A 12 Steps & Service Workshop in Richmond, VA

You call it. We just had a group conscience consisting of 2 incredible alcoholic minds. We're gonna have a 3 hour meditation. Yeah. And they'll they'll tell you what'll come out of that.

Yeah. What we wanna take just a minute before we get rolling and, pose a little little question. Yeah. Everybody is here for a reason. Everybody came here in.

We've gone through some stuff this morning that, that I really enjoyed visiting. But part of our purpose is to try to help everybody here get what they're looking for the best we can. And so we're at a point you've sort of seen that we make it up as we go. And and so absolutely no way to get this train off track. It just stays there, you know.

And then and it winds up getting on track in the in the process. Real quick, give us some, some feedback, if you would, in terms of what you'd like to see visited before we get out of here at quitting time today. And we'll see how well we can respond to that. Anybody? Yes.

A little more depth on the fact that this okay. I can tell you in one brief sentence. When we broke here, you were all standing out in the parking lot talking to each other. We have been incredibly effective. That's the marker.

Or else made you hungry. At meetings. A good meeting, people hang out. They came early. They stay late.

They go do other things. That's what it's really about. If everybody breaks and goes home, there's something missing out of that. There's no spirit. Alan mentioned a couple of things I'll just throw out if, if it may is in the general area of sponsorship.

You know, I kind of alluded that before we broke. A couple of real issues that are that are that are that are weighty for us and and to have to do with effective relationship is when do you discontinue a relationship and sponsorship if you just believe it's run its course? And how do you deal with that? Some people use a crude word like firing, but it's not necessarily that. It's just recognizing.

The other thing is how you deal with people who are under medication. And it poses some real challenges in terms of discerning when you can do effective work, how to responsibly deal with it. Is that covered adequately, Al? Okay. Those are good points too.

I just would like to hear your experience with the steps. With steps. And maybe a work staff or, you know, 8 staff? Step? Yeah.

When all else fails, go to the steps. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good job.

Anybody else? Pardon? Dealing with really resistant people, but they keep showing up. I mean, guidance. Hard cases, but persistent cases.

Okay. Yeah. How you deal with resistant people? Yeah. My mind just takes off with that.

Anybody else? Yeah. Yeah. Will. Dealing with remorse.

Remorse. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Alright.

Yeah. Got you. Do you have responses that are really struggling with just functioning like, you know, they're they're pressed. All dressed up with nowhere to go. Okay.

Yeah. Good deal. It could have been a contender. Anybody else is because you know either one of those could go for a week. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's an excellent thing.

I I get it from the concept stage in the rooms into real stuff where we live. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, one more. It looked like we didn't have enough to do. You remember all that, Donnie?

I'm sorry? I'm talking about, like, grounding myself, my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, and my guilt, I can't Did you call them? Yeah. And I'm going home. Help me just one thing.

You said being self supported through your own kind of vision. And then I couldn't quite follow that second part. I couldn't hear it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. K. The best you can. No. I heard it then.

I'm just not incredibly brilliant. I have trouble following it sometimes. The, I'm I'm having trouble connecting and self supporting and that, that that that spiritual connection. Yeah. You've got a connection in there.

Okay. Okay. You also all obviously know that if we try to address those, we're gonna be here till sometime in the middle of next week. Yeah. However, if you allow us to tell some stories, we can illustrate each one of them, sometimes a couple of them, from our own experience if that's suitable.

I left my lecture notes at home. I left my addressing this notes at home. But, yeah, I hear what you're saying. We've got personal experiences. You're talking about the application of spiritual principles in the real world.

Is the essence of what I heard from you. How do you do that? Well, let me address remorse first. We'll get that that done because I know about that. Guilt is when I have been caught violating one of your rules or laws or principles and I feel guilty.

Very easy to deal with. I'll wait for you to tell me what kind of time I have to do. Just the payback. Then I do that, and as soon as that's done or shortly before it's done, I just go my merry way. That's easy.

Remorse and shame is one I have caught myself violating one of my principles, one of my true beliefs, violating who I am, and there is no pale. I want to tell you a little story. This one hurts. I'd like to keep it fresh because you've all got one of these. We all have an ace in the hole.

Mother, uncle. We've got a place where when all else fails I can go back and rest for a few days. And my dad was that. And during the last part of my sickness, I was part of a subculture. I'm one of the freaks that came out of Berkeley screaming out whether there's hope burned down City Hall.

