Acceptance and Aging – Workshop April – Part 6 of 8 – Sandy B.

Well, let's start this session again with our serenity prayer after a moment of silence. God, grant me the serenety to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Well, we're back to the final question and answer thing. And before I do that, I understand that you've never done a silent period at this particular weekend and that there's some worry that you won't be able to keep your mouth shut. I think you'll find it a lot easier than you thought it would be. You can certainly make eye contact, smile. We don't want to lose touch with one another. We're just establishing contact in a non-verbal way. And you will realize that we still stay just as close. And you pat somebody on the back at dinner and those kind of things. And then when we come back here, we'll just all assemble and then I'll say a few words to break the silence. And then we'll have some time for those of you who would care to to raise your hand and share what you got out of it. What experience you had, whether your feelings were this way and they went that way and it might be helpful to others to hear that so keep that in mind whether you feel that whatever happened was worth sharing with the rest of the guys here and we'll take that time and then comes the AA meeting which I guess you have every year so that will be the standard fair I just want to say before I forget what a good time I've had and how welcome I feel out here it's like a second home to come to LA I got some close friends here Steve always makes me feel welcome I wish I could spend part of the year out here and the rest of it over in Tampa and just go around and see all the groups that people belong to just to experience that. I know I want to come out someday and go back down to Chuck's group in Laguna Beach and see that again. So I just want you to know how welcome I felt the whole time, and I thank you for that. And boy, we've got plenty of them, so I know we'll probably be able to keep this going. How have you dealt with personal setbacks, health, aging, death of friends? And how do you turn all of this over when it keeps coming on? Well, all I'll tell you, I may be older than some of the people in this room. and you get more practice the older you get just to make sure you're getting better at this. Acceptance is so powerful. I mean, I'm having a lot of health problems and aging, I can't play golf, I can't run. I can do this and that. And I think I'm just as happy as when I could do those things. I mean, I love them. They really had their place. But there's an inner happiness. We're trying to get an inner-happiness here that's not connected to the... Health is a real hard one to stay in a pretty good frame of mind with health. And so if you're younger and you're new, you want to really develop as soon as possible that inner sense of well-being. An inner sense OF humor. I'm not kidding. An inner SENSE OF HUMOR where you just laugh at yourself. And I just go, Jesus, I can't even get up off the toilet. What the hell is going on here? and see that as, it's hysterical instead of a tragedy. I mean, there's only two ways. If you look at all these things, that's, oh my God, the problem itself will weigh five times as much. It'll be five times this much. Health aging, death of friends. well I talked about changing our attitude about death and spending as much time as you can reflecting on that and reflecting why Saint Francis suggests that it's by dying that we awaken to life eternal and you've seen us this weekend we've certainly reflected on Clint Vince Scott and you realize that they're still with us that all of that energy all of those bits of wisdom are alive and they'll continue alive and they will be passed on and so another thing is to never label anything a setback no matter what it is it just is anytime something is labeled I know when I start when I feel tired and I'm real sick I get complaining I can't believe that and my friends and my girlfriend will tell me stop complaining stop talking in that way and when I do I feel better so those are just some thoughts that I have. Acceptance is just the key because life is just going to be a different set of circumstances and as I said back in whatever the first lecture we had today or yesterday over the next 90 years there's going to be 6.7 billion people die. Can you imagine that? I mean it's just staggering that that many people are going to die only to be replaced by 7.7 billion more and that this wonderful life just goes on and I have no reason to believe that our inner life isn't permanent isn't eternal that we're just part of the whole eternal picture so those are how some of the ways that I do that. I'm not always successful, but in general, after something, I generally find something funny about it. And the funniest thing is it's happening to me. And I think it's kind of funny, you know, that shit happens to everybody. If a solution exists for a problem, if a solution exists for a problem, is it still a problem? And if no solution exists, is it not merely a fact? Well, I'm going to take a little liberty with semantics. I personally like Bill's choice of words that problems are removed and that they can be looked at differently until we see that there really is no problem that we change our perspective around it I realize that that's not the normal material world way of approaching that the solution is the answer one involves God and one doesn't the God answer involves removing because a problem there's no such thing as a problem there's