Sandy B. at the Far Corners Spiritual Retreat – 2006

About This Speaker Tape

Far Corners Spiritual Retreat - 2006

Sandy B. opens a retreat weekend by challenging the room to physically leave their baggage—worries over health money and the fear of looking bad to strangers—at the door. He dismantles the ego's role in recovery arguing that we aren't living lives but rather reporting on them like biased journalists. Through a series of metaphors from the janitor who believes he's in a tragedy to the absurdity of a $163,000 therapy bill to learn how to 'be yourself,' Sandy B. maps out the difference between the facts of our lives and the stories we weave to justify our misery. He frames the spiritual awakening not as a sudden bolt of lightning for most but as a gradual process of building a 'mailbox' through the steps to receive a gift from a Higher Power. The goal is to strip away the adjectives and modifiers of the ego to reach a state of simple unmodified existence: 'I am.'

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening reading of the Prayer of St. Francis.
• 2:15 The baggage check: Sandy B. lists the specific worries and resentments the group must leave outside.
• 6:40 Discussion on the 12th Step and the nature of a spiritual awakening as a 'gift'.
• 8:20 The 'mailbox' metaphor: preparing oneself to receive a spiritual awakening.
• 12:10 Analysis of the 'Promises' and how fear and economic insecurity 'slip away'.
• 16:30 The 'Joe' story: separating what happened from what we thought happened.
• 21:00 The 'Janitor' metaphor: how the ego turns a simple role into a tragedy.
• 26:40 Laughter: The story of T-Jungle and the $163,000 psychiatrist bill.
• 31:10 The concept of 'I am' and stripping away the modifiers of the ego.
• 35:20 Closing metaphor of the puzzle: putting the man together so the world comes together.