AA Speakers – Joe & Charlie – “Working the 4th Step”
AA speaker tape on Step 4: Joe & Charlie break down resentment inventory using Big Book comparisons. Learn how to identify, list, and remove resentments blocking your spiritual connection.
Joe and Charlie, two foundational voices in AA recovery education, walk through Step 4 in this classic AA speaker tape—the resentment inventory that forms the cornerstone of spiritual recovery. They use simple, direct language and a business inventory analogy to show how to identify and write down the resentments that block you from God’s thinking, then walk you through the five columns of the Big Book’s inventory method and the prayer process to remove them.
Joe & Charlie explain Step 4 using the Big Book’s business inventory comparison: just as a business takes stock to remove damaged goods, the alcoholic takes a personal inventory to remove resentments, fears, and guilt that block spiritual connection. They detail the five-column inventory method from page 65—listing resentments, their causes, what part of self was affected, what you did to contribute, and your character defects—showing how most resentments stem from threats to basic instincts (self-esteem, security, sex, personal relationships). The AA speakers emphasize that resentments must be removed through this honest process and prayer, or they will kill the alcoholic by driving them back to drinking.
Episode Summary
This AA speaker tape is a masterclass in Step 4 work, delivered by Joe and Charlie with the clarity and practical application they’re known for. They open with a critical point: the Big Book says Step 4 must follow Step 3 “at once,” yet alcoholics commonly procrastinate—sometimes for months or years. Joe and Charlie ask the hard question: how many people have been killed by the advice to wait six months or two years before tackling resentments? Every day without the inventory is another day filled with shame, fear, guilt, and the mental obsession that leads back to drinking.
The bulk of the talk is spent demystifying the inventory process itself. For decades, AA members have been confused about how to take Step 4, Joe and Charlie explain, because they’ve created complicated guides and checklists that contradict the Big Book’s simple instructions. They introduce their core analogy: taking a personal inventory is exactly like a business owner taking stock. A business that doesn’t inventory regularly loses money—it can’t see what’s damaged, what’s unsellable, what’s taking up valuable space. The same principle applies to the alcoholic’s mind: if you don’t inventory your resentments, fears, and shame, you’ll go broke spiritually and emotionally—and for the alcoholic, going broke means drinking again.
They walk through the Big Book’s exact language on page 63-67, showing how Bill Wilson uses parallel language to teach the same concept twice with different words. Bill compares a commercial inventory (fact-finding, fact-facing, discovering truth about stock in trade, disclosing damaged goods) directly to a moral inventory of the self (searching, fearless, moral/truthful, looking at ourselves).
The five-column inventory method becomes the framework. Column one: list the people, institutions, or principles you resent. Joe shares that when he first listed his resentments, he thought he had none—until he started writing and ended up with 152 names on multiple pages. Column two: write the cause—why are you resentful at each person? Keep it simple: four or five words describing what they did. Column three: what part of self was affected? Joe and Charlie introduce the basic instincts of life—self-esteem, security (material and emotional), sex, and personal/social relationships—and show how every resentment stems from a threat to one of these. Here’s where a major insight emerges: anger doesn’t come from what people do; it comes from a threat to one of these basic instincts. If your instincts are under control and your relationship with God is right, you can face almost anything without anger. But if your instincts are out of whack and you’re separated from God, the smallest threat triggers rage.
Columns four and five shift the focus inward. Column four asks: what did *you* do to set this in motion? Joe shares a powerful example: he resented his wife Barbara for filing for divorce three times, but when he honestly looked at column four, he saw that he’d been unfaithful, dishonest, and wasting her money. By distorting that resentment in his head over and over, he’d transferred all the blame to her and made himself look innocent. Column five identifies which character defects—selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking, fear, inconsideration—drove your actions or kept you holding the resentment.
The second half of the talk addresses the deepest part of Step 4: removing resentments through prayer. Joe and Charlie share the story from page 551 of the Big Book about a woman with a 25-year-old resentment against her mother. She tried the inventory, but this one wouldn’t budge. She prayed, following instructions to ask God to give the person she resented everything she wanted for herself—peace of mind, happiness, serenity. At first she didn’t mean it. But after praying for two to three weeks, something shifted. One morning she noticed spring beauty she hadn’t seen in years. The resentment hadn’t disappeared because the person changed; it disappeared because her thoughts and feelings changed. Love replaced hatred.
Joe and Charlie stress repeatedly that the goal isn’t to condone what others did or to become friends with them. Prayer for a resentment is a tool of self-liberation. When you resent someone, they control your thinking. Dead people in graveyards have been pulling at them for years through resentments, they say. Praying for them is how you set yourself free and give power back to God instead of your enemies.
They address the objection many bring: what about justified resentments? What if someone truly hurt you and you did nothing to cause it? A justified resentment blocks you from God just as much as an unjustified one. Staying connected to a resentment—even a righteous one—means letting that person or institution control your thinking, your decisions, your life. The woman in the Big Book used her resentment against her mother to justify her lack of education, failed marriages, and alcoholism. But Mama didn’t cause her to drink; she drank whiskey and drank enough to become alcoholic. Resentments are a way to avoid responsibility for your own life today.
What emerges from this talk is a portrait of recovery as a shift from blaming the world to taking ownership—not of what happened to you, but of how you think and feel about it now. Resentment is the number one offender for alcoholics, they repeat, and it’s infinitely grave because it cuts you off from God. Without God’s thinking directing your mind, the obsession returns and you drink. But when you remove resentments through the honest inventory and prayer, what floods in is God’s thinking: love, patience, tolerance, compassion, goodwill. You don’t have to go to other programs or read other books to find these qualities. They’re already in you, blocked by resentments. Remove the blockage, and they emerge naturally.
Notable Quotes
The only difference between drinking and not drinking is we weren’t taking a drink, but we were having the cup of coffee, turning on the resentment replay machine, running it for an hour. We have spent literally thousands and thousands of hours in resentments, and as far as I can tell they’ve never done me any good whatsoever.
It takes a while for me to understand finally I did, and she I said well is there any solutions for these and she said yes there is. All that anger you intended to use on them, you’re turning it on yourself and making yourself sick and blaming it on them.
When you got a good resentment churning around in your head, we don’t feel good, we’re blocked off from God, and after a while the mind wanting to feel better begins to think about taking a drink.
A justified resentment blocks you off from God just like an unjustified resentment does. When you got a justified resentment turning around in your head, then whoever or whatever you’re resenting is controlling your thinking.
If they’re controlling your thinking, they’re controlling your decisions, they’re controlling your life for you. And you have given them power to actually kill you because you’ve given them power to cause you to get drunk again.
The real question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to continue to let them kill us, or are we going to get rid of that jazz?
Big Book Study
Resentments
Forgiveness
Step 3 – Surrender
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Big Book Study
- Resentments
- Forgiveness
- Step 3 – Surrender
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
welcome to sober Sunrise a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience strength and Hope from around the world we bring you several new speakers weekly so be sure to subscribe whether you join us in the morning or at night there’s nothing better than a sober Sunrise we hope that you enjoy today’s speaker let’s go to the bottom of page uh 63 we’ve made our decision we’ve uttered our prayer and the book says next we launched out on a course of vigorous action the first step of which is a personal house cleaning which many of us had never attempted though our decision step three was a vital and crucial step it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by strous effort to face and to be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us our liquor was but a symptom so we had to get down to causes and conditions now we always like to stop here for just a moment and look at the time element between step three and step four now we always hear people asking the question how long should you wait after you do step three until you start on step four and we hear all kind of answers sometimes they’ll say well 30 days and maybe 90 days or maybe 6 months uh we heard a professional in the field one time counseling people to wait a minimum of 2 years and our question back to that person was how many people have you killed with that statement you see we’re trying to find a way to live where we not only can be sober but we can have a little peace of mind Serenity and happiness and every day that we put off and procrastinate step four is a day that we’re still filled with resentments a day that we’re still filled with shame and fear and guilt and remorse another day that we don’t feel good and we really don’t know how many days we could go without our mind beginning to think about taking a drink and next thing you know we’ve convinced oursel that it’s okay to drink and we end up drunk all over again I don’t know how many days I could go under those conditions and frankly I’m not very interested in finding out our book tells us when we should take step forward four step three will have little permanent effect unless at once followed by this strous effort which is step four and you know that does make sense doesn’t it as far back as I can remember four has always followed immediately after three now knowing that and knowing we might get drunk if we don’t get on with step four why would we still tend to procrastinate eight and I think two or three reasons behind it number one is fear some of we older members tend to play King off of the mountain with his step and we tell the newcomer how tough it is by God just wait till you get to step three four blah blah blah blah we just literally scare them to death let us be the first to say today that if we take step four according to the big book Alcoholics Anonymous there is nothing whatsoever ever to be afraid of and I think we’re all going to see that in just a little bit okay knowing there’s nothing to be afraid of then why would we still tend to procrastinate and I think probably one of the greatest reasons is simply confusion for years we could not see how to do step four according to the big book and the reason we couldn’t see it is the instructions are there but they are so simple that we alcohol holics with our Keen intellectual alcoholic Minds looking for something more complicated Overlook the Simplicity of step four so in our desperation we read over in step five something about sharing all your life story and we said oh that’s what they wanted us to do in step four is write our life story so we could share it in step five that’s what I did in the beginning now my my story might not have been important to others but it must have been to me there was 92 pages in it I took it to another poor suffering human being and asked them to read it and they did and he said not very pretty is it and I said no it isn’t he said you’ll never have to be that way again he threw it in a wastepaper basket and I learned nothing from my life story to contribute to my alcoholism certainly nothing knew cuz everything I wrote down I already knew it so nothing new came out of it and today I realize that 95% of my life story really doesn’t have anything to do with my alcoholism any have the fact that I was born in 1929 I don’t think it’s got a thing to do with my alcoholism it may have had something to do with somebody else’s alcoholism but not mine the fact that I graduated from high school at age 17 went immediately into the service I don’t think it’s got a thing to do with my alcoholism the fact that I was married at age 21 I don’t think it’s got anything to do with it but I tell you what it did do the 95% that had nothing to do with it very effectively covered up the 5% that did and I learned nothing from my life story to contribute to my alcoholism so in our desperation again somebody in Minneapolis Minnesota wrote a four-step inventory guide we took the Minneapolis guide combined it with a big and got more confused yet somebody in Dallas Texas wrote a four-step inventory guide we took the Dallas guide combined it with a Minneapolis guide combined it with a big book and got more confused yet have no idea how many are floating around today we saw one that had 20 pages in it I’ll guarantee you if you wasn’t crazy as hell when you took it you would be when you were through with it it was one of those all the time the instructions have been here we just never could see them before because we didn’t understand how Bill writes and I think today if we can just kind of set back and relax look at a few simple ideas we’re going to see how easy this thing really is there’s two things we got to remember first he loved to use comparisons talking about one thing that we already know to teach us something new also he did not like to repeat himself using the same words over and over so he would tell us something then turn around tell it again but use different words the second time and bearing those two thoughts in mind I think we can see how simple this thing really is he starts out by saying therefore we started upon a personal inventory this was step four immediately he jumps into business he says a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke and I think his first comparison is this you know if you had a business and I don’t care what it is selling ladies purses men’s watches bicycles or whatever if you didn’t an inventory once in a while and by the way inventory is defined as a written list of items if you didn’t go in there and make a list of the things that are in there you wouldn’t know what’s been stolen that you didn’t get paid for if you didn’t inventory once in a while you wouldn’t know what’s been sold and you need to reorder to put new stock in its place if you didn’t an inventory once in a while you wouldn’t know what’s become damaged nobody wants to buy it it’s sitting there taking up valuable floor space day after day after day you probably paying interest on borrowed money to put it in there in the first place if you didn’t an inventory every once in a while you wouldn’t know what’s become out of style you need to put it on sale so you can get it out of the store to put something new in its place if you had a business and you didn’t an inventory once in a while you probably would go broke and I think we can all see that okay in our personal lives we have a business too greatest business in the world for us and it’s the business of finding a way to live where we can have a little peace of mind Serenity and happiness so we don’t have to go back to drinking and if we don’t inventory in our personal business chances are we’re not going to find what’s damaged and unsalable in our heads that’s going to cause us to go broke too and going broke for us is simply going back to drinking so whether we’re dealing with a personal business or a business business in either case we would probably go broke without the inventory now then he’s going to tell us how to take a business inventory he says taking a commercial now dad burn him he could have said business again couldn’t he but he’ll use the word commercial which means the same thing taking a commercial inventory now Joe up here on the screen and you also have it in your handout material we’re going to have a little picture up here that’s going to be called inventory comparison I think it’s step five in your handout sheet on one side say says business the other one says personal and we’re going to take a few key words out of the out of the uh big book and put it under business he said taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding and we’re putting fact finding under business and a fact facing process we’re putting fact facing under business it is an effort to discover the truth and we’re putting truth under business about the stock in trade and we’re putting stock in trade under business the stock in trade is what’s in there to sell the ladies purses the men’s watches the bicycles or whatever one object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods and we’re putting under object under business disclose damaged or unsalable Goods to get rid of them promptly and without regret and we’re putting promptly and without regret under business in other words we’re going to go in there and we’re going to try to find the facts when we find them we’re going to face the facts we’re looking for the truth about the stock in trade we’re trying to find the