Sandy B. at the Far Corners – A Spiritual Retreat – 2009

Okay, this is our second section. You know, I don't know who put this together. It was me. That half of all of the lectures are done on Friday. You know Friday afternoon, Friday night. I could have spaced it out a little better and we all wouldn't be so tired. But we're sticking to the big book in the 12 and 12, just taking lines out of there that when I reviewed the pertinent passages, I said, boy, those four really seem kind of meaty, that there's quite a bit that could be developed with those lines. And this comes out of the end of step 10. we have begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us to some extent we have become God conscious and this kind of ties in to when I was talking about the God phenomenon that you can see it going from anger against the word or fearful or whatever our previous ideas and here suddenly Bill describes the process as it's happening to us We begin to sense the flow of his spirit into us. To some extent, we become God conscious. And when I read that, I think of my personal hero in AEA, Chuck Chamberlain, which I think I've talked about every retreat that we've had here. And if you recall, he said this just time after time after time, that we only have one problem that includes all problems and one solution that includes All Solutions. And the problem is conscious separation and the solution is conscious contact. So what he's saying is that whenever you describe a problem that you think is not caused by conscious separation, you're wrong. I don't have enough money. Yeah well that's not the problem. The problem is conscious separation because if you had conscious contact with God you wouldn't be worried about money. Do you see how they all flow together? That when you're this way there's nothing wrong anywhere and that's such a powerful point to make that we have one solution for all problems, and there's really just the one problem. And I remember when I was new and I heard that, and I went, one solution for all problems? I mean, come on. I mean even my dumb brain says that there's more than that. And my sponsor would point out, let's see before you came here, how did you solve all your problems. Possibly by drinking. I mean, I don't ever remember having a problem where I said, well, here's a problem I won't be drinking over. I means, step one in solving all problems was having a drink. And imagine you're in the bar, and one of your buddies comes in. He said, oh my God, I just lost my job. What did we say? Let me buy you a drink, do you remember that? Do you remember? I just Lost My Job, oh, let me buy a drink! Next guy comes in, my wife just left me, oh let me Buy You A Drink! I just found out I got this terrible disease oh let me buy you a drink there was one solution for all problems so we already were familiar with that and yet when we come in here and we go the answer to all problems is conscious contact it just seems preposterous because our ego is telling us there's many many many, many problems. One of the things that the ego detests is simplicity. It just hates it. I remember when I was locked up in the nut ward, there was only three alcoholics and 35 crazy people and when we'd have the group sessions and the therapist, the psychiatrist would say to the nuts what do you think about the alcoholics and they would say you guys ought to stop drinking and I would say no wonder they're locked up. They think that not drinking is the answer to my I mean it was just preposterous that that could possibly be the answer and the reason we don't like simplicity is that can be done and there's no excuse for not doing something that's simple like go to meetings and so the ego goes it's not that simple the solution is very, very complicated and very few people could even come close to doing it. And that allows us to continue to screw up guilt-free. So simplicity is, when Dr. Bob said keep it simple, he was talking at an incredibly deep spiritual wisdom. Simple. Whenever I sponsor lawyers, no offense against lawyers, But they are trained in laying out the complete case or the complete background. In other words, the thing has many, many parts and you lay it all out. And very often when it's their turn to comment at a discussion meeting, they will lay it All Out, maybe in 25 sentences. And I say to them, next time I want you to give that same answer in three sentences. And they go, what? And I said, you can give that Same Answer in Three Sentences if you reduce it to its essence. And as they get better at it, you realize they are simplifying their spirituality. They're bringing it down to getting the very essence out of whatever the situation is. And as you sponsor people, you find in the early years it takes you forever to tell them what the whole deal is. And after a while, you can do it in one sentence, two sentences, and that's the end of it. It's all laid out. It's a complete package. We were talking earlier about the big book. It works. It really does. I mean, it's hard to improve on that in describing our whole program. It works. It really does, period. You know, you don't go on and on. You know because over here there's this and there's that, and you go, you Don't need all that. It