Sandy B. Steps 7 Through 12

Okay, Bill, are you ready? All right. Well, good evening, everybody. My name is Sandy
Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Hi, Sandy. And I want to welcome everybody
back. If you're here for the first time, I've mentioned this every week as sort of a disclaimer
that this is not a workshop on the 12 steps
and this is not a how to do it.
So if anything you pick up here
and you're talking with your sponsor
and he sees it differently or she sees it differently,
you go along with your sponsor.
I'm here to have some fun.
I've been around AA a long time
and I got a lot of stories.
And so we tell stories and try to have fun.
And I try to make them applicable to the principles involved in each of the steps that we're talking about.
And I'm getting so old that I have to make notes.
I left a whole bunch of history out last time.
And so I brought them along and said, I've never done that.
It's a big blow to my ego to have to use notes.
It drives me crazy.
But you'll have to put up with it.
But anyway, I had some people tell me that they've never heard my story.
And they don't know who they're talking to.
You know, who is this guy?
Is he really an alcoholic?
And so I don't have time to tell my stories.
But I did bring a collection of slides.
And we'll just run through them real quick.
and I think at the end of your picture is worth a thousand words.
And so we'll just run through these,
and you'll probably get a good idea of the type of guy that I am.
So if we can turn on the first one.
Now that's a shot of me before I became an alcoholic.
And I want you to notice how well I stand up,
how close people stand to me
and how clear and blue my eyes are.
This is several years later after I became an alcoholic.
You'll notice I'm having quite a problem standing.
And there's no one within 25 feet of me.
And my eyes are missing.
this is very unusual that somebody would have a camera handy
when you're having your first drink
but this is actually me taking my first drink
this is shot of me losing my first drink
for those of you that aren't alcoholics
when I say I lost the drink
I don't mean I don't know where it is
I mean I no longer have possession of it.
So moving ahead rather quickly,
here's a shot of me throwing up in prep school.
Here's a shot of me throwing up at Yale.
Here's a shot of me after I became a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps
throwing up in an oxygen mask.
So that is something you want to avoid if you can.
A lot of you may not know, but the microphone is in the oxygen mask.
Sometimes I would hear from the tower something like this.
Dixieland 5-3, this is Atsugi Tower.
You're breaking up.
please repeat all after leaving 40,000 feet
this is 1957 it's a landmark year because it until I got sober and had about 25 years this
This is the first time I ever had a brand new car.
And this is me driving out of the lot in my brand new car.
Here I am picking up a hitchhiker in my brand new car.
Here's the hitchhiker sticking me up in my brand new car.
Here's the hitchhiker driving off in my brand new car.
Here's a shot of me hitchhiking.
Here's a shot of the hitchhiker picking me up in my brand new car.
Luckily, she didn't recognize me.
Okay, moving ahead real fast.
here's a shot of my children and my wife turning their back on me. Here's a shot of my parents
turning their back on me. Here's a shot of the Marine Corps turning its back on me. Here's
a shot of me having a grand mal seizure and ending up in the nut ward. Here's a shot about
six days later when I went completely
wacko and they caught me
and they're putting me in this straitjacket.
As you
can see, they didn't have my size.
I take a
42 long and that's a 38
regular, as you can see.
When things
go bad, they really go bad.
This is
after I got in Alcoholics
Anonymous and it's a shot of
me, eagerly working the steps with my sponsor.
I don't know why, but he always kept his military pistol
on the table when we were
working the steps.
This is ten years later. It's a shot of me smiling.
Twenty years later, a shot of me smiling. All the rest of the shots are just
shots of me smiling, and it's been that way ever since.
So there, I hope the slideshow gave you a little bit of an appreciation
that I really am an alcoholic.
Leaving 40,000 feet.
I don't know.
I understand.
Okay, we spent maybe the next 15, 20 minutes or so talking about some of the history.
And we basically were doing the 30s, the 40s, and the 50s this time,
and then the 60s next week, which you'll understand why it's important to me next week.
