Nobody Planned Any of This — It Might Be Called the Spiritual Heist of the Century – Sandy R.

Thank you very much. For all three of them is our society. And that's a word that Bill liked to use, the society of AA. Which is probably the same as the fellowship, but I like the word. A society, you know what I mean? It's got a lot of class to it. And... Bill liked to call AA an utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery. That's a pretty interesting sentence, isn't it? Here we have our co-founder and our primary writer with 25 years of sobriety reflecting on our society and coming up with an utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery. And when Dr. Bob said, keep it simple, he was saying a sentence that irritates every self-centered alcoholic because they don't like simplicity. None of us like simplicity. So when we have something that's an utter simplicity, we like complicated things so that we can't do them. Well, I mean, you know, there's 12 parts to this thing. I don't think I'll ever get it finished. But if it's simple, there's no excuse for not completing it. It's so simple, you just do this. And it also leaves no room for our own creativity. Creativity to be applied to the solution. And we don't like moving through life without inputting our own ideas into the situation. Whereas we have a program that is so simple, you simply follow the directions and then evaluate the results. And I remember going, that's cool, I like that, but I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. But I see a couple of places that could use a little improving there. It's just amazing. So an utter simplicity means we don't need any of your ideas. Period. We don't need you to raise your hand and go, you know, it would be a lot better if we did this or if we did that. It's already hammered down to the essence and it simply needs to be done. And so we have this just miraculous layout of a big book in the 12 and 12 and the way the steps are written. And when they're followed with a good sponsor, it produces, it produces consistently spiritual awakenings, which are the most cherished experience that man can have. Now a lot of people in the business world don't know that. They think a jaguar might be the most powerful. But for those of us that have experienced this, we realize that to find out, that there is a creator who cares about us and we find out by experiencing this, it's something that we just are so grateful for, you end up being grateful that you're an alcoholic. I'm actually grateful that I got thrown in this crazy place and got dragged kicking and screaming into doing this stuff. That everybody else is doing this stuff. And then I had to admit I was wrong. There really is such a thing as a higher power. And I experienced it. So Bill comes up with it's an utter simplicity. Meaning there's going to be a lot of resistance to it. People fight AA, that's why. It's too simple. They want to bring input in. They want us to go, look, before we work the program, why don't I tell you about me? Isn't that this tendency that, you know, you're going to help me? Okay, good. Let me tell you all about me. Otherwise, how could you help me? How could you tailor the help to me? I'm a complicated, unique individual. So certainly you would need to know all about me. Before you decide what help I need. And of course in AA, we just laugh. And we go, no, we don't want to hear about you. I'm going to tell you about me. And then we share as a recovered alcoholic what our lives were like. And we watch this man's eyes light up when he finds somebody who's just like him. And that's our process of identification. I might actually listen to this person. He seems to know what it is to be like me. So we have this simplicity that encases a complete mystery. And of course the mystery is God. And the mystery is we don't have a clue about anything. Here. We couldn't tell if ten newcomers came, which five are going to get sober. We haven't got a clue. We haven't got a clue which person with 25 years is going to go out this July. This is a mystery. Try and explain AA to your friends. Verbally. What do you do at those meetings? Oh, man. Dude, it's the greatest. I can see you're happy. I'm just curious. What do you do there that gets you so, oh, geez. Like Tuesday night we have a discussion meeting. And one of us will come up with like a topic. You know, like resentment or something like that. And then we go around the room and everybody tells what they think about that. And then we say the Lord's Prayer and go home. It's great. You want to come? And we just explained verbally what happens. And they are absolutely clueless. But if we brought them to a meeting, an open meeting so they could see it, and they experienced the energy, then they would understand it. So AA can only be experienced. It really can't be understood. You've got to write down why AA works. Why go make stupid amends. You feel better. It just can't be explained. So everything, and what about its origin? I mean, God, there's another quote. I think it's Ernie Kurtz, but I'm not positive. And it's, I'll probably screw it up, but it really describes our society pretty well. And it says in an almost magical manner, Alcoholics Anonymous is able to bring to its religious and non-religious members alike a view of the universe and their place in it, which