Spiritual Awakening Isn’t Learning Anything New — Somebody Just Moved All the Scenery While You Were Sleeping – Sandy R.

Well, I want to extend a very special welcome to all of you for coming here.
You have no idea how it touches my heart that you would all come here to be together.
Because every year we have this most amazing collection of people who have been here before and the many who haven't.
And something touched them and said, go, and then you're going to get to meet these people, and it'll be the highlight of your weekend, is the time you spend together.
So try and mix around and sit with different people at the tables and so on down.
This is not an AA weekend, and we did it deliberately, even though we're all in AA,
but we get outside the box, we got all kinds of literature in the back, and we can talk freely about any spiritual concept that we want.
And so the books are just a collection of spiritual authors, and they're in the back there.
And I would urge you to pick one up and take it back to your room, and if you don't connect with that, put it back, take another one.
And try to walk out of here with an author that you're going to go home and say,
come and get one of his books and let it take you somewhere.
That's the way I approach those books, is that I have no idea,
but I've never failed to go through a spiritual thinker's writings without being able to see something more clearly.
And so it's really worthwhile.
And then later on we'll have holograms up, those that have been here before.
They simply are a mechanical way of seeing what happens when you have a spiritual awakening.
When your perception is suddenly altered.
One minute you're looking at this thing and it makes no sense, and you might look at it for two days here.
Some people are very good, they walk up and go, I got it.
But other people, they're going back and forth.
But then when it happens, you just go, whoa.
And it's just because that's what happens each time we're moved along this spiritual path.
We just see things different.
That's all that happens.
And if you seek hard, which is what we have on our t-shirt, Seek and You Will Find,
being a seeker is a decision that each one of you makes.
You can coast along or you could seek.
And I think seeking is one of the great verbs that we use in the spiritual domain.
Just keep seeking.
Then the other thing in the handout, normally I don't go through this, and I'm glad I did today because there was something in there I had no idea.
I had no idea it was going to be in there.
The book list.
That's a list of the books that we have back there.
Then there's passages from the big book in the 12 and 12.
And we've had these for quite a while.
These are, I just went through our literature and picked out what I thought were the most powerful and instructive spiritual phrases.
That are in our literature.
So it's a shortcut to really looking at where the power in our literature lies.
I think it lies in these.
I'm sure there's others, but I looked as hard as I could.
And I think it's pretty well there.
Then we have the prayer of Saint Francis.
And of course we have a spiritual walk you can take out there.
And one line from each of the, one line from the prayer is that,
each stop.
And you can just sit and reflect.
There's a whole book on meditation that is built on the Saint Francis prayer.
Just reflecting on each sentence.
And it just causes our perception to change as we reflect on those.
And then we still have this thing from Dr. Datcher.
Which I came across on the internet.
And he is talking about how important contemplation and meditation is to addiction.
And then he starts talking about AA.
And he does a very good job.
I only disagreed with him on two points.
And I emailed him and he said, well maybe you're right.
And so that's just something you can read.
Now the one I didn't know was going to be in there.
Are my notes on a lecture on contemplative AA.
Which we're not having this year.
So if you want to give a lecture on contemplative AA.
Feel free to use these notes as if they were yours.
And just impress your home group.
And say I'd like to give a talk.
There's a lot of good stuff in here.
So be my guest.
And simply take it home with you.
And then there's also, I copied these two prayers.
Because they just irritated me so much.
Out of a spiritual writer named Tozer.
This is what you're going to pray for?
When you look at those you're going to say, God I don't like praying for this.
But this is how one gets rid of your ego.
I mean it starts, you know.
Please take away my reputation.
That feels good, doesn't it?
Why don't you be glad to get rid of your reputation?
So that's just some of the thoughts.
Because in this world half measures really do avail us nothing.
You just can't make a partial surrender to anything.
And that's why the full surrender in regard to alcohol was so important.
So I think I've covered those.
I try to be available.
But I'm not going to be able to meet with everybody and answer every question you might have.
So put them in the question sheet.
And there'll be a box somewhere later.
Oh, there it is. Amy has it.
And then we can get to those on Saturday afternoon with Jack's help.
So I want to start tonight by thanking everybody.
First of all, I want to thank Chris Brubaker.
He is the best friend that a human being could have.
When I was in the hospital, he was there.
When I was going to memorial services for my daughters, he was there.
He took time off from work.
And he helped me because I had a hard time walking.
He just is there.
You couldn't imagine having a friend like that.
And I want to acknowledge that.
And the other thing was that my daughter, Conway, was down about a month ago.
