There’s one thing that living with people like you for twenty-nine years has done for me. It has convinced me beyond any shadow of a doubt that all of us are God’s kids. If one of us is God’s kid, all of us are, and if one of ’em– one of us isn’t, none of us are. Now, this is whether we believe it or not, whether we like it or not, even if we deny it, we cannot change the reality of our own being. We’re God’s kids, all of us. And walking alone is not normal, is not natural. Most of us have walked alone for most of our lives. I walked alone for forty-three years, wanting so badly to be a part of and always a part of. That is not normal. To be away from the Father’s house is not normal. It’s just as natural as, uh, breathing to come home to the living God that made us. That’s, that’s the normal state. Being away from home is not normal. So our problem is conscious separation, and our answer is conscious unity. Now, I’m accused sometimes of being a water walker. Some people think I’m overboard on the spiritual, so-called. I am not. I just happen to know that there isn’t anything else but spiritual. That’s all there is. There ain’t no more. So I’m naturally a little bit prone to that direction. But I have never heard a speaker, including myself, from the podium of Alcoholics Anonymous, that so strongly affirmed that as this book right here. For instance, here’s a line in the second chapter. It’s called There Is a Solution, and here’s what it says: “Each individual in the personal stories,” that’s stories about the book, “each individual in the personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.” That’s what it says right here, second chapter. “The way he established his relationship with God.” And so this is the answer. Conscious separation is the problem. Conscious unity is the answer. Now, I’ve got a little thing here. Doc tried to mess it up, but I, uh, erased all of his stuff so we wouldn’t get confused. Now, I don’t know whether that thing will work with me over there or not. Maybe I’d better stay over here. This is something that will sort of show what I was talking about last night. That circle there, in my thinking, would be all there is. There ain’t no more. That’s it. Those two words, life, good, God, insofar as I’m concerned, are synonymous. They all mean the same thing. So that’s it. That’s all there is. There ain’t no more. Here’s the feeling of conscious separation from, and as we said last night, that’s human ego. That’s the only roadblock between you and me and me and God. And here am I out in left field all by myself. I spent forty-three years out there. Now, that’s very real as an experience, but it’s, it is not reality. It is not reality. Now, we said last night that this thing here could not be satisfied, so in surrender, that goes overboard temporarily. Unfortunately, uh, but, but I believe fortunately, it don’t remain gone. We’ll have to surrender forever. There’s no, as, as far as I’m concerned, there’ll never be a time when we won’t have to continuously surrender. But when this is not there, this happens. You wake up right in there. You don’t get in there. You wake up in there because you can’t get out of there in reality. There is no life apart from. There is experience apart from, but no life apart from. There’s only life a part of, a part of. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Now, that’s the truth of life. The carpenter said it like this: “Who, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature?” Which means I believe you can’t change the reality of your own being. You can only change your experience in reality. This was very real for forty-three years, but it was not reality. And this is what happened to me in bed in January nineteen hundred and forty-six. But I didn’t know it. I had to discover it as time went on. Now, the first time I talked with my wife, she knew that something had happened. I didn’t know it. She did. Because I called her in and I said, “Honey,” you know, she was divorced from me. “I think it’s no longer of any importance to me whether or not I live under this roof. It is of absolutely no importance to me at all. I’ll never ask a thing of you as long as we live, but one. If I can ever add anything to your life, let me give it to you,” and we closed the book, and it’s never been reopened. She knew something had happened. I didn’t. I called the kids in and I said, “Boys, there’s no father in the household any longer. You don’t need to love me. You don’t need to obey me. I’ll never ask a thing of you as long as you live, but one. If I ever have anything, be it money, counsel, or blood that’ll add to your life, let me give it to you,” and we closed the book, and it’s never been reopened. They were too young to know that something had happened. I went to the office before I ever got into an AA meeting because the man had done something very nice for me on the Friday before Christmas nineteen hundred and forty-five. He called me in and told me, instead of shooting me, he said, “You’ve had a lot of trouble this year.” Didn’t mention booze. But he knew that I knew what he meant when he said trouble. And he says, being a non-alcoholic, he says, “I think I know what’s, what’s the matter with you. You’re under too much pressure, and I’m gonna take a little pressure off of you.” So instead of shooting me, as he had every right to do, he gave me three thousand bucks for a Christmas present. The Friday before Christmas, nineteen forty-five. If any of you have ever drunk any booze, you know that there’s one thing that’s worse for an alchie than bad fortune, and that’s good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. And I never showed up till last January, and he’d missed me. He’d sent word to the house that if I ever stepped foot in the plant again, he was gonna throw me through the window. And the window to which he referred don’t open. Placed glass affair. Many of you have seen it, haven’t you, Bill? So I was down there before I got into the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because I didn’t know where to find you guys, but I knew where the plant was. And I went down there knowing that I was gonna be thrown through the window, but I couldn’t help it because he paid me for something I didn’t do. And he came in to throw me through the window. And I couldn’t have defended myself with a shotgun because I was puny. I was not well. I’d just come off a four-week blackout. Fortunately for me, I was on the phone when he came in. And, uh, he had a little time, so he took my drafting boards and stuff out of the way so he’d have a clear shot at the window. Soon as I hung up, the, the phone was his, and he was a frugal man. He didn’t want to throw it through the