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Source: Jay S – 48th Annual Big Deep South Convention – New Orle – Speaker Talk (2016) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: jay-s-48th-annual-big-deep-south-convention-new-orle-speaker-talk-2016-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:54:18
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Thank you, Leif. And now it's time for me to introduce our speaker this morning. And thanks to all of you all for coming out on a Sunday morning. It's nice to see a really nice crowd this morning. And I know in my heart that you won't be disappointed by what Jay has to say. I didn't meet Jay until the Thursday night that he and his precious wife Adele came in. When Van asked me to do the presenting part, a little daunting at first, but again I have been taught you never say no. So I accepted and I am so very grateful for the short period of time that I have known both Jay and Adele. Already I have seen a difference in how I have been thinking and wanting to move forward in my program. Still a baby, but one day I will be grown up. I am praying that I will anyway. I listened to some, I will say tapes, I know they are CDs, but they are still tapes to me, on his speaking and one of the things that was brought to my attention was that he seems to be a very spiritual person. And lo and behold, several people, a couple of which I don't even know, when they heard that I was going to introduce Jay said, oh, he is so spiritual.
And I am going, oh, and I am working on this part. Okay. So the more I thought about it, I finally found something written or a definition per se that you might, or for me it made a little bit more sense as to what spirituality is. Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inseparably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.
Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives. And knowing that, and the last thing that Jay said in many of his speaking engagements is something that I hold to me every day and I say, God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. And here is Jay. All true. All true. Well, after that definition, we can just go home. Good morning, friends. My name is Jay S. and I am an alcoholic.
God is doing for me what I couldn't do for myself because it is 11 something in the morning on a Sunday. I'm in New Orleans and I haven't had anything to drink yet today, which for an alcoholic of my variety is an amazing, miraculous thing. I mean, we should all be drunk, right? And I mean, it's late in the day. That's the nice thing about New Orleans. You guys understand morning drinking. You go places, you know, people don't even start drinking until like 10 o'clock in the morning.
It's rude. Rude. So anyway, I want to thank everyone who had anything to do with getting my wife and I here. Van, Lisa, Judy, you've been incredibly sweet. There's a term and it's beloved and it means something that is very dear to the heart. And your AA community here is very, very dear to my heart because you've been so incredibly loving and engaged with myself. And I bring you greetings from Bill and Karen Cleveland and Matthew and Pip Mitchell and, you know, the weird AA family that I'm part of.
I feel at home here. And I want you to know that you're part of our consciousness. And so thank you very much for all the kindness that you've extended to all of us over the years. You know, I was living in my Pinto. And for the younger people here, a Pinto was a smart car that a Ford Motor Company crafted in the mid-70s. It was highly flammable just like the occupants.
[00:05:02]
And I had no idea why I was living in a car. I didn't realize that what I was was alcoholic. Now, I was the short guy in school. You guys all remember the short guy. I can't throw the ball as far. I can't run as fast. But when I hit fifth grade, I find something that I can do better than guys that are bigger, tougher, and stronger than me, metabolized beverage alcohol. Obviously, this is a gift from God.
And when one is gifted, you know, one approaches it with enthusiasm. And I had no idea that what I was was I was having an abnormal reaction to a substance, that this was not how most people function. Now, I don't know, you know, how it is that you figured it out, but I'd like to suggest that if you want to figure out whether you're alcoholic or not, take what it is that you used to do for recreation and then compare it to what happens when 90% of the population does the same behavior.
For example, by the time I'm 16 years old, my idea of a good time is to take a rack of Reds, high-powered, sedative, second all, and wash it down with a quart of spinata wine. 90% of the population, when they exhibit that behavior, what happens is they end up in a coma at the hospital. With me, I'm looking for car keys and to make short-term romantic commitments. Right? Which brings me to another portion of this dis-ease that I didn't suffer from, but a lot of other people suffered from it, is a thing called blackouts.
