Ego and Fellowship – 12 Steps and Service Workshop – Part 2 of 6 – Don P. and Jerry E – Don Pritts and Jerry E

Far more than that. Don't put a number on people who can't show up anyway, for God's sake. That becomes a target. Anyway, I'm listening to you and I'm watching you because I'm suspicious. I've tried a lot of stuff and nothing's working. I've probably tried this four or five times and it didn't work either. and right in the middle of someone sharing something they start this basket around no explanation and I'm watching the people go into their pockets and come up with a buck and throw it in the basket I got 57 cents I'm going to be here for 90 days it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that this thing is going to cost me 90 bucks and I got57 cents in my pocket and I might not eat tonight. I probably won't come back here. So maybe a little explanation would be appropriate after the person finishes sharing. No fees to pay. Our Denver Young People's Group, we used to tell them, if you're new, don't put anything in that basket. You're not a member yet. We used to call them to take it if they needed it. Yeah, we quit that though. No axes to grind. I'm sorry, I try to live up to that one and I just don't do well. Grinding axes is one of the few pleasures I have left. But I'll try not, I'm not going to grind them with new people. No people to please. If I sponsor you, you do not have to please me. You don't have to do a damn thing, I say. If you don't, you won't get the results that you came to me for. You don' t have to show up on time regularly. If you dont, then you don' have that time anymore. I just assume you don''t want it, that's all. I don'''t fire people. I get fired a lot. And that'''s good because it clears the deck for somebody new. But you don'T have to Please Me. You don't have to dress a certain way. You don'T even have to clean your mouth up to please me. I will suggest you may want to do that if you want to make any friends somewhere along the way. Well, they did that for us. It was suggested by my sponsor that I learn to speak English instead of street. And if you're getting into corrections work, please don't try to talk contact. You'll know right off the bat you're fake. They're not going to listen to the thing you say. and you're not very good at it. They are. We get tested a lot with that one. No lectures to be endured. Oh, God save me from that. I love lecturing. One of the ways that I finally gained the trust in my children is that I stopped raising them. I think raising children the way most of us do it is a criminal activity. It's an imposition of my values is on you and you will, by God, reflect well on me. And you do that by lecturing. Remember when you were a kid and all the lectures you got? I don't remember any of the lectures. I just remember all those I got. Just a minute to start that. Click. Click. These are the conditions we found most effective. And there was a second piece, that I was to become effective in my life. I just tripped through. Most alcoholics have that. We really want to be effective. I want to know that somewhere along the way, my being on this planet counted for something. That I wasn't just another number that went through here. That somewhere somebody can say, don't remember exactly who it was, but this happened and my life changed a little bit it got better I think we all want that I've got to be effective, not right that was the way it was put to me learn to be affected, not write get you out of the debating society none of us makes a sole vocation of this work, nor do we think its effectiveness would be increased if we did that kept me out of treatment business for a lot of years I got back into it but in a different role I applied for a job three years sober with Joe Wright out at Fort Logan his house father we practiced as amateurs now he's going to be a pro she said honey you can do this job very easily but if you do you'll lose some of what you've got so I did not take the job I want to be effective. Effective as a parent, what does that mean? What is an effective parent? I'm not going to define it for you. I just want you to think about it. I can see the results of effective parenting. When my two-year-old grandson comes in the house, he gets a big grin and he runs at me and almost knocks me over. I've done something effective. he trusts me anyway we feel that elimination of our drinking is but a beginning a much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our respective homes occupations and affairs the implication is that I will have each of those things a home an occupation and affairs I just have to be careful not to have more affairs than I have principles. This is, I'm going to let Tom talk now. This was just the introduction. Sorry that it took so long. A much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our various respective occupations, homes, and affairs. How can I take what's in here out here? Because if it stays in here and I stay in here with it, I'm useless. I'm of no use to anybody. How can I take this out so even people whose methods may be different, whose style may be differed, we can work in brotherly and harmonious action? That's what this is really all about. How do you do it on the job? I've got some stories later about how that plays out. Spiritual lives are very real right now on the street. let's get with it life meditation is important inventory is important a business that takes no regular inventory will soon go broke a business that stays in inventory all the time is also going to go broke you've got to be open for business every now and then notice I didn't pass the basket while you were talking I appreciate that. If you'll excuse me, I'm not running out on you. Yes, you are. But I'm old. I know. Old people have hoodies. It's 10 o'clock. Let me get logistically solid here. 9 o' clock, what time do we break to eat those sandwiches you made? Eat at 10.30? Yeah, I mean the lunch deal. Oh, that's at 12. At 12 o'clock, noon to 5. 