The Thinking Mind as the Greatest Predator in the World – Peter M.

My name is Peter. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Hi, Peter. Again, I'm grateful to be alive and sober in part of a sacred place called Alcoholics Anonymous to thank Mick for his lead. And good to see so many friends here. Loving God separated me from alcohol on June 23rd, 1988, and I'm a recovered alcoholic. And I say recovered because I am anything less than that would be falsely humble. And I hope in part this weekend we get to talk about experientially what it's like living in the world of the Spirit, experientially what it is like feeling like a recovered alcoholic and the blessings that come with the relationship with this power called God. The great fact and nothing less than that great fact. Mick was talking about how God kind of blessed this fellowship of the spirit where we get to experience the spirit of the fellowship and how God coordinates and arranges all of those things when the intent is pure and it's His will, great things happen. To kind of piggyback off of that how God will bless us when we think he isn't, and how God can hear the spirit and hear my soul when it hurts. I just want to share a quick story, and it's a fresh one too because it just happened a few weeks ago. Mary and I were headed to a conference to speak at in Sweden just a few week ago, and we left Fort Lauderdale and we got to the infamous Newark Airport where rude is the word of the day. and we went from one gate to the next and were waiting in this international part and they wouldn't let us in because some of the paperwork was mixed up and they didn't just say you have the wrong paperwork, they ridiculed me for having the wrong paper work and I told Marion welcome to New Jersey, that's how it goes and within 20 minutes it was what I would call a hostile environment And I'm looking around. We're looking around for AA folks, just something to lock into. And there was a lot of fear I started to experience and some uncertainty. Why am I going to Europe to speak? I should just go back to Florida. And why do I go through this airport when I know what I'm in for all the time? And I was feeling really uneasy. The air conditioning this tournament was broken. It was hot. The people didn't know what line I'm supposed to go to. And I felt like a lost puppy in Jersey. and i was feeling very very uncomfortable and the mind started to talk the mind started to talk on don't do this you don't need to go speak you should go home and it went on and on and on and i were shooting all over myself and so i looked at marion she was feeling the same way and we looked at each other said let's pray so right in the middle of terminal we held hands we closed our eyes and we said prayer and marion recited something from scripture and when we opened up our eyes there was a woman standing there and she said to us it's so nice to see people praying in public and so that led to a little bit of a conversation and a little longer and I would say about 20 minutes we were talking to this woman and most of her family is in AA she talked about Al-Anon she was going back to Stockholm to see her dying dad and she was a missionary and she believed in the carpenter like I did. And she said to us, my favorite piece of scripture is this, is what we just finished praying. And she says, you know, I had this bangle at home and something told me to take it today so I want to give it to you and on this little bangle was that piece of Scripture. And so as we talked some more, I got centered. I got my GPS back. I wasn't Peter-centered. that I became God-centered, and suddenly all the noise around me, all the uncertainty and skepticism in my head seemed to be grinded into dust, and I was back. And it came to me, the realization, I go on an invitation. My life is one of invitation. I'm carrying a message God gave me through Alcoholics Anonymous, and off I go to talk to some more of his kids. And suddenly the complexion of the whole moment, The moment in the afternoon changed, and we got back on that plane, and we had a great flight. This woman told us where she was sitting. We were elated after speaking to this woman. It was just ease and comfort. And she told us Where She Was Sitting. She says, When the plane gets up there, we'll chat. So around 10,000 feet, the bell goes off, and you can kind of get out of your seat. And so Maria went back, and she couldn't find this woman, and we looked around some more, and when we deplaned, This woman disappeared. We looked up what her name means, and it means God is gracious. So she was in our life. I don't know if she was on that plane we really couldn't find her or was she sent by someone because for about 20 minutes or a half hour she completely changed our day and actually my approach towards that conference. And I fell asleep on the plane, and in my dreams something came to me like I sent a gift to you. And when I came to, I realized what that was. So we can take this home and say, oh, it was just a coincidence, and perhaps it was, or it could have been something else. And what I've learned since I've gotten sober by making lots of mistakes and crying, literally crying on my knees to this power called God, that he hears our heart and he reads the soul when it needs to be held and put back together like he's been doing for me and countless others. and what we really are about in Alcoholics Anonymous is driving people back to that power called God. However, however, we're going to go up this mountain. However, we are going to ride up this mountain. We're going into the same God. Another quick story I'd like to just share with you. I'm sober a while and I'm praying to God my conception of my God and I am praying and meditating three times a year for the longest time and I'm reworking the steps, and I believe a really, really good connection with this power called God and my personal God, the carpenter. And Mick starts taking me through the work and we get to step four and I share with him in my inventory about a lot of the contempt I have for my church or some Catholicism, some of the things we've all read in the paper and some other things that I shared with him about and he listened and he gave me some feedback as God would coordinate the whole thing perfectly. And Mick said something to me and it went like this. He said, you go to AA meetings? I said, yeah. Is every AA meeting a healthy meeting? I said no. Are some sick, some well? Yeah. Does everyone do exactly what you want? I said No. You got 13 steppers? I said yeah. But you keep going back and you keep bringing a solution and you keeps loving it. I said Yeah. He said, how come you can't do that for your church? I had no answer. I hate when I have no comeback from my sponsor. I was going to drop them about then. So part of my assignment was to go back, and I knew I had to make amends, and I went to confession on a Saturday, andI sat with the priest, and I told him what was going on with me. And I said, I owe an amends. And what he said to me, and it was exactly along the lines of what Mick said, can you come to church tomorrow to Mass? I said, I can do that, of course. And I knew that was part of my assignment. And I walk into Mass, and Marian took me because I was uneasy. I would go into my church and light candles for years, but to sit in Mass was a little different. I would going take inventory. And when I walked in, as the church bells were going, I began to weep. In fact, I called Mickey right after Mass. It was the most incredible experience. I weeped for an hour, and I went back again on another Sunday, and I Went Back on the Following Sunday, Went Back on the Followings Sunday, and Sunday morning at 1030 Mass, it's my most favorite place on the planet to be. I get fed. Well, I keep going with no expectations and following, and I'm into different books, andI want to learn. I want to know more. I wantto experience more of my God. And so what my God did for me was allow me to read at mass and become a lector and serve communion on Sunday mornings beyond my wildest dreams. And I love being there, and it was a time where I had some contempt for that as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And so What God Does is feed us as he