Action and Experience – Workshop – Part 1 of 9 – Earl H.

Thank you very much. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for inviting me out here to share with you guys. It's always an honor and a privilege. I must confess that I'm relatively brain dead this morning. It was a really nasty flight from L.A. to New York yesterday. Actual pieces of the plane The good news was it was inside the plane. Actual pieces of the plane fell off into the cabin. You know one of those flights where they suspend service and strap everybody in, right? My idea of a good way to spend the day. Horrifying experience. And didn't sleep much. Had a couple hours of sleep, but apparently that's all I'm going to need because here we are. Hi. Thank you. I was mildly intimidated by that. All right. So, I'll knock down some Diet Coke and go. So, something about these 12 steps apparently. We're going to discuss those. So, my disclaimer, not that I need one, but there's a lot of people who have lots of ways into the book, into the steps, into this experience, the purpose and value of it, their own styles, their own ways. Some people really love to get into the minutiae of the book. You know what I mean? And, you know, like, okay, today we'll be reviewing the ninth word in chapter three. Is it a German root? You know what I mean? It's just, I just kind of, when that goes on, it's just. I mean, I'm an alcoholic. I've never really paid much attention to the facts. It's always been about the feelings for me. And I'm the kind of guy that I've got to feel it. I've Got to feel It. I've GOT TO catch a buzz. I've Gotta get that excitement going. I've gotta feel like there's a way in for me. There has to be... I don't want to understand my life. I want to experience it. You know, I want To be complete. As Joseph Campbell said, I mean, I Want to be present in the moment. I Want To feel life. I WantTo feel love. I WantTO feel friendship. I want to feel purpose and value. I mean, understanding has never been that big for me. And it seems that that's always come as a result of action that I've taken. So for me, I've always had to, in reading the book and being in book studies and in 12-in-12 groups and studying this and breaking it down and going and listening, there's so many great messengers in the program. There's so many people that have different ways. My thing has always been that I've got to keep my eye on the prize, you know what I mean? And the prize for me is that I can become a man who's comfortable sober, right? Because for me, sobriety, this isn't about stopping drinking and using. It's about staying stopped. How do I stay stopped? How do i have the process of recovery lay that down upon the process of my life? That's what I'm after. I'm after finding a way to make it possible for me to live a life that has a code of love and tolerance. As the book suggests to me, that ours is a code OF LOVE AND TOLERANCE. And I think it's interesting that they suggest that to me. I'll speak for me. I think its interesting that the suggest to me that I should lead a life based on a code of love intolerance. Out there, they're talking about love. In here it's love and tolerance. They throw tolerance right up there because they know me. They saw me coming. I'm notoriously intolerant of myself and of others. I'm a self-centered, frightened human being. Alcoholic. I was talking to somebody. There's a book study in my living room on Thursday nights. Ava came and spent some time with us a few weeks ago. in that very meeting. And I was talking to someone about... And by the way, if occasionally I just stop talking and I'm just standing here looking at you, you know, just... You know, and I'll be right back, alright? So, what the hell was I talking about? Ah! We were in the book study. We were talking about the four-step. I can't even remember why I was bringing that up. To hell with it. So, I've got to find a way in. I've Got to Find a Way In. The only way I get in is by doing. It's not, to me, I don't think it's so much about understanding this. I don' t think it' s for me. It' s not about breaking down the minutiae. It' S not about, as my sponsor, the late great Donald Madden, my original sponsor used to say to me. It' Is Not About Getting Into It. It' T About Wrestling With It Certainly on a certain level and listening to the dialogue. I go and I listen to the guys that get into the minutiae. I listen for the guys who really, really, really want to break it down. And that's great, but at some point I have to live it. At some point I have feel this thing. I have be able to bring this sense of what I've come to understand into the action of my daily life. I got to get to a place where I'm comfortable, clean and sober. I'm not going to get that way until I'm relieved of the obsession to drink and use. As long as I've got the beast whispering in my ear, I'm a comfortable man sober. And I can't live like that because I've Got to Live Life on life's terms. Whoever's running the show apparently has not read as Earl sees it. Because what's rolling in my head a lot of the time and what's actually happening are two completely different events. I have to get in line with life on life's terms. And when it hits the fan, as it often does, and I recognize that I'm not in charge of the fan. I've got to have some tools available to me to minimize the wreckage I will create in the frightened state I'm in when that occurs. I've