Sandy B. Higher Power Is Everything Or He Is Nothing

All right, John, let's go.
Well, I just want to tell you how grateful we are that all of you came here.
It means a great deal to me and to the guys that put this together.
And if you haven't been here before, it's going to mean a great deal to you
because of the people sitting around you.
We don't advertise this in Tampa.
So all the people in Tampa, some of them know there's something going on,
but it's designed so that we don't end up with a room full of people that already know each other.
Something made you decide to come down here,
and you're with other people who made that same decision,
and you're going to really enjoy each other's company because you're all seekers.
you didn't come down here to have fun
you're not going on vacation
you're down here because something inside of you
said let's try and get closer
to this wonderful creator
that we have come in contact with
and this is a wonderful environment
for that to happen
I got two things that occurred to me
one is we have a library back there
and it's
we hope that you will peruse
the books and find
a few that speak to you
and take them back to your room
look at them, maybe get familiar
with the author and then when you go home
you could buy that book
because our big book
in 12 and 12 urge us
to go out into libraries
and spiritual teachers
in order to go on the individual
path that takes place
in the 12th step
but it's an honor system so we would like you to put the book back
that would be and there's a book list in your handouts
and another thing in the handouts are
pertinent passages from the big book in the 12 and 12 and those were just
selected by me as probably
the most powerful language in our literature
concerning getting close to God
and those phrases have been really meaningful to me
and I hope they are to you.
And I think that's about it.
If I'm not mistaken, the first lecture is on
we had to fearlessly face the proposition
that either God is everything or he's nothing.
Unlike the other years when we had wild topics
like me, Tarzan, you, Jane,
I can't believe I actually gave a talk on that.
And then we had one on Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen.
And I think people began to wonder, what am I attending down there?
It doesn't seem to have anything to do with AA.
So in order to put all that to rest, the four lectures are on sentences out of the big book,
three of them and one out of the 12 and 12.
And so here we have, right near the end of the chapter of the agnostic,
this sentence. We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or
he's nothing. And it's followed up with God either is or he isn't. What is your choice to be?
Isn't that a funny sentence? What is your choice going to be? And you know, I've been around 45
five years now, and this is what dawned on me, that in life there's only one free choice
that we ever have. All the rest of them aren't free. They aren't free will. There's only
one. You can either choose God or not choose God. If you choose God, then God makes the
choices for you. You follow what I'm saying? If you choose him, then he is the
guider and we follow the guidance that we got. So as we choose God, we give up
ever having choice again. If we don't choose God, our character defects are in
charge. It's only an illusion that we have free will. Well, normally I'd like to
be honest, but in order to get this deal, my greed says, do this. Most of the time I'm faithful,
but Luff's just said, go do that. And we suddenly find that one or the other of our character
defects is behind the alleged free choices that we're making. So I would just lay it on the table.
Somebody could disagree with me. There may be other people out there that there really is only one
that we're absolutely free to make,
and that's to choose God or not to choose God.
And I read somewhere, you choose God and live with the consequences,
or you choose not to have God and live with the consequences.
And we all are familiar with what it feels like
to not choose God and live with the consequences of choosing alcohol.
and so this is an interesting point in our sobriety
it comes in the chapter of the agnostic
where possibly the major transformation that we're going to make in AA
is made because we're going to go from our old
ideas about God or non-God that we bring here
and we're going to be persuaded to put those ideas on hold
and see where this new path leads us.
So we could come in an atheist, an agnostic,
a person who had God and lost him, a person who now hates God,
a person who this, all that.
So we all fit in these categories and we arrive here
And this is where some sort of a transition is going to be made so that we end up seeking God.
Now, seeking is a big word in our program.
God couldn't would if he were sought.
I just love that sentence, if he were sought.
And then in the 11th step, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact.
So we see the word sought is a very interesting word.
And I've told this story before, but when I got to thinking about, well, what is seeking?
When's the first time I ever heard of seeking?
And my life, the first time I heard of seeking was in grammar school when they introduced a game called hide and seek.
somebody hid and then you sought them
I found out that seeking them was trying to figure out where the hell they were
that was what seeking was
and so some little girl went and hid
okay go find her
and I would look and I would look and I would look
I'd look in all the obvious places
but I'll tell you after about three minutes if I didn't find her
I didn't give a damn where she was
my interest in seeking was over i call that a low level of seeking that's the
that's the low level then the next one was one notch up it was a it was a higher level
and it occurred around easter when six pounds of pure chocolate were hidden somewhere
by my mother, and she said, ready, go, and boy, I'll tell you, this was a higher level than looking
for somebody hiding in the closet. This was serious seeking, and I would zoom, and I would
zoom. My sister's zooming, and we're going, and we're going, and we're going, but if I didn't find it
after about five minutes, which is a pretty long period of intense seeking, I started whining and
begging for clues. Am I hot? Am I getting close? Am I here?
