Steps 10 and 12 – Part 11 – Mark H. – FOTSNY – 2001

In fact, they didn't have one. She kind of let me know what he was angry about. She didn't even have his phone number, and so I had his phone number. So I said, is it okay if you and I say a prayer, and then I want to give you his phone number? And basically what came out of me was a prayer of forgiveness that what was going on between him and her be healed, and then I gave her my son's phone number. So that amend is over and done with. And so then what I do is I then go back to my room. I'd called my son's number two or three times. I got an answer machine, and he used to say I did not leave a message. You know, hi, this is your dad from 31 years ago. Just call him to say hello. How you doing, you know? But finally on about the third ring, I get him and told him who I was and why I was calling, and I needed to make amends. And same thing, do you know who I am? And he said, oh, yeah, because she was very clear with him who I was. She was a good woman, a good person. She wasn't malicious about me. She just basically explained it, I guess, more matter-of-factly to him. And so he and I talked, and we made the amends, and I asked what I could do to clean that up. And he said, well, as far as I know, nothing really. I mean, you know, it's not like you've ever been in my life. He said, if you'd like to give me your telephone number and all that stuff, you know, that would be cool. And then he used words that I use. He said, but he said, you know, Mark, I just need to sit with this. Those are words I use all the time. But so, you know, that was that. And those were the last two amends in my book of consciousness, you know, that I owed in terms of being here. All the rest had been cleaned up. And I can't even begin to tell you what that feels like. It is that state of consciousness that allows me to be with you, to just be myself, to love you, to love others exactly as they are. If I hadn't gone. If I hadn't gone through that process of amends and done all of that, I would not have the capacity to love my fellow brother and sister and to have compassion for my fellow brother and sister. For me, amends were such a crucial piece in, you know, in that whole deal. Don't miss out on this stuff. This is just incredible stuff. Don't let your pride and fear get in the way of the amends process. Don't make a big deal out of them. You know, as I said, it's one child of God. One down from the other to bring about really healing. Also, do not pay any attention to the outcome. Was I thrown out of some offices? Yes. Did I need to be? Yes. I remember one of those in particular. I was making amends to the mother of a girl I dated. This woman I think God used as a representative probably for about 50 other amends. And she really got clear with me about what kind of a human being she thought. And I left that and I went to my car and I touched that and I just sat and bawled like a baby because I saw where my selfishness and self-centered had taken me and what that did to people. And I needed to touch that. I needed to touch that because I did not want to ever again harm another human being at that level. At that level. I had to touch. Some of them call it repentance. I had to touch that. I had to feel that. I had to know what it was when I took this course of action centered in self and the incredible impact that that has on other human beings. But the freedom in my life today with myself, the capacity to be at peace with myself, to not be in judgment of myself, I guess as Popeye said, this is just who I am. And I'm not going to be in judgment of myself. I'm not going to be in judgment of myself. And I am very, very comfortable with who I am. I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not anymore. The peace of that. See, when you finally become real, the act of humility means humus grounded. See, I'm grounded. I don't have to pretend to be anything that I'm not. And that's what I take and bring into every interaction I have with other people. And because I'm that way, that gives you the freedom to be that way. All these stage characters can just drop away. And you and I can do that. You and I can both be real. And that's when the connection to love takes place. Love can't take place when you've got a lot of stage characters going on, when you're trying to present something to someone else. See, the other thing that happens when you finally get at that level of peace with yourself, this idea that you're, quote, taking risk, is no longer operational. You're just here to love people, to try and understand people. You're no longer concerned with whether we're a nation obsessed with, but do somebody love me? And our obsession needs to be is find someone to love. But my experience is if I don't do this work, first of all, I will never, ever know how much the Creator loves me. And I know that. And it makes, it turns me inside out and makes me weep. It is not the Creator's fault that I am asleep to the Creator's great love for His creation. You see, and you do this and you begin to touch that. And you, then you begin to take that out to other human beings. And you begin to have compassion. And you begin to be a lot less judgmental. And all the things that used to separate you from others no longer exist, whether it's gender or age or race or, they're non-existent. And you begin to see these are just fellow travelers on the path giving it their best shot as well. And we help pick each other up. And we do that with love and compassion. And, you know, an understanding. So, that's all I got on that. Gee. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. The St. Augustine's Prayer Book can be had by Holy Cross Monastery. They have a bookstore there. Their number is, I'll wait for everybody to get their pencils. While you get your pencils. Yes. Um. I use. Cards. Three by five cards to do amends with. I found it. It's a great system for me. It works very well. On the front of the card, I put all the instructions for me. What the big book. I've taken them right out of the big book. What the big book tells me. To be calm, frank, and open. Not to be afraid. To do the things that I need to do. All the information I need to find the persons on the front of the card. Their name, their address, their phone number. How to get a hold of them. If I don't know, I write find. All right. There's an example of the cards in your packet, obviously. Um. And. I'm not always. I may not be ready to make the amend. I may not be willing at this point. So I need to pray for the willing. Some of the instructions the big book gets. So on the top of the card, there's a plus and a minus. So I put them into two stacks. All the ones I'm willing to make are pluses. And all the ones I'm not willing to make are minuses. Start with the pluses. And I order them easiest to hardest. The people that love me the most. All right. I agree. My experience is exactly what Mark's is. Except with one exception. The harm that the deepest harm that I've done is probably my spouse. A person closest to me in the relationship. I hold off on that one with guys until they've got some experience making amends. Because they need all the tools. Because they're walking into a firestorm. It's going to be a firefight. You know. And I don't want the guy to walk in to that as his first amend. And then say, man, if that's what they're like, I'm never touching another one of these deals. Go to a grandmother or grandfather. Somebody that loves you unconditionally. That's going to make it easy. And you get the juice from that. You get the high of, wow, I'm free of that little piece. Maybe the next one won't be so bad. And then they go, wow, that was cool. And then they go to the next one. And they're progressively getting harder. And the guy doesn't even notice it. He's going, wow. And by the time it comes to do the really hard ones, it's like, whoa, this is cool. And next thing you know, he looks at all the minuses. And all of a sudden, they're all pluses. Because he's like, this isn't bad. What was I thinking? These are pluses. And boom, he goes through. Plus, it's a way for me as a sponsor to track his ass. Hey, Rasheed. What's your name? What amend do you want? I'm on number eight. Three weeks later, hey, what amend do you want? I'm on number eight. We're having a conversation. Because he's missed. He has lost the connection to step one. He's forgotten that this has something to do with whether he's going to drink again or not. And if he balks and says he's not going to drink, I am known for this. And if it offends you, I'm sorry. But I am not beyond sitting down at a table and putting a bottle of booze in front of him and saying, which is easier? And if he still doesn't react, I'll take the cap off and say, take a whiff of that. What's easier? Because I care enough about him not to kill him. You know? Life and death stuff. The most missed word in all of the 12 steps is the last word of the eighth step. All. If you do 99 out of 100 amends, you have not worked the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because you're living a lie. That's it. That's the truth. If it hurts your feelings, I'm sorry. But that's the truth. You got to do this. It's a full deal. Soup to nuts. You got to do the whole 100%. Or you won't know whether Alcoholics Anonymous will work. Because if you go get drunk and you say, well, I made my amends. I had that all the time. I work with retreads. They come back to me and say, that program doesn't work. And I ask them one question and I nail them every time. Did you finish your amends? Yeah. I finished my amends. And I said, every one of them? Well, I had two left invariably. There's always a couple left and almost always they're financial, you know, because they don't believe that God is everything. Well, I smashed a, I crashed an airplane. I owe $3.7 million for that and God's everything or he's nothing, you know, maybe you'll be paying on it for the rest of your life, but you'll be sober. What's the deal? Phone number, uh, Holy Cross Monastery, 845-384-6660. You get a voicemail system. You plug in, you hit, you ask for the bookstore and leave a message and they'll get back to you. Yeah. I noticed the number 