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Source: Mark H – Lead Soberfest – Speaker Talk (2004) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mark-h-lead-soberfest-speaker-talk-2004-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:53:03
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Good morning, family. My name is Mark H.. I'm an alcoholic. And because of, loving God, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous Fellowship, wonderful men and women who are more concerned about my life than my feelings, I have not found it necessary to drink alcohol since the morning of October 19th of 1982, and for that I am very grateful. The universe is a better place as a result of me not drinking. The state of Texas is a better state. And that's the way that goes. You know, the success of one is the success of all, and the failure of one of us is the failure of all. Alcoholic drinking does impact the entire universe.
I want to thank the committee for asking me to speak. It brought a whole new level of meaning to willing to go to any lengths. Me and a couple of pals of mine, Andrew and Raquelle, we get on the plane and we're coming up here and it's, you know, having fun and doing what we're doing and then you start the approach and they're going to land and normally then something's going to happen within 10 or 15 minutes and you couldn't see anything outside the window and we're going along and I normally like to meditate my last half hour or so before landing and I just want to be spiritually centered in the event we don't make it. Because there's one school of thought of the state of mind you're in when you die has a lot to do with how you come back in the event that's right, I like to cover my bets. And so, you know, the flaps come down, right? And typically, based on my experience, within about 30 seconds you ought to be touching down. Well, what happens is about 15 seconds we're going straight up at warp 9 and something had gone awry. When I experience fear there's a tool I work with and here's the question I ask myself. Am I in any concrete immediate danger? Now in the last several years the answer has always been no, which lets me know that it's psychological fear and it's not based in reality and it dissipates and goes away. However, yesterday the answer was yes. Fortunately for me, the next question was, can you do anything about it? No. Thy will be done. And then we landed in Green Bay. And so, Andrea and Raquel and I, we go through the gate, you know, first of all they can't decide, they're going to do a bus, they're going to do this, they're going to do that. And I found out later I think they lied to us because no other planes were diverted, just ours, and they told us it was the weather. You betcha. So if this hasn't gotten weird enough, when we walked into the terminal in Green Bay, there wasn't one human being in the silence. And I turned to him and I said, we've gone through a time warp. This is way too bizarre. I mean, there was silence, you know, your heels reverberate. And I said, and then we saw another person and I said, okay, well, if it's a time warp, there's humans here, so. So then you go to rent a car, and I don't know if you know this, but they like you to rent a car where you're going to take it and bring it back. And when you're not going to bring it back, you would think you were a serial killer standing in front of them. We finally got through that.
And then we started on the Great American Venture, driving from Green Bay to Milwaukee. And God bless Tom, I think we got here about six, and then we finally got up here and checked in and then came down and listened to Billy speak. So it's been, but you know, back to this willing to go to any length, right? I was saying to myself, I carried this just a little too far. I'm willing to go to any length, but I don't know if dying was a part of that deal, right? So that leads me to a great question. How many of you in here have like a year or less? Raise your hands. Okay. I'm going to make an assumption here that, or I hope you all have sponsors, and I imagine that sponsor has said to you, you're willing to go to any length. Is that right? But I'll bet you didn't ask, and you lied to them and told them yes. And the reason I say that you lied to them, you didn't ask
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them another very important question. What does that look like? You see? I think it's
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important to people know what that looks like. You know, for me, what it means is I'm going to go from the title page of the big book to 164, and I'm going to follow all the instructions as they are laid out, the precise, specific, clear-cut instructions. I'm going to look at my first step. What's wrong with me? Am I a real alcoholic? Do I believe that to drink is to die? What is that about? Do I believe I suffer from a condition called a spirituality?
Second step, I've got to come up against the God issue. Is there one? Am I willing to make God everything in my life? Third step, decision to do what? Seek a relationship with that which is closer to me than breath the rest of my life. Fourth step, I've got to write these inventories. Four-column resentment inventory, fear inventory, sex inventory. Fifth step, I've got to read all this to someone. Sixth step, I've got to make a list of all the defects that I begin to see manifested as a result of living my life based on self-will.
