Chris – Steps 10-11 – The Position of Neutrality – 2020

recovered alcoholic and uh bless y'all god dang it let's let's look at at 10 and 11 real quick and uh this is a couple of my absolute favorites and uh i uh i think it's important that we kind of look at it there still seems to be some confusion out there and maybe we can clear some of that up it's uh 10 step stuff let me just make sure we got it i dropped my book continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it yeah didn't say if we were wrong we said when we were wrong because like we're gonna i don't remember anybody i got sober november 13 1987 guys so i've got i've got 30 32 years i don't remember ever intentionally coming out and trying to hurt somebody i do it all the time i just just by nature of what i'm doing or just in walking through life i uh i sometimes i'll i'll be talking to patty and uh just and sweetest girl that ever lived i mean she just she's a i mean talking about a great partner she just is the best and and uh and sometimes i'll catch myself saying something stuff coming out of my mouth and the wrong tone and that's like what are you doing why why are you trying to knock this i mean you know eighth step night step stuff talks about cleaning up the wreckage of our past okay but i need to keep that wreckage clean or i'll end up you know getting bogged down again by all the all the craziness that we end up doing again never intentionally did but but i do it all the time if you look on page 84 in your book i'm not gonna shave you next tuesdays or valentines day yeah and then i have to go back to step ten and i had to wait to move out of my office chris for me um and by the end i was at school i thought i'm a какая that's how puke gets y'all understand but i ended up in on the police force two minutes right after the flight it was fun but oh like i've never been on a plane before earth with this craziness that we're going through right now in this world. Can you imagine if everybody would practice the 10th step on a daily basis? What a much better place we would end up living. This is not just for folks in recovery, but this is everybody. It just, it blows me out of the water. We want to talk about it, but I want to read the 10 step promises. And we've ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. My favorite. For by this time, sanity will have returned. Doesn't mean that if you come into AA and you're goofy and you get sober, you're going to be sober, goofy person. Sanity is what I'm talking about. It's not crazy. You're going to still be crazy. Guys, sanity that the book talks about is not about you being goofy. Sanity is the knowledge that alcohol will kill me if I put it in my system. The ability to be able to discern the difference and not ever think about taking a drink. That's sanity. We are seldom interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it like, a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this happens automatically. Hmm. Maybe I misread that. We react sanely and normally, and this will find that this happens automatically. We didn't have to think it through or get my Gorski relapse workbook grid. It just happens. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this happens automatically. We react Sorry for the sarcasm, guys. Please. The miracle of the 10th step. We will see that our new attitude towards liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. Exclamation point. Sing it. Y'all want to talk about a great topic to bring to a treatment center? Yeah. Yeah. How about 10-step promises? We are not even, uh, not fighting it. Neither are we avoiding temptation. Neither are we avoiding temptation. Did I? Neither are we we avoiding temptation? We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe, and protected. We're not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We're neither cocky nor we're afraid. This is our experience. This is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. Guys, I don't know. How did the ninth step promises get on every AA club's wall in the world and the 10th step promises didn't? I just don't. These 10 step promises are absolutely crazy. Yeah. Tells us that we're going to recover from this. I love it that we're neither avoiding temptation. Guys, I got to tell you, my biggest bone to pick with treatment, with therapy, with everything, with bad sponsorship is this idea that for the rest of our life, we're going to have to watch what we do. See guys, if we're doing the things necessary to stay spiritually connected, the obsession to use is going to go away and then it doesn't matter. There's a lady in town ages ago. Mary would know her. She was here for a long time, but this lady was in there and she would go on and on. One of her lines in there, she said sometimes she was sober five years, 15 years at the time. And she kept saying, she said, there's just some days that I can't walk down the wine aisle at the grocery store just because I'm so uncomfortable. And it's like 15 years sober and you can't be around it? You're not sober. We talked about it last night when Myers and I were talking. You're dry, okay? Being placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected, means that I am not going to be bothered by alcohol. I'm not going to be triggered by anything. And that's