M Louisville KY Living in Sobriety Workshop – Part 3 of 2 – Don L.

I would like to start with a serenity prayer one more time, please, after a little silence. God, grant me the serenety to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Well, thank you guys for coming back, and we are now at Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. There's been an awful lot written about spiritual awakening and spiritual experience. Most of you probably know that was the only word that got changed from the original big book, the word experience changed to awakening because it had this wonderful appendix And I think it's Appendix 2 in the back of the book where it talks about the spiritual experience. So there's been an awful lot of discussion about that. I have participated in very little of it. It has never bothered me one way or the other because in my life, spiritual awakening has been very clear, very simple, and very literal. I was comatose to spirituality. I was literally not conscious of the fact that I was a spiritual being living in a spiritual world. The step process did not necessarily make me spiritual, but it woke me up to the fact that I am a spiritual thing living in the spiritual world and I am today awake to spirituality whereas I was not awake to spirituality before. And, of course, we've all heard that if you take the step literally, that actually that's the only thing that the steps themselves come right out and promises. That's the Only Result because it says that is the result of these steps. It says we tried to carry this message to alcoholics. Thank God literally that that word is carry rather than deliver it. Because if that message were delivered, it would be, if that word were delivered it would an absolutely impossible order. We can't do it. And I've been really blessed in that regard because from the very beginning I haven't had a problem with that. I haven' t had a problem that all I can do is carry a message. And you know, we all carry a message every minute of every day everywhere. Sometimes it's a positive message, sometimes it's not a positive message, but we are carrying a message with us. In my case, and I think it's probably true of all of us, maybe for different reasons, but I don't need to be giving anybody the finger in traffic anywhere in the Western world. I really don't, because I don't know who might see that. And maybe they know about my connection to Alcoholics Anonymous, have heard me talk or what have you. And that might be a picture of just how well these principles work for them. I don' t need to do things like that because I' m always carrying that message with me. caring and delivering is kind of connected with the big deal-ism to me. If I get to thinking I can keep somebody sober or I can get somebody drunk, I'm making an awful big deal out of me. And big deals, we're going to talk about those in the 12th step here, big deals simply break my back. You know, not only are they a spiritual mistake, They rob me of my effectiveness. If I'm going to be in that area of sponsorship, if I'm going to so into it that I've got to control this and it's all about me and I'm responsible for this person's sobriety, I can't sponsor many people. It just absolutely breaks my back. It's too big a burden. And it's not limited to day eight. In law, I've been blessed with knowing some people both in law and other areas of life who are really, really successful people. You know, I'm talking about private jet successful material people. I've never known one of those people who has big deals. Whatever it is, however many zeros, you know, however much publicity is connected with him, it's just, oh yeah, well we need to do this, we need ask this lowly clerk over here how to do that, just the next right thing. On the other hand, there are four or five guys that come to traffic court in Louisville where I practice law. I know them, love every one of them. They're great guys. Some of them ride the bus to traffic cort. A lot of times their suits, the rear ends wore out of it. You can see the drawers through the suit. And they're there trying to snag 10 or 20 bucks for somebody on a speeding ticket, you know, every morning and every night when they have traffic court. And I can go over there any day, and I guarantee you, I can call any of those guys aside and say, Hey, Alex, what's going on? Eat up with big deals. Just absolutely eating up with Big Deals. So I don't need to have the Big DeALs, not only because they rob me of my spirituality and they get me back into ego and my alcoholism, they just aren't effective. It just robs me of My ability to be an effective human being in any area of My life. A physician, a physician that takes it too seriously that what they do is such a big deal is basically paralyzed and can't do anything. You know, if you take that to the extreme. And I've found that for me success has been not based nearly as much on intelligence or even hard work as it has been the willingness to go ahead and act in the face of fear. Go ahead and do that next right thing even though I'm afraid because I'm worried every day in many areas of my life. If I wait until I'm certain that I'm doing the right thing, I'm probably not ever going to do anything because I never get certain of anything. I need to do the very best I can. Now, Cherry Carpenter said that of all the insane principles by which he lived his life before he got sober, the single most insane one was do something even if it's wrong he said that's totally insane if you're not sure what dude don't do anything you know just sit there but you can't be absolutely certain either and in my sponsorship deal on