Bill C. from Ventura, CA sharing his story at the Stateline Retreat in Las Vegas, NV

Bill Alcoholic. Pretty big crowd for a Thursday night, man. That's pretty good.

Larry is a great host. I got lost at the airport and he found me.

You know, I realized I'd never flown into the Las Vegas airport.

And I said it went out where it says, you know,

what does it say? The street, you know? So I went out to the street and there was nothing but taxis there. And he had to drive around for a while to get me. So he hung in there. We talked a lot. We divorced. We developed a relationship over that and

so I'm grateful.

It's good to be live, isn't it?

It's good to be live.

This is a real super spreader event here. Boy,

I hope I don't die.

We are hard to kill, though.

They keep trying, right, Butch? Yeah, yeah. There's another guy here that got a liver transplant, man. Anybody? Any liver transplants here?

Black. There's some hands. We should have our own meeting

so it says to tell my story.

I got a silver March the 27th 1985.

37 years,

I am very impressed by that. I think that's genuinely impressive. That's a long time.

I drank and used for 2223 years, so I've been sober a lot longer than I drank it. So the sober story is a lot more interesting.

I remember all of it pretty much. You know, as I get older, some of that's beginning to fade though, too, you know. And

so I really like talking about

what happened when I walked in here. But I got to tell a little bit of this story. But, you know, Sandy Beach used to say, you know, there's my story and then there's what really happened, you know, So it's all kind of vague. But I was a surfer and a biker and a tough guy

and I rarely went to the beach.

My motorcycle rarely ran and I was afraid to fight. But I looked really good

and a Chrome Nazi helmet for a hat and a primary chain for a belt. And black greasy Levis and big black boots with chains wrapped around them. I've got tattoos all over me but I had a clip on earring because I didn't want to hurt myself.

My biker nickname was Horny.

Just absorb that

I have it tattooed here on my arm

and it's misspelled.

It's HORNEY Hornay

with an exclamation mark for emphasis.

That's pretty much all you need to know about me, isn't it? I kind of tell you can just extrapolate from there. You know, I was a fun guy. And,

you know, at 17 years old I was a bad drunk in high school. I had a big jacket and a slouch and a sneer and a foul mouth and a bad attitude and I carried a gun. And I'm from the mean streets of Palace Verdes.

There's no gangs in Palos Verdes. Nobody was looking for me. I was a gang of 1 and

I met her and she lived up in Oregon. And it was the 60s,

right? Remember the 60s,

You know, I, I remember a lot of it.

And so we went up through San Francisco. I was in San Francisco during the Summer of Love

in Golden Gate Park. I'm really sorry, I missed it.

And we went up to Oregon to grow our own and we had a couple of kids, got married, had a couple of kids, and I was ending up running with an outlaw motorcycle gang and sticking needles in my arm and drinking like a fish and not coming home to that family with those two little kids. And it was awful.

It was awful short party.

We all talk about how we, when we were growing up, we had this feeling of separation or we didn't feel part of and and then we drank and there was this unifying experience. And so I think the whole idea was to get out of the house and go have some fun, wasn't it? It was about the party, wasn't it? It was for me. It was about the party, about having fun. I ended up naked, my living room, watching religious television, taking notes.

I'm having sex Minaja Uno

who like no one else in the room. You know what the hell happened to the party?

What happened to the party?

Next time somebody walks into one of your meetings and just says, well, I'm just a party kind of guy, ask him how many other people were at the party that you just left, you know?

And

so at 22, mental institution, mental institution I was in, was in the organs, was in Salem, OR, the Oregon State Mental Hospital. It's right across from the penitentiary. So you know where you're coming from or going to. And it was the mental institution that Ken Keesey worked on when he wrote Cuckoo's Nest.

They film that movie on the ward. I was on there.

So next time you see that movie, think of me.

Now. I'm not bragging, it's just all I got.

Some people went to college, you know.

This is the high point of the drunken log.

