The Way out of AlcoholismBy Jack Boland

TAPE 1A

I drink to your health when I’m with youI drink to your health when I’m aloneI drank to your health so very muchThat I had no health of my own

My name is Jack Boland and I’m an alcoholic, I’m also a minister. I just said a no-no. I saw it disturb a couple of people when I said I am an alcoholic. We know that when we speak the word of a thing it becomes an established thing. And therefore we do not wish to be identified by speaking the word of anything that we do not wish to be a part of our life. Therefore, how can you reconcile the concept of Jack Boland, the minister saying, “I am an alcoholic”. Well this evening I hope to be able to put our minds at ease because there really is no conflict here when properly understood.

Well, we are going to try to harmonize two ideas in which there really are no basic differences. Then we’ll talk about how to recognize the practicing alcoholic, how to identify the symptoms of the dis-ease. The disease of alcoholism and show its progressive stages and tell what to do with and for the practicing alcoholic. We will go into the process of recovery and regeneration. How and why. What to do. And when to do it.

Alcoholism is here to stay, its on the human scene, it exists. As a matter of fact, in this evening’s edition of the Kansa City Star, there is a full page, three stories about alcoholism. I dare say that many newspapers around this nation this evening, or yesterday evening, or tomorrow, the same focus will be given to this problem that is probably our nations number one health problem. The AMA said a number of years ago that alcoholism was the third major health problem that we as a nation were experiencing following heart and cancer. But, I’d dare say that alcoholism is the number one (1) problem if we unearthed all of the alcoholics. I have attended the funerals of many alcoholics, not one of whom was ever identified as an alcoholic, nor was their death attributed to their alcoholism. and yet without this identification it is still the third major health problem.

I was on one of the local television programs doing a ten-minute spot, midday, following a news broadcast, I was talking about alcoholism, and in the news broadcast the announcer was talking about the drug problem in our nation. The announcer pointed out the alcoholism is the nations #1 drug problem. Did you know that? It is not the hard drugs anymore, its alcohol, especially among young people. Alcohol is the most abused of all of the drugs. And, it is a drug. You see we have not

yet declared it to be a drug and a dangerous drug. We think of it as the “social lubricant” that innocuous thing that has so many exotic names in the cocktail lounge, but can produce so many strange experiences in the lives of people. Turning our backs isn’t going to make alcoholism go away because we are rapidly producing a whole new generation of alcoholic young men and young women. There is a tendency for us to think of the alcoholic as the person who lives under the bridge. That man or women who is so unseemly in their conduct, so embarrassing, so beyond hope that we do not wish to be identified with them. Have you thought that the alcoholic might be that young person who just graduated from high school, the one who is awarded the recognition of his or her class that they might be the one to be the most likely to succeed. You bet, that happened to me. I was the one most likely to succeed and I believed it myself. I did not doubt it. I was quite certain that if anyone there succeeded it would be me.

The alcoholic could be that sweet young six-year-old grandchild that you love so dearly. And will be, someone’s grandchild! So we are talking about people, dear and sweet, and precious people; beautiful expressions of God. That is whom we are talking about. People who do not know what their experiencing. Most alcoholics do not know what is happening to them. Nor does their family. Their physician is almost always the last one to know. The alcoholic is really the last to know. There is no such thing as an anonymous alcoholic. Only to ourselves, I was the last one to know what was happening to me. I could not believe it, I thought, as a practicing alcoholic, that I did this thing better than my friends. I did it longer and by that I mean, I drank longer, I started earlier in the day and drank later in the evening. And when the party was over I was still standing there wondering what happened to the party. That group of killjoys that didn’t know how to live, but I did. I did not see that alcohol was the problem; I saw that it was my friend. I could not see the subtle changes that were taking place in my life; the progression of the disease. The deterioration, all the things that I had formerly said that I would not do were happening so slowly to me that I could not see them. Then one day, with the passage of time, I found myself in the city of my birth, really a small town of just over one-hundred-thousand population then, living a skid-row existence. I, the one who was most likely to succeed, and almost had it seemed. One of the symptoms of alcoholism, I think, is that alcoholics keep falling up. They are the only people on the face of the earth that can fall up. I kept falling up. Good things kept happening to me and I kept getting the credit. I got the credit. I worked very hard. I was going to do something with my life, something important, something beautiful. Something beautiful, to me, was called earning money, lots of it and living a life of luxury or near luxury. I had it all mapped out in my mind; I want go into too many details with you this evening because this is not my story about my life. But. I do want you to know that I’ve been there! I, in that town of my birth, spent some period of time living a skid row existence, slinking up and down the streets hoping against hope that no one that knew me would see me. I was always bumping into someone I knew, we would stopped and spoke to one another, and I would tell them some fantastic story of what was happening to me in California. Offering that I had just come in from California and was, immediately, going back to California. Then I

would cross the street and try to bum a quarter from someone else hoping to get enough to buy another drink. Even then, I did not know that I was an alcoholic.

I spent long hours seated in the park, watching the squirrels and wishing that I could be a squirrel. Now, you’ve got to be a “little nutty’ friends before you want to be a squirrel. I really wanted to be a squirrel because they had it made. The sun came up in the morning and they just came out, stretch out on a limb and relaxed; they had no problems. They came crawling down the side of that tree and there were acorns and peanuts that people had left.

Their life was not the way my life was, filled with anxiety, fear, apprehension, shame (although I could admit that shame was there), remorse; so much remorse I could not describe it to you, And a sense of guilt, unspoken, but a living hell, a living torment. Obviously, my friends, the squirrels did not feel that way, they ran and played. The boy squirrels chased the girl squirrels; I didn’t see anything wrong with that either. Where I was inside myself there was only hopelessness, not only for me, there was hopelessness for you; you just didn’t know it yet! That was alcoholism. That was the world of my alcoholism.

Religion would probably have tried to help me on its terms and with its language and with its understanding; which was neither my terms, my language, nor the understanding that I needed. And so I was alone, there was no help. Not only was I an alcoholic, I was an atheist. And, not only was I an atheist, I was a smart-aleck atheist and that is the worst kind. Here I was unable to manage my own life, but I new exactly how to manage yours and the world. If you would have asked me any question, I’d have given you an answer. But. One night I ran into something that I did not have the answer to. One of the symptoms of alcoholism is this; the alcoholic cannot bear to look upon his or her condition or see what’s happening. And one of the defenses that we employ is to select a person who is really an alcoholic, unlike our self, and say, “If I ever get as bad as “Joe” is, I’ll quit”. Every alcoholic, every practicing drunk has a “Joe” who is quite unlike himself because the patterns of the alcoholic are as different as there are people. As there are alcoholics.

There was a certain person in the city of my birth that was an alcoholic. I knew Joe was an alcoholic. Everyone knew that he was an alcoholic. I would carry Joe home. Now in my drinking days, carry someone home meant to drive, but not when you carried Joe home. Yes, you did drive him up to the front of his house, but you also carried him home. I would carry Joe home and put him on the bed, take his shoes off, and stop in the living room and talk to poor Jean who was sobbing and crying because this was never going to happen again to Joe. For he had just promised Jean, last Saturday night that he was never going to come home drunk again. I would feel sorry for Jean and console her, Then, I would go right back down to the bar that I had carried Joe out of and say, “If I ever get as bad as Joe is, I will quit drinking”.

This night, this Sunday night in the city of my birth I was bumming quarters at the post office. The reason that I was bumming quarters at the post office was that

business was bad elsewhere. The post office was the last place I wanted to be because this was the place that my friends, my former acquaintances, salesmen would come on Sunday night to drop their expense reports. This night, business was even bad at the post office. I was stumbling across the street. The hopelessness that was in me had robbed me of the energy just to walk myself across the street and around the corner, but, finally, after many minutes, I was able to do it. And here is the grace of God in action in my life; I turned the corner, and there with four or five other people emerging from a doorway, and I knew what the letters on that doorway, AA, meant and there was Joe. My Joe, my “if I ever get as bad as Joe, I’ll quit drinking” Joe. He was coming out of an AA meeting. I said to myself, “Poor Joe, he’s an alcoholic”. I felt so sorry for him. But I felt even more sorry for me. He came across the street and we went around the corner to a bar and he bought me something else to drink. But I could not get this off of my mind, about two weeks later, I called him and asked if he would help me, except that I did not say it that way. Like most alcoholics, asking for help was almost unbearable. I would have rather died. And so I said to Joe, “Joe, there might be something wrong with me”. Can you imagine that? There might be, there probably isn’t, but there might be. Joe knew what was wrong with me and so did the world. He said where are you? I told him and he came. That was my introduction into the spiritual life that is called Alcoholics Anonymous. And AA was able to help me because it is a spiritual system with a specialized approach to a specific need and I had a great need. It spoke the language. It permitted me to come into the program under its umbrella even though I was an atheist. And then some beautiful things began to happen to me. Incidentally, today, in our society, there are many sources of help for the practicing alcoholic. Our Federal government, most local governments have rehabilitation programs, there are other rehabilitation programs, and you can look into the yellow pages of the telephone book where you live and you will find there some specialized source of help. You can also get in touch with the National Council on Alcoholism, it has chapters in most areas of the country. Almost ever family has a member of the family or friend who has recovered or is in the process of recovering from their alcoholism. If you have an alcoholic problem in you family, get in touch with such a person and they will be helpful in directing your alcoholic into a recovery program, but, by all means, call on a specialist. Because this field of recovery requires specialized help from people who understand: usually through their own experience. But, if not through their own experience, certainly through the specialized educational processes that are available today. But help is available.

The Program of Alcoholics Anonymous is recognized as that program that has been the most helpful to recovering alcoholics that our society and the world has ever known. Incidentally, I forget to give you the figure for the number of alcoholics that who probably exist in our country today; no less than ten-million, quite possibly as many as twenty-million alcoholics. A rather large segment of our society! Last week, one of the ministers was telling me that he had recently become aware of how many members of his congregation were members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he went down the membership roll and that from those he knew were members of AA, he further deduced that about twenty percent of his congregation are members of

Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, “There may be more than that”. He went on to say, “It is a strange thing, I as a minister have not been able to help one of those people into their sobriety. He further surmised, “I think I help them greatly after they have recovered, but not while they are in the process of recovery”.

