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Source: Clif G – 4. Clif G 6 & 7 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clif-g-4-clif-g-6-and-7-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:42:46
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Thanks, Bernie. I'll try to live up to that introduction. I'm Cliff Gooden, Grateful Alcoholic. Sober since August the 15th of 01, and for that short amount of time, I'm as grateful as I know how to be. Only the true believers are at the 245 Workshop, just so you know. Just the true believers are here, or you're voluntold, whatever. So I'm just grateful you're here. Really glad to be here this weekend. I've been up in this part of the country a couple, three times, and it's always such a beautiful place to come to and so peaceful. I was telling Leslie this morning, I caught her over here, telling her what a really, it's really a, you can just feel the presence of the power here, can't you?
I mean, just to look around and see all this beautiful landscape and artwork that God's put together for us, it's just, it's just really beautiful to be here. And so yesterday, Mike and I flew into Minneapolis, St. Paul yesterday. I came from Oklahoma City and Mike came from Nashville. Mike and I have been friends for like 18 years. I mean, we've been friends a long time. And so we got, I came in on Delta in Terminal 1, and Mike came in on Southwest in Terminal 2.
And an hour and a half later, we found each other. And Mike said, where are you? I said, I'm at the Enterprise counter. Come down here. And thinking, there's one Enterprise counter. And he said, I'm here. And I looked around and said, no, you're not. He said, where are you? I said, I'm at the Enterprise counter. He said, no, you're not. Right? And through a series of unfortunate events, we finally found each other and we got here.
We got here. We had a great ride out. Just a beautiful day. Mike and I have a friendship that, you know, we talk two or three times a week. Our wives say we're needy, and that's probably true. But we just have this, you know, you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you just fall in love with people. You just have this love affair with people in AA. You know, Mike Allison is one of those people in my life.
And we've been that way from the beginning. It's pretty cool. My task today is to talk about 6 and 7, which if you're, how many people in this room under a year? Because I doubt if anybody, oh, my God, look at these people. Don't y'all have sponsors? What's wrong with you? In the 12 of 12, it says, leads with a really good line. It says, these are the steps that separate the men from the boys. We could say the women from the girls if we wanted to, right? But we get the point.
These ideas of defects care. Mike talked about it last night. You know, I don't know about you, but when I got to this part in the book with my sponsor, two paragraphs, it's like the free space on the bingo card, doesn't it? I mean, really. If you just think about it, Mike, I mean, really, you look at it and you've got these two paragraphs. Buttress between 5 and 5, 1 through 5, 8 through 12, right smack in the middle.
I don't think there's any, you know, my experience with these steps, I don't think there's any mistake that they lie where they lie. I don't think there's any, you know, Wilson wrote these 12 steps in about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on which account you believe in. Just Penn, he reports, you know, testifies that Penn seemed to just fly across the paper and he put them together. But I don't think there's any mistakes. These fall where they fall because of what comes before and what comes after.
And when we talk about character defects, you know, I always think about, well, where did they come from? What's the origin of defects of character? What is the genesis of shortcomings? Where did they come from? And I think when you look at steps 1 through 5, it's not hard to figure out where they come from.
[00:05:01]
And if we look at 8 through 12, it's not hard to figure out how we're rid of them, to be honest with you. So where do they come from? Where do we have this idea of these character defects, short, whatever you want to call them? So let's just do, we're going to do an interactive deal here. How many people before you ever took a drink of whiskey, somebody impressed upon you that lying was wrong? A show of hands. Only about half of you. The rest are liars.
Well, you know you're lying. How many people before you ever took a drink of whiskey, somebody impressed upon you that stealing was wrong? Cheating, that cheating was wrong. So we know these things. I have knowledge about lying is wrong, cheating is wrong, stealing is wrong, before I ever take a drink of whiskey. I get that. And through our book, we figure out pretty quick that, pretty early in our book, it talks about bottles just being a symbol.
