Sky Camp Men's Spiritual Retreat in Eugene, OR

K. See, there's 3 kinds of prayer. Aside from the lord's prayer, which is about relationship, there's 3 kinds of prayer. One is, help me. Not a bad prayer.

We all know that one. 1 is give me, perfectly good prayer. The serenity prayer is that, grant me. But the other one, the third one is use me. Use me.

That's a powerful prayer because it assumes that he's already helped me. He's already given me everything I need. Now use me. Use me. For what?

For whatever. As someone through whom you can love people, great with me. As somebody that can be useful in a weekend like this, great with me. As somebody that can have fun, great with me. Use me.

And when then we are in the middle of the day, we have something to do when we slam back into that other kind of intellect. We don't need to stay there. We don't even need to get there. But this does this take some practice? Yes.

Is this something that I could do before my amends were complete? No. I had to finish step 9 and go into 10, and then I could have some of this kind of peace. It's important that we do that. We'll talk about the amends probably on, tomorrow night.

And then he says, we're when we say thy will be done many times each day, we are in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. He said, we're in danger of excitement. Well, I kinda like excitement. I like to stir it up a little bit.

Well, somewhere along the line, excitement doesn't become as interesting as being useful. There is excitement exciting moments, but we're not stirring up excitement. And then finally, finally, as we go through the day, we come to a point where we retire at night. And he tells us how to end the day. He says we constructively review our day, meaning that it's just to look at it.

Not destructive. Not like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. But just, well, look at there. Isn't that interesting? And we ask ourselves some questions.

Were we resentful? As I look back over my day to day, was I resentful? Yeah. I was resentful when Gary and I were in the restaurant in the airport in San Francisco. I didn't like the attitude of the hostess that seated us there.

Okay. That's good. Was I selfish? I don't think so. Was I dishonest?

No. As I look back on the day, no. Was I afraid? Yes. I had moments of fear that I would get up here too self obsessed or too tired or too whatever to be effective.

I was afraid about that. Okay. Do I owe an apology? No. Not today.

Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with another person at once? No. Was I kind and loving toward all? No. No.

What could I have done better? I could have been kind and loving toward all. I could have smiled at that hostess. Was I thinking of myself most of the time? Yeah.

Pretty much most of the time, I guess I was. Was I thinking what I could do with for others? What I could pack into the stream of life? Well, I did give that some thought. Oh, I didn't get lost in it, by any means.

But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. This whole thing is about usefulness. We'll see it time and again this weekend. The point of the drill is to become useful. That doesn't really ring my bell much.

Oh, another chance to be of service. That sounds just like servant somehow. And yet, Gary and I were talking about this. Drive down the any street in your town, Los Angeles, and just from glancing at the size of the guy's house, you get some kind of an idea how useful he is in the world. Useful ain't bad.

The world pays off on useful. Pays well to be useful. We were laughing about Spielberg the other day, went by his huge place. Look how useful that guy is. I mean, really, you know, he moves he churns a lot of money and allows a lot of people to make a lot of money.

And he produces a product, and he teaches us, and he inspires us, and he does all of that. He's very useful. Very useful. And, he seems to be doing alright. You know?

I mean, the guy is just doing fine. Interesting, this idea of useful. We, after making our review, we asked god's forgiveness. And I don't think that it's in him to forgive us. I don't think he condemns us for that.

But I'll do that. I'll say, forgive me. I what I do I'll do this before I leave my office. Usually, when I leave my office at night, I'm going to a meeting. And I do it then because if I wait until fatigue sets in, I won't do this.

I won't have that that review. And it takes 4 minutes. But I'll do it. I have a big book in my office and I'll just do it. I have a copy of this page in a little under the blotter.

Pop it out and look at it. Because I wanna go to the meeting clean. I don't wanna have anything. I don't wanna be worried about the fact that I, told a lie to another attorney. I don't wanna be worried about the fact that I used a snotty tone with my secretary, that I was abrupt with another human being.

I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna worry about that. And so I look at it. Because I know this, I know that if I ask God's forgiveness for whatever I've done that day, I'm free to either go to bed or go to a meeting or whatever I'm gonna do. But I know that the next morning when I wake up, I will know exactly what to do.

Let it alone. Don't do anything. Apologize. Make a gesture. Clean it up.

