Surrendering Self-Reliance – Beginners Workshop – Part 3 of 3 – Howard P.

My name is Howard Pollans, and I'm an alcoholic. Nice to see you. Nice to see Walt here tonight. I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks. He's looking well. Nice to be here. This is a meeting that we're kind of spun off from a meeting called the Brentwood Beginners Meeting in Los Angeles, which had been going for a long time. And the meeting, and we just took the format essentially from their format. And there were some things I didn't like about it. One of them was there are no authorities in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now that, I didn' t like that. The speaker's opinions are his own. Of course. and I know they're just opinions but I think all of my opinions are facts otherwise why would I have that opinion a guy wouldn't have an opinion he didn't think was right anyway we're tickled to have so many people here in spite of the fact that I was the first speaker and the format is that the speaker will not so much focus on what it used to be like before he came to AA but on the things when he came to AA that in retrospect from where it looks today in retrospect what it was that helped him the most him or her, so it's him tonight. I called the guy that was he was really my sponsor as soon as I called him but we didn't formalize it for a few days I called him because I thought he was the president of Alcoholics Anonymous worldwide and And I asked him if he would take me to AA, and he agreed to. He said, are you drinking now? And I said no, which was the truth. I wasn't drinking now. I had just finished a half a pint, and I hadn't started on the second half a pint, so I'm not drinking now He said try not to drink anymore. I was forever putting that together. But that day, I drank my usual four half-a-pints and took by then a lethal dose what would today be a lethal of speed. And so by 6 o'clock in the evening, I didn't know what the hell I'd call the A.A. for. Things aren't that bad. And I hoped Kenny didn't come, but he came. And when I got in the truck, I said to him, I am not an alcoholic. And he smiled and said, I don't know if you're an alcoholic or not, but I know we're going to the right place. And he took me to the Culver City Studio group. and I'm not, you know, I had become a person who trusted nobody. All of the old put-down stuff that you learn in the tattletale had become part of me. The old belief system that you know your buddy's so brave and true, will you get to him before he gets to you? Murphy's Law. Nothing is as easy as it looks. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong and at the worst possible time. And I believed that. That was a fundamental part of my belief system. And the amazing thing in retrospect, when Kenny introduced me to the different people in AA, I trusted them. I knew they were glad to see me. They acted like they were Glad to See Me and I felt it. and that was a you know that was an amazing thing because i had not felt welcomed any place at home at work any place in my life i didn't have a safe place to go the tattletale was no longer a safe space to go and it used to be the only safe place and it was no long at a safe place. And I felt safe in AA. And if, you know, we had a founders meeting here and we had some old timers up on the stage. And one of the questions that was asked of the old timers was, if you could just convince a newcomer of one thing, what would that one thing be? And I will tell you what it would be for me. If I could convince a newcomer or anybody in AA of just one thing, it would go to meetings. I wouldn't try to convince you not to drink. I won't try and convince you not have a relationship. Because you're just shoveling sand against the tide, you know. But go to meetings. It's a safe place. And I was amazed. One of my first impressions of AA, and it has been a lasting impression, is these are guys out of the tattletale. And as soon as the meeting stops, they sit down and they be quiet and they listen. now nobody ever told me to do that but I immediately like right off the bat saw this is amazing that these guys who I know talk all the time in the tatter tail are quiet here and respectful and listen now they may be hating their wife or their mother-in-law God only knows what's going on inside our head But I was very impressed with how we are, and I am still impressed with how we are in meetings. And the meetings, see, we have all kinds of meetings. And after the first meeting, I told Kenny, well, I am an alcoholic, but AA can't help me. You see, my dad got sober in July of 1946 and he was in AA and I didn't realize this because I went in the Navy. But while I was in the navy, his footprints were all over meetings in Sumner County, Kansas. He and this other guy were the first two members in Argonia, Kansas, and started the Argonian group. Then whenever any other group would get started, Dad or Bill Bringer or both of them would go help them get started. And I was speaking at the Kansas State Convention, and I looked in there, and Dad was all over Sumner County, you know? He was a leader, and I never, anyway, he died sober at an AA meeting when I was in the Navy. I never spent much time with him when they were in AA, but when he was. But I learned two things that I never forgot about AA. Both of them were wrong. Alcoholics. Somehow I learned from him that alcoholics were people that drank whiskey in the morning. That was the definition that I got. And the other thing was, in AA they don't use the word God. They use two words, higher power. And so I had those beliefs when I came to that first meeting. And it scared me when they said God. I thought, hell, I must be in the wrong branch or