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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. An alcoholic and I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and my home group is the Denver Thursday Night Group, which meets in Denver every Thursday night at 8:00.

And uh we hope you'll join us if you're ever in Denver. It's just a basic oldfashioned AA callup meeting and we only have one topic what we were like what happened and what we're like now and you get about 8 minutes to get that done. So uh it's brisk aa and people are staying sober.

I was thinking on the way up about tonight. Uh, see, tonight I get to play and Sunday morning I get to play and I've never had an arena where I got to play before. And I can remember back when I had given my eye teeth for an hour to tell you how much I know.

And I'm having to let this one go cuz what I know is I don't know an hour's worth of nothing. But I'm delighted to be in Billings. You're warm and you're friendly.

And I have felt good since I got here. And I do have some things I want to share with you all because I came from death literally. Christmas night of 1967, I took enough amphetamine to kill six of us and drank everything there was in my house and lay down because I simply couldn't stand being me anymore.

Not one more second. I had reached that place that everyone eventually reaches if you're going to get on a spiritual path. There was no more hope.

All the little things that might have worked if I could only just figure them out, I'd come to realize weren't ever going to happen. There wasn't any hope left. I didn't even know what was wrong with me.

And one of the things I think we and Alcoholics Anonymous are responsible for when our new people come to us, help them find out what's wrong with them. Uh we have a recognizable describable disease with symptoms all over the place. And if you've got those symptoms, you are one.

And if you don't have those symptoms, you aren't one. And my responsibility to you if you come to me is to help you make that discovery. That's what they did for me.

I uh I couldn't even get locked up in the right place. I understand denial. I honestly had no clue after years of drinking alcohol that alcohol was my problem.

I'd covered over with a number of things. I was certified by one government agency as a sociopath type two. Another government agency had me listed as a psychopath.

I had a long and infamous drug history. I'm not a drug addict, by the way. I just am an alcoholic that use a lot of drugs and I'm willing to talk about that later with anybody who wants to talk about it.

We had it covered over. Nobody knew what was wrong with Don. And I was taken, literally taken to Alcoholics Anonymous cuz I was supposed to go to a federal hospital in Fort Worth, Texas.

That was the plan. But I had reached that place where there was no hope. And so I ended up at an AA meeting in the Colorado State Penitentiary for which I'll be forever grateful.

And all I did right was that I had surrendered totally, absolutely without question. I had reached the point where I can't do it anymore. I can't even live anymore.

I quit and became willing to go anywhere anyone said and do anything anyone said if it meant I didn't have to be me anymore. Because you got to understand, I was in a really precarious position when I woke up the 26th of December. I was in a body that wouldn't die and a mind that wouldn't work.

And somehow I'm stuck on this planet in this body and I had to have an answer. Uh, you gave me that. You told me where to find it.

An old time Renee. I I'll probably cuz we're going to explore my mind. I'll probably end up quoting more than I will talking from my own experience tonight cuz I've learned to be a listener.

If you want to stay sober, if you're new here tonight, listen. Become a listener. This old man said, "We don't have any answers here.

If you want answers to your problems, you can pick any stranger on the street and you lay out your problem and they'll have an answer for you. What we have here is a solution. And if you get in the heart of that solution, you'll find your own answer.

And that was my experience. So I remembered what he said as he described that. And I see that happening in Alcoholics Anonymous today and it breaks my heart.

My term for it is this. I don't put my business on the street. There are people I talk to because I can trust them.

They won't try to fix me. Nobody knows what's wrong with me anyway. When I come to you, I'm a mess.

My sponsors have never tried to fix me. They've shown me what to do so that I could get in fit spiritual conditions and then I don't need fixed. I'm not broken anymore.

And the solution is taking care of the problems gone. Anyway, I was handcarried through the 12 steps. I'm so grateful for the group I came into because they never said to me, "Don, just as soon as you're comfortable, we'll start working steps." What they did say was, "If you ever hope to be comfortable, we better start this right away." The difference between I believe for me the difference between the non-spiritual state and the spiritual state is really very simple and I learned this from an Alanon friend of mine.

