Comparing the Big Book to the Actual Treasure – Sandy B.

Boy, thank you, Chris. Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Sandy. And Chris is the best friend a person could have. I just can't tell you how he has helped me through situations he does all the work for our retreat and all my surgeries he was in the hospital I'd wake up there he was and my daughter's memorial service he took time off from work to go to Connecticut with me and I mean it's just wonderful and both he and his wife I want to thank She would be in the hospital, too. I'd look up and there they were. My God. So I'm very, very grateful for that. I just want everybody to know. They asked me to talk about AA's first three steps, which I'm happy to do. And I was thinking about how to, you know, you have a certain way you've been talking about them for year after year and you really get bored of yourself, and so I've made a few transitions over the years. So I'm just trying to entertain myself tonight. So if it doesn't make any sense, it was fun for me, and you'll just have to put up with it. But I got to thinking about if Bill had followed his original plan, our first step would have read having had a spiritual awakening we eagerly ran from drunk to drunk trying to sell them on the idea of spiritual awakenings and because of Dr. Silkworth he talked them out of that plan which was not working drunks were not interested in hearing about great big hot flashes and the room lighting up and all of that And so the doctor said, Bill, I think you should start out with the hopelessness of the disease and you should hammer that in until they absolutely realize how desperate their situation is. And then they might become interested in the spiritual stuff. And I think he's right. I mean, it's just, if you're doing good, it's hard to give up control of your life to someone else as you're asked to do here in AA. It's almost impossible. Our egos won't allow that. And so thanks to Dr. Silkworth, Bill shifted it around, and boy, I don't know how many pages before we get to step two in the big book, 50 probably, counting the doctor's opinion. So there's a lot of effort put in to making sure that the new person understands the exact nature of the disease of alcoholism. And what it generally involves doing is convincing them that it's a lot worse than they think it is. They come and go, oh, my God, my life's a mess. You don't know half of it. Sit down. And we're going to explain to you how it really is. And if you do a good job as a sponsor, they're sitting there shaking when you finish. So there's no happiness in step one. There's no, oh boy, I'm so glad I took that and I feel wonderful. You have the necessary ingredient for Alcoholics Anonymous, which is desperation. You suddenly went from, God, it's bad, to desperation. And that makes the rest of the program a lot easier. And we can have these things happen to us that are so crucial for the happy sobriety for the rest of our lives. And that is a spiritual awakening. And it's interesting that Bill was influenced by the varieties of religious experience. William James, where his study of these spiritual awakenings, the common factor in every one of them was desperation. People encountered situations in their lives, not alcoholics, some of them probably were, but just people. and they just got down where they just were hopeless and they cried out to God and they had a personal experience and we understand that when that happens we no longer have knowledge if we have any about God we have a personal experience and a personal experience is much different than knowing in other words knowing God is a lot different than knowing about God. I mean, it's just like night and day. And that's what the desperation in step one enables us to have one of these experiences. I think it's it's Just Crucial. So when I sponsor people, I tell them while we're starting, I said, I'm going to guide you to a spiritual awakening. It's not maybe. It is going to happen to you, and you're really going to be excited when that happens. And then you can tell them like Bill was telling how exciting it is and what it's like and how everything looks different and how you see yourself differently and how comfortable you are and the world makes sense and the word is so attractive that there's no reason to drink. What could drinking fix? That's a pretty big promise, isn't it? We're going to take you to the promised land. We'll build a fourth dimension of existence. All these terms that when you read the book, you go, oh, that's figure of speech. That doesn't exist. There's no such thing as that land. There's not such thing as that dimension of resistance or whatever he's talking about. And the answer is yes, there is. And we have a map in these 12 steps that guides you right to the treasure. And I've always said that the big book is not the treasure. It's the map. God is the treasure, so don't be worshiping the book. You know what I mean? It doesn't have the power to do anything. It's a guide to get you to the power that can transform your life. And so it all begins with this call for desperation. And in looking for a starting point, I just looked around and looked around and I suddenly said, I think one of the best starting points you could have is the first sentence in the 12 and 12. Who cares to admit complete defeat? Whoa! Who cares who admit not defeat, complete