Am I there? And I think if I didn't find that, if my
mother didn't finally give me a tip off, I think at the end of 15
minutes I would have said to hell with the chocolate. I'm just, I'm tired
of looking. But it was a higher level of seeking than
the hide and seek game. And then later
on in life when I was a teenager, I had a
golden retriever and I came home one time and was told that he had run away in the morning into the
woods over there and hadn't come back. And I went over there and I called that dog's name and I
stayed out there until it was dark and then when I went to bed I would go out there every couple
hours and call his name and then the next day I did it and then the next week and then the next
month and then the next six months I'd be home from school. I would still go out there because
He could be there.
He could be walking out of those woods any day.
I think I did that all the way through prep school and college.
Whenever I came home, I couldn't resist going out to the woods.
He could be there.
I know it's been about six years.
But he could still be there.
Dogs live a long time.
And I would go out and look for him.
And I think it sounds silly, but 20 years later when I would go home,
I'd just swing by there on the small chance that this old dog could be walking out of the woods.
Now, that's a pretty high level of seeking.
And it was the highest that I ever had until I started drinking and was out of booze and needed a drink.
You all know that that level of seeking.
There's got to be, I've had a bottle around here somewhere.
It's got to be here.
Geez, I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking.
I don't find it.
The nearest liquor store is about 15 miles away.
Guess who's going to get dressed and go down there?
Guess who is not going to stop until they find this?
And that's pretty high-level seeking.
So the question we can ask ourselves, what level is our seeking of God at?
The hide and seek, the Easter bunny, the lost dog, or could it even get as high as I need a drink?
And it puts me into mind that most of the time, our level of seeking God is pretty low.
and yet nothing could be a bigger reward
than to continue this seek at a higher level of intensity
and that's all done by a decision.
It's all done by making a decision to come here.
It's all done by making a decision to go to listen to some spiritual teacher.
It's all done by setting aside time for prayer and meditation.
It's all done by us, the individual.
You suddenly realize this is not a group activity anymore like the other steps.
We did this, we did that, and the sponsor's helping us, and we can talk about it and this and that.
This is done just by me.
I do my seeking all alone.
I have reading a book.
I'm spending, where am I spending my mental energy?
am I committed to getting closer and closer?
And am I committed to getting the full potential out of steps six and seven?
Am I really wanting God to get rid of everything
because that's the only way I can really find him is to have the barriers removed?
Am I willing to shoot for 100%?
Am I willing to let the word perfection come in to my vocabulary?
I may talk about, this may be redundant with another lecture, but
the big book talks about progress, not perfection.
But the 12 and 12 talks about perfection.
And I've read some letters and history stuff that
in the beginning they wanted the four absolutes. That was part of the Oxford
group and there was a big push to make them part of AA. I mean, you know,
Come on, we're using them.
And those of you from the Midwest know that the Cleveland Intergroup still prints a pamphlet about the four absolutes,
and it says AA on the back.
And there's nothing New York can do about it because they were there before New York.
And so this is part of people who get sober in Cleveland and Akron, they get this pamphlet.
Oh, yeah, this is part of AA, these absolutes.
Well, absolutes imply perfection, hope, or honesty.
Come on, folks.
Unselfishness, love, and purity.
Those were there, and the deal was to try and achieve that perfectly, absolutely.
And Bill saw that and said, geez, if I stick this in with these drunks that are coming in,
they're going to go crazy trying to achieve
perfection. Because they're perfectionists now. Unless they can do it
perfectly, screw it. You know, that was my attitude. Well, if I can't
do it perfectly, I'm not even going to try. And so he
felt it might be misleading or difficult when we're new
to even entertain the concept of doing
something perfectly. But in this letter, he said, I snuck
him back in, in steps 6 and 7 in the 12 and 12, and particularly in step 6, where he uses
the sentence, having been granted a perfect release from alcohol. In other words, we were
granted a perfect release. It was lifted from us. Why can't we attain perfect releases from
all our other character defects. We have to raise our eyes towards perfection. So suddenly we see a
shift from progress not perfection to progress towards perfection. And that makes me squirm a
little because I'm not shooting for that. I'm settling for something in the middle. And there's
that great line in the 12 and 12, we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get
us by. And that's, what I want as a businessman is a reputation for being honest. I don't
want to be locked in to being honest, but I'd like people to think I am. So I will,
they do what it takes to get known as a person with an honest
reputation or whatever it is, reliable
faithful, I want my wife to think
I'm faithful, well don't you want to be faithful
let me keep just an option open, you never know something
miraculous could come my way
I don't want to be locked into turning it down ahead of time
I'll do it when the situation arises.
I'm sure I'll make the correct decision, but I don't want God to have shut off all possibilities.
So I don't want to go too far in getting rid of lust.
Do you understand?
So you can see that this seeking, it's all tied in to that.
What level of seeking are we interested in doing?
and before I get going on the
comments about the chapter to the agnostic
I want to share with you and run something by you
that occurred to me recently
and it's called the God Phenomenon
in AA, I made this up so don't think
Well, what page is that on?
It isn't anywhere.
It's just a way of looking at things.
And this is what I think the God phenomenon is.
When we first arrive here, we are confronted with this word on a steady basis.
We pick up the steps, and there it is.
