Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- Big Book Study Disc 3 Scottsdale Arizona
- Speaker
- Debbie D. and Kent D
- Date
- 2017-03-31
Transcript
Source: Debbie D. and Kent D – Big Book Study Disc 3 Scottsdale Arizona – 2017-03-31.mp3 File: debbie-d-and-kent-d-big-book-study-disc-3-scottsdale-arizona-2017-03-31.mp3 Duration: 01:09:59
============================================================
Good morning, everybody. I'm Debbie Davis, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm Kent Davis, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Kent. I know that not everybody from last night could be here today, so how many new ones have joined us today? Anybody new from—good. Welcome. We're just the two so far? Welcome. We're glad to have you. And as we did yesterday, we basically laid out what we feel is kind of our experience with the Big Book and the groundwork of Steps One and Two and Three.
And our point was to do just what the Big Book says, is launching onto a course of vigorous action today, where we're all fresh. Yesterday I mentioned about, as we walk through this, perhaps you can think about something that's been key in your life, on your mind, bugging you, a resentment you can't just get rid of anymore, and think about applying Step One to that specific topic. Then Step Two: do you believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity on that topic? And Step One: are you powerless over that topic, and how is it making your life unmanageable?
And Three: can you turn this topic over to the loving care of a God as you understand Him? So before we get started, Kent's going to read the quote of the day, which is appropriate to right where we are. I had several other things that were on my mind as she was doing that too. Today's Grapevine quote of the day, which you can get for free, just send the email to theaagrapevine.org, and they will send you.
And it just so happens that today's is, Despite the happy transcendence of difficulties of yesterday and of today. We nevertheless deeply realize that our negative traits are still with us, and always will be. Therefore, constant responsibility should be that of taking a fearless inventory of our defects as we go along. The better to understand their mending. As it turns out, Debbie and I, whenever we have the opportunity to do prayers together in the morning, we always do prayers, not always together.
But of course, today was one of those opportunities. We got to start our day, thank you very much, together, and we did our prayers together. And the interesting parts of that is we do know each other pretty well, actually. And a part of our prayer this morning was to present to you what is best for you, and that is the life that we've learned as a result of this program. We have figured out that our job here isn't to make us look like we have some kind of authority or knowledge or ability or something.
Our job today is to make this program come alive for you. One of the things she said is, Is there something troubling you? The other thing that you might consider is a group inventory, and the same kind of things. In doing that kind of a group inventory, you might want to consider that as a part of what we're doing today. Apply that to what goes on in your group. And just the other day, I became aware you can still do the same thing.
Is your group really powerless over the issue? I mean, can you apply Step One to your group? And Step Two, is there really some belief that there is a power greater than your group that can actually guide it in the direction it's supposed to go? Step Three, are you at that place where your group can really make that commitment to, okay, what does God want us to do here? I'll pass it back to Debbie.
So this morning's session, we're going to focus on four, which again, this is going to be a Reader's Digest touch and highlight how we have taken an inventory and how we walk someone we sponsor through an inventory. And because, again, we could spend an entire day on the inventory process in detail. We don't have that available. Briefly, how I have done an inventory in the past. My first one was done in a treatment center under duress.
It was required to get out. That was inspiration enough. I was told to write the resentments. I don't have any resentments. They said, Well, who do you hate? Oh, I got a lot of those people, you know. And because I didn't understand what resentment was, I didn't really know how to get started. They handed me, at the time, a Hazelden, like a hundred-and-some questions.
[00:05:04]
I really thought it was trick questions, that if they didn't get you one way, they're going to get you another way. And it was more confusing than anything. I ended up writing a life story, not an inventory as we understand it today. It was helpful. It did open the door. It felt like I opened up Pandora's box of confusion and mixture of those things. But it did take away the fear of writing an inventory.
At 6.9 years of sobriety, I write another inventory. As I described last night, I came crashing down into Alcoholics Anonymous, physically sober, but crazier and the most untreated severe case of alcoholism I hope to ever have. And I took those, took another inventory. It was brief, but it was incredibly thorough. It was father, stepmother, and men, just the general category of men, okay? Had been a big problem. Didn't matter the name, it was all the same.
And these were the areas that were just dragging me down. And it was, I knew that I had cleaned up the bottom of the barrel for me. I had really hit that dirt. And the second, third inventory I wrote was when I was 27 years sober and had come out of a six-month weird situation of being at a luncheon and there was pre-poured wine, and it affected me with the chemical craving for drunkenness. I may have time to explain that more, but when I came out of that, it was a very bizarre, scary six-month period of time for someone who had been for decades in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous, and yet having this chemical craving to be drunk—not a mental obsession, but a chemical craving—and it was terrifying to have this go on. And I took, once that seemed to phase away, I took the steps again with another written inventory because I had discovered also there were just some of these resentments and petty jealousy, natty, picking at you all the time kind of things in my heart and my mind that while I didn't do anything outside and cause harms, I couldn't get rid of them.
And the inventory process made that possible. So those, that's my experience with writing three inventories. As it reminds us in the Big Book, Liquor is but a symptom. I got to get down to causes and conditions, and what is like the backstory of the things that are constantly causing me some problems. And it starts off with resentments. It reminds us that they're fatal on the next page, that it says it very nicely sets out the direction for that first process, which is put them on paper.