The non-spiritual state is that time of no hope. There is no hope. There's no answer.

There's no reason for living. There's no reason to be here. And there's no chance of ever learning why I should be here.

It's over. The spiritual awakening is the moment when there's hope again. And Alcoholics Anonymous gave me hope in the in the guise of some people with numbers on their chest who were walking around free.

I was 5 months sober when I got into it. I laid around the county jail and healed, which is a very dangerous thing for an alcoholic to do. And these men took this business seriously.

They uh put up with the jobs from the other convicts. The guards would holler out, drunks downstairs, and all that stuff would go on. And these men just walked through that and they made it a point to come look us up when we were in the fish tank learning how to live down there.

They came to us. I don't believe in pulling them off bar stoods, but I troll for drunks. Yeah.

My only reason for being alive today, and I'm dead certain of this, is each day for whatever time I have left, I'm to find one alcoholic who does not know this simple thing. If you're an alcoholic, you don't ever have to drink alcohol again. That's our message at the beginning.

And you know where I find most of them in AA meetings. I don't have to go looking. I'm amazed at the number of people in AA meetings that don't know they're going to have to drink again cuz nobody's told them that.

These guys told me that with a certainty that I could see and hear and feel. They had a real answer. They were free.

But most important, they'd been changed. And that's what I needed. I'm afraid of the penitentiary.

I've been there before. You just have to learn how to live there. What had me frightened is that I knew I couldn't die and they were going to put me back on the streets eventually.

And I couldn't live out there either. I couldn't stand going back out there and the shape I was in. So, what I was promised was uh real interesting.

I was promised recovery from alcoholism. I hear a lot about the promises and I I love the promises. But to me, it isn't just that little bunch on page such and such.

The real promise of Alcoholics Anonymous for me is in the first and second sentence of the first forward to the first edition of the Big Book. We are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. Promise number one, to show others precisely how we have recovered is the purpose of this book.

Precisely how we've recovered. That's the promise we have for you when you come to AA. No theories, no games, no encounter therapy.

Oh god. 3 weeks into AA, I was also at the request of the prison psychiatrist sent to an encounter therapy group. That was fun.

I'm I was so glad I had three weeks in A by then. I sat in this room and we started the games and I knew if I come here in 6 weeks I'll be leading this group cuz that's what my life has been made up of, learning how to play the games. I'm a survivor and so are every one of you.

And it wasn't good enough anymore. I don't want to play games anymore. I really don't.

If I want to play games, I'll get my computer out. Or I'll get sit down with my 16-year-old. We'll play What's What the hell's the new one?

She got a new one the other day. I love my 16-year-old. She's a game player in her head and I'm a master and we have some fun.

She doesn't know it's all a game yet. Three people took great care to do what it says we're to do here, to carry this message to another alcoholic to help me recover from alcoholism. They took their time and they took their life stuff and they took their experience and they gave it to me freely, openly.

They never kided me. They were mean. They kept throwing the mirror of truth up in front of me.

I said to one of them one day, "I'm terrified of my own mind." And he said, "You have good reason to be." I was in California a couple weeks ago and in midsummer, Bob Olsen and I went out and did a retreat for some fellows we sponsored out there, a 12step retreat. And so one of the boys, his only experience in us is that we were really cool that weekend, right? We were patient and kind and loving and did all that stuff.

And they were having a group inventory. And he said, "Well, Don never offends anybody." And the guys that know me just cracked up because I tend to offend people sometimes. I tell the truth.

And that's what they did to me. They said things that would normally be offensive, but they were telling me the truth in a way cuz they had an answer to it. They could say things to me that would be hurtful if you didn't have an answer.

I have a good reason to be afraid of my own mind. What do you promise me? A new mind.

In Dr. Silkworth's little description, he says without an entire psychic change, there's little hope of recovery. Entire psychic change for me means new mind.

We have to fix the old one. And I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear that. I had spent 34 years trying to fix it.

And it was a mess. I'd become everybody I'd ever met and they were all talking at once. I was told very plainly, you must have a spiritual experience of your own and learn to live by spiritual principles.

