Every Spiritual Book He Read Was His Ego Building a Higher Wall Between Him and Higher Power – Sandy R.

Thank you.
Well, we're all back from the four hours of silence and the bonfire
and the marvelous experience that we find in that setting.
And from the very beginning, we decided to end Saturday night by asking a couple of our friends
that are here to share with us for about 25 minutes each,
no longer, anything they feel like talking about.
There's no format. It is whatever is comfortable for them.
And I'm very, very pleased that the two gentlemen that agreed to share,
I'm just so happy they said yes.
And so I'd like to introduce our first special guest from Los Angeles,
come on up, Jim.
Thank you, Sandy.
I'm Jim from Los Angeles.
It's funny.
It's been great.
This is just outstanding.
That was yet another example.
And thank you, Sandy, for putting this on every year.
And thank you for everybody from Far Corners that goes out of their way
and works so hard all year for this.
This is just great to be with a bunch of men.
Who do this work, really have this need to get closer and try harder
and really have a good time doing it, too.
It's funny.
I see the humor because that silence was really great for me
because, again, I was reminded that I spent a lot of time talking in my head
as well as other people and how I use words to separate myself from other people
or to try to classify my experience as it's going on.
And to get quiet like that is really...
It's just like, you know, it's a way of just...
I mean, you've all experienced it.
But what came to me this time was like how I can really pay attention.
Like when I can really pay attention to what's going on around me.
And I heard somewhere this year something that I've been trying to put into practice,
which is another definition of love is attention.
You pay attention to something, you know, really that's a sign of love
and also helps me when I'm trying to, when I'm, you know, around people
and I'm trying to get out of my own head,
is to try to pay attention to what they're saying, which is not easy for me.
Just to show you what a spiritual giant I am,
I was, when I came here, I was very excited, of course.
And when I came in, I saw that I was in the pool house.
So I said to Chris, I said, you know, I'm going to say this one thing
and then I'm just going to let it go.
But do you think that you could put me in one of those cabins like I was in last year?
And, you know, we saw everything that went on with the logistics.
And he's like, man, come on.
Look at this, really?
He didn't say it was much nicer than that.
And I said, you know, I shouldn't have even asked.
And that's classic thing with me and my spiritual experience.
I really think that I can control and enjoy my experience at the same time.
And, of course, I give afterwards because I love the pool house now.
That's my new, I love that.
It's air conditioned for one thing.
That's a secret, but it's great.
It's really comfortable in there.
And it shows once again, like if I,
the reason why I want to do is because last year I had a great experience there.
So I constantly find myself in my search to get closer to God.
I'm constantly hampered by my idea of what God,
my idea of what I think God or my experience should be.
And I was, I've never had a problem with the idea of a God per se.
Like I've never been an atheist in my life.
Both my parents were, came from very highly rigid,
religious backgrounds that they both gave up when they came together.
And my dad told me I could stop going to church because he didn't go to church.
I could stop going to the church that they had kind of agreed on when I was seven.
So I didn't go again.
And I discovered as, you know, I discovered early on the joys of drinking and doing drugs.
I think I was, I thought it was 12, but I think I found some papers recently that were actually things,
drawings and like little notes.
I wrote in sixth grade.
So actually it was already then I was joking about drinking and stuff like that.
So early on I found, you know, a sense of relief from my overly self-conscious state of mind
that I never felt comfortable, which is, you know, something I think most of you are probably familiar with.
And the thing that happened to me is when I was, I had this great good fortune through experimentation with drugs.
I had this incredibly powerful.
spiritual experience when I was 19 years old.
Now, of course, you know, I, I, I think it was, it was definitely a legitimate experience.
No one else had the experience and it was an awful experience because what happened is I got to experience every level of fear that I had in myself all the way down past the fear of death.
I didn't know that I was afraid of things below death.
And then in the absence of that, I felt this great spirit move in and I had this connection, which I really understood.
I really felt a part of everything in a way that I didn't know was possible.
And I felt.
Enormous relief and understanding.
And then about two months for two months after that, I worked on a farm in Virginia.
I was by myself and I was doing a lot of reading and I was reading about classic, like mystical experiences.
And I'm like, yeah, that's what happened to me.
So when I returned back, I was in college at the time when I returned back to college, I was a changed person yet within a month because I had nothing to, I didn't have anyone.
I didn't have a community to share this with.
I didn't know how to live with this.
It was like, that was given this like helicopter ride to the top of the mountain.
I saw this bright, bright light.
And then I was put back down and I was trying to integrate that into my life and I just couldn't do it.
