Letting Go Is the Entire Action of Alcoholics Anonymous – Sandy B.
About This Speaker Tape
Sandy B., an AA speaker from Tampa, Florida with over 40 years of sobriety, opens with his origin story: a fellow Marine picked him up and took him to his first meeting at the Manassas, Virginia group — a five-hour group anniversary with turkey, ham, and square dancing. Miserable and sober only ten hours, Sandy stood outside in the sleet wanting to leave, until an Al-Anon woman named Betsy Lynch put her hand on his shoulder and said, "It's going to be all right." He believed her, went back in, and says that was the end of his struggle.
Sandy spends the first third of the talk on two traditions that he finds remarkable: AA's policy of no opinion on outside issues, and the principle of primary purpose. He illustrates the outside-issues tradition with a Senate committee story — staffers couldn't comprehend that AA had no opinion on warning labels for alcohol bottles — then delivers a deadpan punchline about what the label should actually say. On primary purpose, he uses a magnifying glass metaphor: focusing sunlight starts a fire, but spreading the lens over a wider surface only produces warmth. The power of one alcoholic talking to another, he argues, depends entirely on that concentration.
The heart of the talk is a sustained meditation on letting go as the whole action of AA. Sandy argues that the 12th step's promise of a spiritual awakening is not a reward but the entire point — and every step is an instruction to release something. He frames recovery as unlearning rather than learning, quoting an old-timer lawyer: "It isn't the things you don't know that get you in trouble. It's knowing things for sure that just ain't so." He describes consciousness change using the metaphor of trading "life sucks glasses" for spiritual glasses, and shares how his own childhood looks measurably better now than it did at ten years sober.
For newcomers, Sandy frames the disease as one of perception — a steamed-up mirror that clears with time and willingness. He closes with a hologram analogy: no book can teach you how to see it; you have to stand there until it pops. That moment of seeing, he says, is the most significant experience a human being can have, and it becomes the proof that the spiritual life is not a theory.
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Timestamps
Full Transcript
It's a pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Sandy B. from Tampa, Florida.
Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy B.. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
I'm going to put this up a little.
Yeah, I came here 42 years ago.
I was in the...
Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy B.. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
I'm going to put this up a little.
Yeah, I came here 42 years ago.
I was in the...
It's a pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Sandy B. from Tampa, Florida.
Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy B.. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
I'm going to put this up a little.
Yeah, I came here 42 years ago.
I was in the Marine Corps, and another Marine came to my house and picked me up
and took me to my first meeting at the Manassas, Virginia group of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And the meeting lasted about five hours.
It was a group anniversary, and they had a million people celebrating.
They had turkey and ham and square dancing, country fiddles.
And when I got to the meeting, I'd been sober about five hours.
And I had ten hours when the meeting ended, and I was not agreeing with anyone when they came up and said,
Isn't sobriety wonderful? I was going, I don't think so.
And I wanted to leave that meeting. I wanted to just get away.
But it was in an old odd fellow's house out near Manassas.
Real country, and there wasn't even a street light or where you could go.
And it was sleeting, and I just stood out there and felt really terrible.
And I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I turned around.
It was this Al-Anon lady who I since got to know, her and her husband.
And her name was Betsy Lynch.
And she said, It's going to be all right.
And I believed her.
And I turned around and went back in and sat down.
And that was the end of my struggle.
I just believed her.
And about a month ago, the Manassas group of Virginia was celebrating its 55th year,
and they asked me to come and talk at the group anniversary.
And I went there, and like Bob, my sponsor was there.
And he's got lung cancer and has been really struggling for the last year,
and I didn't think he'd make it up from a little bit further south in Virginia.
But his home group brought him up, had him in a wheelchair.
And so there we were.
You know, it was like the bookends of this wonderful period of time
in the same group where he brought me.
And so it was very moving, and I got a picture in my wallet of the two of us that night.
And it was just remarkable.
And about a week later, his home group members, who I stay in touch with,
called me up and they said, well, it looks like it's getting real close.
It's renal, kidney shutdown, failure.
His family's assembling, and we're hoping that he lasts until his son gets back from Germany,
where his son is in the German Symphony Orchestra playing French,
French horn.
And his son has told him, I'm coming home, and I'm going to play an entire symphony for you.
So we all said, well, we know he's going to last until that son gets home.
There's no way he's not going to last to that.
So his son came and went.
And I called him yesterday.
I mean, this is like two more weeks later.
And I said, Bill, how are you doing?
I'm going out to Vegas.
I wanted to...
You know, tell you that I'm so happy you're my sponsor and all that.
And I said, how are you feeling?
Oh, doing great.
I'm walking again.
So we left it that we would shoot for 50 years together.
And we'll just see.
He's a tough old guy.
And it's been...
I just wanted to share that with you, how important sponsors are.
And it's not that often that you can get to both stale lives.
I ain't that long.
And so it's been a wonderful journey.
And he taught me a lot about AA.
Taught me a lot about service.
And so as I stand up here tonight, you know, I like to talk about whatever pops into my head.
And I was thinking when you were reading the traditions.
You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is...
Universally respected and loved.
It is...
There's no one.
There's no group that hates AA.
There's no segment of society or segment of the world that doesn't love AA.
News reporters run around to dig up dirt on everybody.
I mean, it's gotten bad.
You know how easy it would be to sit out in front of...
In an AA meeting and pick off the celebrities with a camera.
It'd be like shooting duck in a pond out back.
Never happens.
Doesn't happen.
Why?
Just not going to touch AA.
Something special about AA.
And if they did, their editor wouldn't let them use it.
Now, isn't that remarkable?
There's no law against it.
We just happen to have a tradition.
And it's been...
It's being respected.
And I was thinking, you know, why would it be so respected?
And you know what I came to the conclusion?
Because we don't take an opinion on anything.
That little, sneaky, tent tradition.
AA has no opinion on any outside issues.
Sounds pretty innocuous.
Oh, so they don't have it.
And I always tell a story about when I was in Washington and the Senate...
Health and Human Services Committee was trying to decide
whether to put warning labels on alcohol like they did on cigarettes.
And they said, we've got to get expert witnesses
as to whether it would be a good idea or not.
And somebody on the staff said,
well, who could be a bigger expert than Alcoholics Anonymous?
So let's call them up.
So they called the General Service Office and said,
we're having this, could you send somebody?
Oh, be glad to.
So they sent somebody down to interview the staff.
The staff person, they explained the whole bill,
and they said, now, where do you think AA would stand on this?
Oh, we don't have any opinion on that at all.
And the senators in the committee staff couldn't believe
that someone had no opinion.
