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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. >> I'm comfortable in my skin and I'm comfortable in my environment.

And that's that's been as big a blessing to me as almost anything I can think of in Alcoholics Anonymous. We need to find new ways to have balanced relationships. We don't want to be dominant or sub submissive.

We want to be mutually sharing and respectful of one another. We want it to be free and easy. I took a lot of prisoners.

People that worked for me were my prisoners. They had to get along with me. And so I had I had some people that I had mistreated because I treated them badly.

We used to have telephone operators. Uh, telephone operators heard a lot from me when they gave me the wrong number or were too long getting it done. And I don't even know who they are, but I know I gave them some bad days.

Sales clerks. Sales clerks are people that I like to discuss the policy of the store with. They didn't have a damn thing to do with the policy of the store.

They're working just there trying to make a living. And I'm standing there telling them now this is a hell of a way to run an organization. Let me tell you, let me tell you how we ought to do this by it always was going to go my way.

We're blind to our own faults and we we see others. We judge ourselves by our own motives. We judge other people by their by their actions.

You did that. Therefore, I know you had bad motive for that. You didn't speak to me.

You must be mad at me. But I didn't speak to you because I didn't see you. Gosh, I I want to be good to everybody.

I want to be well liked, you know. So, you got this gotness going on. So, you make this list.

You go back through your life and you look for the people you've harmed. What kind of harm? Any kind?

economic, spiritual, emotional, just any kind of harm that you can feel, they can feel. And you make this list and you become willing to make amends to them all. It sounds like a major m when you've lived the kind of riotous life we life we lived, it sounds like a major job.

You're really not too hard. Most of the time we don't even you know I'm I've tried to make amends to people didn't even know I thought they were offended. You know you know why should I I'm kind of embarrassed when that happens because you certainly wouldn't want to tell anybody you did something wrong when you they don't know it.

Uh but that's not the deal. We're trying to clean our side of the street. When you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you have bad relationships, you either owe those people an amend or forgiveness or both.

That's what the deal is. You need to discuss these with things with your sponsors. There's you have not most of us don't have the objectivity to know what to do in these situations.

we we may make the situation work worse if we don't discuss them and and play these things out among with our sponsors where it's safe. Uh we uh amends more than saying I'm sorry. An amend is to write a wrong, to correct a wrong.

And you really can't push off on your sponsor or anyone else what that is. You're trying to free yourself, so you need to do what you think is right. But you're you've got to be very careful because you don't want to harm anybody else.

We have no right to get well at anybody else's expense. So we have to deal with these these relationships in a very careful manner. Uh the ninth step says that this step also talks about willingness.

Some people you can't make amends to. There's some things you can't do. But if you become willing to make the amend from a spiritual standpoint, it will heal you.

Nine steps says, "We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. You're not there to press impress anybody when you go to see them. You're not there to please them or to seek their sympathy.

I don't think you're even there to obtain their forgiveness. I think that's sort of their business whether they want to forgive you or not. Or maybe it's God's business.

I don't know. There's a great deal of similarity between forgiveness and and surrender. uh it seems to me and both of those I think are gifts from a power greater than myself.

So you know what you're going to try to do is clean up your side of the street. You're trying to stand stand tall. You know this is something a lot of people never do.

This is a this is a standup kind of activity where you can be you can have some pride in doing the right thing and feeling good about yourself for having tried to do the right thing whether you please anybody else or not. Let me tell you about a few of mine. I had a son.

I have a son and he was about 16 years old when I got sober. God, he was had a good life. He was on the football team and the basketball team and the baseball team and he was president of the student body and he had girls running after him and it was his was a good life.

He was popular. My life was in the it was not very good and I stayed close to my son because I liked I was kind of living my life through him. I helped him all I could.

I went to football practices. I talked to coaches. I critiqued umpires on a fairly regular basis.

I was the guy at the baseball diamond who was hanging on the screen wire behind the catcher talking to the man in the blue suit about his mother and father, you know, and uh trying to get him to call strikes instead of balls while my son was pitching. Doesn't work very good. I was a pain in the You know what?

I was I'm the only fan I've ever known to get a technical foul in a basketball game. They stopped the game and gave the other team a free throw because of what I said about the umpire. And I told the truth about that guy.

>> >> I was the guy who picked his son up after practice and drove him all the way home giving him helpful hints on how he could improve for the next day or same thing through with ball games, you know, and I was wrapped up totally in him. And I was sitting in a meeting one night and some little lady said, "You have to love your children and give the hold them in an open hand so they can go if they need to go and come if they need to come. You need to give them roots and then you get need to give them wings." And I thought she was talking to me and she was.

I thought about that for a day or two and I went home and saw my son and I said, "Mike, I've been sitting on top of your life and I'm going to give you some room. I'm going to give you some slack. I'm not going to any more football practices.

I'm not ever going to talk to another umpire. I'm not ever going to tell the coaches what plays they ought to run or how they ought to play you or anybody else on the football team. I'm going to go to your games.

I'm going to enjoy them. I'm going to support you every way I can, but that's all I'm going to do. Mike told me later, he said, "I felt like you were rejecting me." But in a very short period of time, he recognized that he had been given a great deal of freedom, and he began to enjoy that.

