DICOBE-00446 – Click W – TWELVE STEPS – 1980-06-17

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Source: DICOBE-00446 – Click W – TWELVE STEPS – 1980-06-17.mp3 File: dicobe-00446-click-w-twelve-steps-1980-06-17.mp3 Duration: 01:08:48

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Quick question, and I'm an alcoholic. Tonight, as Dick indicated, we're going to discuss the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when we talk about the steps, it's incumbent upon any of us to be as objective as possible. When we share one with another from these podiums, we're being pretty subjective, so it's a lot easier to tell our story, how we were, what happened, and what we're trying to be like today. But when we're talking about our therapy, we must be objective. Consequently, anything that I have to say about the steps is not, so far as I know, an interpretation. It's exactly from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, or with visiting with a couple of the members who were there when it all happened. AA is my life. These steps are the blueprint that returned me to sanity, and it took some doing before I got to step number one. Yes, on Wednesday nights we have an AA workshop in which we devote an hour to these steps, and I've been going through these steps and probably will for the balance of the foreseeable future, and then we throw it open and do the same thing, rotating it amongst the group as we did in Sioux City. This all started somewhere between 40 and 50 years ago, 45 years ago, when our co-founder Bill Wilson was committed to one more treatment center for one more time. There was some speculation that it was the last time. He could practically carry his liver around the wheelbarrow, and he had been committed to treatment, various treatment centers, similar to the treatment centers we have today. They haven't really changed much in the treatment of the disease of alcoholism, perhaps 8, 9, 10, 11 times, and he had tried every way he could to get a handle on this disease, this problem drinking that followed him throughout most of his life, and destroyed the lives of so many of his his friends. He had given it his best shot I don't know how many times, and here he was one more time, and this last time it looked like he really had a handle on it. He put together some sobriety, some dryness, and he had made all the same resolves one more time, and so far as he can recollect, and so far as we know, he meant it. He was really giving it his best shot, and he was hanging in there, hanging in there day by day, until one day he was struck drunk and he was back in tombs, and he was in a hell of a shape. One evening he had been there maybe two, three weeks. He got up out of his bed, little room, and he put on a pair of the gray hospital slippers and a robe, and he shuffled down the hall and he stopped at the first door, and there was a fellow suffering alcoholic in bed, not too coherent, and Bill sat down on the edge of this man's bed, and he told this man his story, so far as he could recall it, and the obsession to drink left Bill Wilson. At least this is how he remembers it. I expect the desire hung in there for some time, and the phenomena that happened that evening, he discussed subsequently with Dr. Bill Silkworth, who at the time was the acknowledged expert in the field of alcoholism, probably in the entire world.

He treated over 10,000 recorded cases of our disease, and prior to the founding of this fellowship, he had experimented. It used all known means of science and of therapy and religion, and with very little results. Bill's single case wasn't

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enough to startle the world, but it shook the hell out of the good doctor who had worked with Bill for so many years, and the miracle of our fellowship in its pragmatic form, the actual working of our fellowship, was probably born with that little visit when Bill sat on the edge of this bed. And what happened? Where was the turning point? And this was a turning point in history, and forms the very foundation and the essence of the steps that change all our lives around. So far as anyone is able to tell, and it's pretty difficult to explain or analyze the miracle, this was the first time in Bill Wilson's Born Put Together where he got the hell out of his own way, where he got out of self and shared with another human being. He didn't sit down on the bed as was his want and wait till the guy shut up so he could whine and moan and groan and shake his, wring his hands and explain how his case was different and how he was trying, and God knows he hopes he makes it this time, not at all. He got out of his self, the big I, and shared with another human being, and that was the kernel, the basis of the fellowship that we enjoy today as we sit in this room sharing one with another. It's the basis of the philosophy of our entire fellowship. Getting out of our own way, the single individual, as we've discussed here before, that is responsible for the philosophy that is ours. The miracle that we share one with another is Saint Francis of Assisi, who was the first human on the face of this earth to note that there are no vacuums in nature. It was an established fact, so he just merely noted that nature has no vacuums, there's no such thing, and then he further observed a philosophy that was to change the occidental thinking from that point on. He said, I tell you that nature abhors a vacuum. I further tell you that God abhors a vacuum. So empty yourself of self and you'll rush in. And as long as we are filled with our own self, it's impossible, as it was impossible to make any progress in combating the disease that we share in this room, be we alcoholic or al-Anani, same disease. And that's where it all began. There are some other philosophers, just to get some of the trivia out of the way before we launch into our steps, what they were designed to do, how they work, and the miracle that does occur. And that's a few other philosophers to whom we are indebted. There were four, four giants in the development of mankind whose joint philosophies seem to have come together in a practical, as I said, pragmatic form, and for the basis of the twelve steps, the simple twelve steps that we try to follow every day of our sober lives. The first was a Greek that used to practice his pitches on the shores of the ocean with stones in his mouth. Elegant speaker, wrote volumes, probably the acknowledged foremost of all the philosophers in history, a guy by the name of Socrates. And if you boil everything that he said down in all the volumes that he wrote, he simply said, hey, knock it off, be yourself. And for most of us, he should probably have added be yourself for a change. Be yourself, two words. He had a baby, a pigeon he was working with in those days. He used to follow him around, a guy by the name of Plato.

