One Alcoholic Earns More Trust in Two Hours Than a Psychiatrist Gets in Two Years – Sandy R.

Okay, we're getting close to what I think is the highlight of the weekend, which is
this four, four and a half hours of silence.
It generally is the most memorable later on, especially for those of you that haven't done
it before, so I hope you enjoy it a lot.
Well, we left off yesterday talking about the fact that all of our life suddenly was
a story, a series of stories, and that we had no idea whether they were true or not
as we started inventorying them.
And that not only was what we were going through today a story, but our past was a series of
stories, and the future was a series of stories that was frightening us, and many of them
were illusions, delusions, and it all is very confusing.
So the problem arises, how do you get out of story land?
How do you get, how can we?
How can we break through, and the answer is, with stories.
It's just amazing that the answer is going to be stories, which is the role of the storyteller.
And one of the great writers about that was Joseph Campbell, and he talked about the importance
of myths, fables, stories.
And they were designed to enable us to transcend reality and to see beyond into a more mystical
reality.
And so that all sounds, okay, I guess I'm going to have to go along.
But it sounds, I don't know if I'm that familiar with that.
Well.
When you have the disease of alcoholism and you go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist,
they say to you, well, sit down.
Tell me all about yourself.
Tell me all about your problems.
Tell me all about this, and I'll see if I can help you.
And in nine cases out of ten, they are unable to help.
So the person calls Alcoholics Anonymous, and the representative, his sponsor, comes
over to the house, and doesn't ask him one damn thing.
He says, hi, son, sit down, I'm going to tell you all about me.
And he tells him his own story about what it was like being an alcoholic, what happened,
etc., etc.
And in the process of telling that story, an identification takes place.
Dr. Bob talks about it.
He said, I never was in the presence of anyone who knew how I felt, who knew everything.
And because of that, the entire situation looked different.
And the person was willing...
to trust this stranger who just arrived two hours earlier
with stuff he hadn't told anybody else in his life.
What is that?
And the only reason it happened
is because this person who called on him
shared with him his story.
So suddenly we're finding
now the story has a great healing and transcending power.
And so this is how the spiritual world
has to be approached
because it cannot be described in regular terms.
And so we have stories like the prodigal son.
And when you tell that, then you go,
yeah, that's me.
So this mess of a life that we had
has been captured.
It's been captured all in one little story
that he left the father,
went out on his own,
got to the end of the line,
hit the bottom, came home,
and was royally welcomed
instead of being chastised.
And if that isn't similar to Alcoholics Anonymous,
everywhere we went as a drunk,
they were looking down at us,
pointing their finger and telling us
what to do.
Whether it was a doctor, a wife, a father, or a judge.
It was this way.
And we came here and it was like
everybody was so glad to see us.
Remember what a strange feeling that was?
Why are you glad to see me?
Nobody else in the world is glad to see me.
Oh, you're home.
You're home.
If this isn't the sequel to the prodigal son,
I don't know what is.
This journey out and this journey back.
And let me see.
My mind's so tired from those questions.
I didn't realize how much work that is.
So we're trying to break through
the problem of being a separate entity,
which is a very powerful story
that we're trying to break through.
We've been telling ourselves forever.
And the way to do that is to hear about how other people did it and what they saw and to strike a chord inside of us.
We had misdiagnosed our problem.
We never could diagnose it that we were too far away from God.
It was this, it was that, it was this.
But if we think about it, we were told that the problem that we have is a spiritual one.
And we said, no, it's a material one.
No, it's a physical one.
No, your problem is a spiritual one.
You really miss God.
It's inside of you.
Chuck was talking about that, that law that's inside of us.
The thing that is, that was placed there that forces us to move in a different direction.
And now we're going to acknowledge its existence.
That the yearning for God has been there all along and we mischaracterized it.
And we start looking to see.
See if it is there.
And all of a sudden, we realize, yeah, it is there.
And this little bit of spirituality that we start getting in Alcoholics Anonymous in the beginning as people tell their stories.
And I'll tell you when it hit me.
I could not believe this when this hit me.
I was five months old.
You know, shaken.
And it's all about me.
I go, I got these kids.
I don't think they can feel it.
And I just, you know, I was totally obsessed.
If you ask me, what did the speaker just say?
I don't know.
I was very busy.
I'm sorry.
I couldn't hear what he said.
Remember that condition?