666, right? Uh, 845-384-6660. There's, I was just informed by Barefoot Bill, he says there's a bookstore right down the street from them called Esoterica Books and they have it. It's probably a quicker and easier way to get it, uh, 845-255-5777 and it's St. Augustine's prayer book. Okay. And the Holy Cross Monastery also has a website. You just search on the internet, look up Holy Cross Monastery, plug into the bookstore that way to get a copy of that if you're looking for the sacrament of penance. Um, so when I'm here in a fifth step, I have a blank piece of paper. One of the things I do and the guy's telling me all these stories of who he, who he harmed. Uh, he's telling me about his girlfriend, right? His high school girlfriend and how he got drunk on her and, and, uh, you know, abused her and did all this terrible stuff. What I'm writing down on my piece of paper is girlfriend's parents because when it comes to his eight step list, he's going to forget that he upset her so much and she was a teenager in that household. Guess what? That entire household was put on its head because I did it. I've done that. I had to go back to my girlfriend's parents from high school and say, Hey, I really ripped your household apart. You know, that's one of the ones they threw me out on my ass. They didn't want me to have anything to do with them ever again. You know, um, the amends process will pay off in spades. I mean, it's just, it just, it just keeps giving and giving and giving. It's delightful if, if I can't say enough about it, but it's one of those deals. Go do it. What does a rose smell like? How do you describe the smell of a rose? Go smell a rose and then all I have to do is come back to you and say, it smells like a rose and you, everybody goes, ah, I know what that is. Yeah. That's the sidestep. That's the deal. Um, I have had received a lot of questions about surrogate amends. What am I talking about? People that can't be seen for whatever reason I use a surrogate. I write them an honest letter as if they're sitting right in front of me. The exact same amendment I normally would on the backside of the amends card. When you look in your packet, there's three questions that I ask first to start out with. I'm here. I don't say I'm here cause I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't want to give AA a bad, a black eye. I come here and I say, I'm here on a surrogate. I say, I'm here on a spiritual path and I'm trying to clean up my life to live better. If they ask, well, tell me about this deal more than maybe I'll reveal I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous, but I don't lead with I'm in AA and then I say, I'm clear on this harm. I know I've caused you a, B, C, D, whatever it happens to be. Is there any other harm I may have caused you that I don't know? Cause I'm not arrogant enough to think I know exactly what the cost I host you. I know that. No. And all of a sudden they, cause I'm a blackout drinker, they'll sometimes you get the laugh. They start laughing. You think that's the harm? Wait a minute. Let me tell you the harm you caused me, Mr. Boom. Question number two. Do you need to tell me how any of this hurts you, right? You've caused the harm. It's you've got the key to unlock their heart. This is, you've spent months and months working on this stuff to do all the spiritual work to heal yourself and the other person's going to heal right before your eyes. So you may just have to shut up and listen and just get in, man, here comes the firestorm and they just puke on you for 35 minutes. You son of a, and they just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And they tell you exactly what a scumbag you are and how you hurt them. And then finally you look them in the eye with love and you say, is there any way that I can straighten this out? How can I fix this? And they've just purged all this poison that's been sitting inside them. You've just killed their emotional banker. He's gone. You just cashed in the eye of you and all the interest and they'll look at you and they'll tell you and you'll hear God speak through there from them and they'll, you'll get up and you'll give each other a hug and they'll give you a kiss and they'll say, thank you so much. I appreciate you for coming to see me. What a touching thing. And you walk out the door and that's a person that was ready to kill you when you walked in the door. I'm telling you, it pays off in spades. It's a wonderful deal. It just keeps giving. It's a, it is so cool. So what do you do with this amends card? If you got this letter, I write it just like I write an amends card. Same questions go on there. I can't read it to the person that I want to for whatever reason, I'm going to create a harm in doing it or they're dead. Yeah. They can't be seen, right? They're dead. So what do I do? I get somebody that reminds me of them. I grabbed a woman last year cause I had some amends I wanted to make to my grandmother. My grandmother was an English teacher and this woman is a, was an editor I think for New York times. She had the same linguistic background. You know, she just had the, it reminded me of my grandma. So I sat her down. I don't go do spiritual work with women without my wife's knowledge. So I asked my wife, said, honey, I got these amends I need to make. Can I have this woman over to the house when you're home and I'll sit on one side of the house and do these amends. And she said, sure. So cast. She comes over to my house. I sit down, we pray together and I said, I want you to sit in for my grandmother. This is who my grandmother was. I give her a kind of a background of what age she was and when the harm occurred in some of my relationship with my grandmother. Then I read it to her as if she is my grandmother and she's in the mindset. If I was his grandmother and my grandson came to me and did this to me, how would I feel? And she opens up her mind and I swear to you, it was if my grandmother was sitting there at the table talking to me. She shared stuff. She had no way of knowing what she was going to share. She's like, I don't know why I feel to tell you this stuff and she starts talking about stuff that only my grandmother and I knew had been between the two of us. She says, if you had done this to me, here's how I would have felt and this is what I would want you to do. Boom. On the card, you'll notice there's an A after the three questions. That's for the answer. We get alcoholic amnesia. They tell us what we, what they want us to do to make it right and as soon as you walk out and the door closes behind you, you forget it. Whip out the card, write it down. The other reason for three by five card is it fits in your pocket. If you start to choke and your mind goes blank, you can always whip it out and oh yeah, this is the amen. This is what I meant. So you don't forget anything to clean this stuff up. So I write the information down. Now I've admitted to God, I've admitted to myself and to another human being, the surrogate. Now I go to a place where I feel spiritually connected to them. My grandmother. I go and I parked the car right in front of her house where she used to live when she was alive and I make that amend. Six months transpires. I'm still feeling a little disconnected from my grandma. I can't figure out why. So I grabbed that letter and I drive to her grave and the sun is setting. It was one of those really nice days or the spring and this, it was warm and everything. It was just gorgeous. It was like 70 degrees in like March, so really a bizarre day. And as the sun was setting, I sat there and started talking to my grandmother and grandfather. I read that amend again. And I just sat there until the sun went down. I don't know. It was an hour, hour, maybe two hours. I don't know how long I was there at the grave. When I finished that, my grandmother came back into my life. I used to call her up and say, hey grandma, put on the kettle. I'm coming over for a cup of tea and I'd drive over to her house. By the time I could get from my house to her house, the kettle would be boiling and she'd be ready to have tea with me. I never realized it, but after she died for six years, I hadn't been drinking tea. I was almost a daily tea drinker. I'm back drinking tea. I can smell my grandmother now. Ever walk along? It just triggers the memory. She is with me today and she's been dead for eight years now. She's back in my life. We don't ever die. We're with. Our legacy is not how much money we made or the business. Who cares if you were at work until 5.30 every night or 7.30 every night? It's not how much money we made or the business. Who cares if you were at work until 5.30 every night or 7.30 every night? It doesn't make a hoot of difference. Our legacy is left in the hearts of the people we touch when we're dead and gone and we will live forever in those people's hearts because they're going to touch other people's hearts and our love. Life is a pool. You throw a hurt stone into that pool and you send out hurt ripples everywhere and they ricochet off the shore of the pool and they come right back at you and you get hurt. When you're angry and resentful and you're walking through life, guess what? People sense that in you who are angry and resentful and you have fights with them. I haven't had to have fist fights since I've been in A, I don't think, and onto my memory, you know? But people will sense my anger and then they're angry back. When I'm showering people with love, they shower love back. You can throw a happy, a love stone into the pool, the love will radiate out and radiate right back at you. That's what you guys are. You're mirrors. That's what step nine is about, cleaning this stuff up so you can live daily, on a daily basis. The power of surrogate amends cannot be underestimated. I'm not going to lie. It's not going to be underestimated. And I know if you're sitting in here and you're questioning, you're going, this guy is full of shit. You got, if you don't have any experience with it, you have absolutely no leg to stand on. And I condemn at least a dozen people in this room will tell you that has changed their very life. A guy I know last week or two weeks ago, his father was murdered