The Juggernaut of Self-Will – Earl H: Dead Man Talking – a Serious Yet Funny Workshop – Part 2 of 3 – Sandy B.

What the hell's going on? God, I actually remember. All right. Yeah. Say my name again. Don't do it. Hola. Mi nombre es Senor Torialto. Hola. I'm Earl Alcoholic. All right, all right. I've heard a big book. Thank you, Lee. okay get comfortable i'm going to read for 40 minutes don't you love when guys do that just a little bit page 84 of this particular big book itty bitty big book this thought brings us to step 10 which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along we vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past, we've entered the world of the spirit our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness, this is not an overnight matter it should continue for our lifetime continue to watch for selfishness dishonesty, resentment and fear When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code. And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude towards liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we have been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. How can I best serve thee, thy will, not mine, be done? These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will. Thank you. I mean, if you ask me, that's a power-packed little section in the book. Page 84, I'm restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved of the obsession to drink or use. I'm relieved of that. Having been restored to insanity, I get my will back. The power of choice has been returned. Now, of course, all this is my opinion. All right? I am not an AA spokesman this is just the way I'm doing it right now talk to me in a year I'll probably have hopefully have a little different spin on things because it says you know that this is something that we do for the rest of our lives one day at a time address the fact that I'm an alcoholic I'm a self-centered frightened left to my own devices as I've said many times left unattended I revert back into self-will and once there's a place in the book that refers to the juggernaut of self- will that's what happens to a guy like me I reverted back into that this is a daily reprieve I need constant reminding of this way as opposed to this way actions that are beneficial to self and others as opposedto actions thatare harmful to self and others. When I'm self-centered and afraid in the 12 and 12 on step 7, second to last page of the 12 I kind of felt like Howard Peay right there you know going to a specific section it says and I paraphrase that self- centered fear is the chief activator of all my defects of character. You know I'm not going to get something I want or I'm going to lose something that I already have And that pretty much sums up fear for me. I'm not going to get what I want. I'm going to be rejected or I'm going to lose something that I have. I'm gonna be abandoned at some level. And that's what I'm afraid of. You frighten me, which by the way is very easily done. You know, when I was new to frighten me, all you had to do was walk up to me and say, hey, how you doing man? Yeah. Because I didn't have the answer to that question. How you doing? I don't know. I don t know how I'm doing. I m insane. I was easily, easily frightened. I m not as easily frightened 23 years later. Not as easily. You can still knock me off center just engaging in normal conversation. I get lost. I'm easily befuddled. And I still have this part of me and I think it's part of the human nature. If I don' t know what going on, something must be wrong. And that's a very egocentric state of mind when you think about it. You know what I mean? Just, okay, everybody freeze. I don't know what's going on. Wrong here. When in fact, all it means is that I just don't know what' s going on. That's all it means. Everything could be fine. She said, I'm experiencing one of my many momentary lapses at that time. And I'm confused, disoriented. It happens all the time. The interesting thing I think about staying sober a long time is that it's not that I know what's going on all the Time now. That is not what's happened. What's happened is that I've become increasingly more comfortable having no idea what's goin' on. What's goin on Earl? I don't know. I walked in here this morning and looked at Terry and said, why are we here? I'm still asleep. It doesn't matter. Just to let go of all of that, the mental approach to life, that critical factor that I've got to understand everything that's going on. I was talking to a woman. I was walking towards breakfast. Yeah, that's what I was doing. and a woman stopped me and said how do I let go of this you know how do i set essentially the question was how do we set good boundaries how do not be a doormat how do you know where's the balance you know for me and i kept thinking about it after we talked and i thought you know that's that's such an elusive aspect of life you know because inside me i'm i'm moved i'm moving i'm i'm reacting I'm being triggered by things that I'm not even, on a conscious level, I'm unaware of. I'm NOT conscious as to all the things that are happening around me in life, the interactions that I am having. I am NOT present 100% of the time. I'm Not. You know, that whole idea of get between these right here, right here right now, this is where life is, this moment, there isn't anything else, right? I would love to tell you that I am absolutely 100% right here, right now. I'd be lying. Right? I have a little thing about flying. I find it at the very best mildly disturbing. And I'm at this moment preparing to actually of my own free will walk onto an airplane later today. And I will do so, and no one around me will be aware of the fact that I'm having a fundamentally different experience than most people doing that. We'll be in line, and I'll get on the plane, and they'll say hello, and i'll say hi, how are you? Good, good, this is all fine. You know what I mean? You know, and with each step, I'll give it to God, I'll take it back. I'll just bump my way to L.A. Let's think positively. I will fly smooth as silk to L!A., And I'll get off the plane like everybody else, but I'll have my experience of that. And I will wrestle with self the whole way. The point is, is that I'll do it. I won't be paralyzed by