Sandy Implores: Study About Spirituality in Any Way You Wish — It’s the Absolute Best Thing You Can Do for Your Sobriety – Sandy R.

Well, hi everybody. I'm really grateful that you all came. Actually, we'd like it if we
left our cell phones in the cabin. Then we wouldn't be running out and reconnecting with
the world. Let me tell you why I started this or had the idea for it. It seemed to me that
once you've been around AA for a while, you get to a comfortable level, what you might call
pretty good sobriety, and you have a routine going, and you kind of settle in, and you
people, and you're going out to lunch with the guys, and you got the friends, and you got
all of this going. And there's really not an impetus to press on to a higher level of spirituality.
And Bill Wilson had a saying about that, that the good was the biggest enemy of the best
that there is. And I remember that feeling that I had stayed the same for 10 years,
in terms of my relationship with God. And I just started seeking. I just started putting a big
priority on what is suggested in our 11th step. If you recall that step in both the 12 and 12,
it says our libraries are full of books. There are many spiritual teachers. See your rabbi,
see your minister, go talk to people.
It is an individual adventure, unquote. So suddenly you see a departure from the
we program, and we're all doing this together, into something individual.
And so that's why we are, this is all AA people, but it's not an AA weekend. It's a spiritual
weekend, which means we can have a library in the back of all kinds of spiritual things. And so that's
a title of spiritual books. And it is a growing list. Sometimes people who attend here will send
me a book and I'll read it and I'll go, man, we've got to add this to our library. And so they're
free back there. It's an honor system. You just look, take one, read it for awhile in your room,
see if you connect with the author, if not put it back, grab another one. And the object is the walk
out of here with one or two quase dead 있거든요, ones are good. So that's the concept, spiritual
books.
that you're going to go get and make that part of your seeking.
And obviously, no two people will take the same books.
That's the beauty of it.
Spirituality is not the same for any two people.
What gets revealed to us by our higher power is done on an individual basis.
But what that revelation is, is our own truth.
And of course, that's what our big book says.
When I look at the end, it summarizes our whole book.
And it says, we realize we know but a little.
Isn't that a funny thing to put on page 164?
After we put everything that the first hundred knew into this book,
and we ended up with a little.
We don't know.
We don't normally think of the big book that way, do we?
We think about it as, this is everything you need to know.
We have all that, and then we have this.
We realize we know but a little.
Where are we going to get the rest?
What's the next sentence?
God will constantly disclose more to us.
If our house is in order, you can't transmit, this is the great fact, etc.
And so the vast majority of the truth,
the truth that we learn about ourselves comes directly from our higher power to us.
And then, as Bill writes, people of very high spiritual development
always insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they got from God.
So the safety valve on that is, we talk about it with someone else.
I was contemplating last night, and I was sort of reflecting,
and it seemed as if a...
a voice as clear as a bell said,
you ought to run off with your secretary to Costa Rica.
And it felt like God wants me to do that.
And I ran it by my sponsor, and he didn't agree at all.
Didn't agree at all.
And so,
that's the only caveat on reflection.
And receiving guidance.
While I was looking at the name of Dayspring,
I have a girlfriend who's kind of an expert on the Bible.
So I was trying to read along and learn something beyond what I did as a kid.
And there was a sentence where they referred to Jesus as the Dayspring.
So I asked her about it, and he said,
yeah, that's one of the many names that he received,
and it means sunrise.
So we're at the sunrise,
which none of us knew before.
We've been down here quite a few times.
And I like that.
We have conferences all over that call themselves the sunlight of the spirit.
I've been to one in Pennsylvania, and I'm sure there's others around the country.
And that's really what we're after, is that light.
Now, the topic of this lecture is back to the basics of awakening.
You don't normally see that combined like that.
Back to the basics generally has a meaning all of its own.
And suddenly we're adding, of awakening.
And so it's my way of poking fun at, not poking fun,
but of expanding the idea of awakening.
expanding a traditional thought about Back to the Basics.
If you started with the premise, looking in our 12th step,
having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,
then it appears that the whole purpose of the program is this awakening.
So the awakening is the solution.
You follow what I'm saying?
The awakening is the transformation that allows us to be free from thinking about alcohol,
from being tempted by alcohol.
As Bill writes in the 6th step in the 12 and 12,
we've been granted a perfect release from alcohol.
And so awakening is the magic word.