Now, some years ago I spoke at a conference there in Salem. It's beautiful little town and I'm driving around trying to find the nut house and visit my alma mater and

and I but the speaker dinner for this, the committee and the speakers. And there's this long haired hippie guy that came up from California about the same time I did and stayed there and I told him, I said I used to be in the mental institution here. And he says I work there. I said, well, of course you do,

you know, where else would you work? And I'm still friends with that guy. And so he took me there. He called them and he said I've got a dignitary from the South

showing around and we found my ward and had picture taken there.

And a couple years after that, I was speaking in Portland and some guys from Salem came up there and they brought me a gift.

And that's one of my favorite possessions. It's a T-shirt that says Oregon State Hospital alumni.

So after that, I mean, it was awful. There was a lot of violence and it was really scary and, and State of Oregon thought I should leave and

I came back down to Los Angeles and my sober dad, who got sober in 1954.

So, so on top of all my other problems, I got raised in an AA house. I don't recommend it. There's nothing worse than having two people with clear eyes who know exactly what's going on in your head, you know? And but he let me sleep in his garage and he let me give me a job in his little machine shop in El Segundo.

And I tried to clean up my act. And 15 years after the mental institution,

I lived in the house with a second wife and a second set of two kids. My daughter was three years old and my son was four months old, and I had no emotional connection to another living human being.

And I didn't know that. We don't know that, do we?

We don't know that we're disconnected. Silkworth knew that, Silk, Worth says. In the doctor's opinion, they lose touch with all things human. What an interesting statement to make, observing us.

But I'm not capable of connecting to you. And I don't know that. I have no compassion. I never gained it. So I don't know that there's anything missing. And I, I lived in the house with these people. And one night, one of those nights, I'm up all night like we do, all alone in the living room. And there's nothing worse than when the sun comes up. Remember that?

Nothing. I don't think there's very few things more depressing than that. Because I don't want the sun to come up. I'm a vampire,

I and I know it's going to be another miserable day in a long, long line of miserable days. The party is long. Nobody's coming to my house, knocking on my door saying can Billy come out and play? You know, and,

and I was up all night.

My little daughter gets up and she was really happy to see that Daddy was up. So she runs out and jumps up in my lap and it just broke my heart.

Sometimes kids can cut through it, you know? It just broke my heart.

And so, like any good gangster,

I called my mom.

This is a woman that had been an Al Anon for 30 years by that time. They are organized and prepared

and focused.

She got there inside of 1/2 hour before I took the nap and changed my mind. Wouldn't want to rush into anything. And they checked me into a place in Costa Mesa, CA called Starting Point. I spent 35 days in there. While I was in there they made me wear a sign around my neck. I had to make the sign. We made it in crafts.

It was a little rectangular piece of cardboard with a string that went through it and it said I am not a counselor

because evidently there was some confusion about that.

Then they let me out.

They just let us out, don't they? Like, we're OK, you know,

go forth, multiply. Yeah.

And where do we end up when they let us out

The world's aftercare program? Alcoholics Anonymous?

We are the counselors, aren't we?

Truly? The inmates are running the asylum there. You stop and think about this. I've been married three times. I've been to a lockdown mental institution with barbed wire on top of the fence. Twice. I went back for a follow up. I kind of liked it and and people asked me for relationship advice.

I give it to him.

I figure, hell, you can't hurt them, you know? They're in a, you know,

I

so two things happen to me when I walked into a that are just pure luck. And I think the first one's the most important one. The longer I'm sober, this is the most important one.

I just liked it.

Not everybody's story. I walked into the Hermosa Beach Gilano Club on a Friday night, the day I got out of the whatever that drying out place, the spin dry as they used to call them back then, you know, you know, I was part of that generation that got sober incorrectly. And

fortunately I was just arrogant enough to argue for my position. And but I walked into this club and all the Harleys were parked out front, which I was. I wasn't expecting that. This was not the meetings I remember going to in the 50s with my parents,

right? The Harleys were all there. And who knew that an A a meeting on a summer night in Hermosa Beach would be full?

Why would it be full? And this was a Friday night. The meeting was called The Gong Show.