window. But he got ready to throw me through. And I got up the phone and started after him. I said, “Victor, leave me alone. I don’t work for you anymore. I’m down here to clean up this desk. I’m here to do the things you paid me for last year that I didn’t do. And as soon as I get even with you, I’ll get out of here on my own power, and you’ll never owe me a penny as long as you live. But for God’s sake, leave me alone. I’ve got to get even with you.” And he stopped in his tracks. And he says, “What the hell happened to you, Charlie?” And I says, “Don’t know.” But he did, and he didn’t throw me through the window. So all of those people, and many of my clients, knew that something had happened to me a long time before I discovered it. I’d be sitting with a man, lunch, talking business with him. And he’d say, uh, right in the middle of a sentence, he’d say, “What the hell’s happened to you, Charlie? I’ve known you for twenty-five years, and I don’t know you.” And I’d say, “Don’t know.” And I didn’t. But this is what happened. That thing was gone, and eventually I woke up in here. Now, there is no life apart from. There’s only life apart of. So this becomes the whole human race. That’s me, and that’s you. The Good Book says God is life, and you and I are life. So God is that which I am, and God is that which you are. This is the meaning of the words, “As we understood him,” in our book. As we understood him has no reference to understanding the infinite. It has reference only to the necessity of individual experience. My God is your God. The necessity of individual experience. I hunted your God for thirty years before I got here, and I couldn’t find him, and I came here not even looking for mine, and we found each other. So we have to find him where he is. And he’s right here in me and right there in you. So we have to find our own. Now, although the man that ruined my blackboard here for a little bit raises hell with me for quoting. He says, “I hate a man that quotes verses.” And I said, “Very much because you, uh, don’t know any verses.” And then I explained myself. The only reason I ever quote verses is because some of those verses say things better than I can say them, that I want to say, that’s all. Because everything I say from here is my own experience. Everything that I share with you from this podium has happened to me in my lifetime. The bad and the good has happened to me in my lifetime. But there’s some verses that I like, for instance, to explain this. Paul said this. He says, “Just as you have a body, and it’s made up of many members, and all the members are different, and all the members have a different function, and yet they all go together to make up the one body, so are we all in Christ.” That’s what this is. It takes every member of the human race to make up the Christ. Christ is the second of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son. And it takes us all to make up the Christ, every one of us. We’re all God’s kids. So it takes us all to make up the one Son, and that’s what this is. Now, the conscious awareness of this is the difference between hell and heaven. Being born out of conscious separation into conscious unity, I believe to be the rebirth or the birth of Christ in me and the birth, birth of Christ in you. I think it has to happen to everybody. Now, we are the most fortunate of all God’s kids because we run out of time, and people, and places, and things, and money, and booze. And there’s no place else to go. So we come to Alcoholics Anonymous for sobriety, and we do the things that people like you, drunks who are not drunk, tell us that they have done, and they’re sober. And they say, “If you want what we got, do these things.” And we want, and we do them for sobriety. And a lot of things happen to us. We get sober. But all the related disorders disappear also. I have a fetish on this because we have so many experts now in related disorders, it’s a little difficult to get anybody to talk to a drunk. I gotta share this with you because I can’t keep it. I shouldn’t ever tell anybody because I had no business doing it. I called on a person in the hospital where they have a alcoholic re- rehabilitation thing or a fixing up deal. And this guy wasn’t in that. He’s a, he’s an alkie. But he was in there for other physical troubles. And I visited with him a while and was going out, and I went through the alcoholic deal. And they said, “Why don’t you go and visit the therapy section? We’re having a therapeutic deal going on in there. Why don’t you go visit it?” They re- knew– they recognized me. And I said, “Don’t care if I do.” So they took me in. And here was the therapist, one of us, who was, “Close the door.” “Good morning, gentlemen. Where’s a couple of seats?” “Here you are.” So I went into this little deal, and here this g- this, uh, therapist was coaching about a dozen drunks on how to handle such emotions as jealousy, anger, and resentment. And she was giving them the therapy, how to, how to work on them, you know, how to handle those things. And I sat there and listened until I couldn’t sit there anymore. And then I did a very bad thing. I just got up out of my seat and I said, “Just a goddamn minute.” I said, “How come that you think that you can handle emotions like jealousy, and anger, and resentment?” I said, “If we could handle those things, we’d have handled them twenty years ago. There’s no way that you can handle a thing like that. You gotta get rid of it. You gotta get rid of it. They’re children of the ego. They are obsessions of the mind, and the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of the human ego and surrender.” And then I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I walked out before I got thrown out. They haven’t asked me back yet. So this, this being born out of conscious separation into conscious union, I believe to be the thing that happens that they told us had to happen to everybody. Said, “You must be born again.” And we’re so fortunate because we have to have an answer in order to survive, and it’s quite a wonderful thing. Now, we talked a little yesterday about writing down our inventory and sharing it and then giving it away. Giving it away. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings. And that I believe to be the only way that we can get rid of them. The only way we can get rid of them. Now, I’m very, I’m very simple. How do I know if I’ve given them away if I haven’t got them? Now, that’s, that, that beats you, doesn’t it? If I’ve got them, I didn’t give them away. So I gotta keep working on that particular act until it’s done because when I give them away, I haven’t got them. Now, they stay away for a while, and then they come back because ego comes back, and that’s the reason for continuous surrender. Now, this program of Alcoholics Anonymous gives us a new motivation and a new action pattern in the entire business of living. Father Ed Dowling said it this way to me many years ago, twenty, I suspect it was. I had talked in St. Louis at the banquet, yearly affair, and, uh, Father Ed was there. That was his base. Father Ed, as you know, those of you who have read Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, was a Jesuit priest, but he was not an alcoholic. He was sort of in our program or with us from, uh… I’m a big Dipper on Music So. I’m trying, I’m trying to keep everybody awake. He slept through last night’s affair, so he’s trying to keep awake himself. Although he was a non-alcoholic, he, he was with us from the very beginning, tells you in AA Comes of Age. And he said to me one time, I knew him very well, loved him very much, and I think he loved me. And, uh, he said to me, “Chuck,” he says, “your cross was alcoholism.” He says, “My cross was lack of faith.” He says, “I went through all of my studies and was ordained, and I didn’t believe a damn thing.” Now, that’s a, that’s a rough spot for a jibby. I think eighteen years he’d gone to school. And he went all through his studies and was ordained and didn’t believe anything. And he says, “I came to believe by watching what happens to you people in Alcoholics Anonymous.” Now, that’s a tremendous statement. I came to believe by watching the miracles in AA happen. And after this talk in St. Louis, we were going to get some coffee. Mrs. C. was with me, and she says, “Chuck, maybe Father Ed would like to go with us for coffee.” And I said, “Maybe he would, honey.” I says, “You ask him.” I didn’t want to get turned down. I’m a sensitive alcoholic. So she asked him, and he went. And we sat down in the booth, and he started plying me with questions, and he never quit. And I would say, “Oh, for fifteen minutes, Father, you talk. I’ve been talking all night. You talk. I love to hear you talk.” And he’d ask another question. And the last question he asked was, “Chuck, tell me about the family. What’s happened in the family?” And I said, “No, Father, I won’t tell you. Mrs. C. is here. Let her tell you.” And so she told him what had happened in our family. And he sat there with his little old mouth pursed up, looking out the window for seemingly forever. It was a great habit of his. His mouth just looked like a little old rosebud, and he’d look off into space. He finally turned to me, and he says, “You know something, Chuck?” And I says, “What, Father?” He says, “Sometimes I have to believe that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.” I think that’s one of the most profound statements I ever heard out of the mouth of anybody. “Sometimes I have to believe that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.” And that’s exactly what this program has been for me. And I said to my wife, “Honey, where’s the difference?” This program is a new motivation and a new action pattern. Everything that I was taught as a child in home, in school, and in church has had to be reversed since I became older. Everything. There isn’t anything that they taught me that is left except the multiplication tables. That’s all. Everything else has had to change. We talked yesterday about the feeling that, uh, we had to get out there and salt mine, and out-think, out-perform, and outmaneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe. We’re gonna talk about that in A in Business, so we’ll skip that for a minute. I was taught because my family, one side of the family was Methodist Church South and the other side was Hardshell Baptist, than which there is nothing witcher. And we were taught that everything that happened to you hap- had to happen between the cradle and the grave, that there’s only one thing important in life. Life was not worth very much. This veil of tears, they called it. But the only thing that this life was good for was to prepare for death. Death is a big thing, and all your r- rewards come when you get to heaven, or if you don’t make it, in hell. Hellfire and brimstone. Now, they taught us that we had to merit, to earn, to be worthy of the grace of God. That had to be reversed. You see, if we had to merit, be worthy of, earn the grace of God, the first alcoholic would not have gotten sober. Bill W. was an, uh, was a, was an agnostic. And when Ebby talked to him, when he got down to the God part, Bill removed his hearing aid and got a little bit more involved in his gin. He was drinking a bit of gin that Ebby had refused because when Ebby talked of God, Ebby had found sobriety in the Oxford Movement, and they also had a God of their own. That’s where, as we understood him, came from, out of the Oxford Movement, and Jim Burwell. And he went ahead drinking his gin, and first thing you know, he’s back in Town Hospital. And he heard Dr. Silkworth, and he is the only one of that first gang that I never knew, and I’m very, very unhappy about that because he lived a long time after I got the program. I never met Silkworth, but he must have been a hell of a guy. And Bill heard Silkworth tellin’ Lois, Bill’s wife, that the only thing she could do was to make his life as comfortable as she could because six months was all he had, and at the end of six months, she’d either have to bury him or put him– lock him up, permanent insanity. And he wasn’t feeling too good. He was coming off a bad drunk in a withdrawal period, and he heard that pronouncement, and he wasn’t prepared for that. He said to himself, “Uh-oh,” you know. I have tried everything else but this God thing that Ebby was talking about. And being faced with permanent insanity or an alcoholic death, he didn’t have much left to do except try what Ebby talked about. And in total and complete abandonment of s- of self, he said, “God, if there be a God, reveal yourself to me now.” And whamo, it happened like that. He acquired an experience not unknown to many of us. And from that experience on, he never had another drink. When, uh, Silkworth came through the next round, Bill told him what had happened to him, and he says, “Now, Doctor,” he says, “do you think this was real, or was it just another hallucination?” Dr. Silkworth says, “Well, Bill, uh, whatever it is, hang on to it.” He says, “This is the first sense you’ve made to me since I met you in the first place.” So if Bill had to had to earn, be worthy of, or merit, he didn’t have any time. If there had been anything to do but to abandon himself, he didn’t have any time to do it. There was no earning anything. Had there been any requirement to understand the infinite when I got here, I wouldn’t be here. I