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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Hi, I'm Bob.

I'm an alcoholic. Sober through the grace of God and a 10th of December 1967. And for that, I'm very grateful.

It's really been a wonderful weekend. I think you get something out of these weekends that you don't get out of a regular roundup. I think you get something different out of the speakers.

which is and everybody's been terrific. It's really I know that Bob must have been disappointed when he couldn't get Ralph, but I think Ron did a good job. I the uh I sorry I don't and Mildrid is one of my favorite and it seems like I like what Cliff said last night about uh that each of us has a gift and I I've that's I've used that in my talk and I think that that's so and uh I think you see that as you listen to people talk everybody has a little something that they do.

Mildred has always had a special place in in my heart and it's always hard I find myself comparing myself to the other speakers and I I like it that you have I I last so I don't have to compare myself to I and I like that you put Sheldon in the lineup which brought the average down. I think that that that I think that I think it took some of the pressure off which I as which is I appreciate the uh and I like you know Katie I like the you know we need younger energy you know as we start you know old guys are interesting to listen to but you need all of it and you can Watch the people that come up to Katie and Ch, you know, Charlie. It's a, you know, we need that younger energy as we go off with these things so that we can, you know, kind of get a spectrum of it.

I enjoyed Bill. I enjoyed Bill until he went over and went through the last four steps, which was part of the territory I was supposed to cover, and he kind of encapsulated my entire talk in about a paragraph. Uh, should be good.

I enjoyed Larry very much. And that thing on history that Gail does is really astounding. It is u you know when you get into the story you just can't believe I forget where I was or someone was talking about the story.

When Bill went to make that telephone call to the Reverend Tungx and then he ended up with Henry out of Cyberlane. He made 10 telephone calls. Tunks gave him 10 names and I think I don't think I have that backwards.

I think he called tunks first and then got the names and put 10 nickels in the phone and did that. That I might have made it through three or four, but I don't know if I would have made it through, you know, 10. So, it was really uh very special covered Sheldon, Larry.

That was those stories on the amends were very powerful and very good. And I'm looking forward to Thomas. Um, if you're going to pick someone to compare yourself to, try not to pick Tom Iver.

That would be a bad deal for most of us. Cliff, when I think of I've known Cliff for a long time. And uh, I think if I just pick one word that is love, you know?

I mean, it really is about love. And I think you did that and and embodied it and it was kind of an oldfashioned talk. It was really uh you know it's amazing today the communication in AA has changed all the talks when we first came in were closer to what we call drunkalogue today and uh and then I think Chuck Chamberlain more than anybody else altered the communication and alcoholic synonymously shifted it to include recovery and spirituality but even in the talks of the first men and women that we've heard they start with their first drink and with their last they take five minutes at the end of the talk to talk about the kids job.

It was included in the way they told their story. There was the power and dignity and change and transformation was so strongly implied and demonstrated in the story. Today it's more explicit and then it might have been more implicit, but it was really, you know, pretty cool.

Uh, I'm supposed to talk about 10 and 11. quickly tell you a little bit about myself. I My story is kind of the opposite of Ronnie's.

I was born on third base. I've been congratulating myself for hitting a triple. Um you know, I was uh from an intact family.

You know, uh set 107 kids, private school education, uh you know, all that through. Drank my way out of the University of Notre Dame, middle of my senior year, started drinking alcoholically in my late teens. uh couldn't shut it off.

Great starter, poor finisher. Got kicked out or walked out of Notre Dame middle of my senior year. Finished school at home.

Left home, spent the last year drinking a quarter of day and kind of at the bottom of the barrel and woke up one day hugging a toilet. My underwear, missed work, and it was the third day in a row or something. And I looked at myself in the mirror and that was my moment of truth.

when I called Alcohol Economist and a couple of men came out and talked to me and changed my life. We have many traditions in Alcohol Economist. Maybe the most wonderful one of which is that we share our experience, strength and hope, not our ideology, not our philosophy, not our thinking.

And there's a power when you share your life with another person that Cliff talked about last night. And those two men and the share I I talked to all sorts of helpers, but never to another person who had a drinking problem. and they gained my confidence in a relatively short period of time.

