Higher Power as We Understand Him – Big Book Workshop – 2025 – Part 3 of 5 – Charlie P,Joe M. – Charlie P,Joe McQ

The following will be tape number 5B made at the 3rd Annual Northern California Big Book Seminar on Friday, September 23, 1988. The subject of this tape recording will be Chapter 4, We Agnostics, taken from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. The speakers are Charlie Parmley of Maysville, Arkansas and Joe McQueenie of Little Rock, Arkansas. This tape recording is a continuation of the fifth session held at the seminar. Once more, the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power. okay i think in this chapter bill has really convinced me now you know he told me in chapter two that's the solution to it but in this character he is absolutely convinced me of the need for the higher power for the vital spiritual experience and i'm convinced that if i don't have it i'm probably going to end up drunk but that doesn't necessarily mean i like it. And it doesn't necessarily mean that I believe that I can have it. Because you see, if we're the kind of people that have been always viewing those people that go to church as weak people, God, how many times have we driven down the street on Sunday morning, saw them going up into the church house and said, look at them weak suckers. If they were like us, they wouldn't be going in there professing to believe in something they don't, And how many of us thought, based on old, old ideas, that God was hellfire and damnation? I was taught that as I grew up, that God would hellfire undamnation and you'd go to hell for lying, cheating, stealing, drinking whiskey and committing adultery. And by the time I got there, hey, I'd been doing that for 26 years. And I knew God had already told St. Peter when that little four-eyed sucker gets up there and sends him downstairs, we don't need his kind. And even though I recognize the absolute need for that, I may still think that I just flat can't have that. Or I may still view it as a sign of weakness. I may still do the old ideas and the old aversions. I may still think I can't have it even though I recognize that I've got to have it. And Bill Wilson was a real alcoholic just like all the rest of us. And Bill felt the same identical way that we did. Bill felt it was weakness. Bill had an aversion to any of these things that sound like religion. Bill didn't think he could have one of these either because Bill thought he might be an atheist or an agnostic. But thank God, in the recognition of that, He decided to write for you and I another chapter called We Agnostics. And in that chapter, He gives me the greatest thing I've ever received in my life. Not only does AA give me the concept of God as I understand Him, but in chapter 4, it gives me a new understanding of God. You know, I'm sure in my church that they talked about a kind and a loving God. But that message never got through to the pew that I sat in. The only thing I ever heard was the hellfire and damnation. And in this next chapter, He gives me a completely new understanding of God. And with that, I can go ahead and make a decision later on. I don't believe I could have made the decision that's going to be called out in chapter 5 without being able to read and understand chapter 4. We agnostics... Bill begins to talk to us about a higher power. God as we understand Him And I think one of the reasons this chapter works so well in our lives is it does not attempt to prove God to us. Most of the spiritual books that I've read in my past life tries to prove to me that God exists. I think in this chapter, it gives me a few ideas that if I will examine them carefully, it will let God prove Himself to me simply by a few simple ideas. And starting in the first paragraph, he says in the preceding chapters you've learned something of alcoholism. We hope we've made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take you're probably an alcoholic. And we just love the simplicity of the big book. Two simple questions. If you find you can't quit entirely, and if you're an alcoholic, you've got to say, no, I can't. Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, and if your'e an alcoholic you say, no, I don't have, then you're probably an alcoholic. You see, the way people change things, the fellowship always embellishes everything saying, today we've got a pamphlet that's got 44 questions in it. We just need two. I'm so glad that Ebi didn't have the 44 questions when he walked into Bill's kitchen. Old Bill sitting there drunk, been drunk for three weeks, had a big bowl of pineapple juice and bathtub gin mixed up sitting in front of him waiting for Ebi to come and get drunk. And everybody would have said, Bill, has alcohol been bothering your reputation? Hell, he hadn't had a reputation in years. And then he would have says, Bill, has alcohol been interfering with your sex life? And he hadn' t had any of that in years either. He'd have confused the hell out of Bill. Two simple questions. Now if that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. We're one of the few people in the world that have an illness which includes the body and the mind which can only be overcome by spiritual experience. We're also one ofthe few people in the word that have a terminal illness that we can come out of it in better shape than we were when we went into it. Bear that