where I want all of you guys to be. Some of y'all are smiling, you're nodding your head, and some of you look like I've just popped you in the nose. That's like, I'm not, I'm pleased. I'm not trying to, I just, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, I'm not being critical. If you like being miserable, just keep doing what you're doing. But guys, come on. If we're working the steps, then all of a sudden, I mean, I love that position of neutrality. Patty and I, and Mark is in there, and some of the guys I've met out in Vegas, and I've spoke out there a few times. I remember the first time they asked me to speak at the Las Vegas Roundup. I remember seeing it on a brochure when I first got sober in 1987. It was in the AA club, and I remember walking by and punching some guy on the side and says, can you imagine? You won't go into an AA conference in Las Vegas. It's, I'm going to tell you, it's, it's a cool fellowship. I'm going to tell you, it's a great little conference. It's not little anymore. It's growing to be pretty big, but I was supposed to speak there in November, and of course we can't because of the stupid bugs, but maybe I can go next year. Patty and I go out there a couple times a year, go eat too much. I am a buffet whore. I'm just telling you, I'm self-disclosure. I'm $50 in the slots, and I don't have to worry about getting drunk because I am on some solid ground, guys, and thank God. That's not me doing it. That's, that's my higher power. That's God taking care of me, and he says he will, and, and, and he's gonna, so that's what we do. A lot of times, people will talk to me about nightly reviews. Folks, nightly review stuff can be in your 11-step stuff. Nightly review, the, the instructions in the 10-step stuff is as we go through. This is when we do 10-step stuff, so I'll tell you a real quick little story on it. I, I live in airports, and I fly out of San Antonio when I, when we're, when we're flying. This is the longest in 30 years that I have not been in an airport since this, this shutdown stuff. It's just crazy, and I went to my last trip when I saw Jill and Jerry on there. That was the last time they're in Florida. That was the last trip Myers and I took before they closed everything, down. That's about a long time ago, seems like, but going through these airports, and I know everybody in the airports, and I, like I said, literally, I'm, I'm just, I live in it, and I'm going through one time, and I'm busy talking on my phone, and in the security line, and I'm a hundred things going on. I'm busy, because I'm a busy man, and, you know, if I had a clipboard, I'd look busy, you know, but I'm walking through with all my luggage, and, and a little TSA guy, you know, stops me and says, you know, we need to, we need you to take your watch off. Now, I wear, I took it off. I wear this little watch right here. Myers has got a big old fancy smancy watch. This is a $35 Timex. It's, it's plastic, and a little leather band on it. It's, I wear it, so I won't have to stop and take it off. You know, it won't set off any alarm, and I'm walking through the deal, and this little guy asked me to take my watch off, because something was triggering the, the alarm, and, and I get snippy with it. I was like, great. Okay, that's just stupid. That's just ridiculous. Here I am. What? I almost said something stupid, like, probably has something to do with my black eye patch. There may be some profiling going on here, you know. I mean, I'm just being a horse's patoot for this, this guy, and he's looking at me like I just, like, what? I held up the little tray. I took the watch off, dropped it in the tray. Y'all thought, just, just hard enough to know that I was pissed. I want everybody to know that I am being inconvenienced is the word. And I walk through and grab my little watch back out on the other side, grumbled some stupid under my breath, and walked off, and, and I'm walking back down to my gate, and one of the guys I sponsored called me, and a little guy in Dallas, and he calls me, and I, you know, what? You know, I'm just quick with him, and, you know, I've just made a fool of myself back there, and, and I tell the guy what he did. I says, I'm talking to him on the phone, and he says, man, this guy in TSA, these guys, you know, what do they think they are? And they're, you know, this is, they're nuts, and I'm here, just nuts. He gets real quiet on the other end of the phone. He said, my, my, my. He said, sounds to me like somebody needs to do a 10-step, and I said, I said, my, my, my. It sounds like somebody else needs to find a new sponsor. You click, hung up on him. I was just mad. Don't you hate it when your young guys are correcting you? Oh, my God, no. What a world we live in, and I, and I stopped for a second and realized what was going on, pivoted around on that little, little suitcase, and I walked right straight back up to the TSA, to the security, and, and I'm walking through, back on the other side, and I'm walking back into him. He's on the side, and he looked around and saw me, and he saw that I saw him, you know what I'm saying? He, he's like, oh, he held up his hands, like, he thinks the little one-eyed guy's gonna eat his ass, and I just said, buddy, I am, uh, have you got five seconds that I can spend with you? He said, I'm fixing to