You just.
Somehow, I noticed a new guy coming in.
Something caught my attention.
I saw him coming in.
And I guess he reminded me of me.
Five months earlier, he was so scared.
And I could just see the way he was looking.
And whoever was with him showed him the coffee pot.
So he went over to the thing.
And he got the cup.
And it started shaking.
And the cup was spilling.
And so he put it down.
And he went and didn't have coffee during the meeting.
He just sat there.
And I could see his face getting red.
And I knew that.
I just said, oh, yeah, I know that.
And then he was gone.
And I never, you know.
Well, the next week, I'm there.
And I cannot believe it.
I'm looking for this guy.
I'm looking for this guy.
And he isn't there.
And I'm feeling some strange thing inside of me.
Like, I wish he was here.
What the hell is that?
What do I care about that jerk?
But he wasn't there.
And about 10.5.
10 minutes into the meeting, he comes in.
And I remember just a feeling, a little feeling of some kind of strange happiness that this guy was there.
And then he went over to the coffee pot again with the cup.
And I saw how shaky he was.
So he only took half.
And then he got.
And he's given this little routine.
And he gets it over.
And he sits down.
And he was so proud of himself.
That he got the cup.
And he didn't spill it.
And inside of me came, yay!
Like I was his biggest fan for getting that cup of coffee over to his table.
And the question was, what the hell just happened?
What the hell is this?
And that was my first glimpse of that part of me.
That everybody had.
That everybody told me existed.
And it was, I'll never forget the feeling.
It was the first time I started giving a damn about anyone else in the world was that guy.
And then you know how it happened.
You all had that happen.
Now, maybe not with that guy, but with somebody in AA.
And then it slowly started to expand.
And you heard that somebody lost a child.
She didn't.
She didn't give birth.
And you just started feeling that pain for that person.
You didn't even know her name.
And you started seeing, miraculously, before your own eyes,
the old story dissolving about who you are.
And this thing being revealed.
What are you?
Some kind of softy?
That was the first feeling I had.
What are you?
Losing your edge?
You're not the tough guy anymore?
I was so confused to find out that I was another child of God.
And it slowly got revealed here.
I just think that was one of the greatest things that ever happened.
Bill Wilson.
Bill Wilson came up with a name for AA that I've, and you may have heard this.
He said, AA is an utter simplicity which contains a complete mystery.
Now, there's a mouthful.
But it is.
What transformed me?
One guy coming to my house telling me about himself
to the extent that I trusted him within two hours
and became willing to do what was suggested to me.
At the first meeting, I started feeling rebellious
and that it was the old feeling.
And I started to leave.
And I stood out on the damn porch of this old odd fella's hall.
And it was sleeting a little bit.
And there were no streetlights.
I didn't know which way to run.
But I was going.
I just, this was too much all at once.
And I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was an Al-Anon lady named Betsy Lynch.
And I turned around and she said,
Come on back in.
Everything's going to be fine.
And I knew it.
I turned around and went back in.
And it's been fine ever since.
Just the human touch on my shoulder.
Kurtz's second book after Not God is AA the Story.
I just love that.
It keeps showing up everywhere.
And it's really,
it's really the history book that's contained in Not God
plus ten more years of AA history.
I think it goes from the 70s to the 80s.
And Ernie makes a wonderful description of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I've almost got it committed to memory,
so I'll see if I can get it.
He makes this statement.
I think it's, and I've said it a few times,
so some of you have heard it.
He said,
In an almost magical manner,
Alcoholics Anonymous was able to provide
to its religious and non-religious members alike
a view of the universe and their place in it,
which is both comforting and exciting.
In doing so,
they borrowed from religion everything,
which is powerful and uniting,
while politely declining
everything that is divisive and self-serving.
You could almost call it
the spiritual heist of the century.
And they did it all unconsciously without realizing it.
Now,
that is an explanation
of how AA came to be.
They did it all unconsciously without realizing it.
In that statement,
you realize that something was guiding the whole damn thing.
It's just impossible
to see it any other way.
And as you get sober longer and longer,
and get more and more sober,
and get more and more sober,
interested in the history of Alcoholics Anonymous, you start realizing that AA was a happening.