gotta get a hold of some kind of balance. The only thing that has ever brought me balance... I got here, it was very clear that I had lived the life of a maniac. There was absolutely no balance in my life whatsoever. I was in the extremes all the time. I was either a victim or an assassin. I was never in the middle. You know, it's just, you know, don't hurt me, don'T hurt me. Don't hurt Me, I'm going to kill your family. You know? I was Never appropriate in how I was responding to the world, you Know? No balance. When I got sober, I was a sober man with no balance. I became maniacal in sobriety. Right? I mean, I come into sobriete and they say, well, you know what, we exercise. I'm like, good. We'll exercise then. We'll exorcise. And I exercise until I literally rip the muscle from the bone. You know what I mean? It's just working out and working out. It's like something's wrong. I ran until I had stress fractures in my feet and was hallucinating, sitting in the back of meetings. How far did you run today? Thirteen miles. And I came in with 74 broken bones. You know what I mean? So me running 13 miles is strange things are happening all the way, snapping and bopping down the track. Became a workaholic. Just no balance, no balance. What I discovered was that sober, I was running from the beast. I was running from the beast all the time, trying to keep the beast at bay. Just that whispering in my ear, you know, that thing that kept reintroducing the insane thought to me. I've got 16 years of experience that says for me to drink is insanity. Yet I would be standing in the back of Ohio Street on a Saturday night where my sponsor was the secretary, I had the cleanup commitment, surrounded by the guys that we were all sponsored by, Donald, right? I mean, I'm in close. I'm the action of sweeping up a meeting. And the beast would appear and just, how you doing, Earl? You know, and you're sweeping up and he'd just, huh? You're having a very, very bad day. I can see that. You're very, really stressed out. It's terrible. You're a wonderful human being. You're lovely guy and people treating you like shit all day long. I don't understand what the hell. It's a cruel, it's an ugly world, Earl. It's cruel and ugly world. And I can see that you're upset by this and then falling into what I would consider, Earl, a clinical depression. So, oh, your sponsor, he's looking at us. He's looking, okay, smile and wave at your sponsor. Go ahead. Very good, very good. All right, listen. First of all, we got to keep this just between you and me. And here's what we're going to do. We're going out and we're just going to have a couple of drinks. Don't overreact to that, Earl. We're just gonna go have a couple of dranks. We're gonna unwind that spring inside you that's wound so terribly tight. We'll work through this because I'm here for you. I've always been here for you, haven't I, Earl? I love you. I've never left. And we're gonna work this out and keep this between you and me and we'll zip right back into the meeting no harm, no foul. You'll see, you'll see. It's wonderful. I love ya, I loveya, I lovya. Now I'm in the middle of I'm sweeping up. I mean, I'm doing it. I'm in the meeting. Sponsor's right there. Two guys I love dearly. My two original friends in life are standing over there. I'm thinking, well, yeah, that makes sense. See, I can't have that because that guy is going to jump up. The beast is goingto jump up and talk to me and deliver to me the option of a drink until the planets line up just right and I'm just beaten down enough by life and I've just depressed enough and I''m just isolated enough And I've stopped going to meetings just enough, and I've stopped calling my sponsor just enough to get me to have a couple of drinks and isolate me from the pack. Isolate me from my kind. Now, the minute I have that drink, I activate the physical phenomenon of craving, and i got a whole new brain I'm having a conversation with. I do that, I relinquish the power of choice, the beast is back in charge. And I got a hole different voice in my head now. Because he's been whispering and being nice. Because he has to. I give him a drink. Earl, thank you. I feel much better now. And listen, get yourself a piece of paper and a pencil. We've got to write a few things. We've Got a Lot to Do Today, all right? So let's just get the list together and get in the car because we're on our way downtown, okay? Now, and I know, Earl, you seem to need to act as if you're involved in this process in some way. You seem to feel like you need to be in the decision-making process. It makes you feel better. So, okay. All right. You pretty this up any way you need too. You want to weigh it out. You want us to see, should I drink today? Should I not? Should I drink day? Should I no? You want do that, go ahead. But we will be drinking today. You know, and it was only in sobriety they looked back and realized, you know, there I was doing this, you know... How come I never picked no? Why is it that I never pick no? You'd think if I was deciding every once in a while, I'd go, well, not today. Never happened. Always chose to drink. Always. So I've got to recognize that for me to be comfortable, the only way I'm going to stay stopped is if I can get comfortable sober. The only way that I can stay stopped and the only other way I can be comfortable sober is if we're relieved of the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of