Now, Alcoholics Anonymous is an unorganized spiritually oriented group of over a million people who are suffering from an incurable disease. A disease, that should they not recover, brings death or confinement in an institution of some kind is their probable destiny. Here you have more than a million happy people who are using a system of thought, a system of ideas and they are recovering dramatically. Miracles are happening in their lives and invariably the idea is the AA is a spiritual system. And, that what is happening in their lives is not “from” them, but from a power greater than themselves; a source of energy, strength, wisdom, and guidance.

Let me tell where Alcoholics Anonymous came from. Now, this is not a talk designed to promote A.A. per se; we are talking about some ideas and I want to come full circle with those ideas. In 1910, a Presbyterian minister, Frank Buckman, was on missionary taking the message of Christ to the heathens of China. As a minister he was not doing very well, he was homesick for his beloved England, he longed for his support system, he became discouraged, transportation available to him was terrible bordering on nonexistent, and he became more the recluse. The more discouraged he became the weaker his mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. With his dislike for China came more worry, apprehension, and dysentery. Finally, he cried out for help. As a result he had a remarkable experience, he had a spiritual experience likened to Saul of Tarsis. In this experience his mind was changed. There was a great displacement of concepts. So many of the things that he had believed firmly to be true all of his life were pushed aside. HE was given a system, he saw the truth and felt the presence of the living God who spoke to him inside himself with ideas and feelings. He went back to his native England, whereupon he gave up his ministry as he had been practicing it and for a period of several years he began to try to teach this system which was based on the Six Tenets of The Oxford Movement that you have in the folder that I gave you.

Now one of the people that became a student was an Episcopal Priest in America by the name of Samuel Shoemaker. As the result of the system that Buckman taught Shoemaker, he also had a spiritual experience. Sam was a young priest who talked a great deal about God, but had had no experience with God, However, as the result of this system, he had a conscious contact, an experience, that changed his life.

About 1921, Buckman was lecturing at Oxford University to a group of young students and his ideas seemed to catch fire and swept around the world. Within a very short period of time there were several hundred thousand members of The Oxford Movement. You have heard of it, if not, certainly your parents and grandparents heard of The Oxford Movement. It ideal was that if you were a dis-eased or dis-stressed person; you might be able to establish your conscious contact with God. For, most people who think, “They are doing very well, thank you,

everything is alright with me”! These people do not have much of a chance seeking or experiencing this conscious contact because they ‘will not’ be changed. They want to find God within the framework of their concepts, of their ideas and, yet, God cannot be contained within these concepts or ideas. For it is only in the surrendering, and frequently the surrendering that comes from great distress, anxiety, or worry that can be utilized in a very positive way by those who are willing to be changed at depth themselves. You see, one of our great problems in life is that we want God to fix the world around us, but leave me alone. Produce the miracle in my life that will keep me from worrying God, but do not do anything with the mechanism of worry. You get the point, don’t you?

There were remarkable things that happened in The Oxford Movement in America’ The occurrences were located mostly in small cells or groups within the Episcopal Church and Sam Shoemaker was the leader in America of The Oxford Movement. People were healed of all kinds of diseases, just like in the days of the New Testament & Old Testament. They believed in the laying on of hands and that the Holy Spirit could do fantastic things in the life of a person who would admit their own personal powerlessness and would come to believe that the power of the Holy Spirit could descend upon them and heal them because they believed. And because they were willing to admit their defect and their shortcomings. It happened. And it happened and it happened and it happened and it happened and it happened around the world. Even drunks were fixed and they are the worst kind to fix. If you can fix an alcoholic my friends you can fix anything.

TAPE 1B

Now, one of the ideas of The Oxford Movement was that if you had a healing or a recovery or an experience wherein a solution came to you. In order for you to keep it, you had to take no credit for it because if you began to take personal credit you would loose it. In other words, the ego had to remain dead. The next requirement was to find someone who had a similar problem and carry the message of your recovery to them. In other words, one was required to go out two-by-two, so the drunks went out and got a drunk, the people that had been healed of cancer went out and found someone else who had that problem, and they brought people back and they two were healed in the most dramatic way.

However, in the 1930’s The Oxford Movement began to fall upon hard times due to politics within the framework of the movement. People within the organization started vying for power and more than that Mr. Buckman himself, by his own admission, made the mistake of preaching against the church. He said, “The church doesn’t have it, we do”. Now, it just happened that they were using the church’s meetinghouse to conduct their meetings. They began to be against something rather than for something and immediately they lost their power.

Here were the poor drunks who said, “Well, they can quit if they want to, these other people, but we can’t because we need the maintenance. We have a disease called alcoholism and we need to continue this process of recovery. We must stay in this consciousness stream of spiritual thought and power. We must maintain our conscious contact and in order to do that we must be closely knit and drawn together in the spirit of harmony that has healed us in the first place. With that awareness they became frightened as the movement fell apart. But, God is good. The alcoholics in the Oxford Movement had discovered Emmitt Fox in New York. The Sermon on the Mount, by Emmitt Fox, became “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. Members of the program, when they found a new alcoholic would say, “Here, read this book and “it” will fix you. Come to the meetings.”

This program that we call “Alcoholics Anonymous” is merely an extension of “The Oxford Movement” that came out of a spiritual experience of Frank Buckman while in China. It was based on the idea that the healing process is a very natural one; that the activity of spirit in the lives of people is to be expected and desired, but that one must fill the conditions for that healing. The conditions must always be fulfilled and is that not what prayer is? The process of changing one’s own mind! Prayer is not calling upon God to fix something. Prayer is the process of getting your own mind reordered; knowing and feeling the truth inside yourself. Being raised up so that, like Jesus, we can say; I have fulfilled the law. I have made the proper spiritual connections inside myself. And, it works! It really works and has continued to work in the lives of a lot of people.

You see, the Creator has our ultimate good in mind, but strangely enough, has a very difficult time trying to get us to cooperate with that “Good”. As a matter of fact, God has a difficult time trying to get our attention at all. And frequently, that which gets our attention is not so much our desire to experience God, but our desire to stop experiencing some unpleasantness that exists. How many times in your life when you were feeling just absolutely great, and marvelous and things were going well did you fall down on your knees and really thank God? It’s usually when its the other way that the heart reaches out and speaks – and becomes sincere – and is turned in the direction within oneself towards spirit.

This idea of recovery called the Tao goes way back into antiquity. Tao means “the way”. The way out. It has come to man many times throughout the history of the race and in many forms. “Tao” is what we refer to here as “The Twelve Steps”. The system, a system, that system has come to us n several forms, but the Holy Spirit is always bringing to the race, at special times, “The Way”; it is really the way out of our human condition and into our spiritual condition. You see, man is a spiritual being who has fallen away from the awareness of his true identity. He, man, believes many things about himself therefore that are not true. In our human condition we see ourselves as limited beings. And if we think of ourselves as limited, we see our fellow man as even more limited than we are.

Most of what we believe about ourselves is completely untrue or, at best, only partially true. That is true of you and me; even at this very moment. If we could know the truth about ourselves, the real truth, a fantastic thing would begin to happen to us. What you think come to pass. Now, you may not know that you are thinking it, but it comes to pass anyhow. You may be thinking it in a part of yourself that you have turned away from and, as such, do not see or feel. But, it is coming to pass.

The image that we have created of ourselves as an individual is coming to pass. Now we may not be admitting that that image exists, but it does.

And so man, that means you and me, cannot escape our role as creator. It does not matter that we think in error; the universe must respond to our thoughts, to our impressions that send into it. Every moment of our existence we are using the creative mechanism of the universe. What we think about ourselves will and is materializing. And the only thing in God’s Universe that can change it is you-for-you, me-for-me, and the two-of-us and the more-of-us working together to stop believing the things about ourselves that are not true and to begin to believe the things about ourselves that are true. Changing from the one to the other.

Now I had told you earlier that was going to try to harmonize a certain concept; the concept of “How can you say I am an alcoholic”? “Lessons in Truth” by Emily Cady is a basic textbook and I will call your attention to the chapter on personality and individuality. And let me read to you from page 72: the words personality and individuality present distinct meanings to the trained mind, but by the untrained mind they are often used interchangeably and apart from their real meanings. Personality applies to the human part of you. The person, the external, and I will add another word here, the false personality that part of us that is concocted by us; not created by God. It belongs to the region governed by the intellect. Your personality may be agreeable or disagreeable to others. When you say that you dislike anyone you mean that you dislike his or her personality, that exterior something that presents itself from the outside; it is the outer changeable man. It is what the word soul, small s-o-u-l really means. The soul of you is not the part created by you, your soul or your personality are your identity convictions. Your identity convictions - remembered and unremembered, it is all the things that you and I have said we were throughout all the days of this life and perhaps life experiences that preceded this. We have accumulated these identity convictions, they are there, functioning.

Now individuality is the term used to denote the real man. Oh, you mean there is another self here? Another person in us? Yes. The more God comes into visibility through a person the more individualized he becomes. By this I do not mean that one’s individuality is greater when one is more religious. Remember God is wisdom, intelligence, love, and power. The more pronounced the manner in which any one of these qualities, or all of them, comes forth into visibility through a person the greater his individuality.

John the Baptist, represents the illumined intellect; the highest development of human consciousness. We may think of him as standing for personality at its highest, the highest development of personality, the personality that can say, “Well. I am not really the individuality, I am not really identified with my individuality yet. There is one that comes after me. There is another identity. There is another consciousness. There is within me another self that is coming and I know it, I can see it, I recognize it, I bow before it, I am not worthy to tie his shoestring. He is the giant self. I must decrease so that he might increase.

There is a side of us that at its very highest can do nothing. Wow! Now John the Baptist represents the highest intellect that can admit that the Christ exists and can begin to follow Him. But prior to that time the personality, the intellectual identity wants to be very spiritual. It does not admit that it cannot be spiritual; it can never be spiritual because it is not of spirit. It is a concocted arrangement of thought forms and ideas, most of which are negative in nature. The personality can never ever have a spiritual experience. There is only one thing that you can do with personality and that is to diminish it, to decrease it, to deny it. Now, immediately someone is going to say, but if I do that I will loose my identity, oh no you want; you will actually begin to gain it. Because it is in our individuality that we find our real universal self.

