here and get over to 6, 7, 8, and 9. And so, I would like to spend the majority of the rest of the time that we have here today in 10, 11, and 12, because there's some great stuff there. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.