Spiritual Principles – Sandy B.

I'm an alcoholic, and it's grateful. I'm really grateful to be introduced as opposed to being explained, okay? I'm also grateful that I woke up on this side of the grass this morning. I didn't come to, but I'm glad to be here, and I want to thank everybody for their message of recovery that I heard from Friday on. I'm truly grateful, and I feel great for listening and being a part of this program. Now, the good part of what I have to say this morning pertains to this gentleman on my left over here. If I knew better, I would have gotten a dark coat so we could all be in sync, really. I'm the only one wearing a horse blanket, I guess. I heard Sandy B speak on a couple of occasions. I don't remember where. I don'T remember when. But I remember what he said. that's pretty good for me because I have a hard time remembering my name at times and you're going to be thoroughly enjoyed with this message of recovery I give you my good friend Sandy B well good morning everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic it's been a great weekend I've enjoyed being here, and I thank the committee for inviting me back. I forget when I was at this roundup before, but it's a pleasure to be here. Let's see. I got sober on December 7th, 1964, and I've had the same sponsor since that day to now. I don't know if that's a record, but that's along time for two guys to stay alive. You know what I mean? I've been very lucky to have this guy in my life. And if you're new, you want to make sure to get a sponsor. It's like getting a guide because AA is the world's largest lost and found department. And if there's anything that describes us when we're new is we're lost. We haven't got a clue. And so it's not like the guides, you know, Bill wrote about this somewhere. It's not that the guides are totally enlightened and have a clear vision of the entire future. It's just that the half-blind are leading the totally blind. And somehow we're following the next person up there and it all seems to turn out the way it's supposed to. So I feel really great about that. And I decided this morning not to tell my story. I hear it so much that I'm just going to talk to those of you that may be new, I'm juste going to share how this spirituality was put inside of me and how it came about. I am an alcoholic, in case you are new. I did drink excessively and ended up in the Marine Corps and in the nut ward and had the DTs and convulsions and malnutrition and miraculously got sent to AA and then got my sponsor, and life has just been an entirely different life. And I think the beginning of spirituality for me occurred probably when I had about two months or three months and my sponsor said well we've got the not drinking and going to meetings and we got all that going along but let's just sit down and we're going to talk a little bit about some other things i said all right okay and he said now let me see let me say if i understand this uh do you pray a lot and i said no no i'm not into that at all no praying don't like that well do you think about god a lot no no I don't think about God I stopped doing that a long time ago. Well, do you do a lot of spiritual reading? No, no, not into spiritual reading. Not into that at all. What about meditation? Have you tried that? No. No, I don't even like the name. Don't even like the idea about that. He said, well, let's see, how's it going? So that's what spirituality is all about. How's it doing? And that's what AA and sobriety gets us to look at, is how is it going? You know, like totally honest. Could you get totally honest with yourself and say, how is this going? And if you get honest, it's not going very good. It's really bad. And of course that's the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous. The emphasis is not on trying to convince us of the existence of God. That's for religions to do. What AA does is convince us of the need for God. And once we acknowledge that, the doors start to open. And so I started thinking about how bad things really were, that I was uncomfortable in my own skin, that I had used alcohol to fix the problem that I had. And so alcohol was not the problem, it was the solution. And now the solution had been taken away from me, so now I was going to be permanently uncomfortable. You know what I mean? I mean, going to meetings and not drinking made me feel a little bit better, but it wasn't making the dramatic change that I had seen in people around me. And so I was attracted to whatever had happened to some of these other people. And of all the places that we find answers, they come in some of the most unlikely spots. And I'm looking back and I would say that the prayer of St. Francis in the 12 and 12 under the 11th step was just an eye-opener when my sponsor explained it to me. So if you're new, I'm just going to focus on the first line in that and see if your evaluation of it was the same as mine was when I first heard it, because that prayer just starts out with, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. So what do you picture when you see that? And I'm going to tell you what I pictured. I pictured here I am, just a wreck, full of anxiety, all these things, and here's this vision that I have. Make me a Channel of Thy Peace. So this channel opens up from somewhere up there, and all this peace flows into me, and I feel wonderful. and my sponsor said well that's close but you have it exactly backwards you have it exactly backwards that's not what happens at all this you see you are living in the self-centered intellectual perspective and that's exactly how it looks but nothing in the spiritual world it conforms to the intellectual world and that is not how it is at all And I'm going, oh my God, this is getting complicated. I just don't understand this. All we're talking about is a little channel and now he's got me off into advanced something or other. And he says, well, look at the rest of the prayer. He says, I want to be a channel of your peace so that I can go out and bring understanding and bring love and bring comfort