The "Living Fearlessly Men's retreat" in Estes Park, CO

Another piece from my fabulous wife Adele.

You are perfect

exactly as you are.

If Candace Denardi was still alive, that's what I'd say to her. I would get on a plane and I would fly to Colorado, and I would wrap my arms around her, and I would kiss her face and whisper it in her ear and tell her anguished face relaxed. And if her face did not relax, I would kiss her again and know that her face was perfect as it was.

And I would tell her that she was whole and that she had done everything she could to get better,

and that although the lie that she was sick or somehow defective was in air, that it was not her fault. Nothing about her was an error. I would tell her those things, not because it was what I thought she should hear, not because I was parroting something that sounded good in mixed company.

Sorry

not to tell her that something was good in mixed company or ease the discomfort and helplessness that I experienced each time I was confronted with her suffering. I would tell her those things not because I wanted them to be true or because I secretly knew it was her fault that she was sick,

but was trying to be supportive. I would not do them because I am wonderful. I would do them because I experienced what it was like to have the appearance of a sick body and to be unable to make it different. I experienced what it felt like to have people get mad at me for not getting well because doing that made them feel right and safe.

I would tell her because something inside of me had changed

and I no longer felt doomed. I suddenly and absolutely knew that a change in consciousness and corresponding health is not an act of will, not a deserved payoff, not an A+ on an uncurved test, but grace. You see, this is how we humans deal with other people's ill bodies. If you're sick,

get well. You're making me uncomfortable. I may love you, and the thought of you losing you frightens me. I cannot tolerate the idea that I may be next.

If you can't be well, be quiet, don't talk about it, and whatever you do, don't look sick. Your ash and body makes me terrified.

If it's not your fault if you did something bad, my future is not threatened, so you must be wrong. If you can't be quiet, please, please go away. If I can't fix you, I want you to leave me alone. Your physical absence allows me to forget my powerlessness.

But Candace is not alive.

She's dead because she put a gun in her mouth and killed herself. Four years ago.

When our mutual friend Victoria called to tell me and to cry with someone who understood

her own grief,

I slid down the wall and shook my head. I was not disappointed, nor was I shocked, nor was I angry. I understood and it scared the hell out of me,

but I understood.

Candace was a lot like me. For 14 years, both of us had been experiencing physical illness in unrelenting ways. Chronic full body pain and fatigue with the associated disease names, consistent infections, one health problem after another. Both of us had lived through years of depression as well. We told each other that if living through what had happened to us had not been so painful, all the things that went wrong would have been comical.

Sometimes we talk to each other when we knew no one else could possibly understand and one of us was doing poorly and needed hope.

For long periods of times we did not talk, but I thought about her all the time. She told me she did the same with me.

In the year before Candace died, both of us had become so tired. Living in chronic pain changes you. It eats away your hope like a nest of termites. Only one day Candace fell through the floor.

During the last month, I've been healing from a broken hip, and I've thought about this countless times. I've thought about what I would ask myself before I react in the future to people who are suffering and how I would want to behave toward them.

Our friends the Sufis offer ME3 excellent questions to ask myself before opening my mouth.

Is it loving?

Is it kind?

Is it necessary?

And if it doesn't pass all three, I get to keep my mouth shut.

You see, all Candace and I ever wanted

was to have people sit with us knowing we were not broken,

loving us,

waiting silently, patiently and expectantly for the miracle

I

that could have been my wife that died.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, we get to live with naked blood

and we get to experience all the things that come in this life, the good and the bad and the incomprehensible.

And we get to be around people who seemingly can't get this program the way that we want them to get it. Or what we do is we have friends that get in physical problems, they get in accidents, they get in in stuff and they start taking medication.

I got sober in the in the 70s, the very end of it, but it still was the 70s. And

in those days, the consciousness and the Alcoholics Anonymous that I came into was we don't take anything that affects you from the neck up.

And that consciousness came in Alcoholics Anonymous for some really good reasons. In the early days

people didn't know and the and the scientific community was not as as adept as they as they have become in addressing certain problems. And people would be loaded on mill towns in the meetings. Milltown was a, a precursor to Valium and it was an anti anxiety drug that was given out a lot in the 50s. And a lot of people got drunk behind it

or we're just so whacked that they weren't the people that the sober guys knew. And so a lot of folks, you know, said, no, no, no, you don't touch that stuff at all. And that's why that that's a really, there's a real good reason because a lot of men and women died

not knowing.

