Sandy B. Why Ego Is the Only Worry That Matters

Come on up, and he's our guest speaker for the evening.
Hi, everybody. My name is Sandy Beeson. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing?
I really look forward to this. There's a lot of people here that I've known for many, many years.
And I know there's lots of new people, which is the lifeblood of AA, and I'm so glad that you all are here.
Before I get started, I do want to say that one of the reasons I come back up this time of year is to remember my dear friend Hal Marley,
who a lot of you knew and some of you didn't, but there were three of us got sober in 1964.
and as the years went on, Ed Chandler and myself and Hal Marley
would have dinner once a month and take A.A.'s inventory
and decide what was wrong in New York and what was wrong in California
and how could we get rid of Akron, some of those type of things.
And so Hal's widow is here tonight, Rosita,
And she's been a great friend of A.A. for over 40 years, and it's just a pleasure.
We had dinner with her tonight, and so it's just a real honor to keep some of those memories going.
So, Rosita, we're delighted you're here, and I'm so glad to be your friend all these years.
And while I'm on that subject, my sponsor died this year, and Ed passed away this year.
Great friend of mine, Clint Hodges, on the West Coast, who was one of the great speakers out there.
And so we see a lot of us passing away.
And our normal reaction to that is one of apprehension.
And we start, that reminds me, that could possibly happen to me someday.
And I don't like to think about that.
And so I'll tell you some thoughts on that.
I do a lot of spiritual reading, and many spiritual authors say this,
that death is the ego's biggest weapon to use against us, to keep us separate from God.
I don't want to think about that.
The only thing that dies is the ego.
And that's why it makes such a big deal out of it.
Holy cow, I won't be here anymore.
I know, but the human spirit will still be around.
I know, but the ego won't still be around.
And that's who I am.
So I got thinking about it.
And maybe you never thought of this, but do you know what the – it's not even close.
What the leading cause of death is?
Birth.
There's nothing that comes close to that.
So they must go together.
You follow what I'm saying?
It's a package.
It's just like breathing in and breathing out.
And when you get real old, 76 is the magic time.
They start giving you some glimpses of, you know.
So I got some glimpses.
And there is a book of life.
Not much I can tell you.
I can't share everything.
For everybody.
It's a leather book.
It's about three inches thick.
And I can't tell you anything about it except the last page.
Because the last page is the same for everyone.
So just in case you're curious, what's on the last page?
It says, my dear friend, your visit here is now over.
Every single good and kind act that you did while you were here will live forever in the people who are coming after you.
And every rotten, despicable, harmful thing that you did to other people and to yourself while you were here has already been forgiven.
Book closed.
So now you understand the importance of helping one another.
The only thing that lasts.
The only thing of you that will be around.
and all of these people that we're talking
about are still alive with us. I go around the country I see
these little attitude of gratitude pins and I was telling
the folks at dinner this was Hal Marley's little deal
he passed them out all over the place and so I'll
stop people like in Wisconsin and I'll go wow
do you know Hal Marley and they go who? I said
Well, you've got an attitude of gratitude.
Oh, no, this came from Dr. Gratitude.
They don't even know who it came from, but they know that gratitude is important.
And so the message never dies, which, when you think about it, is all that AA is.
It's one message that has been passed on for 72 years.
Same message.
It's a remarkable phenomenon to realize that in many ways, everything lasts forever.
Now, I got sober in 1964.
I grew up in Connecticut in the 30s.
My sister has 30 years in AA.
She and I went to the same church, Catholic church.
She thought it was the most friendly, cute place to be on the face of the earth.
The nuns were cute.
The Latin was cute.
Confession was really fun.
Everything they talked about, it just made her happy, and it still makes her happy.
Now, I'm sitting next to her.
I feel like I'm in Auschwitz.
I am not comfortable in that environment.
The nuns are like Nazis.
They're out to hurt me, scare me, punish me, and tell me how bad it's going to be forever.
Going to confession, sometimes I would faint on the way in.
I couldn't remember.
I'd make up something.
I robbed a bank and I'm sorry.