We open the big book, God on this page, God on that page, God on that page.
We go to a discussion meeting. Everybody in the room, well, then God did this and God did that.
So you can't escape the word. You can't escape it.
This three-letter word is appearing everywhere.
And we have different reactions to it. I can't stand it when they say that.
It bothers me. It's just all these things.
I said higher power for five years rather than say the word God.
And then after five years, I said, you know, you can say God a lot faster than you can say higher power.
I said, yeah, you're right.
So for pure efficiency reasons, I shifted and actually allowed myself to say God.
You know, like I was going to be struck dead because my old ideas told me, you don't want to be caught dead saying God.
Somebody will laugh at you.
I don't remember why, but it was very important.
So we have a word that appears all over AA.
But if we had an AA dictionary,
we could probably have meanings for all the other words in AA.
But if you open the AA dictionary to the word God, it would be blank.
It would have no definition.
It would be a word with no definition.
It would just be a word.
and yet we are stuck with
doing something with this word
and we actually don't really do anything
except the steps
and then as we take the steps
something happens
we begin to have
a consciousness of something
unnamed
but something is happening inside of us
and we call this
God consciousness
we can call it word consciousness for all I care
but a consciousness of something is taking place
and
when we get to the promises in the ninth step
we see a sentence that says
we suddenly realized that God is doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves.
This wasn't something that somebody explained to us.
It happened to us.
It happened inside of us.
And we suddenly went, wow, that word is doing something to me.
You see how personal that is?
There's nobody explaining this event to you.
It is simply happening to you.
And then in the 12 and 12, I just brought this.
It's on the last page of the Pertinent Promises, page 109.
Bill writes, you see what we're seeing?
We're seeing a process of a person's relationship with that word.
And on there on page 109, Bill writes,
we could predict that the doubter who still claimed he hadn't got the spiritual angle
and who still considered his well-loved AA group his higher power
would presently love God and call him by name.
No one told them to do that.
No one said, this is going to happen.
You just find yourself using the word.
And nobody explained what the word means.
No one. It just happened.
and I got thinking about that
wow
how could I summarize what I just
told you about
what is this phenomenon
and I looked at it as
you're now at the very beginning
of your journey in AA
and I would say
in the beginning was the word
and the word
became God
and I just
it just hit me
that's exactly what happened to me
I used this word
because everybody else was using it
I didn't know what it meant
I just said it
and then I talked about it
and all of a sudden
the word itself became real
and that was
the transformation that I had
and that, just for lack of a better term, I just called it the God phenomenon,
that it happens to everyone here.
The steps are designed to cause that to happen,
and it happens no matter what our old ideas were when we arrived here,
that that's where we end up.
And I just think it's fascinating.
When you consider the backgrounds of all the people that come here, that we all end up in the same place.
And I think for me, it would have helped if someone had said the term, God as you understand him.
Now, we know in the beginning, we go, you can call anything you want, it'll be your higher powers.
And the most common one that you hear around the country is doorknob.
Well, I made a doorknob by higher power.
and that and you do hear that but you don't hear someone with 10 years saying it
do you follow what i'm saying i've been sober 10 years and the doorknob is still my higher power
it somehow went from doorknob to god it somehow went from john wayne to god
it somehow went from my aa group to god it's you know so you can see that this
but how did it go to god did someone convince you that god existed they tell you who he was
No. You experienced something, and you automatically said God.
So in a way, in order to understand God in AA, you have to experience God first.
So it's sort of God as we experience him.
And from the experience comes a very limited understanding, because no one can understand God.
He's a mystery.
but we know the results that come from this power
and to me that if you ask me what my definition of God is
it's all the miraculous things that have happened to me since I followed these steps
it's the return of peace of mind
it's the power to see all of you as my brothers
it's the power to see the world through God's eyes instead of my eyes
all of that is my definition
of my personal relationship with this great mystery
that is behind the universe
and I just felt
isn't that fascinating
and then as you're sponsoring people you watch it happen to them
you start out with a militant atheist
and you go that's fine just like our chapter
the agnostic said that's fine don't worry about that
just have an open mind and we'll go
chugging along, oh okay
and then
remember in the third step
in the 12 and 12, the one time
vice president of the American Atheist
Society, boom
had no trouble getting through the hoop
remember that hoop
in step 3 in the 12 and 12
he had no trouble, because it's an infinite
diameter, you can come
through, and then
if you simply keep that open mind
the God phenomenon
takes place. And it's the greatest phenomenon
that happens in Alcoholics Anonymous
is to have come true
that sentence, and I think it's on page
23 when we go, the central fact of our lives
today is the absolute certainty that our creator
has entered our hearts and lives in a way that is indeed miraculous.
that's a pretty strong statement for someone to make
the absolute certainty
that my creator whatever that is to me
has entered my heart and lives in a way that is indeed miraculous
and then we get to the
we suddenly realize that God is doing for us
what we couldn't do for ourselves
and so we find this
sentence
we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything
or else he's nothing. He either is or he isn't. What was our
choice to be? And so you can see that
almost all of us make a journey
in that chapter from non-believer
to open-mindedness and as our
A.A. journey continues, to believer.
