Why the Big Book’s Concept of Higher Power Must Make Sense – Howard P.

My name is Howard and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, I'm honored to be here. I'm grateful to JT for asking me to be the speaker today. when we first talked about it J.T. was feeling pretty good and over a period of time as most of you know his health deteriorated I went to see him with a priest from Philadelphia a week or so ago and the priest Father Mike said to J.P. he told him where in the Bible it says that God spoke from heaven and said, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. Then he said there's another passage where God said to somebody else in whom he was well pleased, Later, we will meet in heaven and we will thank one another. And so when I'm thanking JT, as you guys know, he's probably being thanked one another in a little higher order. but I love JT still do, always will I'm grateful that he asked me to talk somebody asked me earlier I don't know how long you've been doing this but you've done this for long enough that you shouldn't be nervous I can tell you my sobriety date is August 4th 1972 At some time in October of 1974, I was asked to be the male speaker at the Southern California Convention on Friday night, midnight, speaker meeting. That was synchronicity that there's no reason for it to happen, but it happened and they haven't been able to shut me up since then. But I would have thought then that by this time, I wouldn't have been afraid. But I'm not only afraid. I have some new hearing aids, and the only sound they're picking up today is the hammering of my heart in my head. And there's a story about a guy, and I'll tell you part of why. We all know it's easy to just say the ego is the problem, and the ego IS the problem. But this guy had survived the Johnstown flood. Now, this was a hell of a flood. And he had survived it. And the thing that he loved to do the most was talk to people in the barbershop, in the car, in the neighborhood about how he had survived the Johnstown flood. And then he passed away and he went to heaven. And St. Peter said, what is it that you like to do best on earth? And he said, well, I like to say how I have survived the Johnstown flood. Well, he said we will have a large audience at your disposal for you to talk to about that all the time. But you should know that Noah may be in the audience. I give you Noah on the front row I would have thought after that much P.S. I would have settled down more than I have but all I can do is just go on with this thing now I I would talk a lot about my childhood because it was a long long childhood. About 50 years I was native of Los Angeles but I was raised in a little farm community about 45 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas. And one of my school friends, girlfriends when I was in school is here today. That's another reason that I'm intimidated. But in this little town, we thought we were in the Bible Belt. we said we were in the Bible Belt now later on as I've been able to travel throughout the United States I find that everybody thinks they are in the Bible Belt. South Dakota, they think the Bible Belt, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas well California knows it is not in the Bible Belt. But California is happy with that. They do not want to be in the Bible Belt, but all the rest of us think we're in the Biblet Belt. So nobody knows where the Bible Belt is. But Jeanette and I can tell you that it buckles about 45 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas, in the Friends Church right there. And that's where I learned, not in the Friends Church, but in the Methodist Church. I first learned when I was very young about God. And I learned things that weren't helpful to me. And I can tell you that in my opinion when I was at the very start I was bodily and mentally different from my fellows I felt separate from as long as I can remember and I was afraid when the big book talks about fear being a corrosive thread through the fabric of my life I identify with that fear was immobilizing in my life. And yet when I was a little kid and taught about God, I was taught that God was separate from me. I was thought that God was up in heaven, an anthropomorphic being up in Heaven. And I was a little kid in this little farm town in Kansas. So I knew we were separate. If they would have said, God's in Kansas City, I would have known we were separate. But when he's in heaven, we're separate. And I was taught that I have to make my life work. My life is full of, my whole life was full of things like you put your shoulder to the wheel, your nose to the grindstone. If you can get a visual of that, that would be an ineffective position to get any work done. but you put your shoulder to the wheel, your nose to the grindstone, the devil no less is going to take the hindmost. Quitters never win, winners never quit. The little train that could. All of these things without me knowing it convinced me that I was responsible for making my life work and I didn't know it until after I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I lack the power to make my life work. I lack to power to make my live work in such a way that I'm going to feel happiness and satisfaction with my life. I lack power to make my life work so that I will feel good. And I did not feel good about my relationship with