Seventh step, ask God to remove all that. Eighth step, make a list of all the people I harm. Got to pay all the money back. I remember doing this to the guy one time, right? Because I think it's important if someone asks me to work with them, I want to get real clear of them what willing to go to any length looks like. And I'm not going to lie to them, and I'm not going to tell them this is easy. If it was easy, there'd be 50,000 people here, right? But he said to me, because we got into the ninth step, you're going to have to pay all the money back, you're going to have to make amends to your mother and father and all these employers. And the guy looks at me in his eyes like this and goes, Mark, I just want to be sober for God's sakes. I said, well, based on my experience, and what my big book tells me, these are the things you're going to have to do to stay in that condition, you know? Then I got to work with the spiritual disciplines of the 10th, 11th step from now on the day I die. I'm going to start my day with prayer and meditation. Work with 10 step tools throughout the whole day. Then I'm going to do an evening review and I'm going to do an evening meditation. And I'm going to go see what all these spiritual people are doing.
Be quick to find out where religious people are right. And I'm going to be doing this till the day I die. And then I'm going to take all that, and what I'm going to do is make myself available to help other alcoholics till I die. Whoa, I just wanted to not drink, you know what I'm saying? Here's what's crazy though. You take a new person, right? And if their life looked like mine when I came here, and then this man asked me all this stuff and tells me the things I got to do, doing that, it'd be like kissing the baby's butt compared to what whiskey asked me to do, right? But I look at him and I go, sounds a bit much, don't you think? I mean, everything I own is in a duffel bag. Not one human being on the planet wanted anything to do with me and I'm dying. My body is physically dying.
But I think this is just a bit much, right? See, how do you help people like us? It's very difficult to help people like us. I don't have a lot of use for my past anymore. I talk about it normally in context of two areas. One is when it can help others. So I'm going to share some of my past with you all because the book asked me in a general way to tell you what it was like, what happened, what it's like now. And I also have to go into my past to examine the belief systems that I'm up against today that are robbing me of the passion and joy and life that God intended for me to live. Those are the two times I go into the past. Otherwise, I have no use for it because it is not who I am today. This morning at 6.30, I was down in the gym working out. And I was listening, getting spiritual, listening to Creed. Album called Prisoner of My Mind. And I was listening to that song.
And I love listening to heavy rock and roll because, you know, I mean, I'm 58 years old. I'm on the Stairmaster and I'm going Warp 9. And there's a part of me, that part that likes to sit on the couch and eat bonbons. That voice is saying to me, what are you doing here? You're too old. We're tired. Blah, blah, blah. You know, you all got the same voice, right? You know, because I can tell. All I've got to do is look in your eyes. You've got that same voice talking to you. So I love to listen to heavy rock and roll when I'm doing that because I can smash right through that. Because I believe God loves working out and sweating and pushing it and passion and joy. But I'm listening to that song this morning and the words are so true. I was a prisoner of my own mind. Drunk and sober, I was a prisoner of my own mind. So I spent some time taking a look at belief systems I developed. And I developed those belief systems not too far from here. I was born and raised in Iowa. Second oldest of four boys in a farming community. Spent the first 24 years of my life in the Midwest. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for that.
I was, I love the value systems that I was raised with. They stand me in good stead.
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I told my pals, I said, you're going to love spending time with these people. Because these people were raised like I was raised. Which is somewhat of a simplistic way of coming at life with a sense of value. Your word is your bond. And there isn't much pretense. And I said, those are wonderful people to be around. And they told me last night I was right. But I still remember when I took my first drink. Those of you that heard Billy last night, I can really relate. I was 16 years old. My dad died of alcoholism in 86.
There's a lot of members on both sides of my family who appear to be alcoholic. And my dad's drinking was sufficient enough that I'd made some decisions I wasn't going to do that. But you know how that goes. But then I'm up against this other thing. And this other thing is how I was experiencing myself. Minute by minute and thought by thought. And the sense of fear and impending doom and separation and I'm not enough. You know, that dialogue that we have going on. See, people say they know us. But very few people know each other because we don't know the internal dialogue that's going on. We only see the tiny little bit that they present to us. We don't know. You see what's going on. And when I was 16 years old, I still remember I was in Humboldt, Iowa. And my older brother bought us a case of Miller High Life. And I chugged three of those. And that internal condition, which based on what I can tell, is what the steps and any spiritual work that I've ever done is designed to treat and to change that internal condition, which is fear-centered, external-centered, never-enough-centered, here-is-not-okay-centered. That got treated. And for the first time in my consciousness that night, I had a sense of peace inside, internally. Nothing else had ever done that for me. I was 16. And just like Billy said last night, you are not going to stop me from gaining access to that. That treated a condition, the book uses a word called a spiritual malady. And it's how Mark experiences Mark. And alcohol treated that.
