The Mediocrity Complex and the Mind of Self-Cuddling – 1958 – John V.

My name is John and I'm an alcoholic. It's very hard to speak at the end of a conference like this. I have been to many conferences. This afternoon when I was sitting down, when Ken was talking, I started to finally understand what the love of God was. I thought I knew, but I didn't. But all of a sudden in my heart came this love for all of you, and I know you love me. And I started to realize if I could love so many people, how this great God, this power greater than we are, could love us all, and And that's why we're here. I love the state of North Carolina, I love AA of Carolina. Somehow or another there is a different kind of spirit which you feel here in that Howard said, you can't express it in words, you just have to be here, a spirit which prevails, which hangs upon this meeting, and I hope some of the spirit we are going to take with us. I have been to meetings again. You know it is pretty hard when you have to speak so many times that you don't attend meetings. Speaking at a meeting is not the same as listening, as learning. I learned here. I learned about the steps again. Again, I never will forget what was said that remove is not the same as taking away. I won't forget Howard when he said hope and honesty and humility and happiness to four ages. I won' t forget when someone said you carry the message but let them come to you. I won't forget forever the twelve traditions. I didn't know as well as I should, and I felt ashamed for a while. I hope we all do. Now why am I here? I'm an alcoholic. I may have a white collar on and a black shirt, but I wasn't always this way. Primarily, I am someone exact like you, probably even worse than you were. But I started to learn something. I startedto receive something. I got something, finally. You see, when we are young, we want to make our own happiness. I'm not going to get into my story completely. I wanted to be a happy man. I think all of us want to be happy people. And we think that we can make our own happiness by getting money and by getting power. And that's the way I worked. Where I was born, people were not rich. I didn't have too many things. And I got jealous. this jealousy brought me to the point where I wanted things I wanted to have them and I worked hard we all can work hard and we always can get probably what we want as long as we remember that we have to pay a price for success and I had to pay it I became wealthy I became powerful I had a very good position people looked up to me This was America. Someone who came from another country in 12 years' time could get together enough that he could rest the rest of his life. All very pleasant, isn't it? But inside of us is where happiness counts. Happiness doesn't stem from outside. Happiness stems from the inside, and inside things were not right. For, as I said, we had to pay a price. And then we start really to think a little bit. I remember how I first started to have a certain kind of disposition of mind, a disposition of minds that did run into the psychological. We start to make a self-analysis of ourselves, but a self analysis leaving one out, one who is in our program, whose spirit made our program. who is in this meeting, who was in this conference, who still is, who will go with us home. And the psychological mind, which gave me self-analysis, became self-excused. When we start to think about the reasons why we did drink, they become so often an excuse. And excuses never work. The only place where we have to arrive to and come to is a place of self-surrender and self- surrender is only to be found at that point where we become desperate in desperation you know from time to time people say to me isn't it great that this fellow didn't have to go all the way down i don't know i think most of us have to go all away down for he has to have been in heaven in hell first before we ever will know what heaven is and i was in hell and i tried to rationalize with myself how i got there but by rationalizing you don't get out of it you stay there and hell gets darker and darker and then we start to think about complexes we are living in a world full of psychiatry and psychology, and of course they are good in themselves. We start to think about our superior complex, and we start to thinking about our inferiority complex, and no one or even ourselves ever thinks about our mediocrity complex. Our complex that we are full of self-satisfaction. We aren't so bad as people make us to be. and then our minds finally start to run into the mind of self-cuddling. We love ourselves so much that we like even to cuddle ourselves. We like to think that we are God's gift to either women or to the world. We like the thing that the jobs don't go on without we being there. finally we think that we are just economic animals and as long as we make the money and just give it to other people to our wives or sweethearts or whatever they may be we are doing all right but one time there comes a point of no return and that point of no return comes only in desperation I don't think there is anyone here who is sober and happy who hasn't reached that point. The point in which we do not know anymore what to do. The point at which we, as it were, want to throw ourselves away. The point of suicide. The point self-erasure. I've been there many times. I know the point, what it is, when the wheels in your head turn and turn and you think you get crazy. I know the point that you want to pray and you cannot pray And I know the point that you pray and you shake at the same time And then instead of being the person who is born to be a social animal we become antisocial and we start to walk along Can you remember those days when you walked along I do. I know those days when there was no one at all who even cared for me, I thought. No human being had cared for, my own father and mother were in Europe and I was in America and I couldn't communicate with them. I believed that they still may have cared for. My brother was living here and he didn't care. He said I never want to talk to you anymore. All