It was beyond them.
They have an opinion on everything, you know what I'm saying?
No opinion.
No opinion whatsoever.
Now, I have an opinion.
Personally, you can have opinions,
and I think there should be a warning label,
and I can tell you exactly what it should say,
so it would do some good.
It should say, warning, this bottle may run out.
You...
You should consider...
You should consider buying two.
And...
Think of all the lives that might be saved
when the alcoholic's at home,
and it's about quarter to twelve at midnight,
and he ran out, and he's got 15 minutes
to get back down to the bar,
and he wouldn't have to get in his car.
So it would probably do some good.
But anyway, getting back to this no opinion,
let's say,
let's say that just, for example,
AA took a very narrow opinion
on wool blankets.
So we shouldn't have any wool blankets.
The people who liked wool blankets
would no longer have the same opinion of AA.
And then if they took an opinion on the Girl Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
Boy Scouts, or the left wing, or the right wing, anything you take an opinion on,
the opposing opinion no longer holds you in that exalted position.
It just segments, segments, segments.
As soon as that, it's the most amazing thing in the world how powerful that tradition is
on making AA universal.
There just is no little narrow segment that can't stand AA.
And that's because we have kept that and our primary purpose,
which that's what you call this group, right?
Or no, the specific group, but you talk about the primary purpose.
And it's so easy to say, well, gee, there are certain things in the world that we ought to get behind,
that we ought to have an opinion on.
I mean, it just seems to come up from inside.
And this miracle that these traditions got stuck in there,
that we don't do that, has left us in that position.
And the same thing with primary purpose.
How tempting it is to take a powerful solution like this
and try to apply it into a much wider range.
And somehow, they had the wisdom to say,
yes, these 12 steps are indeed miraculous.
And you, with other problems, are welcome to them.
Help yourself.
We'll help you understand them as you use them against gambling
or as you use them against sex addiction or whatever the problem is.
I think there's 140 groups.
140 groups.
Using the 12 steps, but not one group helping 140 problems.
Because that 140 problems, when you have one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic,
you have the equivalent of a magnifying glass taking the sun
and focusing it until there's a fire.
And if you try to do the same thing and spread that
so that the magnifying glass doesn't get caught in the fire,
the magnifying glass could put some heat on a wider area.
You wouldn't get it on fire.
You'd just have it warm.
It would be diluted.
The power of this message wouldn't work.
And then we'd wonder, what happened?
What happened?
We thought we could...
These things should apply to every type of problem.
They do, but only with a primary purpose behind it.
So,
when one alcoholic is talking to another alcoholic,
one drug addict is talking to another drug addict,
one gambler is talking to another gambler,
not one alcoholic talking to a person with a weight problem.
The miracle would not generate enough force to happen.
It's one of those things that sounds good.
Sounds like we ought to be able to solve all these things.
And it just is...
It's...
I look at that and I just go, wow.
Because all of AA,
these conferences, the committees, this literature,
everything only serves one purpose,
to continue to supply the one alcoholic talking to another.
This is...
That's where it all happens.
This is where we celebrate the fact that it happens,
but it is the one alcoholic.
It's the sitting there.
And there's this thing.
And you suddenly trust.
And you suddenly realize you're home.
And so I just wanted to get some thoughts in on those two traditions.
They just are amazing how we came up with these things.
And back with the Washingtonians,
when they got involved in some outside issues,
they were gone in four years.
Disappeared off the planet.
And they had a bigger percentage of the population sober
than AA does today.
A lot of people.
But off went...
So anyway, that's enough out of that.
Now let me tell you what...
Some of the things that happened in my life...
I don't want to tell my whole story.
I grew up in the 30s in New England.
Wonderful parents.
Nice sister.
Four of us.
I didn't feel like I belonged.
My sister has...
Coming up on 30 years in AA.
And I went to the Catholic Church.
My sister sat next to me.
She thought it was the cutest, friendliest, warmest place in the world.
She still goes there.
Just thinks...
She thought the nuns were cute.
She thought the Latin was cute.
She thought the incense was cute.
And the costumes.
And the poop.
And all of that.
I thought it was the equivalent of the Holocaust.
That I read the catechism, the same one she read.
And it scared me to death.
It was...
I can't believe this is going to happen to me.
And I would just...
I would hyperventilate sitting in the church.
Just sitting there next to my sister who's going,
Isn't this fun?
And so...
And when I was eight or nine,
I was staring at the crucifix and it spoke to me
when my first spiritual insight,
Little boy, do you see this?
Oh yeah, yeah, you see that?
Well, that's what God did to his only son that he loved.
Guess what he's going to do to you?
So...
What was being assembled here
is my story.
My old ideas
that avail us nothing.
These are the old ideas that avail us nothing.
This is the story.
And I heard a speaker talk one night
and he said, he was being funny,
and he said, my story is divided into two parts.
What happened during the years that I drank
and what I thought happened during the years that I drank.
Ah!
And as you think about it,
I could make the same statement about your childhood.
Your childhood is divided into two parts.
What happened when you were a child
and what you thought happened when you were a child.
In other words, it's a story.
My story is a story
that I put together in my little head
about what happened.
There was this mean uncle,
who came over.
Well, come to find out,
he's a very nice man.
He wasn't a mean uncle.
But he was in my story.
Here's a real mean uncle
that came over.
The reason I'm saying all this is
that if you were to listen to the talks I gave
when I had ten years sobriety
compared to now,
you'd find out that now
I had a much better childhood
than I used to.
Well, how is that possible?
How could you have a better childhood now?
I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
Bob was talking exactly about it.
Our consciousness changes.
And from that new perspective,
we see that we're not the same.
We see parents that were trying
as hard as they could.
They had tons of problems.
And we just didn't really see
their side of anything.
And so this is the freedom
that is obtained in Alcoholics Anonymous,
is freedom from those old ideas.
The willingness to let go of things.
I've been working eight months
on a men's retreat down in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
And I've been doing a lot of thinking,
you know,
preparing some lectures.
And I've suddenly realized something
that a lot of you may already know,
but it just came to me
in just like,
boom,
holy cow,
I never thought of that.
That the 12th step says,
having had a spiritual awakening
as the result,
that means the entire point
of Alcoholics Anonymous
is to have a spiritual awakening.
That's it.
That's why you come here.
That's what the steps are for,
which is to change your consciousness.
And we carry this message
to other alcoholics.
What's the message?
How to have a spiritual awakening.
That's the message.
Well, boy, it's a program of action.
What is the action?
What is the action?
I'm going to tell you in two words
what the entire action
of the AA program is.
