Sandy B. – Q&A

A question and answer session, which is my favorite, but it's also exhausting, so I have mixed feelings about it, but I really like it.
Now, before we start, there's something you should understand about question and answer.
You're going to hear an answer. You're not hearing the answer, okay?
and answers aren't based necessarily on anything that was learned.
It isn't a learning process.
This is simply how things look to me now.
So in other words, spirituality changes how you see things.
Then they show you something and you report on what you see.
So an answer I give today would be totally different than I gave 20 years ago.
And it may be different than 20 years from now.
That's why it's so important to understand that if something I say is in conflict with what your sponsor told you,
go with your sponsor.
I mean, just relax.
You're just hearing what this person, what I see when I pick these pieces of paper up.
And maybe sometimes it's something that I learned, but a lot of times it is simply, you know, like showing me a color and I go, that looks purple. I mean, that's what I see. So then that's what I'm saying. So we'll go from there and we'll go for a while.
Oh, by the way, if there's a lot, I try to answer them very quickly.
If we don't get through all of them, and yours wasn't answered,
just write it on a piece of paper with your name and address,
and I'll type up an answer and mail it to you.
And I promise that I'll do that.
So if your question doesn't get read, don't worry about it.
If you want it answered, I'll be glad to do it.
Sometimes you guys put hard ones in.
then it takes longer
next time you learn
what was Bill W.'s last name
okay
and thanks for submitting these
any special recommendations
or warnings
for someone who is approaching
his second anniversary
how do you
any special recommendations
well show up
how do you know when you are doing god's will good good question well we're all thrilled
approaching your second anniversary is wonderful i mean they all are wonderful and their earmarks
and their their celebrations of how well aa works so i would say be sure to give the credit to aa
and just enjoy it.
And how do we know if you're really doing God's will?
Ask someone else.
This is what I think God's will is for me.
And go, one, two, three.
Do you agree that this is God's will for me?
And there's humility.
In other words, this is what I think God's will.
if it's good it'll pass tests and people will agree with you so i'm that's i run it by somebody
else that said that's a good answer to a lot of questions what singular experience made you
believe in a power greater than yourself two of them in early sobriety one was at my first meeting
i was i i'm not going to go through the whole story but i've been sober three hours when the
meeting started, and there was a five-hour meeting, and I was over eight hours when the
damn thing ended. And I was on the front porch of this odd fellow's hall in Manassas in the
wintertime. It was kind of sleety, and I was trying to make a break for it. I just want
to get out of there. Oh, fanatics, and they're celebrating. Isn't sobriety wonderful? And
an Al-Anon lady came out and put her hand on my shoulder. Her name was Betsy Lynch,
and she probably saw where I was
and she just turned to me
and said come on back in
it's going to be fine
and I totally believed her
it was like an angel came out
and I just went good
and I was getting ready to run
and I just walked in and felt wonderful
and then about six or seven months
I was driving my car in the base of Quantico, Virginia
You know, I was nervous about my career.
Everything was, and I just heard a voice, even though it wasn't audible, that said,
if you keep going to AA, everything will be fine.
That was, those were the two big things, and then over the years, lots of things, and I've
had more experience changes in the last five years than the previous 40, so don't give
up.
There's a lot to happen out there.
Good questions.
Not too hard.
My sober life is a miracle.
When, if I do a 10th step, I think, what a wonderful day.
I wish I'd been there for it.
How can I fully inhabit and partake in my own life?
We've been talking about it.
And it involves abandoning all your old ideas because the life you want to partake in is the one that isn't apparent yet.
And the more you surrender, the more you will be in what is really your own life.
The other thing is, technically, there's no such thing as your own life.
There's life, and we're part of it.
But there's no way of being separate from life itself.
We're part of it.
I used the story of the leaves on a tree.
We gave the egos to the leaves just to screw them up for a while.
And they started seeing themselves as a separate entity from the tree, even though they're the leaf on the tree.
And these leaves were on the bottom limb, and they were bigger, and they were complaining they didn't have as good a view as the leaves on the top of the tree.
And all of this is because they created the idea they were separate from the tree.
And they're not. They're just a part of it.
And we are part of life, and we want to get rid of our own life, that separate part.
And that's what dying is, is abandoning your own life into the total life of God.
And so that's just sort of a spin-off on the end of that.
What is your definition of truth?
I don't have any answer.
It's whatever is revealed.
and that's where truth comes as far as i'm concerned it is um sometimes a gradual awareness
it's i think it is a good example is we're we suddenly realize god is doing for us what we
couldn't do for ourselves there's a big moment of truth up until then we're going must be a
coincidence it must be the program is working it must be then all of a sudden it becomes apparent
and you see the same thing with the holograms.
What's the truth in those pictures?
There it is.
But it was only revealed to you
and you could tell someone else,
well, there's a sailboat that sticks out in the front
and they're not going to believe it until they see it.
So truth to me is something that gets revealed
as opposed to you type it out
and there it is, that's a true statement.
And I realize on one level there is such things
is that but for my purposes it's revealed it might be revealed to me when you tell your story
and then you have a way of explaining something that i had a similar experience to and i go
bingo that fills in the missing piece that i was looking for you've probably had that
while talking to people at the tables about what's going on somebody will go boom and then you go
yeah so that you see how it it became and truth resonates with our spirit it just it just sits
and you just go yes there's just no conflict with it all right i stay conflicted between
business decisions and program principles. Do you have any thoughts on this? Well, I
would suggest reading Chuck's book, New Pair of Glasses, because he does the best job.
I'm not a businessman. I never was. I don't know a damn thing about making money or business.
I wrote stuff for various people, but he found that as he brought the principles into his business of putting his customers' interests ahead of his own profits,
even if it made him experience a loss, he ended up getting more business and more profits than he ever could have dreamed of
because people were attracted to someone that honest.
And so I would suggest taking a look at that.
I don't know if we have it back there.
We have some copies of it.
You can look at it and then decide if you want to buy it.
It's relatively inexpensive, six bucks or something,
from Press and New Life Press in Los Angeles.
How do I distinguish God's will from my will,
and how do I stay in God's will?
Okay.
It's sort of a paradox in that what we want to do is get rid of our will.
So that we aren't trying to figure this out, the conflict of my will and God's will.
We're trying to get rid of it and not have a will.
We were talking about that earlier.
If you don't have a way, in other words, generally we have a way or a will.
This is my observation.
because we're not happy, and we're trying to figure out a way to get happy.
And we determine that more money will do it.
Now we're being willful about making money,
so we create an energy force trying to cause something to happen,
and that's willful.
I will. I want the girlfriend to say yes, and we're willing these things.