that anymore. I was paralyzed bythat for nine years. Couldn't do it, couldn't doit, and was able to. You know, now I can. And for me, that's good enough for now. You know? I don't have to be fine with it. I just have to be able to move forward. As to love and tolerance of others as our code, right before that it's talking about Step 10, or Step Stan, as I like to call it. And what I love about that, love and tolerence of others is our code. What I love about that is that when I say that, it changes my approach to life. It changes it. It reminds me of something that I need to engage in behavior that is completely contrary to my natural state of being as a self-centered, frightened alcoholic. I don't respond to the world from that place. I react to it. Fear causes me to react. It doesn't allow me to simply respond to life, Love and tolerance of others as a code reminds me. I am a human among humans. I am flawed. Others are flawed. We are all in some way flawed. We're all members of Alcoholics Anonymous. We'reall attempting to be on this path, to stay sober at day to time. And we're all on different points in the path. I'll resolve some issue in my life at 25, right? That Tom dealt with at 2. I'll get something together at five years that Lee will get to when he's 30. You know what I mean? We're all doing this as individuals, and for me to allow the path to others is a place in the book that refers to if somebody's being cruel or mean or unreasonable to me, the book says there's another opportunity here if I'm, you know, engaging in this code of love and tolerance that I can frame somebody up as a sick individual. And there are other faiths or paths that suggest that the balance is here. If I'm centered and balanced, right? And I meet another human being in the path that I see as being troubled, restless, irritable, discontented and they're reacting out from a self-centered, fearful place and they are being mean or cruel or inappropriate or what in my direction that the option is available to me if I'm sticking to my side of the street to see that what this person is saying to me is not necessarily, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with me. They're letting me know where they're at. And if I can respond to the world rather than react to it, engaging in this code, I can see that this is an individual that's out of center, that's off balance, that's struggling. And if i see them that way, if I could frame them up as experiencing dis-ease, disharmony in the world, it puts me in a position to be compassionate towards that individual. Right? And now I can try to be of service. You know, have I said or done anything to offend you? Checking my side of the street. They say, well... Roar, roar, roar. You know? And it's just like, alright, you know what I mean? Let's see what we can do to get you back in the center so we can walk the path together and not be taking something personally that isn't. My attitude is, if I walk in a room and don't like the lighting, it's personal. Why are they doing this? It's my tendency to take everything personally. To just come back to the sentence. Now, am I good at this? Nope. Am I better at it than I've ever been before? Yep. Because they say, I mean there's lines in this thing that suggest to me this is not an overnight matter. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. What does that suggest to me? That I'm a student of the game, and that I shall remain a student of the games as long as I live. As far as I get, there will be a deeper understanding, there will have been a greater consciousness, there will be a greater degree of centeredness or balance or peace or the promises that are suggested to me a little bit earlier in the book But I can go further. So, in other words, for me, there is no master of the game. There's the students. You know what I mean? We're just students. And my job is to just be a student and continue to try to grow, continue to trying to learn, to look at this on a daily basis and see how I'm doing. Love and tolerance of others. Another thing I love about that is the rest of the world the normal man, should he exist somewhere, is out there and out there they tell you love love love is an action I agree give love I agree give love tolerance doesn't pop into that but I got a feeling they know who I am here, that they slide tolerance right up there with love. Love and tolerance, Earl. And tolerance. We know you. Right? You're very weak in this category. We need to shove it right up to the top of the list. Love and Tolerance. Because my nature as a self-centered, frightened human being is I'm extremely intolerant of self and as a result, extremely intolerate of others. I lived in a state of remarkable self-loathing. Shame, remorse, guilt, that cycle that alcohol would push down and as I was pushing all those feelings down with my alcohol I was creating behavior that created more of the same so I would wake up deeper into the shame, the remorse the guilt over my actions my inability to function in the world My complete inability to accept life on life's terms. Those feelings are up at an even greater level. I've got to push them down more, I've Got to push him down more. And I can't get out of the loop. I can' t get out the loop until I got taken out of a loop. That I was just removed from that and thrown... Alcoholism just used me until it was done, spit me out into Alcoholics Anonymous is pretty much the way I looked at it. Because there was no point in my life where I thought to myself, you know, I should probably go to Alcoholics Anonymous. That didn't happen. I got to a point where my life was flatlined and a guy said, go to AA. And they talked to me like I was a dog, which was appropriate. You know? Sit. Go AA. And I went to AA and having absolutely no idea what was going on or what was happening. And a lot of these things just bounced off my skull. but as you begin to wrestle with this stuff, it's just the next thing and the next thing and all of a sudden I'm wrestling with concepts that were completely foreign to me when I got here. They're making sense. And here's the thing about the action of this. Love and tolerance is my code. So then now of others. If they say love and tolerance of self, I can't get in. I can' t get in that way. But if it's