damag and unsalable goods the good items will not cause us to go broke oh they resell every day and we making money off of them the damaged and unsalable goods they’re the ones that’s blocking the floor space and the Shelf space and costing us money when we finally find them we’re going to try to get rid of them promptly and without regret we can’t put anything new in there in their place until they’re gone we’re trying to find the stock in trade this damage and get it out of there if the owner of the business is to be successful he cannot fool himself about values he’s got to be honest once in a while he’ll try to fool himself he’ll say well the reason these ladies aren’t buying these purses they just don’t understand what’s good for him you know he made the decision to buy them he hates to admit that he made a mistake and he may keep them in there longer than he should and if he does it’s going to cost him money every day is there anybody in here would have any problem with what he’s told us about the business inventory have we going to try to find their facts when we find them we’re going to face them we’re looking for the truth about the stock in trade we’re looking for the damaged and unsalable goods when we get rid of them we’re going to or we find them we’re going to get rid of them promptly and without regret always looking for the stock in trade that’s damaged anybody got any problems there okay now watch it he used a series of words to tell us how to take our personal inventory which means basically the same thing he said we did exactly the same thing with our lives we took stock honestly so we go to step four and step four says now we’re under personal on the right hand side of the sheet step four said we made a searching and we’re putting searching straight across from fact finding they mean the same thing to find the facts to search out the facts we made a searching fearless and we’re putting Fearless straight across from fact facing they mean the same thing to face the facts to fearlessly look at them we made a searching Fearless moral and there’s where we got in trouble we said oh damn there’s that list of dirty filthy nasty items and we don’t want to look at them and we sure as hell don’t want to show them to anybody else now I’m not sure what all Bill Wilson knew but I know one thing this guy understood the English language and I really believe that if he’ wanted you and I to make a list of dirty filthy nasty items he would have said we made a searching and fearless amoral or immoral inventory he didn’t say that he said moral bugged the hell out of us till eventually we went back to the dictionary do you know what the word Boral is defined as truth things as they really are the right and wrong of any given situation the truth about things so truth and moral mean exactly the same thing we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of what of ourselves we’re the only stock in trade that we have in this business of staying sober nobody else can make us sober and nobody else can make us drink oh I’ll agree they can make us thirsty as hell once in a while but they can’t make us drink we decide whether we drink or not now what part of us decides whether we drink or not is it our body or is it our mind the real problem the alcoholic centers in the mind so we’re going to look inside ourselves in our minds and we’re going to find those flawed thinking processes which is the damaged and unsalable goods that block us off from God now we made a decision to turn our will over to God and as long as our mind is filled with damaged and unsalable goods then God God can’t direct our thinking we’re going to have to find them and after we once find them then we’re going to get rid of them promptly and without regret and when those flawed thinking processes leave our minds then our mind is opened up for God’s thinking to enter but it’s only after they’re gone that God can enter now there are three common manifestations of a life run on self well and we’ve already talked about them the flawed thinking processes in our mind that blocks God out are resentments fear guilt and remorse associated with the harms done to other people and as long as our mind is occupied with those thoughts then God’s thoughts can’t come in it’s just that simple now I like to look at my head up here as a little bitty store not much a little bitty quick trip or seven 11 not a hell lot in it never has been over here in this part of my store I’ve got some display cases and they are filled with resentments damn him damn her by God I’ll show them bloody blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah those display cases are already full God simply cannot get in there because he is blocked out by the damaged and unsalable goods called resentments over here in this part of my store I’ve got a little file cabinet and it’s filled with fear oh my God what’s she going to do when she finds out about this one oh my God what’s the banker going to say when that check hits there this time he’s already told me he’s going to file on me next time oh my God is that my car sitting out in the front front end torn up don’t know how oh my God and on and on and on God can’t get in there he’s very effectively blocked out by those fears back here in the back of my store I’ve got a little file room and it’s full of guilt and remorse God dwells on each of us we know the difference between right and wrong we do these things that hurt other people we’re scared to death what they going to do when they find out and the guilt and remorse begins to eat us up God can’t get in that store room he’s already blocked out of there we have an emergency phone call Charlie have an emergency phone call for whom Pam Paul Madison who Pam or Paul Madison Pam or Paul Madison Pam or Paul medicine okay the T back at the back I hope everything’s all right yeah now if I want God to direct my thinking then I’m going to have to do something about the removal of these resentments and these fears and this guilt and remorse and if I can remove them then God’s thinking can enter into my mind and direct Those portions of my mind where he was effectively blocked out now my book is is getting ready to show me just exactly how to look at these things truthfully it’s getting ready to show me how to remove them then the greatest thing it’s going to show me is how to keep them from coming back in the future and if I’ll do my part then God can direct my thinking but until I’ve done my part god can’t it’s just that simple he says we did exactly the same thing with our we took stock honestly truthfully morally first we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure being convinced that manifested in various ways and what had defeated us we considered its common manifestations resentment is the number one offender it destroys more alcoholics than anything else from it stem all forms of spiritual disease for we’ve been not only mentally and physically ill we’ve been spiritually sick when the spiritual bity is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically in dealing with resentments we set them on paper so the first thing we’re going to do is look at these resentments now I think we need to look at that word and make sure we understand what it means the word resentment is made from two old old words first is are the letters re e re when you see re in front of another word it always means to do again like repaint replay redo always means to do again the last part of this word senent comes from an old word called Cent which means to feel so the word resentment itself means to reill okay let’s say we’re going through life which we do on a daily basis remembering always that everybody has got self-will that’s one of the problems it’s standard equipment everybody’s got self-will from time to time other people get sick in self maybe their social instinct is out of calter maybe their security Instinct are their sex instinct is filed up and they do something to me that threatens one of my Basic Instincts of Life maybe they put me down in the eyes of other people and it threatens my self-esteem maybe they do something to threaten one of my personal relationships maybe they rip me off and steal my money from me maybe they do something to interfere when my sex life or maybe they do something that threatens one of my ambitions for the future now when they do that that’s a wrong on their part for doing so that’s not a resentment it doesn’t become a resentment till I go over in the next room or I go home that evening and I replay that thing in my mind and I feel feel the pain the second time the first time they did it to me hurt me but when I go over here and replay it and feel the pain the second time then I’m doing it to myself now they did it to me the first time but I’m doing it the second time and after a while I’ll replay it again and I’ll feel the pain the third time and what I found in my life is I’m not always completely honest with me because it seems as though when I replay this thing each time I tend to change it just a little bit and I tend to make what they did to me just a little bit worse I tend to make what I did just a little bit less I tend to make the pain just a little bit deeper and you let me play it over in my head enough times after a while I can say to myself I was just standing there doing nothing and they come along and did it to me I love to watch football games and in a football game you’ll see a guy called a quarterback that sometimes will throw a pass and the guy that’s supposed to receive it many times it’s thrown up high on purpose so the other guys can’t catch it and the guy that’s going to receive it sever many times has to jump way up in the air to catch it now the members of the opposing team they have learned that if you can hit this guy while he’s still up in the air before he really gets good control of that ball you can knock it Loose from him so they wait until he jumps up in the air and when that ball touches his fingers they knock the hell out of him now he’s completely defenseless now and they’ll hit him and sometimes it’ll just turn him upside down he’ll fall on his head his neck Bend sideways his legs spread apart one arm bends completely behind his back and it just hurts the hell out of him and you can see that he’s hurt now the football game though is like the game of life it’s going to go on they’re not going to stop it very long one or two things will happen with this guy they’ll run out there and check him over and if he isn’t hurt too bad they’ll pump a little air in him and get him up and get him going again if he’s hurt too bad they’ll drag him off to the side they’ll put somebody in his place and the game starts again the football game is going to continue I don’t care what’s happened now the announcer up in the booth though he’s got a resentment machine cuz after a while he’ll say let’s look at that again and this time it is in slow motion and Living Color my God it looks twice as bad as it did the first time you can see how far his neck really did bent how far his leg spread apart and how badly that arm was bent and it looks twice twice as bad as it did the first time after a while the announcer will say let’s look at that again the game’s been going on now for 15 minutes the announcer still bouncing this guy up and down up and down up and down off the ground now we alcoholics have up here in our heads a little resentment replay machine and we get up in the mornings and we tuned It Up In Living Color we clean the lens on it cuz we don’t want to miss nothing and we shine it on the world all day long and we record everything they do to us that’s bad and we go home at night and sit down and play it over in our head and make ourselves sick and blame it on them now once in a while we have a bad day once in a great while they won’t do anything to us that’s a bad day for an alcoholic we’ve got our machine cleaned up the lens is clean tuned up we shineing it on the world and nobody will do anything to us we don’t have anything bad to record don’t record record nothing good do you know what we record those days by God we record what they’re thinking that’s what we do we go home at night play it over in our head make ourselves sick sick now there’s a bad thing about a resentment cuz each time you play it over your head each time you throw it out there after a while it turns around it comes back at you and when it comes back at you it comes back as self- resentment and we begin to resent ourselves for being in a position to have those things happen to us and after a while self resentment turns to self-pity and that’s the sickest sickest that a human being can be up here in their head is to be filled with self-pity and we alcoholics love self-pity we like to get up early in the morning put self-pity on as a cloak of dignity and as we go out the door we say here I come mean old world just do it to me I know you’re going to get me cuz you always do it is a sick sick way to build our self-esteem cuz after all if the whole world is picking on us we must really be somebody and my God we love that self-pity if you want an alcoholic mad if you want to make them mad you try to feel sorry for one of us and we’ll tell you in a hurry don’t you feel sorry for me that’s my damn job you know don’t is there any way that God can enter a mind filled with that kind of crap no way our thinking is controlled and dominated by these resentments and all the things that go along with it God is absolutely completely blocked out of our mind through these resentments at the very least we’re going to have to do something about them now the instructions on how to do them are here in the big book alcoholic synonymous are just so simple that we never could see them before we given you a sheet in your handout material called a review of resentments I believe that’s page 9 and 10 and what I would ask you to do now is take those last two columns try to fold them over where you can’t even see them where all you’re looking at is column 1 2 and three the example on page 65 has already been filled out and we didn’t know the procedure that bill used to fill it out that’s where a lot of our confusion is so what we’ve given to you in the first three columns is Page 65 in the blank form we want to emphasize we’re not trying to bring another inventory in AA we’ve already got enough of those page 65 the resentment sheet that you have is 65 into blank form column one I’m resent sful at column two is the cause column three affects M now let’s see if we keep find the instructions on how to fill it out in dealing with resentments we set them on paper okay you’ve got the paper now and we’re going to start setting them down you know we’re always taught to read from left to right and if you read from left to write and trying to figure out the inventory on page 65 you would start with the Mr Brown and you’d write down the resentment then youd change your mind and go to the second column and write down the cause then you change your mind again and go to what part of self was affected and you have to use those Basic Instincts of life and try to write down what part of self was affected then you go back to the First Column mentally and write down Mrs Jones then you change your mind again and go to the second column well you get the idea if you do that long enough you if you have a mind like mine it says tilt just too much information and I say well what the hell all they wanted was life story anyhow so I just disregard this well we didn’t know how to fill out this this column it seems to us that you fill this out one column at a time from top to bottom leaving a little space in between the names in column one so you’ll fill that in over in column two in a little bit later cuz our book said that we listed people institution or principes whom we were angry period from top to bottom in column one we would simply write down all the people principles or in institution with whom we are angry from top to bottom leaving a little space between each one of them all the way down people that’s self-explanatory institutions are those things such as the police department the Internal Revenue Service the federal government the church Etc principles are those old old guiding I hate to use the word laws but it’s the only thing I can think of natural laws that’s interfered with our style of living the Ten Commandments that’s a set of principles and when I was out there drinking I don’t want to hear nothing about the Ten Commandments I’m breaking all of them but one and maybe I broke it into blackout too I don’t know another old principal had always hated said what goes up must come down I never cared for that one another one said what you give outs what you get back another one said there are no free rides you’ll pay for whatever you get and my dad used to say when you lay down with dogs you’ll get fleas on you every time those old old principles that interfered with our style of living now you don’t need to be sober very long to do this all we got to do is take these things out of our head put them down on paper you don’t have to have a high education to do this if you can’t write you feed the names to somebody else and let them write them down and while our mind is on one thing and one thing only let’s fill out the First Column from top to bottom I’ve never seen an alcoholic yet that did not know just who and what by God we’re mad at we spend thousands of hours sitting around in bars talking about it all we got to do is take it out of her head put it down on a piece of paper and we would have completed the first instruction and hopefully the same thing will happen to you that happened to me when I did this they came to me and they said list your resentments and I said I don’t have any and they said surely you got one or two maybe you don’t understand what the resentment is and they explained to me that it was to refill old pains and old hurts and I said oh yeah I got a couple of those they said put them on paper leave a little space in between each one one so I got a sheet of paper and leaving space between like the book does first thing I knew I had about eight names on that sheet of paper and I got it reached over and got another sheet of paper and after a while I had eight more listed and I got another sheet of paper