Amends and Ego Deflation – Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Bob O.

I was shown to make recipe cards, to use three-by-five cards. And I'd write down the person, I'd right down the harm, and I would write down what I wanted to say to them about making it right. I was taught that amends are about balancing the books and that that's my responsibility in the mend. And so I was told to go there, do my business, be calm, frank, and open, as the book says. And to go in, define the harm, tell them what I was willing to do about it, ask them if there was anything else I could do about it. And the last question I was led to ask was, is there any way that I have harmed you that I'm unaware of? You ought to try that sometime, especially to somebody who doesn't like you. You might get an hour off the top. But that's a good practice to ask people if you've harmed them in some manner that you haven't addressed. When you get done with amends, there is a freedom inherent in finishing that that really makes you feel different. You can look the world in the eye. You don't have to cross the street to avoid anyone. It's a point in life which is really spectacular. You're just dead even with the world. That's a good place to be. It's a good place to stay. So do you have any questions about that? We have about an hour to do the rest of this. And so I want to let me just say a couple other things about amends because it comes up. Where do you start? At the top of your list is fine. You know, should I do the hard ones first and the easy ones last or the easy ones first and the hard ones last. Quit talking about it and start doing it. You know, it's like a Nike ad. Just do it. You don't have to put them in any particular order. Usually you do the ones that are closest to you first. And then if you have to travel to make amends, you do that afterwards. Or do it any way you want to do it, pray about it, and do what you think. But do it. So here are the directions for the 10th step. Continue to watch for, yes? Of course. You want to ask over there? Thank you. It's really on kind of the house cleaning steps four through nine. The house cleaning steps four through nine? Yes. Once you've been through them the first time and promises have come true and obsession to drink has been removed, any thoughts on how often we should do them? My personal experience has been once I went through them the first times and life was real good And it seems like then I kind of only did them again when sort of the rubber hit the road with different kinds of disappointments in life. Any thoughts on how often we should do them? Well, again, I'll tell you what I think, but that's just what I do. And you can do it any way you want. But there's a line in the book that says that a business that takes no regular inventory is sure to fail. Okay? So I don't think there's any secret in that. I think that that means to me that I ought to take inventory on a regular basis, and a regular business for me is roughly once a year. Now why should I do that? Because the ego rebuilds. Bill Wilson talks about ego deflation at depth, and we've been talking about ego in here a whole bunch. and the only way that I know to deflate the ego is by going through the steps. The steps, the 12 steps are ego deflators. That's what they are. So we can go in there and we can deflate our ego down. And the problem with the ego was you can't kill the little bastard. Well, you just can't. So all you can do is beat it senseless and then wait for it to grow up again and then beat it up again. And the ego is the enemy. It truly is the army. And as soon as you understand that, you start rejecting it. We had a woman in my home group that was sober a year longer than I am, And she was killed in the winter. She walked out in front of her house. There had been a really heavy snow, and she walked under this cottonwood tree, and a branch about this big broke off and fell right on her head and killed her. And she's one of the most wonderful women I knew, and she loved to play games with her ego. And so once she decided that the ego was the enemy, she used to get up in the morning and talk to it because it talks to us. There's no reason why we can't talk back. And so she got up inthe morning and she'd address her ego and say, guess what I have in store for you today? and what she would do is she would take something that the ego would tell her not to do because she'd fail or look stupid or whatever that was and she'd say this is what I'm going to do today and it was precisely what her ego was telling her not to do and then she'd say and if you think that's something you ought to see what I have in store for you tomorrow and she used to laugh and laugh and then go off and do what her ego told her was dangerous to do. She was a delightful woman and she spent a lot of time challenging her ego and took great pride in what she was doing and I think it was just marvelous. So how often should you do this? As often as you want. My ego has a tendency to rebuild fairly quickly and I don't want to deal with it. I don' t like pain. I don''t like some voice in my ear constantly lying to me and if I could figure out a way to kill it without killing myself, I'd do it. So I had a good