And I showed her the two baskets in the living room.
One for each of my daughters with the cards that came from AA.
And there's 500.
And she sat and read them.
And it just moved her.
She's got about nine years in AA.
But it moved her.
She couldn't finish them all before she went home.
So they're waiting for her to come back.
So any of you that were involved in that, those thoughts that you put in there are going to last forever.
And they really, as far as I'm concerned, that's the monument that I have in my living room to those daughters.
And it's just so wonderful to be lifted the way AA lifts up so that you can be carried across anything.
And out of that experience, this year was probably the most spirituality I've ever had.
Because you only get it when you're in pain and having adversity.
We can make a little bit of progress.
But it's only a theory until you get in the classroom and they give you the test.
And then you can find out if these principles work.
You know what I'm talking about.
When you get fired, you're going to find out if God can help you with financial insecurity.
But you can't do that until you get fired.
Or lose a bunch in the stock market or whatever.
Now we go, okay, you ready for the financial security quiz?
.
Let me see you apply the principles now because it's not a theory.
And so when these events happen, they really are blessings.
They're just amazing blessings.
And I've worked hard on my spiritual program.
And I thought it was stronger than it was.
That's called spiritual arrogance.
I didn't think that physical pain, I thought I could rise above physical pain.
And I'm here to say, I can't.
It turns me into a sniveling, self-centered, whining person.
And there's lots of my friends who will vouch for that.
But as far as the other events during the year, it was just amazing.
And so I want to share two huge lessons that came out of the deaths of my daughters.
One is, well, it's three.
When events happen, the most powerful part of acceptance happens if you accept it as it's happening.
In other words, if you wait, it opens the door to resentment and anger and all kinds of things.
And then you have to work forever to get rid of them.
I had no concept of this until this year.
As whatever it is, your boss goes in, says you're fired.
And you go, okay, from now on, I'm fired.
There's no resistance to it. It's a fact.
And eventually we have to accept it, but if we accept it immediately.
And the second one was to forgive immediately.
Just forgive.
So whatever happens, I had somebody murder my daughter.
And I had seen an example of someone who forgave on the very day that that happened to them.
And it stuck with me for 25 years.
And I knew if that happened to me, I was going to do the same thing.
And so I just decided as I was being told to forgive whoever did it.
And it's never bothered me since.
And the third thing is, and this is probably the most important of all.
Whatever happens, there's a space between when it happens and when you react to it.
It could be one second. It could be three seconds.
It could be while you walk in the other room and sit down and now you're going to let the impact come in.
That's just the way we're structured.
There actually is a break there before you react.
And during that break, you go to God.
That's the trick.
You say, I'll react to this in a minute.
But right now, I'm going to go to God and I'm going to tell him I guarantee that this is not going to change how I feel about you.
And you stay there assuring him that he comes first.
That your love for him is ahead of everything, ahead of your life, ahead of everything.
And spend a minute or two doing that.
You still haven't reacted to whatever the situation is.
Now you go back.
Oh, geez.
God comes with you and he just puts it all in perspective.
You walk back with a guarantee that whatever it is, everything's going to be fine.
There's no worry that needs to be made with any of this.
Boy, I hope this lasts.
And up until this year, that was a theory.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
Oh, yeah, that's very interesting.
Just like the program is a theory.
Until we practice it.
So all I'm sharing this year is that if you stay in a constant state of receiving help,
that is the secret to growing spiritually.
We always talk about giving help as very, very important.
And it is.
But this is more important.
The staying constantly receiving more help than you had the year before.
Why is that important?
Because it's making you more dependent than you were before.
You're becoming more dependent on God.
And that's hard to do because it looks like you don't need him as much as you did when you first got here.
And so if we aren't continuing to surrender even more,
then as we get better, we move further away from God because we apparently don't need him as much.
And so there's the trap that we'll talk about near the end.
I think the last lecture that one of the problems with spirituality is it works.
It does what it says it's going to do.
It's going to return you to a state of peace.
And that leads to an illusion that you don't need as much help as you used to.
So it takes a conscious effort to be getting more help.
Ask more people's thoughts on things.
Pray more.
And see what else you can turn over.
Keep working on the sixth and seventh step.
What else can you let go of?
So those are just some of the lessons that I got out of this year that I thought were amazing.
And I was just lifted so I could stay extremely light throughout the year.
And a lot of it was from getting so much help, prayer, and support.
So that's enough out of that.
And my daughter Conway is just the hero of our family.
She is taking care of her sister's two kids who were absolutely out of control.
And they're now back in control.
They're doing good.