Now the other thing is that as an alcoholic, I have to be responsible for my own health care. There's a guy by the name of Clancy Emmisland who is the biggest proponent of this, this consciousness nothing. You're not sober if you're taking anything

and but he's he's got a very interesting observation that he made. He said he doesn't know anybody with long term sobriety that's ever picked up a drink first.

He said nowadays they always are taking Vicodin as a result of something that some procedure that they've had or something and they get messed up and they pick up. And we have to be really responsible that when we're talking with people in the medical community that they know that we're alcoholic and that there are certain things that we're allergic to. But there are also people amongst us.

And I don't know if you've sponsored anybody yet, that's a manic depressive.

I had a neighbor, sober guy, great guy,

lived in this little place down by the beach and he was a manic depressive. And what would happen is there's a real interesting thing this is this is, I don't know that that's true, but I love to say it. The people that need to be on medication always are getting off it, trying to get off it, and the people that don't need it are always trying to get it.

Well, this neighbor of mine, this friend of mine, he, he would because he kept hearing this, that we don't take anything in AA. He thought that he was doing something wrong when he was taking the meds.

So, you know, you'd start feeling better and he'd go off of them

and then he'd start to drink

because he was trying to medicate the way that he felt.

And when he started to drink, he'd start to think. Never a good combination.

One night he's in the apartment next door and he's trying to show off to a girl a handgun that he's got

and it goes off and the bullet goes through the wall

of my apartment. You know, So I mean, this guy needed to be medicated.

But you know, we, we need to, there are a lot of people in our fellowship that are in a lot of different types of pain. Some of it's emotional.

There are people that have, you know, things that they need to be addressed. Now, my fabulous wife Adele was a horrible depressive. Horrible depressive. I mean, she married me,

you know,

and, but when she came in, her first sponsor was indeed a psychologist.

And she said, you're too sick. You have to work the steps right now because we need to find out what is mental illness, what's depression and what's alcoholism. One of the reasons that the the medical community wants to medicate all of us is that alcoholism is depressing.

You can't live the way we were living and not stop and not take a look at ourselves and be depressed. So we have this blue antidepressant

and what you do is you work the steps and then we find out what is what is it that we need to do? You know, I mean, is it something else? Of course there are people who will kill themselves before and it's really important that we get a medical help because you can't work the steps if you killed yourself.

And there are people that do it all the time. I'm not saying lots, but we lose

probably three to five people a year in my community and I live in a pretty large community that take their own lives.

And so I think it's really, really important that as it, you know, one of the things we were talking about what is a stag? You know, it's a vibrant, strong, mature,

confident being

and this is the sobriety that we that we can offer. This is the example that we can offer to our community. We don't have to be worried about demonizing somebody if they happen to be working a doctor for a script, for Christ's sake.

And if you don't have a medical degree, don't go telling people that they're doing shit wrong.

Just an opinion.

Um, a couple years before Adele broke her hip.

My wife also is a recovering bulimic

and

you know, one of the great there's there's another interesting thing where there are a lot of people who will say

I can get everything. I can solve every problem in my life with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I don't need to go to any other fellowship. That's true. All problems can be worked with the 12 steps. But there are a lot of different fellowships out there. And my wife, who's she's a member of Overeaters Anonymous and because it's about the relationship with food, not whether you're big or you're way too skinny. And she

says that she cannot go to she cannot go to the hardware store for bananas.

And when she's in Alcoholics Anonymous, she's going for her drinking problem, but she needs to go where people know what's going on with the food.

And I have been to meetings of Overeaters Anonymous with her. I've been to meetings Debtors Anonymous,

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. I've been to meetings of

Marijuana Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous,

a few of those I went to when they were just starting to speak because, you know, I was trying to be helpful, giving people experience, strength and hope. And then once they started going or I was sponsoring people that needed to be there, I could send them. I could send them to those, those things. But when I went to Debtors Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and the like, what The thing is, is that each of these fellowships, they have a language to describe

the problem that we don't have in AA that connects on an emotional level to somebody that's suffering from those things.

And so if somebody's got a problem, I really suggest that they go and take a look at these things because they're able to describe themselves in a language that they don't have the tools to. And here's my example.

My wife's a bulimic, so that and she's recovering an Overeater's Anonymous. I come home one night and I look in the toilet. I'm going to the bathroom and there's something that appears to be vile to me

and I'm frightened and I'm scared about what I see

and I don't know what to do

now. I'm raised in an alcoholic home, so the last thing that I ever do is confront anybody, even though I'm sober man.