And that's all there is to that. Well, that's what they said and that's how they lived. These men took great care to be visible, anonymously visible.

They talked about the changes in their lives and say, "But I didn't do it. God did this. I really didn't care who had done it.

They were changed and they had some things I wanted. Bruce got in and out of his cell anytime he wanted to. And the reason I knew that is when I was locked up at night and couldn't get out, he'd come by and visit with me.

And I wanted that. He said he could think one thought at a time. Can you imagine that?

I wanted that he was doing a natural life sentence. He was never to be released and he was free and I wanted that. And he walked that day after day after day.

And he wasn't perfect. I'll never forget the shock of the afternoon somebody upset him. and he'd been teaching me how devastating my resentments were.

And he said, "I resent that." And I thought, "My God, it's all over." We had a group of about 90 men, maybe 10, 12, 15 at the most, meant business. We had a 12step study school he went through. For five weeks, we weren't even allowed to talk.

They said we didn't know anything, so we should listen. And I'd listen to these guys that were obviously phony talking. I can spot one.

The mirror of truth again. I know what you sound like. I wrote the script.

He would say to me when I'd get fried with that phony son of a See, it doesn't matter whether he's doing this right or not, whether he believes this or not. What are you doing? What are you thinking?

Do you believe it? It doesn't matter what anybody else believes. This is your experience.

And he walked it that way. They shared a lot with us. They showed us how to come to believe.

They showed us how to do the third step. They showed us how to take an inventory and what the purpose of it was. They took time and guided us.

If I really surrender, I'm a little child all over again. I was told that God would restore me to a state where I wasn't stark craving mad. We would assume that I went crazy about 3 seconds after birth.

So that meant all. Yeah. Just give it all up.

Start over. I came to believe that everything I ever thought was warped. And today, I love that word.

That's true. I've been warped. And there's times when there's nothing good on television.

I just sit and watch the warp, but that I could learn to live a way of life that would make sense to me. That struck me. I'd never tried to live life to make sense to me.

I tried to get everything I wanted. My problem, they told me, is that I'm self-centered and selfish to the extreme. I'm it.

I was lonely. Of course, I was lonely. I was the only human being on the planet.

The rest of you were who I needed you to be. I thought life was get yours while you can. I wanted mine and I wanted it now and I wanted lots of it and there wasn't enough of it so I took some of yours too and that wasn't enough either.

I was a creator of chaos wherever I went and I really wanted to be a boy scout. What they taught me is that it doesn't matter what I want to be. My life is none of my business.

That's what it says. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me as you want. I have no idea what he wants me to be, but I know it's better than anything I can think of.

So, they showed me and at the end of our initial journey through the steps, I had had a series of spiritual awakenings and several spiritual experiences and experienced this fact. I'm not a human being trying to have a spiritual experience. I'm a spiritual being having a human experience.

And it changed my life forever. I'm a child of God. That makes me a spiritual being.

And it makes you one, too. The thing flattened me out. I was given a little rhyme by an old convict.

And some of it sounds negative, but there's great joy in some of these things on earth. As good as you are and as bad as I am, I'm as good as you are. As bad as I am.

Flattens down. One old boy. I was hooping it up over something somebody had done and he says, "What are you worried about what they think?

There's not one of them going to put a scrap of bread on your table." Now, that's negative. But the truth of that, there's a kernel of truth in there. You can't do anything for me.

You can't. You can't be me. But by what we do together, you do everything there is for me.

When I depended on people, my life was an absolute mess. I started depending on God. And look what he sent me.

That wonderful threw me into the heart of people. Okay. I uh was told very plainly that at the end of this deal I would have to give it all away or keep none of it.

All of it. My sobriety is not for me. It's for you.

That's what it says. That's what the men who came before us lived. My life is none of my business and my sobriety is not for me, but I get to live it just as if it were.

My basement is my place. The spiritual life requires a great deal of solitude, visiting quietly with the father, and the world won't give you that. I promise you.