Now, blackouts isn't something that you ever hear about in, you know, junior high school health class. It's kind of like time travel. You know, you just wake up in other places. And, you know, I'd like to submit to you that if you wake up with a life form with which you were unfamiliar when you left the house in the morning, you may be suffering from something a little different. Now, most people, if they woke up, you know, next to something, they'd go, I don't think I'll do this again.
I just come up with coping mechanisms. I start calling myself a social sleeper. So it's just odd. So I just kept coming up with different ways to rationalize my behavior. And what happened is that I reached the point where I could no longer justify what was going on to myself. My people hadn't raised me that way, and I violated the trust of anybody that ever put any in me. And I couldn't stand it. And I ended up, I'm 24 years old, and I'm running around stealing alcohol and gasoline and going from one place to another because I'm like a cat and I don't want anybody to see how bad I've gotten, and I know it's going to get worse.
And I got arrested again for driving under the influence. I was always under the influence. By the time I was 13 years old, my consciousness was only lames do it on the natch. The worst thing that can ever happen to somebody is to be a lame. Therefore, I'm never going to do anything on the natch. So I always, you know, I liked to drink Romelar before I went to seventh grade. It was a wonderful way to get ready for school.
And, you know, I knew that snack or nutrition break, I knew what kind of nutrition I needed because it went with the Romelar really well. And so, anyway, that's just the way that I was. And at 24 years old, I'd been arrested like… And I don't want it to seem like I'm a criminal, you know? I mean, it's like… Let's be clear about this. We had criminal behavior described last night, okay? Me, it's public napping, drunk in public, you know?
It's just, you know… But somebody was always going, get in the car, get in the car, get in the car.
[00:10:01]
And so, anyway, I'm baffled. I'm absolutely baffled about why it is that I can't control and enjoy my drinking. I can't understand why it is that I can't keep an apartment, keep a relationship, keep a job. I think that what I am is I'm just a bad guy getting what I deserved. And my father bailed me out of jail over a vodka rocks at a hotel. He said, do you think you have the disease? And I thought, well, I don't know.
But maybe he'll pay for the lawyer. So I said, um… And he said, look. He said, I got a buddy I want you to talk to. Give him a call. You can stay with my mother down in El Segundo. So I drove down to my grandmother's house where all great criminals end up, right? Grandmas or ma… You know, whenever you meet a gangster in Alcoholics Anonymous, ask them, where do you live? Mother, with my mother. Awful.
So I'm at my grandmother's house. I give this guy a call. He says, meet me at the Howard Johnson's tomorrow morning at 7.30. Don't have anything to drink. And don't smoke any of that crap either. How did he know? So I meet this guy. He sits down. Talking about himself and talking about himself and talking about himself. How he had problems in his life. And then he met Alcoholics Anonymous and then he didn't have any problems anymore.
And he's talking about himself and talking about himself and talking about himself. I just want him to stop! And so he's not stopping. So I figure I'll prompt him. I say, hey, look. Do I need psychiatric treatment? Do I require religion? How about hospitalization? And he looked right at me and he said, listen, trick. He said, if you or your family can get the $3,000 that it's going to cost for you to go to treatment, go out and drink that money up.
And when you're done, call Alcoholics Anonymous. They do it for fun and for free. And then this angel of mercy, this caring nurturer, got up and he said, if you want sobriety, you're going to have to go after it the way you went after your drugs and alcohol, kid. Find it in the white pages. Goodbye. And he left. He didn't even buy me breakfast. He didn't take me by the hand and walk me into sobriety.
He said, go find it. So I went home to my grandmother's house and I poured myself a water glass full of Davies County old-fashioned Kentucky bourbon with three ice cubes and I knocked it down and I called Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was on the second day of May in 1979 and although I found it necessary on a number of occasions, I haven't taken the front drink, sniffed any glue or done any of those other things that I found to be so consoling.
So my story is that you don't have to drink or use one minute at a time from your first contact with the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now that's not all our stories and there's no hierarchy about it or anything else but this is just my story. I was invited. That's what you get. Okay? So anyway, I call AA up and this woman goes, Alcoholics Anonymous, can we help you? She says, do you have a problem drinking?