But we're not just doing it randomly.
we're doing it because we're uncomfortable
we're not at peace with ourselves
and we're unhappy
so we envision
our version of what will make us
happy and then we go after it
and then a lot of times
we try to say well is that
God's will that I'm trying to earn
a lot of money and do this and that
and it's really the wrong
question to try and answer
the question is how can I get
rid of my will
now let's just advance this thought what if he got so close to god that you were at peace and
happy all the time then why would you want to make a lot of money you see unless you wanted
to donate it to some charity or something because you wouldn't need it in order to make yourself
happy so the getting rid of the will and getting close to god eliminates having to deal with that
question and i just advanced that if you're already happy and it totally at peace you'll find
your whole list of getting things done just becomes irrelevant why would i work that hard
to get happy if i already am why do i need security if i know god's going to take care of me
And you see what I'm saying?
So the trick is to get rid of our own will.
Otherwise, we're left with this, well, you know, calling your sponsor.
You know, I had this thing appear to me last night to, I have this secretary,
and I think if I ran off with her to Costa Rica, I picture myself, you know,
do you think that's God's will?
And of course, your sponsor, he might run off with her himself, but he's not going to agree that that was God's will.
I know that's a convoluted answer, but it's important to understand that the destruction of our will is the name of the game.
It's not trying to make my way coincide with God's.
That shows we want to keep having a thing called My Way.
If you were to choose one of the three
Joel Goldsmith books to read first,
which would it be?
I think Thunder of Silence.
As a matter of fact, I was trying to think of that title.
This is just an author.
He's back there.
Sometimes you'll mention an author.
I wouldn't have read him,
so I'll have to say I don't have a clue.
But, yeah, I was going to use that line later on.
Isn't that an interesting term, the thunder of silence?
That's how powerful it can be when we can get a relationship with it that is really working.
and silence has been called
the space between thoughts
the space between words
silence is the stage upon which
all sound occurs
it's an incredibly
spiritual
force
I've been sober
18 plus years and still struggle
with meditation
any tips will be greatly appreciated
and I'm leaving off the names
that are on here okay I've mentioned this several times because I found it when I was in pain and
when I had various things going on that this really was still possible and it appears to be
universally true that the ego will allow you to take four breaths you know like you're going to
start meditating. One, two, four. Before it wants to know what's going on. Do you follow
what I'm saying? It kind of goes, it looks over and there you go. And so you're very
peaceful and then it's going, what are you trying to not think? Hey, we got things to
do. What are you doing over there? And sometimes it'll be ten. But if you just say, I'm going
to get four and do that a hundred times a day you approximate a 20 to 25 minute quiet meditation
and it creates the same amount of space and so you see you've come up with something that's
incredibly easy to do and i've been doing a long time and my ego hasn't caught on
it doesn't realize what I'm up to
and sometimes I'll be up to ten breaths
without a single thought
crossing my mind
and then they rush in
okay that's enough of that
what is going on
and then I just stop
and go about
and so I found it
or a pain will come up
and interrupt it or whatever
so there's a thought
and perhaps during the weekend
if other people have ideas
then they can get advanced
let's see
now this is a question
it says on page 83 of the big book
we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door
how can I not regret the past
I understand not shutting the door in the past
because if I forget where I came from I'm on the way back
I've never been able to understand, not regret the past.
I know that I had to do what I did and go down as far as I went before I was able to surrender and start building a new life.
I do regret the worry, the heartaches, the mental anguish that caused my mother and father for many years.
I regret the physical and mental abuse I heaped on my children.
I regret the damage done to others who cared about me, but most of all, my family.
I worked on the steps
I got to nine
I made direct amends to all that I could
I made living amends
I've tried making living amends
family for 20 years
I have a life today I never would have had
I do not dwell on my regrets
but I certainly wish
that I had not
have had
to unjustly hurt the innocent people
that I love and love the most
I simply cannot understand how I can
not regret the past
it would seem extremely non-cary and callous if I didn't
I am not that person anymore
the instructions did not say to explain
but wanted to express my viewpoint
it also did not say to put my name on it but I am
but I know who it is
and I think it's a great question
and I'm sure a lot of people have thought about that
and I think
we feel
that we're being irresponsible
if we were to let
just go okay that's it
I'm going to just drop it
that's the end of it
but that is something that was
taught to us and it feeds into
the ego
I think there are people
in this world who feel honestly
that if they aren't
anguishing over something, they're being irresponsible.
Do you follow what I'm saying? In other words, if I kind of followed
my mother's role model, she
was anguishing and kind of felt this was her contribution
to the world, was to anguish.
She'd read something in the paper and then anguish over it.
And so you kind of felt like, well, I'm not anguishing, I'm just going to a ball
game something is wrong with me that i'm not doing this and so we come in the court we have
to get rid of that if we if we care keep carrying this around it shows up in our
energy around us it makes us less attractive it makes us less harmonious with our family
we made amends but we're still carrying this and there's energy that doesn't need to be there when
we're around them it's it's it's just not necessary if they have forgiven us what are we still carrying
it for it's because the ego wants to have a standard and wants a weapon to keep beating us
up with year after year and so this is the reason that it stays there but it does it by creating a
good motive i would be irresponsible if i simply dismiss this like i don't care that it happened
but we've gone through the whole thing oh thank you chris we've gone through the whole process
of our 12 steps
and this is how God
wants us to fix this
but it's not good enough for us
I relate to this
I carried a whole bunch of stuff
because of my perception
of what the Catholic Church wanted me to do
which was to stay guilty forever
and here I am in the program
and so I carved out a place
as sort of a special exemption
for me
I felt it was okay for you
to let go of your past
and not regret it
and if my people I'm sponsoring
say good for you
but I
I'm a little different
I have set up a rule inside of myself
that says if I
stop regretting it
I'm being a bad person
even if
we took a vote all the way around the room
here and it was 54 to 1
that you're not a bad person
if your old eyes
ears are strong enough
that won't be conclusive enough
we will still hold on to I am
and so if we've done all the steps
we've made the amends
and we have forgiven
everyone for everything
then you'll see
that that will disappear
it's a real question because
there's lots of people
that have put themselves in that box
and can't see an honorable way to get out of it.
In a way, it's almost like the Al-Anon people when they teach them,
you have to dump your husband or he won't get sober.
It looks like a very cruel act, but that's what they go.
Look, you, oh no, I love him, I can't,
I'm not saying they always say that,
but it looks like you're being callous when you follow spiritual principles
to save the alcoholic.
It's very similar.
What are the origins of the principles behind the 12 steps?
I've heard, oh, isn't that funny because somebody just gave me a CD on this.
The origins of the principles behind the 12 steps.