Lot of people said it wasn't really an AAA meeting. I went to it for 20 years, you know, and they were laughing there. Nicknames are flying around the room. Their friends would get up at the podium to share and they start hooting and haul. One guy just got down off the podium. He couldn't get anything out because everybody was hooting. Everybody was dressed up trying to hook up on a Friday night down at the Illinois Club, right? And I stood in the back of the room because there were no chairs. It was full. And I didn't feel part of because I wasn't, I didn't know anybody.

But I started laughing. I heard the music right away. I got the joke where we laugh at the tragedies and we cry at the successes. And I got that. Could I define it like that? No. But I left there that night and drove home and I thought, you know, this may not be so bad. This is all the partiers that lived, right? This is where they are. And there was a sense about that. And I literally went back the next night just to find out

what the hell is going on there and and I've been doing that ever since. I've never lost that. I'm an old hippie from the 60s and weird has always attracted me. And to this day I find you all deliciously strange.

It's a never ending font of weirdness, you know, And I love it. I just love it. Second thing that happened is I'm banging around for a couple of weeks and every all of you talk about, at least around where I'm from, talk about you got to get a sponsor. And the recovery place is a pretty straight ahead place. You got to get a sponsor. We want to know his name. Call us back. You know, so I saw this guy, he looked like he knew everybody, which he probably did. He was six years sober and he was all enthusiastic and he was everywhere I went. I guess that's why I asked him

and I walked up to him and I said, will you help me?

So we talk a lot about what a bottom is, even a bottom in sobriety, right? And I think what it is is the collapse of the alibi system.

The ego just collapses for a while and it comes back. But there's a window where new information can come in. And I'm not as defiant. I'm not as argumentative. I'm not, you know, just a little bit, just enough. And what he said to me that night, he said several hurtful things. But one of the things that he said was go home and read the doctor's opinion.

Make notes in the margin of what you agree with and what you don't. Be at my house Thursday at 5:00

and we'll discuss it.

And I just did that.

I didn't argue with him. I didn't, you know, I'm sure we had some discussion, but, you know, it was a hazy memory, but I remember going home and reading that. I think I told him we'd already read that in the hospital. We could just move on to level 2, right? He was, he says, no, you're on the street now. Just do this. Do this and we'll talk about it. And so I, I did my assignment and I showed up at the stranger's house. I'm sure I didn't even know his last name.

Thursday at 5:00. And he did a real intimate thing with me.

He let me into his place and we sat in his living room, just the two of us. No one else was around. And he didn't trust me that I'd read it. And he had me sit there and read it to him out loud.

And I had made some notes because there were some incorrect things in there. And I, you know, wanted to discuss it, have a little debate. And we did, we talked, you know, I, we, we talked about stuff, right?

I didn't know at the time it was an uncomfortable situation. That's why I was uncomfortable, because it was very intimate. It was just him and I, no one else was looking.

And we talked. We talked, and each week I went to his house and we read another chapter in the book

and he took me into Alcoholics and he took out a meeting directory and he circled some meetings, one of which was his Home group, the Hermosa Beach Men's Stag that I've been going to now for 37 years because I'm afraid not to. And through all the incarnations of that meeting all these years, people cycle in and cycle out. They do it incorrect for a while and then you work on correcting them

and you create chaos and then it corrects itself and you just don't leave.

He told me. I told him one time. I said I'm sick of this, meaning I'm leaving. He told me you can't leave because I'm Stan, so you got to stay. And then about two months later he comes to me. He goes, I've had it, I'm leaving. All I said, no man, you can't go, you know,

and, and all the assholes that were in that meeting,

they're all gone. I'm still there, you know?

There's something. There's something good about not running away, huh?

I mean, is there a group conscience or isn't there?

We were having a big argument one time and we had a meeting over at my house about what we were going to do, a group inventory.

And after everybody left, it was very contentious. And after everybody left, my, I said to my wife, you know, if these guys don't, if they don't do this, I'm done. That's it. This is the right thing to do. And if they don't do it, I'm out of here, right? And she looked at me and she said she's sober a long time. She says,

well, you profess to believe in this stuff. I said what she said with the group conscience and all that, I hear you talking. You say you believe in it. I go, well, I do. That's what I'm trying to get to happen here. And she says, well,

just wait till I finish.

Don't don't move ahead of the story.