12 to 1. Okay. That sounds like a square deal. So we're great by 1030. Good. I like to do that. It sort of puts me at ease. Well, it also helps me know what I'm doing. Sometimes people just turn you loose and say, Do whatever you want. Just be wonderful, you know. I won't rehash it all, but let me just piggyback a little bit what Don was talking about. This chapter, there is a solution, is what we're about. And it's about how we make this solution come alive. How do we make the solution really be a solution and be effective? And, you know, a lot of times when I first looked at the big book, it looked like just jumble to me. You know, it just looked like a whole bunch of philosophical stuff. But what I find when I get into it is that it's about as detailed a manual as you'll ever see in terms of laying out in specific kinds of terms how we make these things happen. And that very much is true to me. I appreciate what Don was sharing there. I was thinking that I think probably the most uncomfortable I have ever been trying to talk to an A, a guy asked me to speak in Charlotte, and he's a lawyer. That doesn't excuse everything, but it explains a lot. people. And the guy had gotten hold of my professional resume from somewhere, and he introduced me to an AA group by my professional resumé. And I swear to God, I have never felt more awkward in a meeting in my life. How do you get from that to what we're about? And I bet you it took me ten minutes to get reoriented and reintroduced to a way that we're on the same sheet of music. And what that does, it came to mind when he was talking about this, that unless we get those essential ingredients for making the solution come alive in place, it doesn't happen. You ever go to a meeting and somebody lectures to you, somebody just makes a speech? That has to be a classic demonstration of how to turn off somebody. I mean, drunks won't listen to that. They absolutely won't list. I don't care how good it is. It just doesn't have the ingredients that earn the confidence of an alcoholic. We had a really wonderful person come speak at our group a while back. And they spent the first 30 minutes just launching in to an abstract presentation of history. History's interesting if it's coming from a drunk. But if it is a history lesson, you can thump it up. And so for 30 minutes, everybody was kind of restlessly shifting around and politely listening. and then half hour into it they got drunk and started talking about drinking and wrestling and throwing up and rowdy behavior and my God the crowd just became electric you know and so that's not in place it just doesn't work and to tell you we get some brain dead sometimes listening to drunk stories but thank God for them because they're the heart and soul of it. Now, Henry, you need this. Don't you go too far away. I guess they're the heart and soul of this thing of what it is that earns success and confidence because if you hadn't been there I don't particularly want to hear the philosophy unless you're coming from the same place that I'm coming from. And so to me that's awfully important with this X problem drinker that if I can establish the fact that that's who I am, you know, that I'm a guy who has had this problem, then everything I offer is valid. You know, and the same with you. If you're telling me something and I know where you're coming from. Now, I learned a long time ago that, you know alcoholics don't invest real trust very readily. It's got to be on the basis of a proven relationship, a trusting relationship. But once it happens, it never stops. It never quits because it's a lifetime deal. I'm constantly amazed at how many people I have called me that I worked with 20 or 25 years ago. And there's something about that connection that occurs that just becomes almost like a sacred trust. And when you start getting shaky and unsure, you want to reach back to something that you trust. You want to get something that you know you can hold on to. And so I think it's an awfully vital thing about the solution that it's not enough just to have a lot of glib words that describe something. Very important for me to understand that it is based on my experience. This thing of one alcoholic honestly sharing their experience with another alcoholic has had effectiveness like nothing this world has ever known and that's why you know kind of share chair with don is this notion that we if we start moving it into a technology and we get too studious in it we lose the spirit of what this dude's about so tremendously important to me to always keep an in uh in good sharp focus that that my experience is what's valuable Not my wisdom or wit or all that stuff, but it's the experience. And first and foremost, and then who's found a solution, pretty important to be able to have a valid story of recovery and not just a drunk story. So pretty, pretty sharp criteria for that. armed with facts about