And the belief
that we have is based on experience. It isn't
based on faith. It actually happens to us.
Once you experience contact with your own creator,
there isn't much need for faith. It happened.
It's a guarantee. You personally
felt this presence. And
we're in a different league now. Now we're
not seeking to have more
faith so that we might eventually find this higher power.
We're seeking now to improve our conscious contact.
We're seeking to continue this
wonderful experience that
took place
in this great journey,
in this phenomenon of God.
The last line in the chapter
to the agnostic describes this journey.
When we drew near to him,
he disclosed himself to us.
Isn't that a great sentence?
The trick is to find out where near is
and go there.
I was going to make a joke that they gave me
you've seen me here
I don't want to go through my personal health
but you know all the retreats prior to this one
I was limping around because my knees hurt so much
I got two brand new knees now I need a hip
so they got me a golf cart
which I'm grateful for
and I was going to tell people
For 20 bucks, I'll take you to dinner and back every night.
For 50 bucks, I'll take you on a tour of the entire retreat center.
And for 100 bucks, I'll take you to near.
Which is the...
Which is that spot in the retreat center where God is.
If you go there, he will disclose himself to you.
So the trick is to figure out where the hell is near.
And as it turns out, we're looking in the wrong place if we're looking out there.
Because that came later on, on page 55.
We found the great reality deep down within us that's only there, that he may be found.
So as we are newcomers to this spiritual journey,
we suddenly realize nothing out there
is of any importance whatsoever.
There's nothing out there that needs to be changed
with our slogan back here.
This was just a spiritual saying that I heard on a CD
and I just went, wow.
It just says it all.
Stop looking out there.
It's all in here.
and that's where the seeking goes so how do you go in there and that's what the 12 steps are all
about we can't go in there we were blocked and what's blocking us from going in there
is our ideas about out there that's our story that's the world that we created
the one that doesn't isn't real but it's the one we live in the middle of and it's all these
ideas that we told ourself growing up those kind of people are terrible the government is this
god hates you everybody's picking on me i'm a victim whatever story we put together they're
all dramatic. And the problem is that we thought them up, and as soon as we think the thoughts
of another component to our story, we emotionally feel it. So if we say it's unsafe to be in that
room with that guy, we will feel frightened, totally in response to the thought we had that
it's not safe in there. It could be safe as can be. And we all remember this from whenever it was
the first time that you thought to yourself in your bedroom, there might be a monster in your
closet. I remembered that. And I went, yeah, there could be a monster. I thought it was fun to think
that. There could be a monster in there. And I went, yeah, there could be a monster. And all of a
sudden, there was a monster in there. And I needed my father in there in a hurry. I wouldn't even go
over near that closet. I had created this frightening thing. And so we do that in so
many aspects of our life. It must be tens of thousands of little storylines, none of which
are true, that have to be gotten rid of so that we can return to God's world. And so that's what
our journey is in sobriety it is a return to where we started from before we made up a place
that doesn't exist and lived in it and so what does the 12 steps do they destroy all of our old
ideas it's captured for me the best in that great line the idea that somehow we can drink like other
people has to be smashed. Everybody knows that line. And can you picture it? Here's this idea
that was obsessing us. Well, maybe this time, maybe this time. And finally, our sponsor and
two other people came along with a brick and went, boom. And that was the end of that idea.
It isn't going to come up anymore. And so getting rid of old ideas is what all of spiritual growth
is. It is, that's, the entire program
is letting go. Maybe it's in
another lecture, but it is, they call it a program of action.
And the action verb is letting go.
Now that doesn't sound like much action, does it?
Boy, I'm rolling my sleeves up. Okay, what do I do? Let go.
I know, but what do I do? I want to get,
I want to really get involved.
Yeah, just let go.
And then we realize this is our grip on our life.
You remember, I'm not an alcoholic.
And you go, well, you're in the nut ward.
You're wearing a straight jacket.
You're doing it.
You remember how hard it was?
Okay, I'm an alcoholic.
Oh, look at what's left, all the thousand fingers.
Okay, I am an alcoholic.
I got rid of, I'm not an alcoholic, and I went through, I am an alcoholic.
Well, how much progress have I made?
There's a long way to go, and that's where willingness comes in.
We had to reconsider or die.
That gave us the motive to possibly begin the journey of being wrong.
The great freedom of being wrong.
Before I get off track, I better keep going.
Yeah, let him go. Okay.
It's very difficult for me to believe that that is what's missing.
my mind is constantly coming up with another course of action
other than letting go
maybe I should buy another spiritual book
maybe I should do this
I'm all over the place
and I don't want to let go of something
and we will hold on to those things
like we hold on to character defects
Bill surmises that the reason we hold on to a lot of defects
is that we like them. I like getting angry and
feeling a little superior to the jerk I'm arguing with.
There's a lot of pleasure in that. Do you know what I'm saying?
My pride really enjoys feeling superior to other people.
