Humility and Self-centeredness – History Surrender Workshop – Part 2 of 2

Am I on? I'm not. There it is. I'm not on now? You are. You don't know how much fun it is to be with my buddy here. I just look forward to it so anyway he said that I have to come up with another topic so I'll come up with a topic that whenever I look at Bob I can't help but think of this topic can I leave the room the topic is humility I thought I'd spend a little time talking about it the reason is that it's one of the most powerful tools we have available in the program and I think it gets under mentioned and I thing one of culprits is somebody started a sentence It was around when I got sober, so it's not new. That if you say you're humble, you're not. Or something word to that effect. If you even let the word come out of your mouth, there's something unhumble about that. So no talking about humility. You follow what I'm saying? All of a sudden you go, well, I don't want to be seen as a jerk, so I'm not even going to say the word. and yet the word is it is so amazingly powerful and Bill really gets into it in the seventh step in the 12 and 12 which is why Bob and I are big believers in using both books because there is stuff in the big book that is far superior to the same material in the twelve and twelve but on the other hand there's a few things in the 12 and 12 that are head and shoulders above the coverage in the big book. This is just in my opinion. And certainly humility is one of the topics that is there. I would call humility the passport out of self-centeredness and there's no way to get out of there without it. You can't possibly get out of self-centeredness without humility. Because humility is saying I can't get out of self centeredness on my own. It's impossible for me with all my resources, with all my energy, with All My Knowledge, I can do nothing about being self centered. And self centered is one of the most painful things you can experience. It's the worst place to be in the world. and so when we finally admit that then since we're not humble but we've admitted we're self-centered we immediately say well then I'll do something about being self-centred oh really what are you going to do what are YOU going to DO to stop being self centered well I'll just stop being SELF CENTERED you will stop being Self Centered and you find out that you can. Now I don't blame people for being self-centered I don' t know how you could not be self- centered. When we start out in life as a little kid and you go out in the backyard and you look around at the world guess what's at the center of it while you're looking around? There's the neighbor's house, there's the farm there's this and what's in the middle? Me! I mean you just, you couldn't possibly not conclude that you're at the center of your own little world. So we all should realize that it's not our fault that we ended up self-centered. And if you remember back in history when they thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system, and boy, when they... The observers who started realizing we weren't, they were bringing some bad news to the people in charge, the kings and everything. I always wanted to kill this guy. Because naturally, why would the earth be the center of the solar system? Because I live here. That's why it would be the centre. The centre is where I am. And so we can't help but be the central of our own little world. And that's the painful place that we live that we're trying to destroy and come into God's world with these new pair of glasses to be able to see a different world so that when you get up and you see a different world, you're happy. And that's what humility does. It causes us to realize there's nothing that I can do to get out of self-centeredness. I must have help and I must always be receiving help. Every time I get my chip every year, they always down in Florida, they go, how many years and how'd you do it? And I always say by constantly receiving help, that's how I do it. By constantly receiving health. Normally we talk about giving help, but receiving help is the key to everything. If we're not receiving it, we're going back to self-sufficiency, which leads to self centeredness. And that's why humility is such an important thing. It's the opposite of pride. one of the characteristics of humility is it doesn't compare if you find yourself comparing you've moved over to pride this is better than that this is good, that's wrong this is the humility just accepts and goes on about its business there's not making any judgments about anything and I'm learning this at the same time that I am making the proud statement my group's the best group in AA, and if you don't think your group's the best group in AAA, go find another group. Did anybody ever hear that one? And I went, uh-oh. I don't know. I don' t think that fits in the humility column. I think that fits inthe pride column. So we have to get comfortable with being able to talk about it and just say, boy, you know, humility really helped me out. It made me ask for help. It's a greatest thing to have is this new perspective that I need help constantly. And so that's what Bill is talking about when he says we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. And if you start with someone new and you say, do you understand asking him to move your shortcomings? Yes, I do. I can see myself, okay, God. Okay, now humbly asked. and then you find out that there's no we have no idea the difference between regular asking and humbly asking and that's why we want to study it and get comfortable with this concept of humility humility is not getting my way it's getting rid of even having a way in order to be in God's world I have to start destroying my world the way it ought to be. This is the outcome we need. This is The Thing. I've got to have this. And