Letting go.
Every step that we take
is designed to make us let go further.
We admit we're powerless over alcohol,
so we've got to let go of that.
Then we have to come to believe
that something's going to take care of us,
so I have to let go of me taking care of it.
And then I'm going to start inventorying
all the things I want to let go of.
And then I'm going to share with my sponsor.
This is all the stuff.
These are all the defects and everything
that I need to let go of.
Good.
Well, now we've got it listed there.
And then I'm going to go
and I'm going to ask my higher power
to ungrip my hands
so that I can let go of these things.
And then I'm going to let go of the past.
And then I'm going to go through every day
letting go of anything that disturbs me
so that I can maintain
my spiritual awakening.
This awakening with this higher power.
So, it's a strange situation
when you come here
and you think you need to learn
and get knowledge
and move, grow spiritually.
Grow spiritually is to shrink.
You follow what I'm saying?
You become smaller.
And as a matter of fact,
you look at all the information you have,
and you go, whoops, wrong.
Gone.
You don't learn anything.
You unlearn.
We had a guy, I remember when my first month,
I didn't know what he was talking about.
A little guy, he's a lawyer
for the House of Representatives.
Charlie Bruton from Alabama.
He'd been passed away a long time ago.
I hadn't thought about him in years.
And he used to get up there and he'd say,
well, you know,
it isn't the things you don't know
that get you in trouble.
It's knowing things.
It's knowing things for sure
that just ain't so.
That's what we did.
We knew a lot of things for sure
that weren't true.
And we lived under the specter
of this misinformation
that drove ourselves crazy.
Drove ourselves crazy
that I'm a terrible person
living in a terrible world
with people you can't trust.
There's no such thing as a loving God.
And that's it.
They just said, well,
we're just going to have to get rid of
everything that isn't true.
And pretty soon there was nothing left.
You know what I'm talking about?
You know, it just,
no, no, that's wrong.
Chuck talked about it all the time.
Uncover, discover, discard.
Oh, wrong again.
Look at the tenth step.
Oh, what else am I wrong about?
Who ever would have thought
that we would delight in being wrong?
That was the hardest thing
for any of us to do
was to admit I was wrong about anything.
First time I did it,
my sponsor finally said,
well, do you see where you're wrong about that?
And I said, you know something, Bill, you're right.
And he said, no, you're wrong.
Same thing.
He said, well, say it.
Say it.
It didn't want to come out of my mouth.
It didn't want to come out of my mouth.
It did not want to come out of my mouth
that I was wrong.
I said, oh, wrong.
Like, that would be the end of the world.
And so it is very paradoxical,
a lot of the things that happen in here.
That it is, I was in the Marine Corps
and they told me the key to the whole thing
is surrendering.
Just put up a white flag.
Complete, unconditional surrender.
And it seemed like such a foreign thing
for me to do.
For somebody to want to do
to solve a problem
was to let go of it.
And I, you know, I was thinking
if my higher power came into my room
and said, I'm here to help you,
what's going on?
And I would say, well, I'm really frightened
about this situation here.
He'd say, well, that's not yours.
Give me that.
And whatever I brought up,
he'd just, no, no, no, you're not supposed to.
Who do you think you are, God?
Give me that.
That's not yours.
And I wouldn't have anything left.
There wouldn't be anything left.
He would have taken everything away from me.
And I'd say, what am I supposed to do now?
He says, go out and play.
Absolutely insist on enjoying life.
Your job is to be happy, joyous, and free.
I'll take care of all the problems.
Sounds too simple, doesn't it?
Alcoholics don't like simple things.
Remember what they said in the very beginning?
Okay, just don't drink.
I know, but I got all these things.
I got to go.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Just don't drink.
You don't understand.
I got about 8 million problems.
It's much more.
I mean, the solution to my problem
is going to be about 40 pages.
Not don't drink.
That's too...
It couldn't be don't drink.
And then everybody would say,
don't drink.
Everybody would say, don't drink.
Everybody would go, just don't drink.
Even if your butt's falling off, don't drink.
Okay.
So we have the same feeling
when somebody says, just let go.
Couldn't be that easy.
Just let go.
Let go?
You mean let go is the answer to all the problems?
Yes, one solution for all problems.
Oh, come on.
The world's a lot more complex
than one solution for all problems.
I mean, that couldn't possibly be true.
Okay, what were you doing before you got here?
What did you do when you had a problem?
Well, I went out in the kitchen.
I got a glass.
I poured some whiskey in it
and poured it down.
One solution for all problems.
I don't ever remember saying,
well, here's a problem I won't be drinking over.
I'll be solving this one sober.
How are you going to solve anything sober?
So we already know one solution for all problems.
What was the solution?
We took something that changed us inside
so that everything looked all right.
You know what I mean?
The world didn't change.
I just was in the bars on my third drink
and I suddenly said, that's more like it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, I thought everything was all screwed up.
Well, it was, but it's not now.
Everything's fine right now.
How could it be fine?
I don't know, but it is.
Everything looks different.
You know, the first time I saw that was with my sponsor.
I came in, you know, about every three days
you come running in,
Bill, this time the sky really is falling.
It was just out there and it's coming down hard.
And hit sit down.
All right, what is it?
Well, my wife is going to go over there
and I got six kids
and then I'm going to hear the Marine Corps.
Okay, all right, all right, all right.
And then hit start in.
Well, you know, that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
But don't forget, you got all these new friends
and you got this program
and it's taking you on a wonderful direction
and your heart is just being filled with all these.
When he got all through, I'd say,
well, if you look at it that way,
not so bad.
If you look,
if you look at it that way.
So, strangely,
when Chuck came out with a new pair of glasses,
he really captured the whole deal in sobriety.
And sometimes I think we ought to have a ceremony
at two years.
And if they've successfully worked the steps,
we call them up to the podium,
we take off the life sucks glasses,
and we say, we got these for you.
We want you to put these on
and tell us what you see.
So we put on a pair of spiritual glasses.
We look around and we go,
God, this is wonderful.
This is the most beautiful world I've ever seen.
It really is.
It's an awakening.
I'm just so happy.
Now, here's the problem.
We say to the person,
we strongly suggest that you throw away,
throw away those life suck glasses.
Oh, yeah, I will.
I'm just going to,
I'm just going to keep them in my pocket for a while.
Sort of a memento of the old bad days.
And about a week later,
we get the phone call.
Oh, God, you're not going to believe the fire.
Everything's terrible at work.
And I said, what?
Have you still got those new glasses?
No.
Put on the old ones.
And I'm very familiar with having problems.