in mind and think about that. That's something real, real strong. Now to one who feels he's an atheist or an agnostic, such an experience seems impossible. That's exactly where I was. You see, I didn't know really whether I'm atheist or agnestic, but I knew based upon what I had learned in my past life that to have this spiritual experience for me would be an impossibility. But to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he's a alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death, step one, or to live on a spiritual basis, step two, are not always easy alternatives to face. But it isn't so difficult. About half our original fellowship were of exactly that type. At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual base of life or else. Perhaps it's going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. And our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted. Now you see, the atheist or the agnostic, they really believe that they can't get any help from God. No, the Atheist says that God does not exist. Now if he really believes that, then there's no way he can get help from a power greater than human power. Because the atheist is saying the human mind is the greatest power on earth, since God does not exist. And if the human brain is the biggest power on Earth, then the atheist can't get any help from God because he doesn't have any God to turn to. And he's got to run his own show and make his own decisions and stand on his own feet. Now I said to myself one day, Charlie, are you an atheist? And I said, no, I don't think I'm an atheist. Maybe I'm a Gnostic. So in looking up an agnostic, I find that an aggnostic is an entirely different person than the atheist. An agnestic believes that God exists. Can't prove it. He's not going to take a chance on it. He's going to run his own show. And he's going rule his own destiny. And he'll stand on his own two feet. Just like the atheist does. Yet he believes that God exists. But neither one of them can get any aid from a power greater than they are because one of him doesn't believe and the other one is afraid to take a chance. So I said, Charlie, are you an agnostic? And I said you bet your boots I am. I've always believed in God. I don't know. Maybe I was born with it. Maybe it was taught to me. I don' t have any idea. But it's always in my mind there has been a God, a power greater than human power. And I had no trouble with this God thing as I grew up until I got to be about 13, 14 years old. You know, prior to that age of my life, the minister said, you can't do this, you can'T do that, don't do that. If you do it, you're going to go to hell as sure as anything. And I believed him and I didn't do any of those things. But when I got about 13 or 14 years older, I began to think, some of those thing might be fun. and one day he looked me straight in the eye and he said to think about doing it is just as bad as doing it and I thought oh shit I've had it now because I've been thinking about doing it and then I decided if you're going to go to hell for thinking about it then you might as well do it and I did it and I didn't go to heaven so I said hell he's lying to me about everything else And from that day on, I separated myself from the church, from the minister, and from God's ideas. And I began to run my own show and do my own thing. Now, I've always believed in God. But from about age 13 or 14, I paid no attention to God whatsoever because doing my thing was fun and it was exciting. Living on God's way was not exciting to me at all. So, I put myself in a category of being an agnostic and I think that's where most of us are when we come to, Hey, I've never met a true atheist. Even a true Atheist believes in evolution. And if that isn't evidence of a power greater than human power, I don't know what would be. I think most of us believed in God, but we acted as if we disbelieved in Him. We acted just exactly like the Atheists does, although we did believe that God exists. If a mere court of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. I have never met an alcoholic that's a drunken bum. There is a difference in drunken bums and alcoholics. Drunken bams are doing about what they want to do, and they're really not very interested in changing their life. An alcoholic is with the drunken bam, but the alcoholic don't want to be there. I've never seen an alcoholic yet that didn't have a set of morals. I've Never Seen an Alcoholic Yet That Did Not Have a Good Philosophy of Life. We all know what we're supposed to do. We know we're supposed to work. We know мы're supposed to support our families. We know WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE A PART OF OUR COMMUNITY AND WE DO OUR DAMNEST TO BE THOSE THINGS, BUT WE CAN'T LIVE UP TO THOSE STINGS BECAUSE OF OUR ALCOHOLISM. IF THOSE PHILOSOPHIES AND IF THESE MORALS COULD HAVE SAVED US, MANY OF US WOULD HAVE ALREADY RECOVERED FROM OUR DISEASE. WE ALL HAD THEM. BUT WE FOUND THAT SUCH COGEN PHILOSOPHIES DID NOT SAVE US NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE TRIED. We could wish to be moral, and we could wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly. You know, whether we're atheist or agnostic really doesn't make any difference. Our human sources, as marshalled by the Will, were not efficient to overcome alcoholism. They failed utterly. I know that's true, because if they had not failed, you and I wouldn't be in this room today. The only reason we're here is because we came here as a court of last resort. You know, we were driven here by the lash of alcoholism. If I could have found another way to do it, you bet your boots I wouldn'T be a member of AA today. I'm here because everything else failed. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live. And it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how were we to find that power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find the power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. Now, it doesn't say which will help you solve it or which will enable you to solve it. It said, which will solve your problem? Now up to this point in the book, I've been looking at one thing and one thing only. I've be looking at sobriety, sobriete, sobrieta. Don't drink, don't drink. But this page said that really isn't what it's about. But the main object is to enable me to find a power greater than I am. And then that power will solve the problem. And interesting enough from page 45 on we don't speak of alcoholism anymore. From page 45 on, we talk about one thing and one thing only. How do you find the power? If you're powerless over alcohol, then you've got to have a power greater than that is in order to overcome the disease. So from here on,we start looking at how you find the power. I would love to tell you today that AA has invented something brand new that the world has never seen. And through that invention, we're able to overcome our disease of alcoholism. But if I told you that, I'd be lying to you. AA has simply taken some old, natural, spiritual rules and applied them in lies in the way that we alcoholics can accept and understand and allowed us to find this power. There's a set formula for changing things. And if you can once find that formula and follow it, then you can change about anything you want to change. But we can never change anything until we find the formula. And there is a spiritual formula that has always applied and humankind has known about it for thousands and thousands and dozens of years. The beginning of that formula is on page 47. The middle of the page. The beginning of the finding of the power. Okay, and he begins this simple procedure. Where do we begin? How do we began any task, not only find this power, but any task in life is, as we say, this is a basic formula for success. We need ourselves but one short question. Do I now believe or am I willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself. You know, do I now believe? Well, the agnostic already believes, so he's all right. The atheist has to become willing to believe. And as soon as either one of these people can do this, he said, as soon As they can do that, we believe, we're willing to be, we're emphatically showing him we are on his way. We're on our way to find this power as soon We can believe or become willing To believe. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderful, effective spiritual structure can be built. The believing is the beginning of anything. Now, believing is a force that we all contain on an individual basis. We are individuals and this is our power. And it's the limitation of our lives. You know, every decision and every action that we take in our lives starts with believing. It is the beginning of our failure and our success. Our whole lives are based on that. And I think we as humans don't realize I stand in awe at the power we have and how we're using this, how we use it and focus it in our life and how We apply it. I realize today that every problem I got into began with believing. You know, we see people this day that's in prison. And they're in prison for stealing. That's the actions. But that action was based on a decision. It began when they believed that they could steal and get away with it. That's at the beginning of their trouble. And while they were believing they could stealing and getaway with it, some police was believing they would catch them. And the police won, you know. So believing is the beginning of our troubles. Believing is the begining of our success. And believing is the limitation of our lives. Our lives are not based on our ability. It's what we believe we can do. And human beings very few human beings and I think the program teaches us so much not only about how to apply that here but in the other area of our life. How do you use this awesome force that we have? All we have to do, we can't make any more money than we believe we can. We can't do anything else except based on what do we believe. And all we haveと do here to begin our spiritual lives is to believe or become willing to believe. He said upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. Now remember back in the first step He started painting a picture. Remember when he said willingness was the foundation? No, when you take that first step and you see that you're powerless over alcohol, your life is unmanageable, you say this ain't going to work. You become willing to change. Right? Now once you become willing to change, then on the foundation you put a cornerstone. When they build a building then they put the cornerstone on the Foundation. And a corner stone is believing. After you become willing to change then you have to believe you can change. And this when you can believe you can