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Source: Howard P – From Gilbert, Arizona – Date Unknown.mp3 File: howard-p-from-gilbert-arizona-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:03:10
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Thank you. My name is Howard and I am an alcoholic. Honored to be here. I was at the Baghdad conference when it was in Baghdad, right outside of Baghdad, years ago with a guy named Larry T. And we see each other several times a year at conferences and we always say, are you speaking in Baghdad this year? This year I can say, yes, I am. So I've been looking forward to it and it's an honor to be here.
I just, you know, there's some formalities that I want to cover first. In my talk I make up stuff and say it's in the big book. I quote things, just make them up, I got a book here, but I, you know, I do that because it adds credibility to my talk. I've been telling this joke for 40 years and some place along the line the judge from Maryland got my joke and then God got him and I got my joke back. So I'm going to tell you, I do this because I can relax, you see, it don't always work.
If you guys don't laugh, it ain't going to work. But while I'm talking, I didn't ask how long I had, but I look at my watch from time to time, not to see what time it is, but to give those of you that are worried about it a sense of optimism that I care. But I don't care. Anyway my story should be getting longer because I'm getting older and the link to my sobriety is getting longer, but for a long time now I've been really talking about my first 13 years, first 15 years in sobriety, and I've had more than that since then.
My sobriety date is August 4th, 1972. My wedding anniversary is September the 22nd, 1953. And so I'm right at 83 years old and Pat and I have been married for 62 years and I've been sober for 42 of those. So that's how much we got to cover in this hour and a half. In this hour and a half they laid out for me to talk. So I was born in Los Angeles a thousand years ago, moved right straight to Kansas before I was a year old and I grew up there in the Bible Belt.
Now it turns out everybody thinks they live in the Bible Belt, you know, and in Kentucky they're reasonably sure they live in the Bible Belt. In Kansas they're dead sure they do and so everybody thinks, well, now that's not true. The people in Los Angeles know they do not live in the Bible Belt. And they don't want to live in the Bible Belt. They're very happy to be whatever belt it is they do. I was in, but we learn in these Bible Belt areas, we learn much in our youth about things that affect us for the rest of our lives.
When I was probably four or five years old in our little farm community they had outdoor movies on Saturday night to attract the farmers into our town so they'd do business with our merchants. And I was watching this movie on training elephants in India and they took the baby
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elephants out and they started their training by tying them the right front leg to a big
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tree and they'd pull and tug and pull and tug, can't get loose. They learned over a period of time, they came to believe over a period of time that when the rope is tied on their leg it's futile to pull. Then the trainer starts teaching them the rest of the stuff, but the trainer always reinforces this fundamental truth, when the rope is tied it's futile to pull. So at the end of the movie this huge elephant was pulling, actually they'd cut a tree down, cut the limbs off and they'd hook that tree trunk to the elephant's harness and he would pull it out of the forest for harvest.
At the lunch break to keep the elephant where they wanted it, they drove a very small stake into the ground, put a rope around the big elephant's right front leg and put the other end around this little stake and it would walk around but when it came, the rope got tight, it couldn't pull against the tight rope. The stake didn't hold the elephant, the rope didn't hold the elephant. What held the elephant was the limiting belief they imposed on it when it was a baby.
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with approximately 425,902 baby elephant beliefs like that. Stop that. I didn't even know I knew but it was stuff that had to be true so that I could feel good. It had to be my way. I learned very young that you need to win the competition. Who's the competition with? It is with everybody. And you have to become the best or the boss so that you can get money, property and prestige in the position of authority.
Then you'll feel good. It's a unique system for about 90% of the people. But this 10%, that don't work, not really. We're biochemically spring-loaded to fight or flight. We have no, I mean we're ready for the competition. That's our brain chemistry. Our brain chemistry also is that we're in the bottom 50% in terms of the neurotransmitters that activate the placer center. So when you win the competition, when I win the competition, the best I feel is, well, I won but I'd have, the best feeling would be a state of low-grade alert that I ain't going to win the next time.
You know, an ongoing feeling of impending doom, impending calamity. That was my best feeling. My dad was an alcoholic. I was the sixth kid born in eight years in the Depression and I used to make him a dad. My dad was never punished when he was growing up and he was never happy about that. He felt like his parents let him down because they didn't discipline him and he was not going to make that mistake with this kid.