I'm not used to not having problems.
We're problem people.
Bill writes that we create our own problems.
Our problems, we think, are of our own making.
And it is in the problems
that we separate ourselves from our higher power.
That is why we feel so lonely.
Why we sit and wonder
why it's so lonely deep inside of us.
And there was one thing that used to fix that.
That's the cosmic loneliness that mankind feels.
And we wondered, how do you fix this?
And alcohol came along
and we found a way of really fixing that.
That core problem that human beings have.
And, of course, it was the right path.
It was the wrong higher power.
It had the idea that this could not be fixed
in any traditional way.
But it had to be fixed as an inside job,
which is what alcohol was.
And it was very hard for me to believe
that these 12 steps could do
what you all said they would.
I knew you believed it
and I knew that you had it work,
but it did not look like it could possibly be
the answer to the problems I had inside of me.
And when my sponsor said,
read them, read them, read them,
just take a look and this is where it all is.
I read and read and I went back to him
and I said, all right, I know I'm slow,
but which one is the money step?
Because,
if I don't get some money for my wife and six kids,
we're going to be evicted
and the whole world is coming down.
Which one is the money step?
And he said, there is no money step.
What we can do with your financial insecurity
is to give you spiritual comfort
even though you don't have any money.
And I felt like I was in a used car,
when I heard that.
You can what?
We can give you the spiritual perspective
so that not having money won't worry you
and you'll be just as comfortable
as if you did have money.
And I remember going,
okay, technically I can see that,
but could we stick to the
where you actually get the money part
of the...
of the solution
and we'll get to the God stuff later.
And he said, no, this is all God stuff.
This is all, you know,
so I was getting my first glimpse of
you can have financial security without money.
I mean, that was like, well, what is that?
It is the power of our own creator
to make us realize
that we are being taken care of
as we sit here.
I love to tell new people in Tampa,
now, I know you all have a lot of problems,
but I will give you a written contract
that all your problems are now being worked on.
They're all being worked on,
so go get some ice cream.
Take a look at them tomorrow.
See, they're going to be...
stuff's being worked out, isn't it?
Yeah, you never saw it was going to work out that way,
did you?
They're all being worked on.
So the last thing that we have to do
is worry about it.
We have to worry about them.
The action that we take
is to transform ourselves.
My latest thing with people that I sponsor is
they want to come over and talk about a problem
and I go, okay, come on over.
And then my job is to show them
that they really don't have a problem.
That they are not seeing it correctly.
You have a situation,
but you don't have a problem.
You have a problem.
You have labeled it a problem.
And then if that doesn't work,
we're starting in on statute of limitations on problems.
And they fit in, there's minor, medium, serious,
all the way up, you know what I mean.
And minor problems are three days.
You can't have it after three days.
Sorry, but don't even bring it up.
Nope, nope, that's too long to hold that problem.
You have to let it go.
All the way up to six months for...
some major thing.
It's all to dramatize the point
that the solutions we seek in here
are not normal.
They're not what we are accustomed to
in our own problem solving.
One time I was feeling bad
and I decided to trick myself into feeling good.
Now, I don't know if anybody's ever done that.
I'd say, God, you're feeling real depressed
and really...
really upset about this issue.
Go get the movie section out of the paper.
And as soon as I said movie section,
I went, yeah, movies.
I love movies.
I always go there.
So I got the movie section out
and I said, God, that's a good one.
Well, I'm going to take you tonight.
Oh, thank you.
It's me taking me.
Do I get popcorn?
Yeah, I get popcorn.
And after a while,
I had tricked myself into feeling better.
Now, here's the part.
Here's the part that we leave out.
If we really understand it,
we tricked ourselves into feeling bad
in the first place.
It was us.
We just took some situation
and made it into a problem.
And the reason that we do this
is to maintain this separate identity
from our higher power.
To maintain the fact
that we exist in addition
to being a child of God,
as Chuck called us.
And it's that second identity
that we make up
that is driving us crazy.
It is that story that's going on in our head
that's been going on there
since we were a little kid
about all the trouble and this is bad.
Oh, I'm so upset.
I just found out about this
and I just got upset
and I found out about that.
None of it has to be there.
And it took me years to realize
I could ask for freedom from all of that.
And it came in the form of awakening.
When we talk about our 12th step
and the spiritual awakening,
it is the power to see things
in a much different way.
And the rest of the program
is to awaken further.
Bill calls it more spiritual growth.
It is to work on being able
to see it even differently
than we do now.
And so I know I'm kind of getting off
on a lot of things
that have been running around in my head,
so let me get back to those of you
that are new.
Clancy calls the disease
a disease of perception.
And when we come in,
what we see is a very troubling world.
So you're not lying
when you look and go,
God, everything's so overpowering.
And we agree with you
that that's what you see.
And alcohol made you see it differently.
It was more of a happy world.
In here,
you're just going to have to take our word
that your perspective
is going to change.
And it's going to change
very soon.
So that you will look at the same world
and be quite comfortable in it.
That you will look around
and it will make sense.
It's like you're in the shower
and you can't shave
because the mirror is covered with the steam.
But if you wait long enough,
you'll be able to see very clearly
everything.
And so right now,
the only thing that is
troubling you
is the inability to see
what the other people in this room can see.
And you just have to hold our hand
and we will take you along
until it clears up.
And the clearing up
is very exciting.
You will see for yourself,
you won't be taking somebody else's word,
how wonderful it is
for you.
And after that happens,
you will be unable
to stop yourself
from sharing that
with the next person.
You will be over there
in a heartbeat.
Yeah, yeah.
I used to be able to not see
worth a damn either.
Give me your hand.
I'm going to lead you along
until you see it.
This is kind of like a hologram.
My kids had me up.
I was up in Baltimore.
About 15 years ago,
I'd never heard of them.
And my son had one on the wall
and my grandchildren could see it.
They went out there and they said,
yeah, if you look up
in the left-hand corner,
then whoop, it's 3D
and you'll see it.
And I'm out there
and I would be eating dinner
and I'd say, I'll be right back.
And I'd go back out in the hall
and I'd stand out there
staring at this thing.
Okay, relax.
Just have your eyes.
It's going to pop in any second.
I never saw it.
We all went home
and I never saw it.
Part of me wants to go back there
if he still has it.
Because everybody else saw it.
So, you know,
I was thinking about this
and an awakening in AA.
You know what I mean?
It happens sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly.
It'll always happen
if you go back and stare
at that damn thing long enough.
So, how could you
shortcut all that?
How could you write a book
about how to see a hologram?
Well, you could write all you want.
