Don P. from Aurora, CO at the 6th Annual Big Book Weekend at Tanglewood in Camden, ME

Let's see, he knew one of them would. There's always somebody around.

Well, my first day out was one of those remarkable days, then back into federal court on the same parole officer that put me in said to the judge.

He's been going there.

Let's put him on a street and watch him. We'll know within six days whether he's going to make it or not.

Let's just put him on the street and watch him.

So to everyone's surprise, my parole is reinstated.

Now what that matters that every night I had to report to the state parole officer and once a month or once a week to start out with the federal parole officer.

OK, he and I had a talk and this was on a Memorial Day weekend, which was a long weekend. I had $17.00 left of the $25 kick out money on a size 80 suit that had a flashing neon sign on the back that said just out

convict beware. That's what it felt like

and we decided to leave me in jail. He and I concluded Just stay in jail over the weekend

is a long weekend in that shape is not a very wise thing to do.

So I spent the weekend redoing what we're doing here. I relooked at my life. I worked the steps again, if you will. I got spiritually fit because I had no job and no place to live and $17.00

and that's all I knew.

And as I went out the tier, when the federal guy picked me up on, I think it was a Tuesday because we had a Monday,

picked me up to take me in for processing.

As I walked by the cells, one of the guys I had known said you're going to need a job

and handed me a slip of paper. He said if it gets real bad, go see this guy and I flipped that paper in my pocket,

went down and the feds processed me. This was fairly early 9930. They finished processing me and took me over to the state parole office and he was real clear. He said to either have a job by tomorrow or back you go. That's clear. I don't have to interpret that. What does that mean? It means have a job by tomorrow or back you go.

Since I started listening to the voice of God, it's always been very clear.

So I left his office and went to get on the bus because I knew I could get a job at Burger King out in Aurora. I knew the guy. We had history. He'd put me to work

but there was a new sign on the bus,

it said have exact fear. Drivers carry no change.

I could not

get on the bus.

Couldn't do it

and I'm in fit spiritual condition and I'm ready and willing and I can't get on that bus.

I couldn't risk the possibility of not having the right fear and being asked in front of all those people to get off that bus.

God uses whatever is at hand.

OK. As a result of that, I got this piece of paper out and it's just down the street, three blocks.

Minuteman Employment Agency.

Jack, see jackets. So I walked down and I did what you all taught me to do.

The cards play like they're dealt.

I'll be open. If you can't take me as I am, I don't be here. Anyway.

So I walked in and said, Jack, my name is Don and I'm an alcoholic and I've had some drug problems and I just got off state penitentiary and I'm on parole and I'm on the federal parole for smuggling marijuana and I need a job. What do you got?

He got excited. I said. You're just what I've been looking for.

OK,

so he took me over to Dixon Paper Company

with my size 80 suit and all that and Dixon told us that they don't hire ex cons. That did not bother me because I'm not an ex-con. I'm a man and I've been to prison and there really is a difference. Ex cons get hassled and hustled and end up going back. I don't want to do that.

But Dixon did say we can use him loading box cars. As long as he stays on your payroll,

shoots me. I don't care who pays me. I just need a job so I don't go back.

And

that's about 1111 thirty. We're coming close to lunchtime,

Jack said you want to work the rest of the day, and I could tell he was hesitant. I said yeah, I really do. I just soon stay busy.

I don't believe God ever tests me, but He does use whatever is at hand

to help me become aware of who and where I am.

We got me a hotel room, got me a pair of Levi's and AT shirt and some different shoes. Those prison shoes are just the worst things.

They're just not good shoes. They're the what the Navy makes for Navy guys that are rejected by the Navy

sent to us. Anyway, he took me out to Abbott Laboratories for the afternoon to unload a truckload of dope.

Abbott Laboratories makes the stuff I liked the very best.

Nas oxen Methamphetamine hydrochloride.

If I had a drug, a choice, that would be the one.

