Sandy B. Spiritual Principles

I'm an alcoholic, and I'm really grateful to be introduced as opposed to being explained.
I'm also grateful that I woke up on this side of the grass this morning, and I didn't come to.
I'm glad to be here, and I want to thank everybody for their message of recovery that I heard from Friday on.
I'm truly grateful, and I feel gratefulistic in being a part of this program.
Now, the good part of what I have to say this morning pertains to this gentleman on my left over here.
If I knew better, I would have gotten a dark coat so we could all have been in sync, really.
I'm the only one wearing a horse blanket, I guess.
I heard Sandy B. speak on a couple of occasions.
I don't remember where.
I don't remember when.
But I remember what he said.
that's pretty good for me because I have a hard time
remembering my name at times
and you're going to be thoroughly
thoroughly enjoyed with this message
of recovery I give you my good friend
Sandy B
well good morning everybody my name is Sandy Beach
and I'm an alcoholic
it's been a great weekend
I've enjoyed being here, and I thank the committee for inviting me back.
I forget when I was at this roundup before, but it's a pleasure to be here.
Let's see.
I got sober on December 7, 1964, and I've had the same sponsor since that day to now.
I don't know if that's a record, but that's a long time for two guys to stay alive, you know what I mean?
I've been very lucky to have this guy in my life
and if you're new
you want to make sure to get a sponsor
it's like getting a guide
because AA is the world's largest
lost and found department
and if there's anything that describes us
when we're new is we're lost
we haven't got a clue
and so it's not like
the guides, you know, Bill wrote about this somewhere. It's not like the guides are totally
enlightened and have a clear vision of the entire future. It's just that the half blind are leading
the totally blind. And somehow we're following the next person up there and it all seems to
turn out the way it's supposed to. So I feel really great about that. And I decided this
morning not to tell my story. I hear it so much that I'm just going to talk to those of you that
may be new. I'm just going to share how this spirituality was put inside of me and how it
came about. I am an alcoholic, in case you are new. I did drink excessively and ended up in the
Marine Corps and in the nut ward and had the DTs and convulsions and malnutrition and miraculously
got sent to AA and then got my sponsor and life has just been an entirely different life.
And I think the beginning of spirituality for me occurred probably when I had about
two months or three months and my sponsor said well we've got the not drinking and going to
meetings and we got all that going along but let's just sit down we're going to talk a little
bit about some other things i said all right okay and he said now let me see let me see if i
understand this uh do you pray a lot and i said no no i'm not into that at all no praying don't
like that well do you think about god a lot no no i don't think about god i stopped doing that
a long time ago.
Well, do you do a lot of spiritual reading?
No, no, not into spiritual reading.
Not into that at all.
What about meditation?
Have you tried that?
No, no, I don't even like the name.
I don't even like the idea about that.
He said, well, let's see.
How's it going?
So that's what spirituality is all about.
How's it going?
And that's what AA and sobriety gets us to look at,
is how is it going?
You know, like, totally honest.
Could you get totally honest with yourself and say,
how is it going?
And you get honest, it's not going very good.
It's really bad.
And, of course, that's the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The emphasis is not on trying to convince us of the existence of God.
That's for religions to do.
What AA does is convince us of the need for God.
And once we acknowledge that, the doors start to open.
And so I started thinking about how bad things really were,
that I was uncomfortable in my own skin, that I had used alcohol to fix the problem that I had.
And so alcohol was not the problem, it was the solution.
And now the solution had been taken away from me, so now I was going to be permanently uncomfortable.
You know what I mean?
I mean, going to meetings and not drinking made me feel a little bit better,
but it wasn't making the dramatic change that I had seen in people around me.
And so I was attracted to whatever had happened to some of these other people.
And of all the places that we find answers, they come in some of the most unlikely spots.
And I was looking back, and I would say that the prayer of St. Francis in the 12 and 12 under the 11th step
was just an eye-opener when my sponsor explained it to me.
So if you're new, I'm just going to focus on the first line in that
and see if your evaluation of it was the same as mine was when I first heard it.
Because that prayer just starts out with, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.
So what do you picture when you see that?
And I'm going to tell you what I pictured.
I pictured here I am, just a wreck, full of anxiety, all these things.
And here's this vision that I have.
Make me a channel of thy peace.
So this channel opens up from somewhere up there and all this peace flows into me and I feel wonderful.
And my sponsor said, well, that's close, but you have it exactly backwards.
You have it exactly backwards.
That's not what happens at all.
You see, you are living in the self-centered intellectual perspective and that's exactly how it looks.
But nothing in the spiritual world, it conforms to the intellectual world,
and that's not how it is at all.
And I'm going, oh, my God, this is getting complicated.
I just don't understand this.
All we're talking about is a little channel,
and now he's got me off into advanced something or other.
And he says, well, look at the rest of the prayer.
He says, I want to be a channel of your peace so that I can go out
and bring understanding and bring love and bring comfort and bring peace
so that I can go out and take care of all other people that I may run into.