Wouldn't help, would it?
You'd still have to stand there
until you saw it.
So, this is what we say in here.
Keep coming back
until the miracle happens.
Don't give up on seeking.
Don't think just because
another six months has gone by
and that you can't see it yet
that you're not going to see it tomorrow.
Or maybe in the next minute
it could happen.
When it does,
this is your ticket
into this new level of existence.
This now becomes the proof
that you've been looking for
that the spiritual life
is not a theory.
Your own personal life
is not a personal,
I see it.
I see it.
That is worth
being alive for.
To have that.
There isn't a bigger experience.
I can't think of a bigger experience
that human beings could have
than to see
the truth about themselves
in that fashion.
And once that happens,
you're a seeker for more of it.
I want more to be revealed.
Bill talks about that.
I want more to be revealed.
I want more.
I want to see the whole picture.
And this is the organization we're in.
We're in this society
that we belong to
enables us to continue this journey
and to share it
with those that are coming behind us.
I'm out of time
and I just want to tell you
how happy I am
to have spent my anniversary here
with all of you
and God bless.
Thanks.
Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy B.. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
I'm going to put this up a little.
Yeah, I came here 42 years ago.
I was in the Marine Corps, and another Marine came to my house and picked me up
and took me to my first meeting at the Manassas, Virginia group of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And the meeting lasted about five hours.
It was a group anniversary, and they had a million people celebrating.
They had turkey and ham and square dancing, country fiddles.
And when I got to the meeting, I'd been sober about five hours.
And I had ten hours when the meeting ended, and I was not agreeing with anyone when they came up and said,
Isn't sobriety wonderful? I was going, I don't think so.
And I wanted to leave that meeting. I wanted to just get away.
But it was in an old odd fellow's house out near Manassas.
Real country, and there wasn't even a street light or where you could go.
And it was sleeting, and I just stood out there and felt really terrible.
And I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I turned around.
It was this Al-Anon lady who I since got to know, her and her husband.
And her name was Betsy Lynch.
And she said, It's going to be all right.
And I believed her.
And I turned around and went back in and sat down.
And that was the end of my struggle.
I just believed her.
And about a month ago, the Manassas group of Virginia was celebrating its 55th year,
and they asked me to come and talk at the group anniversary.
And I went there, and like Bob, my sponsor was there.
And he's got lung cancer and has been really struggling for the last year,
and I didn't think he'd make it up from a little bit further south in Virginia.
But his home group brought him up, had him in a wheelchair.
And so there we were.
You know, it was like the bookends of this wonderful period of time
in the same group where he brought me.
And so it was very moving, and I got a picture in my wallet of the two of us that night.
And it was just remarkable.
And about a week later, his home group members, who I stay in touch with,
called me up and they said, well, it looks like it's getting real close.
It's renal, kidney shutdown, failure.
His family's assembling, and we're hoping that he lasts until his son gets back from Germany,
where his son is in the German Symphony Orchestra playing French,
French horn.
And his son has told him, I'm coming home, and I'm going to play an entire symphony for you.
So we all said, well, we know he's going to last until that son gets home.
There's no way he's not going to last to that.
So his son came and went.
And I called him yesterday.
I mean, this is like two more weeks later.
And I said, Bill, how are you doing?
I'm going out to Vegas.
I wanted to...
You know, tell you that I'm so happy you're my sponsor and all that.
And I said, how are you feeling?
Oh, doing great.
I'm walking again.
So we left it that we would shoot for 50 years together.
And we'll just see.
He's a tough old guy.
And it's been...
I just wanted to share that with you, how important sponsors are.
And it's not that often that you can get to both stale lives.
I ain't that long.
And so it's been a wonderful journey.
And he taught me a lot about AA.
Taught me a lot about service.
And so as I stand up here tonight, you know, I like to talk about whatever pops into my head.
And I was thinking when you were reading the traditions.
You know, Alcoholics Anonymous is...
Universally respected and loved.
It is...
There's no one.
There's no group that hates AA.
There's no segment of society or segment of the world that doesn't love AA.
News reporters run around to dig up dirt on everybody.
I mean, it's gotten bad.
You know how easy it would be to sit out in front of...
In an AA meeting and pick off the celebrities with a camera.
It'd be like shooting duck in a pond out back.
Never happens.
Doesn't happen.
Why?
Just not going to touch AA.
Something special about AA.
And if they did, their editor wouldn't let them use it.
Now, isn't that remarkable?
There's no law against it.
We just happen to have a tradition.
And it's been...
It's being respected.
And I was thinking, you know, why would it be so respected?
And you know what I came to the conclusion?
Because we don't take an opinion on anything.
That little, sneaky, tent tradition.
AA has no opinion on any outside issues.
Sounds pretty innocuous.
Oh, so they don't have it.
And I always tell a story about when I was in Washington and the Senate...
Health and Human Services Committee was trying to decide
whether to put warning labels on alcohol like they did on cigarettes.
And they said, we've got to get expert witnesses
as to whether it would be a good idea or not.
And somebody on the staff said,
well, who could be a bigger expert than Alcoholics Anonymous?
So let's call them up.
So they called the General Service Office and said,
we're having this, could you send somebody?
Oh, be glad to.
So they sent somebody down to interview the staff.
The staff person, they explained the whole bill,
and they said, now, where do you think AA would stand on this?
Oh, we don't have any opinion on that at all.
And the senators in the committee staff couldn't believe
that someone had no opinion.
It was beyond them.
They have an opinion on everything, you know what I'm saying?
No opinion.
No opinion whatsoever.
Now, I have an opinion.
Personally, you can have opinions,
and I think there should be a warning label,
and I can tell you exactly what it should say,
so it would do some good.
It should say, warning, this bottle may run out.
You...
You should consider...
You should consider buying two.
And...
Think of all the lives that might be saved
when the alcoholic's at home,
and it's about quarter to twelve at midnight,
and he ran out, and he's got 15 minutes
to get back down to the bar,
and he wouldn't have to get in his car.
So it would probably do some good.
But anyway, getting back to this no opinion,
let's say,
let's say that just, for example,
AA took a very narrow opinion
on wool blankets.
So we shouldn't have any wool blankets.
The people who liked wool blankets
would no longer have the same opinion of AA.
And then if they took an opinion on the Girl Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
or the Boy Scouts,
Boy Scouts, or the left wing, or the right wing, anything you take an opinion on,
the opposing opinion no longer holds you in that exalted position.
It just segments, segments, segments.
As soon as that, it's the most amazing thing in the world how powerful that tradition is
on making AA universal.
There just is no little narrow segment that can't stand AA.