has to feed us and puts teachers in our life to feed up. He has to teach us what we're missing because sometimes we think we're awake and we're sound asleep. And what I hope we can do this weekend is kind of get the jaws of life and pry us open a little bit. Awareness is the greatest agent for change, and if I think I have all the answers, I'm really sound asleep. How do I treat the challenges that my sponsor gives me? Even though it might make us uncomfortable, do they take direction? Am I still willing to go to any lengths with 15 or 20 or 25 years? Am I Still Seeking This Power Called God With The Desperate For Jotting Man on women with 15 or 20 or 30 years? Or do I sit back and rest on my laurels and tell the newcomers what to do while I haven't cracked open a book in 10 years? How free do we want to be? If we're sitting in an AA meeting tonight, it's a workshop. But it is an AA meeting to some sorts. And if we're seating here tonight and we're not experiencing freedom, my question is why? We have big books. We have meetings. We have sponsors. We have the sacred three sides of our triangle. Why are we in bondage? And to who? Ourself and the thinking mind which is the greatest predator in the world. And if we're experiencing freedom tonight, do we want to get freer? How much God do we wanna experience? I love the effect produced by booze. I love The Experience I Have With God. And the less self for me the depth of self for successful living, the less cell for me that's around I get to experience more of God, but my ego wants to fight that. So we need sponsors to kind of navigate us through that. And the best formula I have found is the 12 steps in the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, to continually rework that. Experience the depth of self, enter the world of the Spirit, and get poured back into 1 through 9, into 10, 11, and 12. I mean, the two stories I just shared were the words don't do them justice. The experience I had with Mickey and the experience at the airport, what? God fed me. I have a whole life of service, what I do privately and what I do for work. My whole life is service. I'm constantly the way God has made me feed. And every once in a while, God knows I hunger and feeds me. It could be through the direction of a sponsor or just can be walking into a church. You can be going on a trip to go speak and I get fed. I got fed going to feed others, if you will. It wasn't like that for me when I got drunk. When I got drunk, when I was 14, I was searching for something. You feed me because I am empty. Now, those weren't the words I was thinking. I couldn't articulate that, but I was missing. I was losing something. And it took a whole bunch of years to completely bottom out when there was nothing left of me but desperation. And then God scooped me up and put me in my seventh and last treatment center. When I got drunk at 14, my plan wasn't to wind up in seven treatment centers or be homeless and experience daily humiliation and degradation at the hands of a bottle of booze. And what's worse is when you took the booze away, I quickly found out, I remember this after my fifth treatment center, you removed the boozoid from me. Mickey talked about this. I'm just as sick. In fact, I might be more dangerous. We're going to talk about that a little bit the second half of the first step, the unmanageability, the current unmanangeability. I become a better thief, a better liar, a better cheat, and I'm going to hurt people. I infect people without this power called God. And I was searching abusive relationships, bad relationships with my family, and kept returning back to that which is killing me. And if I wasn't drinking, I was on a sex spree or a food spree of money. I was in some spree, and the spree many of us experience here while we're sober, the thinking spree, because you know we love to think. We're always thinking. Half of this room is thinking, who invited these two here? We like to think, I tell new people when you go to an old time and ask him a question and the old time he says, let me think about it get back to you, just run to the next day you don't because of thinking, we're always figuring something out because in that thinking I need to play God somewhere delusions of grandeur I'm a low life, whatever it is, but I'm thinking I love to think. I've got to think, you know, we've got to create drama. We love drama in my thinking. I love drama. No, I really do. I love trauma. Take it. I'm serious. And if I don't have drama, I know you got drama or will invent drama. And you know what the mind does? How it gets into this is I want to ask how Joe's doing. I haven't seen him around a while. And I pretend I'm really caring, concerning about Joe. I don' t care about Joe, I just want to gossip about somebody. And then you do the same, and we have these two masks on like we're real spiritual people caring about Joe. We just don't want to discuss our own demons, so let's pick on him. And this is how a lot of us navigate in Alcoholics Anonymous and get 30-year chips. What am I like when I'm all alone on my couch and no one's around or I'm in my car driving stuck in traffic? How am I doing? How Am I Doing? What's my mind telling me? I didn't drink today, but it's okay to do these other things. Do I practice? Here's a consideration. Do i practice fidelity to my God or do I have other lovers besides God like the sex and the food and the gambling or whatever it might be? Do I practise fidelity in my own relationship? Do i practise fidelity? What's that look like? i got into my first treatment center i i was i didn't think i was an alcoholic i went into my first treatment because i got caught stealing from my dad i was stealing his checkbooks uh checks from his checkbook and i really justified that inappropriate behavior my dad had lots of money i figured he had really a lot of money he was doing well at the time what's the big deal if i took a couple of checks he's cheap to me anyway I deserve this money. And I was desperate, so I forged his name, and I go get these checks cashed, and I did that for a little while. I thought I hit lottery because I can buy liquor. God forbid I should go look for a job. And then he got all these checks back in a checking statement. I didn't know those things existed, and then he went looking for me, and I went to my first treatment center, andI didn't concede to my innermost self. I will tell you this, my fifth treatment center, which I was put away for nine weeks, and at the time that was a long time to go to treatment. I came up in the 28-day models. But even after my fifth treatement center, when I conceded to my innermost self, I knew I was a drunk, and I knewI was headed for worse trouble than I'd already experienced. Even with that kind of knowledge and a desire to stop on my way into my fifth treatment center two days later, I was drunk after discharge, after nine weeks. Knowing I'm alcoholic, having a powerful desire to stop drinking because I knew it was hurting me. I was discharged on a Saturday and drunk on a Monday. So even knowledge of this, our book tells us, knowledge will not work. And it certainly won't work in a strange mental blank spot. And having a power over my life, having a wonderful desire to start drinking, my book tells me there's absolutely no avail. I experienced all of that. So when I picked up this book with the sponsor and they began walking me through it, and I saw these words, and he shared his experience. Yeah, I get that. Experientially, I lived this life. I lived two lives in one lifetime. So 1988 shows up, and I�m homeless. I�m living in the streets of New York. I weigh about 60 pounds less than I weigh right now. I was urinating blood. I had black eyes. My gums bled. I don�t know the last time I bathed or ate good food, solid food. My diet was if I can boost a couple of Twinkies and get some liquor. I mean, that was it. No money gets spent on food. Any money gets spend on blackberry brandy. This is what we do. I remember coming to or out of a hallway and maybe 5 or 6 in the morning sometimes and I would see these people at the bus stop going to work all freshly showered, suits on, their attache case and women looking really nice, catching the bus to go to work or going