Jesus said about John the Baptist, “John was a real nice guy, that isn’t exactly what he said, but that’s what he meant. He said, “John’s alright. At the human level, he’s the greatest. You can’t get any nicer than John. His intentions are excellent. He’s really very bright, John is, but he doesn’t know very much and he hardly understands anything, but there’s one thing that John does understand and that is that he is not the one. He understands that he must work to develop his spiritual nature.

Just before I stepped to the lectern tonight someone gave me a copied brochure from a conference that was attended by many great minds. It was held at the University of Utah School on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies and one of the presenting Doctors was Howard J. Clinebell. And to that group of gathered experts he offered this statement; “Disease is the lack of growth”. Disease is the lack of growth and to that statement I agree. Personality cannot really grow. It is only the individuality that can grow except that it cannot grow because it is already perfect, it is already fully formed. It is the part of us that never changes. But we must put it on. Paul said put on that mind that was in Christ Jesus. Put on that identity that is already in you. Put it on. Now in order to put it on, you have to put off the one that is not likened to it. And here is the process now of the John side of us beginning to admit that it is not I, but the Father who dwells within me who does His works. Of myself I can do no thing. Fantastic! But there is a self within me that can do all things. One’s individuality is that part of one that never ever changes its identity. It is the God Self. And the God Self of you has never ever been an alcoholic, it has never been an addict, it has never been anything except what it is pure and perfect and kind and whole. It is the whole-self of you. Always has been, always will be. And it is the only part of us that can say, “I am”.

Now, the process of recovery from anything is always the admission of the condition that exists. If I am going to leave something I must know what I am leaving and what I am moving towards. As a matter of fact I have my plane ticket from Detroit. They would not sell me the ticket until I told them where I was going. They simply would not! I said I wanted to buy a ticket and they said where to? And I had to tell them, the guy just stood there and looked at me until I told him where I was going. Now he already knew where I was departing from, because he was standing there. If you are going to go anywhere you need to know where you are starting. We do not want to admit where we are. Yet, we have to see clearly where we are. Not so that we are identified with where we are, but so that we can get a ticket out of that place.

The protocol son, who was the world’s greatest drunk until that time. Look what he did. He took half of what his father had and went out and spent it on riotous living and wild women. And ended up, guess where he ended up, a Jewish boy. Tending pigs! Eating what they left. He didn’t even get to eat with them. Read it. Now, if you don’t think that is hitting bottom friends you tell me what is. And one day right in that pigpen, right in the middle of that pigpen, he came to himself. Himself. He came to his real self. His real self awakened and said look what I have done to me. I did it. And I can admit it. I am no longer worthy. He did not say that I am worthy. My name is “I am” and I’ve done nothing wrong; I am the perfect son. He didn’t say that. He probably said my name is “Whatever it was” and I am an alcoholic. I have done these things and I will arise and go to my father. Now this does not mean a journey in time and space. This is a journey in consciousness. This is one who can admit what has been happening to them by their own hand, by the misdeeds of their own unawareness. They did not know it was happening until this moment. He went out to succeed, to have fun, to enjoy himself; did you not? I did! You think I intended to end up in that park in the city of my birth wanting to be a squirrel? Not me friends. The one day I came to myself, as an atheist, I said I will arise and go to my father, that really happened to me after I was dry. After I could do it. And immediately, his father came out to meet him, this is the law of recovery. When we can admit where we are and not ask God to come and fix the condition, but to repair us. Heal me. Change me. I’m not worthy of it. This personality side of myself will never be worthy of it. Never can it be.

And what did the father say, this is a principal, this is a universal law. It has happened to you a thousand times and you may not have recognized it, but it is happening to you at this very moment. The father saw him a long way off. The father-mother God, I think it was the mother side of God that saw him a long way off. Love, feeling, joyousness came out to meet him and put its arms around him and comforted him and did not blame him. It was the boy that said I am not worthy. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. And the perfect parent, the Father-Mother God said, “Shh! And turned to the servants, the universal powers, and said, “Quickly, bring sandals for his feet. He has been walking down a long and rocky road; his feet are cut, he is tired. Bring a robe, put it on him, and clothe him. That robe symbolizes every thing that he needs, everything upon this earth that he needs. And here, put a ring on his finger, the symbol of eternal life. The symbol of his spiritual identity.

Restore to his consciousness an awareness of is individuality, of his oneness, of his right to be here. He is not a servant, but a child. Go and kill a fatted calf, let us eat and drink. No alcohol for this one, but coffee! Let’s have a party, that’s what God said. Let’s have fun because life is fun and recovery is fun. Recovering from what ever your problem is, is fun. But, you can not recover from your problem if you cannot admit it. If you are so spiritual friends that you can’t have a problem, I feel sorry for you because you can’t recover. Did you know that being upon this earth in this human form is the greatest of all diseases! Being in our human condition is what we are recovering from. Moving into our Spiritual or Christ Consciousness is the destination. That is what the ticket is for. Whatever it takes to bring us to our senses, whatever is your dis-ease or dis-stress that can bring you to that point of admission and of desire and of movement, and momentum again. Because the spiritual life is a process that requires great movement and motion that must come from feeling, but a renewed feeling; not the feeling of dead emotions, but the feeling of wanting to return to life. The excitement! And strangely enough the people who have been the most diseased can regenerate that feeling of the joy of life. The excitement of life, life begins to mean something to them again, right here in their gut; right where they live and feel. And you do not have to have a major problem to cause this to happen to you, but if it hasn’t happened to you, let it begin to happen to you this evening while you are here. Get the feeling for life and the excitement about the possibility that you too might rise up into that experience of a conscious contact with God.

It’s the personality of us that is dis-eased. That is an alcoholic. Or, whatever the problem is. And so when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and came into my sanity there was some conflict. And then I realized that words are merely symbols, are they not? A word has no meaning or power except the meaning that you assign to it. In our language we take certain sounds, words, or symbols and assign meanings that we all agree upon. We agree that a certain word means a certain thing. And even though we agree there are variations in our understanding of what each word means.

Now, when I say to you that I am an alcoholic. I am saying to you that my recovery is the most important thing in my life. That God is good, alive, and well and I am moving toward Him. I am not identifying with a problem, but with a solution. And in that process of identification with a spiritual solution I can say to another protocol like myself; come and join me in the solution. Let’s leave the problem behind. Let’s move forward into this larger experience.

You see, the destination in Alcoholics Anonymous is not sobriety; it’s sanity, spiritual sanity. Spiritual sanity. Sobriety is not the goal of AA, did you think it was? No, not physical sobriety. A spiritual experience! The end result of those Twelve Steps is to have a spiritual experience from which the most amazing things can and do take place. So, if I can admit that my personality has no power, then I’m following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ who admitted the same thing and taught that we have a side that must be decreased so that another side can be increased. And the side that is increased is the side of us that is real and permanent. And knows God.

And is the Child of God. And was created in the image and likeness of God. And never ever had a flaw.

And so when we are dealing with an alcoholic we do not judge by appearances, but this does not mean that we turn away and say that there is no alcoholism. Not judging by appearances does not mean that you do not love, or see, or recognize what’s happening to personality and do not take an action there. But even as you take that action, and we’ll talk about some actions that need to be taken in our lecture tomorrow night, even as you do practice tough love; you see beyond the appearances and behold the “Christ, that perfect one” of this blessed person.

So it is!

TAPE 2A

The movement that we experience in the world outside ourselves is always the result of movement that takes place inside ourselves. In the Sanskrit of language so old that it hasn’t been used in a few thousand years, the oldest recorded words are: “If you would change your world, it really says the world, first change yourself.” Huh! Isn’t that fantastic! That is the last thing that I thought needed changing. I knew some people that needed changing. I had a list: I had never actually written it down. But, I knew who they were.

There was a time in my active alcoholism when I attended my funeral regularly. Now you have probably never been to yours, but I’ve been to mine. And, I didn’t mean to tell this, it’s just sneaking out. But, I’m going to let it sneak out. I had made my transition and I was in the most beautiful casket that you’ve ever seen. There just has never been one like it. And it was up in the forepart of this beautiful room and I stood in the back where I could observe the casket and the people in the room. The flowers, well, you never saw so many beautiful flowers. Gorgeous flowers! You can understand that can’t you, they were for me. And there was a long line of people that came in somewhere to my right. I could not see the entranceway, but the people were streaming slowly through this doorway and down the side of the room. And there I was in the casket, now I never approached it to look at me, but I knew that I was there. THEY had put me there. You do understand that don’t you. And as they filed slowly by, speaking, crying, sobbing, with tears streaming down their cheeks, they would say such things as: “Poor Jack, if only I had understood him he wouldn’t be here”. And my comment from the other part of the room, it was strange how I could hear everything they were saying My comment was, That’s right, you son-of-a gun. Now that isn’t exactly what I said. And then the next one filed past making their comment and I responded with mine, and then the next and the scenario was repeated as each paid their respects. “They” had done it, somehow the total of

responsibility for this experience and transition that had been mine had added up to about 500 percent their responsibility. I did not see the person, Jack Boland, standing in my place. I did not see that I had done it. This is one of the symptoms of my alcoholism. Not only could I no see what was happening to me, but I had to believe that my experience was coming to me from the outside. Were my intentions not perfect? Of course they were. And so I blamed and I judged. I did not know nor understand. This was my alcoholic insanity, I did not know that excessive drinking was but one of the symptoms of alcoholism; it is not the total disease. There is an inner change or condition that happens in the mind. My dis-ease had become my experience. But, in some measure is that not the experience of many people living upon the earth. We talked about this idea, this concept, of the personality being the lesser or defective part of us. It is that part of us, it is that self of us that we have been seeking to escape, to escape into the larger self. All through history mankind has felt intuitively that there is a way out. If only we could find it!

You recall the old fairy tales where the story is told again and again. Aladdin had a wonderful lamp. Have you not in your fantasy wished that you had Aladdin’s lamp? Remember that he rubbed it and received the things he wanted. And that fairy tale was actually “Higher Intelligence” speaking to you and me and telling us that we have Alladin’s lamp inside ourselves, it’s the creative word. Our experiences come from the words we speak; from the “I am”.