How did AA get started? It just happened. A lot of groups get started that way. I don't
know. We were sitting around. He said this. It just happened. It just happened. It just
happened. And yet it all fits together perfectly. And the message has been strong enough to
be carried all over the world. It's just happening. So suppose somebody came up to
me and said, I want you to prove in a court of law that the 12 steps work. You think you
could do that? I'd say, oh, yeah, that'd be a piece of cake. All right, well, let's go
in the courtroom. So I'm sitting in there. We got a jury. We got a judge. And the judge
says, OK, make your case. We're all listening.
I said, OK. I'm going to call as my first witness Jim Sherman from Los Angeles. Jim comes
up. Do you swear to tell the whole truth, nothing but the truth, to help you out? Yes,
sir, I do. And he sits down. And I go, Jim, tell us how it was, what happened, and what
it's like now. And Jim goes, thank you, Jim. You want to cross-examine? Yep. He could ask
him every damn question in the world.
Every trick question. And all he'd get is honest answers. There'd be nothing to hide.
It would be the piece of cake to take cross-examination on your own story. And then he'd sit down.
And then I'd call all 60 witnesses up. And then I'd rest my case. And I think we'd get
a unanimous jury that the 12 steps work, based on just hearing these stories of recovery.
That's a very powerful happening. And I think it shows us the power of story to transcend
the reality that the self-made stories created for us.
Let me see.
The...
One of the things that I think is very important to me is that I think that I'm a little bit
the great stories that we tell ourselves that causes us the most problem and prevents us from
really getting comfortable with our lives is the story of dying. This is the ego's ultimate weapon.
Don't forget you're going to die. You're going to die. Dying is bad. Dying, dying.
And so it has to be dealt with. I remember writing one time, they used the term, life is precious.
And I wrote after that, well, if that's true, then death is beyond precious.
This is the fourth dimension. This is way beyond.
And stories enable us to see the eternal nature of ourselves and come to the realization that we don't die.
That the ego dies, the body may die, but the spirit, there is this main part of ourselves, this spirit that is not affected by this material world at all.
The trick is to see it. And it's the same as these holograms.
When you see it, it's a whole different ballgame.
When we can sense the connection to God improving, the eternal nature of things is part of what we see and what we actually feel.
And boy, as far as I'm concerned, I've done my 80 years.
Man, let somebody else hang around down here.
I want to hit the jackpot. I'm not going to do anything, but I'm ready.
There was a story about, if there is a heaven or whatever you call it, but the two new arrivals are up there and they're chatting.
And one of them said, how long were you down there?
He said, 91 years.
And the last 30 sucked.
I was in pain. I was this. I was that.
I am so glad to be, I just, it's just the most, wow.
That was fun. I had this and that.
How about you?
Well, actually, I died at two and a half months with crib death.
Somehow I got the blanket twisted around and cut off oxygen.
And so that's why I'm here.
And the first one said, you did that on purpose, didn't you?
Death has to be made into a non-entity.
It has to be seen for what it is.
It is the opposite end of birth.
It is just the opposite side of the same thing.
What was, if birth was the start, what was there before that?
The only thing that is afraid of dying is the ego.
Because it's really gone.
That storyteller is gone.
But your eternal nature, and as we get comfortable in seeing this,
it changes life.
It's such a life-changing thing.
to stop even having death be a word that can frighten us.
In my own case, I was so afraid of the word that when my sponsor was ill,
no, not my sponsor, it was a very close friend of both of us,
I was afraid to go in the hospital and visit him because the hospital reminded me of dying.
That's where people go to die.
I would just be terrified to go in.
And so my sponsors went with me.
And I started feeling a little more comfortable, a little more comfortable.
Then I was around somebody while they were dying.
And then people started dying all over the place.
And pretty soon I just was comfortable with it.
I just said, oh, yeah, this is how it happens.
And finally I volunteered in hospice.
And I'd go sit with people and talk to them and ask them,
well, how are you feeling, this and that?
And I broke a lot of hospice rules.
I used to take people for drives in my car.
You're not supposed to put them in your car and all that.
And so it became normal.
This is just normal.
Whereas before, I had given it so much power.
Over me that I couldn't even entertain the idea of addressing it.
And so I just urge any of you that are still struggling with that
to put that ghost to rest.
It is essential to have peace of mind
because it's just, until we examine it,
it's given inordinate power in our lives,
the thought of our own death.
And it can be a very joyful force.
I thought, boy, at the end of this thing, there's a jackpot.
That's when the jackpot comes.
And it's a whole different way of looking at it.
