#89 A Design for Living Part 3

Chapters

• 0:00 Four Stages, One Aim
• 0:42 The Promises as Byproducts
• 2:49 Restitution and Real Amends
• 4:06 Step Ten: Watch Your Thinking
• 7:12 A Daily Design for Living
• 9:15 Defects to Actions in Real Time
• 12:27 Step Eleven: Conscious Contact
• 15:43 False Self and External Identity
• 20:31 Money, Fear, and Flow
• 23:42 Meditation Is What You Think About
• 28:40 Valleys, Practice, and Patience
• 33:24 Faith, Experience, and Belief
• 37:16 Death, Energy, and Continuity
• 45:58 Caring for Parents with Grace
• 54:18 Sponsorship Without Control
• 1:00:18 Trust God, Clean House

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Thanks everybody. So we've done a process. Emmett Fox talks about four stages of spiritual transformation. Admission, submission, restitution, construction of a new life. Admission, step one. Submission of the ego to a drastic reappraisal, two through seven. Eight and nine, restitution. Restitution. Ten, eleven, and twelve, daily living. That's what we're working for. So the first nine steps are about getting enough of the crap that's in the way of making progress and establishing a relationship with the God of our understanding set aside enough to be able to start living on a daily basis. So when we're doing when we're doing the uh amends, it gives us some interesting things to think about here. The uh in this book, when you study this book, every time it makes a promise, there's a condition. And I know uh in early recovery, everyone's been exposed to the promises as the big deal, right? The big reward. Right? If if we're panting about this phase of our dub, we'll be amazed before we're halfway through. We're gonna know a new freedom, a new happiness, won't regret the past, and we should shut the door, comprehend the word serenity, and we'll know peace. No matter how far down the scale we've gone, we'll see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We'll lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. That's also the same promises of ethyl alcohol. Isn't it? Couple drinks, I'll know a new freedom. Couple more drinks, I'll comprehend the word peas, right? And it just goes on and on. So the thing that's important about these promises, they're not goals. They're byproducts of the process you've been accepting, right? So the question for the promises, if they're coming on online for me or not, it might be an indication to the condition of the promises, which is if we're painstaking about this phase of our development, which is the restitution. The amends. And our amends, many of us, well, I'll just tell you, it took me 16 years to finish my financial amends. I have living amends that will be going until I stop breathing. And I have taken care of the other stuff, the warrants and the taxes and all that stuff. That was the easy stuff. Growing on an individual and daily basis, that's the hard stuff. So these promises are laid out, and then it says they will always they will always materialize if we work for them. Then it says they're being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But they'll always materialize if we work for them. So am I engaged in the process? It's not run out and do a couple amends. One of the things that's going to happen, one of the traps here is when I start cleaning up my past, I get some relief. That's not the goal. Relief is not the goal, it's a byproduct. I've addressed harms done others, and as I address them, every time we do an amend, it's one less thing the beast can grab and remind us about how bad we are and how broken we are and how many people we've hurt. Not anymore. Excuse me. So the working is step 10, 11, and 12. Now that I've gotten enough of this set aside, it's not like my fear's gone, my resentment's gone. It's not like I'm holy. It's not like I've just locked in and I'm just me and God are bros riding through the heavens. It's not that. It's I've made progress in my own understanding through the lens of my experience. What have I learned about this? What I've learned about this is example, when I make decisions, which aren't decisions, when I react out of fear, it always makes it worse. Whatever the circumstances, it always makes it worse. Ignoring it makes it worse. So the trap is I'm supposed to feel better, but that's not the end of the game. I have to keep moving and keep growing. And so while I'm doing that, I have to think about step 10. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. So the step, the tenth step, is about our thinking, and it's about our perception, the evaluation we're doing, or what we think we're seeing, the reality around us, right? So here I call this spiritual architecture. I love this because as as imprecise as I was with the other stuff when I got to here, I really did it to the best of my ability. This is one of the places that when when you watch people and listen to people in the fellowship talking about relapse, I'm a chronic relapser. Um there are people that don't have a 10th and 11th step. Because your your your relapse can't sneak up on you if you're watching your thinking. It can't. It's just it's not like I woke up drunk. No, you've been working on that for a while. You didn't get drunk today. You started getting drunk in your thinking weeks and months ago. And then it materialized, it manifested. And I don't know how it happens. That's because you don't look. And I need to stay on top of this. So this step keeps me right with people, places, things, and circumstances, the exterior, the known world, the three-dimensional world. Okay? So watch this. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When they crop up, that's a promise. We don't brag about that one. That's a promise. Why? Because I'm human. And I got basic instincts, social security and sex instincts that are going to appear problematic from time to time because I'm asking the world to give me something it can't give me. Okay. So let's, I know it's a stretch, but let's just say I did a little inventory and I realized I was, I just sat down with half half an hour with Andy and told him about my my new dietitian. The whole thing was made up. That's called a lie. Okay? So I've in that process, just catching the defect. In principle, I've done a four-step. I've analyzed, and I know the root cause, the appearance of a threat to one of the one or more of those instincts. Why'd I do that? Because I made a decision in the third step to turn my thinking and my actions towards something better. Why'd I do that? Because it's absolutely necessary that I find and establish and grow a relationship with a power greater than me. Step two. And why'd I do that? Because of the necessity of step one. Self-reliance has failed me completely. And I have to become God reliant. I have to become reliant on something else, a higher authority. So just in grabbing the defect, I've touched the first four steps. Then it says, ask God to remove it. There's six and seven. Then it says talk to someone immediately. There's five. Then it says resolutely make any amends if necessary. There's eight and nine. And then it says resolutely turn your thinking to someone you can help. There's twelve. This is why I don't do a four-step every year. If you get this practice down, by meaning it's productive, there's no there's nothing to do a four step on every year because I'm keeping the house clean as I go. That's really important. No backsliding, right? 