A Spiritual Basis of Life – Cass V From Big Book Workshop Bville Nj Winter – Part 2 of 2 – Cass V. and Stanhope Nj

What we are doing here is we're going through the book Alcoholics Anonymous word by word, page by page. This is the way it was done with me and this is the ways I work with my sponsees. In the doctor's opinion, we found that we have suffered from a disease that is physical as well as mental. But the problem with the disease is that once the alcohol is out of our system, it is then a disease of mind. And the only solution to this disease is to find a power greater than ourselves. In Bill's story we got an example of how somebody in the grip of alcoholism could take himself the depths of despair and how through a program of recovery we can find happiness, joy, and peace. We've also done the chapter, There is a Solution, and more about alcoholism, which talks about the problem being in the mind and the blank spot that we all have that nothing in our sobriety is going to prevent us from picking up that drink if we're in one of those blind spots, unless God stands between us and the next drink. And that takes us to chapter 4, which is page 44. And this chapter makes the bridge between steps 1 and 3. This is basically, this chapter is step two How we are restored to sanity In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic If when you, and this is the definition of alcoholismo if when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take you are probably an alcoholic note that the two thoughts are divided by or, not and you don't have to have both of these factors you only need to have one of them if that be the case you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. To one who feels he is an atheist or an agnostic, such an experience seems impossible. But to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is alcoholic of the hopeless variety. one of the things that was explained to me is most of us have faith in a God or in a power greater than ourselves but the biggest problem is we don't trust that power and the way it was explained to me is when I'm not trusting I am an agnostic and if i'm an agnostic that means i'm relying on my thinking and the god of reason and not on anything else and that that simple presentation helps me understand this chapter a lot better to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to faith and again we're back to only for the alcoholic is this an alternative you know doomed to an alcoholic death or live on a spiritual basis anyone else in the world would say give me that spirituality the alcoholic i gotta take a cigarette break and think about this but it isn't so difficult about half our original fellowship were exactly that type At first, some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while, we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else. Perhaps it's going to be that way with you, but cheer up. Something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted. If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life was sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. And to me, my standards were always up here and my behavior was always down here. And I just couldn't get them together. And I kept beating myself up and I didn't know what the problem was. I thought there was something intrinsically wrong with me and until I accepted my alcoholism I wasn't able to put standards and behavior on the same line and it is through this program that I have been able to do that and like any human being I fall on my face more times than not but we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how much we tried we could wish to be moral we could Wish to be philosophically comforted in fact, we could Wish these things with all our might but the needed power wasn't there our human resources as marshaled by the will were not sufficient they failed utterly And that explained to me why time after time I would repeat the exact same mistake. I would swear I would never do this again. I'm not talking about drinking, I'm talking about behavior. I'll never do it again, I am going to treat my kids better, I am never going to get involved with this kind of guy again. And I was always right back where I had started from. It was as if I could not learn from my mistakes. And like Fonsa very kindly pointed out, well that's true Cass, you have a diseased mind. That's why. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how were we to find this power? Well that's exactly what this book is about and there's another promo for the book. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral. And it means, of course, that we are going to talk about God. Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship. But his faith falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God. So we have reopened the subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored. When I work with people, I don't pull any punches about God. I was told the only thing I needed to know about God was, Cass, you're not it. and that worked for people who have a real serious problem with it I really don't lose my words there's no way to take somebody through this program in my experience by doing that and what I've seen is if God is going to drive them out of AA who will drive them back in We know how he feels. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been violently anti-religious. To others, the word God brought up a particular idea of him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely. we were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak even cowardly we looked upon this world warring individuals warring theological systems an inexplicable calamity with deep skepticism we looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly how could a supreme being have anything to do with it all one of the things my sponsor really had a drum into me was that god gave me free will and it was a gift and he never takes back a gift he will never interfere with my free will if i choose to ignore him i will pay the consequences if I ask him to get involved he will get involved there's a friend of mine in the program who describes his God as very polite he doesn't get involved unless he's asked and who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow yet in other moments we found ourselves thinking when enchanted by a starlit night who then made all this there was a feeling of war and wonder but it was fleeting and seen wrong yes we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences let us make haste to reassure you we found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves we commenced to get results even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is god there's a friend of mine in this program who's an atheist and he truly is an atheist. And to get the concept of a power greater than himself, he had tremendous difficulty with. He had no problem with the spirituality because spirituality has nothing to do with God. It has to do mit action, how you behave and the way he dealt with it was to see himself as a lesser power and he was able to go to the room and say this lowercase god group of drunk was a power greater than himself and he was able put programs together that way much to our relief we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God. Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to assess contact with him. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him. If you're having problems with the concept of God, one of the things that is recommended is to pray for the willingness to believe. If there is a God, you're going to score. If there isn't, you have nothing to lose. to us the realm of the spirit is broad roomy all-inclusive never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek it is openly believed to all men and this by the way gives us some of the promises of the second step um to go back as soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence the spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps and then the second promise is we found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him when therefore we speak to you of God we mean your own conception of God this applies too to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you at the start this is all we needed to commence spiritual growth to effect our first conscious relation with God if we understood him afterwards we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach that was growth but if we wish to grow we have to begin somewhere so we used our own conception however limited it was this chapter basically tells us that this power that we're looking for is actually within ourselves and when we get to the 11th step we're going to find that we are supposed to learn to trust our instincts which are god-given when we're trying to make decisions and one of the things i found when i finished my steps was that for the first time in my life i wasn't having any problems figuring out what was rationalization on my part and what was my gut and my gut doesn't let me down um am i at the start do you know okay we needed to ask ourselves but one short question do i now believe or am i even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself as soon as a man can say he does believe or is willing to bleed we emphatically assure him that he is on his way it has been repeatedly proven among us that upon the simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built okay we're going to go to page five we did that already all right this was great news for us but we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith which has seemed difficult to believe when people presented us with spiritual approaches how frequently did we all say i wish i had what that man has i'm sure it will work if i could only believe as he believes but i cannot accept as surely true the many articles of faith which are so plain to him so it was comforting to learn that we could commence at a simpler level when i was real new in this program There was a man at a meeting, and he was talking about the fact that he was down in Florida, and he got a phone call from his brother in New York saying that he had to come up with $500. They were going to cancel the insurance on a fleet of trucks he had unless he came up with the $500, and he's listening to his brother and he didn't have the $500 and his brother's going well you've got to get the money and he turned around to his brother and he said the only thing I have to do is don't drink go to meetings and work the steps and he basically turned it over to God there was no one he could turn to for the money and the next day he found himself with a check for like $550 that he had completely forgot about. Somebody was paying him back for something. And he didn't get all bent out of shape and he wasn't all twisted up and at the time I was real new in the program and I was losing the castle that I owned which was where I lived, it was my place of business and I was losing everything associated with it. And I went over to this man after the meeting and I asked him, I said, where did you get such faith? And he said, I had it by working in the program. And I said but how do you get that faith? And he says, Cass, just pray for me. The first five years of my sobriety I did not know where the next dollar was coming from because I had scuttled my career and I had skuttled my financial stability and by working this program I literally anybody who knows me I don't worry about money and I always figured if it came down to a roof over my head I'd move in with one of you and that would take care of it besides the seeming inability to accept much on faith we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy sensitiveness and unreasoning prejudice and these are three things that are literally barriers to spirituality obstinancy which is stubbornness sensitiveness and unreasonable prejudice I have to be open minded I have to look at the men and women who went before me and see the changes that they've gone through and say if that's what works for them then I want that then I gotta do what they did many of us have been so touchy but even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned, and that's a warning. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process. We hoped no one else would be prejudiced for as long as some of us were. I'll tell you how I did my first four steps. I nearly drank. And it was the day I nearly drunk, and for whatever reason, I made the phone call to my sponsor before I picked up that drink. And she told me, she says, I know you were going to drink. and I said well how did you know and she said you're refusing to do your fourth step if you don't find out what's wrong it can't be fixed and you know I love the fact that God seems to talk to us very softly like he's given us this book and we can read it and we follow all his directions and that's our choice and if we choose not to then he brings out the big ghost and I've been trying for a while to avoid the big guns. They're pretty uncomfortable. The reader may still ask why he should believe in a power greater than himself. We think there are good reasons. Let's have a look at some of them. The practical individual of today is a stickler for facts and results. Nevertheless, the 20th century readily accepts theories of all kinds provided they are firmly grounded in fact we have numerous theories for example about electricity everybody believes them without a murmur of doubt why this ready acceptance? simply because it is impossible to explain what we see, feel, direct and use without a reasonable assumption as a starting point everybody nowadays believes in scores of assumptions for which there is good evidence but no perfect visual proof. And does not science demonstrate that visual proof is the weakest proof? It is being constantly revealed as mankind studies the material world that outward appearances are not inward realities at all. To illustrate, the prosaic steel girder is a mass of electrons whirling around each other at incredible speed. These tiny bodies are governed by precise laws, and these laws hold true throughout the material world. Science tells us so. We have no reason to doubt it. When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material worlds and life as we see it, there is an all-powerful guiding creative intelligence, Right there, our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so. We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Where our contention is true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere. Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents spearheads of gods ever advanced in creation we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word the alpha and the omega the beginning and end of it all rather vain of us wasn't it and i just look at my life and how i was running it and an ape could have done a better job. We who have traveled this dubious path beg you to lay aside prejudice even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about. Actually, we used to have no reasonable conception whatever. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritually minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness, and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. And this is something that this program has given me. Because I didn't have stability, happiness, or usefulness until I was able to go through the personality change. And what we talked about before, how we actually live on assumptions and we don't demand proof. This table is a mass of electrons all put together. if we separated them it doesn't exist but it's solid and we just assume that it's tangible and it can't be divided but it can it can be divided into something we can see and this we accept because we can touch it and the thing i wanted more than anything in life was the stuff I couldn't touch. I wanted peace, and I wanted happiness that didn't have the rug pulled out from it. And the only people I saw with that were the people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's why I decided to listen to my sponsor. Instead we looked at the human defects of these people and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance while we were intolerant ourselves. We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of the trees. We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. And to me that was, okay, I'm going to pray for this and if I don't get it, God doesn't work. and my sponsor heard that and she taught me a new way of praying like I had to pray for God's will for me and not what I thought I wanted in our personal stories you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the power which is greater than himself whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference experience has taught us that these are matters about which, for our purpose, we need not be worried. They are questions for each individual to settle for himself. And here come some more promises for this second set. On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to and believes in a power greater than himself. and the second promise this power has in each case accomplished the miraculous the humanly impossible as a celebrated American statement put it let's look at the record you know the difference between AA and the psychiatric effort is we both look at our past but the psychiatric effort says that we who are the problem can solve the problem. And AA says all we have to do is get this power greater than ourselves involved, and he will remove those things that were blocking us. If psychiatrists could produce, or counselors, anybody could produce The personality change that the men and women of Alcoholics Anonymous go through by working this program, you've got to remember it takes about six months to go through the first 164 pages and do all your steps. If any professional could produce that change, that person would have a line to their door that would circle the globe. and it just doesn't happen here are thousands of men and women worldly indeed they flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater than ourselves to take a certain attitude towards that power and to do certain simple things there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of total failure of their human resources, they found a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements. And that's the 12th step. Once confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence, they show the underlying reason why they were making heavy going of life leaving aside the drink question they tell why living was so unsatisfactory they show how the change came over them when many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness of the presence of God today is the most important fact of their lives they present a powerful reason why one should have faith And by the way, this is basically the way we're supposed to tell our story from the podium. They tell why living was so unsatisfactory. They show how the change came over them. And they're able to say that the consciousness of the presence of God today is the most important fact of their lives. There's a group I mentioned to you called the By the Book Group. My daughter, who has three years' sobriety, is she and I are going to be doing two wives in the family afterwards. We're going to do it together. And she has gone through a tremendous personality change. And most people who know me today don't accept the fact that I was a flaming bitch and I couldn't be trusted. and my daughter told me, she says I'm warning you now mom that when I sit down and I start I am going to tell the group that you were a bitch and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree this world of ours has made more material progress in the last century than in all the millenniums which went before Almost everyone knows the reason. Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today. Yet in ancient times, material progress was painfully slow. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by superstition, tradition and all sorts of fixed ideas. Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought around Earth preposterous. Others came near put in Galileo to death for his astronomical heresy. We asked ourselves this, are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realms of material? In my case I was willing to let God take over anything. He could take over my job, he could takeover my family. The only thing I really didn't want him having a say in was my relationship with men. I figured I still had, you know, some research to do there. Even in the present century, American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Had not all efforts at flight failed before? Did not Professor Langley's flying machine go to the bottom of the Potomac River? was it not true that the best mathematical minds had proved man could never fly had not people said God had reserved this privilege to the birds only 30 years later the conquest of the air was almost an old story and airplane travel was in full swing but in most fields our generation have witnessed complete liberation about thinking show any longshoreman a Sunday supplement describing a proposal to explore the moon by means of a rocket, and he will say, I bet they do it. Maybe not so long either. This was written in 1965. Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which мы throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does? Okay, and right now this next paragraph is going to give us a list of problems that actually can be answered by the promises in this book. We have to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view and here's the problem we were having trouble with personal relationships we couldn't control our emotional nature we were a prey to misery and depression we couldn t make a living we had a feeling of uselessness we were full of fear we were unhappy we couldn't seem to be a real help to other people was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels or lunar flights of course it was you know the second step the alcohol is not mentioned anymore from this point on in the book what it's talking about is alcoholism untreated alcoholism And this is what it is. When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God idea did. And the reason our ideas didn't work is because our thinking failed us. and that is where the disease of alcoholism is located in our thinking. The Wright brothers almost childish faith that they could build a machine which would fly was the mainspring of their accomplishment. Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us that God's sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the rights would never fly. Logic is great stuff. We liked it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our senses, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man's magnificent attributes. We, agnostically inclined, would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to a reasonable approach and interpretation. Hence, we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we make it more sane and logical to believe than not believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, We don't know. When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing God either is or he isn't what is our choice to be? and that's basically it God either is or isn't what's the question? I'm either going to get sober or I'm not going to get sober And if I don't find this power greater than in myself, I'm not going to make it. Arrived at this point we were squarely confronted... I just want to add, I am not saying you have to find a God, you have to find God, you have to find a power greater than yourself. Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn't duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason towards the desired shore of faith, the outlines and the promise of the new land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands had stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that reason had brought us so far, but somehow we couldn't quite step for sure perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support the hardest thing for me to do was to admit that I was insane and I looked at the things I did in my life and I said was it all a sham and of course you know I have to catapult over no help so you know i'm looking at things and i'm saying well then i must have accomplished nothing in life and i had my father really had a way in the end and she said you know it doesn't mean that you didn't do good things you're and you know the expression that we all hear we're not bad people trying to get good we're sick people trying to get better and that gave me a lot of comfort and the thing she said afterwards was actually more important she told me, she said God did not materialize for your cat the day you walked into Alcoholics Anonymous he's been around a little longer than that That was natural, but let us think a little more closely without knowing it. Have we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? Or did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith. Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of reason. So in one way or another we discovered that faith had been involved all the time. We found too that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose flesh that used to bring on. Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money and ourselves and then with a better motive have we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships have to do with pure reason? or nothing we saw it left were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed did not these feelings after all determine the course of our existence it was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith or love or worship in one form or another we have been living by faith and no less imagine life without faith where nothing left for pure reason it wouldn't be life but we believed in life of course we did we could not prove life in the sense that you prove a straight line at the shortest distance between two points yet there was could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons created out of nothing meaning nothing whirling on to a destiny of nothingness of course we couldn't the electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that at least so the chemist said hence we saw that reason isn't everything neither is reason as most of us use it entirely dependable though it emanate from our best mind what about people who prove that man could never fly yet we had to be we have been seeing another kind of flight a spiritual liberation from this world people who rose above their problems It's possible, and we only smile. We have seen spiritual relief, but like to tell ourselves it wasn't true. Before I took my third step, from the time my early memory as a child, I was afraid of my own shadow. And whenever I was confronted with a new situation, I used to have this knot in my stomach. I'm about to pick up the telephone to talk to a creditor. I had a knot in, in my tummy. And I took my third step in turning my will and my life over to the God of my understanding. And I was at a meeting, and I had just shared, and I noticed that, or I thought, I didn't have that knot anymore because it wasn't there. And so the next time I went to a meeting, right before I was about to share, I noticed the knot was gone. And I noticed it when I was talking to customers or I was dealing with an odd situation. I didn't have that knot in my stomach. And I was 44 years old and I had lived with this for quite an earliest memory. and I spoke to my sponsor about it and she told me she said Kat that may be your second step gift or your third step gift but there is a gift that knot in the last nine years has come back I don't know two or three times it sure as shit it's a signal but I'm off my program actually we are fooling ourselves what faith is there were faith in a power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our makeup just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there that he may be found. And so it is with us. We can only clear the ground a little bit. If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then if you wish, you can join us on the broad highway. With this attitude, you cannot fail. The consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you. In this book, you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. His story is so interesting that some of it should be told now. His change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving. Okay, that story, by the way, is Our Southern Friend on page 497. and the guy who wrote that is Fitz Mayo that's F-I-T-Z-M-A-Y-O Akron, Ohio where Dr. Bob's house is they have photographs of a lot of the early AAs and one section of the house has the photographs of certain early Aas and then the story they wrote in the original manuscript so this was Fitz Mayo our friend was a minister's son he attended church school where he became religious at what he thought an overdose of religious education for years thereafter he was dogged by trouble and frustration business failure, insanity, state aloneness suicide these calamities in his immediate family embittered and depressed him post-war disillusionment ever more serious alcoholism impending mental and physical collapse brought him to the point of self-destruction. One night, when confined in a hospital, he was approached by an alcoholic who had known his spiritual experience. Our friend's gorge rose as he bitterly cried out, If there is a God, He certainly hasn't done anything for me. But later, alone in his room, he asked himself this question, Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong? while pondering the answer he felt as though he lived in hell then like a thunderbolt a great flood came it crowded out all else who are you to say there is no god this man recounts that he tumbled out of bed to his knees in a few seconds he was overwhelmed by a conviction of the presence of god it poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide of flood The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the presence of infinite power and love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his creator. That's what got Finn's cornerstone fixed in place. No late of this institute has shaken him. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night, years ago, it disappeared. Say for a few brief moments of temptation, the thought of drink has never returned, and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink, even if he would. God had restored his sanity. What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its elements are simple. Circumstances made him willing to believe. He humbly offered himself to his maker, then he knew. Even so, God restored us all to our right mind. To this man the revelation was sudden. Some of us grow into it more slowly. But he has come to all who have honestly sought him. when we draw near to him he discloses himself to us and as we get closer to the God of our understanding my God finds different ways to talk to me I can't even describe him because as soon as I try to describe him he changes and he also changes the way he talks to me sometimes it's my instinct sometimes it says you know like a oh wow that's a clever thought And I know it's not mine. One of the things I want to say before we take a break, several years ago a speaker by the name of Bob O spoke at the New Jersey Convention. And one of the thing he talked about was he talked about he was part of a group of big book thumpers. And these were, they called themselves the golden flippers because these guys could not put together any time at all. And it turned out it was like 20 of them, and they got together. And they went through this book, the first 164 pages, and they went though it word by word, page by page. And when it said pray, they prayed. And when they said act, they acted. And they did, and then paused wherever there was an instruction in the book. And as a group, they would individually take that instruction and take it home. Twenty years later, he said there were, I'm bad with numbers, I think he said that there were 18 who were still sober. And the other two had died, and they also died sober. That's 100% recovered. And this book was written for male order sobriety.