Forgiveness, Surrender, and Acceptance Are All the Same Thing with a Different Name – Sandy R.

My name is Jerry. I'm an alcoholic, sober since January of 1973, and I do have a different perspective. I have a resistance to some of the things that, I'm not nearly as spiritual as Sandy. I hope you're not overly disappointed with that, but if you are, you're supposed to, you've heard the announcement, you're supposed to write him a letter or give him a note, and he will answer the damn questions right, and that took a lot of pressure off me. I will not answer your emails. I'm going to shoot my best shot here, and then I'm going to go away. I've been told that certain of the answers that I propose to use are not acceptable. Like, it's a dumb damn question, and I'm not... Who in the hell asked that? Stand up and explain it. I want to know what you... I've wondered the same thing myself. I don't know is another one I plan to use a lot, so... Who gives a damn is another one. And I... Well, there we are. Sandy did not do his job. He's supposed to do half of these, or maybe he gave me the bad ones. I don't know. We're going to find out right now. As he said, it's going to always be my point of view. I am no expert. I'm just one of the bunch. That's a long letter. Jesus. Jesus. I'll be selling 28 years next month. I'm finding that the older I get in sobriety, the fewer newcomers I seem to attract to sponsor. Sponsorship has always been a high priority for me in maintaining my sobriety. In retrospect, I sponsored many, many men between my 5th and 11th years. I have worked with fewer and fewer newcomers. This may be or may not be anything to do with the fact that I am the one placed for the first 17 years and then moved to a different area of the country every four or five years. Every four or five years. Every four or five years. My question is, has anyone else experienced that they sponsor fewer than the elderly, the older they got, is what it means. Could it be that the newcomers are more attracted to sponsors who have less time because they can better relate? Or, maybe I need to look at myself. I can identify with that, absolutely. I had to think back to the time I was coming into Alcoholics Anonymous and I was a very big-time lawyer and I had to protect my anonymity at all costs and so I wound up going to a little home group. Their baby had a year and a half, the next one had five years, and then they got serious about sobriety. They went 15, 20 years. You know? And those guys that had those years of sobriety, I'm hanging on by my fingernails. You know, I want to drink every day. And I listen to them talk and they're easy, and they're laughing, and it's comfortable. And I think those sumbitches don't need, they're not as bad drunk as I am. I need some real relief quick. And so I did not identify with them. as well as I did a guy who walked in who had six months of sobriety. God, he had literature in every pocket. He had been to a treatment center. I couldn't risk my anonymity by going to treatment, so I was scurrying around the outskirts of AA trying to get it. And he came in and he knew more about alcoholism than anybody I ever heard in my life. And I identified with him. He didn't sponsor me, but we became close buddies. What I've seen in my experience is that I have, as I've gotten more time in sobriety, I have attracted fewer newcomers than I did before. But I have also picked up a lot of guys that their sponsors have died or moved or whatever. So I have had a fairly stable group of guys that I work with. The problems? The problems that they have are nearer like the problems that I am experiencing at the time, so I think the match is good. And I think that there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to work with newcomers, I think it's a good idea to get on the jail committee. Go talk to some guys that are being sent by the court or, you know, they don't have a hell of a lot of choice who they talk to. You get them in those little... jumpsuits that they have, and they've got to come in and sit down for an hour, and, you know, you can work on them. It makes me feel good. I don't know whether it helps them a damn bit or not, but it's a good thing to do. And it does help me. I like to go to newcomers' meetings. Even if I'm not a part of the program in any way, I just hang around, and if I hear some guy ask a question somewhere, I can go over and say, you know, that happened to me. So I've had to adjust. Adjust my approach is what it amounts to. And I don't think I'm unique in that, but I may be. So if there's somebody else here that disagrees with me, will you raise your hand so the rest of the group can go talk to you after this is over? I don't want to talk to you anymore. I really don't. I'll be glad to talk to anybody who wants to talk to me. Oh, God, I've got a two-pager. Well, there's two little ones. When were the first and second letters written by Silkworth? Why were they both published? I don't know the answer to that question. I know they're both there. They're written and put in the book. Honestly, does anybody know whether the first and second letters were in the original? The big book? I have one, but I've never addressed that question. They were? I'd guess probably that as the book was written, Bill or somebody pointed out some points that maybe Dr. Silkworth helped them with, and so they, instead of having him rewrite the first one, they just had him include a second one as though it came along a little later. I have no other explanation to that. Why would God give us the ability to doubt Him? Damn fine, no. Oh. We're supposed to have free will, huh? Part of this journey through life