Whatever it is. And I get that done. And it keeps us, kind of in in clean shape, but it's a constructive review. For me to wallow in self pity or upset about it just drains me of power. That's all.

And the whole point of the drill in the morning, the whole point of the drill of saying direct my thinking is to tap into power. I want to go through the day with power. Now, if we do that, there is then a way to be that is really quite interesting. It even gave me some different ways of being with the Lord's prayer that we'll say here in a minute when we break up for tonight. Our father who art in heaven.

This way this way on the right side of the page, in the book it says we have seen much of heaven. That's over here on the right side of the page. This is what? Hell. It's gonna be hell.

Scarcity, wanting to be right all the time, defensive, guilt. There there is a terrible sense of hell living like that. Is God over there? I don't think so. That's the far country.

The far country. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. You're holy. That's the divinity of it. That's the sacredness of it.

Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. This is it. This is the kingdom here. The realm as it says in the book or kingdom.

It's the same word. Thy will be done on earth. It's gonna be done either way as it is in heaven. It's gonna happen that way. Give us this day our daily bread.

Feed me from here. This is where I wanna play with you. Sing and dance with you. This is where I wanna play. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against.

Forgive this trip over into the far country as I forgive others. And we'll talk about that remarkable clause on Sunday morning. Lead you won't lead me into temptation. You're not gonna take me over there. I go alone when I go there.

I go alone, man. That's what's so tough about it over there. And when, incidentally, the easiest way to get to heaven, take somebody with you. Take somebody with you. When we reach out our reach out for another human being, even an enemy, God reaches out for both of us.

God touches both of us. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Right here. Forever and ever. This is how we want to be planted.

This is the significance to me of step 11. I'm just saying something as simple as direct my thinking. Because I'm always going to have a mind, I'm always going to have an ego, I'm always going to have that sense. Here here I'll say it this way. Somebody told me something quite remarkable one day.

They said, you've gotta have you have to Hodges, you have to and for me, the problem has always been the my the rock in my shoe, the pebble in my shoe has always been lust. Now we have the nonalcoholics coming into the room. The pebble in my shoe has always been lust. I'll wait till they settle down and we'll get finish this up a little bit. Welcome.

Good to have you here. It goes like this. He said, you have to develop real compassion for that little piece in there that's never gonna get it. There's a little piece in me that belongs only to I'll wait till I settle down and we'll get finish this up a little bit. Welcome.

Good to have you here. It goes like this. He said, you have to develop real compassion for that little peace in there that's never gonna get it. There's a little piece in me that belongs only to God. There's a little piece in me that belongs to you.

There's a little piece in me that ain't ever gonna get it. I better have some compassion for that piece in me because when I decide I need to snuff it out, it gives it power in some weird way. When I decide that I'm gonna just get rid of that lust or that greed, it just comes up. Remember before we got here? Remember how we hated it?

How we hated it? That we were drunks? Alcoholics? And then we came here. And one of the things that happened earliest for us was we heard other people that looked just fine saying, I'm Joe, and I'm an alcoholic.

And we slowly began to have some compassion for that little piece of me that is never gonna be able to handle booze. It's okay. It's okay. And that's the way that it goes. There's a little peace in me that's never gonna ever get it because I'm a human being.

And what will I do with that peace? Try to extinguish it? Try to pretend it doesn't exist? Try to pretend it's not part of the thing? No.

I have to have some compassion for it. And the best way to do that, the thing that has helped me so much is, that there is always in every meeting, somebody sitting there that I think is never gonna get it. And he's the rogue in the meeting. He's the little point of separation. And he's the one that I'm gonna go up to and say, hi.

And give him a hug or shake his hand or let him think he's welcome there. Let him think I'm glad he's there. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But I know that if I can have compassion for that God, I can more easily develop compassion for that little piece of me that's never gonna get it. And so this is a wonderful place to play and a wonderful place to be.

And I wanted to start with Step 11 tonight because we wanna go here, we wanna be able to play here. But before we can really play there we have to take a look at the other steps and we'll do that tomorrow. Now in a minute we'll stand up here and we'll say the Lord's Prayer to close tonight's session. And as we do, let's think about which side of the road we wanna be on. Let's think about direct my thinking.