And she's the reason.
And as the rest of my family were commenting, 12 years ago we couldn't trust her with an ice cream cone.
Because she was still out there.
You wouldn't put her in charge of anything.
Just like they wouldn't have put us in charge of anything before we got here.
And so it's just a joy to watch someone else blossom.
And I know you all see that in your home groups.
We saw today at Yana, new people getting white chips.
Somebody with three days talking, thanking everybody for the help.
And the privilege of being able to see this on a regular basis.
You just don't want to miss it.
You really got to stay at meetings and be looking for the miracle that's going on.
And watch the change in the expression in people's faces.
And watch women who are all looking so awful.
And watch their inner beauty come back.
And look over there and go, that woman looks 20 years younger.
And rejoice in it.
And what we're rejoicing in is that we got to see it.
That's what I like.
I mean, I could travel all I want.
In a way.
I mean, I couldn't spend a lot of money, but I could travel.
I've done a lot of traveling.
And I'm going, why would I travel?
What sight could I see that's bigger than this?
What I saw today at noon, why would I go to Egypt?
Why would I go anywhere?
That's the privilege that we have in here.
If you see it.
If you see it that way.
And as you seek God, this is what you're going to start seeing.
It's just going to get bigger and bigger.
Because the goal is
to come as close as we can to seeing God's world instead of ours.
That would be the jackpot.
That's what St. Francis obviously must have come darn close.
I'll bet if we could get inside of his mind and his eyes
and just watch when he came out and looked around what he saw.
I'll bet it was spectacular.
I'll bet it was just amazing.
Whereas the rest of us are going,
what are you talking about, St. Francis?
It's a bunch of people hanging around being human.
I don't see why you're so excited.
Well, we get glimpses of this.
And Bill writes about that.
Get a glimpse of the kingdom.
That's the kingdom.
It's right here.
Is to be able to see that.
So I urge you all to keep seeing.
And seeking.
And see if your vision and what you see doesn't improve.
Now let's see.
This year, I'm just winging it.
I choose these topics and they sound great about six months ago.
Yeah, that'll be fun.
Boy, we'll get into that.
Then I go, God, I only know about three minutes on this stuff.
Anyway, we're going to talk about everything is perception.
And of course, it springs out of the way we call alcoholism a disease of perception.
But when you really look at it, all of life is a disease of perception.
And that's all there is.
There's nothing in the world except your perception.
The only thing you know for sure that it's real is you.
And so all of the challenges and all of the growth comes from you changing your perception.
That's how the whole deal works.
You are changing your perception.
What's this?
Oh, whiskey.
Tea.
Thank you, Chris.
Can you take that off the CD?
That does taste good, tea.
Tea with honey.
I got my doctor here, Jim, so we know we're going to make it through.
Right, Jim?
But let's go back and go over that again.
The only thing any of us have is perception.
That's it.
There's nothing else.
Because if there's 50 people in this room, they're seeing 50 different Sandys.
And you're hearing.
No one is seeing the same thing.
Nobody's going to go home with the same experience from this weekend.
It's yours uniquely.
And so if we understand that, that everything is perception, then the answer to everything is inside here.
It's inside here.
And I would add to the, you know, when you're new, they go,
Now, I want you to go home, and I want you to put this sign on your mirror.
You know the sign?
You are looking at the problem.
Have you all had your pigeons do that?
You just put this up on the mirror.
You are looking at the problem.
It's time to take that down and put a sign up that says,
You are looking at the solution.
That's where it is.
And I really enjoy going in and making eye contact.
Going in and making eye contact with myself.
And telling me how much I love me.
And I look in my own eyes to see what I can find out.
Because it's symbolizing that's where all the truth is.
It's not out here.
You can't trust anything that you hear.
You can't trust anything that you read.
It may lead you to do a deeper looking.
To do deeper meditation.
So that you can look at the spaces between the thoughts.
But it's only there.
It's where we are going to have anything revealed.
Now, in order to have that happen,
we got to start getting rid of
this, um,
perception that we put together.
The original perception that we start with is called our story.
And it's not an accident that we call it our story.
Our story.
Well, I think I'll make up a story about me.
Let's see, I was born here.
I had a rotten childhood.
Parents were mean.
Forty years later you go,
Actually, they were very nice.
That story was wrong.
Why?
Why are we doing it?
Because our perception changed.
We came in here.
We had the beginning of some awakenings.
We looked back at our childhood.
And we went, you know, they were really trying hard.
They were actually pretty noble people.
Didn't say noble here.
I guess I'll have to erase that.