And she says to me, she says, well, why don't you just place it before the group and let them decide. And if they don't go the way you want it, don't take your ball and go home.

I thought that was

indignant, you know, I think that's when you're supposed to smack him or something, aren't you? You know, I was. I'm afraid of her, you know. So

where was I?

So each week we read it and at six months sober, I did an inventory

and I had one of those experiences that we have here

that we try to explain. Some people say it's God, some people say it's a coincidence, Some, you know, we have different because we get hung up in the concept of what it is. But here in AA, we don't have to worry too much about concepts because we actually experience it. And then you can label it with whatever you makes you feel comfortable, but the experience is hard to deny. And I had an experience after that fifth step. I went home and I realized that the guy who walked through that front door six months before.

Wasn't the same guy

as who walked in it today.

And I said to myself, I think out loud, I said, my God, it's going to be like this now.

The old life, whatever that was, seems to be over. And on top of that, I was six months sober. I hadn't been six months sober since I was 14 or 15 years old. That's a shock to the system. Remember that. You know, everything is weird, isn't it? Sober is weird. There's no medication. Everything's brand new,

all the relationships, everything.

So some years ago, I was with this pretty big time Indian guru and I was really impressed to be with this guy. I was very impressed. A friend of mine was attached to him and we want to hear him speak. And we're on our little spiritual journey, trying to find out what's cool. And and I'm a hippie. So Ram Dass and be here, you know, all that stuff is cool. It's fun. And he was still around and I got to meet him and sit with him. And so we're with this Indian guru, right? And we're sitting in the back of the room and this is three of us.

And I'm talking away like I do. And he starts laughing at me, and he's laughing at me. I go, what are you laughing at? He says, well, I just love you Alcoholics and drug addicts.

And I said, why is that? He says, well, the rest of them out there are trying to get awakened. You're just trying to figure out what the hell happened, You know,

like what? What the hell happened? What are we doing here?

You know, how come we're not drinking? I mean, isn't it true? We are people who normally would not mix and we're mixing, you know? Isn't that odd?

I think the rest of the journey is trying to figure out what the hell happened.

What's my purpose? There must be a purpose, don't you think? I think there is. You know, I think I found my purpose. I think, you know,

I started making amends at a year sober. I started sponsoring people.

What a journey

and I sponsor people today the same way. Now I'm doing it on Zoom. If I have to read, War fever ran high in that New England town. One more God damn time,

man.

You know

whether he died by a musket or by pot. No, it's not. It's not pot. It's not pot, you know.

You know what that poem really means? You know what happened to that guy?

That poem is not telling you not to drink. Because I've been there in the little local A8. They love to explain what it really means.

He drank small beer. Small beer is not fully fermented. And it was

on a hot day, and he couldn't wait. And he drank it, and it swelled up in him and he died. So the rest of the poem says drink strong or not at all. And strong beer is fully fermented. So it's telling you how to drink correctly.

Explain that to your next newcomer. You know,

I,

so it says in our book in that little passage that my guy read,

that the only thing that's going to save us, the only thing that's going to keep us sober, the only thing that's going to give us of life with some purpose, maybe some relationships with intimacy, is the maintenance of a spiritual condition.

So evidently I need to get a spiritual condition so I can maintain it. And I didn't have one.

So the first job is to try to get one of those. It also says in there that we're going to rest on these things called laurels,

and what a Laurel is, is a past achievement.

I didn't have any of those, so I need to get some laurels so I can rest on them and find out why that's not a good thing,

right? So we got to start. There's a lot of work here. You know, it's going to take a while.

And I started thinking about the spiritual condition thing, right.

You know, there's a program in a a, there's only one. There aren't many. There's only one. We all know what it is. Even if we're not doing it, we know what it is. It's the 12 steps. They keep telling us that over now they read chapter 5 every time, you know, and

but we each have our own experience with it, don't we? Each one of us has our own experience. And I think what it's designed to do, and he's very clear about that in the book and in a lot of other writings and a lot of letters is to bring about this some kind of spiritual awakening, to develop a condition of spiritual condition to live life on some kind of a spiritual or 4th dimension basis. My sponsor loves to say, he says all my problems are in the third dimension and the solution to all of them is in the 4th, right? I think that's probably true.