so that's why this word to me is such a key word. And I learned something new, and then I'll pass it on to Bob. I used to make statements. Bill writes that humility has a hard time in our society. And I used to joke and say, you won't see a car manufacturer saying, buy a Porsche. Everybody will think you're humble. It just wouldn't sell, you know what I mean? It's not a word that really grabs you. So I said, you'll never see it in the business world. That'll never be a big deal in the business world and God damn if I didn't think about probably about six months ago I said wait a minute, when you were a little kid, you bought Humble gasoline all the time. There was this huge oil company named Humble. It became Exxon it went in with standard oil and became Exxon so I went and looked up Humble I said how did they ever choose the word how did you start an oil company and call it Humble and it came from this little town in Texas and this is how the town got its name one of the earliest settlers there before the Civil War wait till you hear the guy's name Pleasant Humble you like that wow his name was pleasant humble and they called him plebs and he moved there and he started there's a river i guess the san jacinto river is right there south of houston and he starting a ferry boat service and that was how he was earning his living and then he decided to open a post office in his house and the second he did that humble was on the map it became an official place it was later incorporated it was a lumber town then they discovered oil and so they created this little humble oil company and then that thing took off I mean it was all over the United States and one of the last commercials they had was put a tiger in your tank I don't know if any remember they called it s o was another name they used and And ENCO was another name they used. And in the article that I read, Texaco was in every state. And this one wasn't in every State. So they had to go and switch their name in order to get in every State. And this is the sentence that they used, The humble oil company executives had to swallow their pride. It just looks funny. The humble had to swallow the pride, and so they became Exxon. And somewhere in this article, somebody from the Green Movement had found a Time or Life magazine ad from Humble Oil in 1962, and they had a picture of a glacier up in Alaska. I think it's Tico or something like that glacier. And it said, Humble Oil produces enough energy every day to melt this glacier. And it was kind of an interesting look at the future. Anyway, that's my little trivia about Humble. Well, the fact that you first of all related the subject to me. and then pick one that I don't do particularly well. I mean, it makes it kind of difficult to participate. It's interesting. I was brought up in a business environment. My dad worked for himself, and I ended up working with a partner, but kind of for ourselves, built my own company. and when I saw myself as a business guy was being able to get things done was being able to do deals to be able to affect you know problem solution or this is what you want you know take a path and go get it and especially the last few years when I've had a few issues that I really didn't want to have that were kind of in front of my face and I've really been touched Every time I go read the 7th Step and the 12 and 12, Bill's treatment of humility in that is just extraordinary. And what I discovered in that process is I really don't think bad things should happen to me. I mean, I'm not kidding. I mean it is like I don't know if I think I should be exempt when it happens. The first thing is, you know, I don' t want that. What the hell? You know, I mean, can we change it or minimize it or – and I think of how stupid. I mean do you know anybody that doesn't get their – and it isn't. I mean I don't think I do it pathologically. But I mean my knee-jerk reaction is, you know, I just – my life – I don' t know if my life is good enough that when something negative or whatever happens I don''t like it and I kind of have a reaction to it. And as I get older and those things, I think part of, you know, as I try to develop, I think some sense of humility is I stop this feeling that I should somehow be exempt, that my life should be a procession of pleasure and that I could not have the texture that most people have in life. You know, I mean, I commiserate with lots of other people and I try to have compassion when they're having difficulty. But, you know, so number one is I stop holding myself as someone who is exempt from gravity, which I really think that there was an arrogance in my that. And then I discover what a strong wanter I am. I am a wanting machine. I am a deeply shallow person. If you couldn't sell it to me, you ought to get out of the business, is what we used to say. So I was a materialist of the first water. And that's reduced quite a bit, both because of circumstances and because I just move away from it. You know, it just was a long, fairly long period of my life and it isn't where I am anymore and it doesn't, you know, so I just don't participate in it nearly to the extent that I used to and I don't participate in it much at all. But all these things kind of also relate to how, you don't know, God-centered, self-centered. Interior, exterior, you now, is there solution? I mean, everything in the world. When Sandy talked about it in the 40s and 50s and 30s, I mean almost everybody was churched. You could talk about God. It wasn't even an issue. I mean now we can't even say the Pledge of Allegiance in public school. I mean we have taken things so far kind of to the other side that we've lost, I think, some common sense in this process. So today, in that society, in a primarily secular view of society, your solution has to be external. I mean, the closest