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What's being passed around is an outline for today and something that we're going to use today. I was informed since I didn't do it two weeks ago and I had to write myself a note, but I forgot to write myself a note this time. So I'm going to introduce myself first instead of near the end. By the way, this is not an AA meeting, okay? It's a workshop on AA. It's a workshop basically going to be of my opinion, but that opinion is drawn on experience in working the steps, in my study of the Big Book, good sponsorship, good home group, and the like. But nonetheless, it is my opinion. And so if it conflicts with anybody's knowledge, I'm going to ask you to do one thing: Don't throw it out right away. Please sit and meditate on what I say, because most of what I say, and I like to believe that all of what I'm going to say, is going to be reflected in the Big Book where you can find it, or in the experience of the founders. And I'll hopefully cite exactly what I mean as we go along. But my name is Chris Daell. I'm a recovered alcoholic, and welcome to everyone.

Before we start, I usually say the set-aside prayer. I say this prayer before I read any of the work that comes before me when I'm on my journey, and I'm on my journey hopefully 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The set-aside prayer: If we have a moment of silence. God, please help me set aside everything I think I know about myself, my disease, these steps, and especially you. I pray for an open mind with these things. Amen.

That must be the edited form that I don't have in my Big Book, and my apologies. We can screw up, right? Right away, I did give it out last week.

Okay. But I hope I'm more prepared than that. Over the last three weeks, we hit the first three steps and the first four steps. The first step being one of hopelessness—truly hopeless—that we're alcoholic. It's not that we can't drink; it's that we are alcoholic. And that's our first step in recovery. We finally take our inventory and see our alcoholism for what it is and what it's been doing to us. And how I see that I am hopeless to do anything alone away from my God, which is the natural awareness that one comes from when we take our first step inventory.

All our living out there has been to build up resistance, denial, and a defense against that knowledge that we are hopeless in the inability to not drink. That's why one of the things that we're told when we first come around the program—don't drink—is really inapplicable to the alcoholic because I lack the ability of choice. I cannot not drink. So therefore, telling me not to drink is really irrelevant. And that's why in the early days of AA they tried to get the prospect through the steps even before they went to their first meeting. They tried to acquaint them with the powerlessness, because once I start putting some time under my belt, the delusion comes back in that I'm doing it myself, even though I'm biting the bullet, white-knuckling it and whatnot. I don't have the ability to sustain sobriety if I identify myself as a real alcoholic.

My second step is the awareness that since I can't do it by myself, I need something more powerful than myself. All right? And to me, it's not the doorknob. Although in early sobriety, I thought it was a radiator. I was going to ask my wife at the time to handcuff me to the radiator because I feared drinking. Now a radiator would have been my higher power at that particular time. It does not work. It hasn't worked for me. That's my experience. That's the experience of the founders.

This third step—and most of this is an internal work, but hopefully work through with a sponsor—the awarenesses and the understanding come, and then I have the biggest decision in my life to make over that first inventory that I make. That first inventory that I'm going to take is me being an alcoholic. The answer to that inventory is that I need God in my life. My third action in the program is to see that and sit and take my third step and truly ask myself if I want to stop drinking for the rest of my life. And based on my first step experience, am I willing to turn my will and my life over and do anything? Am I willing to do anything to stay sober?

See, that "anything"—the underlying operative word—is "anything," because I'm going to kill my ego as I know it. I'm going to kill myself as I know it. All the things that I think I know, I have to be willing to throw out the window. Because everything I know only did one thing for me: Even though I knew a lot of quote-good things, and I don't really believe in good or bad things, they were things that were inappropriately used. And that's what we're going to go across today in steps six and seven—the things that I used to keep me out there. I was very effective at it. So I did a good job out there because I kept that awareness out of my consciousness and went down the road into alcoholism because I was a strong person, not a weak one. The weak ones die long before they get here. Okay?

You know, they say we're a bunch of weak people. I dare one of them to get up at 6:00 in the morning after getting home at 5, shower, and go to work. I dare them. That's not a weak person. Okay?

