Sandy B. at the Far Corners Retreat – 2008

Well, hi everybody. I'm really grateful that you all came. Actually, we'd like it if we\nleft our cell phones in the cabin. Then we wouldn't be running out and reconnecting with\nthe world. Let me tell you why I started this or had the idea for it. It seemed to me that\nonce you've been around AA for a while, you get to a comfortable level, what you might call\npretty good sobriety, and you have a routine going, and you kind of settle in, and you\npeople, and you're going out to lunch with the guys, and you got the friends, and you got\nall of this going. And there's really not an impetus to press on to a higher level of spirituality.\nAnd Bill Wilson had a saying about that, that the good was the biggest enemy of the best\nthat there is. And I remember that feeling that I had stayed the same for 10 years,\nin terms of my relationship with God. And I just started seeking. I just started putting a big\npriority on what is suggested in our 11th step. If you recall that step in both the 12 and 12,\nit says our libraries are full of books. There are many spiritual teachers. See your rabbi,\nsee your minister, go talk to people.\nIt is an individual adventure, unquote. So suddenly you see a departure from the\nwe program, and we're all doing this together, into something individual.\nAnd so that's why we are, this is all AA people, but it's not an AA weekend. It's a spiritual\nweekend, which means we can have a library in the back of all kinds of spiritual things. And so that's\na title of spiritual books. And it is a growing list. Sometimes people who attend here will send\nme a book and I'll read it and I'll go, man, we've got to add this to our library. And so they're\nfree back there. It's an honor system. You just look, take one, read it for awhile in your room,\nsee if you connect with the author, if not put it back, grab another one. And the object is the walk\nout of here with one or two quase dead 있거든요, ones are good. So that's the concept, spiritual\nbooks.\nthat you're going to go get and make that part of your seeking.\nAnd obviously, no two people will take the same books.\nThat's the beauty of it.\nSpirituality is not the same for any two people.\nWhat gets revealed to us by our higher power is done on an individual basis.\nBut what that revelation is, is our own truth.\nAnd of course, that's what our big book says.\nWhen I look at the end, it summarizes our whole book.\nAnd it says, we realize we know but a little.\nIsn't that a funny thing to put on page 164?\nAfter we put everything that the first hundred knew into this book,\nand we ended up with a little.\nWe don't know.\nWe don't normally think of the big book that way, do we?\nWe think about it as, this is everything you need to know.\nWe have all that, and then we have this.\nWe realize we know but a little.\nWhere are we going to get the rest?\nWhat's the next sentence?\nGod will constantly disclose more to us.\nIf our house is in order, you can't transmit, this is the great fact, etc.\nAnd so the vast majority of the truth,\nthe truth that we learn about ourselves comes directly from our higher power to us.\nAnd then, as Bill writes, people of very high spiritual development\nalways insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they got from God.\nSo the safety valve on that is, we talk about it with someone else.\nI was contemplating last night, and I was sort of reflecting,\nand it seemed as if a...\na voice as clear as a bell said,\nyou ought to run off with your secretary to Costa Rica.\nAnd it felt like God wants me to do that.\nAnd I ran it by my sponsor, and he didn't agree at all.\nDidn't agree at all.\nAnd so,\nthat's the only caveat on reflection.\nAnd receiving guidance.\nWhile I was looking at the name of Dayspring,\nI have a girlfriend who's kind of an expert on the Bible.\nSo I was trying to read along and learn something beyond what I did as a kid.\nAnd there was a sentence where they referred to Jesus as the Dayspring.\nSo I asked her about it, and he said,\nyeah, that's one of the many names that he received,\nand it means sunrise.\nSo we're at the sunrise,\nwhich none of us knew before.\nWe've been down here quite a few times.\nAnd I like that.\nWe have conferences all over that call themselves the sunlight of the spirit.\nI've been to one in Pennsylvania, and I'm sure there's others around the country.\nAnd that's really what we're after, is that light.\nNow, the topic of this lecture is back to the basics of awakening.\nYou don't normally see that combined like that.\nBack to the basics generally has a meaning all of its own.\nAnd suddenly we're adding, of awakening.\nAnd so it's my way of poking fun at, not poking fun,\nbut of expanding the idea of awakening.\nexpanding a traditional thought about Back to the Basics.\nIf you started with the premise, looking in our 12th step,\nhaving had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,\nthen it appears that the whole purpose of the program is this awakening.\nSo the awakening is the solution.\nYou follow what I'm saying?\nThe awakening is the transformation that allows us to be free from thinking about alcohol,\nfrom being tempted by alcohol.