just my labeling it a problem it was an event that I decided was unacceptable and if you think about the number of events that happen to each of us every day I mean, it's in the hundreds of thousands. You know, a breeze blows by, a sound comes here, this goes there. We pick up newspapers, they have a hundred stories in there. One, two, three, four, five. Most of them we just go, mm-hmm. But story number 31, wait a minute. That shouldn't have happened. And we've suddenly taken that event and classified it as a problem. And the definition of a problem is that it bothers me. and the end of the problem is when it doesn't bother me. So I'll just stick with that, that I like the idea that they can be dissolved, removed, disappear, whatever way you want to do that. All right? All right. Step three. How you make a decision one time or every day. now we'll get back into that thing I was talking about the big bang is still happening I would say the decision I made is still happening so that it's happening every day it is I may feel that I'm losing contact and it reminds me of flying when I first started flying you did all the navigating with your ears there were no needles pointing at anything it was back in the days of the radio range and there was, at any radio station there were four beams that went out and all the rest of the area around the radio station it was either an A or an N. You know, dit-da or da-dit. And when you tried to locate where you were you knew if it was an A you were either northeast or southwest and then you took a bisector heading and it either got louder or softer then you knew you were down here. So you took a heading to end up on a beam and the beam made a signal of a steady beep but as you drifted off you could hear the beam and an A if you went to the right or if you driftED to the left you'd hear the boom beep and the beginning of an N and as soon as you heard that correct it back and that's the way I feel with my relationship with God that if I can feel the disturbance starting to come in, I know that I am drifting off the beam and it's time to correct until I'm undisturbed. But this fundamental decision to rely on the beam to get down didn't change just because I was slightly off of it. You know what I mean? This is the only way in. So when I make a decision to turn my wealth over to God, I'm staying with that. It's a constant decision. But I can be off course slightly and I'm coming back. So I am correcting. Nobody can fly the beam perfectly. They used to tell us if you hear the beam solid, there's something wrong with your radio. Because nobody's that good. And the wind is moving us. And no one's that good to stay 100% undisturbed all the time. So we're making corrections, but we're never abandoning the decision that God is the answer to everything. We're just having a problem hearing the signal. So I would say we make the decision one time and maintain the contact on a daily basis as needed. That's just my opinion. When I pray, do I have to be on my knees? I don't think we have to. It's hard for me to get on my needs these days to tell you the truth. But I do remember in the beginning how powerful it was when my sponsor said, and now I want you to pray on your knees. And the powerful part of that was In order to do that, I had to get willing to do what he wanted me to do. And I made a noise when he kept insisting that is a noise that you all are familiar with and it's the most wonderful noise a pigeon can make. And I know you've heard it. And this is the noise. Okay. That's the noise, That's the sound of going from being unwilling to reluctantly willing. I want, I don't want, and then finally here comes, all right, there's that. I don' t want to, but I'm going to do it anyway. And I think I had that with praying on my knees. All right. And it actually felt good to go along with it. And I have no idea whether it affects my relationship with God. It affected my relationship With My Sponsor and it affected my Relationship With Me where I felt willing and I understood the lightness of being willing. Just the sense that things have been lifted from my shoulder because I was willing. So that was my experience with praying on the knees or not. Have you told someone that you will never get over drinking unless he or she allows you to make an amends? No, I haven't. and that would be a very heavy contingency for me I'm just saying for me this would be a very difficult situation because I have established the case that my sobriety is contingent on somebody else's behavior which is a tough position to put ourselves in and so perhaps this could be taken to a sponsor and re-look at the situation until it doesn't look like this until sobriety is sobrieting no matter what the outside circumstances are so that would be my suggestion on this is to get a disconnect between this other person and sobriete it's very difficult to have that in there we do it I mean we could easily establish that in our head but it would be a nice thing to get rid of so sobriety is just sobrietry it's between you and God your sponsor and your program alright what pisses you off? questions like this when you ask that sometimes it's fun to be pissed off god damn it but I don't really mean it it just feels fun to go through the drill again and shout those words and act indignant and do all that so goofing around I may do that from time to time but I really hate to get angry which is what this is saying but it's impossible to stop it but boy I'll tell you the frequency is considerably less than it was I'm talking