That's when I arrived.
Anyway, as the 40s came to an end, Ann Smith died.
And we always like to mention Ann, who was Dr. Bob's wife,
because she is given great credit by Bill and a lot of the old-timers
for being the one who really was a spiritual leader
who developed a lot of the readings, who just kept everybody on course.
She was a very stabilizing influence on all of the early alcoholics.
also Jack Alexander wrote a second article
in the Saturday Evening Post
and this was, we mentioned the first one
the second one was to go back to AA nine years later
and take a look
and he really does a wonderful job
of showing all the pluses
and some of the little problems that AA groups have
but again it was a remarkably positive
publicity about AA
which is our program of attraction, not promotion.
We let other people say all the good things about AA,
and AA doesn't do that.
We just help drunks.
And the rest just takes care of itself,
which is kind of what a spiritual life is.
We just do God's work, and he takes care of everything else.
It's very hard to get to that point
because our ego doesn't want to be cut out of the picture,
but certainly that article helped us to see that.
The other, Dr. Silkworth passed away, and of course we talked about him.
He wrote The Doctor's Opinion, and he was very crucial in Bill Wilson getting sober
and Towns Hospital, et cetera.
They had the first general service conference in New York,
and it was the first time they got organized as AA as a whole
and after the conference, Lois and a few other women went up to Stepping Stones,
which is where the Wilsons lived, and made the plans that became the foundation of Al-Anon.
And so you can see it was a very few people were responsible for all these things that we have
down to this day.
Bill, oh, in 53, the 12 and 12 was published.
I graduated from college that year.
I think they were studying me
because that was the years that
Yale University was studying alcoholism.
And they were the original university
that was studying it,
and then it went on to Rutgers,
and I don't know where it is now,
but that was the origin
where they were just trying to get a handle on this
and Dr. Jelnik came along
and some people who went to treatment in the old days
remember the Jelnik curve
where it goes all the way to the bottom
and then you come to AA
and you see it come all the way back up.
Then we had the 20th anniversary in St. Louis
and they had 5,000 people.
So you can see the increase
in the numbers of our international conventions.
So at the end of 20 years, we have 5,000, and I forget what they had in Toronto, 65,000 or something like that.
So you can see how much bigger AA is and how it continues to just blossom.
Now, the last thing, oh, and then they also published AA Comes of Age and the second edition of the big book.
Now, the second edition of the big book, this is the third edition, but the second edition had a cover very similar to this,
and that was the one I had.
It came out in 55 and I came in 64
so everybody had second editions then
and the unique feature about the second edition was
it had a reversible cover
so you could take the cover off the book
and the back of it was the same color, blue
and then you could put that on
and nobody would know what the name of the book was
that you were reading as you were sitting on a bus.
You follow what I'm saying?
and it was to protect people from knowing, you know, that we were in AA in case that bothered us.
Also, in 54, and you'll see it on here, AA adopted the circle and the triangle.
And it appeared on all the pamphlets.
It was the official symbol of AA.
And for whatever reason, in 1994, they took it off.
I'm going to try and find out.
Maybe one of the delegates is here and they can tell me why they did that.
But it doesn't appear now.
But it's still, we talk about the circle and the triangle as if it were still there.
Okay, so that gets us through the 40s and 50s.
and leaves me plenty of time to get back to our discussion of the steps
or what I'm trying to do is to talk about stories.
And as you know, we've been using one analogy to carry us through,
and that was the slide projector.
And for those of you that are new,
we came up with this because we've learned through bitter experience
that it's impossible to achieve happiness
by trying to control the world out there
or the world on the screen, if it were a slide projector.
But that's what we were taught to do when we were little.
They said, take a look, you've got to succeed in that world
and you've got to accomplish this and all that.
So our eyes and our focus were always out there
to see what's going on.
Who's getting ahead of us?
What's the problem?
And as a result, we saw lots of problems
because there were other people trying to get
the same stuff we were trying to get
because we were convinced that that's where happiness lay,
in getting that screen arranged to suit me.