and next thing you know I had eight more listed and I got another sheet of paper I got up to about 152 and I said man you’re mattering hell at everything I did not know that you can only see one resentment at a time in your head I don’t think any of us will ever see how many resentments we really do have and how much they control and dominate our thinking till we get them all down on a sheet of paper and see them in their entirety for the first time now we made a decision to let God direct our thinking and if we’ve got that many resentments then resentments direct our thinking and God can’t and it’s just that simple just by the listing of the names we learn something very valuable about ourselves how resentful we really are you just can’t see this stuff in your head it has to go on paper so we filled out the First Column now Bill said Mr Brown Mrs Jones my employer and my wife he probably had more than that I think he did didn’t want to use any more space in the big book mine was that long long list of about 152 names Joe said we asked why we were angry period stop right there and go to the second column the cause now he’s uh we in the illustration and he used here very short and sweet just four or five little words not too many words to describe the cause Simplicity is the key here in the in the second column now he’s resentful at Mr Brown why his attentions to my wife he told my wife of my mistress Brown may get my job at the office I don’t even know Mr Brown I’m already mad at him myself now he’s resentful at Miss Jones because she’s a nut she snubbed me she committed her husband for drinking he’s my friend and she’s a gossip what she did was put his old drinking buddy in The Nut House and she don’t he don’t like that at all and he’s mad at his employer why well he’s unreasonable and unjust and overbearing probably said say bill by the way where were you all day yesterday anyhow he threatens to fire me for drinking and pading my expense account that’s unreasonable as hell isn’t it yeah very narrow-minded now he’s he’s really mad at his wife she misunderstands and nags and she likes old brown and she wants the house put in her name yeah you tie that together like and Old Brown wanting the house put in her name it’s about time to get a little bit upset isn’t it so simply in the second column we just write down we ask ourselves why we were angry beside each name one at a time using four or five little words to describe the cause there may be one cause or there may be two or three causes but we simply write them down in the second column we’re not going to write any big long essays no just a few simple words by each name and there may be one cause and there may be multiple causes as we have here whatever it is is we put it down I filled out the second column and I begin to realize something that’s become very valuable to me I begin to realize it’s not the people and the institutions that I’m upset with it’s what they’ve done to me that’s got me upset you know I can take Mr Brown out of here and put Mr Green in I’ll be just as upset with green as I am with brown if he does the same thing to me I could take Mrs Jones out of here and put Mrs Smith in if Smith does the same thing I’m going to be just as upset with her as I am with Jones well I can take my wife out of here and put my mistress in and if she does the same thing I’ll be just as upset with her I begin to realize it’s not them that’s got me upset it’s what they’ve done to me that’s got me upset now the reason that’s valuable is because of this I’m getting ready to start out on a lifetime changing process to develop the best possible relationship that I can with the world and everybody in it so I can have maximum peace of mind and serenity a part of that relationship is a little later on in my program I’m going to have to go to a bunch of people and ask them to forgive me for what I’ve done to them by the same token I’m going to have to forgive others for what they’ve done to me and a part of that forgiving process can start right here when I begin to realize it’s not them is what they’ve done has got me upset that starts getting names out of the way and it’s going to make it a lot easier to handle this in the future so I filled out two columns now number one I learned how resentful I really am how much that blocks me from God and number two I’ve learned is not them I resent it’s what they’ve done to me that I actually resent two valuable things now let’s look at the third column in most case it was found that our self-esteem our pocketbooks our Ambitions our personal relationships including sex were hurt or threatened so we were sore we were burned up on our Grudge list we set opposite each name our injuries was it our self-esteem our security our Ambitions or our personal or sex relations which been interfered with we were usually definite as this example and again using that information that we got from the Basic Instincts of life we said simply fill out the third column what part self was affected by that what part what Basic Instinct was threatened by the action that those people did I can’t be upset with you unless you’ve done something to threaten one of these Basic Instincts of life if you threaten my social Instinct in any way my self-esteem my personal relations Etc you’re going to upset me and make me angry if you threaten my security either material or emotional you’re going to upset me and make me angry if you threaten my sex life in any way you’re going to upset me and make me angry and as I begin to fill out the third column and put down the part of self that is affected in most cases I begin to see a pattern develop maybe the side of each name I’m putting down self-esteem maybe I begin to see my main problem is self-esteem maybe I’m putting down security maybe I see where my main problem deals with security maybe I’m putting something under sex each time I begin to realize that the sex thing is my main problem I begin to see which part of self really does stand out probably going to be a combination of all three but I can certainly see which part of self really does predominate and stand out when I keep seeing it appear over and over and over and over again when I fill out the third column I here’s where I’ve learned something that I think’s the most valuable thing I ever learned about me as I filled out the third column for the first time in my life I could see where anger comes from I’ve always had a problem with anger of all always acted and reacted with anger I would do something would hurt other people I would be ashamed of it I’d say I’ll never do that again I’ll turn right around get angry do it all over again you can’t do anything about a problem till you understand the problem I never did understand where anger come from I always thought it was just one of those feelings that flitted into your mind you could do nothing about it today I realize that anger comes from a threat to one of these Basic Instincts of life now if my Basic Instincts are under control at the level that God intended if my relationship with God is okay you can do about anything you want to to me and I’m not going to experience anger over it but I’ll guarantee you if my instincts are out of control my relationship with God is not right about anything you do to me that threatens a Basic Instinct creates anger and I romp and stomp and raise hell with you and everybody around you you know this lady that I’m married to today hopefully I can introduce you to her tomorrow she’s here with us this weekend beautiful lady named Barbara if there’s any such thing as a black belt alanon she’s one of them she’s got now about 31 or 32 years in the alanon fellowship great great program but Barbara is like all human being she has self-will too and once in a great while she’ll get sick in self alen ons do that once in a while not too often but once in a while and she’ll do something that threatens one of my Basic Instincts of life and when she does it it hurts now I found that if my relationship with God is right and my instincts are at the level God intended I’m able say well the poor old thing they’re sick just like we are and they can’t help it any more than we can and that thing will just slide off of my back and just won’t bother me at all and I just go on about my business now 30 days later though the same lady does the same thing only this time my instincts are not under control and my relationship with God’s Not Right today that’s right and I react to what she did with anger and I romp and I Stomp and I raise hell with Barbara and everybody around me all day long the same lady did the same thing but I choose to react to it in an entirely different manner based upon my relationship with God and where my instincts are that day thank God I’ve learned that cuz you see I can’t do anything about Barbara and I can’t do anything about any other human being on Earth but I can do something about my relationship with God and keeping my instincts under control where I don’t have to get angry and if I don’t have to get angry I’m in much less chance of drinking than I am if I just continue that anger over and over and over thank God I’ve learned that one of the best pieces of information I ever found now we have filled out three columns column one we listed the people we’re angry with resentful at and we realized how resentful we really are and how much that blocks us off from the sunlight of the spirit column two we’ve learned it’s not them we’re resentful at it’s what they’ve done to us column three we’ve learned is not even what they’ve done to us it’s how we choose to react to it based on our relationship with God and whether our instincts are under control or not now we’re going to fill out a couple names here from our inventories we’re not going to do the whole thing but just two or three names as an example the first thing first name on my sheet was this lady named Barbara 30 some OD years ago I hated this lady with a purple passion if I could have done away with her and not get caught I believe I would have done it I used to lay awake at night fantasizing about this thing tomorrow morning when she’s on the way to work and by the way she always worked I believed in her being self-supporting through her own contributions always thinking of others always thinking of others tomorrow morning when she’s on the way to work she’s going to get run over by a big semi Tru and it’s not going to be just any Trucking Company it’s going to be a very affluent trucking company and they going to run over her and kill her and then I’m going to sue them and I’m going to come out of this deal getting rid of her with2 or3 million dollar in hand you alanon are not the only ones that fantasize we Alis did it too believe me we did second name on my sheet was the Internal Revenue Service God I hated those people with a purple passion just mention their name and I began to frol at the mouth immediately Joe what was the first name on your inventory sheet rose rose the wife number one rose now it’s just that simple that’s how you fill out the First Column we go to the second column why am I so upset with Barbara well the last year before she went to alanon she had the audacity to file for divorce three times she’s spending more money on lawyers and divorces and I’m spending on booze and everything that goes with it and my God I hated her for that why am I so upset with the Internal Revenue Service well they’re trying to put me in jail that’s why Joe how come you so upset with rose she had an affair with another man after all I’d done to her had an affair with another man really upset with her now we go to the third column now barbar of fing for divorce three times is that a threat to my self-esteem oh you bet what are other people going to think about me now taking this lady back after she’s filed for divorce three times Barbara fing for divorce three times is that a threat to my personal relationships sure it is she’s going to take the kids and she’s going to leave or they’re going to kick me out one of the two no personal relationships her filing for divorce three times is that a threat to my security oh yeah but the time she’s through she’ll have it all don’t worry worry about that is it a threat to my sex life oh yeah oh yeah she probably won’t let me have any sex if we get a divorce Internal Revenue Service trying to put me in jail is that a threat to my self-esteem what are people going to think about me after this Deal’s over with is it a threat to my personal relationships they’re not going to let me have any relationship with my wife and children if I’m in jail is it a threat to my security oh yeah they’re going to take every penny I’ve got by the time it’s over with is it a threat to my sex life the kind I’d like to have you bet you it’s a threat to it now there may be some in there I don’t want but old Rose having an affair with another man is that a threat to Joe’s self-esteem is it a threat to his personal relationships it’s threat to his security yeah he’ll have to go to work now she been supporting him for the last 10 years a threat to his sex life oh yeah oh yeah all these things are a threat to those things okay when we have finished out these three columns and we’ve been able to see column one how many resentments we have column two the cause of the resentment column three the part of self that was affected and we’ve learned valuable information about ourselves just by filling out those three sheets now then let’s see what we do with those three sheets after they’re filled out Joe we went back through our lives nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty when we finished we considered it carefully the first thing apparent was that this world and his people were often quite wrong to conclude that others was wrong as far as M of ever got and I always knew that yeah the usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore sometimes it was remorse and then we were sared ourselves but the more we fought and tried to have our own way the worse matters got as in war the Victor only seemed to win our moments of Triumph were shortlived now it’s plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and happiness to the precise extent that we permit these do we squander the hours which might have been worthwhile and I read that last statement and I stopped and I tried to look back in my life and see how much time I’ve squandered in resentments now I don’t know about about you guys but I know about me and when I’ve got a good resentment churning around up here in my head I’m pretty well paralized from doing anything worthwhile and one of my favorite things that I was doing back when I was drinking was to get up early in the morning have a drink of whiskey and a cup of coffee and turn on my resentment replay machine and replay what she did to me yesterday yesterday and replay what that guy did to me a month ago and replay what that person said to me six months ago and replay what that damn boss did to me about a year ago and replay what that damn policeman did to me 5 years ago and replay what my uncle did to me 10 years ago and replay what my mother did to me 15 years ago and replay what my father did to me 20 years ago and it took me just about an hour to run through that tape and I loved every moment of it when that tape would run out I’d have another drink of whiskey and another cup of coffee and I would turn on my get even machine now by God the next time she does that I’ll do this and she’ll do that and Sako I’ll put it on her they’re not going to treat me that way and it took me just about an hour to run through that tape and I loved every moment of it when I came into AA I found out the only difference was I wasn’t taking the drink of whiskey I was having the cup of coffee turn on the resentment replay machine run it for an hour another cup of coffee turn on to get even machine run it for an hour I have spent literally thousand thousands and thousands and thousands of hours in resentments and as far as I can tell they’ve never done me any good whatsoever they certainly never made me any money they never made me feel better they only made me feel worse they never straightened up a relationship with another human being it only made them worse and worse and worse and as far as I can tell that was absolute complete wasted time now as a human being I really believe today that I’m allotted just so much time to be here on Earth and I’m beginning to approach the end of mine and for the first time in my life not only am I sober but I am peaceful happy and free for the first time in my life I’m sober and I feel great I didn’t know that you could be sober and and feel as good as I feel today what little time that I have left I want to enjoy every moment of it I don’t want to waste any more time in resentments or anything else that blocks me off from God I want to enjoy every moment of every day that I’ve got left I simply do not intend to waste any more time in resentments they block you off from God they block you off from your fellow man they just make you sicker and sicker and sicker and what time we spend in them is an absolute waste of time that’s one of the worst things about a resentment wasting what time we have left in resentments but that’s not the worst thing here’s the worst thing about a resentment he said but with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience this business of resentment is infinitely grave we found that it is fatal for when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off in the sunlight of the spirit the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again and with us to drink is to die that’s the worst thing about a resentment when we’ve got a good resentment churning around in our head we don’t feel good we’re blocked off from God and after a while the Mind wanting to feel better begins to think about the sense of ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a couple of drinks next thing you know we become insane we convince ourselves it’s okay to drink and we end up taking a drink and we trigger the allergy and we end up drunk all over again that’s the worst part about a resentment the book says if we were to live we had to be free of anger the Grouch and the brainstorm were not for us they may be the dubious luxury of normal