defeat, unconditional, you're going to give up. and when I think about unconditional surrender I think of World War II with the Japanese and they knew they were beat and the military was pretty much in charge over there even though it made them look like the emperor was the military was really holding the reins and they clearly wanted a conditional surrender so that Japan would still have a military and they could all still be kind of big shots And it took the second bomb to get them to change their mind and go for unconditional surrender. No conditions. You don't get to say, you have no say-so about anything. How do you like that? How would you like to start with that coming into, you are now going to have nothing to say about anything? That would be a big... And you wouldn't be able to extract that kind of agreement unless the person was desperate. And so MacArthur went in and changed everything. Every old idea that the Japanese country had, they threw away and came in with new ones. And then he gave it back to them. And boy, look what that country did. It just took off and became quite a place. Quite a place. And the same thing happened in Europe. They got rid of a lot of, not dictatorships, but kings, monarchies, and changed the format so that wars couldn't break out so easily between countries. So there was a lot done with unconditional surrender. And so here we are coming in, and this thing says, who cares to admit complete defeat? And we have to talk about that. We have to realize what that might entail. And I wrote down a couple of sentences because I came up with the word abandon. You know, when the captain of a ship, when it gets to the end, they go, abandoned ship. You must be down to the bottom when you are going to abandon ship. Okay, we're leaving. and it's going to sink. What is our ship that we're going to abandon? Our old way of life. That's our ship. It's the one we put together. It's our plan for living. This is the one I thought up, and I sail around, and I'm the captain of this damn thing. Now, it's a terrible voyage. I hate it. It sucks. But I'mthe captain. That's worth something right there. My life may be awful, but I'm in charge of it at least. It's hard to get people to give up until it gets really desperate. You know, some people five times in jail didn't make a dent. The sixth time, you know, I think I'm going to go check that AA out. There was something. And so these are the abandoned quotes that I found. And in Bill's story, he said, my wife and I abandon ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping alcoholics to a solution of their problem. That's remarkable. I mean, they don't have any money. She's working in a department store, and he's just out of treatment. Let's abandon ourselves to helping other alcoholics. Ah, that's a rare occurrence that a couple would do that. And they did. And they did. How about that? They did. And they never stopped. Only partway along the way, Lois went helping the families of alcoholics. So they were including everybody in this marvelous decision of abandonment. Let's forget about ourselves. Let's commit to this. Then another one is many of us have been so touchy that even And casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. I know that feeling. I don't want to hear about God. I don' t want to heard any of that stuff. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. You see what I'm saying? It's like you can't even keep a remnant of that out. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Isn't that a beautiful word to express defeat? just I'm abandoning right after the third step prayer we thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly now we're carrying it to the superlative we're going to abandon ourselves utterly to God and then of course on page 164 abandon yourself to God as you understand God So I picked that, who cares to admit defeat, to show where defeat can take us. It's the only path to success and to happiness in the spiritual world is complete defeat. And so as much as we resist it in the beginning, we have to come to grips with it if you want to have happy sobriety. I only talk about happy sobriety. I don't talk about bare knuckle, holding on, just not drinking day to day. That's fine, but eventually you're going to wear out. That's going to be too trying and too exhausting. And so you're gonna want to have what these other happy people have, and they're gonna all tell you, well, then you're gonna have to give up more, more, more. So if you look at the first step when Bill uses is that who cares to admit complete defeat? He's talking about alcohol. But as we go through the steps, and you'll hear our presenters, especially when they get to six and seven, that we're going to have to admit complete defeat in all other areas of our lives. That's the only way to overcome anything is to acknowledge that you can't overcome it. God, I wish I could just stop gossiping so much. I wish i could just start telling these little lies. You can't. that's hard to admit, isn't it? No, no, no. I could cut back. I could temper it. I could be more forgiving. I could do more understanding. No, you can't. You just think you can. Now why do we want to do that? Why do we just want to go, no, I can do that. Because part of us wants to leave God out at all times. That's the challenge that we have. there's two parts inside of us. One that can hardly wait for