The Soul Sickness of Mind, Will, and Emotions – Harold L.

Fantastic. Great. Well, I'm grateful to be here. It's always a privilege to come on this platform and share not just good news, but it's the best news ever. Right. And it really is. My sobriety date is April 7th, 1987. My home group's here in St. Louis, Missouri. It's called AA on the Rocks. It's a strong three legacy group. And it meets on Wednesday nights at seven o'clock. If you're ever in St. Louis, please look us up. And we'd love to host you. And if we get ahold of you quick enough, we will put you to work. We will get some mileage out of your sobriety. I can promise you. And if you're coming to the big dance, you know, in 2030, which will be right here in our hometown, which we hope you do. If you do come to that, plan on coming in a day early. Okay. Wednesday night, because A on the Rocks and other groups in the St. Louis area will be hosting a pre-party party. I don't know what all that looks like yet. I can just guarantee it will happen. And we'd love for you to come in early and be a part of that as well. But I'm grateful to be here. I come from a great line of sponsorship, a strong sponsor, a three legacy sponsor, a three legacy home group. All those are things that have made a big difference in how my life turns out. So I just want to make sure I share that. And of course, Alice and the team here. Thank you for this platform. Thank you for the invitation. And I love all of you. And it's a privilege to be here. We read, it was read tonight on page, the bottom of page 98 and over to the top of page 99 to 12 and 12. But anytime you're extracting any kind of text from anything you're reading, I think it's always important to read the paragraph before and the paragraph after, at least, to bring total context to what you're reading. I'm not going to read that for you, but I would just encourage you to. You know, at least some, you know, go over that and browse that and observe that. So this, this paragraph takes on its own meaning for you personally, maybe at a deeper level, but I'm going to speak specifically with the time that I have about what we, what we read tonight. And, and I can tell you this right off the bat. I didn't come to AA because I believed in God or I believed in a higher power. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I was out of ideas, bottom line. That's why I got here. I wasn't. I wasn't planning on staying here. I went back to a treatment center in 1987 in the same space and town, different name that I was at in 1980, seven years later. And I went back there because of the demonstration AA gave me back in 1980. I only stayed for 30 days and I was gone. I had no intention to stay and I did my time and I was intoxicated immediately and would continue on seven more years and burn my life completely to the ground. And, and I surrendered one more time in a jail cell. And through that surrender brought me back to that treatment center. And I started my journey in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't, again, come to AA because I believed in God or I wanted this deep spiritual life was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn't planning on being AA forever. I didn't even know what that meant. I just, I went to that treatment center, one, because it was familiar. Number two, because I was in a lot of trouble and I needed a piece of paper to stand in front of the judge. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more petty convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. I was facing a parole violation and two more felony convictions. And on my way back to AA. No aunts, no uncles, no siblings. It was just her, a divorced woman twice in the 60s, no education. That's a tough resume to try to go live off. But she pulled it off. But what she did do is she shredded her will in life over to the care of God as she understood God, which was her Catholic roots. And she did that, and she never wavered on it until the day she died in 2015. And over the decades, my mom blossomed into an incredibly beautiful woman. And if you've heard me speak before, you've probably heard me say before that there's nothing more beautiful than a woman who's walked with God for a long time. And part of that's biased because I'm a mama's boy, but it's just true. I'm around a lot of amazing, we've got a lot of amazing godly women on this platform tonight. You met some of them, they were introduced to you, that are incredible people, and I love spending time with those people. And they influenced me in so many ways. But my mom was a huge, huge person. And what she wanted me to do, all my mom wanted me to know. Number one, she loved me. And number two, there was a power greater than myself. And that was the God that she understood, which was this Jesus-looking God. She wanted me to have a relationship with this Jesus-looking God, live this Jesus in her life. So she put me into a parochial school. And she robbed from Peter and wrote a bad check to Paul to get me in there. She didn't have any resources. But I went from kindergarten until about the fourth grade. And I went, I had to go to mass every day, you know, pretty much except for, you know, maybe Saturday. But I was in mass every day. And I'm not one of these people that get on. And they had their own experience. But I'm saying I'm not one of these recovering Catholics or somebody who experienced church hurt or had a real run-in with the church. There's a lot of people that have had that experience. That just wasn't mine. I know I love church enough that I would come home and play church. And some of you might be in that space. You might have done that yourself. I used to come home and put TV trays together for an altar and throw a cool Afghan over the top of them and dump the fruit out of the fruit bowl and fill it full of potato chips with the Eucharist. And for the Eucharist. You know, I'd use potato chips. And I'd dump the, you know, get something with some grape Kool-Aid into it for the wine and get a towel out of the closet for a cheap stole and get a Bible out we never read, you know, but I'd get it out. And I'd have, you know, we'd have mass at the, you know, the Holy House of Longer Worship, whatever you want to call