So, I created a place for me. There is however particularly for you new folks that are trying to practice prayer meditation because we'll tell you 100 times a day you got to stop and pause every time you get agitated to doubtful which is every time I move from here to there America's hang-ups have created for us a meditation place everywhere you can leave the boardroom you can leave a fight you You can leave anything that's going on and go to the bathroom and nobody will bother you. Nobody.

You can pause and ask for the right thought or action. Okay. And uh so these are things that they they showed me I could do in the midst of problem.

I remember the first time that happened for me. See I I don't work the AA program. I don't know how to do that.

If I'm working at it, I screw it up. Whatever I'm doing, I put myself in the middle of it and I take certain actions, but I think that's just to keep me busy so God can get the work done. I eventually had to learn how to work.

I didn't know how to work. I'm a thief and a dope smuggler, and working takes different things. Although my drug smuggling got me a fine job over the time, my sponsors told me, "I'm gonna just float around." Okay, this was such fun cuz I I got finally got to work after I was released at a place that didn't hire ex-convicts.

Well, I'm not an ex-convict anyway. I'm a man who's been to prison. There is a difference.

And so, they hired me. and I was working on the docks and a little little truck driving job came up and so I bid for it and the dispatcher called me in and I was taught by my sponsors on any resume I have anything from 1967 back goes on there too. Whatever I did goes on there and I'll explain it to them later.

Well, here's this drug deal. I was a smuggler. He says I tell me about that.

So I did and he said, "You know, the organizational qualities and and the talent that it took to do that is exactly what I need for this future. I know how to get from here to there under difficult circumstances. In God's hands, all things can happen.

He uses what's there and it happens for us. Well, anyway, I had to give it away. Now, my experiences were real to me and they were limited and I was like a new child.

So, they gave me a big book and the next group of guys coming out of the fish tank and it was my job to read the book to them and to share my experience as we went over the next five weeks. I hand carried them. So I got into what the real business of Alcoholics Anonymous is in my sixth week.

The real business of Alcoholics Anonymous is to carry the message and help the new person achieve sobriety. That's our real business. I have to stay sober to engage in that business.

In the eighth step, there's a real interesting piece of information. says, "I'm trying to claim my life up, but that in itself is not the real purpose of this. The purpose of all this is to fit me to be of maximum service to God and the people about me." And I think about things like that.

I don't shut this mind off anymore. If I were going to play football for the Broncos, I would need to be fit to be in that game. And that means there would be certain exercises I would do on a regular basis designed to keep me fit for that particular arena.

Well, I'm in this arena and there are certain exercises I must do on a daily basis to keep me fit for that. And it's just that simple. So I don't work the program.

I am the program. this thing. I took the numbers off a long time ago, except when I'm working with new people.

New people got to have the structure. In fact, I'm I'm a step Nazi, I'm afraid. That's what I was accused of yesterday in a treatment center.

I don't know. All I know is that I there may be a thousand ways for people to get sober. I only know one.

So, as it was then, as it is now, I do the same thing I did yesterday with three of my guys that I did in my sixth week of Alcoholics Anonymous. We get the big book out and I read it out loud and then we come to something where it says do this, we do it. If it comes to a place where it talks about a new attitude, do we have that attitude?

And that's how we do this thing. And whatever it does for them, of course, it keeps me in the program. And uh and I love watching them.

I've got two now that are a joy to my heart. About 6 months ago, little Chuck came to me. Now, he's been around 11 years, and he was two weeks sober at this time.

And I loved him. He's little and mean and ugly. and he just dared me to say something meaningful.

Just dared me, you know, but he was willing. And we uh talked about some things. We got around talking about God.

He says, "Oh yeah, I hate that son of a I can't wait to die so I can get right up in his face and tell him what I think of him." And my mind said, "Isn't that nice? He believes That's one hurdle we're not going to have to mess with. When he inventoried God, it was interesting.

He discovered he had created God in his own image, just like I did. Angry man. Terribly angry man.

And as we finished his inventory, two things happened. He came up on a court date. He'd been caught driving under revocation and without insurance.

And in Colorado, those two charges are mandatory 5-day jail sentences. There was no question he was going to jail. And then there was a third little thing that would be a little fine.

