The Difference Between the Map and the Treasure – Jay S.

Hey, good morning everybody. Good morning. We're starting a little bit casually, a little bit behind schedule, but everybody's eating and that's fine and Bill and I are finally here and that'S good. Jay came early. Let's hear it for Jay. He's the youngest one of Yeah, so he gets up early and everything. It's true. But Jay just pointed something out. We did not officially have an A&A meeting yesterday because Jay just pointed out we did not pray ourselves out of here last night. So we're going to do some meditation this morning before we start. On the program today, the first thing we're going to discuss is how we met our sponsors and what they did with us. I can't say some of the stuff that Bill did because I'm sworn to secrecy, but then we'll have a Q&A and you can ask us questions about last night or this morning's sessions or anything you want. But Jay's going to start us off. I'll set the timer for three minutes and then we will say the serenity prayer so Jayden knows he's at an AA meeting. All right, hold on. So if you all get comfortable, close your eyes whenever you're ready, Jay. Thank you. God, grant me this serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Should I lead off so that it builds? Yeah, I don't care. Any way you want to do it. That's the way we should do it, yeah. Oh, that's right. Jay Alcoholic. so um yeah yeah i came uh i came to you on the second day of may in 1979 and alcoholics anonymous was a much different organization back then the organization wasn't different but the consciousness and and the public mind was very very different AA was basically known from the days of wine and roses there was not the there was not the access to recovery it was still pretty much a secret society you came to Alcoholics Anonymous generally in real trouble you weren't referred here I think the biggest difference is that most people now, come to Alcoholics Anonymous. They're referred by some kind of professional. Back in 1979 the people that referred you to Alcoholic Anonymous were generally police and maybe but it was a much different time. So the AA that I came into, another thing was the format. There was meetings at noon and meetings at 830 at night. And I hear music. Let's see. Would everybody please turn off their phone or at least put it to airplane mode? I can't believe he did that. He's leading by example. Thank you um so and the and the a that i came into there were lots and lots of new people and lots and lots 12-step calls generally the way that people came to alcoholics anonymous is they would call the central office and then somebody would be sent out to go and talk to them and bring them to a meeting much much different um and uh there wasn't the internet so that people could find the meetings as easily so it was all done on the phone and so i called in i mentioned yesterday about how i called it and i ended up at my first meeting and that's basically how things things happen so here i am in a i'm at that first meeting i uh i look up on the wall and i see the steps and the traditions and i'm just going oh my god this is the lamest thing that ever happened to anybody in history. A hipster like me has ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous, oh my God. But I also realized that I had been given every opportunity that a man could have and the best I could do with that gift of being born in the United States at this time and everything was that I ended up in AA. there had to be a real problem here and the problem probably had to do with me and so I thought okay I'm going to pay attention I'm going to try this thing. I'm gonna completely try this thing because I'd never completely tried anything I just uh and uh and so I'm three days sober and I'm sweating on an aga hide couch and this woman walks in and she had a bun in her hair and and I think I should say the night before Friday night there was a dance at the Alano Club I'm two and a half days I'm 2 days sober and I'll go vibrating into the dance and I got the good t-shirt on and there's women like the women here today they've like showered and everything and they're swinging their hips and I realize that I don't have any drugs in my pocket and I don't have a drink in my hand and I'm 24 years old and I am never going to get laid again in my entire life. So I get into the Pinot that I had been living in and I start driving towards the Stickenstein. I am not going to drink but I am going to find a woman who understands. And on the way, the first miracle happens. The voice says, this is not a good idea. Turn the car around. Now, I've heard that voice all of my life. But I always thought it sounds like somebody trying to tell me what I ought to do, and I'm not going to pay attention to it. I'd go and do whatever they... But this time I turned the car around, and I grabbed this guy Larry, and he was working the hinge at the dance, and I said, Talk program to me, please. I've had to do that three or four times in the 36 years that I've been with you. Just get somebody and say, talk, program to me, please. I'm in trouble. Help. Okay? And so this guy stopped what he was doing. He got somebody else to watch the hymn. She got me a copy of the big book. I'd been too cool to get a big book, right? Didn't want to look like I was going to Bible study. Alcoholics and anonymy. and uh and i uh and eddie sent me home and uh i start reading the book and you know and i'm reading sweating and smoking and reading sweating And I don't understand what's going on. And I finally get to the point where I'm in we agnostics and I understood the story at the end of we agnostics. It's Fitz Mayo's story. Fitz Mayo was the third guy sober in New York and Fitz had been a preacher's son and his stories is in the book and anyway he tells the story of getting down on his knees the voice says to him, who are you to say there is no God? I understood that and this guy got down on his knees and said a prayer and he had a white light experience and he was very fundamental in the creation of what we know as Alcoholics Anonymous. So I did what that guy did. I understood the story. So I got down on my knees and I said my prayer. My prayer was, I don't know if from Jesus or Buddha, I don' t know the Talmud, the Torah, the Banishment, just please get me the top. I'll do whatever these dried up old geeks say to do just please help me not to drink and i believe now at that moment i'd done the third the first three steps that prayer was perfect i'm with you this morning so then i go to the alano club i'm sitting there and i'm smoking sitting on a naga high couch stuck to it right this woman walks in and she's got a bun in her hair and black dress on she looks like she's of Mass, 8,312 times. She says, oh young man, you're new, aren't you? How can you tell? She said, I didn't tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words. What are they? Find God or die. Not that. Oh please, not that. Now 36 years later, I can tell you secret to Alcoholics Anonymous in four words. Find God and live. Live wondrously, live abundantly. And when I say God, please don't be confused with what it is you think I might be saying. I'm talking about an experience that I've had within the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm hanging a single word that's simple to say. That's it. But when I talk about God for the rest of this weekend, I'm talking about an experience that I've had within the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. So this woman terrifies me. I go into the noon meeting. There's a guy taking a cake for four years. I ask him to sponsor me because I need backup from these kinds whack jobs right and so it starts out and i am an active member of alcoholics anonymous and i never will be able to repay that man in his al-anon life they literally saved my life and uh the uh so we start getting together once a week and he'd ask me what i'm doing and this and that and another thing and um by the time it's week three i mean like this is the kind of shape I'm in. I would