himself not about the illness, about the sociology of alcoholics and but armed with facts about him and then he'd come from a good solid confident kind of a place get to earn the entire confidence within just a few hours another thing I just wanted to mention a little bit it's the thing about the holier than thou. And that is a kind of sneaky thing to, in subtle things, kind of make that happen. It's the thing of I see us sort of collectively doing it sometimes. But let me go back to a prison thing and then branch that out just a little bit. Some people when they do institutional work get into sort of group thinking, your group thinking. Put everybody in one box. And one of the things that I used to really dislike in those early days was people who would come in and talk about you guys like there's one monolithic set of people sitting in these chairs. And my God, it's all different people. They're totally different people. But it's sort of looking at folks as a class. and I don't know of a less engaging thing that you can do because there's no connection. That's just sort of a kind of class action stuff, I guess. But it happens. And folks will tend to sort of lecture and advise people that they see as a sane group. And so it really works against this business of earning trust and confidence in me. When I can't get away from this kind of separation of seeing myself in one category and seeing you in another, it's very important for me to recognize that we is us. I see it also in some of the ways we deal with people who come into our meetings who are sort of like, for example, people who come in with a court paper. And we'll tend to deal with those people as if they were one thing and sort of write them off as people who are in a different category because they happen to have a different hook in them. And we will tend to just sort of routinize how we deal with them and miss the opportunity to really relate to them as individuals. one of the real challenges that I've been trying to work on and been trying to enlist others into doing it too is how we deal with people who come into AA and I think it comes under that whole year now even though we may not be thinking that way consciously like if people come in to meetings from a facility I was speaking somewhere the other day and up. Three people got up and left at a certain time. Well, I mean, I'd been around long enough to recognize the behavior. I knew they were reporting somewhere because it wasn't, you know, like random acts of desertion. This was like somebody rung a bell, you know. So I kind of leaned over to the guy beside me. I said, where are they going? He said, oh, they come over from the jail and they have to be back. But see, today it was compartmentalized thinking. And those folks came in as a unit, sat as a union, left as a unity, and never really shared an experience the same way those of us did who were sitting there. And so thinking of that, whether you're thinking holier-than-thou or just that these folks are different, absolutely blocks that thing of connecting and earning the confidence and trust of people. Treatment centers, same thing. I don't know about here, but a lot of our treatment centers have waned and they're not as evident. But people from halfway houses and treatment centers, it's been a real perplexing concern for me that they tend to operate like, I guarantee you I could go to Jay Walker's. And if people were coming in from a facility, I could spot them. And so could you. Because you watch them, they'll move like they're in a cube. You know, they'll come in sort of cubed up on the bus or a van or something. And then they'll march like soldiers into the meeting. And then They'll sit together. And some of it is regimentation. Some of it Is just the thing that's where they feel safe, I guess, or something of the other. But I've seen people, watched them walk into the Meeting, in the cube, sit in the Cube, move into whatever group they're going as a cube, get back on the Bus as a Cube, and never interact with the folk in the meeting. There are subtle things, but there are ways that we display this kind of sort of put-it-under holier-than-thou, this thing of not breaking through those barriers in the ways that мы can. And if we don't get past that and get it to a personal level... I'll give you one other example of a thing I read into. And part of what got me troubled about court papers, I was in a city out in the Midwest a while back. And there was a meeting that, I don't go to a lot of daytime meetings, but they had a noon meeting at this particular place and I said, well, shoot, I think I'm going to catch that. So I went in and I was kind of like the psychiatrist at the burlesque show. I was watching the audience, you know. The meeting was fine, but I got interested because they had an interview and they had to deal there where the secretary of the meeting sat on a raised platform at a desk and sort of ran the show, which I thought she was. And nobody paid attention to her. But I started watching the people who came in with papers where somebody had mandated them to be there and get a signature. And they had a ritual. When you came in, you went up to that desk and you put the paper in the inbox on the desk and sit down. So I picked a guy just to sort of see what happened. picked a guy who walked in random random selection came in put his paper there just like he was trained to do it i don't know if they teach it on the street