And from that drink, and I drank alcohol for 20 years, from that moment until I got sober, there was a change. That was a major turning point in my life. I was involved in several things in my high school at that time. And from that drink, they all stopped, every single one of them. I graduated from high school, went to college, wound up going to three different colleges because when you're partying pretty hardy, you've got to stay a little step ahead of them. I finally wound up at the University of South Dakota. And there was a little event going on then called the Vietnam War. And I had kept switching majors because I was having a lot of fun in college. And I kept switching majors. So when I was into my sixth year of college and I didn't have any degree, they drafted me. My inventory revealed that I wrote some inventory about being in Vietnam for 13 and a half months, right? Poor, poor me. My inventory revealed that I drank just a little bit too much alcohol, which is the reason I got sent there, because my degree ultimately would have been to be a teacher and I would have gotten 4F. I hate it when inventory does that. You know, I got a lot of mileage out of that story for a long time. You do solid inventory and see truth, it changes your whole story. Do you get that? It just changes your whole story. I volunteered. Here, send me over there. Got nothing better to do for 13 and a half months. But it wouldn't have been the story. And so I got drafted and got sent over there and 13 and a half months there and came back and did finally finish up that degree and got married and roared off to San Francisco in a Volkswagen with $150 in my pocket, just like Bill Wilson and Lois. I'll tell you, I get out to San Francisco and I went to work for a major insurance company and I want to talk about this internal condition. I don't necessarily, I can't tell you how I can't tell you how the internal dialogue that I had with myself, I can't necessarily tell you how that was formulated.
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I have some ideas because I've had to go back and look at the past to see the belief systems that were generated, but I can give you some of the core belief systems that were in there. One of them was that you're a H. and you'll never amount to shit. That was buried deep in there and I did not know that. And that was a driving force in a lot of what I began to experience because now I'm in the business world and I'm starting to have success, but on an internal level I've got that kind of dialogue going on and these people are going to find out about you and the subsequent fear and the terror and so then you're driven more around work, but I got this internal dialogue going on and the drinking begins to take off.
And I mean take off because drinking was the only thing that would treat that internal condition, that sense of separation I had from everybody, that impending doom, that fear that was on me all the time and would not leave me, and those voices. You know there's a reason, ladies and gentlemen, people shoot themselves in the head instead of the foot, it's to stop the voices. You all know what I'm talking about. This morning when all of us got up, probably within the first 5 seconds to 30, you had a committee meeting in your room in your mind.
And sitting at that table were the various identities that you think define who you are. Mine started out this morning, we had the jock, we had the spiritual man, we had Rambo, we had the CEO of a company, we had the friend, we had the boyfriend, and I hadn't even gone to the bathroom and they're all chattering. And the spiritual man screams aloud, shut up, it's time for prayer and meditation. The rest of you take your place, you know that I'm first.
So I pull out my books. Upon awakening we ask God, you know, the spiritual man does his nice stuff. Then I begin to sit in meditation and the jock starts talking. Time to work out. I'm trying to get spiritual, time to work out. He's done, it's my turn. So then I get down there and I'm starting to work out and cranking out, you know, listening to Creed and doing the thing. I look at the clock and the spiritual man says, you're going to be on pretty soon.
He starts in, talking. But we all have those voices. See, I drink, and if I'm real lucky for brief periods of time, there's one. Just one's a great thing. If you're a real alcoholic and listen to just one for a period of time, that's a wonderful sense of relief in your life. So the drinking got worse and worse and worse, and then along the way I added a few other chemicals on top of that. And to make a long story short, I wound up moving from San Francisco to Eugene, Oregon.
And then along with that subsequent intake of alcohol, I began to compromise all the moral values that I was raised with back here. For example, I'm married to a woman I love and I'm committing adultery. And I'm violating my conscience, and now I've got more voices. And I don't want to do that, but I'm doing that. And I'm not showing up and giving my employer a good day's work. I still remember my dad.
I think I was six, seven years old, working the bean fields or detaching corn. And I don't know about the rest of you, but what he said to me is, Mark, when a man's going to pay you money, you give him a day's labor. And that's in my very bones. I don't know anything different than that. And I can't deliver that in my conscience, and so now I'm drinking. I'm in this cycle. You see, I can't stand the man that I'm looking at in the mirror.