show up at his doorstep baffled at three o'clock in the afternoon. Noon meeting's been over for an hour and a half. Whoever I went to coffee has gone home or off to work or something, and I'm just like... And I would go and I would sit on my sponsor's porch sometime and just wait for him to come home. Sit there and smoke, his wife would get home first and she'd open the door and she put on a pot of coffee and she let me sit there and wait until my sponsor came home from work. That is love. That is love. Anyway, when I had three weeks sober, back in 1979 you could read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous unsupervised. Dangerous times. Really? Really? That's why they had to come out with a fourth edition. But anyway, so I'm reading and, I mean, this is how toasted I am. We would go from the meeting at noon down to the beach and sit there and read AA literature back and forth to each other because we didn't know what to do. Lifeguard George and I. and uh and we'd uh because we were just without I was I was really I needed help and anyway I'm reading it and I'm about three weeks sober and I see in in uh in chapter five where if we don't do an inventory we we may drink we may never get over drinking so I run to my sponsor I go I'm gonna drink he goes no you're not i'm not gonna drink but he said why do you say that and i showed him he goes oh that he so he gave me my four-step guide it was two pieces of paper with a line down the middle of each and he and his buddy told me some really disgusting things about themselves i was you know and and and then he sent me home with my instructions on doing my my inventory. These were the instructions he gave me. He said, kid, get yourself really jacked up on coffee. So this is before Starbucks. You had to brew the stuff and then you had to drink it. So it took a while to get ramped up. And then he said, what I want you to do is I want you to sit at the kitchen table. He says, I want you to look at the door. He said, I I want you to think about every place that you ever lived. I want to you think about your family members, where you went to school, where you worked. And I want in your mind's eye just have a parade of these people walking through the door. And any time somebody walks through that door and your stomach tightens, write down their name. And then you get three sentences as to why, Because nobody's life is that interesting, kid. And then he said I want you to write down what you're afraid of. Write down the sexual weirdness. He said we're only impressed if it involves invertebrates. And then, he said, you know, want to know what you've done with them or who you stole the money from and all that stuff. So write that stuff down. Now was this a fearless and thorough moral inventory using all four columns? No. It was the greatest hits, okay? What I wrote down on that first inventory was all the stuff that when I put my head on the pillow went around and around and round and around my mind. That's the stuff needs to be on the inventory, that first one. What about all the other deep stuff that may be dwelling down within me? It'll get in contact with you. You don't have to worry about it, but what we want to do is we want to get those big things out of the way. And so I wrote that stuff down, got together with my sponsor, You know, I mean, it's like, I'm afraid of her, her mother, her sister, her dog. You know? I mean Yavapai County sheriffs. I mean there's this thing that somehow the inventory is supposed to be difficult. Poppycock. Number one, the steps are designed for alcoholics. We're about that deep. Okay? Sam Shoemaker who was Bill Wilson's spiritual advisor said there's only one sin which one? thinking that we're different from our fellows now the reason that I believe that alcoholism is a disease more today than I did when I wrote that first inventory is because I've heard a lot of fifth steps and they're all the same some are a little more boring than others but we're alcoholic males there's only so many things we can do to destroy ourselves we just aren't that creative and I think for my sisters in the fellowships it may be the same thing and so you get that stuff down that I think is so awful about me that makes me so different and then I got together with my sponsor the next day and I read it to him and uh and he listened and then we said a silly prayer or two and then i i burned it oh no what happened to your eighth step you know your your this stuff is the stuff that it's it's accessible you know and um we burned it he tells me to go spend a couple hours down at the beach. I went and did that. We got together later. I did the silly prayers with him. And then he sends me out to start doing my amends. I'm 24 days sober, and I'm a fully vested member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had the first person ask me to sponsor him when I was 28 days sober. I called my sponsor. I said, what do I do? What do I say? He said, Jay, you say yes. Really? He says, Jay, if they're sick enough to ask you for help, you can't hurt them. Okay? Nothing is as dangerous as an alcoholic woman or man trying to solve their problems by themselves. You can't herd them. And I started out trying to work with others and tried being their friend, tried being there director and none of that was really working that i mean i was i was doing the best i could and uh there's this thing about oh well i'm not good at it well bill wilson wasn't good at none of us are i'm pretty good at decades later No, no, no. No, that was worth the shot. But the thing is that I got involved and I started doing it. Now, I want to tell you that about five years ago there's this thing called Facebook. and this man the first man that asked me to sponsor him i hadn't seen him in 25 years or no 30 years by then this little thing comes across is this my sponsor and the guy's still sober you know um so i mean and it doesn't have anything to do with me it doesn't have anything to do with me although in the beginning it feels like but the thing is is that i need to be available so i start working with people i'm having a good time with it and uh but nobody seems to be quite as twisted as i am they don't seem as enthusiastic as i why is it that they aren't i mean if my sponsor said he was going to be someplace, I showed up there, you know, early just because I didn't want to miss anything. But nobody's doing that with me now. So then what I decided was I wanted to grow in effectiveness and understanding. And so I went out and I took four different guys that i admired in alcoholics anonymous and i called them up and i said can i take you to lunch and they all said yes and at different times i took these guys to lunch i took a pad of paper i said what'd your sponsor do with you what do you do with your sponsees and i learned some really good stuff and so i cobbled it together and tried different things now the great thing about newcomers is they don't know. They're new. Just try shit on them. See what happens, right? And then see how things work. But the most important thing that I learned is start reading the literature. Now with my sponsor and the consciousness of the AA that I came into, they literally would say, are you reading the book? That was it. We never talked about the book Alcoholics Anonymous or the 12 and 12 at all you went to book studies to do that but with my with the sponsors I never heard of it but what happened is is that um I started say and read it and then come and we'll talk about it but then I found that they weren't reading it when we'd get together to talk about so that's what I started having them read it to me and in the beginning I had them read it to me and that turned out to be a little demeaning and so it became and some people they don't read very well so it become a thing of I'd read two pages they'd read 2 pages and now with people that I sponsor what we do is we do that with the big book and we do it with the 12 and 12 and I got guys that I take through the concepts now not the service manual But through the pamphlet, through