go on break in a minute. I'll be right there, and he did, and he just, I sat there for a minute, and he, he got off, and he came over and says, Doc, and I, you know, I, these poor guys, they, they take the heat all day long, and I, he came up, and I said, I was absolutely wrong to talk to you that way. There was, you didn't ask me to do anything that you shouldn't have asked me to do, and I absolutely, I'm gonna make it right. I apologize for being a, a complete and total poot, and, um, it'll never happen again, and I appreciate you doing your job, and I just want to make sure that you, you understand that, and he looked at me like with, like, again, like a bug with three heads. And I was like, what? And I, and I, and he shook my hand right there, and I shook his, and, and, um, I said, you have a good day, and he said, yeah, you do too, and, um, and I gotta tell you, and I turned back around, and I went back down my gate. The walk to my gate the second time was completely different than the walk to my gate the first time. I wasn't carrying all this stupid baggage. All it had to do with me on owning the fact, my consciousness, I treated another human being like a, like a, insect, and, and I had to go back and clean it up. I see this guy in the airport all the time. Sometimes I go and don't see him, but nine times out of ten, he's working, working that same line, and I get in there, and I wave, and he waves back. I mean, he'll go out of his way to say hi. Then we're, I mean, I got me a new buddy in the airport, and I don't have to walk around taking all this crap on, um, the freedom of that. Had it not been in the book, and the instructions written now, I wouldn't have done it. Y'all, what, exactly what Myers was talking about earlier in that fourth step, I can rationalize and justify why it's perfectly okay for me to be pissed at you for what you did. If you hadn't have done this, I wouldn't have done this. That ain't the way this works, guys. What I get to do is continue to try to clean off my side of the street. I do it with my amends that we just talked about, and I'm doing it with this 10-step business, because that's exactly what we're supposed to do. Clean it up. I had another quick airport. I'm, I'm, uh, sitting in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, Southwest flight all, all turned in there, and, and, uh, Southwest is my airline. I fly them a lot, and, uh, I'm fixing to leave the airport. I'm running to make a connections. I think I'm going to be late. It turned out I had plenty of time, but I'm running in there, and I'm, people are letting the other guys off, and this big old, big old beefy guy, he gets off the, out there in the aisle, and then he's, there's two ladies sitting next to him, middle seat and aisle seat, and he backs up and lets these ladies through, which is really nice and really gentlemanly but if you're doing that in an airport stop in an airplane it's just it's you're stepping on everybody to push it everybody's in a hurry to get off the plane and he stepped on me to back up so he could be mr gentleman and i pushed him you know i mean i just i got my knuckle in his back and i pushed him up like that and i said buddy you're stepping on back up stop i got real loud with him in his ear because i'm a poot what was i angry about i wasn't angry because he backed up on me i was angry because i was running late yeah afraid of my fear is the number one offender remember yeah the evil and corroding thread it's affecting my life anyway i got off the plane he walked on out i'm still grumbling you know flipping him off and and i've got my head down and i'm running real fast i need to need to go to the bathroom real quick i pulled in and went in the bathroom and then realized because there was a flight attendant female flight attendant in that bathroom there and she looks and she goes whoa whoa whoa and i went oh man i walked into the wrong bathroom i mean i am so distracted with my life i mean i just it's so stupid i walked back out went to the right bathroom and then left and then walked back up to the gate i'm still grinding my teeth and i'm sitting up there and i walk up there and guess who's at my gate mr big beefy boy yeah and he's sitting down at one of the chairs and i'm sitting over there and of course my conscious guys this just happened a year ago yeah i'm 31 years sober you know mr spiritual giant you know and i yeah and i'm rationalizing and justifying why i need this and i'll pull my little back he's again he sees me coming he holds up his hands like that and i say no i was so wrong to do that all right i'm just i was a poot and he starts to laugh and i'm laughing about something we start talking he's turned out to be a lawyer and uh and we had some stuff in common we were just like and i sat down next to him we visited it was turned out my flight wasn't that quick and we were there 15 minutes later and i'm like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so 20 minutes but we had to line up and got to be good buddies i see him in the airport all the time clean it up you step on somebody clean it up that's all the 10 steps about guys with your families with your loved ones i know petty i do not a week goes by that i don't know where a 10 step i don't do it as often as i need to that's for a fact so i i think it