And I said, uh? She says, are you drinking now? Now, I don't know about you guys but I get really literal when I'm talking. I didn't have it pouring down my throat so I was able to say, no, I'm not drinking. She said, we've got a noon meeting happening down here in Manhattan Beach. Why don't you go down there? I showed up fashionably late because if you're not invited to the pre-party why show up on time, right?
And so I walk into this coffee bar and the woman behind the coffee bar goes, you! Upstairs! And I walked up these twelve steps into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and everybody started talking at me. And I can't understand, why are they talking at me? But you see, when I've been out busy you can tell that I spent a lot of money getting my hair styled oh, six, eight months ago.
[00:15:01]
And when my hair's long, I kind of look like the Sphinx. My fingernails are out to here. When I light a cigarette, it looks like a napalm strike's been called in. You know, I got the zup zups going because I haven't had enough to drink yet today. And everybody's talking at me. And the third guy that talked was a guy by the name of Butcher Joe. Now, you can always tell Butcher Joe, Joe Hacker, I kid you not, a butcher named Hacker.
You can't make the, anyway, and Joe looks at me and he talks about crying the big crocodile tears when the family left, and inside he's going, yes, now we can drink and there isn't anybody that's going to get in our way. I understood that. And he talked about knowing just exactly how deeply to cut himself so that they'd have to take him to the hospital and he could get the drink that he needed on the way.
And he looked right through me and he said, you don't ever have to feel the way that you feel about yourself ever again if you're willing to do what I've done. And I bought the package right there. And the reason that I came here from Sedona is to tell you that you never have to feel the way that you feel about yourself ever again if you're willing to do what I've done. Now, this is a large group. There's a lot of time in this meeting, but I have been privileged over the years to come up against different things in my life where I've needed to turn around and go a different way and go to groups like the Al-Anon family groups and ask for help.
You may be getting your ass kicked by something other than alcohol. This is not just about not drinking. This is a way of life that becomes more and more expansive. And the longer that we are separated from a drink, the longer that we are involved with spiritual principles, the more and more our behavior becomes aligned with a more spiritual way of life. But sometimes we need a little help with the food.
We might need a little help with the gambling. We might need a little help with the… I don't know what it is that you may be suffering from, but if you are suffering, there are groups of women and men that can help you get out of that and get free from that. And they have a language particular to the problem. Example, I end up in a meeting of Debtors Anonymous called Men and Money. I wonder if I qualified.
And money in my family of origin was violence, absolute violence. That's what happened at the first and the 15th of the month. Things just got weird and they got weirder. And I never got any training at all. And I'm sitting in this meeting and a guy talks about hiding in clutter. I had every receipt for my business, but it was all stuffed in boxes and places all over. And I thought I was just insane.
And these people actually knew about that. And they were able to show me a way out. And the suffering was alleviated. So I want you to know that my experience is that no matter what you may think is your secret thing that's kicking your butt, you don't have to suffer from it anymore. Just an opinion. It's mine. It's a really good one and it should be yours. Another thing about, just because somehow I've gone down this wormhole about money.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the only organization in the world that doesn't ask other people for money. And we are also one of the largest publishers in the world. And a large part of what we do with our money is that we take money from the sale of books and we use it for our operations. And we've been doing that from the gate. And people aren't buying books the way that they used to.
[00:20:04]
Now if you're working with others, there are these things called smartphones that people more and more are using to get their AA literature. Ask your sponsee, can I see your phone? Open your books. And see if their big book, their 12 and 12, their language of the heart has come from AAWAS or if it's a bootleg. And if it's not, get them to download it. It's a way that you can support Alcoholics Anonymous World Services.
Just a little aside there. So, I'm in this meeting of AA. And this guy has just convicted me and the meeting is done and something miraculous happened. There were four guys, this is Manhattan Beach, California, there were four guys that were going down to the beach to play cards and watch girls go by on roller skates. And they brought the new man along for entertainment. And they taught me everything that I needed to know about Alcoholics Anonymous that morning.