And I have lots of spiritual tools, but I just, I, I, I believe from this evidence that my wife is in relapse

and she's really sick at this time.

And I stop

trusting my wife

unilaterally

and I start to act dismissive towards her

because I know what's going on and she's not telling me.

And this is my best friend.

This is my greatest supporter. This is a person who wants more for me than I would dare dream for myself.

And finally, one day, she looks at me and she says, you know, this is the place where I generally pack.

Now. I'm sober, man.

I'm the spiritual guy,

and instead of talking with her

as I had always done,

I went to the Steps of Recovery meeting of the Al Anon Family groups in Manhattan Beach, CA on Tuesday,

and I showed up. Fortunately, I'd I'd been schooled by my friend Bill Cleveland's father Gordon, who died with 45 years of sobriety, whose wife had been in Al Anon, one of the founders of the Los Angeles Al Anon intergroup. He taught us that Al Anon's more important than an AA

because in Al Anon a family can get well, not just one person.

And he said if you ever go to Al Anon, he said you've got a fellowship, you've got a sponsor. He said go in there and shut up and listen. And I went and I followed his advice. And what happened is, is that I started to learn some things that I did not know. Now, I think at the time I'm like 22 years sober.

I know everything there is about the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I know everything there, you know? I mean, I as my friend Bill Cleveland says, I know more about myself than is safe to know,

OK?

But in listening to these people talk about their family and their relationship to it, See, I'd have people tell me to go and Al Anon for years and my eyes always rolled up in the back of my head because I thought they were telling me to go and get some some

dog training skills.

But what I learned there was about myself and about my place in the universe in a way that I'd never seen. And I learned a generosity of spirit about myself that I'd never had before. And after about six months of being there, I finally was in a place where I could tell my wife what happened.

And she was so heartbroken and she was so upset. I was the only friend she had left. Everybody had moved away from her because her pain

and what she was going through was so difficult that nobody wanted to see her that much anymore.

And when she came to the meetings, she was always in such a poor condition that it was just difficult for anybody to be. And I was her only friend.

And she said, how could you do that to me? Why didn't you come and get me? Why didn't you wait till the next morning?

And I didn't have to make it about her.

And about three months later, she went and got me one day and walked me into the bathroom. And she said, is this what you saw?

And I said, yeah. And she said, well, this is what it is.

Oh,

and I hope that none of you ever get to the point that what happens is that you stop believing

your mate.

And you know, This is why I'm here to share with you what's happened and how it is that I've come through the different problems that I've had sober. And by me going to Al Anon, what's happened is it's taken a lot of pressure off

and I work a really shitty Al Anon program.

I got I go to one meeting a week. I got the star all Anon sponsor, the guy that I see when I go talk at these things all over and I go to a step study at his house. But The thing is, is that I'm in the consciousness and I'm being humble. See, I don't want to. I just want to be there and be anonymous and be a student

and they allow me to do that. And I have learned so much.

And I really hope that that some of you might take advantage of the family groups and learn what they have to offer. And if you're telling jokes about Al Anon,

quit it. If you're in it, you didn't tell some really good jokes,

but if you don't know,

this thing saves lives, it saves marriages. It saved mine because what happened is, is that as my wife became more and more physically I'll I kept trying to monitor her behavior as bad as any al Anon wood trying to monitor somebody's they're drunk. And I was trying to get her to not do certain physical things and not go here and not do this and and trying to make sure that she was doing this and doing that right now. Are you listening to the doctors? And you're not supposed to pick up anything that's over 5 lbs And how can you possibly carry that?

It's at least 15 lbs and all that kind of stuff. And what happened is, is that I wasn't her husband and her lover anymore. I was being her God damn father. And the two she'd had were lousy.

And what happened is Al Anon taught me to step back

and to let God be God. And what happened in my home

is that grace intervened once I removed myself enough and God came in and healed my wife.

And if I was on top of her,

God couldn't have gotten through.

So I was the problem. I was the block,

so go into the family groups is a really, really good thing. And saying, I don't know

is also a really good thing when you're dealing with people that are in chronic pain.

Personal experience about that

I was in a

I was in a business when marriage #1 dissolved.

I was raised in an A. A meeting that our Hermosa Beach men's tag is, is that if you are separated, the first thing you do is you pay the Child Support no matter what

before you do anything else. And you make sure that that check is $10 more and it's two days early.

It's not her money,

it's your children.