And he'd whip, I mean he would, three times I'd beaten way harder than you had to beat a kid. If somebody would have said, Polly, don't whip a kid like that, it'll be traumatizing. He had a seventh grade education. He had no idea what the word traumatize would have meant but he would have believed that if I got traumatized, he could whip that out of me. I mean, that's just the way it was and I never got where I like being whipped.
Now in Los Angeles, there's some people, I understand, that get where they like that. Bring them up there. I'm not like that. You whip me, tonight you whip me and I'm going to cry. I mentioned to you that Pat and I have been married 62 years and it didn't occur to me until recently that I never asked her if she would like to be whipped. Don't let her get a hold of that tape. I just felt like, well I never liked it, she won't either.
Anyway, so none of that stuff made me feel good. Achieving didn't make me feel good. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, like many of you, I had my first half of a half a pint of whiskey and that made me feel good.
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I remember drinking it and thinking, this is what they mean when they say, let's have a few drinks and get to feeling good. This is what feeling good is. And then within a half hour, I'm throwing up on the Methodist ministers yard but God, I felt good when I felt good. If you take the worst feeling and say that's a zero and the best feeling is a ten, I lived my life, and many of us did, always below a five.
Probably around a three is what I ran at. I drink whiskey, I go right to an eight. Unfortunately, that's just for about two hours. Then I go down below a three to a two and a half, throwing up, sick. I'm thinking, well, I don't want to do this part again, but I want that eight. One time in our 62 years together, Pat got drunk. And she always, I'm telling you, she was the head cheerleader. She poured the tea in the governor's mansion.
She was the most popular girl in town, and rightly so. That's why she wouldn't have anything to do with me. So she got drunk once, and she ended up on the bathroom floor up chuckling, and when she came up, she said, I don't know why you get drunk, but I'm never going to do that again. And she hasn't. See, she runs about a seven, six or a seven. She jumps way up to eight. It's all right, but no big deal.
But when she goes down to two and a half, she ain't doing that again. Because it doesn't mean that much to them, you know, but it fixes me. I can feel good. In the back of the big book, I'm going to start being more specific. The third edition on page 369, it describes a spiritual awakening. And the language they used, which they said they did not intend to mean everybody does it, but the way they described a spiritual experience was an immediate change in consciousness followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.
Now most of us have that on a gradual basis when we come into the program, but every one of us had it when we had our first drink of whiskey. A change of consciousness followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook. Man, that was it, you know. And I not only learned to feel good, I learned to be somebody. I was somebody. I could dance and I couldn't dance well, but I could dance and sing and I was a jerk.
But that's better than being a nobody. And so I could be somebody. And we could have fun. When Pat and I got married, we used to go to dances and I would hang out pretty good and on the way home, she'd have to drive and I'm up chucking out the window, but we had fun when we were at the dance and it was fun. And when we went to San Diego after we got out of the Navy, we had people in the service there and it was fun.
And then I got a job as an entry-level engineer at General Dynamics Astronautics. I'd been a toolmaker for six years and in the Navy I'd been an electrician's mate and I didn't want to lose my job as a toolmaker, but I lost it Friday and Monday I got a job as a process analyst. We analyze processes. I ask people what they do now and I don't have any idea from what they said that they do, they do. But we analyze processes and I was great at it.
I really was good at that, but I couldn't write reports and that's an important part of the analysis is to reduce it to a technical report. And I discovered that if I took
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of whiskey, now that, that didn't get me drunk. It got me brilliant. And I wrote a great technical report and I knew I did. That was on Wednesday. They typed it up Thursday, they distributed it Friday. The next Tuesday, my boss's boss's boss came out with my report. He said, Howard, did you write this report? And I said, yes, sir. He said, this is an excellent report. And I said, well, thank you. Well, we knew you could do it if you'd give us the effort.
My head said, effort, effort. I gave you effort. That didn't work. It was whiskey that worked. You don't tell them that. Let them think effort. They'll give you a raise for effort. You won't get anything for whiskey. They'll give you a hard time for drinking whiskey. I went from a process analyst and engineer to a senior engineer, the kind that we left San Diego and moved to Culver City and went to work for Hughes. The closest they come to aerodynamics was a rotor blade that went over. But that'll do it. That'll get you up there. And I got a job with them as kind of a senior, senior engineer and then as an engineering manager. Steady progression of promotions that I got because I drank whiskey. And when I was telling the story coming out from the airport, before, you know, when you keep doing that, pretty soon you've got to drink so much before you get barrelled in that your speech is slurred. And your boss thinks you're drunk. And he says, hey, you can't come in half drunk early in the morning. You know, you're not. Hell, he acted like we were supposed to come to work sober and stay sober all day long. And he didn't appreciate it when I did that. I didn't get no special appreciation. So I didn't do it very often.