So what we put ourselves through is implicit. Although I come in here with the thought that I'm a weak person, there's the duality. There's the misconception and misperception of me, the alcoholic. That I can live in the same world, think of me in two different ways—that I'm weak—but yet prove that I'm strong in all those areas. Okay?

So the decision that I make is that I'm willing to go to any length and I'm going to turn my will and my life over to God. Now, my will is my thinking. My life is my actions. All right?

Now, that doesn't mean that all I'm going to do is go to AA meetings. Okay? I fulfill that obligation in my third step. The obligation in the third step is that I am willing to change all my thinking and think along the lines of what I perceive my God would do, and that I am going to live by that knowledge. That's a big, strong statement. It's not just "turn it over, turn it over." All right? That's a commitment. That's my third step. It's a commitment to God, to myself, to the human being that I am, to everybody in my life, and to the world at large that I'm going to change who I am. That's a strong, powerful, insightful, but yet awesome task to do, because I came in here self-centered. And hopefully I'll put that aside, just like the two-year-old that's totally self-centered—that when mama leaves the room, mama must have died and they're all alone. Okay? That's how I came in here: like that little baby. Okay? On a lot of levels, even though I could belly up to the bar, go back-to-back, in a fight. All right? That didn't prove my manhood. It just proved that I had certain male testosterone in me. Okay?

And today I walk the walk of following my truth, and I'm the man that I knew I was all along but couldn't do it because I was in denial of what I needed to do. And what I needed to do was surrender and accept that fact in my first three steps.

So the first three steps are the foundation steps, as we talked about. My first step is the foundation. The second step is the cornerstone. And my third step is the keystone. It holds the arch that I'm going to walk through to freedom.

We went over the fourth step last week. The fourth step is going to identify a preponderance of, or the grosser handicaps of, what I brought into the program. And what I brought into the program was a lot of fear, rage, anger, resentment. And that kept me out. And also the guilt of the harms that I did and I never addressed them. That's what we looked at last week in our fourth step. All right?

And as I'm going to be redundant here and repeat what I said, the basic thing is to get it done. All right? You bring into it honest, open, and willing. And no matter if you do it that way and you write it down, or you sit with a sponsor and they write it down, you come into the fifth step with a full or at least an understanding of who you are and what you brought into the program. That is sufficient for your fourth step. It does not have to be perfect, because if it's going to be perfect, I'll never get around to completing it. And then I don't have to change. All right? Because I am a passive-aggressive, and I have perfected my resistance to change. That's who I am. And this is the awareness that it's going to come about.

So when I commit it to paper or I finally own it to another human being—if I can't write, I'm illiterate. And there's been people that come in here that are truly illiterate and can't write. We help them with that. That's what we're about. We're to be of service to people and a willingness to be of service to people, which means that I have to do away with my self-centeredness. And if I can't understand what makes me self-centered and display those character traits in my life, I am not going to understand what I need to change.

These middle steps, five through nine—contrary to some other beliefs in AA, they say that we do the steps over and over again. Well, these middle steps, as I understand them to be, is to clear up the wreckage of the past in a process. All right? And I'll reaffirm that especially when we get into the tenth step. Okay? But I'll give you a little peek. The tenth step says our new stuff that we become aware of. So it's not about repeating the old stuff. Okay?

That doesn't mean if you think it's possible, you don't sit down and write. That's not what that means. What it means is that these middle steps are what I'm going to clear up to become new. I like to liken it to a forge. All right? I am going to put me in that forge and I'm going to create steel of sobriety. All right? That means I have to burn my way into that steel of sobriety. But I don't temper it until I get to the tenth step. I've already made the steel because I've changed from all those iron nuggets and whatnot that they put into that forge, and I come out with a beam of steel. And then for the rest of my life I'm going to hammer it and form it into a life of service. That's what my tenth, eleventh, and twelfth steps are for, and we'll get into that next week. All right?

So these middle steps are all those veterans out there—it's akin to basic training and AIT. You don't get into the stuff of freewheeling in that tank until you go through basic and AIT. So it's the same thing. These middle steps are a basic change of character from civilian life into where we're going. All right? Or from a drunk life into a new life. This is what we're going to form. These are what those middle steps are, and that's how I've come to understand them.