And I'm working alongside a kid that's got a bandage on his arm as we chat.

Turns out that he gave himself a bad shot the night before. He's a speed freakin and here I am

and I became aware that day unloading that stuff. All of my obsessions have been removed. I didn't want it.

I worked hard that day. I had no desire whatsoever. I became aware that God had done what was promised for me. My head was clear. I worked so hard that day. The dock manager offered me a full time job

and the spirit intervened again and I heard my mom say no. I don't think this is a good place for me to work.

OK, what a day this was.

Went back to work for Dixon Paper unloading box cars. I'm just going to shoot the shit with you for a while because I love this. This run inside this. You'll enjoy this too.

After I got through that day, I went to York Street to the meeting. I did exactly what I was told.

Long set of stairs up to the top. I walked up and I'm scared. I don't know anybody

and at the top of the stairs is read

not only seen him a week before and I've been dealing with him for over a year

and I walked up there and said read, you probably don't Remember Me. And so I fell

and he laughed

and said welcome.

I talked with his wife one time and she said that was really an unusual day. He came home from work early, said I don't know why we need to get to the club. She said we never went to the club that time of day. He said we need to get over the club

and several other times in my life

Rita Dottie were there at crisis points when I needed family. So start looking for your reeds and your daughters.

OK,

so I anyway, I ended up unloading box cars down here for Dixon

and

I was able to get jobs through Jack for some of the other bombs at York St. Come in and off the street trying to get sober. Need a few bucks. Well, Jack's running that kind of agency, so I help get little jobs for him and I'll need a job that was about 12, maybe four weeks sober. And it's a hot day in July and we're unloading stuff out of a box car. I'm inside and he's putting it on pallets

and he hollered in. He says come here for a minute, please,

he said. Look down the tracks and tell me what you see.

I look down at tracks and waddling toward us with this big ugly green parrot.

I said well hell, I may have some stroke, but I see a big ugly green parrot, he said. Thank God

that's not from middle 7 DTS,

he says. No, you know, we got to catch that bird because we're both going to tell this story at the club and if we don't have the bird to show them, they're going to think we're crazy. And I'll kept that pair till I lost track. Al. It was an ugly thing

and that's what I did for a while

and then one day they called me in and apparently there'd been a change. They they may not hire ex cons, but they turns out they do hire men who've been to prison.

They decided they want to put me on their payroll. Working on the dock loading trucks.

Now what this meant is that I had to fill out a job application. You know how those are. They want your last 10 years work history

OK dish room Colorado State Penitentiary

1966 drug smuggler

and so on and I did I just put it down there. That's what you told me to do just,

well, that's what I did for a living.

Dispatch comment to his office the next day and he not become friends.

He's got my application in a really funny look on his face,

He said did you really do that? And I said yeah, and I did. He said, did you get it across? I said, yeah, I did.

I got turned in later, but I got it across, he says. Well, I've been thinking,

we've got this little delivery truck that delivers paper to the print shops in downtown Denver and then goes out east of Denver to deliver sex to some of the stores. And that's a tough little route, but it seems to me that you have the skills

to get stuff from here to there under difficult circumstances.

Do you want the job? Well, of course I wanted the job

on my route. Every two weeks out east,

two things occurred. I was the one driver that didn't know when he was going to get off work. Part of my job at the end of the day was to take the packages over to the Greyhound and the Trailways bus station, and there's a line of trucks out there. You never know for sure. And this was just a little little pissy inside, just a little agitated. Everybody else gets off. I don't.

One day I'm sitting on the line waiting to drop the packages and remember my friend Jim who'd killed some people in a blackout. I just want to do the first step with also

two prison guards come in with him.

They're shipping him back to Florida

now. The chancellor he and I ever meeting again is infinitesimal, but here we are. Just crossroads in time. We were on time, both of us, to spend 5 minutes where we each knew because we were got pretty close. He's OK and I'm OK. We had our little chat and I've not heard from him or seen him since, but God let's everything come full circle. I don't have anything lingering in the back of my mind about Jen. He's OK.