And we lived underground. There's a real culture out there. Anyway, we were resting, and Albert called me in Albuquerque. Albert was one of the snakes I ran with. And Albert said, we got 30 kilos of good marijuana as far as Juarez, And our driver got busted.

And we need somebody to go get it. Now get the whole picture. At the time, I'm a single parent to 2 little boys. 1 6 and 14. I'm trying to be a parent, but we're on the road.

Don't want to get too dramatic with it. Albert says, we need someone to get it. Would you do it? And I said, Of course, Albert. Now that should give you some dimension of where I'm at.

I'm trying to keep these kids safe and I just accept the job of smuggling 30 kilos of marijuana out of where it is, Mexico. And I didn't do it for the money. I did it for prestige. I was the only one in the United States they could think of to call to go into old Mexico. Get the job done.

The truth was Albert had been told to call me. They said call Prince because he's crazy. So anyway, we took the job. I stopped drinking and put on a little bit of weight. Did the math.

Got my head clear. The math was necessary. How much volume is there in 30 kilos of marijuana the way it was packed then? I needed to know what kind of box can I put this in? I'm sane now.

It will. I'm functioning. Cleaned the boys up. Cleaned me up. Sport coat.

Young American, Theresa father. That's the role we're gonna play. Had them run a VW van in somebody else's name and had them get us a place to stay. At this point, I have nothing to do with the deal. If it falls apart before I get there, I'm not in it.

I'm not stupid. I'm just insane. We got into Juarez. I got the van, got us into Juarez. I didn't pick the stuff up.

It was lying in a motel. They picked it up and then transferred to me. The hotel they'd picked for us, of course, was just a whorehouse motel in Juarez. We immediately moved into the Holiday Inn style place uptown. Reach to that volume fits perfectly in a single air mattress.

So I'll open the end up and stuff the mattress, then reseal it, put air in it. That cuts the smell down. Then on top of that I put dirty diapers. Border, my 2 little boys. So when we hit the border crossing I turned to the children and right out of nowhere screamed at them.

Scared them so they'd be crying, because they don't mess with you. They don't get crying, catch, and dirty dirty diapers. That's remorse. Forever broke the bond between one of my kids. That's regret.

That's remorse. There is no payback for that except the one I found here. In the 4th step, there is a promise that is so profound, face and be rid of. I didn't come here to just get fixed. I came here to be changed into the kind of person who's not capable of committing that act ever again.

That's the only thing I know to do with it, Will. But Jane is so profound that I'm no longer that person. Now I still have to deal with the fact that I've got to clean that up for the kids. They're scarred, and we'll always be scarred. Create an arena where they can get better from it.

So the answer has changed so profoundly you could never do that again. Total surrender. As long as I'm capable of committing that kind of an act, I cannot live with myself. I can't. You can't deal with it.

How can you with it, Counselor? You just have to be different. Okay. And that's what I did find here. That's precisely what occurred.

Then the next job is to tell you that so you can get off your own back. Because like it or not, that's the best I could do. That's pretty shabby. I'd rather die than be that ever again. But you don't have to die.

You get to be something even better. Let me mention 2 2 different levels of remorse that I think about Willker. 1 is that remorse comes when I fail to follow my hunches. That what I'm talking about, I'm talking about a different level of it, of the day to day things that are building up remorse. Because what I found is that when I listen to my hunches and I do what I feel the urge to do, if I don't do it I always regret it.

It's a real message. You know, if I've got a friend sick in the hospital and I have a hunch that I ought to go see him, if I don't, Deep, deep remorse. And I think that's the signals about being in tune with the call it voices, if you will. But the things that I feel spiritually driven to do and those hunches. And if I take over and impose my judgment I'll nearly always have remorse about that.

What I've learned is that my first hunch, whether it's a spiritual signal or not but my first impression about something is usually the most correct one I'll ever have. And if I follow that up with a whole bunch of thinking all I do is screw it up. And after a certain amount of a whole bunch of turmoil and confusion, I wind up right back where I started. But it went off and too late. So that's one level.