works, it really does. So Chuck's concept of how simple it is, there's just one problem and one solution. I remember since this is out of the 10th step in the very beginning of the 9th step in the big book and boy I think if you're going to really look at the 10 step the 12 and 12 in the Big Book are such a beautiful package in really capturing the essence of it sometimes like step 1 in the 12 and 12 was, yeah, I mean, it's really covered in the big book. You hardly need it. And then you'll find the bigbook barely touches it like in 6 and 7. The 12 and 12 just lays it all out. So I'm a believer that there's an awful lot of value in using both. But we survived for a lot of years with just the big books, so I'm not going to argue against the camp that boos when you mention the 12 and 12. Although you met Steve down at your place I don't know if you were there, where's Steve? Oh there you are down in one of the club meds during the morning session a lady from New York got up and was sharing and she said in our group we only use the 12th and 12th, and you should have seen the room The looks were like, what? But she had about 15 years sobriety and was very happy, so I don' t know how we can improve on that. Yeah, I don't know who it was, but I remember just going, damn. At least they could be unhappy and then I could go, see? Do you want what she has? Now I forget where I was. Okay, keeping it simple. So anyway, if you recall, The immediate sentences prior to coming in the tenth step are the promises. And then all of a sudden there's that wonderful line, we suddenly realize God is doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. And so the sequence of promises where the verbs that are used with the promises are magic, You know, self-seeking slips away and they will always materialize if you work for them. If you look at those verbs, they're not the ones that a therapist uses. You know what I mean? Just stay with me and self-Seeking will slip away. It's only God can do that kind of work. So all of those things are only possible because of God. I'll intuitively know all of that. And so we have had, it's like that's the doorway from our past, from all our old ideas into the magic moment of the tenth step which is the present moment. This is the day at a time step. Bam! We're here. And so to emphasize that, like we went through a door into the now and the tenth step. Three sentences in it says, we have entered the world of the spirit. That's a wonderful sentence in the big book in the tenth steps. Because of all this work and because these promises that just hit you, you're now in the world or the spirit? now when you change worlds you can't keep obeying the same laws that were in the material world work hard, get ahead, screw the other guy, do this whatever all the rules are pay attention on television so you know what to buy now we're over in the spiritual world so we wonder what are the comparable guidelines, rules How do you exist in the world of the Spirit? Probably a long list. Must be, boy, this is probably about 50 different things. And then it says, yeah, whenever you're disturbed, upset, frightened, I can't remember all the things, we ask God at once to remove them. Okay, any questions about all the rules in the World of the Spirits? And you go, wait a minute. You know, we run it by somebody else. But basically, once we come over here, God does all the work. Whatever's going on, God could have bothered you again. God could help you with this, could help me. So there it is. It just says you want to call on God. That's the new rules. And so I know if you're like me, you're sitting out there, and I still, when I read it, I go, wow, that's just amazing. That wouldn't work. There are situations that need my mind. I've got, you see what's happening? Yes, that's cool. It's very simple. But this is the real world, man. What do you think? You just go over there and you... You've got to watch out for your... You've Got to put some money aside. You better have a little retirement plan. And pretty soon we've come up with a 15-step plan that leaves God out. the ego is always looking for a way to leave god out and just go to a discussion meeting bring a topic up you know what do you do about uh resentments well what i do i try to think about what happened i tryto um go talk to my sponsors see if i could see their side of it I tried to do. And you will hear, if there's 50 people in the room, you'll hear 48 ways of handling it that leave God out. We're specialists in coming up with solutions that can be done by me without asking for help. And then somebody will say, well, just ask God to remove it. And dann he passes. And we all go, boy, he doesn't understand the real world and he's coming up. What the hell? Somebody go, I'm going to talk to him after the meeting. I mean, where is he? You know where he is? In the world of the Spirit. He really believes this. He really sees that that's it. So there it is. What are the rules? And it just, there it ist. We just ask God at once to remove them. and then we can listen for guidance and that's how it works. Let's see unfortunately our ego generally gets in the way and causes us to react to the situation that we're going to ask God to help us with and we