love and tolerance of others as our code, of others, okay, so I'm supposed to take what is for me a remarkably contrary action. And I'm going to try to... Some guy's talking to me and I'm thinking, okay, I'm gonna try to be loving and tolerant. And I'M gonna start taking these actions and I'M GONNA ACT IN A MANNER THAT IS COMPLETELY CONTRARY TO WHAT'S GOING ON INSIDE ME. That's one of the most amazing things about alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Now I'M GOING TO ACT DIFFERENTLY THAN I AM. I can't think my way into this, thinking about self, loving and tolerant of self. No. Loving and tolerant for others. Okay, that's going to require an action on my part. I'm going to have to behave differently. I'm gonna behave differently." The cool thing about this is, for me, what I've recognized for me is, I started taking actions that were so far beyond my ability or my understanding or my emotionally driven self that some guy walked up to me that I didn't know and I just started off being a nice guy as opposed to standing there, you know what I mean? The first thing you meet is your neck. What do you want? You know, lean in and go high. I'm extending my hand because I walk around with my hands in my pockets You know, or like this. All the time. Now, you know, I used to stand like this to protect myself. Now I stand like THIS because my stomach's a lot bigger. And it's an excellent resting place for my arms. But to try to be open, Hi, how are you? And the guy's having a problem and get out of myself and try and be of service to him. What's interesting about that is initially for me that was a very, very painful experience because my experience of that was I am so much less than the action I am taking. I feel so much... It was this glaring evidence that I wasn't what I was projecting, that I'm so much more than what I am. I'm much less then this. When I'm just down in it, I'mjust down init, right? And all of a sudden I take an action to rise up and I am less than the action I am taking and it becomes glaringly apparent and it created pain inside me because there was evidence for me now suddenly of something other than how I had always been. That was hard. It was hard to be nice and that's why because every time I was nice to you I had the experience of I'm so not a nice person in how I deal with others And this action began to move me in a different direction. I wanted to become someone who could be nice to another human being and feel good about that instead of in pain about that. So it was just, it was as if I'm here entrenched in self and I would throw a line out to another human being of being, you know, functioning as a loving and tolerant person and it would just kind of move me towards that a little bit. And then I would do it again and it would move me toward that a bit. Then somebody would scare me in a meeting or something and I'd say something or give them a look or something, you know? Because now I know the difference. Now I have my own experience of this being different and now I'm moving towards something outside of self. There was hope in the action. The hope was in the action and taking the action. The only way a guy like me would take an action, move forward is if the room I was standing in was on fire. You know? Donald, my original sponsor used to say to me, you know, you get out of the house when the house is on fire, your shoes are on fire and I would move forward. It was the pain of the past, the unacceptable nature past, the unacceptable nature of my past that caused me to throw that lifeline. And that lifeline for me was rising above self and only action, only outside influence was going to make that possible for me. So I began feeling extremely intolerant of self, acting as if if I was able to be tolerant of others, acting as if. And it would keep me up all night trying to figure it out, trying to figuring it out and not being able to figure it out. This wasn't working for me. And I'd take another action. Donald would say, go over and say hello to that guy. And I look at him like, why? And he could have said, because you don't talk to anyone. you talk to me and that's it you're two years sober and nobody knows who you are you're not a part of this you're connected to me I'm not going to be enough go talk to that guy go say hello to him and talk to him fine so I go over Ohio Street back at the meeting I walk up to this guy and say hi I'm Earl he says hi I am Christopher how are you I'm all right. How are you? I'm alright. We began our friendship by lying to each other immediately. And I'm sitting there thinking, who is this pipe-smoking fool? Right? And he's over there going, thinking... He's wearing three knives at the time. And he're thinking, I'm gonna need a new knife. As we sit fine, how are you? Donald, your sponsor. Yeah, he's my sponsor. I'm 23 and a half years sober. Christopher and I have been sober. Christopher just turned 25 March 5th. And he's my original friend. And we're friends to this day. And we laugh about the times we decided, and Donald would say, you know guys, go do something. Acquire a phone number. I don't know what your phone number is. How many phone numbers you got? One. I have a phone number. And we would go, and I remember there were times, I mean, we were just crazy. But we were perfect for each other. I would go. I'd call and say, let's go get a couple slices at LaMonica's in Westwood. We'll walk over, see a movie, and then barbeque. So I would come home. I would walk over to his house, knock on the door. And I remember the day where he opened the door and the look on his face was a look I understood. He wasn't going one day at a time right there. He was going a second at a time, not blowing his head off. That's what he was doing. The look on his face, there was such pain you know and madness on his face. He was white. And I opened the door. He opened the door and he looked at me and I didn't go in. I didn' t step in the apartment. I just stepped back and And he came out and we walked about 20 minutes down to Westwood, didn't say a word. Got a couple of slices, didn t say a work, went to the movies, didn t say word, walked back to his house, didn t say words, said see you later, he walked in and I went home. And I stayed up all night wondering if he was