down to the train station. And I secretly despised every one of them because I wanted so much to be like them. And I knew alcohol was my master, and I wished myself dead. And then one time in Staten Island, I was living in a fleabag motel, and I made an attempt to take my own life. I ate a bunch of Valium and washed them down, and I wasn't elated, and I didn't think I was depressed. It was almost a relief. This ends now. I had the realization that I've ruined my life. I can't leave the drink alone. I've been to treatment. I've had priests on me. I've Had Shrinks on me, I'm going to die just like my mom did, and I had to realize that I'm killing my family too. Just let's wash the night away, and they don't come to anymore, and that's it. The courage to do battle wasn't there, and God interrupts my death again. And 1988, I get placed through a series of circumstances when God connects the dots for us when we don't know how. God connected the dots and placed me in treatment center number seven. And I'm here with you tonight to share about that, to share About the Good News that our book offers us, to share abut the great fact that our books promises us that we go from where we were to what we became in the experience of sunlight of the Spirit. And it's been made very clear to me, if I'm sober, God willing, for the rest of my life, I will always be broken. There's a great quote from a book, I'm weak flesh born into the slavery of sin. I'm broken. I can't fix me. It's only with his hand that I'll get fixed on his terms and his way. But going into each day, I'mbroken, and my brokenness is right in my mind. You can give me Shangri-La and I'll critique it. I can hit Powerball tonight and say, not everyone wants my money. I mean, there's just something wrong. I just look at things a little different. Now when I'm in the sunlight of the Spirit, when I've experienced that God, I don't even need to tell you that. It's just the way we walk, that you know that. And some of my experiences with this God thing, It's not always elation, euphoria. It's just this rightness or this okayness that no matter what's coming at us because life is problematic, just deep down within, I don't know how I have a sponsor, I have an support group, I'm going to somehow navigate through this. And there's just an okayness about it. this process of recovery i have found is a forward journey backwards we go to the steps numerically one to four to five and so on and we 10 11 and 12 but what i have found for me it's a process of going home it's a forward journey backwards to what god created with the oxford group talked about purity honesty and selflessness and love. I wasn't like that in 1988. Some days I'm still not like that. But overall, I think God's done a decent job with all of us in our attempt to seek him. So the forward journey backwards, back to that place we go home. And it's only through the removal of self, the death of self that we get to experience this God. I can have nothing in between me and God. Sometimes I sit with a sponsor and say, I have this problem has to go and sometimes God will just remove it. And I think God doesn't love me because he's taken the job for me, he's taken a relation for me and what he's doing is just bringing me closer to him to experience oneness because the things I think are good for me are killing me. But I don't know that because I'm not that bright. I can't see that far down the road but he can. God could and would if he was sought. So So there was a time when I was drinking. I got involved in some non-conference approved dry goods for a while. All the dope fiends in the back went, yeah. The crackheads went like this. What did he say? What did they say? What did you say? there was a time where I I'm not exaggerating I despised my family because they were confronting me on my problem and that they were picking on me and little by slowly God has brought us back together the other neat thing what's happened to me as a result of this work and I really got to thank Mickey for this I adore my dad But I had him larger than life. How do you live with somebody who's larger than life? You can't. Because what I would do is interpret that as no matter what I do, I'm still the mistake. I can't have a relationship. It's not fair to you. It wasn't fair to him. And what I've been able to do over the last couple of years and as my dad is getting a little older and begging God to show me how to have a relationship with this man, as close as we are, is that God has given me the awareness to see his humanness and come to terms with the mistakes he made bringing me up. It wasn't father knows best. There were mistakes. It was ugly. But I got to see his fear. I get to see his own mortality now, his age. I gets to see the humannness in him which has allowed me to love him from a different angle and the byproduct to that is I'm not writing a lot of inventory on my dad as much as I used to and I'm that much more comfortable around this guy because he's a man like I am, flesh and blood with flaws and brokenness and fears and uncertainty and doubt my dad just went into therapy two weeks for the first time, made a commitment to do six months in therapy. This, by the way, is a miracle. This man doesn't do things like this. He made a little try at it a bunch of years ago. So the healing that God does that I've gotten to experience only one place, the Sacred Rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I turned 26 a few years ago, and my belly button birthday just passed, And what a good life, because there was a time where I didn't think I'd make 30 years old. So getting a little older, a little bit more tired, a lot more broken. But I get excited about Alcoholics Anonymous. I get exited about talking my experience in this book and excited talking about God. And again, it's a treat for me to share the podium with Vicki this weekend. So that's all I got. Thanks. Thank you very much, Peter. So there's this schedule. And the way I read it, we have basically about an hour left. and I thought and Peter and I discussed it that it would be nice if we could go into we've talked about we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and then there's the second half of the first step that our lives have become unmanageable so when we go to a doctor the doctor says where does it hurt right where does it hurt and so here's an answer I would like to offer from my own life it hurts in my soul it hurts you know we owe each other the truth in Alcoholics Anonymous when we listen to someone tell a story their story we pad it along the way with our own desires we want that story to be like this, like a straight line and then this happened and the sun came out and the angels sing and it's like that but I don't have alcohol-wasm i got alcoholism so we're going to get it on the table now i want you to know me and i want you to what this disease does in my life and then we're gonna look at the second half of the first step at 23 years sober i laid down to take my life this is i'm not ashamed of this i'm not happy about it but i can tell you i got there by being disconnected from sponsorship i would confer with my brother wizards i would talk with people who couldn't lay a glove on me do you ever get frightened calling your sponsor i do and i'll tell you why because i've given my sponsor permission to be in my soul i have two i thou relationships i thou i am submissive to two beings one my sponsor and the second one is god these are the i thou relationship relationships in my life i was missing that for 15 years in AA. Oh, I'd check in with this or that and I'd go through the steps here, hit and miss. But what was happening is I'm slowly losing my power and I'm losing my soul. And I ended up on the floor at 23 years sober in an office in a rum part of town, an office i didn't pay for and i was on the floor under a telephone that never rang and my business is going down the pipes and i'm terrified and i would have told you i'm not that materialistic i'm Not that connected to money i mean we don't have money we don' t have anything I would ride to work on a bicycle and I would sit in that office and then finally one day I didn't even see it coming I made wrong spiritual choices and then one day