11's about prayer meditation, which is just as befuddling to me in the beginning as the concept of God or any of those other things. So I need to find out what that's about. The 11th step is about conscious contact with the Creator. And the vehicle is prayer meditation. I don't have any experience with effective prayer before I get here. And I said some words. Once I was here, I said some words because we have words that we open meetings and close meetings with. We have the serenity prayer, we have the third-step prayer, we have the seven-step prayer. Nice prayers. But if I don't apply those ideas, they're just words. They have no power. So I'm in search. This whole thing has been about the disconnection from the divine. From the time we were little boys and girls, we got disconnected. And you've seen this. We have children. The children are born, they're just beautiful. They're absolutely free. And they're just loving. There's no boundaries. You put two kids, little babies together, they play with each other, they feed each other, they swap spit. See them at nine months, a year when the ego has come online, you put them together and they start fighting. Mine! Mine! And they're beating each other up. That's because the separation has happened. Before that separation, before this idea of self comes online, there's no difference between you and me. We're all on the same page. It's a beautiful, divine inspiration, right? These kids. We were all that way. And we got disconnected. We got traumatized, we got hurt, we got mixed messaging when we were little kids about what's the valuation and and where are you in the pecking order kind of thing? And we got lost. Because our culture, our culture is about the external referral. So out of that disconnect comes this thing called the false self. This is about external gratification. The false self says a few ideas that are running in the background. I am what I do. Have you seen my card? My card will tell you what I do. You meet people, say, How are you? What's your name? What do you do? What do you do? And I look in the card and I see your name. And you got a bunch of initials that, well, you must be doing something big. I don't know what all that means, but it looks pretty big. And I compare it to my card, which has no card. And I'm going, I must be a loser. I am what I do. The other one is I am what I have. I am my car. I am my house. I am those things that bring me status. It could be your advanced degrees, it could be your title, it could be your status. And when you are what you have, when you are your Mercedes and you lose it, so does your identity and your value go with it. You saw this in maybe you didn't, but I did, in 2008, when we had the bubble burst, the real estate bubble burst, and I was doing a weekend retreat for some men. They all had their iPads out on the break, and they were literally crying. I'm down another 10%. I'm gonna have to work till I'm 70. Because money was security. It's not security, it's money. It doesn't equal security. When it equals security, you have to keep getting more of it. Because once you get it, then you gotta worry about losing it. And then you got to worry about adding to it for more safety. I had a guy sponsored, he was a sweet man. And his goal is to be a millionaire, and he became a millionaire. And uh, because then he would have he will have arrived. And uh then he married a woman who had a commercial cleaning company, and now there are multiple multiple millions on their PL statement. And then his father started divesting himself of some real estate. He owned a bunch of LA, and and and once a year he and his brother get a check for a million, million and a half bucks. So now he's got four or five million dollars. And I say, Did you do your purpose? When he said, I will, right after I see what the market's doing. And that set his tone for the day. I'm up, I'm up. My portfolio's up, I'm up. My portfolio is down, I'm down. That's insanity. And the thing you don't notice is I got all the things I said I wanted, and I'm not any safer or secure than I was when I didn't have them. And the life is reflecting to us, it's showing us this isn't the answer, but we got to find that out. We got to find that out. So the other one is this is the big one. I am what you think of me. How many times have you been in a room, been in a conversation, looked around the room, and said, Why is she looking at me like that? What's that mean? You know, and what's that face mean, and what's that? And then the beast grabs it and starts making up a scenario. And it's always a nightmare scenario, it's never never a positive thing, right? And off to the races we go. So I gotta figure out the other one is I'm not connected to you, which means I have justification for using you and hurting you because it's really nothing personal, it's just business. Right? And if I'm not connected to you or God, then I have no accountability. Your inventory is your accountability sheet. We got one at the end of the day, the 11-step inventory. What is it about? Did you do a 10th step? The 10th step is the what we used to call the spot check inventory. So the 11th step, the Rati guys know this, you're not doing 10 at nine. That's just a cute thing. We start the day with the 11th step prayer meditation. Then this idea we're talking about, the 10th step, we run throughout the day. When I get dis-eased, uncomfortable, or get something, uh, a resentment activated, I stop and I look at it and I analyze it, and I look at the motive and I pray my way around it, right? Then at the end of the day is the other half of the 11th step. How did you show up? Did you give more than you took? It's a simple question. Well, hell yeah. If I don't take it, no one's gonna give it to me. No, no, no. So then my deal was I just gotta be 51% of a giver. That's my goal. Give just a little bit more than I took. And it it addresses the selfish self-centeredness. And it helps you see the more I'm thinking about what's going on out here, the less peace I have in here. And it always it's always turn, this information is always turning us back. So, prayer is about connecting. In our 11th step, it says, we're trying to establish content, conscious contact with the Creator. The vehicles prayer meditation. I don't know anything about those things. So rather than ask, because that would be vulnerable, um, I did end up asking. If you hear someone talking to me and you like what they say, go up to them and say, tell me more about that step. Tell me more about your prayer life. And some can and some can't. That's good information to have. But every once in a while you might get a tidbit, a nice tip. I just studied and I told you about the three things, the golden rule, the law of karma, and God is unconditional love. Now contemplate this. If God is unconditional love, there's no condition by which you and I don't