So the question that I asked myself,
if awakening is the answer, what is the problem that it solves?
Did you ever think about that?
If awakening is the answer, what is awakening fixing?
You know, in other words, you have to work backwards,
and you go unawakened.
Unawakened?
That would be one stab at it.
I came up with self-centered trance.
Self-centered trance.
Clearly, when we go to sleep at night and we awaken,
we're awakening from a dream or from sleep.
And when we study our own self-centeredness,
it really is like being in another world from where we can be when we come to AA.
Only we see it as simply a little bit of self-centeredness that caused me to be an alcoholic.
And when I stop drinking, probably most of that self-centeredness will go away.
And the further we get into this, we realize we haven't barely scratched the surface.
When we look at self-centeredness from the point of view of awakening.
So without awakening, you really don't accomplish anything with self-centeredness.
I remember the first time that my sponsor pointed out that my problem was self-centeredness.
And I hadn't thought about that before, and I said, well, let me think about that.
I didn't want to concede right away.
I don't want to give in too soon.
So I said, you know, you're right.
Now that I think about it, I do think about myself a lot.
I think you got a point there.
I'm going to have to do something about that.
Now the world-class comedy line, I am going to have to do something about self-centeredness.
Well, what are you going to do?
Well, I'm going to become un-self-centered.
You see how ridiculous that is?
How are you going to become un-self-centered?
Stand over there?
No matter where, have you ever noticed, no matter where you go, you're the center.
You're in the shopping mall and you look all around.
There's that way, that way, that way.
And from wherever you look, you're at the center.
So it isn't any small wonder that we ended up self-centered.
Just like that.
Just like they were years ago when they decided that the earth was the center of the solar system.
Why?
Because that's where we live.
What else would be the center?
You know, and then when they said, oh my God, maybe it's the sun.
They were going to hang people for coming up with ideas that were so shattering.
When they came up with that, they had to change all the books.
They had to change everything.
You had to go back into your mind and change.
You had to change almost every reference point to make the sun the center of the solar system.
That's a monumental thing.
It's not as monumental as becoming un-self-centered.
In order to go, so the, what we find in the program is the opposite of self-centered is God-centered.
That's what changes it.
That's what changes it.
And when God becomes the center, it changes almost every idea that we have about anything.
And that's a shocking thing.
I remember when I was new, they said, actually, it's only a two-step program.
Don't drink and change everything there is about you.
Everything.
So that means that there's probably no idea that I have that I can be sure of.
That's rather unnerving.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
Because those are the things that make you feel comfortable.
You're anchored in place with your ideas and your beliefs and all these things.
And now we're being told they could all be wrong.
So it takes a great leap to come into a spiritual program.
And that's why we have sponsors.
And that's why we do.
That's why we do steps.
That's why we inventory, inventory.
And then our sponsors go, no, that's not the nature of that problem.
The nature is it's your fault.
Well, it didn't look that way to me.
I thought it was my boss's fault.
No, you owe him an amend.
Gee whiz.
Wrong again.
Wrong again.
You remember the first time you were wrong?
It's hard, isn't it?
It's very hard.
I finally was willing to concede it to my sponsor.
And I said, okay, you're right.
And he said, no.
No, you're wrong.
And that was a horse of a different color.
Much harder to say, I'm wrong.
And as we go along, being wrong is delightful.
One more thing to throw away that's causing me conflict.
Chuck Chamberlain, who was really the inspiration for this weekend,
Chuck, I got to meet him and went to his, this was in the 70s,
probably between 76 and 80.
Somehow I managed to get to the Los Angeles area, go down to Laguna Beach.
And he was quite, I'm sure some of the guys in here may have met him or talked to him.
And he was quite a presence.
There was just an aura.
There was something magic.
And I would sit and listen to him and I knew everything he said.
Everything he said was wonderful, but I didn't know what it meant.
You know what I mean?
He was talking over my head, but it was exciting.
And I just said, boy, I really want what he has.
I don't know what he is that he has.
And of course, when you read the book, A New Pair of Glasses,
is everybody fairly familiar with who Chuck is in A New Pair of Glasses?
We got it in the back.
It was from a men's weekend like this.
And they had transcribed it, and later on they turned it into a book.
And Chuck's main point was this sentence.
That there's one problem that causes all problems.
There's only one problem that includes all problems.
And that problem is conscious separation.
In my...