get upset about it And when you're upset, you can't hear the guidance that God has. And that's why the 12 and 12 is so powerful ally with the plan that's laid out in the big book. Because in the 12and12, it's specifically designed to cover the situation where you get disturbed. And there's that spiritual axiom, whenever we're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. And you go, well, what's wrong with me? He did the whole damn thing. Well, what'S wrong with you is you're disturbed. That's what's Wrong. That's the thing that's Wrong, so then it has the four-part plan to get undisturbed. Self-restraint, which we can pray for in the morning so that when something adverse happens, we do nothing. That's very important, do nothing I was working for a regulatory agency and I wrote a nice paper, a position paper and the general counsel came in and said did you write this? And I said yeah and he said this is awful and I told him where to go Well, you know, take that memo and jam it up here. And I said the words, and they were moving across the room towards his ears. And I wanted to stop them because I changed my mind about saying them because I knew if I said them, this was going to cause big trouble, like getting fired. And so if I had had the power to not say anything until the temperature came back down a little, So self-restraint was big. Then came this second part, which is an honest analysis of the situation. And this requires talking to somebody else. And I use, I have just people I run things by. Can I run this by you? Can I Run This By You? And when we say that, we're talking about a 40-second conversation if you got plugged in with somebody else who's on the same spiritual wavelength. Can I run something by you? Even if he's at his office, he goes, yeah, shoot. And then you lay out the situation. So there's an honest analysis of what happened. And then the person on the other end listens. And it may go, well, the memo does suck. Tell him you're sorry and you'll write a better memo and make amends for your reaction to him. Okay. So then I go over and I do that, and I'm returned to undisturbed. On the other hand, it could be totally him. He could be outrageous and just coming in and yelling. The person didn't even write the memo and this and that. And then so I explained it to him, and he says, oh, my God, that's 100% his fault. It's 100%. Forgive him. Now you're back to unddisturbed, so the winning is being undisturd. That's the new way to win, if there is such a thing as winning in the spiritual world. Undisturbed. So this is, we sense the flow of his spirit. We've started to become God conscious. And we're recognizing that maintaining the contact, if it's done, you don't have to ever do anything else. Do you follow what I'm saying? You have everything, and now you're in a position to be useful. And you may be sent over to the 12-step call. You may go back and help somebody else with their paper. You may do this. You are suddenly in a situation where you don't need anything taken care of for yourself, and you're free to actually help God with what needs to be done around you. But you can't experience that unless you have this conscious contact. That is started here. At one point I want to get into. Yeah, since we're in that spiritual axiom. I brought this book because it was the book that I got when I came in. The second edition. It doesn't mean there's any difference between this and the rest of the books. It's just this is the one that I had. and I got reflecting on the book and how in the early days the way an alcoholic worked the program was to get the book in the mail by writing, they saw maybe the Liberty Magazine or the Saturday Evening Post article and they wrote to New York and they said, I understand you know how to help me. I'm an alcoholic and they sent him a book and they just said follow the directions in the book and so they just opened it and started reading it and doing what was in here and I think this book makes it perfectly clear that the purpose of this book is to enable the reader to find God and that God will take care of all your problems I mean, there's no way of characterizing this in any other fashion other than that. That's the point of this. So the person would get it, follow the directions, and have a spiritual awakening. Just from following the directions in the book. He had no sponsor to guide him. So when he took his fifth step, he went to a priest or a therapist or something like that. As it's suggested in here, find somebody. And he went and followed all of this and had the spiritual experience. And then they go to the chapter working with others. I mean, when you read this, you just go, wow. Now the guy turns to working with Others and it said, oh boy, the best part's coming now. Now you get to go out and find another alcoholic in your little town and show him how you did this whole thing. And I'm trying to picture myself, got the book, nobody knows anything about AA or alcoholism in my town, and I'm going to go find another alcoholic, maybe by asking down at the jail or over in the hospital or something, and then go, hi, I'm here with this book and I am going to show you what I did. And that's how this whole thing happened. That's why