it. Save a few souls. It was a great day. This is how I'm starting out in life. It's the 60s. We're going into the 70s now. Jesus Revolution is full blast. Peace Love Movement's going on. All the rock operas are out. Tommy, Godspell. Pear. Jesus Christ Superstar. All of them with a spiritual momentum behind them and a spiritual rhythm and articulation, if you would, to their music, to everything they did. And I can sing all those rock operas still today. If you put them in, I know them by heart. Played a lot of them in different bands. But all that was what was shaping my life. You know, long before I met King Alcohol. Whether I liked it or I didn't like it. But even with all that information, and that's what a lot of it was. It was information. You know, and it was an experience for sure. But it didn't penetrate this soul. And I would call, I would identify the soul as our mind, our will, and our emotions. And I was very much separated long before I ever met King Alcohol. It just didn't really start to form itself and come up really alive until I got a little bit older, closer to being a teenager. You know, 10, 11, 12, and that age where the manifestation of the separation really started to show itself. But that's how I started out in life. You know, I was on fire. Whatever spiritual experience I was having at that time. I love music. I love sports. But, you know, through a series of changes, my mom dropped a bomb on us and said, hey, we're moving to St. Louis. And I came to St. Louis in, you know, when I was right around seven or eight years old. And my life changed. Everything about my life changed. My mom, you know, told me, pulled the blinds back and introduced me to a brother and two sisters I didn't even know existed from our previous marriage. You know, that were about 10 years older than I was. And so that was a shock. And now she's trying to make her own amends and reconcile her own life with these kids. And little by little. But, you know, I was no longer in a pro-career school. I was thrown into a public school system. In a school with maybe 100 kids now to a school with thousands of kids. And this is where I can go back in my life and really see how this separation I'm talking about really started to stretch me. And it's really started to burn into my mind and how I perceived the world, how I perceived you, how I thought you perceived me. And what you thought of me paralyzed me. You absolutely owned my life. And just little by little, that separation pushed me further from anything of my upbringing. Any of the teaching, any of the understanding, any desire to want to live that way or do that. The world really pulled on me like a magnet. And then along come the dark side of life. Tobacco, sex, drugs, going down the line and eventually booze. And nothing. None of that church or mass or teaching or rock operas. Or anything. None of those things were able to take away the care, boredom and worry in my life. That just was owning me at this point in time. It just owned the title to my soul. And when I got intoxicated, I drank the magic juice for the first time. I mean, really drank it and got intoxicated. It changed my life. And I surrendered my will and my life over to that understanding immediately. And I was hell bent to do it for the rest of my life. And I set out to do that. I turned my life over to it. And I was willing to go. To any length. To give it. To live it. To experience it again and again and again. At a very priceless cost. And you all know what that cost is. And for most people, unfortunately, it's death. I didn't experience that. But I sure. I hurt a lot of people. I burned a lot of bridges. And I destroyed a lot of lives. And I broke a lot of hearts along the way. And include my own. And I ended up here at Alcoholics Anonymous. And when I came into the rooms. And I saw the steps. And I saw the language about God. I've been so separated from God for so long. And so much of my challenges with God. Or a higher power. Were very much at a subconscious level. I wouldn't even been able to articulate what my hang ups were. Until I stayed around here long enough to be able to form language. And hear people share in meetings. And all of a sudden I start to have a little bit of a library. A point of reference. To be able to put words with some of my crazy thoughts. And I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I have ideas and resentments. And questions and my doubts. And all those things that we come here with. And I just want to say this up front. I'll probably close with something similar. But this platform. This fellowship. This life that we get to live in Alcoholics Anonymous. Where we have this third tradition. That the only requirement for memberships. Is the desire to stop drinking. That's it. You come as you are. Wherever you are. And understanding today. that broken people come to AA. Well, people don't come here. You know, broken people come here. And broken people do broken things that hurt people hurt people. And so this is what shows up and it continues to show up and will always continue to show up. Well, that's how I showed up. But the beautiful part is, is that we welcome that unconditionally. This agape love that we have here is one of the most powerful things. If you want to use biblical terms, this kingdom of God, this kingdom of God that you hear so much about in most of the time in past tense language, a lot of times in philosophical, religious circles, this is kind of like this dream lifestyle. We would call it the world of the spirit. You've now entered the world of the spirit. We got the fellowship of the spirit. You know, we're familiar with this language, but it really is the case because, you know, when you come here, we don't care who you are, what you did, what your gender is, what your sexuality is, who you voted for, how much money you owe or you don't know. We don't care. If you have a sincere desire to not burn your life to the ground with alcohol and to overcome your alcoholism and welcome home. But with that comes so much more. And with that comes that you walk in here with whatever level of faith you have. And you have faith. You could sit there and say, well, I don't believe in God. So that means I don't have