The other that I think, like Don talked about, our program is designed to provide surgery for the soul from deep remorse like that. And I have some. I think we sort of visit steps a little bit of this thing. I believe that what starts to emerge in the 4th step and then gets crystallized in the 8th 9th are the surgery of the soul. You know, where I start getting rooting out those causes and conditions and the enormous damage that has come from my defects of character.

And my belief is, whether it's true or not is certainly my belief is that every time whether it's gravity like he's talking about or gravity like in my case where I took human life. All of these things have an enormous weight. And so do those far lesser things that make up an amends list. And my belief is that I will never have the freedom that this program promises until I take that surgical procedure and give it my best to make right those wrongs. And so it's one thing to recognize it and deal with it.

But if I don't have to figure it out and deal with it, all I have to do is take the steps and let it happen. And, if we don't, I think we pay an awful price because those things become the anchors that we drag through life. And I won't be free till I'm able to turn them loose. And just kidding myself that it wasn't all that bad is not enough. Just having somebody try to placate me and say, Oh, you weren't that bad is not enough.

Now, what I have to do is root out those things that eat me up. And, so, yeah, I think the steps directly put us through at whatever level so that we'd find peace. This kind of thing is about being shabby. I described a high intensity, high drama piece. The children were in no real danger.

Don't mistake that. Had we been caught, they'd have been better off because they'd have gone to at least a decent foster home. What I did to my children is that for no reason whatsoever, I broke the spiritual bond between us. I harmed them to accomplish my own ends. Totally self serving.

And that's what inventory brings me to every case. It's shabby. It's about me wanting a little prestige. It's about me wanting this or that little money or whatever. And that's the one that's hard to face.

But on my own, I am nothing. It's very clear. Left to my own devices at my very best, if there's 10 people in the room, at my very, very best I can help 9 of them. Somebody's gonna get screwed. In God's hands, I have found that even the onlookers benefit.

No. Nobody gets messed with it. Even people just crossing the street. Okay. Two little pieces for the prayer that goes along with this.

This whole thing is about me getting conscious of the relationship with God. We ask for guidance and direction. There was an old assembly of God preacher who used to come into the penitentiary and I discovered that I like spiritual people. I don't care what they call themselves. And I love singing hymns.

We shall gather at the river still brings tears to our eyes. You sing in the garden? I'm dead meat. And this guy was I had this illusion that spiritual people were perfect and and he was 1. And yet he said he had difficulties sometimes and temptations sometimes.

We asked him, what do you do? He said, well, when I'm tempted with something and I'm not sure see, I know the difference between right and wrong. It's the gray area that I get in trouble. If I'm not sure, he said, I'd take the master by hand and say, if I go do this, will you go with me? And I've got my guide.

Today's guide is a little different. It's a little more personal. If what I'm about to do, would it be alright if my mother, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter saw me do it? The answer is an absolutely yes. I'm not doing it.

Yeah. It just gets real simple and basic that way. And the temptations are even harder as you get rid of your defenses against your temptations. Okay. It gets really tough.

Well, I won't really hurt anybody. But that in in relating to that, clearing away self puts me in see, the spiritual life is a very practical life to me. Anything that separates me from the children of God separates me from God. And since the whole idea of God is bigger than I can even begin to comprehend, the mercy of AA is that it deals with it on this level. One of the old masters says treat people like they're gonna be treated.

That's what goes around does come around. And, I mean, those are some of the guys I must engage in this thing. I've got a lovely guy, sober several years now. Never talks a meeting, never does nothing. He's just miserable.

He's in deep depression. Of course, he is. You get up and sing for a minute, it'd be over. But he doesn't know how to sing or doesn't want to sing or or whatever. Does that help a little bit?

There are no bad answers for this. I must behave as if God were at hand because where I am God is. He wants me to run my head into the wall. If I wanna run my head into the wall, he stands by and lets me. Keeps the bandages handy.

If I don't want to run my head into the wall, all I gotta do is ask for the strength to do the right thing. And when I ask, will you go with me? If I get a strong yes, I'll go. And that's the toughest one of all. That's the hard one because I know it's gonna I'm gonna be doing something that's extraordinary if I say yes to that and go.

If I get a no, I don't go. If I don't get either one, I don't go. That's the grave. That's where the doubts are. If you're not sure you ought to do it, don't.

Don't. Don't know why you're down. I might have missed it. Your your temptations get harder as you as you lose your defense against your temptations of God? I am more vulnerable to drinking today than I ever was before because I don't see alcohol.