And we came into AA and we said,
wait a minute, if you're a slide projector
and you don't like what's up on the screen, why are you walking
up to the screen trying to move all the images around?
Why don't we come back into the booth, the projection
booth, and see if we can change the slides
and then see if the picture up there doesn't become
more pleasing. And that was exactly what we
were talking about as we inventoried in the fourth step, well, what are all these slides that I keep
projecting up there that cause me great fear, anxiety, anger, envy, lust, whatever it is.
And they are repeated all the time. Everybody has their own pet set of slides. Everybody has their
own pet set of problems. In other words, somebody over here worries all the time they're going
to fall off a cliff. Nobody on this side is even remotely worried about something like
that. They're worried about not having enough money or not getting as much attention as
someone else does. Or, whatever it is,
we find that we repeat these stories and these slides
that we started putting together when we were young
and we just keep playing them. Well, there I am. Not adequate.
Just like ten years ago. Yeah, there I am.
Not much, huh? There it is.
You come back in 15 years. Well, let's put a slide of you up there.
Yeah, there I am, still a piece of crap.
It's been that way since I was...
I've got to go up and fix that.
I'm going to go put some good clothes on that person.
I'm going to run up there and get the makeup done a little bit better.
Well, now I'm a piece of crap with good makeup on.
It hasn't changed anything because we've got to come back
and see what's wrong with these slides.
And we talked about the fact that how are these slides made?
They're made by thinking.
All problems are created solely by thinking.
That's how every problem we have is created, by thinking.
It is not that I got fired.
That's an event.
I didn't have anything to do about it.
And it's not a problem because I will go look for another job.
The problem is I'm very angry that I got fired because it's threatening me and I'm frightened.
That's the problem.
How did I get that problem?
Oh, I just thought it up.
I said, I'm very frightened that I got fired.
Well, did the boss come in and say, you're fired and you're frightened?
He didn't say that.
He just said, you're fired.
We're cutting back, you know.
We're not doing enough business.
So I, my slide maker, which is my ego, goes, yay, here's a chance to generate some more trouble.
And I just start thinking about it.
And you know the pattern.
We can make about 15 slides out of that.
Well, I won't have any health insurance.
Then when I get sick, I won't be able to afford the doctors,
so any small sickness will soon turn into a big sickness.
I'll probably get malnutrition. I can't afford food.
I'll be slowly starving to death.
And you miss two payments on the mortgage, they take the house.
I read the fine print in there, so now I have malnutrition on the streets.
You haven't got home yet from being fired.
This is the, and as you all know, we could go on forever over all kinds of events that happen.
And so the reason that we have sponsors and have these steps is to allow somebody else to see what's going on.
and they come into the booth and they go,
wait a minute, all that's happened is you've been fired.
You made up all the rest of this stuff.
We've got to get rid of this.
We're going to take this one out, this one out, this one out.
And that's the wonderful thing of not trying to see anything on our own.
This is one of the great lessons of the fifth step.
the truth about ourselves requires a third dimension.
It was like when I was flying photo missions.
We would take two pictures very close of the same thing.
It would be like a 70% overlap.
So that when they got the photos back, they could put them like this,
and then when they looked in, they saw the third dimension,
and they could measure how deep craters were, how deep trenches were,
and how high something else was.
And that's what another person, in most cases our sponsor, does.
It puts things in perspective.
And so we learn this by inviting someone into the booth, into the projection booth.
And we find out that the way to make the picture so that it's the most comfortable thing in the world is to remove all the slides.
All of the slides because they are simply my mind's reaction to all the events I've ever had.
The events aren't up there, it's my reaction to the events.
You follow what I'm saying?
That event happened.
Oh yes, that's the most outrageous thing
that ever happened to me.
Do you see what I'm saying?
It just happened.
It wasn't outrageous to anyone else.
It's the most outrageous.
And so, spirituality occurs
not by learning anything.