seems to be the discovery of the need to have a power greater than yourself. And you need, I think, A.A. got it right when they had, as you understand him, because I think everybody has a different kind of thought or need for this person. When I first ran across the words in the book and saw in the steps, God was everywhere. And it really bothered me because I had a fundamental idea of God of some kind. I thought about God being an old man sitting on a, on a cloud somewhere. On one side he had lightning bolts and the other he had a book. He was keeping score for everybody. And I didn't believe in that God. And I still don't. If you believe in that God, that's fine with me. But I don't, that didn't, that didn't resonate with me. So I had doubt. But if you're having trouble and you're looking for a solution, you begin to recognize, or you should begin to recognize somewhere there is an answer. And if you get to the right place, you're going to find the right answer. Find people like us and talk to them and find out what they, how they arrived at where they are with their understanding. I don't want to ever tell anybody. I don't, it doesn't do any good for me to tell anybody how I arrived and what I believe really. It's what you choose to arrive at and believe because you need to, you need to believe in the power that you define as God. And you, you may, you ought to always be open, I think, to changing your mind on that. I told the group that I came in with, I went to a bunch of old timers and told them, I said, I don't have any faith. I don't have any faith. They've told preachers and rabbis and priests have told me I need faith. And I don't have it. I've sat in a chair and decided I'm going to have faith. No faith. And they said, we don't give a damn whether you have faith or not. What we want you to do is practice the program. Take the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and put them in your life. And when you have completed them, you will have developed a faith. You will have an understanding in God as you understand him. And that happened to me. Different and apart from where I started. But they, they told me to make a list. A list of things I could believe and things I could, did not believe. Had a long list of I don't believes. And a short list of what I could believe. And they told me I'd been, spent my life in no man's land. Halfway between what I didn't believe and what I could believe. And throw the, the list away about what I didn't believe, but be willing to bring things over to what I do believe as I go along. And go with what I do believe. So that's, that's a long answer. To a question that probably didn't answer, but it's the best I can do. I think we're born with the need for doubt. How do you keep the desire for continuous growth, seeking growing at all times? Well, I don't at all times, but I do continue to have a need. To grow. Because I encounter different aspects of life that I had never encountered before. And they can be stressful. I had, came up with leukemia a few years ago. And for a few years, maybe a few years, a while anyway, I woke up every morning wondering if this is the day that leukemia was going to come back and get me. And then one day I woke up. And looked out, and it was a pretty day. And I thought, I'm not going to screw this day up worrying about when I'm going to die. So I had to face death. My old mentor, Bob White, I told him one time I thought I had discovered my most basic, most basic fear. And the fear was I was going to lose my identity when I died. I didn't want to be a drop of water going back in the ocean. I didn't want to be a drop of water going back in the ocean. I didn't want to be a drop of water going back in the ocean. I didn't want to be a drop of water going back in the ocean. I wanted to stay Jerry Jones and appreciate what I'd accomplished in my life. And he laughed at me. And he said, well, let me tell you what. He said, he called everybody Sugar Boy. He said, Sugar Boy, he said, I have a, my wife brings an expert into town every week to talk at our little chapel. Each of them has a different idea of what it's going to be like. And I don't want to be morbid. Hell, I can't, I can't hardly wait. And said, guess what? Guess what? Guess what? If. If nothing's there. And. I'm dead. It won't matter because I won't know it. Took a lot of my fear away and I needed to grow beyond that. That one point I had. So the program keeps giving me things that move me along in this life. And I think it happens to all of us. If God doesn't make too hard of terms for those who seek him, and God can only be found in the present moment, why is it so hard to remain in the present? Because we are human and we have active alcoholic minds which zip around thinking about 30 seconds, about 30 things in 30 seconds, I think. I. I don't know why God does things. I don't think anybody really knows why God does things. To me, this entity called God is constant. And if I lend myself to the principles that God has given us, my life goes forward. And I have what I need to be reasonably comfortable in my life. And I'm pretty sure that works for a lot of people because I see people that have a lot more difficult lives than I've had who are happy and content with what they what they do. And I believe I believe God sets certain things in motion life. I personally don't believe God. God controls everything that happens. Now, Sandy does, but I don't believe a lot in predestination. I think we're kind of a free flowing deal and we go different places, but we're all going to wind up the same place. And anyway, that's my view on that. God, I'm moving right along here. There's