Cinderella was in the kitchen, she was miserable and unhappy; she was so much like so many Cinderellas that I know trying to escape the kitchen. Something happened. A pumpkin turned into a carriage and a pair of white rats turned into a team of horses and so on. But there most have been a change in Cinderellas consciousness first don’t you imagine. Something happened first inside Cinderella before that can take place and do you know that I know some real life Cinderellas. I do! I know some Cinderrella stories that would make that story look like a fairy tale.

Always, Men and women have felt intuitively that there is a way out. That it is not necessary to be angry, and mean, and resentful, and bitter, and critical, and judging as I was. I knew that there must be a better way, but I had not been able to find it. I knew that it was not necessary that man should fight and grab for prosperity and food. And that his days should not be as dark and as hard as mine were becoming. And what I life worth if life is to be a constant struggle? And you know that I take such joy in your joy. You that are here. Growing, changing, excited. And one reason why that I take such joy is that I have been on the other side of that joy myself; and I know that there are many people out there that need us. There are many people this evening, in the world, that need you. And they need your joy, but they need you as the link that can reach out into life and touch them where they are. Not blaming or judging them. Nor failing to recognize their need. They need us to come with our joy, not to join them in their misery, but to reach out and understand. And, my friends, that is the greatest thing in the world; to be where you are, growing and changing in your life. And to be the bridge that allows someone to walk across into

the spiritual life and into his or her fulfillment. So that, somehow, you have had a small part in their Cinderella story.

If your own Cinderella story, if your own fairytale, is for you alone it will never be good enough. Because whatever it is that you have achieved; you can not really enjoy it or can you keep it permanently unless you have discovered the system of giving it away. Your life must have meaning to other lives because you are a spiritual being filled with power and glory. And great magnetism. And attraction. And when you are lifted up you should draw al the people who need you unto yourself.

We’ve known that God means for all life to be noble, creative and joyous You are a divine being in your individuality. I dare say that you’ve not always acted that way. And, I’ll dare say that there is someone here today that has not acted that was all day. Was I right; well of course I was. And you do not need to be embarrassed about it because if I can catch myself being what I am not; then at that moment I can correct it. But if I play a little game that I am not that way I am powerless to change it. Before you change your state of consciousness nothing else can change. Nothing can change until you change. And this change is not really creating a new personality; that’s just moving the furniture around in the room.

The change that we are talking about is putting on your individuality; that perfect spiritual nature that has always been there. Sometimes lying dormant. Remember the story wherein Jesus was crossing over to the other side, he was talking to the crowd, and got into the boat with his disciples and went over to the other side. What is the other side? That’s the promised land. And that’s the new experience. And a storm came up. Anytime that you start to move into the new good; anytime you make a decision to move forward into something that is new and exciting; it might be new job, a new marriage and you are so excited about it. You are crossing over to the other side. And I promise you that in a little while a storm will come up; it won’t be outside either. The sun may be shining brightly. The storm will come up in you. All kinds of negative emotions will begin to surge and the waves will just about sink your boat. And the winds will blow and strange ideas will come into your mind. The knowing of this might not be so pleasant, but it is the known. And there is a tendency to fall back into it. And then a beautiful thing happens. That which appears to be negative; that storm that arose is what awakens us. It awakens this individuality so that it can take charge, it can go to the front of the boat and say, “Be still to the negativity”. Awh, it is beautiful.

But suppose we say that we weren’t really asleep. Suppose we play this pretending game. You see we have to begin to observe ourselves and see ourselves and to see this present duality that is in us. This human side of ourselves that is competing with the spiritual or “Christ” side of us. And life is a process. And your life is the perfect laboratory for you to discover yourself. To discover that part of you that needs to be buried. I’m so glad that I attended my own funeral. There are some things tha t I hope never get resurrected. I’ve buried them because I’ve seen them and I did not like them. And you would not have liked them either.

Your state of consciousness is your soul state. And your soul is not a constant state. That’s soul. That’s not like your spirit or your individuality. It’s the conditioned state of your subconscious mind. And this conditioned or programmed level is sometimes referred to as conscience. Have you ever heard someone say let your conscience be your kind. Don’t you dare let your conscience be your guide. Because your conscience is that programmed part of yourself and a great deal of what is there is either wrong or, at best, only partially right. And it cannot guide us. Your conscience cannot guide you anywhere except into the ditch on the right-hand side of road or maybe on the left.

We want to turn our lives over to the care of a power greater than ourselves. Don’t we? Of course we do!

Divine Intelligence, Divine Order, that Infinite Presence that is within each one of us. Available, if we can but turn to it. If we can awaken. So often, it takes a dilemma. Now, I am not at all trying to indicate that you go out and create a crisis so that you can awaken. There are some people that are not happy unless they are miserable. And they continue to create misery so that they can feel good. Don’t do that! That’s not the way. But, if in your living experience; if in your moment-to-moment experience, if you feel some dis-ease; check it out and you will find that it will help you to become aware, to awaken and to make a corrective movement or adjustment in your life or in your thinking in that particular moment.

Now I said to you a moment ago that the way out lies in the spoken word. In the Bible, the word “word” means any definitely formulated thought. Not just the drifting thought that floats through your mind. Not just those thoughts that come to you and sail through your mind that frequently are not your thoughts at all. You may be picking them up from the person seated across from you in the room. It is possible for us to impinge our consciousness, our thoughts on other people. We do it often.

Your thought is important, what you are really thinking down inside yourself is very important. You see “the word” is creative and it doesn’t have to be the spoken word. The most creative of all words is “I Am”. Whenever you say “I Am” you are calling upon the universe to do something for you and it will do it. It must respond to that which you say “I Am” to. And if you say “I Am” tired, or sick, or poor, or fed-up, or disappointed, or hurt you will get an equivalent response.

A person who says I am lonely may never say the words “I’m lonely”; they just feel lonely. And that is their “I Am”. And the universe responds by creating conditions in which they can continue to be lonely. The universe says you love to be lonely. Okay, we will keep it fixed so that you will be lonely. Oh, did you hear that you lonely ones? And so the way out of that is to stop being lonely. But how can you stop being lonely unless you can catch your loneliness acting itself out. You may never speak the word, “I Am lonely”, but you’re a speaking it constantly because the word is the

vibration that you are sending into the universe every split second of your life. You, at this moment, are sending out the word of you and imprinting itself on the universe. And that word is a many faceted word, it is not just one word. You are saying this is what I am. And the universe says, “Very well, I take you at your word!”And until you change your word, remember that you do not have to use the grammatical form “I Am” because each time you associate yourself in thought with anything, or think of yourself as having anything; you are using a form of “I Am”. The verb “to have” and the to have is part of the verb “to be”. In the very ancient languages there is no verb “to have”. This is a modern improvement. I have means I am, because you always have what you are. All that you can have in life is what you are; is what you are. And, you always do what you are. You keep doing what you are. What you believe yourself to be what you are; that’s what you do.

Its fantastic, amazing, its beautiful. And when you change your word, your vibration, your soul-state, and frequently people to not verbalize their soul-state, they just live it. But it must be seen to be changed.

And then the process of changing that, remember when Jesus said, “Let your word be Yea, Yea or Nay Nay.” There are some things that I want to say Yes, Yes to and some things I want to say No, No to. Some of the things that I formally said yes to I now say no to them. No, that is not for me! And one of the things that is not for me, as you know because you have heard me say it, was giving up a dependency on alcohol and all other chemicals.

Now, I have been speaking about the word and telling you how much it means to me and how dynamic that word is; how powerful that word is. Our how our total experience comes out of that word. How can I equate that and I going now back into that little bucket of worms that I opened up last night by saying that I am an alcoholic. How do I equate that? Well, when I say that or when most of the people I know say that, they are saying, “I am a recovering person, I am a joyful person, I am a sober person!” That is merely a word symbol that stands for a many faceted phrase that is completely and totally positive. It is an identification with a spiritual life and with spiritual law.

Let me read to you from the book called “Alcoholics Anonymous” on page 83. “The spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it. As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit both ourselves and others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could

not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us -- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them…. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime.”

Isn’t that the way that you and I feel about it?

“Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone…. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.”

Now, that is a well-defined spiritual program. I want to see somebody that is going somewhere, someone that is in movement, someone that is excited. Someone that is willing to grow, change and put off their little self, their little me and put on that giant self that you and I have experienced in larger moments. So, how do you program these new Ideas, these power concepts, these invisible patterns into your mind? I said it to you; it is by the word that we speak; by what we believe. And word means thought coupled with feeling. Thought, thinking in your head, a concept, an idea, but that concept or idea is a seed sown on hard ground that Jesus talked about until it is sown into the receptive feeling nature. Until feeling agrees, until feeling becomes excited, until there is an excitement about the newness of your life an idea has no power. And you think the idea and think the idea and think the idea. Nothing happens. Let your feelings become receptive and responsive. Let your feelings take the idea into yourself; the idea that I am a growing, dynamic, changing person. And then it becomes the word. The positive word. This becomes one’s image of oneself, “I Am”. My image of myself is my I’m-age (I-am-age). This is what I am and feel myself to believe. And your outer experience will be nothing more or nothing less than this programming of ideas. You know that the unconscious mind or, to use a more concise term, subjective mind (because there is no unconscious mind for it is subjective) must respond to your thoughts. Must respond to what you speak and visualize, and feel into it. It is like a giant computer and whatever ideas we program into remain forever or until they are programmed out. It can not say no. It is so subjective to you that you can put an erroneous thought pattern into it and it cannot reject it. It says that you are the lord of your own being. That you must know what you are thinking and feeling. And the thoughts that you have thought and the feelings that you have felt it accepts into itself and records them there, where they remain. And others are added to them and they grow in power. They are alive. Just as much alive today as the hour they were received into your subjective mind. Because in that part of you there is no time, no space, no distance. Not only do they shape your moods and your reactions to each person and event of today, but these hidden concepts actually draw into your experience the kinds of persons and events that will become your life tomorrow. It is the most fantastic thing; I moved to California because I did not like my life in Virginia. That’s reasonable isn’t it? It was

all the way across the nation from one coast to the other. You can’t get much more space than that between you. And I was really excited about it because I knew things were going to be different in California. I was a little upset with myself because I had not come up with this idea any sooner than I did. That was my only problem; I should have come up with this idea more quickly as bright as I was. Now, in California an amazing thing happened to me. In spite of my great expectations. In a period of time that was so short that it would have probably surprise you I had reproduced with little effort I had recreated te experience that was equal to the one I had had in Virginia. THe people even had the same shapes and said the same things. And I thought how could this be? I came here (California) and there they are. And I did the same things. In California, can you believe this, I was exactly the same way as I had been in Virginia. I even lost my temper at the same things in California. And I thought it was the things, but that is what I thought t was in Virginia. You see I was drawing to me the equivalent of myself. Was I not? Constantly

Listen to the words of Bishop Sam Shumaker, the Episcopal priest that I told you about last night, the former leader of the Oxford Movement in America. A man around whom the movement of Alcoholics Anonymous literally grew up and without him it might not have come into being. And Dr. Sam said; “Have you ever been drastically dealt with by anyone? Have you ever dared to be drastic in love with anyone? We are so official, so polite, so ready to accept ourselves and each other at face value. I went for years before I ever met a man that dared get at my real needs and create a situation in which I could be honest with him and hold me to a specific commitment and decision. One can find kindness and even good advice, but that is not all that men need. They need to be helped to face themselves as they reall y are. The people in A.A. see themselves; they’ve been forced to see themselves as they are. I think many of us in the church see ourselves as we should like to appear to others, not as we are before God. We need drastic personal dealing and challenge.