Now, I found out recently that my son I thought I'd made amends to this as best I can, but my son still has some carryover feelings about those days when I was trying to run his life. I'm sorry about that and I'm going to do all I can to straighten that out. But you never know how long these amends will take or what they will what they will require of you.

But I know that I have some more work to do there. On the other hand, my daughter who was about four years younger, I didn't really have much time for her. I was busy.

I was practicing law and running football and doing all this kind of stuff, you know, and she didn't she had a bunch of little girls around her all the time. And I never was able to I never have understood little girls. Now, when she let me ride on, she'd ride my shoulders and play horsey and that kind of stuff.

I did fine. I was had no problem at all. But then she got a little older and they began to hang around together and they giggled a lot and they whispered all the time.

They were whispering and giggling and they would never tell me what they were whispering and giggling about. I could never get in the game. Well, Karen, because I was not paying a lot of attention to her, she she really kind of got along fine without me.

She was made her own life and was moving right ahead. And so when I got around making amends, I recognized I probably owed her some too. So, I I said to my Billy one night, my wife, I said, "I can't seem to get anything going with Karen.

I'm trying to get a friendship going with her, trying to get something happening, and I can't seem to get it going." And I said, "I don't know what to do." She said, "Why don't you take her to dinner?" I said, "Take her to dinner?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Would you go?" She said, "I don't know. Ask her." So, I went in. And I said,"Karen, would you go to dinner with me?" She said, "Why?" I said, 'Well, because I'd like to I'd like to spend some time with you.

I'd like to know what you're doing in your life. Where would we go? Anywhere you want to go.

When? Whenever you will go. Okay.

So, we started going to dinner. And we go to dinner once a week. Now, after about a month or six weeks of this, I quit asking because I didn't want to do the same thing I was doing with my son.

I didn't want to force myself on him on her. First week, nothing happened. Second week, I don't remember the second or third week, she came in and said, "Daddy, aren't we going to go dinner anymore?" And I said, "Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. ever have. She brings her kids to me.

She puts them on my lap. She wants them to know me. She brought him to an a talk that I was given recently.

The whole family daughter came first. Her 16 or 14-year-old daughter came first and she liked it. So, she brought her two boys and they liked it.

Youngest one's five. He calls me pop after the talk. He said, "Pop, I'm not going to drinking that alcohol.

Get you in trouble." So, you do the opposite. You stop hurting people. That's that's first.

And then you try to restore that which you've taken away or that which you've damaged. And people respond to that. People respond to that.

Not always. Some people have have resentments of their own. They've got a spiritual sickness.

You know, our our fourth step talks about those folks who who are spiritually ill and we have to pray for them. >> And you pray for them and you get forgiveness. Some people you don't even know that you have you don't know whether you've created a you really don't know whether you owe him an amendment or not.

There was one guy he was a he was a man I went to work for. He was one of the best lawyers in Dallas. He's president of the state bar of Texas.

He'd been president of the Dallas Bar Association. He was enormously well regarded and respected. clients loved him and uh I got to go to work for him.

I carried his briefcase. I briefed his cases. I prepared his bills.

I wrote his letters for him. I did everything. He told me many times that he didn't think he could practice law without me.

And then one day he called me in his office and said, "Jerry, I'm leaving this law firm. Several of us who have been practicing here are forming a new law firm." Come on, Mars. Ask me, will I go?

He didn't ask me to go. And I was offended as I looked at it. I really didn't want to go.

I didn't like a couple of people that he was going with, but by God, I deserve to be asked. So all the clients that we were working on cases together hired me to continue to work with him after he left. It was a miserable year or two because I couldn't see his I couldn't see his correspondence.

I didn't know what people were writing him letters for. I didn't know whether he was billing or not. I I was just scratching around on the outside and finally we got all that laid to rest and I uh got to this part of the program.

His name did not make the list. I did not owe him an amend. And then about a year and a half after I'd finished my first round of amends, I was in love, Texas, where we had been one time and I was going into a restaurant, the Hickory Steakhouse.

And I thought, you know, the last time I was here, I was this with this other lawyer. And then I remembered the whole thing. We'd been out there trying a lawsuit.

At the end of the day, the lawyers on the other side said, "Come down to the bar and have a drink. Let's talk about settlement." We went down, had a bunch of drinks, didn't talk about settlement at all. Uh, and then a remarkable thing happened.

A a lady came out from the back of the room. She was the first go-go dancer I had ever seen. She had an interesting costume what there was of it.

And uh she she danced and moved around under black lights and it was pretty exciting type of deal. As she took certain steps, I had an awakening. Uh miracle of miracles.

When the when the dance was over, she came over to our table and sat down. She knew one of the guys there. And then they got to guaranter pretty high and I was just kind of watching this thing going on.

She said turned around to me and said, "Would you like to dance?" And I was ready. So we danced a little while. She She knew some very interesting jokes.

Not jokes she would tell in polite company, but she told lots of jokes. And she had a rather loud voice. And u as we danced, she said she was hungry.

And I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. I'll get my partner here and we'll go get something to eat. And he we also had our client's representative who was one of the major players in Dallas, owned an interest in the Dallas Cowboys at that time.