friend that died recently and he knew he was going to die. He had lung cancer and had been a two-pack-a-day smoker for a long time. And anyway, I went down to visit him the week before he died. This other guy and I were his two best friends, and he lived in Tucson. We flew down to Tucson and spent basically his last week with him before he passed on. and he said to me, you know what's good about this? And I said, what's that? And he said, I'm finally going to get rid of that goddamn ego. And I asked him, okay. And he says, can't follow me, Bob. When I die, it dies. And that's why it doesn't want me to die. and that's why I'm fighting death because my ego won't allow me to die. Dear friend, he's the only junkie I ever sponsored and he knew the big book better than most people in Alcoholics Anonymous. So anyway, the instructions for step 10 are continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. And when you see them, ask God at once to remove them. Talk to someone about it. Make amends if you've harmed someone and then resolutely turn your thoughts to someone you can help. There are a number of, before we get into that, there are a lot of promises in the 10th step and most of them are about neutrality to alcohol and I wouldn't have believed a word of it when I came into the program. when I came into the program if someone would have come up and said you're going to be neutral to alcohol you're not going to before it or against it it's going to cease to be an issue I would have hit them because that is such an outrageous lie to me and it's the truth and we truly do become neutral to alcohol I just don't think about it people go aren't you afraid to take a drink And I go, no, I'm not going to take a drink. Well, aren't you afraid of alcohol? No, I am not. Don't you spend time thinking about drinking? No, really don't. Don't You find yourself scared? No. Well, don't You think that is dangerous not to be scared? No. No, the promises in the big book, in the 10 steps say that we are going to be neutral. And neutral means I don't have an opinion. I just don't have an opinion. It just doesn't happen in my life. Well, surely you have to think about it a lot. No, I don't. I just do not drink. I do not make excuses for it. You know, people look at me and they go, hey, how about a beer? And I go, no thanks, I do NOT drink. And everybody is afraid that somebody is going to come up and go, well, you do not drink. Why not? there must be some reason are you an AA or are you an alcoholic or do you have some sort of physical allergy or what's going on there that never happens nobody gives a shit it's alright to say I don't drink half the population doesn't drink we think everybody drinks like we do nobody drinks like we drink I go to parties and I look around for all the drunks, and they aren't there. They must be someplace else. So we have 10-step buddies. That means that I have to call someone up and say, I'm in selfishness, I'm en dishonesty, I's resentment, and I'm fear, and here's what's going on. And then they say, did you ask God to remove it? Did you harm someone in the process? Did you make amends? Did you resolutely turn your thoughts to someone you can help? There's the trick. See, the things that kill people like you and I are selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. That is the basis of my disease. And so if I get into one of those four things, I'm in danger. How do I get out of it? I get out of it by resolutely turning my thoughts to someone I can help. As soon as I'm thinking about someone I Can Help, I'm not thinking about me anymore. Okay? And that's the problem. My problem is thinking about Me. And as soon asI can turn my thoughts, I'm out of It. And if you don't believe it, try it. That's one of the best exercises around. and the step workers I know in AA probably spend as much time in their 10th step as they spend anywhere. So people don't do it because they're protecting their egos. I don't want to look bad. I don' t want to tell somebody about some little thing I did that really is so pedestrian that I'm embarrassed, okay? Why not? I don''t care what people know about me. They're not going to learn anything new. They already know the truth. and I'm not perfect, and I make mistakes, and I do silly things, and the tenth step is one of the best ways to deal with it. And if you're afraid of looking bad, you're never going to be a good tenth stepper. And I can tell you at some point, you won't even care. I don't. Am I embarrassed to tell? Kind of. Sometimes we start those conversations with, well, you aren't going to believe what I did. And they'll go, yeah, I will. And I mean, you've only done that 15 times in the last 30 years. So I don't want to carry that stuff around. I don'T want to be selfish or dishonest or resentful or afraid. I just DON'T want them. AndI'LL tell you what, about 90% of the 10 steps you're going to hear about fear. That's where most people go, is in self-centered fear. And so when people call you up, that's generally what you're gonna hear about, I'm in fear about this. I'm not gonna get this, I'm gonna lose that, whatever that is. And when you listen to those, make sure that you ask those questions because it's really important that first