the disease. I've gotta be relieved of this obsessive thinking. I've got to get this voice out of my head. When I'm dealing with life on life's terms and I'm looking at the options that are available to me on a daily basis, drinking and using can't be on that table. As I review my options, that's not something that I'm considering. It's done. It's been done. That's the whole point of working the 12 steps as far as I'm concerned. See, we've got this triangle with a circle, right? Mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance I've sought my whole life and never had drunk or sober, that the only way a guy like me can experience any kind of balance in my life is if I'm freed from my addiction, if I'M freed from the beast, if I' m freed from that physical phenomenon of craving and the obsession of the mind, that physical allergy. I've got to be rid of all this stuff. I've GOT TO get rid of it. The only way to do that is this triangle which AA adopted. Unity is the body. I bring it here. I couldn't get sober, but we seemed to be able to. Step one says, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. I need to do that with you. I've got to do it with you." I couldn't get sober, but we seem to be able to stay that way together, right? That unity is the body, I bring it here to you. I've Got to be with you". The recovery is of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease. How do I get relieved of the obsession of drinking juice? Work the steps. That's what they're for, right. Having had that awakening, the spiritual awakening is the result of working the steps. That was the whole point. To be restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved of the obsession to drink. The third side of the triangle, the spirit. I can practice these principles and carry the message. I can be of service. How can I help you? But like the book tells me, I can't give away something I don't have. Right? I've got to do the work. I've Got to get in there and I've GOT TO wrestle with these concepts and these ideas. And I've GOING TO try this stuff out. Right? I got to try to activate this stuff in my life so that there's a feeling associated with it for me. It's like, it's the Zen way, man. It's, like, chop wood and carry water. That's the deal what we do around here, man, is we chop wood and carry Water because I get up and I go to a meeting. Head says, don't want to go to meeting. Thanks for sharing. Off to the meeting we go. Right? Don't want work the steps. Why? Well, I'm kind of big on that Herbert Spencer thing, you know. I'm rather proud of my ability to show great deal of contempt prior to investigation. you know I don't want to I don' t want to why because I don''t know anything about it and I hate being bad at anything if I can''t be good at it immediately I don ''t want to play that's the way it is right I don'T want to be the newcomer right go to the step study first step study hi what's your name Earl complete idiot No information about this at all. Oh, good. What I loved was my sponsor. I remember when I first went to him and asked him to sponsor me. I wasn't even human. And I went to them and I said, you know, will you sponsor me? To which he replied, what? Will you sponsor him? And he said, yes. You don't have to like what I tell you and you don't have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. And I went, okay. And then put my head down and started to cry because I had just asked somebody for help. You don't realize you haven't asked anybody for help in years until you do it. And then you think, my God. And I just started to crying. And he looked over me to his assistant, Jeff, and he said to Jeff with a big smile on his face, Oh, wonderful, he's destroyed. And I remember that I looked up like, oh my God. This is the guy I picked? And I now come to understand, well of course he was thrilled and delighted to see that I was destroyed. I had been beaten into a state of reasonableness by alcoholism. He wasn't going to have to convince me of anything. He was just going to tell me what to do and I was going to go do it. Because my ass had been kicked. I wasn't going to debate things with him because it was very clear. You know, my best thinking didn't get me to AA. It almost kept me from ever getting here at all. So I became this kind of – there was this willingness on my part that he found delightful, that all my ideas, I tried them all, and we'd all been beaten into the ground together, me and my ideas. And I could come and he could just say, do this, do This, do That. Do this, and as a result of the doing of it, that I could have an experience. All right? So, Ava's looking at me like, could we get to one here? We've got an hour for one and I don't blame you. It's always funny to watch the people. Ava is one of my dearest friends. I love her dearly. We have a blast every time we get together. She shows me around New York. We have great time. She comes to L.A. She meets my wife and comes to our home. It's very nice. and she was being, she's a perfectly reasonable woman. It's remarkable. I mean, she's very reasonable person. She says, you know, okay, here's the schedule we're going to do. You know, you got six hours so two steps an hour, 50 minutes, 25 minutes a step, a little break for the smokers, you know what I mean? A little body break and we'll move to the thing and I'm listening and I think and I've