or what but he just came out here put the paper and went down sat down about in the middle of the crowd meeting was on step five and i kind of watched him the whole meeting and he would probably didn't disrupt anything he was just properly attended got through with the meeting, got up, walked up to the desk, got his piece of paper, walked out. Never interacted with one human. Now we would put him under the heading of having been to AA. Has he ever been to AA? No. He came in and observed a meeting. He didn't engage in a meeting, and got into no fellowship, got into no conversation, and I've got into no personal interaction with a single human. And to me that's that thing that happens when we start thinking collectively of people, that we just kind of write off the whole class. And we don't want to be ugly with that, but it's just something we do. And so, just mention that thing, that thing of thinking collectively I'll tell you one thing I ran into when...time goes so fast when I'm talking. I got tired of this one little war story that kind of makes the example. When I got out of the institution and went back to Michigan on my first trip, first trip. I was going to the state convention in Lansing, Michigan. And I had a lot of buddies that hadn't been back since I left up there and I had dear friends that I wanted to see. I started in the hotel and there was a real nice looking guy standing there with his name tag on, well dressed fellow, looked like a Wall Street guy. But he had the name tags. I went over, chatted with him for a minute, and then I asked for a guy. And he recognized the guy that I mentioned as doing a lot of work down at the institution I was in. And he said, oh, you must have met Pete. Were you around Jackson? And I said, yeah, I was there. He said, well, Pete does an awful lot of good work down there. he speaks you fellas language well now I know that that was a mild innocuous state but it's also the kind of statement that can drive you out of here and I said could ask you what language is that he said oh you know what I mean I said yeah I do know what you mean but I hope you know what i mean because i speak the same language you do i don't speak a foreign language because i happen to be in a different setting you know they're simple things you know and i wasn't being being scornful of the guy but it's very important because that attitude can be the barrier to somebody coming here so when we're looking at things about what makes the solution come alive what makes it effective i think that's why the book points out this kind of thing is that those little attitudes can make the difference. You know, if you have that kind of feeling about somebody, you don't need to tell the new guy. I guarantee you his feelings are out there sharply enough that he'll pick it up. You can't hide it. So I think it's awfully important that in doing that, it's kind of like Don said, it is not so much how much I know or how glib I am or anything like that. It's about how well I can present myself to the person and earn that trust and confidence. If I don't, the rest of it is an exercise in futility. How long did we practice? About ten minutes. I noticed the way she said it. Here is never mean to call it. We just had a group conscience consistent of two incredible alcoholic minds. We're going to have a three hour meditation. Yeah. No tell what will come out of that. We want to take just a minute before we get rolling and pose a little question to you. Everybody is here for a reason. Everybody came here either to get in or out of the sun or whatever, but folks have got a reason for being here and something they're looking for. We've gone through some stuff this morning that I really enjoyed visiting, But part of our purpose is to try to help everybody here get what they're looking for the best we can. And so we're at a point, you've sort of seen this, we make it up as we go. And so absolutely no way to get this train off track. It just stays there, and it winds up getting on track in the process. real quick give us some feedback if you would in terms of what you'd like to see visited before we get out of here at quitting time today and we'll see how well we can respond to that anybody he started to talk about how effective how do you know yes a little more depth on I can tell you in one brief sentence. When we broke here, you were all standing out in the parking lot talking to each other. We have been incredibly effective today. That's the marker. Or else made you hungry. At meetings. A good meeting, people hang out. They came early, they stay late, and they go do other things. That's what it's really about. If everybody breaks and goes home, there's something missing out of that. There's no spirit. Alan mentioned a couple of things I'll just throw out if it may is in the general area of sponsorship, and I kind of alluded to that before we broke. A couple of real issues that are weighty for us and have to do with effective relationships is when do you discontinue a relationship and sponsorship if you just believe it's run its course? And how do you deal with that? Some people use a crude word like firing, but it's not necessarily that. It's just recognizing. The other thing is how you deal mit people who are under medication and it poses some real challenges in terms of discerning when you can do effective work, how to responsibly deal with it. Does that cover it adequately? Okay. Those are good points too. I just