faith. No, that's a faith system. That's a belief system in itself is a belief system. So you can't really hang on to that. But I came with all kinds of doubts. And I came with all kinds of doubts. And twisted perceptions. And I came from the correctional world. And I can promise you still today, if we walk into a Department of Corrections anywhere in the world, but if I took you to the prison I go to every week and walk in and say, pick a housing unit. And we picked one. I said, just go pick out 100 guys. I don't care what their age is. I don't care what their ethnic background is. I don't care. Just pick 100 of them and bring them down here to the visiting hall or to the chow hall or wherever we're going to meet the fellowship room. And you bring them in. I could tell you three things about every one of those guys and I would be almost 100% accurate. And here's those three things. Number one, their relationship with their earthly father, heavily compromised. If they ever have one at all. I mean, whether it's abuse, absenteeism, for example, you can pick it. It's there. I can promise you. Number two, their educational skills, reading, writing, comprehension, below par. Are some of them higher net? Some of them have some college degrees. Yes. A few exceptions, but for the most part, under par. But the one place that I'll be 100% on is that their relationship with God twisted at best for a higher power at best. And that's a common denominator and all that. And I was that guy when I got here. I was heavily broken and heavily separated. And so I came to alcoholics. Now it was just like this, this what we read tonight. So I'll just kind of, kind of go through this a little bit, pick out some different lines from the book, you know, some different sayings and just kind of unpack it from the way I understand it. And wherever you're at on your spiritual journey. And here's what I'll just lay out right now. Whether you say there's a God or you say there isn't a God, neither one of you can prove it. I just laid it out there. You can't prove it. You can make some strong arguments, but none of it's airtight. It all going to come down to faith. There is a God. There isn't a God. There is a higher power. There isn't a higher power. But I think what our book allows us to do is work through that. The fellowship allows us to work to come with your doubts, come with your questions, come with your Gnosticism, come with your atheism, come with your self-righteousness or your religious hierarchy, or this huge intellectual background you have with theology or whatever. Come with it all, bring it and come to this space and learn how to love people for just who they are and not based on anything else. And I don't know of any place on the planet that does that. It's the most spiritual, spiritual, place you could ever go to. And so if you're new here, welcome home. And you really are a part of something that's pretty amazing. If you come all the way in, sit all the way down and stay and stay in is always the hardest part here. But if you stay all this stuff that we're talking about, you'll unpack it and you'll work through it and you'll, and you'll just come to fruition. So God bless you as you do. But one of the lines in there is that the world doesn't like a place where God is in charge. You know that that theme is in that. And that was one of my things. You look around the world, you see, you see accidents, you see sickness, you see cruelty, injustice, unfortunate verse, all kinds of things. And a lot of people reject God, the root reject prayer because they are not arrogant, but they're hurt and they're confused. Right. And that's what I was. I was, you know, I was hurt because I didn't never grew up without a dad. My mom was never around, grew up on the streets. I was a band member. I hung around people much older than I was, uh, T hot, you know, older, teens, people in their twenties, thirties. And I suffered all the abuse before I was old enough to drive a car, physical, mental, spiritual, sexual, picket, all of it. And so I was all kinds of confused and hurt when I got here. I was all jacked up when I walked into the rooms, alcoholics, thongs. Some of us didn't become skeptics in classrooms. We became skeptics in hospital waiting rooms. When you're sitting around and looking at all the injustice in the world and people, you know, why is this person suffering? Why is this person have to die so young? And why is this? And why is that? And all these things, all these atrocities you see going on. And it's been going on since the beginning of time. If your life has been brutal, prayer can often, I think sometimes feel like a really cruel joke when somebody says, pray, huh? Yeah, right. Pray. You want me to pray to this God in this God that allowed me to go through life the way I went through life. Come on, man, give me a break. And you may not be able to say that out loud, but again, at this subconscious level, it could be very much what's going on in your life. Unhappy lives, that feeling of being cheated. I definitely fell into that category. And many of us carry deep disbelief because I didn't get whatever people got. My mom never had any money. I always had hand me down clothes, hand me down everything, hand me down bicycles, hand me down lawnmowers, hand me down cars, hand me down drum equipment. My first set of drums, I had a, a blue sparkle bass drum with cheetah Tom Toms and a trash can at one point for one of my symbols, a trash can. But he said, but he said, and half stuff. And it, and of course it, it caused a lot of rage and bitterness and eventually, you know, turn to self medication with King alcohol. But it's just, it, it kind of feels like two runners. One, you're both at the starting. You're both getting, they're going to be in a race. One gets to start 50 yards ahead of you. And you're 50 yards behind with a backpack of bricks on you. And then someone says, Hey, run harder, run faster, try harder. And some of this aren't just bad people, man. We're just tired people. You're worn out. You're wore out when you get here and then you're, and, and you're wanting something materialistic, you know, something tangible. You can put your arms on and you're saying, well, it's really not when you put the