Consciousness, I exist in some place separate from everybody else and from God.
And that the solution to that one problem takes care of all other problems.
They all disappear.
And so he lays that out.
You take that to a discussion meeting.
And we go, why don't we discuss the fact that...
That there's only one problem, and there's one solution,
and it includes all problems, and that'll be the end of that.
So let's apply it, let's say, to financial security,
which is, everybody's got a little bit of that.
Every day they look in the news.
Financial security.
Immediately we shift and go after the solution to financial security.
Well, what you have to do is start setting aside a little,
a little bit here, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody says conscious contact.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
In other words, conscious contact is the right answer to all questions
in this spiritual realm.
So, gee, my girlfriend left me.
What am I going to do?
You need to improve your conscious contact with God.
Well, that doesn't look like the answer to that problem.
None of spirituality looks like anything.
The steps never looked like they would work when we came here.
I used to look at them on the board.
I wondered where the money step was.
I need money, man.
I don't need any of that stuff.
I don't need an inventory.
I don't need God.
I just need some money.
And it wasn't up there.
I had no idea how doing this stupid laundry list
would suddenly set me free and put me in a different place.
But it did, and I'm sure it did to all of you.
So, as I got ready for this particular lecture,
no, as I was getting ready for the next lecture,
which had to do with contemplation,
I started looking around on the internet.
I was looking up stuff about Plato.
I just thought contemplative sounded so cool
that it would appeal to everybody's ego.
Oh, yes, I'm going to be a contemplative member
of the Bible.
You know, and then people would come,
yes, I want to get in on that.
I didn't really know what it meant.
So, I said, well, I remember Plato talked a lot about that,
so I'm reading Plato's stuff and all that.
Well, anyway, as I'm doing it,
I come up with a paper that Amy's going to give you all
at the end of this talk.
And it's a paper by a doctor.
Ph.D. on addiction and contemplation.
Interesting that a guy, somebody would write a paper like that.
And as I read it, I said, man, this belongs in lecture number one.
Back to the basics of awakening.
So, let me tell you what he basically says.
I emailed him because I was so taken with his thoughts
on this subject.
He talks to all the other doctors
about the traditional viewpoint on addiction,
the psychological factors and the physical factors
and all the stuff that you hear everywhere you go.
And he says, I think they're all missing the point.
This is really a spiritual problem.
Well, that caught my attention right away.
That caught my attention right away.
And guess where he went to lay out his case?
He went to Carl Young's visit with Roland Hazzard.
Isn't that amazing?
This guy in modern times went back to that visit and the advice
that Dr. Young in the letter to Bill Wilson talked about alcoholics
and alcohol was really, at the low level, a spiritual thirst.
For the union with God.
That was how Young saw it.
And so when his therapy didn't work with Roland Hazzard,
he told him the only possibility is to find
kind of a spiritual experience because he was aware
of some alcoholics who were able, of his type,
who were able to recover by means of a spiritual experience.
And so what Young was talking about was a profound transformation.
And so then Natcher makes the case that all addictions
are a search to answer this problem we have
that something's wrong.
And so he goes on to say that alcohol is not the only thing
that's missing.
It was the reason we were drinking.
We couldn't figure out what was missing in our lives.
And as we came to AA, we found out it was God.
We found out that we had gone down the typical
prodigal son path and we felt lost.
We felt alone.
And we knew there was an answer somewhere, but we couldn't remember what it was.
And alcohol seemed to solve that.
In other words, alcohol was solving that core problem that we had.
And he just looks at all other addictions and he says to that person,
food seemed to solve that core missing.
We don't even know what we're missing.
To the next person, gambling looks like the path to nirvana.
And then he just goes down all of them.
So he just says that all addictions are the erroneous assumption that if I go far enough
down this food path or sex path or gambling path or whatever it is, drugs, that I will
eventually solve this thing that's been driving me crazy since I was little.
And I remember that when the first time I drank, it went way beyond.
Not just making me happy and having a party thing.
It went deep into my soul and solved the thing that had been bothering me since I was a little
kid.
It fixed the loneliness.
It fixed everything.
And I thought that if you kept pursuing it, it would keep me connected so that I wouldn't
have what we call the missing God problem.
And so I really was, I'm rolling along with him, and I'm just going, man, this guy is really on target.
He's right tuned in.
And then he made an observation that was parallel to one that I made some years ago.