works good this old 11 step stuff guys the really growth around this meditation i uh i come from a sponsorship lineage that talks a lot about meditation my sponsor is gary b over in indianapolis and and uh his sponsor was a guy named paul m paul martin he passed away years ago one of the finest guys you'd ever come across paul wrote a bunch of articles uh for the grapevine he was an author he wrote for a bunch of different magazines but he wrote specifically for the grapevine uh some really good stuff he got sober a long time ago he used to sit and watch wrestling matches with bill wilson and lois in his house back in the day i mean he was around in the early days and uh paul martin anyway he wrote some great articles specifically on meditation talking about the 11th step being the forgotten step everybody i can't say everybody i would bet 90 of the people in alcoholics anonymous played lip service to the 11th step you know did you did you get quiet did you meditate in the morning i mean most people don't they get in a hurry y'all follow maybe stop at the light and you know get a little prayer that god don't let me die today and then move on you know but the meditation that that some of these articles are great i can send them to you but but uh bill wilson wrote some pretty good stuff i always thought i always thought that what we do what we hear in meditation a lot of y'all that went through treatment i'm sure you went through some meditation classes the meditation back in the day when bill wilson wrote the big book didn't mean the same thing that we give it today the dictionary in 1938 dictionary talks about meditation as a thoughtful contemplation now today a lot of times what we do in meditation we'll teach and there's nothing wrong with it there's different meditations there's transcendental meditation there's lots bill wilson learned transcendental meditation right before he died and i guess great articles that talk about him he was so excited about finally learning this this method of meditation and uh i knew the guy that actually taught him the meditation it's a pretty fascinating story about bill wilson he was real sick and uh he uh he claimed that this helped him a lot in his last days was that meditation but this idea of getting quiet and leaving your body and going to the astral plane and and you know and that that's a form of meditation that's not what bill wilson was talking about when he wrote it in the big book he wants us to think about our day ahead to contemplate what's fixing to come down the road and to think about what's going to happen on the pike just like myers was talking about earlier today guys we there's so much stuff going on in our life and if i don't get quiet and get centered and remember what's important in my life and pretty soon what i'm doing like usually about five seconds after i drive out of the parking lot i'm flipping people off in the in the in the on the road i'm you know i'm tailgating the guy come on isn't that funny if he's driving too slow you know i'm mad if he's driving too fast on my butt contemplation guys is i'm going to get quiet with god and i'm going to ask you guidance here's the piece i want you to see some of the some of the techniques about meditation or can be quite uh a challenge to learn there there is there is there are some processes out there that take a lot of discipline a lot of time any type of meditation takes uh takes discipline uh we hear the old timers used to refer to this 10 11 and 12 is the disciplines of 10 11 and 12. it takes discipline to stop during their day and go clean up your mess it takes discipline to get quiet with god in the morning or at night and spend some quiet time and it takes discipline to go work with others we'll be talking about that next hour with myers and uh it's it takes a little effort um this guy that wrote those articles paul martin he meditated 45 he made it uh uh uh 45 an hour and a half a day it was 45 minutes in the morning and then he went to bed and he went to bed and he went to bed and he went to bed in the morning 45 minutes in the evening the longer you can spend in that quiet time but but i gotta tell you he was one of the most connected guys you'd ever come across and uh when i actually started i'm terrible at nightly reviews guys i don't do it as often as i should but i gotta tell you guys i don't miss any time to get quiet with god in the morning patty usually sleeps a little later than i do i get up get ready to work sit right here at this desk right here surrounded by all my aa stuff and just you know it's a it's a good place for me to get quiet and i can open my little window and smell it smell that southern breeze coming off the guadalupe river and and uh and i get quiet with god and i ask god's guidance it's in that quiet that you're going to know god's truth it's in that quiet that you're going to get the guidance that you want the point i'm going to make is that you don't have to wait till you're sober a bunch of years to start getting guidance again i've worked in the treatment business for years and years and years and i've people sit in treatment and start getting guidance bill wilson says you're gonna and this idea that you're gonna have a long time for this to start happening i take the booze out of my system and i get detoxed and