had used every resource I had, and I had lost. And I said to myself, “If I ever live to get out of this bed, I’ll find AA.” And from that second till until now, I haven’t had to have a drink or a pill. Just to become willing to come here was the key in my case. And it was no earning or being worthy of or meriting anything. And I had lived to be about sixty-five before I realized that the very word grace, the meaning of the word grace is a free gift. A free gift. And there’s no way that any of us can earn a free gift. Now, a little thing that is most important to me. When I discovered that I was sober, I started to try to do something about step eleven. And it said, “Talk through prayer and meditation.” And I thought I was gonna have to prayer and meditate. Had I had me a Grand Central head. My Grand Central head didn’t leave early. A Grand Central head is when ten thousand things are going through your mind at the same time, and you can’t hold a, a thought for a split second. But I knew I had to prayer and meditate because it said here, “Talk through prayer and meditation.” And I’m gritting my teeth, sitting in the same chair sitting right now. Try and meditate. And it was a mess. But two verses popped in my head. Pardon me, doctor. And I wouldn’t take a million dollars a verse for ’em because the first one was this. Seems like the carpenter was walking off down the road one morning, and somebody wanted something, and he yelled at him, “Good master, good master.” And he walked over, and he looked down at the guy, and he says, “Why callest thou me good? There’s none good but one, and that’s the Father.” This is carpenter talking, mind you. And a little later on, some monkey came up to him, and he says, “Say, bub,” he says, “you’re doing some pretty fancy didos.” He says, “How do you do these things?” And the man says to him, “Go peddle your papers. I don’t. Of myself, I can do nothing. It’s the Father within, He doeth the works.” I wouldn’t take a million-dollar speech for those because at that second, I said to myself, “If that’s good enough for Him, it’s good enough for me.” And it made me, made it unnecessary for me to try to be good or to try to be so damned accomplished. You know? If it’s good enough for Him, it’s good enough for me. And so I’ve lived from then until now in total expectance of guidance and direction. I changed step eleven a little bit for me. The way I use it now, I get out of bed in the morning, and I say, “Look, Dad, I’m reporting for duty. Now I’m gonna move it around. I’m gonna do the best I can with what I got. And all I want out of you is a little guidance and direction to figure it out. Sure, thank you.” And I go about my business. Total expectancy of guidance and direction. This in business, play, AA, home, the works. And I get it. And people say to me, “Uh, how do you know?” And I’ve got the simplest yardstick in the world on that, too. I never had it so good. This is the only easy life I’ve ever known, the only good life that’s ever been mine in my entire lifetime. And that’s all the, the yardstick I need. The next thing that they say to me is I pray for knowledge of His will for me and figure it out. I think I get direction, but how do I know whether it’s my will or His will? And that’s a good question. And I have the simplest answer in the world for that for me. If it’s important to me personally, it’s my will. If it’s important to me personally, it is an ego satisfaction. If I am praying aright, it is not for something for me. It’s that I might be of some value to you. Now, you might think, “Well, you call this a retreat. Why aren’t you opening and closing these meetings with a prayer?” Because every one of these meetings is a prayer as far as I’m concerned. Insofar as I’m able to perceive, every serious thought is a prayer. Even worry is a prayer for something you don’t want to happen. Anticipatory anxiety tends to create the thing you’re afraid of. Actually creates it. Old Job said, “Lo, that which I feared has come upon me.” Anticipatory anxiety creates the thing we’re afraid of. Now, before we go any further, I’ve got to tell you that I do not believe in a capricious God. I do not believe in a God of judgments, punishments, and rewards. I don’t believe it. Now, many of you do. I do not. And I’m gonna tell you why, though. Number one, if there was anything other than God, God could not be infinite. If there were otherness, God would not be infinite. He would be finite. The Good Book says, “In the beginning, God.” God plus nothing leaves nothing but God. In the beginning, God. So insofar as I’m concerned, there is no otherness. That’s all there is. There ain’t no more. Very likely, the process of creation is something like this. God thinks and Himself becomes the thing He thinks about. You remember the little boy said to the teacher, “Where’d God stand when He created the Earth?” It’s a hell of a good question, isn’t it? Where’d He stand when He created the world, Earth? He couldn’t have stood on a ball of mud out of the Mississippi River. He hadn’t made the Mississippi River yet. So He didn’t have to stand. God thinks and Himself becomes the thing He thinks. It’s about the universe to me, the entire universe with all its galaxies. You know, Plotinus, eighteen hundred years ago, thought there were, I think about a million, a hundred and twenty stars in the universe. He counted them with his little telescope. Galileo, a little while later, he thought there were five thousand stars. Presently, they say there is an infinite number of galaxies. An infinite number of galaxies. So it’s expanded a bit. Now, when I look at these things, I see God, the body of God, its creation, just as you have a body. And people say, they say, “There’s no Keith.” There is no Keith at all. That’s where Keith lives. When Keith moves out, that body goes back to the elements that make the mountain and the molehill. Same thing. So your body is just as real as it’s supposed to be. Creation is just as real as it’s supposed to be, in a state of constant flux. This is the reason that Einstein said energy and mass are equal, identical, and interchangeable. This is the reason that Carpenter said, “That which is made is not made of that which does appear.” It’s evidence of or the body of the creator, and as such, it’s the most beautiful thing I ever laid eyes on. And we’d have time to expand on that, too. Beautiful thing. Now, you and I duplicate God in our little world. We think and ourselves become the thing we think about. For instance, something you and I know a little bit about is drinking whiskey, and muscadoodle, and old panther. I broke in on white lightning, a hundred and forty-six proof. From that up to a hundred and sixty-nine. Real