I've heard people say with certainty that a specific principle relates to a particular step.
But I cannot find any documentation in our literature.
This will probably be helpful to a lot of people who, and I wish I'd been with, I think it was somebody, LaRock.
In 1951, he was given a talk in Texas, and somebody gave me this thing, and they said, this is the principles, you know, of honesty, surrender, whatever, and they're connected to each of the 12 steps, but it's nowhere in writing anywhere.
But people have made up a list and passed it around, but it didn't come out of any official AA.
And this guy, oh, what a beautiful speaker. It must have been like a teacher or something. It's a great CD.
and he said, it was 1951, he got sober probably in 1941
or somewhere in there.
He had about 10 years.
And he said, he would sit around his home group
and they were looking at the 12th step
and it said, practice these principles of all our affairs.
And they said, what are the principles that we're practicing?
And they said, I don't know what they are.
Why don't we think about it and see if we could figure them out?
and so they sat around and we could do that today we could go why don't we all try to come up with a
unanimous decision on what's the principle behind step one and we might say surrender or whatever
it is and they were very creative principles I could certainly connect to them but at the end
of the thing he said now you might do the same thing in your group and come up with different
principles so now you see these are the principles but they aren't the principles
Do you see the difference? There is no the official principles.
And I'm sure if we were great historians, we would find that somebody probably in Cincinnati did that and came up with different principles that would be equally perfect.
And so, isn't that funny? I just listened to that two days ago.
I've seen those lists floating around.
People refer to them as the principles.
And so I would call it that is a set of principles that seems to be helpful to people.
And then we can take it out of the official category.
And while I'm along those lines, I asked a lot of both.
I did a survey some years ago, and I said, when did the promises appear?
Because there were no promises when I got sober.
If you had asked anybody in AA in 1964 what the promises were, they would have gone, I don't know.
somebody saw them
our best guess was about 20 years ago
someone looked at that
the end of the ninth step
and said hey here's a bunch
of promises and next thing they're on
plastic
and next thing it's the promises
and then
the fifth step promises
appeared and then
in our area they're reading stuff from
everywhere
well why don't I read the tenth step promises
If you go on the 12 and 12 in the big book, you can find a bunch of sentences that have will in it.
Any sentence with a will in it is a promise.
So they asked me to read the promises one night, and I said, I'm going to read the final promise.
You will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny.
So that was the final promise, because it's on page 164.
So there's official and then there's semi-official.
And those things, the promises and the principles,
are semi-official and they're fun and they're useful.
But they didn't, you know, you can't find it in the archives where they came from.
What kind of connection is there between thinking and meditation?
Boy.
Okay. How about a bad one? It would be nice if there was no connection at all and you could just meditate. We're trying to get rid of thinking and it's too bad there's a connection.
there's too bad
you can't be free of thinking
by just hitting a switch
and then just sit in the silence
and wait to hear God's will
or to hear peace
or to hear all that's available from that other world
and yet
we're going to read books on meditation
and use our thinking to get into meditation
And so it's a catch-22.
In order to get there, you have to use your thinking.
But the trick is to use your thinking to get rid of your thinking.
And so you can see you get into a funny area to get started.
and this on the wall here was this teacher's entire meditation program.
It was just that one sentence.
You just focus on that and sit there and basically
anytime you start feeling that something should be different than it is,
you get rid of it.
And that's it. That's the whole thing. So that's what I say about a connection. In a way, it's too bad that you can't shut off the thinking.
How do we reconcile letting others
to be free to do as they wish
with being a responsible parent
to say, oh boy, this is a good question
I'm 16 or 18 year old, I've got two daughters in AA
and so I know what you're talking about
they're out in the streets
I can't let them be out there
I have to go fix it, I have to, and then you try as hard as you can, and they still are out there, and then you feel you haven't tried hard enough, and we got to, and of course, Al-Anon is a wonderful, I would go to Al-Anon with this baby, and learn how to responsibly, responsibly detach,
and um i think i've been in the program long enough to realize that this was their experience
this is their bottom this is their life this is their connection with god and there was i'm sure
you've heard speakers they go around don't forget god has no grandchildren you ever heard that
sentence. God has no grandchildren. God doesn't go through me to my kid. He goes directly.
Directly. He doesn't go through me. There's a line in the big book. I've always felt,
and I said, Bill, Jesus, I can't believe you said that. It's in Family or to Wives. And
the wife is wanting to know why her husband hasn't stopped drinking. Does anybody remember
this sentence, and this is what he said. Listen, God has either removed your husband's
obsession to drink, or he hasn't. Now, don't you feel irresponsible if you were to just
accept that? Well, my daughter's dying out there, but God had removed the obsession,
And so I'll be on my way.
But it's inviting us to think along those lines.
And so I used to go, my ex-wife would call me.
She's down in Orlando.
She's lying in there and some drug dealer took all her money and she's out of the thing.
You got to go over.
And my main job was to calm my ex-wife down, to make her at peace,
to assure her that I would, in fact, do everything that was possible.
And then she was able to have peace of mind.
And then one time, something told me it was time to go over there.
So I flew down from Washington.
I got a motel room near where she stayed in Orlando.
She now has eight years.
So I went over there, and it was about 5 o'clock at night.
It turned out she was in the house with her girlfriend of hers.
They were drinking buddies, and they were really well on their way.
And I hadn't seen her in a few years.
So I knock on the door.
She opened the door.
On the top of her lungs, she shouted,
Here's my asshole father.
And then she just started it.
You're the worst father ever.
And then people are coming out of their houses.
And she's just screaming and screaming.
So I stayed a little while.
And then I said, Oh, I'll come back by in the morning.
Well, in the morning, we're hungover.
it's a different story
and she was working for
Piedmont Airlines then
we went over there and enrolled her in their
alcohol program there wasn't that
much resistance and she went
in but she went back out a few more times
and then she's been
sober ever since
so I think the reason
Al-Anon is so powerful
is
they have gone through the same situation
and they
give you permission, which you cannot give to yourself, to take this detachment and utilize
it so that you don't ruin your own sobriety in an effort to cause something to happen
that you can't cause to happen. You almost need other parents to say, look, it's okay
to, and then follow their guidance. So that's a very big question, and anybody with kids
is going to run into that.
If sobriety is a gift,
God either has or he hasn't removed the compulsion.
My mind's pretty good.
I knew this was coming.
Quoted the page in the big book.
If sobriety is a gift,
God either has or he hasn't removed
the compulsion to drink,
why would he withhold it?
Okay, we're asking a question that's a mystery.
There's no way of knowing why God does anything.
So we have to surmise, okay, there is no answer to this.
Why would God do anything?
Why did he create the universe?