That's really not our problem. I think that for you new people, please don't go home and tell your people, hey, this guy from Oklahoma said drinking really wasn't my problem. Because they'll hunt me down. Because they believe that's the problem. And I'm not suggesting that drinking is not a problem. But it's like a runny nose to a cold. It's like a cough to a cold. If you go to the doctor and say, hey, I've got a cold, they don't give you anything to fix the cold.
They treat the symptoms. And whiskey was a symptom treater. And so people tell us, give us home remedies for what they perceive is wrong with us. Chicken soup. They just tell us stuff like that. Erica talked about here, just moderate. Which is perfectly good advice for a hard drinker. Somebody who just overshot the mark one time. Great advice. Good piece of information. But the book talks about, distinguishes those kind of people from what they call the real alcoholic.
And for the real alcoholic, into the chapter we agnostic says our real problem was lack of power. That's my problem. As a matter of fact, it's my dilemma, it says. And so I lack power. And so the reason we all raise our hands when we say, hey, I knew lying was wrong, but I lied anyway. I know cheating is wrong, but I cheat anyway. I know stealing is wrong, but I steal anyway. Is I can understand the concept, but I don't have the needed power to put in my life to do the right thing.
Lack of power is my dilemma. I understand lying is wrong. But I watched my brother tell the truth one time, get a whip, and I go, that's out. That's out. So I get the idea, I get the concept. But our book talks about that the needed power wasn't there. We could be going down the road, and we get to a spot and everybody's doing the same thing. We're all headed somewhere, and the leader of the pack says, now up here we're all going to go right.
And my alcoholic brain says, I wonder what's left. I wonder what's left. I'll be back later. I'm just going to check what's left. I know we're supposed to go right. I lack power to do that. I lack the power to implement the right thing in my life. If a better philosophy of life, if a better moral code was all I needed to overcome alcoholism, then I wouldn't lie, wouldn't cheat, wouldn't steal. You ever walk into a room and it has a sign on it that says wet paint?
You know what my first thought is? Really? I've got to know. I've got to know for sure. Don't push this button. Why? Why not, right? I get it that that's the idea, but I lack power to put those simple concepts in my life. The real problem in my life is I'm separated from God on self-will. Therein lies my real problem. Therein lies the real problem. And it looks to the material world, the world that we operate in, that whiskey's my problem.
It looks like to everybody else that whiskey's my problem. But every speaker I've heard today, last night and today, talk about at the same time the internal condition. If I just had him, if I had the right him, if I had the right whatever, if I was in the right place with the right people.
[00:10:04]
This internal, this spiritual malady that I suffer from. And because I lack power, what I do is I try to create power in my life. I try to manufacture some kind of power in my life. Silkworth talked about, he said, when alcoholics get restless, irritable, discontent, they get the sense of ease and comfort, right? That comes with the first drink. The sense of it, not real ease and comfort, only the sense of it.
And I can get the sense of power from the activation of my character defects. I tell a lie and get away from it, what happens? I get a sense of power. I got one over on you. Go tell my friends how I got one over. I got one over on Earl. Everybody's happy laughing at Earl, right? And I get a sense of power. I cheat you out of something. I get a sense of power. Steal something from you, but I'm not that kind of friend.
I'll help you look for it though, you know? Good guy, basically. But I steal something and I get a sense of power. So this idea that I'm trying to manufacture power in my life, and character defects are born out of this separation from God on self-will, that I'm trying to hammerhead through life generating power, this false power in my life. The trouble is at some point in my lifetime, trying to generate this power, I find booze.
And booze begins to give me the sense of ease and comfort. The ease and comfort that really what I think, that this is the magic elixir that I've been looking for. When I drink, what I think happens in my head is I think that I feel like normal people are feeling when they walk around in life. I believe that I'm there. That my skin fits. I think this is what they must feel like. I get this sense of ease and comfort.
Run around. But I continue to activate on these. As a matter of fact, the book tells us that drinking makes everything worse. Because I live this double life. And everything seems to become exaggerated for me. As a matter of fact, Stillport says, the alcoholic life seems to become the only normal life for me. I live in a life of delusion and illusion. I'll have this delusion. And the trouble with my life is, I see everything through this prism of self.