something. This must be one of those right-winger things. And they also... See, I started drinking in the morning two or three years before I came day eight. And right before I had my first morning drink, it went through my mind, alcoholics drink in the evening. In the morning. And then it went into my... I drank anyway. And then I got rid of a hangover. And it was very clear to me, I drank in the morning to get rid of a hang over. I didn't know why alcoholics drank in their morning. It didn't make sense that alcoholics, you know, I didn' t know what the hell was wrong with them, but I just drank in order to get rid of the hangover." And at that first meeting, the first half of the meeting, they described alcoholics from the big book, and they related their stories, their little short stories, to those facts in the book. Alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. Loss of control. That's what the alcoholic has is loss of control, and that loss of controlled is characterized. They said in each and every one of us, it set us aside as a different class of people. In an insane obsessive belief each time we start to drink that somehow, someway, this time it's going to be different. Coupled with a physical reaction that manifests itself in the phenomenon of craving for more once we start. Well, as many of you know, I didn't think I craved to drink, but I talked to Kenny at the break and I said, identify that other stuff. And he said, well, there's a type of alcoholic who when he starts to drink slugs him down so fast that the craving doesn't have an opportunity to set in. Now that was then, you know... And they say don't analyze, that this isn't... and I heard this when I first came this is a living experience it's not an intellectual exercise well my living experience was as soon as I intellectually understood what the loss of control was related to I saw I was an alcoholic I got drunk one more time but I stayed sober because I saw that I am just like the guy that's obsessed with this deal. When I start to drink, I can handle it, and once I start, I cannot. And in Chapter 7 in the 12 and 12, it talks about many alcoholics saying they prayed to God that the obsession be taken away, and it was taken away. I didn't pray to God that the obsession would be taken away. I got it that I was an alcoholic and that my rotten life came from the fact that I drank too much, and if I didnít drink the first drink, then I wouldnít drink a second. That made sense to me, and I didnít drink. Also made sense for me not to pray. It was all right with me if you prayed, but it made sense with me notto pray. So I didn't. My sponsor, after I told him that night that AA wouldn't work for me because of all the God stuff, he said, why don't you go to meetings? He didn't put it that way. He said, I was just like you. And what I decided to do is I have to make my life work. I know that. So I'm going to go and I'm gonna listen at meetings to see how these sober people make their life work. And if they say something that looks like it would work in my life, then I'd try that and it would works. And he said, I had to go to a lot of meetings because most of what they said wasn't appealing to me. And so that was the way, that was what I did. I stopped drinking, and I came to meetings, and I listened. On Monday night it was my home group the Beginners in Discussion meeting and these guys were the best in the world. I'm telling you they were just the best of the world and Kenny had said if you see something you don't like about AA hey, for goodness sake, come and tell me. Because he said, I might have missed it and I might not like it either. Very early, I was at the home group meeting and they said, is anybody here for their first or second meeting? And nobody's hand went up. Now that was the clue that we're not going to do the regular Pat and Mike routine. Then he said, does anybody have something they want to talk about? This woman's hand shot up like lightning, and she stood up and she said, I want to tell you a story. She said, I want us to talk about, I guess, gratitude, God in my life or whatever. She said when I first came to AA the first night, I didn't have a job, and I was in terrible shape. And I asked Betty to be my sponsor, and I told her I didn'T have a jOb. And she said, Oh, yes, if I'm your sponsor, you have a joB starting tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock. And that will be to get the newspaper and look in the newspaper for Help Wanted ads. And when you see a Help WantED ad that you think you can do and you think You'd like to, then you call that number try to schedule an appointment send a resume and you do that all day long and at the end of the day just at 4.45 your job is over get ready, go to a meeting God's job through that process defines your work and she said this morning she said it was 12.37 in Culver City and I had a 1 o'clock meeting on Wilshire Boulevard, and I wasn't going to make it. And I said, God, please help me. She said, going up Fairfax, every light was green. I don't like that. Then going down Wilshire, every night was green, and the parking lot was right there in front of her building, and the elevator, of course, was there. She goes up, thank you God, and she's there two minutes before her appointment. And then she says in tears, and I got the interview. I got there in time and I caught the job. And I couldn't wait till the break to talk to Kenny and explain to him how these traffic signals are computer oriented and those computers are set on a clock and God don't change the time because someone prays. I said, she wants to go north on Fairfax. How about the poor sap that wants to go east and west on Venice? Is God going to crap on him