and bring peace so that i can go outside and go out and take care of all other people that I may run into and he said the channel comes from inside of you out that's what you had the energy completely reversed you thought you needed something you don't need anything at all you already have it all inside and it's been locked in there through your character defects it's being blocked and that's why we have these steps to open that channel so that all of this can come out and And you can allow this infinite supply of peace and love that's already inside of you to get out. And you're going to find the greatest joy in the world of just spreading this. And I remember going, well, it doesn't feel like that. It feels like there's nothing inside of me. It feels Like I'm empty. And if I ever open this up and let whatever little was in there, I had the picture that I was like a balloon and then I was going to go and just be flat. and so it took a leap of faith to understand this is what he was talking about. And for me, the most amazing place to find all of this information in our big book, I've always, this is my favorite chapter, the chapter to the agnostic. I think it's the most spiritual chapter in our Big Book, and I remember when my sponsor gave me my Big Book. I had no intention of reading it. I already knew what my problems were. I knew what the answers were. I had known it all my life, so I didn't need to be bothered with, you know, details. But he was dead serious about this book. And so I knew I wanted to make him convinced that I had read it. And I remember taking it home and pushing the pages and making them look like they were worn. And I got magic markers and just scritted around, you now, little things and put the coffee cup and made coffee stains. and it looked like, let a cigarette burn out on a page, you know, and it just looked like this book had been just devoured. And while I was skimming through, I saw this chapter of the agnostic and I didn't read it, but some of us know what's in stuff without reading it. I know that there may be some of you here that... And you just go, oh yeah, that's the chapter for us agnostics and that's where we stay sober and then all the rest of the people read the rest OF that stuff and the steps and all that. So when I get with it, I'll be getting that chapter and I'll been learning how agnostics stay sober when I read that chapter. And of course it was quite a bit later when I actually got serious about all this and got into that chapter and if you're new, I can tell you what the chapter says in three words. It says, change your mind. That's what the character says. If you're an agnostic, become a former agnestic. That is what it says in there. And it really helps. I mean, this is why AA is so practical in terms of spiritual things. Because it starts out, and this is where I get my definition of the disease of alcoholism out of the chapter of the agnostic. And it says, I don't have it down exactly, but it says something like in the very beginning, if when you drink you have little control over the amount you drink And if, when you try to stop, you can't do it for any extended period of time, you may be an alcoholic. Well, everybody feels, oh yeah, okay, I got it, that's me. Little amount, little control over the amount I drink. And then he goes on to say, if that be the case, you maybe suffering from a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer. Now, there aren't too many medical journals that would show it that way. You know what I mean? Like back in the appendix of all the diseases on the planet are those that only a spiritual experience will conquer. You know What I mean. Don't go to the doctor on this one. This disease is not going to be one that we're going to be working on because only a spiritual experience will conquer this. But that's what we have. So what a disease that is. No medicine, nothing. Just a spiritual experience. And so if you're like me, you go, well, I don't believe in spiritual experiences. And then my sponsor goes, next? This only works for somebody who's willing to believe in spiritual experiences, oh, well the only way I could get there is to change my mind and that's really what's going on. In other words, I came in with all these old ideas about me and the world and all this stuff. And none of it involved having a spiritual experience and suddenly I have a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer and I'm up against it. I'm really up against it mentally. And then the chapter goes on to say to be doomed an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face. Now if you don't think that's a funny line think about that line to die an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face why is that so funny because when we're new it's like we're we're on a quiz show and they bring us up and they go we got two doors and you have to choose one you ready die an alcohol alcoholic death or live on a spiritual basis oh man whoa that's it you know what I mean there's no door three just coast along like I've been doing and you almost feel like sneaking out and getting on the phone calling up a doctor listen doc friend of mine is curious about this how bad is an alcoholic death Because I already know what living on a spiritual basis, I've never done it, but man, when I imagine it, you know, because what do I know? So I've got to imagine what would living on a spiritual base be like. So what do my role models, and I think the biggest role model I have is Mother Teresa. You know what I mean? You can't get beyond that. And I'm going, that's wonderful for her. you know what I mean but I'm going I'm gonna give all my stuff away and I'm just gonna be over in some little poverty place just taking care of people for the rest you know it's almost like what about bowling I mean does it have to be that intense does it you know I can't get too spiritual I might give all my stuff away so I've got to control this is the mind trying to come in here talk about half measures you know what I mean yeah I'd like to get half spiritual and