Well I'd try to explain it to him but I don't think he
could grasp the full impact of
what I'm thinking. There's just many of them. We love being a better baseball player than
somebody else. It isn't just that we love the game. We love the fact that I'm better
than that guy. There's a great sense of it. I'm a better businessman. I'm a smarter investor.
I like that. I like feeling better then. And if that doesn't work and you get tired of
feeling better, then feel worse then.
I'm the worst bastard that ever lived.
I'm a piece of crap.
And then we go, yeah, I kind of like wallowing.
Anybody wallow?
Just wallow around in self-pity.
Oozing from every pore, as Bill writes.
This is, if we don't do that, we can hardly keep our story alive.
because the world that we lived in, the only building material are thoughts.
That's the entire world that we live in is composed of thoughts.
And they'll start fading if we don't keep thinking them every so often.
So if you still have a resentment over the girl that left you in high school for that jerk,
you have to go back and stir it up a little bit,
or it could actually disappear.
It could actually no longer be in your emotional repertoire.
So I would recommend at least every five years,
go back to when you were a sophomore in high school
and think about Lulu.
And bring up, God damn, that really, that damn guy.
Now I'm frightened.
He's a better guy.
And the whole thing, and you get it going.
And you can put it back because it's got a shelf life of at least five years.
So we have to go back to all these things and make sure they're activated so that they're still part of us.
Because after all, we practically are all our resentments.
We practically are.
all of the fear, anger, feelings
that we have ever since we were little, that's who we are
and that's the world we live in and we re-feel all of those
and it was suggested to me, I think that's
in here somewhere, that
there is one action that has been
called divine
and if anybody knows
it's called forgiveness
to err is human
to forgive is divine
and forgiveness fits in
to the overall scheme of things
if we're going to forgive something we're going to let it go
that high school event
never happened when I forgive it
and I would ask you all
tonight to imagine, just for the sake of imagining, that you
in an instant could forgive everything that ever
happened to you. Every unkind word, every
failure of your father to show up at the sporting event, every failure of your father
to be there when you were little, every failure, every unkind thing the government
did, everything that the police did, everything that, just go back through your life.
all the things that we've kept track of
that hurt us. There's got to be
thousands. I mean, if you think back on it, it is
hopeful. Now imagine that you
forgave it all. We can't because it really
takes God's help, but let's just imagine
that everything that happened to us
was forgiven. It no longer existed.
It was nowhere. Do you see
that you would really be nobody?
What would be left of you?
The only thing that would be left is your spiritual side.
And that's who you really are.
In other words, this whole identity that we created is mostly resentment.
And memories of things that we aren't going to forgive because they shouldn't have happened for one reason or another.
And when I reflected on that, I said, my God.
The only thing that would be left is I'm a child of God and I'm just going to do what he wants me to do.
That would be the total identity.
And we were afraid of that.
We sensed that fear.
Bill writes about it in the third step in the 12 and 12.
You remember when he said, I'm going to turn my life over.
in the, you know, Bill writes a lot by advancing an idea
and then telling you what your reaction is going to be to that
ahead of time. So he advances, why don't you turn your entire
life over to God? And then the guy says, what? I'll be the hole in the
donut. You remember that? I'll be a non-entity. That's
exactly what I was trying to describe. If you forgave
I, what would my
role be in my life if I turned everything over to God? How about
zero? How about zero? I would have no role
in my own life. I would simply be a servant carrying
out what God wants me to do. Now this will guarantee
total happiness. It will allow you to see the universe as you've never seen it before.
why don't we all volunteer well I want to be in charge
of something can't you hear your ego going
whoa I got to reserve a little
of this for myself so if you imagine
your world and God's world and we want to go
to God's world but we'd like to keep some of ours I'd like to be in charge
of something. I'll give up drinking, but I'd like to be in charge of the other areas. All right,
I'll give up having affairs. My sponsor started me down the list. Look, if you're going to have
a good marriage, you're going to have to give up. Okay, so the AA program consists of not drinking
and not having affairs. I'm glad we've got that. I'm in. I can do it. And every day he had another
thing. Well, you know, you're taking money out of the cash box at the Marine Corps. That's
embezzling. I would suggest you give up, okay, give up
drinking, affairs, and embezzling. Glad we've got it straight
and I'm ready to go. I can do it. And every day
and give up this, and then give up this, and then give up that.
And you can see if we're going to try to seek
God, we have to be willing to give up the whole freaking thing.
And then I don't have a job anymore.
you follow what I'm saying I don't have a job
I'm just carrying out it's like going back in the Marine Corps
here's the orders of the day go do them go fly at 10
come back go to this briefing boom boom I didn't have a
say so in any of that I just carried it out
and you know it was fun once I got the hang of that
it was fun just carrying out
orders. I never thought I'd admit that, but I really ended up
liking it. And that's kind of
what seeking God is about.
It is
coming to grips with the fact that this is not
going to be pain free. We're going to give up
our way in order to live his way. We're going to
give up our way. Now let's see if we could
come up with a description
of one problem that includes all problems.
My best guess is not getting your way.