So what is the spiritual condition made-up? Well, the very first thing this guy wanted to know from me when I went to his house Thursday at 5:00 is whether he I thought I was powerless over drugs and alcohol. Now, for me, that was an easy admission. I was very sick. Physically, I was quite sick. I was in trouble. And as it turned out, I was a lot sicker than I thought I was. And it almost killed me 30 years sober, almost died behind it. And so I could cop to that, but 37 years later,

powerless has a much bigger meaning to me today. I think it's everything. And they didn't want to tell us that up front, so we would run screaming down the street, you know, But I think it's everything. I think I literally have no control over anything at all. And I don't think I need any. I don't think lack of power is my dilemma. My dilemma is I think I have power and I keep trying to use it and it creates havoc in my life. self-reliance fails me. I have no faith and I crash and burn.

And they don't tell you about the third surrender, the 4th one and the fifth one, you know, But there's many coming. I talked to you incessantly about how if you were a little bit different, the two of us would be a hell of a lot happier. And you absolutely insist upon living your own life. And it pisses me off. At my core,

I've lost complete control over the geopolitical situation in the world. Look at it,

you know, doesn't matter what side you're on. But I over two years ago, I shut off the news. I couldn't handle it. I was not emotionally stable enough to handle it. And I don't live in that world, do you? I don't live in that world. I'm powerless over all of that. They never wants. Nobody from Washington has ever called me and asked me what I thought about this situation, you know?

And I get all cranked up and I don't want to, I don't want to live there. And I feel better. It took me a while to detox and I had several slips.

Yeah, but I'm out of the game. I'm powerless over everything. I don't think there's anything I have any power, nor do I need any. Something else is running the show. Second step, right? It's a logical thought progression, isn't it?

Because it seems to be just unfolding all the time. It seems to be happening. Everything seems to be running. When I focus on my breath, when I meditate, I realize I am being breathed. I'm not thinking about it. It's just sort of happening, and everything seems to unfold.

Some people will tell you that you have to believe in God to do a a. No, you don't. All you really need to know is it's not you. Yeah. Wilson talked about this incessantly. Open mindedness, right? Open mind. It's not me. It's not me. That's all I need to know. And if I keep following it, I will have a series of experiences that will make me stop and think, and I'll start reading books and I'll start looking for something. You know,

that's our human nature is we want to understand God. You wouldn't want to pick the wrong God. Wouldn't that be awful?

You know, what if you died and realize, oh hell, it was the wrong guy, You know?

Then the third step comes around and it's interesting. It says that I'm going to make a decision

to turn my life and will over to clearly what already has it anyway. I think it was nice of them to lead me to believe that I actually have some say in the matter. Well, I've been withholding myself from the totality of all things long enough. I'm going to acquiesce now and allow you to take me. Thank you very much.

Where's my trophy?

And we have these windy discussions about what is God's will,

My little ego that presented itself at 2 1/2 years old. Like all of us, it loves the idea of us having a battle of wills with the power that drives the entire universe. How is that even possible? Right?

Chuck Chamber needs to draw the circle with the stick man outside.

After a while you realize there's no circle,

there's nothing to be. I can't possibly be separate from nature. There's no morality in nature.

Things just are. We add the morality, we say the lion shouldn't eat the lamb. Well, good luck, you know? Well, well, then we create a fantasy land that someday there will be a space that will end up where the lion will lay down with the lamb, because we have so much trouble with the immorality of nature.

Now, if that happens, I think that land is going to be nervous for eternity, you know, because this is the nature of the lion to eat the lamb. There's no morality in it.

And I struggle with all that.

What is God's will? God's will is what's happening right now. What, what else could it possibly be? And I don't like what's happening right now. I'm looking for an alternative, you know, And I suffer. I suffer.

We talk a lot in AA about acceptance.

My take on that is, if I really realize how powerless I am, acceptance just happens. So it's a power thing, isn't it? I'm unaccepting. It should be different. I live my life in such a way that evidently what I believe is that things outside myself should be different in order for me to be okay.