carrying the message uh i have got sponsors this weekend somebody's already mentioned tim h to me and i've got others that uh speaking all all over the country, had them speak at the International. People are throwing gardenias at them, telling them what spiritual giants they are. I've got other guys that I've sponsored that are in graveyards from alcoholism. I've Got others that are essentially doing life in penitentiary for things they did after they were basking in the light of my spiritual glory. and I'm so blessed because I'm happy about the guys that are doing well but I truly don't feel any credit at all and I am sad about the guys that are dead or otherwise messed up but I don't feel a bit of guilt either because I am not big enough to do that as far as I know I have told them and far more importantly I have shown them all the same thing and I'm not responsible for the delivery of that message, and that frees me. I need to remember that in every area of my life, I'm like a 1920s Western Union messenger boy. Now, most of you are not even old enough to maybe even have a picture, but I have a figure in my head of a little guy in a uniform, a little pillbox hat, pedaling around town on a bicycle delivering telegrams. You know, if that little guy that's delivering the telegram made the content of the telegrams and the people's reaction to the telegraph his business, that job would be so hard nobody could do it. Oh my Lord, I'm delivering this telegram, these people's sons have been killed. You know, I've delivered this telegraph, they're financially ruined. You know blah, blah, bla, bla. It would be just absolutely impossible. Well, that guy's job, he doesn't have anything to do with the contents of the Telegram and he doesn't have anything to do with people's reaction to it. His job is the quiet and loving delivery of the message. And that's my job, is the quite and loving deliverance of the truth. And as hard as I've tried, I have never created the truth at any given moment. I don't create the truth in any given month. Sometimes the truth is in part a consequence of behavior I've done in the past. but as far as the truth in the moment the truth just is and my job is the quiet loving delivery of it and the quiet living part of it is really important Cherry made it clear to me that honesty without compassion is really not honesty it's a form of hostility and I need to always keep that in mind that I have an obligation to be honest but I always have the obligation to be compassionate. And I've found this, I've find that nothing is more spiritual in my life than simple courtesy. Simple courtesy to everybody with whom I come in contact. It's a really kind of sad thing that many of us, and I know my default position is this too, I'll be more courteous to total strangers than I will be the people that I share my life with on a daily basis. And it just makes me sad to see people who are sharing life together and are just routinely so discourteous of one another. I just think courtesy is important under any situation. One of my heroes, who's not in the program, is a retired judge in Louisville, a dear friend of mine. He and I did a lot of drinking. and he was the first African-American circuit judge in Louisville. And there's an award, he's 90 now, there's a reward given in his name, Ben Shove Award, and it's the civility award that the bar in Louisvous gives. And as always was said that Ben could give you 20 years in the penitentiary and you would thank him on your way to be locked up because he would do it with such courtesy, You know, giving you such respect. So you can convey awfully harsh news, but it can be done in a courteous and kind way. And this is not directly connected, but I believe in tough love. There are times that I do tough love, but if I have any doubt whether tough love is appropriate or kindness is appropriate, I will err on the side of kindness every time. Every time. And one reason for that is I would rather have on my tombstone Don was kind than to have on there that Don didn't take any crap. And I believe that my God is much more pleased by the kind children then my God is pleased with the shrewd children. Then my God is pleased with the smart children with the children that don't let the wool get pulled over their eyes. I believe my God is much happier with the kind children. Now we get into the real nitty gritty of the 12th step and that's practicing these principles in all our affairs. And what I'm going to do on that is what I always do. I'm just going to shotgun. I'm gonna shotgun a whole bunch of things that are so helpful to me in practicing these principles in my affairs. I've already talked about big deals, which is so important to me that I need to not have those big deals. Anytime I make a big deal out of anything that is not God and the 12 steps, what I really make the big deal out of is me. Connected with that has to do with stress. I've got a friend sponsor named Billy H in Louisville in fact Billy does some speaking around some of you may know Billy but Billy and I were having a conversation about 20 years ago we talked one another more days than not he's a lawyer too and what the conversation really was although we were being discreet enough that if you had a recording of us you couldn't nail us down on any ego involved in it But what was really going on was that we were lamenting the lot of being so high profile in A.A. and the legal profession and just how much stress was inherent in that situation. And he and I burst out laughing at the same time because nine years before then, we had formed a business which was formed because I couldn't buy a loaf of bread