the Concepts Illustrated. But anyway, so that's what my first sponsor did not give me much direction at all because we were so busy going out and picking up new people. You know, I had a car, so I'd go down to the Alano Club and they'd say, here's where they are. Go get them. Don't talk to them. you might pollute them we'll take care of that but you go get them and anyway that's it applause applause Bill Alcoholic so I come in in 1985 he was six years sober and I'm one of those that he practiced on I didn't know I didn' t know he didn't what the hell he was doing I knew a lot he seemed like he knew what he was doing a quick story some years ago this friend of mine that I got sober with he fell in with this Indian guru a relatively prominent guy in India and this guy came over to the United States and was giving some talks in the United States. And my friend Wayne just said, let's go hear him at Henry Dennison's house. You know? So cool. That's another story. But anyway, we go there and he gives his talk and it was very interesting. Wayne is completely enthralled with this guy. It was really fun to watch. After he gave his talk, we go in this little back room, and just the three of us are just sitting there hanging out talking. And this guy Ramesh is a really interesting man, very bright. And so I'm talking away like I do, just yabbering away, and he looks at me, Rameshm, and he starts laughing. And I said, what are you laughing at, man? And he says, I just love you alcoholics and drug addicts. and i said why is that he goes well the rest of them out there are trying to get awakened you're just trying to figure out what the hell happened and uh like his description of himself in sober is the same as me what the hell happened man you know i mean there's no rational explanation i'm out there for 22 23 years just doing it all you know and killing myself and all of a sudden one day it stops I think we have a tendency to give credit to the recovery program that we went through you know because we learn a lot there so clearly it's intellectual understanding right i can finally see if that's true that we can finally see what causes us to finally see because people have been talking to us for years i mean this is nothing new you know now we're locked up inside this place and they're talking at us again you know why is it different so i come into alcoholics anonymous baffled without really knowing that I'm baffled. You know, I mean, it's like everything's brand new. Everything's new. They've taken away my medication, so absolutely everything I do is brand new." I don't know about you, I could not imagine having sex sober. I mean how do you do that looking right at them and then talking to them and stuff? You know? I just said, well, I'm going to worry about that later. I'm not addressing this issue at this point. It was like that for me, it was like that. I mean, I just didn't, I was uncomfortable everywhere I was. Without really being aware that I'm uncomfortable wherever I am, I'm just kind of on edge, you know? It's like sitting on a couch that's stuffed with steel wool, you knows? Everything moves all the time, you notice? And that's kind of where most of us I think are at some level, you know, where you're just trying to figure it out you know I mean we all stand in the side but away from the crowd a little bit and listen to how everybody's talking and stuff so that we can talk right you don't want to say the wrong thing you know. I'm the guy that walks in the room and if you're looking at me is what the hell are you looking at and if You're not looking at Me I'm heartbroken there's like no middle ground You know, there are not striations of emotions. You know this is like on off on off. It's like that 150 times a day Flipping the switch you're pissed off and then you're crying. Yeah, it's like it's at a roller coaster So I come in and I go to the gong show and I'm thinking it was probably within the next two weeks. I I asked him to sponsor me now he was very prevalent he was in all the meetings he was his wife at the time had just gotten sober and so everywhere I went there he was you know I mean we're all were hanging at the Alano Club and most of the meetings he there you know he was there at the gong show he was at the men's tag meeting he was that you know he was always around and it looked like and it probably was the case he knew everybody he was connected you know and he was very enthusiastic he always had a lot to say I think that's why I asked him to sponsor me but I'm not really sure I mean it seemed like the right thing to do and so I said you know will you sponsor me and at the time I was calling myself an alcoholic and an addict because they taught me to do that in the recovery place and trust me I'm an addict you know and so I was doing that because everybody was doing it this was like maybe the first big wave of people coming out of recovery places coming into AA unbeknownst to me I was part of that whole big thing you know not calling the central office but coming in through the recovery industry, which I have absolutely nothing against. These people are our friends. They're trying to help. We should be integrated with them. We should part of them. We should understand what's going on. But there was a lot of animosity towards that when I came in. People were reading newspaper articles in the meetings and talking about spin dries and people making money off of AA and it made me feel like an outsider. Well, I'm just arrogant and pushy enough where it just pissed me off. So I started talking about it a lot just to create havoc. So somebody else, you can chase people out of AA and not even know it. I don't think those opinions belong in the meetings. I ask him to sponsor me. I'm calling myself an alcoholic and addict. He takes me outside the Alano Club. It's at night. And he says, I noticed that you call yourself an alcoholic in an attic. I go, well, yeah. He says, well if you're calling yourself an addict because you think it's a little hipper, slicker, and cooler, you might want to drop it and be like everybody else for the first time in your life. This is Alcoholics Anonymous. And I remember standing there, and he's short if you haven't noticed. and I'm looking down at him what was standing in front of me was every god damn authority figure that has ever been in my life and I've yelled and railed against all of them and I looked at him and that started coming up and I just went okay I mean when you end up in AA there's just no argument anymore I mean my friend Scott Redman says that Alcoholics Anonymous has offered me a level of lameness that I did not know was available I mean this is not where the hip people are the hip people are still out there you know and and I remember driving home that night being kind of pissed off and then I thought to myself how did he know how did he that I was trying once again to separate myself from the group not be just like all of you and and I thought also you know this is gonna be difficult this guy he didn't ask me any questions about myself he didn't ask me where I came from to get kind of a feel for my case so that he could approach me in a certain way that would be helpful to me and make the transition into AA a little more smooth you know he was never he's still not like that you know and but I showed up at his house Thursday at 5 o'clock and at the time we hadn't gotten to the point of where you know I read a page and you read a page he just had me sit there and read it to him out loud you know and he listened and he every so often he would stop me and bring something to my attention because he had a book he was following along right and I really liked that it was like going to class and I could ask him questions and stuff. We were alone together in the room. This is what most of us that don't sponsor people try to avoid, is being alone with another human being and actually having to truly interact without any outside stimulus at all. It scares the shit out of us. It's called intimacy. Sponsoring people is a very intimate thing. And