And the, what I got out of that, how I, my tiny, my lack of experience, what I, what I did with that is that I tried to, first of all, I felt like that, that God was transcendent, that there was a God, but he wasn't involved with what was going on down here.
There was something that it was elsewhere.
And the other, the other thing that, that, that happened to me is that I.
Just.
Didn't, I wanted to have that feeling again.
I wanted to go back to have that feeling.
So I tried drugs and that didn't work because it was just trying to do the same thing.
Tried to do that.
I tried to have the exact same thing happen again.
Didn't work.
And then, um, then I tried to follow different, um, paths.
Like I, I went and investigated, uh, the Quakers, uh, some Tibetan Buddhists and every, everything just didn't, it didn't quite fit.
It didn't make any sense to me.
And so what happened is it isolated me.
And that was my.
My first experience with like spiritual pride.
Cause at the same time that I felt like I'd had this experience and it didn't make sense to anybody else.
And, but I knew that it was true, but as time went on and I couldn't, I couldn't keep it alive, I started to feel more and more apart from it.
And, um, so after, I mean, I remember for one, one case I felt I was with these great guys, these, these guys, uh, I didn't, Sandy, I never knew you worked in hospice.
There was, I had the good fortune to meet these guys.
Uh, Catholic priests that were involved in the, uh, Cornell burn center.
And they were hospice priests there for various reasons.
I was, I was finishing up my, my finals and I was with these guys and I'm like, Oh, you know, I really, I'm amazed by what you guys do.
I mean, they were living this life where they were of total service and I'm like, you know, I'm really interested in what you do, but I just don't, do you guys really believe that?
I mean, I can see it as a metaphor, but you really believe they're like, yeah, we believe it.
Like, and it just didn't, I couldn't do it.
I was, I was, it was.
Something I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to give it.
I was trying to get this, all these things.
I was trying to piece it all together and it wasn't fitting.
It was very fragmented.
So the frustration that came to me from, um, from then I came to my ego this whole time.
I'm like trying to kill my ego.
I see my ego, my self-centeredness, like all these, these things, but I'm still resisting it and fighting it.
And therefore it's makes it stronger.
And so what it did, it played a little trick on me.
It said to me that experience you had was not true.
The actual experience of life.
The real life experience is that we're alone.
We're not actually connected to one another.
That's alive.
Your biology.
I mean, Sandy, Sandy talked about, you know, you're in the middle and every year as you, you know, you turn around, you're obviously in the center of your universe universe.
That was part of that.
But what it really was is that we're mammals, right?
We're social animals.
And so this idea of love and this idea of being connected to everything is just a lie that comes from our biology.
And what the real truth is beyond humans is that we're cold.
It's the cold universe.
The cold, hard truth is that we're alone.
We're alone.
There's no other, there's no way around it.
And this was, this allowed me to do two things.
It allowed me to have incredible amount of self-pity, right?
And what self-pity allowed me to do is have license.
So because of nothing, none of this was true, I could do anything I wanted.
Now at this time I'm already married because I figured that would fix me and it didn't.
Right?
So I, I, I start doing whatever I want.
I'll, you know, I'm trying to, I'm living the double life I'm living at the top.
Right?
Top of my life and what I'm showing to everybody, you know, I'm, I'm trying to dance the dance, but in deep down, you know, I'm just following deeper and deeper into these, these, you know, into, into all sorts of things.
Because what happened is the, when the problem with a lie that's told to me like that is that once I start believing that lie is that then I'm separated from the truth inside of me and I'm not able to love because it's all this separation.
Again, it's always an opportunity for me to be.
Separated.
And so when that, that, when that there's no love, like if, if I'm separated from the truth inside of me and I'm not, I'm not loving, you know, people, I'm not connecting to people.
Um, it's in fact, it's, I can't love, right?
Because I have to be separate in order to do the stuff that I want to do in order to get away with what I want to do.
And then what I start doing this, I start becoming even more disconnected and over time, you know, it just doesn't, in the end it just becomes the sort of thing that I don't.
I've got, I've got this, this situation where I can't possibly get myself out of.
I've done this little trick of, you know, the, the, the trap that I can't get myself out of.
And, you know, there are certain things that happen that I thought might, I might see my way out of it.
And, and, you know, by this time I'm drinking all the time, you know, I've, um, um, I got a job in an office where I, you know, I can close the door and I, I can, I can drink.
I find the people at work that I drink with them just, you know, this is the way that I figure life is going to be.
And it's getting smaller and smaller.
I'm making more and more concessions.
And, you know, I figured God can't find God, right?
And I'm not learning, looking for God anymore.
And that's, you know, the reason why I can't find him.
But that's, you know, he's not showing himself to me.