And after his sponsor had taken the deep six and he could step up and be heard loud and clear, he said the guy was right, of course. But before you can be yourself, you got to know yourself. And then a couple of hundred years later,

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there was a carpenter. He used to ply his trade along the shores of the Galilee Sea. And he said those two guys were right. And if you can cash in on that message, then you got some dues to pay. Know yourself, be yourself, and then give of yourself. Plato was responsible for our first five steps. Socrates through 11, and the late JC came in with a biggie, number 12. If you boil it all down in a couple of one-liners, that's it. That's the heritage, the sum and substance of that omnipotency, if that's your persuasion, of all the smarts that man's ever gathered together in treating one man with another, one to another. And we got it all, and the price is right, in 12 simple little steps that even I finally could figure out.

And in my case, it wasn't always that way. It took me some doing to get smart enough to keep it that simple, so even I could understand it. When we all got together and this happy journey began for all of us, we had about, estimates vary, three, four, five, possibly four steps that we used to pass along verbally. We did that for several years in this fellowship. Nothing was committed to paper, nothing written down. And we followed these four steps and we passed our version or our interpretation of these steps along, amongst ourselves. We didn't have a name for this fellowship, but we had nothing committed to paper. And we began to make some progress. The most significant progress, or the arresting of our diseases concerned in history, was done by 12 or 13, 14 people. And after a journey to the Big Boss in those days in Ohio, Bill came away with the thought and the permission jointly given that we should commit what we have to paper. And they still didn't have a name.

The New York crowd, and there were about 20, maybe 30 of them, on a more or less regular basis, wanted to call this fellowship and these steps the Way Out, the way out of where we were. And they went so far as to go back to Washington, where Peg and Dick come from, and researched the title to The Way Out. There were 12 of them on record, and he'd be down, he'd be the 13th, anything. So Ohio supplied the suggestion that they call themselves a bunch of nameless drunks, which they were at that point, and hence the name Alcoholics Anonymous was born. And they had to come up with these stories in that book. And the story of the first 100 drunks who were able to handle this thing on a continuous basis for one year was a typical alcoholic effort. There were 23 of them. But they figured, they figured if the rumors they heard were true, Joe knew somebody and Hank had a friend who knew somebody, they could collect them all together, there were probably 100 of them. So 23 of anything becomes 100 to any one of us, you know, going in. And so we got underway. And the steps were formulated and argued over. And there were a couple of incidences of actually going three fast rounds, a bloody nose or two, name-calling and people quitting and resentments. Why?

Because as they sat down this blueprint for us to follow, that's exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted to give us a plan. They wanted to give us therapy to follow. They wanted to give us a directive to lay down the rules for the conduct of our lives. And that would help us all. And that's where the battle began. Because the rules that they originally wrote weren't what any of them did at all. And that, again, is typical. So the real battles they had were these steps are concerned and what's significant to us, as you heard this evening, when Don, one of the great readers of our time, said,

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and he started by saying, here are the steps we took. And there was the battle. They had to sit in session and report action taken before they put a word down on paper. Not what they'd like to have you do, or what would seem like a pretty good idea, but what did you actually do? And you know, a few years after it was done, the stories got a little distorted. The view from the top wasn't exactly as it was.

I walked in that door and I knew immediately I was home. You son of a bitch, they dragged you kicking and screaming in that door and you sat in the back and you were the last in and the first out, didn't talk to anybody for a year. Oh, is that what happened? Well, I don't see it that way, but so they battled step by step to record precisely what they did, because they did have a hold of something, a miracle. And the only way they could screw it up was by adding to it.

So they were meticulous and precise in recording exactly what they did. And that's why it's sometimes startling for us to sit around and analyze and interpret and decide how this should be done, or what do they really mean by that word when it's already history. Steps cannot be improved on, even if we would legislate, because here are the steps we took and you can't change that sentence. That's what they did.

And they strongly suggest that we did it too. We want to live and that's why we're here. Most of us in this room are experts in dying, in confusion, in pain and suffering. But here's a blueprint to live, to turn our lives around. Happy, joyous experiences, and it's all laid right out for us. And it starts with the step that ain't. Nothing to do there. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives were all screwed up.

Grewed up. So we walk in that door and we're asked to acknowledge our condition. And that's it. That doesn't seem like much of an order, does it? Except if it's an honest, no-con job to ourselves, it's probably the first time in memory we have stopped conning, rationalizing, justifying, pointing the finger, if only as excusing. And that's what we're asked to do. But we're only asked to do it to ourselves in depth.

And that's why there's no cop-out with that first step. Because we can't go back and offer a second explanation to ourselves. Either we is or we ain't. No such thing as being a little pregnant. This fellowship, you either is or you ain't. You know, and it's a misunderstood step, at least in my observation. And here I'm departing from what I have read in the text. It's passed along to me by my sponsor.

I'm mad living here. It's my opinion. I have heard in meetings and in clubhouses time after time, and poor Joe, boy, he's sure squirrely. He's on what I like to think of here as a dry drunk. Everything's going to hell on him. But it's okay. Why? Why is it? Well, it's not. He's observing the first step. What's he doing? Well, he's not drinking. You know, hell, no matter if he's a son of a bitch and raising hell with everyone and making life miserable for himself and everybody around him, but he's still following that first step.