Everything is divided through me. Everything comes through me. And I see everything from a perspective of me. How does this affect me? What does this do to me? How does this work with me? What does this mean to me? How is this going to feel to me? Everything is diagnosed through the prism of self. And so I'm seeing not reality as it is. I see it as it affects me. I see it as it's divided by me. And this idea that I lack power is foreign to me.
Because what I've discovered in Alcoholics Anonymous, for a lot of people that I've talked to, they have some kind of shared experience. There's almost some kind of delineation where there's a separation. A conscious separation from God. Like you could do that. We make this conscious decision that I'm separating from God. Later on in the chapter, we find out that we can't do that. The book tells us that deep down inside of every man, woman, and child is yet the fundamental idea of God.
I was talking to Mike yesterday. One of my other favorite Mikes. I was talking to him yesterday about this. My sponsor is a guy by the name of Bob Bizance down in St. Paul, Minnesota. And so Bob gives this talk. And he talks about early on when they started Gopher State that Chamberlain came. And they used to go upstairs, and Chamberlain would hold court up in his hotel room. And he said one night, he said, Everything you ever needed, you already have.
And he looks at Bob and he says, I see you're disappointed in that, right? Because I need to be a big explosion, right? I don't need to know that. But we get this delusional idea that somehow we've separated from other people and we've separated from God. How will that manifest for us? That we have this separation. And it's necessary for us to manufacture power in our life because we believe we are the kings of our own kingdom, that we're the masters of our own ship.
Kingdom, That We're the Masters of Our Own Shit, When we look at this idea of looking
[00:15:05]
at these steps leading up to six and seven, it's easy to find out that powerlessness in one that I've taken these defects and tried to turn them into some power machine for me. When I get to step three, this idea, looking at that, what does it look like in my life prior to Alcoholics Anonymous? Sometimes it can look like, tell them I'm saving lives, I can't take that right now. How does three, what does the behavior that three addresses look like on me?
I can tell you it looks something like this. Three is all about a relationship in my life. How do relationships look in my life? It's best to see that from the perspective of romantic relationships, Katie, because if we can look at it from the idea of romantic relationships, it's the one that I can see it the most and maybe you can too. So I'll use Katie today, I'll make amends later. There's a step for that, so that's good.
So I meet Katie and what happens in my life prior to coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, I meet Katie and within the first 13 seconds, I have Katie in my life totally planned out together, totally planned out. I can see us, the two kids, the house, the white picket fence, I have our whole life planned out. Now I don't share that with her, but I have my whole life, our lives planned out, 13 seconds. That may be way too long.
And so like good alcoholics, what we do is we take each other hostage and go underground. This is what we do. But eventually you've got to come back to life, you know, so about 60 days we come back to the real world or our perception of the real world. And what happens, I begin to notice some things about Katie. I notice when we're in a room like this that she doesn't stand as close to me as the role that I have assigned for her in my life.
And if we eliminate all the women, it was just men in here, she doesn't take my hand as quickly as the role that I have assigned her in my life. She doesn't follow the script. And I'm a role assigner. And I'm suspicious that some of you are too. I just assign her a role in my life. I don't tell her what the role is. I don't tell her how to play the part. She should just know. She should just know, because I'm willing to bet that some of you in here have either said or were the recipient of this language.
If you love me, you would. Greatest manipulation we do in relationships. If you love me, you do this. If you love me, because I've assigned you a role and I'm giving you a clue on what the role calls for. And so what happens is at some point in time, after that 60 days, I figure out she's not playing the part. I'll be gracious, as our book says, or I'll be just a jerk to get her to move where I need her to move.
And at some point in there, I figure out Katie's not the one. She's lost all of her star power. So I start interviewing understudies. That's just what I do, you know. And pretty soon, you know, Katie finds out she's not happy. I'm out of here. You know what I say? Good. Good. Why? She doesn't get it. She doesn't get it. Then you know what happens? The thought comes to me that terrifies every alcoholic in this room, particularly the new people.