And so I made sure that that was being done and I didn't have money for health insurance for myself.

And so I started making some bad decisions and I had gallbladder disease and I I didn't take care of it. I tried to heal it holistically, document somebody much about that, and I almost died.

I was so spiritual, I almost died and and they couldn't remove it laparoscopically, so they had to cut me open like a mellow and

and afterwards I needed to take a little medication

and they gave me the Vicodin and I was taking it as directed. But I did the thing that the sober guys taught me to do. Now I'm sober man, right? I know everything. I don't have to report my but I got one of my friends who was a healthcare professional lung sucker. Larry,

how do you live without sponsoring a lung sucker? You know, I mean, it's just important to do. And I and I, I told him what I was taking and we talked every day. And anyway, it would been about 10 days

and I tried to stop and it hurt like a motherfucker. And so a few days later I said to him, you know, I want to start again, but I don't want to go through that. I want to stop again, but I don't want to go through that pain. And this man said the most spiritual thing, something I never would have thought of. Why don't you take 1/2?

And I did,

and I stepped off it a couple days later.

But if I'm in my own mind,

if I'm the one who's running that stuff,

even though I got, you know, 18 years sober at the time,

I'm using the wrong

the wrong thing to solve the problem.

So,

ah, I suggested that what we do is that we write a third step prayer. And if you haven't had a chance to do that, there'll be some time later this afternoon to do that. I'd like you to get

in your group and

for the topic to be

If there was a situation in your life

that you could leave here,

what would you leave?

I started another business about seven months ago

and

for me, one of the one of the things that's that's been interesting over time is that I've gotten myself in a couple of financial binds. I've made some bad decisions

and one was when I was trying to keep

three coffee bars running

and a college came to me and asked me to take over the food service and I said, oh, of course, it's obviously God's will. I didn't go and get a partner.

I didn't go and get money. I took the receipts from the three businesses that were going and took all that money and put it into getting the equipment and getting the other thing going. And

things didn't workout. And I had taxes that I didn't pay and that when it came to selling the business, I wasn't able to get much for it. And,

and I have now been able since in making amends, I've been able to pay back the $80,000 that I, that I borrowed from people that I love, but I'm still paying back the tax obligation and that my ego and my pride, what I did was I paid the people back

and not the government

instead of like do it at 5050

like any sane person would probably do. But I wanted to finally be able to take care of the, to the, the men and women that I borrowed the money from. And, and so I'm in the midst of, of making those amends. And it's, and it's difficult. And in any business, what happens is at least businesses that you start, it takes about nine months. Everyone I've started, it takes about nine months

for things to start to turn. It's almost like the gestation of a child

and my wife is resigning her position because of her health problems. And so I've got a little bit of

insecurity going

now. I have evidence in my life that everything is going to workout. All right. I don't know how that all works out,

but what I want to do is I want to take this concern that I have

and I want to pretend that God is everything.

And I want to leave that here so that when I go down off the mountain

that there's more of Maine available in my heart and mind. And I'm not busy

thinking, umm,

that I can actually, in doing that third step,

turn that stuff over.

All right,

so go

enjoy the groups. I wanted to enjoy is it was great walking around a little bit. I I heard that great belly laugh that comes when alcoholic men are telling the truth about themselves. So I hope that you enjoy your group and we'll be back here

at

4:30. There's free time, but we'll be back here at 4:30 to do a little.

I'm going to take you through how exactly my wife and I meditate together so that I can show you about what it is that we're going to talk about how you have a sober home, OK? So thank you.

I forgot.

OK,

Yeah.

You know about establishing a daily practice.

If there is any wish that I have for you, it's that you will if you don't have one, that you at least start with the three minutes a day

and and again, it's making an experiment. The other thing that I'd like to that I think that is even

as important as that is this idea about what our home is. And one of the great tragedies as I travel around Alcoholics Anonymous

is how many people do not follow the recommendation on how to work the 11th step. And

in it,

it's wonderful because

it says

that

if circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends. Some of us are lucky enough that our wives are our friends

to join us in morning meditation.

If you have another sentient being that you share your domicile with,

ask them to join you in morning meditation

and it will change the dynamic of the home. The biggest difference between marriage number one for me and marriage #2 is exactly that line. And when I was shopping for the for the second wife, one of the things that I wanted to make sure that I did was, is I found somebody that would be willing to go on the spiritual path.

It's a lot easier to be physically intimate or emotionally intimate than it is to be spiritually intimate.