it gets to internal is a psychologist. You know, psychology might be the religion of the day. That's acceptable enough to gain some insight. But psychology, as one of my great spiritual teachers said, just transfers the bomb from your lap to under your seat. It doesn't solve the problem. I mean, the resolution of most of the serious issues of life need a spiritual resolution. And they are not, and the resolution is what happened to me in Sandy's conversation. The resolution wasn't a resolution of my problem. the resolution as I didn't have a problem. And then I had nothing to say. I mean, there just isn't. You're sitting like a little foolishly in front of your, you know, this place that you've been preparing, you Know, for the last six months as I wear my hair shirt. And I really told the story well. And then all of a sudden it's nothing. You know, I mean it really is. In this moment, you see it in a way that you – and that is how things happen in my program. My partner has a phrase that he uses that I stole that says, See it or be it. If you don't see it, you are it. When you didn't see your alcoholism, it had you. when you saw your alcoholism when you admitted your alcoholismo that relationship started to change so when I don't see what Sandy was talking about and we were talking about in the conversation it had me so all we did was have a conversation and what I got to do was see it and it dissolved just see it or be it I mean, I saw it, and I was able at this moment. Now, I will probably return to my suffering post, but in that moment, I mean there was nothing to talk about. I mean I literally had nothing to say that would have been other than baloney, you know, to do it. So for me, humility is that I'm not exempt. Why should it be a surprise when difficult things happen? Difficult things happen to everybody. So get over it. I mean, you're just one of the group of everybody. I mean you're not exempt, and I really think I've spent a fair amount of my life trying to be exempt. That's a good point. I'm glad I had one, finally. Just to follow up on what Bob was saying about changing society, I've noticed it in AA. So I'm going to summarize it all. This is how far we've come the other way. I can summarize it all in one sentence. I love being able to reduce things to one sentence. Matter of fact, when I sponsor people and they comment at discussion meetings and it takes them seven minutes, I go, I want you to go home and reduce that to two sentences. And that's very spiritual progress because simplicity is spirituality. So if you can reduce your comments to two senses, you just got to the essence of what you're trying to say. And it's a great spiritual discipline. So here's my one sentence. In an AA group today, if you mention the word Jesus, you better be swearing. That's my comment on today. A couple more things on humility. we do humble things all the time and we don't see them as humble if you go to a meeting it's an act of humility why are you going to a meet because you need help you're not going to make it through life unless you go there if you read the big book it's a act of humility I'm going to read this, I need help if you pray it's another humility and one of the great acts of humility is anonymity that you simply are you don't have a resume anymore you're just Joe the drunk how simple that is that's my whole who I am just a name and I'm an alcoholic that's a huge act of humility so we're engaging in humble acts all the time and I think if we saw it that way the word would become a bigger part our vocabulary, we'd be able to talk about it a lot more. Now are we going to get another topic or are we going to go for questions? Questions? We just got the answer to that. Okay, we're going to do this and if we don't get any I'll ask Bob questions. And that is what we call desperation as opposed to humility. There we go. Thank you. You saved us. Here comes a microphone. I'm Jim. I'm an alcoholic. Could you give us an example of when one of your sponsees comes to you with a problem, how do you give them a pair of glasses to look at? Yeah. Do you want to start or do you want me to start? Well, I'm not going to touch it. Okay, I used the same technique my sponsor used on me when I was new. When I would go to him every month, the sky is falling. If you remember when you're new, the end of the world is just around the corner every other day And he would listen to all this stuff. You know, I'm going to get through all the inquiry. I've got six kids. We don't have enough money. I don't think we're going to starve to death. I heard that a little. Now, why was that a problem for me? Because I kept thinking about it. Do you follow what I'm saying? Let me start out with this. How many people here have a problem that's not bothering you? Okay, so the essence of a problem is that it's bothering you. So if we could get you unbothered, would you still have a problem? No. In other words, when you go to the tenth step, if something disturbs you no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with you, and then they show you how to get undisturbed, honest analysis and open-mindedness willingness to forgive and a willingness to make amends so anyway I went to him with all these problems and he said okay yeah I hear that you're scheduled to talk next week up in that big meeting up in Washington and I went yeah I am He said, you know, they really enjoy you. You're funny and they really get a kick out of that. So I'm looking forward to driving up there. Do you see where he's going? He's taking me down a different road. We're not even going to talk about what it is that's got me upset. And then he said, and you've sponsored the guy now. How's he doing? Oh, he's doing great. What step do you want? Oh, around the second step. Yeah, I'm going to teach him this and this and that. So