I'm trying to live in this external world, and I've got all this internal stuff going on. And you want me to not drink? I understand why most of us die from drinking. Drinking is the only thing that could treat that condition. And I want you all to think about something. You've got to understand that the day I got separated from alcohol, because I had nothing to do with that, because I drink, the day that that happened, you've got to understand that this internal condition I'm describing stayed with me, except now I'm sober and can't drink.
Isn't that fun? Catholic Church has a name for that. It's called purgatory. Listen, in this body, in this reincarnation, I've experienced hell, purgatory, and heaven, so I don't have to die to go through that stuff. So I wound up leaving that marriage, and I wound up moving to the state of Washington,
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and it just kept getting worse and worse, and the internal condition kept getting worse and worse, and the voices were getting more and more judgmental and more abusive to myself. And you've got to treat that, and you've got to treat that, and you've got to treat that, and then the drinking was taking over so much you can't begin to work. In 1978, I moved up to Anchorage, Alaska, and that was the beginning of the end.
From there, I wound up winding up back in Colorado, and when I sobered up in 1982, I was working as an orderly in a nursing home, cleaning up human feces, writing the great Jack London story. Somewhat of a paradox, because I would go in, and I worked. One of the reasons they hired me, they left me alone. I took a fifth of vodka in to work with me, and there was these eight old men that I took care of, and I could do that because of my size.
I weighed about 250 pounds, and I would drink all day and take care of those men and change their pampers and do that kind of stuff. Very paradoxical work in relationship to the hell I was living in within myself. So that's what it was like, and along the way, I was truly like a tornado in people's lives. I had a lot of amends, a lot of amends. Biggest amends of all, when I look back in hindsight, was I robbed people of emotional security.
You can't put any price on that. I recently went to see a friend of mine who is in jail as part of her amends process. And when I went to see her, talking through a plate of glass, right? She's in recovery, thank God, and it's an amends. But I left, and I said to myself, alcoholism took everything that was of any value from me, and paradoxically, alcoholism gave me everything today that is of any value.
I needed to have that experience to see what my drinking does to people who care about me. I needed to feel that again. To the morning of October 19, 1982, to make a long story short, God, power, the force, call it what you will, separated me from alcohol. I'm not a guy who came in and out of AA. I'm not a guy who woke up and desperately wanted to quit drinking. That is not my story. My story is more like this.
God, whatever God is, I had a strong suspicion. He had some things for me to do, and realized that I was never going to get sober. And it just feels like zap me that morning. I wound up in a detox that morning, and I have never taken a drink since that time. And that is not because of me. Because of me, I drink. So that's what it was like and what happened. And then I got thrust into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about my journey over the years. In some respects, it feels like I have two ten-year segments of different events. I was very damaged physically, mentally, emotionally from alcoholism and the way I lived my life when I came to you all. So my first two or three years really in the program are at best a very, very dim memory. And I really finally begin to get exposed.
But I want to go back to this condition I told you about. You know, you people raised your hand, you got a year or less. You can probably relate because you're very close to that condition. But that internal condition that I drink to treat, I had to start living with that sober. And I fell prey to some belief systems. First of all, I know from hindsight, going to meetings will not treat that internal condition.
And meetings were never designed to treat that internal condition. But there's a belief system that can filter through as if I go to enough meetings, I'll be okay. That is not my experience. My experience is, without some real due diligence in the steps like the big book describes, that I get worse sober. I don't get better. Suicide rate among alcoholics is 75% times greater than the national average.
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Sober. Sober. I know why. Because of that condition and nothing to anesthetize it, how we live with ourselves. Now, there's another element to this that I discovered fairly early on. That condition I'm describing is not made better by external circumstances of my life getting better. See, when I talk, there's two things I'll talk about. One is I can talk to you about my life situation. My life situation is where I work and who, you know, what I do for a living and where I live and all that stuff.
Very little of my time anymore is spent on my external life situation. And the reason is, you and I live in a world of impermanence. And the way my life is today, it may look a lot different tomorrow. People I love die. And people get sick and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And if your life and how you experience yourself and how you feel about yourself is predicated on your life situation, I feel sorry for you.
Because it changes. Just like that. Just like that. People you love die. They get drunk. They get sober. You have a job. You lose a job. You have great health. You know, I've been sober long enough and live long enough now. Some of the people who are interested in my life are dying. Dying of cancer. Dying of old age. See, I live in a world of impermanence. So what I have to get in touch with and what the steps got me in touch with was this thing that's deeper than that.