of all that they ask God to remove whatever they're experiencing the next thing that's really important is if they've harmed someone to quickly make amends for it and then the whole business about in the book it says talk to someone but you're already talking to someone And so then it talks about resolutely turning our thoughts to someone we can help. That whole thing is an exercise. You've got to work at it to get good at it. But, and incidentally, just so you know, it doesn't say go help somebody. It says turn your thoughts to them. Because the most important thing is to turn out a self. Now, you can go help them or you can not. but turn your thoughts and if you go help someone in the process then it's great I mean that's good anyway but it's important to get out of self now the 11th step I said yesterday morning that I don't think that 5% of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous do the 11st step you want to know why I'm going to tell you If you look at people who do the steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, this is my big book, right? This is a second edition big book. I've had it since I got sober. So this book's 36 years old. Okay? You see right here where it's all falling apart? That's the 11th step. And the reason why is because most of us go home at night, have this on the table next to the bed, and open it up and follow the directions because there's a lot of directions. And so it's easier to, what the 11th step tells you is what to do when you retire at night. It tells you what to doing you get up in the morning and then it tells you want to do as you go through the day. In the point of the 11 step is all about discipline. Undisciplined. And at the end of the 11th step, it says, in this way God disciplines us. And it says we are undisciplied. Does that come as a surprise? So there's some discipline involved in that. And because there's this discipline involved In this, most people don't want to do it in AHA. Most drunks look at that and go, uh-uh. No, I don't Want to do all that. I'll just do what it says on the wall. So they go, I'll pray and meditate. And you go, you don't know how to do either one. And they'll go, well, I've figured it out. So people go, thank you, God, and then that's the prayer. And they will meditate and they will go, well, that's enough. When this book was written, meditating had to do with opening your mind. some people would do that with the prayer of St. Francis some people would do that with other prayers some people would consider a passage out of the Bible some people would do something else you know what people do today they get in the lotus position and they practice eastern meditation that was never the intent doesn't mean it's wrong but that was not what meditation was in 1939 meditation was sitting and considering that's what it was prayer was about talking to God and meditation was about listening it wasn't about sitting in the lotus position and going I take no issue with all of that But that's not what was going on. So it says that I need to pray and listen, okay? So that's what I do. But that isn't what the instructions are. See, one of the biggest challenges in Alcoholics Anonymous is people come into these meetings and they all have the 12 steps on the wall, and so everybody looks up at the steps and the most they ever do with it is agree with them. Ah, yeah. Okay. Well, I've done that. Yeah, that looks about right. Okay. All right. I'm done. You missed the whole point. See, in this book there's a set of directions for every step, and that stuff on the wall is sort of a general statement that overlies all of the directions. So, when you get to the 11th step, where the heck is it? Yeah, my book is so ripped up here. When we retire at night, we constructively review our day were we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid? Well, were you? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving towards all? Well, that's about as many questions as I want to answer tonight. Or were we thinking of what we could do for others Of what we would pack into the stream of life See, if your experience is like mine I'm sitting there answering those questions Going no, no, I was selfish Oh shit, there I did it again And then it says But we must be careful not to worry And drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection for that would diminish our usefulness to others. So, you know, if your response to asking those questions is to start beating yourself up because you didn't do a very good job, you're doing exactly what this book asks you not to do. That's not constructively reviewing our day, okay? I'm just sitting there thinking about how bad I am at this stuff and that's worry, remorse, and morbid reflection. Morbid reflection is thinking about what a jerk you've been. And that's not the point. The point is to look at the day and see if you've done some things right and if you need a little work. It's almost like business. It's not personal. Just try and do the right thing. Just try to make things a little better every day. On awakening, oh, it says after making our review, this is our evening review, we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. So just say, God, show me what