Now, I drank in a bar called the Tattletail. There was a guy in there that sold little white pills with crosses on them. He stacked them up and wrapped them with tinfoil. I see people from the same age group that say, yes, yes, yes. Well, those are bins of drink. Binnie's and Boo's solves every problem that the alcoholic has except controlling his body functions. It certainly solves the slurred speech problem. I mean, you say the same things over and over really fast. No slur in the speech. And I got demoted. And I had ran up bills that my wife didn't know about. And I got a 10% cut in pay. I mean, everything's going bad. And I had an opportunity to sell some test equipment, which I didn't own. Equipment that I found right before the company I worked for lost it. And I got it out the guard gate, and I got it to a fence, and he disappeared along with the equipment. And then I told the guy that's the owner of the Tattletail, hey, if you know anybody that wants to buy test equipment, I can get it. I cut the fence clear out, and I was going to have a direct dealership. And the next morning, I woke up. It was July the 26th, 1972, and I was on page eight in the big book. No words can express the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretches out in every direction. No place in my life existed that I wasn't disintegrating in. I was sinking, and there was nothing to stop the sinking, except a double shot. And I knew not to do that, or it's going to be right back into the equipment lab. And so I called this guy who was really the president of Alcoholics Anonymous worldwide. He had drank in the Tattletail eight years ago, and now he was the president worldwide of AA. Actually, what he was is the secretary of the studio group, but if he hadn't
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been the president, I wouldn't have called him. And I called him, and I told him that, I said, you still go to AA? And he said, yes. And I said, well, I want you to take me sometime. And he wasn't sure who I was. He knew I was from the distant past. And he said, let's go tonight. It's a beginner's meeting. It's a home group. He said, it'd be a perfect meeting for you. And I said, no, no, I got stuff to do tonight. I can't go tonight. Good God, no. But he talked me into it. And I went, and it was a beginner's meeting. And he introduced me to this guy who was his sponsor. And this guy, this is his smile. And then Kenny said, this is Howard's first meeting. And it was just the three of us. And Frank stood up and shook hands with me. And said, well, welcome to AA, Howard. I want you to join with us. And you do what we do. And don't do what we don't do. And in a very short time, your life will be magnitudes greater than you've ever imagined. Now, I'm thinking, I wonder how this clod picked up a word like magnitudes and used it properly. But I also thought in the tattletale, where we were deep thinkers. I don't know about you and your body, but nothing is as easy as it looks. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And at the worst possible time. That's the fundamental truth of life. That was the way we thought. Put that on the bulletin board. It's important to know that. Life sucks and then you die. Put that on there, too. Don't trust anybody. And I remember thinking, don't trust anybody. But I trusted Frank. I had no idea why I trusted Frank. But I trusted him. Crabby old guy. And that night at the beginners meeting, they called on Chuck Ennis. They said, anybody here in the first meeting? One hand goes up. I don't know what the planned meeting was about. But as soon as the newcomers there, this is my first meeting. The topic is, what is an alcoholic and how does he stop drinking? Chuck, why don't you share on that? Chuck is the group's old timer, film editor at MGM. He talks about going to the backstage bar across the street from MGM and just to have one drink, two at the most, three at the outside on his way home. Next thing he knows, last call for alcohol. And I'm thinking, well, so what? That's not unusual. And then he said, he never, he said he came to AA and they told him that alcohol, he said, that's part of the thinking that's fundamental to the alcoholic. Alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control their drinking. The loss of control is characterized by an insane obsessive belief each time he starts to drink that somehow, someway, this time I'm just going to have two, three at the most. But coupled with that obsession is a physical reaction peculiar to alcoholics. It's a class of people that manifests itself in a phenomenon of craving for more. A craving much stronger than your willpower not to drink. And so you go through the well-known stages of a spree, but I, I was already set free. On the 1st of January, 1965, I had taken a puff off cigarette as the clock struck midnight. And I put the cigarette out and I said, that's my last cigarette. Within three minutes, I had a phenomenon of craving for a cigarette. Within 15, I had to have a cigarette, but I willed myself not to. And I have not had a cigarette to this day. If willpower is the real answer, mine is strong enough not to drink. I put that to the test on Monday, the next Monday, one week after I'd been in my first meeting. I went to San Diego, had a double shot. I think it was, I think