It occurs by unlearning.
by undoing what we have put together that really isn't real.
It's our entire existence of ideas which we put inside ourselves
that were nothing more than reactions to something that happened.
And then we create an entire story based on the reactions.
and in that world
which becomes just a show business world
there's no God
and it gets very lonely
loneliness
authors have been writing about human loneliness
since almost the beginning of time
that how do you deal
with the realization
that you're actually,
when you really cut through it all,
all alone here.
Well,
we're all alone
because we made up a story
that we're all alone.
We're the only ones in it.
It's just like a dream.
Did you ever have a dream
that you weren't in?
and the same with these stories all of the stories if each one of us got up and
shared all the slides we would be the star of every slide
just like you the ones i just showed you here i am throwing up here i am blah blah and if we
went inside of each of us with our thinking, you would go, oh yeah, that's the time I.
Maybe they're positive ones. That's the time I scored a touchdown. And everybody went,
yay. So now all I want to do is go back and play that one slide. There they are. They're
still applauding. I know, but you're 58. I know, but I want to play that slide. Makes
me feel wonderful to play that slide. And so as we discussed the possibility in the
sixth step of getting rid of every slide, or as the step says, we're entirely ready
to have God remove all these defects of character. What is a character defect? It's a slide.
it's a wrong story
it is not true
if we could ever get willing
to have these slides erased
then as we talked about last week
when we turn the projector on
the only thing that will come out
is pure white light
which is our true nature
that is our creator
shining through us
and when that light appears
on the outside world
it illumines it
the way it's supposed to be
and we see people in an entirely different manner
and when they are bathed in that light
which is what you feel when you come to AA.
I don't know what's going on here, but it feels good.
You're feeling some of this spiritual energy.
You're feeling concern from other people with nothing in return for them.
And it makes you feel entirely different.
So instead of being self-centered alcoholics, which we've been all our lives,
and our specialty is bringing out the worst in people,
which we're all very good at.
You know what I'm talking about?
We had a plane and we landed somewhere to get it fixed
and we were there about five days, some little peaceful town out in Iowa.
And I think that town is probably still recovering from that.
where they're fighting with each other
because we were able to bring out
the worst in those people.
And that's what we do.
We just, let me know.
I don't understand.
Let me talk to the manager.
You know what I mean?
Just, you know, the...
That's because that's what's being played.
This place is unfair.
You see what I'm saying?
They rip you off in here.
Where did that slide come from?
There's a bunch of people over here
that think it's wonderful.
Oh, no, it's not.
They rip you off.
They rip you off.
Where'd that come from?
I don't know, but it's there.
I can see it.
I can see it.
I'm projecting it up there.
So when I see a place that rips me off, which I created,
then I emotionally react to it.
God, I'm getting ripped off.
You see what I'm saying?
I rip myself off, and then I go,
God, I feel terrible about getting ripped off here.
it's just astounding the emotional reaction
that we have to erroneous thoughts
and that's why this trusting your feelings
is a tough one in the spiritual world
because a lot of those are caused by our own thinking
which isn't true
so that's why we run them by someone else
I'm feeling this way, well get rid of it, it's not true
Oh, thank you.
You follow what I'm saying?
And our sponsors can see that.
Or they can say, well, now that I'd be concerned about.
You see what I'm saying?
And that's why we never try to evaluate ourselves on our own.
And these are the great principles that come out of the steps five and six and seven.
They're huge steps.
Now, when that light shines on people, it brings out the best in them.
Brings out the very best in them.
And when you finish your day, you come home and you go,
God, I had a great day.
And we have no idea that we caused it.
The light just went around, having people respond to it.
Hi.
I mean, you know, it's just, that's what happens.
Just a smile sometimes.
You'll see what happens in a dry cleaning place or something like that.
Hey, good day, thanks for your service.
Oh, God, I always love coming in here.
And then they go, oh, really?
Wow, wow, I love working in this place.
See how powerful that is.