I ought to do to make this better. On awakening let us consider, think about the 24 hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. If you're going to consider your plans for today, you better have some. What we do is we'll generally on a legal pad or a Palm Pilot or something, we'll write down 10 or 12 things we want to do the next day. Okay? That is a marvelous business skill. It's pre-planning, right? So the night before about the time I'm getting ready to retire, I'll write down 10 or 12 things I want to do the next day, and then the next morning I'll consider those plans. And I may change a couple of things, but basically it's going to look pretty much like what I had written the previous night. And that allows me to consider my plans for the day because all of a sudden I have some. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives. So that's the way I'm starting my day, asking God to keep my day free from those things, especially like self-pitie. Do you know that, I'll just mention this, that depression looks suspiciously like self-pity. And I'll leave it at that. Yes? How do you help somebody? Here. I'm sorry Hi my name is Kathy I am an alcoholic How do you help somebody that is stuck in that depression depends a newcomer why don't you go ahead and sit down thank you for doing that I was having this conversation at breakfast mostly because I'm in that business there are some people who are continually clinically depressed that is a mental illness much the same as being bipolar or schizophrenic so it's perfectly reasonable for those people to be medicated otherwise they're going to be clinically depressed all the time does it make it more difficult to work with them yeah, it does any medication is going to alter someone's consciousness and for us to stand in front of doctors and say, don't you dare give that alcoholic an antidepressant drug is to play God. I don't believe in it, and I'm in that business. And I think I'm no big fan of therapies, and i'm in the business. Okay? And when I talk to my psychiatric staff, I tell them, our job is to get people off of medications unless they absolutely need them. We want to get them back to normal lives. Now, what's the truth about that? The truth is that there are people who truly are clinically depressed continually. And those people deserve medication and anything less might cause them some serious problems, not the least of which is suicide. Now,what about the rest of the world? I'll tell you what I think about that too. A third of the industrialized world at any given moment is clinically depressed. A third. A third of everybody. Are they going to stay that way? No. Are they gonna get over it? Yeah. What happened 50 years ago when they didn't have anti-depressive medications? People just lived with it and got through it. I am given to depression. I am. Most alcoholics are naturally depressives. That's the way we are. We are people who are susceptible to depression, and I have regular bouts with it. What do I do about it? Ignore it. Do I require medication? No. Why not? Because I want a clear mind, and And I'm willing to take a little pain with it to maintain a clear mind. So I am surrounded by people who can write prescriptions, surrounded by. And, I mean, they want to do good things for me because they work for me. And so they'll come up and say, you seem a little depressed. Sometimes I'll say, hey, no, I'm not a little stressed. I'm a lot depressed. And they'll say, well, I can give you something for that. My response is no, you can't. I think it's normal, and especially for alcoholics, to have periodic bouts with depression. If they last and last and won't go away, medication is not the worst thing in the world. If it's periodic, if it means I may spend a week in it, day in it and hours in it. Screw it. I'm not up for it we have a funny thing alcoholics have a funny thing about them when they take medications and that is on a regular basis medications that are purported to do certain things beneficial things for people don't work for us it's like trying to give us novocaine if you're a chronic alcoholic and they give you Novocaine, they might as well shoot water in your gums because it isn't going to work. And there is something about our history which does not allow us to act normally under certain medications. And so we may take Prozac and commit suicide. And don't think that's an odd example. That happens on a regular basis. We may take Welbutrin and go off like a Roman candle. We may takes Zoloft and go off and just get crazy. We can take liverine, valium, phenobarbital, we can take any of those things and they won't do in some cases, they will do just the opposite of what they're intended for. And then everybody sits around scratching their heads looking at the body, going, that shouldn't have worked that way. I don't even want to go there, and I'm in that business. So my idea, and everybody has their own choice, is that if I get depressed, I'm not taking medication. I will walk through it. I will find out that God works in my life and I will ask him for help and say, I'm having a hard time here and please help me through it and as a consequence, I have not taken drugs for anything for 36 years. Do what you want