It's just, it's, it's, it just feels so strange because we've got no training about it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk a little bit about how we went about it and then show you what we do. Because one of the things that's been really helpful when I've gone around and it's really fun when Adele and I get to do it together. It's really a, it's really a hoot. But

so I got the tall girl and we're we're starting to run around together and

we're having a good time. And it gotten to the point where,

you know, we're starting to say our prayers together. And she says, you know, it's let's let's start meditating. I want to meditate. OK, great. So tomorrow morning, now she's a class of

89. So I've got 10 years more than she does, you know? So I will lead the prayer in the morning, you know, morning practice. Sober man is here.

So we get up in the morning and I, I and I, you know, suggest some stuff and we do this and we do that and we do it for about 3 days. And then she says to me,

you know, this really isn't getting it for me.

What I heard was I don't like the way you kiss.

That's not what she said, but that's what I heard. And so I go. Well, OK, being sober man and magnanimous tomorrow morning you lead.

And so we get up and then she so she does what, what, what appeals to her. And then after a few minutes afterwards, I I wait and from my great height, I start to share with her about things maybe could be tweaked a little bit.

And

one of the great, one of the reasons that

that I am so glad that my wife is in the fellowship is that she's got a sponsor because the sponsor always takes the bullet before it gets to me. And

she was driving to work and she just gave her an earful about this anxious ass that she was with. And you know, fortunately we've got a ten step and I reviewed my conduct a little bit later and even I couldn't support it to myself.

And I called her up and apologized. And,

and what happened is, is that we followed her lead. And it doesn't matter who leads the dance. The most important thing is that we dance

and that

that there's a whole dynamic that happens with this eleven step. It's beyond thought.

I want to get a T-shirt with that line of Jung's about beyond the confines of mere rationalism, because there's something that goes on. See, my wife is my best friend.

She's my greatest supporter and she

wants more for me. She wants me to be a better man than I want to be myself,

and I feel exactly the same way about her, but I forget. I know that nobody in the park of men's tag ever forgets who their partners are, but occasionally I forget and I take things that she says to me personally. I get sensitive around her.

The only time that happens anymore is on the days that we don't meditate

and we meditate together probably five days a week,

Saturday mornings, the one morning I, if I'm home, I generally sleep in and she's got her, her OA Home group that she goes to. But so anyway, we, we have this, this practice. And so I wanted to show you what it is that we do.

Josh has been kind enough to to say that he'll stand in for Adele. So why don't you come and have a a seat here, my friend?

Right here. Yeah, doesn't matter. So what it is that we do is that

when we get up, we would, this is when we first were starting to do things together. She'd pick a prayer. Anybody can pick a prayer. We read the prayer together and then and then we're silent for three minutes and then we we come out of it, we read something that's helpful and that brings us together.

One of my favorite I don't know if you guys have got it around here, but the Los Angeles Central office has a little pamphlet that that they've got called

just for today. It's actually an Al Anon piece and it's the road map to mental health whenever I get lost and on the back of it's the Saint Francis Brewer and so we'll use the Saint Francis prayer today. But like, if

you're the

Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, it's a wonderful piece, that piece that you hear many times at weddings or at funerals. But any piece of spiritual poetry that you can read back and forth is, is really a wonderful thing. And, and what it does is it reminds us who we are and what we're doing here. So we're going to we're going to sit for three minutes.

And then we'll we'll do the the Saint Francis prayer.

When I sit with her,

I have my hand on her generally.

And one of the reasons is, is that there's an energy flow that goes through us. And it's not just, you know, I mean, I'd love to tell you that, you know, it just leads to all kinds of wonderful things. But The thing is, is that anything that I can do that helps the energy flow between us is a wonderful thing. And so there's that.

So let's do 3,

because it's far better to do it than to talk about it.

The couch. What I do is I turn, we kind of turn towards each other. And

so I start out, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. Now where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is air, I may bring truth. Where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

That where there is sadness I might bring joy,

Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand and to be understood, to love and to be loved. For it is by self forgetting that one finds. It is by forgetting that one is forgiven, and it is by dying that one is wickens to eternal life.

And then I kiss her and we go out into our day.

The fabulous Joshua Stand affair.

Any questions?

This is like, yes,

my wife and I do that, but we don't typically just go line by line. She'll read a reading of her choice. Or

well, sure.

The question is

the thing about the go online by line is that what we're doing is, especially with the Saint Francis prayer and generally when we're doing this, we'll do one for 30 days. But to pick a piece of literature that's going to draw us together and talk about what it is that I'm doing in this relationship.