So the light itself is the solution.
Now here's the problem.
The problem is trying to get all the slides
becoming willing to have them all gone.
Because that wouldn't leave much of me.
You know what I mean?
Me.
There would be really no me.
There'd be like just God talking through me.
I'd be like a damn little puppet.
You know what I mean?
Hi, I'm standing.
God's talking through me.
How are you all?
That would be terrible, right?
Wrong.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
We'd just be an instrument.
And we'd see everything the way our creator sees it.
And we wouldn't make up any stories about anything.
We'd just be, we would just be.
That would be the end of it.
So it's quite a struggle to become entirely willing
to have all of these removed.
you know when we talk about freedom and we were slaves to so many things alcohol and sex and drugs
and gambling and you name it and if we looked at it like a person who was tied to a tree with
ropes of varying length and maybe there's 15 ropes and you finally get the first one
loose so now you can go three feet away from the tree well you're freer than you were
You know what I mean?
And then you cut another one.
Now I'm 10 feet.
Well, now I've got the whole 10 feet to walk around.
But until you get that last one cut, you're really not free.
You know what I mean?
I'm more free than I used to be because now I'm 150 feet.
I can walk all around this tree, but there's still that one.
Now those were placed there by some outside source.
But we're going to come over and it's going to be the exact flip side of that.
we're going to try and surrender
all the ropes that we put
and the way the ropes work are
I got a death grip on it
and I ain't letting it go
no I'm not giving this up yet
and I'm going to tell them
I give up drinking
I gave up drinking
I told you about my sponsors
I can't drink
okay okay okay
so AA is a not drinking organization
then he said
you know you're taking money down at work
that's embezzling
you got to stop
Oh, you've got to not drink and not embezzle.
So there's two things you do in here.
You remember that?
If you're going to have a happy marriage, you're going to have to knock off the affairs.
Oh, so there's three things in AA.
No embezzling, no drinking, no affairs.
And then it goes on and on and on until I've let go of everything.
So in the same vein that if there's still one rope holding me from being free,
there's still one clenched fist
holding me from being surrendered.
Turning my life over.
God, you've got everything except these 12.
I'm going to hang on to these for a while.
I'm not throwing this little black book away.
Maybe when I'm 80.
Whatever it is that we don't want to give up.
And so the sixth step is talking about perfection
and there's a story that C.S. Lewis came up with that I just think is wonderful.
He's one of my favorite authors because he makes up stories.
That's how he teaches.
And I've told this story a lot, so if those of you who have been around, bear with me.
But it's a quick one, but it's about the little boy with the toothache.
And the story is that he's in grammar school, he's on the baseball team,
They're going into the championship, and the coach says, guys, we've discussed everything.
There's nothing left, no more practice, nothing.
Go home, eat a wonderful meal, and go to bed and get eight hours sleep.
If you get eight hours sleep, we're going to beat them, guaranteed.
That's all you guys need, just rest.
So he went home, told his mother, had the dinner, went to bed.
He sound asleep, and about midnight, he wakes up with the beginning of a little toothache.
And he feels it, and he says to himself, if I call my mother, she'll bring two aspirin in.
The aspirin will take away that little bit of pain that I have, and I'll go right back to sleep.
But he doesn't call his mother.
He decides to wait and see if it'll go away by itself.
And he waits, and he waits, and he's feeling, oh, now it's getting a little stronger.
You know how toothaches, when they start, and so now he's totally focused on feeling the tooth.
Well, nothing so far.
Okay.
He wastes two hours, finally calls his mother.
She gives him the aspirin.
He goes to sleep, and he gets up, but he missed about three hours sleep,
so he makes three errors, and the team loses.
And the question is, why would he wait three hours before getting the aspirin?
