Why the Spiritual Life Is Enlightened Self-Interest – Tom I.

My little hootin' any done here real quick, but I'm sure glad you got here. We'd have never made it without you. I'll just sort of get us opened up and what we'll do this morning is Don, since he's going to have to fly away to the Golden West, he'll pretty much do the first half of the work and then we'll take a break. So that's going to be somewhere around 10, well I know there's no point in telling this group what time we're going to do something. It'll be roughly around or even telling them how we're going to go do something but somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 or 10 or 1015 as dictated by the airline we'll take a brake and it will shoot for a 15 minute break and if we can stay fairly close to that then we'll shoot to finish up around 11.30 so I can take a little bit of a break and then we're going to go over and do corrections workshop somewhere in Richmond at 1.30 so let's open with a serenity prayer God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things that I can and wisdom to know the difference it is good to welcome our buddies the back row gang from North Carolina I guess everybody knows they're the honesty committee from North Carolina and check it out. And Steve, if you haven't met him, it's Steve on the left, on our left, your right, and then Paige and then Jerry. Pretty one. Good. Well, did you notice he must have gotten married. His shirt's pressed. That's a very discerning eye, I'll tell you that. It's great to have home folk here to help us get out of town welcome guys we've had a good weekend I had the chance to work with my buddy and it was just a neat experience he said we ought to keep on dancing like this so a good chance we might and so Donald what we're going to basically do is we're going to start out with the men's stuff sort of look at how that gets us back into the community and then in the latter half we're going to try to pick up that notion of effectiveness and how those last three steps kind of put us into some effective things with some recognition that our world has to get a little bigger than just me and mine. And so generally, that's the kind of direction we're going to try to go for it. So, Donald, we're putting in your hands. There are three people who can get away with that. What did I call you? Donald. Donald? Oh, no. That's what you said. Jesus, that was Freudian, I tell you. The one that bothers me is Donnie. I still have an aunt that calls me Donnie, and she's the only one left. God, now there we are. so through the nature of alcoholism and my own strenuous effort I managed to become completely alone worked my way down to where I even gave away my name and became a number in a single cell maximum security penitentiary there is no more alone than that one but all that is is a reflection of the alone I have become out here alone in the crowd who the hell am I relying on you to tell me that and then having learned not to get in crowds because if you tell me who you want me to be I can be that very quickly and then you tell my and I can do that but if there's two or three of you I get confused So I have to be alone. The ego sense that I'm the only one on the planet is what I'm talking about. And one of the reasons I didn't get along with folks is you didn't really exist for me. There was me and who I needed you to be so I could get what I wanted. And then when I was through with that, you disappeared. Either I moved or you threw me out. But in one way or the other, you just disappeared. And there really wasn't a whole lot of regret about that, just a lot of confusion. On the other side of that is this spirit that is within each one of us, I think, that knows the truth. I am you and you are me. We are truly kin in any way you can imagine it. We all come from the same place. We all want the same things. I need a little appreciation a little warmth a little food a little sex a little applause a little comfort a little recognition we all need a little of that Bill was very clear about that in the 12 and 12 I don't use the 12 and 12 much but his understanding and ability to communicate these are our basic instincts these are our basic character traits my character defects are just natural traits that I have that are defective. I want a little applause. No, I want the entire world to give me a standing ovation. Regularly. Regularly? Regularly! And I want that to happen before I've done anything. This is when I come on stage. My genes tell me, as a young male, that my main job on this planet is to repopulate it. That's a genetic imperative. It's not a joke. And there's a process of selection. I don't want to get all clear about that, but I didn't meet the criteria. I just had the urges. By the way, one of the blessings of getting older is I know that's no longer my job. It's his job. Go, brother. One of the needs Of a human being A person in a human condition Is for continuity and regularity The sense of belonging that comes from Knowing We get it here because we have an 8 o'clock meeting We know that's when We're going to be able to gather with people Of our own kind There will be a comfort period here we establish that that's good natural and normal as an alcoholic I tend to either overestablish it or ignore it completely everything is done on my time so anyway I end up alone through the process we've been talking about I wake up I'm not alone someone comes and talks to me and they were telling me their story and all of a sudden that's me. How do you know that? I had a wonderful experience with a kid at a meeting one time. I'm sitting next to him, and he's calm, cool, and collected. And in the course of a light conversation, he's also just three days sober. I got a chance to look in his eyes. And I need to make contact because he's way too calm, cold, and collective. all of his energy is being devoted to staying in that chair and he's not going to hear a thing so I leaned over and I said you know I bet inside you feel like you've got 10 million needles all pointed out and any second they're going to go he came up out of the chair laughter how did you know that well I know that because I have had that And I recognized