we're all here, because somebody in your town got the book or an AA member who had done it moved to your town. The history is very different all around the United States. But it all came because there was this. And so what is this? We sometimes treat this as if it were a Bible and it contained all the answers that the words in here came from up in heaven and you just have to consult this and you will find the answer to everything. I never look in here for the answer to any problems I have. There's nowhere in this book does it say to go back in here and find the answers to problems you have. It says go to God and get the answers. That's where it says to go. Go to God. So what is this? I call it a treasure map. This will lead you to the treasure if you follow the path that we talked about, the God phenomenon. You start here, bingo. It's not the treasure. You know what I mean? This is not the treasurer. The treasuer is God. and so then we give another guy a map here's a treasure map you follow the directions in here you will hit the ultimate treasure which is your own personal contact with your higher power now comes my editorial this is editorial, okay this is one man's opinion And that is because the people coming into AA now are coming from a different society than when I came in, in 1964. A very different society. They're coming from an era where there was a lot of discrimination. Coming from a society that does not hold God in the high esteem that we held him in 1964, that's just a fact. It is, for whatever reason, there was a gal who kept getting drunk in our club and she was a Harvard graduate. And one of the things that she told me, she said, if I ever mentioned God to any of my classmates, they wouldn't talk to me anymore. There was this peer pressure to not appear weak or something. This is just, so as those people come in and get sober, there's a subconscious pressure to try and make AA conform to that reality. And in, I mean, I travel around a lot. And there are places where the spirituality of the program is being diluted to make it more acceptable to more people. I'm just saying this is not what's in here. There's nothing in here about doing that. It acknowledges all the different backgrounds we could bring in, which is what I was talking about earlier in the second step. You've got the atheists, the agnostics, all of this. and how we go, relax, just keep an open mind and we move along. The whole point of it, everyone who comes in is to allow them to have the awakening not to adjust to them for some unknown reason so that they could take a different path than the one that's in the book. And so it's clear that there's some thoughts that AA isn't politically correct enough. So I'm going to give you my solution to the political correctness problem that you might encounter in your neighborhood. And we only have to change one word in the 12 and 12. How do you like that? Do you like simple answers? Here we go. We change the spiritual axiom to read. If something offends me, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with me. Because that's the buzzword we don't use, disturb. And I remember when I came to AIA, there was a lot of stuff I didn't like. I don't know about you, but there was not a lot. I did not like the not drinking part. I didn' t like the four-step inventory. I said four step inventory I mean how do you know you can trust the guy what if he tells somebody else I don't want to do this but it didn't matter what I said I don' like that part, who cares, do it I didn't know that if I had the secret magic word I could have said doing a four step inventory offends me and they go oh that's different let's have a group conscience on this one doing the inventory is offending Sandy why don't we see if we can help him and we would have some generic inventory read and I'd say is this something like it and I would go yes in other words the reason that we were so successful is they forced us to learn the spiritual lesson of adjusting to the world instead of demanding that the world adjusts to us. Anytime we give in and compromise with somebody who wants the program changed for them we might be signing their death warrant. We're teaching them a non-spiritual lesson were teaching them, what you do is you complain about it and get them to change to you. Well, that's what self-centeredness was. That's what we were doing before we got here. We wanted the world to adjust to us. And I just am putting my two cents worth in that that could be the worst lesson we ever teach anyone is to tell them that we'd be glad to adjust so that And you don't have to experience any discomfort. That's the end of my little thing there. I'll move on. We're back in this God consciousness, and one of the questions that I remember somebody came up with, and I thought it was an interesting question, it's talking about having had a spiritual awakening as the solution. and spiritual awakening is the solution, then what's the problem that it fixes? Spiritual asleepness? Do you follow what I'm saying? It already implies something that we're not aware of. It's implying that our view of reality isn't correct. that everything that we've been seeing through our eyes and with our ideas is possibly subject to