to do. There's just way too many variables in there for me. We consider our plans today for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that we be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance. You hear that? You know who I'm looking at. You can employ your mental facultIES, your mental skills, with assurance, knowing that they work. for after all, God gave us brains to use. Our thought life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. In thinking about our day, we may face indecision. we may not be able to determine which course to take. It's not unusual for us to face indecision. Everyone faces indecission. That's not an alcoholic thing. That's a living thing. Here we ask God for inspiration, intuitive thought, or decision. Do you know what? How do you do that? You say, God, Please give me an inspiration An intuitive thought or a decision That's pretty tough right We relax and take it easy We don't struggle Remember when I told you the story About I think I'm going to take a nap That's what it says It doesn't say take a lap It says we don't have to We don' t struggle We relax And take it Easy that my inclination and every alcoholic's inclination that I know of is to run around and go, oh, my God, oh. Oh, my god. And that isn't what it says. It says sit down and shut up. Relax. This isn't the end of the world. Close your eyes. Try to meditate and see if the right answer comes. And here's what it says. We are often surprised how the right answer comes after we've tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Here we are in intuitive thought again. So you sit there and you say, I'm going to let my intuitive thoughts solve this dilemma. And then you relax and go your turn. See if it works. Okay? I've never found a lie in the big book. So if this says it works, I think it works My experience is that it works And the only way you're ever going to find that out Is by trying it, by risking it And one of the things that defines recovery in people Is a willingness to risk Let's see. Where did we stop? What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind, being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God. It's not probable that we're going to be inspired at all times. We may pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it, right? So this really aggressive guy with a really good program in Denver, just a nasty person, about 6'6", attorney, abrasive, nasty, confrontive. Used to have been drafted by the New York football giants. Came up to me one day and he said, what if your intuition told you to give somebody all the money in your pocket? And I said, where the hell did that come from? And he said well I'm just asking you the question. If your inspiration told you to do or your intuitive thought told you to do something that you wouldn't want to do, would you do it? And I went, absolutely. Okay. Then I forgot about it. So I was in Los Angeles at a convention, and I had to fly back, and I had to take a cab up to John Wayne Airport and that was going to cost me about 40 bucks, I think. And I had probably 350 or something like that in my pocket and I was walking down the street to a place where I could catch a cab and this bum comes walking along and my intuition said, give him your money. and my mind goes ah come on that's spiritual make-believe and my inspiration goes this is not a joke give me your money and my response to that was go away I don't want to hear it and it was insistent and so I took like 300 bucks and this bum comes walking past me and I said excuse me and he just looked at me I mean this is a guy that looks like been living in a trash barrel right and I said here this is yours and he looked at it like he didn't comprehend what it was and then I just walked away. And I was like half a block away from him and my mind was screaming, don't look, don't looks, don' t look. Yeah, I did. And I could not look. And I turned around and this guy was on his knees on the sidewalk. and I honestly don't know what the hell happened there except I know that my intuition told me to do something and I did it and that is so far from who I am I mean I truly I am a strong saver and I'm a person who spent so much, I'm way past cheap. Have you ever heard of Penurius? That's Scrooge. But the idea of just handing some stranger, and especially someone that apparently doesn't know what to do with money anyway, Handing that person, that's a judgment I just made that makes no sense at all. But handing someone a whole lot of money and then just walking away and going, okay, is really beyond my normal mentality. And so I did that. and I can tell you without any fear of contradiction that that was exactly the right thing to do and I don't even know why. So at some point, if you want to live this spiritual life, you're going to have to test your intuition just like I do. We usually conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we'd be given whatever we need to take care of the problems. We ask, and we do that just by saying that, okay? We ask especially for freedom from self-will and are careful to make no requests for ourselves, only we may ask for ourselves. However, if others will be helped, you know what people do. God, I want to win the lottery. I'll give some of it away. Oh, yeah, right. As if God didn't see that coming. We're careful never to pray for our own selfish needs. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that, and it doesn't work. You can easily see why. If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination that requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few-step prayers which emphasize the principles we've been discussing. Some people do the third-step prayer and the seventh-step pray here. Suggestions. There are many helpful books also. suggestions about these may be obtained from one's priest minister or rabbi be quick to see where religious people are right make use of what they offer how many times have you seen people getting down on one kind of faith or another it isn't what this book says we're not here to say bad things about people's religions they have formed a foundation for untold millions of people in the past and given them good and productive lives. And for us to cheap shot religion because we screwed it up doesn't make any sense at all. As we go through the day, we pause when agitated or right and doubtful and ask for the right thought or action. That is a wonderful exercise if you're willing to do it. As we go through the day, we pause when agitated or doubtful. You know what agitated or doubtfull feels like. I mean, it's pretty hard to ignore. So if you become agitated or doubtvoll, ask for the right thought or action. You know, God likes to hear from you. So you go, God, will you give me the right thought or reaction? I can't tell you how helpful that is for me in working with inmates. because inmates are in this competition about who's the tough guy. And, see, they'll look at me, and every once in a while somebody will try and get in my face. And what I have to do is I don't back up. In fact, I'm much more likely to move forward. But in the middle of that, I am emotionally backing up and saying, God, show me what's going on here. Show me what the right thought or action is. and what it does is it saves me from creating a much larger problem. And so if I can consider that in the midst of it, it keeps me from getting in all kinds of trouble. So use that. Practice it. When you're agitated or doubtful, pause and ask for the right thought or action. we constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show humbly saying to ourselves many times each day that I will be done we're then in much less danger of excitement, fear, worry anger, worry self pity or foolish decisions we become much more efficient we don't tire so easily for we're not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves I know guys remember those little electronic watches that beeped every hour I know a guy in AAU used to go look for those things and every time they'd beep they'd say thy will not mine be done isn't that great see the 11th step is really about taking God into all our activities and all through the day when we get up, when we retire at night, as we go through the day there are instructions and they're all about keeping God in our minds as we go through the day. That's why it takes so much discipline. Do you hear all those instructions? That's Why Nobody Wants to Do It. You know, if Wilson had written three or four, everybody would do it. But in this thing, this takes a lot of work. And in my home group, people normally talk about what they found in their evening review and they talk about their plans for the day and they talked about their experience with the 11th step. And so if you want to try this, you will find that there are enormous benefits if you're willing to practice that kind of discipline. Your choice. Okay? Anything you want ask about that? So we'll talk about working with others. Incidentally, the 12th step isn't just about working with others, it's about practicing these principles in all our affairs. Which means that we have made a decision to live by spiritual principles and that we start acting that way. How do we work work with others. Be willing to be available to help other people. It's not just about sponsoring people, it's I'm working with others right now, okay? It means that you might want to consider being an example and let me tell you something funny and this is about being an example, but one of the lines in the 10th step is for by this time sanity will have returned. Okay? So if you want to act crazy go do it somewhere else. By the time you get to the 10th steps sanity will have returned and that means if you still want to ask crazy, you're doing it out of choice. You're not doing it because you have to and so if you're still doing it, that means you want to act crazy. God only knows why, but once you get to the 10th step, sanity will have returned. And if you're going to be an example, try and be a good one. And sometimes people will just sit and watch you just to see if you are going to do something weird or not and it's important that we become beacons for people who are seeking sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous and the way we do that is by being sane and rational and straightforward and carrying a message that is clear, precise and unafraid so I mean we talked about the 12 steps you know what I do I sponsor