And that has to do very much with step six.
the reason he didn't call is that he knew his mother and he knew she would run right in and
get him the aspirin and he'd go back to sleep but she wouldn't stop there the next day she would
call the dentist for an appointment for him to go in to have this tooth looked at and he knew
the dentist that when you got there, the dentist would look at that tooth, but he would also look
at all the other teeth in your head. And if he found some other problems, there would be a series
of appointments until you had perfect teeth. He didn't want perfect teeth. He just wanted two
aspirin. The only help that was available was perfect help. And if you notice who were
contacting in the sixth step.
It's the supplier of perfect help.
God. We're entirely willing
to have God remove all the defects of character.
You think he's going to remove them part way?
Part way?
Gets rid of 90% of lust? I think he's going to take the other
10. That's going a
little too far, like we talked about last week.
So we can see that this is the beginning,
as the 12 and 12 suggests, of a lifetime
job of trying to get willing now
about these.
Now we come to the shortest step
in the program
humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings
and if we look in the big book
I have the seventh step prayer
right on this little card
the entire seventh step says
we now said something like this
my creator I am now willing
that you should have all of me, good and bad.
So there it is, all.
I mean, the prayer says it.
It says everything that has to be said.
I pray that you now remove from me
every single defect of character
which stands in the way of my usefulness to you
and my fellows.
And make no mistake about it, that's all of them.
I remember telling myself,
well the reason I'm still a complete ass in these other nine areas
God doesn't want them to go yet
because they're not in the way of my being useful
grant me strength as I go out from here
to do your bidding, amen, we've now completed step seven
until you read the twelve and twelve
which came out in 1953
three, which is quite a few years later. And I think Bill realized that this indeed said it all,
but it didn't say it strong enough. As he was working on the original six principles from the
Oxford group, it left some wiggle room. You know what I mean? And it left us, you know, well, I'm
all done. This is it. Just take everything. Thank you. I'm on to step eight. So the spirit
was there. It was perfectly clear. But as you see when he writes the 12 and 12, it's
more than most people see. And I think he saw an additional dimension as he put together
the seventh step
it's totally about humility
and humility
is a very misunderstood word
it is a word that has a hard time of it
in our society
you never see a car ad
buy this car
people will call you humble
it's just not
oh isn't he great
he's so humble
you ought to hire him
really humble. Probably sell everybody.
See that lineman over there? Look at him. Isn't he
humble? He said, we need more humble football players and then we'll be
able to really have a winning season. Humble
seems to mean wimpy,
weak. At least that's what I thought it was. Humble, humble. I thought, what is
humble? And so when I got to this thing
and my sponsor said, now you see this step?
And I said, yep, yep.
Humbly ask them to remove our shortcomings.
Okay, well, you know what the shortcomings are.
They're the defects of character.
Yep, yep, okay.
All you have to do is humbly ask God to remove them.
I said, okay, yeah, that's what I'm going to do.
And he said, well, how are you going to do it?
Before you do it, would you explain to me
the difference between just regular asking
and humbly asking?
you know like regular asking
hey God would you get rid of these
okay that's regular asking
now
how do you humbly ask
hmm
and I thought to myself
and I remember a movie
I think it was going my way
with Bing Crosby
and there was a nun in there
and every time you saw her
she was up in her room
getting ready to pray
and the light was a certain way
off of the mirror
and it captured her face
and I officially recorded it as humble.
So I thought if I got up in my room
in front of the mirror
and looked in
and got that look,
God, please take everything
that I would be humbly asking.
Now, maybe you did a lot better.
I haven't seen too many papers on humility
longer than one sentence or so.
So it's a word that isn't really understood.
And we say, well, if you think you have it, it's gone.
You know, we have a lot of funny sayings about it.
But let's look what Bill writes.
I copied down a couple of them.
He says, humility is the foundation principle
of all of our 12 steps.
How about that?
Without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.
So we must have got some humility when we came in here.
Then he goes on to say, as long as we place self-reliance,
oh, and then he said, unless we get more humility,
we will never have a chance of becoming happy.
Those are pretty big words, aren't they?
No humility, no happiness, wow.
As long as we place self-reliance first,
a genuine reliance upon a higher power was out of the question.