would like to hear your experience with the steps. With steps. Maybe the fourth step or eighth step. When all else fails, go to the steps, you hear me? Yeah, okay, good job. Anybody else? Pardon? I'm dealing with really resistant people, but they keep showing up. I need guidance. Hard cases. But persistent cases. Okay. How do you deal with resistant people? My mind just takes off with that. Anybody else ? Yeah, Will? dealing with remorse remorse oh yeah ok alright yeah gotcha all dressed up with nowhere to go Okay, yeah. Good deal. It could have been a contender. Anybody else? Of course you know either one of those could go for a week. Yeah. that they're like. Stuff like all this knowledge that I have of it actually is what I feel like. That's an excellent thing, how you get it from the concept stage in the rooms into real stuff where we live. Good stuff. One more. Like we didn't have enough to do. You remember all that, don't you? I'm sorry? It means self-supporting through your own contribution. I'm talking about mostly grounding myself in my guilt and my fear of myself, so I can't really let go of it. And did you comment on that? Yeah, and I'm going home. Help me just one thing you said. Be a self- supporter through your young contributions. And then I couldn't quite follow that second part. I couldn' t hear it, could I? Grounding your idea of going to power greater than yourself. Uh-huh. Yeah. In the darkness. Yeah. In the morning. Yeah. Okay. Did I get it right? No, I heard it then. I'm just not incredibly brilliant. I have trouble following something. But I'm having trouble connecting the self-supporting and that spiritual connection. You've got a connection in there, but I don't know. Okay. You all obviously know that if we try to address those, we're going to be here until sometime in the middle of next week. However, if you'll allow us to tell some stories, we can illustrate each one of them, sometimes a couple of them from our own experience. If that's suitable. I left my lecture notes at home. And I left by addressing this notes at Home. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. We've got personal experiences. you're talking about the application of spiritual principles in the real world is the essence of what I heard how do you do that well let me address remorse first because I know about that guilt is one I have been caught violating one of your rules or laws or principles and I feel guilty very easy to deal with. I wait for you to tell me what kind of time I have to do just to pay back. Then I do that and as soon as that's done or shortly before it's done, I can just go my merry way. That's easy. Remorse and shame is when I have caught myself violating one of my principles. One of my true beliefs. Violating who I am and there is no payoff. I'm going to tell you a little story. This one hurts, but I'd like to keep it fresh because you've all got one of these. We all have an ace in the hole, father, mother, uncle. We've got a place where when all else fails, I can go back and rest for a few days. And my dad was that. During the last part of my sickness, I was part of a subculture. I'm one of the freaks that came out of Berkeley screaming out, where there's dope, there's hope, burn down City Hall. We lived underground. There's a real culture out there. Anyway, we were resting and Albert called me from Albuquerque. Albert was one of those snakes I ran with. And Albert said, We got 30 kilos of good marijuana as far as Juarez. And our driver got busted. And we need somebody to go get it. Now, get the whole picture. At the time, I'm a single parent to two little boys. One six and one four. I'm trying to be a parent, but we're on the road. Don't want to get too dramatic with it. Albert says, we need someone to get it, would you do it? And I said, of course, Albert. Now that should give you some dimension of where I'm at. I'm trying to keep these kids safe, and I just accept the job of smuggling 30 kilos of marijuana out of where it is, Mexico. And I didn't do it for the money. I did it for prestige. I was the only one in the United States they could think of to call. To go into old Mexico. Get the job done. The truth was, Albert had been told to call me. They said, call Fritz because he's crazy. So anyway, we took the job. I stopped drinking and put on a little bit of weight. Did the math, got my head clear. The math was necessary. How much volume is there in 30 kilos of marijuana? The way it was packed then. I needed to know what kind of box can I put this in. I'm sane now. Well. I'm functioning. Clean the boys up, clean me up, sport coat, young American, Therese the father, that's the role we're going to play. Had them run a VW van in somebody else's name and had them give us a place to stay. At this point, I have nothing to do with the deal. If it falls apart before I get there, I'm not in it. I'm just insane. We got into Juarez. I got the van and got us into Juárez. I didn't pick the stuff up. It was laying in a motel. They picked it up and then transferred it to me. The hotel they'd picked for us, of course, is just a whorehouse motel in Juarez We immediately moved into the Holiday Inn style place uptown. that volume fits perfectly in a single air mattress so I'll open the end up and stuff the mattress then reseal it put air in it that cuts the smell down then on top of that I put dirty diapers and on top of that I put my two little boys so when we hit the border crossing I