because he prayed and he didn't? Kenny said, I'm glad you brought that to my attention. Because I was thinking that the night she came here, and she was not only unemployed, she was unemployable. And I was thanking, thank you God, that she got a job. I completely overlooked that computer part. I'm glad you brought that to my attention. I will tell you, I think it's the truth from then on out. Anybody that shared and if God gave them a traffic light, I believed it. And in the long run, I have come to believe If he doesn't get me one, it's because of my belief, my failure to believe. And if you get it, it has nothing to do with the fact that you're going at the right speed in order to catch the traffic lights. God did it for you. And that has enriched my life and helped me see that we each do this, whatever makes sense to us and have our own work for each one of us. Now, I got that, and as time goes by, I look back and say, that was a big thing. I heard a guy who turned out to be a movie mogul who I didn't know who he was, but at the Thursday night meeting, he was a speaker at the Brentwood meeting. And when he was speaking, he talked about driving down the street one day and just spontaneously saying, I love you, God. Which I kind of felt embarrassed for him that he would say that. But he said it, and then he said, I had this best feeling that I've ever had. Start down about the bottom of my feet and come up my body with goosebumps. He said it was better than a drink. and he said then after that he'd be driving down the street and then he would think I think I'll slip it in I love you God and he never got that feeling it had to be a spontaneous thing and I have had those kind of experiences and the fact that Marvin shared it made it true for me. Now, I can just tell you about Marvin that I would call him, I would, he gave me his phone number. Oh, I told Kenny. Kenny had just said one of the most important things I learned when I came in new. Kenny said, listen like someone would who wants to learn some new ways to live his life. And these people that are sober in here are finding ways that can help. Listen for similarities, don't listen for differences. Marvin was different. Marvin dressed different. He wore different kind of beads than we wore in the tattletale. I think even pearls this guy wore. My wife later met him and when we left, my wife said, Howard, I don't know what he does, but he spent more on that denim suit that he was wearing than you spent on your entire wardrobe. I later found out that he always bought his clothes at Giorgio's, but I didn't know anything about that. Didn't know any of it. I didn' t know anything about him. I just knew that when I called him, I had to go through two or three secretaries, but he always answered the phone, and if he was in a conference, she would say, well, Marvin's in a conference, but I'll get them. I said, don't bother him. I just called to say hi. Just tell him when he gets back how I called. She said, okay, but do you have a number? And in a few seconds, I'd get a call, and it would be Marvin. He'd say, how are things going? And we would talk. I didn't know. I wish sometimes I'd have had, this was a guy, you know. This was a guys, and I didn' t know what a guy. And then one night, I was watching the Oscars, and his movie that he had produced was up for an Oscar, and they zeroed him on him and his wife. And this was my buddy that would call me back. You know, that impressed me then. It still impresses me because we were the same. I was a scumbag out of a tattletale and he was out of Georgials or wherever those people drank. And we were the same. And the program made us the same." And I heard, I heard Ski from San Diego say he was 36 years and learning that all the people that he hated didn't feel the hate. And I at the next meeting says, how do you stop hating people? And Patty Hicks said, You can't be hateful and grateful. Well, what she said was, I just heard a guy say, You You can't be hateful and grateful at the same time. And he also said if you're NAA and you're sober, there's a basis for being grateful. But you'll have to work at it because if an alcoholic don't work at being grateful, he won't be grateful. And I didn't pray but this guy convinced me to learn to meditate. And I wasn't going to meditate on the St. Francis prayer. I decided to do was bring into my consciousness the truth about the first seven months of 1972, where my life was just plummeting. The character and quality of my life were disintegrating and nothing was to stop it. I was a candidate for a hard time in a federal penitentiary. My kids were candidates for that disgrace. And it was just a hopeless situation. And then I'd bring into my consciousness the truth that the moment I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, the plummeting stopped. My feelings were still way out of line with what was going on. But the problems, there were no new problems. really. And I took the equipment I'd stolen, took it back, and I felt good about that. I had meeting after meeting after meet to go to where people cared about me and where they shared things that helped me. And so meetings, meetings, get a sponsor. And one One night I heard the guy say, if you're doing AA and you're not working the steps, AA will stop being fun and you'll decide that AA doesn't work. And then you'll decided to go to a bar and have a drink and if you do that and the bartender says what's the matter? I thought she was going to AA, don't AA work? He said if you are not working these steps be honest with him and tell him you don't know if AA works or not because you wouldn't try. Up till then, I had not been willing to really work the steps. I took the equipment back and