My God, I'm going to be alone the rest of my life. And it's a paralyzing thought for alcoholics. Because if I can just get the picture right, I'll be okay. If I can just get the, if I can only manage well, I'll be able to wrest satisfaction and happiness out of the world. It's so obvious to me when the old man broke it down for me about the romantic relationships. But then when I took that same deal and put it on my parental relationship, I treated my mom and dad the same way.
I signed them roles of how to parent me. And when they wouldn't do that, you know, I'd have what we call in Oklahoma a fit. I'd just fall down the floor, kick my feet, right, until I got my way. I did that with my friends. I've done that my whole life. I'm a role assigner because I'm trying to manage well. I'm trying to stretch power out of all these relationships. I'm trying to grasp power. And it tells us in that third step in there that, you know, these other people are doing the same thing.
They're trying to get the roles that they've assigned people and we just have this constant battle, right? And I can tell you this, when you can see that in step three.
[00:20:03]
Step four is a quiz. When you can see your mistakes in these relationships, because a good part of step four, my experience, is all about my relationships with people. When I can see the mistakes I've made in role assigning people, trying to wrest satisfaction and happiness out of the world. When I get to writing, and by the way, I know Erica's going to talk about step four, but I'm going to make this editorial comment.
There's no mystery in step four, because I've been given fifth steps in bars for years before I came here. Just the first three columns, but nonetheless, if you're here, new people, you got the first three columns. Don't even worry about it. You got it, right? Every time I do a line of cocaine, I tell it off. It's that fourth column I struggle with. The victim paper. It's the fourth column I struggle with.
But if I do a solid, if I understand step three, and my grasp for power, and how these character defects, I begin to see them dominating my relationships, lying, cheating, stealing, the children of the ego, the seven deadly sins, children of the ego. They all stem from my ego. They all stem from me, how you see me, how I want you to perceive me, all that stuff. When I can see that, the fourth column is a breeze.
Because then I can see, oh my God, it's really me. It's really me. And so I begin to put together the pieces of my life. The thing about six and seven is, the thing on step six that I missed for years, Erica talked about today, I'm willing to bet that some of you missed it too, is that piece in step six, because it talks about willingness, how it's indispensable, that's so important. I agree. Willingness is very important.
But they put a qualifier on that willingness in step six. I don't know if you've seen that or not. They snuck it in my book several years ago. The gnomes, you know the gnomes? The ones that you could be reading this for like ten years and suddenly want to go, how the hell did they put that in my book? I've read that book. It was never there before. And it says something like this that I deem objectionable.
These things have to become objectionable to me before I'm ever willing to let go of them. If they're not objectionable, if you're still lying, cheating, stealing, getting some out of it, you ain't letting go of it. You're just not. If you can be as willing as you want to be, until it becomes objectionable, and gosh I just heard Erica give a perfect example of that. On the night before she met Mike, it became objectionable to her and she let it go.
She laid it down. Just like that it was gone. You know what drinking and drugging for us? The day you got a sober date is the day you found it objectionable. That's the day you found drinking objectionable in your life. You were no longer willing to go another mile. You were gone as much as you could. So these things have to become objectionable in my life. I can say the prayer all I want to, I can become as willing as I want to be, until I begin to see the pain in sobriety of other people.
Mike and I did a retreat a couple years ago, this Mike, Erica's husband. We did a retreat a couple, and he said the most profound thing that I just loved. He said, I just don't want to hurt anybody anymore. And character defects hurt people. And the pain I began to cause in other people's lives in sobriety, through the activation of those defects, became to a spot, one by one, that I found objectionable.
I began to find them objectionable in my life. I'm going to tell you a story that gives me no thrill in telling you this, but here's what I know. Our painful past is sometimes the only asset we have. It's the things that help us out. It's the things that set us free. It's the coin of the realm in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's what we trade in here, is our experience, what's happened to us, and how we want to let it go.
