His two henchmen fell down on him. Not yet. In 1923, I was in the real estate business in Los Angeles, and I had a picture on my desk of an old man with a white beard down about to his navel, and the caption was, “I’m an old man, and I’ve had many troubles, most of which never happened.” I like that real, real good. This is we decided yesterday to be a question period, and, uh, Chet Borden has the first question. Chet, uh, I don’t hesitate to ask a question to you. After you give your, uh, position there. I’ve had a lot of people, uh, ask me, and, uh, been wondering whether or not you would consider next year doing the same thing. And, uh, I know that we meet a lot of these men that have been picked up with, uh, either the men or the others. There’s always one in every crowd. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I don’t know, Chet. We’ll think about it. I don’t know whether it’d be too quick to do it again next year or not. You gotta change a little between them, you know. And I don’t know whether we can grow very much in a year. We’re not as green as we used to be. It’s been 12 years since the last one, and I think it’s just about right. 12 years. But I’ll think about it. I think it’s nice of somebody to think that they might want it, so I thank you for that. What’s the next question? Should we work with practicing alcoholics before we have taken all the steps ourselves? I think that the very moment that a guy decides he wants what we have and becomes willing to go to any length to get it, he is ready to work with alcoholics. Not that he tries to carry the message to alcoholics, but that he tries to carry the alcoholic to the message. Soon as we have decided that we want what’s here, we can tell anybody, “Look, I found a place that seems to manufacture sobriety. Bunch of guys that are doing something about their drinking, and they have impressed me very much, and I’m going to a meeting. How about going with me?” So you carry the alcoholic to the message. The bookie says, “Obviously, we can’t transmit something we don’t have.” That’s what you’re referring to. But you don’t have to, uh, you don’t have to be anything but kind to carry a message. Really, that’s all. Little love. Okay. In our sobriety, how do we deal with emotions, A, others we work with in the program, B, in our own sobriety? I got into that, I guess. I said sobriety was fourfold: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Emotional would just be one of the areas of our lives that has to come still. For instance, if we’re going to work with alcoholics, we can’t afford to become emotionally involved in their program or in their problem, I mean, not in their program, in their problem. We can’t afford to become emotionally involved in the problem, or we lose all of our possibility for help. You gotta stay above the problem. Now, it seems like maybe that that would be a- Is not. You have to love more to stay emotionally involved, uh, uh, uninvolved in the problem than you do to become involved in it. The answer is not in the problem. The answer is in the answer. I worked on my problem for ten years, and the more I looked at the problem and the harder I worked on the problem, the greater the problem became. It was just like fertilizing, watering, and cultivating a weed. Grow, grew out of all proportions. And I think we have to be able to live above the problem to be of value to those who have it. We don’t get emotionally involved in the problem. It’s not that we love less, it’s that we love more. I think it takes much more love to release than it does to hold on to. Emotional stability comes, I am sure, out of this thing we call self-discovery. Physical sobriety comes from not drinking. We don’t drink today, and after a while, we are physically free from the effects of alcohol. But until we become emotionally stable, mentally stable, and spiritually somewhat stable, uh, we are– we’re not sober. Sobriety is the ability to live comfortably, peacefully, and joyously with oneself. I find much, much confusion in this area of becoming emotionally involved in, uh, the problems of our so-called babies. Many people think you got to be emotionally involved in it. And I think we completely stymie ourselves when we do. That’s the truth. What about sex after sobriety? Is there anybody here who wants to cover that topic? Have a little sister. Do you want to speak on that? I can. Paul’s got the answer. 提供 the question, and Jasper doesn’t work like it used to. Never. Tell him that, Paul. So you’d have him arrested for assault with a dead weapon. I’m delighted to be able to report that, uh, as we said yesterday, love includes possession, but not the necessity to possess. I think that, uh, it’s perfectly possible to live very happily in a marriage relation without, uh, uh, emphasis on that particular deal. I know it’s quite important to many, many people. It’s strange how important that it gets at times and, uh, then, uh, in a little while, how unimportant it is. We used to call it the biggest nut there is, you know. But I, I, I realize that it’s a problem in many, many families. It might be in mine. I don’t know. But I believe that sex as such should be just as spontaneous as everything else. I think it should come as the result of love, you know, the givingness of self to self in love. And I think that’s the only way it’s, has any value at all. I think that we as a sex are very, very lacking in this area. Actually, I do. All men, because we are inclined to want what we want when we want it, and, uh, it’s to explode, and that’s what And when the explosion’s over, the, the, the, the job’s done as far as we’re concerned. But I feel that that’s totally selfish approach. I think that the love and adoration both before and after the act is far, far superior than to the act itself. In other words, I find nothing wrong with sexual intercourse as a result of love. But as a, an objective, I think it’s self-robbery again. It’s a beautiful thing when it’s the givingness of self to self in love. And otherwise, I find no value in it. That’s all I can say. What is the value of patience when counseling with another alcoholic? If we had all the alcoholics in the world in this room right now, we would have 90% of the impatience of the human race. We are a very impatient lot. We want everything to happen yesterday. And patience is certainly a virtue. I doubt very much if, uh, our value as a counselor would equal our value as a listener. If you can get the guy talking, or the gal, you can get them talking. This is the deal. In my own case, if I’m talking to somebody new, the one thing that I listen for is the first attempt at a belly laugh. This ain’t no big deal. You can’t get serious. An alcoholic cannot take a preachment or a lecture. We know all about the preachment and the lecture. We’ve given them to ourselves a thousand times. We know exactly what they’re going to say before they say it. And so the caring, and to get them to talk and be a good listener gives the counselor more value than talking himself. We’re not experts on anything. And it’s the simple little thing that opens the door. It isn’t the profundity. Nobody ever got sober on profundity. Nobody. It’s the little things. Many of you heard me tell this, but I was talking at the Bob White Group many years ago on Santa Barbara and Van Ness. And there was a drunk in bad shape sitting right about there where it’s a castle, this city. And, uh, came time for him to light a cigarette, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get the thing to make. And he struggled, and he struggled. And, uh, after a while, a little old lady that was sitting next to him reached over and took his cigarette and his match and lit it and put it in his mouth. And the next year, I was there at the same time, and this guy got his birthday, first birthday. And I thought, “Well, I must have done pretty well,” you know, in that talk. So I was prepared to give him a nice compliment, you know, when he got up to take his birthday cake. And he said the reason he was back was not what was said or done in the meeting. It was the fact that this little old lady had lit his cigarette for him. This thing don’t depend on profundity, expertise. It’s love. And love is patient. Love is patient. Not even that I love to think about it. This happens to the Harpers Group. I talk there on Friday before Christmas every year. And 10 or a dozen years ago, there was a guy sitting along the wall. There were benches along the wall. And he was leaping. He wasn’t shaking. He was leaping. And I went over and sat down beside him before the meeting started. And I put my arm around the guy. And I said, “Son, it ain’t no big deal. If you don’t drink, if you don’t take that next drink, two days you’ll be pretty nearly well, physically.” Just put it off. Don’t take that next drink. It ain’t no big deal. Make a game out of it. You can go for three days without a drink. See what happens to you. And for years, he’s gone by me, or, uh, at least once a year in some meeting, and he gets right up to my left ear, and he says, “Son, it ain’t no big deal.” He goes on about his business. So yes, if you love him, you’re patient. Next. How do we surrender and turn our will to God when after asking for guidance we still ponder at times? There are many times when even prayer is like praying up a chimney. No way can, uh, you seem to make any conscious contact with anything. Everything’s futile. You have no purchase at all up there on the end of that line. And that’s what the book means when it says, “When everything else fails, get your wet drunk.” Because you see, when we’re feeling futile, we want something. We want something, and it isn’t happening. And there’s no way that you can want something when you’re working with a wet drunk. No way. You can’t think about yourself when you’re working with a wet drunk. That’s one place where you give all your attention and love to the thing it has. It is just simply to outmaneuver it. It’ll neither be the pukee or the puke or in that case. So we gotta get ourselves off m- off our minds. Now, I have a- A thing of my own, I can’t solve a problem. No way I can solve a problem, and I haven’t tried it much in these last 29 years because I’ve expected guidance and direction. But if I wake up to the fact that I’m all tied in a knot working on something and I’m just completely rigid almost, subconsciously I’ve been messing with this thing and beating my brains out, and I recognize it. And this is my little deal, and it, uh, it works for me right along. I, as I said to you, I share everything with my own God, good, bad, and indifferent. And in this case, I say, “Look, Dad, I’m beating my brains out over this problem, and I don’t know the answer. You do. And when you get re- ready to give it to me, I’d certainly be glad to have it. Sure thing.” And I dump it, and I never look at it again. I just dump it. That’s it. And in a very short time, I find out that it either wasn’t a problem in the first place, which is about 50% of the time, or I have the answer. It’s the self-concern and the impatience that bring about this sort of an impasse in our own lives. And to get ourselves off our mind, there’s nothing more highly recommended than to sit down with a wet rug. Does that do you any good? With ego and self taking over periodically, do I analyze and look for answers too much? You’re a mess. If I were you, I’d just give up. I find, uh, so many of our people, e- even in the grapevine, I find so many of them writing about self-esteem, building self-esteem. I hear people get up here and talk all the time about you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anybody else, and I am most grateful that that ain’t the case. I never spent any time trying to build up self-esteem. I never spent any time trying to love me. I wouldn’t have taken me with a large dowry. I hated my damn guts. And so I got busy doing things this book suggests, and it wasn’t trying to learn how to self-esteem me or to love me so I could love you. I don’t, I, I don’t think that that’s, uh, is the way it is at all. Francis says, “For it is better to love than to be loved. It is better to understand than to be understood. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in forgetting that we’re forgiven, and it is in dying to self that we awaken to eternal life.” And that’s exactly what we’ve been talking about ever since we’ve been down here. That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. I don’t believe that an image, Phil, I don’t believe that an image of me would add anything to my life at all. I haven’t any more image of me than I have of a walrus. That isn’t what I’m interested in. I’m not interested in an image of me. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to share me with anybody that wants me in love and let the chips fall where they may. I’m not even interested in your opinion of what’s happened, except when you wanna give it to me. That’s not my deal. I love you. I love you, and that’s all I have to do. That’s what I’m interested in. That’s my deal. It’s not my deal who you love or what you love or what you think. That’s your deal. I love you, period. I don’t even have to concern myself about what you think of me. I got no image at all of me. I think of myself exactly as that big window out there in front of my chair. That window to me is me. And when there’s no obstruction, the light comes through. But the window is not the light. And I think of that drape as my ego. And when that drape’s closed, the light don’t come through. But just as the window is not the light, the drape is not the darkness. It just dr- shuts out the light. So my business is keep the drape open, Phil, and let the light shine. And I don’t furnish the light. I’m a channel I’m a channel. You and I are necessary to God as channels through which he goes forth into his creation. We’re channels. Then we get ourself out of the way, and let it be, and let it be. Now, as we said last night, and as I say to me all the time, I’m either gonna run my life and take the consequences thereof, or I’m not gonna let run it and take the conse- consequences thereof. And I can’t run mine, and I don’t get involved in running my life. I get involved in living. I think losing yourself in life guarantees finding yourself in God. Guarantees it. ‘Cause all you gotta do is to get rid of the roadblock. You lose yourself in life and find yourself in God. And Phil, I wouldn’t if I were you, I wouldn’t spend another five seconds trying to find self-worth or anything else. To find yourself, yes. To realize that whatever it is you’re looking for is right here. What you’re looking for, you’re looking with. What you came here to get came with you. Everything you ever wanted to know, you’ve always known, and everything you’ve always wanted to be, you’ve always been. But it’s covered up. It’s covered up. So we uncover and discover, and get lost in that, Phil, and forget about you. To hell with you. And you’ve got a little better break on that than I have. Maybe you have, and maybe you ain’t. Phil’s got a little income. So it allows him to, uh, have a little more time on his hands than maybe he should have. You know? You hear yourself? I think that’s it. Forget about old Phil and just do. Do, and let the chips fall where they may. The beautiful thing about this deal is not to get serious about yourself. To make the whole deal a game, a play of life upon itself. And you have fun out of it. I have more fun with God than I do with you. I have a hell of a lot of fun with God. I think that the guy has a tremendous sense of humor, or he wouldn’t have hid himself in the last place we ever looked, you know. I think it’s funny. The very last place we ever look. There he is. I can just see him, you know. Here I am, out trying to find a bottle. Off-hours, you know, and I’ve gotta have a drink. Just look at that son of a bitch. He found me, and I’m with him. See? So I love it. It’s a fun deal. You’re too serious, Phil. Yeah. Make it– make a fun deal out of it, huh? That help any? Should members of AA work professionally in the field of alcoholism? Were some of you counselors into that one? I do not really, uh, care much to comment on it, but I would say this. It’s awfully hard, it’s awfully hard for amateurs like us to get mixed up with professionals and stay amateurs. We’re a strange bunch. All we have to do is to rub elbows a little while with a doctor, and we become doctors. Maybe some people can retain their amateur standing in working for money in the field of alcoholism. I don’t know. Maybe they can. But in my personal life, I’ve met only one that seemed to do it, and he wasn’t around long enough to really, uh, see whether it was gonna work out or not, and that was Warren Snyder. Warren died about a year or so after, two years after he started, uh, working in the field of alcoholism for money. Now, the one thing that would seem to be foolish from a paid 12-step call would be working with the National Committee on Alcoholism. Because the National Committee on Alcoholism has no recovery program at all. They are educational and referral. That’s their business, and that’s not the business we’re in. So it would appear that there would be no conflict For the National Committee on Alcoholism. They, they, they have no, no, uh, program of recovery. But those of my friends who work with them somehow become professional. I’m mindful of one gal I love very, very much, and ten years ago, she made one of the finest AA talks I ever heard in my life. And she became an employee, secretary, of the Committee on Alcoholism, and she talked to our group a year ago, yes. And she made just as fine a talk she’s ever made. But it wasn’t Alcoholics Anonymous talk. It was a professional talk. It was a professional talk. And the one thing about us that we must maintain is caring and sharing. We’re not experts on anything. We share our experience, strength, and hope, one with another in love. And so I haven’t seen anybody even be able to do that kind of thing without seeming to get lost in profession, professionalism. Incidentally, it wasn’t three months after that talk that she was in the hospital herself. Not, I’m sure, for either failed drinking. I say I’m sure. I’m not sure of anything. I’m like Bill. I don’t know nothing. But she was in the hospital for a sort of a breakdown of some kind. I can’t do it. Personally, when I talk for organizations that have an honorarium, the, the thing I do carries an honorarium for, say, seventy-five to a hundred and fifty dollars. I don’t take it. I don’t take it. Because whilst they don’t know it, I get them for eight bits. I learned what I’m telling them from you guys, from drunks who don’t drink. And I can’t any more take an honorarium than I can fly. Because you guys didn’t charge me a thing. You didn’t even ask me if I had anything. The only thing you said to me is, “Mister, were you looking for somebody?” And I said, “No, sir.” And you said, “Well, what were you looking for?” And I said, “It would interest you, sir, I was looking for sobriety.” And you lit up like a Christmas tree. Took me in and rocked me to sleep. Now, I’m certain that any alcoholic is totally free to make a living. I think we’re entitled to make a living. But if I were a preacher, excuse me, Dave. If I were a preacher, I would want my business on the side. Because I would not want to get up here and try to tell you monkeys what you want to hear. I would not want my gas and water in your hands. If you don’t like me, you cut off my gas and water. So I’ve got to try to please you. I can’t do that. I would want my business on the side. I’d want my money coming in from here, so I could tell you what I think. I can’t talk without saying it as I feel it, as I think that it should be. And I can’t work in that field. But if I were a captain in the Marines, and they wanted me to head up a program for alcoholism for the Marines, and I could set up my own staff, as certain Marines have had the privilege to do it, I might do what a captain in the Marines who asked that question did. He turned to me and he said, “What am I going to do?” I said, “Get your staff to handle the related disorders. Get all these people that you have working with you to handle the hopheads, the pill heads, the sex maniacs,” like, uh, who was that? “And you deal in Alcoholics Anonymous, the, the drunk at Alcoholics Anonymous.” And that’s what you did. And it’s worked out beautifully, and I don’t see it’s doing you any harm. Yes, Dave. What? Should members of AA attend meetings of Al-Anon? Are we missing anything? I think they are because most of them are women in Al-Anon. I have a lot of fun. Of course, my wife is, is quite an Al-Anony-nonie. And, uh, I had a lot of fun with her. I got by for many years by saying to her when she got a little out of line, “Look, sister, you ought to have been for us.” Because we go into my program, you know? And after a while, she got smarty pants, and she started saying, “We wouldn’t have needed your program if it hadn’t been for you.” And I don’t see why I should go anyplace else or have to go anyplace else to find out how to work my program in Alcoholics Anonymous. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t see the need of it. Long before Alcoholics Anon– uh, before Al-Anon was born, when people were coming to me and saying, “We gotta get this guy sober or this gal sober,” I was saying to them, “Maybe, maybe this is the best time in your life to find yourself. Maybe the only chance you’ve got to help this alchie is not to come to me, but to apply these principles to yourself. Find your own peace, and maintain your own peace in your own household. And it might be the, the only good thing you can do for that drunk.” This is a long time before Al-Anon was born, and that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to find living answers in our program, which we must find along with sobriety. And I don’t mind going to Al-Anon meetings. I’ve talked before Al-Anon meetings, big deal. Matter of fact, you people don’t know it, but you’re looking at the greatest Al- Not speak to the rest. A few years ago, a Swede from Dallas called me, Olin Lancaster. I guess that’s Swedish or something. I don’t know what it is. And it was Thursday, and Olin says, “Chuck, when are you– w- w- when can you leave for Dallas?” I says, “I’m not coming.” Olin says, “Yes, you are.” I says, “I’m not coming to Dallas.” He says, “I asked you when you will leave.” And I said, “I’m not coming.” And he says, “I, I don’t want that kind of an answer. When are you leaving?” And I says, “Who fell down on you? What’s the matter with the speaker you had? Why didn’t you ask him first?” “Who fell down on you?” He says, “None of your goddamn business.” Well, to make a long story short, I flew to Dallas and talked at the Al-Anon luncheon. And I was a substitute for a substitute. The first one that had agreed to talk to the Al-Anon lunc- luncheon was the late Liz. You know, the gal in, uh, that wrote the book, the late Liz. What was her name? Gert. Gert. Gert Mac– Gert Makana. Gertie and I don’t get along too well anyway. But she was the gal that, uh, was supposed to talk, and she pooped out. And the next one was the Anna Rogers St. Johns, and she pooped out. So I’m a substitute for two broads, substitute for a substitute. And they still say down there that I gave the best Al-Anon talk they ever heard. So, I just do that in to make it, uh, hard. Now, there’s no s– there’s no reason you shouldn’t go to an Al-Anon meeting and talk to. Next. How do you prove love? Well, I don’t think that you prove anything. I don’t think we’ve got anything to prove. Nothing to win, and we’re not going anyplace. I’ll have to tell you again, I said this in this meeting already, but I’ll say it again because I love it myself. This certain doctor called me at midnight. And he says, “What’s your definition of love?” I said, “It’s the same as this 10 o’clock in the morning.” But then he called me at midnight and asked me what the definition of love is. He says, “What’s your definition of love?” I says, “You won’t like it.” He says, “What is it?” I says, “Actions.” To talk about love is like talking about humility. I feel very humble this morning, boys. Action. If you love somebody or something, you do something for ’em. You just do it, and you don’t make a big deal out of it. You don’t make a big deal out of it. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t spend five seconds trying to prove anything that I said from this po- podium for, to anybody here. That’s not why I’m here, to prove something. I wouldn’t spend five seconds try to, trying to defend anything I’ve said. I have a, I have a right to my own opinion, and you have a right to yours. And you have my approval. If you want to disagree with everything I’ve said and the way I’ve said it, everything all right with me. And the same thing is true with people everyplace. I love you. It’s none of my business what you think of me, unless you want to make it so. So quit trying to make something out of it, prove it. Next. Upon waking with negative thoughts, how does one establish a relationship with God? I think this is what we’ve been talking about all weekend, too. Praying without ceasing. I find no difference in a prayer and a serious thought. It’s the same thing, as we said, uh, since we’ve been here. Fear, worry is a prayer for something that’s gonna happen. To live in the conscious awareness of the living presence of God. I don’t even like too much– I talk about it an awful lot, but the Our Father prayer. Our Father, God. I talk about Our Father lots. But this relationship that we’ve been talking about this weekend is much, much closer than a father-son relationship. As I said, I believe, I said I’ve got two sons some place in Southern California. I don’t know where either one of them are. This is impossible with my relationship with my own God because God is that which I am. God is that which I am. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t be. There would be nothing. I would be extinct but for God because God is life, and there’s no way to be separated from God in reality. The only separation there is, is conscious. The feeling of conscious separation from, let be it. Very real as an experience, but not reality. So I don’t think that we ought to wake up feeling any different than weee went to sleep or feeling any different than ten minutes after we get up. Now is the deal. How is it with me right now? How is it with me right now? Now, if I had to get up and start playing right quick to feel good, I don’t think I’d feel good when I got through playing. I think I ought to feel good right before I start to play. And again, my prayers, I don’t know when they start and stop. Feel like better launching a little on that deal because I like to live in the conscious awareness of the living presence of God in a relationship with everything around me. Everything around me. So I, I, I think that’s the thing to, to sort of get through your head, that now is the time. You see, this is, this is so very vital to me because tomorrow was always the day I was gonna straighten up and fly, fly right. Tomorrow I was gonna do it, you know. But tomorrow never got here. Every time I came to, it was now, and I was thirsty. So I took a drink. Tomorrow never got here. And a-again, I don’t think I have to be in any particular position to, uh, retain this feeling of the living presence of God. I don’t think that it, uh, happened in church or in the mountain or in the temple or in Jerusalem. It’s in my own mouth that I might know it and do it. So that’s the only answer I’d have to that. Yes. When did you really start trusting God all the way? When did that happen? I don’t know. I don’t know because I discovered that it had happened, you see. I think it happened when this thing was burned out the first time. I think that’s when it happened because I was in here. This was me all the time, you know. But to be born out of conscious separation into conscious unity makes it a reality. A belief in God is good, but it is not good enough for alcoholics. We have to live in God. To live in God. That’s what this whole thing is all about, to get us out of our own way so that we can go about our Father’s business. That’s the only business I’ve had for twenty-nine years. I’m in a business. I go about my Father’s business, and that’s my business, and His business take care of. And it’s just as natural and normal as breathing. I expect it. Not that I’m sitting around in expectancy waiting for somebody to pick up the phone or ring it. It’s just my being. I know that every good and perfect gift is from Him. Father Barney said to me 10 years ago, we were driving under the Golden Gate Freeway. I was taking him home with me. We’d been to the office. And just as we went under the freeway, he said to me, “Jack Hahn, how the hell do you fulfill your commitments?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “You’ve got three lives, and any one of them is enough for anybody. And you do all three of them. How do you do it?” And I said, “Father, you ought to know that better than I do. You’re a damn Jedi. You can study it all your life, and why do you ask me that question?” He says, “Well, how do you do it?” And I says, “There’s no division in my life. There’s no division in my life.” When we practice these principles in all of our affairs, gentlemen, there is no division in life. There is nothing that is more or less important, and there’s nothing that is more or less spiritual than another Your business is just as spiritual as your AA. Your AA is just as spiritual as your church. Your home is just as spiritual as both of them. Substance is just as spiritual as, uh, ha-ha. Joy, just as spiritual. Every good and perfect gift is from His hand. And to liveliness, to be a-a-aware of this, constantly aware of it. And that’s what I was telling you yesterday. To trim the sails. To trim the sails. Some ships fly east and some fly west, but the self-same wind that blows. It is the set of the sail and not the gale that determines where it goes. And so trimming the sail, saying to myself maybe 50 times a day, “God is my refuge and my strength.” I don’t know why that is then. I’m not afraid of nothing. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of God. I’m not afraid of the devil. I’m not afraid of tomorrow or yesterday. Why would I be saying, “God is my refuge and my strength”? Lift up your eyes to the hills from whence cometh thy strength. I love the hills. I love God. And I trim the sails, reminding myself that in Him I live and move and have my being. The conscious awareness of the living presence of the Almighty. And that’s what this retreat’s all about. There’s nothing else here, so far as I’m concerned. I’m either gonna run my life and take the consequences thereof, or I’m not gonna run it and take the consequences thereof. And those are not words. That’s the way I live. And I cannot live any other way. I did it 43 years, and that was 43 years too long. Did that do you any good? I’ve always been a competitor. How do I re-remove competition from my life? It’s a strange thing to me, again, that I have been a competitor all my life. I was corrected this morning because there’s a man here who’s two years older than I am. She doesn’t look it, but he had a very sheltered youth. I could do anything with my body up until I got hurt in football. I could do anything. Football, basketball, baseball. In fact, the whole business was just duck soup. Old Walter Camp said years ago, “The only way I could keep from being an All-American was get hurt,” so I got hurt. Got removed from football. Competition was my life. I had a brother that was three and a half years older than I, and we were competitors. From the time I could walk until I left home at 20, we were in a fight. Lasted 20 years on the installment plan. And he was three and a half years older than I, and three and a half years stronger. And up until I was 18, 19, 20, he could whip me. But he couldn’t make me believe it. He could not make me believe it. We’d start a fight as kids two miles from home, and every time he got off of me, I’d dog him. And we’d end up in the living room, and Mother would whip us both. And I left home at 20 thinking I could whip that guy, you know? He never did make me believe that he could whip me. So competition, yes, it was my life. Now I do a lot of lawn bowling. And if I go down there to beat somebody, uh, I, I’m like a worse woman. It’s just like I never had a bowl in my hand. But if I go down there to, to, to do the best I can with what I got, and enjoy my competitor’s shot just the same as my own, I can beat anybody in the place. 