A workshop titled "An Unshakable Foundation for Life: A Retreat on Steps 10 & 11" at the Wilson House in East Dorset, VT

And I almost forgot to introduce

our two presenters here, Baldy Bill and Barefoot Mike. Once again, thank you so much.

They got a good sense of humor too.

Before we begin,

I'd like to to open with a prayer.

Somebody had told me that this is an Irish prayer. I don't know if it is or not. I'd rather call it a resentment prayer.

I

So why don't we get quiet and perhaps close our eyes? And

I'd like to say this prayer to start.

Lord, thank you for the people that I've been in my life.

May those who love us, may they continue to love us.

May those who do not love us may you turn their hearts. And if you can't turn their hearts, may you turn their ankles so that we may recognize them by their limping.

I

with the humor session.

We weren't we warned you Friday night. We weren't be talk. We wouldn't be talking cured this weekend.

A prayer to start the day.

God, Please guide and direct our thinking today. Please divorce our thinking from excitement, fear, anger, worry, foolish decisions, self pity,

and dishonest or self seeking motives. Please clear our thinking of these wrong motives so our thought lives will be placed on the higher plane of inspiration. Please grant us the power to align our will with Your will, for after all, you gave us brains to use.

Show us how to pause when we face agitation, doubt, or indecision today,

If we're not able to determine which action to take, let us remember to ask you for inspiration and intuitive thought or decision. Help us to relax and take it easy and not struggle, knowing that the right answers will come with practice, patience and diligence.

Let us be mindful today that our function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness and that this is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Help us to continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. And when these crop up, let us ask you at once to remove them.

Grant us courage to discuss our defects and shortcomings with someone immediately, and to make amends quickly if we've harmed someone.

Let us then turn our thoughts to someone we can help, reminding ourselves that love and tolerance of others is our code.

Let us be mindful that if our thoughts and actions are in accordance with your will today, inspiration and intuition will gradually become a working part of our minds. Please show us all through the day what our next steps are to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of any problems we ask especially for freedom from self will and to never put our ourselves ahead of other people.

Help us to be quick to see where spiritual people are right and to make use of what they offer. Let us constantly remind ourselves that we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times throughout this day, thy will not mind be done.

Show us how we can be most efficient today so we don't tire so easily burning up energy foolishly like we do when we try to arrange life to suit ourselves. We ask for the strength to fit ourselves today so we can be of maximum service to you and our fellow man.

A Prayer for Truth

Today Creator, I ask you to open my eyes and open my heart so that I can recover the truth about my life. Help me to resist the temptation to believe the lies that repress the expression of my life and my love. Give me the strength to resist the temptation to believe the lies of others that only create emotional poison in my heart.

Today, Creator, let me see what is not what I want to see. Let me hear what is not what I want to hear.

Helped me to recover my awareness so that I can see you in everything I perceive with my eyes, with my ears, with all my senses. Let me perceive with eyes of love, so that I find you wherever I go and see you in everything you create, and

help me to see you in every cell of my body and every emotion of my mind, in every person I meet. Let me see you in the rain, in the flowers, in the water, in the fire, in the animals and in the butterflies.

You are everywhere

and I am one with you.

Let me be aware of this truth

today. Let everything I do and say be an expression of the beauty in my heart. Let me be aware of the beauty and perfection in everything you create so that I can live in an eternal love with you. Thank you Creator, for the power to create a dream of heaven where everything is possible. Beginning today, I will use the power of my love to create a masterpiece of art, my own life. Amen.

This is called a prayer of tolerance.

Higher Power help me to know that the most loving quality I can possess is tolerance. It is the vision that enables me to see things from another's viewpoint. It is a generosity that concedes to others the right to their own opinions and their own peculiarities. It is the bigness that enables me to let people be happy in their own way instead of my way.

This is a Native American prayer,

O God, great Spirit of all the world, To His voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all living things. Hear me, I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the setting sun. Make my hands respect the things that you have made and make my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught your people. Let me learn the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength not to be greater than my brothers and sisters, but to fight my greatest enemy,

myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. And when life fades, as the fading sunset, may my spirit come to you without shame.

A prayer for love

today. Lord, help me to accept myself the way I am, without judgment. Help me to accept my mind the way it is, with all my emotions, my hopes and dreams, and my unique personality. Help me to accept my body the way it is with all its beauty and perfection.