So I had to go back and read the first step. Didn't say anything about not drinking. There's a strong implication that this program will work a hell of a lot better, you know, drink. But you admit the condition of yourself with that baby. And I'll tell you how important alcohol is to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's implicit in that first step, the first half of the first step, and then they throw it away. Here we are, week after week, and for me, it's been over 10 years since I had my last drink of booze.

And here I am, week after week, rushing to this, these meetings to save my life.

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I don't think it was alcohol. Alcohol is not my problem today. I haven't had any of it to drink for a long time. Now, it would be, obviously, if I took up the glass again. But then what am I doing here? And that's because I was required to do a 180 degree turn in my life. And I can't maintain that complete and total turnaround, which goes against the very nature of my being, without these meetings, without refueling. Anything to do with alcohol, as far as I know. Matter of fact, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't have that much to do with alcohol, if you stop and think about it. We have no facilities to treat a wet drunk, but I know of.

All eleven and a half of the blueprints for changing our life doesn't refer to alcohol. It refers to this big self, those four biggies that we laid out going in here. That's what we're doing here. It's probably just as hard to get off of cigarettes as it is booze, according to at least two studies that I've read. So knocking it off, which all of us have done from time to time, many times in our life, is not the answer. And it's not the reason for this fellowship. Certainly, going in, you don't drink no matter what. Certainly, if you want to Dick's Pigeons, you'll lay that out in real little words so you can understand it.

Tell you the name of this game, Boopie, you don't drink no matter what. Period. And you hang in and you hang on. But the first step, which we term our honesty step, and so far as I know, it's the only honesty step that's referred to in this fellowship. The conning of ourselves, it must stop. It's a mirror job. We look in the mirror and we tell ourselves we can't get a handle on this stuff. We can't handle it. Losing or using. And look at the condition we find ourselves in. Look at how we're all screwed up.

Our lives are all screwed up. And we admit it to ourselves. This is not a moral program. It hasn't anything to do with morality, what's right and what's wrong. And watch your step, you sinner. You, not at all. The famous one-liner that we do throw out is very simple. If you sober up a horse thief, what do you got? A sober horse thief, that's all. Nothing to do with morals. Any more than if you walk into any doctor's office, if he checks when you've been to confession last before he treats you, hasn't anything to do with morals. This is a therapy, it's pragmatic, it will save your life. There are no moralists pointing fingers in this room.

But a funny thing does happen along the way. The longer you stay on this program, the narrower the road gets till you squeak when you walk. And isn't that funny? When there's no preaching, when we don't point fingers, when we accept you to where you are as you are, you make the choice. And for a very simple reason. That if it's too uncomfortable doing it, we suggest you don't. Big therapy. If it makes you uncomfortable, don't do it. And when that makes enough sense, when the pain is deep enough, you just don't do it.

And so we march through this happy fellowship, step by step. Once we have made that important first acknowledgement to our inner selves where the conning has stopped, where we stop comparing your drinking with her drinking, our drinking with your drinking, what time we had, as if booze could, you know, tell time, I'm on the morning drinker and the thing here. When we stop exploiting the differences, when we follow the simple ground rules, simply a desire not to do it, no matter how much you are doing or when you're doing it. This fellowship is for people certainly like me who didn't like it where they were, but didn't know what to do about it, couldn't get a handle

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on it, would take shots in various directions and then would fall short. I didn't like it where I was. And here's the way out through these simple steps. And the first one is an acknowledgement to myself. As honest as I was capable of being, and I'll have to tell you that after about a year, I got a hell of a lot more honest. And I suspect that I did take that first step along somewhere along that first year with everything except my mouth. I took that going in, you know, you'd look pretty funny if you didn't hold up your hand. Any alcoholics in the room? Yeah, sure. Everybody else is sticking up their hand, but I mean a real alcoholic.

I guess I was struck with a disease after I'd been here about a year. I got here just to get the heat off, you know. Matter of fact, maybe it wasn't booze at all. It's probably just a 20-year run of bad luck. But anyway, I got here and for seven years I tried where that first step is concerned. I made that acknowledgement time and time and time again. I made it in bars and I made it and I made that acknowledgement and I meant it. And I honestly did try. And in looking back, I suspected it's true. I gave it everything I had and it wasn't very much. Because when I had offered my family and myself and my life prior to Alcoholics Anonymous, it wasn't all that swift.

I don't know why I thought I would get the handle on this, but of course I did. I even found myself walking around using that famous Salanon phrase time and time again. God knows I tried. And for seven years. And they were years of purgatory. And they were not years of just hit and miss. I think, I expect that I'm accurate when I tell you that I probably attended an average of maybe three meetings a week for those, an average of three meetings a week for those seven years. And I would get a little time now and again. And nothing happened.

Until I probably replayed that phenomena that was Bill Wilson's that first night in the hospital. When in desperation and at the end of my individual rope, at my particular bottom, I gave up and threw in the towel and acknowledged that possibly even this wouldn't work on a continuing basis for me. And from that point to this, it hasn't been necessary for me to take a drink. So it wasn't all that swift effort that I put into this fellowship. Because the harder I worked, the more the program didn't seem to work. Because once again, I, the big me, that back in the 16th century, 15 something, a man who was later to become designated a saint, pointed out to me that it wouldn't work if I did it that way. Get the hell out of my own way, the big me. But consider the self that we bring to Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a suffering self.