good. You drink it out of a fruit jar. It’s nice. You get it. Freeze right off your nose. Take a big slug of that and you’re like brrr. That’s good. But it got the job done. So we think and ourselves become the thing we think about. After a while, every alkie looks like every other alkie. Every one of us look just alike. We get a cauliflower, purple one, on the end of our nose. All of our wiring is exposed. And we get a little bean belly sticking out, you know. Every one of us look just alike. You say, “There’s the doc. There’s an alkie,” you know. Every gourmet looks just alike. They get fat, roly-poly. Get very nice disposition because they can’t whip nobody. They all look just alike. Every wolf looks just alike. Look at Bill back there with his bald head. Son of this one up here with his bald head. He’s their morph. Look at him. He walks down the street. Everybody sees him, knows he’s a wolf. Hi, Bill. I love you, too. So we think and ourselves become the thing we think about. For instance, I got a guy sitting in front of me here that knows a little about the market business. I do the plans for every, uh, market that I put in. I do the plans for all of my clients with my own hands. Laid them out, put the departments where they should be, allotted the space to them, put the back rooms where they should be, and allotted the space according to the operation, whether the man had his own warehouse or twice-a-week deliveries from someplace else. Put all the plumbing and wiring fixtures, uh, spotted all the plumbing and wiring that it took to operate the thing. Then we gave it to the architect, and they built a building around it, and I built the fixtures that went in it, and the operator put some canned goods and some meat in there, and had a store. But that store came out of my head before it was ever on paper, you see. We think and ourselves become the thing we think about. That’s the way it is with our lives. We duplicate the creator in our little world, and that’s the reason that it behooves us to know what this thinking apparatus is. Now, I told you I didn’t believe in a God of judgment because I don’t believe that an infinite can think comparatively. I don’t think God knows the difference between a molehill and a mountain in size because God is both the molehill and the mountain. He don’t have to think comparatively. He’s both of them. So he don’t have to think comparatively. To compare, there has to be otherness. You hear me? Okay. This makes it unnecessary to have God of justice. We have God of love and a great law of justice without judgment. A great law of justice without judgment. The law says, “What you sow, you reap.” You can’t plant radishes and get cucumbers. What you sow, you reap. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. It’s a great law of life, and it’s just as cold as any law in the universe. It’s cold as the law of electricity. That law of electricity will light that light, fry your bacon or fry your fanny, and it’s just as comfortable frying your fanny as it is lighting that light. It’s the nature of the law. The nature of the law of life is that if I pour in slop, I get back slop, and it’s just as comfortable giving me back slop as it is giving me back love. Now, I taught that law forty years ago, and I thought people could live by it, but you can’t. If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t live by it. You know it. You know you can’t plant radishes and get cucumbers, so you know that you gotta do a little controlling job on your thinking. But you can’t live by it. You gotta have some heat. Where does the heat come from? There were two pillars in front of the Temple of Solomon. They were called Jachin and Boaz. You had to walk between those pillars to get into the temple, the Holy of Holies. Jachin and Boaz. Now, that means law and love. Law and love. And the ancients put it like this, “On the one hand, all is law.” The way it works, law. What you sow, you reap. And on the other hand, all is love, and love is the fulfillment of the law. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Now, what does that mean? That means sooner or later, you and I can have only one motivation for any act whatsoever, and that’s love. The only reason for doing anything is because you love it for free and for fun. That’s work, play, a-a home, the works. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Now, what does it mean? It is axiomatic that if the only thing I pour into life is love, the only thing the law can give me back is love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. I love you. Period. Why? In the beginning, because you were drunk, and because you gave me– you rocked me to sleep, and you gave me the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and helped me do it. So I had to love you. I had to love you. I hated you more than any part of the whole human race. I hated you before I got here. Before the thing happened to me, I thought the entire human race was a cosmic mistake. God’s kids were too damn mean and too stupid to merit my attention. I was interested in God. I learned a lot about Him, and the more I learned, the drunker I got. Now, that wasn’t because I knew more, but because I didn’t do anything. I knew so much I didn’t have to do. I told you guys what to do, but I didn’t have to because I knew these things, you know? So it took me pretty seventy years to learn that you can live yourself into right thinking, but you cannot think yourself into right living. All you gotta do is do these things, and something will happen. Don’t do them, and nothing happens, regardless of how much you know about this book. We had a guy here when I first got here. We called him The Coach. His name was Paul Kittyhill. Some of you guys were here long, long enough ago to know him. Paul had two vocabularies. He had a under-the-bridge vocabulary, and I thought I had a pretty good one, but he could lose me And he had an old dame vocabulary. And he knew this book practically by heart. He could stand up here almost, quote chapter three in its entirety and chapter five in its entirety without cracking a book. And we had to watch Paul die. We had to watch him die. He came to me just about a… Oh, man, he came by our meeting, Beverly Hills, just a short time before he left us, and he fell on my neck and cried like a baby. And he says, “Chap, look at you and look at me.” And he says, “Just think, I was gonna throw you out of my own house when you came to see me.” And he had to die because he forgot to do these things. He knew them, but he didn’t do them. So we can live ourself into right thinking, but we can’t think ourselves into right living. Now, I love you. It’s none of my business what you think of