Today, Lord, clean my mind of emotional poison and self judgment so that I can live in peace and love. Let the love for myself be so strong that I never again reject myself or sabotage my happiness and personal freedom. Let me love and accept myself without judgment because when I judge myself, I find myself guilty and then need to punish myself with the power of self love. Let all my relationships be based on love and respect.

Help me to let go of the need to tell others how to think or how to be. Let me accept the people I love just the way they are without judgment, because when I judge them and blame them, I find them guilty and want to punish them. Help me Lord, to love everything you create with no conditions, because when I reject your creation, I reject you. Today, Lord help me to start my life over with the power of self love.

Help me to explore life, to take risks, and to love myself unconditionally.

Let me open my heart to the love that is my birthright so that I can share my love wherever I go. Amen.

If you see what needs to be repaired and how to repair it, then you have found a piece of the world that God has left for you to complete. But if you only see what is wrong and how ugly it is, than it is yourself that needs repair.

This is a piece I wrote called the Bullets of Life.

It sometimes seems that life has a tendency to come straight at us like a speeding bullet. The problem is that we think we're the target. We are not the target of life's happenings. We think we are. The truth is that life just happens. The bullets are just random firings. But we think the problems in our lives are like guided missiles headed for a target on our forehead. But if the Big Book is correct when it says all our troubles are of our own making, then we're the ones that paint the target and

we go out searching for the bullets.

In other instances, we are sleeping when the bullets are fired and we're not alert enough to move out of the way. When we awaken spiritually, we realize that life is not out to get us. We are just another energy field that the bullets of life pass through. We are not the targets.

This is a quote by Albert Einstein. He has some really beautiful spiritual things that he said.

Our technology has surpassed our humanity.

What an incredible line.

Our technology has surpassed our humanity. A human being is part of a whole called by us, quote UN quote, the universe apart, limited in time and space. He expresses himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison

by widening our circle of compassion, to embrace all life creature, all living creatures, the whole of nature and its beauty.

The search for serenity.

The search is yours and mine. Each finds his way with help, but yet alone. Serenity is the goal. It comes to those who learn to wait and grow, for each can learn to understand himself and say I found the joy in being me and knowing you and knowledge of the depths I can descend, a chance to climb the heights above my head. The way is not so easy all the time. Our feet will stumble often as we go.

A friend may need to give some extra help

as we once gave to others when in the hour of fear. This is no picnic path that we have found, but yet compared to other days and other times, it seems a better route. We lost our way before in fear, guilt and resentments held too long. Self pity had its way with us. We found the perfect alibi for all our faults. We do not know what life may bring from from day-to-day. Tomorrow is a task not yet begun,

and we could fail to pass its test.

But this will wait. While in today we do the best we can, today we try to grow, Today we live. We seek to know, to give, to share with you.

This body has lived with father, mother, husband, and all. This body has served the husband, so you may call it a wife. It has prepared dishes for all so you can call it a cook. It has done all sorts of scrubbing and menial work, so you can call it a servant. But if you look at the thing from another standpoint, you will realize that this body has served none but God. For when I serve my father, mother, husband and others, I simply consider them as different manifestations of the Almighty and serve them as such.

When I sat down to prepare food, I did so as if it were a ritual, for the food cooked was after all, for God. Whatever I did, I did in the spirit of divine service. Hence I was not quite worldly, though always engage in household activities. I had but one ideal to serve all as God, to do everything for the sake of God.

What I thought I'd do is kind of real quickly go through what's in the packet, because there's some really powerful stuff in the packet

which you'll all be expected to memorize because there's going to be a test.

Now there has a table of contents because it's so extensive, there's no way you'll ever find anything if it doesn't have a table of contents.

Page 2, which is the first piece, is Prayers in the Big Book

prior to the stories.

Then there's a guide that a friend of ours put together on starting the day and doing an evening review out of the Big Book.

Mike just read that prayer to start the day.

We outlined, or Mike outlined first tips on steps 10 and 11 in the big Book, which starts on page five, and then on page 7, tips and principles in steps 10 and 11, in the 12 and 12 and a highlight on that.

Then there's an interpretation of the Lords Prayer, sort of the Lords Prayer explained or expounded upon.

There's just a piece on flux on meditation that someone

either said or was from a book.

There's the Halo meditation, which you start your day and end your day with a Halo meditation. It's kind of quick and easy.

It's been kind of powerful. I had sent that out to a group of people and they appreciated it.

Then there's a prayer for each of the 12 steps.