spiritual head, the material straight now. Okay. Whatever, you know, whatever, you know, cause my mindset, when I got here, call me crazy, call me crazy. I think I could be a little bit more spiritual. If I had a few hundred dollars in my pocket, call me nuts and a better looking girl and a legal driver's license and a car that wasn't held together by bumper stickers. That was my mindset. Why? Because I was shaped by the culture, materialism, consumerism, secularism, going down the line. This is all shaped me whether I wanted it to or not. It did. And it still does. It still has an impact on my life today. If I'm transparent and I'm honest about it, these things can still pull on me and take precedent over anything spiritual on my life. I can still get lost in the world system pretty fast. And if there is no justice, this is a big one for me. Then there's no God, you know, this a knowledge is this logic. It does in this reading. If you read this all the way through it, and if you read the big book portion, it doesn't call it stupid. It just calls it being human. You're just a human being having a human experience. And this is how we reply. It also implies, though, which I love your pain is real, but your conclusion may not be the whole story. And if you're here tonight, that's what I would challenge. I don't want to dismiss your hurt. You know, the injustice, you face, some of you have suffered tremendously here. There's some horrific stories here, way more horrific than mine. I mean, seriously bad stuff, but you just got to stick around. I don't know if any of you've had children that have had surgery. I've had, I got five kids, but my girls when they're young, a child and surgery, the child thinks the doctor's going to harm him. The nurse is going to harm him. You know, what are you doing? Get away from me. Don't touch me. Don't put those needles in me. Get away from it. They can't comprehend the purpose because they don't have the full frame, right? They don't have all the information. And so you have to sit there and try to help them understand, have faith. You got to trust this process. You're going to feel better on the back end, but they don't understand it. So therefore it freaks them out. Well, this thing, the same thing happens with this whole higher power thing. I don't understand it. So therefore I'm threatened by it. It's not understanding is not the same as having proof. It's not. And so when we say, turn your real life over to the care of God, of your understanding and Bill Wilson, if you read the best of Bill and you read this section on faith, the very first paragraph, he would say, and I'm paraphrasing that that statement, we turn our will in life over to the care of God. As we understood, God is probably the most important language in the entire AA vocabulary, pretty powerful. So this understanding, but the understanding will grow and it may even shrink and it'll grow again. Then it'll shrink and you'll be challenged and you'll have doubts and you'll have questions and things will happen and you won't understand. You're confused by whatever. And your self-centeredness will definitely enter your prayer line. It will definitely enter your spiritual life. And you can be very self-centered trying to be spiritual. Trust me. And probably don't have enough time to unpack that, but I can go on on that all day. But we sympathize. This isn't one of the most underrated lines. I think a doesn't start by arguing. It starts by saying we get it and we do whatever you're out on your journey. We just get it. That's what the fellowship does. I get, I think around step 11 is before we believe in God, we borrow our belief from the room, right? And this is what it says. Many of you had faith in your home groups. You believed in your home groups. Well, that's exactly what happened. You could easily summarize it this way. I believe God saved me in a cell. He introduced me to Alcoholics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous introduced me back to God, you know, and that was a process and it's still a process in the making. I didn't come to AA because I believe as I had started out with, I came because I was out of options, right? That's why I came here. Some still cling. They uses that language. Some still cling. They read that right here in that paragraph. Some of us still cling to AA as a higher power. Well, I still cling to AA as my higher power in a lot of ways. This is why I come to meetings is why I love coming on stuff like this. I get to hear wisdom. I get to hear experience, strength and hope that gives me inspiration, motivation and encouragement. It stretches me. It challenges me and holds me in contempt. All kinds of things happen when that's going on. So I grow by being around you and his mother, Teresa beautifully said, you got to remain green. Why? Because green things are growing. Well, if you're going to remain green, you got to be around fertile soil. What is fertile soil going to solid meetings with solid people hanging around, solid people going the same direction you want to go. All those things still very much are how I experienced God today. I experienced God with skin on and I'm looking at a lot of people that influenced me today. So for the newcomer, the Gnostic, that's allowed hanging on your higher powers, your group, G O D, good or late direction, group of drunks. You know, there's lots of acrostics and acronyms for, lots of spiritual words we have, but it's basically a saying, start where you are, you know, just know that this power we're talking about doesn't want to leave you there, you know, but start where you're at with all your hurts, with all your habits, with all your hangups, with all your doubts, with all your questions, how much you are a person drowning doesn't need a theology degree, right? They need a hand. They need a life preserver. They need a raft. Get me out of this. They don't care about all that stuff. If all you can believe in tonight in this room and what we're sharing and the people that are in it, well, let's start there. That's enough. I mean, Johnny, that's all you need to make a beginning here. Let the group of your higher power until you can find your own. What a beautiful invitation. And that's true. Where else