going to kill himself or not. And so did he. then we saw each other at the meeting the next day, you know, and he's 25 and I'm 23. I mean, it took a crazy person like me to understand what was going on with him. And there was my turn in the barrel, then it was his turn in the barrel. And we were, we acted very lovingly and tolerantly towards one another because Donald told us to. And we didn't want to piss him off. We had no interest in friendship, no understanding of friendship, nor ability or awareness of how to make that work. Is this thing cutting in and out? Yeah. Done. Done. Done. Snack it. There, it's fine now. Oh, you know what I'm doing with that now, don't you? You need another nut. that was the beginning you know of trying to be loving and tolerant and it was completely foreign though imagined insults were the worst man's in charge and he forgot his shoes alright what have we got here then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help we have ceased fighting anything or anyone even alcohol I read that and I thought not even close to the surrender you know Yet another surrender. Put my hands up. Put my hand up to surrender. Donald used to say it in ways that I could understand. He'd talk newcomer language. He said, Earl, we just don't get into it anymore. And I remember looking at him and thinking, on one level I understand that, but I have absolutely no idea how you do that. It is my nature. Something rolls by and I just bite down on it. You know, and it'll drag me until I'm bloody and dying. And then maybe I'll let go of it. You know? I don't let go off anything. I spent my whole life hanging on. Just hang on. Just hangon. Just hang-on. You'll get through this. Just hang'on. You know when you come in with your fist clenched so tight and then, you know, you're just reacting, reacting, reacting. And then you come into here and they say, okay, let go. I don't know how I can't, the fist is tight and I'm very focused on letting go I'm not going to let go of this idea of letting go but then it's like shut up or okay we're talking about step three Oh, okay, turn your will and life into the care of God. Okay, say the prayer. I'm a little spooky. All right, but four, I'm writing, I'M writing, I'M WRITING. Fifth, something, okay? I'M DOING THE FIFTH. I'M doing the fifth. You know what I mean? Sixth, okay. I've got to have this relationship with God. I've gotta humbly ask. Okay, all right. I'm gonna sing it. Oh! The hand opened. I wasn't looking at the hand. I wasn'T focused on the hand I was engaged in the process. Suddenly the hand opened standing outside a meeting. Guy walks by and says something that is unacceptable. I said, well, you don't know me well enough to talk to me that way. I would say that probably every third meeting I went to. You don't owe me well to talk with me like that. It was amazing to me the things people in AA would walk up and say to other people they didn't know. It was astonishing to me. They would think you could get away with that. And then they would. And I'd think, God, what's going on? And a guy would walk by and say something that I considered an insult on some level. There's 18 ways to take it. I would always take it that way. I've been insulted. There are other people around. Not only have I been insulted, but I have been publicly humiliated. He must die. He must Die. Just flipping a light switch in me. And I went for the anger. I went through the rage to just let this guy know what had just gone on inside me as a result of that completely harmless comment he'd made to me to make it clear to him this is who I am and don't ever do that again, right? And I went for the anger, and it wasn't there. It wasn't There. And I was left without my tools for living. Drugs, alcohol, violence, and run. There was nowhere to... couldn't drink or use anymore. It was over. The violence wasn't available to me anymore. as a result of doing things that I saw as completely separate from that issue. And there was nowhere to run. It was just standing there. You get forced to use the tools. You're getting forced to use the rules. If you really right in here when it says, we are not fighting it. Neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We've not sworn off and said the problem had been removed. It did not, does not exist for us. That is our experience. That is how we react as long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. So what I found was that I found myself in the no man's land between those two worlds. My old world did not work. I knew that to the center of my being. But I did not have the spiritual toolkit yet. I did Not have the wherewithal or the ability. I had not exercised these things, taken these actions enough in my life to really experience the benefit of them. So I got left with no tools. Sober. That was part of the process for me. This stuff doesn't work anymore, it seems to be no longer available, I'm in the steps, I'm going to meetings. The big difference between the two things, those two worlds, and crossing over, really crossing over into really fully, deeply, personally embracing this path. In doing that, what had to happen for me was I had to set the bridge on fire behind me. There was no going back. I couldn't drink again even if I wanted to. It was over and I knew it, I accepted it. I had to move forward. There is no other direction to go in. None. It's so hard to stay here if you maintain your right to exercise the option of drinking and using. There are people who walk around in the program saying, I choose I choose not, I've been given, they got some knowledge and they say I have the power of choice has been returned. I've Been Restored to Sanity, Soundness of Mind on 84, on 85, I'm given free will back. It also suggests right there a good idea how to use that will which is to just give it back to God. That's a pretty good use of self-will. It's mine, it's my choice and people walk around saying that they choose not to drink a day at a time. That section we just read suggests to me It's no longer a choice. It's not an option. It's off the table. It's non-issue. It's unavailable. It's unavailable. So if I'm removing old ideas, old choices, old decisions, old actions, if those are flying off the table left and right as a result of my embracing this