have access to that. If God is the other God that I got introduced to when I was a little boy, vengeful, wrathful, needing to be adored and worshiped, and then maybe loving and kind, but I don't get to know. And I already know as a boy, I'm already flawed. I've screwed up a bunch of these commandments already. And I don't see a way out. And I asked my youth pastor, this is kind of a funny story. I asked my youth pastor to explain it to me. Is God loved or is God as this pissed-off guy? And he didn't have an answer for me. So I went to the senior pastor and asked the same thing. I didn't get an answer. I don't remember hearing an answer. You just gotta have faith. It was things like that. I don't know what that means as a boy. So I bailed, I quit church. I said, This is the funny part. Years later, I'm talking at a conference up at Center City, and uh I'm talking with a guy from California, and he said, I'm gonna miss your workshop tomorrow because I'm gonna go down and see my folks. I said, Oh, really? Where your folks live? He said, You Dinah. I said, Oh, what'd your dad do? He says, He's a retired pastor. I said, Really? What church? And he said, The church, that was the church I went to as a boy. So I said, Well, that's interesting. I told him the story and he he thought it was interesting. I saw him the next day. I came back and I said, How was it? And he said, They remembered you. Which is good news, bad news, it doesn't matter. They remember me, but it was uh it's just it's just so weird how these circles keep getting completed and brought around. So I'm studying about prayer. I know it's supposed to be about connection, but I don't know what the vehicle is for the connection. So I'm studying these uh these texts and these ancient practices, and I was I was uh certified as a spiritual director a number of years ago, and part of that there was a lot of biblical and historical study. I'm not a religious guy in the in the classic sense. I'm spiritually based. So you can be spiritual and be in a faith, and you can be in a faith and not be spiritual. But anyway, that's not the deal. The point is I need to find some access to these ideas. And so I in in our studies, they we get a bunch of books we studied, the Desert Fathers and Mothers. And these were the scroll keepers in Samaria, the guys that lived out in the deserts. They were ascetics because they didn't want to be corrupted by the sin of the city. So they lived out in the deserts, and they're the ones that were saving all the scrolls, the historical documents in the caves. And the tribe was called the Essenes or the Assines, depending on which side of the river you're born. But it it just turns out Jesus was a descendant of that tribe many years later. So they they get these scrolls out and they're trying to decipher because no one knows what the uh Aramaic language is. They don't know. So they got to interpret it and they interpret it. And in those days, and for many hundreds of years, the holy man dictated to the scribe what to write down. This is the deal. So it's all written in Aramaic, they're trying to figure out what it means. And there was a book, I think it was called The Book of Mary, and it was how they prayed. This might be interesting to you if you've not had much success with petitionary prayer or intercessory prayer. Because my experience of that is they're all based in lack. And you get what you pray for. So the Book of Mary, they're transcribing it and they go, This little this little symbol means ask. And this then was transcribed first from Aramaic, then to Hebrew, then to Greek, then to Latin, then to English. Now, do you think in those translations there might have been something missed? As the guys dictated to the drunk scribe. I'm just just saying. I mean, there's a good possibility that we've we've made a mistake. Well, in the 1990s, early 90s, they found out they did make a mistake. And that symbol that we adopted to mean to ask, which was the birth of petitionary prayer, didn't mean to ask. It meant to claim. And I'm going, that's interesting. So their concept was Jesus taught the divinity of man. Their concept was the divine spark in you is the creator, is the God living in you. And their prayer was a claiming prayer because their concept was if we're created in the image of our Creator, we're completed. We're created with everything we need. Pine trees make pine trees, cats make cats, dogs make dogs. God makes us in God's image. So why would God short us? Why would God say, Well, you're not getting heart? I don't really like the way your embryo looks. No, it's it's not that at all. And so this has got my attention. It's really interesting because I tied it with the other three things unconditional love. So there's no condition by which I don't have access to God's love. So why am I suffering so much? Why am I in so much pain? Good question. I'm not punished by my thinking. I'm not punished for my thinking, God punishing me. I'm punished by my thinking. I'm not punished for my actions, I'm punished by my actions. Now I don't have to fear God. If I can embrace that idea, if that makes sense to me, I got a foothold in this thing now that I can do something with. Because it's me. We're back to this idea of external referral. It's me punishing me with my thinking. Because my thoughts become actions, the actions generate consequences. That's how it works. So if your thinking gets out of higher nature, your actions will become higher nature and your consequences. It's not a miracle. It's just the way the universe works, it's just the way we're built. That got me free of my childhood, God. So instead of saying, Oh, God help me, I say, God, give me the courage, give me the clarity to see what I need to see. God, I'm scared. Enliven my faith. It becomes a positive action. It's a positive action. Which is for me a really good deal. So I practice this stuff has to be practiced. It doesn't say do it once and turn the page. It says practice it for what? For the rest of your life. For the rest, because you you went through all this stuff to get to the daily program, the daily design for living. That's 10, 11, and 12. Don't bail now. Because more's coming. What do I mean by that? Life's in session. There's going to be glorious things, gifts that happen. There's going to be terrible losses and everything in between. And I need to have a way to ride on top of all that to the best of my ability. And that's what the prayer, my relationship with this God thing does, right? I dig unconditional love. Because now I don't have to go that totally sidetracks that you don't deserve anything. The shame ideas, the fear idea of being punished. I punished me. And so in our creation, my interpretation, I'm not telling you what to think, but in our creation, we have this internal guidance system, this emotional, this spiritual intelligence that guides us if we can clear enough of the noise out of our head to listen to our heart. So we're back to the is this loving, is it kind? That's a really good inventory question when I'm coming up with some good ideas that are just gonna benefit me and no one else. Is it loving is it kind?