TAPE 2B

How many of us have ever taken a fearless moral inventory of ourselves and dared make the depth of our need known to any other human being? This gets at the pride which is the hindrance and sticking point for so many of us and which, for most of us, has never even been recognized; let alone faced or dealt with. This is the thing that has driven so many young people up the wall with their parents and with others in organized religion. They would not look at themselves or examine themselves and make the necessary adjustments or changes in themselves. Therefore there was no growth.

You and I, as people dedicated to the spiritual life, have declared ourselves willing to launch out on a new course of rigorous action in an effort to become a new kind of being or person, to follow the Christ. To follow means to emulate; doesn’t it? It does not mean to bow down to, it means to emulate, to be like; to have the qualities of. But are we willing to go to any lengths to establish our conscious contact with God

and thereby experience whatever it is that His loving creative presence and power and intelligence has in store for us. Because all that the Father has is ours. And we have only touched the hem of It and experienced the least part of it yet.

And here comes the real, first test in our lives. Because our lives are pretty easy until we get to the point of where it becomes necessary, vital and crucial to begin to examine ourselves. Unless we are willing to make a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which have been blocking us from moving forward.

Joshua said to Aken; “My son, give glory to the God of Israel and make your confession, tell me what you have done.”

Aken replied; “I have sinned against the Lord, God of Israel. For I saw a beautiful robe that was imported from Babylon and some silver worth two-hundred dollars and a bar of gold worth five-hundred dollars. I wanted those things so much that I took them and they are hidden in the ground beneath my tent. But the silver is buried deeper than the rest.

Oh, Aken, I love you. You honest child.

And you know some of us have some things buried deeper than the rest. Some of the things we haven’t really buried at all, but down deep there are some things that have to be uncovered, they have to be admitted because they block us.

The 32nd Psalm: “What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven. What joys when sins (And you know what sin means – it means missing the mark, falling short) are covered over. What relief for those who have confessed and God has cleared their record. There was a time when I couldn’t admit what a sinner I was, but my dishonesty made me miserable and filled my days with frustration. And all day and all night your hand was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water on a sunny day until I finally admitted them to the Lord. And you forgave me.

Matthew the 3rd Chapter: “And when they confessed their sins he baptized them”.

James, the 5th Chapter: “Admit your faults to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed”.

The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.

Fantastic!

1st John: If we say that we have no sin we are only fooling ourselves into refusing to accept the truth. But, if we confess our sins to Him, he can be depended upon to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.

Feels good, this is growth. This is not negative. This is watching, observing ourselves moment by moment and catching ourselves in this process of living when the smaller self tries to come forward and play its little games, and we catch it and we turn to that Spiritual Power, in whose presence we always are and say did you see that I did it again. And spirit says that’s okay, you’re fixed.

Plato said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

And. I’ll tell you that the unexamined life will be painfully lived. The person who has lived it will not really know where they have come from or where they’re going. They will not really know who they are. They will have little inner identity, however is that not what we are seeking? Are we not going into the east, wherein the word “east” in the Bible refers to going into oneself and seeing what is there.

Well, life is so good. I have not talked much about alcoholism tonight., so with that said, it is time for me to talk about that very important subject. In this room tonight is a beautiful, beautiful person who was in A.A. and dry for 9.5 years. Her minister said, “Don’t you dare believe that you are an alcoholic.” In time she dropped her association with Alcoholics Anonymous and her friends who went there. After nine-and-half years, just three months ago, she got drunk; like really drunk. Ended up in a drying out institution, while there she heard about the schedule dates for this series of lectures that you are hearing. She called here and found out the program was booked to capacity. Then Margaret heard about her telephone call and called her back and informed her that a place would be reserved for her. She has been at present for the series and, in our brief conversations, she has begun to make her piece.

The lack of understanding that took this person out of the program of recovery is something that I have been wanting to speak about. You would be amazed at the number of people that have come up to me during this lecture series and stated that they were alcoholics, or my husband is and has been dry for 17 years, 10 years, or 6 months. What a beautiful life’s been had after finding this program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Many other people have approached, however, and stated that my son or daughter is an alcoholic; what can I do for my son, my wife, my father? This problem or condition exists somewhere up close, up tight in the life of almost every person that you and I know. Almost every person here in this room; its not just limited to lay people.

Last year, I was on a panel talking about outreach and I happened to mention that some of the speaking that I do is to outside groups, Parents Without Partners, Alcoholics Anonymous and I said, as a matter of fact, I’m a member of A.A. And after the panel discussion was over, another panel member, a minister, came up to me and stated, “Gosh you were brave to to say that”. I said, “Not at all, you just get a crowd together and I’ll say it if it serves a purpose”. And I was so delighted when he

said, “I got sober a number of years ago through Alcoholics Anonymous and I recovered; then the spiritual life became so important to me that I wanted to become a minister. After I joined A.A. and was sober, I joined the church and the spiritual life was the way for me. I was ordained, but I’ve been ashamed to say that I’m an alcoholic. I did not know that the two could fit acceptably. Today, I realize that I missed my true identification with the people I serve. I want to go back and hopefully be the bridge for some people to connect to their recovery and into the spiritual life that I have found.

Near the end of our conversation, a lovely lady walked over to us, excused herself for interrupting, she asked me a quick question and turned and walked away. I turned to my new friend and said, “You know her quite well don’t you; she’s in A.A. And see that minister walking in the door? He’s in A.A.

About a year ago, my telephone rang, there was a mother on the other end talking. She offered that I did not know her, but she had been coming to the church over the past year attempting to listen while blending into the background. You do not know me, but I know you. I need some help with my child, with my son. Can you help me? I offered that I would try. She stated that he stays out late at night and appears to be drinking excessively. He wrecked the car the other night, we could not find out where the car was or damages incurred. He does not communicate with us anymore. He will not work. And she had some other things to say. And I like to know who I’m dealing with, so I said, “By the way, how old is your son.” And she said, “Forty-three”. I said to her, “That’s what is wrong with your son! He’s still your little boy. He hasn’t been empowered to go out into his life and face his life. You are still there picking up the pieces and putting his life back together whenever you can”.

About two years ago, a young man called and stated, “I understand that you can help me”. I retorted, “Gosh! I don’t know whether I can or not. Tell me what your problem is”. He said, “Well, I’ve got lots of problems. First of all, I put my last coins in this telephone to call you. I’m in a Chinese restaurant and I don’t have enough money to pay for my lunch”. He said, MY family has disowned me. My father has asked me to never come home. My fiancé has given the ring back and she does not wish t see me anymore. The manager has locked my apartment, so I can not get into my apartment to get my clothes. The finance company is seeking my car to repossess it. The Federal government has an indictment against me. Let’s start with that”. And I said, “Gosh, you really do have a problem, no wonder you called me”. He said, “That’s not why I called you!” And I said, “Why then did you call me?” He said, “I just opened my fortune cookie and there was nothing in it” That young man is an alcoholic. And it took everything that it took to get him to begin to see the devastation of his life. And it was the opening of that fortune cookie that stopped him in his tracks. That is a true story. Can’t you just see someone who is already desperate and they are opening their fortune cookie, hoping to read the solution for their life and there was nothing there. And man, when there is nothing in your fortune cookie it is time to ask for help.

I said come on over here. He said I can’t. I said okay you stay where you are and I’ll come and get you. About a year after that encounter, I was privileged to perform his wedding ceremony. It was not the girl who gave the ring back, but another girl who was and is a living doll. And out in front of our church he drove up to his wedding ceremony in a long, sleek foreign car. He not only found sobriety, he found the ability to cope with life, he found himself, he found joy, he found his real identity, he found his place in life, he made his spiritual connection to life. Got the picture? But, he had to seize what was wrong, the excessive drinking, the unacceptable behavior, and come to the realization that his life was an empty fortune cookie. One does not need to be an alcoholic to have that experience, you could just be goofy. Their different kinds of goofiness, you know! You select your own! But, if you’ve got it, admit it! And do something about it. Call upon the power of the universe to help you in your distress. And it will happen.

Alcoholism is a disease and it does have symptoms. Before a person can be helped these symptoms must be identified and recognized. There are stages in the progression of the disease of alcoholism.

The early Phase as outlined by the Jellinic System: Pre-addictive or Pro-dromal Phase

o Loss of memory – the alcoholic anesthesia that takes place – this is not passing out, this is having memory black outs after relatively moderate drinking. If there is anybody listening, if you hve ever had a blackout, a period in which you drank and did not remember what happened, but others reported that you appeared normal and rational – let me assure you that you have taken a giant step forward in the direction of an acute and chronic case of alcoholism, that hasn’t happened as yet – you’ve not reached the addictive stage, but you are on your way without exception – this does not happen to the so-called normal drinker – it is not know to happen to a normal drinker – this is an indication of an abnormality in the mind or body of that particular person leading

o Sneaking drinks o Gulping drinks- I want to get this one, so I can anothero Unwillingness to admit or discuss one’s drinkingo Pre-drinking – Having one before the party, priming self to be “ripe”,

social drinkers do not do this (I didn’t know this until 29 years old)o Guilty feeling about drinking (doesn’t mean you got drunk)o More frequent memory blackoutso Periods of abstinence because of guilto Flashes of aggressiveness – alcohol speaking for youo Grandiose behavior patterns-begin to developo Others begin to disapprove and question drinking patternso Arguments begin around the subject of alcoholo Persistent remorse

If one continues or persists with their drinking, of which, most alcoholics do not stop at this phase. Only occasionally does one stop. One needs to become perceptive, admit and see what is happening.