The basic ingredient of all humility,
a desire to seek and follow God's will for us, was missing.
So we see there's a lot of humility in joining AA
and saying, I can't stay sober on my own.
I need help.
and now we're in AA and then they say
well just admitting that you're an alcoholic isn't going to do it
you're going to have to go to lots of meetings
in order to continue to live and stay sober
I don't want to go to meetings
I don't think I should have to do that
I like to do stuff all by myself
no you go to meetings
this is additional humility
we are making a statement
I am powerless over all this
and then they tell us they get a sponsor
and why do I need a sponsor
because you can't rely on your thinking
what?
I'm a genius
who's thinking am I going to rely on
anybody but you will move you ahead
anybody but you
well you don't think that's a huge chunk of humility
to rely on somebody else to do your thinking
we have a lot more humility than we realize
we are well on our way
to erasing slides
and becoming transparent
so that this light can shine through us.
So humility, I just made some notes here.
I said, humility is the light.
It is the absence of me.
If I'm not there,
everything shines through.
I am the cloud between me and the sun.
that's what I am
and if I can get that out of the way
things are going to be wonderful
so humility is in fact the light
it is the absence of self
and we see that as we start into AA
it's just that we get to a certain point
and we're able to maintain a certain amount of sobriety
and a certain level of semi-discomfort
and we call that success.
Well, it is in the very beginning.
But we don't want to go through the next 15, 20 years
in 40% of the pain we used to be in
and call that a win.
You follow what I'm saying?
They're going, don't settle for that.
Keep going.
Keep going.
humility
make me an instrument of thy will
there it summarizes it all right there
humility allows the light to flow through
because there's no self to block it
of myself I'm nothing
the light does the work
in the slide projector
I'm nothing
God does the work
it's all let go and let God
let go of what?
Let go of all the clouds that are blocking the light.
That's what we've got to let go of.
You're in the way of your life.
Your story is in the way.
Okay, well, I think you're convincing me.
I think, okay, let's go.
One more caveat, as the lawyers would say.
Are there any lawyers here tonight?
Okay.
This is the caveat about step seven.
I hate to break the news to you, but erasing slides hurts.
I mean, like, it hurts.
Like, I don't like that.
You remember how humiliating it was to be an alcoholic and finally admit,
okay, I'm an alcoholic.
So I was wrong.
I am an alcoholic.
First time my sponsor wanted me to say I'm wrong,
I said, yes, you're right.
He said, no, you say you're wrong.
I don't want to say I'm wrong.
Being wrong is painful.
Well, it turns out every one of those slides is wrong.
Oh.
Oh.
Yeah.
You ready to start scraping?
I don't know.
I don't know.
So that's what, if we manage to become entirely willing, the process of removing old ideas is quite painful, page 72.
For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful.
He certainly doesn't mince any words, does he?
and we stick to it and clean a few slides
and we begin to feel peace of mind and serenity
and then he writes on page 74
our eyes begin to open
to the immense value
which comes straight out of painful ego puncturing
the tremendous value
which is more of the light
more peace of mind
more serenity is now flowing in
because I was willing
alright, we'll discuss gambling
I gotta change that
oh God, admit it's wrong
okay, I'm willing to have it gone
and that's what we do here
we slowly
go through
what is called pain,
but was later on called effort.
Because as we realize,
every time
that we experience this discomfort,
that it makes us feel better later on,
we start changing the name
from pain to effort.
It's like the first time you've been out of shape
and you go to the gym to work out.
moving all those machines around.
You remember how you feel after you go home?
Every muscle in the body is dying.
And you go, boy, this takes a lot of pain to get in shape.
But as you get in shape, you're glad that you took the pain.
All right, look at this.
Hey, feeling better, breathing.
I like this.
What do you like?
I like the fact that I went through that pain.
But now we don't call it pain.
We say, well, I got in shape and now I'm maintaining it.
I think I'll even go further.
I think I'll now try to run a marathon.