So already we know
that the story
isn't true.
It's just not true.
How many times
have we been forced by our sponsor
to change our mind?
All right.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
Might be somebody in the group.
I hate that Jake.
He's such a jerk.
No, he's not a jerk.
He's a wonderful guy.
No, he's a jerk.
And then your sponsor explains all about him.
The work he does.
What his family situation is.
And you go, well,
maybe he used to be a jerk.
That's a person changing their mind.
Slowly.
And then finally,
you look at Jake
through your sponsor's eyes.
And you almost cry.
He's such a wonderful guy.
Perception.
So we just don't want to lock in
anything that we see or read.
It's only that,
that we're there today.
See, that's the view from here.
So if you're at sea level
and you have one view,
but when you climb up a thousand feet,
right, Mike?
It's a hell of a different view.
It's quite amazing.
Any of you that did flying or
climb up mountains or whatever it is,
that view is constantly changing.
And your perspective,
on everything,
is changing.
That's what we're trying to do here.
We're trying to climb
to the spiritual heights
for the simple reason
of seeing things differently.
Of seeing a different world.
So you don't have to
travel to see the sights.
Because they're going to occur
if you're growing spiritually.
You'll never see the same old meeting,
the same old crowd,
the same old anything.
It'll be new.
It'll be exciting.
And the trick is
to be able to see it.
And to see it more clearly.
And more clearly.
Just like the holograms.
One of the things that gets us
in trouble with this
is our tendency to move away
from the present moment.
And to try to look at things
in some long range.
And I think we have
a separate talk on that.
But it is the heart of
not being able to make progress.
Is to start this perception
that involves memories
and anticipations.
All of which are false.
They're all made up.
We make up a story.
And I've talked about this.
I think it just, yeah.
I'll go to the end of this.
In our big book it talks about
one of the great things.
I just love the way
Bill wrote this stuff.
He said,
God is everything or he's nothing.
He either is or he isn't.
And then he has that sentence.
What is your choice to be?
Do you like that sentence?
What is your choice?
Everything or nothing?
And you go,
I have a choice
about whether God exists?
I have a choice?
Yes. Yep. Yep.
Because whatever choice you make
is going to be your perception.
And perception is everything.
So if you choose there's no God,
you will see no God.
Isn't that amazing?
You could look all over the place.
And so we created
our own little self-centered story.
Our own little world.
And we're in the middle.
And if we came in with a lie detector
and put it on you and said,
any sign of God in here?
You could say no.
And it wouldn't move.
You would be telling
the absolute truth.
No.
There's no sign of him in here.
Well, if God's everywhere,
how could he not be in there?
Do you see where we're going?
How could he not be in there?
How is it possible?
Well, you just made up a story
that there's no God.
And believed it.
I call that make-believe.
You make up a story
and then you believe it.
Now, once you make up a story
and you believe it,
then you emotionally react to it.
Boy, it's lonely in here.
How did it get lonely?
I decided there's just me.
I'm the only one.
I'm really freaking lonely.
But look at all these other people.
No, I'm alone.
You haven't heard my story, have you?
I'm alone.
You hear my story.
There's four of us in my family.
My mother, my father, my sister and I.
I sat at the table by myself.
And they were there.
And they were together.
So I've always been by myself.
By my choice.
And then I complain.
I'm so lonely.
So then we come back
and I just tell new people,
you choose that there is no God
and you will experience
the results of that.
And write them down.
Just write down.
There is no God.
And then go through a week.
No God.
I've got to handle everything.
This is it.
Boy, I tell you.
And then you'll hear people talking.
The load that I have to carry
is crushing my shoulders.
And psychologists will tell you
the load that people are carrying,
their shoulders will go down.
And there's nothing there.
All this weight is coming from thoughts.
And so, but if you're alone,
who else is going to carry anything?
Why don't you ask Carrie to help you carry?
I don't ask for help.
I'm a real man.
I do it on my own.
Yeah, it shows.
You can see the real men who are over there going,
oh, my God.
We don't ask for help.
And so I've always been fascinated with that.
That that's how I had no God.
I made it up.
And believed it.
And then I came into AA and they said,
well, why don't you change your mind?
I said, I didn't know you could change your mind about God.
Oh, yeah.
Change your mind about anything.
So now decide that God's everything.
He is.
And see how it goes.
And it's just amazing.
It's not that God goes away and comes back.
God's totally dependent on my perception.
The one thing that we have,
and this is just my own personal opinion,
in free will,
we're only given freedom to make one choice.
No more.
You're not free.
This is the only one that you're free.