Then the middle phase begins. The Crucial Phase: the onset of addictive need

o Drinking pattern changeso Other interests decline and become secondary: family, goals, sports.o Devaluation of personal relationships to people that were formally

good close friends. Their not good friends anymore. I wonder why I ever thought that Joe was my friend. He doesn’t understand. Seek out “other friends” who like to do what the alcoholic likes to do.

o Geographical escape mechanism begins to take place-person begins to dream, if only was somewhere else, like California or dead

o Suicidal thoughts begino Decrease in sexual driveo Protection of supply (trunk, toilet, basement, attic)o Marked self-pityto Job changingo Stress increases – personal and familialo Unreasonable resentmentso Alcoholic jealousy - Irrational jealousyo First hospitalization (first drying out or detoxification required)

Chronic Phase beginso Morning drinkingo Ethical deterioration – stealing, “borrowing” (not left to the indigent)o Drinking with inferiorso Prolong bingeso Impairment of thinking heightenso Loss of tolerance (now, only takes half as much to get drunk –

metabolize of alcohol compromised be disease)o Drinking o Indefinable fearso Vague desire for religion or God

What can you are I do to help such a individual. Be able to see, understand, admit, and to know the process of addiction. And then, if possible, where possible begin to set-up barriers. By barriers, I mean, confront or be able to confront; not to blame or judge. I know if you are of an alcoholic family that it is so difficult not to blame or judge. Alcoholism is hell, it not only hell for the person going through it, but the people living with you suffer an equal amount, if not more. Another symptom of the family succumbing to the dis-ease is that they will protect the alcoholic just like the alcoholic has been protecting him or herself. You see the protection is really about

control about not admitting, this subsequent environment is about building walls so highly protective so that no one dares say that Jack drinks too much

In almost twenty-five years I have not seen one alcoholic recovery until life said that “you are drinking too much”. Life or spirit in the form of a spouse, employer, judge, boss, friends, or a combination of these. It happened to me in the eyes and concerns of some other people those moments of truth, which without them, I could not have made it. And, there might be some alcoholic in your life that needs you to go to them and say, I love you. I love you so much that there are some things that I must tell you. – You are an alcoholic and I have know it for some time now. I have observed you. I’ve watched you. I’ve loved you. Your alcoholism is no longer your own diseased because it has become the disease of your family, friends and those who love or care for you. Now, I must tell you and you can react in anyway that you want to, but I’m going to tell you because I love you. I’m going to tell you what I see in hopes that it will shock you so that I can help you to break through the defenses that you mind has constructed.

This is love. This is love speaking. This is beholding the Christ in that person because in back of that physical self is this beautiful, exquisite spirit that I behold in you, that is your joy. But I also see, and we must see, that in the outer expression is this person that is on a self-destruct path unable to help themselvesin the beginning, and they need us. They need to truth. They need our love supporting them. You can tell that alcoholic, if you make the decision to do something about your drinking I’ll be there with you every step of the way; all the help you need already exists and we will find it. And it does exist. And with the power of God acting through your love they will find it. There is no question in my mind that they will find it. And so it is!

TAPE 3A

There was a man who lived several hundreds of years ago. And has long since been rated at as saint. And you or I are not going to let that cause us to be biased or to scare us off of the fact that because he, like us, went through the emotional wringer. I’m quite certain the he would have been surprised to discover that he had been classified as a saint. I can’t prove it, but I have suspected after a little research into his life, that he was really a drunk. He sure acted goofy enough. His father didn’t like what he was doing; actually disowned him. Many strange things happened to him along the way. And he was changed, dramatically changed as the result of a spiritual experience, a conscious contact with God. Following that experience, he did not seem to forget his roots, the cause of that change. He never lost the common touch. You know him by his prayer:

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace;that where there is hatred, I may bring love;

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;

that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;that where there is error, I may bring truth;that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;

that where there is despair, I may bring hope;that where there are shadows, I may bring light;

that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;to understand, than to be understood;

to love, than to be loved.For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

You know him. All those things that he sought to give to the world and to the people around him were things that he had experienced. He came out of the darkness and wished to carry that light. He came out of despair and wanted to bring hope. Consequently, the darkness and despair of his life was the great strength of his life. For to have turned away from that would have been fro his to turn away from the opportunity to bring it back to the people who, by themselves, could not find it.

Thomas Carlyle wrote, 'The older I grow—and I now stand upon the brink of eternity—the more comes back to me the first sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes: "What is the chief end of man? To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."'

And Thomas Blake in ‘The Searcher’ wrote: I looked for my soul, But my soul I could not see, I looked for my God, But my God eluded me, I looked for a friend, And then I found all three.

The first time I looked for a friend; I did not have the ability to be a friend. I was not looking for someone to be a friend to because I had not yet reached the point to where friendship was within me, but I looked for a friend who could hold out their hand and say; “Here am I”. Someone that could help me to move forward into their experience. And you know there are lots of Saint Francis’ around; there are a lot of saints around.

The best definition that I have ever heard of a saint is: “One through whom the light shines.” But, if that light is only shining on your doorstep, if your illumination is only for yourself; or if that light does not shine out on your brethren where they are and enlighten their footsteps then your light has no brilliance.

It is our living experience upon this earth that causes us, many of us, most of us to want to reach out and help others that have been or who still are where we were. Life is good. You may recall that it was the fall of man in the garden when Eve, our

feeling nature, bit of that bitter fruit of good and evil. AS the result, life began dividing into two sections, the part we call good, which I like, and the part we call evil, which I don’t like. All life is good. The best things that ever happened to me were the worst. That does not mean that I wish to go back and repeat them. But, I did learn from them, they shaped my life, they gave me direction. And they gave me movement away from where I found myself. So, they were good. Today, I no longer classify my life by those categories of good or bad; for it was all-good. It took everything that it has taken to bring me here to this place and to tell you that my name is Jack Boland and I am an alcoholic. The greatest thing that ever happened to me was my alcoholism. Take that away from me and you take away my strength. You bet! It shaped me, it was that experience that finally convinced me that of myself I can do nothing. It was that experience that proved to me, no, more than proved, produced for me as a living experience the presence of a power greater than myself. In whom I did not believe until the experience occurred.

God was not an intellectual idea that I gargled around in my mind for a period of time weighing and finally agreeing with. God became an experience for me as the result of the experience that had preceded that experience. So, I call it good. All of it! I rejoice and I have no shame.

Many of you, some of you, well, at least a few of you still are concerned because I say that I am Jack Boland and I am an alcoholic. And they say, “Well, one day aren’t going to not be an alcoholic?” And I say, “No, I’m going to an alcoholic. I’m just going to keep on being one!” To me, that is a very positive statement; other, however, see it as a very negative statement. So, we talk a little more as if they are looking for words to change my experience.

Do you know what a Hosanna is? I’m reading to you from “The Revealing Word” by Charles Filmore. - Hosannas--Represent the joyful obedience and homage that all the thoughts in one's consciousness give when an error state of mind is overcome. - And when I say to you, my name is Jack Boland and I am an alcoholic; that is a Hosanna. It is my exclamation of praise. It is another way of saying Hallelujah. Now, in my whole life I have never given out the glad shout, Hallelujah. If I did right now, you might think that he is a little weird for saying Hallelujah. But when I make that statement what I am really saying is that I am a person who has had a spiritual experience that has separated me from an error state on mind in which I lived in darkness and death for a long period of time. Now, I rejoice in power of presence of God that brought me out of that experience and keeps me now in my right mind. That is what I am saying when tell you that I am an alcoholic. You bet. I don’t know how to say anything more positive than that. There is no way for me to express more gratitude than to say to you that I am an alcoholic. I am a miracle of the recovery process. Then someone will query, “Well is it an incurable disease”? and I’ll say yes.

Yes, but I’ve been delivered from the experiences of the disease. Delivered from the desire to drink, the need to drink, everything that I ever sought in the partaking of

the drug. Remember that alcohol is a drug, and classified as a dangerous drug. I do not need to be cured of the inability to take a dangerous drug into my body. All that I need to be is delivered from the desire to use it and to be fulfilled with all the things that I thought the drug was producing in my life. That is all! That is enough!

When I say that I am an alcoholic, I’m saying that Jehovah is my deliverer. I am – the “I am” of each of us – is God’s name in man. And by use of “I am” we link ourselves with outer seeming conditions or we make conscious union with the Father, with Spirit, with abiding life, love, wisdom, peace, substance, strength and power. The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Blessed are those who deny ignorance and fear and affirm the power and presence of the “I am”. That is what I am doing when I tell you that I am an alcoholic. My use of the word alcoholic is not negative at all.

Helen Keller until the day of her death was deaf, speechless and sightless. Wasn’t she? She did not recover from those physical conditions, you did not expect her to, you did not need for her to. You accepted her because she became one of the most remarkable people that has ever lived upon the earth. She touched me, when I was a child I marveled at what she was doing because she overcame, she rose above, she found her larger identity as the result of overcoming the negativity of that other experience. The moment that she stopped resenting her condition is when she started experiencing her real self. That is what happens to those of us who are recovering or are overcoming any condition that exists in our lives.

That so called weakness can become one’s strength. Having found strength, meaning and purpose should I turn my back away and say, “That never happened to me?” Oh no! Oh, no! It is not in that world that I wish to walk. All of us need to be healed because we live in our human condition. That is what we are being healed from, did you know that? You don’t believe it? Let me ask you this. Be very careful when you answer because you may deceive yourself. Do you want to be healed? Do you really want to come alive? To really be alive. Now, I suggest that you sit down and think about it, really think about it because there is not one of us who is fully alive yet. Not one. No, not one who has fully explored, demonstrated and brought forth into visibility the fullness of that power of aliveness that I behold vibrating in you and feel in me right now . Your first reaction might be, “Of course I would like to come alive, I would love to be healed, if there was anything wrong with me I would like to be healed. If I needed fixing, but I don’t need fixing. Why is it that some people have to be at death’s door before they develop an intense desire for life? Why? For the fullness of life and all the joys of life could bring and would bring if we would only come alive. That is our problem, is our inability to really come alive. To be what we already are.