Then there's the first of the different types of personal inventories, sort of 10 step stuff. Besides how it is in the big book. In the 12:00 and 12:00, we drew out about four or five pieces that have different ways to take an inventory to see, you know, how am I doing in my spiritual path? How am I doing currently

with certain topics and certain

spiritual practices or however you want to wear it? And this one has 26 different words and descriptions a little bit afterwards saying you know how you doing in these areas.

Then there was an article on Step 10 is not just to be done at night

and

it talks about the 12 and 12 in the Big Book and all the different inventories that are mentioned.

And the one fact that I thought was kind of interesting is that, you know, most often in the Fellowship, you hear people say that the 10th step is done at night. But the only night time in the only night time review that's mentioned in the Big Book is part of the 11th step. And in the 10th step,

the moment by moment spot check inventory is mentioned 15 times and the evening review is only mentioned twice. So I've never understood where the 10th step is done at night comes from because it doesn't really say it in that regard

in our literature. And like we had shared and like I,

I try to pass along to people as it's a moment by moment inventory. And you know, whether you call your nighttime inventory a 10 or 11, it really doesn't matter for me as long as you're doing it, you know what I mean? That's kind of how I see it.

Then there's the How to Listen to God pamphlet. I've got to be honest with you, I've read lots of spiritual literature and I've listened to lots of spiritual tapes and this had to Listen to God pamphlet, which was used by early A A is one of the most powerful pieces of spiritual literature I've ever read.

Then there's another sort of inventory process of it's from the Akron Intergroup news on on page 17 in the packet from December 1998. It talks about

ways that we get off the beam. It talks about exhaustion, dishonesty and patience, argumentative depression, frustration. There's a list of 16 things that shows whether we've gotten off the beam.

There's an article called The Serenity Prayer Way of Life. There's another sort of tense step way of inventorying called What's your score from the 1947 A a Grapevine, which again is, you know, how am I currently doing spiritually? How am I currently doing and working my program and getting results from it?

Then there's the the actual meditation that's described in the 12 and 12 on how to use the Saint Francis prayer in its entirety from the 12:00 and 12:00. There's another little meditation technique called the Six Steps to Meditation in Motion that talks about exercise and meditating. With that as a tool,

there's some thoughts and some practices called the Guide to Meditation and Prayer and Guidance

that someone we know had put together. That's rather powerful.

There's a 7 minutes with God how to plan a daily quiet time and this includes using the Bible and and having a meditation and it talks about take a half a minute with it, which is a prayer for guidance, 4 minutes and reading the Bible, 2 1/2 minutes of prayer, adoration, confession, Thanksgiving and supplication and that's your 7 minutes with God.

There's the What is Acceptance article that we had read last night that Bill Wilson wrote in 1962 in the Grapevine.

There's another ten step way of inventorying. It's called 8 Questions to Staying on Track.

That's another way of inventorying how well are we doing? It talks about who am I recovering for?

What am I resisting? What is the lesson here? What am I not doing that needs to be done? Am I losing my energy to this? Whom am I giving my power to? Who's in control and am I at peace with myself?

Then there's a 11 step guidance meeting format for people that perhaps want to start an 11 step meeting.

That's followed by Moore 11 step guidance, meaning stuff. Then there's the five finger prayer.

I'm not going to go into that. There's something funny in that, but you'll have to figure it out.

You'll notice who gets the middle finger.

Sorry about that.

Then there's an original third step and 7th step prayer that Doctor Bob used to use.

Very powerful stuff.

There's a set aside prayer that very often we start studies with to just have an open mind and a new experience.

There's the open mind prayer,

which for me is another powerful way of starting something like this, to just have an open mind, a new experience.

Umm, there's pocket readings for throughout the day, which is just to help with

sort of keeping God as we go throughout the day. Something to keep in our pocket.

At least that's how the original format was. We squeezed everything down here because we didn't. There would have been a whole lot more than 35 pages in this packet. There's the Earl M memorial prayer. Earl M was the gentleman who wrote Doctor, Heal thyself in the Big Book, who just a physician. Heal thyself in the Big Book who just recently died. And this is a memorial prayer that he had written that was said at his funeral.

I just recently again listened to some stuff that he had done. There was really powerful. He did this one talk called the Pipeline Talk, and he talks about being a pipeline for God. It's one of the most powerful spiritual talks I've ever heard.

There's an Alcoholics Anonymous prayer that uses that starts with each letter of the words Alcoholics and Anonymous. That's actually really cool.