And so my beautiful wife, who several of you people know my wife, Mike and Erica, and Mike know Mike Allison, they know my wife, and several others do also.
[00:25:01]
She's just a wonderful human being. And every time we'd go out to eat at a restaurant, I'd just flirt with the hostess. I can't help myself, I'd just flirt with the hostess. And she would say to me, I wish you wouldn't do that, I wish you wouldn't do that. And I'd say, oh honey, okay, I won't do that anymore, until the next time, until the next time. And on Valentine's Day, we went to this restaurant, and I'm flirting with the hostess.
And then the waitress comes over, and I'm flirting with the waitress, and she begins to tell a story. I said, well just sit down here and tell me that. And my wife got up, went outside, got in her car, and drove home. Now I didn't have a car, that was my ride. See I can get information, but until there's enough pain involved, I'm not willing to let it go. But I'm going to tell you something, on that day, I was willing to let it go.
Because see, I'm still getting something out of that. I'm getting something out of it. But see, whatever I was getting, it wasn't enough to overcome the pain that I finally saw I was causing in my wife. I finally saw her pain that was attributed to my behaviors, based on my needs and my defects of character. And I got it. And I got it. It became crystal clear to me. And so these ideas of what these defects are, we agnostics talk about old ideas, principles.
We talk about principles in here, which for me is just another way to say old idea. For me. And so these old ideas I have, sometimes I'll bring those in from the material world, because the book tells me now I'm living in the world of the spirit. And old ideas I may drag in from the material world here in the spiritual world, they don't work anymore. And when they become objectionable, sometimes the old ideas have to become objectionable because the old ideas are born out of character defects.
When those become objectionable, I'm going to let them go. So the first five steps help me identify the defects of character. They help me see what it is in my life. And sometimes they're sly, they're deceptive. Some of the things I believe were character assets are actually defects, but they served me well prior to coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. And so what I have to do is evaluate. And so I do that, I get the two paragraphs, I get the free space on the bingo card.
And one day I wake up and I realize the word objectionable is in there. It's like a whole new day, it's like what Erica talked about, it's that moment of clarity that I'm unable to see this until I can see it. I mean, I can just be Mr. A.A., but until I can see things, I'm just a goofball. I'm stumbling through life still self-directed. I can still be self-directed here. But I've got to be awake enough to see them.
And in order for me to be awake enough to really begin to see these things, I've got to complete the activities and actions of the steps. I've got to get out and make the amends. I've got to make the list, I've got to start making amends to what? Fit myself to be maximum service to God and the people about me. I've got to get in fit spiritual condition. Step 10 tells me how to do that. The thing about 10 and 11 that makes them so powerful for a guy like me, step 10 does the one thing I never could do before coming to A.A.
It keeps me in the moment. Because what does it ask us to do? To watch, watch. I have to be present to watch. And it's so easy for me to be distracted today in the world. It's easy for me if I can get trapped outside in the material world, easy to be distracted. Easy to lose my focus. And those four things to look for, selflessness, dishonesty, resentment, fear. They will distract me so I'm not watching.
That's why I've got to watch for those things. When they crop up, it gives me things I've got to do. And it tells me this idea that I go to God, I go to somebody else, I make amends if necessary, I turn my thoughts to somebody else I can help. It keeps me in the moment, it keeps me fresh, it keeps defects at bay. It keeps defects in the Defects at Bay. It keeps defects in a spot where God can come in and do what he does.
[00:30:01]
Step 11 keeps me that conscious contact, so I have the, I'm in touch with the power. See, the ability of the power, it's not of me, yet it flows through me. I'm, Bob always says, I'm the pipe, not the well. It comes, it is through me, not of me. And step 12, my task is to stay, you know, having this awakening, having this gift, this unbelievable gift that we've been given, is to try to carry that message.