in front of his eyes. It was a mafia hit. Boom. His father is dead, five years old. He completely disconnected from his dad. He has not been able to have a healthy relationship with any woman in his entire life. He starts to touch that stuff because some of the work we started to do together. He makes amends to his current girlfriend. It's time to make amends to his father. Goes to the grave. He has a conversation with his dad. He said he could feel himself getting pulled into the ground. Put his head on the tombstone. Couldn't pick his head up. He could feel his father. His father was reaching up. He could feel the love of his dad. Today his dad is back in his life. You don't believe this stuff works? I'll give you his number. You can talk to him personally. You can look into his eyes. There is no question. This deal works. I don't care who harmed you or who you harmed. It's a two-edged sword. You harm somebody, you got to make amends to them. They harmed you. You're a prisoner of your emotional banker. You're going to have to go make amends somehow for that deal. Guy called me on the telephone. Excuse me. Guy comes to me up here. He says, my family's now moved to Miami. Is it okay to make that amend over the phone? One word answer. Did you hurt him over the telephone? If the booze was in Miami and there was broken glass from here to Miami, I guarantee he'd have crawled across that broken glass to get to Miami because he's a real alcoholic. He's a real alcoholic. Piece of cake. If it's possible to see somebody face to face, I see them face to face. If they don't want to see me, I use a surrogate. I clean this stuff up. There's ways to do it. And if you run into a jam, email me. I'll answer the question for you. You have to be working with somebody else. Do not go into amends by yourself. It's usually the person that heard your fist up because they know the deal. They know more about the deal than anybody else. Have them work with you through the amends process because they will see harms that you are blind to. That's why when I started talking my amends over with Mark, he says, no, no, no, don't go to that person you scumbagged. You're going to create a harm. I was blind to it. I would not have seen that harm. He says, go to everybody else that you scumbagged and clean it up there. There's other ways to make amends to that person that you scumbagged. And I will be making amends to that person, right? That person right now doesn't want to talk to me. That's okay. And if they continue to not want to talk to me, man, we will make amends another way. I will get a surrogate. I will go through this process. I will be clean. I will be free. That's eight and nine. That's eight and nine. That's the deal. I wish I had more time to talk about it, but you guys got the essence of what I'm, if you're not touched by what we just shared here, you're not human, you know, love is inside you to not be touched by this stuff. You are submarine and so bad. It's just waiting to explode. I'll give you 20 bucks. The bar is down the street. Go get it over with. Go drink. Get beaten bad enough to come in here and be willing to do whatever it takes to clean up your life. It's that frigging important. Let me kick it back to Mark for 10 and 11. Mark alcoholic. A couple more comments on that, uh, uh, give me any exam. There's some amends. The best thing you can do is find someone who has experience, uh, and I'll use my Vietnam experience. Yeah. And I'll give you the nine steps. So what, what do you do about this? And, uh, what I did is, um, I went and found a, uh, Vietnamese church and there was a Vietnamese priest in there and I made that, uh, amend with the, uh, uh, Vietnamese priest. Uh, and then, uh, and he suggested something to me and some of you are familiar with Takna Han, who was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. And then, of course, out of that thing, he gave me the name of Takna Han, and then since then, of course, I've bought many of his books, and his practices have been so incredibly helpful to me. So there's a course of action you can take behind any kind of harm that you put out. I'll tell you an amend that I was asleep to for many years was the amend to Mother Earth, which is a living organism. I had littered, and at any rate, it became very clear I'd created harm there, so it's called, well, what do you do? Well, gosh, for several years, now I suppose it's about once a month, I just take a large garbage can or sack with me, and I start walking the streets. I don't throw trash out the windows, but there's different things that come. When you start to realize there's nothing but oneness, and everything's living, moving, and breathing in you, you just start to get a sense of all those things. So like Dave said, just do it. Okay, let's talk about 10 and 11. We do the work in 1 through 9 so that we can enter the world of the spirit and awaken to the fact that there's a fourth dimension, our beingness, our awakened spirit, if you will. And we get to take... that part of us into our doing, if you will. I was so asleep for a long time to the 10th step. Today, when I look at the... There's two pages in the big book, and I think there's four or five paragraphs. You will find in meanings that we talk about only really one of the paragraphs, the first one, because you got the short form, right? Continue to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong... When we were wrong... There is so much more to that step. It is absolutely unbelievable. You know, some of the... It talks about having entered the world of the spirit. And one of the things I like to do with a lot of the 10-step sentences, if you will, as a tool is sit with that and say, do I have an experience with that? Do I know what that means to have entered the world of the spirit? You heard me make a statement last night. I've so often tried to think of what it would be like to get a new drunk coming in and the topic of the meeting was share what it's like having entered the world of the spirit versus when you came in here drinking and puking. Discussions around these kinds of topics, I think, would do amazing things to increase our membership and keep people around. But it follows and says that your next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness. In what? I think Dave so aptly described the growth and understanding and effectiveness in every area of his life, the use of the traditions and the concept. So you take that spiritual being, that awakened spirit, which is basically love that we've been talking about all weekend into every area of your life and consequently you'll begin to grow in both understanding and effectiveness in every single area of your life because now you have tapped into that unsuspected inner resource, the great reality deep down within. And then it begins to give you some practices, if you will. Dave talked about off the beam. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ten-step practices are just designed to keep you on the beam. One of those practices is watch. Watch is a spiritual practice. That's a word that you could take and just work with for a long, long period of time. Watch yourself during the course of the day, minute by minute. For what? Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. And then it says ask. God at once to remove it. Ask is a spiritual tool. It's a spiritual practice. Practice asking. Ask. Another book says the problem. The problem is not receiving. The problem isn't asking. And then it talks about turn. Resolutely turn. Turn is a spiritual practice. What does that mean? The egos gather where the mind goes. The goal of turning is to turn away from yourself. Get the force away from yourself. You could work with turn. Just practice turning. Something happens, you start to get upset, turn. Turn to someone you can help. Love and tolerance. Tolerance of others becomes my code. You can practice that. Tolerance becomes my code. What does that mean? A code is the way in which I live my life. The definition of tolerance is amazing. Basically what it says is, Mark, can you love someone exactly as they are? Even if you completely disagree with them. Love and tolerance of others becomes a code. It becomes a way of life. And then you begin to practice that. See, if you don't begin to practice these things, you won't be able to know whether or not they're going to work in your life. If you take the word love and tolerance of others as a code and begin to just say, take that either into your family or just into your workplace. Just work with that one sentence, and you're going to start to see how much practice you need. You see, what you do speaks a lot. I cannot hear a word you say. Don't pay any attention to what your mind tells you. Take the practice, watch yourself, and see whether or not, in fact, you can do that. I've ceased fighting anything or anybody, dash, even alcohol. That is a spiritual practice. My experience is, the extent to which I am resisting is the extent to which my selfishness is still in play. In this universe, the way it is is the way it is. So it talks about, I've ceased fighting anything or anybody, dash, even alcohol. And you work with that. You just begin to work with that everywhere you go, in your group. It's in your home. Cease fighting. The way it is is the way it is. Quit trying to change the way it is. Get in complete acceptance with the way it is. Cease fighting. You know, we've done some relationship stuff, you know. If someone's in your life and don't want to be in your life anymore, cease fighting. God has your best interests at heart, including taking things out of your life that are not in your best interest anymore. Men and women of faith have courage. They trust their God. You know, God giveth, God taketh away. I mean, that's how the whole thing works. Cease fighting anything or anybody. Stop resisting. I always, to me, it's interesting about the concept of love because what does the face of love really look like? And I'll use the example of a relationship. If you're in a relationship with someone and they tell you they don't want to be in it anymore, what do you think the face of love looks like? God bless you. Go in peace. God bless you. Go