not as many as I thought there were. I know. I knew Sandy. I'm going to edit this thing some because he's afraid of what I'd say. How spiritual awake are you? 2009, 20, 29. Wait a minute. Oh, it's percentage 20 percent, 50 percent or 72 percent. How spiritually awake am I? Which day? Which day? Some days I'm pretty spiritually awake. Some days I feel close to the power. Any time I allow myself to drift off into the material world and get to thinking about money and status and prestige and those things that we all kind of think about from time to time, worrying about what somebody thinks about me, I go way down. I'm not very awake. And I tend. I tend to react like an ottoman, a robot. You push this button and you get this on this subject. That's the way I lived. I was asleep when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I had no feeling of connectedness to anything, no awakening. Now I can experience something and I'm awake enough to know this is self-centeredness. Self-centeredness is kicking in, and my solution for self-centeredness is to get away from it. So on that day, I'm probably 70 percent. And at what period of the time, the older I've gotten, the more time I can spend in that higher arena. But I have less material problems today than I did. Now, my grandkids are all screwed up right now. They've come back on me. And God, I guess, has sent them back to stress me a little bit to see if I can get back on track. But most, my life's been pretty comfortable for the last 15 years. I can't even remember why I worked. Seems like such a waste of time to me. A couple of people identified with me here, I believe. But that's where I am. You can tell, I'm in the 20 percent range today. I'd do better if I was up to 70. When did the Keep Coming Back chant start? From where? I haven't got a clue. I don't think it was when I first came down. You're talking about, I assume we're talking about at the end of the Lord's Prayer, when we finish up the Doctrine and Covenants. I don't think it was when I first came down. You're talking about, I assume we're talking about at the end of the Lord's Prayer, when we finish up the Doctrine and Covenants. When we finish up the Doctrine and Covenants. The meeting, when everybody, you know, keep coming back, it works. I think I encountered that in probably the first ten years of my sobriety. But where it came from, I honestly don't know. It seems to be everywhere I've been. Does anybody know more specifically than that? I sure don't have any idea. I sure don't have any idea. I sure don't have any idea. I sure don't have any idea. Here is a spiritual question. Who did this? Sorry. What is the meaning of spirituality? Spirituality. Well, I just did a little work on that not too long ago, trying to figure that out. And they say in the book or dictionary or something, it's of the spirit. To me, spirituality is that part of life that is separate and apart from the physical. Or the material. It's that higher form of consciousness which we all possess. Dr. Silcourt talks about a psychic change. And it's that part of our, to me, it's that part of our makeup that allows me to begin to think on a different level and pursue different values than, than, than, than once dominated my life. I think it involves things like love. I think it involves things like the spirit of unity and fellowship. I think it involves honesty. The principles of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. None of which can really be picked up or held in our hands or seen. You see just evidence of them. It is an outgrowth of the right, of rightness. Of right living, I think. But it's defined, it's of the spirit of man. Of his highest and best part. Of his mind and his being. And if actually, there's a debate goes on whether our consciousness comes from our brain or from outside our brain. And it may be that part of the universe which, which we might call our soul. A higher, finer part of being. That part of you, you can't screw up. No matter what you've done or where you've been. There's a part of you, you just can't screw up. If you do what you're asked to do in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you'll free yourself from a lot of these things. And as Sandy pointed out, those terrible things you did become your greatest assets. In a moment. The moment you accept them and recognize what they are, they change from liability. Liabilities to assets. And they're useful only to help someone else find their highest and best meaning and free them from a lot of guilt and things. Poor answer. Tough question. Did you ever go through periods in which you, your prayer life was lackluster and not in earnest? What do you do to turn that around? Yes, I have and I do. There's a, you know, if you do things over and over, it gets to be kind of habit and you kind of fall into the, I kind of fall into the same pattern. Read the same books. Bob here sent me a collection of daily books, daily meditations. Some of those daily meditations I read every day. Some of those, some of those I don't care a lot about reading every day. But I always, I can tell when I get off the beam. When I get off the beam, I begin to be uncomfortable in, in this life. And I have to find some way to go back and get there. And prayer is a major, major way I do that. My wife, is a, she's, she's a really prayerful person. She's a, we go to a, a church called the Unity Church and they have a silent unity that prays 24 hours a day to people that send it to them. And they have good results. People send in their prayers and they, they get good results. They've even done some scientific studies, which are, I would say, render prayer as