And uh so I took the two of them and the go-go dancer to this restaurant for dinner. She continued to tell jokes and I remembered all that as I walked in that night and I thought, you know, you know, that might have been a little embarrassing to the man who was a president of the State Bar of Texas at that particular time. He may not have been real comfortable in that relationship.

He may have even thought I drank a little too much on that occasion and then it came back like a flood. I would no more have asked me to go with go with me to form a new law firm. I wouldn't ask a young lawyer that would drank like I did.

Uh why would you want why would you want to start a new business with a with a problem like that? So I knew I ordered him in. I went to him and he didn't want to hear it.

He didn't want to hear it. And I said, you know, I just got to tell you this thing. And uh he said, you know, it's it's okay.

It's okay. You made partner in the law firm when I left. You've been had a good career.

I'm happy. You're happy. Let it go.

But I had carried that around. And I'd said some pretty costic things about him in the interim. And I needed to straighten that up.

And I'll tell you this, he's a good lawyer. And I've told lots and lots of people that he's a good lawyer. And if they need a good lawyer, they could not go wrong if they hired him.

That's about as much as I could do. And it's been enough to free me from all of those ill and bad feelings and to allow me to talk there. And to to set your mind at ease, the lady went home after dinner.

She got her free meal. That's all she was really looking for. that the uh the amend step, you know, there's a lot of people that you like I told you about the telephone operate.

There are a lot of people that you uh that you've offended you you can't identify who they are. There are people who have died that you can't make your amends. It's really important to make these amends as soon as you and your sponsor believe the time is right because you don't want to have to you don't want to have to try to clean up after they're gone.

The first amend I ever made was to my mother and father. They didn't raise a kid to act like I was acting, to drink like I was drinking. And they both were courageous enough to tell me from time to time that I was ruining myself and ruining my family with the way I was drinking.

And I just had to tell them at the time that, you know, I'm just a a big boy now and I'm going to have to live my life the way I'm going to have to live it. And they had a sad look on their face and went went home. And when I got in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'd been there about a month.

I mailed them a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. They lived about 500 miles away. And I said, "I've thought it over and this is the way I'm going to try to live the rest of my life." And that was good enough for them.

They thought Alcoholics Anonymous was the best thing since sliced bread. My god. My dad, every time they'd pass, he'd go to AA meetings with me.

And every time they'd pass, they had, he'd go for that wallet. I'd say, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

We're self-supporting through our own contributions." He say, "Damn it, Jerry. It ain't right. Man ought to be able to give money to something like this place.

>> >> And it didn't and it didn't. I write my relationship was right with both of them. They uh uh they supported me always.

And when I got through with my men's and and was living a decent life, uh they flowered in that relationship. My dad My dad could never say I love you. He just couldn't say it.

Mom died first and he got in a lot of trouble with depression and one thing another after she died and I went up to West Texas and got him and brought him back to Dallas and he wouldn't live with us. He wanted to have an apartment of his own and he went to this apartment and and I'd go by there and see him every day or so. And uh he gave me all of his money.

He said, "I don't want to keep up with it anymore. you just give me what I need. And uh I uh got a call one morning at 6:00 in the morning.

He said, "Are you up yet?" I said, "Yes, sir, I'm up." He said, "I need you to come get me." I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "I don't know. I have a lot of pain in my chest." So I said, "I'll be right over there." And I got in the car and went right over there. And I said, "When did it start?" And he said, "Oh, about 3:30 or 4:00." I said, "Why in the world you call me?" He said, "Hell, you never did like to get up early." And I said, "Well, let's get you to the hospital." So, I got into the hospital.

He had a ruptured aorta, the big vessel coming out of the heart. He left in about a day. Just before he died, he uh he uh I'd been in I'd been talking to the doctors.

One doctor wanted to crack his chest open and go in there and try to repair it. And I said, "Well, this old boy's been making his decisions for a long time. I'm going to he's going to be involved in this one." So, I went in told him what the doctor said.

One doctor said it was what one of my guys that I sponsor was a doctor and he said uh said, "I think this is idiocy to try to operate on him in this condition." And uh the other doctor said it was a heroic surgery, but he didn't think that we should ought to be tried to be heroic here. And this one doctor wanted to do it. And so I told dad the whole story.

And he said, "Hell, I'm not going to do that." He said, "I won't make it. I won't make it to the operating table." But he said, "I'm not sure how long I'm going to live. How long am I going to live?" I said, "Well, Dad, I I don't have any idea how long you're going to live.

you may hell you might even get well but they don't think you are. He took me and he said stuck out his hand said, "Well, Jerry, it's been pretty good. Been pretty good." And he died.

That was good enough. That was good enough. It's a wonderful freeing step.

The promises come here. Before you're halfway through, the promises come to you. You'll know a new freedom and a new happiness.

You'll not watch to shut the door on the past and you'll see how your your experiences can benefit others. Can you imagine a greater miracle than your worst assets in your life, the worst liabilities you had the moment you accept them become your your greatest assets. You can use them all your life to help people.

Add fulfillment to your life. All of the promises come to you. Not all at once, not every day, but they're there.

And that's the program by college anonymous. We'll do the rest of the steps uh in about 30 minutes. >> Here's Are we ready to go?

>> Y'all just about had about a full load of me, I think. So, I I need to get through before everybody leaves. Step 10.