you're not conscious of that at the time. but as the years go by and those defenses fall away my insecurities decrease I'm able to get closer and closer and close to you because I'm less afraid and when I jokingly see it said that I think I'm better at it I'm just better at getting close to I know now that you cannot hurt me why would you you know I mean it just I just don't have anything to defend there's nothing to protect anymore everybody knows everything about me which is kind of embarrassing you know but there's nothing to hide there's something to defend and he was always he's always been very much that way with me very talk to me you know you can talk to me and God I'm a talker and he would stop me and say what chapter are we on let's get back to the you know and he keep keep me on track and each week i went by we read another chapter in the book and he skipped the third step with me he did not make me get on my knees and hold his hands and pray which i didn't know that you were all doing that you know anyway so i didnít know that anything got skipped more about that later i did my inventory and i came over to do my fifth step and i walked up to his house knocking on the door and i hear somebody yelling he's sitting out on the beach in a beach chair and he's got another chair now this is southern california there's thousands of goddamn people on the Beach right and this fifth step should be done in dark rooms with kind of music in the background or something you know this is heavy stuff he says come on out here and he had a pad with him you know and I sat there and I did my fifth step in public with this stranger the stranger I didn't we didn't really know each other we'd known each other for maybe three or four weeks that's about how long it takes to get to the fifth step and uh and I Did My Fifth Step and then he asked me he says is there anything that you've left out that you're not going to tell me. Tell me now. So I told him about the vacuum cleaner, which is not like robbing a bank or murdering people. It's like weird stuff that you do when nobody's looking. Nobody ever needs to know about the vaccine cleaner, you know? Why in God's name did I tell him about The Vacuum Cleaner? And years later, we're in The Hague in the Netherlands. Remember that? And we're walking around. There's all these museums. And there's a vacuum cleaner museum. Porn. Porn is porn. And we went in and we found pretty much the kind of vacuum cleaner. Took some pictures next to it. He told me, he says, there will come a day in your life where you will share all of this from the podium and some of it's not really appropriate but there's nothing anymore that has any power over me that person that I used to be or that kid that was experimental all the stuff all the dark stories that I've carried around that caused me to feel less about myself there's no more power in any of them isn't that odd you know what that's called freedom freedom freedom happens here and he told me to go be quiet go reflect for an hour on the work that i'd done and if there was anything i left out to call him later and he said another thing to me that was a real experience. He says, when you walk back in the door of your house, think about the guy that walked through that door six months ago or whenever it was and the guy who's walking through the door now. And literally I came home and the wife and kids were gone and I had to stick the key and lock to unlock the door which is odd really and I unlocked the door and I took a moment and I thought about it and you know what struck me? The obsession had been lifted and I had not noticed. I'd been busy trying to figure out how to get along at AA and intrigued by the whole experience and I said, I had not noticed and I sad the first real prayer that I probably maybe ever had said. And that was, I invited God over for a barbecue. I didn't know what else to do, you know? I didn' t get on my knees and it wasn' t anything heavy. It was just like, I think you'd like this house. It's kind of nice here now. Nobody's screaming and yelling and it's quiet. Sometime after that, i called him up and the first annual south bay roundup was going on and uh wasn't it august the first one anyway and uh he was down there working a booth you know i didn't even know if i was gonna go or not he told me to go but you know and uh i called them up he called me back and I said I've got a problem and I need to talk I need to talk come down to the roundup come down to the Marriott I'll meet you there so I can drive down there and we're in the lobby of this big hotel the Marriott Hotel in Torrance and we're sitting there and I'm going on I forget what the problem was I don't remember we're going on and he interrupted me he says do you want me to pray with you and I said yeah would you please because the whole God thing is stupid right it's just stupid and they suck you into it and pretty soon you walk around going god god god God, God. And I was just, I just didn't like it. It bothers me to this day when somebody gets up at the podium and just God this and God that, and you're just like, God, shut the hell up, you know? You're just whistling in the dark hoping maybe if I say it enough times it'll happen, you know. That was my attitude, just really not good. He told me one time, he said, your opinion is absolutely irrelevant we don't need you here you need us i thought that was cold so this this admission to him this was a big deal for me he said do you want me to pray with you and i said would you please and he goes well let's do it right here and we're in the lobby people are And I looked at him, and I went, please don't make me do that. Because I would have done it at that point. I would Have done it. And he took me around the corner. Every year I go to the roundup, I go visit the shrine. We sat in this chair, in this bench in the hallway. And I think he put his arm around me, and we breathed a little bit. And he said, you know, breathe God in and breathe your problems out and that kind of stuff. And we did the third step. I later asked him, I said, why didn't you do the third steps? Why didn't he do the first step with me when we were reading the book? He says, because I was afraid you'd come across the table at me. So he waited. So sponsorship is not etched in stone. It's not etced in stone I hear some people say well if the guy can't do a third step he's just not ready how do you know how do that you know he might be ready he's just not willing it's like you know now today what happens to me today this has happened several times to me when we get to the third step and I say to the guy I go are you ready to do the third step. The guy will look at me and he goes, no. I go, why not? He goes, well, I have a problem with God. I look right at him and I go me too. Let's pray. And then I've had a couple of guys say, well I don't even believe in God. I looked right at them without missing a beat and I got nobody really does let's pray because it says right here in this book, pray. I don't know about you, but I am like out of options. Nothing else seems to have ever worked in my life. This is working really well and these people that I'm following around, they pray and they meditate and they seem peaceful they seem their lives are getting better i mean the evidence is astounding the other thing about that and i know jay feels much the same way i mean we all can come up with a certain theology we've been raised in certain cultures by people some of us have been raised going to church since we were very little my experience is that most people if they were raised in a church they somehow end up back in that church with a completely different attitude than they had before when they were being forced to go it seemed because that's where we're from and we're comfortable there i was raised with nothing you know so i don't have any root in that my experience in alcoholics anonymous is that god is an experience it's not a concept and if you do this work it will happen to you now you can label it whatever you want you know or you