about where you get angry so much that you are no longer in control of yourself and you're saying things and it used to happen to me all the time and now I would say it happens once a year something like that And when it does, I just feel awful. I'll tell you about one after I moved to Tampa. I was just making friends. And so I think it was three couples invited me to go to a... They had an extra ticket to a theater in the round thing in downtown Tampa. And when I got there, there were rows of seats around the stage. There's one over there, one over here. And it was open seating. You just picked whatever you wanted. And so they were going to go get Cokes and something to drink, and I said, give me your coats, and I'll save seven seats in a row. So I went over and put the coats down. And pretty soon two couples came along, and the guy started moving the coats. Okay, we're off to a bad start, right? and so I said hey these are for the people he said there's no reserved seats you can't reserve any seats and I'm going well I understand that but they're standing right there they're here already it's not like I'm waiting to see if they possibly come here they're over there getting the coats well you can say well finally his wife and the other couple talked him out of it You know, and just went, John or whatever his name was. Back off, back off, back off. So they sit in the next row up and he's like right behind me, just one over. And he's grumbling, I don't know if that's a guy like that or not, you know. Now, my friends come back didn't know anything about this. They have no clue. Hi, hi, hi. And they sit down next to me and I'm just getting warmed up inside. And all of a sudden, they just see me whip around to some guy behind there. What the hell, you poor kid like that? I can't believe it at all! And then I turn around and they're all looking at me like, what the hell was that about? But I wasn't through. Because the more I sat there, it was way more outrageous than just one tongue lashing like that. And so I spin around again, and fortunately the play starts, and they're all sitting. I know they were just going, jeez, who is this new guy to Tampa? He's a madman. And then, of course, as the play went on, I went, that was very bad. And I'm waiting for intermission to make an amend. And then the more I felt about making the amend, the more it got me mad. it really helped to just think you're going to go up to that guy during the intermission and you're gonna tell him you're sorry and it just felt good to decide to do that and I actually got unmad so the interission comes and I'm looking to see where they are and there they are he has his back to me and his wife and the other couple can see me coming and the looks in their eyes were very frightened And I tapped him on the shoulder, he turned around and I said, I'm so sorry, I hope you had a good show. And then he said, oh, I'm the one that was wrong. And it disappeared. But that loss of control, I had to hang over from it the next day. I felt awful. I just don't like to get there. So fortunately, it's a rarer and rarER occasion. and when I do lose it, I try to get it back quickly. I try the amend or whatever has to be done because that is a sick feeling. I just hate it. So hopefully nothing will happen this weekend. That would really be good. Yeah, he was leading the retreat. He told us all to screw off and went home. if God is everything is he my character defects or rather defects a distortion of my desire for God I love these are really interesting twists on seeing things Well, let's start with this. If God is everything. I believe that God is part of everything, but he's also apart from everything. in other words he exists beyond my ability to know him and he also exists so that I can feel contact with him so there's two levels of existence that I sense is there and so he's part of everything but he's also beyond everything simultaneously That would just be my sense. So, if he is everything, is he my character defects? Well, you could look at it this way. The character defect is the separation from God, so he has to be part of the equation. It's not separation from something else. so his existence is necessary in order to have a character defect so you can see that there is a connection but we certainly don't want to say that he is causing the character defects or that he's playing a role in the character effects it's the longing that I have and I'm chasing something else yes, so there's the fact that I miss God and am lost God's connected to that but he's certainly not part of the defect or are the defects a distortion of my desire for God yeah, it really is it is I don't think it's a distortion of the desire the desire is it's a distortion of my understanding of the problem where the distortion comes in is when I think that my real problem is not enough money. And it's really not enough God. The distortion is in the incorrect diagnosis of the problem. And so that's where I would put that. Man, you guys are wearing me out. Couldn't you just have something like, could you tell us what step one is? Earl did you write these oh okay okay do you do steps four through nine once or continuously well here we go we're going to get this duplicitous answer okay I know I've got a lot of old-timer friends who constantly are taking people through a fourth step again, a fifth step again etc. And maybe I do that myself and maybe I do that with the guys I sponsor but it's certainly not a formal arrangement. It is I'll see something disturbing them we'll sit down