is both powerful and exciting. In doing so, they borrowed from religion everything which is uniting, and I think it's powerful, while politely declining everything that is self-serving and conflicting. It might be called the spiritual heist of the century. And they did it all unconsciously without realizing it. So all that happened without anybody planning it. It just ended up that way. The steps ended up the way they're written. And when you look at our history and look at the input that came from various sources, and... . . . I often talk about what we might call the big bang of A.E.A. I've probably done this a few times. And I suppose there would be three choices. One might be Ebi coming to see Bill. And the impression that he left, it was so powerful he couldn't stop looking at Ebi. It wasn't what he was saying. It was the energy that was coming out of his friend. And he couldn't believe that this was his friend. He couldn't believe it. And the other one might be at the payphone in the Mayflower Hotel when things could have gone one way or the other. And somehow Bill persisted in that. And my favorite is Bill's experience in Towns Hospital. When out of desperation, he just said, well, if there is a God, let him show himself. And the room lit up and then Bill never drank again. And he was obsessed with the drive to save every alcoholic in the world. And all that happened in a millisecond. One minute, there was no hope for any alcoholics in the world. And ten seconds later, we had the origin of this program that has gotten two or three million people sober and whatever it is, I've forgotten the numbers, 130 countries and however many groups it is. All from this moment. And we could look at this that the this was something that happened in 1934, which is one way of looking at it. Or you could say that it's still happening. That that energy that hit Bill is now hitting other people as it continues this wonderful gift from God. It's hard to see that that didn't come that way. Initially, you might say, well, you know, he's in the detox place, he's given these things, and that could have been a hallucination or whatever. But as time has gone by and we look at the results that came out of that, there's very little doubt that this was the moment when alcoholics were going to have a chance at happiness which they never had before. We just, there wasn't a chance. There was just nothing. And it's amazing to look at the medical history of what they did to alcoholics and it's just astounding. And then this comes along and I think sometimes I forget to reflect on that. That we're here because of that moment. And we're, we know each other and we share this. Everybody here, it's already bonded with one another because of the fact that we're alcoholic. We don't have to say anything else. We already know. Hi Fred, yeah, I'm an alcoholic, so am I. Well, I know a lot about you. And you know a lot about me. And you know that you didn't come here on a roll. And that your life was very painful. And the damage that we caused with others. The conflict, all of that. And we're stuck with it. We just, we get sober and then we have this past. And it seems like we're going to be haunted with it for the rest of our lives. Until we start through the steps. And we get to six and seven and eight and nine. And we watch bitter enemies become friends. We watch the power of amends. We watch the power of forgiveness. And our past changes. There was somebody running around um, some of our meetings, maybe about eight years ago. And he said, his favorite quote was, abandon all hope of changing your past. And I disagree with him. I disagree with him a hundred percent. Your vision of the past isn't accurate. That was your self-centered perspective on all of that. And as we go through these steps, you're going to find that your past starts taking shape into the reality that it really is. I've told the story of Los Angeles. And a guy comes up and says, I think I know you. And I said, well, I've never seen you. And he said, no, I think I know you. In 1962, you were in an airplane on a cross country going back to Cherry Point. And you declared an oxygen emergency. And all the planes had to land. And um, you never flew again. And I said, what's that? And he said, I was in the plane with you. And here it is, 40 years later, I run into the guy that was sitting in the right hand seat. And um, I did, that was the last that I flew. My drinking made it so that I couldn't even get in the plane. I was so, um, frightened. I thought I was going to have a seizure. All these things were happening. So I went to the colonel and said, I'm not going to fly anymore. And he said, why? And I said, well, I can't tell you. I'm just not going to do it. He said, you've been doing it for almost 14 and a half years. This is your whole career in the Marine Corps. I'm just not going to do it anymore. He said, okay, well then I'm going to have to write the commandant of the Marine Corps. And we're going to have to get you assigned to something else. Which was killing me because I didn't want to do anything else. But I didn't know how to get out of the box I was in. I had been climbing in these planes for the better part of a year and I was having withdrawal in the plane and I was just freaking out. It was just so scary. I almost ejected a couple of times. I