Yeah. It's not part of my mind. The mental obsession with alcohol is gone. I don't even see it. 15 or so years ago, I was flying home.

I I think those of us who are sober a while are in far more danger of drinking because of the truth than we are lies. You got to all work real hard to come up with enough lies to convince me it's okay for me to drink. I know better. But I'm flying home. And this was a perfect evening.

I'd given a talk. It didn't hurt anybody. They even drove me back to the airport. They didn't make me walk. I fly United a lot.

And on this particular evening, because of that, they moved me into 1st class. I used to think that's because I had some special thing going on. It's because they can't sell that seat but they can sell mine back here if they just move me up. That's an ego deflator. But it's nice up in 1st class.

Real food, real plates. It's an evening flight. I'm in fit spiritual condition. I'm going home to the family. I adore.

I've got a book I've been waiting to read for several weeks. The lights in the first class cabin were just wonderful. I'm I'm okay. And I noticed the other side of my corner of my eye a flight attendant pouring this burgundy red stuff into my seatmate's glass. That's all it was.

And I looked over at it because the light was hitting it and my mind said, That really looks good. Well that's the truth. It really did. It's not wine. It's that.

Then my mind said, I bet that's gonna taste good. Of course it would. That's why she's giving it to me. I'm still not thinking alcohol. Then my mind said, I bet that's gonna make sure his whole dinner taste better.

That's the main function of wine. It cuts the grease from the glass course and that's when you can taste it. Okay. Then a prayer began in me. I don't know how to describe this to you.

I just know that I absolutely trust this inner resource, the spiritual resource to protect me when I don't even know I need protection, when I'm in the crazier zone. There's a sense that comes over me and I immediately turned and went in and just got quiet and realized my very next thought would have been, I probably ought to have one of those without ever thinking alcohol. That's how vulnerable I am today. The temptations are much more I've got to really stay fit, k? We're out on the road a lot.

There's a lot of danger out here. I don't know if you know that or not. There's grave ego danger. There's grave physical danger. There's grave emotional danger.

And it's real easy to cave in After 50 people tell you that you're just wonderful. You begin to think maybe they're right. That means that I have special privilege. And that's where my ego goes by. And, no, I don't.

Does that help a little bit? Yeah. Pardon me. I'm a storyteller. You got to get it all because I don't know anything.

I tell you that the part of the part of the temptation, and I don't wanna kinda leave this around and talk about that that, emotional recovery thing a little bit too. The, with me, the the more the more critical kinds kinds of temptation stuff are are matters of principle things. You know, like, you know, like now, I'm not cured, but it's been many years since I've had a real crisis in terms of drinking. That doesn't mean I'm cured, because I I know what causes that to be so. But where I run into difficulties now is that as my life has changed and I've become a participant in life and a responsible person, I have to make a lot of ethical, principle based decisions that are sometimes tough to make.

And, with most older members, that's where I see the real crisis coming. It's about values and and what you stand for. And and so I I find a lot more threatening stuff that I have to be diligent about in terms of cutting corners, of not of not being scrupulous about the way I do business. So, you know, the the ones where it becomes the glaring thing of the burgundy, yeah, I I can deal with that. The more subtle ones that kinda take away my integrity are the ones that I really have to watch out for.

You know, trouble with booze to me is always at least 6 months ahead of the crisis, at least. And it and it has to do with starting to lose that sort of sharp focus and clear kind of plug into the program. You know, it's a strange thing that you can watch somebody headed for trouble. Probably, probably everybody here has seen somebody or may know somebody right now that's headed for trouble and you know it. Everybody recognizes it.

But everybody is equally baffled about how to deal with it. Now, how do you do it? And how you charge in? Sometimes you can charge in and do far more harm than good. But you see it.

You start seeing it in behavior. You start seeing it in that squishy thing called attitude. You start seeing it in performance at meetings and stuff like that. But how to step in and intervene is a real deal. My group spent 4 hours recently in a workshop to work with people.

And that was one of the things we talked about. What we what we wound up seeing, the consensus of that group, was something I saw about this morning. It depends on the level of trust. The person who can most is most apt to be able to step in is the one one's greatest level of trust. If you have that trust, there is absolutely no limit to what you can do with an alcoholic.

