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

Once again, a little something from the fabulous one, Adele Shea.

I fell in love with my husband Jay for the first time last weekend.

Though we've spent more than 12 years together, I had never seen him before.

And then I did.

What I had seen before that moment was a story.

I wrote about who he is and what he will or will not do.

I saw black hair.

than gray hair, than ear hair.

I saw behaviors I deemed as good and bad and appropriate and not.

And I responded according to my perceptions at any given time.

This day he was good, that bad.

This moment he was doing it right, that wrong.

This moment he was wise, that diluted.

This moment, his appearance was acceptable,

that unacceptable, and on and on, the story went.

Each time I read my story about whom he is,

whether he was in the room or not,

I would feel happy or sad, angry or loving,

irritated or accepting.

Inside those thoughts, who can be seen?

There is no presence inside a thought,

no illumination of what is appearing.

What I saw were my own opinions, which I reacted to accordingly.

Great suffering existed in living like that,

even with a husband whom I thought I adored.

Then the light came on, and there he was before me.

Beautiful beyond description.

And in that moment, I realized that I had never seen

anyone or anything before.

A startling realization, I highly recommend.

Jay appears different to me now.

His ear hairs do not bother me.

His face is perfection.

His body exquisite.

There is nothing to change in him or his behavior.

There is nothing to change in me.

How do perceptual changes like that happen?

I have absolutely no idea.

But I have a story.

And this is a story of what appeared to happen.

Perceptions began to change when I began to look inside for answers.

They changed dramatically when I regularly began to meditate.

That is, to simply to sit and to watch my thoughts.

And when I began to hang out with people who had a higher state of consciousness,

for lack of a better term, about how to look inside for answers.

Thirteen years ago, I began thinking with my eyes closed for three minutes a day.

When Jay and I began dating, we began the practice together.

For years with lessening intensity,

I felt as though I would crawl out of my skin during that time.

No peace existed in those sessions for a long time.

My mind would frantically search for and seize thoughts.

Then flashes of quiet would come without words.

A feeling of perfect okayness would overcome me for a nanosecond and then longer.

A deep sigh would fill me.

In those instances, there was nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to change.

Sometimes I practice that discipline for one day and then not for a week or a month.

Other times I did it more consistently for a while, and then not and then again.

Trying to make myself meditate for 20 or 30 minutes during that period did not work for me.

I found it impossible to return to that amount of time once missed,

so I would simply stop sitting for long periods.

I did not stop shaving my armpits or wear petulia oil or levitate,

though I thought I was supposed to do those things before I actually began sitting still.

I did try listening to my breath and using a contemplative word.

Mine was shalom.

to repeat whenever my mind drifted,

and using a number of other exercises,

all of which were helpful,

I found nothing more beneficial

than place my fanny in a chair.

It was tremendously helpful to sit with Jay.

More often than not,

one of us would not feel like sitting

and the other would be encouraging.

I found I liked my husband better

on the days that we sat together.

Over the years, the days of sitting still got closer and closer.

I stayed at three minutes for more than 11 years.

Slowly, the time expanded on its own.

This year, it moved to about 20 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes to an hour,

three to five times a week with a group of people doing the same.

The decision to do that happened organically.

Attempting to force myself to meditate more always produced less meditation.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped trying to meditate.

The practice appeared to change rather quickly after that.

That's my story.

You have my permission to ask Jay how it's going.

I wanted to talk a little bit about being with girls sober.

I was 40 years old, and my first marriage was ending.

My sponsor said, I left my marriage so I could get into a relationship.

And...

And this was done consciously.

You know, I'd done everything that I could.

I'd been as supportive of Jacqueline as I could be.

And we were not able to make things work.

And thank God that we both had sponsors, and we were both on this path,

and so that when I came to her and I said that I can't live like this anymore,

because I could not stay in a relationship that was just a friendship any longer.

And I knew that I was going to start looking elsewhere for affection.

And so instead of going and doing that or her going out and spending money or causing some events so we could blame each other or make something wrong, we were able to accept responsibility for our inability to create a loving union.