I did things within the steps, but I hadn't worked the steps and that night I decided to work the step and that has been an amazing, amazing experience in my life as it is in everybody's life that does it. And then I have to work the steps again. So going to meetings, listening, the things I heard, many of them, I am valid. Chuck C., who was my patron saint, if you will, in the program, to me he was a spiritual giant. The first time I heard him talk, I read Chapter 5. It was in December of 1972, and I was nervous, and I said, Chapter 5, how it works. Rarely have we seen a person say that. And I'm thinking, I hope nobody noticed that I said how it worked instead of how it work. Chuck gets up and says my name is Chuck C I'm an alcoholic everybody says hi Chuck he says did you hear Howard say Howard was hee hee hee he said we had a lady in my home group who thought Howard was God's name she'd say Our Father who art in heaven, how would be thy name? I didn't like Chuck. I invalidated him and a lot of other things, but I kept coming back and I kept listening and I did the steps. And it's a gradual thing, but it all goes back through that first night I got in the truck to say I am not an alcoholic I get in the trunk to go home from one meeting and I said well I am an alcoholic but AA can't help and Kenny said that's the way AA works you gotta go to meetings and you'll change and you won't even know you're changing And I went from a person who was certainly wasn't an alcoholic to a person who knew he was an alcoholic, but I knew AA wouldn't work. And very quickly I knew AAA would work because I kept coming back. So we'll have questions now. Any question you have of me, feel free to ask it. if we don't get a question I'll just go on talking is anybody going to don't look around what did you say John I'm John Hi John When did you start to pray? Oh When did you start to pray The first guy I met in AA was a guy named Frank Giroux and Frank didn't Frank was retired and my sponsor Kenny worked as a machinist and he and I were both at work so we couldn't get a hold of each other and I had anxiety attacks those of us who know what an anxiety attack knows the immobilization you can't even get your breath unless you finally breathe in a paper bag it's just immobilizing and I would call Frank and Frank could have me explain the problem to him. And I'd explain the problem to them. And then he would say, what do you think the worst potential consequences would be if this takes place? And I tell him and he said, well, could you live with that? And I said, yeah. And And then he would say, now that's the worst potential consequence. This guy ain't an engineer, and I'm supposed to be, but he's saying statistically these extreme events seldom happen. Something much less than that happens. And he had talked me down from the anxiety attack. And it worked. I got promoted into a job where I was doomed to failure it was an impossible situation and I called Frank to talk me down once again oh before that just synchronicity a word that Carl Jung invented so he wouldn't have to say God i went with them to a new meeting with frank on thursday and a guy said i just read this article where it says alcohol doesn't create a good feeling alcohol is a sedative drug that sedates that part of your brain that generates anxiety And once that part of your brain is sedated, you can experience an inherent good feeling that's a fundamental feature of life. And that's the good feeling. But alcohol don't create the good feelings. It just subdues the bad feelings that we live with all our lives. the problem with it is it numbs the brain like burning it numb and the numbness doesn't last as long as the burn so when the numbess is gone you're in worse shape than you were before and we learn to just keep drinking until we have convulsive seizures or jigslake or something so the drinking won't do it but I thought But that makes sense. The next week, everybody with a three-day holiday, everybody comes in Tuesday. I have this new group and I have an anxiety attack and I call Frank. And instead of Frank talking me down, he says, well it sounds like you have a real problem. I didn't call him to find out that I had a real problem. I called him to find out I didn't have a problem. And he said, I said, well what can I do Frank? And he says, I'll say the serenity prayer with you. And I said Frank, you know what I think about prayer. Why would you suggest that? And he Said, because you're trying to live up to your life's responsibility. and in order to do that you've got to have a help of everybody in your life but you need to have a sense of well-being a sense of well being that you used to get from drinking that you can never get again from drinking and what we do to get that is we say the serenity prayer hell we might have to say it a million times before it works but one time it'll work I said okay, and when we said God grant me, by this time my mind is saying what it always says. God doesn't change things because people pray. Grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change. Now another voice that wasn't there before last Thursday said, God doesn't have to change anything to give you serenity. Serenity is an inherent part of your life. You've just got it blocked off with anxiety. Courage to change the things I can. My head said, I have courage. I just get my strength in love anchor. but I have courage from the very start and when the prayer was over it occurred to me that I had been given the wisdom to know the difference and the anxiety attack was gone and I took an emotional sounding as I always do to check to see and the Anxiety has gone, and the problem is the same. And the problem didn't go away nearly for