So obviously he doesn't exist.
And, um, things happen that show me that God's, you know, alive in my life.
And for instance, one of them was the birth of my daughter.
Um, and I, when she came, I was there and when she, and I was blown away by this amazing experience.
And I thought, you know, wow, I can, you know, I'm no longer a predator.
I'm now going to be a protector of this little baby.
Like, and I thought that that was going to change me, but she was born on St.
Patrick's day.
So I said, I wasn't going to drink, but you know, it's St.
Patrick's day.
And you know, what do you do?
You celebrate, you know, the birth and pretty soon I'm drunk.
And my wife's like, you're not here for me.
And I'm like, well, but you know, this is, this is how you celebrate.
And that's not how she celebrated.
And, uh, you went on, you know, continue.
You don't like this until, and it's still, uh, until, um, I went to my, I finally admitted to my doctor that I was drinking a lot because there was liver damage, you know, that showed that I was drinking a lot.
I can no longer lie and say, you know, he's like, well, I don't understand if you're only drinking like a drink or two a week, how come these levels?
And I'm like, all right, I, I'm, I, I'm drinking all the time and I can't stop.
And he said, well, why don't you, why don't you try AA?
And a lot of people, there were people in my life that weren't.
Um.
Made friends with their name.
They said, why don't you try the steps?
And I had the great good fortune when I came to, um, AA, um, I met a man, um, who I got along with.
I didn't know I'd met him through my child's daycare.
And he said, said to me, you know, I was, he said to me, oh, how do you feel about the idea of God?
And I was because I, when I was, I'd always been, when I was looking for God, I was always trying to do it as knowledge.
Like I wanted to read about different spiritual traditions.
I wanted to add all this stuff on, you know, I wanted to know it.
You know, I wanted to kind of classify it and know, and once I had it all together, then maybe I could, you know, maybe then I could take a step towards it.
But now I had to be all prepared for it, apparently.
And this man was completely irreverent, not interested at all in what I knew about, you know, what my ideas were about, um, about my, about God or what, what God was.
And in fact, he kind of, he kind of made fun of some of the ideas that I had.
I thought that was kind of rude.
Um, the, uh, you know, he's not interested in what I know.
That's very strange.
You know what I mean?
And, uh, this guy, um, you know, I knew I was an alcoholic.
I didn't know what it really, I knew what my life was unmanageable at that point.
Cause I tried to stop drinking.
I'd really tried to stop drinking when it always just came back harder when I said, I'm not going to drink.
And I made that commitment.
I would drink earlier in the day.
So I knew it was like the first step made sense to me, but for all that I thought that I had God in my life and understood God, it wasn't until I took the second step.
And I said, one of the first honest things I'd said in a long time when he said.
You know, do you believe in the power greater than yourself?
And it, and I said to him, no, I don't, I don't, I've been interested in God my whole life.
And all I've, all I've been interested in is that it's made me feel better about myself and better than other people that I have a connection to something.
And it said, what I was doing was taking that connection, this, which was real and distorting it.
But, and so I, I didn't really believe it was larger than myself.
I was using it to try to inflate myself, which has been.
And in saying that to him, it kind of, I never realized that until he asked me that straight question in the second step.
And he said, and then he said, do you believe that, you know, I believe in a power greater than myself.
And I said, yeah, I definitely believe that.
I've heard your story and I believe it.
And he says, do you think that could happen to you?
I was like, well, I don't know.
I've been, you know, I've been around this stuff a long time.
It hasn't seemed to take me.
But you believe it's possible.
Just, is it possible, is it possible that that could happen?
I said, sure, anything's possible.
And from that, we went instantly into the third step prayer.
And we said the prayer together, held hands.
And in my mind's eye, I'll never forget this, I actually saw a door opening.
And I saw this light and I had this feeling like I'd felt like when I was five years old.
Like there's this simplicity of this thing that I was actually opening myself up to it.
And then I promptly said, yeah, I believe it.
And I promptly saw a figure closing the door.
Do not open that door.
Do not look behind door number two.
And I shared this with him.
And he goes, well, that's good.
You know, that's your ego.
That's your ego.
Your ego's scared right now.
You know, he doesn't want it.
It doesn't want that light.
And this guy I followed, he had about 22 years of sobriety.
A lot of you probably know him.
His name is Scott Redmond.
And he, what was interesting to me is that he kept,
he kept this stuff fresh.
He was fiercely attached to becoming closer to this, this higher power.
You know, he said there was, there was, he would always try something,
he was always trying something new, reading something new.
It was never stale for him.
And I, using that as a model, and that's how I've heard from, through Scott,
I heard about Sandy, who's also the same way.