I couldn't take it anymore and I got on the floor of that office and the sun started to set and I watched and Marie's at home she doesn't know what's going on with me and I got the telephone above me and I did not call her and I watched the sun set and I had a knife in my pocket and the question becomes am I going to take my life now and cut my wrist or am I gonna do it five minutes from now and I went through that for four hours and I cannot describe to anyone unless you have been there what it is like to go to hell if we define hell as the absence of god which i think is a reasonable definition i was in hell for four hours it's the blackest most negative spot i ever hit in my life and i i thought i'm gonna make a big mess on this floor and I don't want to put anybody out. So I got to get out that door. I got a crawl from where I am and get out that back door and there was dirt outside that door so that would absorb the blood. The reason I'm talking to you about this is because this is not child's play. We are in Alcoholics Anonymous. This is life and death. This is life and death and I want you to hear me. the dirt would absorb my blood and I would chicken out and run and I'm gone and this nightmare is going to end. And after four hours, I could not do it and I fell asleep. And I woke up the next morning and I saw that telephone and I remembered when I was going down, I want to share this with you, because of the kindness of God. During those days, as I got more and more negative, as I get more and less positive, as I've gotten more and most lost, you know, because for a suicide, a suicide eliminates options. So the world goes from this many options to this few options to this view options and pretty soon there's only one option. So I'm down at one option, I'm getting there. And I would say two things to God. I would said, God, I can't breathe. I can't breathe and I would say also would you please give me a cookie I just wanted something sweet in my life I just needed I just wanted a cookie from God and so I got down on that floor and I fell asleep Marie still doesn't know where I am I woke up in the morning and I remembered that I had met this woman in Minneapolis and she had talked about this guy in St. Paul who was a humdinger in AA and I needed a humbinger believe me so I called her and I said can you give me that man's phone number and we got to what's going on and I told her what was going on because now I'm tapped, I got no more lies in me I got not more bluff in me there's no more actor left in me and I tell her what is going on God bless her heart, she starts breaking out her a.a literature she's got two or three books in her lap she's talking to me and i'm listening and i'M THINKING GOD SHE'S GOT EVERYTHING I WANT BUT SHE'S A WOMAN COME ON I GOT SERGEANT STRIPES OVER HERE AND SHE'S 16 YEARS SOBER AND I'M 23 YEARS Sober I LOVE WOMEN DON'T GET ME WRONG BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN WHAT This is going to be some humbling business here, but I asked her to be my sponsor. She said, no, Mickey, I'll just help you and we'll point you over. I said, No, I want you to be my sponsor and her name is Cookie. I never saw it coming. Then I said It's interesting. Just watch what you're saying. Watch what song you're whistling or you're humming, it's God talking to you. I'm telling you. It gives me goosebumps. So what got me in that room was not alcohol. Do you understand? What got me on that floor is not alcohol One symptom of our disease is this addictive relationship with alcohol. It doesn't occur in a non-alcoholic. Okay? And the average temperate drinker, they do not experience the phenomenon of craving only we do okay even the heavy drinker can put it away what gets me on that floor if we can turn to page 52 in the big book and if you don't have one i'm going to read them one symptom of alcoholism is our inability to drink, okay? We have this addictive relationship. Now, in the book it says, above the bedevilment, which is what I'm going to read, is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which ?? throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does. So there's the attitude going into this. If I've got all the answers, what am I doing painted into this corner? What am I dealing with a knife in my hand? What am i doing with a bottle of pills or a gun in my head? And isn't it interesting that our ego cooks right up to the end? You know we can't drink because we would lose our sobriety, our pecking order. So the drink for the long time sober is a bullet. We don't want to lose our sobriety. What is wrong with it? All right. And what I would invite you to do is tonight I'm going to read these bedevilments and I would like you to just... I'm gonna pause after each one and you ask yourself where are you with this bedevilement tonight? Right? Because what we want, I got that all worked out because that's when I was drinking. That was when I Was Drinking. I want you all to also notice it doesn't say when drinking and it doesn'T say some of us. Right? The longer we're in this fellowship, the less we're going to talk about how we're really doing because we're royalty now. We've got 10, 15 years. Right? We don't want to tell somebody we are so lonely for just to have a little friendship that we can hardly breathe. We can't tell somebody I'm 23 years sober and I just lost my job and I can't find another job. We don'T talk to each other about where it hurts. So here we go. We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view. these are other symptoms of the disease of alcoholism we were having trouble with personal relationships we were having trouble with personal relationships either I'm going to treat people like they're more important than I am or I'm gonna treat people like they are less important than I am but there are no peers in here because I also hate myself we got that going for us do you know what I mean This is a real sickness. This is an actual disease. It is a soul sickness. And also in the chapter of agnostics, which is where we are, it also says when the spiritual maladies overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. So where does the disease of alcoholism live? It lives in my soul, which is why a spiritual program works for me to recover. So that's why it's hard for me to go into the doctor's office and say, you know, I'm feeling really lousy. Where does it hurt me? It hurts in my heart. It hurts my soul. It hurts him my soul and I didn't find out incidentally that I really had a soul till I almost took my own life and my soul was killing me. so ask yourself are you having trouble with personal relationships doesn't matter if you're 17 years sober do you or do you not have the disease of alcoholism do i or do i not have the diseaseof alcoholism and if you do odds are you're having problems with personal relationships we couldn't control our emotional natures dr jekyll mr hyde without a drink i'm going along it's a great day the next thing man it's stormy weather what happened what happened i i call it a soul storm i just get a soul storm and now man i mean it's like somebody put the light out we were a prey to misery and depression isn't it interesting that in our big book i just read that word the d word now we go along and we scratch our heads and we say oh my god i can't tell anybody i'm depressed are you alcoholic it comes with the party it's part of the package you got this disease you get the full money right we are a prey to misery and depression what's wrong i don't know i don'T KNOW WHAT'S wrong. How about I'm an alcoholic? Oh, no, that's an excuse. I'm in full control. Really? I'm not. We couldn't make a living. Oh, sure, I can make a living, we say, and we take great pride. I can make a leaving. Who gave you the power to make that living? How is it that you can show up for that job? Who made you so articulate that you can answer the telephone or deliver that package or do something useful if that's not god i'm telling you i have to places where at um let's see about 25 years sober i'd lost everything marie and i lost our home i was riding a bicycle to paint apartments for seven bucks an hour and and I'd been a six-figure man, an advertising typhoon. Now I'm painting apartments, and