men but for alcoholics these things are poison we we turned back to the list you see this is why you got to have a written inventory if you had it in your head you would have lost it already we turned back to the list for it held the key to the future we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle always before I looked at it to see what those suckers had done to me today I would look at it to see what that resentment is doing to me and if it’s blocking me off from God and maybe causing me to get drunk that I’m looking at it from an entirely different angle we begin to see that the world and its people really dominated Us in that state the wrongdoing of others fancied or real had power to actually kill and I stopped and I said heart Charlie how how dumb can you be all my life I’ve been proud of the fact that I stand on my own two feet nobody tells me what to do I don’t need your advice thank you and I suddenly realized that other people through my resentment toward them have controlled and dominated my thinking as far back as I can remember and if they’ve controlled and dominated my thinking they’ve controlled and dominated my actions they have absolutely completely controlled and dominated my entire life for me I always thought I was in charge but I suddenly realized other people have been in charge as far back as I can remember through my resentments toward them and then I said man you really are stupid aren’t you cuz some of these people have been dead and buried in the graveyard for years and they’ been reaching out from the grave and they’ve had me by the yangy as far back as I can remember and when I saw that I said to hell with them I’m not going to let those people alive or dead live in my head rentree any longer I’ve made a decision to let God direct my thinking and if others directed alive or dead Justified or unjustified then God can’t and it’s just that simple and an amazing thing happened to me right here we alcoholics fancy ourselves as reasonably intelligent people now I don’t know that we’re smarter than anybody else but I think we’re reasonably intelligent people and we don’t like to look stupid and when I saw the stupidity of letting those people control me and dominate me it looks so dumb that about 95% of the resentments began to disappear automatically when I saw how stupid that really was but I found that I had four five or six that were so deeply embedded in my mind for so long that they didn’t automatically disappear when I saw the stupidity behind them and for those I had to have some additional help we now come to the first prayer in the big book in step four we always hear about the step three prayers the step seven prayers we never hear about the step four prayers let’s see how we can use prayer to remove those deep deep seated resentments he said how we could we escape we saw that these resentments must be mastered but how we could not wish them way any more than alcohol so you can’t heal a sick wine with a sick mind you can’t whis your way out of it well this was our course we realized that the people who’ wronged us were perhap perhaps spiritually sick and though we did not like their symptoms in the way they disturbed us they like ourselves were sick too it’s part of the prayer we ask God to help us to show them the same tolerance pity and patience that we would cheerfully Grant a sick friend when a person offended we said to ourselves this is a sick man how can I be helpful to him God save me from being angry thy will be done and I’m like Charlie I spent many many years in my life many hours of my life thinking my mind was racing uncontrollably figuring out some way I could get even with those people and I finally figured out a way to get even with them well the way you get even with people is you pray for them and when you pray for them then you’re even and you see I didn’t know that and after I got sober i’ been sober about 3 or 4 months I went to a little conference in Apache Oklahoma and I met a lady there some of you know her name was Alabama KS some of you all knew Alabama she became a big influence on my life and she said a couple coup things that night that really struck me she said she had a soul sickness and I could identify with that cuz my last night of drinking I was sitting on a bar stool and I had a real sick feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t a throwing up type sick it was sick feeling and she said it was a soul sickness I said that’s what I had a soul sickness and and then she said another thing that night she said I have peace of mind today and boy I mean that really struck me cuz that’s all I ever want was peace of mind and I loved Alabama she was always was excited about life and what was going to happen next and then after that meeting was over with we were sitting around the lobby of this hotel and it was about 3:00 in the morning and I was sitting there watching Alabama operate and it wasn’t saying anything finally it was just Alabama and myself and my little sponsor George little black guy laying in her lap and uh I began to talk to Alabama I said Alabama you said you had peace of mind tonight how did you get peace of mind I want peace of mind and she said well Joe tell me what’s going going in your mind and I told her how I was going to meetings and going to meetings and going to meetings but that night I’d go home and lay down and my mind would fly over and I begin to think about all those situations that we talked about and she said well Joe you’re just full of resentments and I said what is a resentment see I didn’t know she said a resentment was old angers and old hurts that refelt over and over and over again and all that anger you intended to use up on you on them you’re turning it on yourself and making yourself sick and blaming it on them she explained that to me and it took a while for me to understand finally I did and she I said well is there any solutions for these and she said yes there is this happens to be and she referred to page 67 and showed me this information here and she said some of those deep-seated resentments like you have you going to need some additional help and she said on page 551 of this book is a story who of a lady who had those deep-seated resentments if you turn to that page in the book she said we’ll read and see what they had to say well Alabama had a purse that was about this big and it was about that deep and she began to look at that Pur you know how they are they digging around and she finally found this one of these books I didn’t think she’s ever going to find it she pulled it out of there and she said well let’s look at page 551 and see what this says so I turned over page 551 in her book and on the third paragraph she said this book says that I’ve had many spiritual experences since I’ve been in the program many that I didn’t recognize right away for I’m slow to learn and they take many guises but one was so outstanding I like to pass it on whenever I can in the hope that will help someone else as it help me as I said earlier self-pity and resentment were my constant Companions and my inventory began to look like a 33-year diary for I seem to have a resentment against everybody i’ ever known all but one responded to the treatment suggested in the steps immediately all but one automatically began to disappear when she saw how dumb they really were but this one posed a problem it was against my mother and it was 25 years old I had fed it fed and nurtured as one might a delicate child and it had become as much a part of my of me as my breathing now he had provided me with my excuses for my lack of Education my marital failures personal failures inadequacies and of course my alcoholism and though I already thought i’ been willing to part with it now I knew I was reluctant to let it go one morning however I realized I had to get rid of it for my reprieve was running out and if I didn’t get rid of it I was going to get drunk and I didn’t want to get drunk anymore in my prayers that morning I asked God to point out to me some way to be free of this resentment during the day A friend of mine brought me some magazines to take to a hospital group I was interested in and I looked through them in a banner across the front of one featured an article by a prominent clergyman in which I caught the word resentment now he said in effect and here it is he said if you have a resentment you want to be free of if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent you will be free if you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them you will be free ask for their health their prosperity their happiness and you will be free even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it go ahead and do it anyway do it every day for two weeks and you’ll find that you come to mean it and want it for them and that you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness resentment and hatred you now feel compassion understanding and love well I went home after after that meeting and I got in my bed that Sunday night laid down and my own mind flipped over again and started racing uncontrollably and I said well I think I’ll pray for those people so I started praying for those people that night and my list got longer the next day I prayed for those people again and that afternoon I prayed for those people and that night I prayed for those people it I don’t know how long it went on it was two or three weeks or more I don’t know but it seemed like I was in constant prayer for day and night praying for those people I don’t know exactly what happened but I do know that one morning it was one of the beautiful spring mornings we have in Oklahoma and the old look I got stuck in this stoplight just the length of a stoplight is what happened I looked over that beautiful house sitting over there and the grass was so green it was just beautiful the greenest green I’d ever seen the Tulips were in full bloom red and yellow the little squirrels were in the trees and the birds were in the trees whistling and I got is this a beautiful morning and I thought to myself my God how long has it been since I’ve seen that you know I could not remember I could not remember and when this book talks about being cut off from the sunlight of the spirit I really do know what that means I really do cuz that morning it was so vivid now what happened was that those people did not change but my thoughts and feelings toward them did change you see and has never returned again thank God for this program called alcoholics anom I’ve been there and I don’t want ever return again I think the reason this works so well is prayer for another human being prayer for their welfare and their happiness is probably one of the greatest expressions of love that one human being can have for another and love and hate can’t exist on the same plane and as we pray for that human being asking that God give them in their life the same thing we want to hours Peace of Mind Serenity happiness Etc over a period of time that resentment will begin to disappear sometimes it just takes two or three prayers sometimes it takes every day for two weeks sometimes it might take every day for two months but if we will consistently do it we will find sooner or later that that resentment is replaced with love and the resentment disappears now if you’ve got a resentment that you don’t want to get rid of for God’s sake don’t pray about them cuz if you do you’re going to lose it I know I speak from experience you know I had a guy that I really really really resented and again I think I would gladly have put him away if I could have gotten by with it without getting caught and when I got to this part of the inventory I went to my sponsor now this is going to be one of those take it to the Grave resentments I had no desire to remove it at all and I’d worked on all the others but this one is stuck in there and I went to my sponsor and I told him about it and he said Charlie you’ve got to get rid of that resentment and I said I don’t want to get rid of this resentment he said well that’s beside the point he said if you don’t get rid of it sooner or later is going to get you drunk and in my smart mouth of May I said well how in the hell do I do it and he said let me show you and he took me to this prayer too and he said now read that and go home and do what it says and you’ll get rid of that resentment and I went home and got out on my knees which again I very seldom did in those days and I said God I want you to give that son of a everything he deserves and that’s the only prayer I had for him that day and I prayed again and again and again and three or four or five days later I don’t know when I found myself saying something I didn’t really mean to say I found myself saying God give him in his life what I want in mine the same Peace of Mind Serenity and happiness that I seek for myself and four or five or six or seven days later I don’t know when I woke up one morning and that resentment was gone completely gone and it’s never returned since that date and I think the irony in the whole situation is it wasn’t 30 days later this guy moved in as my nextd door neighbor this thing really does work see what I learned from this experience is that love is forgiving and love is forgiving you see now just think this old head up here that these display cases over here were filled with resentments has now been emptied out the resentments the damag and unsalable goods called resentment has now been removed from my mind now when that happens to me there’s another natural law that applies that says nature abhors a vacuum no such thing as a vacuum or void there’s always something trying to rush in and fill it up if those resentments disappear God’s not going to leave another hole in my head I got enough of those already they will have to be replaced with something else and the only thing that can replace them will be the opposite of them where my mind used to be filled with resentments that portion of it is now filled with love patience tolerance compassion and Good Will toward my fellow man that’s God’s thinking my thinking was the resentment God’s thinking is love patience tolerance compassion and Good Will and that part of my mind is now filled with God’s thinking you see there’s nothing negative here at all this is a positive happening in part of my mind I’ve now got Peace of Mind Serenity and happiness much less chance of drinking now than I was when I started the inventory process and what really blew my mind is this I didn’t have to go to any other fellowships and I didn’t have to read any other books to find love patience tolerance compassion and goodwi if God dwells within me and my book says he does then that’s always been a part of my makeup I just never could use it before in my Chase for money power prestige sex and what I thought were the good things of Life those thoughts had to be repressed to let me operate on the level I wanted to operate on but now that resentments are gone they automatically come to the surface I’ve never seen anything like this before I don’t really understand how this works I simply know that if I do the simple things the book tells me to do this happens automatically and resent ments are replaced with love patience tolerance compassion and Good Will toward my fellow man but it would do me no good to get rid of resentments if I didn’t know how to keep them from coming back cuz the world is full of sick people and they’re going to do it to me again tomorrow and if I’m not careful I’ll resent and it seems as though I don’t get just one when I get one let me play with it just a little bit and then I’ve got two and let me play with those two and then I’ve got 10 and the next thing you know I’m a basket case and I’m sick all over again I’ve got to do one more thing let’s unfold those last two columns on your inventory sheet and let’s go to page 67 and we’ll see if we can’t find the information to fill out the last two columns in the second paragraph on page 67 it says referring to our list again see you got to have a written inventory this is the second time we’ve had to go back to it now referring to our list again putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done we resolutely looked for our own mistakes uh-oh we’ve never done this have we we’ve always looked to see what they did we’ve never looked to see what we did where had we been selfish dishonest self-seeking and frightened though a situation not been entirely our fault we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely where were we to blame the inventory was ours not the other man’s when we saw are false we listed them we placed them before us in black and white we admitted our wrongs honestly and we’re willing to set these matters straight so we go to the fourth column and if you’ll notice the heading on the fourth column said what did I do putting out of mind the wrongs others have done I resolutely look for my own mistakes what did I do if anything to set in motion trains of circumstances which in turn caused people or institutions to hurt me and eventually led to my resentment of them for doing so so I went to column four and I looked at this uh lady named Barbara and I said now Charlie you forget what she did you forget her filing for three divorces what did you do if anything to set that in motion and it took took me just about 5 Seconds to realize that if I had to been out there screwing around she probably wouldn’t have caught me and she probably wouldn’t have filed for divorce in the first place took me another two or three seconds to say to myself well if I had to been sneaking around behind her back lying to her all the time completely dishonest with her she probably wouldn’t have filed for divorce in the first place another 3 or 4 seconds and I was able to say to myself well if I hadn’t have been blowing all of her money on booze and what I think was important she probably wouldn’t have file for divorce in the first place and I begin to realize why I loved that resentment cuz you see when I could concentrate on her filing for divorce and play that over and over and over and over in my head gradually distorting the picture every time I played it over making what she did a little bit worse and what I did a little bit less and let me play it long enough I could gradually