me. It is none of my business. It’s my business what I think of you, and I love you. Now, if you happen to love me back, it’s a plus. So you can add to my life, but you can’t take away. Did you hear me? Now, this is one of the greatest things that you ever heard tell of. You can add to my life, but you can’t take away. And everybody that lives can add to my life, but you can’t take away because I’m not trading with you. I love you, period. First, because you’re drunk. Second, because I know who you are, whether you do or not. You’re God’s children, every one of you, and for that reason, I love you, if for no other, you see. Now, I want to throw this in. What time did we start? Ten thirty-seven. Have I got a half an hour? Good. I want to throw this in. As many of you know, I do a few things in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I have been doing them for twenty-nine years. Like maybe having eight talks in a row, and I don’t do it because I want to hear my voice. I’ve heard me before. And I don’t do it because I want your applause because I’ve had that before. The only reason I’m here is to share me with anybody that wants to be loved. That’s the only reason I’m here. And that’s the only reason I can do what I do. If I was concerned about saving your souls, I wouldn’t be here because if any of you have a lost soul, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to look for it. Not the slightest. And I’m most certainly not here to make Christians out of you because as I understand or misunderstand Christianity, I just might not be a Christian. You priests take note. So, I’ve never had a sponsor in this program. Never. When I got here, I didn’t know anything about a sponsor. And when I learned about a sponsor, I didn’t figure that I was entitled to that much consideration from anybody. I never even asked many questions for a long time. I became an eavesdropper. When I got well enough to hold a cup of coffee, I’d get me a cup of coffee, pick out somebody that seemed to be talking pretty good AA, and back up to them, you know, and stick me into the conversation. Gave me a hell of an eavesdropper. And if they caught me, I’d take off, back up to somebody else. And if they caught me and included me in, I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t believe it. I’d go out under the pepper trees and cry like a damn baby. And a little later on, when I might have been able to ac-accept a sponsor, I had a few hundred of them. Everybody that I see in Alcoholics Anonymous is my sponsor. Those who are in the program and those who are not in it, every one of them is my sponsor. I feel that every man is my teacher, some teaching me what to do and some teaching me what not to do. And I think the one that teaches me what not to do might be just as important as the one that teaches me what to do. As I’ve told many of you, I went through two deaths last year with people that I’d known, one of them twenty-eight years and one of them twenty-five. And they both left by their own hand. One of them was only forty-five years old, and he’d been sober twenty-five years. And I’d been instrumental in get him in– getting him in here. And his, his image got between him and his program, and he’s gone. And he had to die. And the other one let something get too important to her, and she had to die after twenty-eight years. So those that teach us what not to do are just about as important as teachers as those that teach us what to do. Now, why does this law and love do away with the necessity for a God of judgment? It’s quite possible, gentlemen, that the only bondage there is in this life is absolute freedom under law. Absolute freedom under law. For instance, there is no law of God or man that says I can’t drink whiskey. You can’t find a law that says I can’t drink whiskey. And by the grace of God, through the miracle of AA, I have enough money in my pocket right now, if you won’t tell anybody, to get us all drunk and keep us drunk quite a little while without even going to the bank. I can do that. Why don’t I drink whiskey? The priest says, “You ought not.” And I say I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I don’t know what that means, you ought not. Who says I ought not? But I know what this means. I can’t afford it. I cannot afford it. When I drink whiskey, it robs me of everything that I like about me and you and life. So I cannot afford it, so I don’t drink it. There’s no law of God or man that says I can’t hate you. I can hate the bejesus out of every one of you if I want to. No law says I can’t. Why don’t I? Again, the priest says, “You ought not.” And again, I say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I know this, I can’t afford it because whatever I pour in, I get back, and I’ve gotten back enough of that slop. I don’t want any more of it, so I don’t do it. There’s no law of God or man that says I can’t judge you. I’m perfectly free to judge the hell out of you if I want to, and I’m very capable in those lies. For many years, I inventoried everybody that I ever knew and lots of people that were just walking by. Why don’t I judge you? I can’t afford it. Now, the carpenter told me what would happen to me if I did, but he did not tell me I couldn’t. He says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with whatsoever judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. And with whatsoever measure ye mete, it’ll be measured to you again, heap up, pressed down, and running over.” Now, that’s what happens to me if I judge. But he didn’t say you can’t. If I want– If I’m willing to pay the penalty, I can do it. But I am not willing to pay the penalty, so I don’t do it. No law of God or man that says I can’t resent you. Why don’t I? Can’t afford it. Envy, can’t afford it, so I don’t do it because whatever I pour in, whatever I sow, I reap. The only bondage there is perhaps in this entire life is absolute freedom under law. You can do anything your imagination conjures up if you’re willing to pay the inevitable consequence of your thought and act. I am not willing, so I don’t do it. Now we got to take a little moment and do away with something that many, many of us think about. For instance, people were telling me for years, “Duck, you can’t drink. You got to quit.” You know? And, uh, I could look around me and see a lot of people that were drinking and not getting in trouble, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t drink like they did. And I sit up there in my room now in that same chair, and I look down on the little town of Laguna Beach, and there are fifteen thousand one hundred people in Laguna Beach the last count. And fifteen thousand of them can do things I can’t do. And they’re all God’s