Howard P. Speaks on 13th Corinthians and Loving Your Life w/ Meditation -Gilbert, AZ

(0:00 – 0:08)
I’m ready. I’m just going to record you now. It’s not going to bite.
(0:09 – 0:15)
What is it? You tell me what time it is? It’s a recorder. It’s a recorder. Oh, oh, okay.
(0:19 – 0:36)
Desperado Why don’t you come to your senses? You’ve been out riding fences for so
long now. That’ll be it for now. I’m probably the only one here that knows all the lyrics.
(0:39 – 1:00)
So, I may be the only one that knows all the lyrics to 1 Corinthians 13 chapter. I want to
run through that quickly with you. Now this is, if I can, if I don’t lose track, okay.
(1:01 – 1:18)
Now what this is, is where he compares, he compares the things that in his time, in St.
Paul’s time were great. Eloquence was a great thing. Prophecy was a great thing.
(1:18 – 1:37)
Speaking in tongues was a great thing. And as he spoke of each one of those, he said,
without love, they’re nothing. Life itself, faith, all those things don’t amount to nothing
without love.
(1:38 – 1:48)
And then he tells what love is, what love does. If you love your life, you’re patient. Just
think about that for a second.
(1:49 – 2:11)
If you really love your life the way it is right now, you’ll love it when you’re sitting at a
red light or driving through a green one. You know, you don’t get impatient because the
light’s red. And when it turns green and the guy in front of you just sits there like a
numbnut.
(2:12 – 2:32)
You don’t even notice if you love your life. Now if you love your life conditionally, you
see, but this is unconditional love. Anyway, and this whole deal about love is a
transforming thing.
(2:35 – 3:02)
And the way it happened for me was with 1 Corinthians. Though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels and have not love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling
cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not
love, I am nothing.
(3:02 – 3:20)
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned and have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love
envieth not.
(3:21 – 3:39)
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly. Seeketh not
her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. Rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in
truth.
(3:40 – 3:50)
Believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never fails. But whether
there be prophecies, they will fail.
(3:51 – 4:00)
Whether there be tongues, they will cease. Whether there be knowledge, it will vanish
away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
(4:00 – 4:16)
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part must be done away.
When I was a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child, I spoke as a child. But
when I become a man, I put away childish things.
(4:18 – 4:37)
Now I see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I
shall know even as also I am known. Now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three, but
the greatest of these is love.
(4:38 – 4:54)
Now I did that every morning for at least 30 minutes for six months. And I started out,
you know, there’s three parts to that. There’s the first part, the second part, and the
third part.
(4:56 – 5:17)
And I cleared that up, don’t you? Now, I would make it without my mind wandering
through the first part. Then I could put that part aside. Now by my mind not wandering, I
would know what Drummond was saying with the words and ideas he was expressing.
(5:17 – 5:31)
I would be conscious of that when I went through the first part. Then I would be
conscious of what they were saying in the second part. If my mind wandered, I had to go
back, but only to the second part.
(5:31 – 5:41)
Once I made it through the first part, I was done with that. Except it was with you. If you
paid attention to it when you was going through it, it’s with you.
(5:42 – 5:52)
Then you go through the second part, and that’s with you. Then the third part. Then I
would go back to the second part.
(5:53 – 6:29)
And Drummond had… So, St. Paul passes this… Okay, he’s analogizing Sir Isaac
Newton’s prism and separating the different frequencies of light. Red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo and violet. There’s no indigo, but Newton said there was, so I’m with
him.
(6:31 – 6:49)
And it separates white light and puts it on the screen in those colors. And he said this is
what St. Paul did with love. Through the prism of his intellect, he broke down the
elements that make up love.
(6:51 – 7:02)
Love suffers long, that’s the first one. And Drummond wrote several paragraphs about
each one. I’ve just took what I wanted out of it.
(7:03 – 7:13)
Love is patience. Love is patience. This is the normal attitude of love, love passive.
(7:14 – 7:26)
Love waiting to begin, not in a hurry. Calm, ready to do its work when the summons
come. Love suffereth long, heareth all things, beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things.
(7:27 – 7:40)
So love understands and waits. If you love your life. And love is kind, love is kindness,
love acting, the greatest thing in the world.
(7:41 – 7:57)
And a man can do for his heavenly father is to be kind to his children. I will pass through
this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, any kindness that I can
show, let me do it now.
(7:57 – 8:13)
Don’t let me defer it, because I may not pass this way again. Love envyeth not. If I love
my life, and Gary wins the lottery, I will rejoice that he won the lottery.
(8:16 – 8:25)
I will not envy the fact that I love my life. I will not envy the fact that in true life, I want
some kickback on it. Kickback.
(8:31 – 8:53)
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Love is humility. After you have been kind,
after love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, love goes back into
the shade again and says nothing about itself.