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that Joe and Charlie was where I first heard this, but I experienced it that day. I had that drink and I don't know what happened to willpower, but willy did not show up. I had no idea not to have another drink. I had another drink and I stayed on the streets in San Diego for four days and four nights. Could not stop, did not want to stop. The worst I had ever been. And on Friday, I realized I've lost my family. I've lost my job. I haven't called. I'm a candidate for hard time in the federal penitentiary. And I'm further in debt. I am an alcoholic. I really am an alcoholic and I have to stop and I can't stop. I'm going to AA to stop drinking. I wasn't going to hide out, I was going to stop drinking. And then I went in the liquor store and got a pint of whiskey so I could get home. And I nibbled on that till I got home. I didn't know, Pat was, she had been worried about me. And when she saw me, she was relieved and half happy. I brought the bottle in, put it on the table and I said, I just like that cigarette. I'm not, I'm going to finish that and that's going to be it. She said, before you have another drink, you go out and see if you still have a job. Well, I had a few more and then I went out and my boss was going to fire me. And he's chewing me out. You know, if you're going to fire somebody, that's one thing. But you don't get to chew them out first. You can't have two bites. And I said, Tom, I'm going to AA and I'm not going to drink anymore. And if I don't drink, I'll be able to get another job just as good as this one. So don't worry about me. And he said, Howard, I hope you do go to AA. I hope you don't fall and break a leg. I hope you don't get polio. I hope nothing happens to you so that you'll be so much as late for work Monday morning. And one other thing, don't call in sick. You come in and I'll tell you if you're sick. But I don't want you to make that, you just come in. And he said, this second check here was to pay you for the two checks that you were going to. But I'm going to tear this check up and you're not going to get paid for being on the streets of San Diego for a week drunk. Is that all right? Yes, that's all right. I'm further in the hole, but I'm glad to have the job. I don't tell him that. I just say, yeah, that's fine. And it was. And we stayed and talked and I went out and I had put the, I had put the, what was left of the pint bottle under the seat and I drove him around to his car, put on my brakes and that pint bottle slid out between his feet. And he looked at it and he said, well, let's get rid of that so that you won't be tempted to drink again. And he drank half of it and I drank the other half. And that was August the 4th, 1972.
And I never, I have not had a drink since then. Now, I had no idea what the significance of that was. I had no idea what the word surrender meant. But surrender means I am an alcoholic. In this area of my life, I am completely beaten. And I have to get out of this and I can't help. And many people have said, help me God, and passed out and woke up feeling free. I, the only freeness I felt was I'm not going to drink again. And I never even came, I don't think I ever came close to drinking again.
Because I always knew, don't make any difference how bad it is now, it's going to be magnitudes worse as soon as I drink. I knew that because that was the story. And I had surrendered. I didn't know it was the surrender that made that difference. So, I told Kenny I didn't think God was in my life. I said, I believe in God. I believe in God, but, and I don't pray, and I don't think God's in my life, and I'm not going to work the steps.
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Can I still be in the program? He said, oh yes, oh yes. Full-fledged member. Well, what's my program going to be? He said, we'll go to a meeting every night. I'll take you. That's it? That's it. Then they start changing the rules on the way to the meeting. They say, now I want you to listen to what people say. And if they describe some change in their life that you think might help, put that in your program along with going to meetings.
And one way long, and I heard a guy say, if you make a mistake and brood about making that mistake, then you've made two mistakes. And the brooding is generally the worst consequence of the mistake. By God, is that wisdom? Isn't that wisdom? I'm going to do that. I'm not going to brood anymore. I brooded about brooding. Another guy said, I'm Steve from San Diego. I'm 36 years and learning that all the people that I hate don't feel it.
And it's killing me. God, is that, that's wisdom. I'm not going to hate anymore. I hated Steve for saying that. Now, I'd read the book, and I read the book, and some place I kind of read that we have moral and philosophical convictions galore. But when it comes time to use them, the necessary power isn't there. Now, I don't tie that in with what's happening to me at all. But later on, it dawned on me that what I'm getting is hope.