us to totally embrace God and the other part that realizes if we do that it has no role to play. It will be as step three says the hole in the donut. If I give up everything holy cow I'll have no territory left in my kingdom. I'll give up the drinking territory because it's killing me but certainly I stay in charge of finances and romances and politics and all the other decisions and how I can be happy and what I'm going to say and who I'm gonna help I'm still the captain of my soul well if you want to be happy you better give it up and that's what I think step one involves it is an acknowledgement or the beginning of an acknowledgement that anything I stay in charge of is going to be a disaster. Now this flies in the face and I'm the first to admit it because what were we taught before we entered the spiritual world? We were taught how to get along. See, in other words, there's a spiritual world and then there's material world where you're going to accomplish it by yourself. They don't talk often in Wall Street about use God to help pick the stocks and stuff like that. And how to get ahead when you're in school and so on down. Only you can do it. Do you remember that pep talk from your father or your mother? Nobody's going to live your life for you. You have to do it! You are the one! You are not alone! You are alone! And they were lying. God was standing right over here and said, I'll be glad to help all the way through. I'll help you study. I'll helps you work. I'll helped you with the legwork. No, no, no. Thank you, God. But I'm one of those people that doesn't need God. I don't need help. I'm self-sufficient. And if you got results, people patted you on the back. So your self-efficiency got reinforced. And if you failed, then you fell down to the bottom because you said, I should have been able to succeed. And I realized that all the rules that I was taught were basically true, except for the last one. And that's where the lie still goes on today. and that was that if you attend school every day and you attend every class and you pay attention you take notes and every night you study 30 minutes for every class you do all your homework on time you do a little extra studying for the test you will get high grades and if you get high grade you will be able to you will go into a good school and if we do it again there and study hard then you can get going to become a doctor you can become whatever you want because you studied hard you followed the rules and you did this And then you will get a good job, and then you will get paid more money, and the harder you work, you will move up. Then you'll have a house, two houses and a boat and a pump and a wife and the kids and that. So far true. And then, you'll be happy. No. No. That was the big lie. That all of this was leading to happiness. And that plan is a real reason why we have so much difficulty living in the present moment. Because we've been taught all our lives that happiness lies just ahead. Just ahead. As soon as you get, then you'll be. As soon als you get. Okay, so I got to get out of grammar school. Okay, out of high school. Okay, it still isn't working yet. Okay, how to college. Okay, not working yet, okay, get married. Okay, It's not working. yet. Okay. Oh, it's just up there. And then you look on the TV screen. You're not happy? No, I'm not. Do you have a Porsche? No I don't. Well, if you did. So every product that is advertised is telling us not to be happy in the present moment. You haven't got what it takes to be happy this second. And so we're always moving ahead, grabbing, grabbing. And we never take time to inventory and take a close look to find out that we're already happy. And we don't need to go anywhere. And that's what this does. That's what surrender does. Stop that journey. Stop all that nonsense. We're going to slow down. You're going to give up and some amazing things are going to happen to you. That's a lot to cram in to that first step, but it's all in there. It's all the precursor for all these wonderful things that are going to happen. And you can come back no matter where you are in the program. The answer is you've got to let go more. You have to let go more, you don't learn anything more you surrender more and the more surrender the more gets revealed and it feels like you learned it but you didn't, it just was given to you, you didn' t study it, it was just revealed and that's an entirely different process than studying and so that's all I got on the first step is that it is clearly, I guess I could add in don't drink. Okay. For the purest in the audience. So anyway, we get defeated and we're down at the bottom and it's awful. And all of a sudden, somebody's starting to sneak in some spiritual stuff. You know what I mean? Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Well, what is this power greater Than Ourselves? That's God, right? Oh, that's the God when I was in the Catholic Church. Oh, I don't want that. So we have a lot of ideas about God. And the chapter of the agnostic is one of the most brilliant chapters in our book because it very carefully shows how to handle all those objections that we once felt. As Bill writes on the first page, half of us were atheists or agnostics. Half of us, and probably half of us still are. You know, I don't know about that. I'm not interested in that God thing. And the other half is going to church wondering why it doesn't work. Why am I still drunk? What's wrong with the power in there? What is going on? So there's a lot of negative feelings towards this idea of God. and I had a lot of other negative ideas about AA. I had lots of things in AA that offended me. I didn't know that that was the secret word I could have used to get you to adjust to me. Oh no, that offends me. Oh well then we won't do it. Certainly, number one on the list was the not drinking part of Alcoholics Anonymous. That offended me way up here. And I'm very grateful that you didn't adjust the program to me. You follow what I'm saying? And I thought the idea of the fifth step was the complete invasion of privacy. What about my rights under privacy? I don't want to do a fifth step. Well, if we were sensitive, we'd go, well, then we can find a way around that. Don't worry. We can find a way around that. So you can see we would do everyone a disservice if we ever adjusted AA to them. We might sign their death warrant. We might assign their death warranty. If we try to accommodate anyone to our program and make room, special room of some sort. And, of course, we see that in the biggest objection that most of us have is with God. Ah, geez, I just don't want to deal with that. And then look how smart our chapter is. We know that almost nobody wants to deal With that. So what does it say to do? Oh, let's not worry about it now. Let's just go to some more meetings. Put that on the shelf. Relax, relax. We don't demand you believe anything. Just relax. Can you keep an open mind? Oh, okay. Okay. Now I went to mostly speaker meetings when I was new. They didn't want any new people talking. Because the answer comes from listening. But I thought that talking was important. The more you talk, the more people could adjust to you. Which seemed to be the solution to my problems. If they would adjust, then we'd all be happy. And what happens at speaker meetings is I hear somebody with my story. And I was a member of the American Atheist Society. I wrote papers on all that. But I was drunk all the time. And I came in here and they tricked me into having an open mind. And now God's the most important thing in my life. Or whatever your background was. And then you sit there and you see someone glowing with happiness. So the attraction to a higher power isn't done intellectually. It's not done by going, no, wait a minute. See, your ideas are primitive. These are much more advanced. You were a little below. That isn't it at all. We just go, well, let's go look at some of the work that God did. And then you look and you see it. And you see people just going through tragedies and they're still happy and helping other people. And they're doing this. And I don't care what your background is, it's going to start to crack. You're going to starts to go, well, just maybe. And this is the biggest confession of all. Maybe I'm wrong. Wow. Going right for the juggler vein there, right? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these spiritual people have something. And there's a line in the second step where it says, we never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. We never gave it a fair healing. We never tried it. And so when I'm sponsoring somebody who's an atheist or agnostic, I just say, just not worry about it. Just come on and look what you see. And as they see it, and then I finally go, did you ever give spirituality a trial? Did you ever gave it a shot? Or did you make your decision based on understanding what would happen if you did give it a shock, which is the way I used to reason all the time. The reason I don't pray is I know ahead of time it wouldn't work. and then I was worried what if I prayed and it did work I'd look like a jerk all my former friends would ridicule me you can see how the ego is in there and does not want us to have anything to do with God and so we take on the role of this and the role of that so I maintain adjusting AA to accommodate anybody could be signing their death warrant, even though it looks like we're being nice. Well, let's carve a little space out for them. Let's have, we got the regular meeting and then the non-believers section over here. Cut them a little place. Cut them some space. Let them, you know, keep their old ideas. We don't want to be offensive. They might all die. They might not all die because we wouldn't tell them the truth. And the truth is, we have a disease that requires a spiritual experience to conquer it. Right there in the chapter of the agnostic. Alcoholism is a disease that requires a spiritual experience to conquer it Well, I don't believe in spiritual things. Well, you're screwed. That's the end of that. Sorry. I hate to be blunt, but bye! Well, I'm not going to go to AA anymore. Well, where are you going to go? We all know they'll be back. What are we talking about? What else is there to join where everybody's happy? I know there's programs where people are miserable, but we've got the deal, and the deal involves a higher power. That's the secret of AA. That'S the heart of it. There's no, you can't mince words about that. That's it. Am I making a speech that's long enough? Please send a copy of this to the New York office. Thank you. Okay. I had to get a dig in, didn't I? Anyway. So in the middle of that chapter comes these sentences in the chapter of the agnostic are so much fun. God either is or he isn't. He's everything