So I was not comfortable there.
how did I get uncomfortable
I told myself a story
about what was going on
that terrified me
one day I was sitting there at age 10
I was looking at the crucifix staring at it
trying to understand it completely
and it finally spoke to me and it said
little boy do you see the chips
well this is what God did to his only son
that he loved
guess what he's going to do to you
So I created a rather horrifying church world to live in.
The church didn't create it.
I did.
I made it up.
I made it up that it's terrifying in here.
I didn't know I made it up.
I thought they did it to me.
And for a long time, I blamed my alcoholism on the Pope.
He allowed this travesty to take place, all this suffering.
And whether we realize it or not, that's what we manufacture as we're growing up, is a story.
And that's just like if 30 people see an accident, there's 30 things that happened.
There is no accident.
There's 30 stories about an accident.
No, no, no.
That other guy, he was the one.
And then you talk to the guy next to me, and he goes, no, no, no, it was her fault.
No, no, no, the traffic light was broken.
It just came back on.
And you just hear this incredible diversity of the stories.
And we don't realize it.
We think we're dealing with facts, and that this world is this way.
I didn't know any of this. I'm just growing up trying to figure out what's going on. I'm afraid all the time. I don't belong anywhere. I didn't belong in my family. Very uncomfortable. I was smart. I got good grades. I was a good athlete. Went to prep school. Went right into Yale University in my hometown. I got there. Everybody there was smart, rich, and knew what was going on. I couldn't figure out why I was there.
i was just what am i doing here i thought for sure during that freshman year the dean was
going to call the thousand guys out and go gentlemen we have discovered an imposter in
our midst and there he is i knew it was coming i was just oh when are they going to find out i'm
here and i wasn't drinking and people said you ought to drink you ought to drink you'll fit in
It's fun.
No, no, no.
I'm going to get high grades in athletics and all that.
But there came a time when it was so, I felt so much pressure all the time.
And I was at a social event to meet people and no one wanted to know me.
I went over to all different kinds of people and they looked at me with their eyes and said, I don't want to know you.
Do you get it?
Yeah, I get it.
I get it.
Geez.
Wow.
People can really be hostile the way they look at you.
You see right in their eye.
They hate you.
They wish you weren't even in the room.
Get out of here, you.
Get out of here.
And I was getting ready to leave, and I said, maybe I will have a drink.
There's a bartender there.
What the heck?
They said it makes you feel better.
I think I'll have a drink.
So I went up and had a drink of whiskey, and I waited, and I didn't feel anything.
I said, well, maybe it takes two.
So I drank a second one, and I'm waiting and waiting.
It doesn't make me feel any better.
And I started on the third one, and I said, I don't think this does make you feel better.
And I think I was seriously thinking of leaving, and I turned around, damnedest thing, everybody in the room wanted to know me.
I could see it in their eyes.
They were all looking at me going, I'd love to be your best friend.
Don't join that group, join our group.
And I was just torn as to where to go.
And I finished the drink and I started over.
And as I was walking over, I started agreeing with them.
They would be lucky to know me.
I could bring them up a few notches.
And I intuitively knew everything.
It was as if all my creativity that had been, was in there and couldn't get out due to this anxiety and not fitting in.
Boom.
I was finally me.
And it was great.
I loved it.
No pretend.
I'm me.
Spontaneous.
And I talked and talked.
Pretty soon everybody left.
I'm still talking.
Hey, wait, wait, wait.
And I said, boy, if three drinks did that, what would 23 drinks do?
And I sat there at the bar.
And we know what that does.
You go home that night and the room spins and you vomit and you dry heat and you sleep by the toilet and you just experience pain.
that you haven't experienced before.
And I sat on the bed the next morning, my head splitting like a hatchet was in it.
My mouth was so dry, I thought I was going to cut my tongue.
And I just sat there, oh, oh, oh, oh.
And the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight?
And I went, yes.
This hatchet and possible death in the next ten minutes is a small price to pay for what I had last night.
So you can see the, I was an alcoholic.
Alcohol did something so wonderful for me that I was willing to pay any price.