my dad, I did not feel good about my relationship in school. I never achieved my potential, although we know that I was achieving my potential and I ultimately did because I was potentially a pitiful and incomprehensibly demoralized alcoholic and I lived right up to that potential and that's what I was doing all my life. But other people had other visions of my potential and I wasn't cutting it for them. And so I felt bad. I felt bad about everything, I think. And when I was 13 years old, I learned to drink whiskey. I drank alcohol and for the first time in my life, I felt good. I really felt good. I remember the first time I felt that thinking this is what they mean when they say let's have a few drinks and get to feeling good and okay along about this same time in the Argonia movie theater there was a travel log movie about training wild elephants in India. And I don't know why I remember things, but some things I remember, and I remembered the movie. And after I had been in AA just a little while, Don Gates talked about how we learned stuff when we're kids. He said, you know, you may be a Republican, you may be a staunch Republican, but probably you're that if that's what your family was. You may be an Hindu, a stauch, devoted Hindu, but if you are, it's probably because your family was and that was what was imposed on you. And on the way home, I remembered this movie where they had taken the baby elephants out of the herd and had chained them to a tree so that when they tried to pull, they couldn't pull loose. And the trainer watched them until they saw that when the baby elephant pulled against the chain and it was tight, it stopped pulling. It had come to believe that when the chain is tight, its futile to pull. Then they went ahead with the rest of his training. But all his life, they reinforced the belief that when that chain on your right leg is tight, it's futile to pull against it. So then at the end of the movie, they had a harness on the elephant. He was pushing over trees, lifting them up, and then they'd hook the tree to the harness and he had dragged that tree out of the forest. And at lunch, in order to keep the big elephant where they wanted it, they drove a relatively short stake deep enough in the ground that when they put the rope or the chain around the big elephants right front leg and then wrapped the other around that stake and the elephant would wander around when it would hit the end of the chain, it would stop pulling. It couldn't pull against the tight chain. The chain didn't hold the elephant. The stake didn't holds the elephant but the limiting belief they had imposed on it when it was a baby was what held the elephant and I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with 973,405 approximately. Baby elephant beliefs that I didn't even know I had. Stuff that it had to work for me to feel good, but I lacked the power to make them work. One of them had become that if I'm going to feel good, then I have to be right. if you're right with God you're good if you are not believe me there is going to be literally hell to pay if you write with your dad I never was but he may have been nice to you but you are going to get hell to play if you aren't if you were wrong in school if you weren't in church if you where wrong in any place there is hell to pray so I learned that I am right by god i'm right and if you don't think so you're wrong i don't care if you're the superintendent of schools or you're the church minister or who you are i'm right and you're long it's got to be that way and i don t even know i know that it's just i can look back in retrospect back, Walt. From where I am today, knowing what I know today, I can look back on those years and say I had a bunch of baby elephant beliefs that I was separate from God and that if I just behaved the way God wanted me to behave, then in prayer I could beseech him in times of adversity to help me through the adversity, but I wouldn't, but that would only work if I was doing what God wanted me to do. And I was never able, or most of the time didn't want to do what God wants me to do, or at least what people told me God wanted me to do. So anyway, I was screwed up. Nothing worked in my life. I didn't feel good. I drank whiskey and I felt good and that was the way I felt good and I thought better and better when I in 1959 I got a job as an entry-level engineer and there were some things about that that I was very good at but I wasn't good at some of it and I discovered if I drank whiskey I was good at all it was truly magic it was different for me than it was for anybody I knew because I couldn't see what to do and I'd drink whiskey and I could see and once I discovered that I discovered it on a Wednesday night after work and once i discovered it the next thing I discovered is you don't have to wait till Wednesday night to do this. You can do this any day at lunch. Or eventually, you can do it any time of any day. It's lunchtime someplace. And then eventually, I reached a place Let me say this first. I was an entry-level engineer with a title called process analyst. Because I learned to drink whiskey, I became an engineer. Because I continued to drink whisky, I became a senior engineer, and then I became in engineering manager and became a Senior Senior Engineer and then an Engineering Manager. And that's not setting the world on fire, but