\nAs Bill writes in the 6th step in the 12 and 12,\nwe've been granted a perfect release from alcohol.\nAnd so awakening is the magic word.\nSo the question that I asked myself,\nif awakening is the answer, what is the problem that it solves?\nDid you ever think about that?\nIf awakening is the answer, what is awakening fixing?\nYou know, in other words, you have to work backwards,\nand you go unawakened.\nUnawakened?\nThat would be one stab at it.\nI came up with self-centered trance.\nSelf-centered trance.\nClearly, when we go to sleep at night and we awaken,\nwe're awakening from a dream or from sleep.\nAnd when we study our own self-centeredness,\nit really is like being in another world from where we can be when we come to AA.\nOnly we see it as simply a little bit of self-centeredness that caused me to be an alcoholic.\nAnd when I stop drinking, probably most of that self-centeredness will go away.\nAnd the further we get into this, we realize we haven't barely scratched the surface.\nWhen we look at self-centeredness from the point of view of awakening.\nSo without awakening, you really don't accomplish anything with self-centeredness.\nI remember the first time that my sponsor pointed out that my problem was self-centeredness.\nAnd I hadn't thought about that before, and I said, well, let me think about that.\nI didn't want to concede right away.\nI don't want to give in too soon.\nSo I said, you know, you're right.\nNow that I think about it, I do think about myself a lot.\nI think you got a point there.\nI'm going to have to do something about that.\nNow the world-class comedy line, I am going to have to do something about self-centeredness.\nWell, what are you going to do?\nWell, I'm going to become un-self-centered.\nYou see how ridiculous that is?\nHow are you going to become un-self-centered?\nStand over there?\nNo matter where, have you ever noticed, no matter where you go, you're the center.\nYou're in the shopping mall and you look all around.\nThere's that way, that way, that way.\nAnd from wherever you look, you're at the center.\nSo it isn't any small wonder that we ended up self-centered.\nJust like that.\nJust like they were years ago when they decided that the earth was the center of the solar system.\nWhy?\nBecause that's where we live.\nWhat else would be the center?\nYou know, and then when they said, oh my God, maybe it's the sun.\nThey were going to hang people for coming up with ideas that were so shattering.\nWhen they came up with that, they had to change all the books.\nThey had to change everything.\nYou had to go back into your mind and change.\nYou had to change almost every reference point to make the sun the center of the solar system.\nThat's a monumental thing.\nIt's not as monumental as becoming un-self-centered.\nIn order to go, so the, what we find in the program is the opposite of self-centered is God-centered.\nThat's what changes it.\nThat's what changes it.\nAnd when God becomes the center, it changes almost every idea that we have about anything.\nAnd that's a shocking thing.\nI remember when I was new, they said, actually, it's only a two-step program.\nDon't drink and change everything there is about you.\nEverything.\nSo that means that there's probably no idea that I have that I can be sure of.\nThat's rather unnerving.\nDo you follow what I'm saying?\nBecause those are the things that make you feel comfortable.\nYou're anchored in place with your ideas and your beliefs and all these things.\nAnd now we're being told they could all be wrong.\nSo it takes a great leap to come into a spiritual program.\nAnd that's why we have sponsors.\nAnd that's why we do.\nThat's why we do steps.\nThat's why we inventory, inventory.\nAnd then our sponsors go, no, that's not the nature of that problem.\nThe nature is it's your fault.\nWell, it didn't look that way to me.\nI thought it was my boss's fault.\nNo, you owe him an amend.\nGee whiz.\nWrong again.\nWrong again.\nYou remember the first time you were wrong?\nIt's hard, isn't it?\nIt's very hard.\nI finally was willing to concede it to my sponsor.\nAnd I said, okay, you're right.\nAnd he said, no.\nNo, you're wrong.\nAnd that was a horse of a different color.\nMuch harder to say, I'm wrong.\nAnd as we go along, being wrong is delightful.\nOne more thing to throw away that's causing me conflict.\nChuck Chamberlain, who was really the inspiration for this weekend,\nChuck, I got to meet him and went to his, this was in the 70s,\nprobably between 76 and 80.\nSomehow I managed to get to the Los Angeles area, go down to Laguna Beach.\nAnd he was quite, I'm sure some of the guys in here may have met him or talked to him.\nAnd he was quite a presence.\nThere was just an aura.\nThere was something magic.\nAnd I would sit and listen to him and I knew everything he said.\nEverything he said was wonderful, but I didn't know what it meant.\nYou know what I mean?\nHe was talking over my head, but it was exciting.\nAnd I just said, boy, I really want what he has.\nI don't know what he is that he has.\nAnd of course, when you read the book, A New Pair of Glasses,\nis everybody fairly familiar with who Chuck is in A New Pair of Glasses?\nWe got it in the back.\nIt was from a men's weekend like this.\nAnd they had transcribed it, and later on they turned it into a book.