the look in his eyes. Now he and I have made contact. Scared to hell out of him. But all of a sudden, he's not alone. The great master used to walk the world. And the stories they tell of him, one of the things that he would do, he'd come upon some guy who was sitting by the... leaned up against a wall, all crippled and covered with sores and blind. And the master did some interesting things. Very simple stuff that I watch happen in AA. That's why I know I'm in the right place. The very first thing he did was this. He didn't say a word. I don't care if you want to be alone. You can't be when that happens. You can hate it, you can rebel against it, but you can't deny. Whoops. So he established contact. then he knew something the guy on the wall didn't know the guy in the wall thought he was alone because he was crippled and had sores and was blind so people didn't want to be around him the master knew he was crippled and blind and had sore because he thought he wasn't he was all alone so he touched him then he would say something like is there anybody there you don't have to do this anymore you know you don't have to whatever's wrong with you you want to walk and well yeah I'm going to give you the magic get up walk and he was able to say that with such total conviction that the person on the other end heard it and that's what they did for me I stopped being alone in a first step my first best step was a lie well they usually are I had gotten so desperate to become part of something that I was willing to risk even being a little bit honest even though I was being guided by big book people I jumped ahead naturally and went back to my cell and spent two hours writing down the worst things I'd ever done I thought, that'll get me some status here I will be accepted. Took it back to my sponsor, and he said, that's garbage. You wrote that to impress me. Get out of here. And crushed me. But I'm resilient, and I have a will. And by God, I'd work two hours on this thing. Somebody's going to listen to it. So I went and found me a guy. A guy named Leroy who was a member of the AA group. but wasn't really a member of the AA group. He showed up for meetings. And I would tell Leroy one of these things I'd done, and Lerory would say, well, that wasn't that bad. And I'd tell him another, and he'd say, well, THAT wasn't THAT bad. And I awoke, because some of it WAS that bad! And what I awoked to was the fact that once again I had picked somebody who'd tell me what I wanted to hear, so I didn't have to do anything. that if I didn't stop that instantly, I would die a very ugly death. And I'm not afraid of death. I haven't been afraid of death for a long time. I've done it three times and it just, it doesn't do anything. You get reborn again right away and shit, what a waste of time. Anyway, what I was afraid of is that to die an ugly death means that for some period of time, just prior to that, I'm going to have to live a very ugly life, and that's the one I can't stand. This gives a nice foundation to get away from the guilt of making amends and gives it real purpose. If I'm willing to live an useful life and I'm stuck here, my genes indicate that I will probably be in the late 80s or mid-90s before I cash out. That's the way my family is. the shortest member the youngest member in the family cemetery that I saw was 65 and he died in a train wreck so I don't think that one counts the rest of them are 80 90 and I was 102 my mother's 91 and she hadn't even slowed down yet so I need to find a way to live with some peace I've already identified that I'm no longer alone I've been touched by someone Now we've identified the stuff that's been separating me from you. See, the whole idea of God is too big for me to grasp. I can grasp it. There probably is one. Can't grasp much else. So the mercy of this deal is that I get to work it out through you, the children of God. And anything that separates me from the children of God separates me from God and my life depends on not being separated. Depends on it. Not my death. My life depends on it. My life will be in accordance with that relationship. It will be reflected in everything I do. Anyway, we got through all that. And now I've got a list of people that I have harmed. If I harm you, I separate us. And anything that separates us is not a good thing. I need to repair that. It's a very ancient principle. A.A. didn't invent it. and I really have come to dislike the word of man because what it seems to me is I'm sorry which is crap I'm so sorry he doesn't get it my sponsor is very clear you never get to say I'm Sorry again you've been sorry your whole life what you get to see is I was wrong oh shit I have harmed you I truly believe that this whole thing is based on willingness I think willingness is the most demonstrable observable most powerful sign of the presence of God it is so powerful that the instant I'm willing to be changed I've already been changed the making of amends does not set me free the willingness to make amends is what set me fre locked up for the night in a single cell penitentiary my sponsor said we know what you did to these people but you're so insensitive you have no idea what it did to them so you're going to go out there and make amends and screw it all up again I want you to go back to your cell with this list and go over the list close your eyes picture everybody in your mind and see if you can have a willingness to say to each one of them I have been wrong and I've harmed you would you please tell me what I have to do so we can get the books to balance and in the process of doing that that evening I was literally lifted the sensation was I was lifted from that chair and set free now they didn't know I was free they kept locked up for a while but not often remember I told you how Bruce used to come by and how astounded I was that he was walking with tears talking to us shortly after that occurred they started letting me out of the cell to go talk to people because following his footsteps I began working with the next group and it was my job to go around not just in the school but afterwards and be available to them because they were sitting against the wall still crippled and they needed somebody