I'm getting hope. I hope this, you know. And I tell you, I wasn't taking hope home from the tattletale. I was taking big time trouble, and I knew it. So, I'm, AA's doing good. I'm actually feeling good at AA. But at work, my boss expected me to come sober and stay sober. And here I was, sober for three or four weeks, and not getting any appreciation or anything. He said, you want your job back. You know, I'm going to put you back into the management.
Now, nothing like that. I go home and Pat is mad every time I get to home. And here I am, sober for several weeks, and she don't appreciate it. And I'd be pushing the lawnmower, and I hit a tree with it. The bolt that holds the handle on hit me in the chest right there. You want to experience that, get a ball-peen hammer and turn it over so that you hit yourself right there with that ball part right there.
Ooh, damn Pat, anyway. And damn AA, too. Would my chest hurt if AA worked? I don't think so. I'm not going to those meetings and grin like a baboon and say, isn't this wonderful? It's not wonderful. It's just like Frank Gluck. I'm not going to drink, but I'm not going to go to a meeting. And then Clarence showed up. He always took me to the meeting on Saturday night, and I always went and went. I didn't, it was a lot of meetings when I was at home or work where the trouble was.
And then I'd blame AA, and I'd say I'm not going, but I always went. And I always came home better off. And this night, a guy named Don Gates said, if you're new in AA or if you're old in AA, and you're not working the steps, AA will stop being fun, and you'll decide, I'm not going to the meeting. I'm not going to drink, but I'm not going to the meeting. He said, you don't go to the meeting, and then you'll go in the house.
He said, you don't go to the meeting, and then you'll go in to have a drink. And the bartender says, what's the matter? I thought you was going to AA. Don't AA work? He said, if you're not working the steps, be honest with him and tell him you don't know if AA would have worked or not, because you wouldn't try. There was nothing in my head to pop off at that. I knew that was true. My head popped off at everything, but it did not pop off at that.
And on the way home, I told Clarence, you know, Don's right, and I'm going to work the steps.
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Now, my sponsor moved about 50 miles away, and I'd see him once a week or so, but I went through the steps the first time, just me and the big boat, and listening in meetings. But I didn't have any guidance, and it transformed my life. All I did was keep doing the surrender, admitting that I was personally powerless over alcohol. See, that keeps the surrender surrendered, just validating that, reminding yourself, keeping your brain, your neural pathways on that instead of the way they were.
Surrender changes the neural pathway. It disengages one and will start building another, which the steps add to. And I did the second step, which is I believe in God. I don't believe he's in my life. The third step was the AA group is my higher power. The fourth step was a terrific inventory on resentment and on dishonesty and a pretty good one on fear. And I don't pray, but I'm reading on page 66 and 6.
Now, Frank, old grumpy Frank, was beginning to teach me to meditate. And he was doing it from the 12 and 12, and it says we listen for deeper meanings of each word and phrase. Now, they're talking about the St. Francis of Assisi prayer, but Frank said, I don't want you to do that. That's a saint's prayer. I don't think you're going to get it. But when you read the big book, when you read anything Bill Wilson writes, pay attention to the possible depth of the meaning, because you may be reading Bill for a long, long time.
And if you don't understand the word, look it up. Don't be afraid because you may be needing that information for a long, long time. And so I'm reading this on 66 and 67, what is now called in Texas the sick man's prayer. Now, I didn't ask God to help me see that this guy was sick. It was my dad and his beatings. And I was just saying, ooh, he's in my head. It was his fault. He died 20 years ago, and he's still my biggest problem.
And I read that carefully, listening for the deeper meaning. It was not a prayer. But I looked at it in deep enough meaning, and I saw it from an in-depth meaning. It was not a prayer. But I looked at it in deep enough meaning, and I saw it from an entirely different angle. I saw that dad had a 7th grade education, that he was an alcoholic, that he had to have his way. God, I understand that, you know.
I have to have my way. I'm just like dad, and I have the same problem here. And all he knew was whipping. And he thought I'd appreciate it later on. Well, the fact is, I saw it completely different, and I cut him slack. I gave him patience, tolerance, kindliness, and compassion. Those things are for giving. I don't think they can really… If somebody's really hurt you, I don't think you can forgive them without God's help.