Why did he make the Brooklyn Dodgers lose all the time?
I mean, I'm not...
Big bang.
Right.
But I understand the thing.
What it implies is that since the compulsion is still there, that God doesn't want to remove it.
I have no idea.
I know that unless some very painful, difficult things happen to me, I would not be where I am now.
and very often very unfair and painful things happen
and then later on we go
we were talking to Brian Lutz
and you went through all that
and then you're grateful that it happened
and you're back
and so it certainly isn't
because he's a mean person
and wants to hurt somebody
it is
it's going to be revealed
that would be my best answer
wait and see
and then we'll find out and generally the person might say if they gets over that um well it took
all that before i was even willing to let god in so you can't answer questions about trying to
figure what god's motives are but i spent a lot of time doing that why would he allow wars why
would he do and i think it was a desire to not get close to god and it was the way i wanted to
stay separate. What time do we start, Chris? Three o'clock. We're going to take a break in a minute.
We're getting there. We're halfway. How is it that despite working a strong program, in my case,
nine years, I still have periods of high anxiety, I have no secrets, work the steps,
am active in sponsorship and service,
these occasional periods can be very discouraging.
Well, we all recognize that when Bill was writing the 12 and 12,
he was in depression that was just awful.
And he carried on in spite of those.
And it was certainly not a reflection
that he wasn't working a good program.
It wasn't as if he was doing something wrong.
I had anxiety so high I used to come close to fainting in the early meetings.
And somebody told me to embrace it, to don't fight it.
when it came, welcome it. After all, it's your anxiety. You know, just bring it in. It's part
of you. Don't say you don't like it. Just go, all right, I'm experiencing anxiety. I'm willingly
going to experience anxiety. I did the same thing with pain. I embraced it because there's no way
to measure increments of pain or anxiety, but let's say you could measure it on some sort of
a scale and I was getting 50 units of pain. When I decide that I shouldn't have this,
I don't like it and I don't want it. I run it up to a hundred by fighting it because
now I'm angry at it. I can't believe it. And then run around telling Chris, I can't believe
it. And then when I just went back to, this is what's on your plate today. Just take it
and just sit there and see what you can learn about pain. Where does it start? And I think
the anxiety is in the same boat, that if you embrace it, you'll reduce it because you won't
be fighting it. The fighting causes it to double. It practically does. I was frightfully
slow in accepting my powerlessness in anything in my life that wasn't drinking. Oh, I see.
Relationships, finances, attitudes at work. Yet I was around sober members of AA who were
trying to give me the message what are some interesting ways to try and get people in their
first five or ten years of sobriety to see their powerlessness besides just letting the pain grind
them down what a good question because the pain will grind them down where they are powerless
I think I would approach
this with the same thing
I was talking about earlier
by asking them if they're happy
have you
you say you're not powerless over it
that you're able to control it
Have you been able to make yourself happy?
Have you controlled your finances, relationships, or whatever it is,
so that you're happy, joyous, and free in those areas?
And if they say, no, I'm still miserable,
then I think you're powerless over it,
because you can't make yourself happy in any of those areas.
And generally, they'll just go,
well, yeah, there's no way I can make myself, yeah.
There's no way you can make yourself happy in relationships.
You might need help.
You are powerless to make yourself happy with finances, relationships, or whatever any of that is.
It's really a telling thing because the person has to say that they're not happy.
Or they wouldn't be racing all this, fighting it.
If somebody is totally happy without doing any of the steps, without using God, I wouldn't talk to them at all.
I would just go, great, geez, that's just wonderful, because there's nothing there to fix.
So why mess with it?
I just don't think it can last.
One more, we'll take a break.
How do we reconcile the broad, roomy, all-inclusive nature of our path with the reality?
with the reality that it nonetheless still requires rigorous, thorough adherence
to definitive, though simple, framework, the steps.
I think this ties into what we were talking about in the last lecture.
If I'm reading this right, the all-inclusive,
it's kind of like the language in the third step out of 12 and 12.
this great openness of AA,
no matter what your background,
there's this all-inclusiveness.
You come in, you're an atheist, a communist,
a Jesus believer, an agnostic,
I hate this, old, young, whatever it is,
this thing is all-inclusive.
There's no requirements,
just a desire to stop drinking,
to come through the hoop.
But as we start down the path,
then it starts getting narrower
and so it's all inclusive
it's very wide
I don't know if the person who wrote this
wants to ask me afterwards
I'll be glad to talk to them
whether I'm missing the point of this
and it requires rigorous action
not to come in through the hoop
but to keep making progress
to keep moving on the spiritual path
what is the rigorous action?
fighting with our ego
trying to let go of it
and allow God to take over
that's the fight, that's the rigorous action
that we're talking about
that's 15 minutes
let's take 10 or 15 minutes
10 minutes, alright, 10 minute break
and then we'll come back and see how far we can get
and then we'll get ready for the silence
and these are great questions
okay we're now we're into the final session of question and answers before we go into the
silence and i think they're great questions i hope the answers are useful
and like i say these are not the answer speaking of other spiritual literature you've read outside
the big book in 12 traditions.
What other book is one of your favorites?
Well, a lot of C.S. Lewis,
The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity.
Recently, I can't think of this.
He's from India.
We have it back there.
I Am That,
which one of our members
made me aware of.
And it's, you know,
an awakened person
who followed the directions of his spiritual leader
when he was a kid, not well educated.
And he just lives in a little shack
and seekers from all over the world come to him
from other countries and so on down.
And they ask him questions and then he answers them.
And the book is just the questions and the answers.
And the reason I like it, because, you know, an intellect has fun with that.
The person asks the question, I answer it, and then I read his answer.
I mean, you know, I answer it mentally, and then I read his answer, and I go, wow, I wasn't even close.
So if you like doing that, being perpetually frustrated, I find that book kind of fun.
the new earth who wrote that the power of now eckhart tolle for some unknown reason and this
will just show you that if you if somebody recommends a book you pick it up and you go
man i don't get it keep the book because you'll pick it up 10 years from now and you go wow this
is freaking amazing because i picked up the power now and i put it down after about 15 pages
And then somebody said, well, he wrote another one.
Well, you know, I tried it, and I picked it up, and I went, oh, my God, this is wonderful.
So, same author.
So you can see a lot of it has to do with timing.
A lot of it has to do with where you're at right now as to whether this is the right teacher at the right time.
So that's why it's hard to have a universally accepted book where everybody in the room said, yeah, I picked it up.
It was perfect.
It just isn't going to happen.
But those are the ones that occur to me off the top of my head.
Why do you sometimes have a complete lack of control over our defects of character?
Please speak to the riddle of our existence.