unknown: 23:56

No.

SPEAKER_00: 23:56

Then don't do it. But then I can, you can do it. God is not gonna say, oh, don't do that. I'm gonna tie your arms behind your back. You see, oh, you want to do it? Good. You're gonna get a lesson. You're gonna get a lesson in what works, and you're gonna get a lesson in what doesn't work. And I have to keep choosing and discerning. There's a serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity, accept the things I cannot change. What can I cannot change? I can't change anything. I can't change you, I can't change the weather, I can't change the room temperature. I can do a little bit. But I can't change any of the externals. I can't change what you're thinking about me. I can't change my fear. I have the way I intervene on my fear is I practice some aspect of my faith. The way I intervene on my resentment is I fact practice an aspect of tolerance or forgiveness, understanding. It's in it's in the uh resentment inventory. This is our course. What does it say? Though I don't like what you did to me, or what I think you did to me, you like me are sick too. So I don't like what you did to me. That's the cause. Column two. I don't like how it affected me. That's column three. But like you and me, we're both sick. That's compassion and empathy. That's the way out of this. It doesn't mean I condone the behavior. It's I have to learn the compassion and empathy. It's a form of love. We have to come from love. And that those are two really good vehicles. So, and then fear is the same thing. How do we outgrow fear? That's this that's a formula for outgoing what appears to be things that are attacking you or hurting you, or potentially can hurt you, resentment. Fear, future tense, hasn't happened. What do we do with that? We ask God to remove the fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. Not do, be. That's a call to consciousness. Be kind, be helpful, be loving, be understanding, be quiet. You know, that has saved my ass so much. As it turns out, Roger, you have nothing to say. Oh, but but but but I just want to share. No, no, you just shut up. Right? That's an another this is a sidebar to that. But what we do here is we don't tell each other what to do, we don't give advice. Talk to any of my sponsees, I never tell them what to do, I never give them advice. I share my experience. That's what we're doing today. And you do that in the breaks, you're sharing your experience with each other. That's the power of the story. Without that story, we got nothing. We got nothing. We got a framework, but we don't have anywhere to put any meat on the bones. So change the things I can. Second part. Except what I can't change? Change the things I can. What can I change? The only thing I can change is my attitude. I can change what I'm thinking. That's the adjustment. But I can't change the outcome. I just want to come from the highest place I can so I can have an outcome that is more positive than negative, that is more curative, healing than destructive. So that 11th step keeps me right with the power. So if you think of the 10th step as a horizontal, people face the same circumstances, man's world. 11th step is the vertical access, connection to the power. There's another element, meditation, which was, I mean, pure meditation were harder for me to come up with than a concept that I was willing to grow towards. Because I had so much prejudice and so much unuseful experience. So there's a guy, some of you probably know Joseph Campbell. He's got a really famous series he did with Bill Moyers on PBS, and it was called The Power of Myth. And I had a buddy call me up, this is early in sobriety, and he said, You need to listen to this guy. So I listened to him, and his whole riff was comparative religions. He started out to compare them, all the different religions, including indigenous um practices, to look for the dissimilarities, the things that were different about them. And what he found was the similarities. They're all talking about what we've been talking about unconditional love, love, karma. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Because that's who I want to be. It's not because I want something from you. So when I find a guy that a man or a woman that talks to me, I buy their books. I buy in those days I buy their tapes. I got 30 tapes with Joseph Campbell on different things. And because I could hear what he was saying. In my heart, I could hear it. So one night um I hear he's gonna be on this late night show. It was a woo-woo channel in the middle of the night because they can't sell advertising at two in the morning. There's a guy named Michael Toms, it was a new age thing, and Joseph Campbell was gonna be the guest. And I was a nocturnal guy anyway, I was a musician, I was up all night. And so I'm going, this is gonna be cool. I'm gonna turn the radio on. I'm gonna listen to Joseph. And I get on there, and the topic is art and pornography. And I'm going, whatever. That's not why I'm here. But they were in the middle of this conversation, and Michael Tom just throws up this question. So, what about meditation? And Joseph said something that sounded like a throwaway line. He said, Oh, meditation's whatever you're thinking about. And then he went back talking to him about the topic. And my little ears perked up. Meditation is whatever you're thinking about, you know? Fear can be a meditation. Your resentment can be a meditation, your fear of lack of money. Lack can be a meditation. So this is another like a 10th, 11th step thing, which is I got to stop and ask myself, what the hell is my am I thinking? What is the main theme of the day? Where's mine? Lack. So the I heard this and I it was interesting to me, but I didn't have an experience of it. And one day I was got pretty good at my morning prep, the 11-step stuff. And I get in these really nice grooves, and I'm so holy until I got out to my truck. And I got my truck in an old van with a dog house, and I had the dog house off because you had to hit the starter three times with a hammer to get it to work. And so I'm driving around with all this dirt coming up. And I'm going, God, where's my I where's I need a new truck? Where's my new truck? I didn't know this was my meditation. I'm going, my meditation is where's my new truck? And I pull up at the stop, andy's in a bright red pickup truck. I'm going, Jerk. Right. And I I see Val in her truck, and I'm thinking, everyone's got a truck. I'm driving through these neighborhoods. There's trucks everywhere. I said, Where's my new truck? And then I drive by a dealership. There's acres of trucks. I don't know. This is my meditation. And I'm getting really torqued. I come home that night, I trip coming in the door, and I put my fist through the wall. What was that? That was the result of my meditation. Where's my new truck? Where's mine? It never occurred to me. Maybe we should get a job and buy a truck. I just want it to appear. Just like I want, I want to do some