To me, that is not go to the computer and do the checklist columns. Uh-huh, uh-huh, check, check, check. There is, there's no connection to checking off a pre-designed box for myself. There is a power and a magic that happens when it goes from my head in memory, through the shoulder, through the arm, through the hand, to the pen, to the paper. It goes into ownership. It goes into responsibility. It goes into awareness.
And it's amazing how this mountain up here becomes something a lot smaller on paper, because up here it's doing the lazy eight racetrack. And by getting it out, to me, it's like getting the poison out. And so it says, you know, who are you resentful at? Why are you resentful? What'd they do to you? What'd they do? And then, how's it affecting me? Now those are the three visual columns we get on page 65.
Now I know there's a fourth one coming up, right? So I can help them start by, let's make that list of who you hate, who you resent. And what did they do to you? Take their inventory. Let her rip. Just get all that poison out. Don't edit. Well, they didn't mean to. No. You leave any of those remnants in your gut, they have a chance to regit footing. So what is it that they did to you? And so then Ralph W.
[00:10:02]
does a beautiful job on Step Four. And when it gets to, what is it effect? What were my injuries? It isn't about the topical words of, well, it affected my self-esteem. Okay, well, let's go down another layer. How did it affect your self-esteem? And how did that affect your self-esteem? And where was that based on? I don't like to look at it as analysis, but in a way that's what it is. It's peeling back those layers.
Because if I'm staying topical, not much is going to change. There's not going to be that awareness I need for the remaining steps of change and amends. So let me just start with my own example. I'm going to give you one. It's the one resentment that always loomed for me, and this kind of covers a lot of stuff. So in writing down the list of names, we're going to start with my stepmother. That was the number one resentment.
Everybody's got one they just grind, you know, about. So that was stepmother. I do my column work a little bit differently. I do not mean it as disrespect. It just worked easier for me. I've heard some folks, they're very technical. Nineteen words, that's all you get to describe the resentment. That's all they used here. That's okay too. There's no rule, okay, is what I want you to understand. It's a very soft guideline.
So I write down these list of people on a piece of paper, and then each one of those names got their own piece of paper. So at the top is my column one, which is stepmother. Column two is, what did she do to me? And so my first resentment, which would be column two, perhaps we'd call it, the cause is the big… She slapped me in public. So that is what she did to me. Now there were other things, but I'm just going to take this one resentment as my example. Affects my—what did that affect?
Well, yes, it affected my self-esteem. How did it do that? Well, she did it in public, and so she embarrassed me in front of my friends. And it affected my security because I'm probably going to really get it when I get home, and I'm a little afraid of that because my dad won't be home, so I'm probably going to get a pretty good whooping on this. My ambitions—it affected my ambitions. I wanted to look good in front of those kids, and she's now humiliated me.
My personal relations—this is going to affect my relationship with her definitely, and now, you know, going down with that. It didn't really affect my sex relations. I'm not having sex with my stepmother, so, you know, it's affecting these. So this gives you a little pinpoint idea of how we take the topical and we go down just a little bit more on that layering. So I've got this all loud, and I've started to see how this has affected me, and peeling that back, and that my embarrassment in front of my friends has really affected me in their eyes as I see it, and also I'm afraid of what's going to be happening at home. So as it goes on, it explains to me the darkness of a deep resentment.
And again, resentment—it was helpful for me to understand that a definition, anyway, of resentment is to resend those hurt feelings over and over and over. That's what I was doing with those things. On page 66, it beautifully identifies about what the pain and the problem of deep resentment. Again, I'm going to read this in first person, the first complete paragraph on 66. It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility, which is being useless, and unhappiness.
To the precise extent that I permit these, do I squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, with me, whose hope is to maintain and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. I found that it is fatal. For when I harbor such feelings, I shut myself off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns, and I drink again, and with me, to drink is to die. And reminding me.
And reminding me, I've got to be free of anger for alcoholics.
[00:15:02]
These things are poison. I don't know, eight or ten years ago, I heard that beautiful expression, and resentment is like I'm drinking poison expecting you to die. I just about fell out of my chair thinking the truth of that. That would just crack me up. No kidding. That's exactly what it is. Because they're home sleeping just fine. I'm grinding, grinding, grinding. In the next paragraph, it reminds me that these resentments, the wrongdoing of others, fancied or real. Darling, there's no fancy about it.
If it's happening to me, it's real, right? There's no light fancy about it. The transition begins in the next paragraph when it says, Why don't maybe let's take a look at this a little differently. Look at the person a little differently. All right. It goes, I realized that the people who wronged me were perhaps spiritually sick, though I did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed me. Wow.
I never looked at those things as symptoms. If you harmed me, your entire being is gone, trash, dead, done. That's you, not a symptom, not a thing that disturbed me, but it was your entirement. And they, and like myself, were sick too. So I asked God, please show me the same tolerance, pity, and patience that I would cheerfully, love that word, grant a sick friend. When a person offended, I said to myself, Hmm.
This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God, save me from being angry. Thy will be done. And I avoid retaliation or argument. I wouldn't treat sick people that way. If I do, I destroy my chance of being helpful. I cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show me how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one, how to be able to be kind, publicly polite, publicly kind.