Do you all know what that is?
That's a line in the 12 and 12.
And I talk about it a lot.
Well, why do I sometimes have a complete lack of control over my defects of character?
It's impossible to control our defects of character.
We can try, but we can't do it.
We're powerless over controlling our defects of character.
We can exercise some restraint so that we don't get angry enough to murder, but we get angry enough to buy a gun, if you follow what I'm saying.
That's why we need God.
We don't want to be figuring out how to control our defects of character.
We want to ask God to do the work.
And sometimes you hear, well, I'll do the legwork and God will do the rest.
God will be glad to help with the leg work.
He'll be glad to help sweep the kitchen.
See, we constantly come up with phrases
that imply God wouldn't help with that
in order to keep him out.
I'll take care of this part of it, God.
I'll take care of it.
We're always wanting to.
So we make up stuff like that.
You know, if faith is going to move him out
and bring a shovel,
well, why have faith?
in other words we can't mix the two metaphors either we're going to be spiritual or not
now the riddle of our existence very quickly i could spend 15 minutes on this but it's in
step six in the 12 and 12 and it comes where it says we're entirely ready to have god remove all
the defects of character which implies perfection it says all and then we go well why do i still
have our mind and sometimes we fall back on and i don't want to if you believe otherwise then
you'd stay with that but sometimes we fall back on the seventh step prayer to explain why we still
have some of our character defects because it says remove the defects that are standing in the
way of my usefulness so we assume that god wants us to have all the other defects and he only is
going to remove the ones that are going to interfere with us helping somebody so it's god's
fault that i'm still an asshole it's not me that has anything to do with this and i could see if
you've read that you could see that's exactly what it says but if you read the 12 and 12 you'll see
that the same author certainly doesn't agree with that that the that we are praying to have all our
defects removed and that certainly will enable us to be useful to others and that's the reason to
get removed. And we apply this to drinking. We do become, in fact, entirely ready to have
it removed. And it is removed. Why do we still have all the others? That's the riddle of
our existence. We have absolute proof that if you get entirely willing and humbly asked,
it's gone. So the reason they're still there is
me. I don't want them removed.
I'm not entirely ready to have lust removed.
And he said, now the reason for this might be in the mind of God. That's what Bill
wrote. We don't know the exact answer. But his guess
is alcohol was killing us.
So the ego saw that we're going to, we don't get rid of that.
I won't be around to screw with you anymore.
So I'm going to let you be entirely willing to have alcohol removed.
And it was.
The other ones aren't killing us.
They really are, but they aren't killing us like alcohol was.
So we don't have the urgency that was associated with the drinking.
That's why we have to work so hard to become willing
and to go through the pain of having them removed.
so he was trying to guess
that was the riddle and he says
it might be only in the mind of God
that's a good question
what do you do for fun
I used to play golf
and I ran and I can't do any of those things
I know this sounds egotistical
but I just sit around
and make myself laugh.
My mind is just,
it is fun to hang around.
I'm just in there.
Holy shit.
I think there's some, you know,
whoo.
I mean, I did have a straitjacket on
for a long time,
but it's really fun to be in here.
I just wouldn't trade it for anything.
So that's what I do for fun.
that's why i'm having fun all the time humbleness i know
i'm screwing up in my personal life but i am too proud to seek help
oh god this is us
boy anybody in here that doesn't relate to this question
raise your hand
having issues with sex behavior
anybody in here that isn't having issues
so this question was written by the whole room
I think men are particularly
there's so much pleasure
out of all aspects of sex
that it just seems like you shouldn't have to give that up totally.
And if there's ever an example of settling for the middle ground,
it's on the sex issue with men.
And so if you're in that, you are exactly where everybody else is.
And the first thing that I do, I have the same problems everybody has.
is that I accept that that's who I am.
I have this defect.
I have this is who I am
so I don't get mad at myself for having it.
After all, as Bill wrote in the 12 and 12 in step four,
these instinctual drives were given to us by God.
We've somehow let them go beyond
where he intended that they go,
but we didn't put them there in the first place.
And so it's a real challenge to have that be subdued.
We call it the sex demand.
And God is available to help us reduce that demand.
Our old way was to try and satisfy it by more, more, more, more, more.
And of course you can't do that.
And we can laugh at ourselves and we continue to go down that dead alley.
Okay, one more time.
Whatever it is.
I'll get the porn channel on,
but I'll only be there for ten minutes.
Whatever it is.
I'm going over to the massage parlor
and just have a political conversation.
I just wonder how the girls feel about Obama.
And if we see how ridiculous this is, we can start laughing at ourselves instead of condemning ourselves.
That is a sin to condemn ourselves for being filled with faults.
So we've got to stop that.
we just have to stop that
and then we're going to
year by year
take whatever steps we can to reduce
this demand and allow God to reduce it
to let go and to seek
to get closer to God
so that we're extremely happy
and complete and don't need
anything other than what we already have then it's real easy to give things up because they
won't fix anything because they're really trying to fix us from being incomplete unhappy at least
i'll have some fun so acknowledge it you're the same as everybody in this room don't condemn
yourself and just allow God in as best you can. And that's why we're here. We're seeking
to get closer to God, which automatically will work on this. What is your definition
of humility and being humble? Oh boy. When I get my medallion every year and they say,
how did you do it?
I say, I want to stay in the state
of constantly receiving help.
And I think that's what humility is,
is to recognize the best deal I can have
is to constantly be receiving help,
to constantly be getting feedback.
Ask Carl, ask you,
what do you think about this?
What do you think?
Do you think I should do it too?
And that keeps me
from being in charge of my own life.
It is, you know, it's that part of us that wants God to run everything.
And that's why we've got to stay with it until it happens.
So that's my best shot.
There's many, many definitions.
That's what I see today.
What was the one thing in sobriety that you found you were wrong about that most impacted your spiritual growth?
Wow, I've been wrong about so many things
I don't know
I don't have the answer
but I'm going to
when I went to AA
and I looked around the room
I decided which people
were worth listening to
before they talked
and i eliminated anybody from the south how do you like that southerners i eliminated women
what the hell could they know and this is in my mind all right yeah she's up and i'm going to
really concentrate on him who did i concentrate somebody who looked just like me you know what
i mean somebody who looks at my age and white and then ah now here comes the answer and then
here comes this guy with a third grade education
and I skip him
but then later on I'm going what the hell did he say
and then I suddenly find myself
waiting for him to talk
and I realize all the judgments I made
in my mind
you could call them prejudices
I was prejudiced against old people, black people, Hispanic people
anybody that wasn't me
and I think it's so wonderful to be wrong about all that
and to realize you're a teacher
is going to be the most unlikely person
you know how many people you know
went to Harvard and they have a biker for a sponsor
with tattoos all over them
oh this is the greatest guy in the world
he's the most spiritual man I've ever met
off he goes and you go really?
doesn't look that way so i think that's the single thing was that i stopped
and i love to listen to everybody and i've realized we all are the same
the package may be a little different but boy are we the same that was my favorite thing to
be wrong about all right do you believe there's such a thing as the alcoholic mind
or is that a term the ego has invented
to differentiate the alcoholic from the normal person
who also suffers from a thinking mind?