then i start doing the things that the 12 steps are asking me to do there is going to be a connection with a power greater than myself like like we were talking about earlier myers was talking about two and three i don't know what that face looks like i think i'm clearer today than i did than i was 32 years ago but but it's still my idea of what god is may be different than what myers is is i mean i believe i think we're headed in the same direction but i don't know as i did the work i started getting the book says we will intuitively know how to how to handle certain situations and i think people read that like it's just rhetoric the truth of the matter is you will intuitively know how to handle certain situations you know it's like you you do some if you're meditating on a regular basis and you do something stupid you'll know it you nine times out of ten how many of y'all have ever done this you'll be sitting there in meditation you'll be you'll be you'll be getting ready for your day and all of a sudden this name will cross your little mind i give this analogy all the time i'm uh i'm uh uh this happened years ago uh it continues to happen on a real regular basis i'd bore you to tear if i told you every time one of these little miracles happened but i'm sitting there and uh there was this young guy that hosted me out at a conference out out towards california and he was the nicest young man you'd ever come across um it was the longest committee dinner i'd ever been at i remember that about that's all i remember about the talk is that the dinner was arduous to say the least and um i'm uh i remember him like it was that but anyway i hadn't thought of him in ages and i was sitting there and i'm getting ready for work and all of a sudden the the his his face crossed my little my little mind and i i'm thinking god i wonder how he's doing anyway and i got to work and i made time to track his number down because i saved y'all's numbers now that's i just do and if you're a big book thumper you're probably in my a lot of y'all in this room or in my database and i i i tracked him down like and i called him on the phone and uh there's an hour difference between us and it was earlier there and when it was for me and and i called him got him on the phone and he and i said hey this is chris how you doing buddy and he and it was just silence on the other end of the phone and he says is this Chris R. and i said yes of course it is how and and he got real quiet again he started crying i said but are you okay he said can i call you right back and i said absolutely pulled off the side of the road and waited and he called me right back he said why did you call me and i said buddy you just crossed my mind i was just thinking about you this morning and i said what's going on he said you're not going to believe me this i don't i don't go to aa anymore and i said oh that's not good says you know i had a little little little battle in the in the aa group i'll tell you what it was he introduced himself as a recovered alcoholic he had a couple years of sobriety and some old some old bastard in the meeting uh ate his butt about it even though it says on the title page that we can recover from alcoholism uh dozens of places in the book it says we can recover uh he introduced himself as a recovered alcoholic and this guy embarrassed him in a meeting and he said i don't believe you and dressed him down and he said you know what i don't need this and he left see the problem though is he needed that he needed that fellowship as much as that fellowship needed him and i encouraged him to go back i encouraged him to clean up his mess he had a fight with a guy in a meeting he made a fool of himself okay and he and he did he went back i talked to him a couple days later i checked on him he says man it's all better i'm back he says i sure appreciate it i was about this far from taking a drink and i went back and i made amends with the old guy and everything's okay i'm gonna be all right yeah all right guys i could beat it y'all understand i've seen this a thousand times we're in the world to play the role he capital letter she whatever it is assigns guys just we keep going back to the same stuff we've got to stop presenting this this program as as just a way to not drink one stupid day at a time this is this is a way of life this is a way of getting connected man because i listened in those quiet times with god i listened i ended up god working where i want to work i ended up being with the person i want to be with you know my my my my creative juices get get stiff i i get to do some cool stuff with my life that i that i never could do before god's gonna guide you i don't know what god's got in store for anybody in this gathering there's what 575 people in here now i don't i don't know where god's got i i i guarantee you this i know god wants you happy i guarantee you god wants you happy and some of us are not happy because we've kind of lost our way we've compromised ourselves we've compromised ourselves we've compromised ourselves and before you know you look up and like that you're leading is not the life you're supposed to lead you know i i gotta say it while we're on this topic my friend charlie says that the 11th step is not extra credit you know it's just it's stuff that we're supposed to do