transfer all blame to her and make myself as pure as the driven snow and it was all her damn fault in the first place I thought my God Charlie have you done that with any other resentments here I looked at the Internal Revenue Service I said now forget what they’re doing to you trying to put you in jail what did you do if anything to set in motion the fact they trying to put you in jail why it didn’t take two seconds to be able to say if I hadn’t been cheap eaten on my income tax they wouldn’t have been trying to put me in jail anyhow and rather than look at what I had done to them I had played it over and over and over and over distorted the picture transferred all blame to them made myself as pure as the driven snow that way I could continue through life doing what I wanted to do and never have to look at me because after all it’s all their fault in the first place showing this resentment against Rose what did you do if anything to set that in motion Charlie was out there screwing around but I was committing adultery okay sneaking around behind her back and lying to her all the time and Rose finally got enough of it she said I’ll show him and she went out and had her own affair and Joe had over a period of time played that resentment over and over gradually transferred all blame to him or to her made himself as pure as the driven snow I went down through my list of resentments I never found a name on there that I hadn’t done something to them to set this thing in motion and I had resented it and played it over and over and distorted the picture transferred all blame to them made myself as pure as the driven snow if you’re practicing alcoholic you’ve got to develop these kind of skills you know we have a conscience we’re not drunken bums we know the difference between right and wrong and I don’t think we could live with ourselves if we had to honestly see what was going on whenever we’re out there doing our thing but you see we never have to see it because we’ve got this convenient thing called resentments that we play them over and over distort the picture and transfer all blame to others and we men go from woman to woman to woman and you ladies go from man to man to man and we go from job to job to job and we go from City to City to city and we go from country to Country to Country and it’s always their damn fault that’s the only way we could live the kind of life we were living by being able to transfer blame to others and none of us realize how much we’ve been doing that until we take an honest look at these resentments and see the part that we played now in the fifth column you see the major Character defects talked about in the big book where had I been selfish dishonest self-seeking frightened or inconsiderate all other Character defects stem from these in the fifth column I asked myself this question which of the above Character defects cause me to do what I did or cause me to want to hold on to the old resentment even though I may have done nothing to cause it now going back to Barbara again if I hadn’t been so selfish I wouldn’t have been out there doing those things that hurt my wife and children if I hadn’t been so dishonest I wouldn’t have been sneaking around behind her back line to her all the time if I hadn’t been so self-seeking and frightened saying to myself man you’re getting close to 40 years old if you’re ever going to do some of that you better go do it before it’s too late fear drives us to do things like that if I hadn’t been so inconsiderate in my wife and children I wouldn’t have been taken the chance of hurting them in the first place I began to see in the fifth column the type character I had become through my years of living a life run on self-will and when I saw it I didn’t like it it made me sick you see I always fancied myself as a reason ly good person until I saw how I had become so selfish and so dishonest and so inconsiderate of other people that I was continually doing things that hurt others and they retaliated and I resented for it I begin to see that if I don’t change those things in the fifth column If I Stay selfish dishonest self-seeking frightened and inconsiderate that I’m going to keep right on doing the same old things I’ve always done drunk or sober I’m going to keep right on hurting people and they’re going to retaliate and I’m going to resent and eventually it’s going to block me off from God and I’m going to get drunk over it but just think if I could become a little less selfish oh I don’t have to get perfect I never will but if I could become a little less selfish if I could become a little less dishonest if I could become less frightened and self-seeking if I could become a little more considerate of other people and their needs and their wants maybe I wouldn’t have to do some of that kind of stuff maybe I wouldn’t hurt people and maybe they wouldn’t retaliate and I wouldn’t have to resent and just maybe I wouldn’t have to get drunk over it you see what we’re really doing here is step four this is the resentment part of it but out in the fifth column I now see the exact nature of the wrongs that I’m going to talk to another human being about when I take step five the resentment is the wrong that’s what blocks me off from God but what’s the exact nature of it that means what’s the truth of it what’s at the core of it what’s the inherent characteristic of it that’s what we’ll talk about in step five you know when a guy comes to me and he’s committed adultery 44 times I don’t care about that all I want to know is what is within him that caused him to do it in the first place if he’s stolen 364 times I don’t care about that what I want to know is what’s within him that caused him to do that that’s what we’ll talk about in step five and in that fifth column I now see the Character defects and I’m going to become willing to turn loose of in Step six out there in that fifth column I see the shortcomings now I’m going to ask God to take away in Step seven and in my case all the names from column one came off of this sheet to be added to the sheet later to be used for steps eight and nine cuz you see when I get to step eight it says I’ve got the list I made it one I took step four in my case every one of those in your case probably some of them in my case all of them now what I’ve really done if I have done this the way the big book says is I have prepared myself with all the information I need for steps 4 5 6 7 8 and N resentment wise not only have I gathered all the information I need for 456 789 well I’ve had a positive result here resentments have disappeared and they’ve been replaced with love patience tolerance compassion and goodwi did we do anything to be afraid of no did we make a list of dirty filthy nasty items no did we do anything that was too complicated now I’ve never seen anything like this inventory according to the big book now I hear some of you saying and and I hear awful good I’ve got good hearing Charlie hears good I hear some of you saying well well Charlie that’s probably right on those that we did something to them but how about those that did it to us and we didn’t have anything to do with that how about those that hurt us as kids growing up how about those that hurt us in our marriages that we didn’t do anything to cause it aren’t we justified in having that kind of resentment well I guess we are if we want to get drunk over it but you see a Justified resentment blocks you off from God just like an unjustified resentment does when you got a Justified resentment turning around in your head then whoever or whatever you’re resenting is controlling your thinking if they’re controlling your thinking they’re controlling your decisions they’re controlling your life for you and you have given them power to actually kill you because you’ve given them power to cause you to get drunk again now if you’ve got one of those resentments and I don’t care what it is is I don’t care whether it’s physical abuse mental abuse sexual abuse or whatever you I keep hearing in AA all the time this sexual abuse thing and it usually centers on young women but let me tell you something men know about that too I don’t know how many fifth steps I’ve taken with men and nearly every one of us somewhere in the background we’ve had that kind of stuff too it’s not just women it’s men if you’ve got one of those kind of resentments and you don’t want to get rid of it knowing full well it might get you drunk then we better get it on this sheet of paper and take a look at it and see what we’re doing with it we’re probably using it for rationalization and justification to rationalize not doing things we ought to go do or just as imp importantly to rationalize and justify doing things that we shouldn’t be doing in the first place oh the greatest excuse in the world is if they hadn’t have done that to me then I wouldn’t have to be the way I am today they call that victimization I don’t really think we got any place for that in AA we’re all adults it’s time for us to realize that whatever’s happened to in us in the past does not have to control what we do today now the only reason for that is to justify rationalize and Etc the woman in the book she used her resentment against her mother to justify her lack of Education bull she could have gotten an education if she wanted to bad enough she used it to justify her marital failure bull Mama didn’t have anything to do with her marital failure she even used it to justify her alcoholism mama had nothing to do with her alcoholism she became alcoholic because she drank whiskey and she drank enough of it she became alcoholic you I think it’s time for us to realize we are responsible for what we think and how we feel we are responsible for what we do today mother and Daddy and other people are no longer responsible for that maybe they were when we were little kids but we’re not little kids any longer it really doesn’t make any sense to let somebody hurt me 5 10 15 20 years ago and then let them hurt me every day for the rest of my life if I’m resenting them they’ve got me and they’re going to kill me I need to put them on this sheet put down their name what did they do to me what part of self is affected what did I do if anything to set it in Motion in this case nothing but then let’s look in the fourth column are we so dishonest with ourselves we refuse to see the truth if you got a resentment in your head today it’s not true I’m going to say that again if you got a resentment in your head today it’s not true oh it was based on truth and it’s partially true but if you played it over and over and over youve you’ve distorted it and it’s no longer true can we honestly look at it and see the truth behind it let’s look in the fifth column and see if maybe we are so fright frightened of facing life without it we refuse to turn it loose cuz you know after all if we turn it loose then we’ve got to take responsibility for our own behavior it’s a hell of a lot easier to blame it on others are we AF afraid of facing life without it we won’t turn it loose are we so inconsiderate of another human being and we fail to recognize that people that do those things to us they’re not necessarily bad people they’re sick people they didn’t necessarily do it to us they would have done it to anybody in that position if we could even begin to consider that maybe we can start a forgiving process maybe we could straighten up a relationship with another human being before it’s too late after they’re dead it’s too late I’ll guarantee you it is maybe we can do it while we’re all still alive if we will do those things I think we can get rid of that resentment too when we really see the truth behind it and what we’re doing with it if we can’t get rid of it that way then we can use the ultimate tool by Godly we can pray for them and if we pray for one of those people resent that doesn’t mean that we approve of what they did that doesn’t mean we’re going to take them by the hand and walk hand inand with them for the rest of our life what it means is we’re tired of letting them control us dominate us and Rule us every day for the rest of our life we can get rid of those kind of resentments too and if we don’t want to do that then chances are we’re using it for some reason and we need to look at it very very carefully Joe takes two people to make a prison The Prisoner and the Jailer have to turn them loose and let them out and turn them loose all those people that I hated had to turn them loose Charlie said I don’t want to be a victim any anymore and I don’t think Alcohol Anonymous may be the only Association left on the face of the Earth that won’t allow us to be victims there’s victims going on all out there everybody wants to be a victim of something you know but we and AA won’t let each other do that because we have a way out whenever else fails we can pray for them they need the prayers and we need to practice you know I see in many AA meetings where we’ve gone into this group therapy stuff and we set around the table and we discuss what those people did to us and we try to figure out why they did it we’ll never understand why they did it the thing is they did it then we start trying to discuss and figure out why it made us the way we are we’ll never understand that the fact is that’s the way we are the real question is what are we going to do about it are we going to continue to let them kill us or are we going to get rid of that jazz that’s what AA about it’s not to sit around and talk about problems it’s to sit around and talk about how do you solve the problems and resentment is the number one problem for every alcoholic and if we can get rid of them then we’re peaceful happy and free until we do we’ll never be free of it we went through a process yesterday afternoon the first part of the inventory process there we learned how to look at our resentments to take an honest truthful moral inventory and as we listed those resentments we begin to see the truth about them really the first thing we saw in column one is how many resentments we really did have how much that blocked us off from the sunlight of the spirit the second thing we saw in column two it’s not those people or institutions we resent it’s what they’ve done to us that we actually resent the third thing we found out in column three it’s really not even what they’ve done to us it’s how we choose to react to a threat to one of our Basic Instincts of life which is going to determine whether we’re resentful or not so just in filling out those three columns we learned some very valuable information we also were able to see in the big book that resentments was an absolute waste of time that whenever they’re churning around in our heads we’re pretty well paralyzed from doing anything worthwhile and we find that if we honestly look at them most of us have spent literally thousands and thousands of hours in resentments and as we look back at that time in our lives we can see where they really never did do us any good they never really straighten up a relationship with another human being never made us feel better only made us feel worse never made us any money for sure and as far as we can tell it’s absolute wasted time but we also said that’s not the worst thing about a resentment the worst thing is it very effectively blocks us off from God blocked off from God we don’t feel good we begin to become insane we begin to think about taking a drink next thing you know we end up drunk all over again and when we truthfully and honestly looked at those resentments we could really begin to see how other people have controlled and dominated us throughout our entire lifetime through those resentments now we always thought that we had it under control that we determine what we said and what we did but we suddenly realize that we really have done nothing but react to others through our resentment toward them that looks so stupid to us that about about 95% of those resentments automatically disappeared the other 5% that was so deeply embedded we found through prayer that we could remove them also so we could be resentment free if we follow the the uh procedures outlined in the big book the real revealing thing is though the amazing thing is that after we became resentment free God wouldn’t allow another hole in our head it had to be replaced with something else the only thing that could replace it was the opposite of the resentment and where we used to feel resentment we now feel Serenity a little peace of mind a little happiness compassion good will love those are all God’s thinking rather than our individual thinking and we found that that came to us automatically those things had always been a part of us we just never could use them before now that resentments are gone then God’s thinking automatically begins to replace the resentment and we’re much less of getting drunk now than we were when we started the process we went back to the resentment sheet and we looked at it from an entirely different angle now we begin to look at it to see what had we done to set that thing in motion or what did we do we had never looked at before and in our fourth column we found that in almost all cases whatever the resentment was we ourselves did something to set it in motion and we heard other people they retaliated we resented we played the resentment over and over and over distorted the picture finally transferred all blame to other people a good practicing alcoholic has to be able to do that we just couldn’t live if we didn’t have that ability so we really in the fourth column really did begin to look at the truth of the resentment to see the part that we had played and in most cases we ourselves set the ball rolling we looked in the fifth column to see the exact nature of that resentment the resentment was the wrong but what was at the actual core of it or at the center of it and in the fifth column we found the type personality that we had developed through our Years of Living on self- will and living as a practicing alcoholic and we found just about every time we had hurt anybody in the past it was either through selfishness or through dishonesty or because we were self seeking frightened or through inconsideration of other people and we begin to see in the fifth column that if we don’t change those things we’re going to keep right on doing