They said, this is AA, kid, we don't use no dope here. I was horrified. But they said, I'd gotten at that meeting that if I'd be alcoholic, that I had to stay away from the front drink. It's the first one that gets me. And that anything that leads me to the first one, I got to stay away from. So, if I'm smoking a little non-habit-forming marijuana, sooner or later Pepsi's not going to cut it. I'm going to need a beard to take care of it, right?
They said that was drinking. Who knew? I thought it was cutting the cotton mouth. And if you're doing a little of that Peruvian marching powder, you need a double Bombay on the rocks with a twist, just to take the edge off. They said that was drinking. It's like you're being spiritual, you know, and you're dropping a little LSD. I love chandeliers. You need a gallon of wine just to settle through the experience.
And they said that was drinking. Who knew? And so they told me, we don't drink, we don't use, we don't go with girls who do. What an order. I can't go through with it. So, anyway, and they demonstrated to me, they demonstrated to me compassion for the alcoholic. We went back to the clubhouse, my car had been towed. They said, it's a new guy, don't give him any money. And so, anyway, so I came in on a Wednesday, don't drink anything on Wednesday, don't drink anything on Thursday.
On Friday, I go to a couple of meetings and then there was an AA dance. So when I came to AA, I had a good t-shirt, a bad t-shirt, a pair of Levi's and some bowling shoes, and my formal wardrobe. And so I got the good t-shirt on, I borrowed an extra $2 from my grandmother. I go sliding into the dance, you know, and the women, they're like the women here this morning, you know, they took showers. They've got perfume on.
They're swinging their hips, they're snapping their fingers. I realized I'm 24 years old, I'm never going to get laid again in my life. And I go screaming out of the meeting, jump into the pinto that I'd been living in and I go driving towards the stick and stein. And I'm headed towards the stick and stein, not to drink, but just to find a woman who understands. And on the way, the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous happened for me.
That still small voice inside of me said, this is not a good idea, turn the car around. And I did. See, I'd never done that before. I'd never followed that still small voice, that voice that each and every one of us has. So I went back and Larry was standing at the door and I grabbed him and I said, talk program to me, please. And he got me a copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd been too busy to pick up a copy.
[00:25:02]
I didn't want to look like I was going to Bible study. And he talked to me about the book a little bit and he shot, you know, and then I shot home to my grandmother's house. I wasn't sleeping yet. It was only day three. I'm just walking and sweating and smoking and walking and sweating and smoking. Start reading the book. And, you know, I got hooked when Silkworth talks about the sense of ease and comfort that comes with a few drinks.
How did they know? I wouldn't have used that language, but how did they know? Little further, you know, I wasn't interested in that World War or that stock market crash or any of that stuff. You know, I'm looking for a solution and I'm not able to pick any of it up. But at the end of chapter four, there's a story about a guy, Fitz Mayo, who's the third guy who stayed sober in New York. And Fitz was a preacher's son and he was coming off a bad drunk and his family's religious and he just hates anything that's got anything to do with God and he's in this crisis and he hears this voice say, who are you to say that there is no God?
And he gets down on his knees and he has an experience and he didn't drink. I understood that story. So I got down on my knees and I said my prayer. And my prayer was this. I don't know from Jesus or Buddha. I don't know the Talmud, the Torah, the Upanishads. Just please get me the top. I'll do whatever these dried up old geeks say to do. Just please help me not to drink. And I believe at that moment I'd finished the third step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That prayer was perfect. I'm with you today. I went to the Alano Club the next morning. I got the bad T-shirt on. I'm stuck to a Naga Hyde couch smoking, waiting for the noon meeting, 10 o'clock in the morning. This woman walks through. She's got bun in her hair and correct shoes on and black dress. She goes, oh, young man, you're new, aren't you? How could you tell? She said, I can tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words.
What are they? Find God or die. Not that. Oh, no, not that. 37 years later, I can tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words, find God and live. Live abundantly. Live wondrously. Live in dimensions that right now you may only be able to dream about. And when I say God, please, please don't hang something on me that's yours. I'm talking to you about an experience that I've had in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And it's a short word, and I'll drop it here or there, but it means absolutely nothing except something that has happened in the interior of my heart and that I have been able to experience with lots of people, but it doesn't need a definition. It doesn't need a definition. So this woman scared me to death, so I ran into the meeting, and I got a sponsor at that meeting. I needed protection. And I started reading the big book.