Most people on this earth are working very hard at not living. They are developing all the attitudes of thought and emotional responses to life that lead to a static state of nothingness that they will not admit of or see when pointed out. Having created this condition, they desperately hold onto the things that are killing their livingness. They would rather have those things than to be healed. To be healed means to be

made whole. I’m still an alcoholic, but hopefully I am in the process of being made whole. I don’t have to drink to be made whole, do I? So, in that sense, I am healed. All that I need is to return to that original spiritual condition to be restored to my right mind. To be restored to my spiritual state. To be delivered from the greatest disease that we have and that is our human condition. Yet, this is the part of us that we defend the most. And, protect the most.

We will not find healing or solutions to our problems or joy or happiness or livingness in our purely human condition. Your human condition is not where it is. It is your spiritual condition. Anything that happens in your human condition that makes you want to move into your spiritual condition, rejoice! Hosanna! Thank God! We must get up out of that state of mind, but most people do not want to do this; they want their healing or their solution to take place where the problem is and while in the state of mind that has produced the problem. In that state of mind, there is no solution that can be identified with the five senses. That intellectual sense consciousness that looks to the outer or exterior for the stirring up of its solution or healing.

Let me tell you a story about that idea. As a matter of fact I’ll read it to you from the 5th chapter of the book of John; “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Bethzatha [Bethesda], which has five porticoes (or covered porches [These five porticoes stand for the five senses, that’s the sense consciousness]). In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. (Bible interpretation referring to all of us who are living from our purely sense consciousness alone are blind, lame, or paralyzed in some form. We’ve got something wrong with us. And it is coming out as an experience. And, we’re stretched out prostrate)

One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. (In the Bible, the number 40 means the period of time necessary to complete a process. [I drank for forty years. I was twenty-nine years old when I quit, but I drank for forty years. That was the period of time necessary to complete a process; to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s the forty years of the scriptures.] Now this guy had been stretched out laying there in his condition for thirty-eight years meaning that he was almost ready. Now you know what thirty-eight means in your own life, not thirty-eight years of age; but you’ve been into it right up to your eyes and you can hardly stand it, but you’re not quite ready to turn loose of it yet because you still think you can fix it – That’s thirty-eight. You really know that you can’t, but you got to try just one more time. Now, this fellow had been stretched out there for thirty-eight years, meaning his was almost ready.

Now, Jesus walked on to the scene, here were all of these people stretched out with various diseases. You can imagine him walking around some, stepping over others, while assessing the crowd, yet, and walking over to this one person. Why did He ignore the others? When somebody is ready to be changed you know it. Until they are ready to be changed you cannot fix them. Don’t try to fix anybody that doesn’t want to be fixed! It will turn him/her off. Get your own first and then become a

living example so that “George” can look up and say, “Whatever happened to her” And subsequently, they will want to follow in your footsteps. – Now, Jesus walked up to this person because he knew he was almost ready to change. He still needed a conscious shock, a confrontation, an intervention to his thinking. Remember our conversation from the other night when we were talking about confronting that person who wasn’t ready to get sober or to find their solution, yet? And so here is the confrontation.

When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?"

The sick man answered him, "Sir (Now, can’t you just hear the self-pity), I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." (Doesn’t that sound like us? Poor me, no one to help me, I’m all alone in this world. I’ve tried so hard for so long! And there is no one to help me, even God himself has turned his back! – You see he wanted his healing on his conditions. His own way.

Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." The Living Bible says: "Rise, take up your pallet, and go home quickly.” – Rise! Rise up out of your condition. Rise up out of your negativity. Get up off of that bed of concepts (Now you thought I was going to say something else.). Get up off of yourself. Rise up into your spiritual condition. Rise up into your right mind and go home.

And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked: and on the same day was the Sabbath.

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the Sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. (He seems to be putting the blame on the “other guy”.)

Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?

And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.

Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. (If he’d been an alcoholic, he would have said to him, “Don’t take another drink or something worse will befall you.” He said your healed, but don’t take another drink.

My name is Jack Boland and I’m not going to take another drink because I am an alcoholic. That is consistent with the metaphysics that I interpret in the Bible.

Your living experience, your life upon this earth; every bit of it has great value. It can be used and it must be used in your life. When Jesus said to the man at the gate, “Go straight home.”, you noticed that he didn’t go quite straight home and home is not the house in which he lived. Home is his spiritual identity, his Christ consciousness. Home is that spiritual place within you where the Father, Mother God awaits. Home is where the prodigal child returns. Did you know that you can’t go straight home, it’s impossible, you can’t walk straight to the door? And if you should get to the door and then to your car, you can’t drive straight to where you are going. Do you think you do? Watch yourself. Watch yourself make a series of corrective maneuvers as you go. You can’t go straight anywhere.

Even light does no travel in a straight line. Einstein proved, in theory, that if he could shine a laser beam straight out into the universe and stand there long enough, that laser beam would come back around and hit him in the back of the head. Now, it would take about five billion years, but it would happen. So, perhaps there truly are no straight lines. Even light does not travel in a straight line. We get to where we want to go by constantly correcting our course.

In Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, you’ve learned that man has a built in goal seeking device. Your mind is a goal seeking device. Yes, that human mind that you are constantly using. The word ‘Cybernetics’ come from a Greek word meaning: the steersman. Because our scientist were able to understand how the mind works, they were able to create servo-mechanisms that automatically steer their way to either a goal, target, or answer. These servo-mechanisms grope their way to the target, the solution, or home. They do it by using positive and negative feedback. Negative, in this case, does not mean negative in the sense we use negative. This relates to the polarity of the universe, positive and negative. If we wish to do anything, to achieve anything, to accomplish anything we must use both polarities to navigate our way. This mechanism does not respond to positive feedback, for if it is heading straight for its goal, the mechanism doesn’t need to do anything, it is on target. The moment that it moves off target it receives negative feedback which causes it to take corrective measures to put it back on target for its goal. So, when it commits an error, gets off course to far to the left or right, the mechanism automatically sends corrective signals to send it back in the opposite direction. The mechanism accomplishes its goal by moving forward, making errors and taking corrective action from negative input. The mechanism zig-zags it way forward to the goal.

The errors are necessary to alter the direction that we are going. So it is with the mind. It is through understanding of this system that we can implement a similar mindset as a means to align our self more quickly with our own goals. Now suppose that yu are one of those peopleEWWWWWW that never make mistakes. Wow, what a problem that is if you never make mistakes. If you can never catch yourself making a mistake. There is no negative feedback. I used have a saying, “I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong.” And that lead me into the ditch, let me tell you. And it would be just as incorrect to say, “I am never wrong, I am always right.”

In that case I would not be able to supply the mind with the negative feedback that it needs for reaching the goal or home. I want to go home. I want to get there as quickly as I can. I want to follow the shortest and easiest method. I can do this by groping my way, by continuing to take an inventory, observing myself, and finding my way there.

Suppose a person does make mistakes and these mistakes depress you terribly and you can’t bear to face these mistakes. That kind of thinking continues to produce its negative feedback, but if the person will not examine that negative feedback it can not help them get to where they wish to go. So negative feedback is a healthy, positive, and goal producing mechanism that every human beings needs to function accurately and successfully on this earth.

Santayana once wrote that those who failed to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I, Jack Boland, would say he that has not made peace with his past is doomed to repeat it. Remembering it is one thing, using it and then making your peace with it. You see our past has a way of continuing on to become our future unless we correct it. Unless we can correct ourselves by utilizing our past and our present experiences. Your experiences are not by chance. The fact that you are here upon this earth and events keep happening to you is marvelous and designed by the Creator to be used in a very positive way. So when we call these things that happen neither good nor bad, but utilize them to move forward to the goal that we seek. Letting all events, all experiences to become an asset and letting nothing become a liability. Then your past can become your monitor, your guide. You can use it.

Let me read to you from Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, “All servo-mechanisms, by their very nature contain “memories” of past errors, failures, painful and negative experiences. These negative experiences do not inhibit, but contribute, to the learning process, as long as they are used properly as ‘negative feedback data,’ and are seen as deviations from the positive goal which is desired. However, as soon as the error has been recognized as such, and correction of course made, it is equally important that the error be consciously forgotten (forgiven), and the successful attempt remembered and “dwelt upon”.

It is important to dwell upin the successful attempt utilizing the negative attempt; remember when Jesus said, Let your word be yea yea or nay nay. Our errors, mistakes, failures and, sometimes, our humiliations were necessary steps in our learning process. However, they were meant to be means to an end – and not an end in themselves. When they have served their purpose, they should be forgotten. If we consciously dwssssell upon the error, or consciously feel guilty about the error, and keep berating ourselves because of it, then – unwittingly - the error or failure itself becomes the ‘goal’ which is consciously held in imagination and memory. The unhappiest of mortals is that man who insists upon reliving the past, over and over in imagination – continually criticizing himself for past mistakes – continually

condemning himself for past sins and continually experiencing the past experiences. Fantastic!

We want to go home. Where is home? It’s a place where the answers are. Where the joy is, where the peace is, where the beauty is, where the sense of the now is, where the presence of God is, where your real identity is, where purpose and meaning flow forth moment-by-moment-by-moment. That place exists within each one of us. In the mind, the intelligence, the love, the power of the universe that has created this place within us has given us a system of discovering or uncovering or experiencing our conscious contact with “Home”, with this ‘home’ that is within us. One of the names that has been given this system has been TAO. It has come into life many times throughout history; its had certain variations in it’s form.

Tonight, you received, “The Twelve Steps to a Spiritual Experience”. It came from the six tenets of the “Oxford Movement” and this is a form of the ancient system of TAO. The way Home, the way into your spiritual consciousness, your real identity, the “I am” identity of each of us. I would like to go through these principles with you. Instead of using the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, I will use ‘The Twelve Steps to a Spiritual Experience’, they are the same steps, but I’ve changed the words slightly.