the same things in sobriety that we used to do when drinking we’re going to continue to hurt people they’re going to retaliate we’ll resent and eventually get drunk over it and we begin to see in the fifth column the things that we will need to change in our personality if we want to live with peace of mind Serenity and happiness in the future we summed it up by saying we were in the process of doing the resentment part of step four in the fifth column we now had all the information we needed for steps five six and seven and in the names in the First Column those that we had harmed they come off of there to be added to the list to be used for eight and nine at a later date so we really ended up in this simple little inventory with all the information we needed for four five six 7 8 and N resentment wise very positive thing took place resentments disappeared and they were replaced with love patience tolerance compassion and good will so there was nothing to be afraid of there was nothing too complicated it was not a list of dirty filthy nasty items just a simple inventory now we don’t want to give you the impression that you can always be 100% free of resentments you know God never gave us anything bad it depends on what we do with things as to whether they become bad or not a resentment used right can be used for a worthwhile purpose if somebody does something to me that threatens my self-esteem if it would cause me to look at me and see some things that I need to change and I go ahead and make those changes then that resentment can be used for a worthwhile purpose for instance if we’re living in the neighborhood all the old houses are run down mine’s no worse than anybody else’s they all need painting they got broken window screens and pains and I sit on my front porch each evening after work and I rock and I rock and I’m very complacent about that situation one day I look up though and some idiot has moved in across the street he’s out there painting his house fixing his window screens and window paines makes my house look bad I sent the hell out of him for doing that I say who in the hell is he moving here and in here and screwing up this whole neighborhood now if I use that resentment right it’ll cause me to look at my house and become a little bit ashamed of it next thing you know I paint my house fix my window screens and window paines my next door neighbor resents me for doing so next thing you know he fixes his house up and his neighbor resents him and after a while God’s got the whole neighborhood cleaned up like it should have been in the first place that’s the proper use of a resentment but we alcoholics won’t use it that way we’ll sit on the front porch and we’ll Rock and we’ll Rock and we’ll resent and we’ll resent 30 days later we’ll go there at midnight and burn his damn house down we’ll show him so it really depends on what we do with resentments that determines whether they’re going to be for bad or good and if we use one rightly it’s going to disappear anyhow the ones that kill us are those those that we just leave in our head and it is faster and faster and faster and we get sicker and sicker until eventually it creates a real problem for us Joe this morning we’re going to talk about fears a bit and uh we’re not we’re not going to pycho analyze ourselves in any manner we’re simply going to do like the book suggested yesterday we’re going to find the facts and we’re going to face the facts and eventually through this process we’re going to accept the facts as they really are truthfully and it says also that when the spiritual ity is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically the spiritual mality not only is my relationship with God but my relationship with me my mental attitudes and my relationship with other people so that’s another form of spiritual malady that I had and Dr Yung said we’re going to that we’re going to have to look at our ideas emotions and attitudes and that’s what we’re doing through this inventory process we’re looking at ideas emotions and attitudes and see where they came from if we will we’ll go back now from page 18 and I’m going to read this little paragraph and tells my whole story in one little paragraph he says an illness of this sort and we’ve come to believe it an illness involves Those About Us in a way no other human sickness can if a person has cancer all is sorry for him no one is angry or hurt but not so with the alcoholic illness for with it goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life and engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferers it brings misunderstanding Fierce resentment Financial insecurity disgusted friends and employers warped lives of blameless children sad wives and parents and anyone can increase the list in other words it’s a family illness it affects everybody in the family to some extent and if you live with one of us very long you’ll be affected by it in some manner for sure and as I look back in my life to see where these ideas emotions and attitudes that were that were to become the guiding force of my life started Way Way Back so now let’s go back to page 67 and again we’re not trying to psychoanalyze ourselves I just expound the facts I accepted the facts as I looked at the facts and I could see where I’d come from said notice that the word fear is bracked alongside the difficulties with Mr Brown Miss Jones the employer and the wife six times along that column this short word somehow touches about every aspect of Our Lives it was an evil and corroding thread the fabric of our existence was shot through with it set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us Misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve you know you do the crime you do the time that’s the way that is but we did not we ourselves set the ball rolling see I did that myself to me cuz I didn’t know any better sometimes we think that fear ought to be classed with stealing it seems to cause more trouble now we reviewed our fears Surly we put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them we asked ourselves why we had them here it is for me wasn’t it because that self-reliance failed self-reliance was good as far as it went but didn’t go far enough some of us once had great self-confidence but it didn’t fully solve the fear problem or any other when it made us cocky it was worse so what we’re going to do here this morning is basically it’s about the same thing that we did with resentments we have a little list here and it’s a review of our fears and we’re simply going to look at our fears where they come from the idea emotions and attitudes behind them and what we’re fearful of and we’re going to write them down in these columns just like we did with resentments and it won’t take very long to do this in the First Column it says who or what did I fear I list people institution or principles whom I fear and again in column one I simply write down the the people the institutions and PE and the principles that I feared leaving a little space from top to bottom one column at a time and we list those now we men tend to say well we don’t have much fear we’re tough we’re Macho but we’re not talking about physical fear anyhow we’re talking about all these fears that run through the Mind from time to time and I think if we carefully look at them we’ll find that we all have fears connected certainly with our marriages we have fears connected with our children we have fears connected with our jobs we have fears connected with the Internal Revenue Service we have fears connected with the police department we have fears connected with the federal government we have fears connected with the church we could just go on and on and on and name literally thousands of fears that people have now I’m not going to attempt to psychoanalyze myself I’m not going to say you know that that that these fears are are things that come from things way back in my early childhood like mother uh setting me sideways on the potty when I’m two years old or something what I some fear we’re supposed to have anyhow it’s just like resentments fear can be used for a worthwhile purpose if they’re used right mainly what we’re looking at are these fears in our head that just continually kind of control us and Rule us and dominate us we’ve made a decision to let God direct our thinking and if we have that many fears then God can’t the fears do and I found out the same thing here with these fears that I did with resentments I didn’t think I had very many fears instead I started putting them on a piece of paper you can only see one at a time in your head but as I begin to fill out sheet after sheet after sheet I begin to realize how much fear really does control me rule me and dominate me so I did the same thing that I did with resentments started top to bottom listed each fear leaving a little space between each one of them and it’s amazing when we see how much fear we really do have we’ll never see it till we put it on a sheet of paper go see for many years I didn’t think I had any fears at all I thought I was a bra very brave attitude that I had and after I fill out this First Column I could see that the fears was throughout my whole attitude and outlook on life it priated every part of my life I was fearful of everything and everyone and I did not know that I didn’t know that so I go to the sex sex column second column boy he got it on his mind this morning Happ huh yeah I can hardly wait I believe he must have got over his headache yeah got brain damage this morning thinking about it so I say simply go to the second column and I write down beside each of these people or principles or institution of whom I’m fearful what am I what am I afraid of in conjunction with those people am I afraid what are them I afraid they’re going to do something to me am I perhaps going to go to jail for some of the things that I did am I going to lose something of value am I going to lose face will it result in divorce will it destroy a personal relationship when I might lose my job those kind of questions I ask myself beside each of those people and institutions and principles as I listed in step one and once again as we fill out that second column and we begin to look at these fears we’re going to find that nearly all of them are going to revolve around about one of two or three things anyhow nearly every fear I’ve ever had revolves around the fact that I’m either not going to get something that I really want or I’m going to lose lose something am I already got or I’ve done something to another human being I shouldn’t have done and I’m worried to death about what they’re going to do whenever they catch me nearly all of them will will Center somewhere around those things so we simply just put down the cause of the fear you and again I’m not going to say well I’m afraid of the dark cuz mother set me on the potty sideways some fear I’m supposed to have you bet you I’m a little bit afraid of the dark why well I don’t have headlights and I can’t see at night and that keeps me even getting hurt it brings caution I’m a little bit afraid of the heights why well I don’t have wings and I can’t fly keeps me from getting hurt but if those kind of fears should keep me from going outside after dark if they should keep me from riding in an elevator or an airplane then I better look at them very closely they’re beginning to really really rule me and dominate me most of my fears though center around just basically two or three things I’m afraid I’m going to lose what I got not going to get what I want or I’ve done something I shouldn’t have and I’m afraid what they’re going to do when they catch me very simple process column three go to column three and what part of self was affected and again that’s why I need that information on the Basic Instincts of life and the working knowledge of some of those words and ideas to en able enable to do the third column you know if you don’t have a God in your life and you’re living without God and you and and you don’t need other people and you’re living on your own uh will then you’re the only one thing you can do and that’s to try to satisfy your Basic Instincts of life and that’s what I was doing I was operating on my own so what part of myself was affected was it my self-esteem was it my security my ambitions personal or sex relations which been interfered with is those the things that happened and I look down at the the third column and beside each name again in each instance I write down one of those Basic Instincts of Life the part of me that was affected by these things you know I can’t experience fear unless there’s a threat to one other Basic Instincts of life and I found out as I filled out the third column just like I did with resentments I found out where fear comes from you know I didn’t know where resentments came from I didn’t know where anger came from I didn’t know where fear comes from today I realize it comes from a threat to one of these Basic Instincts of life and just like with a resentment if my Basic Instincts are at the level that God intends for them to be if my relationship with God Is Right then you can do about anything you want to to me and I’m not going to experience fear because of it but I’ll guarantee you if my instincts are not under control my relationship with God is not right then about anything you do or say to me is going to create fear absolutely amazing what we learn by about ourselves just by filling out these simple little columns now let’s go to the fourth column go to the fourth column and we try to put out of our minds all these things that happened so far and we write down what did I do what did I do to set the ball rolling did I do the crime to do the time yes I did that was it when my wife was going to divorce me and I was fearful of it what did I do what was some of the things that I did well I was uncaring for her I didn’t care about her didn’t consider her in any manner in any way and therefore I was afraid and I didn’t know that see I really didn’t know that I was afraid of those things it told us way back in step three that we invariably find that we’ve made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt and we’ve made decisions trying to satisfy our Basic Instincts of life and running on self-will those Basic Instincts become insatiable things we never get enough to satisfy them and we’re continually doing things that end up hurting and harming and creating other people and then we got to be scared to death what they going to do whenever they catch us and even if they don’t catch us the guilt and the remorse eats us up here just like with resentments so we begin to look at the part we played and we find that we did the same thing with fears that we did with resentments as we played them over and over and over in our head we actually distorted the picture and the fears that we have in our head today are not true oh they started on truth but they are no longer true you see that’s one of the definitions of one of those wrongs fear is incorrect believing and if we carefully look at each one of these fears we’re going to find that they’re absolutely wrong they started with truth we’ve distorted the picture and once again we’ve used them to transfer blame to others so we don’t ever have to look at ourselves same identical thing as with resentments now let’s look into the fifth column in the fifth column I simply look down and in these instances was I selfish in those interests in those particular items yes I was very selfish because I was so fearful I was selfish I was afraid I was going to lose things that I already had or I was afraid I wasn’t going to get some things that I wanted was I dishonest yes I was dishonest I took things from other people that didn’t belong to me and I was very dishonest it seemed to me like to be successful in any manner was okay with me so I was extremely a dishonest person and I certainly I didn’t know that particularly and then I was self-seeking and frightened and inconsiderate of other people for sure cuz I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it and I didn’t make a damn how I got it was the way I at my life and if you got in my way you just shouldn’t have so I was a very selfish self-seeking frightened inconsiderate individual and I did not know that you know it’s absolutely a life living on Hell whenever you’re scared to death you’re not going to get something you really do want it and then through dishonesty you go ahead and get it and then you got to be scared to death what they going to do whenever they catch you and even if they don’t catch you the guilt and the remorse eat you up and our lives really really do become an absolute living hell in trying to satisfy these Basic Instincts of life and we just really Drive ourselves absolutely dingy until we get an opportunity to truthfully look at these things now out there in that fifth column once again we see the exact nature of the wrong the fears are what’s wrong the wrong because we find out most of them are incorrect they’re what block us off from God but what’s the actual truth behind us well if we wasn’t so selfish if we wasn’t so dishonest if we were not so self-seeking frightened and inconsiderate we wouldn’t have to experience near as much fear as we do but I’ll guarantee you if I stay selfish dishonest self-seeking frighten and inconsiderate the same old things are going to drive me I’m going to do the same old things of always done fear guilt remorse is going to absolutely eat me up sooner later it blocks me off from God and causes me to get drunk so once again what we’re doing here in this little inventory sheet we are doing step four this is the fear part of it out in this fifth column we see the exact nature of the wrong for step five the defects for step six the shortcomings we’re going to ask God to take away in Step seven and then once again many of the names over here in column one will be people and institutions we’ve harmed and we’re scared to death what they going to do whenever they catch us so those names will come off of column one they’ll be added to the sheet to be used later on for steps eight and nine we got some off the resentment sheet we got some off of the fear sheet also and one thing that absolutely amazed me is when I really looked at but this truthfully