in credit when I got back to get me a car. And we named it NOBID, N-O-B-I-D, for No Big Deals. So it isn't like we didn't know about No Big Deal. But we started laughing at the same time because we realized that stress is not inevitable. It certainly is not an adjunct of my greatness. Stress is a spiritual mistake, and it's always the same spiritual mistake. I have made a big deal out of something that is not God in these 12 steps, and therefore I've made a Big Deal out of myself. Without that, it's impossible to feel stress. Had a nun that was in one of our 12-step programs, not AA, tell me one time that she didn't believe that any situation was inherently stressful, that it is our perception of the situation that causes the stress. And if I get the big deal-ism out of my perception, stress is much less a factor in my life. One of the biggest principles in my wife is what I call the unmade bed, and let me tell you how that goes. i have found out that if what's causing me to be uncomfortable is that my bed is unmade and i really get the obsession on it i just can't get started i can't you know i can get in a place where i can get started making up that bed i can talk to my sponsor until i have worried him nearly to death i can do all the inventories i want on it i can pray until i am blue in the face i can go out and get me some outside help go talk to a shrink or counselor about what's wrong with me that i just can't get right to make this bed i can do all those things and i will never get any relief until i make up the bed i'm simply gonna have to make up the bed there's no other way around the thing um cherry put that another way he said the only way you will ever get comfortable, Don. He said, by the way, you can go to a bunch of meetings, you can do the steps, you Can do a lot of things right, but you will never truly get comfortable until you start doing things that make you comfortable and you stop doing things that make You uncomfortable. He Said, You can do all the other things, but if you keep on failing to do things you need to do to make you comfortable and continue to do things that make you uncomfortable, all those things will not make you comfortable. You know I've found out that my God will do almost anything for me but I've also found out that my god will do always nothing for me without my cooperation. Just absolutely almost nothing. You know we think about turning things over to God as if it's some kind of great spiritual process that happens some sort of way when we're in a room by ourselves and in silent prayer and meditation and that sort of thing. Do you know how you turn a toothache over to God? You go to a dentist. If you don't believe it, next time you get a tooth ache, call your sponsor. Pray about it and do an inventory and call me and let me know how it works, okay? I don't turn things over to God with some sort of psychic change in me. I turn things Over to God With my feet. Just like I don' t make decisions with my brain, I just think I do. I form intentions with my Brain. My intentions don' T graduate into being decisions until I have started acting on them. And it' s so helpful to me. Words are important to me in sobriety because whatever I name something or somebody is going to have a great deal to do with what the reality of that is. And it's real helpful to me not to call my intentions decisions. I don't call my intention decisions until by taking action I have let them graduate to be decisions. And that lets me keep it in my brain, straight in my mind, whether I have just formed an intention to do something or whether I haven't in fact made a decision to do it. Another important word is attitude. Everybody, when we first get here, we're here forever. Change your attitude. If you don't get a better attitude, you're going to get drunk. You've got to have an attitude of gratitude. Well, I'm flipping around and looking inside trying to find all my switches, you know, and knobs and do something about changing my attitude, and I can't change anything. So man, I think I'm doomed. I can'T change my attitude. I'm going toget drunk. Because the only definition, I don't guess I'd ever really thought about the definition of attitude. I'd known the word all my life. And what I assumed it was, was my mindset and the way I felt about something or somebody. That was my attitude toward them. And I couldn't change anything about that regardless of how hard I tried, regardless of however much I prayed even. I just couldn't get it changed. Well, Cherry sent me to a particular dictionary, and that always really ticked me off because I knew I was better read than Cherry. To send me to the dictionary just seemed so humiliating. And he sent me to a particular dictionary to look up attitude. And the first definition of attitude in that dictionary had nothing to do with my mindset or how I felt about anything. It was a term from geometry and aviation, angle of approach. And that was another one of those aha moments. It was like turning a light on and off because instantly my attitude went from something totally beyond my control to something totally within my control. Because you see, my angle or approach toward you or anything on this earth is not how I feel or think about you or it. It's how I act toward you. So that was just so freeing. Another huge word was the word realize. I had thought that realize was more or less interchangeable with know. You know, I would say I know that or I realize that. Realize is a form of the word real. When I have realized something, that literally means that that has become real inside me. There are things I've known for 30 years, like the seventh