to come by and say look at me I'm out here I mean that's the message I'm walking free follow me get up off your ass walk but I had some direct amends to make I'm free already I'm being free now I'm willing to truly make amends which means to change amend means to change to set right the wrongs I've done and they wouldn't let me out to do it so my experience is a little different than yours because I was ready there's a great danger at this point in sponsoring people they enter into their evangelistic stage and start running amok the danger is that I'm inclined to rein them in let them go keep guiding them but let them run amok this thing needs a few evangelists and And the fellowship itself will cool them out. I don't have to cool them off. They'll run into somebody else's meeting. They'll be taken care of. How can I change what I have done? My mother, for instance, on Christmas Day, the last day of my sickness, my little boys and I went to my folks' house for Christmas. It would never occur to me not to go home. My dad met us at the door and said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother says you can't come in here anymore because she can't stand watching you die. Now how do I straighten that one up? To this day, I can't comes up with any way to do that. I must set that straight. well one of the things that I learned in that eight step experience reviewing the list was that once I asked the question what do I have to do I'm supposed to shut up and listen while they tell me okay I know roughly, I know what I did I know roughy what I can do to straighten it out but my job now is to shut off while you tell me what I need to do months after I got out I was allowed to go see my mother and she was frankly quite reluctant. Chuck Chamberlain helped me through this. He said, there is nothing, I single-handedly, through my own efforts, destroyed everything worthwhile in my life. And I have no right to ever expect anyone to even talk to me again. and with that attitude I'm free whatever happens now is appropriate you want to throw me out you should you wantto forgive me good but it doesn't matter I'm just here to send a screen so that's the attitude I approach life with I don't have any rights that's one you can think about at 2.30 in the morning when you can't sleep but I don't. I gave them all up, burned them out. So I got to my mother's house and we just had a little light chat. My dad fortunately was a very wise man and he helped guide me as to the timing of this visit. And in the talk I found a way to ask the question you don't ask that bluntly always what do I have to do to set this straight but I found away to ask the question. And her response was, honey, all I have ever wanted for you is that you be happy. So for 32 years now I've been going by my mother's house on a regular basis, happy. And it worked. She said it was six years before she believed I was going to amount to anything. But that isn't why I was going. I drag my happiness with me. My wife, my grandchildren, two dollar bills, the fun stuff I get to do. My mother's a traveler but it's getting a little harder on her. So I tell her about all the places I've been and I tell Her about you and what I'm doing. She thinks I'm the president of AA. Hey. And I thought one time, I really need to straighten her out on it. I'd heard her say that to one of her friends on the phone. I thought, I'd better straighten her out. And then I realized, no. After all the disappointments that she's had on me, let her think it. As long as you and I understand, I'm only the vice president. After I have initially addressed the harm I did to you, now it's about changed behavior. I must be a different person, which means I will behave in a different way. And this is something I'm not powerful enough to do on my own. This is a spiritual deal. This comes out of the fact that I truly understand if I cause you pain, I cause me pain. And I can't stand any more pain. I think the spiritual life is one of enlightened self-interest. I still want mine. I just finally understand that the best way for me to get mine is to make sure you get yours. And mine just comes right along with it. But it's still there. There's no nobility in spirituality. Nobility is oneof the greatest dangers to spirituality that I know of. And yet we get busy doing things that are perceived as really quite noble. just don't you believe it let somebody else believe it because he'll open some doors for you but don't You Believe It the change with my dad is very simple I went to him with my list I'm among list makers so I have to mention lists and he looked at it and I can see in his eyes he didn't want to hear this shit and I started out we're supposed to be hard on ourselves and easy on others that's a basic principle not only in making amends but in life itself so I've been taught to prepare I said dad first of all I need to straighten out some stuff I did in the past do you have some time yes I lied to you I stole from you I cheated you blah blah blah he said please stop I know all that all you can do by telling me again is hurt me all over again so I get to live with the details of that what he said was you and I will just have to start from here wonderful thing we started from there and for 27 years my dad and I built a relationship it was both father and son man to man, friend to friend we built one day by day by way I owed him some money and he says the whole thing's written off don't worry about it I said no this is one I've got to take care of he says alright here's what we'll do every now and then you can buy and give me a little bit of money and when you think it's done it's down but I don't want to be any part of your accounting system just goodbye once in a while i believe that god uses whatever's at hand and my dad mom got along fine but she was always a little bit testy about the fact that he kind of controlled the money and when her mother died she inherited some money and that tiny little chink in her armor opened up and she got him she reported to the state that she had inherited that money and they cut both their pensions off now he's totally depending on her for the money i saw the only mean streak i've ever seen of