on a regular basis but if you will actually do it it takes a little effort there's a great little document called how to listen to god and if you uh uh i can send you a little handout that comes with it i'd be more than glad to do that um uh uh you can buy the book it's also titled from that oxford movement that talks about how to meditate they get some great little pointers i learned with an egg timer right now on the phone there's there's man there's some great uh meditation websites and there you can get on there and click on that website and meditate with with 200 000 other people at the same time it's pretty powerful to sit there and get quiet with that many people and because that shows that how many people are online and uh but it's in that stillness and it takes time guys you'll get quiet and all of a sudden the guy will start to laugh and you'll get quiet and you'll get quiet and you'll get quiet next door you'll think about the lawnmower okay that's fine you know then just acknowledge it and then go back to what you were doing you know just just go back and pretty soon everything cuts out and you're just focused on the things that are important it's just it takes a little practice guys but if you'll do it more than once every six months it's pretty easy you'll you'll find that you get pretty good and i don't care how long you do it guys my meditation is always about 10 to 15 minutes you know it it absolutely helps me get through the day i mentioned this real quick because i see it a lot of times with the guys i sponsor there's a little article out there and i can send it to you it's not in the big book but it was written by a lady and she's been she's dead now but article is still available out there but uh it's called uh thank god for your discontent and one of the things it talks about is i see so many people in aa that are not drinking one day at a time but their life's miserable they're constantly in a battle you know they're fighting the relationships and they're fighting finances or they're fighting you know just the kids it just it's just something's always going on and it's like guys life is tough sometimes but it doesn't have to be that big of a battle and part of this article thank god for your discontent is that maybe makes me want to cry maybe god's trying to show you something yeah i'm gonna tell you i don't remember ever growing spiritually around something that happened good i grow through i grow spiritually by getting through the adversity you show me somebody that beats cancer and i'll show you somebody that's spiritually connected you show me somebody that's been through a nasty ass divorce and i'll show you somebody that's walking in in rarefied air thank god for your discontent because maybe it's that discontent that you need to start talking to god about and finding out why you're not doing what you're doing why it is once and for all that you're in this situation god's not putting you in this situation i'm you you're there okay reason i'm saying so you sit here and you start figuring out in this quiet time you start figuring out what is it that's really important to you again when your insides are not matching your outsides there's going to be conflict you got it okay so you're sitting in there thinking and all of a sudden you're thinking and all of a sudden these thoughts start coming i'll give you an example real quick i'm uh uh when i left this place i worked i'd worked there 17 years and i left i went to work for a fine facility uh down on the coast and uh it's myers and i worked together for a long time down there and it just some of my best friends on earth still still worked there still lived there it was it was a tremendous facility uh but i'm away from home i'm away from the outpost my home group a lot i just i'm literally weeks away from the hill country at times and i'm away from the hill country at times and i kept thinking always i'd go out and run i'd get on my bike and do whatever and i kept thinking about coming back to the hill country and i finally had a conversation with patty and chris noser and i'd have this conversation i says i'm thinking i want to come back to the hill country i'm an executive at this facility i'm i'm making big money i'm a vice president and uh and i'm thinking about coming back and i'm gonna get this job at this place i used to work i'd have to take a big old cut and pay but i think it'd be worth it and patty looked at me like what what do you what and we got to talking and i explained it to her and she said absolutely she said you do what you got to do i support you thank god and i quit that job and i moved back to the hill country you don't know how god does this yeah and now about a year and a half later we're in the middle of this coronavirus crap i'd have been in trouble having to get on an airplane and travel to work but i'm seven miles from my job i can drive there i don't have to get in an airport anymore i don't have to travel as much god's all over this stuff folks god just continues to guide us but but but looking at this stuff that we're supposed to do folks i got to wrap this up it's just it's just some of the hardest decisions that we make y'all think the hardest decision is i don't want to drink anymore that's not a hard decision all you got to do is make