step prayer that I knew for so long I could have quoted it to you backwards. But I didn't realize that it really means what it says, that it doesn't ask God to remove all those defects of character. It doesn't Ask God to Remove the ones I think I want gone, not the ones that make me uncomfortable. It asks God to Move the ones That Stand in the Way of My Usefulness. So to keep realizing and knowing separate has been real handy to me too. But now, I have tried my best to get my mind changed. There just needs to be some way that I can think myself into right acting. And I have augmented that with prayer, steps, outside counseling and everything else. And it has never worked for me one single time. the bad news is I've got to go ahead and start taking the action when I don't feel like doing it. I have spent so much time, energy, and even money trying to work on getting me to feel right so I could do right. And not one single time has anything made me feel like Doing Right except going on and doing right when I Don't Feel Like It. And that's just more maturity than I can nearly stand. Bad news if you're an alcoholic of my type, but that's really connected with the unmade bad thing. Another principle that I need to keep in mind is what I call my broken bat singles principle, and this is the only sports metaphor I intend to use. That's the only one I usually use, but it's the way it comes to my mind, so I'm going to use it. When I think in terms of my success, in terms of baseball, here's the way I think of my success. My team is three runs down. It's the bottom of the ninth. There are two people out. The bases are loaded and I'm batting and I hit it out of the park just on a frozen rope and the crowd goes wild and that truly is the way that I envision success being in my life. Here's the ways success always happens. I don't get along with the manager. I don't have a ride to the ballpark. I've got holes in my uniform. I know I'm not going to get to play anyway, and I've about half got the flu. And it looks like it's going to rain. But I finally get there, andI make myself go, and I sit there,and finally somewhere in the game, I get in as a pinch hitter, and I swing looking like,as we used to say when a kid looked, swinging like a wash woman, and I break the bat, and it barely loops over the second baseman's head. and all of my successes are series of broken band singles it never happens those great big you know long ball in the crowd going wild it's just keeping on suiting up and showing up and lord knows for years i've been old enough to know how my contemporaries did as far as the material world went not a one of us had hot shots is rich it's the really dull ones that got rich it's the ones that just kept on suiting up and showing up doing that same thing every day over and over again and and doing it right and very connected with that is what i call my bad hands principle the same weekend in 1990 when i began to some things happened that i began to look at six and seven a different way i was in cleveland i just asked tom burns to be a sponsor cherry had died a few months before and i was including for the weekend and there was an A.A. Akron Golf Tournament up there that weekend, loads of heavy, heavy sobriety. And one fellow that was in town not before the tournament, his daughter was getting married because he had to sneak back in Cleveland, was Jim. Jim had been dry 20 years and there was an awful lot not to admire about Jim. Jim had owned some truck dealerships in Cleveland and he had gotten in trouble with multiple extramarital affairs and he wound up owing the government a couple of million dollars in withholding taxes. And, you know, they get really ugly about that, you know, about the withholding tax part of it. So Jim had been living in Las Vegas, let's say he was just visiting back to Cleveland for his daughter's wedding for seven or eight years at that time when I met him and talk to him. He's dead now. And he'd been living underground, making his living playing poker. Well, I just thought that was interesting. I was sitting at Tom's kitchen table with Jim and I said, you know, Jim, how are you able to do that? Because, you Know, I've known a lot of people that would love to make their living playing poker and it seems like almost nobody can do it. And Jim said, yeah. Said, that's right, Don. and said, you know, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people who would like to make a living playing poker. And he said worldwide there are about 700 or 800 of us that can do it. And he says the entire difference is what we do with the bad hands. He said any idiot can play the good hands. But what makes the difference between success and failure is what I do with the hands that are so bad that I don't even want to look at them. I don' t want to think about them. And I have found out that that applies in every area of my life. See, my idea of what determines success is those highs and those great peaks. What' s going to wind up making the ultimate success in man relationships with other human beings in my law practice in everything in my life is what I do with the hands that are so bad I don't even want to look at them. That's what's going to make the ultimate difference between success and failure. I already talked about forgiveness. I will tell you a little bit about my own personal life in that regard. My daughter, and by the way, she's a wonderful gal. She's 42. She's been in Al-Anon many, many years and in September, She and I were blessed to go to Moscow, Russia, and Kiev in the Ukraine. And I did the steps through an interpreter. And Dana is fluent in Russian, so she did the hell