that's a steady, progressive series of promotions that I got because I drank whiskey. Long about 1970, I hit a place where I had to drink so much whiskey before I was smart that my speech was slurred. When I finally got smart, my speech were slurrred and I'd drop things, spill water, you know, gee, spill the coffee, And then I discovered a thing called bennies. How many of you guys don't know what bennie's are? See, there's more and more of you. That's speed. I learned to take bennis really when I was in the military. and I thought god damn those guys march slow I mean everything was better with bennies except I it helped me in every way except to control my body functions if you take bennie's and booze you need some help there, and so my boss started talking to me about my drinking, and my wife had been talking tome about my drink, and we got married when I was 20, and over the next 10 years we had three children, and I loved my wife very much except for when I hated her, and She needed Al-Anon when we were in the seventh grade, and she never heard of Al-A-Non until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. So that was always, you know... But there was a lot of good things happening. We had a lot fun up till 1970. And by 1972, my boss demoted me, took me out of management, said I'd lost credibility with him as the supervisor and with the people that I supervise. The next month, Pat, who I'd been married to for a number of years, since 1953, she was going to leave me. It was about the 780th time, and she never left, but she meant it this time. And I said, don't leave. I'll stop drinking altogether. I won't. Just don't leaves. and after a few days of not drinking all together I went back to her and I said Pat some people are born to drink and I'm one of those and I don't want you to leave and I don't want you take the kids but if I can't drink at all I guess you have to go that's actually a funnier line in her Al-Anon talk, but she stayed because I was just going to drink a half a pint a day. Now some of you will be mystified by this because every morning I meant I was just going to drink a half a pint today. Now, nearly every morning before I got the half a pint, I'd stop by the Tattletail and have a couple of doubles, which don't count. Then when I can think and my heart's beating and I can go by the Quick Stop Liquor Store and get a half of pint, and I'm going to baby this baby through the day. This is all I'm going to drink is just this half a pint. And I go out to the car just a couple of times during the morning and let's say by 1030, the half pint's gone. But I'm feeling better and I'm thinking better. And I'm drinking. I don't mean I'm going to drink exactly a half a pint a day. I'm going to average a half a pint a day I think I'll go out at lunch today and get tomorrow's half a pint. I won't want a full half a point tomorrow just part of a half and tomorrow's half a punt is gone by two and then it's a get off my back I'll drink if I want to. I'll not hurt anybody ready. And I'd go get number three half pint, and even if there was some of that left, and there usually was on the way home, I'd stop by and get the fourth half a pint so that I could take it into the kitchen with me, and in front of Pat break that seal. Take a drink. Boy, it's a jungle out there today, which would account for why it smelled like I was drinking. But knock it didn't fool her. Drinking whiskey fooled her into thinking that I had just started drinking whiskey. I've been drinking it all day. And then before very long, I passed out on the floor, and she's thinking, boy, he ought to stop. He can't even drink a half a pint. And she hadn't gone down, and I mean, she just started walking over me, you know, hoping they didn't wake me up. Because if I woke up, it was my TV set, my station, my remote, you Know, and they just let me, what we called sleep, we now call it, when he was passed out. But, and then I'd get up the next morning stopped by the quick stop liquor if i had part of that third half pint left i'd drink that on the way to the tattletale then i would have a couple of double shots then i'd go get my half a pint for the day and then i go get My second half a pint and my third and my fourth day after day. By August, well, by July, I'm hopelessly in debt. I've had convulsive seizures. A doctor diagnosed me as being acutely intoxicated with probable alcoholic neuropathy. I owe money. I I owe $2,500. Now today that's $25,000. And $2.500 that Pat don't know I owe and she's making the payments. And we don't have any other money than this money but she's taking care of it. She's making other payments that she knows and here I am, $2500 with no hope. I don't have a hope of paying this off. Then I had an opportunity to sell some equipment that I didn't own. Equipment that I found right before Hughes lost it. And I slipped this equipment to offense and the offense found somebody to buy it, I was supposed to get 50. It never got a dime for it. But within 10 days, I woke up and I'd been back in the tattletale trying to sell some more test equipment in the Tattletail to the entrepreneurs, the people that came into the Tettletail that owned the factories. Whiskey had stopped making me smart. So on July the 23rd, I woke up. It's like it says on page eight, quicksand stretched all around. There was no words to express