a mom didn't last long but she got him and every now and i'd come by with a $20 bill to repay my debt and that became his pocket money it's more than me just saying i'm sorry now i'm to be of service all along the way the big book's very clear it says while we're trying to get our lives in order this is not an end in itself our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be maximum service that God knows about us. This is how I get fit. I do these exercises and they make me fit to be around. And my transgressions then become tools by which the Spirit can work. It's wonderful. This makes me fit to being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a hard time finding the words to describe my experience with it but that 12 step study school we started in was partly because we were not fit to go to the regular meeting where there were real people we weren't fit it doesn't mean we were bad people we weren' t fit we hadn' t done anything to become fit we were part of AA but we had to go through this orientation now I don' t subscribe to that out here and yet I do. Okay? An old fella named Bernie Riley one time, he was an old bank robber, you loved him. Drunk bank robbers. Robbed a bank in downtown Denver one time with that $35,000 went up and rented most of the Brown Palace hotel and had a hell of a party over the weekend and was broke on Monday. And the Brown Palace is only a couple blocks from the bank. He did a little time for that one. They just followed him to the party. Bernie only had one leg. They'd been amputating him for a while, and he had a nasty mouth and a nasty attitude, but he really loved people, and it kind of took me under his wing. I'd been on the street maybe five months when he did one of those get in the car it was my car because he couldn't drive but get in a car we're going to Brighton he says Dick and Mary Earpons meeting fine I got to this little church and we went down the stairs and these two older people just put themselves all over me and I got to experience a dimension of love I hadn't encountered before they didn't love me for any reason other than the fact I was there there was no other reason I got my standing ovation before I'd ever done anything he had waited five months I found out later because we talked to make sure that I was fit to go among those lovely people he wasn't dragging no bum into that one that's part of what I learned about this thing. And I passed that on. I take the people I've sponsored a lot of places, but there's some places they don't get to go with me until I'm sure they're not going to screw this deal up. They're not gonna tamper with these people. My room is one of them. Anyway, I began to get involved. I gotta tell a story on my coming down to see you because it fits here. See, this is a lifetime process. When I moved down to North Carolina and went to work with Tom, I figured I'm fairly safe. Now, I'm in the middle of my second or third month of interferon treatment for hepatitis C, and I don't feel good. And for whatever the reason, I'm being told by my spirit, leave home, leave your support system, leave your doctor, leave everything, and go down to New York City and go to North Canada where they don't even speak English. They speak Southern. But I'm safe enough because I'm going to join Tom's group. But I am prone to spiritual arrogance from time to time, and I know how it's supposed to be done. And they weren't doing it right. And this was a lovely group. We had a little meeting ahead of time where everybody got introduced and they had this thing called the chip system, which I'd never seen before. And then they broke up into four different meetings. It was a beginner's meeting, step one through four, I think it was, and then step four through 12, and then a big book meeting. I thought, this is cool. Until the chipmunk got up and waved the silver token in the air and said, this is how you join AA. If you want one, come down and get it. And I think, my God, I've fallen into a bunch of Baptist revivals. But I'm cool. I'm 25 years sober or so, and I'm cruel. I don't say anything. Then I go off to the step meeting. And there's no big book. They're reading out of the 12 and 12. And that's fine. It's just that I don' t have a lot of experience with that. and so one more little piece of discomfort shows up here the next week I go to the meeting on 5 through 12 same thing 12 and 12 and I don't have any experience I don' t feel right and the way I translate when I don''t feel right is they're not doing it right got to the big book meeting and they were in the family afterward and there was actually a big book there In my arrogance, I'm thinking, ah, we're okay now. And the chairperson read a little from the family afterwards. Somebody mentioned dysfunctional family in the meeting and went to hell. Then that young girl, can't remember her name, 19 years old, in an effort to make me feel part of the group, asked me if I would be the chipmunk. Cindy. Cindy, yeah. And I lost it. They also, after the meeting, did a big book raffle. And I don't dig raffles. I don'T think A needs to raise money. What I found out later is he set it up as a way to cheat and get books into the hands of new people. That's what that was about. But I go off on this poor little girl and her boyfriend. There are two things I will not do in this group. I will NOT hand out those damn chips. I said, I will not participate in that damn buck raffling. If you ever want to know why, I'll tell you. He said, I want to Know Why, so I told him. And on the way home, my heart is breaking. I know I've been a jerk. So I did what I had been taught to do and found out why their behavior threatened me and went through all that stuff and once again realized something I've known for years whether I feel like I belong here has nothing to do with whether you accept me or not it has to do with whether I accept you or not that's when I belong so I was I got a fist up was it you I fist up with Jerry yeah he's the only one I could trust to see what a jerk I was I had to go back to the group the next week and go to Cindy and say could I please have the privilege of being a general? I was wrong I said, completely wrong and thanked her