of it without an interpreter! It was so close. We really got a great friendship, great relationship. Dana was sexually molested by a relative continually from age 4 to about age 11. And we didn't find out about that until she was 14, 15. I've always been glad I was sober when I found out about it because I've also been a criminal defense lawyer. In the first 10 years I practiced criminal defense law, I really, really did represent some really, really bad people and might have done something I couldn't have lived with. But I found about it and it was a monster. You know, I didn't find any magic bullet to say a few prayers and do a couple of inventories. Nothing went away. It was an absolute monster in my life for a long, long time. And about 10 years, when I was about 10-years sober, a relative involved in that was on what the doctors and everybody else believed would be a deathbed and wanted me to come there. And I thought I couldn't come. I thoughtI shouldn't come somehow felt disloyal to Dana. I thought what they'd done was beyond the pale of where forgiveness ought to even be considered but it didn't feel good I couldn't get it to feel right and I kept praying about it and I talked to people and here's what came to me at the end of the day today I'll ask you guys to stand up with me and I'll asked you to say the Lord's Prayer with me And I will ask my God to forgive me by just precisely the same standard by which I forgive my fellow man. And you see, I'm too far gone to put any limits on my God's forgiveness of me. Of course, the first word that jumped out to me was the big H, hypocrisy. We alcoholics are so sensitive about hypocrisy, you know, If we've been sober a while, we can laugh at previous adultery and larceny and homicide and get a little grin if it's far enough away and the circumstance is right. But by God, we don't want to be hypocrites. So I was worried a while about hypocrisy, and then I got to thinking about it. You know, it would be really nice if God feels all warm and fuzzy about me and is thinking, gee, I'm so glad old Don got it together. I just really like him. He's one of my very favorite creations, and it's just such a joy to give him all these gifts. That would be a good thing. But on the other hand, if God is somewhere thinking, I don't know why the little bastard pisses me off the way he does, I don'T KNOW WHY I EVER MADE HIM, THE EGOTISTICAL LITTLE CLOWN JUST MAKES ME MAD EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT HIM, AND I WOULD LIKE TO SQUISH HIM LIKE A BUG. But after all, I'm God and I've got to act like God. So I guess I'll have to act like I've forgiven the little idiot. I'll wind up the same place. I'll end up exactly the same place I would be if God felt all wonderful and kind toward me. So if I act out forgiveness to my fellow man, what I'm feeling and thinking about it doesn't matter if my God gives me precisely what I gave my fellow man i'll be okay i've also found that acting out the forgiveness for me to wait until i feel forgiveness to do it never ever works i have to begin acting out The Forgiveness before i begin to get any relief now forgiveness is not approval uh i certainly never got to the point where i want to go have a cup of coffee with that person uh it's not approval it's a it's a form of acceptance. But those unforgivable things are the things that I truly must forgive if I'm going to live. I try really hard not to be controversial in any area of my life. One of my favorite statements in this book is that nothing would have pleased us so much as to write a volume that would stir no controversy. And I really do try to live that. If you have caught me arguing with anybody in the last 25 years, somebody was paying me. I will not argue with you for nothing, make my belly hurt and it's just a gift. God has relieved me of the need to be right. God is letting me understand that being right is all relative anyway and it never really matters who is right. Cherry Carpenter used to say that Henry Clay must have been an alcoholic because most of us would rather be right than president, and I think that's true. I know it was certainly true of me all my life, but to not stir the controversy. An excellent example, that's the way Bill wrote the big book. The best example I can think of, alcoholism is not called a disease anywhere in the first 164 pages of this book. Now did Bill believe it was a disease? Certainly Bill believed it was an disease. had to be tempting to get on his soapbox and back out, educate people, and make them see the light as to whether it was disease. But that's still not altogether uncontroversial today, whether or not it's disease. And in the late 1930s, it was really controversial as to Whether It Was Disease. So Bill concluded that he could get across everything he wanted to get across by calling it a malady, a disorder, a sickness, without using that buzzword of disease to trigger the controversy. So that's the way he did it. And you'll find that all through the book where we're talking about the fifth step. He's holding down an olive branch to the Roman Catholic Church, which was not very happy with us in the fledgling days of our fellowship. You know, everything's been great for decades now, but the church felt threatened by AA and was not altogether friendly to it at all. And in writing about the fifth step, Bill says, of course if you belong to a denomination which requires confession, you will want to and must do your confession with the person appointed to receive such confession. So that's all the way through it. And I don't believe controversy helps me with anything. oh I forgot our ask it basket, my goodness