the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. And it was quicksAND. It was quickSAND. There was nothing to stop the sinking. I'd stolen the equipment. I was a candidate for a hard time in the federal penitentiary. My family was a candidate for that disgrace, and I'm thinking, I've got to stop drinking until this blows over. And back when Pat was going to divorce me the last time, she had gone to her lawyer, and he had said, oh, you guys don't want to divorce him. He just sounds like an alcoholic. Why don't you get him to go to AA? And she said, I know. I'll ask him. It wasn't like we hadn't heard of AA. Her dad, my dad was an AA founder. He got sober in July of 1946. He was the second person in Sumner County, Kansas. And he and Bill Bringer, I didn't know this until I got the archives at the Kansas State Convention and looked at Sumner Country. Dad and Bill Bringer were all over that. They started the meeting in Argonia. That became the mother group for all of the meetings around. And it was back then that the traditions were just coming out. And anyway, the literature on that is, particularly if it's your dad, my dad died sober March 8, 1951, at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous of a heart attack. And I think he had three years sobriety then. But you would think that I would know something about Alcoholics Anonymous. You'd think I'd know something. Now, what I thought was I knew everything. And I didn't know anything. I knew that I wasn't an alcoholic. And Pat, who's a lot smarter than me, she sure should have known. But she didn't. I mean, when she said to me, the lawyer thinks you should go to AA, I said, Pat, AA is where people go when their drinking has put their life in trouble. Our life's not in trouble She says, okay. Soon after that, I sell her the half a pint of Dayline and everything's like it should be. But now I'm going to have to stop drinking until the equipment thing blows over and now I're going to AA because Pat will like this. And so I called this guy who had used to drink in the Tattletail. He had disappeared eight years ago. I don't know about your bar, but my bar got the straight dope on every issue or event that we were familiar with. And in Kenny's case, he had joined AA and within three or four years, he was the president of AA worldwide. and so I decided to get his phone number and call him that very morning and I asked him, I said are you an AA and he said yes and I said well I think I'm having a little trouble with my drinking would you take me to an AA meeting he said my home group meets tonight and it's a beginner's meeting this is a great night to go Are you drinking now? And I said, no. Which was the truth. I had just finished the third half a pint from yesterday and I'm not drinking now. He said, well try not to drink anymore. So through the day I had my usual and I had a lethal dose of Benzedrine so that by 6 o'clock in the evening, I couldn't figure out what the hell I'd called AA for. Things aren't that bad. I hope this guy don't come, but it came. And I got in the truck. First thing I said is, I am not an alcoholic. And they say we must be rigorously honest. I tell you, today I believe I could not have been more honest with him I was absolutely certain I wasn't an alcoholic although I set that on 4 o'clock that's when my time starts no, no,no no, I just wanted to give those of you that were worried about it a sense of optimism that I care what time it is. So, Kenny showed up and I said I wasn't an alcoholic and he took me to AA. In retrospect, looking back on it from after a period of time, I had become a person who didn't trust anybody I believed in Murphy's Law. I believed Murphy's Law was the fundamental truth of life and every negative thing I glommed onto you know your buddy is so brave and true well you get him before he gets you and I lived by that didn't trust anybody and I in retrospect when I came to AA I met Frank Giroux, the first guy I met Kenny introduced me to Frank and I trusted Frank. And there was nothing about him that I could justify trusting Frank but I did. He had a dour expression. He was crabby looking never smiled and yet when I was introduced to him and he said welcome to AA. I felt welcomed. Another guy when I told him I wasn't an alcoholic said you don't have to be an alcoholic to be a member of the Culver City Studio Group. The only requirement for membership here is a desire to stop drinking and if you have a desire to stop drinking and you think you'd like to be a member then that's the only nomination and the only vote required. If you say you're in, you're end and he said whether you're here or not your place will always be here and Alcoholics Anonymous nobody can take your place now that was a good thing to say to me in retrospect I'm glad although I don't know it made that much difference but I'm still glad nobody told me sit down shut up and listen people have been telling me sit back and sit down shut up and listen all my life and it never helped what helped was your place is here we're glad to have you Nobody can take your place in Alcoholics Anonymous. That still gives me goosebumps. And Kenny, who had read the book, where the book said, have the guy talk about himself. Find out as much as you can about him so that you can use it to help him so you could see how you would like to be treated if the tables were turned. and