I don't have to trash him to one single person. I don't have to keep thinking about them and what they did to me. Can I just move on? And this began to shift how I looked at these people that I have the resentments toward. So I've identified the who, I've identified what they did, how it affected me, and for most of us, that's all we ever, that's the farthest we ever got in our mind or on paper, perhaps.
But the next paragraph is the game changer for me. Never did I see my participation in this. Now, some years ago, Ralph and I and Bob D., who you had last year, we were all on a program together, and we were given topics instead of sharing our story. And Ralph was doing Step Four, beautifully does it, and he gets to this part and he says, you know, I just basically say, And what's my part? But my friend Bob doesn't really like that, and I'm listening to that thinking, But that's what it says, right? No, there is no two words in there that says, What's my part? So I'm at the break, and I said, Bob, tell me about that. He said, Well, I know we say it a lot, and for a long time I did too, but I stopped saying that and tried to use the language that the book has, which is basically my mistakes, where am I to blame, what are my faults, my wrongs? Because, he said, I remember talking to a sponsee that had just come back from making amends. And he says to the sponsee, So how'd that go? He says, Well, not good.
Really, what happened? He said, Well, I made amends for my part. Do you hear the silent parentheses of the dot, dot, dot? But they did not make amends for their part. See, if I have a part, well, so do you. If we got a big pie, I'm looking at my 10%, but you got 90, you know? So if there's a part, then there's this other added expectation. But if I'm looking, and it reads real clear, we put out of our minds the wrongs others had done.
This isn't their inventory. This is my inventory. Ah. So let's go back to my single scenario. Column one, stepmother. I write out what she did to me.
[00:20:00]
She slapped me in public. How does it affect me? I describe those to you. Now, where was my wrong, my mistake? Where am I to blame, my fault? In front of those kids, I called her a bitch. Now, I almost forgot that part of the whole equation. I set this ball in motion. I launched that action. She was reactive, naturally so. She was humiliated in front of my friends, and I was trying to be a show-off, look bigger in front of them.
Ego is bouncing out, and it got smacked down, rightly so. That was inappropriate all the way, every way on my part, where I was wrong, at fault, etc. That was the area I did not see. So that is my example that I like to share about the resentments section. The second section we review is the fears. I don't remember having a lot of fears. That things, what I say to the gals today is, What keeps you up at night?
What's creating that upset stomach, that ulcer in your heart and your life? What are you looking over your shoulder about? Those are the things. Now, I'm not going to put down I'm afraid of snakes. I'm not crazy about them. I don't go where snakes are, and they don't keep me from living life. But what we get to do with that is open up the cellar door of things that we're afraid of so that the healing process can begin.
That's what I look at that as. And then moving into the sex conduct, if I wrote this book, this part of the chapter wouldn't be in here, okay? It just wouldn't. But guys wrote this. And I'm glad that it's in here because it has forced me to grow up and look at this, which maybe isn't as much for a lot of the women that I work with, the sex conduct, as it is as how am I in a relationship? How do I behave in that manner?
And for years, my inventory showed I was such a user and abuser of the relationship. It was so one-sided and selfish. And I really saw that when my marriage, first marriage, came to an end. As humiliated and embarrassed and what a chump I was, I saw myself and so fragile emotionally, I had to take my own inventory and saw that I brought nothing to the table but selfish and self-centeredness. And earlier when Step Three, we read, that is the root of our problems.
Yeah. And that if I was to ever, if God ever had a relationship He had in store for me, I would like to bring something way more to the table. And so by looking at the conduct, the paragraph on page 69 asks me to review my own conduct over the years past. Where have I been selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate? Whom have I hurt? Unjustifiably aroused jealousy, suspicion, bitterness. I got this all down on paper.
The beautiful question is, where was I at fault and what should I have done instead? That prompts me into solution. Okay, these are my mess-ups here and the things about me I don't like. So what could I do differently? Again, by listening to you share your experiences, I got ideas, but also in the next two paragraphs. So I asked the gals, and this is what I did. Let's look at those historical relationships.
What's the pattern you see? Some of those are you that, again, some of the therapeutic terms. Are you a passive-aggressive? Do you play the little girl all the time to get your way in your manipulative way? Are you a threatener? I'm out of here, only to come back. Or are you the drama queen that they have to run after and then, you know, you go from, you know, Screw you, to Oh, Daddy. You know, I mean, what is your behavior in a relationship that you've had so many,
[00:25:01]
or are so unhappy, or so immature and childish? Let's look at that. And then, what would your ideal be? If you could dream up Mr. Right for you, not your mother, not your sister, not your sponsor, what are you attracted to? Not, you know, the bad boy that you can tame. What are the characteristics you would like in a relationship? And that's what it says. In this way, by looking at the old way, I tried to shape a sane and sound idea for my future sex life, for my future relationships.
I subject each relation to the test: Is it selfish or not? What am I going to get out of this? I asked God to mold my ideals. For me, there's a pause, and then help me to live up to those. If I want someone who's financially secure, let's say, they don't have to be a good billionaire, but financially secure and responsible, I need to be financially secure and responsible. If I'm looking for someone to be honest and monogamous, I need to be honest and monogamous. So if I'm looking for that, am I that? And if there's time, I'll kind of tell you a little bit more about what that was, but with Kent and I.