five or six years. It was a real problem. But I never had an anxiety attack since then. I've been anxious. But when those things happened to me, they caused me to ponder what has happened. And one of the things that had occurred to me was God didn't have to change anything for me not to have the anxiety attack. I had gone to an AA meeting and I had learned a new truth. I have serenity as an inherent part of my being and bringing the principle of that truth from the prayer into my consciousness made it a truth in the moment in my consciousness and the anxiety was gone and I thought now that's a hell of a good way to pray is to look for the principle not just by rote but look for a truth in the prayer and bring it into my consciousness in a prayerful way as the truth and that's when I started to pray and I have had, it's been an amazingly good thing. And it's, I have to really discipline myself, otherwise it's just a routine rote thing that's better than not praying at all. But the real thing is when I'm conscious of the truth and the principle coming into my mind as the truth. So, that's how... Yes? Sonny. If somebody didn't like to pray right at the beginning and didn't believe in God's stuff, do you know why one of the things that prompted me to ask you to become a sponsor of 1617 Miracles? How did you get through step 5, 6, and 7? How did I... How did he get through steps 5, 4, and 5? Okay. I've got how did I get through steps 5, 6 and 7 I have done that a series of times the first time my sponsor came to my house Kenny Sixbury had moved away A guy named George Cooper was my sponsor, and when I got the fourth step done, I told him, and he came to my house. And there were some things that when I did the fourth Step, I wasn't going to put down on the fourthstep. And then I thought, okay, I'm going to Put them on the Fourth Step, but I'm not going to read them to him or anybody else. But I'm going to get the most I can out of the fourth step. I'm gonna cut a corner here, but I'm not gonna cut it on the fourth tip because I'll read that and that's that. And when George came to the house, he said, I said to George, well, how are we gonna go about this? And he said well why don't we start off with you telling me the things that you weren't gonna tell me at all. Tell me those first. and I told him those things first and it changed everything he just sat there and listened and didn't make judgment he just sit there and listen and I went ahead and read the rest of it and the main thing he said afterwards that was an immense help to me was much of the stuff you're talking about was when you were a kid. And he said what I said to somebody else the other night. Kids are victims. If you hang on to that, pretty soon you're volunteering for it. When you get to a certain age, you become a volunteer. But kids are victims and that made sense to me and I no longer wanted to volunteer for those problems. And I didn't know how not to. I did the sixth step. You know, George said, when I leave, take the book down, read the first. I did just what it said. But see, I didn' t think God worked in my life. I know that I should have, you know, but the fact is I didn''t. and I said the seven step prayer and I didn't think God was there was nothing in there that was going to change my life now I went through the steps again when I was five years sober and it was amazing in that I saw I saw things about like I was raised in a German family and my dad was the authority over the kids and over the wife and nobody told me I was going to get to be the authority but I believed it and I was the damned authority and I'd tell you what to do if I was your authority and we would really go after it if I didn't have well I'm a lot that way now as a sponsor if you really push me. But you don't even have to really push me but it's not a character strength but I didn't know that that's the way I was until I did this inventory when I was five years sober and I saw that Pat has to knuckle under to me and I didn'T And she did knuckle under. And now she had stopped knuckling under, and my life was miserable. She's going to Al-Anon, and they taught her to just say no, you know. No, I'm not going to do that. If this causes you pain, I love you enough to help you go through the pain, but you're going through the paint, Howard, because I ain't going to go through it. And I did this inventory, and I saw that I had a sick need to be the authority in her life, particularly when she was looking for a higher power. When she was Looking for church or she was Lookin' for a minister or she Was lookin' for Est or Lifespring or anything, I would attack her for that in a subtle way because I wanted to be the authority and I didn't know that and I discovered that in that fourth step I did the fifth step just the way in fact nothing happened when I went through the fifth step with my sponsor so I went to it with another guy who had gone, you know, and nothing happened but then it occurred to me because the book said do it with your wife but you can't say anything that'll hurt her and my head said if I read to her that stuff it wouldn't hurt her but it would hurt me and then I thought I don't know if it'll hurt me or not but I'm going to do it and I read those things out of the inventory to her about how I had seen that I dominate her. And I told her, I don't want to be that way. And I said, you always say that I have better reasons than you. Now I'm going to give you a reason for you to keep doing what you're doing in Al-Anon because if you weren't doing that, I wouldn't be doing this. And this is a good thing to do. and went through the fifth step. I did the sixth and seventh just like I had. Ultimately, when I'm nine years sober, I