make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of god it's called the third step prayer bill wilson refers to it the decision all the time and then you do the work and you're going to get it and then it's about god showing you what you're supposed to do folks i talk to people every day emails texts on my calls i talk to people every day who are not drinking one day at a time and miserable and you talk to them and it's like yeah but i can't do that you're so quick what do you really want to do with your life and that's i've said this in a thousand talks i've ever done buddy this is not a dress rehearsal all of us in here who knows how much longer we got i don't know if i get sick tomorrow i i don't know if i get sick tomorrow i don't know if i get sick i don't know i just know this it's not okay that i'm miserable it's not okay that i'm working at a job that i don't want to work at i don't care i don't care how you gotta you you owe everybody no if you have to work someplace to make this amount of money you're living beyond your means start selling some shit back up a little bit guys god didn't care what kind of house you live in yeah you're no warmer in a five million dollar house than i am in my little 700 square feet rock house on the river you're just it's just the nature of the beast and i don't owe a soul in this world yeah there's some freedom in that guys there's just some freedom it didn't happen overnight but i didn't want to be in debt all of a sudden you start meditating praying and god starts guiding you what you're supposed to do with your living go back to school we talked about it last night man learn to speak some languages i hear people in aa all the time i'm bored you you know you're bored you're bored because you're boring nobody wants to go paint a picture because they're afraid it won't be a masterpiece it probably won't practice yeah me on a bike i wouldn't ride a bicycle for years because i was afraid of what i'd look like i look like a like a little skinny old man on a bicycle so what i love it i love it go do some cool stuff guys paint some picture learn write some poetry for god's sake go go do something that you that makes you excited i'll ask you the same thing my old sponsor asked me one time when's the last time you stayed awake half a damn night past your bedtime you just could not go to sleep not because you drank too many freaking energy drinks but because you were excited about a project you know a little research you're doing you're writing a little book or you're doing something that you're really excited about when when one boring day after another boring day after another boring day guess who's gonna relapse soon guys it's never about how far you are away from the last drink it's how close you are to the next drink and if you don't get to a place where you can get happy folks i believe that's god's intention for us you're gonna be in trouble you know i don't want to make this sound like a tony robbins talk guys i just like god dang guys i just see a lot of people that are that are not challenging themselves anymore because they're they've been told they're stupid or they're too old or they're out of the other it's just time to stop listening to that crowd that spiritual warfare that always wants us to keep us dampened i i don't know i'll say this and let you go i was doing a a retreat up in denton one time in a monastery too and there was a jesuit priest that was leading the leading the the retreat he was in the program and a wonderful man golly he's long passed away but one of the things he asked us in that retreat there's like 185 guys in there i forget how i mean there was a bunch of them and one of the things he asked us in that retreat there was a he said do y'all believe that the dark side satan the devil whatever you want to call it do you believe the dark side wants you dead and all the hands of the place went up yes and he said no that's not true he said the dark side wants you ineffectual isn't that a great word ineffectual the dark side wants you sitting alone by yourself in an apartment house whatever you want to call it and he said no that's not true he said do y'all believe that the dark side satan the devil whatever you want to call it and he said no that's not true he said do y'all believe that the dark side wants you ineffectual isn't that a great word ineffectual isn't that a great word in 1987 november that's where i was sitting in a little apartment with two stinky ferrets reaching in a medicine cabinet to pull down two bottles of pills not because there's no love in my family but because i'm a man i'm a man i'm a man i'm a man not because i i just feel useless and it was folks like y'all in alcoholics anonymous folks exactly like a bunch of y'all here they got around me and started and started pushing me towards the light and explained real early on that this wasn't about just not drinking this was about getting happy this was about being effectual i'm so grateful they did i'm so grateful that i've surrounded myself with a whole bunch of folks that will continue today to challenge me to do better to challenge me to be more and this is all stuff that comes from what we're talking about here in that meditation piece it's really important guys bless y'all i appreciate it we'll talk to y'all in a little bit thank you