But nobody ever really hurt me bad except dad. And God helped me. Just from knowing the deeper… Anyway, the thing is, I took the equipment back. The next morning after taking the equipment back, and then my boss saying, I don't know where the equipment's been, but I know it wasn't stolen because I have it. The next morning when I woke up, I had the same feeling that I had when I had my first drink of whiskey when I was 13.
Just gradually a good feeling came up my body, leaving goosebumps at the back of my hand and the back of my neck. And I went to an eight. Now, you come down, but in working the steps, you may go from… Let's say by this time I'm up at four and a half. Okay? I go from four and a half to an eight. But when I come down, I don't come back down to a four and a half. I come down to four and three quarters.
And I wish to Christ I could have stayed at eight. But in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't go to a two and a half. You know, and that's, to me, in my experience, that's just the way the steps have worked.
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You work them and you get highs and then you come down, but you never come down where you were. Over any considerable period of time, it gets better, never worse. Although you still have trouble. I got a promotion, got my job, got a better job back. My wife went to Al-Anon and she turned on me. All these years, she has fought with me and lost. I can win any fight I have with her. I can out-reason her, make stuff up.
Well, we do that. I mean, that's just an automatic thing that your left brain does. If you don't have the information, it makes it up. And it makes sense, and she can't, she has not exercised that part of her neural system. Mine's up there doing chin-ups, for Christ's sake. And she goes to Al-Anon and they teach her to just stop fighting and say no. No is a complete answer. Now, come on, I want you to go to Fresno with me.
I'm talking up there. It's a long drive, but you can listen to me all the way up there. And then when we get there, you can listen to me again. And then when we get up tomorrow morning, we can see all of the exciting scenes in Fresno, California. Which she's already done once. And she said, Fresno's just good for one time, and I've been there. So she said, if it causes you pain, this is Al-Anon. If it causes you pain, this is Al-Anon.
If it causes you pain for me not to do what you want me to do, I love you enough to help you go through the pain. I go to my news sponsor and tell him how unreasonable she is. He said, it sounds like time to go through the steps again. I said, I don't think she's ever been through them. So help me God that happened. So I go through the steps again. I see how angry I am. This is a thorough inventory, not just getting the tall poles and the tent, but going back through my life with the guidance of my new sponsor.
And I list all the resentments. And I'm telling you, I did not realize that I did not have one relationship with anybody that I hadn't been angry about. Much of them I'm still angry about. I had no idea I was that way. I don't want to be that way. But I can't stop. I need help. I have no idea that that's surrender. I had no idea that I was this selfish. That I did not have a relationship with anybody.
For I'm not in it for me. To have my way. To be in a position of authority. That's what the baby elephant needs is a position of authority. And with it comes stress. Like he couldn't believe. But that was the belief system. And I say I did not know I was this selfish. I don't want to be this selfish. Help. And in each instance, I get help. Don't mean that I, but as Bill explains in step seven, or step six in the 12 and 12, I just make that up too.
What we have in those steps is a perfect ideal. I don't expect to complete. But I'm not going to surrender at a level. Now you can do this intellectually. I surrender to whatever level that I think will get me what I want. I mean, I've done that all my life. But a real surrender, a real surrender, I mean, I've done that all my life. But a real surrender is deeper than that. And so it works. And I got promoted to a…
In the meantime, I'm meditating. Frank taught me to meditate. Frank taught me to meditate. I would be in a tough spot. Stress was my problem. I'd be stressful, and so I'd meditate.
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And what I would meditate on was the first three steps. Just the way I took the first three steps, God wasn't in it, but he was around it. I believed God, but he was off someplace doing other universes. But I could go through my belief, and it worked for me. You know, it didn't work as good, and my life just kept getting a little better, and as it got better, and as I saw, for example, my first sponsor who had, when he first came into AA, Leo Aves, who was the second oldest guy in the home group, he told me, he told everybody, just stay away from those middle steps. Do the first step and the twelfth step. That's all you need. Everything else will fall into place if you just do that.
Well, Kenny bought into that, so when he was moved, I went to, he was my sponsor, but hell, he couldn't have helped me through the steps anyway. But this, my second guy around, he could help me. Not to speak of the third guy around, and in the meantime, Frank has taught me to meditate. And I meditate, and the problem goes away, and then I hit the old snooze button, and I'll do this later, I'll do it in the shower.