is I began to see a lot of the names same names appearing on the fear sheet that I had on the resentment sheet I had never tied that together in my head before Barbara was on both sheets I resented her and I certainly feared her and I’m still a little bit afraid of that lady today if she ever finds out everything that I was doing about 30 years ago go she probably going to file for divorce again I don’t know I resented the Internal Revenue Service and I feared the Internal Revenue Service they were also on both sheets and I never really had tied that together in my head now if you think resentments look stupid in your head wait till you get these say down on paper about fears now fears look awful good in your head but when you get them down on a sheet of paper they really do look double dumb when you see the truth about them resentments look stupid hell fears look even worse than that and they look so dumb about 95% of them are going to disappear anyhow when you see the truth about them once again there’s going to be 1 2 3 four or five it’s been embedded in our minds so deeply we’re probably going to have to have a little help in order to get rid of some of those we now come to the second prayer in the big book on step four regarding fears you know when I prayed for those people that I resented my my ideas emotions and attitude toward them changed they didn’t change but I did now prior to this idea about these fears my whole attitude and Outlook upon life was involved in these fears I had fears in every area of my life and didn’t know it because I hadn’t had a God in my life either but I’ve took step three and I’ve got God in my life and now I’m on a different basis and the book says perhaps there is a better way we think so for we’re now on a different BAS basis the basis of trusting and relying upon God We Trust our infinite God rather than our finite selves we’re in the world to play the role he assigns just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him does he enable us to match Calamity with Serenity Now we never apologize to anyone for depending upon our creator we can laugh for those who think that spirituality is the way of weakness paradoxically it’s the way of strength the verdict of the ages is that faith means courage all men of Faith have courage they trust their God now we never apologize for God instead we let him demonstrate through us what he can do here’s more prayer we ask him to him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be and at once we commence to outgrow fear and you know as I look back at that my sponsor told me in those early days he said the most important thing about prayer two the mo the two most important things about prayer one of them is to start and the other is to continue and as I look back over my life I can see that every time I prayed I changed just a minute amount just hardly noticeable the next time I prayed it was just a little bit more and the next time I prayed was a little bit more and as time goes by I can see a real Reliance upon God today in my life it wasn’t that way in the beginning but I when I started trusting and relying upon God rather than myself then those fears begin to come away from me they weren’t as as intense as had been and they begin to get in the area where God intended for them to be and at once I commence to outgrow these fears you know we hear always about the promises on page 83 and 84 we never hear about the promises that are spread throughout the entire book and I think one of the greatest promises to be found anywhere in the book is what Joe just read we ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be at once we commence to outgrow that fear now we can take these deep-seated fears just like deep-seated resentments through prayer on a daily basis asking God to take this particular fear away from me direct my attention to what he would have me be instead of that and at once I commence to outgrow that fear and over a period of days as he directs my attention to what he would have me be and I try to be that as I ask him to take that fear away way some morning I wake up and that fear is gone it really really does work and I think the reason that it really works is when we’re asking God to take it away and direct our attention to what he would have us be then that’s one of the Great Expressions of courage and faith that we human beings can have courage faith and fear will not exist on the same plane the fear will be replaced by the courage to do the opposite that fear and as we begin to change it’ll be replaced by faith that God really can do these things and slowly we can remove those fears too now just think this file cabinet up here in my head that was filled with fears has now been emptied out that damaged and unsalable goods caed fear is gone at least to the level that God intends for it to be once again God’s not going to allow another hole in my head the fears if if they disappear they got to be replaced with the opposite and the opposite will be faith and courage the opposite of the fear itself I found out I didn’t have to go to any other fellowships read any other books to get Faith and courage if God dwells within me that’s always been a part of my makeup I just never could use it before in my Chase for money power Prestige and sex and my desire to fulfill the Basic Instincts of life and I just worries about I wouldn’t get what I want and and I’d lose what I got or they’re going to catch me at it faith and courage had to be repressed and I had to operate on that fear level but now that the fear is gone faith and courage automatically comes to the surface another positive happening 2third of my store now have some peace of mind Serenity and happiness in them and I’m in much less chance of drinking now than I was before I started the inventory process you see we don’t have to wait wait till step 12 to get something good out of this every step brings a positive result there’s nothing negative about any of our program period now also just like with a resentment knowing that fears block you off from God and that they might get you drunk if you got a fear that you don’t want to turn loose of you better look at it very very closely because we can also use fear to rationalize and justify not doing something we really would like to do or just as importantly we can use it to justify continuing to do things that we know we shouldn’t be doing and if we’ve got one of those and we don’t want to get rid of it we better look at it very very closely let me give you an example of what how you can use fear to rationalize and justify how many of you in here this morning and please be truthful with me how many of you would really like to go back to school and finish your education could I see your hand oh my God about half of you at least now I’m going to ask you another question how many of you really do intend to do that oh about a half of those hands went up this time I wonder why nothing in the world but fear fear that we won’t measure up fear of failure fear of hard work actually Keeps Us from doing things that we really would like to do now if we can ask God to take that away and direct our attention to what you have us be instead then every one of you that wants to go back to school will end up doing it but until that fear’s gone it’s going to drive most of us away and keep us away we use it to rationalize justify just like we did with resentments so if we got one of those let’s look at that closely too all my life I love to work in my hands all my life I wanted to build a set of kitchen cabinets never would do it because I knew there’d be a lot of mistakes people would laugh and I would be embarrassed now after I worked the program for quite some time one time I got the courage to BU able to set of kitchen cabinets now they don’t look very good there’s a lot of mistakes and people laugh at it but I really don’t give a damn it don’t bother me anymore see so we can overcome these things with God’s help it’s amazing what we can do with these things bottom of page 68 now about sex we’re getting ready now to to look at the uh store room back here that’s filled with guilt and remorse and it seems as though uh we human beings hurt each other in the sexual area probably faster and easier than we do in any other way and I think there’s a reason before that uh you know the other animals here on Earth Earth they have a sexual urge just like we do so that they can and will reproduce themselves but the difference between their sex life and ours is simply that they don’t have this thing called self-will most of the other animals here on Earth they don’t really have any choice in their sex life when it comes time for them to reproduce themselves God usually signifies that by some physical change in the female of the species the male senses that change prepares himself the two join together and it’s kind of like bang bang thank you ma’am and when it’s over with they normally go their separate ways not always but usually they do now they didn’t think about having sex before they had it and they didn’t think about having sex while they were having it they couldn’t decide when they were going to do it God made that decision for them they usually can’t decide who they’re going to do it with they can’t decide whether they’re going to do it with one or more parners they can’t decide how many times they’re going to do it and they can’t even decide what position they’re going to do it in so therefore you see very few sexual problems amongst the other animals here on Earth I’ve never seen a cow on a psychiatrist couch yet talking about sexual dysfunction they just don’t have those kind of problems we human beings are a little bit different you see God gives us this thing called self-will and we can make choices about our sex lives we can have sex any day of the year that we wish to we can decide who we’re going to have sex with we can decide whether we’re going to have it with one or more more Partners we can decide how many times we’re going to do it providing we’re physically capable of doing so we can even decide what position we’re going to do it in they tell me there’s something like 64 different positions a human being can have sex in I have no idea what they are I only found three in my lifetime and two of those damn near kill me I’m not sure I’m going back to so what we’re going to look at here for just a few minutes this morning is not so much as to how we do sex but as to how we think about sex cuz how we think about it determines how we’re going to do it and that determines whether we’re going to hurt other people or not and that determines whether we’re going to have to eaten eaten up with fear guilt and remorse associated with our sex lives so we’re going to look just a few minutes at how we think about sex he said many of us needed an overhauling there now you older fellas don’t get your hopes up we’re talking about mental not physical but above all we tried to be sensible on this question it’s so easy to get way off the track here we find human opinions running to extremes absurd extremes perhaps one set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature a base necessity of procreation I’ve heard them all all my life they’re the ones that say sex is a dirty thing you ought to do it at one time in one position with one person only the only reason to do it is to reproduce yourself and if you enjoy it it’s a sinful thing I’ve heard them as far back as I can remember they are to the extremes on one side then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex who bewail the institution of marriage who think that most of the Troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes they think we do not have enough of it or that isn’t the right kind they see its significance everywhere can you hear them today they’re the ones that say you ought to be able to have sex anytime you want to anywhere you want to with anybody you want to as many times as you want to you ought to be able to enjoy it every time and if you don’t there must be something wrong with you or maybe they call that the sexual Revolution main thing I see wrong with it it happened 25 years too late for me to participate in it I know that one school would allow a man no flavor for his fair and the other would have us all on a straight Pepper diet well we want to stay out of this controversy we do not want to be the Arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct we all have sex problems we’d hardly be human if we didn’t what can we do about them and I read that last statement with great relief cuz I knew this book was getting getting ready to condemn me for what I had been in the past I knew it was getting ready to tell me what I was going to have to do in the future and I’d already made up my mind that I wasn’t going to pay any attention to it at all and I was relieved to find out that we’re not going to be the Arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct we simply are not going to get into that question this book is meant to be helpful to be to anybody anywhere and we start trying to tell people how they’re going to have to conduct their sex Liv we start condemning them for what they’ve done in the past and surely surely we’re going to alienate people besides that what sexually acceptable in one part of the world may not be acceptable at all in another part of the world so we simply are not going to get into that question what we are going to see is a simple little way to review our own past sex conduct see what we’ve been doing with it see if perhaps we’ve been using it for the wrong purposes in some cases look at those people we’ve hurt by it then try to shape a sex life of the future where we can still engage in it and enjoy it yet at the same time not hurt other people and if we don’t do something about it and we continue to hurt other people and feel the fear guilt and remorse sooner or later it’ll block us off from God and we end up getting drunk over it very simple process process Jo certainly I’m not going to be the Arbiter of anyone’s sex conduct and I needed an overhauling in that area when I arrived with alcoholic synonymous and again we’re going to look at the ideas emotions and attitudes Behind These sexual conduct that I had and I I look back in my life and when I was about 12 or 13 years old I got to thinking about this a lot I mean a lot almost gave me brain damage from thinking about it so I went to my mom and I said Mom of course my dad’s in the nous you see I can’t be talking to him so I went to my mom and I said mom I’ve been thinking about this sex thing and she said oh my God Benny Joe scared her to death that’s my name Benny Joe oh my God Benny Joe said that’s not a good thing to be thinking about in fact it’s a dirty filthy rotten thing to be thinking about she said and you ought to saved it for the one you love think about that and she she said you only time you supposed to have sex is when you want to have children well let’s see she had five children she had sex five times I figured well no wonder my dad was in The Nut House you know but somehow I just didn’t believe what she was telling me and we had sex education when I went to school too but they called it recess and also in west Tulsa Oklahoma there was a place called The Jenkins Cafe and every day and every evening in front of the Jenkins Cafe there was a gathering ing of very wise intelligent experienced men and women of about 15 to 16 years old and they were more than glad to share with you all they knew about sex and some of those guys told me that they were having sex with two or three different partners a night they said sometimes they was having sex as many as 10 times a night they said and you know the fallacy of all this I tried to live up to that because that’s what I thought it I never could but I tried and I was so over two or 3 years in Alcoholics synomous before I figured out they were lying to me at least I hope they were lying you better hope they were lying to you yeah so certainly I needed an overhauling there when I got here I had the spiritual knowledge of a seven or eighty old boy I had the coping skills of eight or nine year old boy and I had the sexual knowledge of a 12 or 13 year old boy do you think I needed overhauling in all those areas how many of you got your sex information pretty much the way I did someone yeah I need to sit down and look at this didn’t I you know I remember the very first time I ever had sex I was very selfish and self-centered and dishonest and self-seeking and I was also alone that’s why he’s wearing glasses today too he’s every time we say that that two or three you guys whip your glasses off and put them in your pocket we can see and gals okay let’s look at the next paragraph now very carefully we’re going to see here the same set of instructions that we use to to look at sex that we had for resentments only difference is they’re worded a little differently which is Bill’s way of doing things we’ve reviewed our own conduct over the years past where had we been selfish dishonest or inconsiderate whom had we hurt did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy suspicion or bitterness where were we at fault what should we have done instead we got this all down on paper and looked at it so once again we made up a little sheet to avoid any confusion and it looks just about exactly like the resentment sheet except we call it a review of our own sex conduct and in this little sheet a review of our own sex conduct we have the same five columns column one who did I hurt now I doubt if there’s anybody in this room this morning that ever hurt anybody in the sexual area that we don’t remember just exactly who that is that seems to be a form of knowledge that we all have there might be some question as to what do we do to hurt people in a sexual area well certainly we hurt them in many different ways uh for instance if I’m in a married relationship and I go outside of that relationship and I have sex out there and my wife finds out about it then surely I’ve created a problem from her it not physically at least emotionally if that sexual Escapade creates a trouble between my wife and I there’s children in my home then I’ve hurt my children also by the same sexual Escapade if the lady I had sex with out there if