So I'll tell you mine first, and then I'll go to his.
I came up with this as a way of pointing out something about AA.
I came up with this little made-up story.
Well, if you go back 55 years in AA, anywhere in the country, in all small cities and certainly all towns, there was only one meeting a week.
I do remember some places.
I came in in 64.
I remember a couple places where they just had one meeting, and it was a big deal when they got two.
So the question arises, how the hell do you stay sober on one meeting a week?
Well, you really look forward to the meeting.
And maybe you find a buddy, and you have coffee halfway through the week.
But mostly, you prayed like hell.
I mean, you did some serious praying.
Oh, God, get me through Wednesday.
Come on, God, let me get through Wednesday.
Okay, God, get me through Thursday.
Yeah, I'm at the meeting.
And then we had that nice, comfortable feeling of being there, and it gave us that fix.
So now we fast forward to today.
Every town, every city has 6 o'clock meetings in the morning, noon meetings.
You go there during lunch.
5 p.m. meetings.
Go to a meeting after work.
On the way home, 7 o'clock meetings, 8 o'clock meetings, midnight meetings, men's meetings, women's meetings,
gay meetings, couples meetings, discussion meetings, speaker meetings, conferences, roundups.
We've got pamphlets on everything.
We've got movies, DVDs.
I mean.
We've got a support system that is so far-reaching, you don't have to hardly pray at all.
There's a lot of truth in that.
There's a lot of truth in that.
You can have pretty good sobriety by riding on the system.
Meeting every day.
Talk to my sponsor every day.
Read the big book, whatever it is.
And so guess what he points out?
He says that in early AA, this spiritual transformation was the centerpiece of everything.
And you look back, especially in the Akron, Cleveland, the Midwest area, it was a big thing.
I mean, and it started from the day you got there.
You want to try this?
Come on upstairs with us.
Get on your knees.
Do you believe in God?
Do you believe in Jesus?
Remember all that?
It was very churchy.
And oh, yes.
And so there was this huge reliance on the direct contact.
And he faults us now.
He said, that's not what would work.
He said, that's not what would work.
He said, that's not what would work.
That's not what you need.
And one thing that I learned, that I learned from him,
and the things I learned from him,
is that a sampling of AA today would show,
it would show, and I'm using his words,
and I could see where he would reach that conclusion.
He said, people are now addicted to AA.
Do you see what I'm saying?
In other words, their total reliance is on the meetings.
Now there's nothing wrong with that.
from going to a higher spiritual level.
So I think he and I were making the same point.
When you get the paper, I think you'll love to read it
because it's not often that somebody outside of our realm
makes such a nice case for the spiritual solution to addiction.
I emailed him and made the following point.
I said, I think you're underestimating the number of true spiritual experiences
that occur in AA.
Because after a spiritual experience, you cannot help but pass it on.
It's part of a spiritual experience.
You just have to go tell somebody about it.
And that's what happens.
You want to sponsor people.
You want to reach out.
It's so exciting and so transforming that nobody could hold you back.
Bill Wilson had such a monumental experience.
In his hospital room, he envisioned our entire program all around the world
of one drunk carrying it to someone else.
And in that instant,
he received the invitation.
He received the energy to never stop doing it.
In spite of no job, no money,
gets evicted from their townhouse in Brooklyn,
has to rely on other AA members to give him a ride places,
stayed in 40 different homes over the next two years.
Never did he back away from this drive to pass it on.
It was part of the spiritual awakening.
So I wrote to Dr. Natcher and I said,
I think that this is what is driving many of the people in AA,
is this desire to pass it on.
And not that they have to be at the meeting or they'll drink.
And he wrote back and said, maybe you're right.
He wouldn't concede that that was totally it.
So if you want to follow the addiction thing,
we're addicted to passing it on.
I just can't get enough of that.
I have to see one more time someone being transformed.
So when you take a look at that,
I hope it resonates a little bit that we have a wonderful fellowship.
Nothing needs to be done.
Nothing needs to be done with it.
I love it.
I think it's growing.
It's strong.
It's wonderful.
What I'm talking about is what are you doing as an individual
within your own spirituality?
Are you like me where it's stayed the same for about 10 years?
That's an easy thing to have happen.
And you're the only one that can change that.
This now is an individual thing.
You can become a seeker to go further.
And in that seeking, something happens.
I noticed it in various AAs.