And I went to my first meeting of AA where I met my sponsor that I still have today who was 91 years old and 56 years sober and still active. And uh he was the 12step champion of the Uptown group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he sat me down in a chair and told me that alcoholism was a disease that affected me physically, mentally, and spiritually.

and that what my job in alcoholics economist is to do was to use the 12 steps to change to find a different way to live and if I didn't change I wouldn't stay. He told me that I would diagnose myself over the next couple of months as I sat in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous which is what happened to me and then he walked the path with me and I got to go on all those 12step calls of not as many as Cliff but I went on an awful lot of them and they were some of the best experiences I've had in my life. Uh, I have loved AA since the moment I came in the front door.

That was my gift. I It's been hard for me to do the work, but easy for me to stay. And I've worked with a lot of other people who it's been the opposite.

You know, they they were not attracted to alcoholics. They did, for whatever reason, didn't identify. They looked for the differences rather than the similarities.

Uh, Cliff talked about having a wall. I built a wall up around me. The thinking that goes on behind the wall says, "You like me, but you only like what I let you see about me.

If you could see everything about me, you'd hate me. I hate me." That sort of thing. I started to tear that wall down when I called a continued in conversation with my sponsor, completed it when I took my fifth step, and I made a discovery.

And the discovery was is that I'm not unique. My personality may be unique, but not my illness, not my behavior, not my feelings. And I started to have a sense of hope that what worked for you could work for me.

When I came to Alcoholics Thomas, what I expected to find was an expert on Bob. I wanted someone who was so wise that they could see through me into why my life didn't work. I was the the guy who was seemingly pretty well equipped to live life and was unable to live it.

It was like this. It was as baffling to me as it was my family. And um I never found that person.

What happened to me is I surrendered and I became an alcoholic and I had hundreds of people who were experts on recovery from alcoholism. Now later in my recovery, I built the damn wall back up. Thank you very much my drinking problem, but stay out of my sex life, stay out of my marriage, stay out of my gambling, stay out of my work.

Brick by brick, I built the damn wall back up until I was sober seven or eight years and somewhat isolated going to a lot of meetings and uh and I got unsurrendered. Uh I was on a honeymoon for about 9 months. That surrender experience creates an opening and grace that is almost unparalleled.

You just you know for 9 months every time I asked a question I got an answer. After nine months you could give me an answer and I was not always sure you were correct. my ego started to reassert itself and I had the mixed experience.

I had a another spiritual experience that which I'll get into and talk to at at 8 years. I hit a wall and I think I had I think we do we make astounding growth in alcohol anonymous in our first two or three years and then we many of us tend to level out. We have reached some of the goals that we, you know, big goals like not wetting your pants and going to work and staying married.

But it's kind of subtle. We we seem to be able to do the extraordinary. And many of us have an unbelievable amount of difficulty doing the ordinary.

We just, you know, have trouble with marriage. We have trouble with checkbooks. We have trouble with insurance.

We have trouble with children. We have trouble with life. If you ask normal questions to alcoholics and they're tough, you know, are you married?

And there's this pause, you know, it is uh do you have children? And there's this concerned look on their face. I mean, they don't know, you know, are you educated?

Did you go to college? I mean, those are complex questions. Those are not they're not we're not unwilling to answer them.

We just don't know how much time you have. And uh it is a it is a you know uh what happened to me at 8 years of sobriety was as important to me as anything that happened in my sobriety and brought me to a second level and I was able to start dealing with the I think more of the causes and conditions of my alcoholism and I was unable to see them. You just don't get it done in two years.

You don't get it done in three years. You don't get it done in 5 years. I mean, I I get a kick out of listening to the different speakers sometimes.

It's like they stumbled around an AA and then at 10 years or 12 years or 15 years they found the truth and you know now they have the correct way and I don't think that's that's not the description that I would use. I think the quote stumbling around. I mean, they look backwards and they judge themselves in their childhood sobriety.

I mean, who isn't stumbling around? I mean, we do get some old souls. I mean, every once in a while, you get someone that can give a talk at one year that no one that someone else would have to wait 10 years to give.

They just are able to see it. They did the work. They saw it and they can describe it.

Those are different gifts. There's lots of people who do the work that can't describe it, but they're they've done it. And every once in a while you get one of those and it works out fine.

So I at eight years I had this epiphany. After eight years I became a the unmanageability of my life mostly left. I was a guy who had work problems and marital problems and children problems and gambling problems and those left at that point in time.