And that just doesn't happen and I suffer. So then we get to the inventory. What life and will is. The third step talking about is the inventory. Isn't it the end result of living a life with seeming power, resentment, fear, and broken sexual relationships? That's what I bring to you. That's what I have. This is my life. This is who I am.

These three things is who I am,

and I share it with this strange guy that I just met, this God that I don't believe in, and me maybe for the first time in my life. And what's the lesson in the inventory? It's the second pillar of spiritual condition. We got powerlessness. But the second one is I have to stop blaming other people and institutions for my problems. High school is over,

it's time for little Bill to grow up and take responsibility for his own life. Back to the doctor's opinion, the alcoholic life seems like the only normal one. How do we pull that off? It's someone elses fault. We can't take responsibility, we can't rationalize or justify our behavior so we blame it on someone else. On my first inventory was the entire federal government

and specifically the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Who are they to tell me whether I can drive or not?

It's going to take a while to stop the blaming. It's really ingrained in me. But if I surround myself with some fairly healthy people in a A, they will help me stop. We will help each other. You find your peer group, right? You find your peer group,

A really happens. Back in my day, it was in Denny's at 2:00 in the morning when you could still smoke. And you drink coffee and eat banana splits and smoke and talk about that weird meeting you were just at at the Illinois Club. You know, what'd your sponsor tell you? Oh, he's an asshole. And you know, that's where A really happens. That's where it really happens.

The 4th column of the resentment list is essentially our defects of character, isn't it? What are? Because what we're looking for, what are my faults and mistakes, That's what we're looking for. So you can make a list of them. But now that you're going to try to stop the blaming and you're starting to get, maybe you're powerless, they will come and visit you with alarming regularity, you know, because there's no more medication now they just show up. I've had many, many incidences where I say something to somebody and walk away and thought to myself, oh, I did it again.

I was 7-8 years sober. I'm coaching a bunch of nine year olds in soccer, included my kids

and they were getting beat at halftime by 5 to nothing or something. And I gave my lecture on how you have to have personal pride. You need to go out there and start knocking people over. You can't just let them crush you like this, right? So they will go back out there and they scored another couple of goals against this. And I just left, walked off the field. I had parked my Harley 'cause I'm a bad ass in the in the basketball courts and I jumped on my motorcycle, burned rubber through the basketball courses, just drove off

and then I ran out of gas.

It's hard to look cool

with your big leather jacket and your helmet. Walking down the street, Jay remembers this true story. And I walked back to my house and I called my sponsor and told him what happened. And he said, Bill, it's children's sports.

And I actually said to him, you don't understand.

This is critical.

You know,

I got escorted off a soccer field for going after the referee one time.

When you got to walk back out there and apologize to everybody, including your own children. You won't do that again. And

so then we get to 8:00 and 9:00, right? And these people that I hate, that I'm angry at, that I'm blaming for you want me to make amends to them in order to rid myself of the resentments. I am not going to do that.

Makes no sense to me. It's scary.

This is big time stuff now, but I do it. I do it

and when I go to somebody that I don't ever want to see again and I look them right in the eye and I say the words that need to be said,

pay back the money, whatever it is. When I turn and walk away from that experience, I am changed right then and there. The action of doing that will change you as a person. It's a cathartic experience.

I'm changed because the 9th step is where the transformation really begins. Because this whole thing is about transformation back to the spiritual condition, right? What is that? What is a psychic change? Isn't that a change in the way we perceive the world around us?

How do you get there? This thing actually works. It this actually happens, It isn't very rapid though, you know, takes 37 years and

it's still happening. It's still happening, still happening. It doesn't ever stop.

One through 9 is about 10% of the program. It's not the work,

it's sober 101. It's the first semester. And what's the lesson in the ninth step is the third pillar of spiritual condition. Nothing was ever personal.

People are just doing what they do, and I happen to be in the blast radius of their behavior,

and sometimes you're in the blast radius of my behavior. I'm not focused on you, you're just the next victim in line. None of it was ever personal,

and the immense process will bring about this awareness. I hated my father. He didn't like me much either, and I was an awful kid. I was a spawn of Satan. I was a bad kid and I knew I had to make amends to him and I didn't want to do it. It was scary because when you do that, you lose.