I saw it in Chuck Chamberlain.
And then I saw it as I traveled around and would be in different groups.
There would be somebody in there
who had something very intangible.
One of the qualities was he didn't share at every meeting.
But when he did, it would be condensed to two or three sentences at the most.
And those three sentences would seem to capture the essence
of a very complicated sounding question.
And you knew, wow, that was really interesting.
You might not even fully understand it, but there was something there that was attractive.
There seemed to be some kind of an energy.
There seemed to be, and I call these people beacons.
There's just, instead of deacons, beacons.
There's a lightness.
There's sort of an assurance.
And I just feel we need more of them.
And that you guys and the other people that come here could easily end up in that category.
Because you decide to become a seeker beyond where you are.
And in that capacity, you're off on your own.
You find some meditation class.
You read one of these.
You go and then see.
What starts transpiring?
About four years ago, I started looking around and reading various people.
And I would see people like the Dalai Lama.
I'd see people like Mother Teresa.
And I would look at them and I'd just go, they are practically out of their own ego.
You know what I mean?
What you might call just fully awakened or fully illumined or fully whatever it is.
And I dared to have the thought, why don't you do that?
Do you know the backlash I got from my own ego?
Who the hell do you think you are to have a thought like that?
You little piece of crap.
I'm glad no one heard you have that thought.
They would be teasing you out of AA.
What?
What?
What?
And the more I thought about it,
there's no difference between you or you and the Dalai Lama at all.
That pure spirituality is inside of all of us.
He didn't go out and get something.
He got rid of everything that was blocking that part of him.
And so I said to myself, never having discussed it with anyone else,
since then I talk to anyone.
Since then I talk to anyone.
Since then I talk to anyone.
Since then I talk to anyone.
Since then I talk to anyone.
I said, why don't I do that?
And you know something?
I got really excited.
I obviously will never get there.
But in the last four years, I've had more change than in the first 39.
So that's all I'm telling you.
The stuff I think about and see that races around in my head is so damn exciting
that I can hardly contain myself.
I just love to reflect.
I just love to reflect on God and to just talk to him and carry on.
And it's just a tremendous feeling.
Well, I made some notes.
One of the first things I did, you've been given pertinent passages from the big book.
It's just something to take home.
And I just selected these way back when.
And you all can disagree with me all over the place.
You can make your own list up.
But I listed these as perhaps the most powerfully spiritual sentences
that are scattered throughout the 12 and 12 in the big book.
And that show the goal is much higher than the one I was talking about.
And that show the goal is much higher than the one I was talking about.
And so I'm just going to read 10 or so that I think apply to this lecture
to support what I'm talking about today, that I'm not just pulling this out of my head.
And from the doctor's opinion, one feels that something more than human power
is needed to produce the essential psychic change.
Now, we read that and we go, yeah, that's cool.
That's what the doctor said.
But then you take it in.
You go.
You go, jeez, that's like magic.
That's pretty powerful.
Then page 25.
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our creator has entered our hearts
and lives in a way that is indeed miraculous.
You could slide by that without letting it sink in.
The absolute certainty that your creator has entered your heart, that's no small promise, is it?
That's a promise.
That's a big deal.
So I go back and I go, yeah.
Then later on, this is probably one of the jackpot lines in our literature,
we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or he's nothing.
He either is or he isn't.
And then the most important line of all, what was our choice to be?
Isn't it amazing?
Isn't it amazing that that's how we have an awakening?
We choose it.
Choose it.
Made a decision to turn our life over.
And I ask people who are sort of agnostic or atheist when they come here, I say,
how did you get to be an atheist?
Did you see a non-burning bush?
Did a voice come down and say, I do not exist?
Or did you just decide to be one?
I guess I did.
I just decided.
When did you decide?
I was in college.
It was cool.
And I run around.
I just, I'm an atheist, man.
I'm an atheist.
And then I go, so you could junk that and make a decision that God's everything.
And, you know, that's what AA asks us to do.
Okay, you've been an atheist all this time.
How's it going?
How's your serenity?
Are you happy?
Is it working?
Is it great being an atheist?
I don't see them smiling that much.
Why don't we throw that aside and conduct a new experiment?
We'll make God everything.
And you just keep notes on, is this working any better?
And, of course, that's what happens in AA.
We're talking.
We're talking about results.
We see people get happy, joyous, and free because they made this decision.
God's everything.