There's a little piece on the mind in our thought life.

There's a piece called Sadness as a meditation.

Hopefully some of the things that we've, that we've tried to talk about this weekend. I know Mike did, especially that, you know, we sometimes label things as just, you know, not good, negative, whatever. And it's interesting how that can be used as a spiritual practice, which then gives it power and which then

changes how we look at it and changes how it affects our life, which is very, very powerful. Like in the Serenity Prayer, all we got to do is just change our perspective towards certain things and all of a sudden just everything changes. It's just amazing. It's just that simple.

There's a meditation on compassion. There's a really beautiful piece by Ayan Levanzant called Be Still, which talks of sort of like about meditation. That's that's really powerful.

Here's a cool, here's a cool little inventory for somebody to try. It's called an inventory for those who disturb us. It says write an inventory of all the things that are good and right about the people that disturb you in your life. Talk about getting a different perspective towards somebody.

There's a serenity prayer exercise. There's a third step prayer exercise, a seven step prayer exercise. Just meditating on each part of those prayers once, one part each day.

They're spiritual books that give you exercises to do that are really powerful.

The last one continues up to the next page. Then there's a little thing that I had recommended to lots of people.

It's a piece on Are you sure? You know, we always think that this is the way it is and this is the only way that it is. And it's just a little thing that you can put either on your mirror or somewhere that you see all the time that says, Are you sure? Because sometimes we just have these thoughts in our head and we, we think we're so sure. And there's no way we could ever be sure about most things, you know?

And there's a tip on staying connected that I've been using for years and that I have a wristwatch that every hour it beeps and for maybe a minute I just acknowledge God. It's a really great way to just get centered and then get back to my day and acknowledging God throughout the day.

It's a little piece on my way isn't working. Sure, no one here can relate.

There's some prayers on how to start guidance that piece that I read. All for the sake of God.

A really cool piece on A View from above.

A really cool piece on thoughts about death,

the law of motive, and then some meditations at the end to consider. And then the last piece Mike had said to me one day, you know, we're always inventory negative stuff. I wonder if we could come up with like a gratitude inventory at something like that. And the next day I emailed them with a gratitude inventory. Basically it's the resentment inventory turns in a positive way. It's the exact resentment inventory out of the big book turned into a positive way. It's really kind of cool.

I kind of want to in regards to all this stuff. I kind of wanted to share something.

You know, I keep talking about that weekend that I went away or that's 10 days that I went away and there were so many things that came out of it. One of the biggest things that came out of it for me was that

I no longer see meditation as a place that I go. I see meditation as a place that I try to come from throughout my day. Like for a long time I thought of meditation as sort of a vacation, you know, But then it's like back to reality. And now I kind of see meditation as where I come from and that life is sort of the vacation that I just go visit every once in a while. And then I try to, instead of go to meditation every once in a while. I try to come from meditation as I go through my day.

That life is a meditation. If I'm in the here and now and if I'm,

you know, one of the things I like saying to people in an e-mail is when I sign off is, you know, don't forget to look for God today.

That's that's a living meditation. So many things we miss and so many ways that we can see a higher power, you know, maybe even starting my day with, you know, Lord help me to see you today. You know, it's just an amazing thing that, like I said, I always used to see it as kind of a vacation and something that I go to. And now I really see it as where I come from and try to stay in throughout the day.

We read yesterday the 10 step promises

and what I like to think of, well at least the first line of that paragraph on 8084, it says and we have cease fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. Now, I think it's pretty safe to say in this room

everyone has

ceased fighting alcohol. I think that's a safe assumption.

Maybe not, but I think so.

But what about the other things in our lives? What about some of the external problems that that we have? Some of the things that just might be objectionable to us, some of the things that we're just not able to accept today, which may be some of the things that we read last night could help us with.

And those are so many outside things. Maybe a death of a family member.

Kathy and I got into a car accident last summer, went through some stuff with that. I got to experience my first bout with depression, which was a real interesting thing.

Couple months ago I sprained my ankle, you know, and I got to experience some stuff with that, some real positive things.

But that's still outside stuff.

How about the inside stuff within us?

We have ceased fighting

anyone or anything,

including ourselves,

Mark H from Texas says. And it took me a long time to understand this. I just didn't get it when he would say it, Mark says. You cannot defeat your ego.

And I didn't get it. I mean, for years I had heard we must smash our ego. You have to become entirely rid of self. You got to,

you know, deflate the ego, ego deflation at depth, as the 12 and 12 says. And, you know, we just got so fanatical about this concept of smashing our ego.