praying, and I want the Bill Wilson fairy to come through my room in the middle of the night and dust me with some rejuvenating dust, so I don't have to do all this crap. We have to work to change. Some of it's easy and some of it's hard. The hard stuff yields the biggest lessons. Metaphorically, when we're on the mountaintop, everything's going great. We're not learning anything. We're enjoying the fruits of our labors, but we're not learning anything. When do you learn it? When you're in the valley. And you're trying to climb out of the valley back up the mountain. And on the way, there appears to be absolutely no root. No root. No rud. When I was faced with the event process, it was like staring at a mountain that I couldn't see the top of, and there was not a single path up it. Overwhelming. The beast is going, you're never going to do this. It's impossible. So it's a practice. So I need to find things that connect me. Maybe it's music. Maybe if you're a Hindu, maybe it's a sutra. You stare at this, meditate on this in this picture. It can be anything, but find something that focuses your mind. One of the things we do in spiritual direction oftentimes is we light a candle and we stare into the candle. Because it centers your focus. It helps your mind not wander. Because the mind is designed to wander. That's why we have so many contrary thoughts going on all the time. That's why it's so noisy. Because the beast is in there just stirring the pot, waiting to find what activates us. It's just, it's like metaphorically, it's like the beast is looking for that little hole in the dike. Then it's going to stick its finger in and make it a little bigger, a little bigger, and starting over here. Because we got to we gotta have a problem. We gotta have something to fight with, right? So meditations, whatever you're thinking about. So now I got something to work with. What are you thinking about? What is the theme today? Where's mine? How does that feel? Not very good. I'm walking around thinking lack, lack, lack. You want to know where you're at? Take a look when you're when you look in your bill folder, when you're paying your bill, getting out of the restaurant or the the checkout line, and you and you look in, what's the thought? Is the thought thank you for the abundance? Or is the thought, oh god, I need some more money? There's no, there's no because you make more money than me, it doesn't mean there's less money available. Think about money. What's the root word? The word is we call it currency. That the root of that is current, which is energy. Okay, so I go to work and I've got to deal with my with my employer. I'm gonna give you 40 hours a week of what? My energy, my time. And you're gonna give me this much money. Okay, and then I'm gonna take the money and I'm gonna spread it around too. I'm gonna give some to the mortgage, I'm gonna give some to the gas station, I'm gonna give some to the grocery store, I might buy myself a treat, uh, I might buy someone a gift, but the idea is there's not less because I give it away. And when when my when my consciousness is I only have this much, it cramps the flow. When I realize there's no limitation to this, this is just a stream of energy that's fed to me through this vehicle, this job. But when you look at your life, when I look at my life, revenue steams dry up and other ones start. I don't know how it works. I just know that I it's my attitude, it's my approach. If I can spiritualize the money thing instead of make it a material thing, I have a relationship with it that allows it to flow, to continue. So, anyway, so there's that. So I've got a practice for connecting with the creator. I got a practice for getting straight and keeping on the right page with you guys and the apparent circumstances of my life. And now I got a mission. 12-step, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. That tells me something. You know, when when I came in, and I think sometimes in the fellowship you hear this, if you've been sober 30 minutes longer than him or her, you can you got something to share. You might, but you don't have the solution. I don't when I get a sponsor, when I go somewhere and I'm talking to someone, I don't want to hear what you did 10 years ago. I want to hear what you did today. What did you do today? You know, it talks about earning your daily reprieve. Well, the what about all those years I didn't earn my daily reprieve and I still got it? Back to grace and mercy. Damn. They're right about it. They're right about it. So this 12-step, I've got a couple things I can do. If I've had the awakening, I'm now fit to carry this message to other people. And when I'm not doing that, practice these principles. What principles? These higher principles. Compassion, empathy, prayer, meditation, love, kindness, tolerance, forgiveness, those principles in all my affairs. This isn't something I do Monday night at 7 o'clock. This is something I do every day, all day, to varying degrees of success. Because I'm human and I don't beat myself about being human. But I really, I really don't like sitting down with my wife. We had a rough go here the last little while, and it just, it's not the man I want to be. I'm sorry. It's not the man I want to be, I'm sorry. And that's all I can do. And then I turn the page and I try and act the way I want to be. Sometimes life just gangs up on you and you don't have the ability to get there. It takes energy. It takes no energy to go, I'm screwed and fall into your fear. That takes nothing. But once you're there and you're trying to get out, that takes a lot of energy to get to the positive side of the cage because that's energy to transform my thinking. That's an intervention on the beast. That's how we grow. That's how I become a believer. This is how how narrow I was. Yeah, we're talking about you gotta have faith, you gotta have faith. I don't have faith. That's no. Well, when you think about it, faith is an example of being in the presence of the unknowable, the unprovable, but I have an experience. I didn't have that experience. But what I did was when I sat in those meetings and I slowly over time got convinced some of these men were doing this, and I knew that from the way they shared. And I watched that my cancer's back. I have to pray some more. My cancer's in remission, I'm trying some more, right? My wife left and praying. My wife came back, I'm trying. Had a financial reversal, I'm praying, you know. And so when I decided I'm going for it, that was faith and nothing else. Because I didn't know it was gonna work. I just believed you that it worked for you. That's faith. Then I go out and I try this a few times and I build my belief. Joe and Charlie had a great example about this. You know, the uh the advertising with the white jeans with the grass stains, and here's the detergents, it's gonna kill that, right? And so they show you the dirty jeans, they put it in the washer, they bring it out, and snow white. When I go to