I know you're going, what do you mean?
I got free will.
I can do this and that.
You can either choose God or not choose God.
You're free to do that.
Once you choose God,
He makes the decisions.
And your choice is gone.
Because you're going to turn your life over to Him.
If you don't choose God,
your character defects are in charge.
And they'll make your choices.
Right or wrong?
You're sitting at work and some little cute Puerto Rican girl winks
and you go, hmm,
maybe I should take the afternoon off.
Did you choose that?
Or did lust choose it?
Or did fear choose it?
Or did resentment choose it?
So in order to have free choice,
we have to get rid of our character defects.
The only way to get rid of them
is to become totally dependent on God.
And so there it is.
I used to think when I was addicted to alcohol,
it felt so good to be free at last.
And you know how people are.
They go, well, I stopped drinking.
I'm free.
I don't have to think about drinking.
Everything's going to be wonderful.
And it's not.
They still have all these problems.
They're still frightened.
They're still angry.
They're still resentful.
But you've got all your freedom back.
I would have a prayer that would say,
relieve me of the bondage of freedom.
Please.
Don't give me that.
Don't give me the responsibility
for all the decisions in the world.
Why couldn't I just,
just have a loving God
figure it all out for me?
And I just get to watch.
I just become an actor on the stage.
I think I had something from Shakespeare somewhere.
Must be another lecture.
This would be so simple
if our ego wasn't involved.
Because every time I get a good idea
like this,
you know, I like that.
I'm going to turn everything over.
And then I'll have a voice.
Well, you better not turn the money thing over, buddy,
because you're right on the edge.
You keep that yourself,
because you know,
so I've already taken that back.
But it sounded great when I said it.
And I think a lot of good ideas come from my spirit,
and then they get vetoed by my mind,
who looks around
and uses information out there that's false
and creates,
takes me back into the world of my thoughts,
which
you've all been through them.
They just keep repeating
and repeating.
Each person has their own set of fears
and their own set of hot buttons
and all of that,
and they just keep going off.
So,
one of the things that I realized this year
was a different attitude about death.
Death is absolutely essential to life.
And life is absolutely essential to death.
You can't,
you couldn't have one without the other.
You couldn't just have life,
what, just goes on and on and on,
and you live to be a billion?
Corn grows until it's 700 feet high?
Just keeps growing?
You have to get a helicopter to go harvest it?
I don't think so.
It's supposed to grow, die.
Grow, die.
And so,
you could say that death is the end of life.
Well, if that's the case,
then life is the end of death.
Or you could say that
life is the beginning of death.
I always liked that one.
The biggest cause of death is birth.
There's no,
nothing comes close.
Nothing.
No disease, nothing.
And so,
just look at our whole life.
You're reading a book.
It ends.
And then you go,
wow.
It doesn't go,
you don't keep reading it for the rest of your life.
You listen to a song.
And you just go,
yeah.
And what if it just kept going?
It would,
you know how the records would get stuck?
And it just keeps going,
and I'm laughing,
and I'm very happy,
and I'm very happy.
I'm very happy.
You just say,
God, a song that's gonna last a year.
You wouldn't like a song that lasts a year.
It has to go away.
It has to stop.
When you go to a play.
When you breathe.
I treat breathing,
this is the birth of a breath.
Followed shortly by
the death of a breath.
Well, that one's over.
But it's not over, is it?
Because here comes another one.
And another one.
So,
how could death not be the beginning of life?
As we're worried about it.
And what a life
that must be.
Somebody said that life is magnificent,
then death is beyond magnificent.
It's gotta be unbelievable.
And so we can lose
one of the great weapons
that the human ego has.
Death.
See, the only thing that dies is the ego,
so no wonder he worries about it.
See, he's gone.
But the spirit
is eternal.
So the ego's running around trying to
make sure there's no dying done.
Then he won't be able to screw around
with you anymore.
And it's over.
As a matter of fact,
it's one of the reasons Bill gives
for why we are able
to become entirely ready
to have God remove the drink problem.
Because the ego realized
that if he didn't concede on that,
he could be gone.
It was fatal.
And so he says,
I'm gonna go along on this one.
I'll give that to God.
And we get the freedom.
And we get,
you never,
I haven't thought about taking a drink in 45 years.
It's gone.
It's complete release
from that problem.
From that character defect.
And then as Bill writes,
now why can't we get the same willingness
with the other ones?
They aren't fatal.
So the ego's gonna put up a fight.
And he's going to
do as we talk
when we talk about step six.
He's gonna concede part way.
I agree we should get rid of 65% of my lust.