after a while, he said, well, how do you feel now? And I said to him, well if you look at it that way, I guess I don't have as big a problem as I thought I did. So what did he do? He caused me to look at life a different way. And if I'm not thinking about the problem, it doesn't exist. There are people with terminal cancer when they're not thinking about it they're the same as everybody else and then their ego wants them to go think about it feel sorry for themselves and turn it into a terrible problem and then they get free helping somebody else and then it's not a problem so it is all helping someone to see and think differently so that they're not disturbed by the situation it's just a situation when it upsets us it's a problem you get rid of the upset that's why Bob you started the whole thing out I'm afraid God's going to make me happy and poor that is the answer in other words if you're unhappy financially and somebody can make you happy the problem's gone but it's not the solution he wants but it' s the solution so anyway that's what I do on that area So that's all I don't know. Davey, alcoholic. I know, Sandy, you talk a lot about what you do across the country is you bring people good news. And I was wondering how hard it is to get up there and do what you guys do and keep the ego out of it. That's yours. The short answer is that I don't. I think it's interesting in Asia, most people who do anything for which we would get attention, whether it would be you were the group leader for a couple of months or whatever task of service, I think often in service we get called by our ego. You know, you do the presentation and the meeting. I mean, there's a part of that that's attractive, and we get a call through it. That may get you there. It won't keep you there, so over a period of time, it becomes more ordinary, something that you're able to do with a different facility. You look at it differently, and I think most of the time we look at is as service, and there are ego-enhancing aspects to it. People treat you nicely. They tell you, oh, you did a wonderful job. I mean, there's still ego sorts of things in it, but I really think after you do it a while, it becomes more of just a service. There are times when you believe your press. There are time when you're more elated when people are blowing smoke at you. Not smoke. I mean, they really – I mean I grew up listening to talks. I had – they made a very big difference in my sobriety. And I think I was – I don't know if I was so interested because at one point in time I was going to have to do that. But I think everything in life we have an opportunity to act either with our ego or with some humility. And I thing that's something as spiritual people with principles we have to learn. and sometimes we don't do it perfectly but over a period of time I think with the principles that we have we don�t tolerate ego it's really funny in our society I think if we had someone who was overly prideful about something we'd start to reduce asking them pass yeah it's I mean you know when people come up and they give you all this oh you helped me You did this for a little while. It's easy to get a high out of that, which would be the ego. Oh, yeah, yeah. It makes me feel sick when I do it. I just feel terrible about that because I know that this is God's, gets all the credit for everything in AA. And I'll give you an example of it recently. Because of my daughter's death, I got a bunch of people in AA from all over started writing me cards. I think I got 240 of them from all over the place. And a lot of the cards said, well I don't know you but I've been listening to this and you really mean the... and I'm so sorry to hear what happened. And so these things started piling up in a big basket and so a friend of mine came over one day and I said Let me show you all these cards. And I was having him read so he could read all these nice things these people said about me. It had nothing to do with my daughter. And I started having that feeling as I gave it to him and I just took him and put it in the other room. But it's very easy for that ego part to sneak back in. It looks for any opportunity to direct the attention. So here I am directing the attention from my daughter to me, and it looked innocent. You know what I'm saying? If somebody could sit there and go, oh yeah, this is so-and-so, and they don't realize, yeah, but did you read the part about me? And that's when you take the basket and go put it in the other room. So as Bob said, nobody's immune from this. You better get used to it because you're going to get caught up every day and then you just, we got a whole step about that and when you're wrong promptly admit it well that was screwed up, give me that basket and then go in there and lastly, don't beat yourself up over it don't go oh my god I can't believe that's pride again I can believe I go for that I mean, you're compounding the felony. Hi, I'm Nancy, and I'm an alcoholic. My question for Sandy, I admire your spirituality. Could you tell me what the third step meant to you back when you first got sober? And if it still means the same to you now? and if you find yourself taking your will back what do you do to give it back over to God well very quickly I just covered turning it back over is to admit you're wrong boy being wrong is ticket to peace of mind okay wrong so that's a you get your spirituality back you're right I let it go I did this, I did that the third step in the beginning is very different than it is now because in the begining my sponsor explained to me he used the second step in the big book the chapter of the agnostic where it says you have a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer so he said your disease requires that a higher power appear or you're dead. So I was sort of getting a mafia-like