And he said, the channel comes from inside of you out.
That's what you had the energy completely reversed.
You thought you needed something.
You don't need anything at all.
You already have it all inside,
And it's been locked in there through your character defects.
It's been blocked.
And that's why we have these steps to open that channel so that all of this can come out.
And you can allow this infinite supply of peace and love that's already inside of you to get out.
And you're going to find the greatest joy in the world of just spreading this.
And I remember going, well, it doesn't feel like that.
It feels like there's nothing inside of me.
it feels like I'm empty
and if I ever
open this up
and let whatever little was in there
I had the picture that I was like a balloon
and you were going to
and then I was going to go
and just be flat
and so it took a leap of faith
to understand this is what he was talking about
and the
for me the most amazing place
to find
all of this information
in our big book
I've always
this is my favorite chapter
The chapter to the agnostic.
I think it's the most spiritual chapter in our big book.
And I remember when my sponsor gave me my big book,
I had no intention of reading it.
I already knew what my problems were.
I knew what the answers were.
I had known it all my life, so I didn't need to be bothered with, you know, details.
But he was dead serious about this book.
And so I knew I wanted to make him convinced that I had read it.
And I remember taking it home and pushing the pages
and make them look like they were worn.
And I got magic markers and just scritted around, you know, little things
and put the coffee cup and made coffee stains.
And it looked like, let a cigarette burn out on a page, you know,
and it just looked like this book had been just devoured.
And while I was skimming through, I saw this chapter of the agnostic,
and I didn't read it, but some of us know what's in stuff without reading it.
I know that there may be some of you here that, and you just go, oh, yeah, that's the chapter for us agnostics,
and that's where we stay sober, and then all the rest of the people read the rest of that stuff and the steps and all that.
So when I get with it, I'll be getting that chapter, and I'll be learning how agnostics stay sober when I read that chapter.
And, of course, it was quite a bit later when I actually got serious about all this and got into that chapter.
and if you're new, I can tell you what the chapter says in three words.
It says, change your mind.
That's what the chapter says.
If you're an agnostic, become a former agnostic.
That is what it says in there.
And it really helps.
I mean, this is why AA is so practical in terms of spiritual things.
Because it starts out, this is where I get my definition
of the disease of alcoholism out of the chapter of the agnostic.
and says, I don't have it down exactly,
but it says something like in the very beginning,
if when you drink you have little control over the amount you drink
and if when you try to stop you can't do it for any extended period of time,
you may be an alcoholic.
Well, everybody, oh yeah, okay, I got it, that's me.
Little amount, little control over the amount I drink.
And then it goes on to say, if that be the case,
you may be suffering from a disease
that only a spiritual experience will conquer.
Now, there aren't too many medical journals
that would show it that way.
You know what I mean?
Like back in the appendix of all the diseases on the planet
are those that only a spiritual experience will conquer.
You know what I mean?
Don't go to the doctor on this one.
This disease is not going to be one
that we're going to be working on
because only a spiritual experience
will conquer this.
But that's what we have.
So what a disease that is.
No medicine, nothing,
just a spiritual experience.
And so if you're like me, you go,
well, I don't believe in spiritual experiences.
And then my sponsor goes, next.
This only works for somebody
who's willing to believe in spiritual experiences.
Oh, well, the only way I could get there is to change my mind.
And that's really what's going on.
In other words, I came in with all these old ideas about me and the world and all this stuff.
And none of it involved having a spiritual experience.
And suddenly I have a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer.
And I'm up against it.
I'm really up against it mentally.
And then the chapter goes on to say,
to be doomed an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face.
Now, if you don't think that's a funny line, think about that line.
To die an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face.
Why is that so funny?
Because when we're new, it's like we're on a quiz show and they bring us up and they go,
we got two doors and you have to choose one.
You ready?
die an alcoholic death
or live on a spiritual basis.
Oh, man.
Whoa.
That's it?
You know what I mean?
There's no door three?
Just coast along like I've been doing
and you almost feel like sneaking out
and getting on the phone,
calling up a doctor
listen doc
a friend of mine
is curious about this
how bad is
an alcoholic death
because I already know
what living on
a spiritual basis
I've never done it
but man
when I imagine it
you know
because what do I know
so I got to imagine
what would living
on a spiritual basis
be like
so what do I have
what are my role models
and I think
the biggest role model
I have is
Mother Teresa
You know what I mean?
You can't get beyond that.
And I'm going, that's wonderful for her.
You know what I mean?
But I'm going, I'm going to give all my stuff away,
and I'm just going to be over in some little poverty place
just taking care of people.
You know, it's almost like, what about bowling?
i mean does it have to be that intense does it you know what i mean i can't get too spiritual
i might give all my stuff away so i've got to control you know i mean this is the mind trying
to come in here talk about half measures you know what i mean yeah i'd like to get half spiritual and
and it turns out that there's no half help available there's no
middle ground you can't get a little bit sober you can't get a little bit spiritual and so that's
what makes it such a monumental program and uh so i'm sitting in there looking at this stuff you
know like whoa and then we start talking about what the bottom really is like if you went back
to drinking and then i go to meetings and i hear people who were willing to go beyond the nut ward
and get sick beyond where I dreamed of ever getting.