Uh and then my my work life took off like on a rocket ship. I started making lots of money for the next five or six years in my deeply shallow period and um big houses, two Mercedes, all the sorts of things. You know, I thought God was blessing me for my recovery.

I was the in the thousand suit and the Mercedes coming to the meeting. You know, how would you like me in your group? It was u there's an arrogance.

You know, there was a false humility and lack of success and there was an arrogance in my success and I didn't see it. I was blind to both those elements as I went through it. And then they had the t then I lost it all which still seems unbelievable to me that you can lose it all.

I mean, how the hell do you lose it all? You know, and I, you know, and my father saw that. My father, I'm the guy who was making a lot of money, you know, all the sorts of demonstrations that you had.

And my dad was always concerned. And I thought, you're just a depression guy. But he wasn't concerned about the depression.

He was concerned about my shallowess. He was concerned about my love of success. He was concerned about how I spent money.

He never went after me and was specifically crit he didn't have to. He was such a fine man. I knew what he was concerned about even though I pretended I didn't know what he was concerned about.

And I'd always answer him in dollars. It's okay. I got it handled.

You know, not uh so I went through a collapse uh in the late 80s and early 90s. It was uh one of the worst periods of time I had. I felt I thought about suicide 20ome years.

What in 1990? What I've been 23 years sober sitting in meeting crying through the meetings. You know, my kids in treatment, Linda and I go to the sober house every Friday night.

I cry my way all the way through the meeting. See that guy over there? He's got 25 years.

How'd you like to have what he has? I think uh the lesson for me was to learn who I was with money to who I was without money. And then I went back to work.

I was allowed God through God's grace to keep the company. We lost most of the money but then kept the company. And then I we built it back up.

And uh and then the last couple of years we tore it down. And uh I learned most of the lesson that I think the universe and God wanted me to learn in the collapse in the late 80s and early 90s. And then I forgot it.

And somewhere during the great runup of uh real estate values, I uh forgot it and got back in the, you know, into the deeply shallow period. And I I need to learn the lesson again. Old and dumb is such a crappy combination.

If you can change one of the variables, I would I would encourage you um to do so. So, if you're uh willing to sit and listen to a guy in his late 60s, 40 lbs overweight who's gone broke a couple of times, I will share my story with you. It is uh but I'm an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I sponsor a bunch of guys. I go to a lot of meetings. I'm in love with my wife.

I have three children that I have a good relationship with. And there's lots of other wonderful things that are going on in my life. And while I am uh in different financial circumstances than I historically have have been, I I am still self-supporting through my own contribution.

So there's the both sides. Uh 10step continue to take personal inventory when we're wrong promptly admitted it. Uh the short version is I don't do a formal 10step.

I'm uh I don't know what that that's just the bottom line. And I have done it over a few periods of time, but I don't do I do it in an in a u I do it throughout my day. It is a step that has become part of my life.

I don't I don't I think there are people that would say, "Oh, baloney. That's a rationalization." That is not my experience of it. I bring that I think the steps are both something that we do, but eventually they become something that we are.

They become literally part of the fabric of our thinking and character. and I bring that to my daily life. And when I have a conflict, uh, I examine it and do the things that the book talks about in the 10th step and I quiet myself down, talk to another person, all the sorts of things that I supposed to do.

I think one of the great enigmas of Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery or any spiritual walk is if it works, why do I still have problems? I think that is the enigma that Bill Wilson faced. I think that's what he talked about when he talked about an emotional sobriety.

And I think that's the little boogeyman that lurks in the backs of most of us. And I want to talk about that a little bit. Why if it works?

Why if uh because the message that we're given to the newcomer, I mean that was my dilemma early in sobriety. Come in here, get in the book, get a sponsor. You don't have to do it perfectly.

Just do it well and you're going to be fine. And then you get in your car and you drive home and when are you going to be fine? you know, you don't you know, you're 10 years sober and you're not fine.

When the hell is, you know, going to be okay. And we don't have that conversation very loudly in alcoholic because it sounds like it's kind of a disloyal conversation. Our lives are extraordinarily better in most ways.

But the fact is, as you get us on most days, it's not enough. I don't give a damn how grateful I am. It's It's not okay.

And I want a better marriage. I want a better relationship with my children. I want more balance.