been thinking that's a very good plan. That's a very good plan and I am just so concerned that I am the weak link in this plan. Because we never know, I don't, who knows, no one ever knows what I'm going to say. It's such a crap shoot. Who's speaking? Earl. Is he good? We'll see. It's different every time. And it has to be different every time for me it has to because got to get between those man guess it right in there there's nothing but right now for me. It's got to be right now right now that's the thing that work in these steps the value of this the buzz that's available is that that we can be here together this morning this place right here right now there's Nothing else because this is where our lives are. We're not having lunch now. Odds are we're going to. Odgs are. Can't do anything about the fact that many sirens in New York at night. I got two hours sleep. Can't do anything about it. Must let this go. And be here now and have fun and look into the eyes of my brothers and sisters and know that I'm safe. We're on the ground. We're not in a plane. We're here now. This is good. This is great. This is what's good. And that the steps give me back right here, right now. I mean, when I was drinking and using, I like to go down. I like heroin, alcohol, barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things. These are the things that I like. My idea of a good night sitting around checking my pulse. But if I can't get those, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine. Let's go up. I'm perfectly happy driving the freeways decoding license plates. You know? Psychotic. I'm completely happy doing that. Right? Because it's not ultimately, it isn't about up or down. It's about I've got to get out of right here right now. Because right here, right now, I'm self-centered. I'm afraid. Right here, Right Now, I am dealing with feelings. Can I deal with them? I can't even name them. You know? I just know that this feels terrible. I'm Afraid. I'm comparing your outsides to my insides and I'm losing every time. I'm not a comfortable human on the planet. You medicate me effectively, I can go out into the world. Right? I've got to find, so the thing that I'm trying to get away from with drinking and using is right here, right now. My alcoholism robbed me of now. So how can I live life? How can I be free? How can i know God? How can be a friend? How can love you? I can't love you in 20 minutes. Well, there are those who would disagree. Sorry, an inappropriate thought floated by. I'll just let that go. You get what I'm saying, don't you? Right? Life is now. I've got to be present in this. I can't be of service. I can have purpose or value later. Now is the only time I can do that. So that for me is like just to kind of frame up that's why I work the steps. That's why I involve myself in the steps to be relieved of the obsession of the mind to be able to experience some sort of balance and inner peace and be present in the moment, to be relieved of the obsession to drink and use. Relieved of it. Which is what I think brings everybody into the semantic debate of recovered, recovering, recovered, recovery. I can't even get into that. You know what I mean? Am I recovering? Yes. I do not suffer from alcoholism in the slightest. I have no obsession to drinking or use. It's not even a thought. It doesn't even occur to me, let alone be obsessed by it. Am I recovering? Well, yes. Yet this is a process and I move towards unobtainable absolutes in my daily life. Everything that I do now can be done much better than I'm currently doing it. Which is great news for me. Because if I get the buzz from doing this stuff, what that means is there's a bigger buzz ahead. That I'm going to know a greater peace. I'm gonna know a great love. I'm gunna know a grater honor. I'm ganna know greater discipline and as a result, greater freedom in my life if I continue on this path. This is really good news because out there drinking and using, I mean, it just goes bad so quickly. You know? First little buzz, oh, secret to life. You know, my reaction to the first getting high was, I need to do this as often as I possibly can. And I did. What I didn't know at that moment was what was going to happen. It slowly, over time, the buzz I was getting out there is going to get smaller and smaller and the price I was going to pay for it was going to get greater and greater and so on and so forth. So that in the end, I'm paying an horrific price just to get even, just to get to zero. I'm not getting high anymore. I'm not having a good time. There's no euphoria being experienced by me. I'm just trying to get out of the pain and the madness, right? It's turned on me and it's chewing me to pieces. In here, it's the opposite. The more I do this, the more I chop the wood and carry the water, the bigger the buzz gets. The more in touch I get with a spiritual life. The more connected I become to you. More and more and more for me, the distance between myself and others is not what separates us. More and more and more, the distance between us is what joins us. And I feel more and MORE connected to my God and to my fellows. The inner self and the outer self of who I am become closer and closer and close together. It's almost in that Eastern way that it's coming together. Do you know what I mean? It's coming Together. And that's the peace and the grace and the dignity that a maniac like me can begin to move towards if I'm willing to work the steps. Now, having said all that, step one. All right? I think we've laid a little groundwork here. Let's move into the steps。 