You don't wanna go too far.
God, if he takes it all,
this is him talking about me
out of going along with getting rid of it all.
What would it be like if you got rid of it all?
Like you're dead?
I mean, are you sure you wanna go that far, Sandy?
And so we settle for half measures.
That's why steps six and seven are so hard.
That's what we're doing here.
We're trying to become more willing to let go.
It's hard to believe that the biggest action verb
in AA is letting go.
Doesn't sound like an action verb, does it?
You know, like climb a mountain.
Just roaring.
This is the tough one.
Beep.
That's the hard one.
You need a sponsor to come over and go.
You only let one finger go.
What about...
Not all.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I gotta keep something.
Some of this...
If I went like that, I'd be nobody.
That's the goal.
How about that?
That's the goal.
To be an instrument of your higher power.
You would have no identity other than servant.
You get up.
You do what you're guided to do.
You watch the day go by and you go to bed.
God takes care of everything.
How do I know to take care...
You see the ego?
What do you mean he'll take care of everything?
What are you talking about?
It's hard to believe.
So we gotta stop trying to believe it.
You have to let go of belief.
You don't need belief.
You wanna go beyond belief.
We wanna stop trying to know anything.
We just wanna let go.
Because when things are revealed,
when your perception is changed,
you didn't really learn anything.
You just saw things differently.
It's just somebody...
It's like they moved all the scenery
while you were sleeping.
And you came out and the house is painted
and everything looks wonderful.
So the traditional idea of learning
doesn't work in this.
So why are we reading all these books?
We got a whole thing back there.
Aren't we gonna learn?
You're gonna learn how to let go.
If this guy can't show you how,
maybe this guy can.
But somewhere,
we're gonna come through experience
to understand that letting go is the ticket.
To have no say-so in your own life.
That doesn't sound appealing, does it?
I have no say-so in my own life.
Well, then what's gonna happen?
You're gonna wait and see.
You're gonna get up every morning
and see what happens.
Now, the funny thing is,
the same thing's gonna happen
even if you try to control it.
It's just not gonna happen.
It's just not gonna happen.
It's just gonna happen.
And so,
I used to think that I did,
I had control over certain things.
Certainly I have control.
I have control over this.
And so if you did, then,
answer this question.
How could you have got to AA two years sooner?
Anybody think they could have done it?
How could you have got higher grades in high school?
Well, I could have studied, yeah, but
how could you have studied?
You were a screw-off.
What are you talking about,
you could have studied harder?
Name something that you could have
caused to not happen that way.
I can't think of anything.
And yet, my version of looking back on it,
my version of looking back on my past,
it was an endless series of bad decisions.
No.
That's the way it was gonna happen.
You were going to become a member
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And that's the end of that.
You could have chosen anything.
I wanna be a Nobel Peace, sorry,
you're gonna be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Why would God's name,
would they make us members of Alcoholics Anonymous?
Look how useful we are.
Just look at how useful we are.
We're the only ones that a suffering alcoholic
will listen to.
Wow, maybe it wasn't a bad plan after all.
Really.
How many times now,
even sober a while,
have you said,
at first I thought it was the worst thing
that ever happened,
but now I see it was the best thing
that ever happened.
Well, make up your mind.
So, if we can somehow start
pulling away the idea
that we can control anything,
life will be like going to a movie.
That's it.
It's just gonna unfold,
so you oughta watch it.
It's a play about you.
And Shakespeare was right.
Just say your lines.
Remember the old lines?
They had us saying real terrible lines
for a long time.
You remember those lines?
Irritated everybody.
I thought it was awful
I was given all those lines to say.
Say mean things about people, insult,
just be irresponsible and all that.
I thought it was my fault.
See, when you take responsibility,
then it's your fault
that you didn't treat your children right,
that you didn't do this.
No, you were given a part.
And that's,
and that's the way the lines went.
You couldn't have treated them any better.
You weren't the good guy in that part of the show.
You were the bad guy.
I know all this sounds like,
oh, you're just making excuses for us.
No.
After you've been around a while,
you start looking back,
and you realize
that this guilt stuff
is another story
to make us feel bad.
To make us feel bad.
The only reason we feel bad is
we made up a story that
we have to feel bad about.
God, you were such a jerk.
Yeah, you're right.
And you sit there and cower
from your own reprimand
because you thought
you should have done better.
Well, tell me how.
I mean, I know I could say the words,
but how could I have gone
the person that I was?
Once we understand this,
we can start letting other people off the hook.
Why is that guy such a jerk?
That's his part right now.