And then we maintain what we have and enhance it, polish it, and hone it in our tenth, eleventh, and twelfth steps because we continue to take an inventory and so on. Okay?

So we're up to the fifth step, and that starts on page 72. And if you haven't guessed already, I'm an advocate of the Little Red Book. The Little Red Book, for those that haven't been here before, is a publication started in pamphlet form in the forties, made as far as I can determine in the mid-fifties into a book, and then the last date that I have on it was apparently changed in the seventies. But the book was called in pamphlet form "The Interpretation" or "The Orthodox Interpretation of the 12 Steps."

And as I went over in the first step, they took their program seriously. They had fun. They didn't take themselves seriously, but they took their program seriously. I just want to give you a little indication of what they thought about step five.

"If we have been honest and thorough with our personal inventory, we have listed and analyzed our character defects, that have recorded the harm we have caused others, we have a list of our greater handicaps and imperfections and also the names of people who have suffered as a result of our unmanageable lives and insane behavior. The exact nature of our wrongs is now admitted to God on ourselves and then talked over with a third person. That's our fifth step. Alcoholic rationalization BS at this honest procedure, discounting the need of admitting anything to another human being."

So they also understood the resistance. All right. But anytime we see resistance in our program, or anytime I see resistance in my program, what I have to do is go back to my first step. And I see that I told myself in my first step that I was willing to go to any lengths. So if I'm willing to go to any lengths, resistance be damned. The speed bump of life be damned. I put it aside and I pocket my pride.

I happened to have, when I did my fifth step, I had already talked to my sponsor. My sponsor was living up in Montreal at the time. I said, "I'm ready to do it." And he starts to go into the thing about the selection of it. There's no selection. Walter got my fifth step. I drove up to Montreal. It wasn't because I was hiding anything. One of the things that I pinned out is that I'm loyal. He took me through the steps—the first three and the fourth. He's going to get my fifth. To me, it was that simple, you know?

But the selection process shouldn't be too much more difficult than that. You need somebody that understands where you're coming from, even if you have to teach them where you're coming from. And it's perfectly okay to teach somebody what you're about, because you need to acquaint them, and hopefully somebody that is spiritually based. So if you feel, after meditation, that you need to go to a priest, you go to a priest. That's what we do in the program. We take inventory, we see the solution, we go take it. That's all our program is about.

So if you feel, whatever—whoever it is that you take your fifth step or give your fifth step—you don't take it; you give it. And hopefully the benefit will start coming back. Okay?

On 722, "This act in actual practice we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient. Many of us thought necessary to go much further. We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons for it."

Okay? There's the problem. And as we've said before, once we come up with a problem in the Big Book, they're going to give us the solution. And here's the solution: "If we skip this step, this vital step, we may not overcome drinking." Okay? It's simple. All right? Remember your first step promise that you're willing to go to any length to get sober. All right?

On the top of page 73, not the first paragraph, but the top paragraph—the continuation from the page before: "Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell. We think the reason that they never completed their housecleaning, and this is going to be a part and parcel of the completion of our housekeeping. They took inventory, all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. What's that? Shame. Fear."

That's what we're supposed to identify in our thing. "They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear. They only thought they had humbled themselves, but they had not learned enough humility, fearlessness, and honesty."

And humble, humility, fearless, and honesty really is the prod that willingness to go to any length overcomes. And in this sentence, "We find it necessary until someone they told someone else all their life story. And another way is saying all their truth," because that's what moral is. A moral inventory is the truth about me. All right? You don't go into a store and take inventory in the store and say you have three shelves full of stuff when there's nothing on the shelves. And conversely, you don't say that there's only one thing on the shelf when there's ten things on the shelf. All it is is the truth.

And there is nothing that we put down on that fourth step that we didn't know already. It's just that we didn't see it all at once. And that's what it's about.

And they give an example. "He pushes these memories and that's on 732. Far outside himself. Hope they will never see the day of light. He is under constant fear and tension. That makes for more drinking."