it turns out that there's no half help available there's not no middle ground you can't get a little bit sober you can get a bit spiritual so that's what makes it such a monumental program so I'm sitting there looking at this stuff like whoa and then we start talking about what the bottom really is like if you went back to drinking and then I go to meetings and I hear people who were willing to go beyond the nut ward and get sick beyond where I dreamed of ever getting and as I started realizing this was the only alternative that if I continued drinking, that was going to happen to me. That was the most spiritual thing I could be doing. And if you knew, that's what you want to focus on because that will get you in to the open mind that is so necessary. Nobody's going to jump up with the proof of the existence of anything. But if you understand the hopelessness of your situation and the reality that you're powerless over alcohol, we might embrace this alternative. So it's almost like we become spiritual by default. You know what I mean? I wasn't planning on this. I would have never chosen any of this. I'm not that kind of guy who's interested in any of these stuff. I just had a deal. It's like the mafia made me an offer I couldn't refuse. You know, you get spiritual or Guido comes by. And so this almost sounds, you know, like, wow, what a strange way of getting people interested in spiritual principles. But let's face it, that's how we all got interested, whether we admit it or not. It was because the reality of our own nature was explained to us and it was explained that our problem was lack of power. And so I wrestled with this. And what I wrestled with was not wanting to lose total control over my life. I wanted to become a little spiritual, but keep some bad stuff just to have fun with. You know what I'm talking about? And so when I look at, you know, we started into the seven deadly sins and we got to get rid of all of those. And I'm going, yeah, yeah. OK, pride. Yeah, get rid. I don't want pride. I don' t want anything to do with pride. And then I kept going, no, but I'm proud of this. And I always found exceptions. And I remember there was a meeting up in Washington. It was an old group. I mean, this group had been around for a lot of years and they had, I don't know if you remember the old groups, they used to have like about 50 character defects listed on a big board and somebody had hand-painted them all. And lo and behold, on that board, there wasn't pride. It was false pride. and I remember reading that and I said that's it false pride that's bad but some pride like my pride would be alright and I was in the Marine Corps at the time and pride I mean I tell you I must have gone four years just on the word pride trying to justify it and of course like it says it's not by accident that it heads the list because it ends up justifying all the rest of them gotta have some pride And so as I examine this, like year after year, I would come up with, well, it certainly must be all right to be proud that my son is a good Little League player. I'm so proud of him out there. But when I got honest, I'll tell you what that word meant. It meant I want everyone to know that I'm the father of the kid that just hit that home run. and he never would have hit the home run had I not been the father. And I see you giving him a lot of the credit for that home run when it really belongs more over here. You see what I'm saying? It was, the pride always came back to me and as I moved along a little further I suddenly realized that I had the wrong word for what I was trying to express and the correct word was grateful. I'm so grateful that that boy has all that talent, which he got not from me but from God. So if anybody wants to applaud that home run, give God a big hand because that's where the credit goes. So it was a question of inventorying and going in. So pride was a hard one to even make a beginning on. Greed. When I first got into AA, I didn't want to hear anything about the steps. I didn't want to hear anything about meetings. I just wanted a loan. I just needed like $2,000. You know what I mean? I saw that as the answer to everything. I had all this, whatever was worrying me, I just said, you know, if I had $2.000. So I just saw this agreed, just the idea of not wanting to take care of myself because there was so much lacking inside of me. I felt this lacking because I was not interested in spirituality. I was nicht going to understand that I could be filled from the inside out. I saw that I had to get things from out there. And so I just went right through the whole thing, envy. Of course, I remember, you know, everybody, look at that car he's got and I've got this piece of crap and I can't even afford a battery for it and I won't be driving it until next Wednesday when I get paid. And you remember all the things that are going on. And then lust. And I remember going, lust? I want to get totally rid of lust? Any of you all think about that? Like 100% gone? Does that worry you at all? Or am I the only one? I mean, is that zero, like zero lust, right? Zero. I don't think we want that. I think what we want, you know how Bill writes in the 12 and 12, We just don't want it to be enough so that we're raping people. But they've got to have some of that energy going on. In other words, no concept of what we were talking about in the sexuality area. Gluttony. I'm too skinny, so I could skip that one. That was one of the ones I could just go by. But procrastination, being lazy. I love to just not do anything. When I retired, it took me one minute to get adjusted to it. It just was like, whoa! I'm so glad to not even say the word work anymore. I love just, oh, I think I'll take another nap. Boom! It just came natural. So what I'm saying is I just found, as I went through anything that you presented to me, I qualified it and moved it down I certainly don't want to get rid of all of anything but I want to become better than I am you know what I'm saying does anybody I don't wanna become a saint I just wanna be thought of as a