And as I started realizing this was the only alternative,
that if I continued drinking, that was going to happen to me.
That was the most spiritual thing I could be doing.
And if you knew, that's what you want to focus on,
because that will get you in to the open mind that is so necessary.
Nobody's going to jump up with the proof of the existence of anything.
But if you understand the hopelessness of your situation
and the reality that you're powerless over alcohol,
we might embrace this alternative.
So it's almost like we become spiritual by default.
You know what I mean?
I wasn't planning on this.
I would have never chosen any of this.
I'm not that kind of guy who's interested in any of this stuff.
I just had a deal.
It's like the mafia made me an offer I couldn't refuse.
You know what I mean?
It was like, you get spiritual or Guido comes by.
And so this almost sounds, you know, like, wow, what a strange way of getting people interested in spiritual principles.
But let's face it, that's how we all got interested, whether we admit it or not.
It was because the reality of our own nature was explained to us.
And it was explained that our problem was lack of power.
And so I wrestled with this.
And what I wrestled with was not wanting to lose total control over my life.
I wanted to become a little spiritual, but keep some bad stuff just to have fun with.
You know what I'm talking about?
And so when I look at, you know, we started into the seven deadly sins,
and we've got to get rid of all of those.
And I'm going, yeah, yeah, okay, pride, yeah, get rid of that.
I don't want pride.
I don't want anything to do with pride.
And then I kept going, no, but I'm proud of this.
And I always found exceptions.
And I remember there was a meeting up in Washington.
It was an old group.
I mean, this group had been around for a lot of years.
And they had, I don't know if you remember the old groups.
They used to have like about 50 character defects listed on a big board.
And somebody had hand-painted them all.
And lo and behold, on that board, there wasn't pride.
It was false pride.
And I remember reading that, and I said, that's it, false pride.
That's bad.
But some pride, like my pride, would be all right.
And I was in the Marine Corps at the time, and pride, I mean, I tell you, I must have gone four years just on the word pride, trying to justify it.
And it's, of course, like it says, it's not by accident that it heads the list, because it ends up justifying all the rest of them.
Got to have some pride.
And so as I examine this, like year after year, I would come up with, well, it certainly must be all right to be proud that my son is a good Little League player.
I'm so proud of him out there.
But when I got honest, I'll tell you what that word meant.
It meant, I want everyone to know that I'm the father of the kid that just hit that home run.
And he never would have hit the home run had I not been the father.
And I see you giving him a lot of the credit for that home run when it really belongs more over here.
You see what I'm saying?
It was, the pride always came back to me.
And as I moved along a little further,
I suddenly realized that I had the wrong word
for what I was trying to express.
And the correct word was grateful.
I'm so grateful that that boy has all that talent,
which he got not from me, but from God.
So if anybody wants to applaud that home run,
give God a big hand, because that's where the credit goes. So it was a question of
inventorying and going in. So pride was a hard one to even make a beginning on. Greed. When I
first got into AA, I didn't want to hear anything about the steps. I didn't want to hear anything
about meetings. I just wanted a loan. I just needed like $2,000. You know what I mean?
And I saw that as the answer to everything.
I had all this, whatever I was worrying me, I just said, you know, if I had $2,000.
So I just saw this as a greed, just the idea of not wanting to take care of myself
because there was so much lacking inside of me.
I felt this lacking because I was not interested in spirituality.
I was not going to understand that I could be filled from the inside out.
I saw that I had to get things from out there.
And so I just went right through the whole thing.
Envy, of course, I remember, you know, everybody, look at that car he's got,
and I've got this piece of crap, and I can't even afford a battery for it,
and I won't be driving it until next Wednesday when I get paid.
And you remember all the things that are going on.
And then lust, and I remember going, lust?
I want to get totally rid of lust?
Any of you all think about that, like 100% gone?
Does that worry you at all?
I mean, or am I the only one?
I mean, is that zero, like zero lust, right?
Zero.
I don't think we want that.
I think what we want, you know how Bill Rice in the 12 and 12,
we just don't want it to be enough so that we're raping people.
But they've got to have some of that energy going on.
In other words, no concept of what we were talking about in the sexuality area.
Gluttony.
I'm too skinny so I could skip that one.
That was one of the ones I could just go by.
But procrastination, being lazy.
I'd love to just not do anything.
When I retired, it took me one minute to get adjusted to it.
It just was like, whoa.
I'm so glad to not even say the word work anymore.
I love just, oh, I think I'll take another nap.
It just came natural.
So what I'm saying is I just found,
as I went through anything that you presented to me,
I qualified it and moved it down.
I certainly don't want to get rid of all of anything,
but I want to become better than I am.
I don't want to become a saint.
I just want to be thought of as a saint.
I don't want to be honest.