no no no I just forgot the ask it basket John sponsorship, get a sponsor there are no perfect sponsors sometimes your sponsor is your best friend sometimes they're not Cherry Carpenter and I didn't like one another when I asked him to be my sponsor and we never got wild about one another I never rode in a car with him I never shared a meal with him. He never called me on the telephone except to return my call. Cherry Carpenter was not my buddy. He was my sponsor. On the other hand, I've had sponsors that are my dear friends, and that works too. It's not a marriage. There are no perfect sponsors. Get somebody that's done the steps, got some sobriety, ask them to be a sponsor. If that doesn't work out, then you move to somebody else, but don't live without a sponsor On the another hand, I never tell anybody, no, I won't be your sponsor. I put some conditions on it. I tell them I'm busy and I want them to have somebody else that they can be in touch with on a regular basis. But if Cherry had told me no and there had to be a great temptation to do that, I might be dead today, really. So I don't tell people. I don' t fire sponsors. I tell him, you know, I think you'd be a whole lot better off going over here and letting so-and-so sponsor you because it doesn't look like it's working to me. all I've got to offer you is the steps and either you're not doing them or for whatever reason, the way we're doing it it's not doing the job here and I think you really ought to go somewhere else but I don't tell them, you can't call me your sponsor. It's not about me. Somebody getting drunk is not a reflection on me. You know, I don' t care about that and I just don't think I'm big enough to fire somebody and say, no, I won't help you because you're now doing it my way. You're now doin' it the way I think the book says do it, so therefore I'm not going to do it for you. So that's what I need to do. And our basket basket, there are not too many of them, so I think we're probably going to be able to finish it anyway. Scared me there for a minute because I had forgotten that we had the basket basket. Back to the feeling thing, little handy thing that a lot of us in the fellowship in Louisville do with one another. Did you ever notice that every day We run around and multiple times we say, how are you doing? And immediately get told how they're feeling. We'll do it every time. How are you dealing? You'll tell them how you're feeling? Well, we stop there and say, wait a minute. If I want to know how you are feeling, I will ask you how you feel. I wantto know howyou're doing today. What's going on? You know, well, what are youdoing today? Well, what's goingon with what you are doing? and keeping that secret and realizing things like they don't put you in the asylum for being crazy. They put you in the asylum for acting crazy and they don' t let you out of the asylum for being sane, they let you out ofthe asylum for acting sane and when the big book talks about sanity and insanity it's almost always talking about action not talking about a mindset not talkingabout an emotional condition and I found out a wonderful truth, being crazy is harmless. Uncomfortable, but harmless. It's acting crazy that'll kill me. And when I'm so crazy that I don't know what a sane action is, that's when I need to call you. Because, you see, my insane ideas don't ever come up and say, good morning, Don, I'm an insane idea, I'm here to kill you. They come up, say, hi, Don. I'm common sense, and start explaining themselves. And the magic is that my insane ideas never sound like common sense to you, and your insane ideas Never Sound Like Common Sense to Me. So even though I'm feeling crazy, I can call you, and you can tell me something the sane person could do, and I can do that, and everything will be just fine. I can't balance my life real quickly I'll tell you that and then we'll get to the questions I got obsessed with balancing my life like between the time I was three years sober and five or six years sober you know, I started to get busy in my law practice I started getting busy in AA and my daughter had moved in with me I'm raising my daughter man it was just awful and I'm trying to get balance so I prayed I worried my sponsor's death I did all these inventories I got me some outside counseling I could not find balance in my life so I was at a the fact that noon meeting that I talked about much earlier where I can't hear but I know what everybody's going to say anyway I was in that noon meetings and a fellow that I never had seen before and I have never seen since was there. But I remember that he was two days out of the asylum and I was going on about getting some balance in my life and this little guy piped up and said, Don, if you could balance your life, why couldn't you manage it? Of course I can't balance my life, but God can balance it. God canbalance it. And when I let go of that, and when instead of feeling so overwhelmed and looking at the things that overwhelm me, it's amazing how all that evaporates when I pick up the stitch and start taking some stitches instead of sitting there and looking At It. It's just absolutely amazing. The fear of prayer, by the way, praying for God to remove my fear is fine, but it never has done me much good. The one I need to pray is God give me the strength to act in spite of my fear because God doesn't seem to remove my fear while I'm sitting there and not beginning to take the action. I have to start the action after I've prayed. The prayer is absolutely necessary. Start the action After I've Prayed, and then God will remove the fear. Final thing before the steps, first line in the chapter, Working with Others, Nothing. Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. Folks, I believe that is to be literally taken. That means that prayer, meetings, sponsors, all these things, conventions are wonderful. Coming to hear little clowns do the steps on a Saturday, all that's great. But nothing will so much ensure our immunity from alcohol as intensive works with another alcoholic. And I want to tell you that my own life has proved that it will cover a multitude of sins. You can do a world of things wrong and not let up on intensely working with other alcoholics and God will take care of you. It will cover an multitude of things. Thank you so much, and I'm now going to go on to the Ask It Basket. Thank you. well the first question has to do in part of a couple things to talk says how do you balance working with others and working through sorrow i can't but god can do a wonderful job of it if i just pray to do the next right thing See, I always want to set policy. Well, this is what I do when I'm working through sorrow. Well, that's what I'll do when... It never works that way. I can't set policy? There have never been two situations identical in the history of the universe. I've got to listen for that next right thing. Got to listen to that spark of the divine in me that knows the next right things. Right now. I don't have the wisdom and the expertise to work through sorrow of my own or anybody else's. But God does. And I found out that it works just beautifully when I'll put it in God's hand and try real hard to love, comfort, and understand and do the next right thing. Next question. Talk about your experience with the 13th step. Hmm. Well, I've had some. I've had some I've been married for the last 20 years but for most of the first 10 years that I was sober I was single people do it and the whole sexuality thing is something I talk about when I do all the steps to talk about four and five, where Bill Wilson talks about our fourth step inventory in the book. If you removed the example of the resentment list from page 65, there are at least as many words devoted to the sexual inventory as there are to the resentment list. And at least half of the words devoted to it in one form or the other are telling us to quit being so hysterical about sex, to quit putting it in an area completely different from everything else in our life. And I have always needed that so much. The sex prayer on page 70 is an absolute masterpiece. When the book's winding up talking about what we do inventory-wise with regard to to our sexuality. The sex prayer, middle of the page on page 70, says, To sum up about sex, we earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity and for the strength to do the right thing. And then listen to this. The thing that I said is like air, it's everywhere. If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. same solution we are given for everything get out of ourselves do something for somebody else and let it work in the paragraph before that talks about if we stump our toes sexually and we're kind of funny about that uh you know if we're cheating on our taxes or our expense account we have some you know gee john i really need to start turning those cash fees and yeah Yeah, Don, you really need to do that. Go right on. We stump our toe sexually. Oh my God, it's the end of the world. I'm going to get drunk. I'm gonna be dunked in the river. I'm gunna be put in the stocks. They're gunna branded with the letter A. It's the End of the Damn World. Well, the book tells us clearly that stumping our toe does not mean necessarily that we're guna get drunk It says that our experience has shown that if we are sorry for what we've done and are willing to let God take us to better things, we'll be just fine. Now, the other side of that coin is the book says that if we're not sorry for what we've done and our behavior continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. And then it says we are not theorizing. These are facts out of our own experience. So I haven't talked a whole lot about my own 13th step in. And there's been really, given me and the way I was all my life, there's has been remarkably little of it. That's the miracle that's been there. As little of that as there's ever been in my life because I really have always had so much respect for the program, for our colleagues and the fellowship. Traveling around speaking as much as I do, there are a whole lot of opportunities from time to time to the 13th step of what you wanted, if that's what you wanted to do. But I've always viewed that as being a violation of a trust really. I haven't been perfect in that regard. Don't claim to have been perfect. But I'm sorry enough for what I've done and tried to let God take me to the realm of the right thing enough that I'm still sober and I'm doing alright and I've still married every 20 years. So that's the best answer I can give to that. How does one achieve the complete willingness to surrender and launch their self back into the program once they have slipped and know that it's the best thing to do? It's a difficult question on one hand. In fact, it's so difficult that it is impossible on one hand. And on the other hand, it is so simple that it isn't believable. We all know the statistics that it's harder to stay sober after you have been sober for a period of time and you drink and you come back in, that it becomes progressively more difficult. The longer you've been sober, the more difficult it is until you get to mass stage of sobriety. It's just almost a negligible percentage of people that can never get any quality of sobrietty again if they drink. And here's the