Not getting your way sexually, not
getting your way financially, not getting your way health wise. In other words
when we start describing a problem that we have
that's bothering us, it's
one of many ways of not getting your
way. In other words, a situation
happens. The situation is just a situation.
But you don't want it to be that way.
Do you see what I'm saying? I didn't want
it to rain on the day I was going to play golf.
Normally rain is rain. But
this day it rained on your golf day and you didn't want it
to rain because now you can't play. So we're very angry at the rain.
Isn't that a strange thing to get angry at? The freaking rain. I can't believe it.
And I gently carried the belt. God did that. He didn't want me to play. He hates me. I knew he hated me
and it's been that way my whole life. Thanks God.
You see so
now if when things don't go your way you're unhappy and miserable then we got to come up
with a solution to that how can we find happiness simple learn how to control everything
so that it does turn out your way and that was what we were trying to do
when we came in here. If only
she would do this. If they only listened to me down at work.
And so we were managing
life in order to make ourselves happy
because we saw no other way. What other way
is there if
we get unhappy because we don't get our way?
The only answer I ever saw was try and control it.
And when eventually they wouldn't control, I would just get drunk at them.
I would just get drunk at them.
And then suddenly we're confronted with a rather unusual proposition.
And that is, why don't you just not have a way in the first place?
Now, if you didn't have a way, you know, things go my way.
Well, what if you had no way? Then nothing could ever not go your way because you don't have one.
Well, how do you not have a way? You turn it over to God. That's it.
So the secret to getting rid of problems that where things aren't going your way is to turn your way over to God.
And then when it rains, you just go, well, I guess I wasn't supposed to play golf today.
I guess I'm supposed to be doing something else.
Oh, the phone's ringing.
Oh, it's a 12-step call.
Oh, now I understand why it rained.
I'm supposed to be going on a 12-step call.
I go over there, and the guy is happy to see me.
I bring him to the meeting.
People are talking to him, and I see his eyes light up,
and I go, wow, watching a guy's eyes light up
is better than getting a birdie.
Who thought a golfer would ever say that?
You golfers out there, isn't that, boy,
that's about the highest event in life. Well, unless it's an eagle.
You know what I'm saying? But suddenly, an avid golfer is saying, oh no,
watching a guy's eyes light up is way bigger than getting a birdie.
Whoever thought that would happen? It wouldn't have happened if we stayed in charge.
It would not have happened if we weren't willing
to get rid of our way
and see what God's way is
and
the problem is that we don't give up our way easily
there's a noise that we make
when we're giving up our way
when our sponsor's going, no
look, no, I want you to do this
I don't want to do that, but I want you to do this
your way is willful, I want you to come over
and we want you to do that. And then we make the noise
that all sponsors look for.
All right.
I love that noise.
Okay. And you know that the person
is agreeing with you, but they don't want to.
They don't want to. It's with great reluctance and
resistance that I make the sound,
all right.
And that is giving up your way.
Can you feel it right there? You just, okay.
my way would have been
and then we go over here
and then
much to our surprise
it turns out better
than if we had gotten our way
the trouble is
newcomers
are misled
by the way we describe that event
because we describe it this way
because our ego takes over
so I decided
rather than play golf
I'd go on the 12 step call
and it sounds like we're spiritual giants
who decided to put someone else's
well-being ahead of our own
we leave out the part about it started raining
and that's why I wasn't playing golf
there's a thing called spiritual pride
where we take credit for God's work
and that's one of the hardest things
about the program, I will get into that later
is taking credit for God's work
and we don't even know we're doing it.
It happens very subtly on the inside.
God turns us into such a strong person
we don't need him anymore.
It happens after 10 years of sobriety,
something like that, and you don't realize it.
But you actually think you've been made stronger
by the program because it feels like you are.
But you're being held up totally by God
but it feels like you're stronger
and that can be an interesting proposition
oh
there's a paper in your handout
by a Dr. Natcher
we had it last time
you don't need to read it now
but I stuck it back in there
because this is a medical doctor
who decided to break ranks
with all of the addiction teachers out there
all the treatment centers and this is what addiction is
and this and that and this and that
and he claims that addiction is
caused by being separated from God
and that we're trying to
find God which is missing
in our life through sex, drugs
rock and roll, gambling or whatever
and of course I just thought the guy was brilliant
this medical doctor would be doing that
And he used AA as an example of all of this.
And then he makes, he kind of misreads AA towards the end of his paper,
where he says, we keep going to AA, and now we're addicted to AA.
And I wrote him an email saying, you're misunderstanding the spiritual path.
If you think we're going here because we're addicted, it is a desire to pass it on, is why we're here.
we've been given the spiritual freedom
through an awakening which is what he says
is the answer to all addiction is awakening
and I thought it was a well written paper
but part of an awakening
which occurred to Bill Wilson
there's two parts one is
he has an experience that is just
the purpose of being alive is to have
an experience of that magnitude
but part of the experience is
you can't help yourself from spending the rest of your life
trying to pass it on to someone else
and that's why we keep coming here
to find another newcomer to light their eyes up
and so I've always
thought that, I'll talk about that
the big bang of AA, I always thought it was Bill Wilson's experience
because it included
he couldn't stop himself
from trying to carry this thing to the whole world.