If the heat's really on, it consumes our head with the bad luck that we find ourselves in, the circumstances, what they are doing to us. Getting out from under, escaping just one more time is all we can think of. And again, it's us. It's us and our misery. And when things get a little better, why, then we want to be noticed for our accomplishments. We do. We'll even, my God, take somebody to a meeting now and again. Have to. Again, it's the big I, the big me.

My progress stops when my self gets in the way. And it does. It does today. It did yesterday. And it almost killed me 10 years ago. And that's what we're addressing ourselves to. And there's a reason for that. Because I'm dealing in a basic instinct. And give us a little instinct going for us, and we'll overshoot the field. And it's our excesses that got us here. And all that first step asks us to do is acknowledge our condition. And please, newcomer, don't do anything else. Don't try to fix it. Just acknowledge it. But fix it.

Fix It, Just Acknowledge It, But For Real, So There Really Isn't Much to Do, And Then

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We Follow It With A Step, Step We Discussed Last Night With A Gentleman Who Is Having Trouble With A Power Of Some Kind, With Religion, And He Is Conforming To Most Of The Other Basic Ground Rules Of This Fellowship, And It Looks Like He Is Doing All Right, But He Said I Don't Know That I Believe In The Four Or Five Months That He Has Been With Us, And In The Perfectness Of Each And Every Word That Was Offered To Us In These Twelve Steps, They Even Took This Guy Into Consideration When They Said Came to Believe, We Are Not Asked To March In That Door, And Accept Jesus Christ As Our Personal Savior To Become One Of His Sunbeams On The Spot, And Ain't That Great, It Is The Step That Gives Us Hope That Something Can Be Done With Our Individual Lives When Nothing Had Been Possible Before Getting To Alcoholics Anonymous, They Offer Us Positive Hope, And That Is Not An If Come, There Is Hope, And It Is Hope In The Form Of Pointing Out To Us That There Is Some Juice That Is A Little Swifter Than We Are Somewhere, That There Is A Power A Little Greater Than Our Act Has Been, And It Is There, And It Will Start Us On The Road To Maturity, Return Us To Sanity, And It Has Nothing To Do With Chasing Each Other Around With A Butterfly Net, It Is Just Reflecting On The Lives That We Led Prior To Getting Here. We Were Kids, I Don't Know A Kid Who Isn't Nuts, You Just Follow Their Act Around For A While, They Make Adolescent Decisions, Impulsive Decisions, They Are Always Between A Rock And A Hard Place Just Trying To Mature, And Here We Were Regardless Of Our Chronological Age Or What Our Act Had Been, Conducting Ourselves Daily With Immaturity, Insanity, And Nobody Or Nothing Had Seemed To Come Up With The Answer For Us On A Continuing Basis, And Yet That Step Is Our Hope Step, It Says Hey, You Found The Right Place, Here There Is Hope, And Number Three If You Stick Around, Your Life Is Screwed Up, There Is Some Juice That Is A Little Swifter Than You Are That Will Take Care Of It For You, Step Two, And Step Three If You Stick Around You Are Going To Plug Into That Juice, You Are Going To Plug Into That Power, And The Third Step Is A Promise, And It Is Also One Of Our Most Misused Steps, At Least From My Observation, Turn It Over, Anytime We Run Up Against A Problem Or Circumstance In Our Daily Living, What Do You Do About It, Turn It Over, What You Did About It, Let's Read That Step Again, The Third Step Is A Generalization, As I Have Told You Before, I Think The Last Time I Visited Here, I Have A Sponsor, Dick, I Know Pretty Well, And They Can Imagine The Fact That This Guy, In Applying That Step In His Early Sobriety, Turned A Hundred And Five Bucks In Hot Checks Over To God As He Understood Him, God Turned Him Over To The Sheriff And He Ended Up In The Slammer, Which Will Happen Every Time You Apply That Step Specifically In My Observation, Because That Isn't What The Step Says, That Is A Commitment Step, Turned Our Will Or Our Willfulness, Not The Specific That We Are Working On, In Our Lives, Our Entire Bottle Of Wax, Over To The Care Of Some Power That Is A Little Swifter Than We Are To Guide Us Through Life Or Point Us In The Right Direction To Get With This Program, Not Oh My God, What They Do, Turn It Over, That Is Not The Step, But We Do Have A Step, We Do Have Tools In These Twelve Steps To Specifically Handle Any Situation, Any Set Of Circumstances Or Any Specific That Comes Our Way, In My Opinion It Just Doesn't Happen To Be The Third Step, That Is A Commitment Step, Because Until We Get To The Sixth Step Of This Program, We Have No Program, We Are Just Getting Ready For It, There Is A Lot Of Groundwork To Be Done, A Lot Of Homework To Do, And Here Is Where We Find It, And Here