Where God is and where he is not, and where we wanna play. Tomorrow, during the we'll start, we'll have breakfast and we'll start at whatever time we start 9 o'clock and, I would like to ask you specifically to, share your thoughts, to ask questions, to be a part of this, to let me know what's going on with you, and, participate with me. So we can, come together and be together and have a really sweet weekend. Alright. Shall we stand and say the Lord's name?

Alcoholic. Alright. Saturday morning, 10th annual. Is it 10th? 10th annual, Sky Camp, men's spiritual retreat.

Last night, we talked about step 11. Started at the with the idea of step 11, of going through a day in conscious contact. We talked about, we didn't really talk so much about meditation, but I've got a little information for you on meditation this morning. It comes from Southern California. Picture yourself near a stream.

Birds are singing in the crisp cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion from that place called the world. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

The water is clear. You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're holding under the water. There now. Feeling better? Any questions?

Well, any comments or questions from last night? Anything you wanna comment on for the weekend? Anybody got a bit of input they'd like to give us? Let's start at step 1 then this morning. Step 1 is an admission, of course, of powerlessness, of unmanageability.

And it's a little bit difficult to grasp that notion of powerlessness except when we come to alcohol and we all know that we're powerless over alcohol. But it takes a little bit of doing and I think some living in sobriety before we really understand that we're powerless, period. The book says, there is one who has all power and that one is God. If he's got all power, I'm wondering if there's any for me. I mean, it's like, basically I think I'm in the I picture myself now and this took, as you can imagine, a lot of, thump thumping.

Me getting thumped. But today, I see myself in a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I see myself in that raft with an oar. And I'm trying real hard to get some place, to move out of where I am. I don't know where I'm gonna go but I don't like it where I am.

And I grab that oar and I just go at it. And what I do is I bring that raft around in tight little circles. But the oar and my energy of moving that around in tight little circles gives me the illusion that I have some power. But I'm not going anywhere. And it isn't until until I'm willing to, notice that I'm not going anywhere, willing to notice that I'm circling the drain and have been for a long time, Willing to notice that this is not avail all of my scheming and planning and efforts aren't put me where I want to.

They will not take me where I wanna go. And I have to get there before I'm willing to begin to think maybe there's some power that will move me. Maybe. And, if I'm very fortunate, I'm given a thought. Maybe I ought to take off my shirt and hook it to the old paddle I've been using and stick that up into the air and see if I can't hook into real power and get moving that way.

Won't won't ever be my power. There's a world of difference. World of difference between wanting to tap into power so I can use it to manage my life and being willing to tap into power that will manage my life. That's a big difference. What I really want is a line of credit on the power.

And I'll write it down and use it my way. I'll make my little plan and then I'll, begin to ask that it come out the way. And I'll take my little action and I'll begin to ask that it come out the way I want it to come out. And I can make a whole illusion of spiritual effort. Spiritual effort out of that.

And I'll make my prayers and I'll think there's something for me to do. And on my best days, I'll say, oh, dear God, I don't know what you want me to do. I don't know if you want me to have an affair with the girl at the office or the one at the AA meeting, but I'm willing to go either way. Just guide me. And that's the top of my game, boy.

That's it. That's my spiritual life. And I, don't get that kind of a spiritual life because it's not a spiritual life. It's just self will run riot. That's all in the world that it is.

We have some problems. I, we don't have, you know, we're not gonna spend any time talking about the fact that I'm powerless over alcohol. That that reference is the, what we call craving. As you know, the word craving refers to what happens to me once I take a drink. As an alcoholic, I'm gonna set into cycle a terrible need for another drink, and another drink, and another drink.

And we've all been down that road. And then a day came astonishingly astonishingly when that cycle was broken up because we finally, in some way, begged for help. Happened to every one of us. And we don't we don't get involved in that anymore because we don't take the first drink. The, the obsession that took us to the first drink doesn't take us to the first drink anymore because it's been removed.

But the mind that harbored that obsession will take us all over the map. And I've on page 37 of this book called Alcoholics Anonymous, Wilson says, and he's talking about Jim, he had such knowledge about himself as an alcoholic, yet all the reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk. Or I have the foolish idea that I can live this life if I only mix my AA program with my own judgment. Or I have the foolish idea that I can live a spiritual life if I'll only mix God's will with my will because we got to fine tune it for our own particular case, don't we? Somehow.