I didn't know I made that arrangement, but that's what alcoholics do.
This is worth anything.
Why was it worth anything?
Because it solved every problem I had.
It finally brought me into the world that you all had been in all along.
and i was so happy that i found it i didn't see it as something bad i finally said wow now i get
to enjoy life for the rest of my life this is wonderful just always have booze so the grades
went the athletics went i'm getting in fights i'm going to jail i'm almost getting thrown out
somehow graduated the korean war was going on the draft everybody had to join the military group of
guys are drinking beer let's join the marine corps yeah come on i'll finish my beer let's join the
Marine Corps. That was a rude awakening when I got there. I kept saying, you guys are so
intense. Relax, relax, relax. Wow, come on. And of course, you know what they do. They
just crush you, your identity, and turn you into a Marine. And the Marine Corps and AA
are the only two organizations that I truly loved.
I eventually fell in love with it.
I loved being part of something, and I loved the camaraderie,
and I also signed up for some unknown reason to be a pilot.
I'd never been in an airplane.
And they accepted me, and I met a young lady in Brantford, Connecticut.
We got married, and we went off on our honeymoon to Pensacola, Florida.
Very romantic, except I got airsick flying down there on United Airlines and was airsick a while.
And it's too hot.
But the motion sickness went away, and then I became a very good pilot.
Well, everything we went through, I would be number two or number three as we went through formation and gunnery and carrier and advanced training.
And then I got into jets, and I got my wings, and I went overseas in the top front line fighter squadron, and the war ended.
So now there was, here we were just totally trained and a bunch of hot shots.
And so you just flew practice missions and drank.
And it was just delightful.
It was back when they drank as a unit.
The colonel ordered the drinks.
My boys, give them another round.
and people drank as fast as I did.
I didn't have to sneak drinks.
Remember when you're with a slow drinking crowd?
Hey, I'll be right back, guys.
I've got to go to the bathroom.
You got a bartender?
Give me a double.
Oh, another round?
Yeah, I'll have one.
I just had a double.
But I didn't have to do that
because they were drinking as fast as I was.
I was finally in my element.
And I held up pretty good
for the first six or seven years of flying.
But it started catching up.
I was drinking really a lot.
And I finished that tour of the forward air controller
with the Marines out in Camp Pendleton.
Then I went to Pensacola.
I was a flight instructor for three years.
And I flew tons of hops.
Geez, you fly four flights a day some days.
You've got this nut in the front seat trying to kill you, and I'm back there trying to get over a hangover.
But it was fun.
I'm just telling you, all of it was fun.
And the last flying I did was I went to photo school and joined a photo squadron during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And we were flying the Crusader, which is the photo plane you see in the movies about Cuba.
And we had a radar plane.
It's an old F-3D.
It was a very easy plane to fly, two engines, straight wing, had a radar guy over here.
Very elite squadron.
There was only 15 pilots.
There were no lieutenants.
It was really an honor to be in there.
I'm in there as I am starting to experience withdrawal symptoms from alcohol in the plane.
and I'm getting frightened.
I didn't know what to do.
There was no alcohol program.
There was nowhere to go.
So I just kept going.
But I kept telling myself,
you're going to kill yourself.
What are you doing in here?
And I would, you know,
my heart would start racing.
I would lose my peripheral vision.
And I'd start just sweating up a storm.
And I said, you're going to pass out any second.
You're going to pass out any second.
I'm going to keep going, keep going.
And then near the end, it was, I've got to get out of here.
You remember at the end of the drinker, you're getting a haircut,
and you had to leave in the middle of it or whatever.
I've got to get out of here.
Where are you going to go?
You know what I mean?
There's no real good alternative.
And I remember flying with one hand on the ejection seat.
Well, I'll fly the mission with that, and if I need to, I'm out.
People think I'm making this up, but it went on for about six months.
And one day, I don't remember the details, but I remember coming back from a cross-country in the flight of four of the easy plane to fly, the F-3D.
And I had to get out of that plane.
I mean, I just had to get, this had no objections to you.
You had to open a chute and you slid out the bottom.