for her kindness and they let me be the chipmunk the next week I did not say this is how you join AA I said this is a good marker of the night you decided to get sober would be a good token to have to remind you that night nobody got any chips and I was never asked to do it again I don't know whether I did it wrong or not the thing was that's the kind of stuff we have to straighten out the high drama stuff is over I need to belong somewhere and I need to be part of it that means I have to accept you as you are the book raffle got to be fun because I woke up to the fact this happens after the meeting. Don't be such a millennial thinking A cop. I still don't do raffles. So it got to be that I was the one who got to pick the number because he and I talked about it and I was the only honest one in the room. I didn't have a ticket. And I began to understand what he was doing. He was making sure the books got into the hands of new people. In fact, there's times we cheated there's an old carny trick when you use a hat you put the winning number in the band and drop the others here and when you pick it up you got the winner we did that it's a long way of saying what I just said whether I feel like I belong or not has nothing to do with whether you accept me it's whether I accept you and once I've cleared away the garbage in my head that you're doing something to me and understand no one has ever done anything to me. And if they have, I set myself up for it. But I can take you as you are. You took me as I was. So a man means to change. And there's some principles behind it that are critically important. One of them is being on time. Being here now. And the way it translates out onto the street is if we have an appointment at 8, So from my viewpoint, you need to know there's a 10-minute window on either side. If you come 20 minutes early, I'm not ready. I'm doing something else. My life is really full, and I move from one thing to another. And if you're too early,I'm not there. At 10 minutes till, if you come into my house, for instance, I've got a chair out front. I can just go sit in it and watch to see because I want you to experience something that I experienced. When you show up at my house, as you walk up toward the house, I open the door for you. Important. You don't have to knock. We translate that in groups by putting people at the door to welcome you in. They shake your hand as you come in. Very important stuff. It's a terrible thing. And I know Tom's run into it because we get around a lot. To go someplace to a meeting, and nobody ever talks to you. They don't know whether you've been there a while or if you're brand new. The meeting goes on, nobody ever talked to you, and you're gone. There are other meetings where you can't even get to the coffee pots. You've got to go through this gauntlet of people. I like them. I love having some noodle 12-step me because he doesn't know better. I just let him do it. it's kind of fun to see how far they'll go before they ask you how long you've been sober I like the enthusiasm there was a period of time let's see, I must have been five or six years sober I went to work at the Colorado Reformatory getting jobs for the guys as they came out, jobs and housing we did some preliminary work so they didn't hit the street cold, they had something to go to this is 120 miles from Denver I had to come over once a week on Monday to check into the office and to catch my home group because the group in Vena Vista was me, another guy and a continually drunk Mexican kid who came and went. I need a little bit more than that. So I catch my home group, and then I go back. And I've got these two boys who've been with me the last four and a half years on the road. So their experience of me is sometimes he gets back and sometimes he doesn't. And sometimes when he comes back, we move. There was a lack of continuity there. And the way I have to make amends for my children is to create an arena where they can heal. There has to be continuity. We call it home. I thought one time, you know, with that going on with the boys, when I leave every Sunday night and I don't get back until Tuesday morning, I wonder what that's doing to them. So I ask them. Ask people. You want to know what's going on? What's going wrong with them? Ask them. They'll tell you. i said boys does it bother you that i go over to denver once a week they said no we don't mind if you go but please make sure you tell us when you're going to get back see the way i changed that is from undependable to dependable i stopped being a surprise and start bringing surprises but there's a need to know Now, I fly a lot and my wife's afraid of a stepladder. She's never comfortable knowing that I'm in the air. The old behavior was, well, I'll see you when I get back. If I get black. When I get back. No, she has my timetable. She knows exactly when I'm supposed to arrive. I will call her from the Richmond airport after I've checked in and I said we're ready when I hit the ground in Denver I will tell her we're on the ground and it's just a little thing it's subtle but that's a necessary thing for her comfort not mine I'm comfortable she needs to know that the people in my life need to know you need to know and so I tell everybody my home group is known as an AA group and we meet at St. Joseph's Hospital at 6 o'clock every Friday morning in the Aspen room next to the cafeteria now if you happen to be in Denver and you're looking for me and can't find me I'll be there or if by chance I'm on the road they will know when I will be back my group knows when I'll get back they're informed too because I'm a member of that group my little group does things together we don't just meet on Friday morning we're still in our evangelistic stage we just slickered this hospital head nurse into accepting a box of big books from us we bought a case of third editions so she will have them so she can pass them out when she runs across an alcoholic and she will call us so we can go see her she has agreed that it would be a good idea we planted a seed that maybe we could do an in-service for the entire hospital staff. We'll bring a couple of alcoholics and an Al-Anon with us and do an In-Service for