\nAnd Chuck's main point was this sentence.\nThat there's one problem that causes all problems.\nThere's only one problem that includes all problems.\nAnd that problem is conscious separation.\nIn my...\nConsciousness, I exist in some place separate from everybody else and from God.\nAnd that the solution to that one problem takes care of all other problems.\nThey all disappear.\nAnd so he lays that out.\nYou take that to a discussion meeting.\nAnd we go, why don't we discuss the fact that...\nThat there's only one problem, and there's one solution,\nand it includes all problems, and that'll be the end of that.\nSo let's apply it, let's say, to financial security,\nwhich is, everybody's got a little bit of that.\nEvery day they look in the news.\nFinancial security.\nImmediately we shift and go after the solution to financial security.\nWell, what you have to do is start setting aside a little,\na little bit here, and blah, blah, blah, blah.\nNobody says conscious contact.\nDo you follow what I'm saying?\nIn other words, conscious contact is the right answer to all questions\nin this spiritual realm.\nSo, gee, my girlfriend left me.\nWhat am I going to do?\nYou need to improve your conscious contact with God.\nWell, that doesn't look like the answer to that problem.\nNone of spirituality looks like anything.\nThe steps never looked like they would work when we came here.\nI used to look at them on the board.\nI wondered where the money step was.\nI need money, man.\nI don't need any of that stuff.\nI don't need an inventory.\nI don't need God.\nI just need some money.\nAnd it wasn't up there.\nI had no idea how doing this stupid laundry list\nwould suddenly set me free and put me in a different place.\nBut it did, and I'm sure it did to all of you.\nSo, as I got ready for this particular lecture,\nno, as I was getting ready for the next lecture,\nwhich had to do with contemplation,\nI started looking around on the internet.\nI was looking up stuff about Plato.\nI just thought contemplative sounded so cool\nthat it would appeal to everybody's ego.\nOh, yes, I'm going to be a contemplative member\nof the Bible.\nYou know, and then people would come,\nyes, I want to get in on that.\nI didn't really know what it meant.\nSo, I said, well, I remember Plato talked a lot about that,\nso I'm reading Plato's stuff and all that.\nWell, anyway, as I'm doing it,\nI come up with a paper that Amy's going to give you all\nat the end of this talk.\nAnd it's a paper by a doctor.\nPh.D. on addiction and contemplation.\nInteresting that a guy, somebody would write a paper like that.\nAnd as I read it, I said, man, this belongs in lecture number one.\nBack to the basics of awakening.\nSo, let me tell you what he basically says.\nI emailed him because I was so taken with his thoughts\non this subject.\nHe talks to all the other doctors\nabout the traditional viewpoint on addiction,\nthe psychological factors and the physical factors\nand all the stuff that you hear everywhere you go.\nAnd he says, I think they're all missing the point.\nThis is really a spiritual problem.\nWell, that caught my attention right away.\nThat caught my attention right away.\nAnd guess where he went to lay out his case?\nHe went to Carl Young's visit with Roland Hazzard.\nIsn't that amazing?\nThis guy in modern times went back to that visit and the advice\nthat Dr. Young in the letter to Bill Wilson talked about alcoholics\nand alcohol was really, at the low level, a spiritual thirst.\nFor the union with God.\nThat was how Young saw it.\nAnd so when his therapy didn't work with Roland Hazzard,\nhe told him the only possibility is to find\nkind of a spiritual experience because he was aware\nof some alcoholics who were able, of his type,\nwho were able to recover by means of a spiritual experience.\nAnd so what Young was talking about was a profound transformation.\nAnd so then Natcher makes the case that all addictions\nare a search to answer this problem we have\nthat something's wrong.\nAnd so he goes on to say that alcohol is not the only thing\nthat's missing.\nIt was the reason we were drinking.\nWe couldn't figure out what was missing in our lives.\nAnd as we came to AA, we found out it was God.\nWe found out that we had gone down the typical\nprodigal son path and we felt lost.\nWe felt alone.\nAnd we knew there was an answer somewhere, but we couldn't remember what it was.\nAnd alcohol seemed to solve that.\nIn other words, alcohol was solving that core problem that we had.\nAnd he just looks at all other addictions and he says to that person,\nfood seemed to solve that core missing.\nWe don't even know what we're missing.\nTo the next person, gambling looks like the path to nirvana.\nAnd then he just goes down all of them.\nSo he just says that all addictions are the erroneous assumption that if I go far enough\ndown this food path or sex path or gambling path or whatever it is, drugs, that I will\neventually solve this thing that's been driving me crazy since I was little.\nAnd I remember that when the first time I drank, it went way beyond.\nNot just making me happy and having a party thing.\nIt went deep into my soul and solved the thing that had been bothering me since I was a little\nkid.\nIt fixed the loneliness.