And I remember looking at that chute and I said, do you remember how it works?
They only show you once.
I'm not sure I really know, but I think, but then I said, well, the guy can't fly.
Then I'm leaving.
He's a radar guy.
You know, and here's this guy sitting over there, and little does he know what's going through my mind.
And I finally declared an oxygen emergency, told the flight leader we had to land immediately.
Something wrong with the oxygen?
It's causing me to, so when that happens, you do land immediately.
We went into an Air Force base nearby, and then they checked the oxygen.
Of course, there's nothing wrong.
Plus, the guy next to me, he's not having any problems breathing the same oxygen.
And we got real drunk that night, and I came out the next morning, and I said, I'm not going to get in the plane.
and that was the last time I flew and three months later they made me an air traffic controller
of all things and that's what I did during the last year of my drinking so
now I'm in Oxnard California this year in the early part of the year
and Clancy wanted me to talk at his group
950 people at one AA meeting
so I went there and then the next night was Brentwood
and they wanted me to come up and they have a very interesting format
so I said yeah I'll do that and then we'll go to Oxnard
I went out early to visit some people
I'm getting ready to start this meeting
and a guy comes up
actually a lady came up and said my friend
is here to get her 30 year medallion and her husband
and drove her up tonight.
He's not an alcoholic.
He goes to meetings with her, but he thinks he knows you,
and he wants to talk to you outside the church.
I said, all right.
So I went outside, and this guy standing there, I've never seen him before,
and he said, in 1962, you were flying an F-3D-2Q in a flight of four,
coming back from a cross-country
and you declared an oxygen emergency.
And all the planes landed
and there was nothing wrong with the oxygen
and you never flew again.
And I said, how do you know that?
He said, I was in the plane with you.
And so now I got the story about what was really going on that I was, because he was a pilot.
So why were there two pilots?
It turns out that a hurricane was coming up near Cherry Point.
Whenever there's a hurricane, the military flies all their planes to a safe place.
And then you drink and wait until the hurricane goes by.
And then you fly back, so it's choice duty, so the radar guys don't get to go and the second pilot goes.
And he flew the plane back.
And I said, I'll be darned, that's amazing.
And then we got talking.
And my recollection of that event, the aftermath of that event was that I came back totally ashamed,
beaten I was 14 years a pilot now I'm a has-been I've washed up a failure a piece of crap and I
had to come to work every day in that squadron while they all looked at me and felt sorry
and wished they'd never met me and realized I was ruining the reputation of that fine squadron
and it hurt me to go to work every day I did the legal work for three months until I finally
got orders and got out of there, and I said, boy, were they glad to get rid of me. That
was my version of what happened. And then he said to me, did you know how popular you
were in that squadron? Do you know how much everybody loved you? It broke their hearts
to see. They did everything they could to get you flying. The colonel especially went
up to the commandant and tried to get something changed. And I went, wow, my story isn't the
truth. So I went back to my story and I went, erase, erase, erase, erase, erase, erase,
erase, erase, erase, and put in the story. The story. And I've done that with a lot of
my life. As a matter of fact, our program says old ideas availed us nothing. All we do in spirituality is get rid of things. We don't get
anything. We don't learn anything. We unlearn until there's nothing left but the truth. So our story is what gets shattered. And I tell
people, if you were to listen to talks I gave when I had
ten years of sobriety and compare them to today, today I had a much
better childhood
than I used to have. Now, how could you have a better
childhood than you used to have?
By looking at it through
spiritual eyes. By looking at it
as a result of the transformation that takes place in AA.
And that's why the world becomes a better place.
That's why your family suddenly straightens out.
You follow what I'm saying?
I don't know, my family's a lot better than they used to be.
No, they're not.
You're seeing them through spiritual lenses.
They were pretty nice all along.
You made up a story about how horrible they were,
And you told yourself that story and that story and many others like it kept you separate from God for all these years.