I want to have a reputation for being honest.
And then people will deal with me in business
and I can take care of them as appropriate.
You know what I mean?
I'll be honest most of the time,
but man, if we're not making our quota,
we've got to get in there.
so this is this this is the spiritual dilemma if you're new you're probably going man this
sounds difficult well it is it's very difficult it constantly involves changing our mind
changing what we set up for ourselves as an ideal because these ideals are very limited and
it's a struggle that's just going on and on now I was thinking about how this all got started
And I always like to give credit to Dr. Young.
And if you all remember the AA's origins, it really started when Roland Hazard, the millionaire from Rhode Island,
alcoholic, ended up probably going to lose the family business, which had been there forever,
and tried everything the United States had to offer.
and somebody finally came up with the idea that Carl Jung in Switzerland
was the last chance for this young man to possibly save his life.
And he went over there and spent a year seeing Dr. Jung.
At the end of the year, Dr. Jung said,
I've done everything that I can for you.
You understand the situation.
If you keep on drinking, you're going to end up in a sanitarium for life.
And he said, I understand that. I understand that.
so I think I've made all the changes I can in your personality
good luck, we'll see you later
and Roland left and got as far as Paris
where someone asked him the wrong question
and they said, would you like a drink?
he said, yes, I'd love a drink
and he's drunk again
and he came back to Dr. Young after some drinking
and again in total despair
and said, look what happened to me
and this is when Dr. Young
just said the most humble thing I can imagine
for the world's greatest psychiatrist
talking with this millionaire
and he said to him
there's nothing I can do for you
and whenever I see that
I think about the end of our readings in chapter 5
when it said no human power
could have relieved our alcoholism
and certainly Dr. Young symbolized the epitome of human power
that was available at that time.
And here was the absolute zenith of what could be done by mankind
and it looked this alcoholic straight in the eye and said,
there's nothing I can do for you.
It was the ultimate first step.
Do you understand powerless now, Roland?
and it hit him like a ton of bricks that oh my god it's over for me and dr young said now i have
heard of some cases like yours where people have gone and sought and a spiritual experience
and they have recovered so i would suggest to you that you go out and look for some sort of
spiritual experience and roland did and he found the oxford movement oh thanks dan
one second
and he found the Oxford movement
and got sober
because it had all the principles
that AA was to adopt
and of course
it wasn't long after that
then the second character
that got the message to Bill
Abby Thatcher
got drunk one last time
up in Manchester, Vermont
and they finally
were sick of him in the town.
He had already driven his car into a farmhouse.
And if you remember the story in the big book
and asked the lady for a cup of coffee
when the car reached the kitchen.
And then he went out and was going to paint his house.
You know, his family disowned him
and gave him the summer home.
And he's, like all us alcoholics,
he said, oh my God, I've got to do something constructive.
I'm going to paint my house, a huge house.
So he bought some paint and ladders and brushes
and got out there and got about 10 square feet painted
and then sat down to admire the work that he had done.
He sort of got a little beach chair and sat out in front
and sort of imagined all the rest of the house painted, you know,
and having a few drinks.
And some birds came by and crapped on the paint.
And it just infuriated him.
And he went in and got a couple shotguns
and sat out there waiting for birds to come by.
Boom, you know, and the people in the neighborhood
thought a war was starting and it's just Evie over there blasting away.
And so he gets in front of the judge, and the judge says, I'm going to have to do something with you.
And he said, well, maybe I could call somebody.
And Roland Hazard was up in Manchester doing some Oxford work,
and the judge released Ebi, who they had known each other, in his personal recognizance,
and he whisked him off to the Oxford group.
And not too many months later, Ebi thought about Bill Wilson and went and said to him,
Bill, I found something. You ought to come and check it out. And Bill checked it out,
and the rest is history. So many years later, Bill realized that he had never closed the loop
with Dr. Young. And so he wrote him a letter and said, you may not realize this, but you saw a
patient named Roland Hazard, and this is what happened as a result of what you told him,
that you could do nothing, that he should seek this spiritual answer, and he did.
And now we have found AA, and we consider that you are one of the founding energies
of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
We're very grateful.
And he wrote the letter shortly before Dr. Young died, and Dr. Young got to write back.
In the grapevine, you'll see this exchange of letters every so often between Bill and Dr. Young,
And basically, Dr. Young said, geez, I often wondered what happened to Mr. Hazard.
Back then, when he came to see me, probably in the late 20s, early 30s,
he said it wasn't safe for a psychiatrist like me to professionally talk about God
because the rest of the psychiatrists would laugh at me.
But Young was very spiritual.
If you've read any of his stuff with the symbols and all of the things,
he was very much into spirituality and God being the center of everything.
But he said, I couldn't really say that back then.
And now I can talk more freely about it.
And that's what I wanted for Roland, because I knew that this is what was his answer.
Because I've since looked at a lot of alcoholics.
And I have concluded that one of the things alcoholics have is an inordinate longing for God.
Now, think about that as the disease of alcoholism, that the real problem us alcoholics have.