Now there is a caveat in there, and again, going to the point of perfection: We deny things so many times and so often that we become immune to what the truth is. So we're not going to know it at times at this point in our sobriety. It's going to take maybe one, ten, twenty, 110 steps. Okay?

And one of the things that I've been very fortunate enough—I do a lot of twelfth stepping—is that during those twelfth steps, I start remembering when the denial, the resistance, and son of a gun, you know, that's better than an inventory sometimes, you know?

At the bottom 73, "We must—here's an operative word—must entirely honest be entirely honest with somebody. If we expect to live long or happily in this world, rightly and naturally, we think well before the choice of the person or persons with whom we should take this intimate and confidential step," because that's what it is. All right?

So yes, we need to be cautious, but we don't need to be neurotic where we're resistant to any change. Okay?

And there's a rule on the last sentence in 741: "The rule is we must be hard on ourselves but always considerate of others."

Well, this is our inventory. Okay? It's not what I did because of. All right? And when we own it to this other person, we stick to our own responsibilities, not anybody else's.

Page 751: "When we find that person, when we decide is who to hear the story, we waste no time."

Again, it's time-effective. There's the direction: We waste no time.

752 gives us the fifth step promises. "We hear the other promises almost every time we go to an AA meeting. Once we have taken a step withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace with an ease. Our fears fall from us. We feel the nearness of our creator. We may have certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience."

And here's where the spiritual experience comes from—not the relief of not drinking, but here's where the spiritual experience truly begins. "The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared."

Okay? We don't not drink. The drink problem disappears. "We feel we are on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe." All right?

And truly, you will or I had felt that, and the people that I have, the sense of relief, the sense of connectedness comes from being honest. There's the operative word. And there's the result. And there's the promises that the fifth step gives us, and it gives us directions upon when we complete it.

In the next paragraph, page 753: "We thank God for, and that second line, third line down, we thank God from the bottom of our hearts that we know him better. Taking this book down from our shelf, we turn the page which contains the twelve steps, carefully reading the first five proposals we ask."

Okay? And anytime you ask, the natural thing is that's a prayer. All right? When you see the word "ask" in the Big Book, that's the prayer.

"Rereading the first five proposals, and proposals are principles and principles are steps, so you go back to page 58 and you look at all of them and you ask, 'Have we omitted anything? For we are building an arch.'" There's another metaphor for what we're doing through which we shall walk a free man at last.

"We ask ourselves, are the stones properly placed? Those are the steps. The cement is the action we have done, and the mortar is made out of the, is what's going to hold the bricks together. And that's our God, the power of God. Okay? Is all that put together? Okay?"

Again, what is it doing? It's asking us to do an inventory of what we just did, which is an inventory and the sharing of our inventory. All right?

So old dummy here says, "My goodness, they're asking me to do inventory." And that's what we do. We do inventory. We constantly look at ourselves.

If you haven't felt any one of these things and felt relief, okay—when I left my sponsor, I was up in Montreal. I didn't have a shelf to pull it down. I was very anal, you know? Should I put it up on a shelf and take it down? So I followed the directions. Okay? But with that honesty, okay, I—it sounds silly now, but at the time—should I look for a shelf? Did not seem so silly. All right?

And I went to one of the finer restaurants up in Montreal and I sat down and had myself a steak while I reviewed the book and I reviewed my fourth step to see if, you know, so I had to give myself some pleasure. So maybe that's where I had my spiritual experience. I don't. All right?

When we're satisfied with that, we come to six. Okay? Step six and step seven. And that's on page 76. Okay? Now I gave out a handout. If you look on the column side, you won't find that in the Big Book. All right? But this is a compilation of a bunch that I picked up. I've mixed and matched. But basically, this is what steps six and seven are about.

Remember, I gave you the basic training of the forge that's going to fire the steel. All right? And this is what we do. We start looking at those things. Number one: aggressive. Why am I aggressive? Okay? I have identified that because it's on my fear list. That's my defense against you for coming in and rattling my cage. I'm going to keep you away with aggression. All right?