In the next paragraph, it tells me whatever my ideal turns out to be, again, here's the action for myself. I must be willing to grow toward that. I must be willing to make amends where I've done harm, provided I don't bring about more harm doing so. In meditation, I ask God what I should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come if I want it. Now, that's just, again, a snapshot. One other category that I do, because I had it, is what are the harms you owe amends for that had nothing to do with any resentment, fear, or sex conduct?
I stole from employers who had done no harm to me at all, but I harmed them. I didn't know where to put them, so I put them, I just used that same paragraph. We reviewed our own conduct over the years past, and I asked myself those same questions. People who may or may not have looked at what I did as a hurt, but I hurt them. So I had like a fourth category, so resentments, fears, sex conduct, and harms done that don't fit anywhere else.
So that's a snapshot of my walking someone and my own experience of doing a fourth step. I'll turn it over to Ken. Thank you, Debbie. Just to reflect on what she just said and what I do, it's so fun that we do basically the same thing in a different way. So under step five, where it says, we revealed every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past, that's her other column for me. So I'm asking the people I work with to come up with those kind of things that don't fit into resentment, fear, or sex conduct.
I will then ask them, let's go every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past, and in that, I'm looking for the same thing Debbie's looking for. So even though we do it differently, we really do it the same. I've had two inventories. The first was in my first year of sobriety, and it was with a fellow that, you know, I was the one that had every single guide, including the Hazelden and the NA one, and man, I had them all.
And he said, Why don't we just stick to the Big Book? And I thought, Oh, that simplifies it. But I had a little bit of a problem that occurred before I got sober. I was married to this woman, and she accused me of molesting my own child, and I got— Hatred for that woman, you know. I mean, if you want to see what happened in my life, my alcoholism took off with that resentment. And it went just meteoric.
I mean, I was the one that was a primary parent. She didn't even know how to relate to children, and so I was, how could you possibly? These are, you know, anyway, it was like, so I can remember I'm in the car. So I can remember, I'm in the car following her, and I'm thinking, you
[00:30:01]
know, if I had a rifle, I could just pull off one shot and just drive away, right? And we'd solve this whole problem. But I really, I did. I came up with new and creative ways to get rid of her. And I would, like, play those over in my head over and over. I loved it. I mean, I can remember the baseball bat one and think, this was before, you know, GoPros, but that would have been perfect for me. So, I don't know if you get it, but when he asked me, did I have a resentment, I said, no, I'm a lover, not a fighter.
I don't have a resentment. He said, you might want to mention that ex-wife you've been talking about, you know. And so I did. I put her name down, and, you know, it was so strange because he wanted me to come up with, you know, where was I to blame? And I'm—he doesn't even have a high school education. I got degrees, right? I don't know how you describe falsely accused, you know, to your sponsor, but falsely accused.
Don't you get that? I don't have a part. And—but he's relentless. I mean, he keeps circling back to it, and he says, have you figured out yet? You know, and he would keep bringing it up week after week, and I'm thinking, you know, you don't hear what I've been saying. I don't have a part. And I'm sitting in a meeting. It was a speaker meeting, and there was this woman. Standing in front of the room telling her story.
And what she was saying was this: her husband put her on a pedestal and idolized her, thought the world revolved around her, and loved her to death and did anything and everything for her, up to the point where he found out that she had had an affair. And ever since then, he's accused her of all sorts of things. And I go, Oops. I'd kind of done that same thing. And when she found out I'd been unfaithful, she flipped and accused me.
And I'm thinking, Oh my God, this program actually works for— it actually fits, again, with who I am. Here's that condition where I didn't believe that I had any part in it, and then come to find out that, yes, probably I was the one that set the ball in motion. And so now, it was one of those key ingredients in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that connected me to, like, this is really what I need. So obviously I didn't have any fears or sex conducts. All I had was this overwhelming resentment.
I can actually remember going through exactly what it says to do in here, and I do just like Debbie, you know, to conclude that others were wrong was about as far as I ever got. No kidding. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong me, and I stayed sore. Sometimes the more we fought and tried to have my own way, the worse— yeah, absolutely. Jesus. So it's talking about Kent, and I try and do that same thing.
I try and get the fellows that I work with to do that same. But it gets over to, you know, we had to be free of these resentments, but how? And then it says, This was our course. Oh, you might well just try and do exactly what it says. And so, you know, I'm— My sponsor wants me to think of her like a sick friend, and I was like, no problem. You know, I can do that. You know, she is one sicko. You know, for anyone to accuse a man who loves his children like I do, I mean, that's just a sick, sick, sick person.
And then he wants me to say a prayer for her. Well, I had been listening to a bunch of tapes, and I heard other people come up with their own prayers, so I came up with a prayer that I really liked. It was like, I pray that flipping biddy get everything she deserves. It wasn't quite like that, but you get the, you know, I pray that she get everything she deserves. You know, I really felt like I was saying a prayer to satisfy the requirements. And, you know, come late afternoon, I think, did I say that prayer?
I'd say it again, you know. It says in the book, do it for two weeks, you know, and you'll be, pray for her, you know, for two weeks. I'm thinking, six weeks later, I'm still praying for her. I'm loving this, you know. This is like, all right, you know, I like this program. And all of a sudden one day I'm saying the prayer, and it's like this thought comes, well, what do you think she does deserve?