the grocery store to buy that detergent, it's faith only. Because I don't have an experience that it works. But when I go back the second time after it's worked, I'm going back on belief. That's what you gotta do with these steps. You they're experiential, they're not intellectual. We use our intellect to do some discerning to make some lists and stuff, but they're experiential. And if you're not having the experience, it's probably because you're not meeting the qualification of the step. And maybe it's because you don't have it under explained to you in a manner that's accessible, that you can deal with. So I got that. And there's a this is interesting because for me, might not be for you. Oh, I got my story. So the early people I sponsored, they were felons, but the first five guys I sponsored were gay guys, dying of AIDS. And they've been a this is the 70s, they've been ostracized from their families, from the community, everything. And I was basically, I'm taking them through these steps, and and we're uh talking about what's going on, and every one of those guys died in my arms. And I watched that and I said, that's not right. That is not right. So I uh I got a lesson in that, and I one of the lessons I got was step up for your people. Step up for your people. If they're in your life, they're in your life for a reason. I don't know what the reason is, but damn it, this isn't an accident. Every guy that's come to me has not been an accident. Some to enrich me, some for me to enrich, some both of us got enriched, right? And I don't know what it's about, but that death thing put me in front of the question: what is this that I'm feeling here? Because I don't know if you've had this experience, but when someone passes, we call it dying. Um, other people call it transitioning. When someone passes and you're with them, you can feel something leave their body. You can feel this, my interpretation, you can feel the life force, the spirit leave. And I didn't know why this was happening, but it made me think, well, what is this thing we call death? Is there death? Is it just lights out and the curtain comes down? What is it? And then I did some reading and studying, then I looked at nature. And there is no nature, there's no death in nature. Nature uses everything it has. The trees drop, their flowers, their leaves in the fall. And that's is the leaf dead? Yeah, but it feeds the grass, and the grass is alive. You know, one of my uh analogies that I use a lot is this this one of my favorite trees in my hike, got blown down by a storm. 80 hundred-year-old oak tree, I just love that tree. And I thought, it's a loss, it's gone. And then months later you come back and the trunk has sprung open. And there's bugs, there's flowers, there's all kinds of life growing out of that. Did the tree die or did it just transfer its energy to something else? And that gave me some a concept that made sense to me. And then my mentor started dying. And I thought, damn, this is awful. Then I realized when I'm talking to Andy, that's what Don told me. And I realized what was imparted to me is eternal, it's in there. It's his energy in me, his teaching in me. So this goes on and on. Then uh I have another saying that many of you have heard, life's preparatory. What I do today is preparing me for what's going to happen tomorrow. And I don't know what it is. I just trust the idea. I'm being prepared for something. Might be something joyous, might be something traumatic, might be something sad, might be something, right? So the next thing that happened, this is a span of you know 20 years. My dad was dying. And I got to sit down with him, and I said to my mom and dad, I said, Where's the will at? And uh we don't talk about that. I said, we're talking about it now. And I had enough credibility with them that they were listening to me. Now, you remember that meeting I went to to get rid of Jim? One of the guys in that meeting was a guy named Mel. And Mel was an estate planner. And I said, Pop, I know this guy. He's a he's a vet like you, he's a world to World Two guy, and he's an estate planner. Let's just go talk to him. See what he got to offer. Because this is the deal. Mom doesn't know how any of this works, and it looks like you're going first, and we need to have her covered. Don't you want to have her covered? Little guilt works. Little guilt, don't you want to help mom? Oh, yeah. So we go talk to Mel. This is about restoration, this is about healing. Because I had a really contentious relationship with my parents growing up when we were all drinking and everything. It was not pretty. And uh so we go and they set up this estate. And they said, well, we need someone to be the executor of the state. And my dad said, That has to be him. That'll be Roger. Mom agrees. Then we get to the living will, we get to the health directive. Who's gonna take care of that? That'll be Roger. The whole thing is dumped in me, on my lap. Not because I asked for it, but because I was placed in that position, I'd been prepared for it. And I helped walk my dad out, and he was in the hospital. It was so interesting. He had to have heart surgery, and this he stroked in the process, and one whole hemisphere and half of the other one was gone. So I had to sit down with my mother and explain to her he's not coming back. Here's the EEG, here's what the doctors are saying, here's the truth. If he regains consciousness, he'll be blind, he won't be able to hear, and he won't be able to talk. That is not his wishes. And the reason he gave that to me is he knew I'd carry out his will. I'd do for him what he couldn't do for himself. How does that happen? How does that happen to a bozo like me? God almighty, it's just amazing. And then and he passed, and when he was in a coma, I'm sitting in the corner of the room. That guy told you about the stock market. We'd come in, we'd plop a big book down on his belly and say, We're having a meeting, Pop. And we'd set him right now that he couldn't argue with us. But I was sitting in the corner, and people were coming through to say their goodbyes and their prayers and stuff. And the people with unfinished business were coming through. Oh, don't leave, don't leave. I'm in the corner, and I'll tell you, swear to God, I felt his presence up behind me in the corner. It was just like he was watching the whole thing. Just like he was watching the whole thing, waiting for everyone to get done so he could move on. And then it got done, and it took about a week and a half to convince my mom. We moved up to the hospice room, and he passed really peacefully in about a day. It was beautiful. Now the problem is I'm in charge of my mom. And I say this lovingly. It won't sound like it. I didn't like my mom. You know, I didn't want this job. I didn't ask for this job. She was 84 at the time, and she had the nerve to have a stroke. And I had her uh, I got one of those life alert things for her because she was living alone. She's in her 80s, and something