He's either everything or he's nothing.
All right, let me just move along and mention a few.
All of these are very powerful.
But he has come to all who have honestly sought him.
There's that word seek again.
When we drew near to him, he disclosed himself.
These are great words.
When you assemble them all, you can see, am I sure changing myself?
I mean, we feel we're on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe.
What a comforting thing that is.
Chuck Chamberlain, in his talks and in his book, just looked everyone right in the eye and said,
for the last 22 years, I've been guided by God every day.
That's my whole plan.
I just get guided by God.
And I remember asking, well, how do you do that?
He said, you decide to do it, then you sit and wait for guidance.
Now, how do you like that?
I thought it would be much more complicated than that.
You wait for a thing and it's light from the sky.
Hello.
You just stop the way you've been doing it and you go, OK, where's the guidance?
And then you wait.
And then it shows up and you can't believe it.
What is guidance?
We're talking about intuitions, intuitively having answers come that didn't come through the normal thought process of,
I've got to figure this out.
But rather, I let go of trying to figure it out.
And wait.
And then it occurred to me a couple of days later, that's it.
That's being guided.
And I just, you talk about putting the money where your mouth is.
You just sit and wait for guidance.
I love that answer.
Then I had, we begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us.
To some extent, we become God conscious.
Exactly what Chuck was talking about.
To end conscious separation, we have conscious contact.
We've begun to develop this vital sixth sense, but we must go further.
And that means more action.
And that was going into step 11.
Then later on, near the end of page 158, talking about one of the early guys.
But he found God.
And in finding God, he found himself.
What that means is that I start to come out of the self-centered trance
and see my original self.
Before I made up a story about myself and went through the whole prodigal son journey.
And my true nature is revealed to me.
Which, as it turns out, is spiritual.
We're spiritual being having human experience.
My true self, not my self-centered self, is pure love.
It is that quality in me that is divine.
That God, the God inside of me.
Whatever you want to call it.
The spirit.
And Chris and I were talking.
He really likes to go to church and relate the Bible to these principles.
And we were talking about love our neighbor as our self.
If you don't love yourself, your neighbor is in for a bad deal.
Did you ever think of it that way?
You're going to love him.
You're going to treat your neighbor like you treat yourself.
How do we treat ourselves a lot of the time?
Pretty bad.
In our opinion of ourself.
That's the false self.
That's the one we made up.
The true self is pure love.
So love of self is love of neighbor and the whole thing.
Yes, my neighbor wouldn't be getting much good treatment, would he?
If I didn't learn to love and treat myself with great love.
See to it your relationship with him is right.
And great events will come.
To pass for you and countless others.
This is the great fact for us on page 164.
I love it when we close our meetings reading that final.
That's the most heart touching part of everything.
See to it and great events will come to pass.
That is the great for you and countless others.
That's the great fact for us.
These are pretty big words.
This is beyond.
This is beyond happy sobriety.
You follow what I'm saying?
This is a lot different ball game than happy sobriety.
This is bringing in the point of the whole thing.
All right.
Prayer and meditation are a principle means of conscious contact with God.
So now we're getting into the essence of our program.
Conscious contact.
To take away conscious separation.
It's the only way to end that feeling that you don't belong.
When I took on the concept of God is everything.
I'll never forget.
I went God is everything.
Okay.
I'm going to take that in.
God is everything.
He's everything.
He's me.
He's Lee.
He's this room.
The coffee cup back there.
The moon.
The people do everything.
So I suddenly had him as the whole universe.
Everything.
Everything.
Everything.
Everything.
He's the whole universe.
Nothing in the universe that isn't God.
So there's this entire universe.
And then I started thinking.
And then there's me.
There's the whole universe.
And then there's me.
From where I sat.
I seem to exist.
In addition to the whole universe.
I don't know if any of you have that feeling.
You exist in a place.
That where only you exist.
We call it our own little world.
Which is the fourth lecture.
And that's why we feel lonely.
What is that world?
It's the story we made up.
As we grew up.
It's our story.
My little world.
It's where you run and hide.
I'm going to go think about things.
In my own little world.
I'm going to go think about things.
And you're in there by yourself.
Right?
There's just me.
And all my negative thoughts.
Every opinion that we have.
Surrounds us.
And we go in there and think about it.
And that's what gets smashed.
Remember that line in the big book.
About the idea we can drink like other people.