\nIt fixed everything.\nAnd I thought that if you kept pursuing it, it would keep me connected so that I wouldn't\nhave what we call the missing God problem.\nAnd so I really was, I'm rolling along with him, and I'm just going, man, this guy is really on target.\nHe's right tuned in.\nAnd then he made an observation that was parallel to one that I made some years ago.\nSo I'll tell you mine first, and then I'll go to his.\nI came up with this as a way of pointing out something about AA.\nI came up with this little made-up story.\nWell, if you go back 55 years in AA, anywhere in the country, in all small cities and certainly all towns, there was only one meeting a week.\nI do remember some places.\nI came in in 64.\nI remember a couple places where they just had one meeting, and it was a big deal when they got two.\nSo the question arises, how the hell do you stay sober on one meeting a week?\nWell, you really look forward to the meeting.\nAnd maybe you find a buddy, and you have coffee halfway through the week.\nBut mostly, you prayed like hell.\nI mean, you did some serious praying.\nOh, God, get me through Wednesday.\nCome on, God, let me get through Wednesday.\nOkay, God, get me through Thursday.\nYeah, I'm at the meeting.\nAnd then we had that nice, comfortable feeling of being there, and it gave us that fix.\nSo now we fast forward to today.\nEvery town, every city has 6 o'clock meetings in the morning, noon meetings.\nYou go there during lunch.\n5 p.m. meetings.\nGo to a meeting after work.\nOn the way home, 7 o'clock meetings, 8 o'clock meetings, midnight meetings, men's meetings, women's meetings,\ngay meetings, couples meetings, discussion meetings, speaker meetings, conferences, roundups.\nWe've got pamphlets on everything.\nWe've got movies, DVDs.\nI mean.\nWe've got a support system that is so far-reaching, you don't have to hardly pray at all.\nThere's a lot of truth in that.\nThere's a lot of truth in that.\nYou can have pretty good sobriety by riding on the system.\nMeeting every day.\nTalk to my sponsor every day.\nRead the big book, whatever it is.\nAnd so guess what he points out?\nHe says that in early AA, this spiritual transformation was the centerpiece of everything.\nAnd you look back, especially in the Akron, Cleveland, the Midwest area, it was a big thing.\nI mean, and it started from the day you got there.\nYou want to try this?\nCome on upstairs with us.\nGet on your knees.\nDo you believe in God?\nDo you believe in Jesus?\nRemember all that?\nIt was very churchy.\nAnd oh, yes.\nAnd so there was this huge reliance on the direct contact.\nAnd he faults us now.\nHe said, that's not what would work.\nHe said, that's not what would work.\nHe said, that's not what would work.\nThat's not what you need.\nAnd one thing that I learned, that I learned from him,\nand the things I learned from him,\nis that a sampling of AA today would show,\nit would show, and I'm using his words,\nand I could see where he would reach that conclusion.\nHe said, people are now addicted to AA.\nDo you see what I'm saying?\nIn other words, their total reliance is on the meetings.\nNow there's nothing wrong with that.\nfrom going to a higher spiritual level.\nSo I think he and I were making the same point.\nWhen you get the paper, I think you'll love to read it\nbecause it's not often that somebody outside of our realm\nmakes such a nice case for the spiritual solution to addiction.\nI emailed him and made the following point.\nI said, I think you're underestimating the number of true spiritual experiences\nthat occur in AA.\nBecause after a spiritual experience, you cannot help but pass it on.\nIt's part of a spiritual experience.\nYou just have to go tell somebody about it.\nAnd that's what happens.\nYou want to sponsor people.\nYou want to reach out.\nIt's so exciting and so transforming that nobody could hold you back.\nBill Wilson had such a monumental experience.\nIn his hospital room, he envisioned our entire program all around the world\nof one drunk carrying it to someone else.\nAnd in that instant,\nhe received the invitation.\nHe received the energy to never stop doing it.\nIn spite of no job, no money,\ngets evicted from their townhouse in Brooklyn,\nhas to rely on other AA members to give him a ride places,\nstayed in 40 different homes over the next two years.\nNever did he back away from this drive to pass it on.\nIt was part of the spiritual awakening.\nSo I wrote to Dr. Natcher and I said,\nI think that this is what is driving many of the people in AA,\nis this desire to pass it on.\nAnd not that they have to be at the meeting or they'll drink.\nAnd he wrote back and said, maybe you're right.\nHe wouldn't concede that that was totally it.\nSo if you want to follow the addiction thing,\nwe're addicted to passing it on.\nI just can't get enough of that.\nI have to see one more time someone being transformed.\nSo when you take a look at that,\nI hope it resonates a little bit that we have a wonderful fellowship.\nNothing needs to be done.\nNothing needs to be done with it.\nI love it.\nI think it's growing.\nIt's strong.\nIt's wonderful.\nWhat I'm talking about is what are you doing as an individual\nwithin your own spirituality?\nAre you like me where it's stayed the same for about 10 years?