kids. How come? They can eat a little and drink a little, love a little and hate a little, judge a little and resent a little, lie a little and cheat a little. They’re God’s kids same as I am. How come they can do that and I can’t? Simply because as yet they have not run out of time. And there’s another thing that they can do that you and I never could do. They can eat a little and drink a little. You and I never could do that. We’ve always figured that anything that was worth doing was worth doing to excess. So we ran out of time. They haven’t run out of time yet. And it is my opinion that it doesn’t make any difference to the universe when they run out of time. Whether it’s now or five hundred years from now don’t make any difference. Sooner or later, every one of us has to come back home to the living God, made us because we’re all God’s kids. But the timing don’t count with the universe. It counts with me. Life is pretty good living it with you guys. It ain’t worth a damn living out there in that jungle where I used to live. So that’s the deal. So our motivation is to add to, to go about our Father’s business, doing things for His kids that they need to have done because we want to. And that’s what our Twelve Step tells us to do. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, to God’s kids, and to practice these principles in all of our affairs with God’s kids in every department of our, our lives, at home, in business, in play, in AA. And so if our motivation is love and we do these things for free and for fun, the only thing that the law can give us back is love. This is the motivation. This is the way it works, and it totally does away with the necessity of a God of judgment. It’s built in. It’s built in. Right there it is. What you sow, you reap. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Now, I can go right down the middle of the road with a God of law and order, a God of love, a law of justice without judgment. I can go right down the middle of the road with that. But I can’t go a foot with the God that they told me about when I was a kid. You see? They told me that God would take my kids away from me in death to punish me for my sins. I said when I was that high, if there’s a God like that, I’m going to get me a pitchfork and join with the devil. If I ever catch Him, I’m going to stick that pitchfork through Him because I could not accept a God of that kind, and I don’t now. My insides wouldn’t have it, and they still don’t. But a God of love and a great law of justice without judgment, I can go with. It’s a fantastic thing. I don’t happen to believe in good or bad. I don’t happen to believe in right or wrong. I don’t happen to believe in two worlds. I believe in one world. I believe in that. This is an experience, but it’s not reality. The Bible says, “Judge not according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment.” That means that pretty soon we see ourselves in all men and all men in ourselves, and we look through the condition to the thing behind it. I haven’t seen a drunk now for twenty years. It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen a drunk. And when I was in business, my client was at Fortieth and Alameda. And every time I went downtown, if time permitted, I went to the head of Fifth Street and drove west. It drew me like a magnet. And every time I ever went into Fifth Street, the Black Maria was just in front of me or just behind me. And I knew that Black Maria inside and out. I’ve ridden in her chains, and all the boys on the street knew her, too. And they knew the ragpickers who were sitting right there, you know, going to pick them up. And here’s the little wino, you know, with his bottle in a brown paper bag so nobody know what he’s got. There’s nothing that looks so much like a bottle of wine in a brown paper bag as a bottle of wine in a wine, in a brown paper bag. So here comes this ragpicker coming, you know, and he tries to get in the alley, and he goes flat on his ass about, strike that. About four times, running for the alley, but he don’t break that bottle. He breaks his fatty, but he don’t break that bottle. And he gets into the alley, and I say, “Thank God. Thank God,” because that’s me. That’s me, but with the grace of God. And I go on down the street, and here’s this old boy in the doorway. It’s, uh, July, and he’s got on two overcoats. A black one and a gray one. And there he sits in the doorway, and his bottle’s right out in the open, and it’s half full, red eye. And he’s sitting there laughing and talking with his friends and having a hell of a time. His friends aren’t there. And I can’t hardly drive by him. I want to leave that car of mine right in the middle of Fifth Street and go over and pick him up and set him on my lap because that’s me, but for the grace of God. You see, I used to wear my overcoat in July. I used to meet the people, talk to them. They talked to me, and we had a hell of a time. They weren’t around. One of the things that made the biggest impression on my family, I think, of all the things I did, drunk. There’s many times we’d all be in the same living room, and I’d have company, and they wouldn’t have any. They couldn’t understand it. So we don’t judge according to appearances. We look through the appearance and see God’s kid right under that crud, and we share with them. We share our experience, strength, and hope, one with another in love. And that’s the reason our program works and nothing else does. Without the sharing, without the caring, there would be no recovery from Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I told you a little bit ago, it’s my business what I think of you, and it’s your business what you think of me. That is not my business unless you want to make it some of my business. It never concerns me. I never wonder, even. I don’t have to because I love you, and love is a complete thing within itself. It’s like virtue. When virtue recognizes itself as virtue, it immediately becomes vice. Virtue is its own reward. Love is its own reward, the fulfillment of the law. So I don’t have to wonder about it. Now, in personal relations, this has the greatest meaning on the face of the earth because you see, all of us are God’s kids, and all of us do what we have to do because all of us have obsessions of the mind. Now, in my early experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, I thought that obsessions of the mind were a part of my disease, that the earth people didn’t have any right to ’em. You know, this was, uh, they’re not alcoholics. Alcoholism is a disease of a two-fold nature, an allergy of the body coupled with an obsession of the mind. Ain’t that normal? Allergy of the body, so they can’t have the