saint I don' t wanna be honest I wanna have a reputation for being honest And then people will deal with me in business and I can take care of them as appropriate. You know what I mean? I'll be honest most of the time, but man, if we're not making our quota, we've got to get in there. So this is the spiritual dilemma. If you're new, you're probably going, man, this sounds difficult. Well, it is. It's very difficult because it constantly involves changing our mind, changing what we set up for ourselves as an ideal because these ideals are very limited and it's a struggle that's just going on and on. Now I was thinking about how this all got started and I always like to give credit to Dr. Young and if you all remember the AA's origins it really started when Roland Hazard the millionaire from Rhode Island an alcoholic, ended up probably going to lose the family business, which had been there forever, and tried everything the United States had to offer. And somebody finally came up with the idea that Carl Jung in Switzerland was the last chance for this young man to possibly save his life. And he went over there and spent a year seeing Dr. Jung. And at the end of the year, Dr. Young said, I've done everything that I can for you. You understand the situation. If you keep on drinking, you're going to end up in a sanitarium for life. And he said, Oh, I understand that. I understandthat. So I think I've made all the changes I can in your personality. Good luck. We'll see you later. And Roland left and got as far as Paris where someone asked him the wrong question. They said, Would you like a drink? He said, Yes, I'd love a drink. And he's drunk again. and he came back to Dr. Young after some drinking and again in total despair and said, look what happened to me and this is when Dr. Jung just said the most humble thing I can imagine for the world's greatest psychiatrist talking with this millionaire and he said to him there's nothing I can do for you and whenever I see that I think about the end of our readings in chapter 5 when it said no human power could have relieved our alcoholism and certainly Dr. Young symbolized the epitome of human power that was available at that time and here was the absolute zenith of what could be done by mankind and it looked this alcoholic straight in the eye and said, there's nothing I can do for you. It was the ultimate first step. Do you understand powerless now, Roland? And it hit him like a ton of bricks that, oh my God, it's over for me. And Dr. Young said, now I have heard of some cases like yours where people have gone and sought a spiritual experience and they have recovered. So I would suggest to you that you go out and look for some sort of a spiritual experience and Roland did and he found the Oxford movement Oh, thanks Dan. One second. And he found the Oxford Movement and got sober because it had all the principles that AA was to adopt And, of course, it wasn't long after that then the second character that got the message to Bill, Abby Thatcher, got drunk one last time up in Manchester, Vermont and they finally were sick of him in the town. He had already driven his car into a farmhouse and if you remember the story in the big book and asked the lady for a cup of coffee when the car reached the kitchen and then he went out and was going to paint his house you know his family disowned him and gave him the summer home and he's like all us alcoholics he said oh my god I've got to do something constructive I'm going to painting my house it's a huge house so he bought some paint and ladders and brushes and got out there about 10 square feet painted and then sat down to admire the work that he had done sort of got a beach chair and sat out in front and sort of imagined all the rest of the house painted you know and having a few drinks and some birds came by and crapped on the paint. And it just infuriated him, and he went in and got a couple shotguns and sat out there waiting for birds to come by. Boom! You know, and the people in the neighborhood thought a war was starting, and it's just Evie over there blasting away. So he gets in front of the judge, and the judge says, I'm going to have to do something with you. And he said, well, maybe I could call somebody. and Roland Hazard was up in Manchester doing some Oxford work and the judge released Ebi, who they had known each other, in his personal recognizance and he whisked him off to the Oxford group. And not too many months later, Ebi thought about Bill Wilson and went and said to him, Bill, I found something, you ought to come and check it out and Bill checked it out and the rest is history. So many years later, Bill realized that he had never closed the loop with Dr. Young. And so he wrote him a letter and said, you may not realize this, but you saw a patient named Roland Hazard. And this is what happened as a result of what you told him, that you could do nothing, that he should seek this spiritual answer. and he did and now we have found AA and we consider that you are one of the founding energies of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous we're very grateful and he wrote the letter shortly before Dr. Young died and Dr. Yang got to write back in the grapevine you'll see this exchange of letters every so often between Bill and Dr。