He's doing a good job, isn't he?
So, when we see that,
just look, just from doing that,
from now on,
you're going to see jerks differently.
I'll guarantee you.
The next jerk you see at your home group,
you're just going to go,
I'm glad I don't have to play that part right now.
Freedom from jerks.
I mean, you could do the same thing
to almost anything.
So, that's why it's so important to see
that perception is everything.
And the perception
is where you're at spiritually.
That's the measure of your spirituality.
So, when Chuck
came up with that great line,
New Pair of Glasses,
well, actually, it was who?
Father Dowling?
I think so.
Gave it to him.
It says,
It says it all.
I mean, how simple is that?
Here's Chuck,
that great retreat
and all the material that's on there.
And here's this little title,
A New Pair of Glasses.
It says it all.
He did the work.
They put him on.
Opened his eyes.
Whoa.
Saw it all different.
So, we're not waiting for anything to change.
We're not waiting for this situation to straighten out
or that situation to straight out.
We're waiting for new glasses.
And then we'll be able to see things
as if it were a play.
After all, in this play,
everybody dies at the end.
It's a hell of a play.
But fortunately,
there's a whole new cast arriving.
And then they'll go off.
And a whole other cast will come.
And it's just one play after another.
One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five.
So, we're making light of life.
Somebody said life is precious.
Well, if it's eternal,
how freaking precious can it be?
There's an infinite supply.
It goes on forever.
How could you waste time?
Don't waste time.
There's only eight billion years left.
It'll be like in the middle of the ocean.
You're in a boat.
And you scoop a cup of water out and look at it
and dump it back in.
Somebody says, don't waste water.
Don't waste water.
You don't have to.
So, you can see,
all of these constructs
are designed to give us faulty perception.
And faulty perception
causes all the problems.
So, there's no such thing
as a real problem.
There's only a bad perception.
So, when I sponsor people,
when they call me up
and they say they have a problem,
I say, come on over.
I'm secretly planning to show them
that they don't have a problem.
That's my goal.
And they come in,
and I go, oh, yeah, I know, I know.
But, hey, wait.
How much sobriety you got now?
Six months.
Six months.
Did you ever think you'd get six months?
No, I really didn't.
You know, you gave that little talk the other night.
People loved it.
You've really come a long way, haven't you?
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And we just keep going on,
and then I go, what was there,
a little misunderstanding at work?
Yeah.
You think it's possible to see that maybe,
isn't your boss going through a divorce?
Yeah.
You think he's hurting?
Yeah.
You think that's why he lost his temper?
Yeah.
How's the problem?
Hmm.
Well, if you look at it that way,
.
It's really not much of a problem.
What did we do?
We changed his perception of the problem,
and the problem went away.
It was never resolved.
It was never figured out.
And that's what Bill writes in our books.
Our problems are removed.
They're different verbs for spirituality.
Not solved, removed, disappeared.
How about the promises?
Self-seeking will disappear, slip away,
whatever the hell it is.
What kind of a...
Explain that to someone.
You know, the promises came true in my life.
Self-seeking slipped away.
Could you explain slipping away to us, please?
Could you write out what slipping away is?
Um...
I don't know. It's magic.
It just...
That's right.
It's magic.
It can't be understood.
That's why I love magic.
The worst thing you could do with magic
is to learn how the trick works.
Spoils it.
Harry's here, right?
Harry's the magician.
I just love some of the stuff he does.
And I don't want it to show me how he did it.
I just want to go, whoa!
Because if he showed me, I'd go,
oh, anybody could do that.
I'd ruin my perception of it.
We just want to figure things out.
Suppose you were an actor in a Shakespearean play,
and you're saying your lines,
and you're on the stage going,
I wonder why in God's name
Shakespeare has me saying that.
I think you'd screw up the play.
You wouldn't stay in the role.
Why has he got me saying this?
It doesn't make sense that I would be saying this
at this point.
Just say the lines.
See if the audience likes it.
Is that how you tell if the tricks are good?
You look at the audience, right, Harry?
And if their eyes are going,
you know you're doing good.
And when a...
conductor's leading a philharmonic orchestra,
and he looks out and sees the faces of the people,
that tells him more than the applause.
The applause always happens at the end,
but when he looks out and sees
that the music is transforming,
that's better than the applause.
Because everybody's in the moment.
When you go to a symphony,
you just sit waiting,
waiting to be moved by the music.
I just had a fascinating thing happen.
My anniversary was just a few days ago,
so I thought of my sponsor
and what a great guy he was.
And I thought about his funeral
and all the people that came.