The big book calls it inner resource. Call it God. Call it spirit. I call it life. And what I had to do was do the work necessary to get in touch with that and take that into an ever changing life situation. It's that inner resource that brings about passion and joy and power into my life to manifest out here. About three years sober, I met a man who, I'll use Billy's words, who was at the uncool table.
He not only could quote the book, but you could tell he had a lot of experience with what it said. And he had these steely blue eyes. And you just stayed away from him if you had a lot of BS in you. But that internal condition was getting bad. And I was real confused because I came into AA with a duffel bag. And in three years, I bought a home and I have a job and I have responsibilities and I am dying internally.
Can't figure it out. Of course, I'd never done any step work. I mean, there's a circle and a triangle, right? So there's three parts to it. One part's the fellowship, going to meetings. I'm in one part of a three-part program expecting the results of all three and wondering why I'm not getting them. And I had a pal who had started working with this man and I noticed this gentleman begin to change. All change is not based externally, but it's an inner transformation.
I mean, the big book talks about we're going to do this work. We're going to go through these steps. We're going to have a revolutionary spiritual experience and it will bring about a psyche change. Common sense ought to tell us that change is all internally and just shows up out here. It's not because I get some knowledge and now I change, right? I mean, we support the self-help book industry, none of which does us any good.
Because we have moral and philosophic convictions, none of which I can live up to. But I buy book after book after book, you know. See, I've got some friends that do this. They have a problem, right? They go buy a book. It gives them an answer. They practice it. It changes. I go buy ten. I pull it off for two days. Doesn't work. Boom. I mean, look at your libraries. They look like mine. We could start a self-help recovery store and fill it up.
Works for one day to two weeks. Because lack of power. See, I have intent. Intent will only manifest. Vision will only manifest through action. Then I get manifestation. But I need power to move into the action phase. That's the part I missed. So to make a long story short, I met this guy and began the journey with him. He did not make the assumption I was an alcoholic. He said, we'll find out that truth.
He was very clear with me. We were going to meet at his house at 6.30 in the morning. That wasn't 6.35, nor was it 6.25. He began to teach me responsibility right from the get-go. He said, your recovery is your responsibility. It's not mine. You have nothing that I want. Let's stay clear on that. So I have a busy life. So I have a busy life, don't ever call me past ten, I'm in bed because I work. You're willing to do that, and he got real clear with me
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that it was going to be my responsibility, so we began that journey. And it was life-changing, and I had an internal change, and that internal condition I talked about began to change. In hindsight, though, well, I'll tell you what happened to me, is I got up the ninth step, and I made a lot of my amends, but in hindsight, what I really didn't do is the first nine steps are no more than a launching pad to put you and I into steps 10 and 11, which is where all the power, and all the juice, and all the excitement is, and I did very little with it. All one through nine are to launch me into the tenth step. The Big Book uses a terminology, the world of the spirit. And then it says, go do incredible stuff, man, here, in this.
Go to monasteries, and go to churches, and read books, and do all this incredible stuff, man, and take it into your life. Learn how to meditate, you know. Stay at it, develop a passion, right? I didn't do that in the external world. I got this internal dialogue, right? And the internal dialogue is that you won't amount to much, so if you won't amount to much, one of the things is, I had a belief system, if I got enough stuff, somehow it's going to treat that condition, so I get trapped in the pursuit of stuff. Gotta have a house, and, you know, working 80 hours a week, and if I get the right car, and you know what, we're the smartest, dumbest group of people I know.
Here's what I mean. I buy a house, I buy a mountain property, I got two cars sitting in the garage, you know, I make an X amount of dollars. Now, of course, I can't miss one hour of work, because I can't afford to pay for it, but, and $20,000 worth of new furniture in this beautiful home, and I'm sitting there one night, and I feel like a prisoner of war, and I can't figure out why, right? See, because the truth got smashed. I got all this stuff, but I'm still dying, and that's when I started to say, somebody's lying to me, right?
But I stopped doing that, and so here I am again, in about nine, nine and a half years sober, I went insane, and got locked up in a nut house down in H., Texas, and in the process before that happened, I lost everything, and I was reduced to sitting in an apartment. I couldn't go to meetings, I couldn't even leave the apartment, I was so terrified. Now, that particular event was a combination of many things.