[00:35:06]
So it doesn't matter what your prayer, you know, the program's still going to work. And it made that, you know, entry into how do I actually do that? And then as I realized that I did have that part, there was a time that I could easily go to her and tell her that I was wrong and ask, what can I do? Of course, she said, Go tell the kids it was your fault. And I'm thinking, God, what's behind door number two?
I just want to… No, okay. So, but, you know, the weird part about the whole thing was that she did come back six years, six-plus years later and say to me that she was sorry for doing that, but she was afraid of losing her kids, and that's the way she was going to keep custody, and that's what happened. So, as far as, I didn't take another inventory until first of this year—first of last year. I got a new sponsor.
I'm 28 years sober, and he wants me to do an inventory. I'm thinking, I'm 28 years sober. I mean, I do an inventory every time I take somebody through the book. And the worst part of it was, he said that in September, and it wasn't until like February or March that we actually did it. And so that whole time I'm carrying this inventory, and I just don't advise that. So I tried not to do that because it just drove me nuts, you know, because you kept thinking of new and different things that I had to inventory, and it was just a, you know, a life-transforming experience for me.
Just completely—it was not what I expected. I went into it with one thought, and I had my list of things. And as I take somebody through the steps, I do it like Debbie does and have them, you know, write down the people and then what it is they did. I ask basically, you know, so how did that affect you? Column three. I want to know what did they do that affected you? How did that bother you? What did it do to you? And as they tell me what it is, I get them to write that down. Or I'll have them do column one, two, and three, and then try and describe to me those details.
Because as they describe to me, one of mine was I resented my dad because he never told me I did a decent job. You know, if I did this good of a job, he'd always tell me what I could have done better. And I resented my dad for that. And so what did that do to me? It made me feel like I could never succeed. I was a failure. I was a loser in every way. You know, he didn't love me, all the rest of that, you know.
But the— I lost the thought. To get to— sorry, I had another thought that went in there. It shouldn't have. In that description that I hear them tell me, I hear what it is that their column, fourth column. And it's like, for me, I could not tell why I hated my father so much until somebody says to me, Well, you expected him to be perfect. And I'm thinking, Oh. Well, yeah. I mean, doesn't everybody want their dad?
And so I know that I have never been able to clearly put down that fourth column without someone helping me see it clearly. It's as though I really believe that you can see me better than I can see me. And I can see, if you've ever been in a relationship, you know that if she would just do what you would tell her to do, she would be better off. Everybody would be better off. But she just won't, by God, do it, you know?
And she's thinking the same thing. But, but in sponsorship, I can actually hear what somebody's telling me. And if I can use their same words that they just described in column three, and I say that back to them in column four, it's like, Oh, I see. So I do that same. And so I didn't, in my fears and sex conduct, I just skipped right over those my first time through because it had to do all with that, you know, enormous resentment that I had.
But as time went on, I had to go back and look at, and if you are sponsoring others,
[00:40:04]
you're going to do the same kind of thing and take those people through. And it actually says it in the 12 and 12. It says, you know, something about, you know, until you've taken someone else through this, you really don't have the full benefit of Step Five. And I believe that taking someone through the steps, I learn way more. And so when you've taken a bunch of people through, you can't help but do the same thing as you go along. So it's been a great benefit.
So I'm now doing my fears column, and I'm thinking, fears? You know, I really have had a day without a resentment. I can actually pass through a whole entire day and not be, like, resentful at someone. But I have never made it through a day without fear of some sort. Someone, a thought coming in my head, the future, you know, what if, what if, what if, you know, all those kind of… So my body is built to create a constant low-grade level of fear that sometimes rises and falls.
I mean, I can remember there was a time in my life, I woke up in the morning, I'm thinking, Where is the fear meter? You know, pegged today, you know, but… That isn't my reality today. So when I'm taking someone through that part on the fear, if the spiritual tool for the resentment was pray for that person, and I learned how to pray for that person because it worked for me. So I have a tool, a spiritual tool that came from the resentments.
Well, in the fear section, it's like, well, Kent, you would not have any fears at all if you were a master of relations. If you had an infinite amount of money, you would not fear financial insecurity. If you had the answers to whatever it was, you would have—if you had all the answers, you'd have no fear. But I cannot have all the answers to what's the guy—I mean, I had my granddaughter in my car, and all of a sudden I'm afraid of every driver running into my car.
You know, where did that come from? You know, I got fears that I've never even known happened, because I can't control the whole world. So if I can't control everything, then I'm going to continue to have fears. And it says, well, self-will is not going to—self-will is not going to—let's just—but next page, page 68, we reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them on paper, though we didn't have any resentment.
Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Well, you know, self-reliance was pretty good, but it didn't go far enough. So what are we going to have to do? It says, well, perhaps there's a better way. And it says, just to the extent that I do as I think God would have me do. I'm not doing what God wants me to do, because I don't always know what that is. But if I'm doing what I think pleases God, then I've got something I can do today. Now, I may be wrong, but I'm sure a whole lot better off than if I'm not trying to do what pleases Him.