Some people think it's my New York attitude. No, it's my aggression. You know? I've tempered it. Trust me. And if you don't, anyway, that's what I mean. We can take ourselves—we don't have to take ourselves serious. I do take my program serious, and I do try to bring into my life of love and service. And I'll code love and tolerance. I'm not perfect at it by any means, but that's what the program is asking me to do.

And how am I going to identify the specific things? And this is important for me to identify the specific things that I use to keep the sunlight of the spirit out of my life. So all those things on the left column—the flaws or the character defects—these are the things we're going to give to God. Very simple. Just like we gave our drink problem to God, we're going to give these to God. All right?

Now, there's a vacuum created. And the vacuum is that I need to replace it with something. Nice and simple, isn't it? The program ain't for rocket science, you know? I'm going to apply those things in my life.

So if I can see myself as aggressive, belligerent, I'm going to work on my good-naturedness and my gentle forgiving. Okay?

Now, I know it's not edited too well because if you look down here, under resentful on the other side is bitter and hateful. Okay? But there is the last one: forgiving. All right? So when I edited, I split them up, but I didn't split them up perfectly. So but I'm sure if you sit in meditation, you'll see that resentful, bitter, and hateful should be on the left column. Okay?

Just—I'm sure, unless, as we identified in step one, that the barriers to success was brain damage, one of them was brain damage. You know? So unless there's brain damage, I'm pretty sure we will.

Now, they banter back and forth about character defects and character shortcomings. What's this? Bill said he needed to make up another one, and this and that, and all—I don't know what's true. I've asked, and so I just put it down as simple as this: Shortcomings are things that I am not doing that I need to do. And that's on the back of that page. And defects are those things that I'm doing that I need to stop. Quite simple.

Now, if I'm being aggressive, that's a defect. If I'm procrastinating, that's a shortcoming. Okay? You see something that I'm not doing that I should be doing. I'm being resistant. I'm dragging my feet. That's a shortcoming. I'm not doing something. When I'm doing something that keeps the sunlight of the spirit out, all right?

And the reason for this list is not to say, "Oh my goodness, what a long list I have." All right? What it is is to be able to specifically identify, because just putting fears down and understanding that I am fearful without identifying the source or a label to it at another level for me has been insufficient. I need to get down to causes and conditions—how I truly keep people away, keep God away from my life, how I've acted in my past and with what, and what tools, because actually, character traits are tools. And character traits are those that keep the sunlight of the spirit away from me and those that open me up to receiving that. All right?

So that's why it's somewhat of an endless list. And then I gave the caveat at the end: "Any other dysfunctional ways of acting, feeling, or thinking which cause others or me pain."

Because me being the creative rationalization person that I am, I'll come up with one that's not on the liability list and say, "Oh, I can keep that one." All right?

Also, when people come in, or when I came in, there was a certain element. Even though I had slight hubris and an ego, I also was suffering low self-esteem. All right? Now, my low self-esteem told me that I didn't have many assets. So I needed those character defects to help me through life.

Well, see, in my prayer and meditation, I come up with the fact that God has made me perfect. God has made me whole. So there is nothing that I lack to overcome the deficiencies that I wish to give my God in my sixth and seventh steps. I am a perfect human being, and I give God my negative, like I gave God my drinking problem. And when I work fervently at that, these go away.

When I bring in the lack of trust of my God, when I bring into my life my fears and my resentments, these come back to me. So these are the principles that I'm going to start to develop today, to be able to practice in my twelfth step, the third part of my twelfth step. These are the principles of working and reworking who I am. This is where the bulk of the work comes.

Even though I'm doing away with what I brought in from the past, these things are going to crop up, and that's where my maintenance steps will come in, and we will see that next week.

So on page 76, the beginning, because it is the shortest of the steps, all right? You have two steps on one page. And me, the drunk, will tell you, "Hey, don't have to worry about it. All right? It's just a short two paragraph, three paragraphs. What do I need to do it for?"