Some current experience with that is Bill had recently given me an exercise to do and I still continue to do it. And it's in accordance with my my watch beeping every hour. And one of the things I do with that is,

dear God, please smash my ego.

And I went, I went for a walk in the park one day. And after the walk, I sat on the bench and my watch beat. So, you know, I'm like Pavlov dog now after a couple days of doing this watch beep, I do that.

I It's kind of instinctive

and the thought occurred to me, what violence

God, please smash my ego. And at least for that second,

it just occurred to me that

that's really violent.

You know, like here I go again, thinking

that my ego is this bad thing.

I can use it incorrectly,

It can be labeled as a bad thing,

but if I wasn't supposed to have an ego, then I don't think the creator would have gave it to me at birth.

That's part of my humanness. It's like what Bill W talks about in the 12:00 and 12:00 and I believe it comes

under Step 4

about instincts gone astray and we and we misuse our our natural and God giving instincts. But they are God-given and surely they must be good. But we're the ones that that misuse them and and they get out of hand and such.

So I begin to get a sense

of what Mark talked about with You cannot defeat your ego. What I've learned to do is just watch the ego manifest.

Just watch it. Let it do its thing. You know, one of the manifestations

of ego for me is anger, especially when I don't get my own way. And then that can go into self pity.

But there are often many and I don't do this perfectly. I really, I was going to say I wish I did. I I'm glad I don't,

but there are times throughout this day where and it happened this morning. I will literally experience anger well up in me

and I see it and I recognize it and I'm able to say something like that's interesting angers here, but I am not angry. Anger's present, but I don't become the anger.

It's just as it's such a new way to live.

I couldn't do this stuff before, before the 12 steps, particularly steps 10 and 11. And this stuff is taken years, years and years.

Well, I haven't been sober years and years and years. But to me it seems like years and years and years sometimes.

You know we have human emotions. Happiness, sadness, gladness. Mad

their human emotions. Don't fight them,

but you don't have to attach them either. See, it's when I attach to my emotions and I think I am the emotion, I become the sadness. That piece on sadness in in in the packet that that Bill talked about.

It talks about experiencing your sadness, but you don't have to be

this sadness. And I think there's a real fine line between the two.

I'm a human being with human emotions. I'm going to experience these human emotions.

For me to want to do anything less is not human, and I really think I'm perpetuating violence upon myself.

I'm almost. I wish I knew where all that came from. Along those lines, something that struck me not too long ago was that if if I believe that God created everything, then God created the ego too.

Which is kind of an interesting thought.

And

Father Ed Dowling, which was Bill Wilson's second spiritual advisor, he said at one of our international conventions that if any of us make it into heaven, it's simply because we are backing out of hell.

And to be honest with you, in looking at perhaps the fact that God created the ego,

what I started seeing was that

in nature there's always these opposites,

you know, cold air, hot air that creates this. You know, when it comes to growth and change, so to speak, there's always these opposites that are pushing each other

and that it's almost like the ego is sort of the opposite and that it can be looked at as negative or bad. But

the ego has brought me to a point where I hit bottom and was willing to consider another way besides my own. That the ego, as I see it, is used sort of by God to change the direction that I'm going into, then seek him a whole lot more than if I didn't have this sort of this sort of opposite. You know, it's almost like the magnet, you know, that

the opposites bring about growth and that the negative quote, UN quote, which I hope we've conveyed, you know, good or bad. You know, Shakespeare said, you know, there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so

I that

those things that had happened to me had brought me to a point where I landed on my knees and I hit my bottom and I was considered and I

change the direction I was heading in, hop to go in the opposite direction, more of along the lines of what I think my higher power always wanted for me. But I needed to go through that in order to hit bottom to then reverse the direction that I was heading in.

All right, we're going to do a closing Saint Francis prayer meditation exercise with you guys.

So

what we're going to do is

basically

come into meditation

and we're going to read each of the lines

from the Saint Francis prayer meditation or from the Saint Francis prayer. We're going to read a line and just pause for about two minutes

and let's meditate on each one of these lines and try to internalize it. This is one of the reasons why the homework was the way it was so familiar, right? Excuse me, that's on tape. To familiarize ourselves with this incredible prayer and to perhaps think about what this prayer is saying.