question. And that we're awakening from something. And one way that I felt was describe my situation I was awakening from a self-centered trance My self-centeredness had woven this network of ideas that I was living in and that the awakening made me see through all of it. And I remember that's why Chuck called that book A New Pair of Glasses. It was a new ability to see through the reality we were living in. And that's one of the reasons we put the holograms on the wall, is to let people practice looking at what they see there until they see an entirely different reality on the same piece of paper. Which is very similar to what an awakening does. It allows us to see beyond the ideas that we had put together. and Chuck called that the new pair of glasses that you at some point when we're in this God consciousness we're given a way of seeing everything differently and that's what makes everything so comfortable is to see a world as God sees it and then live in that world it's as if you wear self-centered glasses, which you put together, and when you look through them, life sucks. That's the only view you have. You get up in the morning, you look out, and you go, God, another day. What a lousy place I live. You're not making it up. That is what you see. This is, that is it. You look out and you, God, Another day. All those jerks on the bus. and that's what you see and then we work this we get this God consciousness it's almost like when somebody reaches this God Consciousness then we have a little ceremony and we the group and we call them up and we go now you've earned these these are your new pair of glasses and you put them on and you just go oh my god this is fabulous and if it was that simple we could stop there but we don't like simple we just don't like simple so they give us the glasses we're thrilled this is oh man I love it and they go now look we can't force you but we strongly suggest that when you get home you throw away the life sucks glasses just put them in the trash disposal and get rid of them And we go, yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm just going to keep him around for old time's sake. So we leave him sit there. And you know, it isn't long before we go. I wonder what it looks like through those again. And then we come to a meeting and somebody goes, what's wrong? Because they can see our face. And we Go back to the familiar. We go back to the world that we have some control over. We go Back to Problems, because problems are who we are. We're problem people. That's our total identity. You ask somebody, how you doing? Oh man, I got, you know the thing. My wife's thinking of leaving me, trying to sell the house and won't sell. This is who you are. You know, how is it? One, two, three, four, five. And then you go, oh man, you think that's bad. We got to come up with six. So now we've connected back and forth with each other and I'm one problem up on you. But that's who we are. We just lay them all out. It sounds silly if someone goes, how you doing? I'm connected to God and it's great. And people walk off and you go boy, he's lost touch with reality. what's he talking about he's connected to God and everything's great it's almost like this is too good to be true soon as we tell ourselves it's too good to be truth we will make it untrue we will take it back to where at least there's four or five problems that we can talk about so that we can engage in conversations with other people and it's just perpetual so we need each other we need seeing we need these type of events that we can eventually break this habit of not describing problems if you've talked to me in the last year you go hey how's it going I mean I look back I was the biggest one but what am I doing now well I got the hip and I got a lot of things I got this thing out there I got golf cart could you get me a dessert thank you the whole thing, and I'm going, what am I talking about all this stuff for? The more I talk about it, the more I get into it, and that's who I am. And at dinner, they were talking about what is the biggest thing you were wrong about in the last year. And this is what I was wrong about. I would say for the last 25 or 30 years I honestly believed to the depth of my heart that I had a spiritual connection to God that couldn't be broken I've been through a divorce you know almost bankruptcy another divorce moving, losing a job getting another job the connection is never wavered just yeah Yeah, I know it looks bad, but it's fine underneath. It's fine under me. And I really, if you would ask me, I'd say, I don't think an atomic bomb could break this connection. We're moving into spiritual arrogance. Only I'm thinking that I'm grateful. I'm just, aren't I lucky to be in this and this and that? Well, then along came a thing called pain. And it started low, and it started going for one year, two, three, four. when the knees did that, all of a sudden there is no God and it was just like it went snap and all I talked about was how much pain I was in I'd go to meetings and somebody would come up can you help me with this? Help you? I'm in all this god damn pain, go ask somebody else god damn it and I'm going and then I'd run over and make amends I'm sorry I didn't mean that, the next