In very real actuality, it is the bulk of what we do. We're changing a lifetime of behavior. We're changing our basic makeup. And remember, a complete conversion of thought, as we saw in the earlier chapters under the first step, that's what I need to do to turn around and recreate the self. And the reason I need to recreate myself is because of who I became because of my disease. And I, again, I am willing to do anything and everything to get well, bar nothing.

Step six, right at the top, and it starts off: "When we can answer to our satisfaction, and that is when we sit and meditate over the first five proposals, and when I can answer to the satisfaction of the questions in the previous paragraph, then we look at step six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove all these things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can he now take them all, everyone? If we still cling to something, we will not let go. We ask God to help us become willing."

So they already see, and the founders were intuitive, that my aggression—in the case of it being on the first one on the list—I was not truly willing to let go of that for a while. Intellectually, I said, "Okay, I'm willing to be a Milquetoast." Okay? But between the preamble and the hour of Father, I still got to live out there in that real world, and these turkeys don't know nothing about. All right?

Started being nice to the neighbors. Now, that was contradictory, you know? To who I'd been. I started saying hello to the paperboy. You know? These are the things I do step by step, because I prayed for the willingness to do it. I didn't use my alcohol denial to say, "Screw that. I know what I need to do: just not drink and go to meetings."

Because see, it's about a life-transforming way of life, not to remain the same. Because how many times do you hear somebody say, "I want to change. I want to change"? And they're not willing to change. No change, no change. It's as simple as that. All right?

So we ask God to help us to become willing. And it's going to show, you know? It's like sometimes, you know? I don't like to say I'm sorry. You know? I'm so, whatever. You know? I get up there and I swallow my pride, because that's what my pride is—because I don't want you to think I'm something that I don't even know who I am.

But when we get to learn who I am, I get more comfortable with who I am, and I have trust in my God. And it's not that I don't care what you think of me, okay? Because I do. I ask people to take my inventory. Sometimes I make a mistake at that. All right? You know? They tell me what I don't want to hear. You? I only want you to tell me the good stuff or the stuff I've already dealt with that I don't care about. That's the one that I'm currently… Okay? When I'm ready, I say something like this. And this is actually the seventh step prayer. All right?

So I'm becoming willing to let go of my shortcomings. And this is where I'm going to give my God my defect.

And if we can all say it together: "My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellow. Grant me strength to go out from here to do your will. Amen."

We have then completed step seven. Okay? The step is a step. That doesn't mean the work is completed.

I say the seven-step prayer with my loved ones a lot, and because we know each other so well and we know ourselves so well, we go, "I pray that you now remove from me every single defect," because I know myself. I am reluctant on everything. You know? There are some things that I have prided myself into, but I need to reinforce that everything. The essence of it is to know. And that's what the list is for—to know what you're turning over.

So if you stick that list in this page as we go on, if you see a character trait that you seem to be exhibiting and that you know that you need to do something with, identify it before you give it away, because it's important. Or I found it to be very important.

Now, this brings us to step eight and nine. Funny how it follows right in after that. And we're going to repair, restore, reparate, compensate. That's what we're going to do to the people that we've harmed.

On your handout, they take some basic categories, and they're going to be in here, but I just pulled them out of the reading. We've already made the list. There's no real separate list, but you're going to break down the list a little bit different, at least to understand it a little bit more, because those are your character traits. And the basic categories of the list of those that we've harmed are those we hate or resent, because we usually have done something to them. Those we owe monetary reparations to. Those which were the incidences of some criminal or crime behavior that I might have caused. And domestic—and domestic includes friends, family, sisters, brothers, and whatnot. Society as a whole. All right? And those are the four categories they usually fall under. All right?

Now, our eighth step says to become willing. All right? And again, as with our—and I don't mean to give anybody a back door—we're not going to be totally willing.

As I said last week or the week before, when I came in with the first three steps, I fully believed under my belt when I came into my first AA meeting, because I was twelfth-stepped in a way that after I finished, I was willing to go to any lengths, including go to these meetings, which I had no idea about. And I was willing to rely on a higher power to deal with my drinking, only because I could handle the rest. But I was willing to go