can just ignore it you know how people in aa talk about coincidences and everybody laughs because we all know it's god i'm convinced they're fucking coincidences you know and they've been going on forever and we just were so loaded we never noticed you know there's all this stuff that's happening the universe by its very nature is a giving place we just take exception to what it's giving us we think it should be something different you know well it's not you know and once you fall into that this stuff starts to unfold right in front of me it's always been unfolding but i just rejected it but i've had some powerful experiences in a mostly around sponsoring people mostly it's been between me and one other person in a room alone mostly there's been other ones but these are powerful human experiences that are hard to ignore hard to ignore at the time am I doing okay at the time that all this was going down people were starting to take meetings to Russia and somehow I got on the mailing list for the little newsletter they were putting out. And I looked at that and I go, you know, I've got some money now. I could go to Russia, carry the message, you know? And I go to Jay and I goes, you know, man, I'm going to go to Russia and carry the message. He looks at me and he goes, why don't you go to Oregon and make your amends. Killjoy. Back on track. Where'd we leave off? Nine Steps. Well, we'll get around to it, you know. So I've never been to Russia. I've been to Oregon a bunch of times, you know. And I went up to Oregon and I made my amends to that first ex-wife and those kids and a doctor up there and some other people started the process of cleaning it up trying my best to clean it up I can tell you today I have a really good relationship with that ex-wife and my second ex- wife her and I are like brother and sister we're together a lot we always were kind of like brother and sister and there's been a lot of forgiveness you know that has come from her you know I never walked away from that family I never walked the way from them I told him I'm not going anywhere I'm still here I'm right here and I paid the money like clockwork every month you know sent my daughter to college and did what we're supposed to do you know and I just I walked in there and there's no one else to blame and I just took the heat started showing up to the soccer games all those soccer moms quit talking to me this one woman was on the side of the field one day and she forgot that she didn't like me and she started talking to me we had this nice conversation I could see in her eyes where she realized she had screwed up and she just kind of stopped and turned away Mary my ex-wife calls me a day or two later she's I heard you had a nice little conversation with Debbie. And I said, yeah, she forgot she didn't like me. And Mary laughed and she goes, yes, she said to me, you know, he's not such a bad guy. And Mary said, yes, he is hard to hate. So here's the key, man. Be hard to hate. Because if they hate you, it's probably for good cause. So if you start changing and just be real cute pretty soon they'll forget they hate you you know there'll be these little gaps of hate and you know we know about hate don't we you ever hated somebody really bad and on a certain day you forget to hate them so the day after that you get a double up on it you skip today you know because you know they feel it we feel it i made my amends and i'm sponsoring people and I've had the same sponsor for 31 years. I should have fired him many times, but he needs me now. We started doing stuff together. We started speaking together. We started giving talks. We started having workshops together. It's been a real blessing. He talks about going to Coe, Switzerland, and to the headquarters of the Initiatives of Change, which is the old Oxford group. And my wife and I went with him in Adele. It was an incredible experience. You know, those people are very aware of us, of their roots of Alcoholics Anonymous. They're very proud of that. And it was a powerful experience. I'd been around a good portion of the world doing AA stuff. All of us have. And what an incredible life. Who would have ever guessed, who would have ever guessed that it would be this abundant? And I'll tell you something just to close quickly. Doing inventories and doing the work is important stuff. We need to do that so that we have a message that has depth and weight. How can we guide someone through the process if we have not done it ourselves? AA is about experience not opinions and concepts it's about experience now if you have some opinions hopefully they're based in experience that you've had and you're trying to verbalize it you know true wisdom is experience combined with intellect and if I can verbalize my experience maybe you'll learn something from it. If I can learn to listen to you, I will learn from your experience, your life experience. When you come here, you haven't been asleep the whole time. You know some stuff. Things have happened to you and you need to tell me. Part of my job is to listen to that. Everything changes when you go from reading a fifth step to your sponsor to when you start listening to them and you're now the sponsor. The whole game changes. I mean completely. It is a completely different program. One through nine is about 10%, maybe 15% of the program, max. And we suffer over it. We've got 87 column expanded versions of the inventory. We've got manuals and workbooks and stuff and to me, a lot of this is just another form of self-obsession. We're just working on ourselves and working on ourselves. Here's some advice for you. Here is an opinion from Bill C. Stop working on yourself. It's a waste of time. You don't need to dredge up your character defects and work on them. They will visit you with alarming regularity. And you'll be so confronted with them, you cannot ignore them. And you know how you confront them? Working with others. Every defect of character you have will present itself. When I started listening to the fifth steps, the whole game changed. I don't go to seven or eight or ten meetings a week anymore. I have a life. If you've been sober some time, like five, ten, fifteen years, and you're still going to 87 meetings a year, week there's something wrong you know what happens is people call people come to the house now you know in between the meetings I go to I'm working with these guys it seemed that's why we're here everything else is an activity this is the real action is reaching out and trying to work with others as I was worked with thank you so Matt the alcoholic opinions expressed at this table are not necessarily the opinions of Alcoholics Anonymous we just want you to be clear on that I do have an experience with God and I will know I love everything I've heard and it's a pleasure to be here again today and one of the things I wanted to say before I start talking about how I was sponsored is you know sandy beach is a guy love he passed away recently but he said over and over and Bill touched on it this is a map this is a map to a treasure and around here a lot of people memorize the map and they never go to the treasure right you have to take the steps on the map to get the treasure knowing the map isn't the treasure and I've heard a lot of times in AA meetings sponsorships not mentioned in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous well yeah if you're looking for the word sponsorship in the map it's not mentioned but if you start and the doctor's opinion is where I start in the letter the doctor wrote in the third paragraph he says in the course of his third treatment he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery as part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his concept to other alcoholics and pressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others this has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship sponsorships in the very first part of the big book unless you're trying to memorize a map and so that's what we're up here to talk about bill used to say all the time i'm surprised