So if I'm doing what I think God wants me to do and humbly rely on Him, am I able to match the calamity of the moment with some degree of serenity? And I don't care what that calamity might be. My daughter calls me up and said, CPS just took her child. I'm thinking, there's a calamity, you know. What the fear is, well, what am I going to have to do, right? Life is full of fear. The only solution that I have is that I will commit to doing what I think God wants me to do.
So now I've got another spiritual tool, like praying for resentment. I've got, well, do what you think God wants you to do. Period. If you've got fear, that's what you've got on your plate. Do it. So I've got now tool number two. And under sex conduct, I hadn't had sex in years, so I didn't have any problems there when I got sober, incapable, I think. But when it says we all have sex problems, we all have sex problems.
Now, it is fun. Debbie and I got together 17, 18? Yes, 17. 17 years ago. She has all those details. Anyway, we got together 17… He has all those details. Anyway, we got together 17 years ago, and I said to Debbie that we were going to talk about sex, and Debbie said, No, we're not.
[00:45:00]
And I said, Well, yes, we are. And she said, Well, I'm not comfortable talking about it. I said, Well, that's okay. And she said, Well, I don't want to. I don't feel it's necessary. I said, Well, that's okay. We're still going to talk about it anyway. And, you know, it may not—what has come from that is a dialogue, years of dialogue on what's the difference between what men and—sure, women think about it as relationships, but men think about sex. I mean, come on. And also, you know, when I'm in this day and age, I have this wonderful way of bringing up a topic, and I ask the guys that I sponsor—well, there was this—there were 17 of my guys sitting there one night, and I just said, How many of you guys have been troubled by porn?
And 15 of the guys—internet porn—and 15 of the guys put their hand up and said they had. And I asked the other two, Well, how come? What about you two? And both of them had the same answer: We don't have a computer. So I know that our objective is to live a spiritual way of life. So I asked the guys that I sponsor to help me understand what part of porn is spiritual. And, you know, there's—it's like…
It opens that door, and we get to talk about those kind of things. And I do believe that there's things that need to be discussed. And, thank you. And opening those doors, for me, it was like… I want to see what I can… She just… You took more than that. I'm sober longer. See, only time I remember using that, okay. I don't know if you can tell, but we have a relationship because we both have a program called Alcoholics Anonymous that we have applied to not only our lives, but to our relationship. And it really has made it possible for me to, you know, allow her to be her and not have to change her.
And at the same time know, like, you know, if you… We did a workshop and it was on relations, and we got to talk about our relationship and the three legacies. And it really came down to, you know, until you get to that place where you admit that somewhere along the line, instead of it's like it's all your fault, you know, when we got here, or at least when I got here, everything was all your fault.
That I didn't have any… I didn't see my part in anything. But, you know, I was the victim of people who were doing this to me and that. My dad, my wife, my boss, everybody. It was if they wouldn't do that, I'd be better off. And so until you get to where you're doing step work and you find out, oh my God, there's my part that I'm going to have to address about these kind of situations, you're not going to be able to have a relationship because you're going to just be blaming each other forever. I mean, those people who get together in their first few months of sobriety have that—they have this old way of doing things. They don't have a program put in place.
I didn't even meet her until I was 12 years sober, thank God. She's sober longer than I am, let's just say that. But because of that, it made it possible for us to have a really decent relationship. So the idea of taking people through that four-step is, I think I've pretty well hit the spiritual tool that I look at in the sex relations—Debbie hit on that—is like, what is it that would be, if you are all wrapped up in porn for some of the guys, you know, what would be your ideal? What do you think is the right thing?
What would you like your life to look like? How would you like it to appear? And so I get them to write down what it is that they think would be some thing ideal for themselves. And the spiritual tool is what it says right at the bottom there. It says we must be willing to grow toward it. And I think that's a big part of it. I like to think of myself as a seeker.
[00:50:01]
You know, it says A, B, and C that, you know, if you were sought. I think of myself as a seeker, and my wife, she describes me more as a trier. But I like seeker better. But I do, you know, it's that same—that's what this is. It means that we're not going to solve the problem tonight. We're not going to take this step and have it resolved. What we're going to do is we're going to have a lifetime experience of continuing to grow toward it with God's help.
Thank you. Thanks, Ken. The nutshell of Step Four for each of us. When I finish reviewing with someone the walking through of Step Four, do you have any questions? We set a date for the Fifth Step. I don't call me when you get that done. That could be two years from now. We set a date, and part of that is because I want them to realize this is part of the momentum. It's no bigger or no less than any other step you've already taken or are going to take. It's part of the momentum.
And if it's a first-time inventory, I usually, we look at the calendar about three weeks out. If it's a cleanup inventory, we try to do it within two weeks. You know, someone who's been sober a while, maybe they're new to me, they want to write another inventory, kind of get current and cleaned up. On a first-time inventory, I'll usually allow about four hours. We may have to do part two, depends. On a cleanup inventory, I usually allow two hours.
Again, over the years, I've kind of learned how to, you know, kind of gauge something. So with that written inventory, again, we move into the Fifth Step. Again, we could talk about this all day long, but timing does not allow that. So we're going to move into the Fifth Step, which is Chapter Six, and it's titled Into Action. And darlin', fasten your seatbelt, because we're going to hit seven steps in this chapter, kaboom, kabang, and it's into action.