Because when we create a story like that, it's a yarn and it's composed of millions of individual thoughts and assessments that we make.
and it becomes once it gets strong enough the entire world that we live in this is the entire
package it started out like a spider with a web just you know one strand across but then this one
this one this one this one this one this one then i got sick and i had polio oh there's a whole
bunch more. And then I had this, and then I had that. And pretty soon, a bug coming along, boom,
flies right into it because it's solid. And I picture that we actually create an egg that we're
inside of. You know what I mean? Like a bird is inside of an eggshell. And you know who's in there?
You. Nobody else. And one of the things that human beings complain about the most is, throughout history, is this cosmic sense of loneliness. It's just me and the universe. And that sense of being alone and alone.
of course we're alone
we made up a place
we're the only ones in it
when we say we're the center of our world
remember that expression
well she lives in her own little world
well I wouldn't know because
I'm in my own little world
and I don't like her
you follow what I'm saying
only we don't know that
we think, here it is. And we come in here and we start to dismantle it. I honestly think,
I like stories, so I make them up. What the hell? You don't believe the last page in the
book of life? Wait and see. So I picture that we come into AA in the egg that we made, complaining
like hell, we're the author of this entire thing, and we can't stand it. I can't stand
the world. Well, you made it. And we start working the steps. And then we start seeing
things differently. Remember when we did the fourth step? We took the inventory, we took
it over to our sponsor to run it by him or her, and everything looked different. I remember
going to my sponsor, well, I have to go, and he said, yeah, but, and I said, well, if you
look at it that way. Okay. Yeah, if you look at it that way, it isn't so bad. So what's
happening? They're just this boom, boom. They're slowly punching, chipping away at this material
that we made. Until one day, we get a hole through there and some light starts coming
in, and we call it a spiritual awakening.
We get a glimpse of something other than this little world that we created.
What the hell is that?
Oh, that's just the universe, of which you are a small part.
Really?
Well, now comes the dismantling of this entire universe that we built for ourselves.
And just to continue the analogy, this is the problem.
This is where we run into spirituality becomes tough.
We're delighted to get a glimpse.
everybody's delighted to get a glint wow that's amazing yeah and that's what you got
by giving up drinking and a couple other life-threatening activities
which are the easier ones to give up because the ego knows that it'll die if we don't get rid of
those so it cooperates a little bit so now we're sort of maybe we got our whole head out of the
shell. And we're looking around and we got, yeah, I'm still in my world, but I'd like to look out
here. Well, wouldn't you like to be all the way out? Yeah, I think I would. What would I be in
charge of out there? Nothing. Nothing. Wow. Well, who exactly would I be out there? No one. We could get you up as high as
servant. That's about it. That's the top rank that we have available. Could I be in charge of
something? Yeah, coffee. I'm used to managing a little more than that for coffee. Maybe I could
live happily, partially, in the world of light and run the rest of this myself.
And that is described beautifully in the 12 and 12 in Step 6.
If you go back and reread 6 with the analogy of coming halfway out of the egg,
I think you'll understand.
We only want to settle for as much perfection as will get us by.
Remember that line in the 12 and 12?
Want to settle for as much perfection as will get us by.
See, something happened in the 12 and 12.
In the big book, it's progress, not perfection.
And we mastered that.
How come you haven't moved any further?
Hey.
Hey.
It's progress, not perfection.
I've been doing a lot of studying of history
so I'm going to tell you
if you go to Cleveland and Akron
that's how I was teasing Akron
they still publish
the inner group publishes the four absolutes
and there's a big pamphlet
I got a bunch of them back
I was in Cleveland not too long ago
and when old timers get up
I've got 45 years of sobriety
I owe it all to Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12-step, my higher power, and the four absolutes.
Now, the Oxford group in Cleveland wanted to include the absolutes in AA.
But the New York crowd was an entirely different crowd than the Akron crowd.
The New York crowd was more of an intellectual, psychological crowd.
And they'd prefer if we didn't mention God until somebody had about three years.
and in Akron
on your first night
they said
go on upstairs
with these two guys
and you go up there
and they go
get on your knees
do you believe in God
I don't know
do you believe in God
I don't know
well we're staying here
until you do hard
I believe in God
alright
and he came down
he states over
so it was very important
to go boom
and the absolutes
absolutes, you can see. So the big book was a compromise on those things. The steps were suggested. It was God as you understand him.