And that's because we have kept that and our primary purpose,
which that's what you call this group, right?
Or no, the specific group, but you talk about the primary purpose.
And it's so easy to say, well, gee, there are certain things in the world that we ought to get behind,
that we ought to have an opinion on.
I mean, it just seems to come up from inside.
And this miracle that these traditions got stuck in there,
that we don't do that, has left us in that position.
And the same thing with primary purpose.
How tempting it is to take a powerful solution like this
and try to apply it into a much wider range.
And somehow, they had the wisdom to say,
yes, these 12 steps are indeed miraculous.
And you, with other problems, are welcome to them.
Help yourself.
We'll help you understand them as you use them against gambling
or as you use them against sex addiction or whatever the problem is.
I think there's 140 groups.
140 groups.
Using the 12 steps, but not one group helping 140 problems.
Because that 140 problems, when you have one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic,
you have the equivalent of a magnifying glass taking the sun
and focusing it until there's a fire.
And if you try to do the same thing and spread that
so that the magnifying glass doesn't get caught in the fire,
the magnifying glass could put some heat on a wider area.
You wouldn't get it on fire.
You'd just have it warm.
It would be diluted.
The power of this message wouldn't work.
And then we'd wonder, what happened?
What happened?
We thought we could...
These things should apply to every type of problem.
They do, but only with a primary purpose behind it.
So,
when one alcoholic is talking to another alcoholic,
one drug addict is talking to another drug addict,
one gambler is talking to another gambler,
not one alcoholic talking to a person with a weight problem.
The miracle would not generate enough force to happen.
It's one of those things that sounds good.
Sounds like we ought to be able to solve all these things.
And it just is...
It's...
I look at that and I just go, wow.
Because all of AA,
these conferences, the committees, this literature,
everything only serves one purpose,
to continue to supply the one alcoholic talking to another.
This is...
That's where it all happens.
This is where we celebrate the fact that it happens,
but it is the one alcoholic.
It's the sitting there.
And there's this thing.
And you suddenly trust.
And you suddenly realize you're home.
And so I just wanted to get some thoughts in on those two traditions.
They just are amazing how we came up with these things.
And back with the Washingtonians,
when they got involved in some outside issues,
they were gone in four years.
Disappeared off the planet.
And they had a bigger percentage of the population sober
than AA does today.
A lot of people.
But off went...
So anyway, that's enough out of that.
Now let me tell you what...
Some of the things that happened in my life...
I don't want to tell my whole story.
I grew up in the 30s in New England.
Wonderful parents.
Nice sister.
Four of us.
I didn't feel like I belonged.
My sister has...
Coming up on 30 years in AA.
And I went to the Catholic Church.
My sister sat next to me.
She thought it was the cutest, friendliest, warmest place in the world.
She still goes there.
Just thinks...
She thought the nuns were cute.
She thought the Latin was cute.
She thought the incense was cute.
And the costumes.
And the poop.
And all of that.
I thought it was the equivalent of the Holocaust.
That I read the catechism, the same one she read.
And it scared me to death.
It was...
I can't believe this is going to happen to me.
And I would just...
I would hyperventilate sitting in the church.
Just sitting there next to my sister who's going,
Isn't this fun?
And so...
And when I was eight or nine,
I was staring at the crucifix and it spoke to me
when my first spiritual insight,
Little boy, do you see this?
Oh yeah, yeah, you see that?
Well, that's what God did to his only son that he loved.
Guess what he's going to do to you?
So...
What was being assembled here
is my story.
My old ideas
that avail us nothing.
These are the old ideas that avail us nothing.
This is the story.
And I heard a speaker talk one night
and he said, he was being funny,
and he said, my story is divided into two parts.
What happened during the years that I drank
and what I thought happened during the years that I drank.
Ah!
And as you think about it,
I could make the same statement about your childhood.
Your childhood is divided into two parts.
What happened when you were a child
and what you thought happened when you were a child.
In other words, it's a story.
My story is a story
that I put together in my little head
about what happened.
There was this mean uncle,
who came over.
Well, come to find out,
he's a very nice man.
He wasn't a mean uncle.
But he was in my story.
Here's a real mean uncle
that came over.
The reason I'm saying all this is
that if you were to listen to the talks I gave
when I had ten years sobriety
compared to now,
you'd find out that now
I had a much better childhood
than I used to.
Well, how is that possible?
How could you have a better childhood now?
I'm looking at it from a different perspective.
Bob was talking exactly about it.
Our consciousness changes.
And from that new perspective,
we see that we're not the same.
We see parents that were trying
as hard as they could.
They had tons of problems.
And we just didn't really see
their side of anything.
And so this is the freedom
that is obtained in Alcoholics Anonymous,
is freedom from those old ideas.
The willingness to let go of things.
I've been working eight months
on a men's retreat down in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
I'm in Tampa.
And I've been doing a lot of thinking,
you know,
preparing some lectures.
And I've suddenly realized something
that a lot of you may already know,
but it just came to me
in just like,
boom,
holy cow,
I never thought of that.
That the 12th step says,
having had a spiritual awakening
as the result,
that means the entire point
of Alcoholics Anonymous
is to have a spiritual awakening.
That's it.
That's why you come here.
That's what the steps are for,
which is to change your consciousness.
And we carry this message
to other alcoholics.
What's the message?
How to have a spiritual awakening.
That's the message.
Well, boy, it's a program of action.
What is the action?
What is the action?
I'm going to tell you in two words
what the entire action
of the AA program is.
Letting go.
Every step that we take
is designed to make us let go further.
We admit we're powerless over alcohol,
so we've got to let go of that.
Then we have to come to believe
that something's going to take care of us,
so I have to let go of me taking care of it.
And then I'm going to start inventorying
all the things I want to let go of.
And then I'm going to share with my sponsor.
This is all the stuff.
These are all the defects and everything
that I need to let go of.
Good.
Well, now we've got it listed there.
And then I'm going to go
and I'm going to ask my higher power
to ungrip my hands
so that I can let go of these things.
And then I'm going to let go of the past.
And then I'm going to go through every day
letting go of anything that disturbs me
so that I can maintain
my spiritual awakening.
This awakening with this higher power.
So, it's a strange situation
when you come here
and you think you need to learn
and get knowledge
and move, grow spiritually.
Grow spiritually is to shrink.
You follow what I'm saying?
You become smaller.
And as a matter of fact,
you look at all the information you have,
and you go, whoops, wrong.
Gone.
You don't learn anything.
You unlearn.
We had a guy, I remember when my first month,
I didn't know what he was talking about.