guy comes in Get out of there and bring a thing. Jesus Christ. People are going, oh, don't go near him. Okay, so this is happening. So far it's okay. I'm home one night and I'm going, I can't believe that happened to me. Now we're getting into the heart of this story. I can'T believe this is happenIng to me I could believe that Jack could have a lot of pain. I could beIieve that Steve could have a lot of pain and get all pissed off, but not me. And when I went like that, but not me, I went, holy cow, where the hell were you? And I was in that what we call spiritual pride. All these gifts had been given to me, and I correctly gave the credit to God. And I walked around in perpetual gratitude. But without me realizing it, the gratitude started fading and I started taking credit for it. I didn't even know I had done it. I just went, not only did God help me out of that mess, not only did god come along and remove all those problems and put me in this happy place, he also made me ten times stronger than I was when I came in here. I am much more of a man than I was. What I was telling myself was I had been granted a very lofty spot of self-sufficiency and never knew it. Suddenly, it wasn't gratitude, it was I'm a new guy. And I think I may have done this one time before. It was captured by a thing called the ego prayer. Anytime the ego is praying, you better watch out. And an ego prayer would go something like this. God, I'm on my knees to thank you for taking me, a broken derelict, lifting me up, putting the pieces back together, fixing my family, fixing my friends, and in general, filling me with a strength and then the power to see the world differently and to live a happy life. You've placed me in a position that the thing I'm most grateful for is I no longer need your sorry ass to get along. Now that's an ego prayer. And you don't even know it's happening. You think you're thanking him for making you in a spot where you don't need him anymore. So God, you see, I won't be bothering you anymore. You fixed me. And boy, you'd say pride comes before the fall. When that hit me, I just felt like a jerk. I was glad my sponsor's not alive still. He would have teased me into the ground. But I think this is the permanent fight that we're going to be waging. One of the problems with spirituality, it works. It really does. It gives you this great gift and then the gift makes you feel like you don't need help anymore. It makes you feel like You don't Need as Much Help. So if we go back to the 6th and 7th step, you're going to see what is expected of old timers. We're constantly trying to have more defects removed and turn more over to God thereby becoming becoming more dependent on God than we were the first day we got here. Remember, we were so desperate. I just need God. I just really need God, if we are successful in spiritual growth, we're going to need him more than ever because we're going to become totally reliant on God. There'll be nothing left. We wouldn't be able to handle anything. So isn't that a paradox that the more dependent, It's in that third step paradox. The more dependent we become, the more independent we really are. What are we independent from? Our character defects. We never were free anyway. They were jerking us around on a steady basis. And so it's like the longer we're here, the more we need and we want to become dependent on God and not return to any form of self. My sponsor had a thing that he told me early on. I don't know if I told this story. I was so afraid of death, you know, in those early years. It just freaked me out to even think about it. I didn't want to read the obituary because I'm not going to go to a funeral. And I couldn't go to hospital to visit friends because I got in the hospital, that's where people die, and I would start, my heart would start racing and it was almost impossible to get up to a hospital room to see somebody who was sick and there was somebody that I wanted to see he was a guy in our group and I told my sponsor I said I just, I go there and I start getting this panic attacks about going in there and he said what if I went with you and I said yeah for some of the reason I went yeah I'll be safe if he went yeah, yeah and he went with me and amazingly enough I could do the visit and I got out and went out and I wanted to go back the next week he said I'll go with you so I went and we came out and about the third time I said I guess someday I'll be able to do this on my own he said no I'll always go with him and I went what the hell is that I'll almost go with it he's trying to tell me you never want to do anything without help so you take God with you the ego wants us to return it wants us to have our sponsor say yes eventually you'll be able to do it on your own but he was trying to show me no if you don't take me with you take God with you stop trying to return to self sufficiency which is what the ego want us to do so then we can take pride in our accomplishments pride pride and of course spiritual pride is the worst kind of all I'm getting tired so I'm gonna oh this is yeah let me just go through this quickly it involves the prayer st. Francis which we may get into oh by the way those of you that haven't been here before when you go