in peace. Go into your own experience. How often do you get a chance? How often do you practice that? See? And it goes on and talk about that. And then the book shifts you into alcohol. And it starts to talk about the fact that you and I have been restored to sanity. Soundness of mind. You know what sanity is to a real alcoholic? Your mind says it would be nice to take a drink. And sanity is a part of you says, that's a very, very funny idea. Restoration of sanity. That's what it looks like. And it tells, it goes on to say that you and I have been placed there. It's a miracle. It's an attitude. We've been placed in a position of neutrality. I don't go around fighting off the demon called alcohol. I've been placed in a position of neutrality. It says a miracle. It was a gift. It was given to me. You do, you do what the book asks you to do in the first nine steps and you get placed there. You don't place yourself there. It says I've been given a new attitude around alcohol. You know what the attitude is? That's poison to me. See? That's poison. I have a new attitude. I recoil as though from a hot flame, but it says it happens automatically. And I don't have, I have to do anything to bring that thing about. It goes on to say the problem has been removed. Has been removed at that time. See? Said it no longer exists. Then it asks you a great question. Is that your experience? See? Is that your experience? If you're taking this course of action, there's little, there's little litmus test all along the steps to see whether or not you've had the experience that the work should have brought about. And one of them is by the time you get to the 10th step and ask, is that your experience? If you're not in a position of neutrality around alcohol, if you don't recoil from a hot flame, then something's been missed somewhere. If you can't begin to practice love and tolerance is my code. If you can't begin to cease fighting, something's been missed, right? Go back. Rework it. Redo it. That kind of a thing. And then it's got the paragraph where I think it's the only place the book does this. It says it's easy to let up in the spiritual program of action that brought you to this place and rest on your laurels. How many of you here know what laurels are? According to a dictionary. Okay. I'm not going to tell you. I want you to go. Listen. This is how we are. It's easy to let up in the spiritual program of action, rest on your laurels. But it goes on to say you shouldn't do that or you're going to die. And you guys don't even know what laurels are. Go back, get a dictionary and look up laurels. This is back to here's what looking up words. My inventory revealed I was so arrogant that I think I know what words mean. It's kind of like one of my major defects was I wanted to give you my opinion on experiences I never had. And then argue about the experience I never had. Basically, my body can't live off the food. But I've got to say, I'm not sitting here sober today based on anything I did yesterday. That's the simplicity of laurels. Why is it important you understand that? Because I don't care if you're sitting here today sober. I don't care how long you're sober. What you did yesterday has no value relative to your fifth spiritual condition today. If you don't understand what laurels are, you won't understand that, and you'll think you're going to stay sober off an old experience or meeting you went to last Wednesday. You understand what I just said? It said, then it goes on to say that you and I are given a daily reprieve based on fit spiritual condition. Now, I've told you this before. If God, if their creator, was all this was about, the big book would be one page long and say the creator keeps you sober. Have a good life. But it's not. What I discovered along the way is that I'm responsible for fit spiritual condition, not God, which is back to the disciplines. I am responsible for setting my alarm clock, getting up, reading these books that I read, doing my prayer, doing my meditation. I'm responsible for writing the inventory, for making the amends. Nobody's going to do it for me. I'm responsible for fit spiritual condition. See, it's such a trap saying, well, God keeps you sober. Because if that's true, then you don't have to do anything. You understand? It says if I believe the book and I do, it says I stay sober because I'm in it. I'm in fit spiritual condition. There's no other reason. The book has showed me how to get there. 10 and 11 are how to stay there, how to stay in fit spiritual condition and continue to grow within your spiritual experience. Then it goes on to talk about how can I best serve thee, thy will, not mine, be done. And then it's an interesting paradox. It says along this line, we can do anything we want. See, the 10th step for me is about the line of the will. The line of the will. You do this work in the first nine steps, you, in essence, are going through the death of self-will. You experience a lot more of God moving through you, demonstrating through you, and you take that out into your day, the line of the will. The line of God's will being demonstrated through you, like the book told us what happened. And during the course of the day, you get a little off track. There's a little story for me that sums up my 10th step. If you're in the middle of the street, and there's an 18-wheeler coming, that is not the time to analyze why you're there. Get your ass out of the street and analyze it at night. That's what the 10th step is. I use the 10th step as I'm being moved through my day. It's not a tool to be analyzed. It's a tool to keep me going along with the line of the will, to see when I get off the line of the will and into self. When I get back in line again. That's what all those 10-step tools are. Watch, ask, turn, cease, neutrality. How can I serve thee, thy will? Line of the will. It goes on to tell you that you've now developed a new sixth sense. When was the last time you went to a meeting and the topic was, please share how you use your new sixth sense? Right? See, I don't know if they do this in New York, but it's fairly common in Morris. Who has a problem? Right? Or who has a topic? I'm throwing out some great topics to really mess up meetings here. Who has a topic? I would like you to share your experience with how you used your new sixth sense today. What? You know, the guy's dropping acid. It's in the book. You don't have to believe me. It's in the 10th step. It says you have a new sixth sense. That's that fourth dimension. And you get to work with this new sixth sense in the course of the day. Dave and I have had that happen all weekend. You go here and a part of you says, no, go here. Or someone comes up and asks you the question, okay, say this. Or that's the new sixth sense. Call this person. Do this. Don't do this. That's your new sixth sense, and you get to work with this thing. See? Don't eat that. Go here. Go to bed. That's a new sixth sense, and you get to practice that piece. 11 step covers two things. It covers an evening review. Bill being the good alcoholic. Either that or he liked to stay. Up late. Started the 11th step with the evening review. And there are a bunch of questions in there. A lot of other disciplines that I read talk about the benefit of self-observation or self-analysis, and that's really what we get to do. I don't make my evening review too simple or too complex. I write it out. I just answer those questions. Was I resentful, selfish, dishonest, and afraid? I have found that if I start with the last thing I did and go back, it's easier for me to make my list. So I do. I just sit there. I close my eyes. Was I resentful? And I go back through the day. Was I selfish? I go back through the day. Was I afraid? And I go back through my day. And if I see something, then I write that. Then it goes on to the series of other questions in there. Do I owe an apology? I go back to, uh-oh, I was short here. I was here. Here. And I write those down because that's going to dovetail into the corrective action I'm going to take the next morning. It goes on to talk about, was I thinking of myself most of the day? And I love this one. This is a great thing to practice. Was I kind and loving toward all? What a great thing to practice with. See, here's the benefit of the evening review. You do it enough times, you'll start practicing being kind and loving toward all. You don't think they meant toward all, do you? And you answer those questions. And then toward the end of those questions, it says, Mark. Mark, you must be careful not to drift into worry, future, remorse, past, or morbid reflection this moment, for that renders you useless. Once again, at this point, the book is doing everything in the world that it can to get the light off of yourself, if you will, and to get it on other people. And it warns you to avoid worry, the future, remorse, the past. You know, I didn't realize this, but you know remorse is spiritual pride? I didn't understand that. I got that out of a book. And I sat with that for a while, and I would have never realized that. If I'm remorseful in anything I've ever done, that is spiritual pride. You know how? You know why? Because that part of me thinks it's God, should have never made a mistake, and I shouldn't have done it in the first place. So it becomes spiritual pride. And then it talks about then, well, you make a list of your corrective action. You ask God's forgiveness. Go to bed and you sleep. And then, of course, you get all the instructions for upon awakening. You get up. You consider your plans. It's for the day. I always have those written out. I dovetail my corrective actions in. Then I begin to go. The 11th step talks to you and I a lot about our thought life. Our thought life. And I think there's a reason it talks to us about our thought life. Most of my actions stem from my thought life. So you better start paying attention to your thought life. Because one of the ways in which I create is through my thoughts. Because the thoughts will ultimately lead to actions. I do those prayers. Of which there's several in there. Talks about if you have to make a decision. I pray for inspiration, intuition, right thought, right action. And then