And so what I did for the, I did a sexual inventory.

And this sexual inventory had nothing to do with what I'd done wrong.

But what I did is that I sat down because I knew that I was 40 years old.

My last dating was done when people took toothbrushes to bars, you know, 1980.

So my dating skills were off just a little bit.

It had been, you know, a decade and a half almost.

And so, and I knew that because I had left my marriage, that I had really scarred my daughter, who was only five at the time.

And I knew that everything that I did would be watched and observed.

And that the only way that I could help to make amends for what I was doing to Jessica

was to try and comport myself in such a way that I could always look her in the eye.

Now, at the time, I had coffee bars on two college campuses.

I'm vice president of a large church, and I'm active in AA.

There were a lot of suspects.

And I sat down and I started to write a list.

And I had to, what is it that I want in a partner?

I had never sat down and consciously thought about that.

I'd always walked into a room and waited for my hormones to go off

and then tried to have my way with whatever the creature was.

Okay.

but I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous,

and I knew that that probably wasn't it.

And the great thing about being a sober member of AA

is we know that there are two kinds of examples in AA.

There are good examples and bad examples.

I could go out and I could Lisa Harley

and get some leather chaps and get some ink,

and I could start sitting at the back of the room

and try and date girls that were closer to my daughter's age than my own.

I know that wouldn't happen to anyone in the park or men stag,

but in our group there are a few.

Not in the Hermosa Beach Menstag, but one of those other meetings that are around the neighborhood.

And so I knew that that wasn't the way to go.

So what I did is I took a look at the fact that I'm a 40-year-old guy

and I got a five-year-old daughter that I'm going to be responsible for.

For me, Alcoholics Anonymous, is the most important thing in my life.

So if I'm looking for someone to share my life with,

they've got to be a member of his fellowship.

The most important activity that I'm involved in

in Alcoholics Anonymous is sponsorship.

Therefore, I want somebody that not only has a sponsor,

but that is sponsoring people.

Third thing that I'm looking for is a woman that has done

her sexual recovery work, because if she's in the fellowship,

she's going to have to have done that work.

Chances are.

My first, I wanted my daughter to maybe also have some alternative choice about people that had different experiences.

Her mother, a brilliant woman, had never gone to college.

So I thought that maybe a woman that was a professional woman might be somebody that would be a,

somebody that, and then I was looking for somebody that was artistic and somebody that, you know,

that in their recovery at least demonstrated some spiritual panache.

And then I've got a couple of personal little things that I like.

I like tall girls, so, you know, that went on there.

And a couple other personal things.

And then I started filtering.

And, you know, I mean, there were a lot of gals that I knew,

but, you know, there were some that were just serial daters,

so I knew that that was probably somebody that I didn't want to get involved with

unless I was just looking for excitement,

and I did not want to model that behavior in front of my daughter.

even though she wasn't, she didn't live with me.

But I, you know, again, modeling that behavior.

So when I went through all of that,

the woman that was on the top of the list was Adele Shea.

And when I left my marriage, I left with less stuff

because stuff was only there for my daughter's benefit.

I left with less stuff that I had when I went to college,

when I went off to college.

And...

And so I knew I wasn't going to out-hip anybody, and I didn't have a lot of money because I was giving the successful business to Jackie, and I had something that was scuffling.

And so I took her out.

We went to coffee a couple of times.

I realized that the targeting system was pretty good.

And I said to her, I said, you know, my marriage is ending, and...

And I know that amongst intelligent women, that there is a period of time that separated men are not datable.

And I know that you're not involved with anyone at this time.

But I really think that we could have a good time together.

Please do not fall in love with anyone until you have the chance to get to know me.

I approached her as if she was the person that I wanted to spend my life with.

And when I go home today, I am going home to the person on the whole planet that I want to be with.

And I approached her like that from the gate.

Now, I've talked about going to these retreats.

I was on this retreat in about 1982, and there was this guy, Father Shepard, who was leading

part of the retreat, and he was an old Jesuit, had a collar on, and he said, from the podium,

don't screw him.