I'll do it on the way to work. All those things are good things to do, but upon awakening, meditate. Then you can meditate in the shower, and you can meditate on the way to work. But if I don't do it, when I wake up, I don't do it. And I'm telling you, that may be just me, but that's it. But I'm doing meditations great. Started on the first of October, 1974, and I did not miss a day until July of 2002 when I had open heart surgery, and I missed some days.
But I still meditate. I don't, I put it off sometimes, but I don't go to work anymore. I am retired, and I can meditate for an hour and a half if I want to. And I do, anyway. When I got my promotion, I had a baby elephant belief. This was, I was promoted to a position described in the job title as manager technical section, systems engineering department, helicopter design division. That's a, that's not only a good title, it pays good money. And now I think a baby elephant belief was, remember the little train that could? Remember him? That's a lie.
You know, because what it tells you is if you just work your way to the top of the hill, and then you break the crest of the hill, there's no more problems. Now that was true. So I reached myself, stressed and strained, to get to the top of the hill. And it was a downhill pull for two days. And then it got worse again. It was the worst it could be. Because I had worked my way up to this position, and my boss gave me an assignment to make a presentation to a two-star general and his staff, three Ph.D. physicians at Johns Hopkins University, in a technical area that I am not that technically strong.
And I am not the guy. I don't care if I look good up there. I am not that good. Get somebody else. But we give you the money. It's in your pay grade now. See how unreasonable they are? Damn right. So the next morning in my meditation, I spend about the first ten minutes being conscious of the dreadfulness that has fell on me. I have worked this hard to get to this place where my first assignment is going to sink my ship forever.
Peter's principle has struck. And then I meditated. By that, I put my attention on what I wanted to attend to. And when my timer went off, I knew not to act. Stress was gone. I had a sense of well-being.
[00:50:01]
But I didn't stop the meditation, because I knew if I backed out of that, I would back out of that and dread. I'd be backing into the dreadfulness. So I stayed right there. And then I thought, why do I have to do this? Nobody I work with has to do this. My boss, his boss. And then as if it was an answer to that question, I had a vision that I saw. And I knew it was my, you know, it's a fantasy. I saw and what I was looking at was a frozen lake.
And because it's my fantasy, I know that the ice is as thick as ice can get with the laws of physics. That you could put a Sherman tank out on that ice and the ice would support it. Then a thought or a voice. Sometimes the thought that comes to me sounds like a voice. And it says, that's right, Howard. It is hold a Sherman tank. And walking across that lake a step at a time is a great metaphor for living your life a day at a time.
And if you're convinced that the ice is thick enough to support you, you will walk across safely. But if you're not convinced, you'll dread every step you take. I backed out. I decided that was the spirit of the universe talking to me and saying he had my back. And I, that was in August. And in October I made the presentation. Everything went better than you would have expected it to. And I, and then we had another problem.
And I think I was guided to tell my boss, you go up and meet with the bigwigs and when you come down we'll have an answer. And I didn't know we would have an answer. If it had been me, I would have said, don't go. But this was, I think, guidance again. But the fact is, the smartest guy that was working for me brought in, at the start of the next hour, the solution to that problem. The specific thing that the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins was worried about, this guy was addressing.
A state of the art. And I'm telling you, trust. And that's, I really have to work. But I've worked on it. I go through, I did an inventory, this time with God. Okay, this time God is in my third step. In my second step. I go through a lot of science, but I become convinced that, that the big bang started with a concentration of spirit and energy that is underlying everything that has come into being since then.
And that I can trust that. And so, I get that consciousness every day. Now, when I'm doing my fourth step, and I list all my fears, this time with God, with me, with me doing the inventory, there is a corrosive thread of fear pulled to the fabric of my entire being. Self-reliance is essential to success. But it don't get you far enough. Certainly not as far as we can go. So we need infinite God, rather, in addition to the finite self.
And I have come to believe that I am personally powerless. And that I am in partnerships with this. Chuck C. describes it as a personally satisfactory. That is, I have come to believe that I am personally powerless. Chuck C. describes it as a personally satisfactory. That is, whatever turns out, be satisfied with that. Because that's what's going to happen anyway. Personally satisfactory, conscious partnership with the spirit of the universe that guides us through this entire business of living.
And so I go through.