A little guy, he's a lawyer
for the House of Representatives.
Charlie Bruton from Alabama.
He'd been passed away a long time ago.
I hadn't thought about him in years.
And he used to get up there and he'd say,
well, you know,
it isn't the things you don't know
that get you in trouble.
It's knowing things.
It's knowing things for sure
that just ain't so.
That's what we did.
We knew a lot of things for sure
that weren't true.
And we lived under the specter
of this misinformation
that drove ourselves crazy.
Drove ourselves crazy
that I'm a terrible person
living in a terrible world
with people you can't trust.
There's no such thing as a loving God.
And that's it.
They just said, well,
we're just going to have to get rid of
everything that isn't true.
And pretty soon there was nothing left.
You know what I'm talking about?
You know, it just,
no, no, that's wrong.
Chuck talked about it all the time.
Uncover, discover, discard.
Oh, wrong again.
Look at the tenth step.
Oh, what else am I wrong about?
Who ever would have thought
that we would delight in being wrong?
That was the hardest thing
for any of us to do
was to admit I was wrong about anything.
First time I did it,
my sponsor finally said,
well, do you see where you're wrong about that?
And I said, you know something, Bill, you're right.
And he said, no, you're wrong.
Same thing.
He said, well, say it.
Say it.
It didn't want to come out of my mouth.
It didn't want to come out of my mouth.
It did not want to come out of my mouth
that I was wrong.
I said, oh, wrong.
Like, that would be the end of the world.
And so it is very paradoxical,
a lot of the things that happen in here.
That it is, I was in the Marine Corps
and they told me the key to the whole thing
is surrendering.
Just put up a white flag.
Complete, unconditional surrender.
And it seemed like such a foreign thing
for me to do.
For somebody to want to do
to solve a problem
was to let go of it.
And I, you know, I was thinking
if my higher power came into my room
and said, I'm here to help you,
what's going on?
And I would say, well, I'm really frightened
about this situation here.
He'd say, well, that's not yours.
Give me that.
And whatever I brought up,
he'd just, no, no, no, you're not supposed to.
Who do you think you are, God?
Give me that.
That's not yours.
And I wouldn't have anything left.
There wouldn't be anything left.
He would have taken everything away from me.
And I'd say, what am I supposed to do now?
He says, go out and play.
Absolutely insist on enjoying life.
Your job is to be happy, joyous, and free.
I'll take care of all the problems.
Sounds too simple, doesn't it?
Alcoholics don't like simple things.
Remember what they said in the very beginning?
Okay, just don't drink.
I know, but I got all these things.
I got to go.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Just don't drink.
You don't understand.
I got about 8 million problems.
It's much more.
I mean, the solution to my problem
is going to be about 40 pages.
Not don't drink.
That's too...
It couldn't be don't drink.
And then everybody would say,
don't drink.
Everybody would say, don't drink.
Everybody would go, just don't drink.
Even if your butt's falling off, don't drink.
Okay.
So we have the same feeling
when somebody says, just let go.
Couldn't be that easy.
Just let go.
Let go?
You mean let go is the answer to all the problems?
Yes, one solution for all problems.
Oh, come on.
The world's a lot more complex
than one solution for all problems.
I mean, that couldn't possibly be true.
Okay, what were you doing before you got here?
What did you do when you had a problem?
Well, I went out in the kitchen.
I got a glass.
I poured some whiskey in it
and poured it down.
One solution for all problems.
I don't ever remember saying,
well, here's a problem I won't be drinking over.
I'll be solving this one sober.
How are you going to solve anything sober?
So we already know one solution for all problems.
What was the solution?
We took something that changed us inside
so that everything looked all right.
You know what I mean?
The world didn't change.
I just was in the bars on my third drink
and I suddenly said, that's more like it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
Well, I thought everything was all screwed up.
Well, it was, but it's not now.
Everything's fine right now.
How could it be fine?
I don't know, but it is.
Everything looks different.
You know, the first time I saw that was with my sponsor.
I came in, you know, about every three days
you come running in,
Bill, this time the sky really is falling.
It was just out there and it's coming down hard.
And hit sit down.
All right, what is it?
Well, my wife is going to go over there
and I got six kids
and then I'm going to hear the Marine Corps.
Okay, all right, all right, all right.
And then hit start in.
Well, you know, that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
But don't forget, you got all these new friends
and you got this program
and it's taking you on a wonderful direction
and your heart is just being filled with all these.
When he got all through, I'd say,
well, if you look at it that way,
not so bad.
If you look,
if you look at it that way.
So, strangely,
when Chuck came out with a new pair of glasses,
he really captured the whole deal in sobriety.
And sometimes I think we ought to have a ceremony
at two years.
And if they've successfully worked the steps,
we call them up to the podium,
we take off the life sucks glasses,
and we say, we got these for you.
We want you to put these on
and tell us what you see.
So we put on a pair of spiritual glasses.
We look around and we go,
God, this is wonderful.
This is the most beautiful world I've ever seen.
It really is.
It's an awakening.
I'm just so happy.
Now, here's the problem.
We say to the person,
we strongly suggest that you throw away,
throw away those life suck glasses.
Oh, yeah, I will.
I'm just going to,
I'm just going to keep them in my pocket for a while.
Sort of a memento of the old bad days.
And about a week later,
we get the phone call.
Oh, God, you're not going to believe the fire.
Everything's terrible at work.
And I said, what?
Have you still got those new glasses?
No.
Put on the old ones.
And I'm very familiar with having problems.
I'm not used to not having problems.
We're problem people.
Bill writes that we create our own problems.
Our problems, we think, are of our own making.
And it is in the problems
that we separate ourselves from our higher power.
That is why we feel so lonely.
Why we sit and wonder
why it's so lonely deep inside of us.
And there was one thing that used to fix that.
That's the cosmic loneliness that mankind feels.
And we wondered, how do you fix this?
And alcohol came along
and we found a way of really fixing that.
That core problem that human beings have.
And, of course, it was the right path.
It was the wrong higher power.
It had the idea that this could not be fixed
in any traditional way.
But it had to be fixed as an inside job,
which is what alcohol was.
And it was very hard for me to believe
that these 12 steps could do
what you all said they would.
I knew you believed it
and I knew that you had it work,
but it did not look like it could possibly be
the answer to the problems I had inside of me.
And when my sponsor said,
read them, read them, read them,
just take a look and this is where it all is.
I read and read and I went back to him
and I said, all right, I know I'm slow,
but which one is the money step?
Because,
if I don't get some money for my wife and six kids,
we're going to be evicted
and the whole world is coming down.