does that exist other than right here? So most kingdom of God, kingdom of God space that I know of, you know, prayer may still not be, it still may be very unconvincing and it also may be very quite objectionable. Yeah, I didn't pray when I got here. It was easy to sit in a room and say the sorority prayer or hold hands and say the Lord's prayer. Or the seven step prayer or a third step prayer. And that was my introduction to prayer life. Really? My only prayer life prior to that are to coming out of that Catholic school was the good old plea bargain, foxhole prayers. And you know how that went, God, and it started almost immediately because drinking was very problematic from the beginning. And it's pretty much from the beginning. It was like, God, if you get me out of this, I will never do it again. I mean, we've all said some version of that prayer. And if you're really alcoholic, you had to add this to it. And this time, I really mean it because you burnt that prayer to the ground, right? I mean, you just wear that stuff out. But so, but when you come here, prayer might be very unconvincing. I remember hearing a story. It wasn't a story. It was a true story about a woman that was in a meeting one day and she was giving glory to her higher power for answering prayer. And some skeptic in the meeting goes, Hey, how do you know it was God that answered your prayer? And she said, because he's the only one I asked. He's the only one I asked about. He's the only one that knew about. So that's where he's getting. He's getting all the kudos and all the love. So some people just don't just doubt their prayer. Don't just doubt the power of it, but they're offended by it. Because prayer can sound like a form of denial, superstition, or even manipulation. And it can be sometimes prayer can even be a form of gossip. You know, we need to pray for so and so because so and so, and then we blah, blah, blah. We can use it as gossip, but it's very, it's, it's really more of a personal thing than it is anything. Because what you're doing when nobody else is looking is really the, the best gauge of where you're at spiritually period. There's no doubt about it. You know, what, what are you doing when nobody else is around? Prayer, you know, prayer felt like people telling me to think positive when I was on fire. You know, that's what it felt like, you know, when you're, your life's on fire, you're burning your life to the ground. People are saying, well, man, just pray. You just need to pray. Yeah, I'm on fire, dude. I need some water. I need to jump off this bridge. I need this thing to end. I didn't hate God. I hate how God was used. And this is where a lot of people experience church. You just need to go to church. You just need to read the Bible. You just need to, you need to hang around different people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all those things that we get lost in. Why struggle with all those same things? Something deep inside is to tell us that something deep inside is kept rebelling. And what is that all about? And I think that's all those things that I'm talking about. It's a culmination of all those things. This is huge. The reading of myths that resistance isn't always intellectual. It's emotional. And it's definitely, it's definitely willful. And if you think about being a soul sickness and I would define soul, this is me, Harold talking the way I would define this soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. And if you take any one of those three by itself and inventory, it's very fractured. This fractured self, uh, is what I suffer from immensely. A wild horse. Just think about a wild horse. It's not trained, not tamed, reacting to any saddle, right? The horse is an evil. It's just afraid. And it doesn't trust. The process. Well, think of yourself that way. You're not, you know, when are a newcomer who's struggling to take your suggestions or take your ideas or, or live into this thing. And it's just, you know, it's like a wild horse and you're trying to put a saddle on it. You're trying to re you're trying to give it a principled life and it doesn't trust you. And it's afraid of a principle life, you know, and that's very much true. So my problem wasn't God. My problem was surrender. You know, I wasn't surrendered enough and there's three types of people that come to a, there's those who make it happen. There's those who watch it happen. And there's those who don't know what's happening at all. And I've been all three of those cats, you know that I've been all three of those guys when I got here. And so I have to understand that and get people space to do what they do. Bowling before any God, you know, that idea of bowing before God, a lot of alcoholics struggle with disbelief. They struggle with authority. I struggle with authority. I didn't even want to sponsor. I didn't get a sponsor until I was three years sober because I already had a probation pro officer my entire life since I was 10 years old, 11. And I still have one at this gave a moment. I'm sitting in the rooms. I got a pro officer. You happen to get slip sign, do better letters. I call it, you know, and then you want me to voluntarily walk up, Hey, will you be my sponsor and tell me what to do and have say so in my life? I don't think so. Oh, I didn't want any authority in my life. I'm going to do what I want, when I want, how I want the way I want. If you don't like it, pound salt. I don't know what to tell you, but just get out of my way. And I had, and I lack surrender. I was surrendered to King alcohol, but I hadn't surrendered to this idea of this design. It's designed for living a spiritual way of life. For sure. This it, you know, it's, it's just a struggle because authority had abused him. I had been struggled through the story of my whole life or because self is their God, because you worship yourself. Well, that's, there you go. I didn't want to God. I wanted to consult him. I want, as a book would say, I want a Bush league, Penn cedar pinch hitter. You know, I wanted somebody to come in and close out the game. If I started to load the basis with nobody out, God, can you come in and get me out of this jam? I want a guy to co-sign my plans, not, not correct them. You know, that