And we don't know it.
is that we miss God a lot.
Only we don't know that's what our problem is.
We know that we're just constantly restless, irritable, and discontent.
And we use our intellect and we look at it and we go,
you're not going to see that we're missing God,
that God is missing in our lives.
It's just that money must be it.
We've got to find something to relieve this freaking thing that's always nagging me.
It was always there.
Something was missing.
I just don't feel right like other people.
And so I'm struggling in the material world to fix that underlying problem.
And nothing would fix it until I found alcohol.
And alcohol is the closest thing to spirituality that I think you can get.
It is almost identical to spiritual experiences.
Suddenly, a power greater than ourselves fixes us from the inside out.
Nothing out there changes.
Nothing.
You don't get any money.
No, the world doesn't change.
Nothing, except we live in a different world.
We're at peace with ourselves.
We really have found an answer.
Unfortunately, vodka is not a loving higher power
and does not have our best interests at heart,
but it shows how we were struggling with a problem we could never put our finger on.
And no matter what we did to try and relieve this problem, it wouldn't go away.
You can talk to AAs who came in and became incredibly successful financially
and ask them, did that fix that underlying problem that you had?
And they said, no, I was thinking of committing suicide on my yacht.
I was thinking of committing suicide on my yacht.
Get in incredible physical shape.
Become workout addicts.
And then you just stand there in front of the mirror just going,
it ain't gone, it's still there.
Get on the health food diets, get on whatever it is, get the perfect relationship.
It couldn't be better.
But then when you're alone, you're just going, God, I still have it, whatever it is.
It's just not fixed.
I need to fix something.
And that's when we get to the last part of that thing in chapter five.
And this is the part that I think, last sentence of what I was talking about,
that no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
And then the next line, but God could and would if he were sought.
Now, if you're new, I'll guarantee you, this is what you just heard me say.
That God could and would.
That's what you just heard me say.
You didn't really sink in if he were sought.
That little part just, it was almost like, oh yeah, God could and would.
Thank you, God, I'm here.
I'm in the program and I'm just going to meetings and I'm not drinking this and I'm in God's hands.
Boy, is it great.
And then nothing seems to happen.
And so maybe we've got to focus in on a word that's right in there and it's called seeking.
Which is exactly what Dr. Young told Roland Hazard.
Go seek a spiritual solution to your problem.
And he did.
And he found it.
And so, I don't know where I came up with this, but this is, in my mind, the evolution of seeking as I experienced it in my life.
And the first time I ever remembered seeking was in grammar school, hide and seek.
Okay, somebody hides, you know.
Remember the first time you played that?
You said, what's the game?
Hide and seek.
Okay, so one guy hides, and then what do I do?
You seek.
What's that?
You find him.
Okay.
You remember how hard you looked?
It was just like, I know where I'm going.
I mean, you were totally focused.
It was just like, mm, mm, mm.
I mean, it was zooming because you wanted to be the one to find it, whoever this was.
Yeah, it's over here.
It's over here.
It's over here.
You weren't thinking about anything else.
It was just like, mm.
And the next time I remember getting involved with that was Easter.
And my mother would hide the Easter baskets for my sister and I.
And then she'd say, and we'd go, can we start?
Can we start?
Can we start?
You know, like, we're going to really focus on this.
and go and then i go you know and i'm just
but even there with all that candy that i could hardly wait for if it went more than like 30
minutes the seeking power started diminishing can you give me a hint give me a hint give me a hint
give me a hint am i warm am i warm am i warm am i warm because seeking takes a lot of energy to
stay that focused. You know that? You know what I mean? And finally, oh, I got it. But
this is, you can get the idea of what it is. And then the last example I remember was we
had a golden retriever when I was probably 12 or whatever and had him for years and years
and he ran away. I don't know if you ever had your favorite dog run away. But I looked
for that dog really hard and for a long time. I mean, I looked for that dog. I would go
out in the woods and call his name two years after he had been gone. I'd go, maybe tonight
I can find him. Maybe because I missed him so much. So there was seeking. Now we come
in and we read chapter 5. It says, God couldn't would if he were sought. Now let's discuss
some of the seeking that we've done. Here's a typical seeking day for us alcoholics. You
ready? We start the day with a 24-hour day book on the toilet. Okay. But we're late today. We
have a very important appointment, and God knows I might get a deal out of this, so we have to
speed read it. Oh, you know, that was cool. And if anybody asked us on the way out what we just
reds. I forgot. I was thinking about this. At the end of the day, we get down on our
knees and we go, thank you very God. Oh, man, am I tired? Well, maybe I'll cut it short
here. I'm very, very grateful. I'm very grateful. Well, out of 24 hours, we had somewhere around
63 seconds of seeking. So I don't know if that qualifies. I don't even know if you could
get in the dictionary under seeking with that you know what i mean it's now that's not seeking at
all that's uh messing around that's what that is that isn't even seeking and so i think it's i
started looking at that and i just went god this is i'm not this is not that huge priority
and it's because it doesn't appear to be life or death like the dog was it's it's like i could
delay seeking one more day and it really won't make that much difference. I could delay really
trying to grow another day. And I believe that's why we have tragedies come into our lives.