We talked.

The place that gave me the cowboy boots and the shirt

was on my route. Every two weeks I dropped sacks off.

I've been taught to pray prior to making any amend. I stand ready at anytime, anywhere to get it done. But I'm to pray ahead of time because while I'm trying to set my life in order, this is not an end in itself. My real purpose is to fit myself to be a maximum service to God knows about me.

So pray at a time. Now I've got a job, I've got the money in my pocket, $10.95 easy money,

and I pull up out front before I take the sacks and not pray. If this is the day somehow let me know I'm ready.

For a couple months nothing happened. And then one day I'm standing there. He's really busy. This particular day he signed the invoice and it just came all over me. This is the day. Do it. I asked him for a couple minutes of his time. He said I'm really busy. I said this is really important. My life is at stake here. He didn't know who I was. He'd seen me as 130 lbs of walking death. I'm a chubby little truck driver now with muscles

and a glint, a different kind of glint in my eye.

So I LED it all out to him, who I was, what it was, why it was so important that I get straight with him, and that I really did need to get straight with him.

And I could see as I was talking to him, he didn't want the hell I was talking about. But this is a kind man. He got down on his knees, hands and knees under a counter, and went through some old shoe boxes of receipts, pretending to look for mine.

That's pretty kind.

Finally stood up and he said well kid, it looks to me like we wrote that off, so can you.

I stopped by that store just before Christmas every year to update him

because he was interested how the boys and I were doing and oh, it's been 10 years ago now. I went by and he had died and his son was running the store

so I took the boy aside. Boy hell took him aside and told him the story and watched his face.

He said, Yep, that was my dad.

It goes so far beyond. I'm sorry.

Those kind of events touch me deeply in my soul and in my heart.

They are the kind of stuff that's the meat

of this way of life.

How can you have a flat spot when you make kindness at that depth?

So I really think I'm more and more I'm beginning to understand that this is about kindness

came home to me in real depth a year and a half ago October.

I had to go in for some surgery and the surgery was very successful. They took out what they needed to take out and was so successful they sent me home the next morning

and at 2:30 or two, 2:30 in the morning, Jackie's rushing me back to the hospital because I'm in serious trouble

now. Please hear this

before I went in. I know that in a hospital setting, somebody along the way is going to give me morphine and I won't even know about it. It's just the way it's going to be. And I'm not a drug addict. But I also know morphine is not a good thing for me to have. I think I'd probably like it.

Don't know, but I've got a got a clue now. Early in sobriety. I would have simply asked God to protect me during that

because one of one of the girls in our little group when we're early sobriety had the same experience, went in and she said they'd give her a shot and she would simply say, well, God, they've hooked me again. Would you please relieve this addiction like you did the last one? And she walked out free. So there's a time. That's what I would have done

at my present state of consciousness, if you will, my sense of God's presence. I started to make that prayer before I went in and hit me. I don't need to ask for that. I need to acknowledge that

I know I will be protected. I need not concern myself with it. I will be protected. So we're back in the ER and they're doing some things that hurt

even even there's funny stuff goes on there. You can laugh at anything. This one nurse, what she's doing is causing me to scream terribly. Jackie said she didn't hear a word, just she should have been in here. Oh my God, this hurt. And all of a sudden my head went,

I said, what did you do? And she said, I just gave you a shot of morphine. So I threw up.

I guess that's what you're supposed to do, your first shot of opiates. I did anyway.

Then I go ahead and finally this nurse said to me, sweetie, I'm so sorry I'm torturing you. And all I can think of is you're not my sweetie.

Don't call me sweetie. That's what waitresses call customers. You ain't.

Morphine didn't touch the pain.

I don't know. It's 10 minutes or 20 minutes short period. After that my head goes,

I said, did you just give me some more morphine? She says, yeah. I said well you can stop because it won't do any good.