An acronym was Jesus. In New York, it was philosophy. If you find a God, great, but don't worry about it. The two extremes. And we
ended up with a compromise, which is what you and I are familiar with right here. But
there are places, I'll tell you, today, I've been in them, within the last month, where
I mentioned the 12 and 12 and the crowd booed. See, that came on after the big book. The
big book. I'm just giving you a little history now. Bill, he ran across somebody when he
was still alive that said that they had studied self-help, spiritual help movements that were
started just by regular people, kind of like AA. And as it succeeded, they said, oh my
God, it's working. Let's write down what we're doing because there's more other people might
want to use it. So then they go, what do you think you were doing? You remember the fight
over the big book and said, no, no, no. Stand them up. We don't want praying them on their knees.
Okay, we don't want this and that. And out of the big hassle came the big book.
Which was a collection of ideas from all kinds
of different people, different approaches. A very
wonderful author for most of it. Bill was very talented
in that area. And
what the author of this book that studied said, as time
goes on, those ideas that were just thrown together become biblical. They take on the
whole. And one of the reasons Bill wrote the 12 and 12 was to make sure the big book did
not biblify and become that. Now, let me give you some examples. And we all do it. We take
a word and just go, see that?
See that
word?
I was on a panel with a bunch
of old, a lot of older timers than me.
And I asked
them, I said, when's
the first time
you ever heard anyone say
the promises?
And they thought and
thought and they came up with
about 30 years ago.
So 30 years
ago, the promises arrived.
do you understand what i'm saying they weren't here when i got sober if you would ask
anyone in aa right in this room how about the promises they go what's that so they have appeared
you follow what i'm saying and now we're finding them everywhere i'm going to read the promises
out of here and i start teasing people well i'm going to read the ones out of the doctor's opinion
or the final promise.
You will surely meet some of us.
That has to be the final promise
because it's the last line in the big book.
Just teasing.
The third and seventh step prayer.
Have those become,
wow, Bill made them up.
You get it?
He made them up.
We got them on plastic now.
I got this.
It's part of my life.
I just love this prayer.
Well, go back and look what it says.
What does it say?
It says, we might say something like this.
Or, if you don't like, you can use your own words.
I'm quoting what it says in the book.
You can use your own words.
We go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But this, this, this, this.
I do it.
I'm just, I've got, oh, my favorite sentence.
If that sentence wasn't in the big book, I'd be drunk right now.
So I'm making fun of all of us.
So, to get back to the point I was making, I have no idea where this is going.
So, the point I was making was about perfection and the absolutes.
Kurtz wrote some great history books.
Ernest Kurtz, anybody read that? Not God and the AA Way or whatever that new one is.
In there, Bill is talking in a letter, says to someone, I snuck the absolutes in, in the 12 and 12, in the sixth step.
And suddenly, perfection appears.
Not progress, not perfection.
Progress towards perfection.
You notice it's in the sixth step.
We have to raise our eyes towards perfection.
What does the step say?
We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects.
What would that be?
Perfect.
Can I become perfect?
No.
No one in this room can become perfect.
Could we receive perfect help and get there?
Yes.
Yes.
Our creator could easily make us perfect.
But there's a big blockage.
We have to let them.
Oh.
Well, I thought, you know where it says in the prayer, remove the defects that are standing in the way of me being useful.
I just assumed that since most of them are still here,
God thinks I'm being useful enough and he wants these defects to stay here.
And when he wants them gone, they'll be gone.
So I've abdicated all responsibility for remaining an asshole.
So it's not my fault.
We are funny, aren't we?
God damn.
So now we're over there where,
why the full implication of that is perfection.
He's going to remove them all.
I'm going to be perfect.
Wouldn't that be nice?
You know how nice that would be?
We'd just be walking hand in hand with God,
happy all the time.
Wouldn't it be just great?
Why don't we do it?
Bill calls that
the riddle of our existence.