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Is Where We Find The Big Difference In Alcoholics Anonymous, In Any Other Therapy, Any Other Religion, Any Other Direction That Has Ever Been Offered To Turn Our Lives Around, And That Is The Fourth Step, If There Isn't A Therapy I Know, Or A Therapist That Doesn't Try To Fix What Ails You, That Is What You Go To Them For, To Make A Complete Diagnosis Of Your Case And Then Supply A Remedy, At Least Work On Something In Some Direction To Straighten You Out Or Turn You Around Or Giving You Enlightenment To Administer To You Spiritually, Physically, Except Alcoholics Anonymous, Because By The Time They Sat Down These Twelve Steps, Those Desperate, Wretched, Confused Individuals Had Been To Just About Every Type Of Therapy At Least That Was Available Some Forty, Forty-Five Years Ago, They Had Tried It All, And When They Look Back On What They Actually Did To Turn Their Lives Around, They Found Out That In Treating One With Another They Couldn't Do Anything For Each Other, And Our Book Points It Out Time And Time Again, Don Read It To Us This Evening, When He Said No Human Power, No Human Power, And That Pretty Well Narrows The Field, No Human Power, And So We Get To The Fourth Step, And The Fourth Step Merely Says, Look, I've Listened To Your Story And I've Seen Your Track Record, I've Listened To What's Being Presented To Us Here This Evening As You Walked In That Door, And We've Ticked It Around, And It's Our Unanimous Opinion That Nothing Can Be Done For You, You're Hopeless, So I'll Tell You What We'll Do, We've Got A Step Called The Fourth Step That Throws You Away, And We'll Start All Over, We Can't Fix You, John Locke's Theory Of Tabula Rosa, Wipe The Slate Clean And Start From Scratch, And Stop And Think Of The Joy, Getting A Second Chance No Matter Where You're Starting, A Second Chance, Not Just A Promise Or A Theory, But You're Able To Start All Over Again, Well We Call Them Newcomers, Born Again, Babies, Because We Have A Second Chance, And Man, We're Dealt A Full Deck This Trip Around, They Wrap Us Tightly, Not Like The Other Time When We Were Wrapped A Little Loosely, A Second Chance, And That's What The Fourth Step Is Designed To Do, That Fourth Step Isn't Up To Us To Interpret, It's Merely Up To Us To Report, Just As The Book Says It, We're Supposed To Do It, I Personally Suggest That If It's Fourth Step Time, That You Take A Piece Of Paper And A Pencil In Hand And You Write, I'll Give You Your First Line, You Carry It From There, I Was Born, And You Take It From There, It's Been My Observation And It's Been My Privilege To Field A Couple Of Fifth Steps, Possibly Sixty, Maybe Seventy Of Them, Right In There Somewhere, And I Tell You The Truth, As Well As I Can, I Have Never Heard The Two Different Fourth Steps, There Are Some Different Dates And Places And Names And Events And Like That, There Are Four Basic Ingredients That Go Into The Fourth Step That We Reveal, Three Of Them Are Perhaps Pretty Obvious, There Is A Fourth That We're Going To Carry To The Grave And I Can Tell Anybody, And If We Don't We Will Write To The Grave, And I'm Not Going To Tell You What Those Four Are, You Know I Recall When I Took A Crack At This Fourth Step, It Was Rejected The First Trip Around But I Made It The Second, And I Wrote

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Down I Was Born And I Begin To Reflect, I'll Be Damned, Until That Point I Don't Recall Consciously Thinking That As A Child, I Don't Even Know How Old We Moved From Omaha To A Place Called Broken Bow, Nebraska, Way Out There Somewhere, And My Big City Mother Was Getting Me Ready For The School, The Opening, At Least Checking In The School, And She Dressed Me Up In These Knickers, And This Tie And The Thing, And She Said Okay, You Know, Now Go To School, And I Looked Out The Door And Watched The Kids Going To School And Fainted, My Life Was Over, There Was No Use, You Know, Even Checking In Tomorrow, And I Recall Hiding Behind A Tree Until A Bell Rang, Now I Swear To You I Hadn't Thought Of That Until I Started On That Damn Fourth Step, Now It Must Have Been Kicking Around There Subliminally Somewhere, And It Must Have Had Some Significance To Come Out Of Me And Be Put Down On Paper, But Fortunately It Didn't Have To Be Analyzed, This Program Doesn't Have To Be Explained, Save The Explanation That It Does Work, And It Works For Everybody In This Room, For Each Of Us, And So I Brought My Biography Up To Date As Honestly As I Could, And I Could Not Escape Or Cop Out Behind The Bromite While More Will Be Revealed As We Trudge, It's Not The Purpose Of The Fourth Step, The Fourth Step Is To Reveal A Pattern Which Comes Out In The Fifth Step Of Our Lives, And Without Exception With Every Fourth Step I Have Ever Fielded, The Pattern Began When We Were Little Bitty Boys And Little Bitty Girls In Knee Bridges, And As We Grew Older We Began Playing With Little Bigger Boys And Little Bigger Girls, Little Bigger Boy And Girl Toys, But From The Time That We Were Toddlers Until The Time We Walked In That Door It Was The Same Pattern, A Pattern That Must Be Revealed In The Fourth And Smashed In The Fifth, And That Portion Of Our Life Is History, And That's Why It's My Opinion, But We Can Only Take One Fourth Step Because We're Talking About History, It Is No More And We Are No More From That Point On, It Doesn't Mean If You Take A Dozen Of Them, Hurt You As Far As I Can Tell, But One Fourth Step Will Bury That Past, Now We Understand The Importance Of What Is Revealed In The Fourth Step, It Is The Only Step They Wrote Twice, They Called It The Second Version Of The Fourth Step The Tenth Step, So We Don't Get Out From Under And We Take That Quite Frequently, But It Is My Personal Opinion And I Will Hasten To Add This Is My Personal Opinion That One Fourth Step Is All That Is Sufficient, That It Is Entirely Sufficient To Take One Total Fourth Step And Bury That Past With The Revelations In The Fifth, Now We're Ready, We've Acknowledged To Ourselves In Depth What We Are, We've Been Offered The Hope And Pointed Out A Direction That Was Just A Rumor To Us Before We Got To Alcoholics Anonymous, That Indeed There Was A Power That Was A Little Swifter Than Our Act, And He'd Handle It For Us, And Three That If We Stick Around We'll Plug Into That Juice And We'll Begin To Grow Up And We'll Return To Normal Living Or Experience It For The First Time If You Are Anything Like Me, But First Let's Get Rid Of What We Have Here, Then We Take The Fourth Step, Then We Complete It In The Fifth Step, Then We've Done Our Homework, We're Ready To Cash In On This Program, And My God The Dues We Paid To Get Here Were High Enough, It's Quite Possibly The Most Expensive Fellowship, Society, Club In The World So Far As I Know, There Isn't A Country Club, There Isn't A Supper Club, There Isn't A Fellowship Or Society That You Probably Can't Handle If That's Really What You Have In Mind, And You Save Your Buttons With That In Mind, But Take A Look At The Dues You Paid To Get In This Door, Just Everything You Have, Including Your Self-Respect And Your Dignity, And The Price Is So High.