was my self centered, how it still can creep in today. Very much in my spiritual life. Many of us has strong logic too. I didn't have a lot of strong logic, but there is a lot of smart people that show up here. Most people that fall under this atheistic mindset are people that are very smart, very intellectual, right? And they saying, yes, we are smart. We had arguments, we had proofs, we had experience, but all we're saying, none of that stuff kept us sober. None of that, none of those smarts, none of all that, that information, kept us sober. Look at Dr. Bob story. Look at alcohol. Number three, Bill Dotson, all these guys, you see, you know, they were all really smart people. Bill Wilson himself, first, it could be so brilliant and still be powerless over alcohol and die from alcohol. My logic wasn't undefeated. My life was still unmanageable. That was what was going on, right? A strong bridge was step 11. Prayer isn't a debate. It's a practice. You know, it is truly is a practice and it's not step 11. It's not think your way into faith. It's practice your way into humility, you know, and doing it privately, personal, you know, what are you reading? What do you listen to? What are you studying? Who you around? You know, I was told early on, there's three things that are important. Number one, you know who you around. Number two, is it okay in, in, in number two, you know, or who you around, what's it doing to me? Number three, what is it okay to be around these people? So I had to start taking ownership of my life. You don't understand exercise by thinking about it. You understand it by doing it, right? And that's the same way with the steps in the program. I didn't pray because I bleed. I prayed because I needed help and I didn't have any other direction. And through that prayer, it changed my life. And I'll wrap up with these, these couple of statements. Good. And I think it's just a newcomer friendly way to say it. It feels weird. Good. That means you're trying something new. You're being stressed. Amen. Because every alcoholic praise eventually just not to God. At first we prayed alcohol, we prayed to relief. We pray to numbness. You know, we, we give our life over to it. I owe, I was already praying. I should know. I was praying to a bottle, to a way of life, to a lifestyle. I didn't know. I turned my will life over to all that. Any of that. So, a, does it demand you understand God and invite you to stop playing God. If my buddy Peter would say probably the first words God would say to him when he got to heaven were, Hey, get out of my chair. You know, it's, it's that, that very self-centered way of still, still after 38 years of being here, wanting to run my own life at times and doing so in a very hard line. So if you're new and your heart is still rebelling, you're not disqualified. You're actually who this whole thing is written for and what this whole program is about. So welcome home. Come with your doubts. Come with your questions. Thank you for allowing me to share where I've been and where I've come from. I hope that some of that helps you and blessed you in some way. Thank you for my life. And that's all I got. And, and what, what is it that you, you do when life gets busy and, and chaotic? How do you find time for peace and quiet? Well, you know, I think, I think that's just something that changes over time. Your prayer life will evolve. Like I said, mine started out with the basic prayers that we, we share in, in unison here in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I can remember when I really started to morph into my own kind of prayer life, private life and, and how that, and it was kind of funny how that happened. But, but my very, my very first hunting season when I had some rights to go hunting again, and I went with my buddy, Benny, and Benny was just maybe a year and a half ahead of me in sobriety. And we went and we stayed in this, the guy said, you can stay in this room. There's two beds in the same room. So it was almost like being in a cell block. And there was one bed on one side of me on the other side. But we, we put all our gear down. We're going to go to bed. We shut off the lights and then climb into bed. Well, I had my routine, you know, which gave me peace, which was I get down and pray. Well, I never got down and really prayed with anybody. And I, and, and I was having this whole battle between my mind, you know, this narrative was just going crazy because this guy's in my room and he's, he's invading my space. And little did I know that he was having the same battle between his ears, but you could have heard a pin drop in that room. There was dead silence. And I don't know how long that was. I don't know. I don't know how long it went on, but finally out of nowhere in a pitch black, he's hollers from his side of the room. Screw you. I'm praying. And I said, what he goes, screw you. I'm praying. I'm I've been over here this whole time. Worried about you thinking about me. If I pray, I'm praying and I'm getting on my knees and praying. If you don't like, and he's got this whole thing built up towards me and I haven't even done anything. And, and I say, Hey, can I pray with you? He goes, yeah, you come over here and pray with me. And I, if I'm on, if I'm on a prayer line and I can give you a lots of those examples. But for me, I just, you know, no big book. No breakfast, no Bible, no coffee, whatever will know. No daily reflection. No, no, whatever. You know, I start my day, a very intentional with getting into some kind of spiritual literature to shape my attitude, shape my forethought. And that gives me a lot of peace at night. I do a nightly review that the 10th and 11th step practice on page 86, of our literature. I have that. There's people on this call right now. I share that nightly review with every night. They share theirs with me. I get tons of these every day. But part of the questions that I end my inventory with for the day is, what am I grateful for? I never met anybody who ever got drunk who had a grateful heart, not one person who was full of gratitude. So I try to go, no matter how K-like my day is, I don't list everything I'm grateful for, but at least one or two or three things that I'm grateful for for this day. It