\nThat's an easy thing to have happen.\nAnd you're the only one that can change that.\nThis now is an individual thing.\nYou can become a seeker to go further.\nAnd in that seeking, something happens.\nI noticed it in various AAs.\nI saw it in Chuck Chamberlain.\nAnd then I saw it as I traveled around and would be in different groups.\nThere would be somebody in there\nwho had something very intangible.\nOne of the qualities was he didn't share at every meeting.\nBut when he did, it would be condensed to two or three sentences at the most.\nAnd those three sentences would seem to capture the essence\nof a very complicated sounding question.\nAnd you knew, wow, that was really interesting.\nYou might not even fully understand it, but there was something there that was attractive.\nThere seemed to be some kind of an energy.\nThere seemed to be, and I call these people beacons.\nThere's just, instead of deacons, beacons.\nThere's a lightness.\nThere's sort of an assurance.\nAnd I just feel we need more of them.\nAnd that you guys and the other people that come here could easily end up in that category.\nBecause you decide to become a seeker beyond where you are.\nAnd in that capacity, you're off on your own.\nYou find some meditation class.\nYou read one of these.\nYou go and then see.\nWhat starts transpiring?\nAbout four years ago, I started looking around and reading various people.\nAnd I would see people like the Dalai Lama.\nI'd see people like Mother Teresa.\nAnd I would look at them and I'd just go, they are practically out of their own ego.\nYou know what I mean?\nWhat you might call just fully awakened or fully illumined or fully whatever it is.\nAnd I dared to have the thought, why don't you do that?\nDo you know the backlash I got from my own ego?\nWho the hell do you think you are to have a thought like that?\nYou little piece of crap.\nI'm glad no one heard you have that thought.\nThey would be teasing you out of AA.\nWhat?\nWhat?\nWhat?\nAnd the more I thought about it,\nthere's no difference between you or you and the Dalai Lama at all.\nThat pure spirituality is inside of all of us.\nHe didn't go out and get something.\nHe got rid of everything that was blocking that part of him.\nAnd so I said to myself, never having discussed it with anyone else,\nsince then I talk to anyone.\nSince then I talk to anyone.\nSince then I talk to anyone.\nSince then I talk to anyone.\nSince then I talk to anyone.\nI said, why don't I do that?\nAnd you know something?\nI got really excited.\nI obviously will never get there.\nBut in the last four years, I've had more change than in the first 39.\nSo that's all I'm telling you.\nThe stuff I think about and see that races around in my head is so damn exciting\nthat I can hardly contain myself.\nI just love to reflect.\nI just love to reflect on God and to just talk to him and carry on.\nAnd it's just a tremendous feeling.\nWell, I made some notes.\nOne of the first things I did, you've been given pertinent passages from the big book.\nIt's just something to take home.\nAnd I just selected these way back when.\nAnd you all can disagree with me all over the place.\nYou can make your own list up.\nBut I listed these as perhaps the most powerfully spiritual sentences\nthat are scattered throughout the 12 and 12 in the big book.\nAnd that show the goal is much higher than the one I was talking about.\nAnd that show the goal is much higher than the one I was talking about.\nAnd so I'm just going to read 10 or so that I think apply to this lecture\nto support what I'm talking about today, that I'm not just pulling this out of my head.\nAnd from the doctor's opinion, one feels that something more than human power\nis needed to produce the essential psychic change.\nNow, we read that and we go, yeah, that's cool.\nThat's what the doctor said.\nBut then you take it in.\nYou go.\nYou go, jeez, that's like magic.\nThat's pretty powerful.\nThen page 25.\nThe central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our creator has entered our hearts\nand lives in a way that is indeed miraculous.\nYou could slide by that without letting it sink in.\nThe absolute certainty that your creator has entered your heart, that's no small promise, is it?\nThat's a promise.\nThat's a big deal.\nSo I go back and I go, yeah.\nThen later on, this is probably one of the jackpot lines in our literature,\nwe had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or he's nothing.\nHe either is or he isn't.\nAnd then the most important line of all, what was our choice to be?\nIsn't it amazing?\nIsn't it amazing that that's how we have an awakening?\nWe choose it.\nChoose it.\nMade a decision to turn our life over.\nAnd I ask people who are sort of agnostic or atheist when they come here, I say,\nhow did you get to be an atheist?\nDid you see a non-burning bush?\nDid a voice come down and say, I do not exist?\nOr did you just decide to be one?\nI guess I did.\nI just decided.\nWhen did you decide?\nI was in college.\nIt was cool.\nAnd I run around.\nI just, I'm an atheist, man.\nI'm an atheist.\nAnd then I go, so you could junk that and make a decision that God's everything.\nAnd, you know, that's what AA asks us to do.\nOkay, you've been an atheist all this time.