Keeps on, keeps on moving toward, toward the higher power, toward this connection.
And.
And we talked a lot about separation and I've come, came to understand, or I came to experience
that there's, you know, there's this, the separation is a complete line.
He directed me to, as I shared with him what I shared with you, and he led me to the Sermon
on the Mount, the Forgiveness Prayer.
And in that Forgiveness Prayer, it describes, there's two places that describe, like,
this uncivilized, uncivilized alcoholic mind really well.
There's many places, but the two that I think of is, like, page 62, you know,
selfishness.
Self-centeredness, you know, driven, that is the root of our problems.
And then, even though alcoholism is not mentioned in the Forgiveness, the part, the, the part
of the Lord's Prayer written by Emmet Fox, he describes the law of the jungle, that we
think that we're allowed, we can live separate from other people, because that allows us
to take what we need to take and take advantage of other people before they take it from us.
And that's a lie.
And when, and that broke me open, and I saw that's, that that is a lie, and I'd been telling
myself a lie for a long time, and I've been saying it just so, so I could help, I could
help myself to whatever.
I wasn't, I would, I didn't want to work for any of this stuff.
I wanted it automatically, and if I wasn't going to get it, I'd take it any way I can.
And that really, that really redirected my, my, my connection there.
I knew that that connection was powerful.
And so, for the first time, and I experienced it tonight, too, from then until now, I've
experienced the fact that there's people that have suffered and have the same, you know,
one kind of strange mental twist that I have, this kind of suffer from the selfishness and
self-centeredness, and that they're willing to spend their lives to get closer to their
higher power, so they don't have to live like that anymore, because the pain and the lack
of power, the pain from having that kind of lack of power is unbearable.
And the, the thing that, that we use, you know, there's, there's, this kind of separation
is interesting, though, because it's hard for me, even though the first thing I have
to stop doing is stop playing God.
I find that I, even, you know, even after time, I still find ways to work in ways of
playing God.
And if I, I'm, I'm, I'm really, it's, it's really helpful, working with a sponsor has
been really helpful, working with sponsors has been even more helpful, you know, in that
regard of trying to, you know, really trying to allow people the dignity of their own experience
and not trying to control, you know, what they're, they're experiencing or tell them
what, what they're experiencing.
One other thing that's happened, too, is that I've, I've,
I will, I have a tendency to get, become awake, like, I'll have these realizations,
and then I'll slowly, like, drift off and fall asleep again, you know, and that's, that's
why it's important for me to keep on coming to places like this and keep on reading and
try to, to try to keep that stuff awake, because, you know, I have a tendency to, to
old ideas, I've got it figured out.
Things are working well, and I've got it, got it figured out.
I have no idea.
I mean, the, my idea of God has completely changed, and it changes all the time, and
the problem is,
is that I'm desperate, I forget that this more is going to be revealed, right, that
it's, that it's the revelation, I have the revelation, and then I try to classify it
and label it and try to figure it out in a ritual and make a technique so I can continue
to experience it in the way that I had experienced it, as opposed to keeping it alive and new
all the time, and a lot of the, we were talking a lot about old ideas so far this weekend,
and a lot of the ideas, I've, I've, those, meditation has allowed me to see a lot of
these.
Ideas about, that I have about myself, and about other people, and about, and I don't
even know where these ideas come from a lot of the time, I've just, I've spent so much
time believing in them, but they're not even, I, there, I, I hear like a, a kid I grew up
with, that idea came from my brother, or that idea, that was never my idea, it's just something
that I've taken in and kind of said, oh, that works, and all of, I find myself repeating
it, and why do I believe that?
The duality thing is, is fascinating, you know, this kind of separation, you know, the
joke is, you know, the opposite of duality is duality.
But the, the, the problem I, that, that happens is that, why can't I, so I start asking myself
questions in, in my meditation, in, in, in contemplation, you know, why do I have this
complete, unconditional love for my daughter, but why am I restricting that from other people?
Is it because it's my daughter?
Is my the, the, is my the key thing there?
Why can't, if we're, I know that we're connected, why do I constantly have these things where
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,
I'm, oh, well, this is a little better than that, and I'm going to put this over here,
and, and, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to put this in a, in, you know, on a pedestal,
and, you know, why am I, why, why do I constantly search?
You know, I find myself doing that almost reflexively, and it's kind of, it's always
kind of, it's kind of entertaining.
I mean, I can see, once I can see this stuff happening, it's really, for a while, it really
bothered me that I know I've had this experience of what it's like, you know, to be connected,
and yet, why don't I do that all the time?
And then I would turn that around.
Okay.