moving forward, there's no place to go back to. I've got to go forward. I have to find new actions. I have take this idea of love and tolerance of others as a code and I have to start to try to implement it. I have to do that. I have to go, I mean, and you find these remarkable ways in, you know, particularly when you're working with a brand like mine, you find these ways where you go into your home group meeting and there's the guy that you always have avoided. Hmm. I'll go over and say hello. Right? Now there's still a voice in there going, dude. What are you thinking? Your instincts are good. You've avoided that guy this long. There's a really good reason in there somewhere, and you know it, don't you? Here's the interesting part. What happens when I go over and put my hand out and ask that guy how he's doing and say, you know, I've seen you around meetings a long time and I've never said hello. It's like, come over and say hi and see how you're doing. What he then does with that is irrelevant. it's absolutely irrelevant that I took a contrary action and went over and shook a guy's hand that's my side of the street what he does with it is his that's not the point and I get guys I sponsor and I'll tell them to do that and they'll go in and shake a guy�s hand and the guy�s just like, you know, whatever and they�ll come back and go you see what a bad idea that was and I just smile because I get that thinking completely and they go, no, no No, no, see, separate it out, separate out. What did you do? What action did you take? Right, right. He says, you acted in a loving manner towards someone in a meeting who seems very isolated in that meeting on a regular basis. And you went over and you extended a member of the group, extended their hand to another member ofthe group. That was good. Now, your reaction to what he did with it. Now let's talk about the tolerant part. He says... Well, you know, he was... Guy's a jerk! I'm going to treat him like a jerk. Hold on. Right? I know all about this because I lived there for years. Right? Maybe, maybe he's an alcoholic. Oh yeah, it's here obviously. Can we move a little quicker? Oh, I'm bored. You know anything about his family? No. You know how he was raised as a child? you know what his life experience is, no? Do you know if scars remain for him? No. No. You know what the prison of loneliness feels like? Yeah, I do. Maybe he's in that prison. Oh. Wow. Maybe, maybe, maybe. There's a whole little world over there standing in the form of that human being. You don't know how he got where he is but you do know where he isn't as an unhappy place, don't you? Yeah. So when you frame him up like that Can you go back at the end of the meeting and tell him it was nice to meet him and you hope you see him here next week? All right. Good for you, man. Good for me. Good for us. Again, the guy's going over there to do that at the beginning of the meaning. He hasn't heard a word on meaning because he's been thinking about how he's got to go do this. Right? And he goes over and he does it and what he's experiencing is same thing I experienced. Flawed human. I am less than the action I am taking. I am less than the action I am taking. I am acting on a level beyond that which I currently experience. And that's the lifeline. And you just move a little closer to the action, a little close to the act. Practicing, practicing, practicing. And that is what I have done in here. I have practiced being a nice guy. While seeing myself clearly as not. I have practice at being honest because I am a dishonest man. Every defective character that is available to humans, I have. The difference now, and I have them all today, the difference is that they don't run me anymore. They're not in charge. The power of choice has been returned. I enlist the aid of God. I Enlist the Aid of My Fellows. I acknowledge openly in rooms full of other people that I should never be left unattended. It's me. And I know some people think, isn't it a shame? All this time sober and, you know, he just has got to go to those ANA meetings regularly. Those regular ones regularly. He's been, you know, for 23 and a half years he's been sponsored all of three hours. All of it less than three hours and that was simply because I was in shock at the death of Donald Mann and while sitting there waiting for them to come get the body I heard his voice. See, I thought Donald was dead. He's not dead. He's here with us. I'm alive. I'm a product of him, as are so many. And I heard his voice in my head say, Get a sponsor right now, you little son of a bitch. Go check the body to make sure he's not moving. And then the name rolled by. I knew a man that Donald loved and respected. and that loved and respected Donald. I was just going to another chair at the same table and I called him up and said, Donald's dead, will you sponsor me? He said, of course I will. And that was it. I mean, it's three hours. I have not had a sponsor for three hours in 23 and a half years, right? And those three were dicey. You know, Donald's Dead, what am I going to do? What am I doing to do all? What am I going to do? Three hours of that is way too long for me. And guess what? As a poor unfortunate soul that has had to stay close to Alcoholics Anonymous and has had begrudgingly at times go to regular meetings regularly and who has had act and engage in behavior completely contrary to who I am as an unintended human being, that has had to sponsor people since I was two and a half years sober consistently at a maniacal rate these legions of guys who come and that I sponsor to read the big book to engage in prayer and meditation to take this contrary action if you see that as unfortunate and unevolved, may I suggest something else? Right and proper action for a guy like me. It just simply is what it is because as a result of doing that, I'm more comfortable being Earl than I've ever been in my life. That's the result of love and tolerance towards others as a goal, right? As a code. To be gentle, to be strong enough as a human being to be gentle with myself and to be general with other people. That's something that I try to do. That is an idea that I try to move towards, right. There are many, many schools of thought in Alcoholics Anonymous, right, and I welcome them all. All I'm telling