And I don't go to jail and I don't go to court with the guys very often, but something said go cuz I'm watching a spiritual event take place with this guy and I want to be part of that wherever he's going to go. He's teaching me things. And he asked me if I'd go with him so I could bring his stuff back and find out where he was and all.

So I went I said, "Let's go out just an hour early and see what's going on." I I don't know what to tell you. let's just go early and maybe we can talk to the DA or something and get an a little extra time, whatever. We went an hour early and he met a district attorney with compassion and she wouldn't let me go in with him and they talked and he came out kind of shaking his head.

He said, "She's she's dropped those two charges and reduced the other one." And uh says, "Well, let's go to court then. That's that's what's next." We got into court and he met a judge with compassion. This judge looked at the thing.

He said, "Young man, I want you to know something. This district attorney didn't give you a break. She gave me a break.

I don't have to send you to jail." And that morning, this was during a tough time. I'm in Denver and we're not making much money down there. $46 had floated into my pocket that morning.

And uh his fine was 41. and I just happen to have it and I don't loan money to people under those circumstances. Anyway, the essence of the deal is he's got a little year suspension to live with and a $41 court cost thing and he hates God stories and we're going back and I can hear your teeth nashing.

But I says, I know what's wrong with you. You got a God story, don't you? She At the end of the inventory, Chuck had two people he will never make amends to.

His brother and his mother. Never. And within a week, his brother called.

He's drinking badly. And his brother made amends. All the rotten crap he done all his life nashing his teeth.

and he's changing. And that's the joy of hanging around here. If my sobriety were for me, I'd be focused on me and I'd miss the opening of this new life.

And he's a pistol. Here's this man is so angry. People were afraid to be around him.

And in our group conscience the other night, he called something and he did it lovingly and with great care that nobody got hurt while he made his statement. The man's getting soft. He's a wonder.

Anyway, and then I got another one. Oh, I love him. He's the chief psychiatrist at one of the finest and foremost treatment centers in the United States.

and he can't stay sober. He knows too much and he's teaching me. Sponsoring people means I learn.

See, I don't know what you need. What you do for me when you come to me and ask me to work with you is take me to the my own heart in prayer. I have to say, what am I supposed to do with this one?

Give me something that will help here. And we've gone over the description in the big book Dr. Silkworth has about alcoholism.

And he knows too much. He can't get powerlessness. That's why he can't stay sober.

And I'm praying my brains out. What can I say? Get it simpler.

Get it simpler. Recognize for all he knows the man's an idiot just like I am. Get it simple.

I said, "Don, what's what happens to you after the first drink?" And he says, 'Well, around the fifth or sixth drink, I go crazy and I lose control and blah blah blah. And I said, "No, what happens after the first drink?" Well, fourth or fifth drink, I do these terrible things. See, what happens to me after the first drink is the second drink, and that's alcoholism.

If I can understand that, I can get sober. He understood it. He's getting sober.

He came into the house and said, "My wife has a restraining order on me and has thrown me out, and she's right." What a thrill. He's going to be all right. She's finally right.

She got into Alanon and learned what to do. I got caught by a bug. Part of my awakening, it wasn't just that they told me I had to to give this away.

If you've had this happen to you, you don't have any choice. I entered into my evangelistic stage at about six weeks and I've never left it. We're talking about the power of God.

You can't sit on that. I can't sit on that. I got to tell you about that.

You know, the frustration of talking is that I've got each day for 22 years I've lived in the presence of God. And I want to tell you about every one of those days. And you give me an hour.

So, I had to do something and the the 12step study school helped. And this thing was on me. this need to do something to give it away to share it.

And the politics down there worked in such a way that one of the politicians, one of one of his boys in the school, and when the election came, I wasn't there anymore, but I needed something to do. So, I learned to transcribe Braille. And then the next thing I know, this guy doesn't know what the hell's going on.

He asked me if I'll teach the class. So, I'm back 12step again. And by then another thing had happened.

I was able to get in and out of my cell anytime I wanted to. I found out how I did that. The institution knew that most of the people in there there because of alcohol problems.