Step one. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. Step two. Sorry. Sorry. Ava went, step one all right basically basically what they're asking me is what's the problem what is the problem here if i don't get real real clear on what the problem is specifically that i'm addressing how am i going to come up with a solution to that problem i got lots of solutions Screwdriver, excellent tool. Excellent tool. Solved a lot of problems. If I have a flat tire, this is really not of a lot of value to me. I've got to know what the problem is so I can come up with the proper solution to the problem. The problem for me, lack of power is my dilemma. I may be, and the book talks about it a lot. It talks about in the doctor's opinion. It talks abut it in the first several chapters. I may like normal man. it lists five different alcoholics. I have a book here. Third edition, I apologize. I don't have the modem to modem book. Sorry, I, I apologise for that immediately. I'll come around to the fourth edition. I will. I'll come around to it, but I like 4.49 being where it is. It comforts me. But it lists classifications of alcoholics, and the psychotic, the one who's normal in every respect, except when he drinks, except when the question of drink is involved. And luckily for me, I read them and I go, yeah, well that's me. Then I read the next one and I'm like, well... My hand just keeps going up as I read through these different... I identify with all these guys, right? I have to... Thank you. Saw that happen, didn't you? Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. What's the problem? What's a problem here? Lack of power is my dilemma. I have an obsession with the mind and an allergy to the body. I've got a soul sickness that manifests itself in that way and in the mind and in this case and in my life and in our lives I can kick and be relieved of the physical phenomenon of craving and the book refers to craving as a physical malady. I can kick, but I haven't dealt with the greater aspect of my disease. I have to be relieved of the accession of the mind or I'm never going to be able to get comfortable sober. Staying stopped is going to become a difficult experience for me. And I don't want the struggle, I want the freedom. I'm sick of fighting. I'm sickness. I'm tired of fighting, book tells me. I've got to stop doing that anyway. So I don' t want to live my life battling the beast. It's one of the most horrifying things I've ever heard of in my life. There was a guy who used to come to... I used to do a workshop every Tuesday night. I did it for five years. I'm on sabbatical right now for three months. It's got fried. And not unlike today. And this guy kept coming to the workshop, and you could tell when you met him, 30 feet away, you thought, oh man, troubled fellow. You could feel the pain on him. And it was very hard. One day I walked up and I introduced myself, and he said, you know, I've been coming to this and I've got almost five years of sobriety and I'd love it if you'd sponsor me. And I said, of course I will. And we started to do the work and we were talking and we're outside in the parking lot. Week after week we're doing this and I'm standing there and I was talking to him and he kept telling me about this friend of his that really didn't want him to be sober. And I thought, well, that's unfortunate. Immediately in my head I'm thinking, well, you now, get rid of him. You know, you've got somebody who stands between your sobrietry or is in opposition to that. But my opinion is immediately that individual was removed from my life. I'm not interested in somebody who's going to work in opposition to my own well-being. And he would talk to me and then he would stop and he would look away for a second and then He'd come back and He'd talk to Me. And I suddenly realized what was going on. The person that was in opposition to His sobriety was in Him. When He got sober, it had been such a horrifying experience for Him. He'd had a psychotic break and there were two people living inside Jeff. And what Jeff did every single day was Jeff would wake up and sober, physically sober. And this individual inside him would begin to tell him how today's a good day to drink. And he would battle this other individual. It's a separate entity in Jeff's mind about whether or not to stay sober. During the course of the day, this other individuals would get drunk. Not with Jeff, but would get drunk and talk to Jeff as a drunk person. And then so the next morning when they would wake up, right, this other individual who lived inside him didn't remember getting drunk, didn't Remember the difficulty of being drunk, but Jeff did because he was sober and he would begin the process again. So he would do this every day, talk to this individual and then talk to me. And I looked at him one day and he was really in crisis. And I said, you know, my goal was to try to get him to some outside help. That was my job with him is to try and get him some outside help. And I looked at him and he said, the guy, and I said you know he doesn't like you talking to me does he? And he said no. No. And I realized I was in kind of a precarious situation so we got Jeff to the right people but I thought that's the most remarkable five