There's no limit to what you can say. If you don't have it, it's a pretty narrow limit to what you can do. And so, to me, those are where we tend and it is about emotional recovery. It's about being sound and solid. Somebody asked me a while back, a good while back, to do a workshop on emotion recovery.

Now, I'm of a down to earth type of fella. And my first reaction, even though I know that it's a legitimate term, my first reaction was, hell, it felt. I I don't wanna do a workshop on some touchy feely stuff like that. And and then I thought, well, there's no real set agenda. I can do what I wanna do.

What you said. Kinda like we're doing here today. I didn't know till lunch what the program was. Well, but I'm looking at this thing of emotional recovery and how we're gonna tackle it. And and so I I sat down and in 20 minutes, I did what anybody in this room could do.

I thought about what is it that that that destroys emotional what is it that that tears up emotional recovery? I mean, it's one thing to talk about the wonderful Nirvana of sound emotional recovery. But what is it that eats it up? And you can do the same thing I did. I sat down and in 20 minutes, I listed 28 things just in a brainstorming style.

Here's stuff that happened. 1st one I put on the list was expectations. And my God. And no wonder I put it first because I don't know of anything in the world that'll pull me off good sound emotional recovery than putting on expectations on other people. All I've got to do to destroy my peace of mind is put expectations because what I do is let them have free space in my head.

And I am absolutely done for because I've turned it over to somebody else. And just little things you'd think about, getting over committed, feeling like you're carrying the world on your shoulders. Worry. The thing he mentioned this morning that sounds really innocuous, a little thing called change your mind. Change your mind.

You think about what we have. We have a real we have a spiritual hold on a new way of life. And all I have to do to lose it is change my mind. And that sucker can be gone in a heartbeat. And so that thing of keeping spiritually sound and keeping emotionally sound is tremendously important.

And we had a good time doing that thing on emotion recovery. And so to me, that's the imminent danger is when I start eroding that sound spiritual ground that I stand on. And no matter what I sell it out to, and you can make your own list of of things that take that down. And so what deals with it? I'll let you know a little secret.

It goes a little bit to steps that I'm not somebody who works on problems. I literally don't. And the reason I don't is because when I work on them, they, honest to God, get worse. They really do. If if I'm trying to fix remorse, like Quinn was talking about, if I'm trying to fix guilt or trying to work on relationships or whatever, you know, I guarantee you I'll make it worse.

And and and and and what I found is that the way the way that that that I work through the problems of my life is by trying to do what the program lays out. That that little thing little thing in the 12 and 12 that I have come to really appreciate where describe what the steps are. It says almost exactly this. I I know I screwed up a little bit, but you recognize is it it says our steps are a set of principles spiritual in their nature. You tell me what my tools are.

Which if practiced as a way of life, that thing about you working the steps, doing the steps, writing the steps, seminar in the steps, you know, to me they're off the subject. You know, those are nice activities. But what the real key to the steps is, is in practice them as a way of life. And what I found, and it's absolutely been my experience, that in 45 years I have never consciously solved one single problem in alcoholics and obviously. Not a single one.

I have never sat in a meeting or sat with a sponsor and said, Eureka! I finally got it. It has never happened. What I find is that as I practice this set of principles as a way of life, amazing stuff happens. Emotional sobriety happens.

Remorse gets dealt with. You know, all of the things that constitute my alcoholism get addressed. And so to me, that whole business about, you know, if there is an emotional recovery, there's not any recovery, you know? That whole business is how to be free of those devils that drove me. And so that's the way I like to go at this kind of stuff.

I I I don't like to just set little goals and do stuff and do mechanical actions. You know, that what I like to do is give myself to this program. When I've got trouble, I never pursue the trouble. What I do we've talked about it a little bit last night that what I do is is I get focused like a laser on what I'm doing. I get focused like a laser.

I go to meetings and I listen at that meeting like it's a sermon on the mount. Now I don't care if guys teaching you how to throw up. I'll listen like I've never heard you because I want to get locked in. You know, I want to get really geared in. And so that's how I go about dealing with problems.

I don't try to fix them out yonder somewhere. I try to fix them by getting solidly tuned in to who I am, to what I'm about, what my spiritual life is so that I get solidly connected. Try to fix it out you under somewhere, I'm about as weak as can be. And so that's not just I'm about as weak as can be. And so that's not just I'm about as weak as can be.