I want, you know, something. It's not okay. And I've been trying to get it for a while.

I don't seem to be getting it. Is my life better? You bet it's better.

Am I grateful? Oh, hell yes. I'm grateful.

Would you like to freeze your life right here for the rest of your life? No. No, I don't want to freeze it.

I I I want more. And not more like selfish, not more like greedy, more like I want to continue to grow and change. What's in our way?

And why the hell doesn't that happen? Which I think is the has been one of the central questions in my life. First of all, I want you to know that at your core, you're conflicted.

Only part of you wants to get better. only part of you wants to change. The problems that have persisted in our lives over a long period of time, we think they're problems, right?

They're filed under answer in our hard drive. I promise you, they are. We come in here, we got a toolkit.

It's entirely full of hammers. There are no screwdrivers. There's not a saw.

There's not a wrench. There's not a And we have learned to adapt. We used the claw, the screwdriver to unscrew things or the claw, the hammer, you know, we used little hammer and big hammer to turn nuts.

We we have adapted uh we go to workshops on how to use hammers and uh uh and uh it's just I mean it's almost hopeless and uh and we don't know that. We literally do not know it. And the causes and conditions of our alcoholism are somewhat invisible to us.

And they're invisible to us because we don't want to change them. And then when we go to change them, you know, we got the ego to deal with. And the ego just sits in the background says, "Look, do whatever the hell you want to do.

Go to the meetings, talk about it, inven I like inventory. Inventory it. Talk to the guys, but get this straight.

We're not changing. I don't give a You can talk about the staff. You can talk about the tradition.

love the concepts. We're not changing. So, just have a good time.

And uh the uh so I'm working with a guy 35 years old, married, second time with kids. He's having trouble with the columns in the forep. I'm saying that's complicated.

Don't worry about it. Just get your mom and your dad, brother, sister. Get your ex-wife, your ex- boss, your present boss, couple of neighbors, couple of guys from the group.

Bring them over to the house. And here's what I want you to say to them. Just say, "We have a step in alcohol.

We're trying to get in touch with our defects of character, and I'm having trouble identifying them, and I wondered if you'd help." uh most of us would not call that meeting. Why? And I'm going to say we we don't want to change.

But it's worse than that. We don't want to know. We train everybody in our lives as to what they can talk to us about and what they can't talk to us about.

We train our wives. We're not talking about that. You want to talk about that?

Going to be a tough conversation. We train our kids. We train our bosses.

We train our co-workers. We train our friends in AA. We train our sponsors.

Your sponsor knows bloody well what you're willing to have a serious convers. What's a real piece of business and what's a complaint and whether you're up to it or not up to it. Both parties know.

We're going to have a pretend conversation. Sometimes the sponsors, we get tired of it and maybe we'll try to bridge that gap, but there's a lot of pretend conversations and I'll call them. There's a lot of sponses that don't call the sponsors because they don't think they have any business.

They don't know what to say. And that I think that's normal. I mean, I keep saying you don't have to say anything.

Just check in. Tell me how your day is. I'm not looking for a forcep every time you call me on the telephone.

I want to be, you know, I want to develop a relationship. Just, you know, just checking in. Day is okay.

It doesn't have to be a deep conversation. You know, the the main condition in my relationship is is that you pay attention to what I say. I've got to have some impact on you or I won't enjoy the conversation.

I do enough things poorly. I don't need one more thing that I do poorly. No, I'm serious.

I I got the guys that ask me to sponsor him and I'm sponsoring a lot of guys and I just I don't I don't need a bigger list. I'm saying you got to help me. I'm I I do not play pingpong.

you you you have not called me until you've called me three times. The tag this is not a game of tag. If you aren't willing to do that, get another guy.

But I just that will help me. If you're not willing to help me, I don't want to help. You know, I'm not willing to, you know, get in the game to go do that.

Uh oh god, time's going uh we are afraid of change. And what we think we are going to change is who we are at the essence of our being. We think our behavior.

It's how I've always been. We are overly in love with our stories. The story is one of the most important things we have in Alcoholics because it's our method of communication because you can't show God.

You can't reveal God in words. But you can kind of paint a picture about the power and the transformation and the result. And that's our story.

But there's a negative part of our story. Many of us are locked up in our story. in our story is what ends up restricting us from the full measure of what is available in our recovery because we think it really describes who we are.