change, you're on your way. Because we have set our goal. All we have to do is to believe. We don't have to have faith in this program. Believing is the beginning. Believing comes before you do something. Faith comes after you do it. And you can't start off with faith. You have to start off with simply believing. It has been repeatedly proven among us upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. Asterisk, bottom of the page. Please be sure to read Appendix 2 on spiritual experience. It's evident that the wonderfully effective spiritual structure is this spiritual experience which is this personality change sufficient to recover from the disease of alcoholism and the beginning of it is to believe that we can change. Now, if we don't believe we can change, we probably will not change. But if we believe that we can, then most certainly we can. You see, the reason we drank is because we believed we could drink. And the reason I don't drink today is because I don' t believe I can. So success or failure is based upon what I believe. Now, my minister always said, son, you've got to have faith. Well, faith is after the fact information. Belief is up front information. Believe is suspicion. Believe is based upon what somebody tells me. And when I came to AA, I did not believe that God would do for me what I could not do for myself. But enough people in AA told me that He would, and I finally began to believe that He would do it for me. I didn't know that. But based on your experiences, I began to believe that God could do these things. And it says, that was great news for us. For we had assumed we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith which seemed difficult to believe. I believed if you didn't have faith in God, then you couldn't get any help from Him at all. And the book said, you don't have to have faith. You just got to believe Let me give you an example of this. You ladies especially. Some time ago we used to have an ad on TV that talked about ring around the collar. And it would show this dirty shirt and the ring around the collar and the lady had already washed it four or five times and the dirt wouldn't come out. And the ad said if you will use this product, you can get rid of that ring around the collar." Now you sat there and you looked at that ad probably a dozen times. And one day, you began to believe what that ad said. So you went to the store, and you bought some of that stuff, whatever it was. And you took it home, and you used it, and sure enough, the ring around the collar disappeared. Now, the first time you bought that stuff you bought it because you believed that lady on television. But after you used It a few times and the ring Around The Collar Disappeared when you ran out of that product, you went right back to the store and you bought that same product. But you didn't go back on belief. You went back on faith. Because now you knew that it would work. You see, we agnostics, what we've been doing, we've bee sitting around and saying, well yeah, God probably exists, but since you can't prove it to me, I'm afraid to take a chance. Well, proof comes after the fact. And I wanted somebody to prove to me that God could do this before I was willing to take a chance on it. And the book said, I can't have that. The only thing I can possibly do is believe. And you know, there's really not any problem for me to believe that there's a power greater than I am because if I've taken step one, I've already admitted that. I've уже admitted that alcohol is a power greater than what I am. If I'm powerless over alcohol, then alcohol is a power greater than what I am. And I'll tell you when it became a power greater than what I am. When I was 14 years old. Then I I took the drink and I was allowed to dance with a girl and take her home and get her in the back seat of a 36 Chevrolet and do some of the things that I always wanted to do. Alcohol did for me that night what I couldn't do for myself and it became a power greater than I am and it run me for 26 years. My entire life was devoted around alcohol from that day on. Alcohol told me what to do so I don't have any difficulty in a power bigger than I have. There's many powers greater than I am. Alcohol was one, and most certainly God is too. Now if I can believe, then that's the starting point, or if I become willing to believe. Page 51 shows me what can be accomplished just on belief, not faith, on belief. This world of ours has made more material progress in the last century than all the millenniums which went before. And this is true. We have made more material progress in the last 100 years, 1,000 years than all of the world before. You know, I usually, I think very quickly we'll say that we are smarter people. Now, we are the smartest people on the face, that have ever been on the faces of Earth. But we still don't know a whole lot. But we know more than other people knew. He said, almost everyone knows the reason. And really we don't. And I thought we made more progress because we were smarter. But he says, students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of the men of those days was equal to the best of the day. You know, people that lived a thousand years ago or two thousand years before they had the same minds that we had. The same intelligence, the same intellect. But he said, yet in ancient times material progress was painfully slow. They didn't invent any of these things. You know, electricity was... They had the capability of having electricity and atomic energy and all that was here on the face of this earth. That hasn't changed. But they didn't discover any of These Things. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research, and invention was almost unknown. They didn' t do any of... They didn''t find any of This Things. He said, now why? In the realm of material, in the material world at that time, Men's minds were fettered by superstition and tradition And all sort of fixed ideas Thousands of years ago You know, and it was accepted in society at that time That they didn't allow people to believe Differently Different Their minds were federed by superstitions And they were boxed in And if you tried anything new, people would look at you funny. Now, you'd get in serious trouble trying to change things. And they did not allow people to use their minds to believe different. Now, whatever we believe, we're going to become. Whatever you believe today, whatever we are today is because of something we believed in the past, what we are right today. So whatever we Believe, we've got to become So if we believe the same, you're going to always remain the same. That's the principle. The only way you can change is to believe different. And these people, thousands of years ago, hundreds of years before, were not able to believe different. You know, if you were walking down a street, say, a hundred years ago 150, 200 years ago and somebody and you had a box and a hole cut in the front of it and some wires and somebody said, what are you doing? He said, I'm going to make me a television. And they said, what's a television? And you go on and tell them how you're going to get some pictures on the other side of the world. Man, they'd got rid of you right there. They'd cut your head off. They did not allow you to believe different so they didn't invent anything and they remained the same. And this tells us, and it goes on with it. It wasn't too many years ago here in the United States. We were burning people at the stake up in the northeastern part of our country because they dared to believe differently. And we called them witches. Well, if you're not allowed to believe different, then things are always going to stay the same. It's only when old beliefs, old superstitions, old traditions, old fixed ideas were cast aside that we begin to change in the material world. That's why we've got automobiles and spacecraft and hair dryers and all these good things because we believed we could do something different than what we had always done before and we were allowed to use those beliefs. But the first guy that invented an automobile he didn't know he could do that. He believed he could but he didn't know to use those beliefs. But the first guy that invented an automobile, he didn' t know he could do that. He believed he could, but he did' n't know that for sure. The first bicycle, somebody had to believe they could do that before they could it. This building we're in today. Now you would say, when did this building start? Well, usually you would say it started the day they came out here and dug the foundation, but that isn't true. This building started when some human being, male or female, believed that they could build this building. That's why it's here today because somebody believed they could do it. And what this book has done is shown us over and over again that you only have to have belief to start. You can do nothing without it, but you most certainly must have it if you're going to change the status of whatever it is. And all natural laws are the same. Whether it deals with the material, the emotional, the mental, the spiritual, doesn't make any difference. All natural laws are the same. Now let's look and see what you can do based on belief. We're going to look at a fellow named Columbus. Some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth preposterous. Remember in Columbus' day, that's only been I think 500 years ago, isn't it? in about three more years, something like that? Yeah, 1492. They believed that the world was flat. Now they had a place over here called the East Indies. And everybody in the civilized world lived around the Mediterranean on the western shore of the European continent. And in the East Indians they had found gold, silk, and spices. And they wanted a way to get there and get back fast. Now they could sail to the end of the Mediterranean, But from then on, they had to go by land. And they didn't have automobiles. They had to goes on foot, camelback, horseback, elephantback. It took years to make the trip. And they began to say, we must find a new trade route to the East Indies so we can get there and get back faster. And somebody said, well, could you sail there? They said, oh no. You can only sail to the end of the Mediterranean. And somebody said, well, could we sail there by going in the other direction? And they said, oh no, you can't do that. Because if you sail out there, you'll sail right off the edge of this sucker and you'll never come back. The world is flat so there's no way to get from here to there except sailing part of the way and going the rest of theway by land. And Columbus came along. and Columbus dared to believe different. Joe? Telling that, you know, the whole expression and constantly we bring