it hasn't come up yet he said you don't have to give it away to keep it. Everybody says you get to step 12, you give it a way to keep it. You give it away to get it right and that's why we come here. That's what we want to talk about because we keep getting it and it's amazing you know. It's like getting more skillful at truly helping other people is getting more skillful at the art of life because we're all connected to each other. You know one of the great awakenings for me like Bill talks about God without even knowing you're talking about God, right? Experiences. God isn't the dancer, the dancer. He's the dancing, right, and so I've had all these experiences and learned to accept that they come when I turn into God. Like the 11th step has a beautiful line where we're looking for what we could pack into the stream of life. That means the stream. Streams go in one direction. You get to pack in or were you trying to get stuff for yourself swimming upstream that direction to me is the open-heartedness of the experience of consciousness unfolding or a power greater than myself or i like to call it the timeless plentitude of being and my journey and sponsorship has been continually being right sized enough and open enough by all the things bill and j have talked about to constantly have a connection and a presence with that and to know when i don't if i'm off a little bit and i came in i told you i asked a guy at a meeting my third or fourth meeting my name john i said he was really weird because i was raised by a family that taught me to be polite and they said if someone asks you a question you don't answer with a question and i asked this guy will you be my sponsor and he answered with a questions he said do you have a job which seemed to me a completely irrelevant question but now that i've sponsored a lot of guys i totally understand why you asked me that and i said no i don't have a job and he gave me his first direction he said get a job and like an idiot i said what kind of job should i get i have no idea why i thought he was kelly's temporary services all of a sudden and he looks at me and he goes the kind with a paycheck which was great advice because it broadened my field like my narrow field was drying up and i got a job you know like i said at midnight to four in the morning stacking newspapers on a loading dock and that job was not beneath me managing a restaurant was beneath me a few years before that stacking papers on a loading dock was just perfect thank you my brain was jello you know i needed some time and i smoked camel cigarettes and said the serenity prayer on the loading dock on my brakes because i was fried man i was not in good then i went home to my mom's and dad's house in time for breakfast you know humbling humbling humbling and I went to a lot of meetings and I talked a little bit the other day about some of the important lessons my sponsor gave me but one of the most fundamental things he did and Bill taught me this again later is he did not get involved in my drama you know I had a baby across town with this girl and we're trying to figure out how we're going to move forward my mom's dying of cancer I owe everybody thousands of dollars. I have warrants out for my arrest. That was a good sponsorship story. I'll tell you this, 60 or 90 days sober, I'm driving home from a meeting and there's smoke coming out of my tailpipe because one of my drug buddies, I don't know who at this time, had put sugar in my gas tank. I don' t know why. I'm sure I earned it. But I'm driving and there is smoke coming out my tail pipe and the police pull me over and I'm like Like, oh God, you know, I don't have insurance. I don' t know where the registration is. I have a license, but it's been expired for several years. And he says, can I see your license and insurance? And I said, you kno, officer, I just got a 90-day chip today in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, oh, can i see your license and registration? So I found the registration for this piece of crap car and I handed him my license and I'm looking at the expiration date doing math in my head which I've never been good at and he looks at it and looks at me and goes I'll be right back and he goes to his car and I'm playing light and camel cigarettes and saying the serenity prayer and he comes back to the car and he says can you step out of the car please and I said I'm 90 days sober and alcoholic synonymous and he said welcome to your past Mr. Mitchell get out of your car and put your hands behind your back and I got locked up on Friday evening and my parents were in another country and I was in jail until Monday morning and when they chained me up to go out to see the judge, the guy next to me and I'm not kidding, pulled crack out of his underwear and smoked it on a table as we're waiting to go outside. And I'm going, God grant me this serenity! This is bullshit! And my sober brother who's 12 years sober and the mother of my daughter standing side by side in the court and i walk out and my brother starts laughing because i'm chained to these skinheads and my girlfriend starts crying and i get home from jail i have to walk to my car somebody has now taken and smashed it up onto the sidewalk that's happened while i was in jail someone hit it repeatedly with a car so i don't know who it is who hates me out there but somebody does so i drove my mr magoo accordion car with the city coming out to my mom's and dad's house i lock I unlock the door. I haven't slept for three days because I've been in jail. I walk in, the phone rings. I pick up the phone. It goes, hey, it's Officer Smith from Redondo Beach Police Department. I go, oh, Jesus Christ, what now? And he goes, ha, I'm just effing with you. It's your sponsor. And I said, dude, that's not funny. I've bee in jail for four days. And he says, I know. And I go how do you know? And he said, because I drove by you while they were arresting you. And I say, well, why didn't you help me? And he go, I am not walking up on a cop when they are running near traffic. I am no doing that. And I go, he goes, what are you going to do right now? I said, I'm going to go to bed. He goes, no, you're going to get dressed and you're going to be in the meeting. And I said no, I am not. And he goes yeah, you are going to the meeting and you are tell them what happened. And I say no, am not, am going to bed and I couldn't imagine telling my few friends in AA what a punk loser I was. I couldn' t do it. And he says well, all right, go to bed and find yourself another sponsor. so now i've already told this guy some stuff so i'm gonna have to kill him and then my fifth step is going to be a lot harder so i took a shower i got dressed and i thought well i'll go to the meeting but i'm not going to share what happened right and at this meeting they had involuntary sharing so you get called on so I'm just being as small as I possibly can be and my sponsor goes call on Matthew so I shared what happened and I was so embarrassed I'm still embarrassing about which is so ridiculous and uh I shared and then what happened before happened again somebody goes man I remember when I got arrested sober and he started sharing and he's started sharing and he starting sharing and I healed inside and my spot I came up and I go I I don't know why I got arrested. He goes, because God wants you to pay your warrants. And that's what happened. I did like 56 hours of community service. This is how lame I am. I got sentenced to 60 hours of community service, but by the deadline I had only done 52. I had one more day of community service. Standing by the side of the freeway with an orange jumpsuit on and people throwing their Coca-Cola cans at you calling you a loser while they drive to work. That's what I did every day. And I go up to the court clerk and I say, because my sponsor says well don't just let it lapse go tell them so i went and said hey i was supposed to do 60 hours i did 52 hours and he goes oh okay let me check your case number he checks my case number the clerk and he says you weren't sentenced