or he's nothing. And then comes the punchline. What was our choice to be? You know, you mean you get God by choosing him? You just choose? Okay, I choose Chris. I choose this. Well, how did you become a non-believer? whatever we were before. Oh, I chose to be. You remember that? I just thought it up. I said, I don't want any of this church stuff. Do you have to get up Sunday mornings and I'm hungover? I don' t believe in God. I don''t see any evidence and of course if you run around you can have a lot of fun seeing that there's no God. Look at that. They're having a war and these people are doing that and these are doing it. And these people are doing what that person just got run over. You think a good God would allow a person to get run over? I mean, it doesn't take very long that you've just sold yourself. Yeah, there's no God. But then when you go to bed and now you go, well, that means I'm all alone. It's just me against the whole world. Me. Wow. Oh, God. I better have a drink. So we created a world that we lived in with no God I mean, you know the world that you live in there's a building material to build that world and it's thought that's what your world is composed of and it is all the thoughts that you put in and then you emotionally react to those thoughts let's see I live in a world where I am the only one everyone else is against me I have to compete with everyone else in the world there is no God I am all by myself and I am not much but I have pretend I am well, I guess I will happily go to sleep so we look for something to help us in that world and alcohol fixed it and alcohol was a power greater than ourselves and it did fix the world and after the third drink we looked around said no this is more like it now this world i like this world I like so we already knew that there was possible to move from our scary world to a friendly world with a power greater than ourselves called alcohol. Unfortunately, that power didn't love us. And so when we come in here, we shouldn't be such doubters that it's possible to be transformed because we did it every day. We ran into the bar and said, I can't stand it. I'm sober. It's awful. What have you got? And we had three drinks and looked around. Now that's more like... I remember smiling at the bartender. That's more likely it. That's more like it. So you can see this whole chapter, the whole thing of step two is the debate. The debate between our heart and our mind. That is the debate. Don't give in to those guys. They are all crazy. They will have you praying and doing all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is why you got to keep reminding people of desperation. It's the only thing that can win against the ego is desperation. And thank God, I thank God for people that have slips because they teach me, whoops I mean I just learned an awful lot from that and I've always said that if nobody died of alcoholism we couldn't call it a fatal disease and it might be harder to get desperate so even our fallen friends have served us well and i feel sorry for them but they're up there happy and but it was a necessary thing otherwise we'd start coasting go well isn't that bad they don't put poison in alcohol anymore and boy you stick around here and you watch out and back. And you go, oh my God. So you can see desperation reinforces our relationship with God. That's the only connection that we have in the beginning is God is solving desperation. But then, and I'm jumping ahead to somebody else's territory, but when we do have this wonderful awakening, now there's two forces that are holding us close to God. One is we don't want to lose this connection and two, we don'Twant to go back to the hell that we used to be in. So we have a two-pronged thing that's holding us close to this higher power. And again, it all starts by desperation and winning this debate in step two. That's why he calls it the chapter of the agnostic, the doubters, all of us. And it's just brilliant the way he handles it. What was our choice to be? And then at the very end, deep down inside of us has always been the fundamental idea of God, just like the idea of a friend. And finally, when we drew near, right Ralph? He disclosed himself to us. When we drew nearly, how do you draw near? Taking all the steps. That's our map. This is, we're here and we want to get to near. And that's the map. Now, the map doesn't take us to Washington, D.C. It takes us inside that this is an inward journey where we go from our old ideas to God's ideas. And we're put in touch with his vision of the world and we get rid of ours. And all of it is done by destroying things, by getting rid of, not by getting anything. Because what we want is already there. We were born with it. We were borne connected. We want to get reconnected. Some people have this big awakening and they go, I can't believe that I forgot all this. I can' t believe that I forgot how wonderful God is when you get reconnecting. And okay, so we're chugging along. I broke down one idea about step three. Oh yeah. I'm glad. Sometimes I go through these things and I go, why didn't I talk about that one topic? I think the heart of step three is when Bill writes, selfishness, self-centeredness is the root of our problem. Selfishness, selbst-centered is the route of our problems. And not long after that, our problems are of our own making. All this material is right there in that