years of sobriety I've ever heard of. That this guy managed to stay sober in the face of that kind of psychosis that was occurring in his life. his commitment to sobriety was absolutely a remarkable thing to me. I can't live like that. I have the option and the opportunity to be relieved of that thinking, to get that, be rid of that, and I've got to do it. Step one clearly is, is this me? Is this me, do I suffer from an obsession of the mind and allergy of the body? I don't have to get off the couch to do step one. I can read the book, go through this, answer honestly, is this true for me and do I identify with this? The answer is yes, move on. Step one, yeah, I'm powerless over alcohol. I've tried everything. My whole life is unmanageable as a direct result of this one thing in my life. I can attribute all the problems of my life to my drinking and using. All of them. They're all either created by or exacerbated by my drinking. So having established my problem, what's my solution to this problem? What can I do to be relieved of this condition? Step two, luckily for me the very, very next step. This is my problem, what's my solution? Step two. Could I come to believe that a power greater than myself, something outside of self, could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink? Could I come to believe that? Again, sitting on the couch, yep, tried everything. Self-knowledge has availed Nothing. Understanding. A guy called me an alcoholic when I was 16 1⁄2 years old. He says, Jesus, you're an alcoholic! And I looked at him like, what's your point? Of course I am. Working for me, thank you. You, on the other hand, seem quite irascible. Would you like a drink? You seem upset. Yeah, I knew I was an alcoholic. I did not know what alcoholism was. I didn't know what I was up against. I didn' t understand the depths to which I would go. I didn''t see the writing on the wall. I knewI was an alcohoIic and I was okay with it. So step two, the knowledge, the information, my own understanding and awareness never stopped me from drinking. Right? So I came to you basically saying, what does someone like me do? What do I do? We're going to talk about it. Am I going to go to AA meetings and listen to you? And as a result of listening to you, am I goingto feel better? Maybe. Temporarily. Or is this ANA thing, me constantly coming to you sitting with you getting some momentary relief as a resultado of a meeting Maybe, maybe not, depending on how the meeting goes. And then I leave to do battle once again? That my respite is in my infrequent companionship with you? I'm screwed. I'm screwd. I've got to find something else. It's going to have to be a power greater than me. Some people say the group works for them. Cool. Some people saying nature. Excellent. me personally God me personally now I came to AA saying there was no God no God I laid on a mountain in Mexico in 1974 and watched my family bleed to death right in front of me swore I'd never love another human being again as long as I live there's no way I'm ever going to tell you who I am there's not going to be a God there's just no way you're going to love me I'm out and any God that would take a kind, gentle, loving creature like my little sister Kimberly and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, doping alcoholic like me on the planet. I have no use for God at this time. I pronounced God. Came into AA raging against God until my sponsor just got sick of it, Donald. And he loved these moments, by the way. He would lie in wait for me. Wait for me to just say one more stupid thing so he could take the two-by-four and just bash me right between the eyes with it, right? And I was ranting about God and he just looked over at me and very calmly, with a twinkle in his eye, because he's loving this, and says to me, Earl, you can't be mad at a God you don't believe. And I just looked at him and went, I have to go now. It just, you know, and there it was. I had a relationship with God. It was just a bad one. I had a bad relationship with God as a direct result of my point of view. My attitude. My insistence upon things being different than they are. Ridiculous. I didn't see that. I wasn't aware of that. It took someone who'd done the work and gone before me to point this out to me. And however mildly loving away, chose to do it. But there I was, there was the truth for me and that I had to get right with this relationship. What I love about the steps is the steps are about me, God, and you. There's nobody else to play with, but that's it. It addresses me, it addresses God, it address you. And I like the order in which they're placed because it's very clear that I got to get it together over here. I got it get it together over. It's me, god, and u. I gotta admit that I'm powerless. I got to seek God as a result of this in step two. I've got to be willing to say, yeah, it's going to take something outside me. Left to my own devices, I'm screwed. I have to surrender this to some force outside of self. The great leap. It's the great leap right before I have pull the trigger. Because in step three, could I come to believe in this? Yes. Where am I going to begin this process? The very next step, right? I'm going to pull the trigger. I'm gonna get out on my knees and I'm gonna turn my will in my life over to the care of a God I may or may not understand. Huge. Particularly when you think about where we're a lot of us