Step 10 in our program, as we've cleaned up our relationships with others, we uh we reach a point in the program where some people call the last three steps uh maintenance steps. I happen to believe that they're growth steps. I think this is the place where we move forward and grow in and understanding and depth as we work with other people and uh and usefulness as we try to be uh a force for good in our community.

The 10th step says we continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong we promptly admitted it. Well, I uh when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was there was a lot of old-timers around who would say that uh you only do one fourth step. Only do one fourth step and then you do 10th step.

I can't tell the difference between the two except perhaps in the area of how frequently you do them because we're referred right back in the st 10 step. We're referred right back to the other nine. Uh the book to quote it says we have entered the world of the sp of the spirit.

Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. We have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. For by this time, sanity will have returned.

That's where I got the idea that step two is talking about the first drink. We will see that our attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just happens.

just comes. That is the miracle of it. We're not fighting it.

Neither are we avoiding it. That's what the steps do. I told you I had a bad temper.

I was in Colorado about five years sober and I was in a tackle shop buying some flies. I was fly fishing. looked across the room and there was stood a friend of mine that I'd been on a church board with and he was a veterinarian and taken care of my dogs and uh knew him well been deer hunting with him and uh I saw him.

I said, "Hi, Bill." And he looked at me kind of funny and he started walking towards me and he said, "Are are Are you Jerry Jones? I said, 'Yes, I'm Jerry Jones. He said, "What happened to you?" I said, "Well, I got a few more nicks and a couple of bangs, but you know, I'm just aging and moving along." And he said, "Oh, no, no." He said, "You're not angry anymore.

What happened?" I said, "Well, I, you know, I've just had to change some of the ways of my life a little bit." He said, "Come on." He said, "I want to go out and sit out on the curb here and talk for a minute. Tell me what happened." People stopped me in the first year of my sobriety as I begin to let go of some of my old ideas and say, "We don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is, please keep doing it." The steps change us just that way. They change the way we think, the way we approach life.

We're moved into a re a life of reality. We're not living on chemicals. We're not living on anything.

We're living on just life. Just life. So we we have to continue to to practice this and continue to work on it.

When I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, the serenity prayer was very important to me. I uh I said I didn't know there was a third part of the serenity prayer for a long time. I prayed a lot for serenity for the things I couldn't change which I couldn't change.

I was an alcoholic. I couldn't change. I wanted to drink.

Couldn't change. Couldn't change. Couldn't change.

And the courage to change the things I can. Found out I could change some things. Could change some things.

But it took me a while to recognize that there's the three part. This is a whole ball of wax here. First of all, you're asked to deal with whatever problems in front of you.

Then you say, "If I can't do anything about this thing, give me the serenity to accept it. If I can, give me the courage to do it. And give me the wisdom to know whether I could change it or whether I can't." And that last part is where we really grow a lot in maturity to find out to gain wisdom.

You can't transfer wisdom. We've been on this globe for no telling how many generations of people and there have been some very wise men. They write books.

They they record things today. All sorts of things. But you can't transfer that from one person to the other.

Each generation, each person in each generation has to grow his own his or her own wisdom. And this is where we where we grow our own wisdom. We continue to take inventory looking for the same things, exactly the same things we look for back in step four.

Self-centerness. We're looking for resentments. We're looking for uh fear.

We're looking for problems with our relationships, both sexual and otherwise. The same questions apply to your to your nonsexual relations as apply to your sexual relations and your dealings with people. So you need to keep looking at those things.

You grow, you try to establish sane and sober ideas and when you're when you fall off the off the wagon make and miss it, you go back and straighten it out and try to try to correct it and move forward. James Allen in his book on inner peace says wisdom is acquired by our own exertions. He who is prepared to be honest with himself to measure the depth of his ignorance to come face to face with his errors to recognize and acknowledge his faults and at once set about the task of regeneration will find the way of wisdom.

That's what we're doing here in this step. The wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until selfarching becomes a regular habit until he's able to admit and accept what he finds and until he is patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong. That's what I think we're trying to do here in the 10th step.

You always start out from where you are. I learned that in the navigation when I was an assistant navigator in the Navy. You don't just go to Japan, you got to start out from somewhere to go to Japan.

So, first you start out here, then you start saying which way to guide the boat. But there's wind and waves and human imperfection and guiding the boat. And first thing you know, you can get way out in the weeds and you have to correct it.

And it's just that way with here. I um I worry a lot about Alanons. They don't have a mascot.

And I know one of my clients out in old East Texas guy told me about Ladino. Ladino, I understand means outlaw in the Spanish language or Mexican language. And he said that on the ranches in Mexico, they would take the young cattle or steers out in the in the warmer weather and leave them out there for the summer.

And then when the weather would begin to get cold and worse in the winter, they would round them up and bring them in. But there were always some steers who were a little rambunctious, a little stubborn, a little hard to get along with, and they couldn't get them to come in. And they they they that wasn't such a big deal because they had a lot of cattle, but they'd leave them out there and the next year when they came around, the herd instinct would kick in with these steers and they'd start rounding up the newcomers and next they wouldn't want any of them to go back in either.