on the spiritual walk the church has a beautiful place to walk and they have very simplistic stopping places for the stations of the cross and they're just the Roman numeral there's not any anything else and they allowed us to put one line from the prayer of St. Francis at each stop so you can go and make the circle down there and stop and reflect on each line in the prayer of St. Francis which I think is one of the great powerful prayers that we have in our literature and that prayer has fascinated me I remember coming across a meditation book that was totally on the prayer st. Francis and I find it just fascinating and here's what it occurred to me in the last couple years that that spiritual journey we were talking about the God phenomenon or whatever you want to call going from zero to we've entered the world of the spirit one of the things that happens to us this happens to us as we're going on this journey, the prayer of St. Francis happens to us. If you notice the prayer of St. Francis is going out from us, that where there's hatred I bring love, that wherever there is discord I bring harmony, etc. But as I look back in order for that to happen we have to place love inside of me so that I can give it. We have to place forgiveness inside ofme. Wehave to place harmony inside ofm. So it's almost like as we're getting spiritually well this prayer comes in and God says well where there's hatred I'm going to put love inside this man now and where there is wrong I'm gonna put a spirit of forgiveness and where this discording on a pro-harmony where there are gonna put truth so we are being fixed inside right along the lines of that so if you if you start reading that see if that hasn't started to happen to you. That where there was doubt, faith is in there now. That where it was despair, now there's hope in here. And you'll see that all these attributes have the old attributes been taken out and this new one has been placed in. And as this happens, it's almost like all of our old self, one piece at a time is being replaced. And then we suddenly see that by self-forgetting, we have found ourselves and that by forgiving, we are forgiven. It took me years to see. I often wonder, how can I forgive myself? I seem to be able to forgive others, but I can't forgive myself. Well, it says it's right there. Have you forgiven everyone yet? Because as soon as you do, you will be forgiven. And I'm going, really? Yeah. How can you forgive a person who won't forgive? So if I still have somebody I haven't forgiven, how in God's name could I forgive myself? So as I forgive everyone, it's done. There won't be anything left in me that needs forgiving. You see what I'm saying? So he was right there. It's by forgiving we are forgiven. And then it leads up to it's by dying that one awakens to life eternal. That doesn't mean your heart stops. Doesn't mean you're in a box below the ground. It means your world has just been smashed. Going back to the one idea of being smashed. As all of that is taken over by God, you aren't there anymore. A lot of people say, you know after four or five years of sobriety I felt like changing my name because I was not the same person that came in here and our families will tell us that you're just not the sane person you were that is the biggest compliment we can get that is to greatest feeling to have is to realize I'm not the sane guy that came into here I care about people I didn't know that was in me these are the gifts that are being placed in through this process. After that's completed then you can see how the prayer of St. Francis works. That where you see hatred you bring love. You've got it now and it goes right down the line. So when you do that walk try to incorporate all that as you're reflecting on has that happened to me? Have they taken a lot the hatred out of my life so that there's room for love? Have they taken away the fear and I have this sense of trust I mean, have they, has God done this? Have the steps, has the program and as you become aware of that you just realize wow, see our ego doesn't want to let us know that we're doing well. It wants to stay, a lot of problems, a Lot of problems keep thinking about the problem it really isn't working so anyway I think that's late at night let's just wrap it up by saying take a few minutes at each one of those lines as you take that walk and try and see if a lot more hasn't happened to you than your ego wants you to know you are really probably twice as spiritual as you think you are but the ego doesn't want you to know that it wants you to think you're in trouble it likes to beat you up it doesn't wanna give you credit for anything but I think if you go out and allow the awareness to come in you're gonna realize you're really walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe now and we ought to become aware that the consciousness of our true situation is all we want. That's all we want, is to have that sense, wow, this is working. I am walking hand in hand with God and things are absolutely wonderful. That is not a bad awareness to have and I hope we all get it while we are here this weekend. Let's wrap it up and we will visit, hang around and thanks for your attention. I appreciate it very much. Thank you.