Okay.
myself up, well you really shouldn't, you know, you should, you know better than that.
You should definitely, you know, you should definitely try to, you're definitely not getting,
you're not doing this right.
You know, you've got to, if you're, you know, and then I would turn that all into about
myself again, you know, that I'm the problem, you know, that I can't just, you know, laugh
at it, you know, that this is, you know, I'm not supposed to be able to figure this all
out.
I can't, my mind is not, I can't possibly conceive of it, I can only experience it.
You know, the allowing, you know, it was first important for me to allow other people,
my sponsees, the dignity of their own experience, but then, you know, it's important to allow
myself the dignity of my experience too, to kind of have, you know, just kind of trust
in the experience of, and, you know, I, you know, I constantly remind myself every morning
I can't, I can't play God and trust in God at the same time, you know, and there's, there's
my, I try, I'm trying to look at more, more ways of just like, of trying to, you know,
trying to let go and let, you know, let God, you know, into my heart as opposed to trying
to figure, trying to figure out how it works instead of just going, going with what I,
what I've experienced and sharing it with other people.
It's funny, the ego, one thing that I was really, for a long time, I really thought
my ego was my, was my problem and the, the, I've come through, through listening to people
such as Sandy, I really think of it, you know, you know, the ego is just another storyteller,
it was something that was really helpful because I thought if, you know, if God was, is everything
then how does that explain my ego, isn't my ego part of God, well, you know, the ego is
just another storyteller and I've been coming to, I read this thing recently about immunology,
they were talking about how there's a higher, higher incidence of allergies now and they're
trying to explain why, you know, there's people are more and more allergic to things more
than they ever have been, you know, the whole peanut allergy and they, these, these scientists
did this experiment down in Venezuela.
And they did a comparison of people that had, who were wealthy and had a great standard
of living and they compared them all, then they compared the middle group who was working
class and then the last group down in Venezuela, they were Indians and they did a measure of
parasites to allergies and the Indians had no allergies and they had 100% parasites,
for instance, they had, they were, they were full of parasites and then the middle group
was like this and then the wealthy people, they had almost no parasites but they had
all of this.
You know, they had all these allergies and I, when I read that I thought, well, that's
interesting because I think that we have, I think that the ego is sort of what came
about from our need for our sense of survival, like there was a time where we had to, you
know, motivate ourselves to like, you know, to get what we needed out of, out of, out
of nature when things were, you know, a lot tougher and in a, you know, relatively short
amount of time our culture has become to the point where we've been provided so much that
I think the ego has a lot of time.
To basically, you know, start seeing where it can, can cause problems.
I think it's, you know, where it can say, you know, well, wait a minute, you know, instead
of saying I need to get, you know, I need to do this to survive, it's like that person
looked at you the wrong way and then that suddenly for me becomes like a survival thing,
you know, so I think of that like as things as, as we've had in my sobriety, the more
and more I, I, one thing I want to be conscious of, the more benefits and blessings that I've
got from, I don't want to be spoiled by those blessings, I, I want to make sure that my
ego is.
I want to be aware of the fact that the ego is going to come, try to come in and, you
know, distort some of this, you know, connection that I have with God, that the ego is going
to come in and generate a lot of, a lot of problems that aren't there.
And in fact, I have everything that I need now and I just need to, I need to, to let
go and I need to, I need to keep working with other guys and I need to keep asking for help
over and over again because as the, my first experiences as described earlier with God
is that they were basically just.
They were just basically distortions of, of my ego and I was trying to do it all on my
own and there's nothing like being with a group of men that are trying, trying to do
this, trying to continually ask for help, trying to continually get closer to God and
to, and to share this experience that they've had, to experience this good, to share this
good news with other people and I, I'm just tickled pink to be able to be part of this
and, and I, I never, I never, you know.
First, the two years ago when I first came here, I was just, I was, I, I've just changed
so much just in that short period of time mostly because of this, the ability to come
here and listen and, you know, listen to, listen and really try to bring, keep, keep
my heart open as opposed to try to figure it out just to kind of try to enjoy the experience.
So thank you very much.
You made it, Jim.
Thank you so much and Jim reminded me of something I want to share, a spiritual moment before
I call on our second gentleman.
You mentioned hospice again and this moment occurred a few years ago when our friend Keith
Lewis passed away.
Thank you.
Keith was a circuit speaker and a great sharer and I sponsored him up in DC, he was an ex-marine
and he was in hospice up in Ocala and several of us would go up there on a regular basis
so it was getting down to the very, very end and I was there to witness the hospice
people, I have so much respect for them, and what I witnessed was the hospice people
turning Keith over and changing the linen.