I do a very radical thing for a guy like me. I relax and take it easy. See? So you go through the day. You get moved through the day along the line of the will. Just move through the day. You hit a little snag, whatever. By the way, those kids used to say that all the time. It used to make me angry. And I realized that's one of the most. One of the most emotional, spiritual words I've ever heard. Whatever. Because it means I've ceased fighting anything or anyone. Right? He says he wants to leave. Whatever. Lost the job. Whatever. You know. Late for the. Whatever. Cease fighting anything or anyone. I have an altar. And above, a friend of mine sent me. It's a big neon sign. Whatever. See? But it's a spiritual practice. I've ceased fighting anything or anyone. More. More tools to use during the day. Pause when agitated or doubtful. You've got to be awake to pause. If you're like me, when I started to work with that, I would be in the middle of the tornado before a pause even hit me. And I would be into action and couldn't stop myself. But so you have to practice with it. Book says, many times throughout the day, thy will not mine be done. Line of the will. 10 and 11 are so interwoven like a tapestry for me. From the time I get up, walk out of my house, to the time I get home. Incredible things. You can practice with. Till the day you die. That's what they are. The strict spiritual disciplines of the 10th and 11th step. Because we're undisciplined, so we let God discipline us in the simple way. A couple more comments. And then done. I've had a daily meditation life since late 91 or early 92. If you said to me, what is the most important practice in your life? I would tell you meditation. If you said to me, Mark, I'm in a position, there's only one thing. I can do. What is it? I would tell you meditation. It was a meditation that I came to know God. It was a meditation that I came to understand that I'm a being, that I'm a spirit. It's in meditation I begin to really connect with the sixth sense. It's in meditation I begin to get free of fear. I kept that simple. I told you, I went and bought a timer. I realized I was going to do it two times a day for 10 minutes. Current practice, two times a day, 24 minutes. Right now, I happen to be. I happen to be listening to a Theta Metronome. I do it. That's my deal. I do it. I don't talk about it. I do it. What you do speaks aloud. I cannot hear a word you say. I'm like Dave in that respect. I look at your feet. See, I just look at your feet. Are you doing it? This happens to me all the time when I talk about meditation is you get these tons of questions or whatever. And then I'll say to people, tell you what, you go buy a timer and you meditate every day for 30 days and then you call me. I've hardly. I've never been called, which tells me they didn't do it. It doesn't make any difference to me. You see, I do it. If I meditate today, I win. If I didn't meditate, I lose. How much of God do I want to know? I'm not the most intelligent guy, but it's very difficult for me to read anything that's spiritually based for many religion or any discipline where I don't see something about meditation. I don't believe all these people are wrong. I just don't believe it. I think the Bible says, be still. And no, I'm God. It doesn't say, be still and believe that I am God. Be still and know that I am God. If you're not doing meditation, I beg of you to begin to work with meditation. It will change your life. It will change how you experience life, if you will. That's all I got. Just a couple of quick things. I'm passing the seventh tradition again for the extra copies we had printed up last night for the traditions and the concepts. And there's extra steel and steels back there. I wrote a four-page guide for 10 and 11 on how to live 10 and 11 as a way of life. So those of you that have a computer, email me. If you want it, I'll send it to you. I go into nauseating detail how specifically how to take steps 10 and 11 and piece them together. And it will answer a lot of what you guys need to hear. A couple of quick things. One of the guys. I was hoping to bring this up because I figured he knew he had an early flight. He just left. So I didn't want to say this while he was here, but he'll hear it when he hears the tape. Because it's pretty powerful. The guy that I did the fifth step with in the closet down in Dulles Airport has been here all weekend. And he was a shoe man when I met him. When I met him, he looked at my feet. He couldn't look me in the eye. You know the fifth step promises that Mark talked about after the fifth step promises? One of the first promises. One of the first promises you'll get is that you'll be able to look the world in the eye after he fifth step, he still looked at my shoes, but then he, and I just stood there and he slowly, he said, thank you, shook my hand. He's looking at my shoes and his eyes came up and he looked me square in the eyes and once he looked into the windows of my soul, then he threw his arms out with tears running down his face. That's the power of the fifth step. All right, a couple of things I forgot to throw in for the night step. Um, if you're going to bed. If you're going to make an amend to somebody like your mother and you start digging into this stuff, the harms you caused your mother and she says, you know what? I really don't want to talk about this. I don't want to dig up the past. I just know that I love you. Guess what? Stop. She, you're going to, you're creating another harm. Remember the fifth step rule. Be hard on yourself and always considerate of others. All right, that's the deal. If you still feel all jammed up about it, go get a surrogate and do it with a surrogate and you can tell the surrogate all that crap. Clean that. Clean that stuff up. All right, second, don't swap a men's my experience. If I'm coming to you to make amends, if it's something simple, like I do this week, I've swapped the men's with about six guys, but it wasn't anything when really I wasn't huge harm. If you know, you guys know what I mean by, I mean, if you got some serious real estate to cover, let them know that you're coming to make amends for your side of the street and you will and tell them upfront and I'm not going to be talking about anything else that transpired between us. I'm here to come in here. And if you want to have that conversation. On another day, we'll do that on another day. You're going to clean up your side of the street because if they start reciprocating amends, it's really easy for your ego to jump in and start justifying because now you're, you can't tell whether you're there to talk about your side of the street or you're here in their side of the street and you can really create harm doing that. That's my experience. Three, if you're making amends to an alcoholic and it's something important, we are flight or fight creatures. If you catch me off guard, I'm either going to fight with you or I'm going to run like a son of a bitch. So don't just walk up to me and blindside me and say, Oh babe, I got this amend for you and then start pouring your soul out of it. This terrible harm. Call me up, make an appointment. And the other thing is don't surprise me. Don't say, Hey Dave, let's get together for a cup of coffee. So I think we're having a cup of coffee. And next, you know, you start pouring your guts out to me. Say, Dave, I've caused a harm to you and I want to set up an appointment for an amend. And I say, great, come on over and have a cup of coffee. Now I know I'm having a cup of coffee and an amend so I can get myself spiritually centered. So I don't, if I'm having a bad day, I don't go and eat you new lunch and chew your breath. Okay. I don't want to rip your head off. You know, I'm, I'm known for that, for ripping your head off and crapping down your throat. You know, if I'm not spiritual, I have a violent side to me that you guys, you've heard my inventory. I can be way off the beam at times. Now I need everybody's help. We're all hungry. It's getting late. We've got a couple of things to cover. What I'd like to do is take only a five minute pee break. Go out, be back here at five minutes of, and I'm serious. Go smoke a quick butt, do it fast. And then I'm going to take us through a guided meditation. Jump through step 12 and we'll all go home and get something to eat. All right. So be back in five minutes. Okay. Somebody said to me, what do you do when you call somebody in the program and you leave a message and they don't return? You say, I want to call up. I got a man to make it need to make to you. I use the rule of three. I make three attempts, attempts to contact them at beyond that. It's my ego. I'm forcing it. God is saying not yet. So the answer is not yet. I hold off. I have violated that rule in the past and it's built, brought me some trouble. So, uh, I try to use three shots, three strikes and I'm out. You know, if it's still, if it's still eating me up inside, go do a surrogate. And then if six months down the road, they changed their mind. They call you up and say, I'm ready to talk with you now. Then go do a face to face. Your spirits already clean. So it's going to cost you nothing. Matter of fact, you're going to get a gift out of it. It'll be a jewel, a wonderful jewel. Um, what I wanted to do with you today is, uh, I'm real big on not telling you. I'm real big on showing you. Um, Mark talked about 10 and 11. The, in my mind, the reason that the nightly inventory is comes first is because you use the nightly inventory. You need the information that came out of the harms you did yesterday in order to clean it up for today. So when, when you go through those 12 questions and I know the big book lawyer is going to say there's only 11 questions. I split one of the questions in half from experience. Kind and loving. If my, in my mind, I'm kind to everybody yet. I'm driving down the road and the voices are in my head or that fucking asshole. I can't believe you jerk off. And that's what, that's the voice that's in my head. I'm not being real loving, am I? But I'm still, there's a lot of red faces all of a sudden. Nobody else does that except me. Right? Then I failed on loving. You know, I do not get