And the the ranchers used to shoot these old Ladinos because they were trouble. Then some smart ranger one day decided that he would uh he would take a string of these little burrows that they have down in Mexico out with him and they'd rope these wild steers and halter them to one of the little burrows. In the beginning, the big steer would just take the little bau wherever the big steer wanted to go.

But sooner or later, he'd want to eat or drink or do something or stop. And when he did, the little booo would start for the home corral. And it would take him about two weeks to lead the big steer docsily into the home corral.

Just persistent pressure on them finally gets him there. And I heard that story and I thought, you know, I was kind of out there in the wild and my wife my wife came got into Alanon and she led me into the home corral. And I may just suggest that the jackass may be the symbol for Alanon.

We we could make little little pins, you know, and little stores like this would sell them or get make them available to the Alanon so they'd know who it was going to be a wonderful idea. Billy wasn't quite as uh excited about it as I was. And I had to think about it a little more.

And you know, I realized that, wait a minute, wait a minute. I've been out in the weeds several times since I've been sober. She didn't bring me back in.

Something did. Something brought me back. Once I'd been in the home corral and knew where I was and recognized a little later on that I was not comfortable where I was, I knew that I was off the beam as we say in AE and something led me back.

So maybe the little bureau bureau was not an alon all the time. Maybe it was a loving God who was turning me back where I needed to go. The interesting thing, the in really interesting thing is this.

No far, no matter how far out in the weeds you get, the moment you turn and start toward the home corral, your life improves immeasurably. Isn't that remarkable? You don't have to get back on track for it to work.

You just got to start back in the right direction. And the 10th step of Alcoholics Anonymous is where we pay attention to what we're thinking about. pay attention to our actions and see this the program work in our life and when we're wrong promptly admit it.

Do you ever do that? That is a remarkable phenomena. I have a little story that is just just blew me away.

I told you about how one lane of traffic was mine. Uh, I used to drive a big Mercedes and I would, uh, I could get on the freeway pretty much anytime I wanted to. It accelerated rapidly and I would just blow onto there and take my lane and didn't worry a hell of a lot about what the other people on the freeway were doing.

One morning I saw a little Volkswagen coming along and I realized they didn't have any percept, you know, no real acceleration. So, I just stomped on it and popped right in front of this little Volkswagen and just to check things out. I looked in the rear vision mirror after I got on the freeway and the little lady driving the car was giving me hand signals.

Uh, and her mouth was moving and I it was kind of cute, you know. So, the devil rides with me in a car part of the time. She decided she would whip over in the other lane and I whipped over too.

Now she was giving me hand signals with both hands and her mouth was really going and I forgot about her because I had I had serious problems. Not, you know, like most people's, but my problems were pressing and and serious and I needed to think about them and worry about them. And so I'm driving on worrying about my problems and I get all the way downtown to my exit.

And I don't know how in the hell she did it, but she got ahead of me someway because I pulled out of the out of my lane and got into another lane and she happened to be she pulled right in behind me and I got off on the exit and she followed me off the exit. I went down the corner and turned right. She turned right.

Bal left. I turned left. She turned left.

Turned right one more time. She turned right one more time right behind me and I recognized I've got a problem here. So I just pulled over the curb and stopped.

She pulled right in behind me and stopped and I got up and I walked back to her and said, "Uh, can I help you?" She said, "You harassed me on Central Expressway." She was kind of cute. And I thought about, you know, playing a little bit, but something kicked in and I said, "You're right. You're right.

I did that. I was wrong to do that. And I will do my best to be a more courteous driver in the future." She said, "Oh, thank you." She took off.

That was all of it. Completely disarmed the thing. She had been angry enough at me to follow me off of the expressway.

It probably wasn't even her exit to just tell me that what I had done. And I admired her courage and just saying that I was wrong made a lot of difference. It almost cuts out all the debate.

When you say somebody, I was wrong, they said, you damn sure were. That's right. I was wrong.

Well, you were wrong. Yes, I was wrong. Where are we going to go from here?

I was wrong. and try to make amends for the wrong that you've done. Try to straighten it up right then before it has a time to fester and grow and create a bigger problem.

It's a wonderful, wonderful tool. I don't use it often enough, but it really works when I do. The uh 10th and the 11th step in my experience is or are related to one another.

I was reading the 12 and 12 one day and there's this paragraph in the 12 and 12. There is a direct linkage among self-examination, step 10, meditation and prayer, step 11. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit.

But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result may be an unshakable foundation for life. Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of what of that ultimate reality which is God's kingdom. And we will be comforted and assured that our destiny and that realm will be secure for so long as we try however falteringly to find and do the will of our creator.

What that says to me is if I this life if I get one point for step 10 and then I do step 11 meditation prayer three. If I combine those three together I get a whole handful. I get a lot bigger life.

So that dictated some of what I ultimately try to do in my morning meditation and in my prayer. When I got to step 11, which says sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out. I didn't know anything about meditation.

You may have known about meditation, but I there was a little place in the bulletin in my church where they played real sad organ music and it was called meditation. And that's where we talked about what the Cowboys were going to do that day on the football field. I uh right over my head.

I just didn't focus on it at all. And I began to do a little examination about meditation. It kind of was a spooky sounding thing.

I was not going to try it until I fully understood it because you know you might levitate or something and couldn't get back down. So I began to buy books on meditation and I had all kinds of books. I read books that were way out there.