What message? The first 12 steps, the awakening. This spiritual awakening, I have to carry that message to other sufferers and to practice the principles I've learned here in all the rest of my affairs. My neighborhood, my job, my interaction in my community, whatever that is, is to take those, those five last five steps help me to keep the defects in their proper perspective and released to God. The seventh step prayer, I don't know if you've really ever read that, because I think I have, right? I think I've read the prayer until I read the prayer.
And what the prayer asked me to do, it says, it talks about me giving over good and bad. Well, why can't I just keep the good, right? How can I just give God the bad and I keep the good? I asked my sponsor that. Why can't I just keep the good? He said, I want you to go back to the doctor's opinion. He said, what does the doctor's opinion say about you and the truth? He says, I can't differentiate. He goes, well, if you can't differentiate true from the false, you can't differentiate good from bad.
I go, how do you know that? He goes, I'll ask you a question. The day you came to AA, do you think that was a good idea or a bad idea? I said, hell, that was a bad idea, man. Turned out to be pretty good. I'm suspicious that some of you people, the day you came to AA and got sober, you thought, this is a bad day. My life is over. I'm assigned to this bunch, right? There's always good and bad news about newcomers in AA. The good news, these are your new best friends. The bad news, these are your new best friends. Good and bad here.
But this is AA. If you're in AA, we've got nowhere to refer you down to. This is it. You be alcoholic, you're with us. Welcome home. So I give God everything. I don't discern. I give him everything. And it says this, I pray that you now remove from me. Who's doing the removing? I've got no power. Mike talked about it last night when Buff talked to him. He said, well, there you are, Hoss, you're trying to remove your defects on your own.
I always say, when I hear people in meetings say things like that, well, I'm working on my lust. I always think, I bet you are, you horny SOB working on your lust. I'm working on it, man. What I really think is, with what power? With what power can I be working on lying? What I have to do is recognize that I'm a liar. I've got to recognize that this is a defect of mine, that I'm a liar. Young told Rowland when he met with him, he talked about the spiritual experience.
And he says, in these people that have this spiritual experience, ideas, emotions, attitudes are rearranged and reversed. And he said, these people that one way acted this way just suddenly came another way. They've turned their whole life around. What I have to do is recognize if I'm a liar, what I have to start doing is, I start behaving like a person who doesn't lie. I can't remove the defect from me, but I know what it looks like when people don't lie, because I've got a whole bunch of people in my life that just don't lie.
And so, you know what I do? The book talks about this over and over and over again, about the demonstrations we make here. You know how you catch alcoholism for new people? You catch it through your eyes. You start watching people in AA. And you think, that's attractive to me. And you start trying to be what those people, the light, the light that Mike talked about last night, the grace of God that shines on us.
We be that light, what happens? It becomes attractive to people. People in my life became demonstrations for me. So I didn't cheat, I didn't steal, I didn't lie. I learned about pride, I learned about envy. Coveting other things. Why can't I have this? That's like when you're two months sober and somebody in front of you gets a six month chip and you get pissed at them because they got six months. Damn them, man. I wish I had six months.
It's that kind of stuff that we don't even recognize. These things like old ideas in our life, these principles that I walk around with before coming to Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:35:02]
When I was in college in 1978, I took a computer science class. Now the room that housed the computer was about the size of this room. And the computer ran against one wall and then halfway down the other. And over here was a punch card reader. And if you did all these cards right and you punched them, you'd have a stack and you'd put them in a card reader. And if you did it right, way over there, there'd be some dot matrix paper you would print out correctly.
Remember that? Scary, huh? So if I went into a coma in 1978 and I come out of my coma in September of 2006 and somebody handed me this iPhone and said, here Cliff, here's your computer, nobody here disagrees. This is a computer, right? If they hand that to me and say, here's your computer, you know what the first question I would have? Where's the card reader? Because I have old ideas about how the world operates.
And I bring those into AA. Old ideas about how it works out there. And I'm going to try to make it work in here. And sometimes those old ideas, character defects, wiggle their way through there. Because I'll hammerhead trying to make it. Why? Lack of power is my dilemma. And I get back to self-direction, self-seeking power again. So I can't discern good from bad. So it says here, I pray that you now remove from me every single defect or character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows.