And so that's not just probably philosophical stuff. That is truly what I believe happens, and it's certainly been my experience that if I practice this as a way of life, stuff just happens. Happens. And those problems that eat me alive, one day I take a look and they ain't there. I don't go looking for them because I know how to find them.

All I had to do was just quit doing what keeps them out there and they'll be back. Yeah. That's a kind of hilarious. Practical story about what he just said. How do I apply this on the street?

That's what I have to keep looking for. I was working in community corrections in Denver. You have to understand the correction system itself is designed to fail. If you're going to work in it, you need to know that so that you you don't. So I got a probation officer here.

I was treatment services supervisor, so I'm here and I got my boss here and a couple other department heads here. She sends me a piece of paper. I do something with it. I send it to them so they can get it to here, so they can get back to them, through me, back to her. That's designed to fail.

Somewhere it gets bogged down. Down. She's under pressure and she's yelling at me. And for a couple weeks, okay. Then she starts yelling at my boss and he starts yelling at me.

Now I got 2 of you yelling at me. And it wasn't okay anymore. Now I know something. One of the basic principles of this thing is if I'm disturbed, it's me, not you. It's me.

I got to deal with me. So I sat down and did inventory the way I've been taught to do it because I I caught myself. I listened to myself. I heard myself tell one of my staff about the bitch. Right now, I know I'm completely out of way.

Her name is Stephanie, not the bitch. And and so that immediately triggers me to lock my office door. Don't talk to anybody else because I'm starting to mess with my own staff. Stupid thing to do. Anyway, I I got it pulled in and discovered what was going on.

First of all, I want my boss to quit yelling at me. I don't care if she yells at me. But I do care if he yells at me because he pays my check. And he and I have an agreement. If he yells too much, he gets this.

This guy I worked with. And I wasn't ready to do that. So I looked at what was going on. It's all about her yelling at me because this paperwork that she had a timeline on wasn't back here yet. And that's because these people haven't done theirs yet.

Blah blah blah. The the monster in the case was the fax machine. I get the paperwork and I go to fax it to her and there's an hour wait to get the fax to her. Either hers is busy, mine's busy. That whole thing is jammed up.

You have taught me the basic principle here is 1 to 1. Eyeball. Eyeball. Not telephones. Not fax machines.

We're going to talk together. Her office is about 10 minutes away. So I took the paperwork and drove over there. And she was shocked to say, hey. Do you have her paperwork?

And I asked her, do you have any for me? She was shocked at that. That Confused. After a week of that, the problem is solved. And in 25 minutes instead of an hour waiting for the facts, problem is solved.

She's no longer a threat to me. My boss is no longer a threat to me. I didn't try unlike you, I don't try to solve that problem. What's wrong with me? What can I bring to the situation that will make it better?

The recognition that she's under the same pressure I am, she got somebody under her. No wonder she's uptight. It worked by the way. Last time I saw her, she came clear across the room and put a hug on me, which was not what I had in mind but it worked. I don't mind.

This goes to the street. Prayer is an activity as well as an in the head thing. It's an activity. How can I bring about unity in my whole life? Well, that's how.

Emotional sobriety means I recognize when I I eat. Okay. Right off the bat. I recognize I'm out of whack here. The bitch just called.

Let me let me tell you one little war story that you sometimes when I first heard people talking about the spiritual life and how you had to live it and, like in the morning, you talked about the I sing about it, but it it actually was my image when I would hear people talking about the spiritual life and how it worked. You tell me how you found that parking place. You know, just driving around in the right place, right time there to park. When I heard people tell us stuff like that, I thought, gee, what kind of witch craft is this? That it sounded like they just prayed and somebody's car blew up or something, you know.

And it just made the world turn around for them. Gee, that is just pure joke. And, and then now I talk that way. But that makes sense when I talk that way. But it's the same message, you know.

But if you're not tuned into that, it really sounds goofy. And and and what I what I found is that the spiritual life, just just like that, it is not just some sort of squishy, do good, grinning, Dalai Lama stuff. It really is about how to function effectively in life. And it works. I'll tell you one of a 1,000 stories.

And injurious to people that work for me. You remind me of that story. And I think as a supervisor, you're not only responsible for getting workouts, you're also responsible for looking after the welfare of the folks. And so I had 41 people whose careers were gonna be destroyed over a decision that was made. And I'm the boss and they hadn't even consulted me.