understanding about whether I'm going to choose God or not. So I'm looking at the third step, making a decision and he's standing behind me with a gun. So I've got to make this decision because there's nowhere else to go. So I have to change my mind or the gun goes off. Do you follow what I'm saying? But now that I've had the full experience of God, it's a very joyful thing. And the third step is especially joyful to me when I'm sponsoring someone and we come to this obstacle of their ego not wanting them to turn their life over and to make it so attractive that they decide to do it. It's so exciting to see that crucial decision being made in another human being's life. I'm an ant on a log going down the river. It has the illusion it looks like I'm steering the log. Yes. there's a hand way over there oh okay my name is Eric I'm an alcoholic I'm working with someone right now that's really struggling with the God issue do you think that the struggle with the god issue has changed that much over the last 30 or so years thank you yeah Yeah, I think I've got a part of me that could answer that no, but yeah, I do. I just think that we're so secular today. I think that everybody, there are people today that haven't been churched at all. I mean, they haven't even had almost any preliminary conversations about God or what they believe. I mean, most of the problems that we have in our society around God, I think are problems of laziness. I mean we don't read anything about God. We keep talking about how important it is. And then we don'T want anybody to know that we really haven't read anything about it or even talked about it much. So we just, I don't, I mean a lot of times the answer we give, you know, is to get people, is to close down the conversation because it isn't, it's like nuclear physics. It isn't something, you know, I don't want to sit down and have a half-hour conversation about nuclear physics. I don'T understand it. I DON'T read anything about it. What would I have to say? I mean, you KNOW, and you just expose that any kind of a conversation I got onto would quickly be disclosed that I have almost no experience in the conversation. And that is more so today with more people, I think, than it ever has been. What also is wonderful about it is once you open the conversation, there are things that you can help them recognize and see as part of that conversation that they have never thought about or recognized and see. You can start to see the natural knower inside of them, the sense of being the God inside of him. And Sandy said that's a pretty wonderful thing to be able to assist It's what is kind of a transformation taking place. But I think it's different because our society is different, and there's almost no external encouragement for it except in the pretty strongly organized religions. Okay, one comment. When I run into an atheist or somebody who doesn't want to hear about God or anything like that. I follow what the big book suggests. And the big book says, oh well let's not worry about that. Let's go to a meeting. Let'S talk about this. Just keep an open mind. Don't worry about that. And you just, you don't go into the debate. Alright, well let'S settle this issue right now. You say no, I say yes. That would ruin everything. Oh well letS not worry about that yet. That'll come later. And we're just talking about the steps and surrender, and we're doing this, and he's going to meetings, and I love to go to speaker meetings. When I got sober, all the meetings were speaker meetings and a few discussions, but you couldn't go there if you had three months, and then you couldn'T talk. And so they will hear attractive things about God from other people and one of them will be just like them. And so So the work will slowly get done and they'll be attracted to reconsidering as you're working them through the steps. I've never heard any commentary about the wise section in the big book from individuals who have experienced relationships, as well as long-term sobriety. And there's always been some commentary on how the right section came to be. But in your relationship, how did you manage the paradoxes of I've worked through my problems or I've supposedly worked through I can't hear her. I'm having trouble hearing the question. I've never heard anything in regards to a setting like this, in regards for wives. Wife? The wife. Oh, chapter to wives. Oh, yeah, okay. and what's the question with respect to the chapter to the wives any feedback in regards to wives and how they conduct themselves and work through the process of sobriety and relationships anything New York's experience is that you can give some insight on well I had one observation and that is there are many new women who don't like the chapter. New day A. Because it's so out of touch with today's reality. And once again, don't engage in an argument, don't try to prove that it's okay, but make a little bet inside of your head that two years from now they'll find a lot of beautiful things in there and that that resentment at the foreign nature of it compared to today's way of things will slowly disappear because there's a lot of beautiful thing in there. But I certainly am sympathetic with somebody who would look at that and be offended almost. But you just let time fix these things because you just can't jump in and, no, you're wrong. You shouldn't feel that way. So I'm sympathetic to your point. Did I do that all right? Yeah, I go to a sober house on Tuesday nights, most Tuesday nights. And it's all men. And they read after to the family and they read the chapter to the spouse. And they almost always initially start out saying, well, I don't have much to say. I don' t like it. And then as their stay lengthens, they start to become more sensitive about their own experience within their family. And they start