God began to speak to me when I was about five years sober, to go seek some outside help, just like our big book says, but I ignored it, because I'm a step-worker, right? Go get some outside help for your PTSD, and your trauma, and your Vietnam stuff, and a bunch of the other insanity that happened in your life, but no, not me, because I'm a step-worker, right? See, step-workers are interesting, they love to take the parts of the book that fit them, and leave out the rest, right?
You know, I was talented on that, and the way here, I pay attention today, because as a result of not paying attention, I got to the place where I was suicidal, and almost moved forward with that plan through a series of events, I wind up in a psychiatric hospital in H., Texas, and in some respects, it feels like I really did a third step there, because a part of me, and sitting in that nuthouse, I realized that drunk or sober, any attempts that I have made to run my life were doomed to failure, and put me in places like this, and I said, I quit.
I quit doing that. From now on, I surrender. I'm through trying to figure out what it looks like, where I live, who's in my life, what I do, I'm done, period. Thanks for letting me do that, thinking I could do, thank you, but I'm done, right? Because I, you know, the pain I was in was unbelievable. I still remember, I, so I got out of that place, and wound up getting moved to H., Texas, and Kerrville, Texas, and what I began to do is, I took a hard look, particularly at steps 10 and 11, I saw all the things that I had been getting lip service to, that I had not been doing.
Those strict spiritual disciplines, as outlined in there. I had been doing nothing with meditation. The 10th and 11th step are very, very strict spiritual disciplines, and based on the experiences I had, here's what I said to myself. See, one of my major defects inventory showed me was this, I love to give you my opinion on experiences I've never had. You can relate to that, can't you? See, I've never sat and meditated for a year straight, but I want to give you my opinion on what it would be like if I did that, right?
So I realized, I'm going to start doing this stuff, and I did. I began to develop a daily meditation life, which I have to this day. And I would make this statement of all the practices that I have worked with over the years, I would have to say that meditation
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by far influenced me great. The greatest of all practices that I brought to bear on my life. Because it was in meditation, I began to understand who I really am. I began to lose my identity with my mind. If you lose your identity with your mind, then there is no past, there is no present, there's only now. And now is the only place in which I will ever experience God and ease and comfort. And all the future's ever been is a succession of nows.
I want you to think about this for a minute. One of the greatest effects produced by alcohol is it brought me current. Brought me here. The further away I am from here, right now, the more I will suffer by identifying with a mind that wants to go back here or out here. The further you're out here, the greater you're going to live with fear. It's called an anxiety gap, right? My whole practice is about being present to this breath, to this moment. Why?
Because it's all there is. It's all there's ever been. It's all there ever will be. Every past was now. Every future is now. There won't be anything more than this. And I was never present to it, and I wondered why I had to drink. My God. See, it's like when I love it when I hear somebody say I'm bored. Here's why I say I love it. The humor of that. This breath, this minute, what's going to happen now, I've never experienced before. And now I'm into a new one.
And that's the way it is till the day I die. And when I woke up to that, the word boredom is non-existent. Because whether you're going to the same job day in or day out, in the same relationship, going to the same home group, working with the same sponsor, every breath is different. You've never been there before. And when you realize that, you can't get enough of life. I remember reading Chuck Chamberlain, who, as far as I can tell, maybe is the only alcoholic that I would use the term enlightened with. He's maybe the only one based on all my studies. He appears to be an enlightened human. And I remember the first time he talked about, you know, he's married to this woman like forever, right?
And I'm reading his book and he says, I have a new wife every morning. And I'm going, what? What is he talking about? See, the longest I've ever made it is five years. See, I've been married and divorced four times. I get up to five years and that's it. But here's one of the reasons. I never got what he was saying. See, he got what I'm telling you. Every morning when he woke up in that breath, that moment, looking at his wife, he had never been there before, so she was new.
I never got that. My God, that just blows the doors off you experience your life at that point. You stop taking things for granted. Why? Because you've never been in this, whoa, meditation. See, he woke me up to this stuff. Incredible stuff. And I begin to visit monasteries. You know, you want to learn about meditation, go talk to someone who's been doing it thirty years, right? Whoa. Go sit in front of some of these teachers, and I begin to pursue a lot of different paths.
A Native American, spent two years studying with a medicine man, had some incredible experiences, got reconnected to Mother Earth. I lost my connection to Mother Earth. Came to understand again, Mother Earth is a living, breathing organism. Found that connection. Begin to work with meditation through a lot of the Buddhist philosophies. Why? Well, they've been doing it for two thousand plus years, that's why.