1957, our singles champions, Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club. And I only bowl twice a week. I bowl Saturday and Sunday. And all the rest of them bowl every day. And you know, uh, that’s a delicate, delicate game, lawn bowling. So I can’t compete with anybody. And again, it is not because I decided not to compete. You see, I’m lucky. I’m lucky, lucky, lucky, because I didn’t want nothing when I came here, not even sobriety. I just wanted to rub out as much of the record as I could. And you can’t rub out a record thinking, you know, in terms of competition. You can’t do it. You just help people do things they need to have done because you want to. And I had to do that to rub out. And when I finally woke up to the fact that things were going good, I was in a habit of it And I just kept doing it, and I’m still doing it. And I believe this is the thing that, uh, we’re talking about. Our civilization has laid so many things on us that are totally extraneous. You have to be this and have that and be known as before you can live. You know? And the only thing you can do with life, gentlemen, is live it. Being is the only thing that counts. The isness of the now is the only thing that counts in this life. Take no thought of tomorrow. What you sleep, what you should eat, what you should drink, or wherein you should be clothed. The heavenly Father knoweth what ye have need of before ye ask. Now then, my son, it’s so much more fun to get as much fun out of your opponent’s shot as your own. It’s so much more fun. It’s twice as much. And if you have four, so much, four times as much. You know? It’s normal and natural that you wish your, uh, suppose, supposedly, your so-called competition well. Wish them well. They do their thing, and you do yours. And there’s no competition if you’re doing it right. There’s no competition. There’s no feeling of competition in it. Now, just while I’ve got it on my mind, all you gotta do, everything that this thing’s about is shifting the motivation in your life. That’s all you gotta do. Shift your motivation from taking something from to giving something, to adding to. Even when you go to a, a meeting, an Alcoholics Anonymous, shift your motivation from going to get to going to add to. From the time I discovered I was sober, six months after I got here until right now, I have never gone to a meeting to get anything. I can’t go to a bad meeting. I can go to a meeting and disagree with everything that’s done in it, the speaker and everything he says and the way he says it, and come out with a full cup. Because it always happens if you go hoping somebody just seeing you might get a lift, you know. It might do somebody good just to see you there. And maybe somebody will ask you a question that you can answer, that you can share, and you can’t come away from that thing without a full cup. And it’s just shifting your attitude from taking from to adding to, and you do it throughout your life, everything in life. And it’s not a do-gooder attitude. Goddamn the do– Oh, excuse me. Morning, Dave. It’s not that you want to be, you know, be a do-gooder, as we said yesterday. To be good for something is self-robbery, even if it’s to go to heaven. To be good for something is self-robbery. To be good for nothing, that’s the front deal, just to be good for nothing. How do I overcome the assistance of, of my family and business associates that I should make plans for tomorrow and the future? Okay. Am I supposed to quit at 11:00? I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna make it. I don’t think I told you guys about having to walk off from a half a million dollars in 1957. Did I tell you about that? No. I want to tell you this because this is the answer to your question. When I was real sober, I went into a piece of property which was the corner of Gardenia and Normandy. It was owned by some very good friends of mine, Jackson brothers, the brothers. Very good Mormons, if you pardon me, Dave. Did you hear the one? I’ll tell you what they went about this, you know. The Pope got the College of Cardinals together, and they said, “Boys, I just got a phone call, and I got some good news and the bad news. Which, which you want first?” And they figured it out, and they said, “We’d like the good news first.” And he says, “Well, the phone call said that the second coming of Christ had already taken place. Christ is, at this time, walking the Earth.” And they thought that was great. They said, “Now what’s the bad news?” He says, “The telephone call came from Salt Lake City.” So I knew this property. It was 10 acres on the corner down there, and I knew it was a tremendous buy, and I thought it was a good place for a market. In my early years in the market business, I got all of my business from- His two henchmen fell down on him. Better without the cough. Pay up the writer. Not yet. In 1923, I was in the real estate business in Los Angeles. And I had a picture on my desk of an old man with a white beard down about to his navel, and the caption was, “I’m an old man, and I’ve had many troubles, most of which never happened.” I like that real, real good. This is where we decided yesterday this would be a question period, and, uh, Chuck Borden has the first question. Chuck, uh, I don’t hesitate to ask a question ’cause you look a little fresh. But after your, uh, vision there, I’ve had a lot of people, uh, ask me, and, uh, been wondering whether or not you would consider next year doing the same thing. And, uh, I know that we see a lot of lead time and some of them can pick it up. But, uh, I’ve had a few times when the others joined us for much of that without a warning. And then again, they often make the warning. Come on. Yeah, they were helpful. They were helpful. I’m good at recognizing- There’s always one in every crowd. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I don’t know, Jeff. We’ll think about it. I don’t know whether it’ll be too quick to do it again next year or not. You gotta change a little between them, you know? And I don’t know whether we can grow very much in a year. We’re not as green as we used to be. It’s been 12 years since the last one, and I think this is just about right. 12 years. But I’ll think about it. I think it’s nice of somebody to think that they might want it, so I thank you for that. What’s the next question? Should we work with practicing alcoholics before we have taken all the steps ourselves? I think that the very moment that a guy decides he wants what we have and becomes willing to go to any length to get it, he is ready to work with alcoholics. Not that he tries to carry the message to alcoholics, but that he tries to carry the alcoholic to the message. Soon as we have decided that we want what’s here, we can tell anybody, “Look, I found a place that seems to manufacture sobriety. Bunch of guys that are doing something about their drinking, and they have impressed me very much, and I’m going to a meeting. How about going with me?” So you carry the alcoholic to the message. The bookie says, “Obviously, we can’t transmit something we don’t have.” That’s what you’re referring to. But you don’t have to, uh, you don’t have to be anything but kind to carry a message. Really, that’s all. Little love. Okay. In our sobriety, how do we deal with emotions, A, others we work with in the program, B, in our own sobriety? I got into that, I guess. I said sobriety was fourfold: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Emotional would just be one of the areas of our lives that has to come still. For instance, if we’re going to work with alcoholics, we can’t afford to become emotionally involved in their program or in their problem, I mean, not in their program, in their problem. We can’t afford to become emotionally involved in the problem, or we lose all of our possibility for help. You gotta stay above the problem. Now, it seems like maybe that that would be a, a sort of a cold attitude. It is not. You have to love more to stay emotionally involved, uh, uh, uninvolved in the problem than you do to become involved in it. The answer is not in the problem. The answer is in the answer. I worked on my problem for 10 years, and the more I looked at the problem and the harder I worked on the problem, the greater the problem became. It was just like fertilizing, watering, and cultivating a weed. Grow, it grew out of all proportions. And I think we have to be able to live above the problem to be of value to those who have it. We don’t get emotionally involved in the problem. It’s not that we love less. It’s that we love more. I think it takes much more love to release than it does to hold onto. Emotional stability comes, I am sure, out of this thing we call self-discovery. Physical sobriety comes from not drinking. We don’t drink today, and after a while, we are physically free from the effects of alcohol. But until we become emotionally stable and mentally stable and spiritually somewhat stable, uh, we are– we’re not sober. Sobriety is the ability to live comfortably, peacefully, and joyously with oneself. I find much, much confusion in this area of becoming emotionally involved in, uh, the problems of our so-called babies. Many people think you got to be emotionally involved in it. And I think we completely stymie ourselves when we do. That’s the truth. What about sex after sobriety? Is there anybody here that wants to cover that? Send the little sister in here. Do you want to speak on that? Jack and Tom’s got the answer. Tom, right here’s the question. If Jasper doesn’t work like it should. Never. Tell him that, Tom. They could have you arrested for assault with a dead weapon. I’m delighted to be able to report that, uh, as we said yesterday, love includes possession, but not the necessity to possess. I think that, uh, it’s perfectly possible to live very happily in a marriage relation without, uh, uh, emphasis on that particular deal. I know it’s quite important to many, many people. It’s strange how important that it gets at times and, uh, then, uh, in a little while, how unimportant it gets. We used to call it the biggest knot there is, you know. But I, I, I realize that it’s a problem in many, many families. It might be in mine. I don’t know. But I believe that sex as such should be just as spontaneous as everything else. I think it should come as the result of love, you know, the givingness of self to self in love. And I think that’s the only way it’s– has any value at all. I think that we as a sex are very, very lacking in this area. Actually, I do. All men, because we are