I bet we owe it to ourselves to cash in. We've paid the dues.

[00:45:01]

And the cashing in starts with the sixth step. And in my way of thinking, it is the program. We call it the altered. The step that, to quote the book, separates the men from the boys. We carry it into this fellowship. At that point, that's an about-face. And it doesn't mean that we can accomplish this all at once. But as the step points out, we're ready. We're entirely willing. We're ready to have it happen. And the willingness is all we ask. We've tried the accomplishment ourselves so many times. And it's funny. The finger stops pointing at this step. It's funny that all are born put together, we have treated with some kind of God. Most of us, I've been exposed to some type of organized, formal religion most all of our lives. And we know when the heat's on, we've always checked in with a deity, pleaded and promised and conjoled, negotiated and bargained, if you will, I will, I swear, and so forth. Heat's on.

And how many times has dad heard our pleas and our cries and our promises? For as long as we've been around, that's how long. And this time it's a little different. Nobody's home if we check in with dad directly. That's why they have the sixth step and they have it specifically for us. All he wants to know is that we mean business. Not just more words with that mouth that we've carried around with us to this point. You mean it? And we have to decide whether we mean it in the sixth step. Then it'll be the most important decision we've ever made in our lives. Are we really ready to do what? To have him fix her so I can go home and do? Not at all. To look at ourselves. If we're really willing, if we are ready to have our own defects of character, and they've been aptly revealed in the fourth and the fifth step in a general way. And if we're ready, he is. But we must indicate that willingness in the sixth step. It's the key. It's the key to our lives. It's a band-aid step, as well as a foundation, a cornerstone of this program. If you got to hurt right now and it's eating you up where you're sitting, I will guarantee you the sixth and the seventh step will indeed work for you as a band-aid and take care of that hurt, that circumstance, that problem. That's the tool designed to do specifically that. We're willing to have the defect of our own character removed that's causing this situation, not them to change and make it better for us. Our personal defect of character removed, we're willing. And then the seventh step, we just humbly ask, I don't know a more humble position than getting down on your knees. You know, you don't want anybody to see you, you know, checking on your dad so you get in a quiet place and down on your knees. And I'll tell you something, it'll get somebody's attention, even if it's your own. And you humbly ask him to remove the defective character that you are willing to give up that's causing this hurt, this problem, this obstruction for your life is concerned, this mental deformity, that's the emotional insecurity. Want to remove? And you know how long it takes him to handle that little chore? If you've taken the sixth step, that fast. There's one more thing we work on or work through. I'm working on a defective character. You see, I'm sure enough now to analyze my own defects of character, couldn't do that before, I can now. Doesn't say that at all. I had been working, asking a damaged tool to fix itself for too long. And for me to stand before you and name my individual defects of character I'm going to work on would be to ask this damaged tool to fix itself one more time. And then we're back to step two. You know, you'd run after me with a butterfly

[00:50:03]

net if I'd hand you a broken hammer and say, here, fix this broken hammer with this broken hammer. And yet that's what I'm doing when I make my own choice. And why should I bother? Why should I even give it another try when I'm plugging in the juice that's omnipotent? And he's a friend. He's a partner. He works with me. He brought me along this far, not to drop me on my head, and not for me to take back a situation and say, hey, Dad, I don't think you understand the full, all the facts in this case. I'll handle this one and get back to you again when there's something you can get ahold of here. We're dealing with omnipotency at this point. And we've worked the believing. We fulfilled some of the qualifications for this fellowship. And so what a joyous step the sixth is. It's the first freedom, the first joy, except for the promise of absolution that we get prior to the sixth step. But it's the real cashing in on the program. It's the difference between the long face, the wringing of the hands, and the beginning to enjoy the freedom, the confidence of living the security of our emotions and of our direction. It's all right there. And the price is right. And it starts with the sixth step. Our willingness to look at ourselves and then checking in with Dad.