Everybody who's been sober has had things happen to them. Painful, painful things, awful things.
And if you looked at it in the big picture, it's just God sitting up there going, God, I love that
wonderful Alice back there. I just want her closer to me, but I can tell you she ain't going to get
closer the way she is. I guess I'll just have to have this thing awful happen, and it doesn't make
sense at the time. When I was sober two years, I went to a meeting every night. I did everything
my sponsor told me, and I didn't get promoted in the Marine Corps, and I got, I'm out. I had 14
years as a regular officer, six kids to support, go to a meeting every night, I'm out. And I remember
going to meetings and people would say, anybody got a topic? Yes, I got a topic. And you know,
what's the topic? Getting thrown out of the Marine Corps. That's not really a good topic for
AEA. Well, I don't care. I got thrown out of the Marine Corps. And I heard that stupid advice that
you hear in AEA where people don't even, they don't even listen to your problem. They tell you
stuff like double up on your meetings, work with new people, say the serenity prayer, say the
prayer of St. Francis. I wanted them to say, you were thrown out of the Marine Corps? Oh, my God.
Listen, I own this big corporation. I'm looking for a top executive. Would $65,000 a year in your
own car be all right? Now, that would be some spiritual help. I mean, you know, just tell me
to say the serenity prayer. That's really helpful. You know, I'm just... I had this huge resentment.
And then three months after I was out, I was in a lot of pain,
and I was just thinking about how unfair this was and what about God and all that.
And there was a little story in the Washington Post about page five, a paragraph about that big.
It said, Marine Corps instruction team killed in Denver in plane crash.
And that was my team.
And if I had been promoted like I wanted, I would have been on the plane, and that would have been it.
And I remember realizing when I read that, that God knew I read it.
I'd just been complaining to God, like mad.
And I knew that he knew that I read it, because he knows everything.
And I felt awkward, to say the least.
You know what I'm saying?
And so I said, well, if you'd just told me that was going to happen, I wouldn't have been complaining.
About all this stuff.
And so here we are.
See, all that the chapter of the agnostic and all that AA is,
is trying to overcome our objections to our ego staying in charge.
That's all spirituality is.
And that's all the steps are.
All the steps are is that we have all these obstacles called character defects
that are blocking this channel.
And none of this stuff can get out.
So we have no...
You can put a lie detector on most of it.
Have you ever had any contact with God?
No.
And we'd be telling the truth.
It's blocked.
We can't have any contact.
We shut it up and the disease cemented it.
I mean, it just sealed it.
So we're telling the truth when we say,
no, I don't have any of this at all.
And so that's what this is.
We're just going to pull all this stuff out of the way
so that the channel can be opened again.
And I remember just going,
you want me to believe in this?
You want me to believe that it's possible to be guided by God?
You know, I'm going to turn my whole life over and blah, blah, blah.
And I remember when I was 12 years old, I joined the Boy Scouts.
Anybody ever join that?
And I only was in one year.
And we went to the thing, and probably after about the 10th meeting,
the scoutmaster got up and he said, this is a compass.
And I'm going to explain how the compass works.
And then you can keep it in your pocket.
And if you're ever in the woods and you're totally lost,
And if you don't find your way out, you're going to starve to death or freeze to death or whatever.
But this compass will get you out.
Because there's this big rock at the North Pole.
And this needle will always point at that big rock.
And it'll save your life.
So all you do is turn your life over to this needle that's pointing at the big rock.
Now, as a Boy Scout, I didn't say, big rock at the North Pole.
You want me to turn my life, risk it entirely on the theory there's a rock at the North Pole that this needle is pointing?
That's a, that's a, I just went, that's terrific.
Put it in my pocket.
I was now ready to risk my life that this needle pointed there.
and then later on the Marine Corps when I got in flight school
and we're going through all the different things
and they said now we're going to go to instrument training
oh great, great
and here's the deal
we have this little radio station on the end of the runway
and it sends an invisible radio beam up to your plane
and if you dial this little thing in and listen
and you hear the A and the N and the steady beam
you could come down right between these two huge mountains
without hitting them
and you will end up right on the end of the runway
and I didn't say to my
Are you kidding? You want me to believe that a little beeping thing down there is going to make me miss the mountains?
I'm going to go up and put my life on... No, I just said, isn't that wonderful?
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and you just come down.
Right down there, there's a damn runway right at the end of the thing. Boom.
Then I come in here and you go, you know, there's this wonderful supreme being at the center of the universe.
and if you will follow these steps
you will establish contact
and be guided by this incredible supreme being
and I'm going
you've got to be kidding
I'm going to turn my
what do you think I am, a sucker?
you want me to believe that?
well see I never would have believed it
because there's no proof
I've heard the rest of you
so I had to take your word for it
but it all comes back to
I have a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer.