(8:54 – 9:04)
Love hides even from itself. Love weighs even self-satisfaction. Love is humility.
(9:06 – 9:21)
Does not behave itself unseemly. I’ll just say, if you love your life, it cannot behave itself
unseemly. Seeketh not her own.
(9:22 – 9:40)
Okay. I not only not envy when Gary gets what is his, I don’t struggle to get what is
mine. If I love my life, I don’t fight to get mine.
(9:41 – 10:06)
Why not? Because love knows that there is no goodness in giving. There is only
goodness in giving. Everybody in China, that’s a lot of people, could love you with all the
intensity that they could generate and you can’t feel it.
(10:08 – 10:21)
The love you feel is the love you give away. And if you’re loving your life, you’re giving it
away. It ultimately becomes part of, hopefully, your consciousness.
(10:22 – 10:37)
Now, none of us are going to be saints, but we can grow in that spiritual direction. We
can make progress. And if we don’t have that as a goal, you aren’t going to make
progress towards that.
(10:37 – 10:49)
You’re going to go the other way, as we did all our lives. Because our brains are springloaded for that. Our culture spring-loads us for that.
(10:50 – 11:28)
So, we have to do these things if we’re going to have freedom from the life that we have.
Don’t necessarily have to meditate on it, but somehow or other, I have to find a
discipline so that I can, at some level, have a personally satisfactory conscious
partnership with the God that creates us in this entire business of living. Working all the
steps is essential to that, but prayer and meditation is the payoff.
(11:28 – 11:50)
Of all the rest of the steps, all the other stuff you do, prayer and meditation makes the
payoff. And if we don’t do that, we miss the payoff. Okay, love is not easily provoked.
(11:52 – 12:00)
Love is good temper. Your temper is significant. It is a test for love.
(12:01 – 12:21)
A symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at the bottom. It is the intermittent fever
which bespeaks intermittent disease within. The occasional bubble escaping to the
surface which betrays some rottenness underneath.
(12:23 – 12:46)
That’s bad temper. For want of patience, a want of kindness, a want of generosity, a
want of courtesy, a want of unselfishness, they are all instantaneously symbolized by a
flash of temper. As soon as you’re angry, you know you’re missing all of those things.
(12:49 – 13:04)
Thinketh no evil, love is guileless. Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. Love
thinketh no evil, imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on
every action.
(13:05 – 13:35)
And if we try to influence or elevate others, as we do try to influence and elevate others,
we will soon see that success of our elevating others is in proportion to their knowing
that we believe in them. Love rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in truth. I have called
this sincerity.
(13:35 – 14:13)
It includes perhaps more strictly the self-restraint which refuses to make capital of
others’ faults. I got a long story, but I ain’t gonna tell it. Okay, there was a guy who had a
large catalog of country music, and I was leading men’s retreat in Nashville, and I asked
for nine people to be selected and for them to have studied Drummond’s book for the
last month before the retreat.
(14:14 – 15:13)
And then each one of these guys was assigned one of the elements, and this guy that
had the catalog of country music had Love rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in truth.
And during the time before, he had sold his catalog to Time Life magazine, no, to Time
Life Records, so that his record, and Time Life was getting the money, but they paid a
fortune to him, okay? And then they screwed up, and they weren’t taking the money that
was due them. And he talked to his lawyer, and the lawyer said, Well, that’s your money.
I mean, that’s your money. And then he read this Drummond, and he called his lawyer
and said, It’s not my money. Anyway, it changed his life.
(15:13 – 15:21)
It changed his life with Time Life. They had never gotten along. It was a good story.
(15:26 – 15:49)
So, what we’re going to do is set up, be awake, and we’re going to meditate. What we’re
going to do is meditate on 1 Corinthians 13 chapter. And be conscious of the deeper
meaning that as they were described in Drummond.
(15:49 – 16:20)
Now, obviously, you need to, if you’re going to do this as a practice, you can get
Drummond for free on the Internet. Right, Josh? Yeah, I’m right. And then you read it,
and you get the deeper meaning of each word, and then as you meditate on it, it
gradually transforms you.
(16:24 – 16:53)
Okay? Okay. Okay. So, we’ll start just by breathing in.
(16:53 – 17:13)
Be conscious of your breath coming in. We’re just going to do that to kind of shut down
all of the brain chatter that we used to do a lot of. Breath coming in.
(17:15 – 18:03)
Out. While we’re doing this, anybody that, if something, the telephone goes off or
something, what we’re doing is really finding a consciousness of our connection with
good life and God. If something makes a sound, if the telephone rings, that is not a
distraction.
(18:04 – 18:23)
That’s a validation of our connectedness. The sound is happening over there, and it is
connected through our hearing into our brain. So we can be conscious of the connection,
not a distraction.
(18:26 – 19:24)
Breath coming in. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not
love, I am become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of
prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so
that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.
(19:26 – 19:56)
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long and is kind. Love
envieth not.