Young and basically Dr.Young said geez I've often wondered what happened to Mr. Hazard back then when he came to see me probably in the late 20s early 30s he said it wasn't safe for a psychiatrist like me to professionally talk about god because the rest of the psychiatrists would laugh at me and but young was very spiritual you've read any of his stuff with the symbols and all of the things very much into spirituality and god being the center of everything but he said i couldn't really say that back then now i could talk more freely about it and that's what I wanted for Roland because I knew that this is what was his answer. Because I've since looked at a lot of alcoholics and I have concluded that one of the things alcoholics have is an inordinate longing for God. Now think about that as the disease of alcoholism, that the real problem us alcoholics has, and we don't know it, is that we miss God a lot only we don't know that's what our problem is we know that we're just constantly restless irritable and discontent and we use our intellect and we look at it and we go i you're not going to see that it's we're missing god that god is missing in our lives it's just that money must be it we got to find something to relieve this freaking thing that's always nagging me it was always there something was missing i just don't feel right like other people and so i'm struggling in the material world to fix that underlying problem and nothing would fix it until I found alcohol. And alcohol is the closest thing to spirituality that I think you can get. It is almost identical to spiritual experiences. Suddenly, a power greater than ourselves fixes us from the inside out. Nothing out there changes. Nothing. You don't get any money. No, the world doesn't change. Nothing except we live in a different world We're at peace with ourselves. We really have found an answer. Unfortunately, vodka is not a loving higher power and does not have our best interests at heart, but it shows how we were struggling with a problem we could never put our finger on. And no matter what we did to try and relieve this problem, it wouldn't go away. You can talk to AAs who came in and became incredibly successful financially and ask them, did that fix that underlying problem that you had? And they said, no. I was thinking of committing suicide on my yacht. I was thinkin' of committin' suicide on miyot. Get in incredible physical shape. Become workout addicts. You know, and then you just stand there in front of the mirror just goin', it ain't gone, it's still there. Get on the health food diets. Get on whatever it is. Get the perfect relationship. Oh, it couldn't be better. But then when you're alone, you're just going, God, I still have it, whatever it is. It's just not fixed. I need to fix something. And that's when we get to the last part of that thing in chapter 5. And this is the part that I think, last sentence of what I was talking about that no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. And then the next line, but God could and would if he were sought. Now, if you're new, I'll guarantee you, this is what you just heard me say that God could and would. That's what you just heard my say. You didn't really sink in if He were sought. That little part was almost like, oh yeah, God could and would, thank you God, I'm here, I'm in the program and I'm just going to meetings and I am not drinking this and I mean, God's hands, boy is it great. And then nothing seems to happen. And so maybe we've got to focus in on a word that's right in there, and it's called seeking, which is exactly what Dr. Young told Roland Hazard. Go seek a spiritual solution to your problem. And he did, and he found it. And so I don't know where I came up with this, but this is, in my mind, the evolution of seeking as I experienced it in my life. And the first time I ever remembered seeking was in grammar school, hide and seek. Okay? Somebody hides, you know. Remember the first times you played that? You said, what's the game? Hide and seek, okay. So one guy hides, and then what do I do? You seek. What's that? You find him, okay? You remember how hard you looked? It was just like, I know where I'm going to be. I mean, you were totally focused. it was just like i mean it was zooming because you wanted to be the one to find it whoever this was yeah it's over here it's up over here you weren't thinking about anything else it's just like and the next time i remember getting involved with that was easter and my mother would hide the easter baskets for my sister and i and then she'd say can we go can we start can we star can we start you know like we're going to really focus on this and go and then i go you know and i'm I just, but even there with all that candy that I could hardly wait for, if it went more than like 30 minutes, the seeking power started diminishing. Can you give me a hint? Give me a hand. Give me ahead. Give me again. Am I warm? Am Iwarm? Am I Warm? Am IWarm? Because seeking takes a lot of energy to stay that focus. You know that? You know what I mean? And finally, oh, I got it. But this is, you can get the idea of what it is. And then the last example I remember was we had a golden retriever when I was probably 12 or whatever and had him for years and years and he ran away. I don't know if you ever had your favorite dog run away. But I looked for that dog really hard and for a long time. I mean, I looked at that dog. I would go out in the woods and call his name two years after he'd been gone. I'd go, maybe tonight I can find him. Maybe because I missed him so much. So there was seeking. Now we come in and we read chapter 5. It says God couldn't would if he were sought. Now let's discuss some of the seeking that we've done. Here's a typical seeking day for us alcoholics. You ready? We start the day with a 24-hour day book on the toilet. Okay. But we're late today. We have a very important appointment, and God knows I might get a deal out of this, so we have to speed read it. Oh, yeah, that was cool. And if anybody asked us on the way out what we just read, I forgot. I was thinking about this. The end of the day, we get down on our knees, and we go, thank you very much, God. Oh, man, am I tired? Well, maybe I'll cut it short here. I'm very, very grateful. I'm really grateful. Well, out of 24 hours, we had somewhere around 63 seconds of seeking. So I don't know if that qualifies. I don' t even know if you could get in the dictionary under seeking with that. You know what I mean? No, that's not seeking at all. That's messing around. That's what that is. That isn't even seeking. And so I think it's... I started looking at that and I just went, God, this is not that huge priority. And it's because it doesn't appear to be life or death like the dog was. It's like I could delay seeking one more day and it really won't make that much difference. I