inclined to want what we want when we want it. And, uh, it’s to explode, and that’s what, uh, happens. And when the explosion’s over, the, the, the, the job’s done as far as we’re concerned. But I feel that that’s totally selfish approach. I think that the love and adoration both before and after the act is far, far superior than to the act itself. In other words, I find nothing wrong with sexual intercourse as a result of love. But as a, an objective, I think it’s self-robbery again. It’s a beautiful thing when it’s the givingness of self to self in love, and otherwise, I find no value in it. That’s all I can say. What is the value of patience when counseling with another alcoholic? If we had all the alcoholics in the world in this room right now, we would have ninety percent of the impatience of the human race. We are a very impatient lot. We want everything to happen yesterday. And patience is certainly a virtue. I doubt very much if, uh, our value as a counselor would equal our value as a listener. If you can get the guy talking, or the gal, you can get them talking. This is the deal. In my own case, if I’m talking to somebody new, the one thing that I listen for is the first attempt at a belly laugh. This ain’t no big deal. You can’t get serious about this. An alcoholic cannot take a preachment or a lecture. We know all about the preachment and the lecture. We’ve given them to ourselves a thousand times. We know exactly what they’re going to say before they say it. And so, the caring, and to get them to talk, and be a good listener gives the counselor more value than talking himself. We’re not experts on anything. And it’s the simple little thing that opens the door. It isn’t the profundity. Nobody ever got sober on profundity. Nobody. It’s the little things. Many of you heard me tell this, but I was talking at the Bob White group many years ago on Santa Barbara and Van Ness. And there was a drunk in bad shape sitting right about there where you castle the city. And, uh, came time for him to light a cigarette, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get the thing to make it. And he struggled, and he struggled. And, uh, after a while, a little old lady that was sitting next to him reached over and took his cigarette and his match and lit it and put it in his mouth. And the next year, I was there at the same time, and this guy got his birthday, first birthday. And I thought, “Well, I must have done pretty well,” you know, “on that talk.” So I was prepared to give him a nice compliment, you know, when he got up to take his birthday cake. And he said the reason he was back was not what was said or done in the meeting. It was the fact that the little old lady had lit his cigarette for him. This thing don’t depend on profundity or expertise. It’s love, and love is patient. Love is patient. Love is one that I love to think about. This happens to the Hartford group. I talk there on Friday before Christmas every year. And ten or a dozen years ago, there was a guy sitting along the wall. There were benches along the wall. And he was leaping. He wasn’t shaking, he was leaping. And I went over and sat down beside him before the meeting started, and I put my arm around the guy, and I said, “Son, it ain’t no big deal. If you don’t drink, if you don’t take that next drink, two days you’ll be pretty nearly well, physically. Just put it off. Don’t take that next drink. It ain’t no big deal. Make a game out of it, and go for three days without a drink. See what happens to you.” And for years, he’s gone by me, or, at least once a year in some meeting, and he gets right up to my left ear, and he says, “Son, it ain’t no big deal.” He goes on by and listens. So yes, if you love him, you’re patient. Next. How do we surrender and turn our will to God when after asking for guidance, we still ponder at times? There are many times when even prayer is like bringing up a chimney. No way can you seem to make any conscious contact with anything. Everything’s futile. You have no purchase at all up there on the end of that line. And that’s what the book means when it says, “When everything else fails, get your wet drunk.” Because you see, when we’re feeling futile, we want something. We want something, and it isn’t happening. And there’s no way that you can want something when you’re working with a wet drunk. No way. You can’t think about yourself when you’re working with a wet drunk. That’s one place where you give all your attention and love to the thing it has. It is just simply to outmaneuver it. There’d neither be the pukee or the pukeor in that case. So we gotta get ourselves off m– off our minds. Now, I have a, a thing of my own. I can’t solve a problem. No way I can solve a problem, and I haven’t tried it much in these last twenty-nine years because I’ve expected guidance and direction. But if I wake up to the fact that I’m all tied in a knot working on something, and I’m just completely rigid almost, subconsciously I’ve been messing with this thing and beating my brains out, and I recognize it. And this is my little deal, and it, uh, it works for me right along. I, as I said to you, I share everything with my own God, good, bad, and indifferent. And in this case, I say, “Look, Dad, I’m beating my brains out over this problem, and I don’t know the answer. You do. And when you get re-ready to give it to me, I’d certainly be glad to have it. Sure thing.” And I dump it. And I never look at it again. I just dump it. That’s it. And in a very short time, I find out that it either wasn’t a problem in the first place, which is about fifty percent of the time, or I have the answer. It’s the self-concern and the impatience that bring about this sort of an impasse in our own lives. And to get ourselves off our mind, there’s nothing more highly recommended than to sit down with a wet drunk. Does that do you any good? With ego and self taking over periodically, do I analyze and look for answers too much? You’re a mess. If I were you, I’d just give up. I find, uh, so many of our people, even in the grapevine, I find so many of them writing about self-esteem, building self-esteem. Your people get up here and talk all the time about you have to learn to love yourself before you can love anybody else. And I am most grateful that that ain’t the case. I never spent any time trying to build up self-esteem. I never spent any time trying to love me. I wouldn’t have taken me with a large dowry. I hated my damn guts. And so I got busy doing things this book suggests, and it wasn’t trying to learn how to self-esteem me or to love me so I could love you. I don’t, I, I don’t think that that’s, uh, is the way it is at all. Francis says, “For it is better to love than to be loved. It is better to understand than to be understood. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in forgetting that we’re forgiven, and it is in dying to self that we awaken to eternal life.” And that’s exactly what we’ve been talking about ever since we’ve been down here. That’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. I don’t believe that an image, Phil, I don’t believe that an image of me would add anything to my life at all. I haven’t any more image of me than I have of a walrus. That isn’t what I’m interested in. I’m not interested in an image of me. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to share me with anybody that wants me in love and let the chips fall where they may. I’m not even interested in your opinion of what’s happened, except when you wanna give it to me. That’s not my deal. I love you. I love you, and that’s all I have to do. That’s what I’m interested in. That’s my deal. It’s not my deal who you love or what you love or what you think. That’s your deal. I love you, period. I don’t even have to concern myself about what you think of me. I got no image at all of me. I think of myself exactly as that big window out there in front of my chair. That window to me is me. And when there’s no obstruction, the light comes through. But the window is not the light. And I think of that drape as my ego, and when that drape’s closed, the light don’t come through. But just as the window is not the light, the drape is not the darkness. It just thr– shuts out the light. So my business is keep the drape open, Phil, and let the light shine. And I don’t furnish the light. I’m a channel. I’m a channel. You and I are necessary to God as channels through which He goes forth into His creation. We’re channels. Then we get ourself out of the way and let it be, and let it be. Now, as we said last night, and as I say to me all the time, I’m either gonna run my life and take the consequences thereof, or I’m not gonna let run it and take the conse- consequences thereof. And I can’t run mine, and I don’t get involved in running my life. I get involved in living. I think losing yourself in life guarantees finding yourself in God. Guarantees it. ‘Cause all you gotta do is to get rid of the roadblock. You lose yourself in life and find yourself in God. And Phil, I wouldn’t if I were you, I wouldn’t spend another five seconds trying to find self-worth or anything else. To find yourself, yes. To realize that whatever it is you’re looking for is right here. What you’re looking for, you’re looking with. What you came here to get came with you. Everything you ever wanted to know, you’ve always known, and everything you’ve always wanted to be, you’ve always been, but it’s covered up. It’s covered up. So we uncover and discover and get lost in that, Phil, and forget about you. To hell with you. And you’ve got a little better break on that than I have. Maybe you have and maybe you ain’t. Phil’s got a little income. So it allows him to, uh, have a little more time on his hands than maybe he should have. You at all? You hear yourself? I think that’s it. Forget about old Phil and just do. Do, and let the chips fall where they may. The beautiful thing about this deal is not to get serious about stuff To make the whole deal a game, a play of life upon itself. And you have fun out of it. I have more fun with God than I do with you. I have a hell of a lot of fun with God. I think that the guy has a tremendous sense of humor, or he wouldn’t have hid himself in the last place we ever looked, you know? I think it’s funny. The very last place we ever looked. There he is. I can just see him, you know? Here I am, out trying to find a bottle. Off hours, you know, and I’ve gotta have a drink. He says, “Look at that son of a bitch. He’s not me. I’m with him.” You see? Oh, I love it. It’s a fun deal. You’re too serious, Bill. Yet, make it, make a fun deal out of it, huh? That help any? Should members of AA work professionally in the field of alcoholism? Were some of you counselors into that one? I do not really, uh, care much to comment on it, but I would say this. It’s