So all the guys who graduated from the 12step study school and were active were allowed to go around 12step. And that's all it was that Bruce had. He was 12step and that's all I've done ever since.

I became an active member of that group and I learned about commitment. I truly believe and it's been said somewhere else, Alcoholics Anonymous success is a direct result of restored families. Now whether it was old broken ones that got restored or new one, the restoration of the family is what gave us credibility and today gives us credibility.

Hey, that's what we are. We're a family. This is where I learned how to function in a family.

Families care actively about each other. Another old-timer defined love that way. Active concern for the welfare and development of the person you love.

That's what that's about. So I began to make a commitment. Families are committed to each other.

I think it was Thomas Wolf said that family home is that place where when you go there they got to take you in. That's us. Our most wretched.

If one of them crawls in that door right now tonight, they'll be made welcome here by most of us, probably by everybody in this group. So, I learned how to behave a little bit in the family, how to take my responsibility. When it's my turn, do it.

And when is it my turn? Whenever I'm asked. That's all.

Whenever I'm asked. If I'm there, it's my turn. That's easy.

And I have learned to ask you to come with me if you want to. But I know it's my turn if I'm there. And I don't know what to do.

I walk around in this business knowing that lives are on the line. When some alcoholic comes to me, there's a life on the line, his and mine. And I don't have any answers.

But I have a solution that works. And I pray a lot. I get confused sometimes.

And what 23 minutes ago? I've had to develop some of my own prayers and already do that. Memorize the ones you got cuz we got some beautiful prayers here.

But each of us has a need for our own. And I've got a couple that I that work for me. I know that periodically I'm going to get screwed up.

So I ask God, "Please don't let me get screwed up about being screwed up. cuz another old-timer helped me understand this whole business is about being comfortable, not feeling good. I'm comfortable with the fact that there's periodically pain in my life.

My 16-year-old nephew died. That's a very painful experience. I'd be a cold dead fish if that didn't hurt.

But I was okay with it hurting. Uh what a time that's been. I love the strength that comes to us.

In fact, the early prayers in the big book that I learned, Bill says from the very beginning, one of our basic prayers, grant me the strength to do the right thing. I've always known the right thing. One of the problems alcoholics have isn't that we don't have a conscience.

Our conscience is overactive. Oh, I've known from the beginning this is wrong. But I don't know how to do right.

And if you give me a choice, I will always pick the wrong thing to do cuz it's more fun. It's just the nature of the beast. So grant me the strength to do the right thing.

I uh was carried into general service real early and there's a lot of ways to serve the fellowship. Uh and when the evangelistic fury hits you, you just go do whatever it is you're going to do. It hit me and I happened to be around general service people.

So, I ended up there and I wondered why along the way. Okay. One of the things that I said to people when I was asked to be a trustee on your general service board was that I am not trustee material.

From everything I know about what a trustee is and does, I'm not. And after four years of serving as a trustee on your general service board, I've discovered I was right. But I did the job.

Oh yeah, I'm still in trouble back there with some I've been given an opportunity to participate in some major events to participate in history because I just happened to be in the chair with the guy who gets to go make history or participate in sits and we'll talk some more about that tomorrow afternoon because what I tomorrow afternoon what I'd really like to do because I've got some time is run you through this service experience and carry you with me so you can sit in the chairs and see what a wonder this is a general service is not politics there are politics there but politics isn't a dirty word either that's how you get things done sometimes it depends on the motive and how you go about it. But I haven't run into much politics here in AA service. When I have run into it, it gets squashed real quick.

I have to serve. I have to do more than just 12step and just sponsor. I believe and our founders made it very clear.

I have a responsibility to God and to this fellowship to make sure that it's intact 50 years from now when I'm dead and gone. It goes beyond this meeting. And what that means, unfortunately, is that it isn't what I do that's important.

It's what I don't do. I have some incredibly good ideas that would make a better. You'll never hear them.