out the point of truly Columbus was an alcoholic. Now, you don't have to be a strong-willed, self-centered, hard-headed person to believe against everybody else in the world. You know, you really have to do that. And he made a typical drunk statement. His first statement was, he says, I believe you can get east by sailing west. Now, you know, that's an alcoholic. And as we say, when he left, he didn't know where he was going. Typical alcoholic, right? And when he got there, he didn't know where he was. That's what Fred said. He knew little of where he went or what he said and did. And when they got back, he didn'T know where he'd been. But what really made him an alcoholic was a woman financed the whole trip. And he died in jail. He really did. He died in prison. Now remember that Columbus just said, I believe. He didn't know. He said, I believe and we think that probably when he left the land going east by sailing west that he probably had a special crew member he hired and put him on the lead ship at night with a lantern and he said, I believe that the world is round But if you see the edge of this goddamn thing, you ought to say it. I can just see old Columbus doing that. Columbus followed a little pattern that has long, long been known to humankind. And he was successful at it. The first thing he had to do was change his belief. He stood on the storage shore of the ocean one day and he said, I believe that the world is round. I believethat you can get east by sailing west. He said, I think we can reach the East Indies by sailing West and go all the way around the earth and come to the East Endies. Now that belief did him no good whatsoever because he's still standing on the shore ofthe ocean. Some days, weeks, months, years later, Columbus made a decision. He said, I am going to go find out whether this thing is flat or round. He said I'm going to find out whether you can get east by sailing west or not. But that decision didn't do him any good either because he's still standing on the shore of the ocean. And some days, weeks, or months later he began to take some action based upon his decision. He began to look for money. He first went to the king of Portugal. And the king of Portugal, being an astute businessman, said, Columbus, there's no way I'm going to let you have this money. He said, Lord, you'll take the ships and you'll sail off the edge of the earth. And he said, I'll get no return whatsoever. That's why he ended up with the queen of Spain. And he sweet-talked her into the money. And she let him have the money and he took the money and he bought some ships. And he hired some crews. And he put provisions in the ships and they began to sail west. Day after day after day after day after day after day taking action upon the decision. Now as the result of the action, they hit land on the other side. You and I know today that it wasn't the East Indies. He thought it was. It turned out to be the West Indies but what he had proven to himself is that the world really is round that you don't go out here and sail off the edge of it and when he came back home he went right back to the Queen of Spain. And the reason he went back to the queen of Spain is because this time he knew that the world was round. You see, he got results out of his action that he took. And he went straight back to the king of Spain and she said to him, Columbus, where's the gold, silk, and spices you promised you would bring me? And he said, honey, I didn't find any. But he said if you'll finance me again I'll go back and this time I'll find him. And she let him have the money and sure enough, he got other ships, he got another cruise, he provisioned them and they began to sail across the ocean. But this time, he did not have the man on the lead ship with the lantern at night because now he knew that the world was round. He went back on faith the first time he went on belief only. And this little formula has always worked. You first believe and circumstances make you willing to believe. Nobody changes unless they have to. We first believe, then we decide, and then we act, and then мы get results, and then We know. Now our 12-step program is set up on exactly the same formula. Exactly the same formuIa. Circumstances make us willing to bIeave. That's step one. in step two we came to believe in step three we made a decision in four through nine we took action and at the end of nine we got the results those are the promises and in twelve we had a spiritual awakening and we know and those of us that know our job is to go back and help the next one come to believe See, when I speak to you today of God as I understand Him, I'm not speaking on belief. I'm speaking on faith. I'm talking about the fact that I'm just speaking on knowledge because I changed my belief and I made my decision and I took the actions and I got the results and I've had a spiritual awakening. I know that God exists. Now, I can help the next newcomer come to believe. And this little formula has always been known. To change whatever the status is in the material world, spiritual world, mental world, or any other world. A very simple formula. Also, my book shows me that those of us that waited on proof, sometimes we're simply wasting our time. Because proof is not always correct. Those that wanted proof that God existed before we would take action were just spinning their wheels. For