Didn't touch the pain. Nothing they did touched the pain. But I'll tell you what got me through it,

Jackie rubbing my head

that touched it.

That's about kindness. And this staff was so kind to me. They really were kind.

We got through the crisis,

no need to go into the bloody details.

I just, I don't want to do that again.

So what do you do when you get somebody like that,

when you can't touch their pain? Well, nothing you can do can touch the pain and you want so badly to help them

and you know you can't. You just comfort them along the way. We forget sometimes that comfort is more important than solution.

We're kind of sometimes lose track of that

solution is OK Bill warns us about it. Sometimes we start them off too soon. They made a nurse for a while.

I learned that with Chuck.

You love Chuck

about 5 foot two mean as a snake,

hated everybody. Chuck had been sober eight years and then work went to work at Hazleton, and then somehow or another was taken drunk.

And then he'd gone to work for a couple other places and he'd have a couple years here and he'd get drunk. And this had happened often enough. By the time he got to Denver, nobody could stand him. So they sent him to me, literally send him to my to my group, look me up and he gets right up in my face and just dared me to say anything meaningful

and he said don't give me any of that big book crap. I tried that and it didn't work.

OK,

all I could think of to say, well Chuck, what do you think of God? Oh, I hate this son of a bitch. I understand it. Someday down the road we all get a couple minutes with him and I can't wait for my turn. Tell him what I think of this shitty deal and I'm going to hell with my friends.

I thought, well this is good.

He believes he's got a really bad attitude, but he believes we can work with that. Would not call me sponsor.

Hated a hated everybody. There's no way I could do anything for Chuck. He was in pain. This was a desperately wounded animal. Came from a bad home to start with, and his own attitudes made it even worse later. Chuck was not unemployable. He'd had 300 and some odd jobs by this point,

OK, Chuck was easily employable. He just couldn't keep a job because somebody say somebody didn't like. And he, that's the noise he makes, by the way.

Yeah,

so I prayed. What do I do with this one Lord?

So I had him come over every day and I had my work was such that I was, I drove around town a lot. I was in the roofing business. So.

So just throw him in a van with me. And we drove around and he spewed hate.

I don't care. He's right on out the window. I don't care. And we'd come home for lunch and we'd go out and eat, spew some more hate and we'd begin to go to some meetings. And he was hateful. He's the kind when he walked in the room, people literally backed up. He didn't have to say a word,

just the energy just came off of him. I got to tell you the truth.

I like that kind. If that gets turned, you've got a new missionary ready to send into the field. Among the the wild animals

took nearly a year

of just nursing him along, going to some meetings that oh,

it wouldn't. I wasn't sponsored, but I was his friend, the only one he had. We established that somewhere along the way and he would listen to me a little bit and he liked coming over the house. And one of the things to get him involved, we had to set up job at our group. We set up the chairs, make the coffee, and eventually Chuck was trustworthy enough. I knew he wouldn't put arsenic in the coffee. We started letting him make it,

and then we'd clean up and drive him home.

This one particular night, a lady who's about 10 years sober came in and she was not in good shape. Her son had just had an overdose of drugs and she was angry, and she was angry at A and she made the mistake of starting to pick on me personally. It didn't have anything to do with me, but she had to lean on somebody. And I'm the only friend in the world he had and the only resource he had was to defend and protect me.

And he started sputtering, trying real hard. And he finally said oh F you lady

stomped out the door and I know he's going to drink because we made a deal at the beginning. Our deal was this. If he was going to work with me, he reserved the right to one more drunk. He said if it doesn't work this time I am going to go drink myself to death

and I won't show up unless you agree to that. And he tested me on that three times, called me from a bar and said I'm sitting here with an open beer in front of me and all I could see was Chuck wouldn't stop you for the world. Think it's stupid but I won't stop you. And he'd always end up at the house.