\nHow's it going?\nHow's your serenity?\nAre you happy?\nIs it working?\nIs it great being an atheist?\nI don't see them smiling that much.\nWhy don't we throw that aside and conduct a new experiment?\nWe'll make God everything.\nAnd you just keep notes on, is this working any better?\nAnd, of course, that's what happens in AA.\nWe're talking.\nWe're talking about results.\nWe see people get happy, joyous, and free because they made this decision.\nGod's everything.\nHe's either everything or he's nothing.\nAll right, let me just move along and mention a few.\nAll of these are very powerful.\nBut he has come to all who have honestly sought him.\nThere's that word seek again.\nWhen we drew near to him, he disclosed himself.\nThese are great words.\nWhen you assemble them all, you can see, am I sure changing myself?\nI mean, we feel we're on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe.\nWhat a comforting thing that is.\nChuck Chamberlain, in his talks and in his book, just looked everyone right in the eye and said,\nfor the last 22 years, I've been guided by God every day.\nThat's my whole plan.\nI just get guided by God.\nAnd I remember asking, well, how do you do that?\nHe said, you decide to do it, then you sit and wait for guidance.\nNow, how do you like that?\nI thought it would be much more complicated than that.\nYou wait for a thing and it's light from the sky.\nHello.\nYou just stop the way you've been doing it and you go, OK, where's the guidance?\nAnd then you wait.\nAnd then it shows up and you can't believe it.\nWhat is guidance?\nWe're talking about intuitions, intuitively having answers come that didn't come through the normal thought process of,\nI've got to figure this out.\nBut rather, I let go of trying to figure it out.\nAnd wait.\nAnd then it occurred to me a couple of days later, that's it.\nThat's being guided.\nAnd I just, you talk about putting the money where your mouth is.\nYou just sit and wait for guidance.\nI love that answer.\nThen I had, we begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us.\nTo some extent, we become God conscious.\nExactly what Chuck was talking about.\nTo end conscious separation, we have conscious contact.\nWe've begun to develop this vital sixth sense, but we must go further.\nAnd that means more action.\nAnd that was going into step 11.\nThen later on, near the end of page 158, talking about one of the early guys.\nBut he found God.\nAnd in finding God, he found himself.\nWhat that means is that I start to come out of the self-centered trance\nand see my original self.\nBefore I made up a story about myself and went through the whole prodigal son journey.\nAnd my true nature is revealed to me.\nWhich, as it turns out, is spiritual.\nWe're spiritual being having human experience.\nMy true self, not my self-centered self, is pure love.\nIt is that quality in me that is divine.\nThat God, the God inside of me.\nWhatever you want to call it.\nThe spirit.\nAnd Chris and I were talking.\nHe really likes to go to church and relate the Bible to these principles.\nAnd we were talking about love our neighbor as our self.\nIf you don't love yourself, your neighbor is in for a bad deal.\nDid you ever think of it that way?\nYou're going to love him.\nYou're going to treat your neighbor like you treat yourself.\nHow do we treat ourselves a lot of the time?\nPretty bad.\nIn our opinion of ourself.\nThat's the false self.\nThat's the one we made up.\nThe true self is pure love.\nSo love of self is love of neighbor and the whole thing.\nYes, my neighbor wouldn't be getting much good treatment, would he?\nIf I didn't learn to love and treat myself with great love.\nSee to it your relationship with him is right.\nAnd great events will come.\nTo pass for you and countless others.\nThis is the great fact for us on page 164.\nI love it when we close our meetings reading that final.\nThat's the most heart touching part of everything.\nSee to it and great events will come to pass.\nThat is the great for you and countless others.\nThat's the great fact for us.\nThese are pretty big words.\nThis is beyond.\nThis is beyond happy sobriety.\nYou follow what I'm saying?\nThis is a lot different ball game than happy sobriety.\nThis is bringing in the point of the whole thing.\nAll right.\nPrayer and meditation are a principle means of conscious contact with God.\nSo now we're getting into the essence of our program.\nConscious contact.\nTo take away conscious separation.\nIt's the only way to end that feeling that you don't belong.\nWhen I took on the concept of God is everything.\nI'll never forget.\nI went God is everything.\nOkay.\nI'm going to take that in.\nGod is everything.\nHe's everything.\nHe's me.\nHe's Lee.\nHe's this room.\nThe coffee cup back there.\nThe moon.\nThe people do everything.\nSo I suddenly had him as the whole universe.\nEverything.\nEverything.\nEverything.\nEverything.\nHe's the whole universe.\nNothing in the universe that isn't God.\nSo there's this entire universe.\nAnd then I started thinking.\nAnd then there's me.\nThere's the whole universe.\nAnd then there's me.\nFrom where I sat.\nI seem to exist.\nIn addition to the whole universe.\nI don't know if any of you have that feeling.\nYou exist in a place.