I'm dying. You talk about take your pride to the cleaners, but I've got to tell you something. I got to work in a job. I've Got to Tell You About This. I'm working in a place where you have to do 10 key. You know what that is? It's all those numbers over here. And I'm going to input credit card transactions for a company that supports a hospital. And I am sitting in there with this young guy behind me. We are back-to-back, only two of us in a room. And he is like this. I am hunting back on this 10 key. I am going one, two, you know, like this, and I am praying to God, please don't let me lose this job. I got nothing. I didn't know if I could be an employee, you know? And he said this to me. I don't know si this will mean anything to you because it didn't mean anything to me, I hear his voice coming from behind my back and he says, hey, you like Whitesnake? I don' t know what he was talking about. I said, sure. And this wall of sound hits me. It's heavy metal. I'm in there one, two, anyway. But you taught me that we are to do a day's labor for a day�s wage. We are to be a worker among workers. And I tried every day to go in there with my sack lunch and be a worker among coworkers. And the lady came into our office one day, our supervisor, and she says, men, I�m going to have to let one of you go. And I knew that Mr. Magic Fingers, He must have had 15 fingers on each hand. This guy was magic. And I knew he was doing double my work. They let him go and kept me. And I was an employee, and I could do that job. And every place I worked, and it was with this 10-key thing, every place they offered me a job. And I worked my way up from $7.50 an hour to $11.50 an hour i was pretty proud of that i wouldn't have looked at eleven dollars and fifty cents with anything but scorn i made six figure income but i worked for that i worked actually more honestly for that than i did for the money i did make the big money and uh we couldn't make a living huh we couldn'T make a living take it seriously and then and then god started to add other things, and he gave me all these weird jobs to do. And today I paint Russian icons and I make custom cowboy boots. I hear people talk from the podium, they say, and God give me a wildlife beyond my imagination. And I'm a custom cowboy boot making iconographer. That's about as wild as my imagination is. Who is this God? That's what I want to know. Okay, we're going to go through this. Here we go. We had a feeling of uselessness. I don't know about that uselessness but I can tell you I get the feeling of isolation that I'm not making contact with my fellow person how about this one we were full of fear how about that one nice huh but we're not going to tell anybody we're going to put on that happy face and we're gonna go into that meeting and we'll be honest and we are going to BS our way through the meeting And we're going to go home isolated, unhappy, full of fear. This is why it's so terribly important to have a sponsor who tries to live this life out of the big book and will help us to do the same. We were unhappy. That doesn't sound like much, does it? Unless you got it. If you're unhappy, it's really a big deal. we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people but when we're full of self it's very difficult isn't it it's I need to do the work to do listen to this I'm about to in the course of this next few sentences read you the most important plural word I ever heard in my life it says wasn't that a basic solution of these bedevilments, and I'm going wait a minute, we haven't hit the word yet but basic solution of these bedivulments? Are you kidding me? That's been my life. More important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight, of course it was. Here comes, when we saw others solve their problems When I got sober in 74, I can't tell you the complexion of Alcoholics Anonymous was so different than it is today. If you talked about your problems in a discussion meeting. They called that psychobabble and they would try to muzzle you. We got some old hands in here, you know what I'm talking about. That's psychobabbled. Cut that crap out. Let's go back to talking about drinking. Drinking, drinking, drinking. They make a straw man out of it. Listen, the drink will kill me, okay? But they make a sprawl man out of it and they're going to work a program against that straw man and say, it'll jump off the shelf and pour itself down my throat if I don't work my program, and that's a lie. The only thing that's going to get me to drink that bottle is what we just read. I've got to extend an invitation to that bottle, and it comes through these bedevilments. I get locked in this stuff. I will invite that bottle off the shelf. When we saw others solve their problems, so I called my sponsor, George, And I said, George. And I was not doing well at work. I was so angry nobody wanted to work with me. I was a bad employee. I was crazy. And I'm six months sober. And I called George and I said... George, I had just been on a bench with God. And I told him, God, we've got to talk. You first. And I meant it. right? Because if there's really a God, I need you now. I went back to the office. I said, George, can we talk? I said do I do the things I do and think the things I think because I'm alcoholic? And he said yes. can I recover from the way I live and he said yes and I couldn't believe it I'm 20 almost 28 years old I've been living with this disease my whole life I hated my guts I was like this I was a loser in so many ways and it was difficult for me to get through the day and plus I got a loaded gun in my top drawer and I'm not doing well. And he tells me, I got an illness and I've got a disease and that's why I think this way, that's how I act this way and I can recover from it. If you don't think that's good news, please. There's no better news on earth than that news. Now there's a lot of work to be done, okay? We admit it, which means to let in. It's the old ticket to the theater. It says admit one. It means to Let In. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives, regardless of how long you've been sober or how short a time you've been sober have become unmanageable by us. Now we're on a serious trip. We are on a series trip and I promise you before God we live in miracle country. we live and move and breathe in miracle country and you know what's cool about this it doesn't cost anything no money zero how special do you have to be to get this nothing just a garden variety drunk if it can work for me it can work for anybody that's what I have to say Peter would you like this talk please Peter alcoholic Peter question to consider currently has life become my master or is God in charge of my life? And not in the words I say, but based in my actions. Because the depth of my willingness is manifested in my action, so I can claim God with my lips all day long, but what do my actions look like? Thank you. So has life becomes my master? Am I more concerned about my car and my backyard, what it looks like so the neighbors don't think less of me, my position at work so my co-workers don't think less of me is my you know mick always tells me how much money do we need just enough not to need god is that important now what's it looking like is life my master am i using external conditions to remedy this internal illness called alcoholism on page 51 in the big book it tells me leaving aside uh the drink question they tell why living was so unsatisfactory let's put booze on the shelf we're still sober how am i how am I doing is life my master 43 pages in my big book are dedicated to step one there's a reason for that because they knew I was going to come along and find and try to find an angle and so we have to take a look at the second half of the first step as to where we are He says we're powerless over alcohol as a dash, and our lives have become unmanageable. And so what happens to people like me is, well, my life's unmanagable, sure, because I'm in and out of treatment. I'm getting beat up and arrested regularly. I can't stop drinking. I can'T hold a job. I can'T have a relationship. Alcohol is my God. Well, that looks pretty unmanangeable. A blind man can see that one, and then I get sober. God gets me sober. And little by