Has to be.
Boom.
Smashed.
So we're smashing.
Every idea that we have.
We're smashing.
This isolation.
And dark place that we live.
And then the light comes in.
And that's what Bill's talking about.
Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate reality.
Which is God's kingdom.
So.
Has everybody had a glimpse?
Had.
I have.
I remember the first time.
I just went.
God.
There's something wonderful around here.
It may have been when somebody else was talking.
And I saw what they were talking about.
And that glimpse.
Is the incentive.
To go see the whole thing.
I want more than a glimpse.
And then.
We find we do receive guidance.
Just about to the extent.
That we stop making demands upon God.
To give it to us on order.
And on our terms.
And Bill ended up in our 11th step.
With something that is.
I haven't seen in any other spiritual program.
Praying only.
For knowledge of his will for us.
And the power to carry it out.
Everywhere else.
You pray for this.
And pray for that.
And pray for this.
And pray for that.
And here we have.
Pray only.
For knowledge of his will for us.
And the power to carry it out.
It's brilliant.
It's absolutely brilliant.
That.
In other words.
All I want is guidance.
That's all I want.
And that's the best.
That I could ever contribute to the world.
The highest order.
Of what you could do as a human being.
Would be to have.
Show someone else how to awaken.
And AA.
AA is now in 146.
Countries.
One person at a time.
People are being transformed.
No money.
No program.
No big deal.
One drunk talking to another.
Is now influencing.
140 countries.
Who would have guessed.
That.
An awakening force in the world could happen like that.
And almost anonymously.
I mean.
Sometimes the people go.
Well they don't know much about AA.
And then.
One of them goes.
Oh my God.
There's one of my church.
And then they go.
Yeah.
And all the other churches in town.
What?
Oh yeah.
We have 190 meetings in this little town every week.
What?
I didn't know about that.
How did I not know about that?
How could all that be going on?
And then they.
Go.
And maybe they attend to me.
Look.
Oh my God.
There's my teacher.
My father.
Why they're all over the place.
Quietly.
Reaching out.
To the next suffering person.
And look where God.
Reached.
To get all his teachers.
In the trash heap.
Hey.
You'll be a good teacher.
Come on.
Out of detox.
Come on.
Come on.
I want you to go to Brazil.
And get them straightened out over there.
I mean.
This thing is unbelievable.
This.
Whole show.
That we have.
And we're part of.
Just.
Guy comes over to you.
And says.
Would you sponsor?
And when you say yes.
One more.
Is going to see the light.
It's.
Fabulous.
The whole deal.
Is just amazing.
And on page.
107.
In the 12 and 12.
He's been granted a gift.
Which amounts to a new state of consciousness.
In a very real sense.
He's been transformed.
So.
When I look at the basics of our program.
In our steps.
That's what I see in my head.
All what I just read.
Not.
Okay.
I'm going to admit I'm powerless.
Okay.
I'm going to come to believe.
Okay.
I'm going to do an inventory.
Okay.
It's a lot more going on than that.
All of this.
Is leading to.
An awakening.
Over the years.
I've changed the way I sponsor people.
I've changed the way I feel about the literature.
I've changed my.
I change all the time.
If someone were to ask me to.
What is the big book?
I would say.
It's a treasure map.
And God's.
The treasure.
And this is how you get there.
The book.
It's not the treasure.
It's the map.
Don't worship the book.
It's.
How to get there.
These are the principles.
That we follow.
It's it was.
Page 164.
Get all the way to there.
And what does it say.
Our book is meant to be suggestive only.
Suggestive.
No ordering.
No pounding.
Why don't we have to pound.
Who enforces this.
How does a work without an enforcer.
Well we know who enforces it.
Alcohol.
It just hangs around outside all the places we meet.
Waiting for somebody who says I'm not going to throw that stuff anymore and.
Understand you don't want to try the program.
Why don't you.
Have.
Let me.
Comfort.
You.
Pour it down.
Now you're going to try it.
Three years later.
Here we come back in.
OK.
What's the spiritual crap you're talking about.
And then we try it.
We got an open mind from.
Out there.
We don't need an enforcer.
We don't need anything but a.
Light.
That's attracting.
The.
This is going to pound us and they're offering something that I want.
Whenever I think of that magic and all of this spirituality is really magic.
I think about Bill's story in the big book and I just observed this about two months ago.