I don't think that the ego did it.
I think AA did it.
We just made up a thing that
there's a disease of alcoholism,
therefore there must be an alcoholic mind
and there must be this and there must be that.
And then we realized exactly what this writer said,
that all the people out there have the same problems.
There's no one out there that has any problems different than we do.
So what makes us different?
We found a solution that didn't work for them.
It was called drinking.
We found a solution to the problem that they all have.
And we'd like to share it with them, but they won't vomit.
They won't cough up blood.
They've got no guts.
They won't do that.
So that's why they're not alcoholic, and we are.
And so we have a common problem and a common solution.
But when we're in here, we go, well, alcoholic thinking set in,
and alcoholic mind, and alcoholic this.
And I agree that all those people out there think the same way.
And there's crazy people out there, and there's one of everything out there.
But we are the same.
We have the same human struggle, only like us before we got here.
They have no idea that the real problem they have is they can't get rid of their longing for God.
And their sense of being incomplete has nothing to do with the material world.
And you can keep earning money until you can't put it in the bank, and you still won't be happy.
And so we are all alike.
Perhaps I have enough spiritual illumination to light my own path.
but how do I become a beacon for others?
You either are or you aren't.
A lot of times you don't even know that you're a beacon for others.
A lot of times the awakening inside of you, the transformation that gets started,
other people in your home group see it long before you do.
and then you become aware
that wow I really am different now
I have a whole different way of looking at things
and it becomes an individual program of attraction
somebody's going to be attracted to you
not necessarily by what you said
just because of the energy that's coming out of you
there's something and they just want to come
can I ask you something?
that's when it happens
can I ask you, could I talk to you for a minute
they saw something in you that they want
and it's an indefinable thing
but we generally associate it with awakening
and that there is this light
or aura or whatever it is
a sense of joy, you know this, whatever it is
and then the person comes
and then you get to transmit it to that person
and you have now fulfilled the highest
act
that a human being can do
which is to show someone else how to awaken
there's nothing beyond that
it's the highest act that anybody can do
and when you
if that happens through you, you didn't do it
it happens through you as an instrument
it's the most beautiful thing to watch
and that's really why we keep coming back
so we can participate in that
okay we're getting there
would you discuss the concept of acceptance
in context of that part of the serenity prayer
which asks for the courage to change the things we can
you've asked the question of a person
who doesn't like the serenity prayer
And Dr. Paul used to talk about that.
He said, I never put that in my story.
Because people kept coming up to him.
Acceptance is the key to everything.
So that's the end of that.
So we'll drop out the rest of the serenity prayer.
You follow what I'm saying?
No matter what is accepted.
Okay.
What about the wisdom to know you don't need to know the difference.
You just accept it.
Well, you can't just accept it.
and then we start the discussion.
Anything that happens
has to be accepted
that it happened.
I was just in an accident
and got my arm cut off.
How could you not accept that?
Your arm's gone.
You can go,
I don't want it to be this way.
But you have to accept good or bad.
Now, in order for something to fit in the category of having to be accepted, we have to make a judgment about it.
You don't hear people at meetings having a discussion about, I just got promoted and I'm having a hard time accepting it.
I just inherited $50,000. I'm having a real struggle with acceptance on that.
And so it seems that we have to classify something as shouldn't have happened in order to generate the need for acceptance.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
In other words, we have to make a judgment about something that it shouldn't have happened.
And now that judgment created the need for acceptance.
and so
a lot of times when I'm
working with people and they have a problem
I try to go through
the drill of convincing them they don't have
a problem, that their
assessment of the situation is incorrect
it's just something that happened
it's not a problem
and what is bothering me
I know how to get you unbothered
without the situation being changed
so if I can get you
undisturbed, is it still a problem?
that needs to be accepted anybody got a problem that's not bothering them
today anybody got a problem that's not bothering you
there's no such thing as a problem that isn't bothering you so if we got rid of the bother we
got rid of the problem we got rid of the need to accept so it's a it's a very so that's a
separate thing about acceptance it's a place where i've taken my mind into a dead end and
I don't know how to get out.
But acceptance in the serenity prayer, if we were to go back and let's use the prayer
and forget that Dr. Paul was right.
We'll go back and say the serenity prayer is right.
And then you can have this discussion in your home group.
Who was right, Dr. Paul or the serenity prayer?
We'll probably end up in a fist fight, but it will be fun.
I wish you the best of luck.
Okay.
in order let's start at the end in order to ask god for the wisdom about anything
you have to be undisturbed or you can't hear it would everybody agree with that you can't be
furious and hear god's guidance so we have to get undisturbed for the serenity prayer to work
in order to get undisturbed we have to accept what happened
we can't be fighting it anymore
we can't be furious that it happened
it happened
now undisturbed just because we accept it
doesn't mean that we might not want to do something about it
somebody does something to me
I'm so angry I want to sue them
I should definitely not sue anybody when I'm angry
because it could be a mistake
what if the spiritual part of me
totally calm
wants to let it go
so I want to get
to being undisturbed
and then I'll decide
it's not worth it
I'm going to forgive him and move on
see that's a different course of action
that's a different course of action
than I would have taken
had I done it when I'm angry
so you have to accept to get undisturbed
in order to be eligible
to get the guidance from God.
And so acceptance is absolutely essential,
even though we might want to change something.
Does that make sense?
If not, that's a bad shot.
I got into a tough area there.
I can do the same thing with patience.
Anyway, a school bus filled with nuns.
Oh, boy.
Is everybody already into it?
Isn't this fun?
This is going to be great.
A school bus filled with nuns and orphans explodes for no apparent reason.
A huge tragedy.
Many are grieving and asking, how could God let this happen?
It could be that those who died are the lucky ones.
Now they know.
So how might one console those who are mad at God?
actually the last
we don't need all the rest of it
that last question, the last line
how can we console someone
who is mad at God
well obviously it would have to be one on one
I'm not going to do it in front of
a bunch of other people
it would be that you are
you really want to take on this
and help them with it
number two what I
like to
think about is
what do we know about God
as far as human beings are concerned
we know that
there's 6.7 billion
and we know they're all going to die
okay that's
we know that for a fact
does anybody say
why does God let that happen
we just go of course that's
In order for there to be life, there has to be death.