Which one is the money step?
And he said, there is no money step.
What we can do with your financial insecurity
is to give you spiritual comfort
even though you don't have any money.
And I felt like I was in a used car,
when I heard that.
You can what?
We can give you the spiritual perspective
so that not having money won't worry you
and you'll be just as comfortable
as if you did have money.
And I remember going,
okay, technically I can see that,
but could we stick to the
where you actually get the money part
of the...
of the solution
and we'll get to the God stuff later.
And he said, no, this is all God stuff.
This is all, you know,
so I was getting my first glimpse of
you can have financial security without money.
I mean, that was like, well, what is that?
It is the power of our own creator
to make us realize
that we are being taken care of
as we sit here.
I love to tell new people in Tampa,
now, I know you all have a lot of problems,
but I will give you a written contract
that all your problems are now being worked on.
They're all being worked on,
so go get some ice cream.
Take a look at them tomorrow.
See, they're going to be...
stuff's being worked out, isn't it?
Yeah, you never saw it was going to work out that way,
did you?
They're all being worked on.
So the last thing that we have to do
is worry about it.
We have to worry about them.
The action that we take
is to transform ourselves.
My latest thing with people that I sponsor is
they want to come over and talk about a problem
and I go, okay, come on over.
And then my job is to show them
that they really don't have a problem.
That they are not seeing it correctly.
You have a situation,
but you don't have a problem.
You have a problem.
You have labeled it a problem.
And then if that doesn't work,
we're starting in on statute of limitations on problems.
And they fit in, there's minor, medium, serious,
all the way up, you know what I mean.
And minor problems are three days.
You can't have it after three days.
Sorry, but don't even bring it up.
Nope, nope, that's too long to hold that problem.
You have to let it go.
All the way up to six months for...
some major thing.
It's all to dramatize the point
that the solutions we seek in here
are not normal.
They're not what we are accustomed to
in our own problem solving.
One time I was feeling bad
and I decided to trick myself into feeling good.
Now, I don't know if anybody's ever done that.
I'd say, God, you're feeling real depressed
and really...
really upset about this issue.
Go get the movie section out of the paper.
And as soon as I said movie section,
I went, yeah, movies.
I love movies.
I always go there.
So I got the movie section out
and I said, God, that's a good one.
Well, I'm going to take you tonight.
Oh, thank you.
It's me taking me.
Do I get popcorn?
Yeah, I get popcorn.
And after a while,
I had tricked myself into feeling better.
Now, here's the part.
Here's the part that we leave out.
If we really understand it,
we tricked ourselves into feeling bad
in the first place.
It was us.
We just took some situation
and made it into a problem.
And the reason that we do this
is to maintain this separate identity
from our higher power.
To maintain the fact
that we exist in addition
to being a child of God,
as Chuck called us.
And it's that second identity
that we make up
that is driving us crazy.
It is that story that's going on in our head
that's been going on there
since we were a little kid
about all the trouble and this is bad.
Oh, I'm so upset.
I just found out about this
and I just got upset
and I found out about that.
None of it has to be there.
And it took me years to realize
I could ask for freedom from all of that.
And it came in the form of awakening.
When we talk about our 12th step
and the spiritual awakening,
it is the power to see things
in a much different way.
And the rest of the program
is to awaken further.
Bill calls it more spiritual growth.
It is to work on being able
to see it even differently
than we do now.
And so I know I'm kind of getting off
on a lot of things
that have been running around in my head,
so let me get back to those of you
that are new.
Clancy calls the disease
a disease of perception.
And when we come in,
what we see is a very troubling world.
So you're not lying
when you look and go,
God, everything's so overpowering.
And we agree with you
that that's what you see.
And alcohol made you see it differently.
It was more of a happy world.
In here,
you're just going to have to take our word
that your perspective
is going to change.
And it's going to change
very soon.
So that you will look at the same world
and be quite comfortable in it.
That you will look around
and it will make sense.
It's like you're in the shower
and you can't shave
because the mirror is covered with the steam.
But if you wait long enough,
you'll be able to see very clearly
everything.
And so right now,
the only thing that is
troubling you
is the inability to see
what the other people in this room can see.
And you just have to hold our hand
and we will take you along
until it clears up.
And the clearing up
is very exciting.
You will see for yourself,
you won't be taking somebody else's word,
how wonderful it is
for you.
And after that happens,
you will be unable
to stop yourself
from sharing that
with the next person.
You will be over there
in a heartbeat.
Yeah, yeah.
I used to be able to not see
worth a damn either.
Give me your hand.
I'm going to lead you along
until you see it.
This is kind of like a hologram.
My kids had me up.
I was up in Baltimore.
About 15 years ago,
I'd never heard of them.
And my son had one on the wall
and my grandchildren could see it.
They went out there and they said,
yeah, if you look up
in the left-hand corner,
then whoop, it's 3D
and you'll see it.
And I'm out there
and I would be eating dinner
and I'd say, I'll be right back.
And I'd go back out in the hall
and I'd stand out there
staring at this thing.
Okay, relax.
Just have your eyes.
It's going to pop in any second.
I never saw it.
We all went home
and I never saw it.
Part of me wants to go back there
if he still has it.
Because everybody else saw it.
So, you know,
I was thinking about this
and an awakening in AA.
You know what I mean?
It happens sometimes quickly,
sometimes slowly.
It'll always happen
if you go back and stare
at that damn thing long enough.
So, how could you
shortcut all that?
How could you write a book
about how to see a hologram?
Well, you could write all you want.
Wouldn't help, would it?
You'd still have to stand there
until you saw it.
So, this is what we say in here.
Keep coming back
until the miracle happens.
Don't give up on seeking.
Don't think just because
another six months has gone by
and that you can't see it yet
that you're not going to see it tomorrow.
Or maybe in the next minute
it could happen.
When it does,
this is your ticket
into this new level of existence.
This now becomes the proof
that you've been looking for
that the spiritual life
is not a theory.
Your own personal life
is not a personal,
I see it.
I see it.
That is worth
being alive for.
To have that.
There isn't a bigger experience.
I can't think of a bigger experience
that human beings could have
than to see
the truth about themselves
in that fashion.
And once that happens,
you're a seeker for more of it.
I want more to be revealed.
Bill talks about that.
I want more to be revealed.
I want more.
I want to see the whole picture.
And this is the organization we're in.
We're in this society
that we belong to
enables us to continue this journey
and to share it
with those that are coming behind us.
I'm out of time
and I just want to tell you
how happy I am
to have spent my anniversary here
with all of you
and God bless.
Thanks.
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