Now that doesn't sound like a big deal but you should have seen the respect that they
had.
They had practiced this where two of them would lift, the other two slid out, the old,
it was, it had been practiced so many times that it looked like a ritual and then he was
turned.
It was all new linen and then they gracefully departed.
And the thought came into my mind that I've seen something like that before at Marine
Corps funeral services when the Marines in their dress blues take the flag off the coffin,
they fold it.
It ends up in a perfect triangle.
And with great respect.
They go over and give it to the widow.
And I just, it came back and I just want to tell hospice how wonderful they are.
Okay, now we're going to get to our second gentleman who I've known for many, many years
and he lives, a lot of you that don't know Florida, he lives in Mount Dora, Florida.
You didn't know that Florida had a mountainous area.
You think of it as a flat state.
But George lives in Mount Dora.
And I went up to visit and I took, came home with a bumper sticker that said, I climbed
Mount Dora.
And due to erosion, Mount Dora isn't as high as it used to be.
It used to be 352 feet and it's now only 351.
Let's welcome my dear friend, George.
George.
George.
My dear friend, George.
Come on up.
Hi, everyone.
I'm George Dunn from Mount Dora, Florida.
Mount Dora was billed as the highest place in the state and consequently all the zanies
who are anticipating.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm in the weather department.
I'm
paraded me around to speak all over the place.
And I, of course, realized that they had noticed something truly exceptional in me.
And down the road, I overheard somebody say, yeah, if that idiot can get some.
That was a little spiritual awakening or experience right there.
But I was one of those, I met, really met Sandy well the first time he helped me the most,
which was on my way to the state mental institution in Virginia.
And I had shorn off the whole passenger side of my car and screaming maniacally in a meeting.
I was really out of my mind.
I was a little nervous.
And I tried to get to this meeting because I knew that safety and love was there.
And I used drugs alcoholically, but alcohol was the love of my life.
The drugs I used primarily, and I'll just mention this and stop.
The drugs I used allowed me to stay drunker than a skunk for four days in a row without sleep
or to sleep.
And to hopefully parachute to safety after one of these drugs.
But, so I was a tried and true alcoholic.
And I believe that, you know, I was out of control from the very first drink.
My life revolved around it.
My decisions revolved around it.
I wound up in the saloon business.
Made perfect sense.
Thrown out of college.
A couple times.
In the saloon business.
Owned a saloon where the worse you got, the better people liked you.
Which was a good environment for an alcoholic.
We had one guy, Rudy the Pig, who was always worse than everyone.
So as long as Rudy was out there, we were all good.
My day came, however.
And I became that one.
I've somehow lost touch with reality.
I had no God in my life.
I'd been sent away to a religious Catholic denominational boarding school where I had
a very freaky experience with my priest faculty advisor.
And at age 12, it just gave me the creeps really bad.
And soured me.
Greatly toward religion and God.
And as my drunken behavior continued, my separation from God and from everything good became greater.
I had to abandon any sense of morality or any values or beliefs that I had earlier had
because I needed new ones to explain my behaviors.
And I moved further and further away.
I got to the point where I was doing gothic print like the monks did of F. God.
You know, trying to make a statement like that.
But that's where I was with God.
And when the option to come to AA, you know, I got interviewed.
And I got to the point where I said, you know, I don't want to go to AA.
I don't want to go to AA.
I don't want to go to AA.
I don't want to go to AA.
I don't want to go to AA.
And I intervened upon through a series of drunk drivings.
And was sent to AA and reported back that, well, I don't believe in God.
You know, so I can't.
You know, that's not for me.
And the reality was that I was terrified that there might be a God.
And what would happen if he ever got his hands on me.
So I didn't make it right away.
It took a series of in and outs at the local nut.
ward where I finally was banned.
If you set fire to the nut ward, they want you out of there.
But the state mental institution decided that they wanted me around for a while.
And they called mom with me sitting there.
And this woman at the mental hospital told her she had to come up to Virginia and sign
the papers.
I had to spend the rest of my life there.
And I'd had a little bit of AA via the drunk driving requirements.
I begged my mom to get me out of there.
And she did.
And I turned to AA.
I'd been through a six-week phase of being chased by, you know, demons.
The devil was trying to possess me.
And that's where, you know.
Sandy.
Sandy.
Sandy was at that meeting when the devil, I guess, almost caught me that night.
My first night in there was in isolated confinement.
And they moved me into general population where I screened out.
I wanted to tear my eyes out of my head.
And so they moved me into general population.
The first night.
I had a knife fight in the main hall where I am.
And the next morning they called my mom.
So it's the scariest time I've ever had in my life.
And I knew that I had to have God.