What are you talking about?

I mean, okay, he's got the uniform on.

He's supposed to say that, right?

And besides, he's celibate, he doesn't even know what he's asking me to give up.

Right?

Yeah.

It was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

But here I am, and I'm approaching this woman,

and this is the one on the top of the list.

I want to play this for keeps.

And the more I got to know her, the more I wanted to play it for keeps.

The first time I had the privilege of kissing her,

I stepped back and I looked at her and I said,

I can't sleep with you.

And she gave me that look.

It's a little forward.

And I told her, I heard this one time, a long time ago.

And I want to try something different.

I know what happens doing things the way that I used to do it.

I want to try something different.

Are you game?

She looked at me a little strange.

She said, okay.

And so after another week or two, when we really decided that this thing might,

we're going for, I said, why don't we do this?

Valentine's Day is a couple months off.

Let's pick that as the day.

And what it did is it took all the pressure off of us getting to know each other.

And a couple other things, and remember, especially anybody that if they're listening to this,

and they haven't heard the other talk, that Adele has given me leave to talk about this

because I didn't know about dating.

I didn't know about getting intimate.

I didn't know any of that stuff.

And we started praying together.

And then when we first started sleeping together, what we did is, is that we started and we went really, really slow.

And I'm going to be very Clinton-esque about this, okay?

Is that we started out and we spent some time kissing, but we didn't have sex.

And then we, you know, got to first base, and we spent like a week there.

And we went through all the processes, but we didn't finish it on.

And what happened is that each and every expression of love a human being can have as an evolutionary thing,

we were able to experience as something of and by itself instead of something on the means to an end.

And so no matter how it is that we express affection, it's complete.

I never knew that was available.

I never knew that was available.

Okay.

And the most important thing is, is that the power got taken out of it.

Sex had always been a power exchange for me.

If I do this, you'll do that.

It wasn't that.

It wasn't that.

And if you follow this path, what'll have...

You know, and I'm not saying that we didn't have a whole lot of fun in that time leading up to that,

but it was in stages.

And...

And if you follow this, one of the things that will happen is that that other energy will start coming in.

And two or three times during the course of this period of time, there was an event in each of our lives where the best possible response from the other person was for us to make love completely.

And we didn't do it.

And so we learned to trust each other on a level that I had never experienced.

in intimacy. We had, we got to know each other because once you complete the sexual act,

what you do is you stick them in a box and you always keep going back to that same box.

And then when it was time, what we did is we left where we lived, or where we were,

I was, you know, we had separate domiciles, but we left our town and we went off

and we celebrated and made it a sacred time together. And, um,

That was 14 years ago.

And a lot of guys that I work with have done this.

And the thing that happens is that, you know,

a lot of times things don't work out.

But people are always able to be in the room together.

Nobody ever feels like their trust was violated

because it's all done up front.

It's all done with honor.

It's all done with love.

It's all done with respect.

I didn't know that was possible.

So, you know, again, part of being...

A sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous with some experiences,

I want to share with you the great successes and joys of my life.

And my home and my marriage is the greatest joy and success in my life.

Followed very closely by the pact that my daughter will call me and tell me,

because I do that with her.

I call her and I tell her, you know, I texted her and said,

I'm in the Stanley Hotel, Red Rum!

You know, and she's a goth chick, so she just loved that, you know.

And she calls her father and tells me when the good stuff is going on, you know.

I'm in Vegas, and Marilyn Manson just got done painting my big toe.

You know, I mean, there's significant things in her life.

And, yeah, yeah, she's off at it and having a wonderful time.

So, yeah.

I just want to share that with you and that they always talk about dating and alcoholics

Anonymous. You know, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

But I want to share with you that if you are looking for a mate, make sure they've got a sponsor.

It makes life so much easier.

It makes life so much easier.

Because I've had time dating sober women

who didn't understand that they might have a problem too

or a part in it.

And believe me, it's a lot better.

The other thing that I did with Adele is I asked her,

when I was courting her, I said,

look, sponsorship is the biggest thing in my life.

I said, are you willing to be a double agent?