So I'm mixing it. I'm mixing it. I'm mixing it. He says, whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion of the ability to think straight be called anything else?

So I got a mind that really doesn't work well. It really it works well in one sense. It works well when I am involved in you. We all we have discovered that this business of sponsorship works very well. It works well for us and it works well for the person we're sponsoring.

We were talking at breakfast about some of the remarkable experiences that we've seen. When we reach out for someone, anybody else, God reaches out for both of us. It works. It's the only problem that I have is when I bring my mind around and bring it on to my own problems. Now, I've got a a difficult way to go.

And I can't spot the difficulty in my own mind because the only tool I have to you to spot the difficulty is my mind. And so in that sense, we have the hound dogs watching the stakes. We've got a situation, oh my mind, no. If there was anything wrong with it, I would I'd know. Oh, wow.

Really? And if you sense there's something wrong with my mind, guess what? You're way off base, Bill. That can't be right. Doesn't end there, interestingly enough.

It doesn't end there. We have an ego. There is a book called, The 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions. I just made a copy of a little piece of it, where doctor Thiebaud talks about the ego. He talks about the fact that there was in his day and still has been studies done that the mind of an alcoholic and particularly the ego is much different than the ego of other people.

Here's here's how he says it, despite most reports to the contrary, there is a growing recognition of certain common qualities regularly present in alcoholics. Characteristic of the so called typical alcoholic is a narcissistic narcissistic egocentric core. Dominated by feelings of omnipotence. Intent on maintaining at all costs its inner integrity. While these characteristics are found in other maladjustments, they appear in relatively pure culture in alcoholic after alcoholic.

One researcher reported he felt he could discern the outlines of a common character structure among problem drinkers and that the best terms he could find for the group of qualities noted was defiant individuality and grandiosity. In my opinion, he says, these words were accurately chosen. Inwardly, the alcoholic brooks no control from man or God. He, the alcoholic, is and must be the master of his destiny. He will fight to the end to preserve that position.

I mean, I'll adopt a stupid position and defend it till the bitter end. It's basically what he's saying here. Because I got an ego that compels me to do that. In order for us to get sober, the book says that our ego has to be smashed. It revives itself and stays with us for the rest of our lives, but it can become a very good trusted friend.

It becomes a useful tool, but not because we allow it to run our lives. It doesn't do a good job at running our lives at all at all. It just is not designed to do that and yet somehow we have allowed it to do that. There's another problem and he describes this in the 12 and 12 and step 8. He says, and he's talking really about forgiveness and the blocks that there is.

He says at step 8 in the 12 and 12 on page 79, though in some cases we cannot make restitution at all, and in some cases action ought to be deferred, we should nevertheless make an accurate and really exhaustive survey of our past life as it has affected other people. In many instances, we shall find that though the harm done others has not been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselves has very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging, emotional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness. At the time of these occurrences, they may have actually given our emotions violent twists which have since discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worst. A few years ago, well, let me start some place else. We can all go back in our memories.

All go back in our memories to situations where we were just given violent twists, Events occurred that terrified us and terror is not too strong a word. When our entire world as little children get shattered we are up against an abrupt surprise and it doesn't need to be a huge deal to give us a little bit of a crazy thing. Wilson refers to the result of this as old ideas. A few years ago, I was, the phone rang on a Saturday in my house. Guy on the other line was Billy.

Billy is the guy I knew in Orange County and he had moved up to San Jose. And he worked up there for some years in the Silicon Valley doing computer stuff. He was very, very good at it. He really has a gift. And I love Billy and he loves me and we trust each other and he was then 13 years sober and I was, this was maybe 9 years ago, something like that.

I said, get over here. And he came over to my house and we sat and talked that afternoon in my home. And Billy was all excited because he had been offered a great new job by his employer. They were gonna give him a car and a staff and send him out in the territory to solve computer problems in the factories and plants and facilities of the customers. Whereas before he had worked in house in their in his own, business in his own, employer's business.

So it was a huge advance for him. A huge opportunity. And he was very excited about it. And I said, when do you start? He said, oh, I can't take it.