could happen. And I wanted to be, well, it did happen. She wore it to bed all the time. She'd roll over, and I'd get a call from the alarm's going off. You're sure your mother's okay? So anyway, I came back from one of these weekends recording, and I had a weird feeling. I stopped by the house, it was dark. And George said, Ma, ma, where are you? Because the alarm hadn't gone off. It just was a gut feeling. And I found her in the bedroom, laying between the bed and the dresser. She had a stroke. The doctors thought it was maybe she'd been later two or three days. So we got her into the hospital. And so now I'm the executor for estate, and I'm talking to the doctors, and I'm saying, so we're looking at meals and wheels and something. And I said, Wow, so nursing home, that's what we're talking about? Yeah. And uh, because she told me I don't want to live with you. But so now my job is to find a nursing home. I'm calling nursing homes. The waits are 10, 15 years, and she's gonna be out of the hospital in a month. Then she's going to a place called the Masonic Home, South Bloomington. And she's there doing a rehab, and that's gonna be about six, eight weeks. So I was just walking around the place and I walked into the the uh housing manager's office, and I said, So, how long is your waiting list? He said, Uh it turns over about every 18 months. Because by the time they get here, they're kind of on the way out, you know. I said, Oh, it's too bad. I got about six weeks. She said, Well, if your dad was a Mason, he was a Mason. He said, Oh, she goes to the top of the line. She goes to the head of the list. And so she got out of there and I moved her from a 4,500 square foot house into a 600 square foot efficiency apartment. And uh it was, I had to liquidate all her stuff, you know. And the story was this this is my son, he saved my life. And then it was this is my son, he sold all my stuff. After he saved my life, he sold all my stuff. And she she developed some dementia. But this was so interesting because I had to go out there two or three times a week. Because I was managing her care and meeting with the doctors and stuff, and I just had to pray my butt off all the way out there. I just want to be a good son. I just want to be able to demonstrate the best quality, not the worst. And I prayed and prayed and this is going on for years because now she won't die. And if you've been in this position, I'm looking at her estate and her money's going down. And she got pneumonia, and she ends up in the hospital. Almost died, got out, and they said, if she gets sick again, she will die. So I said, So what do you think? And said, We'll set up hospice. She loved hospice. There's a guy that comes in and plays music to me, and there's another person that comes in and massages me, and then the minister stops by once in a while. I love this stuff. You know, okay. And she never got sick again. So I took her off hospice. And this is like an 11-year ride, 12 years, and we get near the end. Now my mom's been an Al-Anon since the early 60s. So she's 50 years plus, and she's 96. And uh this is the woman I used to berate and torture by calling her names and being a shitty son growing up. And uh so she stopped eating, she stopped taking fluids, and that's about a 72-hour deal. And so I called my brother who's in the State Department. I said, You better, if you want to say goodbye to mom, you better come come home. He was in Morocco working for the State Department. He came home and he didn't believe me, so he had one of his doctor friends come and check her out. And he's like, Oh yeah, she's on the she's on the ramp. So this is the scene. I'm at the foot of the bed. And if you've been with people that are dying, the breathing you can watch the breathing change. And anyway, she hadn't spoken for days, eyes didn't come open, wasn't responding to stimulus. And my brother was at the head of the bed doing his amends he never did. Well, he ran his fingers through her hair, and he said, Mom, I love you. And there was a big pause, and then he said, Do you love me? She didn't open her eyes, she took a breath and said, I love everybody. Two breaths later, she was gone. 96 years, all of which she lived with different stages of active and recovered alcoholism. Her dad was a drunk, she got tortured as a little girl, teased for her drunk dad, the neighborhood drunk, and then she married a drunk, had four little drunks. But can you imagine? Just reflect on yourself right now. You're on your deathbed, and the last thing you say is, I love everybody. I can't cop to that. Powerful, powerful stuff. So that was a little bit of a sidebar, but I guess it was supposed to come out. So now I'm working with these drunks, and I need to know. We have a chapter, working with others. It tells you precisely how to do this. But it's a funny thing in the fellowship, everyone seems to want to make up how to sponsor. Have you noticed it? Some are like, oh, easy downside. I never did a fourth step. I don't think you need to do that. And someone else is going, I'll tell you when to get up and brush your teeth and call me. Your time is 6 a.m. every Monday. And if you don't call at 6:05, I'm not talking to you. That kind of stuff. And I'm going, you're all dead. Yeah, that's not what it's about. This is what it's about. If you've had this experience, you know you want to help people. It's not an evangelical thing, but it I want to help people because I got something and I got a new life. And I'm on the page. I'm awake. I'm not perfect, but I'm awake. Right? It's not the matter of giving that's in question, but when and how to give. That often makes a difference between failure and success. It doesn't say whose. Every 12-step call I've done has been a success because I got something from it. And I was willing to give you something, whether you want it or not, is your business. Right? Sometimes we're just planting seeds. The minute we put our work on a service plane, the minute I start doing for you what you can do for yourself, the alcohol commences to rule up rather upon our assistant rather than upon God. If I'm going to tell you what to do, you're going to become reliant on me. When you run into people like this, you're saying, What do you think about this? And they go, I don't know, I have to talk to my sponsor. Really? Don't you know how to think? Because this is about learning how to think, learning how to choose, learning how to discern. If I've got someone making all my decisions for me, I'm never going to learn that. So what happens when you've been a good soldier and you've done everything they told you to do, and then you're the wheels come off and your life blows up? What do you think? This doesn't work. So I won't tell you what to do. I'll tell you what I've done. And if I don't have an experience you're questioned about, I know someone who does, can we bring them? We'll talk about it. Then we'll do a profit and loss. We'll do an analysis of it and see there are