Not too far before he talks about Abby coming over to the Brooklyn townhouse and the kitchen table.
Which is in Stepping Stones on there I swear I sat at that table and I just felt.
The most amazing thing.
Bill is describing his own.
Thoughts about God and religion.
And he just came back from World War One.
And so.
If.
I'm there you're wrong we're right.
And he never could.
Understand.
The divinity of Jesus he thought he was a great teacher there's these wonderful principles but I don't know I think it's.
I just know I just can't buy.
Any of this religion God stuff.
So that's where he was that's his predisposition.
And something came along.
To completely change his mind.
In an instant.
Now you know he's a tough old New Englander they're not going to change their mind.
In an instant.
What changed his mind.
Abby's.
Face.
That's what changed his mind.
Not whatever he said.
He said.
I got religion and Bill went don't worry we'll get rid of that have a drink.
I don't.
Hear that I don't want anything to do with that.
But he couldn't stop looking at him.
This is a guy he grew up with.
This is a guy he knew.
This a guy who was a bigger drunk than him.
And he could not understand.
How he could look like this.
That's what changed his mind.
Isn't that amazing.
It broke down.
All of his old arguments.
And he just looked.
And Abby said well why don't you choose your own conception of God.
But he had already.
Started.
Started to have an open mind.
Just from looking.
That's pretty powerful stuff.
There was a light.
And you couldn't stop looking at it.
Like a moth goes right to the flame.
Lost people.
Will go to the light and they won't even know why they're going there.
So when we talk about becoming a beacon.
We're not pumping our egos up.
We're not trying to be something beyond our means.
We're simply reading what's really written in our own literature.
This is what it's saying.
And nature is pointing out that many of us aren't doing that.
We're not going there.
We're going here.
And what Bill said.
That's the biggest enemy of the best that there is.
Comfortable sobriety.
Comfortable.
No need to change.
The only time we change is when they pull the comfort thing out.
We get fired.
The economy.
I've noticed the meetings at our club.
Are much more spiritual than they were two years ago.
People are really talking about God.
And helping each other.
And bringing.
And free lunches in.
And we got it going.
It's really moving in there.
Why?
Well, the stock market had the biggest drop.
It's ever.
Oh, gee.
Okay, guys.
I'm holding on.
I'm moving in.
We're getting closer.
So we respond to that.
We respond to discomfort.
What time am I supposed to stop?
Quarter of?
Okay.
I'm coming in for a landing.
Perfect timing.
Perfect timing.
And let me tell you what line I think captures all of this.
It's a line in the seventh step in the 12 and 12.
And this is the line.
Let's see if you've thought about it the same way.
A great moment occurs when we see humility as something we want.
Rather than something we must have.
Up until that moment, we kind of got humiliated into letting things in.
Changing our mind.
And asking for help.
We asked for help because our butt was falling off.
You follow what I'm saying?
And so we were force feed, fed humility through humility.
Humiliation.
But as we began to experience the rewards of this humiliation humility,
we started going, this stuff really feels good.
Maybe I ought to go on my own and try and seek further removal of these defects.
Even though there's no pressure on me to do so.
That's a magic moment.
That's when we go from pretty good to seeker.
See, that occurred inside.
I'm just going to keep this momentum going.
I don't have to.
But I'm going to.
So you can see, it's a choice.
It's a decision.
And I think it's one of the most rewarding things.
Decisions we'll ever make is to just, in our own mind, you know, I'm going to move on.
I'm going to follow that stuff in the big book, in the 12 and 12 and step 11.
Individual adventure.
I wonder where I'll be led.
But with that in mind, somebody will say, hey, you want to go to my meditation class?
And instead of saying no, you'll go, yeah, I think I'll go over and look at that.
Hey, you want to hear this guy's coming to town to give it?
I mean, I was like, no.
I had a no.
It was a built-o.
I don't need any of that.
And then I went, even though I don't need it, I'm going to try it.
And there was a new openness.
And hopefully, this type of weekend.
This weekend will cause some of us to go, maybe I'll take a look at all that.
Maybe I'll take a look at all that.
Okay, we're at the end of the time.
And we'll wrap it up.
Any more announcements or we just go to dinner in about 15 minutes?
So we can sit.
Oh, Chris, go ahead.
Oh, we're wrapped up.
Okay, thank you all for your attention.
And we can hang out for 15 minutes and then go to dinner.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.