awfully hard. It’s awfully hard for amateurs like us to get mixed up with professionals and stay amateurs. We’re a strange bunch. All we have to do is to rub elbows a little while with a doctor, and we become doctors. Maybe some people can retain their amateur standing in working for money in the field of alcoholism. I don’t know. Maybe they can. But in my personal life, I’ve met only one that seemed to do it, and he wasn’t around long enough to really, uh, see whether it was gonna work out or not, and that was Warren Snyder. Warren died about a year or so after, two years after he started, uh, working in the field of alcoholism for money. Now, the one thing that would seem to be foolish from a paid 12-step call would be working with the National Committee on Alcoholism. Because the National Committee on Alcoholism has no recovery program at all. They are educational and referral. That’s their business, and that’s not the business we’re in. So it would appear that there would be no conflict to work for the National Committee on Alcoholism. They, they, they have no, no, uh, program of recovery. But those of my friends who work with them somehow become professional. I’m mindful of one gal I love very, very much, and ten years ago, she made one of the finest AA talks I ever heard in my life. And she became an employee, secretary, of the Committee on Alcoholism, and she talked to our group a year ago, yes, and she made just as fine a talk as she ever made. But it wasn’t an Alcoholics Anonymous talk. It was a professional talk. It was a professional talk. And the one thing about us that we must maintain is caring and sharing. We’re not experts on anything. We share our experience, strength, and hope, one with another in love. And so I haven’t seen anybody even be able to do that kind of thing without seeming to get lost in profession, professionalism. And to that lady writing three months after that talk, that she was in the hospital herself. Not, I’m sure, for either failed drinking. I say I’m sure. I’m not sure of anything. I’m like Bill. I don’t know nothing. But she was in the hospital for a sort of a breakdown of some kind. I can’t do it. Personally, when I talk for organizations that have an honorarium, the, the thing I do carry is an honorarium for, say, $75 to $150. I don’t take it. I don’t take it. Because whilst they don’t know it, I’m getting plenty . I learned why I’m telling them from you guys, from drunks who don’t drink. And I can’t any more take an honorarium than I can fly because you guys didn’t charge me a thing. You didn’t even ask me if I had anything. The only thing you said to me is, “Mister, were you looking for somebody?” And I said, “No, sir.” And you says, “Well, what were you looking for?” And I said, “If it was interesting, sir, I was looking for sobriety.” And you lit up like a Christmas tree, took me in and rocked me to sleep. Now, I’m certain that any alcoholic is totally free to make a living. I think we’re entitled to make a living. But if I were a preacher, I shouldn’t be there. If I were a preacher, I would want my business on the side because I would not want to get up here and try to tell you monkeys what you want to hear. I would not want my gas and water in your hands. If you don’t like me, you cut off my gas and water. So I’d have to try to please you. I can’t do that. I would want my business on the side. I want my money coming in from here, so I could tell you what I think. I can’t talk without saying it as I feel it, as I think that it should be. And I can’t work in that field. But if I were a captain in the Marines and they wanted me to head up a program, alcoholism for the Marines, and I could set up my own staff, as certain Marines have had the privilege of doing, I might do what- A captain in the Marines who asked that question did. He said, “I’m ruined. What am I gonna do?” I says, “Get your staff to handle the related disorders. Get all these people that you have working with you to handle the hotheads,” “the pill heads, the sex maniacs,” like, uh, who was that? And you deal in Alcoholics Anonymous, the, the drunk at Alcoholics Anonymous, and that’s what you did. And it’s worked out beautifully, and I don’t see it’s doing you any harm. Yes, Dave. Should members of AA attend meetings of Al-Anon? Are we missing anything? Well, I think you are because most of lot of them are women in Al-Anon. I have a lot of fun. Of course, my wife is, is quite an Al-Anony-nonny. And, uh, I had a lot of fun with her. I got by for many years by saying to her when she got a little out of line, “Look, sister, you-” Had it been for us. Because we go into my program, you know? And after a while, she got smarty pants, and she starts saying, “We wouldn’t have needed your program if it wasn’t for you.” I don’t see why I should go anyplace else or have to go anyplace else to find out how to work my program in Alcoholics Anonymous. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t see the need of it. Long before Alcoholics Anon– Al– before Al-Anon was born, when people were coming to me and saying, “You gotta get this guy sober or this gal sober,” I was saying to them, “Maybe, maybe this is the best time in your life to find yourself. Maybe the only chance you’ve got to help this alkie is not to come to me, but to apply these principles to yourself. Find your own peace, and maintain your own peace in your own household, and it might be the, the only good thing you can do for that drunk.” This is a long time before Al-Anon was born, and that’s what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to find living answers in our program, which we must find along with sobriety. And I don’t mind going to Al-Anon meetings. I’ve talked before Al-Anon meetings. It’s a great deal. Matter of fact, you people don’t know it, but you’re looking at the greatest Al-Anon speaker there is. A few years ago, a Swede from Dallas called me. Ole in Lancaster. I guess that’s Swedish for somewhere. I don’t know. And it was Thursday, and Ole says, “Chuck, when are you, w-w-when can you leave for Dallas?” I says, “I’m not coming.” Ole says, “Yes, you are.” I says, “I’m not coming to Dallas.” He says, “I asked you when you would leave.” And I said, “I’m not coming.” And he says, “I, I don’t want that kind of an answer. When are you leaving?” And I says, “Who fell down on you? What’s the matter with the speaker you had? Why didn’t you ask him first?” “Who ran out on you?” He says, “None of your goddamn business.” Well, to make a long story short, I flew to Dallas and talked at the Al-Anon luncheon. And I was a substitute for a substitute. The first one that had agreed to talk to the Al-Anon lunch, luncheon was the late Liz. You know, the gal in, uh, that wrote the book, The Late Liz. What was her name? Gert. Gert, Gert Ba– Gert Bahanna. Gertie and I don’t get along too well anyway. But she was the gal that, uh, was supposed to talk, and she pooped out. And the next one was the Anna Rogers St. Johns, and she pooped out. So I’m a substitute for two broads, substitute for a substitute. And they still say down there that I gave the best Al-Anon talk they ever heard. So I just use that here to make it, uh, hard. Now, there’s no s– there’s no reason you shouldn’t go to Al-Anon meetings and talk to them. Next. How do you prove love? Well, I don’t think that you prove anything. I don’t think we’ve got anything to prove. Not in the war, and we’re not going anyplace. I’ll have to tell you again, I said this in this meeting already, but I’ll say it again because I love it myself. This certain doctor called me at midnight. And he says, “What’s your definition of love?” I said, “It’s the same as it is ten o’clock in the morning.” But then he called me at midnight and asked me what the definition of love is. He says, “What’s your definition of love?” I says, “You won’t like it.” He says, “What is it?” I says, “Action.” To talk about love is like talking about humility. I feel real humble this morning, boys. Oh, boy. Action. If you love somebody or something, you do something for ’em. You just do it, and you don’t make a big deal out of it. You don’t make a big deal out of it. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t spend five seconds trying to prove anything that I said from this po- podium for, to anybody here. That’s not why I’m here, to prove something. I wouldn’t spend five seconds try to, trying to defend anything I’ve said. I have a, I have a right to my own opinion, and you have a right to yours. And you have my approval. If you want to disagree with anything I’ve said, and the way I’ve said it, everything is all right with me. And the same thing is true with people everyplace. I love you. It’s none of my business what you think of me, unless you want to make it something. So quit trying to make something out of it, prove it. Next. Upon waking with negative thoughts, how does one establish a relationship with God? I think this is what we’ve been talking about all weekend, praying without ceasing. I find no difference in a prayer and a serious thought. They’re the same thing, as we said, uh, since we’ve been here. Fear, worry is a prayer for something that’s going to happen. To live in the conscious awareness of the living presence of God. I don’t even like too much… I talk about it an awful lot, but the Our Father prayer. Our Father, God. I talk about Our Father lots. But this relationship that we’ve been talking about this weekend is much, much closer than a father-son relationship. As I said, I believe I said I’ve got two sons some place in Southern California. I don’t know where either one of them are. This is impossible with my relationship with my own God because God is that which I am. God is that which I am. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t be. There would be nothing. I would be extinct but for God because God is life, and there’s no way to be separated from God in reality. The only separation there is, is conscious. The feeling of conscious separation from, let’s be it. Very real as an experience, but not reality. So I don’t think that we ought to wake up feeling any different than we went to sleep or feeling any different than ten minutes after we get up. Now is the deal. How is it with me right now? How is it with me right now? Now, if I had to get up and start praying right quick to feel good, I don’t think I’d feel good when I get through praying. I think I ought to feel good right before I start to pray. And again, my prayers, I don’t know when they start and stop. Feel like better launch a little in that deal because I like to live in the conscious awareness of the living presence of God in a relationship with everything around me, everything around me. So I, I, I think that’s the thing to, to sort of get through your head, that now is the time. You see, this is, this is so very vital to me because tomorrow was always the day I was gonna straighten up and fly, fly right. Tomorrow I was gonna do it, you know. But tomorrow never got here. Every time I came through, it was now, and I was thirsty So I took a drink the morning I got here. And a-again, I don’t think I have to be in any particular position to, uh, retain this feeling of the living presence of God. I don’t think that it, uh, happened in church or in the mountain or in a temple or in Jerusalem. It’s in my own mouth that I might know it and do it. So that’s the only answer I’d have to that. Yes. When did you really start trusting God all the way? I don’t know. I don’t know because I discovered it and it happened, you see. I think it happened when this thing was burned out the first time. I think that’s when it happened because I was in here. This was me all the time, you know. But to be born out of conscious separation into conscious unity makes it a reality. A belief in God is good, but it is not good enough for alcoholics. We have to live in God. To live in God. That’s what this whole thing is all about, to get us out of our own way so that we can go about our Father’s business. That’s the only business I’ve had for 29 years. I’m in a business. I go about my Father’s business, and that’s my business, and His business take care of. And it’s just as natural and normal as breathing. I expect it. Not that I’m sitting around in expectancy waiting for somebody to pick up the phone and ring it. It’s just my being. I know that every good and perfect gift is from His hand. Father Barney said to me 10 years ago, we were driving under the Golden Gate Freeway. I was taking him home with me. We’d been to the office. And just as we went under the freeway, he said to me, “Jack, how in the hell do you fulfill your commitments?” I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “You’ve got three lives, and any one of them is enough for anybody. And you do all three of them. How do you do it?” And I said, “Father, you ought to know that better than I do. You’re a damn Jedi. You’ve been studying all your life. Why do you ask me that question?” He says, “Why, how do you do it?” And I says, “There’s no division in my life. There’s no division in my life.” When we practice these principles in all of our affairs, gentlemen, there is no division in life. There is nothing that is more or less important, and there’s nothing that is more or less spiritual than another. Your business is just as spiritual as your AA. Your AA is just as spiritual as your church. Your home is just as spiritual as both of them. Substance is just as spiritual as, uh, ha ha. Joy, just as spiritual. Every good and perfect gift is from His hand. And to live in this, to be a-a-aware of this, constantly aware of it. And that’s what I was telling you yesterday. To trim the sails. To trim the sails. Some ships fly east and some fly west by the selfsame wind that blows. It is the set of the sail and not the gale that determines where it goes. And so trimming the sail, saying to myself maybe 50 times a day, “God is my refuge and my strength.” I don’t know why I do that. I’m not afraid of nothing. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of God. I’m not afraid of the devil. I’m not afraid of tomorrow or yesterday. Why would I be saying, “God is my refuge and my strength. Lift up your eyes to the hills from whence cometh thy strength.” I love the hills. I love God. And I trim the sails, reminding myself that in Him I live and move and have my being. The conscious awareness of the living presence of the Almighty. And that’s what this retreat’s all about. There’s nothing else here so far as I’m concerned. I’m either gonna run my life and take the consequences thereof, or I’m not gonna run it and take the consequences thereof. And those are not words. That’s the way I live. And I cannot live any other way. I did it 43 years, and that was 43 years too long. Does that do you any good? I’ve always been a competitor. How do I re-remove competition from my life? It’s strange saying it to me again, that I have been a competitor all my life. Corrected this morning because there’s a man here who’s two years older than I am. Should have lived it, but he had a very sheltered youth. I could do anything with my body up until I got hurt in football. I could do anything, football, basketball, baseball. In fact, the whole business was just duck soup. Old Rocker Cap said years ago, “The only way I could keep from being an All-American was get hurt,” so I got hurt. Got removed from football. Competition was my life. I had a brother that was three and a half years older than I, and we were competitors. From the time I could walk until I left home at 20, we were in a fight. Lasted 20 years on the installment plan. And he was three and a half years older than I, and three and a half years stronger. And up until I was 18, 19, 20, he could whip me, but he couldn’t make me believe it. He could not make me believe it. We’d start a fight as kids two miles from home, and every time he got off of me, I’d dog him. And we’d end up in the living room, and Mother would whip us both. And I left home at 20 thinking I could whip that guy, you know? He never did make me believe that he could whip me. So competition, yes, it was my life. Now, I do a lot of lawn bowling, and if I go down there to beat somebody, uh, I, I’m like a worse woman. It’s just like I never had a bowl in my hand. But if I go down there to, to, to do the best I can with what I got and enjoy my competitor’s shot just the same as my own, I can beat anybody in the place. 1957, I was singles champion at Beverly Hills Lawn Bowling Club. And I only bowl twice a week. I bowl Saturday and Sunday, and all the rest of them bowl those in. As you know, uh, that’s a delicate, delicate game, lawn bowling. So I can’t compete with anybody, and again, it is not because I decided not to compete. You see, I’m lucky. I’m lucky, lucky, lucky because I didn’t want nothing when I came here, not even sobriety. I just wanted to rub out as much of the record as I could, and you can’t rub out a record thinking, you know, in terms of competition. You can’t do it. You just help people do things they need to have done because you want to. And I had to do that to rub out, and when I finally woke up to the fact that things were going good, I was in the habit of it, and I just kept doing it, and I’m still doing it. And I believe this is the thing that, uh, we’re here talking about. Our civilization has laid so many things on us that are totally extraneous. You have to be this and have that and be known as before you can live. You know? And the only thing you can do with life, gentlemen, is live it. Being is the only thing that counts. The existence of the now is the only thing that counts in this life. Take no thought of tomorrow. Let you sleep what you sleep. The wrong and all that should be clothed. The Heavenly Father knoweth what you have need of for you. Now then, my son, it’s so much more fun to get as much fun out of your opponent’s shot as your own. It’s so much more fun. It’s twice as much, and if you’re on a foursome, it’s four times as much. You know? It’s normal and natural that you wish your, uh, suppose, sportedly, your so-called competition well. Wish them well. They do their thing, and you do yours, and there’s no competition if you get it right. There’s no competition. There’s no feeling of competition in it. Now, just while I’ve got it on my mind, all you gotta do, everything that this thing’s about is shifting the motivation in your life. That’s all you gotta do. Shift your motivation from taking something from to giving something, to adding to. Even when you go to a, a meeting, an Alcoholics Anonymous, shift your motivation from going to get to going to add to. From the time I discovered I was sober, six months after I got here, until right now, I have never gone to a meeting to get anything, and I can’t go to a bad meeting. I can go to a meeting and disagree with everything that’s done in it, the speaker and everything he says and the way he says it, and come out with a full cup because that only happens if you go hoping somebody just seeing you might get a lift. You know? It might do somebody good just to see you there, and maybe somebody will ask you a question that you can answer, that you can share, and you can’t come away from that thing without a full cup, and it’s just shifting your attitude from taking from to adding to, and you do it throughout your life, everything in life, and it’s not a do-gooder attitude. God damn the do– Uh, excuse me. Monday. It’s not that you want to be, you know, be a do-gooder. As we said yesterday, to be good for something is self-robbery, even if it’s to go to heaven. To be good for something is self-robbery. To be good for nothing, that’s the fun deal, just to be good for nothing. How did I overcome the assistance of the, of my family and business associates that I should make plans for tomorrow and the future? Okay. Am I supposed to quit at eleven? I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna make it. I don’t think I told you guys about having to walk off from a half a million dollars in nineteen fifty-seven. Did I tell you about that? No. I want to tell you this because this is the answer to your question. When I was a year sober, I went into Fish Fry, which is the corner of Gardenia and Normandy. It was owned by some very good friends of mine, Jackson brothers, the brothers. Very good Mormons, if you’ll pardon Did you hear the one? I’ll tell you the one about this, you know. The Pope got the College of Cardinals together, and he said, “Boys, I just got a phone call, and I got some good news and the bad news. Which you want first?” And they figured it out, and they says, “We’d like the good news first.” And he says, “Well, the phone call said that the second coming of Christ had already taken place. Christ is, at this time, walking the Earth.” And they thought that was great. He says, “Now what’s the bad news?” He says, “The telephone call came from Saudi City.” So I knew this property. It was 10 acres on the corner down there, and I knew it was a tremendous buy, and I thought it was a good place for a market. In my early years in the market business, I got all of my business from promotions. I’d find who owned properties and talk to them about either leasing them or building a building or whatnot, you know. And if they wanted to do something, I’d get a tenant for it and all that stuff, or I’d buy the property for them. And all that was just to go to fix order. I wasn’t in the real estate business at that time at all. I was in the fixer business. Now, I knew values, and I was pretty well familiar with what would make a good market site and what wouldn’t. And I liked this property, and I thought, “Who would I get to buy it?” And it occurred to me that my boss might want it because his father had started the business, and he was a wealthy man before he took it over. 1918, his dad had started this thing, and he was very wealthy. And so I went in one morning, and I said, “Victor, I found something that you might want.” And he says, “What is it?” And I told him about it. And he listened, and he says, “Go buy it, Charlie.” And I said, “No.” I says, “I’ll swear to you that I won’t go buy it.” “No,” he said, “You like it. Go buy it.” I said, “No, Victor. Get in the car, and we’ll go down. We can go down and back in an hour.” And so we did, and he looked at it, and he says, “Go buy it.” I says, “No. Let’s find out if anybody else in town likes it. Let me bring a couple of market operators down here and see if they like it, see if they’d like to have a building on it.” He says, “Charlie, you like it. Go buy it.” And I went and bought it. And when I got to escrow, one night after everybody had gone but his secretary and myself, he called me in. The two of us were with him. And he says, “Charlie, I didn’t want that property. I don’t want it. There’s no need in it. I want to get you in the same position I’m in. And as soon as I get you in the same position I’m in, we will retire together. Now, I’m giving you 25% of this deal. 25% of this deal is yours. Now, go out and get us a tenant, and we’ll build them a building, and we’ll go from there. 