In order for there to be death, there has to be life.
So yes, I accept that as normal.
I don't know anybody who wouldn't accept that as normal.
That all 6.7 billion people on planet Earth are going to die.
Anybody think that's a tragedy?
No, that's fine.
So now we're down to when do you die?
Do you follow with that?
Under what circumstances should one die?
And you suddenly realize that death is so natural
that it isn't anything to be concerned about.
It is just like I could make the case that a breath has a beginning and a death.
It's born. It's dead.
That breath lived and died just like that.
And yet, we sustain ourselves on breath, living and dying.
The biggest cause of death is birth.
That's the biggest cause.
And so, I think it's important to make people comfortable with death.
Did you ever bring death up at a meeting?
It gets kind of quiet in there.
Why don't we bring up the topic of death this noon?
And we'll go around the room and see.
And I would submit that if you can do that often enough until that topic is the same as resentment, we've come a long way.
We've come a long way in our own.
See, our ego loves to use death.
It's its favorite weapon to shoot down that there's God.
What about death?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yes.
And so it centers around that.
Now, I'm not doing a very good job of consoling the person who saw the bus blow up with all the people in it.
there is no
I don't think there's any magic answer there
they're going to have their personal journey
and they're either going to
eventually choose God and live with the
results or they're going to
hate God and live with the results of that
I would love to help them
change their mind
we could talk about that one I'm sure if I got people
that come up here they could do a better job than I did
sometimes
simply allowing everything to be
as it is, seems irresponsible.
I'm delighted
that that produced that.
I think we were talking about that earlier.
If you're not anguishing over something,
you're being irresponsible.
Time?
We ran out of...
Oh, I thought we were going to do a separate
CD for each session.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Ah.
I can keep going.
I'll flip it to another CD.
What do you think, Chris?
We won't have the rest of the questions on there, or we'll stop?
Huh?
Just we'll do the questions, and they won't be on the...
How many of you guys want?
You want to stop?
Start another CD?
Start another CD.
Start another CD.
Are you sure?
Okay, yeah, I'm sorry.
I thought we'd have a separate CD for each session.
All right, John, I'm so sorry.
We should have gone over that.
Yeah, we got, I can do 15.
Are you on another one, or do you want me to wait?
No, just keep going.
Oh, keep going.
Okay.
Simply allow me, this sounds irresponsible.
How does planning for the future, like retirement, it said,
find its way into this way of life?
Okay, I think I may have been talking about that.
That if our relationship with God is right,
you won't find you're worrying about retirement.
You just already know you're going to be taken care of.
There is a freedom in total reliance on God.
The ego says it's ridiculous.
That's ridiculous.
God won't take care of you. What, do you think he's going to show up with a sandwich?
He might.
I don't rule that out. I've never seen anybody in AA that didn't have a
sandwich that day, even though they hadn't had a job in four months
or five months.
We go back to Chuck.
There's only one problem that includes all problems.
and one solution that includes all solutions.
The problem of worrying about retirement is not being close enough to God.
The problem of worrying about retirement will go away when you get close enough to God.
That's either true or it isn't.
And you won't be able to, you have to go do it to find out if in fact it's true.
And we hate simplicity.
We hate that this could possibly be the whole deal.
It's got to be more complicated because I'm more complicated.
And then we come up with, what about, well, da-dee, da-da.
And none of that's happening right now.
All of this worry is about the future.
And if we're living in the present moment, it's impossible to have any of that happen.
Okay.
Okay.
I once heard someone say
there is no wrong reason for doing the right thing.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
I think I would agree with that.
Let's say
take a ridiculous thing
that
a new member at a meeting somebody wanted to ride home and he offered to give him a ride home
because that would put him near the bar that he wanted to go to anyway so his reason for giving
the guy a ride home was so he could go get a drink but the guy got a ride home and so the
the act actually
is a good act
even though the motive was bad
the trick is
he's not going to grow spiritually
for doing that right act
with the wrong motive
but
I hope people keep doing good acts
for the wrong motive
because it benefits all the rest of us
but they won't grow spiritually from it
and when his interest is in spiritual growth
then he will be tying the motive behind the action.
So that way you get a ride home.
How do you practice conscious contact with God?
I don't know if we have the book back there called Practicing the Presence by Brother Lawrence.
It's written maybe 500 years ago by a brother.
He wasn't even smart enough to be a monk, and he just was limited to doing the...
Well, he wasn't educated enough, so they made him a brother, and he worked on shoes and things in the monastery.
And he learned how to practice the presence of God so well that people read this book 500 years later.
and it's a constant
attempt to be in a dialogue with God at all times
well God we're on the way to the meeting, well God we're going here, I was telling people
at lunch or somewhere, maybe I've already covered this here, it's kind of like
the movie Harvey and Jimmy Stewart has this imaginary
rabbit and he talks to him all the time, well Harvey we're at the doctor's office, well Harvey we're here
that is constant conscious contact
And I recommend that book highly.
If we don't have it, it's Practicing the Presence by Brother Lawrence.
I have a copy of some of it.
I'd like to read it over the next couple of hours.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, at least take a look at it.
Just see his language on one page.
He writes letters to some of the nuns that are having problems with God,
and he's giving them advice.
and it's really, it's so simple, it's wonderful.
How does living with physical pain affect your spiritual life?
How does the experience help you to grow?
Do you believe that pain is God's megaphone?
I don't know, he's been yelling at me lately.
I think I talked about this, that it broke my contact with God.
It shattered it, and the sad thing is, that surprised me.
because I had so much spiritual pride
I didn't think pain could touch it.
And so what did I learn out of it?
Mostly I learned that I'm human.
I learned a lot more humility
and I learned to embrace pain
and I learned that don't fight it
and try to help other people
and try to do other things.
So there was a lot of lessons in it
and it's the only way to get rid of the ego
is going to be painful
because it doesn't want to go.
until he's just going to fight you.
You can call it a wrestling match, and those are painful in a way,
but they also achieve good results.
All right, Chris, how many more?
Five.
Four.
What would be a good daily action plan to get close to God look like?
I don't have a daily action plan.
I don't have anything organized like a handout, but a lot of speakers do and a lot of people do.
I mean, those are very helpful to people.
I just get up and see what's going to happen.
That's my plan.