to any community service i'm always right on top of the details so anyway i uh so then we talked about fifth steps here my sponsor not bill again you know he says look i want you to do a fifth step and here's four columns and this is how you do it and we read the written example in the big book and i just couldn't get my head around how to do this and i went to several people and said i'm confused about how to be able to do this and my sponsor heard me say that and he goes i understand your confusion matthew it's the only step in the book that has a written example. I understand why it's baffling to you. So I went home and I just tore up the four columns, and I'm Catholic, so I wrote a general confession of all the crap I'd done that was keeping me up at night. And I was thinking about, I wrote pages and pages and then I went to his house and we went down, he had this crazy wife who we'll figure later in the story. So we go down into this rec room, you know a rec room at an apartment complex, but nobody went in there. It smelled like mold and the pool table was warped and we just sat on the couch. And I start telling him this thing and I'm crying and I're telling him my secrets and my dirty stuff and I'M CRYING AND I'M WIPING MY NOSE AND HE'S LOOKING AT ME. He's not writing anything down, just staring at me. I do all five pages and I am pretty much lying on my little tiny crumpled up leaf and he goes, that was awesome. That was fantastic. it wasn't the fifth step but it was awesome I said what do you mean and he goes what happened to the four columns what happened to the written example what are you doing and I said well I don't understand I just told you all my darkest secrets he goes where does it say in this book tell somebody your darkest secrets let's start again and he says write down the name of somebody you're resentful at and I wrote his name down like you for not stopping me before I got all teary and snotty and sending me home. And I went home, and I had a completely different experience. And my brother did something that Bill said. My brother's sober, right? And I said, I'm just confused about these resentments. He could say, man, you're in a room. There's no windows. There's just a door. Who do you not want to see come through that room? And I just started writing. There's a lot of people on that list. And, you know, I want to say something. This is sort of my opinion, but Dr. Paul backs me up. Sometimes we put ourselves on our four steps, right? Because we have guilt. Guilt is a resentment against yourself. Almost 100% of the time, guilt is associated with another human being. It's much more beneficial to put their name. They're all you. They're always you. So I did some things to some people that I couldn't believe I'd done. And I felt guilty about it. I wasn't resentful against them at all. I harmed them, some of them irreparably. And I wrote their name, and I wrote what took place, and I rode how it affected me, and wrote my part, and i was free. And you know when I did my fifth step with that sponsor, I managed to recalibrate, I told you that. I managed into the ground, and never stole money from that place but another manager knew the reputation I had so he came and let himself into the safe on my shifts and he stole money from that place. And he was on my fifth step. And when I got done, they didn't fire him because I took the fall. I deserved to be fired. But when I Got Done, I didn't feel relieved in the sunlight of the Spirit. I felt sick to my stomach that I'd just done all that. And my sponsor said, let's go out and get something to eat. And we went to Marie Callender's. A different one. And guess who the new manager was? That guy. and I was sitting there, I just did the fifth step and his face was bright red from drinking and I couldn't stand looking at him and he couldn't stay and he didn't stand looking at me. That's my experience, you know, and we did the ninth step. My sponsor continually said you need to sponsor people, you needto sponsor people and I just felt like I wasn't, I try, you know I go up and give my number to people and then he said why are you giving your number to a guy that's scared to death of AA? Why don't you take his number? And I go what do I say when I call him? He goes it doesn't matter say how are you doing and then wait and a floodgate will open and I did that and we did the ninth step and he was really clear, he gave me some great direction really really sound direction one of the things he said is never make an amends without running it by me first and I didn't do a couple amends about running it my own first and they blew up in my face some of them on my motives were wrong some had to do with women but I got all this but the reason he's not my sponsor today In fact, I was just thinking, Bill, you've been my sponsor for 20 years. Whoa. I know. Look how healthy you are. Look how much better you are now. Dying from liver disease. Yeah, right. That's the material world. We're going to talk about God some more. So what happened was his girlfriend was a little crazy, and his wife, or I think they got married. And she didn't like somebody named Matthew, but it wasn't me. so you know I got a baby my mother died the IRS came to the door and all the chips were getting cashed in so I was calling a lot my second year sobriety and he never called me back and I'd say hey it's Matthew is John there he's in the shower he's downstairs or he's just getting out of his car I'll tell him he called and she was purposely not passing my messages along I'm not a big fan of of changing sponsors I'm not I just needed someone so I mentioned this at a meeting and a friend of Bill's came over and said I'll sponsor you and this guy it's hard to describe but he's kind of an awakened enlightened sage um he speaks all over the world on spirituality and I would sit with him and he would just smile at me I'd say you know I got this problem and I don't know what to do about the baby and I owe the IRS money and he just smiled at me he seemed very calm and at piece uh it was not transferring over to my side of the table and then he did some stuff that i didn't want what he had and i went to bill and bill was a good friend of his and bill was driving to a meeting and bill said hey uh don't judge him but if you need a sponsor that talks to you about the steps of alcoholics anonymous you need i know we joke about this but he said i'll do it till you find a sponsor right and we drove to the valley and that was 20 years ago and bill's held my children when they were born you know bill used to complain he didn't have any friends and i said bill i'm your friend whether you like it or not right and he said i said you have he said have people in aa and i and he says i held your children when they were steaming you know my wife has many health problems you know she's brain damage and she's had seizures and she's gone to the hospital a few times and my wife's very droll and funny And she said, whenever I wake up and there's fluorescent lights above me and Bill and Jay are leaning over, I think, oh, shit. Something happened. And they think they're the angels of mercy. But Bill said, hey, I don't want to go through the steps with you again in the book. You're sober a while. Let's do a group. And we did the Dr. Paul pamphlet, The Unofficial Guide to the Twelve Steps. And the name of our group was The Seething Cauldron of Debates. yeah and uh it was a great group we had a bank robber and a guy who this one guy in the group his father had tried to kill himself and he shot himself through the chin and the bullet came out the top of his nose and lodged in the roof of his truck and that guy used to drive that truck to the meeting so we were a colorful group you can always tell when an alcoholic is involved in a crime because in the paper it says attempted but uh but this is what i mean you know bill Bill also was like, go out there and help people. And I got some guys to sponsor, and I started calling them. And Bill will tell you, and i think it's an important thing, is you know a