could relay really trying to grow another day. And I believe that's why we have tragedies come into our lives. Everybody who's been sober has had things happen to them. painful, painful things, awful things. And if you looked at it in the big picture, it's just God sitting up there going, God, I love that wonderful Alice back there. I just want her closer to me, but I can tell you she ain't going to get closer the way she is. I guess I'll just have to have this thing awful happen. And it doesn't make sense at the time. When I was sober two years, I went to a meeting every night. I did everything my sponsor told me, and I didn't get promoted in the Marine Corps, and I got, I'm out. I had 14 years as a regular officer, six kids to support. Go to a meet-up every night, I am out. And I remember going to meetings, and people would say, anybody got a topic? Yes, I got a topic. And you know, what's the topic? Getting thrown out of the Marine Corp. That is not really a good topic for AEA. Well, I don't care. And I heard that stupid advice that you hear in AA where people don't even listen to your problem. They tell you stuff like double up on your meetings, work with new people, say the serenity prayer, say the prayer of St. Francis. I wanted them to say, you were thrown out of the Marine Corps? Oh, my God. Listen, I own this big corporation. I'm looking for a top executive. Would $65,000 a year in your own car be all right? Now, that would be some spiritual help. I mean, you know, just tell me to say the serenity prayer a little bit. That's really helpful. You know, I'm just, I had this huge resentment. And three months after I was out, I was in a lot of pain and I was just thinking about how unfair this was and what about God and all that. And there was a little story in the Washington Post about page five, a paragraph about that big. It said Marine Corps instruction team killed in Denver in plane crash. And that was my team. And if I had been promoted like I wanted, I would have been on the plane and that would have been it. And I remember realizing when I read that, that God knew I read it. I'd just been complaining to God like mad. And I knew that he knew that I read it because he knows everything. And I felt awkward, to say the least. You know what I'm saying? And so I said, well, if you just told me that was going to happen, I wouldn't have been complaining about all this stuff. And so here we are. See, all that the chapter of the agnostic and all that AA is is trying to overcome our objections to our ego staying in charge. That's all spirituality is, and that's all the steps are. All the steps are is that we have all these obstacles called character defects that are blocking this channel, and none of this stuff can get out. So we have no – you can put a lie detector on most of it. Have you ever had any contact with God? No. And we'd be telling the truth. It's blocked. We can't have any contact. We shut it up, and the disease cemented it. I mean, it just sealed it. So we're telling the truth when we say, no, I don't have any of this at all. And so that's what this is. We're just going to pull all this stuff out of the way so that the channel can be opened again. And I remember just going, you want me to believe in this? You want me TO believe that it's possibly to be guided by God? You know, I'm going to turn my whole life over and blah, blah, bla. And I remembered when I was 12 years old, I joined the Boy Scouts. Anybody ever join that? And I only was in one year. and we went to the thing and probably after about the 10th meeting the scout master got up and he said, this is a compass and I'm going to explain how the compass works and then you can keep it in your pocket and if you're ever in the woods and you're totally lost and if You don't find Your way you're going to starve to death or freeze to death or whatever but this compass will get you out because there's this big rock at the North Pole and this needle will always point at that big rock and it'll save your life. So all you do is turn your life over to this needle that's pointing at the big rock. Now, as a Boy Scout, I didn't say big rock at the North Pole. You want me to turn my life, risk it entirely on the theory there's a rock at The North Pole that this needle is pointing? That's a... I just went, that's terrific. put it in my pocket I was now ready to risk my life that this needle pointed there and then later on the Marine Corps when I got in flight school and we're going through all the different things and they said now we're gonna go to instrument training oh great, great and here's the deal we have this little radio station on the end of the runway and it sends an invisible radio beam up to your plane and if you dial this little thing in and listen and you hear the A and the N and the steady beam you could come down right between these two huge mountains without hitting them and you will end up right in the end of the runway and I didn't say to him are you kidding? you want me to believe that a little beeping thing down there is going to make me miss the mountains I'm going to go up and put my life on no, I just said isn't that wonderful beep, beep, bleep, bleEP, bleEEP and we'll just come down and right down there there's a damn runway right at the end boom then I come in here and you go, you know there's this wonderful supreme being at the center of the universe and if you will follow these steps you will establish contact and be guided by this incredible supreme being. And I'm going, you've got to be kidding. I'm gonna turn my... What do you think I am, a sucker? You want me to believe that? Well see, I never would have believed it because there's no proof. I've heard the rest of you, so I had to take your word for it. But it all comes back to I have a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And so I came into this thing and I finally gave in and I just said, OK, what's the deal? Let's go. I'm in. I'm In. And when I said I was in, that started the whole deal. Now I'm Inn. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm going to do the deal. What is the deal no more? Well, I don't think so. I don't do that. And then, of course, results started happening. So if you knew and you've been studying the steps for years and nothing has happened, you can study them for 20 more years and Nothing Will Happen. You have to do them. They only become visible when we do these things. And Then We Can See What Prior To That Was Invisible. It Only Becomes Visible Through Action. And Than You Actually See The Transformation In Your Own Life. And You Start Seeing A Different world out there, just like alcohol made it a different world. Spirituality, the power of this higher power makes people look more friendly, makes the world a more comfortable place and makes you equal to everybody else. That's the power that is missing when we're just trying to go out there by ourselves. The bottom line, when I look back on everything that I've learned in AA goes, this is my favorite place to go and I'm going to spend the last few minutes on this. It's in the 12 and 12 under the 10th step. And it's how to live one day at a time. That's what this is all about. So when we finally clear up the wreckage of the past and we've done all of these surrendering and inventorying that we can, we're now ready to get the big reward because all of spirituality is learning how to Live in the Now and let everything sit over here and just be focused. And the 10-step is where it's all done. And so here's this little sentence in there, that axiom, that if you're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with you. That doesn't sound like a lot of wisdom. It's the most I've ever seen anywhere, that if your mind is disturbed, if you are disturbed, no matter the cause of the problem, there's nothing wrong with me. Well, what's wrong with my mind? I'm disturbed. That's what's going on with me right now. Someone did something outrageous, absolutely unjustified. Everyone would have agreed it was unjustified. So I deserve to be disturbed. You understand what we just said? I deserve, I deserve it. I deserve the right to go to jail and stay there. I have sentenced myself to being disturbed because my ego wants something. And I've just shut myself off from God. As soon as I slam down disturbance, I'm on my own. You want to be disturb? God says, go do it. But you're going to do that alone. So now it's just me against the world. I don't even have my higher power anymore. It's the one I'm disturbed. So what is it saying? It says we've got to have a way to get undisturbed. We've got make being undisturb our top priority. And as you start through the day, any time you get unddisturbed, time out. And if you get disturbed, get undistsurbed again. And there's millions of ways to do it, just stop. Get out the little serenity prayer card. Read that a couple of times. Call the sponsor. Thank you. Now move forward. It's almost like you're not allowed to advance in a disturbed fashion because anytime you advance in the disturbed fashion, you do things you have to make amends for later on and you treat people badly. You got disturbed legitimately. Somebody goes, oh, look what they did. So you go into the dry cleaning place and take it out on the lady in there. Where the hell's the suit? You know what I mean? And then she retaliates, and then you do the same thing in the supermarket. You do the same thing wherever else you're going, and you get home and you go, the world is filled with cranky people. I can't stand it out there. We have no idea that we did that to all the people out there This was brought home in spades to me by my sister, who now has 25 years in AA, when my parents, they're both passed away now but some years ago they were having their 50th wedding anniversary she's planning the party up in Connecticut and I'm going to go and she's calling me and then she said Ann we're going to invite Uncle John and I went oh God Sue don't invite Uncle John we're trying to have a happy family get together God please there's any way we can not invite him he's just so obnoxious and abrasive and all this and she said oh he only does that when you're around i went what oh no everybody loves him he's great he's a wonderful guy and i went that couldn't be possible you know what i mean but she had a lot of years at the time and i just so i said okay i'm gonna trust her i'm going to say he is a great guy so i'm just going to pretend he's a great man and so when i saw him i ran up and i said hey uncle john how are you doing i'm so glad to see you. And I think it just blew his mind. He went, well, I'm so glad to see you and he was a great guy. You know what I'm talking about? It was, I must have had some other idea and just, you know, brought out the worst in him. And that's what us alcoholics have the power to do is to bring out the worse than people. And then we come home at night and complain about the world that we live in and we don't see our role in it at all. So it all comes back to never do anything when you're disturbed. No, in other words, pick a day next week and make it undisturbed Thursday. I may not get anything else done, but I'm not going to get disturbed. I'm going to let everybody be wrong. Go ahead. Hey, do you want to drive that way? It's free driving day. You just go. I don't care. I am backing off three car lanes. You can just drive any damn way you want. I am not into this because I am going to go through without being disturbed. I'm just not going to be disturbed. Well, what happens when we go through a day like that? We have so much more energy than we normally have. We are so close to our intuitive, creative side that answers just flow in to problems. We're just, yeah, that, I mean, it's so easy to make decisions when you're not disturbed. We're in touch with our spiritual side when we're undisturbed. We are allowing God to flow through us and guide us in our thinking and our actions. and we're treating people in such a loving fashion that they're loving us back. When we come home at night, we just go, man, I ran into the greatest people today. It was just amazing the people