that was the way my home group worked and the people in my home group worked. I think sit down and shut up and listen is a good thing if the newcomer's drunk, I don't know what the hell else to tell him because if he's drunk and he's disturbing the meeting then nobody has a chance of getting sober but anyway Anyway, I was treated like gold and it worked for me. And this was a group of old-timers who had grown up on the big book. And they had kind of Pat and Mike routines that they always went through, but the newcomer don't know it. When they say, is anybody here for their first meeting? and my hand went up that set the stage for this pat and mic routine they were going to do for my benefit without me knowing it and all they were gonna do was call on chuck innes and say chuck the topic tonight is what is alcoholism and how do you stop drinking and chuck talked about editing film at mgm and leaving on monday night to stop by the backstage bar to have two drinks, three at the most. Next thing you knew it was last call for alcohol, two o'clock in the morning. How did that happen? I'm just going to have three and I'm thinking, man, I'm dressed like that. How many times have I done that? And then he started talking about the morning drink and he started talking about drinking through the day and then stopping every night just to have one more drink or two more drinks, three at the most. And then his last call for alcohol. Time and time again until he was in trouble in every area of his life. And it came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and he learned that alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. Loss of control, that's the Magilla. He said, and the loss of control is characterized by an insane obsessive belief each time we start to drink that somehow some way this time it's going to be different. This time I'm just going to have one or two, three at the most. This time i'm going to maybe a half a pint through the day and he said coupled with that insane obsessing belief is a physical reaction to alcohol that manifests itself in the phenomenon of craving for more well that immediately got me off the hook because i'd never craved to drink i thought about it real quick i decided no i never craves to drink and at the break i told kenny well i identify with all of that stuff but if a craving is what discriminates between an alcoholic non-alcoholic i'm not an alcoholic he said why is that and i said because i never crave to drink he said when did you start drinking i said about six in the morning why did you started six and i said because i had a hangover he said how much did it take for you to get over the hangover i said a couple of double shots or maybe a half of a half a pint he said okay when you got over the handover did you drink any more and I said yes and he said why I thought for a minute and I knew because I wanted another one but I didn't crave it I just wanted it and he said there's a type of alcoholic who once he starts to drink and he wants another and he keeps taking them so fast that the craving doesn't have an opportunity to set in but he said there's another type who when he starts to drink and wants another and then he don't take it that want always turns into a craving i decided i was one of that class that slugged him down too fast for the craving to set in and so we started the second half of the meeting i was an alcoholic but as soon as they started second half they read the top of page 94 in the big book where it says actually it's the bottom of 93 ask your protege if your protegee wonders how you got so far tell him, emphasize the spiritual feature freely but also emphasize that whatever concept of God you have is your own personal concept of God. And whatever concept they have will work for them provided it makes sense to them. Now, that little key there, that making sense to me, I heard that. And I had a concept of god that made sense to be. And anyway, the rest of the meeting was about god and they said things that weren't, that was in retrospect very helpful but at the time I invalidated everything they were saying. They said don't worry about it to the newcomer. Let him act as if. Fake it till you make it and I thought I did that through Christianity through all the churches you can go to and I never could con myself into believing something that I knew I didn't believe so faking it till you're making it never worked for me then they talked about joe who'd been sober 85 years and his higher power was a doorknob maybe a light bulb but i've heard both and then a guy named john got up my name is john i'm an alcoholic everybody says hi john he said they also call me John the Baptist they call me John the Baptist because Jesus Christ is my higher power Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and every morning when I get up I ask Jesus to keep me from having a drink today and to stay with me all day long and he said that happens and at the end of the day I thank Jesus that I haven't drank and tonight I want to thank Alcoholics Anonymous for bringing Jesus back into my life and I thought, that's all right, Sean. I'm glad that worked for you, but I have to live in the real world. I remember thinking that. That was one of my mantras. I haveと live in a real world, which in retrospect, I can see that the real word that day was four half pints of whiskey