I can't take the job. I said, no kidding. Why is that? He said, well, they want me to cut my hair. I said, Billy.

Billy. Billy. Ever since I'd known him, he had hair that was down. You know, it looked fine. There wasn't anything wrong with it.

But it was just like down. I said, cut your hair. What's the difference? He said, no. They can't make me do that.

I said, I used to think that, man, a guy was hard of hearing and I'd start screaming at him. But I, I don't do that anymore In my tolerance and wonderfulness. And I let it go but I couldn't get it out of my mind. And we talked and I brought I came back to her. I said, Billy, come on now.

What's with the hair? What's going on with that? He said, they can't make me. I said, stop that. Just stop it.

He said, you know what it is? I can't get a haircut. I said, yeah. I know you can't, but why? He said, because I have badly deformed ears.

My ears are bad. I said, No kidding? He said, Yeah. I said, Wow. It didn't feel right.

I never heard about this before. Not that he should have told me, but I mean, you would have gotten a sense of it. He would have told somebody. And you know how it goes in AA. Why don't you tell somebody soon?

There's 400 people that aren't gonna repeat it. Right? So I finally talked about something else, and something else, and something else. And I came back and said, Billy, let me see your ears. And he trusts me and he loves me and we're just in my and he pulls his hair back like this.

And what I saw was shocking, because his ears looked like my ears. And, I went, woah. I said, Billy, I got a news flash for you, babe. Those, those ears aren't beauties, but they're not deformed. And, he didn't believe that.

I have a mirror hanging there in the den. We got up and we're kind of comparing ears in the mirror. And he looked and he looked and we're looking at his ears and at my ears and all of that stuff. And finally he said, yeah, but they're so big. I said, they're not big.

They're not any bigger than mine. I got a ruler and we're standing there and comparing our ears with this ruler measuring what's that. And he finally began to get it. That, and I said, where'd that idea come from? That's an old idea that your ears are bad.

He said, I don't know. You know, any good alcoholic says, I don't know. I said, well, if you did know, what would the answer be? He goes, I don't know. I don't know.

So I took him I took him on in a little different angle. I said, Willie, how did it how does it make you feel? Oh, he knew the answer. He said, it makes me feel like a clown. I said, oh, well, I can see why you wouldn't want to get a haircut and go out in the territory.

Because what do people do with count clowns? He says, they laugh at them. I said, yeah. Okay. But what if it isn't true?

What if it's an old idea and nothing more? Now, when did you first feel like a clown? When did you first feel that way? And he knew. He knew.

He didn't even have to think about it. He said, 3rd grade. I said, what happened? He said, well, I was 8 years old. I started when I was 5, and I was 8 years old.

And, I'm running home from school one day. Good day? Yeah. Would you expect what happened when you got home? Oh, I thought my mom would give me a cookie and, send me out to play and call me for dinner.

I said, sounds like a good day. He said, yeah. I said, what was the, upset? What happened? Because there's always a bump in the road.

Everything's going along just fine. And then suddenly he went he said, I went running in the back door. And, my mom was in the kitchen on the phone talking to my aunt. I said, how do you know that? She said, he he said she called her by name.

Her name was Betty. She said, oh my god, Betty. I I gotta hang up now. Billy just came running in and, we can't talk anymore because little pictures have big ears. And he never asked.

What do you mean by that? He just drew his own conclusions. They'd kidded him, apparently, about his ears before. And she he didn't know that that meant little kids hear everything and repeat it. He thought that was about his ears.

And he saw something else. He saw his mother's face when he walked in and she looked upset. And she was just gossiping on the phone and didn't want to be interrupted. But she was upset about that. And he felt that she was disappointed in him and his appearance, and his ears, and all of that kind of stuff.

And he, as soon as he could grow his hair long to cover up those ears that offended his mother, he did that. He never ever asked. He never asked. And, the event itself was forgotten. He couldn't have told you anything that happened that day.

All he knew was that for some reason or other, his ears were bad. At the time of these occurrences, they may actually have given our emotions violent twists which have just since discolored our personalities. Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emotional conflicts be served, persist below the level of and this is simply one that's a kind of a lightweight thing, except it was beginning to have impact in his life many many many years later. And by the time he got halfway through this story about his ears, he he began to get it. He began to see that that there was it was nothing but an old idea.