it becomes common knowledge I’ve hurt her too if she has a husband and children I’ve hurt them also you know one sex act could hurt many many different people I think sometimes we hurt people in a sexual area by demanding more than our fair share maybe our partner isn’t too Keen about having sex every time we want to rather than consider their needs wants and desires we selfishly demand that they have sex with us when they really don’t want to surely that creates a problem for them if not physically at least emotionally I think sometimes we hurt people in the sexual area by demanding that they do things with us physically sexually that they really don’t want to do and once again rather than consider their needs and wants we selfishly demand those things surely we create a problem for them if not physically at least emotionally I think sometimes we hurt people in a sexual area just by withholding sex maybe we’re not to too Keen to have sex every time our partner wants to and rather than consider their needs and wants we selfishly withhold when perhaps we should give in a little more often I think we hurt many people in many different ways and we pretty well know what they are column one we list their names column two what did I do to hurt them column three what part of self is affected now you would think if I heard anybody in a second ual area that it would be caused by the sex Instinct and probably part of the time that’s true sometimes in order to get the physical the emotional gratification that comes at the moment of successful completion of the sex act maybe I’m doing the wrong thing at the wrong time with the wrong person because of the sex Instinct but I think if we will carefully review each situation we’re going to find that usually the other two instincts are involved just as much as sex and in many cases even more so and sometimes sex really doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with it now I’m going to express an opinion and I want to make sure that everybody understands this is my opinion it’s not aa’s opinion not Joe’s not anybody else it’s just mine today I am convinced that God gave us the sex urge so that we could reproduce ourselves I’m also convinced he made it a very enjoyable thing so we would do so I don’t think you and I would do the kind of work involved in sex if we didn’t get something out of it now if we’re doing sex for purposes other than reproduction or enjoyment then we might be doing sex for purposes other than what God intended for instance we boys found at a very early age that you can use sex to build your self-esteem after all the more members of the opposite sex you can attract to yourself the greater man you really are we thought now we boy I don’t know what your girls called it but we Boys called it John Wayne ISM Jane Wayne Joe said Jane Wayne some of you girls tell me you use sex for the same purposes now if that’s what we’re using sex for that has nothing to do with reproduction really has nothing to do with enjoyment that’s to fulfill a part of the social Instinct and sex really doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with it sometimes we use sex to buy a personal relationship maybe we’re just Lonesome maybe we just want somebody to pay attention to us and we found out a long time ago we can give sex and buy back a personal relationship ship now that’s not to reproduce that’s not to enjoy that’s also to fulfill a part of the social Instinct sometimes we use sex to buy material security maybe we’re in a sexual situation we really would rather not even be in but we’ve come become so overly dependent upon another human being for our material well-being that we give sex to buy back material well-being has nothing to do with reproduction or enjoyment that’s to fulfill the security Instinct sometimes we use sex to get even with another human being maybe we’re in a relationship and our partner’s gone out and done something they shouldn’t have done and it infuriates the hell out of us and we say we’ll show them and we’ll go out and we’ll do exactly the same thing fallacy in it is is after we’ve done it we can’t afford to tell them we did it but certainly we didn’t use sex there to reproduce or to enjoy we used it to get even with another human being sex really doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with that you sometimes we use sex to force our will on another human being maybe our partner isn’t doing what we think they ought to do we say we’ll show them we’ll just cut them off at the past we won’t let them have any sex till they come around our way of thinking now we boys aren’t too good at that we only last two days at the most you girls have honed it to Perfection you know exactly how to do that and I don’t blame you I would use it too for that that has nothing to do with reproduction or enjoyment that’s to force our will on another human being I I was absolutely amazed as I filled out that third column to see what I had actually been using sex for two things happened to me almost automatically as I filled out the third column A lot of my guilt began to disappear I thought I was just a dirty rotten no good SOB but I found out that I use sex for purposes other than what God intended not because I’m a bad human being but because I’m a sick human being in those areas and I needed that sex to build the personal relationships and Etc and when I saw that a lot of guilt began to disappear tell you another thing it started happening to me in column 3 I begin to get a handle on this sex thing you see I always thought I was over sexed and that caused me to do those things but in column 3 I found out hell I’m not over sexed I’m under secure and I use sex to build my security and to build my self-esteem and when I saw what I was doing with sex it began to look pretty stupid to do those things and a lot of that desire to go do it at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong people began to disappear and I started getting a handle on the sex thing right here in the third column I think it’s one of the greatest things that we can do for ourselves especially We Men We tend to use sex to build self-esteem and sex doesn’t have really anything to do with it we tend to use it to build our self-esteem and when I saw that’s what I was doing with it then a desire to go do it became less and less column four What feelings did I create in others did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy suspicion or bitterness what should I have done instead in column four not only are we looking to see those things that we did but we also need to be looking at what should we have done instead we’re trying to shape a new sex life of the future where we can still engage in it and enjoy it yet at the same time not hurt other people column five which character defect is involved same old deal if I wasn’t so selfish I wouldn’t be doing some of those things in a sexual area that hurt other people if I wasn’t so dishonest I wouldn’t be sneaking around behind my wife’s back line to her all the time anyhow if I wasn’t so afraid of facing life without that sex to build my self-esteem and ego and Etc probably wouldn’t be doing it in the first place if I really considered my wife wife and my children and other human beings ahead of my own needs and wants I wouldn’t be doing those things that’s going to take a chance on hurting other people that I’ll guarantee you if I stay selfish dishonest self-seeking frighten and inconsiderate I’m going to keep right on doing the same old things I’m going to keep right on hurting people in the sexual area I’m going to have to be scared to death of what they’re going to do if they catch me the guilt and remorse eats me up sooner or later it blocks me off from God and I end up drunk over it it’s not a question of right and wrong it’s a question of what can we do and live with it with peace of mind and happiness and be able to stay sober in the future at the very least we’re going to have to do something about some of these things or sooner or later it eats us up now once again we’re doing step four this is the SE part in the fifth column we see all the information now we need for step 5 six and 7even quite naturally all the names in column one will come off of this sheet and be added to the sheet to be used later on for steps 8 and N again I was amazed to see in many cases the same names appearing on all three sheets Barbara was certainly on all three sheets I even had the Internal Revenue Service on all three sheets I resented them and I feared them and I gave them a pretty good screwing before I got through with them too now let’s see what we do with this information he said in this way the way it was just outlined in this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life we subjected each relation to this test was it selfish or not and prayer is going to be used three different times in this in the next page or so here’s the first one we ask God to mold our ideals and to help us to live up to them we remembered always ways that our sex Powers were god-given and therefore good neither to use be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised or loed see God never to give us anything that was bad whatever ideal turns out to be we must be willing to grow toward it we must be willing to make amends where we’ve done harm provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing in other words we treat sex as we would any other problem more prayer in meditation we ask God what we should do about each specific matter the right answer will come if we want it a God Alone can judge our sex situation counsel with others other persons is often desirable but we let God be the final judge we realize that some people are fanatical about sex as others are loose we avoid hysterical thinking or advice you know this is an area that I don’t think we need a whole lot of advice in anyhow I think all of us deep down inside we know what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t be doing you know I’ve never been in a sexual situation yet that was wrong that I didn’t know it was wrong before I ever got into it didn’t keep me getting into it but I never got into one yet that was wrong that I didn’t know it was wrong before I ever got into it and if you start running around asking people for sexual advice if you ask six different people you going get six different answers and then you’ll have to decide which one of those to follow and besides that I really can’t think of a worse place in the world to get sexual advice than in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous I think that’s a hell of a place to look for it I think all we got to do is listen to that little voice inside I I think it pretty well knows and I think it’ll pretty well tell us what we should and what we shouldn’t do and if we follow it we’re probably not going to hurt other people now suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble does this mean we’re going to get drunk well some people tell us so but this is only a half truth it depends on us and our motives now if we’re sorry for what we’ve done and have an honest desire to let God take us to better things we believe we’ll be forgiven and have learned our lesson now if we’re not sorry and our conduct continues to harm others we’re quite sure to drink and we’re not theorizing these are facts of our experience you know I had a young fellow come to me not long ago he’s still in his 20s and he said Charlie my sponsor told me I couldn’t have any sex the first year of sobriety is that right and I said no that’s not necessarily right I said you can have all the sex you want the first year the second year you can have it with other people you know sometimes it’s hard enough to quit drinking without doing some other things too yeah now to sum up with about sex we earnestly pray for the right more prayer we earnestly pray for the right ideal for guidance in each questionable situation for sanity for the strength to do the right thing now sex is very Troublesome we throw ourselves at a harder into helping others we think of their needs and work for them this takes us out of ourselves it quiets the horny condition oh it quiets the imperious urge when to year would mean heartache oh Bill used some fancy words didn’t he huh okay now we’re going to make one other suggestion before we leave the inventory uh the book says we have a we have the the list for our amends we made it and we took step for and we’ve looked at people we’ve heard on the resentment sheet we looked at them on the fear sheet we looked them at them on the sex sheet but there’s other people we’ve heard in other ways too that perhaps haven’t popped up on any of these sheets maybe somebody we stole money from them or maybe we somebody we hurt physically many ways we hurt people and any of those names that haven’t come up on at least one of these three sheets we suggest we take this fourth sheet a review of harms other than sexual and do exactly the same thing with it that we have done with the other sheets column one who did I hurt column two what did I do column three what part of self is affected column four What feelings did I create in others what should I have done instead column five which character defect is involved and if we’ll do that then we’ve got everything we need here for four five six and seven 8 and nine and when we’ve done this sheet when we have completed our inventory we’ve got everything we need now for four 5 6 7 8 and n and now then we’re ready to get on with our business very very simple procedure now let me ask you something did we see anything here to be afraid of did we see anything that was so complicated we couldn’t do it did we make a list of dirty filthy nasty it items did we get any positive results from this yes is there any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and do step four we don’t need to procrastinate any longer we do we it is simple enough that we can get with it get on with the program a little bit of study and a little bit of help with your sponsor and a couple of evenings you can have it done just that quick now the book says if we’ve been thorough about our personal inventory we have written down a lot we have listed and analyzed our resentments now some people look at the word analyzed as a bad word all this is is another word that means truth we have taken a truthful a moral truthful honest analytical inventory to analyze something simply means to get down to the truth of it now he didn’t say it but we’ve listed and analyzed our fears we’ve listed and analyzed our sexual harms we’ve listed and analyzed harms other than sexual we’ve begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality we have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness now here’s some results we have begun to learn tolerance patience and Good Will toward all men even our enemies for we look on them as sick people my God what a change in personality already this is a real change taking place here in step four we don’t have to wait till step TW 12 to get something we have listed to people we’ve hurt by our conduct and are willing to straighten out the past if we can in this book you read again and again that Faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves we hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him if you’ve already made a decision to step three and an inventory of your grosser handicaps you have made a good beginning that being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself so now what what are some of the grosser handicaps in which we’ve looked at resentment fear guilt and remorse what are some of the basic Character defects that we’ve looked at in the the basic cause selfish dishonest self-seeking frightened and inconsiderate we have really looked at those things very carefully haven’t we now the book recognizes it would never be perfect it said these are our grosser handicaps I think one of the great mistakes being made in AA today is everybody sitting around and waiting till they get well so they can do step four perfect you can’t do that let’s get rid of these grosser things we’ve got another step later on that we’re going to use this process for the rest of our life we’ll be in mentoring forever and it’ll get better and better but these are the major things that kill us we got them behind us now we can get on with our business you know I think I think this is all the inventory I need anyhow as I look back in my lifetime I can’t spot an emotional problem I’ve ever had that didn’t revolve around one of three things matter than hell at somebody scared to death about something or I’d done something I shouldn’t have done and the guilt and remorse was eating me up as I project my mind in the future I don’t see anything that’s going to bother me that’s not going to revolve around the same three things matter in Hell scared to death or filled with guilt and remorse I think this is a perfect inventory for people like us and we will continue to work on it the rest of our lives anyhow now I don’t know whether you all have noticed or not but nearly all the information in the big book on sex is is on page 69 I I don’t know that that has any significance whatsoever that just happens to be where nearly all the sex information is is on page 69 you know we heard a story about a young lady who been in AA about 90 days and she went to her sponsor and she said sponsor I’ve got a problem her sponsor said what is it she said well it’s this sex thing she said sober I don’t know what to do anything I’ve ever done in the sexual area tried to attract a member of the opposite sex or anything else it’s always been while drinking and sober I just don’t know how to function her sponsor said well go home get out your big book read page 69 it will have the answer to any problems you might have so the young lady goes home gets her book out and proceeds to read but she got confused on page numbers instead of page 69 she read page 96 just for the hell of it why don’t you go to 996 and see what she read I think that’s one of the most appropriate things I’ve ever read it just goes on and on and on thank you for listening to sober Sunrise if you enjoyed today’s episode please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message until next time have a great day