Beautifully titled. And the first launch is Step Five. There was an old-time saying that they used to say that if you don't take a fifth step, you'll probably drink a fifth. You know, if you don't take a fifth, you'll drink a fifth. And there's a lot of truth to that. But also, there's a lot of what we've seen, what I've seen, is common of steps one, two, and three, one, two, three, one, two, three.
And maybe they've stayed sober a long time on that alone. Maybe they're in service work and so forth. But what I've seen is there isn't that much change. There isn't that glow on the inside. There's still the same imagery, the tough guy, the bossy broad. There isn't a lot of change that happens. Now, I'm not the one to determine that for them, but I wanted to change. I was ready to change. I was ready to grow up in my life.
And so, with the fifth step, I look if I take ten people that are relapsers, and I'll ask them, Did you ever do a fourth step and a fifth step? Nine of them will more than likely say no. So you say, Well, again, it's a 12-step program, not a three-step program. But what about the one that did say they took an inventory and did a fifth step? Then the question becomes, So what didn't you uncover? What were you unwilling to talk about, unwilling to reveal?
What were the secrets that you said you're going to go to the grave on? These are the kinds of things that will not make solid, grounded recovery. Really possible. So we come to the fifth step. We have our date. Let's just take a side step here. What if somebody calls me up and says, I don't have it done. No problem. Let's just still come over at the designated time. Let's see what you got. They arrive, and I sit them in a room with a pad of paper and pen and say, I'll see you in an hour.
Finish. It's amazing what you can do. Clint H. used to say, Do you know how long it takes to write an inventory? Two weeks and 45 minutes. I'm like, I got that. I understand that. So now you have your opportunity to finish. Go ahead. Because I know that that story will perpetuate itself.
[00:55:04]
Then the car broke down. Then the dog got sick. I mean, it just perpetuates. We're going to stop the perpetuation. You're either in or you're not. What is it? So come on over anyway. We'll still go through it. What I'd like to do with them is I read chapter six all the way up through the first sentence of the second complete paragraph on 75, which is, We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past, and then we stop. Because the next sentence is like post-inventory taking. With that, I—we are in a quiet area. I've tried it a few different ways.
I need to focus. I want to give complete attention to what they are saying to me. I have a tablet, a pen. I am present. We have a box of Kleenex. That comes in handy. Have we done our bathroom business? We have something to drink. We're all ready to go. We're prepared. I tell them that there isn't anything that you're going to tell me today that I haven't done, felt, said myself, or heard. There are no new things. There's only seven deadly sins.
You're not going to have the eighth. You're not going to say anything that's going to shock me. One thing you're going to say to me and reveal that's going to make me say, Out of my house. And this is a safe, secure room. What says here, it stays here. And I love you now, and I will love you post whatever you say to me. That is not going to change. And I want to set up the safety environment for them, because I know there's some stuff that I shared that was very, very uncomfortable and shameful.
Even the sober inventories, more so than the drinking inventories, because I'm physically sober making these decisions and doing this behavior. Way more embarrassing, way more humiliating than the drunk stuff that I could say, Oh, I was drunk. Let me just add one thing, because I work with guys, some have been to prison and done some things, including myself, that I'd rather not be known. I tell them that anything they say to me will go no further than this room, with the exception— Of someone who is in imminent danger. If there's a contract out on your life and you tell me that, I will work with you to figure out how that gets dealt with in a realistic way so that, you know, your life is no longer in danger.
Or if they have told me they have molested children and they have a small child in their house, I'll help move them either out of my sponsorship or out of that house. So unless someone is in imminent danger, then nothing will leave that room. And then we say a prayer just from the heart. You know, we hold hands and we invite God into the room to help so-and-so be honest, help them to have the courage to rid themselves of the things that have been blocking them.
And whatever just comes to my head, and we just say a little prayer and invite God into the room. And then we begin, and I say, you know, I may or may not make notes. I kind of keep the names of the players so I know who they are. Who's your brother? What's your mother's name? Whatever it might be. And for me, I get to start to see the patterns for them, and I'll make some notes so that when we move into the remaining steps, I can see things that sometimes they can't see.
Maybe they don't have the ability at this time to see that fourth column and their involvement. I can help them. I can prompt them. Well, how do you feel about this? This is what I saw. Do you see this now? And again, enable them. There is no judgment on there. Again, somewhere we read, Who are we to judge? Another alcoholic, the things that we've done and the things I've said, my gosh, where would I get the qualifications to be an appropriate judge?
So this is how I do. So now let's say they come in and they've got a book about this thick, okay. The book about this thick. Okay. I know that the design of this inventory, starting with resentments, was smart. I don't know if it was just how that automatically flowed into their minds, but I
[01:00:03]
find that the resentments of our life—my life—was about two-thirds of the glass, and the rest was the fears and the sex conduct. I had to get that upper crap layer off in order to effectively do the other portions of the inventory. So let's get those resentments out. Yet I find that a two-inch thick binder mostly full of resentments is going to be a lot of repetition. Give me your top ones. You know, give me your top ten.