through a day virtually without being resentful, dishonest, self-centered. I mean, if you get through those and those questions all come up, nope, didn't do it, didn't do it, didn't do it. Something's wrong. You're missing yourself. You're deluded. Right? For relationship purposes, I do these questions now with my wife. You want intimacy into me see? You do it with somebody else that you love. You got to remember they're your best friend and they're your lover and they're your partner. It's just like steel on steel. You cannot defend yourself. Defend yourself. So, if I'm looking at my wife and I'm saying, honey, yeah, I was resentful today and I was resentful at you because you did A, B, C, D. She knows that she will not comment on that. I'm just letting down the wall so she can see what's on my plate for how I did my feelings today. And she does the same thing to me. You know? And she may say, you know, go on for five minutes, yeah, you hurt me here, you hurt me here, you hurt me here, you hurt me here. And I got a bite in my tongue. Even if I think she's completely out of her frigging mind, I didn't, I wasn't even in a room when that happened. You know? I bite my tongue. In to me see. She's given me a gift to let me see what's inside her wall. Period. You know? And if I fail on any of those questions, then I clean it up the next day. If I was resentful, I write a four column inventory the next morning and I go clean it up. I fist step it and get rid of the fears. You know? If I was dishonest, I walk up to you, look you in the eye and I say, you know what, I lied, a bold ass lie to your face. I can't explain it. There's no excuse for it. Did this hurt you A and how can I clean it up? You go through the deal. You know, if you have a problem like me with dishonesty, you start doing that, guess what? Your ego will work for you. Your ego does not, Hollywood does not want to look bad. Very short order, you will stop lying. You may still lie unconsciously. I mean, there's a lot of times that I will, I will tell a bold ass lie, but it's unconscious. I'm not doing it on purpose. It's happening. And if I catch it on inventory, I go and I make amends. As hard as that is. And it's brutal. With, because your ego is saying, you got this much sobriety. I can't believe you still do that stuff. You know? And that's the same voice that's going to say, it's okay. There's no excuse. I'm going to pick up that drink. It's not going to hurt you this time, Dave. You know? So, one last thing on the ninth step, and then I'm going to go through a guided meditation that will change. Because I don't believe in telling you. I believe in showing you. So, I'm going to show you what I do currently with 10 and 11. On page 18 of the big book, people come to me, you know, and they got 14 harms. And I've heard their fifth step. Right? That's the key. I've heard their fifth step. They got 14 harms. And I go, how many people in your family? Well, I got 10. I got seven brothers and sisters. And I go, okay. There's seven. Mom and dad, eight, nine. Got grandparents? Yeah. 10, 11, 12, 13. Got any friends? More than one friend? Yeah. I think we got more than 14 harms. What does the book say? It says, an illness of this sort, we have come to believe it an illness, involves those about us in a way other human sicknesses can. If a person has cancer, all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness. For with it, there goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. It engulfs, what? All whose lives touch the sufferers. If you were drinking and you had any kind of interface with somebody, chances are there was a harm you projected there. Because you were a walking frigging harm. You know? You know that spanky in Peanuts? You know, the dust cloud? That's what we're like. We just get that dust cloud. If we come anywhere near anybody, we're projecting a harm. They're going to get some on them. Think of that. That's why I use the tornado exercise. Start in your family and rotate out. Family, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts, work it out into the work life, into your church. You know, did you stand up and scumbag at a deacon meeting and really create a hassle over there? You don't even belong to that church anymore and you've forgotten all about it? How free do you want to be? All right? Enough on nine step. 84 to 88, I do it every day. And what I've started to do, my prayer life became stale. My meditation life became stale. I had to figure out a way instead of, you know, God, I offer myself to be, to build with me and do with me as I will. You know, just reading the stuff. It was rote. It was boring. And some days there was passion to it and I could feel it and it was good. And other days it was literally that fast. And the next thing you know, I'm in the shower. God, I offer myself to thee. Next thing you know, I'm driving down the highway. You know, I'm not even taking the time to spend the time with God. I'm doing something else and pretending I'm praying and meditating at the same time. Look at my feet. What are my actions dictating? You can't do two things at once. Don't be in the car and try to convince yourself you're having a good prayer and meditation life. It doesn't work. I've done it for years. It doesn't work. All right? So what do I do? I get up early, however early I need to get to spend at least an hour with God in the morning. And here's what I do. I say, Father, I appreciate the gifts you've brought into my life from the promises. And I understand that I have to continue to take personal inventory. So Father, please help me to continue to take personal inventory and help me to continue to set right any mistakes. As I go along. And Father, please help me to vigorously commence this way of life. Make this a fabric of my life and help me to do this as I go through life. You've helped me so much, Father, but please help me to correct any harms that I've put out and help me to clean up my past. Even if it's the distant past, I don't remember it, Father, please bring it to the surface so I can clean that up because I want to be the best and most effective instrument for you that I can possibly be. I've entered the world of the Spirit, Father. Please help me to grow in understanding of the world of the Spirit. And please help me to be effective in the world of the Spirit. I know I can't understand and be effective without your help, Father. I need you. Please come to me. And God, I understand this is not an overnight matter. It's going to take the rest of my life. So Father, please help me to continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking and fear. Help me to be conscious, awake and aware. And Father, come to me and bring your Son with you and help me to understand the Holy Spirit. All the saints and Muhammad and Buddha, every spiritual creature that has ever been, bring that energy into my life. Help me to be conscious and present in the moment. Help me to watch for my ego, to drag me into the past with remorse or resentment or to drag me into the future with my fears of what's going to come down the pipe. And Father, if those resentments and those character defects come up in my life, help me immediately to share those with someone else. And help me to make amends as quickly as possible. The moment I find out that I've created a harm, help me to clean that up, Father. And Father, help me at that point to turn, to turn to you, God, and help me to be what you want me to be. Turn my thoughts towards you and my actions. Most importantly, Father, help me to have the power that I need to take the actions to correct what I've created. And Father, love and tolerance of others is in my code. Now I use key words in here. The word love jumps off the page at me. That reminds me to go back to the nine-step prayer. Flip the page. Back to 83. On 83, end of the first paragraph, it says, asking each morning in meditation that the Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love, right? That's an instruction. I should be praying the nine-step prayer every day. If you're not, there it is. If you've got a family member, you owe this prayer as part of your sobriety. But notice what it says. Ask the Creator to show us the way. Do a meditation. Sit down and think of what does it look like to be patient? Remember, I'm real big on vision. What does the way of patience look like? What does the way of tolerance look like? And I go into a meditation right there. I stop, and I'm thinking about patience, tolerance, kindness, and love. What does that look like? How am I going to be loving to my wife, and to my kids, and to the people I'm going to interface? And I envision a white light, that kernel of the golf ball, inside me. And I start it out, and I feel it come up inside of me, and I try to envision it. And the light just radiates out, and it hits the mirror. It hits the mirror of this building and the trees, and it starts reflecting back to me. And that's my meditation of love. And I ask God to me to be a beacon of love, of light. All spiritual books describe love and the power of God as light. So the light is inside me, and I want to shine it out. And guess what? It's going to go into the shadows, wherever the darkness is, whether it's the darkness that I created, or whether somebody else created it. If I shine love in there, it's gone. I'm going to destroy it. And I don't care what your belief is. You try this deal, it'll change you. So I do that quick little meditation for patience, tolerance, kindness, and love. What does that look like? And Father, I've ceased fighting anyone or anything, even alcohol, Father. Please help me not to take a drink today, because that would destroy my effectiveness for you and hurt countless people in my life. And Father, if I'm tempted, help me to recoil from that as if from a hot flame, and help me to react sanely and normally. God, please help me to use the tools you've given me. At this point, I should have my thought life back, Father. Help me not to think like an alcoholic. Help me to think like a child of God with your love and your direction and your power. Help me to carry that out into everything I do. And Father, help me to feel as if I'm in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. Protect that little two-year-old that lives inside me, Father, and help me to act like that two-year-old. Help me to be joyous and free and unconditionally loving to everybody I go through and touch in this world. And Father, please remove my problem of alcohol. Alcohol is not my problem today, Father. Thanks to you and your glory. What a gift to me. And help me to share that gift with others. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. There's a key. There's a promise that comes, or a prayer that we're supposed to be asking on page 164 in A Vision for You. We're supposed to ask every day how we can help the man who's still sick and suffering. So I have to add that in here. I either add it in here or I add it in at the very end of this when we get to page 88. All right? And I go back right back into prayer. God, please help me to keep in a fit spiritual condition. What does that look like? I go into another mini meditation. What does fit spiritual condition look like to me? Right? That meditation. we had this morning was beautiful. That's fit spiritual condition. I'm going to start adding that in there, man. If you didn't get it, go see Glenn. He's got the tapes. For a donation, you're going to get a tape of that meditation. Try it. Wonderful deal, all right? I know I'm not cured of alcoholism, Father. I know I have a daily reprieve contingent on my spiritual condition, and please watch over me and help me to be in a fit spiritual condition. Father, I need a vision of your will for me, and I meditate on what does it look like to have God's will for me. I don't have to climb into God's head. It's what's in my head. What does it look like to me to be living God's will? And then I say the prayer. How can I best serve you, Father? Your will, not mine, be done. I know today, Father, that what I want doesn't matter. Remove that from me, God. Please remove my selfishness and self-centeredness so that I can be effective for you. God, much has already been said about receiving strength. Father, please give me strength. Inspire me. Give me direction. Give me knowledge and power so I can be the best intelligent agent for you, the spearhead of your advancing creation, not Dave's advancing creation. Help me not to get what I want. Help me to get what you want, Father, and to want to do what you want me to do. Then I go through and I turn this next set of instructions into a prayer. God, please help me when I retire tonight to constructively review my day. Help me today not to be selfish, dishonest, self-seeking. Help me today not to be afraid. Help me not to owe any apologies today. Help me not to harm anybody and need to clean that up. Help me not to, here's a key one for New Yorkers, help me not to cram too much into the stream of life because, Father, I know there's one stream of life and it's your will. And when I try to cram too much into your will, it's my will and I'm blocking myself off from helping you and others. God, help me to be an agent for you to do your will. Help me not to think of myself. Help me to think constantly of my brothers and sisters and what I can do for them. To help them in their daily life. God, please forgive me for the harms I've perpetuated and that I'll perpetuate today. I need your help. I'm lost without you. Guide me and direct me and show me what corrective actions I can take tomorrow for the harms I know that I'm going to cause today because, Father, I know I'm going to miss the mark today. And then I think about my day. Right? I'm in my prayer and meditation. So I, God, please direct my thinking today. Please keep my thought life divorced from self-pity, dishonesty, and self-seeking motives. Guide me and direct me. Help me to rely on my hunches and my inspiration, my intuition. Help me to be a father today, God. The best possible father I can be. And then I do a mini-meditation on what does that specifically look like? What is the one thing I'm going to do today for my kids? And I come up with something. That's my plan for the day. God, help me to be the best husband I can be. And I come up with one thing and that's going to be my plan for the day. And then help me to be the best employee. If I'm going to go to the military, how can I do that job? The best. If I'm going to go to American, how can I be that best airline pilot I can be? Right? I come up with a meditation and a vision. I'm using it. It becomes the fabric of my life. All right? And then I continue on as I go through. God, I owe so much to you, Father. As I go through my day, please show me what the next step is to be taken and give me the power and the energy I need to take that. Help me to recognize my character defects. Keep me mindful of the characters of the theater that are going to be there. That are going to be there. That are going to be there. The first things I recognize. Help me to be constantly awake and help me to watch and be aware. God, help me to take some time today to pray with someone else. Help me to pray with my wife and my kids today. Even if it's in the middle of no, for no reason at all. Just stop and pray with someone that needs prayer. Help me to think of others today, Father. Now the book says here, we sometimes memorize some set prayers. That's when I do the third step prayer and the seventh step prayer. I've memorized those. Someday there's great emotion in them. Someday they're not. They're just memorized prayers and I take what comes there at that point. All right? God, as I go through my day, I know if I'm agitated, doubtful, indecisive, Father, that if I pause and take it easy, relax, and turn to you, that you'll empower me and show me what my next step is to be. Help me to do that, Father. And Father, help me to stop and throughout this day and remember thy will not mine be done. And Father, most importantly, help me to watch for the things that I'm not going to see as a threat to me. I know I'm an adrenaline junkie, Father, so please keep me from the dangers of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, and foolish decisions. Help me to use the thought life and the gifts that you've given me, Father, as I go out to help others. In your name, Father, thank you from the bottom of my heart that I know you're better. Thy will not mine be done. And then I get up and I do some stretches because this is my temple, right? God gave me this physical body. It's my temple. I do some stretches. I do some calisthenics. I plan in some physical activity in my life today. I'm losing weight. I'm trying to get my mind back. I read nine spiritual books a day. I go and I do that stuff. And then I go out into the world. And I go out and I be a spirit head of God's, intelligent spirit head, hopefully, of God's ever-advancing creation. All right? Part of this deal is I pray for my sponsees that are having trouble. I pray for the people that I'm resentful for. I pray for myself if I'm resentful for other people, for God to soften my heart. I add whatever it is, wherever I am in the steps, I add that into my prayer and meditation life. I mean, what did that take? Glenn, maybe eight minutes, ten minutes? And I'm talking you through the meditation when you're actually doing it. And it's different every day, just like I did it with you here. Tomorrow, it'll be something different, so it's always new. And every word changes over time. And one day you'll see a new word and you'll go, wow, I never thought of the word turn or the word watch. I've been working with watch for three, years, I've been working with the word watch. And I know that if I ever think I know about the word watch, they're going to be throwing dirt in my face. This physical body is going to be dead if I ever get that word down. It always changes, because why? We. I have to be constantly changing. This book constantly changes for me. Now, how do I help others? 12-step call. There's two different kinds of 12-step calls we've got. We've got a 12-step call of the old variety, which the big book describes. And working with others and in two employers. Two employers is not about two employers. It's all about how to do a 12-step call. All right? So if you don't read the lost chapters, go back in there and read about how to do a 12-step call. Read working with others and two employers. There's two calls. The initial call, when you find out that, well, if the guy is serious, that he wants help, and then what do you do? You leave him a big book. You show him what you got and say, if this was what you want, on our next visit, we'll start down this path. And the interim, read this big book. That's short and sweet. I gave you all the instructions that are in the packet for how to do that. The second call, he's already demonstrated. I'm looking at his feet. I say, hey, did you read the big book? He says, yeah. Now let me back up a little bit. In the first 12-step call, I say, do you want what I have? He has no idea what I have. I got to tell him. This is what I have. I have a profound spiritual awakening as a result of 12 steps. If he's scared of God, he's not going to want what I have. And then I describe to him step one. And in 20 minutes, I turn to the guy and I say, here's step one. There's three pieces to it. Is that what you want? Step two, you're going to have to give your entire life over to this higher power. I don't care what it is, but you're going to have some higher power. Maybe it'll be AA. That'll work. Do you want to give your entire life over? And I say, is that what you want? And I don't let him answer right away. And I talk about step three. I talk about a written inventory. We're going to write inventory. We're going to go and we're going to look at all that stuff. We're going to look at the bestiality, the rapes, the murders, the robberies, the thefts. We're going to talk about that all. And you're going to share it with God and another human being. Is this what you want to do to get sober? We're going to talk about paying the money back and talk about the amends process. Is that what you want to do? Go read the book. Think about it for a couple of days. If you want that, we'll talk again. Boom. Give me your number. I give you, I give him my number. I take his number. The next day I