and a lethal dose of Benzidrine. That was my real world. And at the end of the meeting, Kenny and I was going back out to the truck and a guy named Leo had John up in the corner by the kitchen grinding him because he said, Leo said, John, I've told you before, don't you bring Jesus into the AA meetings. You're going to scare away the newcomers. and I didn't do it but I've always wished I had because I thought of it and that was to go say Leo if you're not going to scare the newcomers away with the doorknob or the light bulb I wouldn't worry about hey Seuss and the guys I think the newcomer are safe with Seuss but when I got the car I told Kenny I was an alcoholic, but AA wouldn't work for me. He asked me why. I said, well, the God that makes sense to me doesn't change things in order to accommodate people and their troubles. My God that make sense to be is the immutable laws of nature. And inherent within the laws of Nature is unlimited intelligence and power so that things happen in accordance with the requirements of the law. and you can pray and that ain't going to change anything. You can do anything you want and the mutable law doesn't change. And he said, That's terrific Howard. You're going to be able to help me with God but can you not drink? I said, Yes, I cannot drink. He said, You got to stop taking bennies too. I remember thinking how did he know I was taking binnies? In retrospect, I think maybe he noticed I said the same things over and over real fast. But he said, I told him, I've got to make my own life work. I've gotta make, God is not gonna make my life work and he said I know how you feel and I know what you mean but what I did, said I stopped drinking and stopped taking vinegar and I looked around me and I saw some people who looked to me like their life is working and in some instance their life has been working for a long, long time and I thought I'm going to listen to them to see how their life works and see if I can make that same stuff work for me but he said you have to go to a lot of meetings if you're going to do it that way because most of the stuff you hear will be dumb it won't fit your but he said he'd go to a lot of meetings and listen once in a while time and time again you'll hear an answer to a problem that you didn't even know you had until your head says i have that problem my life would be better if i would do that and then he said try to remember that so when that comes back up you do that and I got drunk one more time stayed drunk for a week on August the 4th I had my last drink my last bini and I started going to meetings and listening it's amazing how much wisdom that just so should be so obvious but the only way anybody ever tried to tell me was to tell my first what was the matter with me. They may have accompanied that with sit down, shut up and listen. Then tell me what's the matter with me and as soon as that happens I don't like them, my mind slams shut and you have no credibility. Now possibly if you told me sat down and shut up and listened and didn't tell me some of the things I have heard in AA. The things that I've heard in AA enriched my life and gave me a new way to go. Sat down and shut up, listened, didn't help me. Wouldn't help me. But giving me a way to go does. And you guys gave me away to go normality. I was sitting in the meeting. I heard normality say I was a taker of things and a user of people. I was a loser. Takers are losers. You're looking at one right here, and I remember thinking that's the best description of me in a few words that I've ever heard. You see, I saw with reality that I was an taker of things and an user of people. If Norm would have said Howard is a taker of things, a user of people. Howard's allusion. I would have been out of there. But he told me about him and I saw me. I saw him but I saw me and I were alive. Tommy O'Mara said if you make one mistake and brood about that then you've made two mistakes. And the brooding may be the worst consequence of any mistake you make. that was good information for me to have Ski from San Diego said I was 36 years in learning that all the people that I hated didn't feel it my God I should have known that somebody you know a senior engineer ought to be that smart but I never saw it until Ski talked about him and I saw me and Archie Johnson Archie said I was so busy today wanting what I was getting that I didn't have time to worry about getting what I wanted and in AA we try to learn to live in the now, right now and whatever is happening right now including my talk love that because that's what's going to happen anyway And the only problem you can have with what's happening now is to not like it. My head said, let's stick Archie in the eye with a sharp stick. Let's put his theory to test. When I was a kid, we had prayed for it not to rain. And it rained and rained and destroyed the wheat in Sumner County, Kansas. And that was a trauma for me because I knew it was my fault. I knew I wasn't doing what you have to do to have God answer your prayer. Now, if you're four or five years old and you've assumed the responsibility for wiping out the wheat crop, you already have an ego problem. And I had that ego problem right up to that day that I heard Archie. And I went outside, and it was raining. It was raining as hard as it can rain, and I've hated the rain since I wiped out the Wheat Crop. And I