People writing about things they did not know and expecting the others to understand them. And anyway, one day we have a debate in my family about this whether I bought the book or whether Billy bought the book. But one of us bought a little tiny little book in the in the uh checkout line at the at the drug at the grocery store.

It's called How to Meditate. I read how to meditate. It was exactly what I needed.

And if you haven't tried it, I want to challenge you to try something here. Meditation, it said, is the occupying of your conscious mind with something, anything. Sex is not a good thing, but a neutral something is a good thing.

I uh I gave several different kinds of examples how you could say a mantra. Just think about a short phrase sometimes in Sanskrit or some other language or it can be be still and know that I am God. Be still know that I am God.

To repeating this over and over just concentrating on that one thing. You can do it watching a flame. Don't do anything.

Don't think about anything except watching that flame. I took the one that said count your breath. That sounded simple to me, not too spiritual, something I could do.

Said to breathe in, count one, you get comfortable. You get setting up in a chair. You close your eyes if you like.

Probably should not look around much. Don't answer the telephone. Just count your breath.

That's all you're going to do for a little while. Doesn't matter whether you think it does any good or not. Just count your breath for a little while.

So, you count one in, two out, three in, four out. Start over because you don't want to complicate the thing. One in, two out.

Now, you're going to learn something. If you haven't already done this, you're going to learn that controlling your mind is like hurting geese. It goes everywhere but where you want it to go.

It uh it does. It just moves around. I guarantee you, you sit down and start doing that, the first thing you think, well, I got to call John.

I just I'm supposed to call John today. I better go. Well, I said I wasn't going to call anybody.

I'm just going to sit here and meditate. And you you I I finally had to put a piece of paper out here, a pad, so I could write down these wonderful thoughts I was having about things I had to do to stay there in that chair and keep counting my breath. And then I'd get her to going, you know, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.

Boy, I'm doing real good, ain't it? Wasn't I? I'm not supposed to think about how good I'm doing.

I'm just supposed to count my breath. It's really an interesting phenomena and there's no thing on earth that alcoholics need more than to slow down that alcoholic mind. Do you know what an alcoholic mind is?

Guy told me recently, an alcoholic mind, my alcoholic mind, he said, would have killed my body except it needed transportation to go from place to place. the uh the result is objectivity. I found that if I had any kind of self-centered emotion going on in my life, anything that any resentment, any fear, any greed, anything that it would had happened the day before or that was going to happen that day, when I started trying to shut down my mind and just count my breath, that thought would come to top.

It would be right on the top of the list I'd think about. So I made a deal with God. I told God, if you will let me quiet my mind, I will handle that situation.

Whether it's a resentment, whether it's fear, whatever it is, the way the book Alcoholic Anonymous tell Alcoholics Anonymous tells me to do it just as soon as I get up from here. It'll be my highest priority today. And I kept a little my little pad was there so I could write down a word just a word so I could remember what I was going to do.

And then I'd go back and start counting my mind my my breath. You can't relate to this most of you but I when I was a kid I used to go to movies on Saturday see Tom mix and Roy Rogers and all those guys and they were sorry old films. I mean, they'd been run so many times they would they'd break from time to time and you'd be caught up just at the most exciting part of the thing were just about to catch the bad guys or the Indians are about to get the good guys and the damn film would break and the screen would just go white and you would just be in shock because you were so caught up in that film you couldn't see what you you know you forgot where you were.

And that's what we do with our minds. We get so caught up with these thoughts that we don't see or hear or know what's going on around us. One of the guys I a sponsor came in to me one day.

I told him about meditation. He'd been working on it for a while and he came in. He said, "Do you know do you know what?" And I said, "What?" He said, "There's all kinds of beautiful things on the buildings in downtown Dallas." He said, "There's there's sculptures almost on these things." Said, "I never seen those things." And there's he said, "Have you noticed how much flowers there are in the driving to work?

You begin to notice the world in which you live in a really fulfilling way. It lightens you up and you get new thoughts. I never practice law in Alcoholics Anonymous except one time.

There was a lady who came to me and told me that her relatives had caused her 86 year old father to be separated from his 84 year old wife and caused her to file a suit for divorce against the father because we have a community property state. They want to stop the community property so they would c get more money at the end of the road. this challenged me and I decided that this was just the kind of thing that I'd like to be involved in.

So, I got involved in it. I took the case. I'm defending a divorce case, which something I hadn't done in years and years and years.

And I get this call one morning just about the time I'm going to meditate. My friend calls me and she says, "The sheriff is at the door trying to serve my daddy with a subpoena to require him to go to the courthouse right now." And I said, "Well, you tell your daddy to have the sheriff call me or take the piece of paper he's got, whatever he's got, and I will get him to the courthouse when we're supposed to go and tell him not to be afraid that I'll be there. You tell him to stay right there and not worry about anything till I get there.

And I'm telling you, I'm ticked off at this other lawyer. He shouldn't have done this. He shouldn't bother that old man.

He's done enough for his happiness. I'm God. I'm thinking what I'm going to do to that lawyer.

I've got all kinds of ideas. What I'm going to just as soon as I can get him in front of the judge, I'm going to I'm going to rip him one. That's what I'm going to do.