[00:55:00]
And every day I think my life gets better. And when I look at my fears, the best thing that could happen to me was I learned everything I needed to learn about electrical engineering when I was in the Navy as an electrician. I had an electrical engineer teaching it to me. When I was a toolmaker, I didn't learn how to make tools, but I learned manufacturing processes, engineering tolerances, manufacturing tolerances, how in the hell they have to go together.
I learned a whole bunch of stuff about material and how you build things. Then, as an entry-level engineer, I gradually built on the technology that requires that. And how did that happen? Well, it wasn't what I wanted. Self-reliance had failed me. But if you look at it as having a partnership with, you can see you've always had that partnership. And that partner has done nothing but pull a golden thread to every circumstance and event of your life.
But, of course, I don't know that because I am not having my way. And as we get to this deal that we're not going to have our way, but what's going to happen is the best possible consequences of every circumstance and event. Yes, Bill passed away. And that's a sad thing. That's a sad thing. But suffering is not gratuitous to my God. Suffering is the essential beginning of some greater goodness, whether it's this life or some other, that can only happen in that mystical way.
I do my inventory and I see that. The worst problems become an essential beginning of some new place in my life. That's what I see. And I can only see it with a surrendered acceptance through the steps. It's a heck of a deal. It changes things about us that the authors of the book, Bill gave us a perfect answer to a problem that he wasn't that aware of. But he was listening. He was saying yes to everything God was telling him.
Now, he threw some Bill Wilson in there. That, you ain't going to get. Oh, St. Paul threw a lot of St. Paul in there too, you know. But, you know, St. Paul's mentioned a lot of times in the Bible in Minneapolis. Don't get one mentioned. I thought that was a funny joke. I think that's a funny joke anyway. Okay, so my wife has a stroke in August. Has two strokes in one day. When I got home, I was at the Cornhuskers convention.
I went right home and she said, I don't want to go on. She said, I'll never be able to drive. I can't see. And I'm telling you, her eyes were off. You remember Jack Elam, the cowboy star? That's the way her eyes were. And her mouth was drooping. It was very sad. And she don't want to go on. And I start talking about neuroplasticity and how people with strokes go to therapy and they can reverse all of this stuff.
And I'm thinking, don't even think about it until we get you to physical therapy. And I'm thinking, in four or five weeks, within the hour, she says, can you help me up? My head says, I can't do that. Good God, she could hurt, you know. And what I said, I said, can you walk? Can I help you up? Can I support you? And she said, let's try. I got the walker. She put her arms on the walker, her head on her arms.
She said, I wish you'd leave that part out. But her nose was running and she was slobbering and crying. And she was walking around the hospital room. And my heart leaped with gratitude. And it was such a good feeling. Because she wanted to live and she was going to work to live. When just a week later, she was gone. Going to Work to Live, When Just a While Before She Was Given Up. And that has been that same way every day for the last nearly four years. Every day has been a good day. And we don't
[01:00:04]
wait until 20 years to find out that God is pulling a golden thread through our life. We know it every day. And we know it because we have focused our attention on that truth. And you get pulled off a little bit. Yesterday, she got an injection for macrodegeneration. They stick a needle in her eye. And I watched. And I thought, God, how courageous she is. And I nearly cried. And then I remembered my friend who I met at my first AA meeting who had lost his eyesight 20 years ago with macrodegeneration. And I am happy that they can inject her in the eye. And so was she. You know, there's nothing bad about that.
This is the beginning of some greater goodness. The stroke was some beginning of a greater goodness. It really was. The only way that you can't imagine how grateful I am to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and all of the goodness that I have had coming from being absolutely convinced that the worst possible thing is going to happen in a moment. It just has transformed. A long time ago, I read in the book on meditation that wherever you find God, wherever you find God, that's the right way. If you can just sit and be conscious of God's presence and thereby get a feeling of well-being, that's right for you. Or if you have to analyze the Big Bang and all of the finely tuned processes and parameters that have been involved in this growing of the universe. If the rate of expansion had been one part in a hundred thousand million million parts slower, the earth would have never been formed. In engineering, that we call a tight tolerance. One out of a hundred thousand million million parts. And that's the tolerance that we live in today with God. It's going to work out. Now, however you find God, that's the right way for you.
But remember, wherever you see God pass, mark that spot and go sit in that window again. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous is my window. This is where I come to see God pass. Thank you for letting me join with you and do the things that you do. I love you.