the staff. Following that, we will post a meeting notice in every unit, and from time to time we'll just drift through and talk with the nurses. This is the activity that's real service. We're trolling for drunks. We know there's one in this hospital somewhere. Okay. But it's up to us to go find them. Okay. So I became a member of his group. Took it as it was where it was. but because I didn't have any long experience with working out of the 12 and 12 I've read it there's pieces of it I like but I don't work out of it I couldn't share from that they would read a piece from the 12 and then everybody shared their experience and I didn' t have any but it was on the steps and I do have experience with that so I share my experience with them and then Jim came to me one day and said where did you get that and I have learned to be courteous please I said do you really want to know yes I really want to know so I took my big book out and showed you and I said would you like to hear some more about this well yeah I would so the next thing you know I've got me somebody to sponsor at 6 in the morning and before long there were 5 of them and pretty soon we were allowed to start a big book we call a workshop it's a long term group walk through the steps an hour and a half early so it wouldn't taint the regular membership that got going that's still going the group going through the steps together then going to the regular meeting see that activity of walking through the steps with the group is not a separate activity It's an activity for those who would like to do that, but you've still got to be part of the main group. Don't let it separate you. We learned that the hard way. We had a step group that did that and then tried to become a group of its own. Within three years, it was inbred and died. New people wouldn't come. We were so good at what we were doing, we just blew everybody off. I don't want to do this. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got to be able to go anywhere in Alcoholics Anonymous and accept them for who they are as they are so I can be accepted the same way to bring my contribution we each have a contribution to make to life nobody but me can make mine nobody but you can make yours and it's up to me and that's what I mean by change behavior I'm not to stir up stuff with one exception if you ask me to sponsor you Now I'm compelled to stir up stuff. Tom mentioned it. I give you permission, or you give me permission, to come unannounced. One of the new ways of change, the ways of making amends, I don't ever show up unannounce anywhere. It would never occur to me to stop by your house just unannounced. How rude. I'll call first and see if you've got anything going, do you mind? And I don't want you doing that in my house either. I do things in AA a certain way, as does everybody. But when I am asked to chair your meeting, I follow your format whether I agree with it or not has nothing to do with anything I'll follow your form now after we get into the main meeting I may become an irritant to you and maybe not but I will comply with the conditions of this group however it is you want to do it same thing at home We learn to take group conscience by first admitting there is a group here. One of my most fond amends, I don't think Tom knew about this one yet. Our memories come back slowly over a period of time. That first inventory is always shabby because I don' t have enough memory nor do the discernment to know all the stuff that's going on. It comes slowly. Anyway, I'd been on the street for about a year and a half, which means I was about close to three years sober. Still on federal parole. Working, beginning to be allowed to visit my kids again, getting back into life. House father at a place called The Hand of Hope. I told you about that little two-bedroom house with an empty basement where we put drunks on mattresses. And then dignified it with a name. and my memory came back that on my last long run when the kids and I were running in Cheyenne, Wyoming I wrote a check because that's what I did I'm a paper bandit it wasn't even real we had gotten somebody had stolen a sample book from a print company that was samples of checks and we were just using them. They were payroll checks. I wrote a bad check in order to get a prescription that I had also written filled so that I could be awake enough to get the hell out of Cheyenne. And that memory came back. And I come from the school that says there's no slack. If I harmed you, I owe you. I must even be willing to go to prison because my spiritual condition is more important to me than anything. So I must do something about this. I also believe that when the book says if others will be involved, we should consult them. And I have guides. I went to Gary because he wasn't all too smart, but at least he now had a family and he was doing better than I was and he wasn't he was my sponsor and I told him about it and he said yeah we got to do something but who will be most affected if you go to Wyoming and confess to two more felonies my federal parole officer that's who so now I'm faced with a proposition that I need to consult him I can't leave the state without his permission can you get the feeling I've got to go tell a federal parole officer about two more felonies I've committed my old behavior was maybe we can wait a while no in this life everything is immediate so Gary and I went down to see him laid the whole thing out to him he says you're right you've got do something about it here's the deal you have my permission to leave the state and if they arrest you I will not violate you go get it taken care of because he'd been watching he knew about it and on the ride home Gary and I were talking and he said it also says in there you're not to be a foolish martyr stick your head in the lion's mouth because other people will be affected he says you've got a job now they're starting to let you see your kids you're becoming a member of the community it would be foolish heroics just to dash in there because you're facing probably seven years he said I come from Cheyenne I know the guy at the Rexall let's do this let's write him a preliminary letter first and lay the whole thing out