We think the ego describes who we are. The behavior we have is not skin and bones. It's simply what we do.

You can change from a Chevrolet to a Ford. It doesn't change who you are. You can change your behavior and it doesn't change who you are.

And yet we are so identified with certain things that have been in our lives. That's the way I am. No, it's not.

It's what you do. You don't even have a clue as to what you am. If you had a inkling into that, you would.

Okay. Most of us have an idea of ourselves as bad people trying to get better. And it's a paradigm that is broken and doesn't work.

I think if you talk to most of the old-timers in the rocking chairs on the veranda, they tell you that the job is not getting better. It is finding the good that has always been there. That Cliff Roach is the same guy today that he was 30 years, 40 years ago.

And he simply removed the obs the things that were in his way. And if we don't have the discipline and the tool of inventory, but what's in our way is we really have part of us at some level that does not want to deal with it and does not want it to be revealed because we think it's who we really are. It ain't who you are.

It is what you do. It is behavior. It is easy to change.

And when you open yourself up to the grace of God, most of the behavior just falls off. doesn't mean resistance and muscle doesn't work when you listen listen to the reading before the meeting when I talked about you know I'm not even resisting it the problem has been removed that is what happens in transformation that is what happens through the grace of God most of us don't want to take us to God in a complete way we'll take the 70% we brought we're willing to bring but I'm not going to bring the porn collection I'm not going to bring my gambling I'm not going to bring my you know there just a few hold outs you know that I'm doing that I don't want to bring. Why?

Because I I I just because they're your treasures is one of the answers. They I mean they look they are our treasures. And I will report to you from my own personal experience.

They are dog turds wrapped in gold tinfoil. They are not treasures. I mean that.

I mean they look like you know the And the other reason we don't want to bring them to God is we don't like God. And most of us will not get into that. For most of us, if we keep the same conception or idea and belief in God that we brought into the program, it's hopeless.

If that doesn't broaden, widen, become more personal. You cannot get there. It has to be.

It ends up I've uh most of us are lazy. We don't read spiritual material. We don't seek I mean the book says you know could and would if he were sought and in the relationship specifically about God and our relationship with God there's been lots of my life whereas the seeking's been pretty damn skinny.

Now I think going to Alcohol is anonymous. I think going to meetings I think having a sponsor. I think doing 12step work all meet some of the requirements of seeking but there is some work that we have to do in the program of alcoholics anonymous that is not communal it is not in the fellowship it is personal it is us it is private it is what we have to do to attend to some of that's in our inventory some of that's in the eighth and ninth step and a considerable amount of it I think is in the 11 10th and the 11th step and especially in the 11th step if we don't broaden our god that what was that guy that wrote the book is your god too small our god is too small and I think in the last analysis as an old guy I can tell you I think what you're going to find is that at the point that you and God intersect that's the point that you want to arrive at that we're made in the image and likeness of God that what you're going to find at that meeting point is yourself the process of finding God is a process of removal not addition We have dragged our perfect magnets through the junkyard of life and has showed up here with a 6ft ball of crap that we that we bring that we drag into the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and that and it's who we think we are.

And then we've got an internal conversation about that that Cleveland wasn't supposed to talk about and talked about. Um and and we we we identify with that internal communication and we think it's who we are. We don't even realize that we're observing the conversation that we may be the consciousness behind that conversation, not that conversation.

But most of us are hypnotized that internal dialogue is us. It is not you. If I was going to start the meeting on meditation this morning and asked us all to meditate for five minutes, for those of you who have a medit, the very first thing you will discover is you can't quiet your mind, which is what you may think meditation is.

And all of a sudden, you're aware of this gerbal track of stuff that is going through your mind and you think, you know, if if you ask most of us, we think we initiate and instigate and create our thinking. If you do, stop it. And what you discover is you can't stop it.

It's just clouds in the sky. It is meaningless crap until the one comes through that's about you that's got Velcro on it and you catch it and engage it and you think it's meaningful because you have now pasted it on your eyeball. And when it is on your eyeball it's your reality.

And it's not reality. It is a random piece of crap going through the pipe that you have taken and paste it over your eyeball. And when you start to gain some distance from that internal dialogue, instead of pasting it on your eyeball, you're going to be able to look at it here.