you is mine. I cannot be one of those heavy-handed guys. I'm not a dictator, not even a benign dictator. I am not... It's... That's something that feels painful and remains painful for me having tried it and recognized it's not the way for me. That I have to do this a different way. I' m not tough, I'm rigid, I do not tell the guys that I sponsor what to do, ever. I do not tell them what to do. I suggest this, they say I've got this problem, and I say well my experience with that is this, I did these things, I got this result. Because if alcoholism has not beaten them into a state of reasonableness, I don't know how the hell I'm going to. I have to be an example of something else to them. I'm not just responsible for me anymore. I'm responsible to those guys. And I know that they say you can't stay sober for anybody else. I have. There have been times in my sobriety where I couldn't think of one reason within me to stay sober. But I just couldn't do that to Nino. Couldn't do it to Steve, my friends. Not just guys I sponsor, friends of mine, compatriots. Just couldn't doing it to them. I was responsible to them I'm not just me anymore. I'm a member of a community. When I got here, I had no sense of family. I hadno sense of community. Trying to exercise love and tolerance as my code has pulled me into, by taking the contrary actions that that requires, has pulledme into a life beyond anything I could have accomplished on my own. I have a sense of failure. I have friends that are absolutely, they're, my experience of family with them is beyond anything I experienced with my blood relatives. Any of them. There's a connectedness and a history there. I was, my family died on my 22nd birthday. I've been here 23 and a half years. I've Been With You far longer than I've lived with them, and a great deal more consistently. I pretty much left home when I was 12. I've never left home here. I've stayed with you, and you've been the examples. Steve and I were talking about a guy named Fred Ellis who's gone, who used to be at the Thursday Night Brentwood Beginner's Workshop. And I would walk, I would see him, literally I would say, I would call him down. I would calm down. and I would go up at the end of the meeting and he'd stand there talking to guys he sponsored and I'd go stand behind him and burglarize the conversation. I'd be like, but I'm listening because I want to hear what he has to say because he was just the way he talked to people. He was so kind right? And I would listen and I wouldn't and I couldn't go up to him. I didn't know how to do that but I could listen and I did this week after week after week after week after week I would throw the meeting And I'd see Fred and I'd sit down and stay for the meeting. Because I could go listen to Fred when it was over. And after a few weeks of this, he was talking to this guy and all of a sudden he just turned right around and faced me and stuck out his hand and he said, Hi Earl, and he knew my name. And it just shocked, I was paralyzed. And I shook his hand. Years later I understood, you know, he knew I was there. And he was going, who is that guy? I think his name's Earl, we don't really know. It's kind of like back there, you Know? Alright. And he just stuck his hand out to me. Dr. Paul was a guy like that. I mean, Luther Wood, my sponsor, right? He's the samurai to me because Luther is kind to people. And how you treat him is irrelevant to him. His decision is to be a kind and loving man, a tolerant man. And that's how he functions. That's a decision he has made for himself in his life. And he practices it on a regular basis. He's strong enough to be gentle with himself and gentle with others. I figure most of it, to get in here, you've got to have your ass kicked pretty good. A lot of us come in here demonstrating defiance, anger, judgment, intolerance. I'm guilty of all of them. Self-centered fear, you know, ego, demonstration of ego to cover up the great self-loathing that exists. And I can't respond to those things. I can'T battle those things I don't see engaging those things as the right and proper direction for somebody like me. I can't get into that. What I can is be something else and demonstrate something else, a code of love and tolerance of others. So when some guy walks in, I get guys I sponsor who just say, I don' t want to do this. I say, okay. Okay. but my experience when I don't want to do it is that I do this I take this contrary action I get out of self, tolerance of others I get outside of self and in the service which is what it says right after that what we do is we immediately go out and seek to help someone else if I do that I am relieved of the prison of self the prisonof the mind that gets me into that fearful reactive state of being I can get out of that. And what I want is out. I'm through claiming my right to be a pissed-off man. It doesn't work for me. I want the contrary action to get me out of it, and if helping you out will do it, I'm in. I'm In. So that's how we deal with the guys that have sponsors. I had a guy come over to my house one day, and he said he'd gotten sober very young, and he says, Earl, I've not convinced that I'm an alcoholic. We've gone through the steps together. We've done the work. I've been to the meetings. I've had the commitments. You've sponsored me for four and a half years. I'm not convinced I'm an alcoholic. And I said, okay. Well, you got a plan? He said, yes, I do. I said. I'd love to hear it. And he said. I'm going to get a car driver and a bodyguard. And I'm gonna go out and I'm going to do some controlled drinking. And I said, that is in fact the plan. I said however just a part of thought, I just want you to know, I love you. I love you drunk or sober. You don't have to be sober to call me. Right? Stay in touch, let me know how it's going and one final thought. I'm thinking that when a normal man decides to go out and have a couple of drinks. He doesn't factor into the plan the possible need for a car driver and a bodyguard. I'm sorry to say he didn't appreciate that. Eleven months later, I was watching the evening news and there he was fighting with the cops back to jail got out of jail went back into treatment called me up and said can we have dinner I said yeah and we sat down I said so and he said I'm