Now, we could read the big book in the 70s unsupervised. We could. And so one day, I'm reading with a buddy, and I see where it says that if you don't do an inventory, you're going to drink. So I run to my sponsor, and I go, I'm going to drink. And he goes, what? And I said, well, I haven't done an inventory yet. So he gave me my four-step kit, was two pieces of paper, and they were lined down the middle of each.
And he said, okay, kid, this is what I want you to do. He said, I want you to go home, and I want you to get really jacked up on coffee. Now, this is before Starbucks, so it took a while. You had to brew it up, and he says, and I want you to look at the door of the kitchen, and he said, I want you to write down who you hate, who you're afraid of, the sexual weirdness, we all got it, who you owe money to.
He said, we'll get after it. Now, there's a lot of people you'll meet that act like an inventory is something really difficult. Now, that first inventory that I did, was it a fearless and thorough, moral inventory using all four columns? No, it was the greatest hits. What needs to be on that first inventory is the stuff that when you The B on that first inventory is the stuff that when you put your head on the pillow that goes around and around and around and around and around and around.
[00:30:03]
You know, this is not brain surgery. It's designed for alcoholics. There are people who act like, you know, oh, we're so glad you've come to Alcoholics Anonymous. Welcome to our way of life, please. Here's the jelly doughnuts. It's like, but watch out for the inventory. Look, all we're asking any alcoholic woman or man to do is go home and make a list of who you hate. You do this every night anyway.
Come on. Her, her mother, her sister. You know, it's for alcoholics. We're about this deep. Sam Shoemaker, the guy who was Bill Wilson's spiritual advisor, said that there's only one sin. What is it? He said it's thinking that you're different from your fellows. Now, the reason that I believe that alcoholism is more a disease today than I did 37 years ago is that I've heard a lot of fifth steps. And they're all the same.
Some of us may be a little more flamboyant than others. But, I mean, we're alcoholic males. There's only so many things we can do to destroy ourselves. We're not that creative. So my sponsor comes over. I read it to him. We burn it. We say a couple prayers. And then he sends me off to make amends. I'm 28 days sober and I'm a fully vested member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had the first, or I was 24 days sober, 28 days sober.
I have the first guy ask me to sponsor him. I call my sponsor up. It's a very odd thing for you young people. We both had to be standing next to walls at the same time. I said, this guy asked me to sponsor him. What do I say? He said, Jay, you say yes. I said, really? He said, Jay, if they're sick enough to ask you for help, you can't hurt them. There is nothing more dangerous than an alcoholic woman or man sitting at home trying to solve their own problems.
You can't hurt them. You can't. Well, I'm not good at it. Nobody is. Bill Wilson worked with hundreds of people trying to help them get sober before he came across that proctologist that shook a lot. Why should it be any different for you and I? Why should it be any different for you and I? But there is one person that you are designed to help save their life. And if you aren't available, what will happen when they pass through the room?
They'll run screaming for me. So I launch out into this amazing way of life that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. And it has been an adventure. It has been an adventure. Now, every AA group is a spiritual entity. So what I'd like to do is ramp this one up a little bit. If you'd just be kind enough to just close your eyes for a minute and just consider that 82 years ago, drug addiction and alcoholism is a death sentence.
There is no way out. And then something happened. And one sufferer said, You don't have to live like this anymore. And we've been shown a way out. 80 years ago, having this many people sober in a room was impossible.
[00:35:07]
And yet we're running around this place free range. Think about your first sponsor and their family and the sacrifice that family made for you to have time with them. And those first people that you ran with when you were getting sober. And we get to do this for fun and for free. Thank you. I got a tape of a guy by the name of Al Latch, who Dr. Bob sponsored in the Oxford group. And then later on, after he got loaded and came back, Bob sponsored him in AA and he talked about being at Bob's office and there being a big thing of pills behind Bob's desk.