mean, it was just this terrible stuff. And so it took about three months. And I did the legal work for that squadron. And I would not make eye contact with any of the pilots. I was so ashamed. And I could tell by looking on their face, they're going, how did that piece of crap get in this squadron? This is a really fancy squadron, photo squadron, the F8 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and all that. And so I left there after three months of shame. And every time I thought about that period of time, I felt shame. That was the most shame that I had in my past. So my friend comes the next day to another convention and brings photographs and all this from the squadron. I'm just going, God, that's it, yeah, I remember him, yeah, okay. And then he said, did you know how popular you were in that squadron? He said, this was killing me. And I said, well, you were telling us that you were leaving. The colonel was trying, this was before they didn't have treatment and nobody knew about AA, the squadron anyway. He said the colonel was, he was calling all his friends, they're trying to find a way to save you from this. It just killed us. When you left there, we were so sad. And I went, well, that's not how I remember it. So I had to go back 42 years and get rid of my past, the one I had, the story I had about that moment in time. So we have the shaping of this society that I like to think about. And contained in it are millions of people with their own ideas about what should be done or whether things should be changed. And yet we get along in a rather remarkable fashion. To me the thing that is the core of this particular society is the power to work a miracle in the lives of a hopeless human being. That's the signature power of Alcoholics Anonymous. The power to work a miracle in the lives of a hopeless human being. And these miracles sometime become so numerous that we forget they're miracles. Oh yeah, he got sober. Yeah, yep. I knew he would. And his wife is really happy and he's happy and his marriage is saved. Just another event as if it could be caused non-spiritually. As if there was some process that could be followed that would produce this result. And prior to coming here we all tried. The psychiatrists and the psychologists and all that. And we're talking and we're going I need help with my problem. And nothing happened. Nothing. And then we came here and took steps we didn't believe in. Didn't make no sense to us. But after they worked we took credit for it. Yeah, I knew that would work. I knew. I knew that was going to help a lot to go make amends to my mother-in-law. So don't believe people when you hear them saying I eagerly went after the steps. Their sponsor had a stranglehold on them. And after they finished they took credit for it. It's a little trick we play in AA. We make believe we really enjoy doing this stuff. Oh yeah. I love taking inventories. I love calling somebody every day. I love read page 82. All right, Jesus. Read page whatever the hell it is. You know, 10 years later you can hardly wait to read that page again. I mean, how about 164? Just the last closeout on that page. I mean, God, if that doesn't make you feel chills to just think about that. Hmm. So something got assembled by the year 1939 that, and there certainly wasn't a society yet. This thing was, um, who knew if it was going to continue to exist. But somehow that book got written. And, um, even the book was written to get money. It wasn't written, you know, well, we need a textbook, we'll do all that. We can't raise money by, um, hitting up the millionaires. They're not buying into our deal. So we'll write a book and sell a million copies. And then we can get on with the, um, missionaries and the paid drunk tanks and hospitals and all that stuff. And here we end up with, I don't know how many million copies that is sold. It has to be over 10, maybe 15. Do you know? 17? 30. 30. Oh, my God. Um, and so something happened to give us this society that we're all part of. And, um, if you were to describe this society, I know I would have a very hard time because as you travel around to different states and countries, AA is exactly the same but entirely different at the same time. There are just going to be differences because of different customs and different country or different whatever. And yet, at the heart of all of this is this identification of one alcoholic to another with the intent, I mean, the sole purpose being to lead this man or woman to their creator. So they experience that. To me, that's the, um, simplicity of how to keep our program on target. One problem, alcoholism, one solution, God. And as Chuck C. would say, if you're going, you're either going away from God or you're going nearer to God. And it's better to be going nearer to God. But we're going to experience both because we're human beings with egos. And there's times when we're just not going to practice the presence. As Brother Lawrence, that's one of the great books, oh my goodness, if you haven't run across that, Practicing the Presence by Brother Lawrence. A little skinny book, mostly little letters that he wrote. I don't know, it's probably over a thousand years ago. And, um, his words are just the essence of simplicity. I remember one, he's writing to this nun and says, whenever I sit in God's presence, I feel very humble