could be my bride, could be my dog, could be my community, sponsors, whatever. So those are the things, John, and I'm responsible for that. Nobody else is responsible for that. Just making sure that garbage in, garbage out. Spiritual stuff in, probably some spiritual stuff out. So I'm responsible what goes in and comes out. So hope that helps. And that's beautiful, man. Thank you so much. Jackie, come on in. Let's hear what you got to ask. Oh, I lost you. I got to find you and then I can unmute you. Sorry. Okay, now am I unmuted? You know, you just can't shut me up. That's all there is to it. Anyway, my name is Jackie and I am an alcoholic. And thank you, Harold, for your message tonight. So many things you said just really melt my heart or resonate. But there was one thing you said, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about it. And I think you said it even twice. You said something like, my soul is my mind, my will, and my emotions. And yeah, what does that mean? Well, you know, that's a fair question. And, you know, sometimes we always we hear lots of songs written about the soul, things written about the soul. C.S. Lewis, a great theologian, would say, you don't have a soul, you are a soul. I mean, there's lots of theology and philosophy around what does it mean to have a soul? But just my understanding of unpacking, you know, you know, theology and spiritual literature in 38 years is, you know, defining that. What does that really mean? And if we're talking about something that we're separated from, that's not physically with me, that I think moves on or can move on is definitely our will and our mind and our emotions. It's not, you know, it's just a part of me that it's on its own little axis, if you would. And that's what I would define as a soul. And when you think about the soul sickness, when you think about your mind, well, the book would say the problem centers in the mind. But you think about your rebellious will, well, we talked about that tonight. And then you talk about our emotions. And our book has lots of things to say about that. We even have a, we even have topics like emotional sobriety, you know, in the great frontier and a great grapevine letter that, that Bill Wilson wrote around emotional sobriety. So you just think about those three categories and then put that in the context of, you know, calling it something, the soul, what makes up a person. I think it's really easy to say that we suffer from a soul sickness, you know, and that we suffered a long time and, and we've been separated. So that's, it's that separation and the blockage at the same time that's kept the sunlight of the spirits in our soul. And so we do this real heavy work in steps four through nine, which removes, it's all about removal using a Buddhist term. It's about subtraction rather than addition. That's very much a Buddhist term. And, but, but you can just imagine that, that this is the channel between me and this power and it's been blocked long before I ever drank. But through this process of removal, the sunlight, the spirit finally starts to shine in our soul and we start to heal. The soul sickness starts to heal. And we, and page 75 of our book really lays that out when it says that one, once we've shared, I'm paraphrasing, but once we shared our entire life story with another human being, we really cleaned house. It's what most of us would say. I'm no longer having a spiritual wake and I had a real spiritual experience. Why? Because your soul was probably touched by the sunlight of the spirit, maybe for the first time in your entire life. And it's a game changer. It's just like the magic of King alcohol. The magic of this power's touch is a pretty profound. And so that's what I would say, if that's helpful at all. Thank you, Harold. Thanks, Jackie. For the question, Marissa, come on in. You haven't asked the question in a bit. It's good to see you. Hi everyone. I'm Marissa May and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you so much, Harold, for your sharing with us tonight. And you mentioned kind of at the end of your share, fertile soil, that things that are green need to be in fertile soil. What are your practices or how do you ensure that you're staying in that fertile soil? And what do you do if you find that maybe it's not being as nourishing as you originally? Well, that's a great question, Marissa. And, you know, I spent a lot of time in the Department of Corrections and Treatment Centers every week and work with a lot of new people all the time. And so that's always a question. It's another question. Why does this person get sober? This person gets sober. Why is there such a low percentage of people that actually ever get this thing? You know, out of the millions of alcoholics in the world, why is there only a couple, two or three million at all in recovery? You know, why? And it isn't because of the opportunity, but what is it? And it's a great question. And I think it's a great question. And I think it's a great question. And I think it's a great question. And I think it's a great question. And so just if you just visualize a seed, we'll call it the seed of grace. We're all given the seed of grace, you know, and most people will never experience it at the level we're experienced. But you're given the seed of grace. Here's your opportunity. This is your chance to really live again. And most of us will throw it out the window. We'll chew it up, spit it out, swallow it, put it in our pocket, let it grow lint, wash it in the washing machine. We'll never really take that seed and plant it in fertile soil. And so we tell a newcomer, hey, you're going to have to come all the way in and sit all the way down. And stay. You're going to need to get a sponsor. You're going to need to get it worked to steps. You're going to need a home group. You're going to need a service commitment. You know, that's fertile soil in the beginning. It's very much fertile soil for the rest of our lives. But in the beginning, if you want this seed of grace to really blossom, you're going to have to plant it in fertile soil. Broken people do broken things, hurt people, hurt people. Well, people don't show up here. There's meetings that you can pay me to go to. I hear people