third step. So if you can see that selfishness, self-centeredness is the root of your problem, and with a tough sponsor they can really point it out. Don't you see you were self-serving when you did that? You weren't really being nice to her. You were acting nice so you'd get to use her car. See, a selfish person doesn't know anything about kindness They only know how to act kindly because they watched what kind people did. Oh, is that? Oh, you get something good if you do this. Oh, then if it doesn't work, so it turns out you weren't, you didn't mean any of it. And so I was thinking about self-centeredness. What the heck is it? I think it's perception. I think that's what you see when you look around. you see that you're the center. And I don't see how anybody could help but grow up self-centered. Because you're a little kid, you go out in the backyard, you look around, there's the neighbor over there, and here's the baseball field, and there's that. And as you turn around and look at everything, you're in the center of everything that you just looked at. Yeah, there is that, that, and what's in the middle of everything I just looked? That, me. So it's only normal to see everything with you as the center You know what I mean? How could you not? But the process of growing up, we start learning that this perception needs to be changed. That there are, as my parents said, there's other people in the world. Really? And as it turns out, they mistakenly think that they're the center of the world and we're having collisions, instincts and collision. Hey, wait a minute, I'm the center. No, no, I am the center, well, I need this and I need that. And so you can see that there is a lot of disharmony created by self-centeredness. And, you know, I think Bill even makes reference to this in the 12 and 12, you know way back when they thought the earth was the center of the solar system. Why did they think the earth as the center? Because they lived there, what the hell else would be the center ? I live on planet Earth. I'm looking around, and here's all these other things. Well, this has to be the center. Why would they make the center where I'm not? Does that make sense? The ego forces that conclusion. And then the astronomers, I guess Bill said, you know, Galileo, they were going to put him to death. He said, no, I've been studying. I hate to tell you guys this. But the evidence shows that the sun is the... What? Bang! Because if the sun was the center, I'd have to change all kinds of ideas. We'd even have to changed these books I wrote. That's too much change. Bang. So here we are. But out of desperation, we're willing to agree that possibly self-centeredness is the root of our problem. And then our self-centredness takes over and says, I'm going to do something about that. Okay? Let me see you get unself-centered. Well, I am going to stand over there, and then I won't be in the center here. I am not going to look in a mirror and look at life through here. I'm going to. Every sentence starts with, I am going to, I am goingto, Iamgoingto. As you see, you cannot get out of self-centeredness. You can't. So how do we get out of it? We go to the true center, which is God. And we make everything God-centered. And we are no longer the center. And of course, it makes sense. And we go, yeah, boy, that feels good. But part of us doesn't want to do that because we won't be the center of anything. So there's a great battle that goes on in giving up our royal position as the center of our own little world. It's a struggle that we all have to go through and it goes on through the rest of the steps. That's really a lot of what the rest of the steps are, is this struggle to give up more of our territory to God. It just, it's easy to give Up The Drinking, but the rest Of The Stuff Is Optional. It looks like it. And it becomes harder. and so I realized that I created all my problems by thinking about things and then reacting to them and the reason I thought about them that way is because that's how I saw it I saw those people talking over there and it was obvious they were talking about me and they're plotting something well could you hear them? no, but look I can see them And they glanced at me, and then they're glancing back. See that? See that. So now I go to my room to think about this. Wow. What does it mean? And then I make up what it means, and it's generally very scary, and I can't sleep because I'm frightened. I'm very frightened. And it all came about because of my thinking. My thinking was wrong. My perception was wrong, my thinking was wrong and I created a mess and it's very painful to live in that mess that I created. And so we come in here and we go how do I get out of this? Well you're going to have to do a lot of work to smash old ideas. That's how we're going to get out of here because you have wrong information and you're reacting to wrong information. And that makes you get upset. And you remember that great line? I forget exactly where that comes. Oh, the fourth step, I guess, the inventory, the idea that we can drink like other people has to be smashed. Well, that's what has to happen with all our other ideas. Smash, smash, smash. Well, maybe I'm the center. No, you're not the center of that either. Smash. But don't you think I'm still doing a good job in this little... No. Bam. But I think I am a good father. My children love me. God can make you