convinced and I thought good for you I don't know what God's will is for me I try to make myself available to that. That's what I try. I try and get through the steps, through service, right? Through love and tolerance of others as a code, I try get enough of me out of the way to allow God in through the actions I take, through the chopping wood and carrying the water of Alcoholics Anonymous, to let God in so that I can have some kind of experience of what God's will is for me as opposed to what Earl's will is for him. I don't know what it is for me. I'm on the path, Adora, on the path. How the hell could I possibly know what God's will is for you? No way to know. All I can do is engage in the process. That's all I can do. If I do that, it's possible. If I don' t do it, it's impossible. The difference between the old tools and the new tools for me is this. Out there, when I was living out there, I came to you a hopeless man, absolutely hopeless, out of ideas. And underneath that sense of hopelessness was this attitude that if I don't hang on, if I Don't Hang On, right below the hopelessness is the madness. And that if i let go, if I dont keep my guard up and fight with everything Im worth, if I let that guard down for a second, my mind is going to fly out that window and never come back. I will descend into the madness that you can't return from. That was the anxiety, the terror, the fear that I brought in here with me. I've been sober a while now. And a lot of life happens in 23 and a half years. A lot of light on life's terms happens. And I've had some really bad days sober. I've Had some bad ones. I've never been hopeless. Not in here. Never hopeless. And people throw words around. right? I've never been hopeless in any way, shape or form that you could attach to the hopeless that I used to be. Underneath however bad the day is, however bad or painful life on life's terms experiences can be, underneath that has been this sense that everything's okay. Not that everything is going to be okay. What's going on? Don't worry, everything's going to be all right. I've stopped saying that to people because I don't know. What I can say though is, is that everything's all right right now. So when I experience a tremendous loss or I do something stupid and the consequence of that presents itself to me in my life, as happens on a regular basis, underneath that is this sense of there's an opportunity here for me to expand my consciousness, expand my understanding of this path and this process, clean up what I can clean up and embrace it all. That this is just life. I remember that there was a story of the Buddha walking along the road with some other Buddha-like people, you know? And he's walking along on the road and looks down on a ravine off the road, and there's a couple of tigers down there, and they're starving. He can tell them they haven't eaten in a long time, and their starving. And he just saw this, and he just threw himself off into the ravine and the tigers ate him. The end. Or maybe not. It was all part of the cycle of life, and it was just this human form, these attachments and all this stuff that we get into, was irrelevant. It's all part or something completely beyond us. It is the story of a guy who is getting chased by a tiger and he is running under the tiger, right? And he comes to a cliff and there's a little branch sticking out down the cliff. And he goes over the cliff and he's hanging by a branch with one arm. And he looks down at the bottom of the ring. There's another tiger down there. So there's a tiger up here looking at him and there is a tiger down here waiting for him. And he's thinking about it. He looks over and there was another little branch with a strawberry on it, right. So he reaches over and he grabs the strawberry in the midst of this horrifying situation and eats the strawberry and thinks to himself, that strawberry was so sweet. Right? I love that guy. I love that guy, life on life's terms. In the midst of mayhem, he could grasp the sweetness of life. That it was there, but if you can just reach out and take it, it's always there. Can I have the kind of consciousness that will go deep enough, back off far enough to look at it and say, everything's okay. Sounds like a long way to go. A code of love and tolerance for others is the way in for me. There's a lot of amazing, mind-blowing stuff in this book. There's one code, love and intolerance. So when I start trying to dictate, when I started trying to say my way or the highway, or I'm right and y'all are wrong, Right? There's a prison there for me. I'm building a prison. I know a guy in AA that says, you know, people don't ask me to speak much because, you know, I tell it like it is. And I think, God bless you. I know what that prison is like. I know What That Prison Is Like, to be in that place, to look at, to get into, you know, jealousy, envy, greed, all this stuff, right? Right now, my wife has dragged me into a remarkable life. She said we got together and we were dating and I was in love, she was in Love. There was just nothing bad. She's just a remarkable person. I aspire to be remotely like her. And I am the weak link in this one for sure. And I tell people however long her denial holds will be fine. She just, she's just naturally certain things that I have to work very hard to try to be. She's an amazing woman. And she decided, you know, she said, you Know, I think it's time we lived together. And I knew immediately this was a bad idea. I knew it immediately. And said so. We moved in together. Absolutely fabulous idea. She said we should get a dog. Well, now you've completely missed the mark. That's more responsibility. I'm working a lot. This is a bad idea. It was an absolutely great idea. We got a dog. It was terrific. It had a profound effect on me. This unconditional love meeting me at the door every day. You're back! That's all you've got to do to make a dog happy. Just walk in the door. He's back! I love this dog! Let's get another one. We've got two now. All right? I knew that was a bad thing. That was a good idea. She said, you know, we should buy a house. I said, are you insane? Right? We bought a house Best idea I ever had She'd get married Oh, you know When is it enough? You know, when is We're right here This is fine right