a lot of people and they come up and I explain the whole thing to them I explain all 12 steps and as soon as I have made the decision that they are an alcoholic and I decide that about everyone that I work with then I will sit down and I will start at the beginning of the book and we will work our way through I am currently sponsoring actively, taking people through the steps, about a half a dozen people. Plus I sponsor God knows how many other people who are out taking other people through the steps but still use me as a sponsor if they want to call somebody. I usually get other people 10 step with me maybe a half a dozen times a day. Now how can you do that when you're running a business? Because God allows it. so I have the time to do that I've got two people in the 11th step right now and I probably have five people waiting there are people who truly want to get well this is not a not drinking contest this is about getting well This is about being returned to sanity. And once you've stopped drinking, as I mentioned before, that's only the beginning of the process. And what we really want to do is we want to become emotionally, physically, and spiritually healthy. and we want to become healthy to a point where we can go out and really be a benefit to other people where we can carry a message of hope of recovery and of good health to people who are in Alcoholics Anonymous trying to find that if this was just about not drinking I wouldn't be here I mean because not drinking and not having a solution for me was like living in hell I want to find something that makes sense to me I want to find some joy in life I want to find some love in life I want to find some clues about who I am and who God is and all the rest of that stuff I really am seeking a whole variety of things in this fellowship This has become a way of life for me. I'm up to my ears in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I love it. I'm also up to My Ears in Business. I'm Up to My Years in My Family. I have a very busy and fulfilling life. And my guess is that you may want that also. And the real truth is you can have everything I have. This is not a mystery. it's just that we are so reluctant to engage in the things that will improve our lives because we're so afraid to let go of what we have to find it that we won't do it and see if you're like me you've been walking through life with this screw you attitude and go stay away from me, and I don't want to change anything. And I can be in terrible pain and say, don't change anything, but I don' t want to do that anymore. No, I want my life to be meaningful. About 13 years ago, I wound up in Littleton Hospital. So I wound up in Littleton Hospital going in and out of a diabetic coma. And the doctor that was there said, we're having a really hard time with you. You seem to fall in and ought of this thing. And if you go in it again, we're not sure we can get you back out. We're doing everything we can, but there's a real possibility here that we won't be able to save you if you fall back into the coma again. And he said, so I'd make peace with whatever it is you believe in, and we'll do everything we Can to keep you out. So I said, okay. What do you think about? What you think about is not your family. You don't think about your money. You don'T think about how many people you've slept with. You don' t think about how big your car is or how big you're house is or any of that stuff. You know what you think about? Has my life made one ounce of difference? I've been here for all these years. And has the sum total of my life made any positive difference on this world at all? Or have I spent so many years grabbing everything I could take that the net result is negative. What's my life mean? Is there any positive legacy about my life at all? And see, sometime you're going to have to ask yourself that question. Now, I'm okay with that. I'm just doing the best I can and I make no excuses. I'm just trying as hard as I can and if that isn't good enough it's alright with me but I keep trying to do the best I can and I keep trying to live a life that is pleasing to God and you have the same choice and I gotta tell you again that the best indicator of recovery in this program is going from where's mine to what can I do for you and turning your life onto a service plane and helping the very people that are standing in front of you. So God bless you all and thank you for listening to me for so long and I have really enjoyed being here. I just want to thank Bob for coming from Colorado. As everybody knows, back in March we were supposed to have Bob here and there was a little bit of weather issue. and fortunately everything was able to fall back into place again God is good and the church worked out and Bob's schedule worked out and it all worked out so thanks everybody for being here thanks to Bob thanks to Barefoot Bill for coming and taping our weekend again thanks to all the volunteers that helped out to make this weekend possible a bunch of people chipped in they're just here looking to help out and be of service and we thank you for that It's definitely a team effort. We have a little something for Bob, a little gift from the group. Check that out, brother. Oh, it's wrapped.