we'll inventory what it is that's going wrong we'll talk about it we'll ask God to remove it we'll get humble about it if there's any amends to make we'll do that so there isn't on my part a time set apart to review the whole thing the yearly thing or the semi-yearly thing this is done on a daily basis on a continuous basis and I see it as the continuation of the big fourth step that I took in the beginning and this is still part of it I'm just extending it and keeping it going that's just my approach to it there are I know there are plenty. I talk to old-timers all the time, and they just bring... They themselves go for another inventory, go through the annual house cleaning, whatever it is. I have stuck with continuous cleaning and relying on... If my peace of mind starts going away, I've got to do something that day. I'm not waiting for three months from now I'm going to find out what that is I want to stay in that happy, joyous and free thing all the time so I'm the pink cloud advocate that you hate well that guy comes in he's on a pink cloud he doesn't have any common sense he doesn' t realize you can't be on a paint cloud all the time what the hell are you talking about I think it's a choice I think it is a decision to seek the joy as a top priority and it's been with me that way for a long time, I basically sense that I've been pretty happy since the day I got here, got set free and And I also got set free from thinking about drinking. I haven't thought about taking a drink in 43 years. The thought of having a drink, it almost seems insanity. Why would I think of taking a Drink? It would be like taking poison or rat poison or something. It just has no place. It's just never come up. It's a pure gift. Now, do I think about eating 1,000 pancakes? Yes. Or some other insane thing that comes along. We all have those. I think I'll run away and go down there. I'm not going to go to work anymore. These thoughts come in. But drinking, it's just not one of them. All I can say is that I was given a wonderful gift and while I'm on that subject I bet I had three months sobriety before I heard the word slip it caught me by surprise I had no idea what the hell they were talking about but I was at this group and somebody came up and said you know Ralph from the Vienna group yeah, he had a slip and I honestly went What's that? And well, he went back out drinking. Really? So you can see it was a kind of a rare thing. Most of the people I got sober with just stayed sober. It was almost like we didn't know. Oh, I know. And I asked my sponsor, what is a slip? And he said, you're not allowed to have one. so being confused I said I guess when you come in they vote some people are allowed to have slips and some people aren't so there was a total absence of even talking or saying the word it was just, I don't remember saying it hardly and then I just think as treatment centers came along there was relapse prevention and there's suddenly this whole vernacular that I never heard of before, and I don't know whether that enhances people's awareness of it. Hey, you know, one thing, one option is a slip. And it just made it more acceptable as if it was part of the way of doing it. Well, you just have six slips and then get serious. But anyway, so my experience along those lines. And while I'm on those things, I was talking to some old-timers. And I asked them if they remember. Let's just show you how things come in. And then we think they've been there forever. I said, when do you remember the promises showing up? And they all agreed about 25 years ago. So if you went back 35 years and just were in an AA group and said, what do you think about the promises? They'd go, weren't they? They hadn't been discovered yet. And suddenly now they're on plastic cards and they're ordained as the promises, the promises. What else was? Now there was one other thing that showed up. Oh, no, I can't remember what it was, but they weren't part of the original deal, but then now they are. not that it makes any difference, but I thought you'd like that history lesson. Yeah, and we didn't yell back the person's name when they introduced themselves. You just went, my name's Joe and I'm an alcoholic and then he just went on with what he was going to do and that started when I had about five years and somebody told me I came from California and hand-holding during the Lord's Prayer. That came from California, that's what I heard. And one more thing I'll give you guys credit for is reading. We just read the preamble and started the meeting. That went on for years and years and then somebody came and said, you're not reading enough to get the meeting started. And so then we'd read and read and I can remember one time since you're not used to that you find it taking up a lot of meeting time to get through the reading which is one way of looking at it another way of look at it this is very precious stuff we ought to hear it as often as possible anyway Clancy was coming to DC and he likes reading he likes stuff read and we were going to organize a meeting where we read until he finally said how long are you guys going to be here? You know what I mean? Just keep going. It's customary of this group to read the traditions. Customary of these people to read this group, to read that chapter to the agnostics. See if we could get a rise here. Damn, the meeting's almost over and we haven't started yet. But we chickened out. Yep. I would have done, but Hal Marley would have taken them to the State Department. He didn't want to hear a bunch of crap from us.