And you're going to look at that and you say, "Oh, wow. I haven't had that one in a while." And it won't own you. And you can just let go of it and let it the train go through the station.

You don't have to get on every train that goes through the station. The process I mean it is the only way we are going to change and become more peaceful and to have more joy is to increase our consciousness is to become more awake. Having had a spiritual awakening see it or be it.

If you don't see it, you are it. As long as I could not see my alcoholism, I was an alcoholic. The seinal event of me changing or of my being changed through the grace that happened to me when I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous was seeing it.

If you don't see it, you are it. And that is the process of Chuck talks about about dis discovering uncovering and discarding that we have an alcohol synonymous. It is a difficult process.

It takes courage to to keep on growing. Many of us arrive at a point that seemed acceptable and we stop growing and we start we defend ourselves with our sobriety. The very gift that we have gotten in the program is the thing that we start to use about why we don't have to give up the few turds that we have kept.

We really do think we can pee in one side of the glass and drink out of the other. I mean we honest to God we I mean we we should I mean we should give lessons. I mean I really I mean would everybody raise their hand who's you know got that as a core belief?

I mean I really do think that many of us that has been a core belief that you know that the few things we reserve don't affect the rest of our lives and uh and I think that most of us are trying to change the things in our lives with muscle and you know I'm going to go to prim and I'm going to sit down I'm going listen to these guys talk and I'm going to come away with some tips I'm going to come away with a new energy I'm going to come away with a new idea and we're not missing any ideas and we're not missing in the information. You know, it is the I mean, what's difficult for you is what's difficult for all of us. It's a hell of a lot easier to do a than it is to do life.

It's easier to go to meetings. It's easier to sponsor people. It's easier to give talks.

It's easier to do the steps in a casual way than it is to be married, to be a parent, to have a career. doing it, taking it from the practice range to the golf course is a measure of our skill. And most of us can't take what we take what we have in the practice range to the golf course.

And there's a little bit of that same gap when you talk about the ideology that we talk about in meetings and then when we get it out on the street and we start dealing with the child who just got thrown out of school or arrested or all those sorts of things. I mean, I used to have this story about why I would occasionally slap my children. If you had my kid, I mean, he's been thrown out of school.

He's a, you know, he's just a pain in the ass. You can't do anything with them. He's just, and most of it was Linda's fault.

But the few the little bit the little bit, you know, that I'm willing to, you know, take ownership of and I'm doing with my child what my father did with me. And that's another sort of circuit that I would get into. I'd become my old man and the kid would become me.

And yet I've got the responsibility. One day I realized that if my brother, See, I thought it was Peter. And I realized that if my brother were Peter's father, he wouldn't strike Peter.

I'm saying, where's the problem? Problem's with you, Tiger. If two or three or four, you know, if you could put 10 people with that were going to parent Peter, only one or two of them are going to have the issue you're having.

Why don't you take a look at you? When I took a look at my gambling as opposed to a source of income because I was a good back gaming player, all of a sudden, I took a look at what was costing me in terms of work and my the dishonesty of looking for someone who didn't do it as well as I did it and taking advantage of them. And I took a look at what it was really was.

And when you see it, you walk away from it. And when I came in alcohol anonymous, I stood naked in front of my alcoholism. It altered me.

At 8 years, I stood naked in front of my life. And I was able to see the unmanageability of my life at that point in time. And I was able to let go of it.

And pain was the touchstone of growth. Pain was what reduced my ego. It ground my ego down enough that all the concerns that I would normally bring up about the areas of my life that I was trying to change disappeared and all of a sudden it wasn't important that I hurt or I felt uncomfortable or it was difficult.

It was it's time. Let's cut the crap and let's take a look at the real picture of what's going on here. Is that who you want to be?

Is that what you want to do? Is that how you think you know this honors your faith or this honors your program and this is where the man you want to be? No.

Are you ready? Yeah. Let's go.

And then it goes from complaint to business. And there's such a difference when it's a piece of business there. The conversation is just entirely different.