Because I'm working with all these guys, and will you help them when they're starting to get together with women, and can you talk to him, and can you help them?

And she's guided some guys that were, you know, I could only in my mind see that without God's grace them having lots and lots of years of therapy, and maybe someday they'd get to own a chia pet.

And...

And some of these guys are married to the greatest women members of alcoholics.

When my daughter was 12 years old, she'd gotten confirmed in the Episcopal Church to please her father.

It's very sweet of her to do that.

She says, Dad, I don't believe in it.

about 50% of this stuff.

And I said, well, neither do I.

It's no big deal, darling.

But I said, I'm really glad that you went through this

and that you at least learned the principles

upon which this nation basically is founded

in the stories that were part of the development

of the consciousness of this country.

And she looked at me and she said,

you know, Dad, it's all about the friends now.

And I remember that time.

I remember that time when my...

Parents had split and I had to go and spend my time of obligation with my father.

My daughter had come to be with me.

I picked her up, she hung with me on Tuesday evenings.

I'd pick her up from school and then every Friday I pick her up from school and I take

her home Sunday afternoon.

And I didn't go out and do any AA stuff really during that time, you know, because I had

a commitment.

And she said it's all about the friends now.

And I realized.

that that really was what was up.

And I said, okay, baby, I tell you what.

I talked to her mother, and I said,

you don't ever have to come and spend the night with me anymore.

I want you to come when you can and when you want to and all that stuff.

You know, that kid has never come and spend a night at my house since.

And that was like seven years ago.

But she called me and we'd hang out a lot.

Anyway, a couple years ago, I said to her sweetheart,

you know how you're...

Oh, I said to her, you remember when we had this conversation,

I said, did you feel when I said that you could go and do what it was that you wanted to do,

that what I was doing was I was abandoning my fatherly job?

She paused for a second, and she said, well, no, Dad, I felt that what happened is,

is that I was now socially adept, and I needed to find my way,

and you wanted to support me in doing that.

And I thought it was the most loving thing probably that you've done.

And...

Then I asked her, I said, are you willing to be a double agent now?

I said, you know how your stepmother works with my guys.

I've got lots of guys who have teenage daughters who are having trouble or doing this or that.

If I give them your phone number, will you tell them the truth?

And so now she works as a covert agent also.

And guys, I give them a phone number,

and this is after they've spent a zillion dollars in therapy,

and they've been to this and that and another thing.

And they're getting all the samples from all the different people,

and they call my daughter, and they come back to me,

and they say, you know, the kid told me the truth.

These are the prayers I have for you.

These are the hopes that I have for you.

So let's switch gears a little bit.

We've got the family stuff done.

Our co-founder, Bill, had this dramatic white light experience.

And then the book comes out, and in the meetings,

everybody's waiting for their turn to have one.

And they're comparing their insides to Bill's story,

to his white-light experience, and they're waiting for it.

And if they don't get it, they're feeling like

they haven't gotten the whole deal.

And Bill was very, very clear

Later in his life, he got very, very articulate about this,

about this idea of what William James called the educational variety,

a gradual unfoldment of an experience.

James said that the folks that have the dramatic type,

what happens is that experience has been gestating,

incubating in their hearts and their minds,

and then something happens, and all of a sudden, bam, they get it.

In other people, it's the same gestation, but it's just not as sudden.

Wilson talked about the only difference between the two types he believed was in the time factor,

because the results, it's in the fruits of the experience that it's validated.

And the fruit of his experience was not drinking.

And he said, there is no experience.

He says he always used to tell this story about...

You'll be sitting in a meeting and a guy will say,

he'll be up there taking his first year cake and he'll go,

I don't have the spiritual angle on this program.

I haven't seen any white light.

And then he'll go through and he'll talk about how the fact

that he hasn't had anything to drink,

that his wife's happy to see him when he comes home,

that his employer is pleased with the work that he does,

that his children speak to him in complete sentences.

He says, and those of us who know, that is it.

That is the spiritual experience.

And he just hasn't gotten to the point that he can put it into those words yet.