And he talked about all the different ones he ate to get him through the day. His favorite were what they called goofballs, barbiturates. How did Bob get through the day so he could drink at night? He was a barbell head. And sometimes there's questions about alcoholics and addicts in AA. And I'm here to tell you that I've come up with a really good way of describing the difference, because there is one.
And it's our relationship with carpeting. When an alcoholic's been out drinking, they come home after five or six days, they end up on the floor and it's warm and it's soft and it's carpeting. For drug addicts, carpeting is a never-ending source of hope and inspiration. The thing that separates AA from any other spiritual movement is that we actually show people how to change. When you get involved with just about any general philosophy, what happens is that people will say, you shouldn't be sleeping with your niece, quit it.
Or they'll say, don't steal money anymore. Or they'll talk about some problem, you'll share a problem, and they'll say, don't do that anymore. Don't do that. But what they don't show is what it is that we have, which is immense. We actually show people how to change. And if you haven't had that process of walking another person through showing them how to change, it's the greatest gift in the world.
It's the greatest gift in the world. We know what it feels like when you say, I had to send the keys back to the landlord, my experience. I had a beautiful business and I didn't know how to run the money and I didn't know how to ask for help. And by the time I asked for help, it was too late. And I didn't know how to get out of that mess. But there was a man that I was able to go to who said, okay, this is what you do.
[00:40:00]
You go and you look at him and you say, well, here you go. And you walk away from him. And it was one of the lowest points in my life. It was one of the lowest points in my life. And I'm still making amends for that. I'm still sending checks every month. And it's been 20 years. And that's how you get to live free. And that's how you get to live free. There is a dimension beyond three that Bill talks about.
He's talked about being rocketed into the fourth dimension. And we get to live there. And we get to visit the fifth. What do you mean by that? We get to live on the plane of inspiration. Well, how do we do that? Well, we pray and we meditate. And we help others. You know, I'm a big fan of meditation. I really believe, you know, pray and meditate the way you drink and use. Just try stuff and see where you end up.
It's incredible. I'll give you an example. I'm living in Redondo Beach, California. I got the trophy wife. And I get invited to Sedona to go give a talk. Great. So I go give a talk in Sedona. And while I'm up there, when I get done with the talk, as I'm getting down, the voice says to me, move here now. Now, the reason I meditate is to distinguish the voice from the voices. And I sit down next to my girl and I say, I just got told to move here.
And she looks at me and she goes, I knew that. And six weeks later, we're living in Sedona. We went back, gave our keys to realtors, said make the place vanilla, sell it. And we're in Sedona without script or purse, man. We don't know what's up next. Now, she's retired. I'm underemployed. So, I mean, we did have a little flexibility. But, I mean, we did it samurai style. We put our stuff in a container and we're there going, what's up next?
And we ended up having a huge blowup. I mean, this woman's my muse. And we had a huge blowup. And I end up looking on the Internet and finding a job that is as the program director of a retreat house in Sedona. And it ends up being the best job that I've ever had. And I get to invite people to come and put on spiritual programs. And it's like I live in Oz. It's incredible. You know, there's balloons and all kinds of stuff.
And my heart has become open further and further and further. See, I don't know what your dreams are. I don't know what they are. About 15 years ago, my sponsor was having a party at his house on New Year's. And I started doing this thing where every year I ask, if you could do anything in the world, what would you do? Anything. See, we have been raised from the dead. Literally. We have been called forth from a self-inflicted grave.
And you have a purpose. You have the ability to save lives. And you have a creativity in your spirit that no one else has. You are a reflection of what is in a way that is beyond what anybody else has ever done. And all you have to do is open your heart. do is open your heart and ask to be shown. And how do you do that? Well, you just, you
[00:45:01]
know, follow it. I mean, I'm best described in the book Alcoholics Anonymous as a queer chap with a strange idea of fun. I'm a historian. So I have been able to make the applications and I'm currently I'm writing a spiritual biography of Bill Wilson, but I've been able to create a symposium where all the historians in Alcoholics Anonymous get together and we spend a weekend together. I really like girls. And I got this wife that's completely off the hook. And we have, because of the processes that we've had as, you know, I mean, I was raised by wolves. I didn't have any dating chops. But we actually wrote a book on Loving Sober and it's for free. You can get it on iTunes. And it talks about we, you know, I've been all kinds of different places on the planet, working with refugees, doing all, and there is no limit. We're sober. We can do anything. Anything. In the beginning, you know, it was just put the plug in the jug. I like to call that first edition sobriety.