now, I've got to confess to these things on paper and sign it makes you a little nervous I did it signed it off there's no high drama in it because the letter came back the man had died and the business had shut down so there wasn't anything I could do there. Then I got to thinking, wait a minute, don't I owe Wyoming something? I committed a crime in their jurisdiction. Went back to my parole officer and he said, don's do that. He says, here's what's going to happen. You're going to go in there and confess to a couple felonies that they can't prove because the records are all gone and you're going to have to deal with nervous policemen. I don't want you dealing with nervous policeman. He said, You just keep living your life the way you are and an opportunity someday may come along. Well, it did. The job I had for Tom was to establish and kind of supervise alcohol and drug treatment in 15 prison units. So I learned how to do that, took that back home and established the same basic program in a community correction center in Colorado where we took inmates and ran them through a 45-day intensive inpatient, which is a fancy way for saying we created an arena where you could come and get them. Because we had five speakers a week. The only thing we did was AA. And so we got that going. And about four years ago, they sent me to Cheyenne to establish the same program in Cheyennes. Got it up and running. Came back home, and it was about six weeks later it hit me, it's paid. it's all done which was weird to the best of my knowledge I'm straight with the world if I leave today I leave without regret and I'm straight with the world there is nobody left to impress and what a change that was when I realized that because I got to see how much of my life is spent trying to impress people one way or the other so I'm in the middle of a whole new examination of me I don't even want to impress you with a message because then you'll attach it to me and it'll be diminished I just want to carry it what I'm trying to share with you is that while my life is none of my business the conduct of my life is entirely my business I am responsible for my conduct and that really puts some pressure on I've got to ask constantly okay give me the strength to do the right thing because I no longer can claim I don't know the right right thing I've always known the difference between right and wrong and today it's acute and because I know the difference I'm faced with the fact that I'm just a riddle kid I don' t have the strength to do that I don''t even have the will to go do that. So God uses my ego for His benefit. Oh yeah, don't discount the wonderful use of the human ego. Think about this. You know where I came from. You know I'm lazy. You know why I just as soon sit in my big comfortable chair and listen to Mozart and read James Lee Burke novels? I really would. In 1988, somebody comes to me and says, we would like you to go to Russia and carry the AA message to Russia. Was my response, aw, shucks. Put me in a game, coach, I'm ready. When do you leave? That's a very necessary part of what gets me to the airport. Now once I get there, that's gone. But that gets me the airport sometimes. don't discount it I've changed I'm not the person I used to be but I'm still a person I'm a human being trying to have a spiritual experience I'm the spiritual being having a human experience which makes me totally available to the human experience because I really am you and you really are me and there is it's not just an empathy it's a reality we're kin what happens to you hurts me one last little deal because it's pertinent with that sense of things I was devastated September 11th we lost people went through all the emotions of that and you got to know deep within me there's a creature and there's a meanness in me because of this I didn't want these people caught and tried I wanted them caught covered with pig fat make them eat a ham sandwich then turn them loose and see how they fare with that because they can't get in heaven now. That's pretty mean. That's what's going on in my head. Huh? That's right. With mayonnaise. And I'm doing the battle that I know most of you have done with that deal. I really don't want to feel that way, but I do. and one of my guys called and he's having the same problem what am I going to do if I can't deal with this he's Jewish and he has got the other thing going on and he is trying to fight this whole business well, my guide book says there is a simple deal for this I'm to realize that people that harm me are perhaps spiritually sick and I'm going to ask God because I'm too small to do so please show me how to take a kindly and tolerant view and I said to Jack maybe if you both you and I both pray that together because there's a promise that if two of us are praying something really does happen let you and i both pray that the rest of the day he called me the next morning and he said I don't know if this is right and I could hear in his voice he was okay he said I had a thought it occurred to me that if I'd have been raised there by those people with those standards that have probably been flying one of those planes. And there it is. That's forgiveness. The understanding that given the right circumstances, I'm capable of anything sets me free because now I will do my very best not to not do this but to do something else that is so positive and so creative and so loving and so different that this never comes up out of the pit. And I felt better. It made me at peace with that whole deal, too. Still don't like it. I think it's awful the way we treat each other. So let's us not treat each other that way. One of the reasons alcoholics and non-alcoholics become a worldwide phenomenon is that people observe the restoration of family. They saw families who'd been torn apart put back together. They saw new families being born out of it. They saw the family of Alcoholics Anonymous. They don't care how far down you've sunk, you're welcome here. In fact, why don't you come sit in the front row? We're slick too. The making of amends is a process by which I continually advance my becoming a part of the human race. more and more I fade into more and more places and that's