That's a line out of the sixth step.
This is the riddle of why.
Why?
Well, turns out some of us like our character defects.
I mean, they make us feel superior.
Let's get rid of lust.
Let's use that one tonight.
Everybody would like to get rid of 100% of lust?
Raise your hand.
No hands up.
What?
Why don't you want to get rid of 100% of lust?
Lust really distracts us.
We've gotten in a lot of trouble with lust.
Let's all volunteer.
No hands.
No hands.
What's going on in our minds?
Well, I could get rid of most of lust.
I certainly would.
I think that you can carry it to an extreme.
But what would that be?
No lust.
Zero lust.
Let me think about that.
What is that?
Dead?
Dead.
I guess that's dead.
If you're dead, you have no lust.
Put me down for 55%.
55% on lust, that'll be good for me.
We tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by.
It's getting me by.
They go, you know, he used to be real lustful.
Now he's kind of average.
I'm getting by.
I'm getting my.
My sponsor said, hey, you're doing better.
Yeah, that's all I want.
Better.
I don't want best.
Bill wrote, good is the biggest enemy of the best that there is.
So if you're doing good, that's dangerous in the spiritual sense.
Because we're going to stay there.
And this happens after, what, 15 or so years of sobriety.
You suddenly have arrived and you're at a spot.
And we ain't going any further.
I'm here.
It's comfortable.
I like it.
When are we going to try and go kick it up a few notches?
And that's the riddle of our existence.
that is what each individual has to do something about.
Because now we're really at the 11-step type of activity.
Prayer and meditation, reading other books, asking for advice from other spiritual teachers.
It's an individual adventure.
But he certainly lays the groundwork right there.
I had some funny thoughts on various things, so I'm going to share them with you
because I'm working up a little lecture, and this will be my practice.
One of them had to do with acceptance.
I never thought about it this way.
You know, Dr. Paul said that acceptance is the key to everything,
which in a way is contrary to serenity prayer.
Acceptance is the key to things that you ought to accept,
but then there's the things you ought to change,
so they're in another category,
and you just need the wisdom to know the difference between the two.
So acceptance couldn't be the answer to everything.
So Dr. Paul is wrong or the serenity prayer is wrong.
And he used to get a lot of flack.
He's passed away now.
But he used to get a lot of crap for putting that in his story.
He said, I wish they had written the story after I died.
I didn't mean to start any trouble.
But people love to quote that.
And now it's not on page 449.
I don't know where it is now.
Where is it?
417.
Yeah.
So anyway, and I always sided with Dr. Paul.
But then I got thinking about acceptance in terms of turning our willing lives over to God.
I honestly believe that incorporated in to the word acceptance is an underlying assumption that something's going on that I don't like.
you follow what I'm saying
I don't have to accept when the Redskins win
you know
have you accepted that they won
no man
I love it
I don't have to accept it
do you see what I'm driving at
if
I hadn't made a judgment
that something shouldn't be
the way it is
I wouldn't have to accept it
I don't know if that's making any sense at all,
but what I'm getting at is
if I were able to turn everything over,
there would never be anything that was unacceptable
because I wouldn't have judged anything.
And acceptance would become moot.
It would be a word that isn't even being used.
It helped me take my inventory when I was,
well, have you accepted it yet?
And I'm going, well, why is this a problem?
Because I'm forcing something down that I don't want it to be this way.
And I'm adjusting myself to the situation that shouldn't have been that way in the first place.
But I'm working on my spiritual progress in order to be comfortable with it.
And then I finally allow it to be as it is.
which is a rather lengthy process that started because I judged something to be wrong.
And I don't like it that way, but I'm going to accept it.
It's just a product of a very weird mind that drives himself crazy thinking about things like this.
Let me get back to the basics because I've got a few minutes left for those of you that are new.
if we had to look at the program
and you asked me
what is the point of AA
I would direct you to the 12th step
which is the end
sometimes I like to read the end of a book
before the beginning
see if I want to read it
I don't know other people do that or not
but if you jumped ahead in AA
when you got here
and said well how does this thing end
you would find out that it ended
with a spiritual awakening.