because he's God and I'm not. It just says it all. He's God and I'm not. The idea that we're not God is revolutionary because everyone feels that they're the center of their own life. And therefore there must be, that they are really their own power. And so they don't need another God coming in. We got one already. And even though it's all screwed up, it's not their fault. And so we have this battle that goes on. And I found in this sickness, with a lot of pain and just losing energy, I lost about 30 pounds of muscle weight, that the contact was much harder to keep. But there was an absolute assurance that it was still there. And that's a wonderful feeling because of all these years. Um, um, is to go, yeah, I can't experience that right now. But there's no doubt in my mind that it's just as present as it was before. It's a very comforting thing in the midst of discomfort. It's almost like you have the two things going on at the same time. And while I'm on the subject, the number of cards that I got, phone calls from people all over, I just can't thank everybody enough. It was, um, I'm just very grateful. And also I want to mention, um, my friend Chris. You all know Chris. Well, he saved my life. He's there. He was there when my daughter was murdered and he was there when I had other surgeries. And he and his wife. And then Peter Howell. Peter, raise your hand back there. Peter, uh, stayed with me when I came home from the hospital and was there when, um, the heart went bad and all that stuff happened. And he's been just, uh, he could tell you how unspiritual I am. And so, I wish you would refrain from having long conversations with him about anything. Because, uh, boy, I really could be pretty bad. Um, I don't want to go into the next level of talking about our society. Um, I'm just trying to think of other, um, things that took place to get it started. And I'll tell you one. The longer I'm around reading different books, I think we had this book back there. Uncommon Friends. Did we have that back there? You remember seeing that? So I'll tell you about the book. Because I can't think of anything else to say. Oh, yeah, Chris has it. This is a guy, James Newton, who wrote about his own life and how he was a close confidant to, uh, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, um, Charles Lindbergh, and, uh, Doctor won the Nobel Peace Prize from France for coming up with, um, ways of treating wounds in soldiers so they had a much better chance of living. So, pretty high energy people. And he was down in, um, Fort Myer, developing real estate during the crash of 29. And across the street is, um, Thomas Edison. And they become friends. And Edison's amazed that this guy's succeeding. People are buying these frickin' houses. And he just can't quite understand it. So they become quite good friends. So much so that when Firestone comes to visit him and asks Edison if he knows anybody who could be his right-hand man in running Firestone Rubber Company, Edison said, this is your man, James Newton. And he accepts the job and goes to Akron. Does such a good job, Firestone wants to give him the business. That's how close, and after he was there a while, he noticed that Firestone's son was a raging alcoholic. And Newton had been attending Oxford Group meetings for himself and his own interest. And while attending them, he saw a few drunks sober up. So he took Firestone's son on a business trip with him and then asked him if he would like to go to one of the, um, weekends, the Oxford Group weekends, where all the high-powered people were there and Buckman might have been there giving the talk. And he went. And he got sober. And it kind of transformed him. And, um, his father noticed. He said, geez, what happened then? He said, oh, I went to the Oxford. Really? He said, what is that? He said, oh, it's this big society thing and the people go there and they find God. They try to become better people. They want to be better citizens. They want to do all this. Well, we got to get that in Akron. So Firestone calls Buckman and says, oh, I'm on a big deal in Akron of this Oxford Group thing. And all the papers had it. Come to the Oxford thing. Um, Firestone is invited. You're all invited. So here's this newspaper going out telling everybody in Akron, including Ann Smith and Henrietta Seiberling, that this thing, you ought to attend. And they did attend. And they became regular members. And they became regular members. And Ann brought Dr. Bob there on a regular basis. So if James Newton hadn't been in the game, Oxford may not have gotten to Akron and there wouldn't have been any phone lists for Bill to call. And Dr. Bob and Bill may have never met. All because this one person played this little role. Now when you read history, this book, he sees AA and all these things that happen from his point of view. And it's rather interesting. And when I look at the pictures in there, I just can't imagine some one man being that close to all those other. And at the end of the book, he talks about how spiritual every one of them was and how much they cared for their fellow man. And it's quite a testimonial. I think I'm running out of energy. And with your permission, I'm going to just stop now. And we'll let Chris give you two hours of announcements, which I think you're going to love. Thanks, Lee. Thanks for listening.