Couple of members of the group won't follow him because right down the streets bar I didn't chase him. We had a deal.

After the meeting, he comes back in,

goes out to the kitchen and cleans up the coffee. Damn, they're breaking the cups

and on the ride home I just, I'm quiet. I'll wait for it.

You don't stir a rattlesnake when it's shaking its tail.

Believe it alone.

And he said, you know I was going to go drink, don't you? I said, I know. Remember our deal? I promised to never stop you. Yeah, well, I was headed down there to the satire. I was going to get drunk

and I thought, well, wait a minute, I made that coffee, It's part of my job. I ought to go clean it up and then I'll go drink,

came back and clean it up. And he said while he was cleaning it up, he thought,

it's my job, it's my group. I'm not letting that bitch run me out of here.

That's a spiritual awakening.

While later we came by the house and Jackie had baked some chocolate chip cookies.

She loves to beg. This was the

top pediatric hat,

administrative head nurse and the CRC unit at the University of Colorado Hospital and Children's Hospital.

But can she make cookies?

She can't program the VCR,

but she can make some cookies. Anyway, we came in and she gave us each a cookie,

Chuck says. That was good.

Now to a cookie maker that means, oh, have a sack. And she gave him a sack of cookies and we got out to the car and he just broke my heart.

About a year now, sober, just beginning to come around, he said. Why would she give me a sack of cookies?

Good question.

I was able to say, oh, it's just because she thinks you remember the family, John.

And I swear to you, that's the day he changed.

Not through intensive step work.

Somebody thought he was a member of the family,

so we got cooking. I love to talk about Chuck. He called me before we came out here and asked me if I was going to talk about it again this weekend.

We're getting there.

We we finished the step work. He started becoming a damn near a decent person. People didn't run from him anymore and he he dropped FU. It's still colorful, but he dropped that one.

Came over one day.

This is a little short guy.

His dad had died and he'd inherited a little bit of money and we used that to pay off what amends he had.

And he said there's one last thing I didn't tell you. And I think I need to tell you.

Every time I've ever told anybody this, they've laughed at me.

And because we had taken the time to form a relationship, I was able to say, Chuck, you know, I will not laugh at you for anything. And he knew that was true. He had tested me.

I said, you know what, all I have ever wanted to be was an actor

and the spirit went to work. I know some actors

IR one,

but I know some people get paid to do that.

And he also talked about never having any fun. Part of what I did with Chuck along the way was I gave him a little VCR and started feeding my Abbott and Costello movies at him one at a time so he could laugh at least once a week. OK

to this day he got in trouble about a month ago with in his head he said I'm just going to go home and put on an evidence still I'm moving and go to bed.

Beats the hell out of whatever he else he had in mind.

So I said look, let's do that right now. You've been fired again, so you don't have a job.

You got a brand new little truck that's in good order and you got a couple grand leftover. What? And you told me that you one of your harsh desires was to go to Disneyland.

Once you go to Disneyland.

And while you're out there, I'll make a couple calls. I will introduce you to some actors.

They will be able to tell you what the price you'll have to pay to become a professional actor.

So he did, and I hooked him up with one of the folks on the Murphy Brown Show

and they take him out to Universal to show him around. This is a good a member.

And while they're looking at the lot, the producer of Murphy Brown shows up and this guy introduces Chuck and just mentioned Chuck would like to be an actor. And the producer said, well, we can use him right now as an extra if he wants to go to work. He's out there less than two weeks and he's already on the Murphy Bond show. Call me and he says, what the hell is going on here?

This is the kind of thing I've come to expect.

Then he got hit by a truck on the freeway and without a commissioner for a couple years

and had a terrible, terrible experience.

At the end of the depression that he had, he fell in love with a cocaine addict, got a $94,000 insurance settlement, married her to Saver, and in three months both the girl and the money was gone.

And so he decided to keep his promise and drink until he was dead and discovered he couldn't.