come from. The pain, the dis-ease, the disconnectedness, the isolation, the the loneliness, what they call it, the morass of self-pity. The incomprehensible demoralization that we experience that drives me off into what appears to be the abyss to relinquish control, to let go for really the first time. That little slogan, let go and let God, right? It's a tidy little statement. It's cute little quip, right? That used to piss me off. Oh, that's lovely. That's lovely, let go. I'm going to put that right next to turn it over. Thank you. Love those. Love those little AA slogans. And I love what we do to newcomers with them. You know? The newcomer comes in, he's just stepped out of hell into the back of a meeting. Alright? Probably a little edgy. You know? A little concerned to have just stepped into a world completely unknown to him. No understanding of what's going on. Nothing. Filled with a head full of alcoholism. How can it be any other way? Steps into the back of an AA meeting, looking relatively normal. Some of us. Some of us not. And sits down and we walk up and, hey, how you doing? How you doing, Earl Alcoholic. Right? Now I remember when Vegas ran up to me smiling and said, Hey, Vegas Alcoholic, I said, so what? Ain't exactly the highlight of my life, Vegas. I don't know what you're so thrilled about. Get away from me. And he looked at me and he said, keep coming back. And a couple of AA hot shots over here went, yeah, did you see that? Very good, Vegas. Very good. Keep coming back. Deep, man. Deep, brother. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh, this is good. Loving AA so far. Yeah, thank you, Vegas, I'll keep coming back I'm sure at 3 a.m. this morning when I'm ready to either kill myself or several other people, as I usually am as I slowly fade into my one hour of sleep a night I'm getting so far, right? I'm certain that keep coming backs is going to be very helpful. Thank you. And it's also very clear that there's some deep spiritual significance to keep coming back. I can see that because the friends over here with, oh, yeah, deep thing, right? Y'all know what keep coming back does. I don't. You win. I'm the loser. We've all pointed that out at this particular AA meeting. Love an AA so far. If you're new in here, I hope you have more courage than I did step up to the plate and ask them, excuse me, do you understand what let go, let God means? Do you understand the deep spiritual significance of this? Because if you do, I'd love to hear about it. Well, in my neighborhood, if they're honest, about 75% of them would say, you know, I don't know what it means either. They said it to me when I came in. I'm just saying it to you. Oh, I love that sign. It's good. It's like a prompter. Five minutes till what? Oh. All right. I thought, good news. Something big is going to happen in five minutes, guys. So this is what I'm saying. Step one, what's the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma. I'm powerless over alcohol. My whole life is unmanageable as a result of that one thing. If that's my problem, lack of power, what is my solution? A power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink so I can walk the earth a free man. That's the buzz I'm looking for. Step two tells me this is possible. This is up ahead. This is what encourages me to continue. And that's all I've ever needed out of this book, personally. All I've every needed from any page in this book is not this deep, critical-minded understanding of the nature and the root of the words and how they were connected. I don't think when they reviewed this book or edited it that they thought, you know, we better take the word evening off of page 239 because the other words in that sentence are of a Germanic root and that one is not. I don't think that's what was going on. Were they conveying a sense of what it is I must seek? What it is that I must have? If so, I'm compelled to read the next page. That's what's up for me. There has to be an experience that leads me to the next thing. It's almost like... Have you ever read the Zen cones? Have you ever read the little Zen sayings and you read it and you go, you know, Blackbird sits on branch in winter. And you read that and you're like, wow, that was entertaining. And you go to the next one. But if you're willing to take the time and you read that same thing twice a day, just read it twice a week, I think this applies to the book. It's like a masterful western cone of 164 pages. If you read Blackbird sits on snowbound branch or whatever it is. Blackbird sits on snowbound ranch. Blackbird says, yeah, yeah, blackbird, oh, blackbird. All of a sudden the childhood memory comes to mind as you're reading it. Oh, and there's a sense and a feeling that comes as a result of that particular image, the visualization of that image or the sound that's mentioned, the cracking of the ice or something. And something starts to happen to you and there is an experience, a feeling that comes as a results of that that's comforting or peaceful or settling in some way to the self. That's what this does. This book does the same thing. It's a book designed to bring about an experience. Self-knowledge availed me nothing. I stood at the turning point. The book tells me. It's not about getting it, it's about getting. Getting it. Can I have an experience that moves me to the next page? Am I compelled to read on? If so, we're doing great. Thank you.