simplicity of it. Willingness is something that really puzzled me for a long time. Because I couldn't make myself get what I thought was willingness. And I've changed my definition of willing. If something needs to be done and it's capable, reasonably capable of being done, do not ask me whether I'm willing to do it or not. Because what I tell you won't matter. Look and see if I'm doing it. Because that's the only willingness that matters. Whether I want to do it does not matter. But whether I'm doing it is the willingness that counts. That's the willingness that let me live, let me get sober and the willingness that lets me live today. So my answer is having slept just come back and do it again. I don't care if it doesn't feel right. Keep on doing it because a lot of things at times things are working really well for me when they don't feel like they're working at all. So do what other people tell us, because nobody in AA is going to intentionally tell you anything wrong. And it generally is a good rule for me that anything that anybody in AA suggests to me is better than leaving my life in the hands of an idiot, which is me. So that's my response to that. How do you deal with sponsors who keep talking about feelings and life circumstances and not doing the steps, specifically when sponsees are on fourth steps and do you still meet with them or just talk on the phone when things are not taking action on the steps? I think I've already kind of addressed that in what I tell people. I don't dictate anything, but I tell them that all I can really do for them is be a guide through the steps. And I also tell them what Cherry told me, that there's no record of any alcoholic ever talking themselves well. You know, that needs to be less emphasis on talking to our sponsor, more emphasis on listening to the sponsor and doing what the sponsor says. I do not do it harshly. And finally, I'll just give up sometimes and pray that will be done. I'm no longer running the show and bite my tongue and let them go on for the next 20 minutes about their feelings on the telephone. long. And then I'll quietly and lovingly come back and say, I appreciate that. I'm sorry about that, but I can't do anything about your feelings. But this is the action that has helped me when I was feeling similar things. I canít tell you how to find a switch to flip and change your feelings or change your mind. But I can tell you the action I took when I had what I think were similar feelings based on what youíre telling me and what worked for me. And thatís the way I do it. And I've already said that I suggest they go to somebody else if either they're not doing the steps or what they're doing on the steps is not keeping them sober or giving them enough peace that they can live with it. This one says, Can you go over the six note cards that you have in relation to the 11th step again? Awesome. Well, thank you. And I will, in fact, state again what those are. Now, honesty is the three of them have got one word on them. And those three one-word ones are honesty, gratitude, and humility. The other three are longer. The first or one of them is, Thy will be done, I'm no longer running the show. Lifted directly out of the eleventh step, of course. one is pray to love comfort and understand rather than be loved comfort and understood actually actually the my little sheet just says pray to Love Comfort and Understand because I know that the rest of that is rather than to be loved Comforting Understood and the final one is a quote from Chuck Changlin and that is help God's kids do what they need to have done and that's all I've got on the card but the rest Of the quote is for free and for fun because I want to because Chuck says anything we do is barter. Anything we do expecting something out of it's not going to work. The only time we get the real advantage is when we're doing it for free and for fun. He said even being good, even being Good to Go to Heaven or something like that says if you're doing to get reward, you're not going get what you need to get out of it. It isn't until you quit worrying about your butt and really start trying to do something for the folks around you, that you really start getting the beauty. And that was the last question, and I'm going to close with one last thought that I got from Cherry, that Cherry actually got in a personal conversation with Bill Wilson. Cherry had talked to Bill several times, and one time he was talking to him and Bill said, you know, about 95% of the people that come to Alcoholics synonymous and get sober and stay sober just do what they need to do to get there and maintain it and they go on with their life and that's fine it's a wonderful blessing for that 95 percent but he said they're about five percent that want it all they're back five percent that really want all the spiritual peace that really won't feel being plugged into all the power in the universe which these 12 steps will plug us into and for the last 29 years i have failed so many times but i've started over every time i fail by the way fourth dimension of existence i was giving a talk the other day and i made the statement that i had been in the fourth dimension of existence at least 5 000 times that occurred then it occurred to me while i was talking and said, oh my God, that means I've fallen out of it at least 4,999. And that's right after. But the fourth dimension of existence is one of those things that I do keep in my mind. That I do. The fourth dimension and the 5% that I really want to strive today to be part of the 5%. And thank you everyone. I've really loved being here and you've been great to me. Thank you. Thank you.