When you're both on the golf course and your teacher's got a club in his hand and you got a club in your hand, that's a whole different conversation than you have with your buddies when you're, you know, you just, you know, something's, there's a danger of something really happening in this process. So that big six foot ball of crap that we've got that we brought through the process of alcohol synonymous through meetings and through step work piece by piece we start to pry crap off and then occasionally we go in for a steam cleaning to get some of the rubble and dirt and junk that is off there and then after a little bit I mean and ongoingly you start to say oh there's a beautiful piece of glass there's a gem there's a piece of brass think that's pretty cool there might be something interesting And you keep going on that process. And what you discover as you continue to remove the things that are there is this art object and it's beautiful.

And the more you remove the more beautiful it is. And after about 10 years, you find out it's a it's a lamp, whatever the hell that is. Couple of years later, someone gives you a cord.

Year after that, you get a plug. Sometime after that, you plug it in the wall. Sometime after that, you turn it on.

You get a light bulb. And then you turn it on. And three years later, you find out it's a three-way bulb.

And I that's something like the process that we are in. It's a process of removal. And what you're going to find in the process of removal is yourself.

And what you're going to find in the process of removal is God. And where they intersect is the core of your very being. So what you find when you when you go after what God's will is for you, I think at the very essence of it, it is your will for you.

They are identical. They don't seem identical because most of us are looking outside, not inside. We are trying to fill the hole and fill the pain with objects and thrills.

And it's like feeding a racehorse sugar. Works very briefly, very short range. Does not work long range.

We don't care long range. Just short range is perfect. We have I'm ADD.

This is going to work. You just give me the, you know, throw me a fish. Throw me a fish.

Throw I don't want to learn how to fish. Just throw me a fish. But at some point in time, we started to get in touch with the same courage that got us to the front door of alkal Islam.

The combination of courage and pain and an honesty. And what the underpinning of that is is what Bill talked about uh both Bill Wilson and Bill Cleveland is humility which is the bedrock of the steps and it is uh I have had the worst year and a half I've had in 20 years the last year up until about 3 months ago. Um I've lost 3/4 of whatever I've accumulated in my lifetime.

Uh, and I was in danger. I thought of going bankrupt. I was in danger.

Well, I didn't think I was. I was. And I went into a depression.

And the depression lasted about 15 months. And uh, you say, "What does a guy do with 40 years of sobriety who's in a depression, who's scared to death, think that they're losing their treasure again? You You lost it in 1990.

You made it back and you're losing it again. I mean, give me a break. How in hell?

I mean, how I mean, you know, how could you be here again? And uh uh so what do you do? You know, I mean, you you feel doubly bad cuz you're supposed to be wise and and you have stuck it in the dirt.

Uh I do what you do. I go to five meetings a week. I went to mass on Monday and Tuesday and the other five day, you know, the some I go to five or six meetings a week.

I keep sponsoring the men that I'm sponsoring and I do the deal. I get on airplanes to go give talks and sometimes I have to hold a shotgun on myself to go get on the plane. I don't feel like giving the talk.

I don't feel like going. I don't feel I should be the guy giving the talk because I'm troubled and depressed. But the process helped me because I think I would have isolated had I stayed home.

Now, I think there's a balance. I mean, I you think you got to do some staying at home, you got to do some going and you go, you know, everybody's got to find their point in that process. And about 3 months ago, I popped out of the depression and it was like someone turned a light on.

Now, I have been trudging. I've been trying to do the right thing. And it isn't like it's been all just this, you know, all darkness.

There been, you know, I've got a great life. I got three wonderful children. I'm, you know, got a beautiful wife and a a good relationship, but it's been tough.

And I've been, you know, I'm crying at commercials and I mean, you know, I'm not sleeping the I mean, it's just, you know, and all the fun sort of stuff that you do when you're not in a very good place. And I'm looking through my my hole in the fence is right under the cow's tail. And it is and I understand there are lots of holes in the fence.

Uh, and from time to time someone will take me to another hole, but I have my chair set up and my and a piece of carpet and I've got an umbrella and I've got my iced tea. Uh, and once in a while the cow moves. I get a glimpse of, you know, of how it is.

And uh, I'm not kidding. I mean, it is I mean, it's hopeless. I mean it is just I mean if you it's good that we can laugh at ourselves because I mean it is and that's the nonsense that is in our way.

I mean it's immaterial. It's made up. It's I mean the ego the thing that we talk about we're going to get rid of.

You're not going to get rid of it. It's a space suit. You can't take the journey without it.

But it's got to become a junior partner. It's an illusion. You made it up.