And so I came into this thing and I finally gave in.
And I just said, okay, what's the deal?
Let's go.
I'm in.
I'm in.
And when I said I was in, that started the whole deal.
Now I'm in.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm going to do the deal.
What is the deal?
No more, well, I don't think so.
I don't do that.
And then, of course, results started happening.
So if you're new and you've been studying the steps for years and nothing has happened,
you can study them for 20 more years and nothing will happen.
You have to do them.
They only become visible when we do these things.
And then we can see what prior to that was invisible.
It only becomes visible through action.
And then you actually see the transformation in your own life.
And you start seeing a different world out there,
just like alcohol made it a different world.
Spirituality, the power of this higher power, makes people look more friendly,
makes the world a more comfortable place, and makes you equal to everybody else.
That's the power that is missing when we're just trying to go out there by ourselves.
The bottom line, when I look back on everything that I've learned in AA,
this is my favorite place to go, and I'm going to spend the last few minutes on this.
It's in the 12 and 12 under the 10th step.
And it's how to live one day at a time.
That's what this is all about.
So when we finally clear up the wreckage of the past
and we've done all of the surrendering and inventorying that we can,
we're now ready to get the big reward
because all of spirituality is learning how to live in the now
and let everything sit over here and just be focused.
And the tenth step is where it's all done.
And so here's this little sentence in there, that axiom,
that if you're disturbed, no matter what the cause,
there's something wrong with you. That doesn't sound like a lot of wisdom. It's the most I've
ever seen anywhere, that if you're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong
with you. Well, what's wrong with me? I'm disturbed. That's what's wrong with me. That's what's wrong
with me. Someone did something outrageous, absolutely unjustified. Everyone would agree
it was unjustified. So I deserve to be disturbed. You understand what we've just said? I deserve to
go to jail and stay there. I have sentenced myself to being disturbed because my ego wants something.
And I've just shut myself off from God. As soon as I slam down disturbance, I'm on my own. You
want to be disturbed god says go do it but you're going to do that alone so now it's just me against
the world i don't even have my higher power anymore so when i'm disturbed so what is it saying
it says we've got to have a way to get undisturbed we got to make being undisturbed our top priority
and as you start through the day anytime you get undisturbed time out and get under if you get
disturbed get undisturbed again and there's millions of ways to do it just stop get out the
little serenity prayer card. Read that a couple of times. Call the sponsor. Thank you. Now move
forward. It's almost like you're not allowed to advance in a disturbed fashion. Because anytime
you advance in a disturbed fashion, you do things you have to make amends for later on.
And you treat people badly. You got disturbed legitimately. Somebody goes, oh, look what they
did. So you go into the dry cleaning place and take it out on the lady in there. Where the hell's
the suit you know what i mean and then she retaliates and then you do the same thing in
the supermarket you do the same thing wherever else you're going and you get home and you go
the world is filled with cranky people i can't stand it out there we have no idea that we did
that to all the people out there this was brought home in spades to me by my sister who now has 25
years in AA. When my parents, they're both passed away now, but some years ago they were having
their 50th wedding anniversary. She's planning the party up in Connecticut and I'm going to go
and she's calling me. And then she said, Ann, we're going to invite Uncle John. I went, oh God,
Sue, don't invite Uncle John. We're trying to have a happy family get together. God, please,
there's any way we can not invite him. He's just so obnoxious and abrasive and all this. And she
said, oh, he only does that when you're around. I went, what? Oh, no, everybody loves him. He's
great. He's a wonderful guy. And I went, that couldn't be possible. You know what I mean? But
she had a lot of years at the time. And I just, so I said, okay, I'm going to trust her. I'm going
to say he is a great guy. So I'm going to just pretend he's a great guy. And so when I saw him,
I ran up and I just went, hey, Uncle John, how are you doing?
I'm so glad to see you.
And I think it just blew his mind.
He went, well, I'm so glad to see you.
And he was a great guy.
You know what I'm talking about?
It was, I must have had some other idea and just, you know, brought out the worst in him.
And that's what us alcoholics have the power to do is to bring out the worst in people.
And then we come home at night and complain about the world that we live in
and we don't see our role in it at all.
So it all comes back to never do anything when you're disturbed.
In other words, pick a day next week and make it Undisturbed Thursday.
I may not get anything else done, but I'm not going to get disturbed.
I'm going to go out and I'm going to let everybody be wrong.
Go ahead. Hey, do you want to drive that way?
It's free driving day.
You just go. I don't care.
I'm backing off three car lanes.
You just drive any damn way you want.
I'm not into this.
because I'm going to go through without being disturbed.
I'm just not going to be disturbed.
Well, what happens when we go through a day like that?
We have so much more energy than we normally have.
We are so close to our intuitive, creative side
that answers just flow in to problems.
It's so easy to make decisions when you're not disturbed.
We're in touch with our spiritual side when we're undisturbed.
We are allowing God to flow through us and guide us in our thinking and our actions,
and we're treating people in such a loving fashion that they're loving us back.