And so I would put that on your list of things to overcome,
things to erase.
Whatever story you have,
this is the time to erase that
because it will play such great dividends.
Oh, let's see.
Some of the things that help us
break through the illusions and the stories
are meditation, as we talked about,
thinking about things that we never thought of before,
when you describe yourself,
it always has an adjective or an adverb
attached to it.
And what's going on?
I'm anxious these days.
Well, I'm a little worried about this.
Well, I'm hanging around.
I'm waiting to do this.
And the spiritual writers suggest that you take that sentence
and take all the adverbs and adjectives off
and just...
Just think about the sentence without any modification.
The pure essence.
So the sentence reads, I am.
Do you feel how uncomfortable you are when it feels like the sentence isn't finished?
You are what?
You're waiting for the modifier to go on there.
But we don't need a modifier.
When you sit back and allow those two words, what is that, that you are?
And it doesn't take long to see that there's a lot of truth hidden in those two words
that hasn't been sufficiently revealed to us.
What is the full meaning and impact of I am?
If you don't know, you don't know.
If you don't know, you don't know.
If you take time on that, you're going to be amazed what starts coming into view.
You start realizing what an integral part of the universe you are.
And how important you are in the scheme of things.
You are someone who is aware of yourself.
And that's enough.
And that's enough to sustain our attention forever and ever.
If we stay there.
The other thing that is our great friend is something we're going to engage in soon.
And that is silence.
There's silence is, it's almost like where everything is stored.
Where all the stories that transcend are filed away.
Waiting for us to spend some time there.
Silence is the great space between thoughts.
It is, it is just, I think one of those books back there is the thunder of silence.
What a nice term that is.
What is in there?
How much time have we spent checking out?
What do they keep in the silence?
What's in there?
Well, here's a chance to start experiencing that.
And then the final word that is a very transcending word is the present.
The present moment.
Right now.
There is so much contained in the present moment.
That you could have all the mysteries of life just revealed.
Right there.
But we don't know how to stay there.
We're just so preoccupied with stories about other places.
That we've never fully checked out the present moment.
It's almost like going out in your own backyard and seeing how much spiritual energy is out there.
Just sit there on a chair and look over at this corner and look over there.
Yeah, that's where the dog sleeps.
And you could be transcended by your own backyard.
Just looking to see what can be revealed.
Just by sitting there.
And taking it all in.
I don't know if you've done that.
It's amazing.
You don't need to go to India or Tibet or anywhere.
The sacred ground is where you are.
And maybe you'll experience some of that.
During this silence.
And realize.
That you've been created.
As the only living creature that can fully be aware of our universe.
And this creator that created it.
And there must be a reason.
That we were put in this position.
And it wasn't to endure something.
It was because it was all intended for us.
I believe that this whole thing was so that we could see it and be part of it.
And take it all in.
Appreciate it.
Love it.
And wonder at the magnificence.
Of everything that is in existence.
From a blade of grass.
To a sound.
To music.
To smell of your favorite food.
To the people around you here.
You just.
Awareness lifts.
And you just realize everything is God.
And you are an integral part of that.
Everything else is an integral part.
But it isn't aware of it.
So that's our special connection.
So when we enter this.
And we're going to do that very shortly.
Try to take some of these thoughts.
And ideas with you.
And.
See your place in the universe.
And see everybody else's.
And see if you don't.
As Chuck.
I mean boy when he started talking about.
To those college kids.
And he said well the most important part of that prayer.
Are the first two words.
Our father.
That wouldn't be a bad thing to take into the silence.
And look around.
And realize we all in this room have a common father.
What does that make us.
To each other.
It's breathtaking.
It's breathtaking.
To see beyond those old stories.
It's.
Oh God is it exciting.
And it's.
You're this close.
This is the.
This is the best part.
You're this freaking close.
So just keep at it.
So we'll.
We'll just take a moment to.
Ask for some guidance going into the silence.
And then we'll all be on our own until after dinner.
And we come back here and assemble.
And then.
There'll be a few.
People here to help with flashlights to move us around where we're going.
And.
So let's just take a moment and ask God to.
Be with us in this very very special silence.
God we.
We're going to spend some very special time with you.
And with all your creation.
Please bless our endeavors.
And enable us.
To hear things in silence that we've never ever heard before.
Please help us become aware.
Of your presence everywhere.
Amen.