You know? Well, I mean, I was mad. I was mad. I was mad on behalf of the 41 people, and I was about equally mad over the total disregard and insult to walking past me to screw my people. And so I was fit to be tied.

And, so I said, Well, I demanded an audience. I demanded an audience of the head of the system. And, I guess I had enough rank that they respected the demand. And so they gave me an audience. Now if you picture this, and this is absolutely true, exactly the way it happens, and and why the spiritual life is not a wimpy thing.

I'm mad and I've got in my mind that I'm going to handle this sucker street level. You know, I'm gonna go in there and just flat stick it in their ear. And so I'm gonna meet with 7 people. And most of the 7 had directly benefited from the action that had been taken. So I gotta go meet with my enemies in my mind that had done me in and profited in the process and I'm gonna go in there.

So all I can think about is I'm gonna flat put them down. And, I'm driving to the meeting, spoiling for the fight. And on the way up there, thank God it was a long drive. And on the way, I got to thinking about who I am and where I'm going. And I thought, My God.

Is this the way I take care of business that the only thing I can think of is to resort to the old street behavior, go up there and try to bang up on somebody or whatever? And then I thought about what what our program says is is to is to pray for those folk. And so what I did driving up US 1 was I put the face of each person visually in my mind. I knew them all well. And so I put each one of them right there and then I prayed directly with that face in my mind.

Virtual reality was there. And, and I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I said, Well, maybe these folk are wrong, but they're probably doing what they believe is right. Now, I did that 7 times because I picture those people. When I got through, I was no longer angry.

I was still resolute, but I was not angry. And we went into the meeting, and I sat down with those folks. It took a long time because I had to go through 41 decisions and present my case for why that was a bad decision. At the end of the 1st day, I hadn't lost a round. I mean, I had won everything that came up.

And but I couldn't lose. You see, I mean, when I went in there, there was no way I could lose. If I don't if if it had all gone the wrong way, I was at peace. But I was determined that I was right, that I was trying to do the right thing, that I was not trying to be right. I was trying to do what was right.

And at the end of that day, I was really on the road, man. I've won everything. And the boss said, Tom, we're gonna have to, call a break. And, and I didn't I didn't want a break. I'm on the road.

Why why am I gonna quit? And I said, no. No. No. Let's go do that, man.

I gotta drive 75 miles. And he said, you've got us beat numb. I said, alright. I did have a short came back the next day and it hadn't even changed. I mean, it picked up again.

Out of 41 major issues, I lost 1. I think I could've won that one. But I just didn't wanna rub their nose in it. But, you see what I'm talking about? If I had gone in there using the old Ivester strategies, they'd eat me alive.

I would've walked out of there with no gains and more losses if I'd have done it my way. And that's why I say that I don't have to do this if I let the power of the program take care of giving me what I need. I'm a pretty worthy adversary. But if you let me try to do it on outslicking or outtuffing or outsmarting people, shoot, I'm gonna lose a lot more to win. And so to me, that's what this thing is about, not some doormat approach to life.

It's about being able to take a good responsible position and trying to do something according to principles, you know, so that it don't get lost and weak in the process. And and just truly amazing things happen. And that's literally one of of hundreds of cases that I could tell you where that that genuinely works for me. I'll tell you one more that it's just it's a shorter one, but it's just as effective to me. I got a call one day to go make a presentation on behalf of an agency, and I thought we were just gonna go sit around a coffee table somewhere.

So I was off duty, and so I just went up casually dressed in an old golf shirt, you know, and I sat down. Well, I didn't know it, but we had a Madison Avenue presentation scheduled. And I walk into a real ritzy conference room with and I've got people sitting there who are my competitors, who had productions that were produced in Hollywood. I think, man, they had videos and computers, and I had a legal path. You know?

I was here looking like a real doofus, you know, with my legal pad and some fraud notes. What am I gonna do, man? I am absolutely outclassed. I mean, I was a hick in Las Vegas. And and, totally blindsided.

Well, what do you do? When all else fails, try praying. And so I stepped out, went down to the bathroom where I do my best praying and and I asked God to help me do what I was there to do and try to get done what was right. And so I walked in with my little old legal pad, made my presentation and guess who walked out with it? It?