turned to the children and right out of nowhere screamed at them scared them so they'd be crying because they don't mess with you when you get crying kids in dirty diapers that's remorse forever Broke the bond between me and my kids. That's regret, that's remorse. There is no payback for that except the one I found here. In the fourth step there is a promise that is so profound, face and be rid of. I didn't come here to just get fixed. I came here to be changed into the kind of person who's not capable of committing that act ever again. That's the only thing I know to do really well. A change so profound that I'm no longer that person. Now, I still have to deal with the fact that I've got to clean that up for the kids. They're scarred and will always be scarred in a way they can get better from it. So the answer is change so profoundly you could never do that again. Total surrender. As long as I'm capable of committing that kind of an act, I cannot live with myself. I can't. You can't deal with it. How can you deal with that kind of thing? You just have to be different. Okay? And that's what I did find here. That's precisely what occurred. Then the next job is to tell you that so you can get off your own back. Because like it or not, that's the best I could do. That's pretty shabby. I'd rather die than be that ever again. But you don't have to die. You get to be something even better. Let me mention two different levels of remorse that I think about, Wilbur. One is that remorse comes when I fail to follow my hunches. What I'm talking about, and I'm telling you this I'm not talking about a different level of it, of the day-to-day things that are building up remorse. Because what I've found is that when I listen to my hunches and I do what I feel the urge to do, if I don't do it, I always regret it. Because it's a real message. You know, if I've got a friend sick in the hospital and I have a hunch that I ought to go see him, if I'm not going to go to the hospital, if I're not going, deep, deep remorse because... And I think that's the signals, you know, about being in tune with the calling voices, if you will. But the things that I feel spiritually driven to do, those hunches. And if I take over and impose my judgment, I'll nearly always have remorse about that. What I've learned is that my first hunch, whether it's a spiritual signal or not, But my first impression about something is usually the most correct one I'll ever have. And if I follow that up with a whole bunch of thinking, all I do is screw it up. And after a certain amount of a whole batch of turmoil and confusion, I wind up right back where I started, but often too late. So that's one level. The other that I think I'd like to kind of talk about, But our program is designed to provide the surgery for the soul, you know, from deep remorse like that. And I have some. I think we sort of visit steps a little bit in this thing. You know, I believe that what starts to emerge in the fourth step and then gets crystallized in the eighth and ninth are the surgery of the soul. where I start rooting out those causes and conditions and the enormous damage that has come from my defects of character. And my belief is, whether it's true or not, it's certainly my belief, is that every time, whether it is gravity like he's talking about or gravity like in my case where I took human life, all of these things have an enormous weight. And so do those far lesser things that make up an amends list. And my belief is that I will never have the freedom that this program promises until I take that surgical procedure and give it my best to make right those wrongs. And so it's one thing to recognize it and deal with it, but if I don't have to figure it out and deal With it, What I have to do is take the steps and let it happen. And if we don't, I think we'd pay an awful price because those things become the anchors that we drag through life. And I won't be free until I'm able to turn them loose and just kidding myself that it wasn't all that bad is not enough. Just having somebody try to placate me and say, oh, you weren't that bad, is not another. You know, what I haveと do is root out those things that eat me up. And so, yeah, I think the steps directly put us through at whatever level so that we'd find peace. This kind of thing is about being shabby. I described a high-intensity, high-drama piece. The children were in no real danger. Don't mistake that. Had we been caught, they'd have been better off because they'd had gone to at least a decent foster home. What I did to my children is that for no reason whatsoever, I broke the spiritual bond between us. I harmed them to accomplish my own ends. Totally self-serving. And that's what inventory brings me to every case. It's shabby. It's about me wanting a little prestige. It's not me wanting this or that little money or whatever. And that is the one that is hard to face. that on my own I am nothing. It's very clear. Left to my own devices. At my very best, if there's ten people in the room, at my very, very best I can help nine of them. Somebody's going to get screwed. In God's hands, I have found that even the onlookers benefit. Nobody gets messed with. Even people just crossing the street. Okay? two little pieces for the prayer that goes along with this. This whole thing is about me getting conscious of the relationship with God. We ask for guidance and direction. There was an old Assembly of God preacher who used to come