I think I'll do this.
I think I'll do that.
And we suddenly see the immense value of what we once called suffering.
Only we don't call it suffering anymore.
And Bill writes that there comes a time when we voluntarily get humiliated.
you follow what I'm saying
instead of waiting for circumstances
to rub our nose in it
we saw humility
as something
that was immensely desired
and so the seventh step
is fitting in with perfection
which came out of the sixth step
and these are why
you hear old timers
been around a long time
the old folks home
well what are you doing today
six and seven
six and seven
six and seven
which Chuck talked about in the 10th step
which is uncover, discover, discard.
What else am I wrong about?
What other slide did I suddenly find
that is ruining the view?
And I don't blame the view for being ruined
on the outside world anymore.
I don't go, God, my luck of all those things.
Somebody put that up there.
You know what I mean?
I go, oh, that came from me.
I can fix it in here.
Call my sponsor.
How can I get that gone?
Ask that that be removed.
Do you see what I'm saying?
It is totally a wonderful inside job.
Then I don't know where these thoughts came,
but I'll stick them in at the end because we've got about five more minutes.
I do a lot of writing to myself
and I wrote down something and said
I suddenly realize
that I know a lot less than I used to know
about 15 years ago
and of what I still think I know
I'm much less certain
about it
and I think it's a step in the right direction
it's a step away from
thinking that knowing
is going to solve things
in the military we had the need to know
I don't know about you guys who were in the military
maybe other parts of the workplace have that
and you put on here
this document is available on a need to know basis only
and then there was
well are you on the need to know list
no you can't read it
Ha, ha, ha.
So then we all wanted to be, well, I have a need to know.
You know, with these freaking cell phones,
if somebody finds something out 13 seconds ahead of you,
you go, well, how come I wasn't told before that other guy?
I want to be the first one to know what restaurant we're all going to go to.
I don't want somebody else to know.
And so there's this knowledge, knowledge,
which is fine when you're trying to run a business and all those things,
But in the spiritual world, it has nothing to do with being happy.
Knowing and trying to know more doesn't help at all.
What is comfortable is to be happy with not knowing
and realize there isn't anything to know.
There's just a light.
And so I can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing.
they say the greatest source of happiness
we would get rid of the need to know
or wanting
so you get up and you never
have the feeling inside
you know what I want
it never comes up
that's the same as getting everything
it's a spiritual flip side
of getting everything
it's not wanting anything
you're 100% happy
you've solved the equation
Then the last point I was going to make is
that spiritual teachers
don't really teach us anything.
They remind us of things that we forgot.
That were already deep inside of us.
We were born with all of our own truths.
And as we go to meetings and we hear somebody say something
and we resonate with it,
it's because it's reawakening a truth inside of us.
And I go, yeah.
And then I go, you know, I already knew that somehow.
I already knew that somehow.
And so that's why we have that feeling.
Wow, I think I knew that.
And so actually, in the slide booth,
we came in
with all the truth we'd ever need
and those are the white lights
and then we made up
additional truths
which was our story.
Well there's the truth
which came from my creator
and then there's
the stuff I added on.
And that stuff became quite scary
and it also became reality.
That's where I lived.
That's where I spent my whole time.
and that's what the 12th step is talking about awakening
that's why when I started this whole thing
I started with the 12th step
that the point of the whole program is awakening
awakening means we're now re-in touch with
all these truths that we're there to start with
people who have awakened
you know Dalai Lama and some of those
I mean totally awakened
the reaction that they have is
How could I have forgotten all this?
My God, I can't believe I forgot all this.
We didn't forget it.
We went out and created reactions to events,
and then we lived in the reactions, and that became home.
And it's a scary place to be.
It's very lonely in there because you're the only one that made the story up.
So anyway, we're at the end of the time.
And I want to thank you for your attention.
I want to thank everybody for coming
and the group for putting all this together
and that will wrap it up
and we'll close the meeting with the Lord's Prayer
for anybody who cares to join in