call him. Hey, this is Dave. We met last night. I don't think you'll forget me after all that, huh? You know, go into meetings, get a sponsor. You know, talk about the other stuff. That's a good, good stuff to do. All right. The second 12 step call. I started in the book. We go, man, we go. Boom. Straight through. Jump them right into the steps. It's not too soon for that. There's a 12 step call that nobody will talk about from the podium. I'm one of the few people that you'll hear talk about it. It's a 12 step call in these rooms. I've been doing one all weekend. This is a 12 step call. People that are deluded in AA thinking they're working AA. If you haven't finished all your amends, let me be the first person to tell you, you have absolutely no idea whether AA works. If you have not done all, all of step one through all of step 12, soup to nuts, if you're not praying and meditating, you have absolutely no idea whether step, whether the AA 12 step program is working for you. You may be dry up to this point. You may be full of sobriety, but whether you've got spiritual awakening as the result of these 12 steps, you don't have no knowledge because you haven't done all 12 steps. And they're not linear. They're circular. You have to continue to go back through them over, and it becomes the fabric of your life. It's a way of, of life. It's not something I do. It's a way of life. It's part of me. All right. Real important. Let's jump to the guide on page 24. How many minutes I got? Okay. These are, these are things you need to bring on a 12 step call. I put them in the guide. A lot of people have never gone on a wet 12 step call. The guy who's, he's drinking a lot of booze. His body's full of sugar. A lot of, a lot of us are diabetic. If you take away the booze and then you're driving to the rehab, the guy will go into diabetic coma and die on you, right? You need to have sugar candy. The guy's loaded up on booze and he starts to go into DTS and withdraw. You're going to have to have booze to give him a shot of booze, to get him to a detox. If there's no detox, take him to the emergency room. The emergency room will get him down below the legal limit, below point points a one Oh in around here. In some States it's 0.05 soon as he gets below that, guess what? They're calling your ass and saying, come get them. We're done with them, man. Now you're on a 12 step call. It's the old fashioned 12 step call. You want a 40 gallon garbage bag cause he's going to puke. You know, you don't want, if he's in your car, you don't want him puking in the car. You need two people on a 12 step call. He'll try to jump out of the damn car. We're doing 60 miles an hour. So you're driving the car. Your safety is sitting in the back with the drunk. All right, I'm doing a 12 step call with Jean. Is he still here? Yeah, Jean's over there. In the middle of this 12 step call, his roommate comes home from the hospital. His, his liver was so big and that he got a ruptured hernia and they said, if you didn't come into the emergency room, you were going to die. So he just got done with hernia surgery and he walks in and now all of a sudden we got two 12 step calls and they're both right where they're live ones. Jean's got now all of a sudden we're split. He's got one. I got the other. If I walk in the room to do the wet 12 step call, I, you determine this, you pray together, you determine who's going to do the 12 step call. If I'm the 12 step, Mark and I go out, I say, okay, I'm going to do the 12 step call. You are the safety. He's got one job to walk in the room and say, figure out who's in the building with you. Look for weapons. It's not uncommon these days to walk in there and the guy's got a bottle of booze and a loaded gun sitting right next to it. You engage him in conversation is the 12 stepper. Get his attention focused on focused on you. Mark's going to go over and get the weapon. That means that I need to know to make sure that Mark knows how to clear a weapon. If he doesn't guess what? He's the 12 stepper and I'll go get the gun cause I know how to clear the weapon. You know, you're looking for baseball bats and knives. Drunks love to go into the kitchen. You're doing 12 step, keep them the hell out of the damn kitchen. All right, there's knives in there and this is serious stuff. You know, that's the deal. Read through the guide. Prayer and meditation is absolutely important. If you stay sober, it's a successful 12 step call. Don't kid yourself. There's hundreds of AAs that have gone on 12 step calls and a cunning alcoholic has convinced them their sobriety is, is, is shaky and they go out and they go out drinking. They become drinking, buddy. He's sitting at a bar talking to how a doesn't work. It's dangerous business. All right, I only got one other thing and I'm ready to wrap. You ready to wrap or you want something to share something on 12 step calls? Okay, if you go to your guide on page 24, there's one last thing I like to share. It's a poem that came from one of the international conventions shared by an old old timer. I share this whenever I do a workshop, it's called show the way for this poem doesn't touch you the way it touched me. You're missing something. I would rather, see a sermon than to hear one any day. I would rather one walk with me than merely tell the way for the eye is a better pupil, more willing than the ear. Find counsel is confusing, but example is always clear. You concern. You can soon learn to do it. If you let me see it done, I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run and the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creed for seeing good in action is what everybody needs. I may misunderstand you in the high advice you give, but there is no misunderstanding in how you act and how you live. The very last page of the guide is a vision for you. How many people in here know what the vision is that AA preaches? Read the last page of the guide. You'll the vision that AA preaches will jump off the page at you. Clean house, trust God, clean house, help others. That's our deal. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here with you guys. And I'm, I'm truly blessed. I'm truly blessed. I'm truly blessed. I'm truly blessed. Hey, Bart, Bart, hang on one second. Bart, hang on just, just hang on one more second. Bart, we are spiritual body. We need to close with a prayer. So if you guys will hang on just one second, I'll close with a prayer and then Bark will do some couple announcements and, and, and we'll do that deal. Okay. Heavenly father, we thank you for this opportunity for us to be here and, and, and, and learn more about you father. But we understand that knowledge is no good to an alcoholic. If we don't apply it and turn it into action, we, it will kill us. This knowledge or ego will use against us. And father, we ask you to help us to take the actions that we've heard here today. Keep us safe, protected until we meet again as a spiritual body on this journey, shoulder to shoulder on the high road to a new freedom. Father, thank you for this opportunity and we're forever in your debt in your name. Father on men. I bought alcohol. I just want to spend about an hour talking about the fellowship. A little bit of, of, of why we, we do this a little bit. Um, and what ha what it, what it feels like for me, um, in nineties, what happens in 97? Um, I heard Mark share and to me, this program is a lot about attraction and about action and, um, seeing the change in Mark from then. And now, and the few times I got to talk to him has, has been amazing for me. Um, and now I need to put a lot of that into action. Um, he introduced me and Dave through the phone and, um, I knew I would get something that a lot of us would get something about putting these two guys together. And I just definitely want to thank both of them. I think most, most important, um, we need to thank you guys, um, because there'd be no reason for all for them to come here and do this. If you guys didn't show up. Um, and I know it takes us months to put this together and gives us a reason to do some of the fellowship work and some of the service work. Um, and it's a lot of people that were here last year and the year before that we did this and a lot of new faces and the family just keeps growing. And, uh, I love that. Um, no, Tom is doing that thing in December and I, and I really, I can't wait to get together again with a bunch of us. Sometimes it gets a little lonely. I love everybody that's doing the work here and everybody that's just in the rooms here. Um, but I miss you guys too. So it gives us an opportunity to all get together. Um, and I really look forward to that nightly. Um, Rick has a few words that he wants to say, but again, thanks to all of you. I always make a lot of noise. I'm Rick. I'm an alcoholic, you know, um, but you know, me and bought a pretty much on the same page. Uh, so he said everything I was going to say, so I don't know what I'll say. Um, just, you know, once a, once a year, uh, us guys around here and we got, uh, some people from the Harlem group here that y'all want to thank, which is Sydney and Loretta and, uh, uh, and I know we got a friend here from, uh, the Bronx. Thanks for coming up. We got, uh, Rashid, from St. Albans, you know, um, there's a lot of use here. Um, friends, some new friends from college point, some new friends from middle village. We start getting, uh, lonely once a year and, uh, we're starting to get lonely already. We ain't gone. So, uh, we like to have you guys come down every year. Um, you know, about five and a, uh, four and a half years ago, um, I was out here and, uh, I was getting lonely and, uh, I went up to Worcester, Massachusetts, and I met a guy by the name of Don P and I met about a hundred other alcoholics and, uh, I was exposed to something that I know existed. Um, so when I came back, um, I read this and I read it before, but I read it again and it says, abandon yourself to God as you understand God, admit your faults to him and to your fellows, clear away the records of your past, give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit and you will surely meet some of us as you charge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um,