obsession of the mind. That was just for drunks. But in living a while, I had to come to see that we’re all God’s kids, and every one of us are doing the best we can according to our light. That is, according to our understanding. People don’t do what they do because they want to, but because they have to. Just as I drank and you drank against my own will, we have to come to see that obsessions of the mind, whoever has them, are greater than the willpower. When the will and the imagination and/or the emotions are in conflict, the emotions and the imagination always win. We drank against our own will, and so people don’t do what they do because they want to, but because they have to. The man never lived that disliked me enough to have to tear me down. The only reason that anybody tries to tear me down is to build himself up. And when we come to see this, people can’t hurt us. There’s no way that they can hurt us. When we know better, we do better. Now this is– this fools a lot of people because they think because they know these things intellectually, they know ’em. They don’t. I knew everything I know now that is of consequence in my life forty years ago, except one thing, the disease of alcoholism. I didn’t know anything about that. I believed everything I believe now that is consequential to my way of life forty years ago. I was born believing in God. I never got drunk enough not to believe in God. A belief in God’s good, but it’s not good enough. If you are a drunk, living in God is the only answer there is. The conscious awareness of the living presence of the Almighty, the only answer there is. In Him I live and move and have my being. So when we know better, we do better. Now, I knew it from here up forty years ago. I knew it from here up and down now. And I don’t sow what I am unwilling to reap too often. I do it. I do it. Many people, uh, think that I don’t make any mistakes. Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken there. But I have a little trick that I wouldn’t trade again for a million dollars. I share everything in life with my God. Everything, the good, the bad, and the indifferent. I share it and dump it. For instance, when I do a lousy stunt, which I do once in a while, too often, I take it into my closet with me and I say, “Look, Dad, look what I did yesterday. Isn’t this a lousy thing for a guy like me to do?” I knew better when I did it, but I had to make an impression. She was awful pretty. Now, I don’t like it, and you don’t like it, and I’m gonna do better. And with your help, I’ll do a lot better. Sure thing. And I dump it and never pick it up again. And when the good thing happens, I do the same thing with it. I say, “Look, Father, isn’t this beautiful? It couldn’t happen to a bum like me, but it did. And I know where it came from. Sure thing.” And I dump that. I think it’s just as tough on us to try to carry the so-called good as the so-called bad. We don’t need either one of ’em because this life should be spontaneous. We don’t need any impediments. Get rid of the whole business and start each day anew with no yesterdays and no tomorrows. Spontaneous life. Now, the golden key to this thing called life… Ol’ Harold back there has been waiting on it for twenty-some, how many? Twenty- Twenty-four. Twenty-four? Twenty years he’s been waiting for this. He’s just followed me around. Him and old Doc Rendon followed me around for five years waiting for me to drop the golden key. They knew that sometime by mistake I’d spill it, and they’d, they’d be there to get it. And every time they’d come down and take up the whole night yakking in my living room, I would tell ’em, “Look, I’ve given you the key every time you ever heard me talk. I’ve given it to you. All you gotta do is do these simple things.” But they knew there was something else. So I’m gonna give him the golden key now after twenty years. The golden key to this thing called life is rigorous self-honesty. Rigorous self-honesty. Why? Because we have a monitor with us. We didn’t put it there, and we can’t dislodge it. The religious call it conscience. This is another thing I don’t understand, don’t know anything about. I call it God. God in me, as me, is me. I’m not God, but God is me. Infinitely greater than I because He’s all of you as well as me, but not different from other than or apart from, but a part of because now I am consciously aware of the living presence of the Almighty. So the golden key to this thing called life is rigorous- take it into my closet with me and I say, “Look, Dad, look what I did yesterday. Isn’t this a lousy thing for a guy like me to do?” I knew better when I did it, but I had to make an impression. She was awful pretty. Now, I don’t like it, and you don’t like it, and I’m gonna do better. And with your help, I’ll do a lot better. Sure thing. And I dump it and never pick it up again. And when the good thing happens, I do the same thing with it. I say, “Look, Father, isn’t this beautiful? It couldn’t happen to a bum like me, but it did. And I know where it came from. Sure thing.” And I dump that. I think it’s just as tough on us to try to carry the so-called good as the so-called bad. We don’t need either one of ’em because this life should be spontaneous. We don’t need any impediments. Get rid of the whole business and start each day anew with no yesterdays and no tomorrows. Spontaneous life. Now, the golden key to this thing called life… Ol’ Harold back there has been waiting on it for twenty-some, how many? Twenty- Twenty-four. Twenty-four? Twenty years he’s been waiting for this. He’s just followed me around. Him and old Doc Rendon followed me around for five years waiting for me to drop the golden key. They knew that sometime by mistake I’d spill it, and they’d, they’d be there to get it. And every time they’d come down and take up the whole night yakking in my living room, I would tell ’em, “Look, I’ve given you the key every time you ever heard me talk. I’ve given it to you. All you gotta do is do these simple things.” But they knew there was something else. So I’m gonna give him the golden key now after twenty years. The golden key to this thing called life is rigorous self-honesty. Rigorous self-honesty. Why? Because we have a monitor with us. We didn’t put it there, and we can’t dislodge it. The religious call it conscience. This is another thing I don’t understand, don’t know anything about. I call it God. God in me, as me, is me. I’m not God, but God is me. Infinitely greater than I because He’s all of you as well as me, but not different from other than or apart from, but a part of because now I am consciously aware of the living presence of the Almighty. So the golden key to this thing called life is rigorous-