That's the end.
That's what you get.
That's the point of the whole book.
Having had a spiritual awakening
as the one result of these steps,
we tried to carry the message.
What message?
How to have a spiritual awakening.
So, spiritual awakening is this.
Do you want to read the book?
Are you interested?
I don't think so.
Stop a guy on the street.
Hey, want to have a spiritual awakening?
No, no, no.
But that's 12.
That's it.
That's what we're trying to get everybody to do.
How do you get them to do that?
In other words, that's one bookend in AA.
The reason people are willing to do that is because of the other bookend.
The first step, which says, unless you have a spiritual awakening, you're going to goddamn die.
Oh, really?
What?
Yeah, and damn soon.
Really?
Huh.
What's the huh?
You know, check out spiritual awakening.
I don't know.
In other words, we've got to understand the dynamics that make this thing work.
I came up with an analogy of the Tony Soprano spiritual program.
It would be simpler than AA.
It would be a piece of cake.
I could get this thing started.
I could cover the whole world and nothing flat.
Three big guys show up at your door.
Hi, are you Ralph?
Yeah.
They break your arm in three places.
Tony said, unless you get a spiritual awakening within a year, we break every bone in your body.
Bye.
I wonder if that guy's going to go to the library and look up spiritual awakening.
I think he is.
I think he's going to try real hard.
And that's what we are so lucky to have that first bookend that took the reality of our life and helped us see it in its totality.
When Bill first was trying to sober drunk stuff, he told him about this hot flash that he had.
I saw the mountain.
I saw the white light.
It's wonderful.
But the desire to drink left me, and I run around, and I saw God.
It's absolutely wonderful.
Follow me.
Follow me.
Nobody followed them.
They told them that they had that when they drank rum.
I'm not interested.
And Dr. Silkworth said, Bill, you got the cart before the horse.
You got to tell them about the hopeless nature of alcoholism.
And that's why step one is, what do we got, 50 pages before we get to step two?
I guess step one must be pretty damn important.
And the essential ingredient is the understanding of the hopelessness of your situation
and that nothing can prevent this disease from crushing you in the most horrible way
except a spiritual awakening.
Chapter the agnostic, we have a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer.
Once that kicks in, we've got the package.
We've got the necessity for a spiritual awakening and the means to get it.
And this is what makes AA so wonderful.
Because it forces us to have a life-transforming experience that we never would have gone after voluntarily.
We were forced into heaven and out of hell.
forced. You know what I'm saying? Do you know how lucky that is? In order for any human being
to get beyond themselves, they have to go against their own ego. They have to suddenly raise up a
flag and go, why doesn't somebody else make all the decisions for me? That's a hard thing to give
up. The final say on your own life, that does not come up easily. But that's what total surrender is.
And in the beginning, we just give it over to the sponsor. Okay, what do I do now? What do I do now?
What do I do now? And then it works. And we feel better. And we feel better. And we're more grateful
for the sponsor pushing us to this new level. The problem is, at this new level,
Things look different.
And the ego steps in.
And I'll close with this.
It's a prayer from an ego.
A lot of people don't know that egos pray.
Dude, you never heard an ego prayer.
That's not in the big book.
What does an ego prayer look like?
This is what it looks like.
I'm on my knees and I say, God, I'm here tonight to thank you for what you've done in my life.
You've taken a hopeless person, restored him to a place in society, restored him to his family, restored his dignity, his self-respect, his health, excitement in his life.
You and you alone have placed me in a position where I no longer need your sorry ass.
but I am grateful
I'm making fun
of the struggle
that you and I have
with ourselves
which is why we need each other
we need each other to go
I'm sorry
but you are fooling yourself
and that's why we make it
because we do it together
and let's never forget it.
It only works because we do it as a group.
And I know we've got a great group here tonight
and everybody that's part of it
will automatically have this life-transforming experience.
I want to thank everybody for your attention.
It's been an honor to be part of your anniversary.
And I've been asked to just wrap it up
with the Lord's Prayer for anybody who would care to join in.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.