guy's getting healthier when he stops calling about his problems and starts calling about challenges he's having in sponsorship. Because I said it when I started, but this getting more skillful, you know, Bill and I were talking about a concept. I've been, you know, I'm a big student of religion and Maya is a Hindu phrase that the world that we know it is an illusion, right? This is all an illusion. The truth is the underlying energy. But I just read this book by a college professor from the 30s and he said, well, actually the root of Maya is to met out, to measure out, right, so you measure things out and break them up into digestible brain-sized pieces and you bathe an illusion out of the purity of the timeless plentitude of being what you're seeing is actually the truth you just don't see it correctly right so this is not a bottle this is a bottle sitting on a table sitting on the ground sitting on the planet earth in space circling around the sun in this universe there's nothing separate from anything in the universe right so the reason i'm belaboring this point is because almost every problem i've ever had has been a problem of my relations to you because partly I believe for a long time I'm separate from you, right? I believe I'm separated from you. That's impossible. You know, I love these people that go, I'm a loner, I'm autonomous. I'm like, really? Walk across the room without air. How separate and autonomous are you? Yeah, did you make those clothes? Did you kill your dinner? You're not autonomous. You're in a woven web of relationships, right. I'm an autonomous person. I'm not a son. I'm apparent. I'm a brother. I'm a friend, right? So when I said getting more skillful at helping others is getting more skilful at the art of life, I really meant it. These guys have taught me. You know, my son last night at the house that we're staying in said, I need to talk to you. And he asked me advice about where he should spend his summer. His girlfriend's going to be somewhere else. Should he go be with her? Should he stay and work the job he's got? And I'll tell you what, man. I was 100% prepared for that conversation because I sponsored a bunch of people. I listened to their crazy ideas and I didn't jump their shit because they had crazy ideas. I said, you know, I understand where you're coming from, but I think you might want to think about it this way. I had a guy, you Know, when I think about Bill, people have asked me, what's it like for you? What is sponsorship like? I go, well, for years I would hand Bill this big knotted up ball of yarn and he'd look at it for a minute and go, pay attention to this thread right here. And I go, okay, cool. I'm good. And I'd go with that thread. That's all I'm thinking about right now. And then all the yarn just kind of shook itself out. You know, Bill talks about his opinions about God. Jay, these guys are like polar opposites when it comes to that kind of stuff. I'm the product of the two of them. But I will say this. And I really mean this. not believing someone else's experience is true because you have not had that experience yourself will rob you of a beautiful and bright and wide experience of life if i came in here and didn't believe the things you said about aa i wouldn't have tried them right but i didn't only believe the things he said i believed the way you lived and the way he laughed without reserve and when you didn't look over your shoulder and the way when you walked into a room i used to have a look in my eyes i dated this crazy girl but man she was smart and she said you walk into a room and you ask yourself what lies did i tell these people i can see it in your eyes that freaked me out i see you guys come into rooms and not do that right so when someone else is telling you about their experience of god i suggest you don't doubt it i suggest you be curious about it and see for yourself have the experience for yourself I've had experiences with these guys like yeah I want to finish with this you know long time ago 17 years ago actually Bill could not go speak at a meeting so he said hey Matthew can you go speak at this meeting so I went to this meeting up in the valley and I told my story and it was a taper and the tapers sent it as the tape of the month that that week out so three weeks later I'm going to Reno speaking a meeting right because Bill sent me and now it's everywhere and I've been speaking for 17 years once or twice a month all over the world and Bill and then Jay and I have been lucky enough to accidentally end up at conferences together we plan things together I want to tell you who this guy is I worked for a big biotech company who will remain nameless and uh and i was in a uh i was in a big room teaching a bunch of people how to do their jobs and i saw i missed a call from akron ohio and i laughed and said i'm probably being asked to speak at founders day right and i left about it and then i went outside and listened to the message at my break and i said hey this is the committee from founders day we'd like invite you to speak and I went oh god wow right so I call Bill and he's like happy for me you know he's happy for m. I'm the first guy from our home group that got to do this and you know I went to Founders Day and they didn't they were like you know a will never be organized they didn' pick me up to bring me to my own talk it's sorry you guys did a similar thing this morning, but they, it's just how AA is. But you know what? I had someone in my back pocket. You know what Bill flew to Akron to support me with his wife, to support this guy who's a big national speaker, wanted to be there for me and sat next to my daughter. There's one funny story about that. My daughter has come to a lot of my talks. She's 15 now, but she's been coming to my talk since she could but she always puts headphones on and puts on her iPad right because I don't want her to hear daddy abused women and stuff she probably is savvy enough on the internet now but so I said hey Sophie this is like the biggest thrill of my life you know there's 9,000 people in the stadium when I get up there to get up will you take a picture of me doing this I really want to have a picture yeah daddy I'll do that she sit next to building Karen they have sitting on the side so just I stand on the podium I I look at Sophie, and I nod, and she puts the headphones on. God said, your little ego doesn't need a photograph of this. Sophie forgot to take the picture. We had a great time. And the reason I tell you that story is because this guy changed everything for me. You know, I needed, when I hit the wall, someone who'd hit the walls. I didn't need someone to go, go to more meetings, you know, be honest. He said, dude, you know what he said when I called him and said, Phillip, I had a stroke. He said they say there's no big deals in AA. There are big deals in AA and this is one of them. He validated that I was losing it. That's really important and that's why I knew what to say to my son last night because I practiced and I was taught with understanding and love and one of the things Bill and I did that I'll never forget as long as I live is we had some down time and we went to the gatehouse where this guy named Bill talked to this guy named Bob in this really small room and all of this started and Bill and I sat there together a direct descendant of people who gave it away to even get it people who continually till they died mastered the art of helping other people so they could be more skillful at the art of living and I got to be there with Bill and and I'll never ever forget it as long as I live and thanks so much for letting me share I just went to Founder's Day to make sure he didn't screw up. I always tell him, be sure you tell him how much I've done for you. Let's pray. Jaden, do you want to lead us in the Lord's Prayer? Come on up. Stand up. Everybody stand up. Whenever you're ready. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory Forever and ever. Amen Keep coming back if it works, if you work it Hey, 15 minutes? 20? Yeah. Let Samir get in here.