So I begin to do that. Made a commitment, begin to meditate two times a day, reading some of these other books. Spent a couple years, wound up getting involved with the Order of St. Benedict. Joined that order as an oblate, renounced the world. Strict practices, getting up at four o'clock in the morning. Incredible stuff, just incredible stuff. Had an experience in 1996 that lasted forty days and forty nights. Any of you seeking a burning bush, you might want to reconsider.
The only people who want those are the ones who've never had them. My feet didn't touch the ground for about two years, it's hard to work when you've got that kind of stuff going on. It was profound, it changed me. See, I have no say in any of this. No say in any of it. It's being done to me and through me. There's a line in the middle, it's stuck right in the middle of the fear inventory. We never talk about it.
[00:40:03]
Incredible line. It's talking about fear. And it's trying to explain to you and I that there's a better way. And it uses words like men and women of faith have courage, they trust their God, but this little line is stuck in there. It says, it said, I'm going to let him demonstrate through me what he can do. Whoa. Wait a minute. That's a Cheech and Chong line. What does that mean? Right? What does that mean?
I'll tell you what it means and I'll use my external world to give you an example. In 1991, I'm driving from Denver, Colorado to H., Texas in a 1978 Saab with a hundred dollars in my pocket. Ten years sober. We'll fast forward. I went back and I resubmitted to this and said, I'm going to let that, whatever that is, demonstrate through me what it wants to do with me. I've had all the fun trying to decide what that's going to look like.
And, my God, I've got to travel all around the world since then. I've got to ask to speak and do workshops. I have profound experiences. I've helped a lot of people. I've been working on a book that recently got published. I'm CEO of a company today. You know, it's just, that's my life situation. But that's about this power demonstrating through me. I have, I've done what the book said. I've really gone to outside help. I have a team of people that surround me in terms of helping me on this thing called life and awakening. I have a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a financial sponsor.
I may be the only one in here that lacked financial sanity over the years, but five years ago I got just a little bit tired of that because I've always earned good money. Back to belief systems, right? That's a key instrument that I use if I want to change something in my life. And knowing full well that I've always earned good money, but knowing full well that the financial picture wasn't all that good, I begin to go back and examine belief systems I had.
And I found three major belief systems. Some of you might relate to this. Here's one. I'm gonna win the lotto. That was one. The two is, obviously, was I'm never gonna grow old so I don't need to worry about financial planning as I stand here 58, right? And the third was that part of me, that voice that says you do not deserve. See, if you haven't examined that voice, if you don't go to work to get rid of that voice and come up with new agreements, your experience is gonna be like mine. About every five years in AA you're gonna build your life up and then you're gonna take a series of actions and it's gonna come tumbling down like a house of cards and you're gonna be dumb enough, like I was for a while, to say you're choosing to do that.
See, I wasn't choosing to do that. If you got that kind of sponsoring belief system, how in God's name can you have any success with your life? You can't. And I needed to find that out and I needed to get at that and I did. Sat down with a man five years ago. I, to this day, can't even believe my financial picture. Paid off almost 50 grand in debt. You know, I have a five-figure cash reserve account. I have money in a 401k. I've got a five-year plan toward retirement.
I am debt-free. My God, you want to talk about some freedom and some power in your life? Go from where I was five years ago to where I am now and ask yourself if you're gonna experience yourself. Okay, I walk a free man today. I've just barely scratched the surface of that. I had no idea that the connection between my financial insanity, not by choice, but I want to bring that up again, but because of belief systems.
I had no idea of how that was impacting my life. Every area of my life and the freedom I have today. It's fabulous. So I have a financial sponsor. I have a physical sponsor. I'm a jock. That ain't ever gonna stop. I'm not buying this belief system because I'm getting older. You know, this guy's been sober 29 years. He's 72 years old. He works out six days a week. Runs five miles every morning, 4 a.m. He's the next Marine.
[00:45:21]
Spiritual Guidance. Several people I go to for that. About a year and a half ago, I did something fairly radical for people like us, is my life was going great. And I told you I had a strong sense there were some belief systems that I could not seem to get at. And I wanted to get at it. I'll give you an example of this. A friend of mine and I, and somewhat on my own over the years, I've been blessed with the opportunity to go places and do weekend retreats on the steps, which was a blessing, was a gift. And the last one of those I did was about a year and a half ago.