a better father, smash. There's nothing that we could keep. And boy, that is not fun. But don't you think? No. So that's when you go, I'm not going to run this crap by my sponsor anymore. This is just... He's got a... He has a weird way of looking at things. I mean, good Lord. I want to get a sponsor that will cut me some slack. Slack, that's what I mean. I don't need a tight rein. I need some slack so I can... Give me some smack. Isn't that what a battle cry that is? Oh, I told you we'd have fun with this stuff. The reason this is fun is we are funny people. Human beings are funny. The struggle going on up here is hysterical. But it only looks hysterical when we see somebody else doing it. Look at that. But as we get some humility, we start telling stories about ourselves. You're not going to believe how I handled this last night. And then we tell it. And then I'd laugh at myself. Look at that. God, how big a jerk am I? And then spiritual pride kicks in. Those of you who've been around a long time. Somebody with 40 years sobriety shouldn't be doing this crap. They ought to be happy all the time. That's spiritual arrogance. Somebody with ought-to-be. We shouldn't Be moving in that direction. If we were desperate when we came in and we desperately needed God, if you've been here 40 years, we should desperately need God 15 times as much because we've now gotten rid of all forms of self-sufficiency. And without any practice at it, we'd be lost without God. When you come to rely on God for everything, boy, you really need him. you've got nothing to fall back on but he's always there so you don't have anything to worry about the last thing is in the 12 and 12 right on time Bill brings up a paradox we have two paradoxes that I think come out early in AA one of them is that you give up by surrendering you win by giving up And that certainly looks like it shouldn't be true, but it is. And we really learn about that in step one. And the second one is this issue of independence, my independence. I call it freedom. I remember when I was drinking, I felt like I was a slave to alcohol. And then, when I stopped drinking, I was free. Free of being a slave to alcohol And I started going, well this freedom doesn't last very long, or it doesn't I'm not as excited about it as I was a week ago Oh yeah, but you're free from that Yeah, yeah, I know I'm free from alcohol and I'm still all agitated inside. Yeah, but you're free. Yeah, I know I'm free, but I'm agitated inside. So what does freedom mean? It means that I can do anything. I have 360 degrees I can head. 360 choices I can make at any given moment. Now that's ideal, right? Well, which one's the right one? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'm constantly making the wrong choice. That's my problem. Bad choices. Did you ever hear that one? Bad choices, constantly making bad choices. Well, what if we gave our freedom back to God? What if we did that? That's the most precious gift he gave us was free will. Why don't we give it back to him? Say, God, I love what you gave me. I'm willing to sacrifice it and give it back to you. Now he makes the choices. And, and this is the paradox, we now have freedom or independence, as Bill calls it. Because, just because we got free of alcohol and alcohol wasn't jerking us around, guess what was? Our character defects. We weren't making free decisions. I wasn't freely deciding. I'm sitting at my workplace. I'm a happily married man. Lovely young lady wants to know if I could talk something over a cup of coffee. It wasn't an intellectual decision. She was very attractive. I thought for her good, we ought to go down and maybe talk about some coffee. Do you think that was a free decision? Or do you think lust crept in, disguised itself as a helpful person, and said, go ahead and have some coffee. You see what I'm saying? I wasn't free. What do you mean I'm free to make all these things? And so the point Bill makes in the 12 and 12 is, That by becoming dependent on God, we achieve true independence of spirit. And that's a real paradox. But as you experience it, you understand it completely. That it frees you to instead of becoming a master, you become a slave. A slave, a servant. I did a thing on slave and servant that they both do the same job but the servant does it voluntarily and is very happy serving their master and the slave is just doing the same work but can't stand it because it wasn't his choice you follow what I'm saying? it was not his choice and so we come to the end of this that the highest pay grade in AA is servant and to understand that it can't be understood it has to be experienced every principle that we have in here has to been experienced and the experience is the teacher and if you talk to people about their God they will tell you about the experiences that they had that this power made the world look better it made me feel comfortable in my own skin it made other people look wonderful and they're all loving, wonderful people. They transformed everything, myself, the world, the whole thing and it became clear that God was at the center and as long as we kept him there that life would always be fine. No matter what happened we would be in touch with this God and realize that all is well. That's a pretty good payoff and we are off to a good start. We got through our first three but the best is yet to come. Thank you all very much. Thank you.