And why can it happen that fast? Because we're dealing with omnipotency. And he doesn't hit a time clock. He doesn't check a calendar to see if you are indeed ready. He is ready when you are. And it can be taken smorgasbord or band-aid style. I'll tell you, it'll spring a leak down the road if you don't take this program as it's laid out specifically. But it'll work temporarily until you can work the program in its entirety. It's an emergency step. It's a step that's often confused with the third step, turning it over, doing nothing. There's where it lives. You are willing to have the contributions you're making to the fix you got yourself in removed. And he will do it. And it's a hell of a step. It's a biggie. Now, why is it so difficult to string all this together, to hang it together when it's pointed out to us? And when we're trying to work on these steps. And simply because, depending on how far in depth you have gone in your fourth and your fifth step, you're dealing with the biggies, the seven big ones, the seven deadly sins. And do you know that of all those seven deadly sins that each of us carry around to one extent or another, pride or self, or self-justification for what we're trying to do, or explanation for what we're trying to do, or rationalization for what we're trying to do, or what they did to us, is our number one deadly killer or sin, the pride to self. And that heads the list. Every list I've ever read of the seven deadly sins starts with pride. Then it gets into the other ones such as lust and greed and guttony, anger, and that lovely word sloth. I envision some slimy character, you know, that was some slimy character down the road there. Which is just another way of saying, putting it off, procrastinating, not doing anything about it, not stirring our stumps, not making a decision to implement anything except our mouth, sloth.

And yet every one of those seven deadly sins are the seven basic instincts that we must have to survive. When it becomes pride, excessive pride, and excess of any of our basic instincts, it's given the label of one of the seven deadly sins. Short of greed, we have ambition carried to excess such as everything else we did in our life. It'll do us in and result in greed. Short of that is honest ambition. Acknowledging a job well done is justifiable. It's healthy.

Carrying that instinct too far becomes pride. The reason I point that out is that's why it's

[00:55:09]

so damn difficult for us to check these excesses that we all carry around. Because they are our natural instincts. And we carry them to excess as we probably have everything else in our bone put together or we probably wouldn't be here. Some of each of those deadly sins is necessary for us to survive. But where do we call a halt? With our personalities, we probably don't. And it's entirely possible that we cannot. And that's why the steps are written in this order. And that's why that sixth step for this program begins to live is so vital for us to become willing to get the hell out of our own way. To have our own defects of character. Not theirs or those.

Removed and then asking dad to handle that action. Now we have to go back to school again. A lot of us kind of play down this eighth step. We know it's there. We know it's necessary. And by God, we get a list out and write like hell. Some of those names, you know, they never heard of us. And we just write them down there. In my case, as I pointed out, wherever I happen to be living at the time, I could just endorse the phone book, you know, anybody I ever run into, boom. But that's not what the step is designed to do or what it's for. The eighth step specifically says, made a list of all the persons who did harm and became willing. That wonderful word again, that they're laying in there. That doesn't mean to write down a list and run out the front door bumping into yourself and getting a ticket and running all around and looking good in your uniform and, you know, going to confession with every doorbell you ring. And besides, in the mend is more than more mouth. I'm sorry. Well, there's one. Big deal. We were sorry all our lives till we got here. We were sorry for living just before we got here. Sorry won't cut it. That's a big and an important list. And it should be headed, in my opinion, with your own name, because I don't know any of us that doesn't know a bigger amend for this life that was given to us in the rebirth of a second chance. How blessed must we be who doesn't owe the number one amend to what we did with what was handed to us in the way of creation. There's the first name.

And try saying, yeah, well, let's see. My name's on the top there. I'm sorry. And then go on to the next. Won't work. An amend is for real. We've got to do something about a wrong. And if we don't do anybody else in the process, that's no fair. We can't get out from under by fingering someone else. And it clearly points that out. But all that's necessary with that eighth step is the willingness, once again, the willingness. And then I've got to tell you something. It'll be in his time. Don't have to worry about it. If you're for real, you have really taken that step, in my opinion. Because the ninth step tells us that we will directly make this restitution of these men's.

And it also says when it's possible. Our good intentions don't count. And I'll tell you, he'll do it in his time. He will make that amend possible. And that's when you've got to come through with all that willingness that we expressed. And as coincidence would have it, I received a phone call in my office today. And a lady said, this is Patty. And I want you to know that I love you and that I respect what you're doing. And a few other little adjectives there.

And I said, gosh, that was a cheerful voice and a wonderful message to hear just out of the blue. And I said, Patty who? She said, Pat Reed Weston, your ex-wife. Pat Reed Weston, your ex-wife. If I'm lying, I'm dying. Happened today. There was a woman for fourteen years. My willingness has been there, and I have to say it often, I am willing

[01:00:06]

to go to any lengths, except talk to that bitch. Anything else. And I was consumed with it, and I would give myself a sales talk, and I was willing to make that amend. Sometime, and you know. Seriously, I've talked with her, you know, several times in the fourteen years since it's been on the telephone, and God, she could say good morning, and I'd, you know, tight. I'd just, what do you mean by that? You know, just, and I couldn't seem to help myself, and I would, I would, I would try. God knows I tried, and it didn't work.