Same thing with Corinthians. It brings it. It's not about, you know, it's not about me,

you know, So. Yes, Sir. Is there somebody else? Yeah,

I've been doing this for a long time. I've got a clock here in case I get too deep and I go out. One of the things that I recommend you do is is on the way home, stop by the store and get the cheapest egg timer they got and set it for 3 minutes. Whenever I get a new sponsee, they come over to the house that first time that the second time when I make them sit with me, I always give them a timer.

One of the things that we've found

is that the Mr. Coffee coffee maker, the pour through last three minutes, guys, guys will do that. They'll pour the water through, They'll go take their sit when they're done, the coffee is ready,

you know, and said it's just standing there and watching it, you know? Yeah, okay.

Again, this is a practice that's difficult to establish.

There's something within us

that resists doing it, and that's one of the reasons why. And I'm talking about just having a daily meditative practice. That's one of the reasons why we have couples, because we're both not insane on the same day. In other words, she'll say, come on baby, it's time to sit

when I'm making acting as if I may have to. I may be too busy now. We tend to sit for about 15 to 20 minutes together. But again,

this is something that's organic.

It's not a race. This is nothing competitive. And if you start with three minutes, overtime it will grow of its own. The great thing about about 3 minutes is, is that we don't, if you get spiritually sick, which on occasion I do and I will stop for a period of time, I'll get, I'll, I'll have something come that, that, that I get sideways and I don't do it. And it's just like running or working out or anything.

I've got to fall back, you know, while I was, I was meditating for an hour at a time. I've I've

been in some really weird practices over the years. I'm one of these people that believe that you should pray and meditate the way we drank and used.

Try it all, see where you end up,

see where you end up. But there's a little caveat to that. If you ever get around anybody who says that Alcoholics Anonymous is a lower form of consciousness, smile, agree with them, and back towards the door, because you will never win that discussion. They are not bodily and mentally different.

Will Jesus take away my drinking problem? Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Well, my Buddhist practice, will my chanting Nam yo renge kyo relieve me of my alcohol? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I got to do that and go to meetings because I'm bodily and mentally different and they don't know that, you know, when I was vice president of the church I belonged to, I never went to the Monday men's meeting. Why?

Because the only reason I ever got to church was because I went to the Hermosa Beach Menstag on Monday night.

I live my life through Alcoholics Anonymous, and I never, ever

disagree with anyone who tells me

that

I should be on some different plane because there's no you can't. You can't win that discussion. But just remember that we do everything that every spiritual master ever said. We visit him in the hospital, you know, And if you're not, why not? We go to the jails. And if you're not, why aren't you?

You know, and we, you know, we, we, we clothe them and we feed them. And what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is literally we raise the dead.

That's what we do. If you want something to do in this life, that's what we do.

So again, this is worth fighting for.

This is worth making a concerted effort on a regular basis to do. And I guarantee that if you make this experiment with your loved ones and, you know, before Adele and I cohabitated, when my daughter was visiting me, she would come and sit next to me when she was five years old And she would hold the timer,

you know, Oh, I got a big singing bowl at home that I use instead of the, instead of the traveling, the traveling kit. But, you know, and, and, and she would gong that, you know, sometimes she'd even do it five times. Big deal, you know, but I mean, if you've got to send, if, if what you've got is a dog or a cat,

they will come and join you. They will

I,

I have had the privilege of being with a lot of wonderful different spiritual teachers. One of them is a guy by the name of Thomas Keating who's up in Vail and he's, he's got a practice called the

Centering Prayer, which is a Christian

meditative practice. And I, I went up and helped him with some other people from around the country come and read. There were twelve of us that went up there and helped him rework his

step in 12 step language so it could be offered to the 12 Step community. And one of the things he taught me, and I heard it from lots and lots of people, he said it does not matter what goes through your mind,

don't try and fight your mind with your mind.

The only thing that matters is my intent, that I want to be closer to the power, greater than myself and that I am making myself available. And that when I sit down, what I am doing is I'm making myself available.

Any of you that have children or a dog or a cat,

when you're sitting on the couch hanging out and they come and sit down next to you,

do you ever worry about what's going on in their mind?

No, you're just thrilled that they're there. And whatever this creative principle that that that created me, anytime I sit,

it's thrilled that I'm showing up and something happens, something really good. So let's hang out and hobnob for a while and we'll come back at 5:30 and we'll talk a little bit about