And he was laughing and he was crying and we were both crying and laughing and carrying on and hooping and hollering around there. And he dropped that old idea that day that there was something wrong with his ears. And he, within a week had gone out and gotten a haircut. It took him 3 haircuts, really, before he, got the job done. He was, sneaked up on it a little bit.

And he went back up to the Silicon Valley and took that job they'd offered him and he's been kicking ass up there ever since. And so, that got me very interested in old ideas. That event made me see that these are really Howard Polans, if you've met him. And I know some of you over at Mackenzie have met him. Talks about these limiting beliefs that we have.

Baby elephant beliefs, he talks about. The idea that a baby elephant, if you tether it to a stake in the ground, he can't get away. He can't break that stake out of the ground. And even when he gets to weigh £2,000 tethering him to a stake will hold him right there because he knows he can't get away. He could whack it out of there in a heartbeat, but he knows he can't get away and you can keep him there with a little stake in the ground.

That's an old idea. It's a limiting belief. We have those. We have a lot of them. And they make it difficult for us to live in the world.

So we have a mind that lacks proportion and can't think straight. We have, I mean, in the example I used last night was a silly example of somebody coming into my lane on the freeway and cutting me off. Because I know it's my lane. And I know that this person is out to get me. It can't just be somebody else driving into Los Angeles for a job.

No. This is suddenly a crisis that that is gonna interfere with my career in just that second, you know. And so I have a mind that lacks proportion and can't think straight. And it gets us into a lot of trouble. And we have these old ideas.

The way we have it wired up is not consistent with reality. When I was 4 years old or 5 4 years old, I was a happy kid. Basically, I was a happy kid. My dad was overseas. World War 2 was happening.

My mom and I were the best of friends. And she would tuck me in at night, and we would say our little prayers together, and we would laugh, and we would carry on, and we would whisper our secrets to one another. And I adored her. And she adored me. And we had a wonderful time.

And one day, she was holding me and laughing with me and she said, What do you think if I brought a little baby home from the hospital? And I'm fine. Great. Okay, knock yourself out. That would be good.

My dad had, come back on furlough some 8 or so months prior and we had another baby coming in. And she did that. She brought this baby home from the hospital. And things changed around there because now her energy is going to this little baby. And they even had you won't believe this, but they even had set up a room for this kid.

Her own little room. Yeah. A crib. And my mom was in there all the time. And she wasn't tucking me in much.

And when she did, she didn't have any time for my stories and my stuff. And I didn't, I was having a real problem with that. And I knew the problem was the kid. And I'm just gonna be so glad when they finally send that kid back. I had no idea they intended to keep that kid.

And so I when I began to get the idea that they were gonna keep that kid if I didn't do something about it, I began to go in there to that nursery and encourage, my little sister to move out. I'd give her a little thump on the head. And of course, it didn't take my Ma long to figure out that when I went in there the kids started crying. And she followed me in there one day and I don't know exactly what I was doing that day, but it scared my mom. And she picked me up and threw me out into the hall.

And before I hit the wall and bounced down to the floor out of the hall, I knew that she didn't love me. That what had gone before was a horrible betrayal. Just a joke. And I knew that, she loved my sister and didn't love me. My mom went to war and I went to war.

I couldn't basically, basically, it's about I can't trust her. Can't trust them. If it was just limited to my mom, but it was my grandma too, I can't trust her. And then it became limited and then it became, kind of, over time it gets to be all the important women in my life. You can't trust them.

Can't trust them. Can't trust women. We, were in a very religious home. Home. It was the women in our home, my mom and my grandma, that brought us information about God.

And so I developed another idea. And that is the only way I can get to God is through a woman. And then, you know, as the years went by, my mom didn't go anywhere. When I was still, maybe 8 years old, I knew my mom didn't love me. But now I've got another big question to ask because I've got some some, sense that, what's going on is inconsistent with that notion.

Well, if she doesn't love you, why doesn't she leave? Why is she still here? And I developed the idea that they stay because they have to. Women don't really love you, but they will hang around if they have to. You can imagine the, problems that created later on in relationships.

Terrible problems. Terrible. You can't trust them. I want to go to God but I can't get there because I'm stuck with doing it through a woman that I can't trust. And the only reason the only reason they stick around is because they can't leave.