a probable activator of, of things. But there's controversy. There's other people that say they've done their, their, their kinds of prayer and, and it doesn't work. So what I, usually when I get in trouble, I start praying. It generally is when things are not going quite the way I wanted them to go that I begin to think about trying to, to pray. And I'm really handicapped in this because the 11th, 17th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century, I'm telling them, the 11th century, the 11th century, the 11th century. They're not doing it the way I did for them. I'm telling them I got to pray. I got to pray for them and the seven steps tells me what I got to pray for. I got to pray for God's will. And somebody, we were talking at lunch today and I know what God's will is for me. God's will for me is to work the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous in all my affairs the rest of my life. That's, that's, I really do believe that because that gave me the greatest change in my life that I've ever experienced. And so, and that, that's all you've ever done. That's all you've done. One last question. Yes. Sure. Part of prayer, just thinking about it, you know, it never would have occurred to me for somebody, a client or some friend to call me and tell me about a problem and for me to say, well, could we pray about that? But I do that, son. I do that when I feel like it's appropriate and somebody wants to pray. I believe in prayer, and I believe that I need to change my focus from time to time and read different material, use a different thing, meditate a little different way, just to keep myself fresh. We are now down to the white paper. I don't know the significance of the white versus the yellow paper, but we're there. These may be things sent to me by somebody like Clint, like our... Our great man, Sandy. I feel about 98% free. However, there's just about 2% of me that questions whether I'm ever going to be completely reconciled my past. Most of the time, I accept the 2% as my alcoholism telling me that I still have alcoholism. Is this normal or am I still so somewhat? Spiritually deficient. Well, I gather this is being free from your past. I don't know that we ever get totally free from regrets about what we did in our past. The evidence of those things tend to show up from time to time. I had a 16-year-old boy when I got sober. And occasionally, he will mention something that I did or said or whatever that was harmful to him back in the beginning or back before sobriety. And I regret what I did. And I've done everything I can think of to... to... to... to... to... fix that. But to be totally honest, anytime one of those things comes up, I feel a little tightness. I don't think I'm ever going to be totally free. Maybe I'm not supposed to be. Maybe that little tug that I have helps me not do it again. Or reminded me the last time I did it, it didn't come back. It didn't come out too good. So I think you have to kind of look at that not as a deficit, but as maybe a little asset to keep nudging you back on the trail. You know, we wind up out in the weeds from time to time. You can think you're going along in this program just doing fine, but when you look around one day and you're out in the weeds and you're very uncomfortable, and my experience, is that when I recognize that and find it and begin to turn back to get on the trail, which is God's will, the steps, my life in AA, when I turn back on the trail, I don't have to get all the way back on the trail before I feel good. I begin to feel good right away. I begin to feel like I'm on the right road and things are going to be all right. So I think, I think the answer to the question is is that you're probably about like all of us. I think we all have some things we wish we hadn't done, wishes, places we hadn't been, things we hadn't done to other people. But I think that helps us not do it again and reminds us always that we're on a new way of going on a new trail. So, is the soul that is said, is the soul that is said to arrive at birth different from the eternal spirit? If so, how? This is a pure damned if I know question. What is a soul? What is a soul? To me, it's that higher part of my thinking and acting my emotions, that upper frame of things that fit in God's kingdom and don't produce anything but good results. It's an activator to me. It's an essence to me. But is it different from the one I was born with? I have no idea. I don't know when I got it. I don't know when I got it. I only know that there's, there's a part of me that seems to, that observes my thinking. I call him the observer. I think some people call him the committee. But he's watching me, or she, or it is watching me all the time. And my thoughts, if I'm aware, when I begin to think and get off going into the weeds, it'll check me and start me back. That's just never, I don't know how long it will take. But I'm aware, the only evidence I have of some entity that I might call a soul. You know, they've tried to weigh bodies before and a moment after death to see if the body weighs any less absent a soul. Well, I don't know when the soul leaves the body. Somebody's making the assumption it does on death, but it may be 15 minutes later, or 37 and a half seconds. I don't have any idea. I think these are kind of questions, and I'm not critical of this at all, because I have some of these same thoughts from time to time. But we spend a lot of time, I spend a lot of time, spend a whole bunch of my time wondering, who is God? What is God? Where is God? And there's no good answers to those questions. To me, I find things that I attribute to God, evidence of God, but