that I ran in to. And so when you look at that in the tenth step, it just said, now how can we stay undisturbed? Well, it suggests the spot check inventory, but there was the four points, the honest analysis of what's wrong, really be honest, what's going on here, is it my role or was it them? If we decide that the blame belongs somewhere else, we forgive them. If we decide it's our fault, we make an amend. And a top priority is self-restraint in the very beginning. And that's what we talk about. Go out of the house in the morning with a 10-second cushion. Let anybody do what they want. And if we get disturbed, we allow 10 seconds to go by so we can get absolutely furious and then come back down before we do anything. And this to me is just one of the great spiritual things that I've picked out of living a day at a time is if I'm undisturbed, I treat other people like God's children and they treat me back and I come home at the end of the day and I go, what a great day. And it all was because of the priorities that I put in my life. And the last thing that I was going to talk about was forgiveness because my ego sets limits on that. Yeah, I can forgive up to a limit, up to an hour. Up to a minute. You know what I mean? but sometimes people go over the line. They shouldn't be forgiven. It's almost like that's going to hurt them. The only person who hurts is me when I decide not to forgive. So I'm trying to go, has there ever been a teacher, has there never been anywhere where they sort of gave us a clue as to what the limit might be? And I was thinking about a teacher that we had about 2,000 years ago and they're nailing him to a cross getting ready to kill him and he said, Forgive them! They don't know what they do. So in my scorebook, when something awful happens to me, it has to exceed being nailed to a cross and killed in order to qualify for not forgiving. Okay? In other words, I think that's sort of the standard. You have something that's worse than being nailed to a crossing and killed. I'll go ahead and hold on to that one. it's all ego there's a wonderful reading in the may 3rd it was just in may 3rth in that little 24-hour day book about forgiveness and it's talking about you're having a hard time forgiving you had time for you forget about trying to forgive anybody you got to get rid of self you've got to getting rid of yourself you know the prayer of saint francis we have to kill self we have to kill this ego we got to get rid of this self-centered part of us and as we work on that by applying our principles talking our sponsors praying meditating whatever it takes if we can reduce that self down to a nothingness we will find there's nothing inside of us that remembers the injury. Because the only part that was hurt, the self is gone and we're free. We're free. So it's always a test of ourself gets hurt. And that's not who we are. That isn't us at all. We're the person behind all that. And to me, that's what spirituality is, is the willingness to take this journey with the hope that we will finally solve that fundamental disease, dis-ease that has been inside of us all along that Carl Jung suggested, we just miss God a lot. And part of us is dying to get back in contact. We're just dying to give back so that we have this channel so open that all of our needs are being taken care of from the inside. And therefore, we don't need anything from the world. So we can just let it go. We can just have a wonderful time and see where we can be useful. Useful is, you know, we just have that throughout our literature. Make me useful. And so it's a question of giving God all the credit, just becoming an instrument. Instead of trying to be as huge as we can Be, we try to be small as we Can Be. Remember what a big shot we wanted to be? well we are creating a vessel to go through the sea of life and when you design an ego-centered vessel you have created a boat that's about 120 feet wide 15 feet deep and you're pushing it through and when we can become selfless we can go right through a screen door in other words there's nothing that can hit our ego because we've made it so small so anything can happen The only pain that human beings experience is not getting their way. There is no other pain. I'm just not getting my way. And the program suggests, well, don't have a way. Then nothing can go against your way. You remember that? And then the 12 and 12 said, well I'll be the hole in the donut. No I won't. I'll bring an instrument of thy peace. I'll being an instrument. I don't to be anything because I'm everything from the inside out. And if you're new, this is my wish for you, that you just try this. And the reason you should try it, because everything else is so awful. That's why you try it. That's Why You Try It. You don't try it because you believe me or anybody else. You just, you're tired of everything the way it is. So surrender your will into this path. Get a guide. Follow it down. And the path isn't going to go out there. It's going to go in here, and we're going to open you up so that you can see what a magnificent person you are. That's AA's present to you, is you. And when you arrive here, the wrappings around you are pretty lousy. It's not like the best wrapping paper in the world. It's pretty smelly, and it's not too good. And you don't really think you ought to open it because it looks like it's going be a pretty bad present, and you didn't want to look in there. But the program forces you to get away the artificial exteriors, Get rid of all of that stuff and see what's really in there. You are going to love yourself. You've never seen yourself in all your magnificence. You've ever seen what a loving, caring person you are. It's been trapped. All these crazy ideas that you heard that are just baloney are preventing you from carrying out what you want to do, which is to help the next person and just be an instrument of God's grace in this world. it is the greatest life and we struggle every day with our egos to get close to it and that's why AA is so much fun thank you all very much God bless everybody