little, I get a 30-day chip, 60-day ship, 90-day trip. I get six months, and I got a little job going on. I got some money in my pocket. And then a few months more goes by. Maybe we go back to school or join a gym. I got an old ride, got a lil' AA girlfriend, and things are looking really good. The goose hung high. I'm looking good. Even got an impeccable coat of tan, as Bill says. In fact, if I look in the mirror, I'm a superstar right now. Those old-timers should listen to me. You know, we get up on our soapbox and we tell all AA that they're wrong and we're right because they're not in the book, and it goes on and on and On. And then I get stuck on that. And that dash goes up and becomes a wall. And I forget about the lack of power, choice, control in the mind before I pick up a drink that if I'm not spiritually fit, this mind will take me back to a drink. I'm focused on keeping my life manageable. It has to look manageable to prove to me and to you that I'm okay. And what that does is I wrap all these conditions in my life around me like bandages. More money, better job, new relationship, another relationship, another car, just stuff, reputation that I create. I hope you think as good as me as I do. And they wrap these bandages around what's really empty on the end. There's nothing going on to cover up my own brokenness. But as long as I got stuff going on and I seem to be doing good, I think I'm okay, and that becomes life, becomes my master. I'm in for a rude awakening because I have no, I'm not working out in a spiritual gym. I don't have any spiritual muscles. I'm getting no soul food. And then we're back to the first half of the first step, powerless, no choice, control before I pick up a drink because I don't know what that day is going to look like when Jack Daniels says we're drinking and I go drink. My life looked really good. In fact, when I go drinking, people say he was doing really good, he just got that promotion, he just Got That New Car, he just gotten married, everything looked good. But spiritually, I was not doing anything to get well. And I flip right back to the first half of the first step where I can't stop to drink when it shows up. It owns me again. regardless of time or what I'm doing. This process of recovery is transformational, not linear. The great question I was asked one time, have I become programmed by my program or transformed by my programme? And if I'm transformed by myself, by my programmes, then it's nice to have things. I like things. I like a new car. I like an ice home. I like nice clothes. But they're not God. my relationship with my creator is the most important thing and somehow when that goes on i'm not thinking about drinking i get another day sober in fact when that's going on i'm really concerned about other people and page 63 says less and less about me more and more about them how does that shift happen how's that shifting consciousness happen in chapter 2 agnostics it says that sometimes difficulty arises when we mention God to people the only one who's going to manage my life and keep it manageable on his terms well the difficulty is not God with us, not God with me, it's me or us towards God based on the perceptions and conceptions we've accumulated about God the belief systems we buy into about God. And as long as I'm doing that, I'm stuck on the second half of the first step. I'm trying to get my life manageable. I'm managing my life and I'm headed for trouble if I do that. 43 pages talk about step one in my big book. And then I start to experience some disease and discomfort even though I'm not drinking. And what Mick talked about, the ego won't let me tell you I'm Not Doing So Good. And then I fall into this place of despair, which is all coming from the mind where pride and ego have free room and board. It's an extreme form of me when I'm in a place of dispair. It's all about me. There's no humility in that, even though I think I'm really a humble guy. I don't want to trouble anyone. I'm an egomaniac. Run amok. I'm indespair. I'm depression. My mind is now Buddha, Allah, and Jesus all wrapped into one. Whatever it tells me must be true, so I buy into it. And then one day I just can't take it anymore, regardless of how long I'm sober, and suddenly shows up. Suddenly the thought crosses my mind that, you know what? A nice Jack Daniels or a couple of pills or Mr. Boston Blackberry Brandy, I can breathe again. That wasn't the plan when I woke up in the morning. I just couldn't do life anymore because I'm managing it. That's a scary place to be. You know how many, I'm in the treatment center business. You know, how many folks come into my treatment center who had multiple years of sobriety and relapsed on pills, anti-anxiety because they were in AA and they were miserable. They were depressed. They had lots of anxiety. They had problems. My Lord, we all got problems. That's why we have God to turn the problems over to God. And they go seek these meds and be an alcoholic. They don't tell the doctor that they're alcoholic. And the doctor prescribes, and what do we do? It says one every four hours, I take 45 every 10 minutes. Right? Right? And then they wind up in rehab. And when I sit with them, I say, well, what went on? Well, I got my job, I get married, everything was going good. I said, well, what about the spiritual work? I went to meetings. That's not spiritual work. Meetings don't treat my alcoholism. It's one part of a three-sided triangle. What did you do at the steps where you go and understand the effectors? What did that look like? Who are you accountable to? Nothing. They were God. How can I meet God if I'm playing God? How can i experience God if i am God? And mine won't tell me that i am god but secretly i am God. I'm trying to arrange everything and everyone to do what i want. You laugh on cue, you cry on cue. with the right inflection, by the way. It's all about me. And so it seems to be when we're experiencing God, we experience the death of self a little by slow that this ego gets grinded into dust and my mind screams, get away from this. We can do this. I can be in charge. I've hit a million walls doing this in recovery. And some of them weren't train wrecks. It was just a lot of uncomfortability. And I said, I don't understand why. And here's what my sponsor told me. Any time I say, and this is revealed to me in inventory, unmanageability, second half of the first step, how subtle it is. Because the longer I'm sober, my illness gets that much sharper. So I'm reading inventory, and this Is how I start to little by slowly manage my life. I'm Reading Inventory, and it comes to dishonesty, the question, where are we dishonest? And it was given a consideration. Anytime I say, well, I need to figure this out. I'm practicing dishonesty because there's no God in that equation. I'm God. That's a lie. Let me figure this Out. I got to figure, I can see what I'm going to do here, how I'm going to make money, how i'm going To say, I Need to Figure This Out. There's No God. It's All About Me. I Just Played God. That's A Form Of Dishonesty. How Come You're Not Giving Me What I Want? Something's Wrong With You, So I Gossiped To Mick About You. I'm Playing God. That's DishONESTY. Anytime I'm in me, I'm not in God. And that's a form of dishonesty, which means I started to manage my life. And once I open up that box, all bets are off. When I'm Not Spiritually Fit, when we're not spiritually fit, I and we are capable on any given day of doing anything that I'm clear about. All because I want to play God and manage my wife. and I think things are God. I think Things make me important, my reputation, and where is God? As my sponsor told me, God's pursuing me. Every breath I take, God is pursuing me and begging me for a relationship and I keep going, let me go to work, I'll check with you tomorrow. And the next day he knocks on my door and says, well, I've got things to do. I've Got to get to my home group because they need me because I'm Moses. I'll see you tomorrow, okay? current and manageability is my life one of disease and discomfort or pcs and comfort do i have a life of that leading a quiet desperation do i have one of inspiration am i inspired is it humility or ego do i Have a spirit of love and