Just put the plug in the jug. Everything's all right. Second edition. Well, we got problems. We got problems other than alcohol. We can work with those. By the third edition, people are finding out that they can have lives way beyond anything that the pioneers in AA thought. And now, we have the children of the fourth edition of Alcoholics Anonymous. And you get to go back to school and you get to have business and you get to have beautiful children. You get to love in dimensions that people have never been able to love before. And all you got to do is just keep the first thing first. Keep going to the meetings, keep working with others because it's in the sponsorship that we continue to change. There is nothing beyond it. It's the greatest, greatest gift that's available. And if you haven't done it, all you need to do is just get a book and crack it open and read what's there and do stuff.
Or you can do what I do. I wanted to get better at being a sponsor. I was three years sober. The MOOCs that I was working with, they were, you know, all running around but none of them seemed to have the fire. So I took out four guys, Jack Prose and Fred Ellis and Kenny O'Brien and asked them what their sponsors did with them and I cobbled the thing together. You know, take an old timer that you admire and ask him to lunch. And then ask him a question about themselves. They'll talk forever. And they can teach you some stuff to do. Now, again, the other thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that we show people here. And one of the dearest things that's happened in my life is having a meditative practice with my wife.
So I'm going to ask my fabulous wife, Adele, to come up here. I want to give you my very best. I want to give you my very best. And that's what we get to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. So come on up here, baby. Now, here we go. So what it is that we came up with was this idea that three minutes of meditation will change your life. And so I want to show you what we do. Anybody can do this. In our book it says if circumstances warrant, anybody ever had a warrant before? I mean, it's fairly, fairly, we invite our wives or friends. So if you've got a roommate situation, you know, when my daughter was young, she'd come and hold the timer. And we'd just sit together for three minutes. So what we're going to do is show you exactly, we're going to, so let's all just meditate together for three minutes, okay? Oh, yeah. We do this before we meet with every sponsee. We do three minutes of silence before and after the meeting. It will take, suck all the drama out of your
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sponsee meetings. And if it'll do it with them, just think what it'll do at home. So, anyway, so we're going to sit here together for three minutes and then we'll show you how we say a prayer after we're done, okay? So let's just, if you'd just be kind enough to close your eyes. That where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. Oh, Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand. To be loved as to love. For it is giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we find eternal life. Thank you. Fabulous, Adele Shay. If you have a primary relationship, treat it like such. The reason we're a couple is because we both aren't insane on the same morning. Takes five minutes.
Make an experiment. All spiritual stuff. Just make an experiment. Just try it and see what happens. But if you try that for thirty days, you will find what it is that Adele and I have found, which is that we never forget who the other person is. I don't treat her like someone else on the days that we do that. Dream deeply. You have a place in your heart that no one else has. And it is waiting to be opened and it is waiting to be shared.
This is the gift of sobriety. It's a really good time. It's fun. I mean, come on. We've been raised from the dead. You want to just be a better consumer? Huh? Adele mentioned yesterday that every 22 minutes we've got a timer that goes off and what I do is that I take a look and I get in touch with my innocence. And I say, I love you. I love you. Please forgive me. No one showed me how to love you. And then I take a look at what it is that I'm doing at that moment and I ask myself the question, am I coming from the highest possible place? Is the conversation that I'm having at the highest level that it can be or am I just talking about somebody else? I killed my television set 25 years ago. I don't let other people tell me what I'm supposed to be thinking. I pay attention to the life that's been given to me and the love that is presented to me each day. And the greatest love that I've ever been given is in Alcoholics Anonymous. God bless you all.
Thank you.