You lose and I'm keeping score.

You know, you ever hated somebody really good and then you forget to hate him on a certain day, so you got to hate him extra the next day to make up for the day you missed?

Yeah,

I made amends to him, and I had one of those experiences.

I got in my car and I started sobbing and I couldn't stop. And it was like something reached in and pulled that rage out of me. I've suffered from rage most of my life. It's pretty much gone now. I just get pissy. My wife complaints about me being pissy, like giving her that look and stuff, you know when you're pissy. And I keep telling her, hey, hey, this is an improvement,

you know,

So the real work in AA is 1011 and 12, right? It's 90% of the program. To me, that's where the work really is. The 10 step is the fourth pillar of spiritual condition.

Self-awareness is compared to self obsession, where you develop the skill of the watcher, the ability to watch yourself move through life like an observer.

And in meditation you can watch yourself think, you can focus on your breath. And the little ego doesn't like being in the present moment. There's nothing for it to do. It wants to be in the future and the past where it can work on stuff. So it wanders away from the breath and you notice it has wandered away and you gently bring it back to the breath. This is a game changing experience. This changes the entire game.

Evidently

I am not my thinking mind. If I was, I couldn't catch it.

I think that's utterly fascinating. There seems to be a other consciousness within me that's able to watch the egoic mind operate. I can watch it now. The other day I walk a lot. The other day, I'm walking down the street and it comes up with this creepy thing I did when I was nine years old,

and I stopped in the middle of the street and I said, really,

we're going to think about this, Really, What am I supposed to do with it? I really appreciate the input. Thanks so much for sharing, but I'm just going to move on with my day now.

I just looked at the street in front of me because that's where I am. I'm not nine years old anymore,

you know, whatever memory I have, that may not even be what happened. I mean, what's the use of thinking about that? Now, logically, we can all understand this, but practically, what do we do about it? I don't have to go where this thing wants to take me.

Now, sometimes I do. But there is an option

In meditation, the present moment has a feel and a texture to it. And if you're there often enough, you can get you understand what it feels like to be in that present moment, to be right here, right now. Like one of the things in meditation. Some people be meditating. They'll say a car drove by and disturb them,

or a leaf blower. You know, wrecked my meditation. Look at it like this. The sound, whatever that sound is, is in the same space you're in.

There's no separation between you and the sound. But if you reject it, now there's a subject and an object that's a separate reality. Now the leaf blower is evil and it needs to die, right? Don't you see that throughout the world

in the present moment, none of that exists. All there is is that,

and there is comfort in that. So during the course of the day, I recognize when I'm not in that present moment and I can return to it. I don't have to go lock myself in a room somewhere. I can just stop. I'm just sitting right here in front of my computer doing this.

Now some guy calls me and if I'm talking to him on the phone, am I playing a game on the computer while I'm talking to him? Sometimes, you know, but if I'm paying attention, I don't do that. I want to be right where I am, right here, right now. That's self-awareness. Now, self-awareness without humor is depression,

right? Because there comes a time in this process where you stand there and you go, Oh my God,

it's me.

It was never them, it's me. That is not a happy place, right?

What do you do with that? Because you're so used to blaming them, you're so used to taking sides, you're so used to keeping score. It's kind of hard to break it, you know?

My head is not out to get me.

It's not about stopping it from thinking. It's not about crushing the ego. We all have one.

It needs to be for transportation. It doesn't want me to die. It just takes the pass and projects it into the future over and over and over again. It's the same thing that told you that you weren't good enough when you were a kid. We all talk about this thing about some people will call it alcoholic thinking. Like there's this thing called alcoholic thinking, right? I think what we suffer from is emotional immaturity, and we just like to think it was a little deeper and more profound,

you know? I mean, Tebow called us king, baby.

Isn't that true? Isn't that in your own story? Can't you look back? Have you been sober a while when you just behaved like a teenager? Like, like when you come to me and complain about your boss, I immediately don't believe you. I figure it's your fault, you know? I mean, it may be true. Maybe the guy is an asshole, but you know, you've done something, you know, 'cause that was always true for me. You know, it's always true for me.