tolerance even when things maybe make me uncomfortable or acceptance. How am I doing? Currently, how am I doing? I was brought up in AA that way. All my teachers are where we are right now. I don't care about what we did five years ago, ten years ago. Who's running your life right now? How are we doing currently? When was the last time I spent time in worship with my God and not looking to be zapped with some spiritual experience just in honor of my God and thanks to my God? How much time in meditation? How much was the last time I wrote inventory? I went through the 12 steps. Am I completing all the amends that I'm consciously aware of? If I didn't, I haven't had an experience as a spiritual awakening as a result of the 12 Steps. I've done what made me comfortable again. So I'm running the show once again. Here comes disease and discomfort. Who am I accountable to? Do I have a sponsor that I am accountable to, that I call on a given day, a given time, notepad, notebook, pen in hand ready to be taught? Or do I check in and I only tell them certain things that don't make me look bad? How am I doing? First of all, the only way I can be truly accountable to my sponsor, the one way we can do that and be current is through a surrender. In the morning, to keep my life manageable, I surrender to my God every morning in my brokenness. What do you need for me to do today? I surrender this to you. I can't keep myself sober. I can'T do spiritual work. I can'T do step work. As long as my mind is breathing, it'll find an excuse to pull me away and then justify inappropriate behavior and make it look really spiritual to me. And then I get annoyed at you when you take my image. I say, that wasn't so spiritual. I'm not talking to you now. I'm going to a different meeting. They don't understand me here. So it's through that surrender in the morning and the thanking at night. And I work with a little prayer and some religious practice in the afternoon, the way my God has made me. And somehow through that surrendering and a life of service, I keep getting fed and I keep riding the horse. But as my sponsor told me, I'm on a horse. I'm riding backwards, and I'm never going to ride forward. It's just the way I operate. It's my brokenness. But that's okay. I get to do God's work. Now, there have been times in my journey where I wanted to manage my life. I remember a bunch of years ago, I came into a whole bunch of money. And suddenly, I remember going, I'm going to Home Group, but like with those people. Joe, Joe's still looking for a job, poor guy. The night before I was going through the want ads with him and helping him. He's still, because I got a truck full of money. Thank God for good sponsorship because we don't have to say anything and the sponsor will just read you. And my sponsor back in the Free Spirit Group in Brooklyn, this gentleman Tony, he didn't care who was hearing him either. And he pulled me in the back kitchen and he got me back in line again. But for that little bit I was, I have a whole bunch of money now. I can buy things now. And poor Joe's still out of work. Poor guy, I have to go. I don't have time for this. See that? I remember when I first got married, everyone was congratulating me constantly. Congratulations, you got married. I was someone special on AA campus. I had a reputation. I was the spiritual married guy now. And I thought I had everything to do with that. So these, I thank God that I didn't live that way, but these things would show up, little flashes on the radar every once in a while. And because of good sponsorship, that even when I was looking to buy into that, that I'm now Moses, good sponsorship would reel you right back, that the value of having an awake teacher who confronts us out of love, not so he feels good. And so I kept getting reeled back and reeled real back until I was broken down again in Alcoholics Anonymous and with touch of the Master's hand be made into where I am tonight in my brokenness. I think the big difference between then and now is I have less of a problem telling you how broken I am and it was a time in early sobriety I thought it was immortal sin to tell you I'm broken because you may not like me. I'm supposed to be spiritual guru with 60 days sober and if I tell you that I got stuff and I'm afraid or I'm thinking of weird things you may say, oh, you can't come in here. This was the last place for me. Who else can take me in? So God little by slowly kind of gets the clay and fixes it the way he needs fit, unlike what I think, and removes a whole lot of things to forward journey backwards. Unmanageability. Has life become my master? We can read it very often when somebody walks into a room. My old sponsor, Mark, would say drunks are famous for doing this. How are you doing? I'm tired. Why? I've been trying to solve the world's problems all day, talk to all these demons at once. I mean, one of us is talking to 300 people at once while we're sitting at a table. We have these arguments going on. Life becomes too unbearable and we can spot it as soon as we walk into a room. We look like we're beat up. And we usually go to, the way I would approach life without God is going to a gunfight with a pocket knife. no here I come my big book tells me when I meet a few simple requirements I experience this revolutionary change and to experience this revolutionary change I need to meet a few simply requirements it's on page 50 in the big book so am i meeting these requirements these following these spiritual laws because that's what they are the 12 steps a set of spiritual laws and they haven't changed because they work we change we try to change the steps our personalities change we go through life in different different ways and we have always people coming to a and think the steps need to be look more this way than that way you know how that goes but they work they stay the same i need to adapt to that and so for me it's always started with the surrender. Quite frankly, my life was under my business and I at this point in my life at 55 and as long as I'm sober I don't want to manage my life. I can look back on all the times the spots on the radar where I've managed my life and even if it was instant gratification it felt good for a while I felt like a little bit of a John Wayne in AA it always blew up. I want no part of it. My life is one of invitation. I get invited into people's lives, sponsors' lives, people's lives. They invite me and invite to do things like that. I want no part of that anymore. And that's not being apathetic. That's being very much involved with my life on my creator's terms. Somehow, I sleep at night, and somehow at the end of the day, I have inventory to write, but I'm not calling my sponsor to say, really screwed someone over today. It's fear. It's resentment. and its uncomfortability, whatever it might be. So my life was none of my business going over to step three. My life was None of My Business. And I kind of like it that way. It's his business as he sees fit. And how often when I'm trying to manage my life where I think it's supposed to look this way and feel a certain way, and then I get there and say, this is not what I thought it was going to be like if I only would have listened to God. and sometimes when we're following God's path we're going oh my God this is not going to work he doesn't know what he's doing when we get there it looks great and then I take the credit for it I was working in Texas a handful of years ago working hard seven days a week I'm not lying when I say 80, 100 hours I mean I was just constantly working I lived on my work site and make this place somewhat successful, just on the name, filling up beds in this treatment center, my name, and building the inside out from the inside-out. And greed does funny things to people. My dad used to say money will bring out the worst or the best depending on who it is. And these folks got greedy, and I was out of a job. And I'm going, who's going to hire me at my age? I only know how to do one thing well. I do it well in a treatment-centered business. God gave me some gifts, but who's going to hire me? I'm screwed here. And I remember being in South Jersey down the shore and outside this little restaurant, diner, and I'm crying on this