I just kind of go.
when I get a
I do this
that when I get a problem
I say
I wonder how this
turns out
because none of my business
I'm just going to see
how it turns out
and then you watch it
and the damn things
turn out
they're going to turn out
you can't stop them
from turning out
and so I think
that's it
I don't have a plan
one day I'll get up
and read some
spiritual stuff
the next day I'll get up
and make some eggs
you know what i mean but maybe when i'm making the eggs i'm more spiritual than when i'm reading
the spiritual thing you remember the i've written several you know from china some of those books
i remember this line when you're making the tea just make the tea has anybody ever read that
don't make the tea and be figuring out how you're going to close a sale at nine o'clock
just make the tea
which is why the Japanese have the tea ceremony
this is it
tea, boom, and that's all you're doing
you're totally in the now
so I don't really have a plan
okay, I love the big book
how sound is it to you? I love the big book
I mean, God, I love the big book
but as I described it, it's the treasure map
and not the treasure.
It leads you to God.
And that's the purpose of the book.
That's why it's so wonderful
is that it works every time.
It just works.
If we follow that, you will find God.
And so that's why I love the big book.
All right, this will be it.
And then there's about four left.
If I didn't answer yours,
either come up and ask me
or just write it on a piece of paper with your name
or come up and find it
and hand it to me with your name and address
and I'll think about it and send you an answer.
Is passing it on the reason we go to AA?
I go because I want to stay sober.
That's a good question.
And I'm going to even, this is my own personal view.
My own personal view.
And I know none of your sponsors.
this. Probably I shouldn't even say it. Lois Wilson made the statement that after Bill's
spiritual awakening, she said, he'll never drink again. That's how positive she was
because of the spiritual awakening. Now I've looked at all this stuff and then I've had my
own experience. And this is how I feel. I feel that if he made those phone calls in
the Mayflower Hotel and got no connection with anybody, he wouldn't have taken a drink.
That's what I think. I think he would have started again the next day and made some more
phone calls, but I don't think he would have taken a drink. Now, there are many other people
who study AA history, and they would say he was hanging on the ropes, and if that connection
hadn't been made, he would have been a goner. Who can prove either way? I can't say I'm right,
and I can't say the people who feel the other way are right. I really believe that,
because I feel that's how strong mine was. I may commit suicide. I may do one other thing,
but I don't think I'll ever take a drink.
And so I'm at meetings to pass it on.
That's why I'm at meetings.
And I want to get better at carrying the message.
I want to find better ways of expressing that.
That's just what I think.
My sobriety is dependent on my relationship with God
And I believe that every day that I am carrying his message, I'm free to carry the message.
So I know that's almost blasphemy to say that you don't think you'll take a drink.
But I'm so absorbed in the joy of passing it on, it just seems impossible in my own mind.
And so that isn't part of why I'm there.
I never thought of taking a drink in 44 and a half years.
The thought has never entered my mind.
And if I saw it and said, oh, look at the beard, that would be, no, it wouldn't.
It's almost like I don't understand how alcohol works now.
How did it?
I don't understand what it could possibly do.
And I don't know what that means,
but I know that it just doesn't make sense to me that it could help with anything.
So that's a different place than I used to be.
My view of it is I just don't get it anymore.
I don't know what possible thing that could do.
Now, if 12 cheeseburgers, yeah, I'll go eat all of those.
That makes sense, and then I'm sick, and I'm doing all the crazy things.
But in other words, the alcohol looks like poison now.
And it just does.
So let's not end on that question.
John, can you take that answer off?
Oh, I'm going to hear about this one, aren't I, Carl?
Okay, you guys from California, don't call me about that.
Jesus, I wish I hadn't said that.
What is the most unusual event that you've experienced at a meeting?
Yay, now we've got some fun.
We'll end on this.
This is the finale question, and then the other ones.
What is the most unusual event that you have experienced while speaking?
Let me see the most unusual event at a meeting.
Oh, it's on my tape somewhere where my sponsor had me get a speaker.
He wanted me to become the program chairman at our little group.
And it was way down at Quantico, and the speakers had to drive.
Now, California, you guys won't think any of this, but they had to drive like 45 minutes, which was a long way.
And so I didn't want, I was afraid to ask people.
They might say no, but it's coming up.
He's got the speakers about three weeks.
So I finally see this Army major from Belvoir.
There was a group near Belvoir.
And I went, Jack, can you come down and speak Sunday night?
And he said, yeah, I'd be glad to.
And I went, oh, thank God.
And I didn't have the courage to ask anybody else.
I didn't really have a second speaker.
I told Bill, he said, where is it?
He'll be here.
He'll be here.
my sponsor where's the other he'll be here I was so nervous about it anyway we had a jockey in that
group a little guy named Dave who would come drunk and then to be sober the next week and then he's
drunk and we just knew that he was going to be there he was there that night I read the preamble
and I did all that and then I go here's Jack our first speaker and Jack got up I didn't know he was
drunk and he got up and he said my name's Jack I'm an alcoholic I'm here tonight to resign
from Alcoholics Anonymous.
And then he went on and on about,
before I came to AA, whenever I drank a lot,
I got drunk and I got all screwed up,
but you people have showed me how to drink.
Now I can drink safely.
And of course, I'm going, oh my God,
I'm going to be thrown out of AA.
And I wouldn't even look at my sponsor,
who, unbeknownst to me, was falling on the floor with laughter.
because he thought it was so funny.
And that guy might still be talking
except for the jockey.
He listened to that for about 15, 20 minutes
and he jumped up and he said,
you're a damn liar.
You can't drink a fifth of whiskey
and not get drunk.
I can't drink.
I got a fifth outside.
You come outside with me
and we'll go out there and I'll show you.
And he went out and I just stayed there.
And my sponsor had to get up, and he said,
why don't we all come back next week and see what Sandy has?
And quickly, the most unusual thing, speaking,
was in the Texas State Convention in San Antonio in probably the 70s.
and they had
a huge
whatever it was
auditorium, convention center
or something and they put a room
divider down the middle
and there was another thing going on over here
and then our thing and we're having dinner
and blah blah blah
and now it was time for the speaker
and this gal
was Ed Chandler's wife
Sue, she introduced me
and here's Sam and I said hi everybody
my name's Sandy, I'm an alcoholic. At that point, the band on the other side started playing so loud
we couldn't hold the meeting. You couldn't hear a thing over the PA system. And they went over and
they said, hey, we can't, well, it's too bad. We rented this thing with the band. We're going to
play all night, real loud. And somebody in the audience was in the theater business or something
and had a key to an empty theater about four blocks away,
and we all walked down the street, went in there, and had the meeting.
So that was the most unusual thing that ever happened when I was speaking.
Okay, we're at the end of time. Sorry, John.
Now, let's not have any applause. Let's not have anything.
Let's just sort of reflect inside of ourselves
and understand that we're going to get a lot of joy out of this period of silence.
and think about God, and we'll begin the silence now.