here When is this enough? Is this not satisfying you? Fine, we'll get married Best decision I ever made in my life To get married to her Make that commitment. Formalize it, you know? Go through the ritual of marriage and state for the world that I'm with this person. You know? Remarkable. She said, well, you know, we've got to remodel the house now. Right? Well, we can't live here while we're remodeling. Let's buy the house across the street and live in that and when the house is remodeled we'll go over and we'll live in the house and then we'll lease that out and I'm looking at her going, you know, insanity. Madness. we'll see how that one turns out. I'm withholding an opinion because we're right in the middle of it. But you know what? It'll be fine. It was a great idea at the time. It doesn't matter how it turns out, she was right. I have been dragged kicking and screaming into a life beyond my wildest dreams by another human being that has nothing but love for me, which is a terribly difficult thing for me to understand, let alone accept. that I'm being dragged into this amazing life by someone. Now what's real interesting is along the way she feels like she couldn't be where she is without me. I feel like I couldn't be where I am without her. I have a partner. This unknown, unavailable thing for somebody like me and here's the thing that I know about all of it. You take away all the stuff all of all the stuff financial disaster it's a disaster right take it all away take her away take the dogs away these things that I am so attached to, this woman, this dog take them away take them way I'll be alright be alright my job is to be loving and tolerant of others my job is to embrace rather than be suspicious my job is to make the conscious decision to trust, which is the only way that I can make a conscious decision and based on the experience of that come to have faith in God in you in this that there isn't some other code that's really pertinent to somebody like me. There may be other paths and other ways for other people. This is the one for me. I have to find my way out of my mind and into the world. This is the casting of the reel of life into the word that I am now going to the world with an attitude of being loving and tolerant of others, service to others as opposed to my natural state is, what have you got for me? How can you be of benefit to me? How can I get what I need from you? To get out of that and approach life in a fundamentally different way. The greatest thing about all of this is, you never hit the bottom of it. It goes as far as I want to go. So wherever I am, there's more. Wherever I am there's more. And the way for me to get more is to go back to the beginning. The way for me to getting more is when I find myself in a state of restlessness, irritability, discontented, to go step one to acknowledge my problem. Step two, acknowledge the solution to that problem, a power greater than myself. Step three, to make a decision to enact that in my life. Four and five, clear my side of the street before God and another human being. In 6 and 7, to engage in a relationship with the power greater than myself, asking that power to remove my defects of character and my shortcomings. 8 and 9, to go out into the world and clean up whatever it is I need to clean up as a result of inappropriate action or thinking on my part. 10, 11, and 12, me, God, and you keeping the game. If I do that, I can go to meetings with an attitude of service out of self. Not, what do you got for me tonight but how can I be an active participant in this? How can I become an example of this? To the best of my ability at that point. In 11, continue to seek God. In 12, back at it. Right, back out. Out of self, out of cell, out of sell. I don't have to worry in my life about whether or not I'm doing too much service. I never have to worried about am I taking the service thing too far. What I can do is look at my responsibility, the nature in which I engage in that service. You know, I'm getting ready to sit down for a year and not talk for a years. At the very least to stop doing this. Right? Because I don't have to do this to be a good member of AA. I don' t have to be I don''t have to do this to be a responsible human. I don ''t have to do this. What I you know, I need balance in my life. I can go put the chairs away at my meeting and have that be as profound as doing something like this. I worry sometimes, I've always thought, with Donald Madden as your sponsor for the first 13 1?2 years of your life, and my life really started when I got here, I didn't get my life back, I got a life beyond anything I'd ever experienced at all, that it would never become an ego thing to be up here because the minute that idea would hit, I'd just wince because of all the stuff that Donald embedded in me. But I still wonder sometimes, you know? I want to be Earl. And if I'm weekly on a plane flying someplace being an Earl H., it can get a little weird and it can get to a place where I think, I don't know man. And the answer of that for me is to just possibly, you know, I mean, I'm booked into mid-2006, but maybe just stop it and take a year off and just be in the rooms, you know? Be in the rooms. So that's the stuff I'm thinking about, that maybe that's a good way for me to start to be of service more, you know? Be home with the guys that I sponsor. Be more available to them. Be more available to my wife and my dogs, you know. Be more available in those ways. One thing I've learned is anybody that ever gets up here, you sit us down, it has absolutely no impact on Alcoholics Anonymous whatsoever. None. There's guys coming up through the ranks man that blow my mind when they get up here. So I'm thinking maybe that that's something that I have to do. So you get the information, you process it, and you think, what's the right and proper action? What's the thing that's beneficial to self and others? And maybe that's something that's on the horizon for me. It's the first time I've said it out loud from the podium in a long time. I did it once already at stand-up for a year and it was great. It was great and nobody thought anything was missing with me shutting up. I've got to go get on a plane. I love you all very, very much. Have a good week. thank you for listening