\nThat where only you exist.\nWe call it our own little world.\nWhich is the fourth lecture.\nAnd that's why we feel lonely.\nWhat is that world?\nIt's the story we made up.\nAs we grew up.\nIt's our story.\nMy little world.\nIt's where you run and hide.\nI'm going to go think about things.\nIn my own little world.\nI'm going to go think about things.\nAnd you're in there by yourself.\nRight?\nThere's just me.\nAnd all my negative thoughts.\nEvery opinion that we have.\nSurrounds us.\nAnd we go in there and think about it.\nAnd that's what gets smashed.\nRemember that line in the big book.\nAbout the idea we can drink like other people.\nHas to be.\nBoom.\nSmashed.\nSo we're smashing.\nEvery idea that we have.\nWe're smashing.\nThis isolation.\nAnd dark place that we live.\nAnd then the light comes in.\nAnd that's what Bill's talking about.\nNow and then we may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate reality.\nWhich is God's kingdom.\nSo.\nHas everybody had a glimpse?\nHad.\nI have.\nI remember the first time.\nI just went.\nGod.\nThere's something wonderful around here.\nIt may have been when somebody else was talking.\nAnd I saw what they were talking about.\nAnd that glimpse.\nIs the incentive.\nTo go see the whole thing.\nI want more than a glimpse.\nAnd then.\nWe find we do receive guidance.\nJust about to the extent.\nThat we stop making demands upon God.\nTo give it to us on order.\nAnd on our terms.\nAnd Bill ended up in our 11th step.\nWith something that is.\nI haven't seen in any other spiritual program.\nPraying only.\nFor knowledge of his will for us.\nAnd the power to carry it out.\nEverywhere else.\nYou pray for this.\nAnd pray for that.\nAnd pray for this.\nAnd pray for that.\nAnd here we have.\nPray only.\nFor knowledge of his will for us.\nAnd the power to carry it out.\nIt's brilliant.\nIt's absolutely brilliant.\nThat.\nIn other words.\nAll I want is guidance.\nThat's all I want.\nAnd that's the best.\nThat I could ever contribute to the world.\nThe highest order.\nOf what you could do as a human being.\nWould be to have.\nShow someone else how to awaken.\nAnd AA.\nAA is now in 146.\nCountries.\nOne person at a time.\nPeople are being transformed.\nNo money.\nNo program.\nNo big deal.\nOne drunk talking to another.\nIs now influencing.\n140 countries.\nWho would have guessed.\nThat.\nAn awakening force in the world could happen like that.\nAnd almost anonymously.\nI mean.\nSometimes the people go.\nWell they don't know much about AA.\nAnd then.\nOne of them goes.\nOh my God.\nThere's one of my church.\nAnd then they go.\nYeah.\nAnd all the other churches in town.\nWhat?\nOh yeah.\nWe have 190 meetings in this little town every week.\nWhat?\nI didn't know about that.\nHow did I not know about that?\nHow could all that be going on?\nAnd then they.\nGo.\nAnd maybe they attend to me.\nLook.\nOh my God.\nThere's my teacher.\nMy father.\nWhy they're all over the place.\nQuietly.\nReaching out.\nTo the next suffering person.\nAnd look where God.\nReached.\nTo get all his teachers.\nIn the trash heap.\nHey.\nYou'll be a good teacher.\nCome on.\nOut of detox.\nCome on.\nCome on.\nI want you to go to Brazil.\nAnd get them straightened out over there.\nI mean.\nThis thing is unbelievable.\nThis.\nWhole show.\nThat we have.\nAnd we're part of.\nJust.\nGuy comes over to you.\nAnd says.\nWould you sponsor?\nAnd when you say yes.\nOne more.\nIs going to see the light.\nIt's.\nFabulous.\nThe whole deal.\nIs just amazing.\nAnd on page.\n107.\nIn the 12 and 12.\nHe's been granted a gift.\nWhich amounts to a new state of consciousness.\nIn a very real sense.\nHe's been transformed.\nSo.\nWhen I look at the basics of our program.\nIn our steps.\nThat's what I see in my head.\nAll what I just read.\nNot.\nOkay.\nI'm going to admit I'm powerless.\nOkay.\nI'm going to come to believe.\nOkay.\nI'm going to do an inventory.\nOkay.\nIt's a lot more going on than that.\nAll of this.\nIs leading to.\nAn awakening.\nOver the years.\nI've changed the way I sponsor people.\nI've changed the way I feel about the literature.\nI've changed my.\nI change all the time.\nIf someone were to ask me to.\nWhat is the big book?\nI would say.\nIt's a treasure map.\nAnd God's.\nThe treasure.\nAnd this is how you get there.\nThe book.\nIt's not the treasure.\nIt's the map.\nDon't worship the book.\nIt's.\nHow to get there.\nThese are the principles.\nThat we follow.\nIt's it was.\nPage 164.\nGet all the way to there.\nAnd what does it say.\nOur book is meant to be suggestive only.\nSuggestive.\nNo ordering.\nNo pounding.\nWhy don't we have to pound.\nWho enforces this.\nHow does a work without an enforcer.\nWell we know who enforces it.\nAlcohol.\nIt just hangs around outside all the places we meet.\nWaiting for somebody who says I'm not going to throw that stuff anymore and.\nUnderstand you don't want to try the program.\nWhy don't you.\nHave.\nLet me.\nComfort.\nYou.\nPour it down.\nNow you're going to try it.\nThree years later.\nHere we come back in.\nOK.\nWhat's the spiritual crap you're talking about.\nAnd then we try it.\nWe got an open mind from.\nOut there.\nWe don't need an enforcer.\nWe don't need anything but a.\nLight.\nThat's attracting.\nThe.