what form does He take? Where does He live? I go back to the book where it says, God is everything or God is nothing. What's your choice going to be? Take a pick. Well, I choose God is everything. And that means that you and I all are a part of God. The God that we seek resides in us and works through us. There's a story about a World War II statue in Italy or somewhere where it was the Christ was looking over a city or something, and somebody in the World War II hit it with an artillery shell or a bomb and blew it to pieces. And they, very carefully, gathered the pieces up. And after the war, they suck them back together. Giant jigsaw puzzle. But they got it back together. Everything except the hands. And they put a little sign on the bottom of it that says, you are His hands. So I think this part of us exists in us and we are the people who carry out God's will. We carry out God's will. We carry out God's will. We discern it through the principles that we live by and the values that we have and as we pursue those, we take actions which are in accordance with what God would have us do. How do we work on forgiving others? Well, I think the way I work on forgiving others is I tend to understand them and identify them with what they have done to me. And the best time for me to gain forgiveness is after I've done a fourth and fifth step. When I'm looking at six and seven. And I know where I have wronged and what my part has been in all this. So I've got to give them the same break they give me. The fourth step prayer says, you know, you pray for people as though they were a sick friend. Well, I was a sick friend. I did a lot of things that I'm not proud of at all. And I really think that I really think that that's the way I forgive. I think, happen to think, that forgiveness, surrender, acceptance are all the same thing with a different with a different name attached. It's a letting go of something. Turning it loose. Floating free from memory of something that's happened or a condition that I find myself in. And I that's the way I can forgive. I was in better shape to forgive people when I got sober and did the fourth and fifth step that I maybe have ever been. I suddenly began to realize I had one one amend. That I wasn't going to make. I had a resentment. But I was not going to go to that guy and make amends to him because he had done a hell of a lot more to me than I had done to him in my estimation. I couldn't see anything that I had done wrong. He was a senior partner of mine and he wasn't a senior partner of mine. He was my boss. And I had carried his briefcase and filed his briefs and done all kinds of things for him. He said I couldn't practice law without you. And then one day he said I'm leaving the law firm but I'm not taking you with me. Well I didn't want to go with him but I deserved to be asked. I busted my ass and here he is walking off and he's not even asking me to go with him. Well a year and a half later I'd already done my fourth step. He was not included. He was a sick friend. And I prayed a little for him. And I went to a I went to a restaurant in Lubbock, Texas that we had been in at one point when I was working with him or for him. And I remembered the last time I was there we had been in the middle of a trial and the other lawyers on the other side had called us down to talk about settlement. They were just going to drink a while and that's what we did. And I drank some before I got there and some after I got there. And I had a spiritual experience there. I saw the first go-go dancer that I had ever seen. She had an interesting costume. She had flames coming out of various places in her body. That was really intriguing. And she moved well. As she took certain steps I had a spiritual awakening. And she came over after the dance and sat down beside me. And in a little bit she said would you like to dance? Well I didn't know how to dance the way she was dancing but she said we'll just dance. And so we just danced and at the end of the day we just danced. And at the table with me was our client who was a primary lawyer for the Murchison family which was a wealthy family in Dallas. They had hired my partner and he was president of the State Bar of Texas at the time. And I was a tag along. And we danced a little bit and she said I'm really hungry. And I said well we all should all go somewhere and get something to eat. I was, you know, kind hearted trying to be helpful. And she, I rounded the boys and the Murchison's representative and my State Bar president took them to a restaurant, this restaurant. And she, she liked to tell jokes. Sort of off color jokes. And she talked loudly. And people looked at us and it got embarrassing enough to me that I didn't pursue this any further. I decided I better check out. But as I walked in that restaurant I thought, you know, I know why that guy didn't ask me to go with him. He knew he had a young budding alcoholic working for him and he was going to start a new firm and he didn't need. A young drunk going along bringing go-go girls to meet with big clients. So, I went back and found him and told him that I was sorry about all those bad things I'd said about him in the intervening years and talked to him about how I would like to make amends for him. But I couldn't see that until I had that that experience. It took a while for me to get to where I was going. I've enjoyed talking to you all. I gather none of you have any other experiences or any questions you want to ask. And I want to thank you. I'm sorry I didn't have time to correct all of Sandy's mistakes this morning, but it's all right, isn't it, Howard? Okay, thank you. Thank you for listening.