your options. You got A, B, and C. And you go, What do you think I should do? And I said, I think you should choose. No, what do you think I should do? I think you should choose. Because you're the one that's going to experience the consequence of the choice. If I tell you what to choose, I'm going to get blamed for your decision. So I'm trying to become God reliant, not sponsor reliant. Okay. Clamours for this or that, claiming they can't master alcohol until their material needs are cared for. Nonsense. So taking very hard knocks to learn this truth. Job or no job, wife or no job, wife, money or no money, house or no house, fill keep filling the blanks. Simply do not stop drinking. So long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God. If I can get back in the house, that'd be good. No. That's not going to work. How many times have you heard people talk to you about I just I want to get sober because I want to keep my family, I want to keep my marriage. Those will be byproducts of your recovery. You can't be the that can't be the motive. It might start out as a motive, but it's going to change really quickly with time. So burn the idea in the conscience of every man or woman that they can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is trust God, clean house. That sounds so simple. One through eight. Trust God, clean house. Okay. How do I do that? Well, the steps will tell you how to do that. The other one, this is my covenant with the guys that I sponsor. They know it. Um, I know what it means to me. I don't expect them to know what it means to them. But this is what it is. Both you and the new man or woman must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. I'm to walk with you. This is in in other cultures, it's called spiritual companioning, spiritual direction, recovery, sponsorship, mentorship, whatever you want to call it. It's someone walking with you ahead of you, showing you where the where the path is, holding the light. Just it's over here. It's over here. Right? When we look back, we'll realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. So it's funny. Um 47 years ago, something entered into my consciousness that created the cessation of using chemicals, which opened the door to the next thing. But because of my belligerence and closed-mindedness, it took a while, right? It took a while, but it it happened. It happened. And so this, you know, example. I was telling someone this earlier today. I was a musician for 30 years, and I'm living in hotels and out of suitcases and in and in RVs forever. And when I quit playing and I came off the road, I said, that's it. No more road for me, no more suitcases, no more hotels. And then I got sucked into this thing with my parents, and I've been in hotels for another 40 years. It's just like, you don't know what's going on. Just do what's in front of you to the best of your ability. Just give yourself to it and see where it goes. It's in spiritual terms, it's called unfoldment. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how it's going to happen. I don't know when it's going to happen. I don't even know what it is. But I'm just going to prepare myself to the best of my ability to improve my spiritual context with living, and we'll see what comes. And my my faith in my belief is that whatever comes, I have the tools to handle it. Might be painful, it might take a while to get up to speed, but I will get through this. So follow the dictates of a higher power, and you'll presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances. Because circumstances are just the appearance of things. I don't know what they really are, right? Just the appearance of things. This looks really bad. Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Who knows? Good news, bad news, who can say? Right? I'll give you an example. The ego is always, the beast is always looking for the negative. So when COVID hit, I had a business, I had a location, an office in a warehouse for this. And I went from work to having an empty calendar for two and a half years. There was no work. This work because AA shut down during COVID. And so I'm going, oh God, this is hell. I sit down with my landlord and say, I've got three-month prudent reserve. I'll give you three-month rent. You can sue me, but there's nothing to get. And I told them the story, and uh they walked out and uh they just let me go. Because I convinced them you can't get blood out of a rock. So Zach, my son, back on the stairs there, and I took some measurements and I realized that I had enough square footage. In my double car garage with the loft and my basement to move this stuff to keep Gopher alive. And uh the initial blush, I'm telling you, was it was shame. It was, I just felt another failure. Here it is. Right? Because I don't know what it means. I just it just looks like, oh, there's no work, there's no income, there's no way to keep this thing going. That's what it looks like. So we moved, Zach and I moved it home piece by piece, got it set up in the basement, got it set up in the garage, and uh and then the economy started coming back and started getting some orders. And uh I got an office upstairs and I got all the duplication stuff and everything in the basement, and the the inventory is out in the in the garage, and I get an order. And I go, oh, I'm gonna go downstairs and fill the order. And then it dawned on me, look at this. Isn't it? There's 12 steps going out of my basement. No kidding. 12 steps. And I get this order and it's in the mail. I'm ahead of Amazon. It's in the mail in 20 minutes. And I'm thinking, isn't that interesting? Good news, bad news, who can say? Right? And I start realizing this COVID thing was a gift. This is saving me$18,000 a year in rent and utilities. One, and two, I'm much more efficient. Instead of having to drive 30 minutes each way to the office to fill one order, I can just go down the basement and crank it out. Beautiful. Now it the thing that appeared to be a tragedy ends up being a gift. Because you just do the next right thing and you see what unfolds. I couldn't see any of that when I was in the middle of the shame and degradation of having to break a lease and have another form of failure to deal with. It wasn't a form of failure. It was a progression. It was a progression. And you can't see it until it unfolds. So it's a beautiful thing, this way of life. But it's predicated on our practice. Prayer, meditation, self-examination, concept of God that I'm willing to grow towards. Sounds simple. That's all we do. The rest of the way out, 10, 11, 12, just prayer, meditation, self-examination. We call it inventory. And it's all based on the fact that I want to find, establish, and keep growing this relationship with this mystery. And my experience is that whatever it is, I'm going to be fine. That's the deal. I'm going to be fine. So thanks for coming here today. Thanks for eating food with us. And thanks for your support. And Carl, it's up to you.