25% of this deal is yours.” And I went, and I got Bonds to take the deal on it. They didn’t like it. “But,” said they, “This is the first time we’ve ever had any, uh, chance to do anything for Charlie.” And he’s never given us a bum steal yet on a location. “So let’s take it. It can’t be that bad. It can’t hurt us much.” So they took the deal because of me, and they knew about my 25%, not only from me, but from Victor. And so we built them a building. Jackson Brothers built it, and they built it for half a fee, 5% instead of 10, because I’d known them since they were labor contractors. The two boys and their father and uncle contracted labor for duplexes over there between Highland and La Brea and north of Third Street in Hancock Park, and I was the duplex king. We worked together a lot, and we knew each other good, and so they wanted to do something for me, too. They built the building for half the fee. We needed a loan. I went to Vern Jenkins, who was chairman of the board of, uh, Occidental Life, and I called on his son, and he’d get us over. And Vern thought the sun rose and set in me. So I went down and see him, and I says, “Vern, we need a loan to build a building.” He says, “What do you want?” He said, “You can have anywhere you got down here and treat them comfortable. Just tell me what you want, and you got it.” And so everybody in the deal knew all about it. And we built a building, and Bonds opened it, and it was a bonanza. From the very beginning, it was a bonanza. We were getting from $1,700 to $2,100 a week rent. A week, gentlemen, rent, because we had a percentage lease. And lad, it was just so good. 100, 125, 140,000 a week we were doing volume in that place on a percentage lease. And everybody was very happy, and then they got Maryas Department Stores And we built him a department store, and it went the same way. And everything was a deal, to make a long story short. Ten years later, in my eleventh year, Victor was gonna retire, and I was gonna retire with him. Now, all this time, we had talked about this thing. We talked about what I was doing. We had laughed and cried together because we’re just as one man up until the last year. And my eleventh year, it seemed like the guy was growing away from me, but I just thought it was because he was retiring. And he was, you know, he, it was… his mind was on something else. But I was retiring, and we, we talked about it for ten years. And when it came time to do it, well, incidentally, first, the next thing is I bought that house where I live now because I was gonna retire. Because my part of this year, this deal was worth five hundred thousand bucks by this time, a minimum of five hundred thousand. And that was my security, you see? So I was gonna retire. Now, I had very, very good, uh, commendable motivation. I was gonna retire and spend my whole time working with bums like you at my own expense. There’s nothing wrong with that motivation, huh? So I bought that house to retire in. And it came right down to the wire, and Victor couldn’t do it. He could not do it. It was too much money, and he had to deny the whole thing. And, uh, uh, it was impossible because we had been just like that. We had laughed and cried for ten years, and we’d discussed this thing time and time again. We were gonna retire together, you know. And he couldn’t do it. It was too much dough, and he had to de-deny the whole dad-gum thing. Now, I, I was naturally, uh, destroyed because I could not believe that this man would do that. I couldn’t believe that he could possibly do it. And my insight was, “You can’t let him do this for his own benefit. You can’t let him do this to himself.” And my toenails in my hand where I was right, and my insight says that, “This is for your family, your kids, and your wife. This is their thing,” you know? And it, it just can’t be, you know. And I talked to counsel, third counsel, legal counsel. And they said to me, “Charlie, you can take him to court and beat him hands down. You got every justice in town. Everybody in town knows about that thing from him and from you. Charlie, you can take him to court and beat him like that.” Then I considered taking him to court, but I couldn’t take him to court. Why? Because in 1946, he came in to throw me through that window, but he didn’t. He didn’t throw me through that window. And I couldn’t take him to court, and I couldn’t judge him. I couldn’t resent him. I couldn’t hate him because if I did, I’d get drunk, and if I got drunk, I’d die. And here I am between a rock and a hard place, suffering the tortures of the damned because I couldn’t see through this damn thing, you know. It was just a, a reversal of everything that we’d built on for 10 years. Now, it was interesting because his secretary had heard this thing too, and I would talk to her about it. And she heard things that she wanted to hear. But when she didn’t wanna hear anything, uh, even if she heard it, she didn’t hear it because she had hearing problems. And she would tell me, uh, “Charlie, I, uh, I didn’t get it. I didn’t hear it right.” Well, now, the reason she said that was because this guy’s dad had set up a $30,000, uh, thing for her, and Victor had his pivot, and she had $30,000 coming. And she couldn’t take sides against the guy, so she’d have to tell me I never heard it, you know. And I did the whole thing. It was very… You can see what a thing it was because I had subconsciously come to believe this was my security. And it took me a whole year of the most excruciating pain. The only thing that was good about that pain period, except what came out of it, was that there wasn’t one instance in the whole year that it ever occurred to me to take a drink. Now, that’s, that’s something because I suffered the tortures of the damned. But long towards the end of the year, I came to see That’s my own relationship with my own God. There are no values out there. The values are here. There’s evidence of value out there, but no value. The minute we put a value on a million bucks, we’re tied loose around our necks. Because we’re liable to lose it just as that five hundred grand, you know? So there’s evidence of value out there, but the value is right here. Remember the man said, “This is the last time I’m going to say this in this meeting.” Excuse me, Paul. Where are you? You got that? He had to run out because he’s heard this story fourteen times. The man said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures.” No, he says that, “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, for the rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, for rust does not corrupt and thieves don’t break through and steal. Because where the treasure is, there will be the heart also.” So I had to come to see that there’s only one security, and that’s my own relationship with my own God. And when that happened, I called Vicky in one night. Everybody was gone again the third time. And I said, “Vicky, I want to go through this deal with you once more, and I don’t want you to let me make one mistake. If I say anything that isn’t exactly as it happened, stop me. And we’ll iron that out or stop talking. And I want you to do this step by step.” And when I got through, I says, “Vicky, you didn’t stop me.” And Vicky says, “No, Charlie, I didn’t.” And I says, “Is that exactly the way it happened?” And Vicky says, “Yes, it is.” And I said, “Vicky, you take it. You need it. I don’t need it. God bless you.” pain. The only thing that was good about that pain period, except what came out of it, was that there wasn’t one instance in the whole year that it ever occurred to me to take a drink. Now, that’s, that’s something because I suffered the tortures of the damned. But long towards the end of the year, I came to see That’s my own relationship with my own God. There are no values out there. The values are here. There’s evidence of value out there, but no value. The minute we put a value on a million bucks, we’re tied loose around our necks. Because we’re liable to lose it just as that five hundred grand, you know? So there’s evidence of value out there, but the value is right here. Remember the man said, “This is the last time I’m going to say this in this meeting.” Excuse me, Paul. Where are you? You got that? He had to run out because he’s heard this story fourteen times. The man said, “Lay up for yourselves treasures.” No, he says that, “Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, for the rust corrupts and thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, for rust does not corrupt and thieves don’t break through and steal. Because where the treasure is, there will be the heart also.” So I had to come to see that there’s only one security, and that’s my own relationship with my own God. And when that happened, I called Vicky in one night. Everybody was gone again the third time. And I said, “Vicky, I want to go through this deal with you once more, and I don’t want you to let me make one mistake. If I say anything that isn’t exactly as it happened, stop me. And we’ll iron that out or stop talking. And I want you to do this step by step.” And when I got through, I says, “Vicky, you didn’t stop me.” And Vicky says, “No, Charlie, I didn’t.” And I says, “Is that exactly the way it happened?” And Vicky says, “Yes, it is.” And I said, “Vicky, you take it. You need it. I don’t need it. God bless you.”