got in my car, and I thought, that's what Archie was talking about. That's what Will Rogers was talking about. Love the weather, because if the weather is going to be that way, that's the way it's going to being. And I'm telling you, it was that easy. If you stick me in the eye with a sharp stick, I'm not going to love that. I may endure it better now than I ever would have had, and I may not stick you back. Although I may, so we won't try it. But if it's just the weather, I'm going to love the weather. And I learned that early to stop brooding, to do what I could to stop hating people. I learned to meditate. I had some wonderful experiences meditating. Mostly I was going to meetings. I wasn't drinking. I wasn'T taking beneath. One day, I mean, and the meeting things were good. Work was tough. Pat and I were tough. And I was walking to... I was... Now I forgot where I was. Anyway. I learned to love the rain I learned to try not to hate people things were tough at home things were hard things were rough at work I had anxiety and anger Pat and I fought like scattered rattlesnakes a lot of the time And I went to a meeting and actually, I have a pretty good talk if I didn't lose my train of thought. But anyway, it was, I decided many times in this period of time that AA didn't work. That life was never going to be good for me. Now, life was getting better, but I didn't feel better a lot of the time. And I would say to myself, AA don't work? I'm not going to AA again grin like a baboon and say isn't this wonderful when it isn't wonderful and it isn's never going to be wonderful and then I'd go to a meeting because I'd forget one Saturday I'm pushing the lawn mower it hit a tree root I walked into the boat with my chest it hurt unmercifully and I immediately said god damn her anyway in reference to pat who wasn't even there but that was always my reaction when something went wrong damn her and it'd been that had been my reaction for years and then it's damn aa aa don't work i'm not going to aa that's no fun I'm not going to drink but I'm not going AA at that night I went to the Malibu meeting because I forgot halfway to the meeting I heard I was grinning like a baboon and I was saying isn't this wonderful and it was wonderful and I got there and Jack Bailey who some of the old timers will remember is a great AA guy and Jack kind of adopted me and he loved me and he always told me he loved me and I learned to tell him I loved him it was an amazing process and he was there that night and I felt good because I was special to him and the speaker was Don Gates again and Don Gates said if you're new in AA and you're not working the steps AA will stop being fun and you'll decide AA doesn't work and you decide you're going to any more meetings and you don't go to some meetings, then you'll decide to go to the bar and have a drink. And if you do that and the bartender says, what's the matter? I thought you was going to AA. Don't AA work? He said, if you're not working the steps, be honest with the bartend and tell him you don' t know if AA works or not because you wouldn' t try. There was nothing in my head to pop off about that. I immediately knew that was the truth. And I made a commitment then that I was never going to let myself believe that this program won't work if I'm not working the steps. And I did a fourth step, and an amazing thing was I found out that my dad didn't know his beatings. That's not my problem. My dad is not my problema. My dad died in 1951 sober in the AA meeting. How could he be my problem? It's 1973, and the inventory helped me see that, and I did a fifth step, sixth step. My sponsor tracked down the equipment that I'd stolen, and I went and bought it back. My wife and I borrowed money from the bank, and I bought it, and I took it back to the company, and took it to the department manager, and told him I've stolen this, I'm bringing it back, he said, don't tell me that, don't call me that just go home, I'll talk to you tomorrow. I came back in the next day he said I had the equipment calibrated now I may not know where it's been but I know it wasn't stolen because if it was stolen I wouldn't have it and I have it they said there are no provisions for bringing stuff back we got to fire anybody that steals from us so I never tell anybody about this and I haven't I kept doing this stuff the important thing is that the next day when I woke up the weight of the world was off my back and I would have argued I don't care having stolen equipment don't bother me I just don't want to get caught I'm stupid to take it back. This is the dumbest thing you can do. But I did it, and it was the best thing I could have done. It just changed everything. And I had this great feeling, probably analogous to the great feeling I had with my first drink. And just as analogous is that good feeling embedded itself in my memory the way the first drink did. And I don't know how long I felt good, But that has been a memory that is accessible to me. In quiet times, I can bring that in. And then I kept doing this stuff. More and more good things happened. And I'm nine years sober and ten minutes late, so we'll hurry. This is a five-minute thing left, and that's it. I'm nine years sober and I have everything that if when I come in I would have made a list of I have an impossibly good life and I have made it happen God didn't have