And but it's 6:00 in the morning and I can't do anything until 9:00. What am I going to do between now and 9? There's nothing I can do.

I got to go to the courthouse. Well, that takes 20 minutes. And then I've got the rest of this time I've just got to sit around.

Well, I guess I could meditate. Don't want to meditate, but I guess I could. So, I decide I'll meditate.

So, I do my little counting thing. Sure enough, it kind of slows me down. About halfway through this meditation, I think, you know, he's got a right to subpoena my client if he wants to.

law allows that judge is going to say I can't stop him from doing that. He'll think we're trying to hide something if I try to prevent him from taking the dep from talking to the to the uh old man. Okay.

Okay. So, I went to court, told the judge they they were just raising hell. Where where was he?

And I said, 'He's in his apartment. And they said, 'Well, we own him here right now. And I said, 'Well, I'm I'm going to I'm going to get him here.

And I told the judge. The judge said, 'What's going on here? And I told the judge what had happened.

They dispended him to come to court. They hadn't contacted me or asked me to bring him or anything. And he was scared.

He was in his apartment and that I was going to go get him just as soon I needed a little continuence from this hearing to go go get him. And the judge turned to that other lawyer and said everything that I was ever going to say to that other lawyer. He just crucified him right there in front of everybody.

They never ever wanted to see that old man again. They didn't want talk to him. They didn't want to take his testimony.

They just wanted to leave him alone. But see, my that wasn't my thought that came to me. That thought came from somewhere from other than from this aggressive conscious mind that I had.

It floated to the top. And that's what happens with meditation. And when you've quietened your mind, when you've laid out self-centerness where you can know what you're going to do about it, you're then ready to communicate with the power.

And I don't think you could ever find the power except in a really pretty quiet mind. I think you're more apt to reach it at that point in time. You're more apt to have those good thoughts than any other time in your life.

And you pray. What do you pray for? Do you know how to pray when you got here?

I didn't know how to pray. I didn't have a clue about prayer. Most of the prayer that I know about today is it's an internal thing with me.

It has more to do with my attitude and my actions as I go through the day than it does anything else. I pray with my sponses. I pray with people who want me to pray with them.

And I don't know I don't know whether that helps anybody but the two people who are praying. I sometimes interesting results happen but I can't really I can't really scientifically prove what prayer does that way. There are tests as you know though there are there are studies that have been conducted where people pray for one group of people in hospital and compare that to the general population where nobody's where there's no organized prayer going forward and and they do better they heal better than than the others.

So there is a power there. This thing called prayer seems to reach beyond the person who's praying and you pray for only for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that out. Lack of power was our dilemma way back in the beginning.

And now we're asking for the power and the power comes to us as it's needed to do God's will. That's what I think about the 10th and the 11th step. And then we come to number 12.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. have a spiritual awakening. I read somewhere that only 15% of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous have really had a spiritual awakening.

I don't know who came up with that number, nor do I know how they came up with it, but I know from my own experience that 100% of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous can have a spiritual awakening if they want to work for it. There's a quote in our book that says that, you know, if what we seen, if what we know means anything at all, it is that every man and woman, no matter what their race, color, or creed, can form a m a relationship with their creator if they have the honesty and the willingness to try. And I think that these steps, if you do these things as you go along, your life is going to radically radically improve.

things happened to me that were just pretty spectacular for me. My mother was a little Irish gal and she uh she and I were raised I was on that farm. She raised me on that farm and I was we had a lot of hard times during World War II and she helped me scoop wheat and do things that she wasn't big enough to do but we were close and uh about she got cancer and uh that really tore me up and she called me.

Oh, she had she she had surgery for that cancer and I thought they got it all. And then she called me one day and said that they didn't have it all apparently because they were going to have to go in and do another operation. And would I come up and be with her?

I said, "You bet you." I was drinking heavily still. And I started to put my bottle in my briefcase and I decided, "No, mother never want me to drink." She died with 75 years of continuous sobriety. So, she wasn't real impressed with mine.

And uh didn't understand why I drank at all. And so, I didn't take my bottle. And I went up there and they started the surgery and I wasn't drinking.

And the old family physician went in with the surgeon and he he came out, it seemed to me like in just a few minutes and walked over to my dad and I and he said, "Boys, it ain't no good." He said, "That cancer's everywhere. It's on her kidneys. It's on her liver.

It's on the bowel." It was ovarian cancer to begin with, but it had m metastasized. Said she won't live a year. And it was like somebody had reached inside my body and or mind or somewhere and turned a switch and I just turned around and walked off on the way to a liquor store.

I needed a drink and I drank that rest of those few days around there. She went to recovery. They sewed her up and and she she got out of the hospital and but while she was in the hospital, I was around there and I I was trying to play like I was sober.

I was drinking vodka and coffee, some wonderful drinks that I and everybody I was no use to anybody. She could tell I was drinking. Everybody knew I was drinking.

And finally they told me I could go home and I went home. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous sometime after that and we thought mother had she used chemotherapy and we thought she had been cured. They told us she had and uh I got square with my mother.

We uh we had a good good feeling toward one another. And then I got another call and they said, "Jerry, would you come up?" They found another lump in mother's stomach. I said, "You bet you I'll be there." And I went up there and I visited with my mother.