the people who I thought were my friends had completely forgotten me, not only forgotten but they made it known that he even didn't want to talk to me. What then? Then you are on a dead-end road and the dead end road can only lead one flight. And then all of a sudden it is as if someone does care. Someone cares. You know, it was a long time ago that I came into AA. I couldn't do anything else. AA is something like the Ministry. You never should go in the Ministry unless you cannot do anything out. I couldn t do anything but I had to. this was the last resort, and I didn't want to. But one day when I had lost all the money I had, when I have lost even a roof over my head, when I had left all the family I had and all the so-called friends I had an old lady came to the place I lived, an $8 a week room in Morristown, New Jersey where I still am. And this old lady didn't say very much. She didn't even talk to me. The only thing what she did, she asked the landlord if she could go to the room of this young fellow who she understood was such a drunk. The only thing she did she put a book next to my bed, the old book in the yellow cover. You remember that old book? And I believe that that old lady prayed. She didn't ask to wait if I came home. She just put it there, put it there with a good thought in her mind. She wanted to help someone and that someone was was just... And I came home drunk as always, and I found that book. It was a strange thing. I had seen it before. I had bought it once, and then I had sold it again for two double martinis. My friend needed it more than I did. And then the next morning, I did read that book, and in that book I found my story, the story of someone who is hopeless, who is at the end of his road and who can't go any further. And then finally I called up and I asked, how do you get there? And then there was someone else who cared. The old minister I called, he knew AA. We talked two or three days ago about what a man can do. And here was a man of God. For the first time in my life, for I didn't have a God anymore. I was agnostic. For the first time in my life, I could talk to someone who I felt cared for me. You know, people don't have to say you love them. You don't have to hear it. You can feel it. I felt that this man just loved me. And he loved me so much that he could get me sober even in an hour and a half time. He put his hands around me, and he got me sober. And I promised this man that I would go to a meeting two or three days later. What happened in between those few days, I don't know. Complete oblivion. I had been in many blackouts. I had being in many automobile accidents, drunk. I still don't what happened those few day. And even if I would know, I wouldn't tell you. I suspect what happened. And then I came to my first meeting of AA in Morristown, New Jersey. And there I found people waiting for me, expecting. It was 14 years ago. And the old preacher was there too, having a chair ready. And people talked to me and here were friends, here were people who, in whose face did shine a light, as Walter said. I'm not so good at all those names as he is. I have to put my story in two-syllable words. I can talk better. I am not born here. You try to talk in Chinese, you'll find out. And here were people who that time were at the bottom of the ladder. I still remember a fellow who was one eye, one eye had lost by drinking and another fellow came to me and said Johnny don't worry when you shake so hard I got the convulsion last week here. I came in last week and I remember still all those people who were there, those people who loved you, cared for you, who were not interested in what you had, but what you could become. Who looked at you as a human being, a human being with a potential, who looked at us as God does look at you. Not the way you are, but how you and what you can become. And these people became my friends and this old lady someday she'll be a saint. A few days later she sent me a a little package. There's eight pieces of candy in it with a little note on it, and I hadn't talked to her yet. Johnny, if you want to take a drink, here is something that will help you. That's the best present I ever got. I had gotten very expensive presents, thousands of dollars worth, when everything went right, but never anything like this, with a thought in it, with a prayer in it. With hope in it! And she gave it to me, and she never said a word. She only had a thought. And I stayed sober two days and three days and four days and one meeting and two meetings and three meetings and ten meetings and forty meetings and a hundred meetings. You know, those days we went to meetings. That's why I like North Carolina. I think people go to meetings here more. They expose themselves more. Up where I come from, people don't go to so many meetings and they expect to be sober. They can't be. Sorry. You only feel at home with those people who are like you are. You know, I stand in front of people every Sunday and preach. I have to. I want to. But the very best thing for me to do is to talk here. For here I talk to people who understand what I'm saying, who feel, who are in the same boat as I am. And so we went to meetings. I remember that first year I went to 167 meetings, and I started to talk. I think the greatest thing for a person to do is start to talk, go out on a limb, say you are an alcoholic, go on. When you once have said that, it's pretty hard to take a drink, I believe. It was for me. There are so many people who keep quiet, don't say very much. Go out and speak. Try to help. For if only in helping do you get help, you see. It is reversers, everything in AA. It is not receiving, it is giving. For if you give, then you receive. So after a few meetings, after three months or four months of sobriety, in these days we had to go to our so-called old-timers. The old-timers looked you over. Just like right now, old-timers, I mean anyone over a year, they can spot a phony. They wanted to look if there was any phonies around. And you know, in my day and age, when you were 36, and I was 36 when I came in, that was