Because for me, this prayer is an advanced way of life that's very foreign to me for a very long time. And the beauty and the simplicity and the power of this prayer is just unfathomable. And the depth, but it also speaks to us at whatever level we're at, which I think is the beauty of spirituality

in this program.

So why don't we get comfortable? Because this is going to take about 1/2 hour. We purposely waited to do this

and give you some other meditations to get a little bit more comfortable, but perhaps sitting still for a while. And this one is going to be the longer one.

And again, you know, if you need to, if you got a scratch, itch it, you know, this isn't so rigid.

And let's close our eyes and get comfortable.

Let's again take

four or five very deep diaphragmatic breaths

and perhaps try to

settle our body in,

settle our minds

to just be here and now.

I

and as we go this go through this, perhaps consider

the areas of our life that we are

practicing, what each of these lines say,

but also a look at the parts of our life that perhaps we're not practicing it, and consider what our life would be like if we were.

Lord,

make me a channel of your piece.

That where there is hatred, I may bring love.

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.

What would that look like in my home?

What would that look like in traffic?

Were on the road,

standing in line on the supermarket,

past stuff with our families

at our Home. Group

that where there is discord, I may bring harmony.

That where there is error, I may bring truth,

and may I do that in a compassionate and considerate way.

That where there is doubt, that may bring faith.

That where there is despair, I may bring hope.

That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

I

that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted.

To understand rather than to be understood.

To love

rather than to be loved.

For it is by self forgetting that one finds

it is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.

Perhaps dying a little bit more to the ego

in awakening a little bit more to that part. Worthiness it is of God.

Amen.

How'd you guys enjoy that?

How'd you guys enjoy this weekend?

Me too,

in closing while I wait for Bill to get back from the men's room.

No, it was totally not planned.

Neither was most of this weekend.

I want to just thank each and everyone of you for being here for me.

I heard a man say recently that during times like this, gatherings like this, weekends like this,

what we have is a dialogue with each other.

It may seem externally that Bill and I for the most part have been talking with you,

but really it's been a two way communication. You guys have been talking with us too, of course, during the breaks and stuff, but during the sessions and while we've been in meditation,

I think there's been a constant dialogue that's been going back and forth. I don't think we've could have done and said some of the things that we've said this weekend

without your permission. Some people call that spiritual license.

I think this weekend it's it's been, it's been permission has been given through the unspoken word. And I think it's a really neat thing. And the unspoken dialogues that have gone on this weekend has been just phenomenal. It's been a really transformative process for me.

I want to let you know that

a lot of you in this room, I do know you and I know you personally

and some of you, I don't know you that well,

but after this weekend, I know you a little bit better and hopefully you've gotten to known us a little bit better.

I want to know you more

because I want to know me a little more,

and I want to know this thing we call God a little more

and more and more and more

because after all, I am alcoholic

and more is better.

And I love you all very, very much.

Thank you.

This is from Doctor Bob and a Good Alzheimer's on page 136.

It's talking about the early days of AA.

It says the AAA members of that time did not consider meetings necessary to maintain sobriety. They were simply desirable. Quote UN quote. Morning devotion and quiet time, however, were musts.

Now, with that quote, I'm not suggesting that meetings are important, but what I am suggesting is that meetings

are as important as OR. Meditation and quiet time are as important as meetings

and is described there as musts.

There's two things that I wanted to close with. Both of them are

near and dear to my heart. And

the last piece contains

the essence of my faith in the essence of my concept of a higher power.

The first one is something that I was like closing, or I often like closing when I tell my story, and this is called a reflection on prayer. I ask God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for help that I might do great things. I was given illness that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have people's praise. I was given weakness that I might feel the need for God.

I ask for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing I asked for but everything I hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayer was answered. I am among all people, most richly blessed,

and like I said, this last thing

for me contains the essence of my faith.

This is from A Course of Miracles,

which is a book that has been a large part of my spirituality, and the line goes like this.

I'm going to read it twice because it's really heavy.

It says, What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens, all events past, present and to come are gently planned by one whose only purpose is your good?

What could you not accept if you but knew that everything that happens, all events past, present and to come, are gently planned by one whose only purpose is your good?

Thank you for this incredible weekend.

I still feel like singing the Mickey Mouse song.

Please drive safely home.

A few of you have shared with me something that truly warms my heart, and that's that something has been stirred up inside of you to either get back to or to get to doing certain practices.

It's interesting because after we've been in a A for a little while, knowing what to do isn't the problem.

The willingness and the power to do it is the problem.