To mine things out of that that they don't. But at the end, the question to me when you said, well, we have advice, you know, Bill wrote that chapter, which I always thought was a little unusual. and secondly I would find myself thinking I wish my wife were here the Al-Anon experience of before and after because that really is the essence of what and we're the carriers so done here we go I had a question for Bob I have a comment first it's about time You know, in the big book, there's a sentence that says that deep down inside every man, woman, and child is a fundamental idea of God. And in my early sobriety, I remember Bob and Sybil out of California. Bob talked about, you know, he said, I'm going to stand up here today. He was raised an atheist. He said, well, I want to stand here today and talk to you about God. And then Stan C. out of Canada, he openly said, you see, that he had never been raised in a church, but yet he had that feeling inside of him every time he did something that went against the nature of God. And that's how I started out too. Every time I did something, I had that feelings inside. So I believe that sentence in the big book. I was going to ask Bob, in these different countries that you've been to, how did they open and close their meetings And then I have another thing, too, that at the General Service Conference this year, they were supposed to vote on a pamphlet that was going to address atheists and nonbelievers. And it lost out in favor of pregnant nuns on motorcycles pamphlets. We have a – I think the – I didn't have enough of an exposure in China to be able to answer your questions. The meetings, many of the meetings, I went to – we're with expats and they open and close like we open and close our meetings. So many of the meetings you go to in foreign countries are the meeting I went to in India was not in Hindi, it was in English. Now that was there, I mean English really is one of the main languages of India it was not a I mean they were mostly Indians at the meeting and they conducted the meeting the same way we would here with the same prayers and the same I don't remember if they said the Lord's Prayer or their Serenity Prayer but you wouldn't find, my memory of it is that there was nothing different. Same thing in South Africa. Most of the meetings in foreign countries I've been to have been comprised, you know, in the Scandinavian countries where they were not comprised of expatriates, to whatever extent I understood what was going on and I think I did. Their format and what they did was quite similar to what we do and I I do believe that there's a I think there's an or when we can quiet our minds enough either through meditation or what happens I I think what happens is we bring her our wet log to the bonfire of AA and I think it starts to dry out and we are in and what happens a little bit as we check our brains at the door and you move in to the group for the hour that the groups going on and there's a collective conscious in the group and you join it and it has an impact on you I think when you come in sad the group raises you so you're not quite as sad when you come in separate angry whatever it is I think you rise the the impact of the collective consciousness of the group and then to some extent then we start to take that outside you know but but at first it's only in the group that we have any kind of you know peace or or resolution but there are things that you're you're in a meeting and someone like sandy says something and you're and you go oh yeah you don't go oh i agree with that geez that's interesting i mean your soul just goes oh yeah it doesn't think it's okay it doesn'T think it'S correct it doesn't it knows it is so and you start to have an experience of your knower which is getting pretty close to your higher power and we have i think we have those experiences with some regularity in alcoholist animals i think мы see when when whoever talked about sandy or or whoever, when the change happens to someone, they look different. I mean, they're different. So when you talk about the Spirit, and we see that. We see that often. So I really think we get a chance to see it and touch it and feel it. There are many places I think one could go to see it more often than we have the opportunity to see This has been a very powerful conference for me. I'd like to get a little emotional. Anyway, you shared, Bob, that when a person shares their experience and hope that people in AA are sensitive to the fact that they don't want to hear your ideology, your philosophy, your dogma or anything like that. They just want to hear your experience and how you have come to know your higher power and how it's working for you. I'm thinking about a label that as soon as you mention the word atheist, to me it's like you're attaching a negative label to a person because it doesn't fit their, your idea of God or whatever. It's like when I think of atheists, there's three types of theism. Atheism, monotheism and polytheism. And it's just like as soon as you put a person and say he's an atheist, you want to make it negative. when AA automatically says that we have a higher power of our understanding, and some people are judging me who might choose to call that God. This is called higher power with their understanding. So I have a great struggle with that. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think we do. I think We Have a Prejudice. You know, it's always the problem of the majority. You know? We all have a tendency to think a certain way, and atheism is not a common, you know, It's not something that we run into every day, and it's not as common certainly as it seems to be as someone who's theistic. That's an interesting point I've taken. And it's 2.30, and we need an hour between us, so thank you very much. Good evening. Thank you.