park bench. It was Labor Day weekend. I'll never forget it. And I'm going, where do I go? I don't have a lot of money. I have very little money. Well, where am I going to get a job? and how dare they fire me and their God where's money now for years I've been wanting to move to South Florida since I'm a kid there's just something about Florida I remember my dad taking us down when we were kids I felt safe, I loved the ocean I loved it how am I going to get to Florida well I lose this job and while I was working And I gained a great education, more than I thought I knew, about how to do what I do for a living. And here I am out of work, and some friends I was doing business with in South Florida, they give me a call. They said, how would you like to come to work for us? I didn't send the resume. I didn' t solicit them. Next thing I know, I'm on a plane, and I'm working in this place in South Carolina. When I was on that park bench, I said, Father, what you do with me is none of my business. Just show me what to do. I am lost again. I don't know what to Do, which is some of the best things that can come out of my mouth. I don' t know what To Do. I don''t know where to work. I don ''t know what I get for a job. You go for a Job. You''re in charge of my life. Just fix me. Tell me what To do. Everything was removed. And in that poverty, in that moment, that emotional poverty where there was nothing to lock into, I had nothing. Suddenly I hear God, the thunder of silence and the invitations extended. And I'm living in a place that I feel like I've been my whole life. I never felt more at home. I love what I do for a living. I couldn't see that sitting on the park bench Labor Day about five years ago. I thought God forgot me, but it's the removal, the removal the removal of the pruning of the tree. A bad fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree gives good fruit. God has to prune and the pruney doesn't feel good. He kept pruning, removing things that weren't good for me although my mind said this is good for Me. Prune Me and landed Me in Florida and I'm before you tonight. How'd that happen? And then I look back and say it was the best thing I'm not in Texas anymore Best thing, not working for this place. At that moment, I couldn't see it, how dark it is before the dawn. But he managed my life. I think he's doing a pretty good job. He's kept me on the search for 55 years and a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I look back over my life, the touch of the master's hand was always better than anything I could come up with. But we can fall. Mickey calls it the opiates of success. We can fall to the promotion becomes important, the job, the reputation, the relationship, all that stuff just reels me in. And somewhere in there, God lives on the outer fringes of my life and I call him when I'm in trouble or I talk about him to look good, but I become the landlord of my kingdom, which means I only let people in who are going to endorse what I'm doing and what I'M saying and I need more. I just switched addictions I always needed more drink, I was a glutton now I'm not drinking I need more of whatever it is so I'm glad my life is no longer my business so we can get stuck on the second half of the first step but the illness won't announce and say listen you know you're stuck on the second Half of this First Step it's going to say they're crazy, you're right the subtle insanity that pre-sees the first drink is that I've become God again. Which means if I'm God, that means you must worship me. I'm God. And secretly I know how broken I am. That's a lot of work. That' s a lot of managing. At some point I need relief. And I know where I get relief. Oh, to start off on a sex spree because I don't want to drink. Start off on food spree. A little gambling spree, some sort of spree But at some point, I emerge remorseful with the firm resolution not to do that, but I can't do it. So you know what? Have a drink. And on that day, I wasn't planning on drinking again. Step one, 43 pages in my big book. Just on step one, I think it's important. That's all I got. Thanks, Peter. Thank you, Peter and Peter. okay we're just about to wrap it up for tonight and one of the things that i wanted to to suggest for your consideration is i've noticed it in my own life and in my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, there's this exterior nature. We try to put an exterior face on what is an interior build, okay? What we're talking about this weekend is to build an interior spirituality. It's not for anyone else's inspection. Do you know what I mean? We're not here to prove to anybody that we're doing this thing. i'll give you an example of interior exterior i talk to people and they say well i wrote my fourth step but thank god i don't have to make any amends out of this fourth step so what i hear them saying is i am writing this fourth stop to see if i owe amends the fourth step is i'm writing this forth step to ascertain the condition the state of my soul that's my interior life nobody gets a vote on your interior life that's between you and god so these are the building blocks for what is inside of me this is my relationship with my maker so all the considerations that we're talking about here it's not like hey i got the second half of the first step and now i'm going to go broadcast that all over the place i got this guy who grabbed me early on in sobriety he said mickey what's happening to you in your early step work is only for you in the first for instance the first four steps don't be telling people what's coming up in your inventory you can do that after you fifth step but what you do is you hold it between you and your maker and that creates this furnace if you will this oven in which is born spirit and that spirit then will launch and animate me and i agree with what peter was saying earlier this is for transformation we are in alcoholics anonymous for transformation transformation to what am i supposed to become somebody else No, we are in here for God to transform us into who we are as opposed to the false self. We keep trying to create. I've got this commodity. Let me tell you the Mickey Musset commodity. How do you like it? What do you think the marketing value is? That's not it. But it turns out, and I think it was in, who was the first black president of South Africa? I can't remember his name. Nelson Mandela. He said in there, we're not afraid of the shabbiness in us. We are afraid ofthe greatness in us, so believe me, my own experience is if you will give a God a shot, it turns out that he made you just like he wanted you to be. I keep trying to leave. Here's what I want to do with Mickey. I'm going to take him downtown for an ice cream cone, send him out to get it and leave before he gets back. Right? Because this guy is all fouled up. Wrong way Hannigan for sure. No, that's who God wants in his kingdom is me as I am. That doesn't mean I don't have defects of my character which we can deal with in here. So we're building a castle internally where God can live and so if I'll recognize these things, read the book so what we have for tonight is the opportunity to go to bed hopefully, with maybe some new concepts that might be of use to us that will help us say, wait a minute, what's going on with me in terms of my admission, right? Being open to admitting. We say, God, if I admit this, I'll be defeated, right. It's going to tear me up if I admitted I'm powerless and unmanageable. It won't. What it'll do, if there's not a serious problem, I am not going to go for a serious solution. If you don't think you have this, why would you want to go on this trip? We don't do this because it's noble or holy. We do it because we're going to die without it. The gift of desperation. I got alcoholism today. I'm married for 43 years to this lady I love over here. I can't be married without God. I can'T make cowboy boots without God and I make some really cool cowboy boots. Okay. He does. I've tried it without him. Anyway, yes, we are now at the place where we say good night. God bless you. What a wonderful opportunity to be with you together for this night and the next two days. I just love you. Sleep well. See you in the morning. Thank you. thanks for listening