into the penitentiary, and I discovered that I like spiritual people. I don't care what they call themselves. And I love singing hymns. We shall gather at the river still brings tears to my eyes. You sing in the garden, I'm dead meat. And this guy, I had this illusion that spiritual people were perfect and he was one. And yet he said he has difficulties sometimes and temptations sometimes. We asked him, what do you do? He said, well, when I'm tempted with something and I'm not sure. See, I know the difference between right and wrong. It's the gray area that I get in trouble. If I'm not sure, he said, I take the Master by the hand and say, if I go do this, will you go with me? And I've got my guide. Today's guide is a little different. It's a little more personal. If what I'm about to do would be all right if my mother, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter saw me doing it. If the answer isn't absolutely yes, I'm not doing it. It just gets real simple and basic that way. And the temptations are even harder as you get rid of your defenses against your temptations. Okay? It's really tough. Well, I won't read everybody. But in relating to that, clearing away self puts me in... See, the spiritual life is a very practical life to me. Anything that separates me from the children of God separates me from God. And since the whole idea of God's bigger than I can even begin to comprehend, the mercy of AA is that it deals with it on this level. One of the old masters says treat people like you want to be treated. Because what goes around does come around. But those are some of the guys. I must engage in this thing. I've got a lovely guy, sober several years now, never talks to me, never does nothing, and he's just miserable. He's in deep depression. Of course he is. If you'd get up and sing for him, then he'd be over it. But he doesn't know how to sing or doesn't want to sing or whatever. Does that help a little bit? There are no bad answers for this. I must behave as if God were at hand because where I am, God is. If He wants me to run my head into the wall, or if I want to run my head under the wall? He stands by and lets me. Keeps the bandages handy. If I don't want to run my hand under the ball, all you do is ask for the strength to do the right thing. And when I ask, will you go with me? If I get a strong yes, I'll go. And that's the toughest one of all That's the hardest Because I know it's going to I'm going to be doing something That's extraordinary If I say yes to that and go If I get a no, I don't go If I don' t get either one I don''t go That's where the doubts are If you're not sure you ought to do it Don't Don't Don't while you're down. I might have missed it, but your temptations get harder as you lose your defense against your temptions. I am more vulnerable to drinking today than I ever was before because I don't see alcohol. It's not part of my mind. The mental obsession with alcohol is gone. I don'T even see it. Fifteen or so years ago, I was flying home I think those of us who are sober a while are in far more danger of drinking because of the truth than we are lies you got to all work real hard to come up with enough lies to convince me it's okay for me to drink I know better but I'm flying home and this was a perfect evening I'd given a talk that didn't hurt anybody they even drove me back to the airport they didn't make me walk I fly United a lot And on this particular evening, because of that, they moved me into first class. I used to think that's because I had some special thing going on. It's because they can't sell that seat, but they can sell mine. Back here, they just moved me up. That's an ego deflator. But it's nice up in first class, real food, real plates. It's an evening flight. I'm in fit spiritual condition I'm going home to the family I adore I've got a book I've been waiting to read for several weeks The lights in the first class cabin were just wonderful I'm okay And I noticed out of the corner of my eye a flight attendant pouring this burgundy red stuff into my seat mate's glass That's all it was And I looked over at it because the light was hitting it My mind said that really looks good well that's the truth it really did it's not wine it's that then my mind said I bet that's going to taste good of course it would that's why she's giving it to him I'm still not thinking alcohol then my mindset I bet this is going to make his whole dinner taste better that's a main function of wine cuts the grease from the glass of course and this one you can taste it. Then her prayer began in me. I don't know how to describe this to you. I just know that I absolutely trust this inner resource, this spiritual resource to protect me when I don' t even know I need protection when I'm in the graze there. There's a sense that comes over me and I immediately turned and went in and just got quiet and realized my very next thought would have been I probably ought to have had one of those without ever thinking of alcohol. That's how vulnerable I am today. The temptations are much more... I've got to really stay fit. We're out on the road a lot. There's a lot of danger out here. I don't know if you know that or not. There's grave ego danger. There's great physical danger. There's real emotional danger. and it's real easy to cave into that after 50 people tell you that you're just wonderful you begin to think maybe they're right that means that I have special privilege and that's where