There is an old Program story about a sponsor who had a parrot, which was always present in the room when he was talking to sponsees. One day the sponsor decided to go on vacation, to the horror of his new sponsee, who wondered how he could stay sober without his help. The sponsor told him to look after the parrot and to talk to the parrot if he had any problems.

So the sponsee did as his sponsor suggested. He looked after the parrot and talked to him about his problems. The parrot appeared to listen, and would then say something or another that it had heard repeated so many times -- "Go to more meetings" or "Try praying about it" or "Stay out of relationships for the first year."

After a couple of weeks the sponsor called the sponsee and asked how he was getting on with the parrot. The sponsee said, "Well, to be honest, it's just like having a real sponsor. The parrot listens just like you do, and then he says something, just like you do. And a lot of the time, what he says seems to be spot-on, just like you. And other times, it doesn't seem to make any sense, but I go away and think about it, and realize he's absolutely right -- just like you."

The truth is that -- like that sponsee -- we carry all the really important truths about ourselves within ourselves, but we can't always hear them unless we talk to somebody else. These pages are full of comments about Steps 10, 11 and 12, but the fact is that they only ring true for us when we read them and recognize something that we knew all along. It isn't hard to determine the truth, if only we'll listen to our innermost selves and not to our egos.