And so each and every man that is here today has had a spiritual experience.

We're all here and we're sober.

And so what I'd like you to do in your group is I'd like you to talk about your experience.

Now, with some of you, I know that in a group this size,

there's a few guys that have had a dramatic flash.

Right.

It means just a numbers game.

And there are other people that have had, as it talks about, and we agnostics,

then one moment when we've beheld a flower and we've known.

And with others, it was maybe the first time that your child walked across the room

in a long time and put their head against your chest.

Or it may just be the moment that you thought that maybe my sponsor isn't bludgeoning me,

that what he's doing is he's loving me.

So what I'd like to do, because I think that this is a very important thing,

let's spend three minutes again in silence.

And then we'll, yeah, let's, can we do the picture after the group?

Yeah.

Let's do this.

Let's, let's, no, no, we're going to break up anyway.

We'll go do the picture.

But let's bring our hearts and minds together for a moment.

And let's ask, you know, that we'd be open so that in your group you can talk about,

your personal experience.

This is a Jay the alcoholic.

Thank you.

This is from Bill Wilson's letter to Carl Jung.

My release from the alcohol obsession was immediate.

At once I knew I was a free man.

Shortly following my experience, my friend Ebby came to the hospital,

bringing me a copy of William James' varieties of religious experience.

This book gave me the realization that most conversion experiences, whatever their variety,

do have a common denominator of ego collapse at depth.

The individual faces an impossible dilemma.

In my case, the dilemma had been created by my compulsive drinking

and the deep feeling of hopelessness had been vastly deepened by my doctor.

It was still deepened more by my alcoholic friend when he acquainted me with your verdict of hopelessness,

respecting Roland.

In the wake of my spiritual experience, there came a vision of a society of alcoholics,

each identifying with and transmitting his experience to the next chain style.

If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect,

he might be able to lay open every newcomer to the transforming spiritual experience.

This concept proved to be the foundation of such success as Alcoholics Anonymous has achieved.

This has made conversion experiences, nearly every variety reported by James,

available on almost a wholesale basis.

Our sustained recovery over the last quarter century, number about 300,000.

In America and throughout the world there are today 8,000 groups.

So to you, to Dr. Shoemaker of the Oxford groups, to William James, and to my own physician, Dr. Silkworth, we of AA owe this tremendous benefaction.

As you will now clearly see, this astonishing chain of events actually started long ago in your consulting room,

and it was directly founded upon your own humility and deep perception.

Very many thoughtful AA students are attracted to your writings because of your conviction that man is something more than intellect, emotion, and $2 worth of chemicals you have especially endeared yourself to us.

How our society grew, developed its traditions for unity, and structure its functioning will be seen in the text and pamphlet material that I am sending you.

You will also be interested to learn that in addition to the spiritual experience,

many AA's report a great variety of psychic phenomena,

the cumulative weight of which is very considerable.

Other members have, following their recovery in AA,

been much helped by your practitioners.

A few have been intrigued by the I Ching and your remarkable introduction to that work.

Please be certain that your place in the affection and in the history of the fellowship.

is like no other, sincerely.

So what we did earlier is we talked about our experience.

We go around talking about faith,

but faith, I think, is entirely overrated.

We have experience.

We have experience.

A couple stories about mine.

I was about eight months sober,

and I was sitting in the...

in the meeting, the 2-plus-2 meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at the Westwood Community Church

on LaGrange and Westwood Boulevard.

I was in amends.

I was sponsoring people.

And I was sitting there and I was listening to a woman speak and her name was Liz LaPresti.

And Liz was talking and she talked about how the alcohol stripped from her everything that makes a human being a human being.

and that what she became was an animal.

And when she said that last word, the room left.

And I was sitting there, I had the consciousness of sitting in my seat of the chair

and a vague sense of the room.

But it was all gone, and there was nothing but a vast white life.

And my head said, oh, maybe this is an LSD flashback.

Okay.

And my heart said, no, pay attention.

And as I sat there, the feeling that I had,

it wasn't words really, it was a feeling.