a little young. You couldn't have drunk in a whiskey for that. Liquor, John Smith would say. well I had drunk all the liquor I wanted you know I was the fellow who made all the liquor you got drunk on and the liquor didn't cost me a penny either I dare you to get sober when you don't have to pay for it so I was looked over by all the old timers and finally I came to an old timer and he had a daughter and he had been sober for four or five years a friend of his is sitting right in this room and there are a few people who know him and after three or four months they asked him if I could marry his daughter I think it was done in the complete AA spirit give and you shall receive isn't it But he saw it was a little bit too much, I think. Later he told me that it was the closest thing he ever got to being drunk. But we got one another anyway. I was talking to my sweet wife just about two hours ago. She wants to give you her best. She knows many people here. She has many friends here and she loves you all. We have been married now for about 14 years, 13 years And our marriage is an AA marriage Her father is a drunk and I am a drunk And it is a good thing she's married to me Otherwise she would be a drunk too, I tell you right now Then I became a father when I was a pretty old man I have four of the most wonderful kids You know, they never saw their father drink Never And you can look at them and you can see it too Someday they will start to drink, I suppose That's all right They know their father now as someone who helps people They know the father of someone who goes in a study And starts to talk to drunks And people call up all the time And so we start in AA and we start to grow, slowly but surely. By going to meetings, by learning, by studying—I wish we would do more studying in AA. I wish we will do more learning. We think that things come by themselves, nothing comes by itself. And then the stumbling blocks start to come. I have been here now for the last three days. I've been traveling for the last two months, 20,000 miles, speaking, doing things, helping people. And even here in Asheville, I don't know how many people came to me with stumbling blocks. I don'T have all the answers, believe me. I only can talk of what I think. And stumbling block came to ME. I was an agnostic. I didn't believe in anything. but one thing I couldn't understand and I had to learn what it was is who got me really sober who was it and before I would ever find that answer I never could take that second step in our program and believe you me and I heard it say by another speaker you cannot stay sober for a long time on the first step and on the last step that's absolutely impossible you have to take them all without an exception the people who made our program were not just people they had an inspiration they had a revelation they knew what human nature was and they went through it and they tried beforehand and it didn't work and so i first had to learn where it came from and I found it. I found where it came from, from a power greater than I was. A power greater then I was who sent that old lady over, who made me receptive even to listen to her, who make me receptive to the point that I was going to read a book, who makes me receptive go to the meeting, my first one. You see that is the disposition of mind then it comes to the point of surrender willingness a willingness to do what you don't want to do as a selfish individual and then all those other things come in and you start to hear words you never heard before or don't understand anyway you hear words of repentance and you start to check what they mean and they mean something totally different than what you had learned before as a little boy on your mother's knee or in sunday school repentance is nothing else but change of mind your mind changes that's what it is you are repentant not remorseful but repentant You have a change of mind, a change of mind from soft to someone greater than you are. You start to learn about this power. You start feel him slowly but surely. And I know there are so many people in this room who have come to me and said, and what is this then, this power greater than we are? What is the kind of a God you believe in? I hope I'm not out of order to just say a few words on that you know as far as I'm concerned and this is how I started I always had God every person regardless of what he is has some kind of a God has some faith in some kind of a god, god is nothing else or faith is nothing else as that which you put at the center of your life What I put at the center of my life was Johnny ******. And what I had to put at the centerof my life is someone else, that power greater than I am, God. And so we have this whole gallery of our little gods all over the place, a little god called drink and a little god called sex and a Little God Called This. And we worship them. we bow our heads before him and we give him tribute and we have done that and we had a very big one and that was a big bottle and we worshipped it to such an extent that we became high priests in his kingdom and then we start to wake up then we started to surrender and what we have to do is only one thing really and that is take all those gods with a small g down from their throne and adhere to that one. That one who, as far as I'm concerned, is the creator God who made everything. You know, one time I went to Florida with a young fellow. He just died four weeks ago. And he was sober when I got in he was sober for a very short time and then later he got drunk again and we went to michigan to straighten him out twice but he died sober and he couldn't believe in god at all he saw all this second step and whatever followed was nonsense when we were in florida he picked up a little crab you know those things you get as a souvenir with florida written on the on the back and he was so intrigued by that thing that he took it home and I'm a very fast driver and that crab must have lost a leg when I was going around the curve and he came home and he put that crab without one leg he put it in the someplace in the kitchen I