And so the only woman I can bring in my life is one that can't leave. That's a terrible thing to have to deal with because the women that that I figured couldn't leave were either economically strapped or unattractive, or, you know, an embarrassment. I hated them for that. The way this all was wired up was very weird. And I didn't even come close to unraveling this until I did a 4 column inventory.

And I'm going into it now only because when I look at my mind, I've got some real problems with that mind in terms of my personal intimate relationships, in terms of evaluating what's going on with my life. And when Silkworth tells us that what's required is an entire psychic change, it isn't just with reference to our alcohol, our relationship with alcohol. It's with our relationship to the whole world around us. I need a new mind. And the mind I have and the combination of old ideas, my ego, and this mind means that I'm gonna live an unmanageable life.

Do you remember when you were you took your first cake and you saw people take their 5 year cake, their and you thought, man, that guy sounds a little lame to me. I when I have 5 years, I'm gonna really be handled. Right? And then you get 5 years and you go, you know, when I get to have 10 years, I'm gonna be in better shape than that guy. But we, don't we don't seem to make the progress we were certain that we would make in sobriety.

Because while the obsession is removed, and we don't need to deal with the craving anymore, the same mind that took us to booze took us to conclusions and decisions that would just boggle anybody else's mind. Just, wow. How could you think that was a good idea? You haven't had a drink in 18 months and you still think that was great. And we're just working off of these old ideas.

And so, we need a new mind. And that's the essence of it. If you take a look, for example, at these examples in More About Alcoholism, on chapter 3, he's really saying, basically, more about alcoholism is his way of telling us, look at the mind that took you to that drink. Look at Jim. Is he a trophy?

And we read that story about Jim and the first 25 times I read it, I went, oh, yeah. That sounds right. Jim, had a charming wife and family. Jim was a bright guy, a good world war record. He was good with people, great personality.

He drank too much. He drank way too much. And he kept getting fished out of these asylums. He lost his ownership of a car dealership through his drinking. But he stayed on working for the car dealership.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? And then he they asked him to tell us tell him about how he started drinking again. And he said, well, I got to work on a Tuesday morning. And if you've heard Joe and Charlie, you know the question right there is, what happened to Monday, Jim?

It's a good question. He said, I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious. Jim. Words with the boss are always serious. But we minimize that.

I was mildly irritated because I had to work for an agency I used to own. I'll bet you were mildly irritated, Jim. You had to be livid. You're sliding in there on a Tuesday morning with a bad hangover from God knows what happened over the weekend and on Monday. And you had a few words with the boss but nothing serious.

Right. And then he's just getting warmed up now because he says, I decided to take a drive out in the country where I might find a prospect for a new car. That's where they are, Jim. Lining those country roads, man, waiting for you. I mean, in the first 200 times I read that, I go, yeah?

Okay. I understand that. You know. Got it. Yeah.

Hey. It seems right to me. Woah. Decided to stop at a roadhouse. I'd been there before.

See, it's familiar. We find out in a sentence or two it also has a bar. But he's gonna have lunch. He's hungry. Remember how hungry he used to get on Tuesday after being drunk for 3 days?

Hardly stand the thought of food. But he's going in there Because there might be a customer for a car in there. They just wait for you there, Jim. They're gonna turn in their app. We all need an app.

So he goes in there. I'm filling in the blanks here now because I've thought about Jim a lot. I get Jim. I'm thinking, I'm in there and I order a sandwich and a glass of milk. And I got this vague notion that maybe see, tonight I gotta go home.

It's Tuesday night now and I gotta go home. And the wife and the kids are there. And I'm gonna get some questions from her. One of them is going to be, how did your day go? Did you get anything to eat, honey?

And I want to be able to proudly announce that I had a sandwich and a glass of milk. In fact, bring me another sandwich and another glass of milk. He ordered another sandwich and another glass of milk. I'm really kind of on a it's almost like being on a health kick, you know? All is well.

You could get you might get back into the big bed on the strength of 2 glasses of milk during the day and a couple of sandwiches. And that kind of fills you with a sort of wonderful sense of recovery that it occurs to you that, Hey. Now that I'm back in the big bed and my wife's okay with me, bring me a shot. I'll pour it into that milk. I mean, their mind just takes it.