my evil clothes go no I don't does that help a little bit yeah okay pardon me I'm a storyteller you gotta get it all because I don' t know anything I'll tell you the part Part of temptation, and I want to kind of lead this around and talk about that emotional recovery thing a little bit too. With me, the more critical kinds of temptation stuff are matters of principle things. Like now, I'm not cured, but it's been many years since I've had a real crisis in terms of drinking. That doesn't mean I'm cured. because I know what causes that to be so. But where I run into difficulties now is that as my life has changed and I've become a participant in life and a responsible person, I have to make a lot of ethical, principle-based decisions that are sometimes tough to make. And with most older members, that's where I see the real crisis coming. It's about values and what you stand for. And so I find a lot more threatening stuff that I have to be diligent about in terms of cutting corners, of not being scrupulous about the way I do business. So the ones where it becomes the glaring thing of the burgundy, yeah, I can deal with that. The more subtle ones that kind of take away my integrity are the ones that I really have to watch out for. You know, trouble with booze to me is always at least six months ahead of the crisis, at least. And it has to do with starting to lose that sort of sharp focus and clear kind of plug-in to the program. You know it's a strange thing, but you can watch somebody headed for trouble. probably everybody here has seen somebody or may know somebody right now that's headed for trouble and you know it everybody recognizes but everybody is equally baffled about how to deal with it how do you do it how you charge in sometimes you can charge in and do far more harm than good but you see it You start seeing it in behavior. You start seein' it in that squishy thing called attitude. Start seein't it in performance at meetings and stuff like that. But how to step in and intervene is a real deal. My group spent four hours recently in a workshop where we worked with people, and that was one of the things we talked about. What we wound up sayin', the consensus of that group, was something I was talkin' about this morning. It depends on the level of trust. The person who is most apt to be able to step in is the one with the greatest level of trust. If you have that trust, there is absolutely no limit to what you can do with an alcoholic. There's no limit to what she can say. If you don't have it, it's a pretty narrow limit to how much you can drink. It's a very narrow limit to what we can do. To me, those are where we tend to... And it is about emotional recovery. It's about being sound and solid. Somebody asked me a while back, a good while back to do a workshop on emotional recovery. Now I'm a kind of a down-to-earth type of fellow and my first reaction even though I know that it's a legitimate term my first reacton was hell's bells I don't want to do an workshop on some touchy-feely stuff like that. And then I thought well, there's no real set agenda. I can do what I want to do. That's what they said. Kind of like we're doing here today. I didn't know until lunch what the program was. But I'm looking at this thing of emotional recovery and how we're going to tackle it. And so I sat down and in 20 minutes I did what anybody in this room could do. I thought about What is it that destroys emotional, what is it that tears up emotional recovery? You know, I mean, it's one thing to talk about the wonderful nirvana of sound emotional recovery. But what is that eats it up? And you could do the same thing out here. I sat down and in 20 minutes I listed 28 things just in a brainstorming style of, you know, here's stuff that happened. First one I put on the list was expectations. and my God and no wonder I put it first because I don't know of anything in the world that will pull me off good sound emotional recovery than putting on expectations on other people all I've got to do to destroy my peace of mind is put expectations because what I do is let them have free space in my head and I am absolutely done for because I've turned it over to somebody else And just little things you'd think about. Getting overcommitted. Feeling like you're carrying the world on your shoulders. Worry. The thing he mentioned this morning that sounds really innocuous, a little thing called change your mind. Change your mind。 If you think about what we have, we have a real we have a spiritual hold on a new way of life and all I have to do to lose it is change my mind and that sucker can be gone in a heartbeat and so that thing of keeping spiritually sound and keeping emotionally sound is tremendously important and we had a good time doing that thing on emotional recovery and so to me that's the imminent danger is when I start eroding that sound spiritual ground that I stand on and no matter what I sell it out to and you can make your own list of things that take that down and so what deals with it I'll let you in on a little secret go a little bit to steps that I'm not somebody who works on problems. I literally don't. And the reason I don't is because when I work on them, they honest to God get worse. They really do. If I'm trying to fix remorse like we were talking about, if I'm tying to fix guilt or trying to work on relationships or whatever, I guarantee you I'll make it worse. And what I've found is that the way that I work,