I had to have God.
I had to change no matter what happened.
And I realized that I would do anything.
I burned rug burns onto my knees for the first two months.
I just kept throwing myself on the floor.
I didn't believe.
And I think the first sign for me of a spiritual experience, I had gotten this.
Great sponsor up there that was in my neighborhood would be at the meetings every night that
I was going to.
A man named Buck Doyle.
Sandy, of course, knows him.
And I finally confided.
Buck had visited me at the mental institution.
He knew that I finally revealed this terror and said, Buck, I think I'm crazy.
I thought there was no hope.
He said, hell, we're all crazy.
It's just when we drink.
We get caught.
My early spiritual experiences came in the form of being gently, piece by piece, restored
to sanity.
It was amazing.
Every meeting I went to, I was like a loose jigsaw puzzle in a box.
And people were, pieces were a piece here, a piece there.
And I was on the lookout for God at this point.
And I had a white lightning experience at home.
I had one of those.
I think, God knows, I probably needed one.
I'm one of the hard headed variety.
But anyhow, I had this consciousness of God throughout my early sobriety.
And it came in lovingly restored and it came again when I did my— I did the third step,
just to do one more thing that I wanted longer.
What was it like?
And that's when I told him, Well, God, I hope you're going to see me back.
just because, boy, I got no better option.
I better do this fast, you know.
I got on my knees and did it.
But in the fourth step, you all were talking about a God of our understanding.
Boy, I hope he's forgiving.
I really need a forgiving God here.
And in this fourth step, this God was there with me writing it
and forgave me and understood me.
And I knew this.
I sensed it.
And again, in the immense steps, amazing things happened there.
And things were happening along the way.
I know there were so many times I should have been dead before I got sober
that God was dragging me through the sand.
You know, we all know footprints.
And I couldn't be open to see it then.
It was amazing.
It was either great luck or else I'd been yet again a victim of circumstance
was my idea of a godless world.
But now, in the program, I'm seeing God and looking for God.
But I don't trust him beyond my sobriety.
You know, I want the right of decision in women, jobs, what I do other than stay,
you know, go to meetings and all.
If that makes any sense.
I was just, by God, you know, help me stay sober today.
And by sober, I meant help me not drink.
It's amazing that they talk about how the door can be opened a little more and a little more.
And I love, Jim, how you were talking about staying open and, you know, letting it open.
And, you know, I came to this retreat for the first one.
And I've come ever since.
It's been the most profoundly positive influence in my sobriety and in me.
Since I got sober, I had reached the point that that letter speaks to of the mission of this retreat.
And it's for those.
Men who have been sober a good while and kind of feel like I've come this far and this may be it.
And I was ripe when I got here.
I'd been in a marriage for 20 years in the program.
And my wife was in the program.
And she'd been on drugs for the last 12 years.
And I was dying inside.
And.
Just dying inside.
First time I was here, the book that came into my hand was Chuck C.'s pair of glasses.
And I got a clarification there.
He even went further than Bill Wilson.
He said God either is or he isn't.
And if he is, he's everything.
And if he's everything, he's more than substantial to all my needs.
And I knew at that moment that this.
I needed to enlarge my God.
That's all it was.
My limit.
My limitations were my own.
I couldn't possibly conceive of a God.
But yet as I sought God in each area of this, what I was going through.
And I ultimately filed for divorce after having done everything, everything possible.
And, you know, which even included looking at myself.
You know, and, and realize that I, that I had been playing God in this relationship.
I tried a thousand times in a hundred different ways to, to get through to her.
And, and I was breaking down physically and emotionally and spiritually and had been, and we went off.
We did every, every type of counseling, everything.
So that when it was finally done, I had absolute clarity.
And I was able through this program to treat her with respect and love and dignity.
You know, not my style, said Casey.
But it was, the program gave me this.
A new way of looking at things.
A new way of doing things.
I think, I'll give you a quick example.
Of a, a spiritual experience I got.
I believe God mostly works through other people.
After the divorce, my first engagement was sort of a, a blast from the past.
In that it was the old type of thing where I got quickly, immensely, deeply involved with a, a crazy Asian she-devil.
It was very exciting, you know.
And, uh, I'm talking, I, sorry, I'm talking to a friend of mine and I'm like, whoa, this is, you know, beyond a bad jackpot.
And God spoke through him to me and said, if you'll remember when George Washington gave his farewell address to the country, he admonished us.
To be, to avoid foreign influence.
To be, to avoid foreign influence.
And I was, thank you, God.
You know.
I, I can hear these now.
Um, I see them as from God.
Um, I had a wonderful spiritual experience when, the not ward that I was banned from.