Terrible condition, did his best. He took some pills and drank some stuff and nothing happened. He tried, he just tried. He called me up. He was so pissed he couldn't even drink himself to death now because he'd made a commitment

to God for help and service and that's the way it works. And he's been sober for a while now.

He's one of my giants.

That's how I learn.

What a joyous thing to watch somebody come from. I hate this son of a bitch

to. Maybe God isn't doing this to me after all. Maybe I'm doing it,

got a new job,

they're going to let him back in acting school. One of the funniest things that happened to him is that he got a job in a couple places. He's really very good. He has a natural talent and got him into the right acting school and began to develop. And he picked up a couple plays there in Hollywood, and the first party got and they tell me he played it like nobody's ever played. It

was a fundamentalist preacher,

wouldn't you know it? He had to talk those lines

and he they tell me he just played his heart out.

Anyway, just shucking and jiving. It's about time to shut this down.

I don't want you to miss these kinds of things.

This is what's here. This is the fun of it.

I'm getting a film. By the time I get home I'll have a film from another young fella

that came to me. What was it 6 years ago? We shall be about

couple years so over. Professional college student from the Boamingham language. Young rich kid out of Birmingham, AL never had to work a day in his life. Spoiled rotten.

He'd gotten into a sponsorship line where you had to call every day with Tent Step where you were out and if you didn't have any, you were crazy and he was just going nuts.

And he stopped me after a meeting

and told me what was going on, He said. I'm I'm praying regularly. I'm calling my sponsor every day with this test.

And after we talked for a while, I said, well, if you want, you want me to tell you what I would do?

And he said, yeah. I said, well, first of all, if I were you, I'd stop praying

because I'd ask him to describe God to me. Also, it was pretty scary.

He said

I'll die. I said well now wait a minute, let me ask you this Is that who you want showing up? He said no. I said want to quit inviting him in? Quit calling his name. Well what do I do then? I said do you have anything else to pray to? He said no. I said well, and quit praying,

for God's sake, quit writing inventory. Oh, but I'm told I'll die if I do this. If you're dying anyway, you want my advice, stop right in inventory. I said, What do you like to do, Shelby? He said, well, I like good food, I like movies, and I like girls. Said, well, Shelby, you go back to Boulder and ask a girl out for dinner,

get laid, and then call me later.

Now,

he didn't do that part of it because he has some principles, but I thought we got to crack him somewhere. But he did go out for dinner and to a movie, and he spent a couple weeks lightening up. My message to Shelby has always been lighting up. He's intellectual, He's intense. Lighting up Shelby, he called me back in about two weeks and he said, you know, I really need to have God in my life.

I said good, here's what we'll do.

Don't ask me about God. If you want to know about God, ask God.

And we began some stuff that has led him to New York,

where he has already produced a couple movies. He's studying with Tom Noonan. I don't know if you know who Tom Noonan is. Incredible actor. Tommy likes his work. Next week we're getting a film that has been entered in the Film Festival and will probably win some awards from this kid because he got free and decided he's going to be who he is.

And he is so funny.

He's one of those that calls, and when he calls, I just start playing Free Cell on my computer

because we got about 20 minutes of stuff that I don't have the slightest idea of what he's battling about

intellectual in and out of Mars and Venus and Extension. And then we get down to business and I stop playing Free Cell. We talked for a couple minutes and then I say that's enough, she'll be OK

tomorrow morning. If you wish, we will go through

the rest of this recovery process. As I see it, it won't take that long. You all have big books. You all know what to do technically anyway. But I have some views that have helped me along the way to lighten up.

I've been a big book Nazi. I've done all of that. How to lighten up and still do this precisely the way it it says here, because it will reveal some stuff. Then we'll talk a little about amends, I hope, because the making of amends is an incredible walk.

And then whatever else you want to talk about. I don't know what time you want to get together. I know we have have to leave here by what, 1:00 or whatever? When you're tired of me, we'll, we'll leave.