suppose and he just watched it you know what happened that one little leg of that crab grew back every day a little bit that man had grown back for about three months it stopped didn't grow further and he said to me one day he said you know i know what you're talking about now isn't it remarkable that that crab in the first place knew that it had to grow a leg back and then when that leg had grown it knew exactly where to stop it didn't keep on growing at all You see, he started to see and realize that there was this Creator God, the God who made everything, who made you and me, who also made liquor. And He had a good purpose in it too, for if we believe in this Creator, God, then we really believe in one thing special, and that is that we live in the house what someone else did build. You didn't build it and I didn't built it. We have it just in trust don't we? And therefore when we see things we don't like then we have to think about now here was there a reason for it so many years ago? It's just like living in an old house from time to time we buy an old houses and we say well now why do people have closets that way? We don't need them anymore. But there was a reason for it. There is a reason for everything. There's a purpose for everything, there is a purpose for you and for me and for everything we see. Even for the things we think have no purpose whatsoever. And for the things we think are bad, they have a purpose. You know to me I even go further. Even alcohol has a purpose. Even if alcohol only had the purpose to get me drunk and make me an alcoholic than it had a purpose. For if I hadn't become one, I never would have been the same person I am right now, wouldn't I? And you wouldn't be either, and we wouldn't have known this fellowship, and you wouldn't have know this spirit, and he wouldn't that had the revelation of this Creator God in our lives. So everything has a good thing to it. I live in the house that someone else did build but I go a step further than that not only that we live in the house that someone built but that someone is our father and I know that. I cannot tell you exactly how I know but I know one of the things I think what I learned this afternoon was that I can love you when I live in world where someone loves me even more than that. And if I live in a house with my father, then we live all in a big family, don't we? And you are my brother and Walter is my brother and there is a sister of mine and there's another one. We live in the big family and what happened to you is a concern to me and if there is something wrong with you And if you get sick, you know what the father and the mother of a household do? They even love you more. They even care more for you. And if I am sick, and if I'm an alcoholic, then I know that my father even cares more for me. Yes, we live in the house of someone else, but that someone else is my father. And I'm so glad to live in that family as long as I keep obeying the rules of the house. And I know what those rules of the house are. These rules of the house are nothing else but loving and caring and be tolerant. We live in a big family and what happened to you is a concern to me. And if there is something wrong with you and if you get sick, you know what the father and the mother of a household do? They even love you more. They even care more for you. And if I am sick and if I'm an alcoholic, then I know that my father even cares more for me. He has me live in a house of someone else but that someone else is my father. And I'm so glad to live in that family as long as I keep obeying the rules of the house. And I know what those rules ofthe house are. These rules ofthouse are nothing else but loving and caring and be tolerant and take the other point of view and don't condemn and don' t judge meet people as they are and if I know that then I can go through the world like a free being for I know that he cares and still we can go a step further for you see there is not all that we have to believe of this power greater than we are but even more than that we can say that this power greater than we are ones and his only thoughts are love nothing else but love and that love became him in person a person and that person I know and that version I met and that portion I can really give my hand to and then I start to realize that there is a possibility that some people long ago could write a poem and say and I walk with him and I talk with him, and I know he calls me my own. And then I don't have to worry about anything, about nothing at all. You know some of my very best friends are not of my own denomination, don't worry what I am, forget it. A very good friend of mine is Monsignor McNulty who is the president of Seton Hall, and John McNulty and I are real friends. And one day I heard him say, John, he said, you know how you and I can go through the world happy? People want to be real. That is one hand on one another and the other hand in the hand of God. That's how I try to go. That' s how we have to go, we alcoholics. And that's what I learned then in AA. And after I had learned these things and I started to help people. I started to find out another thing. I started to find out what prayer was. You know, prayer is not asking a question. My father knows that I need a lot of things. He knows those things beforehand and he doesn't have to be asked. My boy doesn't have to ask me not even for a bicycle. I know he needs it. And he certainly doesn't have to ask me for breakfast. I know he wants it and he can have it and he can have everything I have. No, the only thing what to me prayer is and you may not agree with me but think about it for a moment is that I want to listen what he has to say to me and he speaks he talks he talks to people like Ken and he talks to people like Howard and he talked to people like Walter and he talk to people I meet here and he tells me what I should do and from time to time sure I want to get bigger and bigger again and still this old Johnny lives and he is still self-centered I know but then on the other hand I know what he wants me to do and then I feel