instance, on page 51, we ask ourselves this, are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the rim of the material? Even in the present century, American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Had not all efforts at flight failed before? Did not Professor Langley's flying machine go to the bottom of the Potomac River? Was it not true that the best mathematical minds had proved man could never fly had not people said God had reserved this privilege to the birds. In this century that we live in, all efforts at powered flight had failed. And finally, people gave up. And they said you'll never be able to build a powered aircraft that can produce enough lift to pick itself and the weight of a pilot up off the ground. In fact, the best mathematical minds in the world had proven that we could never do this with a powered aircraft. Now, the Wright brothers came along and they dared to believe differently. I really don't understand how they believed that they could do that, build an airplane that would fly. They were not mathematical geniuses. They were non-mathematical geniuses They were both high school dropouts. And I think they were too dumb to know that they couldn't do that. and they were both bicycle mechanics. How a high school dropout bicycle mechanic could think that he could build his powered aircraft is beyond me, but they thought they could. And based upon their belief, one day they cleaned out the bicycle shop and they took a big long table and they laid new paper out on it and they drew a design for this aircraft. They said, hell, don't pay any attention to anybody else's design because none of those have worked. and they designed their own aircraft and they built it and he took it out to Kitty Hawk and the first time they tried to fly it, sure enough, it crashed. I guess almost the Orville turned to Wilbur and said, Wilbur, damn you, I've told you all along this wouldn't work. And Wilbur said, yeah, it's going to work. He said, let's take it back to the shop. We'll repair it and redesign it and try again. And after repeated efforts, one day that thing flew and one of them was sitting in the pilot's seat and it picked up the weight of itself plus them and it flew. And somebody ran to the telephone and called the American newspaper man and said, quick, quick, put it out over the wires of the world that Wright Brothers had successfully flown a powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk. The newspaper man said, you're crazy as hell. He said, if I tell that lie they'll fire me just as sure as anything because you see everybody had proven they couldn't do that. Truth is not always right. Now, if proof isn't always right, then those of us who demanded proof, we've just been spinning our wheels. Because if we got proof, it may not be correct. This little chapter shows us a kind of faith that we've always experienced and we have no idea where it comes from. What we would like to do is understand God before we use God in our life. And our book says we use electricity every day. And nobody understands it. Even with all the geniuses in the world today, nobody knows where electricity comes from. Oh yeah, we can take an armature and we can spin it inside of a field and we kan generate this thing called electricity, but where does it come... Nobody understands it! I sure don't understand it, but I use it in my life every day. I have absolute faith that electricity is going to do for me what I cannot do for myself. You know, I can't make lights come on, But I know if I flip that switch, electricity is going to make that light bulb burn. I've got absolute faith in that. And any time it doesn't burn, I'm just surprised as hell. Now, I don't have to understand electricity in order to use it. So why should I have to understanding God in order for me to be able to use God? God's a power greater than I am, just like electricity is. And I don' t need to understand Him in order in order be able of using Him. It talks about in here, the things that we know are things that we've learned through seeing things, feeling things, hearing things. And it talks about our knowledge is very limited. To all appearances, this table in front of me is a solid thing. It makes noise, but it's not solid. There's millions and millions and billions of little tiny things whirling around and around and bound together by some force that I don't understand. which makes this wooden table. It's certainly not solid, but it appears to be. It feels like it is and it sounds like it is, but isn't. So all those things that I demanded proof for, hell, they probably wasn't right in the first place. All I've got to do is be willing to believe. And circumstances made me willing to bleed. When alcohol almost killed me, I became willing to change. And I believed that I could. And then I made a decision and then I took action and then I got results and today I know that I can change but I didn't know that in the beginning all we've got to do is have belief the book tells me what I've got to have is a power greater than I am it tells me that the finding of the power begins with just believing that I care and if it tells me that then it's going to show me exactly where that power is and if I know what I need, and I know how to start finding it, then the only other thing I've got to know is where is it? And I think this has had me confused all my life. You know, I've always looked for God, but I never could find Him. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, back in my lifetime, I got a picture of God in my mind, and He was a tall elderly gentleman standing on a cloud. White robe, long hair, golden halo around his head and sun rays shooting out of it. And I looked and I looked and I never could see him. I think what confused me so much is in church, when my minister talked about God, he always pointed up there. So I knew that God had to be up there somewhere. And then what doubly confused me is when he talked to God, He always looked down here. No wonder we grow up confused. And I didn't know where God dwelt until I read page 55 in the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous. And it tells me exactly where he is. Where I'm going to find him. Actually, I don't think I need to find Him. I really don't thank God for lost. If you've been here since the beginning of time, it's hard to get lost. Page 55 said, Yet we'd been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't true. Actually, we're fooling ourselves for deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith and a power are greater than ourselves. And miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our makeup, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there that He may be found. And it was so with us. I think my book is telling me that God dwells within me. I think every human being. Deep down inside, we have some form of basic knowledge. Some people refer to it as common sense. Other people refer it as innate intelligence. and some people might want to call it the conscience and others may want to refer to it as the soul and I don't think it really makes any difference what we call it as long as we recognize the fact that that knowledge is there and I know it's there because I've experienced it from time to time in my lifetime used to I'd be getting ready to do something and some little voice inside me from somewhere would say Charlie, I don' t think you ought to be doing this and I wouldn't pay a bit of attention to it and I'd go right ahead and do it and I would get in all kinds of trouble and then that little voice would say see, told you not to do it it's always been there it's never been there and I believe that every human being has that inside themselves I think that's what separates us from animals I think thats the spirit that's the thing that makes us different from the rest of the animals on the face of the earth now if God dwells within me and that means I've got my own personal God. I don't have to worry anymore about whether He's the God of the Baptist church. I don'T have to Worry about whether He is hell, fire, and damnation. I DON'T have To Worry about whether HE is the Catholic church or the Hebrew religion. If HE dwells within me, HE is my own, personal God." You see, this thing has given me an entirely new understanding of God. And based upon a new understanding of God, maybe I can make a decision later on, but based on the old understanding of hellfire and damnation, there's no way that I could ever have made my decision. Thank God for this little chapter. Thank God för the fellow that knew about us alcoholics and knew how we were going to feel. Now remember in the appendix it says we will have that spiritual awakening when we become aware of the fact that we have tapped an unsuspected inner resource of strength which we'll probably identify as God as we understand Him. God dwells within all human beings. He always has, and I assume that He always will. I think every one of us has the knowledge of how to live and how not to live. I think we all know the difference between right and wrong. I think мы all have the power there if we could use it. My problem is when that minister said to think about it is as bad as doing it. And I thought about it and did it From that day on, I paid no attention to that voice inside. From that way on in my chase for money, power, prestige, sex and etc., I obscured that voice and run on what I thought rather than what God thinks. Okay, I think at this point in summarizing all of this here, we have went through these chapters. I think of this chapter as final preparation. and we have begun to believe and we have believing in the beginning and we see and we've always found where that power is and we have everything prepared for to make this decision. Make the decision at the beginning of the next chapter to turn our eyes over to this power and the action steps to clear away the things that block us from it. These are the steps, actions that will help us, enable us to find this power which will solve our problems. So it's prepared us, made all the preparations and give us the information to make the decision in the next chapter. So when we come back, we'll begin now that we have the problem and the solution we're going to begin the planned program of recovery. Recovery will begin in step 3 that's all we have for this morning thank you all for being here I'd like to start again at 11.15 this will conclude tape number 5B of the third annual Northern California Big Book Seminar as presented by Charlie Parmley of Maysville, Arkansas and Joe McQuainy of Little Rock, Arkansas Please go to tape number six for Willie Bingham's discussion of step two from the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.