\nThis is going to pound us and they're offering something that I want.\nWhenever I think of that magic and all of this spirituality is really magic.\nI think about Bill's story in the big book and I just observed this about two months ago.\nNot too far before he talks about Abby coming over to the Brooklyn townhouse and the kitchen table.\nWhich is in Stepping Stones on there I swear I sat at that table and I just felt.\nThe most amazing thing.\nBill is describing his own.\nThoughts about God and religion.\nAnd he just came back from World War One.\nAnd so.\nIf.\nI'm there you're wrong we're right.\nAnd he never could.\nUnderstand.\nThe divinity of Jesus he thought he was a great teacher there's these wonderful principles but I don't know I think it's.\nI just know I just can't buy.\nAny of this religion God stuff.\nSo that's where he was that's his predisposition.\nAnd something came along.\nTo completely change his mind.\nIn an instant.\nNow you know he's a tough old New Englander they're not going to change their mind.\nIn an instant.\nWhat changed his mind.\nAbby's.\nFace.\nThat's what changed his mind.\nNot whatever he said.\nHe said.\nI got religion and Bill went don't worry we'll get rid of that have a drink.\nI don't.\nHear that I don't want anything to do with that.\nBut he couldn't stop looking at him.\nThis is a guy he grew up with.\nThis is a guy he knew.\nThis a guy who was a bigger drunk than him.\nAnd he could not understand.\nHow he could look like this.\nThat's what changed his mind.\nIsn't that amazing.\nIt broke down.\nAll of his old arguments.\nAnd he just looked.\nAnd Abby said well why don't you choose your own conception of God.\nBut he had already.\nStarted.\nStarted to have an open mind.\nJust from looking.\nThat's pretty powerful stuff.\nThere was a light.\nAnd you couldn't stop looking at it.\nLike a moth goes right to the flame.\nLost people.\nWill go to the light and they won't even know why they're going there.\nSo when we talk about becoming a beacon.\nWe're not pumping our egos up.\nWe're not trying to be something beyond our means.\nWe're simply reading what's really written in our own literature.\nThis is what it's saying.\nAnd nature is pointing out that many of us aren't doing that.\nWe're not going there.\nWe're going here.\nAnd what Bill said.\nThat's the biggest enemy of the best that there is.\nComfortable sobriety.\nComfortable.\nNo need to change.\nThe only time we change is when they pull the comfort thing out.\nWe get fired.\nThe economy.\nI've noticed the meetings at our club.\nAre much more spiritual than they were two years ago.\nPeople are really talking about God.\nAnd helping each other.\nAnd bringing.\nAnd free lunches in.\nAnd we got it going.\nIt's really moving in there.\nWhy?\nWell, the stock market had the biggest drop.\nIt's ever.\nOh, gee.\nOkay, guys.\nI'm holding on.\nI'm moving in.\nWe're getting closer.\nSo we respond to that.\nWe respond to discomfort.\nWhat time am I supposed to stop?\nQuarter of?\nOkay.\nI'm coming in for a landing.\nPerfect timing.\nPerfect timing.\nAnd let me tell you what line I think captures all of this.\nIt's a line in the seventh step in the 12 and 12.\nAnd this is the line.\nLet's see if you've thought about it the same way.\nA great moment occurs when we see humility as something we want.\nRather than something we must have.\nUp until that moment, we kind of got humiliated into letting things in.\nChanging our mind.\nAnd asking for help.\nWe asked for help because our butt was falling off.\nYou follow what I'm saying?\nAnd so we were force feed, fed humility through humility.\nHumiliation.\nBut as we began to experience the rewards of this humiliation humility,\nwe started going, this stuff really feels good.\nMaybe I ought to go on my own and try and seek further removal of these defects.\nEven though there's no pressure on me to do so.\nThat's a magic moment.\nThat's when we go from pretty good to seeker.\nSee, that occurred inside.\nI'm just going to keep this momentum going.\nI don't have to.\nBut I'm going to.\nSo you can see, it's a choice.\nIt's a decision.\nAnd I think it's one of the most rewarding things.\nDecisions we'll ever make is to just, in our own mind, you know, I'm going to move on.\nI'm going to follow that stuff in the big book, in the 12 and 12 and step 11.\nIndividual adventure.\nI wonder where I'll be led.\nBut with that in mind, somebody will say, hey, you want to go to my meditation class?\nAnd instead of saying no, you'll go, yeah, I think I'll go over and look at that.\nHey, you want to hear this guy's coming to town to give it?\nI mean, I was like, no.\nI had a no.\nIt was a built-o.\nI don't need any of that.\nAnd then I went, even though I don't need it, I'm going to try it.\nAnd there was a new openness.\nAnd hopefully, this type of weekend.\nThis weekend will cause some of us to go, maybe I'll take a look at all that.\nMaybe I'll take a look at all that.\nOkay, we're at the end of the time.\nAnd we'll wrap it up.\nAny more announcements or we just go to dinner in about 15 minutes?\nSo we can sit.\nOh, Chris, go ahead.\nOh, we're wrapped up.\nOkay, thank you all for your attention.\nAnd we can hang out for 15 minutes and then go to dinner.\nThank you all.\nThank you.\nThank you.\nThank you.