And the feeling was that everything is known

and that everything is perfect

and that everything is connected.

But we got an eight-month sober guy involved here.

So in my mind, I formulate a question

because I understood that I was in the presence of

whatever is. And I said, well, in my mind, I said, well, what about war? And the feeling I had was,

don't worry. I got it. And so I sat there in that for another minute. And then because I'm involved,

I come up with another question. I started to ask a question about abortion in the back of my head.

It started to come up. I'm asking another question in the presence of all knowledge. And the feeling

was, I couldn't even quite phrase it in my mind. It was,

And I sat there, and I don't know if I was there for eight minutes or 12 minutes.

This was only a 20-minute talk the speaker was giving.

And before she finished, gradually, gradually, gradually,

the room started to come back in.

And this particular church, podium that the speaker's in, had is here.

And there's three stained glass windows.

And the stained glass windows were the first thing that came into my side.

And windows say, God is love.

And then gradually the room came back, and I looked around.

And it was very obvious that nobody else had that experience.

And I was afraid.

And I sat there.

And somehow the intuitive voice inside of me said, you know, just be quiet.

Now, there's something to be said about spiritual secrecy.

You know, when you're on the path, don't go put your neck out when...

you know, with folks that aren't going to be supportive of it.

You know, it's like going and telling people that you buy dope from that you're sober, you know.

They'll just go, oh, here, have a free one.

So, you know, spiritual secrecy is important as we build ourselves.

I didn't tell anybody about that for about three weeks.

And then late at night at the coffee bar, I mentioned it to an old time,

and he said, yeah, kid, this stuff happens all the time.

Don't worry about it.

We don't talk about it in the meetings because...

We don't want to scare the newcomer.

And so I said something once, maybe a couple weeks later,

a meeting, and a guy called me a liar and came over a chair at me.

And in those days, there were chairs flying,

and people grabbing folks.

Guys would stand on their chair and chair.

It was an exciting time.

We weren't quite as civilized as we are now.

And then I went and I found my old parish priest,

and I told him what happened, and he said to me,

and he had his childhood friend there with him that was also a priest.

And he said, yeah, kid, he said, I wish that that was my story.

He said, but it's not.

And he said, but I've had a couple of parishners over the years tell me,

about these things, and that sounds like what it is.

He said, that's the real deal.

And his friend worked at a seminary down in Texas,

and he said, come with me now.

He said, I'll get you a scholarship.

You need to go to work, being a professional God person.

And I went, oh, no, thank you.

Because I knew that with my ego,

that that was not something that I should be doing.

I had another experience where I was,

it was not long after this, maybe three or four months.

I was.

After our stag meeting, we were standing there.

There was a new guy and my friend John Cleary.

And I had my hand on Cleary.

I'm talking to the new guy, and I'm going,

and, you know, God is as real as we are right here,

and I touched him on the chest.

And we all three went, and the newcomer hit the door running.

My friend John looked at me, and I looked at him, and he left,

And like three weeks later, he quit going to AA because he knew that he had a spiritual experience

and he didn't need to come anymore.

Eight years later, when he came back to Alcoholics Anonymous,

and I reminded him of this experience after he'd been sober for about six months,

he said that when he took the first drink, the memory of that vanished.

He remembered that something happened, but the experience vanished from it.

My great shame about that experience and how I processed it,

is not that I was quiet about it.

I knew that I could go running after it, and I could go, you know.

But I said, no, no, this was a free gift that came to me.

And it came to me in Alcoholics Anonymous.

And so I have stayed in Alcoholics Anonymous

as a way of being faithful to that experience.

But up until about nine years ago, I lived my life basically

as a faithful member of Alcoholics Anonymous,

and not in the awareness of that experience having happened.

Not living every moment as if everything is known, it's okay,

and we are all, it's all connected.

And then about nine years ago, a friend of mine was talking,

Father Terry, who's a professional God person,

and he was describing somebody else's experience.

And I went, oh, I guess I should start to talk about wine.

And so I do it when I come on retreats, and I do it if I talk, you know, on Sunday morning at a convention.