say, I've never been to a bad A meeting. I've been there. I've been in plenty of meetings. You could never, ever pay me to go back there. So, but, but it's to be expected because we're in a broken space, but I want to be around healthy people that are going the right way. And when I, you know, and again, I didn't hang around those people in the beginning. I was one of the ones you go, hey, stay away from that guy. I was that guy in the beginning. Hopefully I'm not that guy anymore, but it was definitely that guy in the beginning. So who I'm around is my responsibility. That's the fertile soil. What am I reading? What am I listening to? What am I doing? Who am I investing my time with? You know, I didn't have anybody I could call when I got there. I didn't have anybody out here. That was the honest to God truth. When I was arrested, I couldn't even call my mom. I've been so separated from her for years. There was nobody I could call today. And no exaggeration with this right here. If I needed a hundred people to be at my house by 10 o'clock tonight, that would be not be a hard thing to do. That's just how full my life is. And so the soil is deep around, around all around me, but I'm responsible for that. And does that mean we, you know, throughout your state, you know, we, we teach in the beginning, you're going to probably have to change the people that you're going to teach. You're going to have to change the people that you're going to teach. You're going to have to change the people, places, and things in your life when you get here. If you really want to grow in this thing, but that sometimes happens even in different stages of your sobriety. You look around, what's this, what's this doing to me? You know, are these people really going the way I want to go? So you may have to change people, places, and things a little bit and shift a little bit as you stay here to keep that soil fertile. And like I said, going back to mother Teresa's quote, you got to remain green. Why? Because green things are growing. So I'm responsible for the greenness in the fertile soil that I've planted myself in. I'm responsible. So that's what I would say to that, Marissa. Great question, Marissa. And thank you, Harold. And I'm going to have, I'm going to break my heart three times and I'm going to let Allison close this out because we don't have enough time for y'all. I'm so sorry. Thanks, John. And thanks, Harold. Allison, alcoholic. Loved your message today. Thank you so much. I just wanted to ask you about clearly your understanding, uh, and growth around a relationship with a power greater than yourself is evidenced in your share tonight. How has that journey changed and affected your relationship with others? You know, it's, it's a, it's a great question. I mean, I think when we get here, we live such an outside in life, you know, it's been our hangup, our own life. And now we're taught to live an inside out life. And that process is, is definitely a process and it, and it varies and, you know, it always materializes if you work for it sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Right. So, I mean, it's just the process. It's always emotional moves to different stretches, but it's, it's, it's really that it's that coming to the end of yourself is really what has to happen. You know, you have to come to the end of yourself. And for some people that happens today, they come to a, I mean, they're just done. They're done with their old life and they just want a new life and they're willing. But for me, I was done with King alcohol and the consequences, but I wasn't done running my life. And so I had to, I had to just sit, hear and suffer in recovery until I came to the end of myself. And luckily enough, I stayed, you know, I was three years into this thing before I really came all the way into it. But when I did, it changed my life. And those third step prayer promises started to happen on top of page 63. And I became less and less interested in myself, my little plans, my little designs, and I became more and more interested in what I can contribute to the world. And so that shift that, that going from a taker to a giver, that's the shift that has to happen. You know, you have to learn to live in recovery and visit the world, not live in the world and visit recovery. However you want to say that shift is what had to happen. So over time, that's just where I live today. What, you know, I've tried, of course, I'm still selfish. Self will never be fully eradicated, but I'm trying to live for something, a power greater than myself's ambitions, not my own. And that really comes down to, and then a program sets it up beautifully is that, you know, I was taught early on, if you want to have a storybook life, you do two things and you do them well. Number one, you have to live for the good of the world. And number two, you have to live for the good of the world. And number three, you have to live for the good of the world. And number four, you have to live for the good of the world. And number one, you always have a new guy you're on this journey with, always have a new guy you're on this journey with. Number two, you got to go somewhere once a week, you don't want to end up. So I've been doing those two things very religiously since, since 1990. And I can just tell you that's shaped my life on who I am and how I operate and what I do and who I hang around and where I go, et cetera. So it's just that commitment of love and service that I'm going to live for something other than myself. And that's what gets me excited today. So if I have to, summarize this whole evening, what AA's handed me is this four principled way of life. Number one, live a life of humility. Number two, live a life of other centeredness. Number three, live a life of self-sacrificial love. And number four, go out and learn to love everybody, including the people you don't like. And that's what AA gave me. And that's how I wake up every day. And it's an amazing way to live. And I'm forever grateful that I got it. And I found it right here in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. So thank you. Great question. Thank you, Harold. Thank you, Alison. Beautiful way to end the Q&A. And I'll pass it back to my friend, Pat.