I have the kind of sponsors and I believe strongly in sponsorship. For me, sponsorships a simple thing. This is someone who has gone down the path I'm walking and out of love comes back and walks away with me and says over here it sounds like a rattlesnake, but it isn't.

Over here there's a real rattlesnake and I'm going to go around it. If you want to get bit, go ahead. I'll to walk with me.

So, uh, I've got a lot of different kinds of sponsors. My my basic step sponsor is still the same guy. He lives in Indiana now and we were unlikely characters.

We were people who would normally not mix. He's about 6'4 and just pretty as hell. If you wanted to sell men's clothes, you'd put them on my sponsor and let him walk around.

People buy them. And I'm this little potbellyied dumpy little old fella who can barely speak English. And we hang out together a lot.

One of the greatest times in my life was the four or five years when Gary and I were in a situation where each day we were practicing the 10th step actively. As things would come up, we would just write it down. It doesn't always have to be this negative stuff.

Just write it down, examine it. I'd call him or he'd call me and we'd exchange all this. What a wonderful growing time that was.

This direct exchange I got off into a deal one time and this is what I look for in sponsors. I got convinced by somebody that AA was spiritual high school and was time I graduated. So I went and took the advanced course.

We won't go into details tonight, but things got kind of hairy for a while. And I came back to him and told him what was going on. He looked me right in the eye.

He said, "That's insane. Go rescue your children." And I did. I've always done what my sponsor tells me.

And I came out of that experience with this certain and sure knowledge. Whatever anybody believes on this planet is absolute gospel truth in whatever universe they happen to be living in. I don't have to live there.

I have another dear friend and sponsor and he's unlikely. He's a very bright intellectual man. He's he establishes insurance companies and gets them going.

They call him in for trouble. I think this guy's bright. And uh I'm kind of soft and mushy.

We're good balance. We love each other. When I rotated from being trustee to give you another idea, this is integrity.

By the way, this man has absolute integrity. And one of the things I'm trying to learn in the spiritual life is integrity. We're close friends.

And he has a condo on Maui. And as a result of all this travel, I got to take my family to Maui. And as a friend, you would think he'd let us have that.

And he would have. Without saying a word to me, though, he charged me 700 bucks for that that week. I understood why.

I was a trustee and he was a candidate for general service manager. And he wanted in no way any possibility that anyone could think that there was anything going on there. Now, that's integrity.

When I rotated from that job, I've had a dream for years. I'll share it with you. years ago in my sickness, I had my two little boys and some suitcases and sea bags and we were standing in a driveway.

We had just been put on the street again and we had to go somewhere and I was too tired to move. I've never forgotten how tired I was that day. I just couldn't do anymore.

But we had to go and it's left me with a dream. I'd like to find a place where I can live out my leisure years with patches on the elbows and my coat. And around that place will be other little houses, little cabins, whatever.

Far enough away from the house that if you don't want to mess with me, you don't have to, where people who are tired, just bone weary tired, can just come and rest for a while. And that's a simple dream. I want to have a few horses and some grandkids and do that.

Well, when I rotated, a fellow from California that knows this about this dream called me and he said, "Uh, we'll pay you $100,000 a year if you'll come out and set that up for us." And I looked at that from every angle. four years as being a trustee. It's a good thing my wife was working cuz I didn't work much and the money sounded nice and the dream sounded nice and it all sounded nice.

But I listened to my instincts now that we small voice and something didn't fit. So, I took everything that I had put together and I called George and I ran it by him and he said this to me and this is how my sponsors work. He said, "Are they hiring you to be the guru?" The one angle I hadn't looked at.

He didn't fix me. He made me ask the question and yeah, that's what it was. I had acquired along the way some uh prestige I guess because I got exposed a lot and that's what they were trying to buy and that isn't for sale and so I had to say no thanks I can't do that and then he and I talked over the conditions under which that offer could be accepted.

He's pretty sharp. I know what to look for now. I know what you'll sound like when you got it right.

Okay. And then he said this to me. In the meantime, keep roofing.

I'm a roofer. And uh and that's working out fine. So, uh we sponsor each other.