Einstein caught it called it the optical illusion of consciousness. It is a collection of decisions that we've made about ourselves over an extended period of time. It is the false self.

And little by little, as you start to do the work, as you get I'm a meditator. I meditate most days. In meditation, you start to get some detachment from your thoughts.

That is one of the greatest freedoms. I used to be a monkey on a string. Thought reaction.

Thought reaction. Thought reaction. You put a quarter in me and push B5, we're going to play B5.

But now you put a quarter in me and you push B5. I get a choice. I never had that choice.

I was just springloaded 60 m an hour, self-centered, narcissistic, unconscious. I don't know. Don't, you know, head first, no helmet.

I mean it was just and uh it's a uh and today I get a thought like that and I can watch it and it is like being led out of jail and certain thoughts still have more velcro. So when I thought I was losing all my money that had more velcro I mean that was not like changing my clothes that was like carrying skin off my body but this time it didn't have my soul. In 1989, it had my soul.

This time it had my testicles. Um, well, it did. It uh, it did.

And I I think the very most difficult I've known people that have gone through difficulty. I think the difficult the hardest thing to handle and the biggest problems in life the most difficult ones to handle are the ones that never happen which is about 90% of what I reduce my day of. It is uh I think the most painful part of my experience the last year and a half has been my self-centerness bar none.

If you would have made the mistake of asking me how I was now, I've got this story. What I should I say fine, you've been sober a long time. Are you going to dump this load on the person who just walked up and asked you a social question or you're supposed to also tell it how it is?

I mean, are you going to be a phony and say, "Okay, or you going to say, you know, say you make up this little, you know, who cares?" And even though I think I tell it well, who cares? I mean over a period of time people just get tired of the goddamn story. I mean it is just you know hoping that he move on die.

I mean or you know something it is I mean do you think you're the only person this is happening to? Wake up. I mean 1990 I mean 2008 happened.

I mean do you know how many people are walking around with a 101k or you know, or kids in prison or losing their house and kids unemployed and raising grandchildren. I mean, wake up and smell the bloody coffee. The gratitude that you find when you start to extricate your head out of that creass is, you know, and you start to avail yourself of the real joy.

You start to take a look at your sponsom. you start to take a look at the pain that is in the world and the fact that one of the greatest things that we have in Alcoholics Anonymous is we have been forced into a relationship with the God of understanding. I was reading a new book called the new Christianity and it talked about the old Christianity was very very much focused on what you believed and that if you wanted to be a good Christian or you know within in this church you had to have the formula you know we're do we do a little of that in aa that's changing and the new what people are interested today they're not interested as much in what you believe they're interested in access to the transformational principles that will transform their lives.

And alcoholics Thomas, we don't care what the hell you believe. We want your experience. So, we're forcing ourselves to have an experience which is the deepest, most wonderful, most personal possible engagement that we could have.

Not one of dogma, not one of belief, but an experience. And you start out collectively, you know, I mean, what what we have in alkaline, one of the reasons it's so nice to talk here this weekend, I will tell you, is it isn't just the quality of the talk is there's pitching and catching. You need someone to catch what you're pitching.

In some places, people can't catch the conversation we're having this weekend. One of the reasons we're able to have the conversation we're having this weekend is we've got pitchers and catchers. We have uh a collective consciousness that is uh strong in this room.

Collective consciousness is a powerful thing. When we bring our damp log to the bonfire of AA, which is what we do on a daily basis, the newcomer checks his mind at the door and brings his damp log into the bonfire of AA and little by little it gets dried out. There is a collective thinking, a collective spirit in that room.

And he or she swims in that spirit without even realizing that it's having an impact on him. And little by little they're able to take just a teeny bit of that out into the world which is what we do in meditation which is what we do in kind of all aspects of our program is we get the experience of the grace that feeling that eight you know 8 minutes or 40 seconds that Cliff talked about and more and more we are able to maintain that to elevate our spirit to raise our consciousness and when you raise your consciousness you start to see it and you have a choice maybe a choice for the first time in your life to really have a choice and all it does it's just it we don't need it you know we don't need it is not our treasure it is not but it is what's in our way and that is a spiritual journey if I said to Mildred Mildred I want you to come home with me there thank you for listening to sober sunrise if you enjoyed today's episode please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message until next time have a great