Even when he's broke, even when he's down and out.
Yeah, but we've got to get this thing going.
We've got to get it out there.
It was because of that awakening, he couldn't resist.
He couldn't stop carrying the message.
I mean, I didn't know Bill.
I could have met him, but I never went up to New York.
But I knew Chuck Chamberlain.
And I know the California guys will tell him,
He was out driving two and a half hours every night to go talk somewhere and people would come to see him.
He just never stopped.
It was, he was my example of how to be a perfect servant.
And the energy to do the task will be given to you on the spur of the moment.
so you can be exhausted and still go out and talk to somebody for two hours
and you're going to feel more refreshed than when you started
because God gives us the energy to carry out his work as we're carrying it out.
It feels like we don't have enough.
Oh, I couldn't make it over there and talk to them.
And then you go do it and at three in the morning you don't even want to go to bed
because you've been energized so much by this.
And so anyway, he makes the statement.
And I want to read it because I love this quote.
Is not, and this applies to all human beings,
is not the real problem
that we are absolutely powerless
to get rid of the longing for God.
This longing is there.
It started the second we began our journey away from God
by making up a story that we're separate from him.
A lot of people call it the prodigal son and the prodigal daughter.
So all the time we're out there, there's something missing in our lives.
We don't know what it is.
We forgot what it is.
And we think maybe more money will fix it.
And we think that maybe more sex will fix it.
Maybe alcohol will fix it.
Alcohol really did look like it fixed it.
But he centers in on, isn't the problem that we're powerless over getting rid of the longing for God?
We just can't shake the fact that there's something missing.
We can't lie down in bed and go, there.
I'm totally complete everything is fine
there's nothing missing
until we get in here and can have that awakening
and then we realize we were seeking
the wrong thing all along
we were going on false errands
to try and fix this problem
and the person oddly enough who made the same comment
in our AA history was Dr. Young
that's exactly what in the exchange of letters between Bill and Dr. Young
when Bill wrote many years later to thank him
for the work he did with Roland Hazard who came to see Ebby
who came to see Bill and Dr. Young
sent Roland on a spiritual quest he said that I've done everything I can
for your disease of alcoholism and I failed
Don't come back to me.
I can't do anything more for you.
And he said, so I'm going to die of this?
He said, probably.
I have heard of a few cases where they had this spiritual experience,
this spiritual transformation that I've been trying to cause with you through therapy.
I would advise that you go out and try and have one of those.
So he left.
You know, he was told, you're going to die unless you can find a spiritual experience.
He became a seeker.
How did he become a seeker? He was told he was going to die. That'll help people become seekers.
Kind of happens to us. You come in, you've got a fatal illness that only a spiritual experience can come.
Well, maybe I'll reconsider. What are spiritual experiences? I suddenly have an interest in spiritual experience.
Why? Because I'm going to die if I don't find one. Well, that's hardly an intellectual decision, is it?
It's a save your ass decision.
and so
Roland has it
the hot thing then
was the Oxford movement
and so he got in that
and had this spiritual awakening
got set free from alcohol
then he showed
Ebi Thatcher how to do it
and then Ebi showed Bill
so anyway
when Bill writes him
and thanked him and everything
he wrote back
no I didn't know what happened
etc etc
and he said
after all my years
of studying alcoholism
I really think that the search for alcohol is a low-level thirst for God.
And that we're actually trying to solve the God problem by drinking.
And we were desperately hoping that this would fix us so that we would be complete again.
And alcohol is so similar to a spiritual experience that we thought we really had it.
There were times when I was so grateful for alcohol.
I said, gee, I'm so lucky that alcohol is in the world.
Because all I have to do is go in there.
Hey, Fred, give me three of you know what.
And then one, two.
And then for that moment, I was complete.
I don't know if you remember that.
It happened to me around the third or fourth drink.
Is that right, Jack?
somewhere in that neighborhood, and you suddenly went, yes. I'd look around the bar going,
these are the greatest people I've ever seen. Look at them. Look at them. I hadn't even met
them yet. They just, I knew they were God's kids. They were, look at that. Look at that.
Now, 10 more drinks. Hey, asshole, come here. That was the end of the spiritual.
transformation that the alcohol, but there was that
moment when, yes, this must be
what it feels like to be complete. I don't need anything.
You know, they'd go, let me buy a round of drinks.
Well, that's your rent money. Hey, got to live a day at a time.
I'll get to rent. Who cares? You know, and there was just, I'm complete.
Don't need anything.
Remember that feeling.
Right at this moment, I don't need anything.
That was the greatest feeling from alcohol.
Well, that's what a spiritual thing is.
I think the final point that I want to make is,
if God is everywhere,
then it's impossible to be away from God.
It's absolutely impossible.
How could you move away from God if he's everywhere?
I'm up at the front of the room.
I said, I'll go back in the back of the room.
Then I'll be away from him.
Well, he's there.
He's everywhere.
So how is it possible for us human beings to become separated from God?
Just think about that.