The head psychiatrist there continued to work with me for a while.
And, and I said to him, what about AA?
It works.
And he said, not for you.
And it scared me because, you know, I didn't see much in the way of chances.
But I reeled out of his office and a church across the street beckoned me in
where there was a minister who just happened to be right there willing to talk to me.
And he convinced me to put all my eggs in the AA basket.
And off I went.
But after I'm sober three years, I'm respectable.
I've got a good job.
I have a good title.
I'm wearing a suit.
And as a favor, I was asked to close a contract on a good real estate deal,
even though I wasn't dealing in that area, but it was for a friend.
And as the group of sellers came in after the negotiation,
I recognized this gentleman, but didn't know quite from where,
just that we knew each other, you know, that feeling.
And he looked at me in the same way.
And at the end of him being the final signer of the contract,
I realized this is the head psychiatrist from the not-warrant.
And right below that, I've already signed my name.
And the look on his face.
I think he thought I was...
I think he thought I was impersonating, you know.
But I waited the next day until 10 minutes of the hour and called him.
And he took the call immediately.
And we talked about how AA works miracles in people's lives.
So I wonder, was that whole run at that noteword
so that God could tell him AA works miracles in people's lives?
You know?
It is a miracle.
It is a miracle.
It is a new pair of glasses, isn't it?
He was right.
I don't know.
Gosh.
I was given the amazing opportunity this year to work with a man
coming in almost as crazy as I had come in.
He was, in addition, a Ph.D., an M.D., a university professor.
Everything but a lawyer.
You know, in terms of degree of difficulty.
And this man got a year.
And I got to learn love and patience and tolerance as Buck and Sandy did with me.
I don't know, you know, how that happens.
But I just felt a big full circle with that.
It was when he got a year, everybody came up and congratulated me.
But this retreat has brought so much vitality.
It brought so much vitality into my AA, my God, my connectedness with the groups and with men, especially.
And a real renewed love of the program and a much deeper love of my God.
God.
You know, when we play Amazing Grace out here,
and I think of the second line that saved a wretch like me.
And a lot of people object to having to refer to themselves as wretches.
But I have no problem with that.
And I get goosebumps every time I hear it.
I know that the tapes from this retreat have brought it back
and given me the opportunity to really hear it almost for the first time.
And I listened to them over the years and spread them out to everybody I can.
And...
the great thing is with it, with a spirit of rotation,
is that I'll still be able to get tapes and be here in spirit and think of you all next year.
And, it's wonderful.
Sandy, thank you.
Thank you.
Love you.
Thank you.
That was two wonderful sharings, and I really appreciate it.
And I just have to tell you my side of George and Buck Doyle.
Do you mind, George?
I'll be right with you.
Buck was Mr. AA in northern Virginia.
He was the man.
So Saturday night was his big meeting, so I was there.
And he saw me, and he goes like this, and you run right over.
And he said, Sandy, George is coming.
I think he's really messed up tonight, so you stand at the door, and when he comes in, you stay with him.
So I had my marching orders for the night, so I'm standing there, and here comes George.
And I did notice that his eyeballs were enormous.
And I went, George, yeah, yeah, come on, come on.
And he's going, they're after me, they're after me, they're after me.
And I'm going, who?
This crazy woman, this crazy woman, they're trying to get me.
They're trying to drive me crazy.
I was coming down Shirley Highway, and they're chasing me, and they're chasing me.
I think we bumped their car, and we came out, and I said, you think you bumped their car?
Well, let's go look at your car.
And we went out, and there's a door missing.
And I go, yeah, you did bump there, George.
And so we went back in, and I sat next to him.
And it kind of went through the whole meeting.
And then after the meeting, Buck is trying to find somebody that George can stay with that night.
And I think Buck had something arranged the next day, but Buck was tied up and couldn't do it.
And he's calling in people he sponsors, and they're going, he's going, Jerry, come here.
I need you to have George.
And they'd look at George, and they'd go, well, I'm going to be out of town, Buck.
I won't be able to do it.
And everybody said no.
Finally, Buck got this guy who was kind of a meat guy, probably about 50 years old.
He seemed old to me then.
And he had an older girlfriend.
And the two of them are standing there.
And Buck has really got him by the tie.
And he's going, look, I got to get to you.
I helped you.
And so finally, the guy goes, all right, OK.
And he goes, George, come here.
This is Frank, and he's going to take care of you tonight.
And this is his girlfriend, Alice.
Alice must have looked like the woman was chasing George down Shirley Highway.
And he went right for her throat.
Yeah.
And the thing I remember the most was the guy looked at Buck and said, I don't think so, Buck.