It was easy. We were comfortable. We hadn't have any issues at all between ourselves.

And she said, "Finally," she said, Jerry said, "I want you to uh get the family in here. I want to talk to them." So, I rounded up all the folks that were there and went in. She said, "Folks, I've been fighting cancer for 17 years.

I'm tired. I'm older. I'm weaker.

I don't know whether I'm going to make it this time or not. I'm going to do the very best I can, but I just don't know whether I've got it in me to last another time. This is going to be real hard on me, but it's going to be hard on you, too.

Said, "While this is going on, lean on Jerry. He'll be your strength." And I was I was My dad blew a big ulcer right in the middle of it and had to remove most of his stomach. He didn't get to go to the funeral.

It was a It was a two weeks of hell. I watched her slowly and painfully die. Now I never one time, not one second thought about taking a drink.

Not once. Not even never passed my mind. didn't really even realize it that I hadn't thought about it until after the funeral was all over and I had dad home and one thing another.

I didn't think about taking a drink. Same boy, same mother, same circumstance. The only thing that had been added to my life was the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and its benefit, the the finding of a power greater than myself.

I had a spiritual awakening. I can tell you a lot of different things that have happened to me along that line and I know lots of people who've had a spiritual awakening. The steps do that for you and you and I have an obligation to carry it out.

The bill says to those whom much has been given much is expected. We got to find drunks. We got to go out and look for them.

Don't sit by the telephone and wait for them to call. They may not be able to get they may not be able to place a call. They're out there in the weeds.

And I hear people say, "Well, I'm not ready for this 12step business." You're never too early in program to do what you can as far as the 10th, 11th, and 12th step is concerned. You can do a little bit. You're consistent with your own experience.

Find drunks. Hunt them. Don't worry about them.

They say, "I'll mess them up." Don't worry about screwing up drunks. They're already screwed up. get them in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and let the meeting and the and the and the process take over.

That's our job is just get them here and share our experience with them. 12step calls are, you know, they're don't seem to be as many of them in my area as there used to be. Uh I got to go I never had one come up that didn't come up the wrong time.

It's always just about the time I'm going to go to bed or uh when I've got something to do next. and uh you just go. But I've never been on one in my life where when I left there that I didn't feel like whether I thought it was successful or not, I have been in exactly the right place doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

And it's not good enough that some people are real good at it and other people don't seem to be doing so good at it. We're like a jigsaw puzzle. You will touch people's lives that with your piece of the jigsaw puzzle that I will never have an opportunity to touch.

Nor will maybe anyone else. And if you don't do your job, they just die or go crazy. And there's a lot of them dying and go crazy.

And you can't guarantee their success, but you can damn sure feel good about knowing I did the best I could. I showed up, suited up. I did the best I could.

I offered what I had. And if they take it, fine. If they don't, great.

But you're blessed. Everyone in this room is really blessed because you've been in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Think how many alcoholics and addicts don't ever make a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The world is just full of this thing. And wouldn't isn't it remarkable the possibility is that God gave addiction to the human race so we would find him. Think about that.

It may be our way. It may be his will that this is the way we got to recognize. Hey man, you're welcome to go that way if you want to go.

But it won't work. It won't work. And there is a way.

Not a way that we humans can fix, but there's a way that I can fix it if you'll turn it to me and let me have it. But you all are going to have to carry the message. In World War II, there was a statue in in one of the countries in Europe that was uh blown up with a hand grenade, knocked the hands off of the Christ that was of Jesus that were there.

And they they restored the statute as best they could, but could never do anything with the hands. So they put a plaque on the bottom of the statute says, "You are my hands. You are my hands.

You're going to have to do my work." And we can. It's the most fulfilling thing. I used to wonder what my purpose on life was.

What am I here for? What am I floating around in this cloud of dirt in space for? What's the purpose of it here?

There doesn't seem to be any immediiacy or need, but there is for you and I. We can reach people that no one else can reach. We can talk to people that no one else can even get close to.

Doctors, clergymen, all kinds of people would love to have the ability that you and I have to reach the suffering alcoholic. But we got to get off our cans and do it. It won't happen any other way.

We got to live these principles in all our lives. The last thing in the world we need to do is is try to lead a divided life. Be one kind of person in AA, another kind of person at home, another kind of person at jump.

We need to be what you see is what you get all day, every day. In every area of our life, we need to practice these principles. Lois Wilson, the last surviving member of the founders, was dying in a hospital in New York, I think it was, and it was in the east anyway.

And she uh she was on intensive care and she couldn't speak and they had tubes in her throat and one thing and another. and uh the general manager of the office in New York uh heard that she was very near her death. So he decided that somebody from Alcoholics Anonymous need to go see her and thank her for what she had done for AA.

So he went and he visited with her, talked to her for a little while. And then he said, uh, Lois, he said, I came here today to thank you for what you've done for Alcoholics Anonymous. You've saved us.

You helped save us. And she had a little pad that she could write on and she wrote, "Not me, God." He said, "You got me, Lois. That's true.

That's true. I knew that. I knew that.

But Lois, you were his messenger. She picked up her little pad again and wrote, "And so are you." And so are you. God bless.

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 day.

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