Step One: I admit that I am powerless to improve my life that I need help. Did that sound like a negative statement? Let go of the little self and take hold of the big self. I am reading to you now from “I AM”, not my will but thine be done. The little self of me admits that it is powerless to do anything to improve my life and I need help. THe peace that comes when one first makes that admission is a marvelous experience in itself. If all that one had was the peace that comes, that would be enough, but something always follows. Especially, if in that moment, I come Step Two.

Step Two: I come to believe that available within me is a creative intelligence and power that can completely change my life. It would be a negative statement if I admitted that I was powerless and there was no power that could lift me out of my condition or could heal me or restore me or do for me the things that need to be done by me. Notice that each of these steps is a ‘mind set’, a posture, an attitude, that must consciously be arrived at before moving to the next step. I come to believe that available within me is a creative intelligence and power that can completely change my life.

Step Three: I make a decision to place myself completely under God’s direction and guidance and become willing to be changed.

I become willing to be changed, not just to have my life changed, not to just have the outer circumstances changed, not just to have Mary Sue or George changed, not just to have them fixed, but me. I am the one that needs it and I become willing to be changed; if nothing else happens, I am willing to be changed

Step Four: I get honest with myself as never before. I take a written inventory of my mistaken judgments and negative emotional responses.

I get honest with myself as never before. So honest that I am willing to pick up pen and paper and begin to write describing myself to me. Especially my mistakes in judgments, those things, that I’ve been trying to hide for years. I am willing now to admit them and to see them. Why? Because I want the negative feedback that come from them. And more than that I want these things to be removed from me. I want to be healed, changed, and I Want to go ‘home’. Now. There is a fallacy about positive thinking. There is an old story about how to clear up a bucket of muddy water. You let clear water drip, drip, drip into the muddy water and eventually the muddy water in the bucket will be clear. The clean water will replace it. Now that is a cute story and it is a true story as far as it goes. The problem is that it does not go far enough. It is one of those half-truths that cause so much trouble. The mind requires more than positive thoughts dripping into it. The muddy water is a problem, of course, and the fresh water is necessary. The real problem is the debris at the bottom of the bucket. Suppose you had some old rusty nails and a few bricks in your bucket. Every time you got clear water in your bucket it got muddy and rusty again from the debris that was already there beneath the surface. There was something there, but you could never ever quite get your bucket clear. All of that water dripping in is not going to get rid of what is in the bottom of the bucket. Running water or dripping water will not float a brick or rusty nail to the surface. And positive thinking is no substitute for introspection. One must see and become willing to have removed from within themselves those things that are there.

Now, there is another fallacy about healing; the assumption that everyone who needs to be healed, wants to be healed. Have you thought that; that everyone who needed to be healed, wanted to be healed? Don’t you believe it? A person who is really in distress has actually made a very positive demonstration that disease is something that their mind has willingly consented to. However, a healing requires a changing of consciousness, changing of the mind. The willingness to get the bricks out of the bucket. The willingness to let go of that mindset that has been producing the problem. And this is not something that just happens, this requires a searching and fearless inventory, the looking within oneself, with the willingness to be changed, the willingness to be healed.

Step Five: I admit to God, to myself and to another human being exactly what I have discovered to be wrong with me.

Oh, now that I found it out I cannot keep it to myself. No. I must go and admit it to God, to myself; why to myself? It is possible to see many things about one’s self and not really admit them. Not really bring them out. Not really see the. Not really be shocked, but when we admit to another human being, when we put it right out on the table, there is a movement in the mind that cannot be described; you can only experience it. A freeing, a freedom, something happens that otherwise does not happen. You do know where these steps

come from in essence, from the Surmon on the Mount in the book of James. They were part of the Jesus Christ system of recovery, of experiencing a miracle.

Step Six: I now become entirely ready to have God remove all my defects.

Step Seven: I humbly ask Him to change me at depth making me over into the person I was created to be. Establishing within me my individuality, my spiritual nature

Step Eight: I made a list of all persons whose lives I had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.

Become willing to make amends to them all. Notice that it does not say, “I make a list of all the people who have harmed me and go to them to get their apology. No! This process requires that we forgive them, The first act that we do is to take all blame from all other persons whoever they might be, Remember when Jesus said, “Before you pray if you have ought against another go to him – this does not mean catch a plane to California. It means: go to him inside yourself, close your eyes and go to him and you will find him there and you will find you there giving him a hard time because of what he did. Inside, go to that place where you have been wounded and hurt and release that experience, release it and set yourself free. Set them free. – Set them free! And then to free ourselves by going to them and saying, “I did that, I did that thing and I am sorry, and I will make restitution, and I will go to the people to whom I lied about you and I will tell them what I did. – Now, if you don’t think that is an ego reducer friends, if you don’t think the “little me” doesn’t like that, try it sometime. – Only the large self, only the Christ of you, the ‘I Am” of you, can fulfill the conditions that are stated here. This is not negative, this is the most positive series of statements that I know because only the large part of us, the giant of us, the Christ of us, can do these things.

Step Nine: I proceed to make direct amends to each of these persons wherever possible, except when to do so would further injure them or others.

Step Ten: I continue to observe my actions and my attitudes and when I am wrong I promptly admit it.

Remember when Jesus said, “Stop doing it unless a worse thing befall you”. If we are in the process of making this correction and then we can begin to observe ourselves in the moment that we begin to fall back into the old way, our negative feedback comes and we begin to steer again straight toward the course.This is an exciting system of working with one’s mind.

Step Eleven: I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, desiring only God’s direction in all things and the understanding and strength to follow God’s will.

Step Twelve: Having awakened to the reality of the spiritual life as the result of these steps I freely share what I have found and continue to practice these principles in each new situation.

I continue to share what I have found, the experience that comes, the joy that comes, the sanity that comes, the excitement that comes, must be shared. You and I must find a way to go out into life and find someone who needs what we have and share it with them. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to go very far, as a matter of fact, the moment that you become willing to share what you have as the result of this movement of spirit inside yourself, you will draw to you the people that you need, the people that you can help. The people that become a part of this new link, this new chain, this larger experience.In the ‘Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions’ published by Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing Company, I read, ‘There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation and prayer, taken separately these practices can bring much relief and benefit, but when they are logically related and interwoven the result is an unshakeable foundation for life. Now and then, we may be granted a glimpse of that ultimate reality which is God’s Kingdom. And we will be comforted and assured that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do the will of our own Creator. As we have seen, self-searching is the means by which we bring new action, vision and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. There is a step in the development that kind of humility That makes it possible for us to receive God’s help. Yet, it is only a step.

We will go farther. Life upon this earth is an exciting experience. That experience can never be separated from the interaction of men and women, of people in movement, in motion. People are changing from something to something. Always, that something lies within us. Your own heart, your own mind is in the flow of that movement to acquire knowledge and information. Yes, but more than that, to become what you know yourself to be; a living, breathing, moving, loving expression of this glorious universe.

When you leave here in just a little while walk out through the rose garden slowly and feel yourself, feel the glory, the majesty of that larger self of you that is looking out through your eyes. As you look at the sky, you can feel life loving that sky through you, you were created to be a channel of its expression. Nothing that you have ever done upon this earth or any other earth like it can separate you from the experience that is yours. As a matter of fact, everything that you have ever done can be used, not to be identified with, but to be separated from. We do not identify with our past as we move away from it. We do not identify with our lower nature as we move toward our higher nature, it’s a positive identification because when we are moving towards our goal no correction is necessary. It is only when we move away from it that correction is necessary and the more quickly I can find the means that my mind will report instantly to me that I have made a deviation in thought, in feeling, and in attitude. If I forget my origins and my experience, I will have lost the most valuable tool.

If I forget my people and who are my people? – You are! Do you have to be an alcoholic to be my people? No. Most of you are just as goofy, in your own way, as any drunk I have ever seen in my life. I can understand you and you can understand me, we can speak the same language when we get honest with ourselves.

Does this mean that we talk about negative things – not one time this week have I or have you gotten into the negativity of our past, we have not discussed it at all. Yet, because of that we are so close that sometimes I feel that we live inside the same skin. We are one.

And we are one because I am shock proof. I am so glad that I am an alcoholic because you cannot shock me. Tell me what you did, this thing that you cannot bare to reveal to the world, tell it to me! I’ve already done it or thought it! So what! This is a necessary part of our experience.

We are in this world, but we are not of it. And man came into his sense consciousness only to have the experience of rising out of it. The glorious experience of working with his mind and with his God to be lifted up to the higher part. As we walk upon this earth for the day, let us enjoy it. You bet.

Let us know that we are people. There is nothing wrong with being people. I like people and you are people.

Do not be so spiritually smug that people can not come to you when they are suffering. Saint Francis was not. He remembered his roots. He

said, Oh God, take me to them and let me put my arms around them. Last night here, at the meeting of A.A.’s and Alanon, we had the joyous experience of being present when a woman discovered that her husband admitted that her husband was an alcoholic, he had admitted it somewhat and she resisted the idea. The joy of being able to admit what the problem was so exciting. So freeing, because if I can admit what the problem is, the solution is the next step I can move from it, especially if there are people present who understand and can touch, comfort and love. Not only do we understand the truth, but we understand where people are and meet them where they are and love them where they are.

To me, its not the truth you taught, to you so clear, to me so dim, but when you came to me you brought an overwhelming sense of Him.

Do not come to me with your words if you do not come to me with you love and understanding.

Do not come to me unless you have your arms around me

Peter Marshall wrote a poem that I dearly love, He wrote:I know father that I must come to you just as I am,But I also know that I dare not go away just as I came.Often I have known failure, failure in the moral realm, failure in ethics, failure in my attitudes, failure in my disposition.I have confessed all of these defeats to youAnd you have graciously forgiven me.Yet, I know, God, that merely to forgive me will not sufficeFor, unless I am changed, I shall do these same things again.At last I know God that only You can correct that within me which makes me do wrongWhere I am blind you must give me sight.When I fail to heed your voice, you will have to do something about my deafness, even where I deliberately choose to do what I know is wrong, you will have to do something about my will.So God, I acknowledge my total dependence upon you. Make me over into the person you want me to be, so that I may, yet, find that destiny for which you did give me birth. And for your help, and for the help of my wonderful friends who are plenteous in their mercy, I give you my gratitude.Hallelujah! Hosanna!

I’m an alcoholic. Praise God! Life is good! And so it is!