at peace like I felt this afternoon and like I feel tonight at peace with God and at peace with the world and at ease with my fellow men and I love him and then I have a purpose and I never will be perfect I can become bishop and I can becomes cardinal it makes no difference from time to time I want to be perfect and some people think that they can become perfect and they can I am still this old Johnny F*** the way I was born there are a lot of inherited traits in me and then I hear another voice say to me Johnny you would like to have those things be taken away don't you but i can't and i won't but i'll tell you something i'll teach you how to live with them how to accept them i teach you that my grace my power my spirit is good enough for you and just leave it right there and then i can go on again when i see my faults and i try to do something about it then from time to time I don't succeed, I tell you. I'm still human too, you know. But I get courage to go further, to go farther for I know that in the end all will be right. And so you learn those things about the power greater than you are. You learn about prayer. You learn abut, yes, you learn about giving. Giving. Not receiving as much, but on giving, you know I'll tell you a story when I told my mother in Europe that I was in AA and then I wasn't drinking anymore and she knew that I had been a playboy you know that I have been a bad egg you know what my mother said child I always knew it I always knew you would come out in the end all right for a child of so many prayers can get lost. There you are. It may be, and I was talking to someone a few days ago right here in Nashville. I said, you know why you probably are sober today, Sonny? Your mother who is dead now, she may be praying for you still up there. That's why you're sober. That' s why I want your prayers. That''s why I prayed for you. There some people with trouble here tonight i know that i pray for you you pray for me then they started to learn something else you see and walter said this it's great prayer of saint francis for it is in giving that we receive we all want to be happy people do we All of us. We want to be free people. We want to go through the world with no cares. We never will have it, but we'll be there close. You know how we get it? By giving. Not by giving money. Sure that little money we give, let's give five percent away. What does it matter? I did drink fifty percent of my salary. That doesn't matter those little things. But But giving of self, for you know you cannot give unless you have it. And you cannot giveaway an AA program unless you have the AA program and you have to study and to learn and to love and to give. For when you give on the front door, you get it back in the back door sevenfold. I'll tell you right now. I know it. When I started out in life I wanted to be the big shot. I wanted to be someone who was talented and I got there but I became an alcoholic and then I lost everything. Then the time came that I didn't care anymore about money, and I didn' want to be president of Standard Oil or I didn''t want to have so many people work for me. I only wanted to help people. You know a very remarkable thing happened that I got about everything back. About everything back but I got more than that. I became a happy man, a very happy man and I'm eternally grateful that I learned how to give. You know it is much easier for me to stay home. Much easier if I love to come, I love to give for in giving is it that I receive. I received then the power and the strength and the courage to go on and I received that happiness which comes by being at one with the power greater than I am. That's AA for you. In In my time you didn't talk about power greater than we are in prayer. I think we can here in Carolina. Here is the spirit of this power right in this meeting, has been there. And people expressed here have been given a terrific amount of things and a great amount of things will come back. Come back in happier, integrated, beautiful lives. You know, we are fortunate people. I'm a very fortunate man that I became an alcoholic. Once upon a time I was declared hopeless. Even this power could use a hopeless individual to make him a power for good. And it is up to you, it is up to your disposition of mind what you want to do, either to make out of your life a mess or a message. That's what AA does. And we have a responsibility in this great movement of ours, for we are just dealing with alcoholics and there are plenty of them. But we are the beginning of something else, don't you see? We are the beginning of a fellowship, this by experience know that God is good, and who cannot do anything else but talk about it and help. Then we become the people, the fellowship of the original church. That's what we are. I'm not going to talk very long. I've talked already too long. My heart is full. Most even I can say some jokes, but I can't. I want to be sincere, for I know that I have learned and I have met someone, and when we go out in the world, you and I, all of us, let us carry some of that spirit of AA with And let us repeat to ourselves, let this mind be in you. Think about it, this mind of Christ, this might be in you and then we strive and then you will be successful and then our movement cannot help to grow and to grow until it also reaches people who are not as diseased as we are or who don't think they are. The world is sick today. The only hope I can see for the world is like a movement like this to spread, to spread all over. And people are hungry and you have the bread and give them to eat. And when you walk on the street by your behavior, and by a smile on your face, let them see that you have found the answer. So may I wind up with a prayer. The prayer is this, go now into the world in peace, be full of courage, hold fast to That's what is good. Render to no man evil for evil. Strengthen those who are faint-hearted. Support the weak and help the afflicted. Honor all men and love the brotherhood. And love and serve God joyfully and with the power of his Spirit. thank you and may God bless you all