(19:58 – 20:47)
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not
her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in
truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, love
never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they shall fail. Whether there are tongues,
they shall cease.
(20:49 – 21:19)
Whether there is knowledge, it shall vanish away, for we know in part and we prophesy
in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part must be done
away. When I was a child, I thought as a child, I speak as a child, I understood as a child,
but when I become a man, I put away childish things.
(21:21 – 21:53)
Now I see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then
shall I know even as also I am known. Now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three, but
the greatest of these is love.
(21:59 – 22:53)
In the program and in life and in our families and in relationships to one another, we
think of love not as standing apart, gazing at each other, but in standing together with
mutual objectives and going to any length to help each other experience those mutual
objectives together. That is the love that we live in recovery. Our goal is a happy,
productive, sober life.
(22:54 – 23:04)
That is something we want for ourselves and for each other. That’s what we want in our
families. That’s what we want in our communities.
(23:05 – 23:32)
Ultimately, that’s what we want in our lives. We want to love our lives and live love. We
do that probably best in recovery programs of any place in my life that I have ever
experienced.
(23:34 – 23:57)
If I love my life, I am patient. Patient is love passing. Patient is love waiting in my heart
for the opportunity to express itself when it summons comes.
(23:58 – 24:17)
Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love
understands all things and therefore waits. And love is kind.
(24:19 – 24:47)
Kindness is love acting. Kindness is love expressing itself. As we go through the day, as
an active part of life, if there’s some goodness I can do or some kindness I can show in
loving my life, let me not defer doing that.
(24:47 – 25:02)
Let me not reschedule for I may not pass this way again. Love envieth not. Love is
generosity.
(25:07 – 25:35)
If I love my life, then it is an unconditional love of life, if it’s real love. And I do not envy
the goodness that other people have. This world and our existence is a life of love, not
one of winning the competition.
(25:39 – 26:00)
Love vanches not itself, is not puffed up. Love is humility. Love expresses its goodness
and then humbly goes back into the shadow.
(26:04 – 26:22)
Love never pats itself on the back for doing its goodness. Love does not behave itself
unseemly. Love is being courteous.
(26:25 – 26:58)
Love is courtesy is love expressed in trifles. And if we love our lives, we cannot, love
cannot behave itself unseemly. Love seeketh not her own.
(27:01 – 27:25)
We don’t struggle to get ours because love knows that there is no goodness in giving or
having. There is only goodness in giving. Drummond says, let me repeat that.
(27:27 – 27:53)
There is absolutely no goodness in getting or having. There is only goodness in giving.
And if we love our lives and live our lives in love, we’re in an ongoing consciousness of
goodness.
(28:00 – 28:22)
Love is good-tempered. Anger, resentment stand between us and the sunlight of the
spirit. If we love our lives, then we love all of our lives.
(28:23 – 28:51)
In all the activities and circumstances, none of us are going to be saints. But we can do
much, much better than we do through the steps and letting go of anger. And we must
do that through the steps to find release from anger.
(28:51 – 29:20)
We must see how damaging anger is in our lives so that we can see that that area of our
life has defeated us. We are angrier than we want to be, but we cannot not be angry.
And we must see that and surrender.
(29:22 – 29:45)
And let that go into love. Love does not look at the bad side. It always… There is no bad
side.
(29:45 – 30:21)
There is only ordinary harmony and unfolding goodness. The ego can shut us off from
that, insisting that our sense of well-being must come from us having our way. But our
sense of well-being must always come from wanting what we’re getting rather than
getting what we want.
(30:24 – 30:31)
Love your life. See the always. See the goodness.
(30:35 – 30:49)
Rejoices not in inequity, but rejoices in truth. Sincerity. Sincerely loving our life.
(30:50 – 31:24)
Our experience will always be things are much better than we had suspected they would
be or that the negative part of us predicted it would be. The love of God is within me.
The love of God surrounds me.
(31:27 – 31:42)
My love of life is within me. My love of life surrounds me. Be conscious of that truth.
(31:45 – 33:01)
Be conscious of that pervasive presence and power. And let’s settle into a consciousness
of love of our life. As your consciousness of love diminishes, bring it back with the
mantra the love of God is within me as truth.
(33:02 – 33:44)
The love of God surrounds me. My love of my life is within me and my love surrounds
me. When your mind wanders, bring it back to love of our life.
(35:42 – 36:37)
And so it is. Let’s give Howard a big round of applause. So I believe that the food is here
and it’s going to be brought in.
(36:37 – 36:50)
If someone cares to help, I think it’s right outside the door. And we’re going to come
around and we have tickets. One’s going to be a 50-50 raffle.
(36:50 – 37:04)
Those will be the red tickets. And the others will be for the other items up here, the little
meditation sandboxes and some AA literature and some different stuff. So feel free to
jump on that.
(37:04 – 37:06)
And thank you for coming.