Let's work with those, because most of it's going to be repetitious. Kent has, give me your top three. Okay, I may start taking the top three, okay? But what we find is the pattern. I'll see the pattern will be repetition over and over the same thing. There is—we sort of talk about each of the resentments as we go along. And again, making it more comfortable. Maybe I'll share some of mine. There is no automatic standard that I do, but whatever that's going to—maybe I'll relate to something to help put them at ease.
Share a part of my own inventory, especially the example I gave you. I always give them so they know that, you know, I am not Snow White here. I am not this some angel that just came in. I've done a lot of crappy, ugly, disgusting, dirty things too. The good news is I don't live that way in habit for a very long time. But it doesn't mean that I didn't, especially in my sober life. I was no model member in those early years when it came to the boys.
Inventory's finished. Then we return to the book and we read once we've taken this step. And I remind them that my first inventory did not give me the relief that I often hear many, but the second one did, and the third one just made me comfortable at getting that crap, those petty little gnat bites out. But the second inventory, when I really knew I cleaned the bottom of the barrel, that absolutely, this is when I felt what often are called the fifth step promises.
And then we look at the very specific direction: go home, give yourself an hour, and reflect on steps one, two, three, four, and five. Have you left anything out? Because how I looked at that, especially when I took them at 6.9 years, is I felt like I was looking to the south when I started step one, and now I'm moving to the north. At step five, I'm dead west. I'm at 90 degrees here. From here on out, I want to be clean, am I?
Because now I'm really starting the climb up. I want to be clean. I want—did I skip anything? Am I withholding anything? Only I know. And yet, as a sponsor, I've listened to many inventories. I always end up with, Is there anything else? Anything else you didn't want to tell me or forgot that came up you didn't write down? There'll be sometimes, well, yeah, there was this one thing. Or my favorite was, I can still remember this, Nope, nope, nope.
Oh, okay. Now I know there's one more thing in there, but I can't drag it out of somebody, but I just sense it. I don't feel this well is empty yet. I said, Okay, well, if anything comes to mind, feel free to call me about it. Two days later, You know, there was something. Okay, what was it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, no problem. I'm so glad you shared that with me. You, I could see, feel over the phone, the load was off.
I could feel the spirit rising of freedom. This one big rock, and it was a sober thing that she was ashamed of, a sober thing, but didn't want to look bad in front of her sponsor. That's why it's important for me to talk about the ugly sober things I did, not just the drunk stuff and then I got perfect. No, no, no, no, no. So that's a little snapshot of my experience in listening to a fifth step. Thank you, Debbie.
When I do a fifth, you're right about the resentments. I usually look for those resentments that have
[01:05:00]
enough power to make them drink. I do the same thing in the fears. I don't go through every single fear. I mean, I can remember there was a fellow who came to me who claimed he had no resentments, but, you know, his way—he was a scared human being. I mean, anybody who walked up to him, you would know that this man is shut down, full of fear. Oftentimes they'll be the kind of person who aren't like shut down, but they're always silent. They never say anything because they're in critical judgment of others.
And really that has to do with fear. They're judging others so they won't think of themselves. So now I'm looking at a person who has fear, and they don't have resentments, and I'm okay. We're not going to focus on trying to pull resentments out of them. I want them to develop a program that treats their fear in a way that is successful with them. So I'm going to try and develop a spiritual tool, like when that happens, what do you think God would have you do during that time?
So I do the same with sex conduct. I mean, the guy could go on forever about his escapades, and I don't really care. I want to know what are the kind of things that are eating your lunch. I think of the different ways that I've heard fifth steps done. One is on page 73, but they have not learned enough of humility, fearlessness, and honesty in the sense we find it necessary until they have told someone all their life story. That scares me to death. I mean, if somebody's going to tell me their whole life story, I'm going to be there forever, it seems like.
So I'm not a big—I do ask people to tell me their drinking history, but I can actually see where knowing someone's entire life story can be of some benefit, especially when I'm first interviewing them. I'm trying to get their life story. But I really, so that I can tell whether I'd be able to work with that person. But I, what Debbie was just describing, what most people, I think, do is to review what's in the fourth step as a fifth step.
But I tend to go through the resentments and discuss it with them, just like we're going to dig out and find out what's in there. And I do the same with fears and sex conduct. So my going through the fourth step is a laborious task. I will not do more than just one of those at a time. Sometimes if there's a whole lot of fears or, you know, some real serious resentments that are harder for them to deal with, I might take more than one hour or one session with them to pull those out.
But when I get to the fifth step, I actually just do like Debbie, get up to page 75, that top part of it there, and we pocket our pride, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. And so I continue to repeat that to them. And I'm asking them, like Debbie has that other, the categories that don't fit into resentment, fear, and sex conduct, I'm trying to find out what is it about them that bothers them. And what I, for myself, it would be like I have this ability to present solutions to problems that you don't know yet exist. Which means we were having a Monday night meeting and we were going to put a sign out on the street because people couldn't tell where the church was.
They kept driving by and said, We can't find it. So it was voted in, we're going to put that sign out there. And I'm thinking the business meeting, so the sign's approved. And I had just been to the International and heard about public information, and I know that, you know, what we should do for public information is put on that sign, AA meets here, 7 p.m. Monday night, and everybody else thinks— Let's break anonymity.
We're not going to do that. Bye. And so my great idea was shot down because I had a solution to a problem that they didn't know existed. They were solving the problem. It died for lack of a second.