If he's everywhere, how could you possibly be separated from God?
and here comes the trick. You make up a story
that you exist separate from God and believe it.
There, the trick's out of the bag.
That's how each one of us became separate from God so that we
lived in a world where there was no God.
It was our world and we're the center of it.
That's what self-centered means.
It means wherever I turn and look, I look at the universe from where I stand, I'm at the center of it.
And man's been doing that for a long time.
I mean, the best intellectuals on earth looked around the solar system and said,
I wonder what the center of the solar system is.
It's obviously where I am.
That's pretty freaking obvious, man.
I'm looking and there's all this stuff over there and I'm here.
So they had to make the earth the center of it so that they would be at the center of it
because that's what our ego wants.
And when, in later years, the observers started going,
we don't think earth is the center.
They were ready to kill him.
Why? Because they'd have to get rid of all their old ideas.
That would be a hell of a thing to change from earth to sun.
I've been living at the center of the solar system for 50 years
and you want me to suddenly make the sun the center?
I don't care if it is.
If I kill you, we can keep the earth as the center.
That's how far it went.
That's how hard it is to become un-self-centered
or to become un-earth-centered,
which is what had to be done.
And so we create this.
That's how separation occurs.
It's the only way you can be separated from God.
is to make up a story that you exist as a separate person and separate from God.
As a matter of fact, there is no God where I live.
So I created a whole universe where there's no God.
And then I went around telling people that.
I don't see any God.
No God in my life.
He never helped me.
I never got tapped on the shoulder, here's God.
I never got, there's no God.
and you know something there wasn't
if you decide
there is no God there is no
that's what that sentence says
he's either everything or he's nothing he is or he isn't
what's your choice going to be
I choose that there is no God
magic there is none now live with it
got lonely in there didn't it
it was very lonely wasn't loneliness
one of the key things of being an alcoholic
I am so freaking lonely in here
why are you lonely in there? I'm the only one in here
and each one of us was the only one
in our world
that's a hell of a place to live
so I wrote a story and then we'll wrap it up
and
this is my attempt
at the human dilemma
they found him broken and weeping in the domain of the four horsemen
the skies were black with terror bewilderment frustration and despair his lungs were aching
from breathing air polluted with pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization
The ropes of resentment and self-pity held him firmly in the cell of loneliness and fear.
They lifted him gently and carried him to an inn.
They bathed him and tended to his wounds.
They fed him and loved him until he stopped sobbing.
They took him on their path towards the light.
They took steps to lift the veil from his eyes.
the vision of their world slowly began to manifest itself
and he saw sights he never knew existed.
He experienced the sunlight of the spirit,
the great reality, and the presence of infinite power and love.
His whole attitude and outlook upon life has changed.
He stood at the last step of the bridge of reason.
Remember that thing in the big book?
He saw clearly that one final step would take him into the world of the spirit.
Suddenly he spun around and strode deliberately and purposely back the way he came.
At a brisk pace, he came down from the mountains into the familiar darkness
and stench of the secret caverns of his domain.
his work had been detailed and thorough no exits no portals for light to penetrate
he settled into his favorite chair a throne at the exact center of his world
the future once again belonged to him
he realized how close he had come to placing a god before him
he smiled as he prepared to die
of absolute misery
he smiled because he knew
that when he died
he would die totally in charge
of the whole universe
that's our
deal
it is
there was
what is that
oh my goodness
it's a long time ago poem
I'll think of it. But the line in the middle of it that captured me was, to serve in heaven
to reign in hell are the choices we're trying to make. To serve or to reign. And guess what
the ego likes to choose? I want to be in charge. So this is the struggle that we're fighting.
why it's so hard. That's why it's so painful to take seeking to another level. Your heart
wants to do it. You come to something like this and you go, yeah. You ever get that?
Yeah. Yeah. And then we go back in the room, we go, oh, you can't make that. I mean, then
it starts. Then the counter argument starts because our world is being threatened. The
one we run, where everything is ours. You just came up with the idea of giving up some
of that world and there's going to be a backlash. Which is why the seventh step talks about
pain as being part of the spiritual journey. But every time we take a step forward and
go through that pain, we realize it was worth it, that it's like getting in shape. It's
really painful in the beginning, but the more you do it, the more it becomes something you
look forward to because of the great rewards we get. So I hope that one way or the other,
you take a look at the dynamics with inside of yourself and realize every time you're going to
try to advance, there's going to be a backlash. And just dismiss the backlash and keep going
anyway. Because the only pain is in resisting growth. The only pain is in resisting letting go.
that's where the struggle is
and isn't it a silly struggle
you can have everything if you just open your hand
you can have everything
you remember that story about the monkey
and they put the food in the bottle
and he reaches in and gets a handful
and they come to catch him
they just walk over and grab him
and he won't run away because he ain't going to let go
he ain't going to let go
that's us
the thing that's stopping us from having it all
I want to keep this too
I don't want it all
I want this and all of it
and so
let's all join together
and let him go
that's it
we'll wrap it up
we got dinner coming up
and then we'll be back here later
thank you all for your attention