And yet, out of the blue, that phone call came today, and it was a different voice. She got through the whole thing before, and I felt myself relaxed, listening to this nice voice, you know, and gosh, I said, well, that's neat, and I said, well, I'll be darned. The bitterness was gone, and I was able to say, hey, kids, you know, you used to think it took two to tangle, but man, I was doing a solo out there on the dance floor, and I acknowledge it. Pretty late, and I want to do what I can for a daughter that's, I want to pick up some financial responsibilities over and above, that I've wanted to do, but pride, and I wouldn't go through her to do it, and like that, and it all happened today coincidentally. And if there are any steps in this whole rundown that I acknowledge and that I've gone through the ritual of, but didn't feel the direct result of, other than looking good in my uniforms, you know, I made amends to people who never heard of me before, you know, they were, I was in the business, as most of you know, as a writer, producer for 30, almost 30 years out there, so there were a lot of household names that I worked with, and when I was going to make amends, naturally, they all went on the list. You got to get a little juice going for you if you're going to go through this funny thing.

Most of them never heard of me, you know, or the event, you know, I'd ring a doorbell and they'd say, Clyde did who? Did what? Okay, you know, boy, I'm just whizzing through this thing. Missed the shot entirely. But I can tell you from personal experience that a mutual amend was made today, and I can tell you that, but I cannot pass along to you this feeling inside me for 14 years of that that's gone. Absolutely gone, and I will follow through to the best of my financial ability, and yet that wasn't the purpose of her call at all.

Another example, as if we needed any in this room, of the pragmatic aspect of these steps, the realism. This ain't no pie in the sky and the great buy and buy. This is here and it's now and it works. Got a friend that says he's glad it's that way, too, because he's afraid of high places and he doesn't like harp music. You know, he'd be in a hell of a shape. But it's here and it's today in our daily living that returns us to wholeness, and with that becomes the freedom of being a real grown-up person and the joy of living that goes along with all this. Booze! What a price to pay, giving up a little of that action. It's the best deal we ever got. And then we move into another one. We move into not getting out from under. We move into a checkpoint. How is this program of ours working?

Some days I'll swear that I haven't changed one iota, not one whit, but there must be changes when I reflect on these ten years. You can write them down on paper, but I don't feel them. So there must be a checkpoint, and they figured that out, too. That's called a personal inventory, and it's just checking out the stock, what's in stock each day. Just what happened that day. If it started off with a great big resentment and it consumes you most of the day, all you can mark down is one. Days shot to hell for one, you know.

And it doesn't say that you're supposed to fix anything. It's just take stock of how you spent the day. And I got to tell you something. If you're taking it on a daily basis and it's prescribed in some cases, it is in mine from time to time. You try. You try laying in there about three times the same shot, and it'll bug you. You can't stand to put it down one more time. You almost have to do something about it. But that isn't what the step says.

Any more than any merchant who's taking stock of what he has stops and says, oh, we've got to fix this one. Call a carpenter. He just takes stock of what he has, and that tells

[01:05:00]

you where you are on this program. It's a wonderful step, and it's a real balance point. And number eleven, isn't that a wonderful step? They didn't ask us to get the handle on anything. When you can't improve something you don't have. So when we reach the eleventh step, we've wrestled our tigers. We've come to accept. We have come to believe. We're cashing in on a program. And here we take all the mystery away from the boss. Improve our conscious contact, and you can't get any closer than shaking hands, than putting your arms around somebody and having them put their arms around you. And what a partner to have. What a day you can spend when you have sought, not even handled it. Back to the sixth, the willingness, the decision, the trying, sought to improve your conscious, real close contact with Dad as you understand him. What kind of juice we got going for us that nobody else has.

And then we get to the twelfth step. The one I call the impossible dream. Can't be done. I don't know why they stuck everything else they couldn't think of. There's about four steps in there. Most all of them impossible. Having had spiritual awakening. Now that is not to be confused with one of these experienced jobbers where the lights flash and that sort of thing happens. And that does happen to some of us. In my case, there was a spirit that did awaken because God knows I was just this short of being a dead person before I got here. Certainly dead in spirit. I actually believe that ten years ago they should have gone through the ritual of patting me in the face with a spade because everything else was dead. And I'm living on borrowed time. And I've done the homework, all eleven of them. And that's what they tell me you must do to get the twelfth. Having had a spiritual awakening. Oh yeah? What's one of those? As a result, being able to report the action that I have taken eleven times before. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. You just give it a shot. You don't go out to save anybody and keep score. You try to carry this message. It's part of your dues. And here it comes to practice. And I'm glad they use that word practice. I'll never completely get the hang of it. These steps in all our affairs. And what a package it is. And how real it comes to life, step by step. When we sit down and look over the steps as they were intended, and we follow them to the conclusion, to the point where we find ourselves now with the best deal we ever had when there was no way out prior to that. First acknowledgement, step one, of really what we are and how our lives were all screwed up. Those, as I see them, are the twelve simple steps of our program of Alcoholics Anonymous. God bless you and thank you.