have made my life work. I have make my life work and my life is dreadful. And I had learned to meditate and I meditate every day. Most of you know that I had a vision which I have had a lot of them but just thought I was daydreaming I had had a lot of voices talk to me and they talked about it at a committee and I just made a joke about it but this time my life was just if I had everything that I thought if I Had I'd be happy and I was dreadful and i meditated one morning and i felt good at the end of the meditation and i said why can't i feel this good when i first wake up and i envisioned a frozen lake and in a little bit i knew the ice on that lake was as thick as the laws of physics will allow ice to get in it you could put a sherman tank out on that ice and it would support me and And I then realized that walking across the lake a step at a time is a good metaphor for living my life a day at a time. Be careful because it's slippery. And by the way, if you don't know you're supported, you'll dread every step every day. And I started to come to believe. I started to take the second step to come to believe that my life is in the care of an all-powerful, guiding, creative intelligence and not just my biochemical life but the circumstances and events of my life the character and quality of my live and I came to believe that and my life was just magic now I did a new fourth step I did another I did it a new fifth step But now I did the sixth step and I looked at those first five propositions and now they fit. I am powerless over alcohol, bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I lack the power to manage my life. My problem is an insane delusion that my happiness and satisfaction is contingent only upon me managing well. And that's insane. I saw that insanity. I lacked the power. Now I had come to believe that every aspect of all being is in the care of an all-powerful, guiding creative intelligence, the spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things. That means, hell, more than 20%. All is all. All is all. And I saw that I believed that. That was a conviction of mine. And that my life was in that care. And then I had just done a fourth step. And i had got all my four steps together in doing this fourth step so that I could look at all the fears because the fears the book had said when I had done the fourth step after I had actually came to believe the book said why were we afraid wasn't it because self-reliance fails us we're now living on the basis of God reliant well I never had been before so those words didn't have meaning. They were just words, but now they had meaning, and I looked at my fears, and I saw if I would have, because 80 to 85 percent of them never happened. It was just stuff I was afraid would happen that never happened, the other stuff that did happen turns out to be the best things that could have happened in my life. I'm not kidding you. It's just the best things that could happen in my life and I saw that and now I'm at the sixth step and I'm reviewing these steps and I am seeing and I ok from here this is the road of life of self well run riot that I write about in the fourth step and share in the fifth step That's the road. And that life, the goodness in that life depends only on me managing well. And so there's never any goodness. There has to be resentment, selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty, fear. Those things have to be there because the self can't cut it. Now over here is another road. Let a fork in the road Not a big 90 degree turn, just a little turn and just a little fork in the road. That road I may have to live my life and take the same action in my life as I take on this other road. Only this way my sense of well-being is contingent not on me making anything happen but by me participating the same way I would participate here I participate there only I know that God is making everything happen and I can relax and that gives me a sense of well-being now that's not a I haven't made a big change but in the sixth step today i can look back and see you take that path for another 22 years and your life is in a hell of a lot better shape than it would be if you hadn't taken that path and i kind of saw that when i was there and that sixth step then i said the seventh step prayer and it had powerful principles of truth in it that had never been in it before my creator you know that says a heck of a lot like like well anyway a heckuva lot to me i am now willing that you should have all of me good and bad the whole because you got it anyway you know all i'm doing is going along with the gag it's been this way forever But I see it. I am now willing. And before, I was never willing. I couldn't possibly be willing. But now I'm willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. Now, I'm not supposed to know what the hell that is. I don't have to know I just know that I'm asking that if this character defect stands in the way of me being useful to God my fellow please take it away I'm willing to let it go and it's so it's been a long answer but it's a long journey through the fifth, sixth and seventh steps and I believe now that. I have to do all the steps, you don't have to. I didn't do them in rotation. I took equipment back before I'd done the fourth. There's a whole bunch of stuff I did out of sequence, but it didn't come together until ultimately I did it in sequence. Okay, I ran over five minutes which isn't much for me uh listen planet jim from washington dc is going to be our speaker next friday and i want you all to please come back and bring people we've got more chairs if we don't we'll get more and uh thank you guys very much for coming and i hope you'll come back again next week.