what it's all about for me is to belong here I accept you as you are where you are that means now we can talk I don't have to agree with you I don'y even have to like you and I don''t like some of you that's a fact some of you don't like me either I don'T much give a damn but that's the fact too but I will make every effort to cause no more harm don't want to go off and get philosophical but it's a constant process I'm sorry the addressing of the wrong that I was done is only the beginning of the activity the thing with my mother was about regular I go by on a regular basis one time when I was there My brother, it took 22 years before my brother and I could get back together. Because what I had done to him was not direct. When he was 19, he was writing music with Stan Kenton. When I was 19 I was in a federal penitentiary in Tokyo, Japan. I was his hero. And I betrayed our dreams. my dreams, his dreams, our dreams he watched the harm I did to the family my brother is a straight arrow he would put together bands and I would sell them marijuana that comes together at least with trumpet players so it took a long time and he's a very decent man very kind man And so he never, but he was cold. It was clear we got nothing going on. He watched me for 22 years. That's how deeply he was hurt. It took 22 years for him to even consider it. And then he invited my wife and I over for dinner one night. And after dinner, he said, you know, I don't know if you and I are ever going to be friends, Don, but this was nice. We can do this again. Which was the beginning. On one of those trips home, because when I was in North Carolina, I still went home. You've got to visit your folks on a regular basis. My wife would come down here and then I'd go back there for a weekend. And I was visiting Mom and my brother came in and sat down and we were just chatting. I had my leg crossed like this and all of a sudden he kicked me on the bottom of the shoe. He said, you know, Don, I'm really glad to see you. And he was shocked because he really was. he says look next time you're in town let you and i go up to the cabin and do a little fishing now i'm a listener that is not what he said he said next time here in town you and i need to spend a whole day without telephones interruptions and straighten this out so we went to the cab and we spent the whole day doing it and as the discussion ended he said to me you know there's one other thing I need to tell you Don he said I'm 58 years old and I believe I've made a decent contribution to life that's important stuff you don't just say that to anybody we have put it back together and in putting it back together one of the things we realized he said we're doing the same thing And he's a very spiritual man. He said, I'm trying to reach people with my music. To touch them at depth. To stir them. And he said, and I've watched you. You do the same thing. I use my music as my instrument. You use your mouth as your instrument. But we're doing the same things. We don't have much in common, my brother and I. We love each other. We like each other。 There are very specific things we do together. But not much. I mean, he just got back from Russia and Scandinavia where they took him to teach music for a while. He's the head of the sound engineers organization and is a very busy man. In addition, he writes a symphony every year for the Colorado Symphony and just lightweight stuff. He's busy. I'm busy. So we get together from time to time. He and my mom came over the other night to sit down and have hamburgers. We do that pretty good. I love to go to his shows. He had a spiritual experience with the Navajo one time and has put together a show called Navajo Star Lore. They have these wonderful stories. And he was touched so much that he wanted to put them to music. And he put together this show that you wouldn't believe. It starts with the sound of a quasar. Whip, whip, whip. Then he breaks out all the sounds that make up that one sound. and you have a little bit of chaos and then he's an improvisational jazz musician. He begins to pull them all together and he and his son and girlfriend begin to make music. And then he narrates the story and you can hear it. Stuff like that. I'm kind of proud of him. But we don't do much together. That's not what it's about. There are members in my home group that we do a lot of things together. There's other members in our home group that's about all we do together. They have their own lives to lead. I think I'm about done because I've got about a three-hour talk bubbling up in me. Because I really, really wish you could see the world as I see it. And if you'll just keep doing this, you will. But only as much as you want to see. One of the most profound statements I ever heard was in Nelson Mandela's inauguration speech and I can't quote it but I can give you the essence most of us are not afraid of failure what we're afraid of is our own excellence and our job on this planet is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God knows about us this is from a guy somewhere else saying the same thing I hear my job is to make myself fit so that my magnificence can come out once in a while and touch you so you can go touch somebody else. And it's a simple thing. It's a healing thing. I do it by changing, by allowing myself to be changed. I love actors because I am one. So I watch Bravo's actor studio where they bring the best on and ask them how they do it. I like to listen to that. And Chris Walken was on the other night. And whether you like him or not, he's one of the best. And James Lipton asked him, Chris, why is it that you think you're a good actor? And he said, oh, I simply make myself available to the material. And that's the essence of my life. I make myself able to do what I want. I'm available to be material. In AA words, that means you don't say no to an AA request. You say yes. make yourself available you all have done that you're excellent oh you are oh yeah you're goofy but you're excellent does that lay the ground work you wanted to lay I think that's just right I'll run dry one thing now the reason he wants to sit and listen to Mozart is because he doesn't know about coal training And that's done.