anything to do with my good life coming and God with his immutable laws of nature I had humans had evolved in accordance with those requirements and humans reached a level of intelligence where they could discern some of these principles and they developed technology to apply God's principle his immutable life so that he built civilization now God was in there but he wasn't changing anything because we was doing a shabby job with technology you build an airplane that won't fly, and it will not fly. I don't care how much you pray, and that was all very clear to me. I do not care how many inventories you do. The airplane that will not fly will not play. God does not change things. The reason it rains is because that is the immutable the law. You see, that lets me off the hook for having wiped out the wheat crop. I had everything and as far as I was concerned, I had made it happen. I got a promotion. I was now the technical I was the manager of a technical section of the helicopter design division. It's a really nice job. And then my boss called me in and said, now that you have this promotion, I'm going to give you this difficult assignment. I said, don't do that. I was willing to give up my promotion. This was a dreadful thing. And my meditations were just experiencing the dread for a couple of days. Then on the third day, I got into the meditation. At the end of the meditation, I felt good. And my head, without me intending on asking, said, why can't I feel this good when I first wake up in the morning? Why do I have to meditate for it? And then in my mind's eye, I saw a frozen lake. and I didn't know what the lake for a little bit there it was and then I knew that the ice on the lake was as thick as the laws of physics will allow ice to get and I remember thinking you could put a Sherman tank out on that ice and the ice would support it I'm wondering kind of why I'm thinking this stupid stuff and then it occurred to me that a good metaphor for living my life a day at a time would be walking across the lake a step at a Time. Be careful because it's slippery. And by the way, if you're not convinced and you're not conscious of the conviction that the ice is supporting you, you'll dread every step of the way. that had a special meaning to me and it started kind of mixing up with some other information that had come to me which I thought I was thinking and it began to wonder maybe that wasn't me thinking how in the hell I'm not that smart that I can think of some of those things And I'm sure that, so I came to believe that I better come to believe. And then I started reading the book again and it described God as a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things. And somehow I focused on that totality of things and in step 11, which I had learned to meditate, it says, we look for the deeper meaning of each phrase and idea in the thing we're meditating about. And so I thought about the totality of things. That would mean everything. Well, over 25% anyway. In the mind of an alcoholic, it's a lot. And then a couple pages later, it describes, it is the perfectly logical assumption is that underneath the material world, and life as we see it, there's an all-powerful guiding creative intelligence. Underneath the material world and life as we sea it, looking for the deeper meaning of life as we see would include all the circumstances and events of my life. It would include the character and quality of the circumstances and events of my life. And it will strengthen my life if I realize all of that is in the care of an all-powerful, guiding, creative intelligence. And if I meditate on that and I'm convinced of it so that as I go through the day I can be conscious of that in times of adversity, my life... I hate to use this word. Well, I'll use the word miracle. I'll used the word miracle. I don't think miracles are contrary to the laws of nature. I think miracles are contrary to my understanding of the laws of nature and my understanding of the law of nature expanded to include spiritual principles which are as much a part of life as the laws of aerodynamics is much a part of this atmosphere. God doesn't have to change anything so that airplanes fly. You have to learn how to apply the principle. You apply the principle and the airplane flies. And you develop confidence in that. And, you can find a sense of well-being in the airplane. And in life, the spiritual principles that enrich and lift my life are embodied in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The things we do, how welcome we make each other feel, the sharing of my story and you sharing your story with me, the being nice to each other lifting each other up anybody can put anybody down just go to the tattletale you know they're 25 years of putting people down lifting people up that's a good thing that we do in aa and uh and i was reading the book on meditation it says whatever way you find god that's the right way for you if you intellectually convince yourself of god's existence that's right for you, or if you just do your life experience, feel the presence of God and know that God is here. That's right for you. But remember, wherever you see God pass, mark that spot and go sit in that window again. These meetings, this program, you people, this is where I see God path. I'm grateful to you for it, and I thank you for letting me share. Thank you.