It doesn't say remove everything today that bugs me. Everything that makes Jen mad at me, remove that. No, it calls on, I'm asking God to remove things that stand in the way of my usefulness today to him and to you. So let's say that Mike and I are going down the road. And we run into the other Mike. And Mike A asks me a question. I just lie straight up to him. Just lie straight up to him. And he knows I'm lying.
And he calls me out on it. And he just takes me right down and right back up again, telling me how it really is. And Mike hears that. And he says, man, if that's what lying looks like, I don't want any part of that. And so see, that defect was useful today. Because it helped Mike. And so this idea, I don't get to choose. I don't get to say today, God, take this. What I say is, God, help me be a better person.
Take whatever today is going to help you and help your kids. Why else would it say the last line? Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Because you know what I'm going to need if I lie to Mike and it helps this Mike? You know what I'm going to need? Strength. Yeah. Grant me strength. So I'm not a discernment of good and bad. I'm not a discernment of which character defect gets removed when.
I'm a discernment of willingness and objectionability. And what I've learned about character defects, if there's any athletes in here, gym people, you go to the gym to get healthy. You go to the gym to exercise your muscles. You go to the gym to stay fit. Character defects are a lot like that, I believe. If you stop going to the gym, you stop working out, you stop doing, what happens to the muscles?
They atrophy. If I quit, if I find things, if I have willingness and I begin to find things objectionable and I stop activating the character defects, guess what happens? They atrophy. They atrophy. So in this whole idea of defects of character and shortcomings and whose job are they? Well, it's clearly that I'm not management material. I mean, it's been that clear for some time. If we had a problem with a car, we would first try to take it to the dealership to get it fixed.
We would keep taking it to the dealership, and finally, probably, if enough cars kept having the same problem, they would say, hey, this is a manufacturer defect. You've got to go to the manufacturer. And so we can be full of character defects, and I can go back to mom and dad or my friends and try to tell them about the defect, and they can try to help me. But for a guy like me, what I've got to do is go to the manufacturer.
I've got to go back to God. Oftentimes I hear people say, I don't know why I'm alcoholic. I've gotten out of the debate deal about that. Here's what I believe for me. It's the only way God could get my attention. He knew that it's the only way in whatever form of a lasting relationship is to bring me to my knees.
[00:40:05]
Bring me to my knees. That day, whatever date the sobriety day is, that's the day we get this idea to make a decision. As our books sometimes refer to us sometimes as turning points in our life. And we have turning points here in 6 and 7. This idea of objectionability, this idea of my willingness to let go. And how long am I willing to hang on to things that I continue to see pain in other people's lives because of my behavior.
The needed power, the book tells us, has always been there. Everything you've always needed, Chamberlain said, you've already had. Our book tells us that deep down inside every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. I love what Erica said earlier about the light and the shadows. I've heard people say this, and I've said this, that it's like alcoholism, it's like the hole in your soul.
You've heard people say that, right? And I've said that. But I can't reconcile that with the book and this idea that God's always been with me. And when I heard her say that today, it reminds me of what I've come to realize for me is that I don't think there's a hole in me. I think it's a shadow. It's a shadow because of all the resentments and fears and defects of character and bad sex conduct. It just made this mountain.
And when I see through the light, it appears to be a hole. It's just a shadow. And as I go through the inventory process and I begin to destruct what's been constructed inside of me, the light shines through again. The shadow disappears. And I begin to move closer to the manufacturer. I begin to move closer to the creator, closer to the power, closer to God. But I have to stay active. I have to continue to be active in my relationship with God.
I have to be active in my watching. I have to continue to the best of my ability to be in the moment, which I fall terribly short of because I can be distracted. But what I know today is that what my task is is to try to stay connected to the best of my ability, to watch as closely as I can, to see if I'm really causing harm to other people and be willing to find things objectionable and to go to God.
Thank you. Applause.