And anyone who's ever gone to any of that stuff, you look at me and you see this, but what you don't see is how am I experiencing me? And I was still going in and I was doing that. First of all, if anyone asked me to do anything, I was always shocked. Which, there's something wrong with that. But I'd go down to do that and I would almost be ashamed that I would be sitting up there doing that. And I knew there's something wrong with this picture.
So through a series of events, I wound up getting connected somewhat back to my PTSD and trauma stuff, but I wound up going to a therapist and, whoa, incredible, 61-year-old Norwegian woman. My God, did that woman ever connect dots for me and help me get free of all that stuff. See, I can sit here and tell you today, when I stand up and talk with you right now in terms of what's going on inside me, it's no different than when I was riding with Tom in the car talking to him.
My God, you know how freeing that is, ladies and gentlemen. And I can also tell you that when I stood up to talk, there was no fear. Do you know how freeing that is? Any of you I meet over the weekend, when I meet you, do you know that there's absolutely no fear? And I will look you in the eye. Do you know how freeing that is to go through life with that level of ease and comfort inside? This is why I have this team around me that I'm accountable to.
Also, in 1994, I started something called Steel on Steel. I may be the only one that has suffered from self-delusion sober, I doubt it, but in the event that some of you have, you might consider this. I had moved to an area that I couldn't find any elders who were doing more work than what I was already doing. And I know the danger of me not having accountability. So one day, I was reading the Bible, and I read Proverbs 27.17.
It says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. I thought, you know what? I got an idea. So I called together four guys I was working with, and I said, I want to start a meeting. It's not an AA meeting. It's called Steel on Steel. And here's what I want to do. I want to take all the areas that the big book asked me to take a look at in terms of spiritual living. Morning prayer, morning meditation, evening review, evening meditation, meetings, step work, sponsees.
I want to take my money. I want to take my physical health. I want to take my career, and I want to take relationships and the definition of honesty. Say what you do, do what you say. And each of us take ten minutes and report on all of those areas. Have to do it within ten minutes, and then the rest of us give them considerations about that. And we started doing that in 1994, and I can also tell you that that changed and transformed my life.
That level of accountability. I still do it today. There's a wonderful woman named Joanne in Dallas. She's 78 years old, 39 years sober. I sponsor her. At least I tell her that. See, those of you that would say to me, I can't get to meetings. I mean, here's a 78-year-old woman that does meetings five out of seven nights. They put a pacemaker in 13 years ago. She still speaks and goes to AA conventions and sponsors five women, right?
I mean, what an incredible role model for me. I go to her for common sense. She comes to me for spiritual direction. That's kind of how that works. But she's in my Steel on Steel group. And I do that group with… Actually, it's evolved into three women and one man and myself. And we meet once a month and we go through that very, very same format.
[00:50:04]
I learned this a long time ago. You go to the ocean with a thimble, you get a thimble full of water. How much of God do you want? How much of that inner resource do you want to tap into? Nobody will do it for you. And if you don't want to, I want you to know this. That's cool. Here's my deal. Sober, just doing the steps wasn't enough. I had to take the doors off 10 and 11, blow it wide open. I had to develop a daily meditation life.
I had to go to other spiritual teachers. I had to seek outside help. And then in the middle of all that, my life just began to take off like a rocket, internally and externally. Passion. I think God is passion. I think God is life, this breath thing. I don't know how many of them I've got left, but I'm going for it. Just like this morning at 6.30, listening to Creed at warp 9, screaming with my lungs all sweat dripping.
Yes, that's how I want to go through it. Now, till the day I'm done in everything I do. I don't care if it's a bite of food, if it's making love, if it's working with a sponsor. I want that passion, that fire. That comes from this deal of these steps. See, God is love. Last time I visited my friend through the plate glass, I was driving home in the midst of pain and sadness and tears. And you know what I realized?
Because of this program, I can love someone so bad it hurts. Do you know how incredible that is for a guy like me? See, that's God. See, that's how God loves us. So much it hurts, the sweetness of that. My God, if I got nothing else driving home that night, I don't need anything else. To be able to love like that, to be loved like that. See, that is what it's all about. God. Alcoholism took everything away, and my God, alcoholism gave it back to me in this program, beyond my wildest dreams, beyond anything.
Jeez, don't miss out on this thing. For God's sakes, don't miss out on this. If you haven't reworked the steps for a while, get back in, get a sponsor. Work with these disciplines. That's all I got. Thank you. God bless you. God bless you.