But there are I have guides. There's a thing going on now that's a wonder to me. Every now and then I've instead of just going through the steps with the people I work with, I pick a guide and I go through as a newcomer all the way through the deal.

This last one was a joy. I only had one major resentment. It was against God.

I crossed that funny little line. See, I fully expect if I'll stay close to him and do his work well, he'll provide everything I need. But I'd crossed the line.

I needed more than he was providing. And we examined that. I got straight with that.

You see, it's very important to me today simply because of the joyous expressions of life I've been able to participate in that I hear that we small voice. That's what I'm listening for. And this program's whole business is to clear my mind of the things that are keeping me from hearing that little voice.

As a result of that, my without my doing anything, after 21 years, my brother invited me to his birthday party. Finally healed. You see, some of this takes time.

I can't fix it. One of the things Chuck helped me with years ago is that I lost everything I ever held dear to me, and I deserved to lose it and never, ever have it back. and I know that so I don't meddle with it.

Not only did he invite me to his birthday party not too long ago, he had me over for dinner, my wife and I. We had a grand time and we were laughing and he said, "I don't even know if we're going to like each other, but tonight was fun." Yeah. I was thinking about my son.

I'll tell you this, then I'll sit down. One of the nice things about this weekend is I'm not even close to through, but we got lots of time to go do it later. See, my son wasn't on this inventory.

There was no direct work done in the steps concerning my older boy. But a great healing has taken place as a result of my listening for the voice because of the work that I did. You see, when my son was 8 years old, I got arrested again and my two little boys got put in a foster home again.

And this was not a good one. And my 8-year-old had to become a man on the spot and protect his little brother. And that was tough.

and he he and I have talked about that and we're pretty clear with it, but there's always been it's never healed for Terry. There's been something wrong there. And after this business, what working the steps has always done and did again this time is that I was able to sit in solitude and be quiet.

Not asking for anything in particular, just be quiet and listen. And it occurred to me that I had never thanked him for that. I guess so.

So I called him and I said that was a very brave thing you did and I know it was tough and I know I've forgotten to thank you. So I'm thanking you now for taking care of your brother when I couldn't. You ought to hear his voice.

There's something new going on with my kid. That's what this is about. Being still enough to be a participant in this so I can be of maximum service.

Now, the biggest change came through this maniac that I sponsor. We have Bronco tickets all of a sudden cuz he has Bronco tickets and his kids won't go with him. I don't give a damn about the Broncos.

I really don't. I'm not even sure what they do. So, I called Terry before this incident, called him and asked him if he wanted some Bronco tickets and he said, "Sure, I'll be glad to." Okay.

And took them. After my mind was clear and I had thanked him. I called him a couple weeks ago.

We had tickets for the Giants game and I said, "Would you like to see the Giants game?" And his first response was, "Are you going with us? It takes time and I trust in time. If I'm walking hand in hand with God, I can trust in time.

He couldn't heal till he could heal. I couldn't heal till I could heal. But if I'm willing to walk through it, I become a healer.

Think about that for a minute and then we'll go home. I think about that a lot because I'm a healer. We all are.

That's our business. We're to scrape the sick ones off the street and help them heal. So, what do healers do?

Well, I have to look around the world. My wife's a healer. She's a nurse in an infant research unit.

Mothers are healers. Okay. What do the healers do?

Well, this is just my observation, not cuz I watched them. When you come in all scratched up and munged up, they don't fix you up right away. They don't put a band-aid on at all.

First thing the healers do is sit you up on their lap and patch you and rock you for a minute and say, "It's going to be all right." That's sit still. It's going to be all right. And then after you believe that, then they fix you up.

And isn't that what we do? They come in here. The last thing in the world I want to do is throw the whole program on some new drunk.

Okay. I'm the kind that if you got a cut hand, I'll put a cast on the damn thing. Give him half a chance.

Okay. Well, that's what you did for me. And that's what I hope I can do this weekend while I'm here is say convincingly enough for anyone who may have any doubt, it's going to be all right.

I know. I had that same boo boo once and it's all healed up. So, I'll tell you about this tomorrow.

This is what she she's going to be rich for. Thank you. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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