And his children were there
that I knew when they were little.
I remember his son ran away during the Vietnam thing
when everybody was disappearing and protesting.
He was gone a long time.
Had everybody worried.
And he was there.
And he looked wonderful.
And I thanked him.
I'm one of these guys that just doesn't pay enough attention.
And yesterday,
I was thinking about him and I said,
you know,
I think he said
he was a musician
in Germany.
That's what I think he said.
So I went on the internet
and I typed in his name.
Erich Tuwilliger.
Musician.
Germany.
And it went boink.
French horn player.
The third best in Europe.
YouTube.
Playing the solo in Beethoven's Fifth.
And I got to watch it.
Wow.
I had a good anniversary.
I was reconnected with my sponsor.
And it was delightful.
Oh my God.
This kid is amazing.
So all of life could transform us
just like music does.
If we would treat it as music.
If we would change our perception of it.
Because when you're listening to an orchestra,
you can't control anything.
You have to only listen.
You know what I'm saying?
Or, I don't know,
maybe you go in there and you add up things
while you're listening.
But if you want to listen.
So we find out that probably the
second biggest action verb is listening.
Just do a lot of listening.
And you can listen and look.
And that's where it all happens.
That is true.
Thinking isn't.
We've got to understand that.
Listening, looking, seeing.
This is true.
Thinking isn't.
So whatever we look at,
we just experience it.
And don't put an adjective on it.
All of our problems come from adjectives.
Until you put an adjective on something,
it simply is.
You follow what I'm saying?
It just is.
You're the one that says,
it sucks.
It doesn't do anything like that.
It just is.
But you didn't want it that way.
So you called it bad.
So you called it bad.
So all the adjectives that we put on things,
that's what we suffer from.
Not from the event,
from the adjective.
It was lousy.
It was bad.
They're mean.
This and that.
Nobody comes with an adjective.
And if someone came in here
and did something,
and then left,
and we went around the room getting the adjectives,
they might all be different.
What did you think of that?
Great.
God.
Just wonderful.
You?
Sucked.
Really?
You?
It was all right.
Next.
I want to hear more.
What was that guy's name?
So none of us would see it the same.
So it really isn't.
It's just the perception.
So what's real?
Just your perception.
That's the only thing you know that's real.
It's you.
And we get back to the beginning.
I'm going to stop soon before I run out.
We get back to the beginning that the starting point
and the end point is you.
The treasure, God, is in here.
The treasure map is the big book
or some of the books back there.
They can help us.
They can help us open this up.
They can help us destroy the story
so we can see the map more clearly.
But the treasure is going to be found in here.
And we're going to find out that we,
our true self, is so pure and wonderful
that we're going to love it.
This type of self-love is the highest form of love
because we're loving the God in us.
And I ask you to reflect on
love your neighbor as yourself.
Everybody says that all the time.
Yeah, you got to go over.
You got to love your neighbor.
No, it says love your neighbor as yourself.
What if you hate yourself?
Your neighbor's not...
He's in for it.
He's in for it.
And so, as you are revealed,
and that's what this whole weekend,
that's what all spirituality is,
is you're going to be revealed.
How do we see the real you?
We destroy the one you made.
One idea after another.
One perception after another.
One more time,
you had it wrong.
And what's left
is what we want to finally see.
So that's what seeking does.
We're not seeking anything in India.
We're seeking something in here.
And it can be seen in our eyes.
It's amazing
what you can see in your own eyes.
And that's where the treasure is.
So the more time you spend
looking in there
and telling yourself
you love you,
it's so awkward to do.
To look yourself right in the eye.
Remember how hard it was
to finally go to your father
and say I love you?
This is even harder.
Walk up to a mirror
and just look right into your own eyes
and go,
you're going to cry.
You're going to cry when you do it.
That's all you've been wanting
for a long time
was your own love.
And you've been given hate
and despise
and criticism
and awful treatment.
We treat ourselves worse than our worst enemy.
We never let ourselves up.
Our enemy, we beat him up
and then we all go home
and he goes home.
We go home and get in bed.
No, I'm not through.
I just want to sleep a little.
You're not sleeping.
Let's go over the day again.
You remember what you did to her?
You remember what you did to her?
Now tonight,
when that voice starts,
just say,
I was just following the script.
And then go to bed.
Good punchline.
I'm going to stop on that.
I don't want to wear this out
because I think I'm supposed to give another talk.
So let's just wrap it up.
I appreciate everybody's attention.
And we can walk over about two minutes to seven.
So hang around here and visit.
Thank you all.
Thanks.