We come home at night and we just go, man, I ran into the greatest people today.
It was just amazing the people that I ran into.
And so when you look at that in the tenth step, it just said, now, how can we stay undisturbed?
Well, it suggests the spot check inventory, but there was the four points,
the honest analysis of what's wrong, really be honest, what's going on here,
Is it my role or was it them?
If we decide that the blame belongs somewhere else, we forgive them.
If we decide it's our fault, we make an amend.
And a top priority is self-restraint in the very beginning.
And that's what we talk about.
Go out of the house in the morning with a 10-second cushion.
Let anybody do what they want.
And if we get disturbed, we allow 10 seconds to go by so we can get absolutely furious
and then come back down before we do anything.
And this to me is just one of the great spiritual things that I've picked out of living a day at a time.
If I'm undisturbed, I treat other people like God's children, and they treat me back,
and I come home at the end of the day, and I go, what a great day.
And it all was because of the priorities that I put in my life.
And the last thing that I was going to talk about was forgiveness.
because my ego sets limits on that.
Yeah, I can forgive up to a limit, up to a limit.
You know what I mean?
But sometimes people go over the line.
They shouldn't be forgiven.
It's almost like that's going to hurt them.
The only person who hurts is me when I decide not to forgive.
So I'm trying to go, has there ever been a teacher,
has there ever been anywhere where they sort of gave us a clue
as to what the limit might be.
And I was thinking about a teacher
that we had about 2,000 years ago
and they're nailing him to a cross
getting ready to kill him.
And he said, forgive them.
They know not what they do.
So in my scorebook,
when something awful happens to me,
it has to exceed being nailed to a cross and killed
in order to qualify for not forgiving.
Okay?
In other words, I think that's sort of the standard.
You have something that's worse than being nailed to a cross and killed.
I'd go ahead and hold on to that one.
You follow what I'm saying?
It's all ego.
There's a wonderful reading in the May 3rd.
It was just in May 3rd in that little 24-hour day book about forgiveness.
and it's talking about you're having a hard time forgiving you had time for you forget about trying
to forgive anybody you got to get rid of self you've got to get rid of self you know the prayer
of saint francis we have to kill self we have to kill this ego we got to get rid of this self-centered
part of us and as we work on that by applying our principles talking our sponsors praying
meditating, whatever it takes, if we can reduce that self down to a nothingness, we will find
there's nothing inside of us that remembers the injury. Because the only part that was hurt,
the self, is gone. And we're free. We're free. So it's always a test of our self gets hurt,
and that's not who we are. That isn't us at all. We're the person behind all that. And to me,
that's what spirituality is, is the willingness to take this journey with the hope that we
will finally solve that fundamental disease, dis-ease that has been inside of us all along
that Carl Jung suggested. We just miss God a lot. And part of us is dying to get back
in contact. We're just dying to get back so that we have this channel so open that all of our needs
are being taken care of from the inside. And therefore, we don't need anything from the world.
So we can just let it go. We can just have a wonderful time and see where we can be useful.
Useful is, you know, we just have that throughout our literature. Make me useful. And so it's a
question of giving God all the credit, just becoming an instrument. Instead of trying to be
as huge as we can be, we try to be as small as we can be. Remember what a big shot we wanted to be
Well, we are creating a vessel to go through the sea of life. And when you design an ego-centered
vessel, you have created a boat that's about 120 feet wide, 15 feet deep, and you're pushing it
through and when we can become selfless we can go right through a screen door in other words there's
nothing that can hit our ego because we've made it so small so anything can happen the only pain
that human beings experience is not getting their way there is no other pain i'm just not getting
my way and the program suggests well don't have a way then nothing can go against your way you
Remember that?
And then the 12 and 12 said,
well, I'll be the hole in the donut.
No, I won't.
I'll be an instrument of thy peace.
I'll be an instrument.
I don't have to be anything
because I'm everything from the inside out.
And if you're new,
this is my wish for you,
that you just try this.
And the reason you should try it
because everything else is so awful.
That's why you try it.
That's why you try it.
You don't try it because you believe me
or anybody else.
You just, you're tired.
of everything the way it is so surrender your will into this path get a guide follow it down
and the path isn't going to go out there it's going to go in here and we're going to open you
up so that you can see what a magnificent person you are that's aa's present to you is you and when
you arrive here the wrappings around you are pretty lousy it's not like the best wrapping
paper in the world it's pretty smelly and it's not too good and you don't really think you ought
to open it because it looks like it's going to be a pretty bad present and you don't want to look in
there but the program forces you to get away the artificial exteriors get rid of all of that stuff
and see what's really in there you are going to love yourself you've never seen yourself in all
your magnificence you've never seen what a loving caring person you are it's been trapped all these
crazy ideas that you heard that are just baloney are preventing you from carrying out what you
want to do which is to help the next person and just be a instrument of god's grace in this world
it is the greatest life and we struggle every day with our egos to
get close to it and that's why a is so much fun thank you all very much god bless everybody