But if it if that meets with your approval, that's what we'll do in the morning. Because I really do have some things to show you here that over the years I have learned to make this an easy walk.

Easy, easy walk.

So I don't want to stop. You touched my heart and I just want to. It was in the heart of Heart Mountains of Germany.

What time do we get together tomorrow? What's happening? This fine fine upstanding fellow here is going to tell us what's going on.

First time I've seen the baby away.

That's first time I've seen you all the way away.

That's nice.

I've been asked this morning to cover a little of the.

Inventory process,

which I'm more than happy to do.

Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless it once followed by a strenuous effort to face Him, to be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.

A little good information there. The only thing ever blocking me from God is me. Stuff within me

and

I would like this to be permanent. Not the bang, but the sense of spiritual beingness

where I am, God is. I'd like that to be an all time thing.

One of them. I've watched a lot of spiritual people do their thing and one of the things I always admired about Billy Graham that we didn't get to see much on those big TV things. But after the altar call, immediately the folks that came down were taken around back and began a house cleaning process. They were assigned mentors

because it's fully aware that the emotional experience is nice, but it will fade.

It's like being in love.

A marriage is based on just being in love is probably going to run into trouble someday because that feeling, that sense of just the thing will fade away or just won't be there on some days. There has to be more than that. But this is a good start

for us because we

we go back to being sick real quick.

It's comfortable there, familiar territory. So everything from here on based on spiritual principle is at once for the rest of my life, everything is at once. Spiritual life is based on being here now. So everything is immediate and this is where it starts.

The great promise here that led me or let let me actually made it possible for me to look at

the things that devastated me was face and be rid of.

If you will face it honestly and truthfully,

you can be rid of it and not ever have to do that again or be that way again ever. That's the great promise here.

Our liquor was but a symptom.

Our liquor was but a symptom. We had to get down to causes and conditions.

Quite a departure.

All of a sudden. Alcohol itself is no longer the problem,

it's only a symptom of the problem.

So we start on a personal inventory, which is a fact facing in fact finding process. I will learn some things I didn't know,

and I will face them clearly. 111 purpose of any inventory is to disclose unsalable goods and to get rid of them properly without regret. The goods may be perfectly fine. Jesus loves me. We had to get rid of that because of what I do with it. It becomes unusable, unsalable, pumping without regret,

letting go of attitudes. I'm going to Carl Young talked about ideas, emotions and attitudes which once were the govern the lives of the men are cast aside.

Attitudes have to change.

Now I'm a word mechanic. I love to play with words. The English language is wonderful because one word can mean 20 different things.

Our granddaughter,

He's learning Spanish. Her dad

ears in the body owes in Los Angeles and speak Spanish, so

they're learning Spanish. When she was about four,

her dad said to her one day, Teomo Gianna, which means I love you. And she said, Tamo dose daddy,

she too. I love you too, daddy. She hadn't gotten to also yet, but she had a word for two

now. That's cute, but think about that.

I'll hear you say something and you mean one thing and I got another meaning for it. So we have communication problems,

OK. And it's the same thing with my relationship with God. If it's going to be a relationship, we will have communication

and I have to get rid of my prejudgments and my attitudes about what these words mean. My attitude about reward and punishment for me had to go still exist. The universe is so structured, if you screw up your

instant, it's all built right in. I don't have to wait for some sort of having sent a special Angel to whack me in the head.

If I dive too deep in the ocean, I will get cramps.

If I dive too deep in your head, I'll get hit.

Just so anyway, we're going to look for some of those things. What are the things that are blocking us? My attitudes, my motivations,

these are what are blocking me from the relationship with God. And I presume that's what it means what's been blocking us, because this is the most important fact in my life today, is the consciousness of the presence of God.

So that must be what I'm locked from, not from an understanding of, but from a consciousness of. It's all about being conscious about waking up.

Now, when I do this with people, I'll just walk you through for about the next day on just what I do with folks.