Spirituality Retreat 2008 – Practicing “The Presence of the Now” – Sandy B.

Before I get started, I got two things I want to talk about but I want to get them on the tape there. One of them is at 2 15 after the group picture we're going to play in here just optional you don't have to attend but if If you've never seen Chuck Chamberlain given a talk, we have a DVD of him. Very poor quality. And he's giving a talk to college students. So it's not an AA talk, but he's talking about spirituality and you'll recognize Chuck. Chuck. And so it's a chance to experience his presence for those of you that came in after he passed away or never got a chance to go out to California, and we'll play it right here. I think it's about 45 minutes, but just to get 20 minutes of seeing him, will put a person connected with a new pair of glasses, so that'll be available. Then the other thing is I wanted to talk about this book that's back in the back. This one would be very attractive to any AA history buffs, of which I'm one. And if you study AA history, including the trivia, trivia, there's a name that if you're at AA conferences and they have the trivia quizzes and they'll say, what did James Newton contribute to AA? And that's the name is James Newton. And most people haven't got a clue because he wasn't an AA member. And it turns out that he was Thomas Edison's right-hand man down in Fort Myer and a real estate developer in the 20s and into the early 30s. Even in the Depression, he was making money. And Harvey Firestone was, you know, Ford and Firestone and Edison were all very close. And Firestone came down to visit Edison, and while they were talking, he said, I need a right-hand man out in Akron, somebody that can really help run my company. and Edison said, here's your man, right here. So they talked and he thought he was really cool so he took him out. Now Newton had been a member of the Oxford group for a few years and was totally carried away with the power, the spiritual power of the oxford meetings. And when he got to Akron, And it didn't take him long to realize that one of Harvey Firestone's son was a raging alcoholic. So he took it upon himself to take him to an Oxford weekend in connection with a business trip. And the son was so taken with the whole weekend that he had a spiritual experience and never drank again. well when he came back and was sober his father is going well how did what happened and he explained that he went out and went to an oxford thing and he said well what's oxford movement so he told him and he says we have to have that in akron and he personally called up frank buckman and buckman brought all his heavy hitters to akron where the newspapers covered this thing like it was a presidential visit it. And because of the wide publicity, Dr. Bob, Ann Smith, Henrietta Seiberling, and a whole bunch of others found their way to the Oxford Group laying the foundation for Bill Wilson to come out and make the connection. And about ten months ago, somebody mentioned to me, hey, did you ever read the book by James Newton? And that's what Uncommon Friends is. This is James Newton's account of his incredibly close relationship with Edison, Firestone, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and a Nobel Peace Prize doctor from France named Carell. He's one of these guys that when he meets somebody like that they immediately make him their best friend and so he is like on the inside of these people sharing his recollections of what it's what these people were really like a a in there from his point of view and if you like history this is a lot of fun and it really gives you some insights I kind of changed my mind about Lindbergh I I decided I'd like him after all. I had kind of prejudged him when he didn't go along with Roosevelt on the war. So anyway, that's it, and we'll move into one of the more fascinating topics that we have this weekend. And you see on your schedule, what does it say exactly? Practicing the presence of the now. Now, in AA, we recognize how important it is to not be consumed by the past and the future. And so we talk a lot about a day at a time. That's a very common thing. You've got a sales meeting next week? Well, don't think about it today. Just live today, today. And you give that advice to everyone. everyone, and we talked to each other about it. But that still allows room to spend the morning worrying about the afternoon and the afternoon regretting the morning. So we took a monstrous step in the right direction by eliminating the last ten years in addition to the morning and eliminating the next 10 years to worry about and bringing it down to just this afternoon. But it's still a heavy load to carry. Why don't we narrow it down all the way to the present moment? And I think everybody, I heard that and I said, right, right. Right. And then the question comes, well, what is the present moment? And how in God's name could you give a talk for an hour and 15 minutes on the present moment? So if you were caught unprepared, you'd come up and you'd go, you know, right right now. You know what I'm talking about. In the present, right now, and then your talk would be over. Am I right? So keep going. Let's draw it out a little more. You know, like now. Now, now, now. So it's not an easy subject. So I made up some stories and some ways of looking at it. And I actually made cards because I want to make sure it comes out right. And I started out with the ABCs at the end of Chapter 5, or at the beginning of the chapter. At the end if what we read in Chapter 5 the third one, God could and would if he were sought. And we all know that line. God couldn't would if he were sought. And we talked a lot about seeking here, becoming a seeker. And so if we were going to seek God, where do you go to find him? Do you go down by the water? Do you Go in your bedroom? Do you over there? Do you Over there? And there is a place where people throughout the ages have gone in order to find their higher power. And I wrote a little, my thoughts on where this place is. And it goes like this. I dream of a place were all dreams end. A place where love, truth and light were born. A place known as, out of our literature, the land of the ages, God's kingdom, the ultimate reality, or the world of the spirit. A place far away from us in distance and time. A place called right here, right now. I dream of someday awakening and returning to my land of origin, a land known as the now, the eternal God's only home. So that kind of narrows it down that if you're not in the present moment, you're never going to find God. You're just not going to fine him anyplace else. If you are not there, the contact won't be made. Now, religion and science have both addressed the past and the future in great detail. I mean, science can take you back to, I think it's about two millionth of a second after the Big Bang and take us all the way up through 11 billion years and tell us everything and what is going to happen and all these projections. But there's very little written about the present moment. It's almost like it doesn't exist. We're not going to study that because it doesn' t really fit in. And the same thing with a lot of religions. They talk about the origin of divinity and what happened and what was taught. And they talk about what's going to happen, a lot about the future. And somewhere off in the future, this entire contact will be made. And there's all of these things. And once again, there isn't a tremendous focus on the present moment. Matter of fact, there's a lot of emphasis on the good that's going to happen to you. If you continue to pray, if you continue to do this, something wonderful will happen. Will happen. happen. And as a result of that, we spend a lot of time anticipating those things that will make us happy. And we can hardly wait to get there. And I think, you know, when When we're little, we go, oh boy, oh boy, pretty soon I'll be in school like my grown-up sister and then that'll be a good deal. Then we go there and go, this isn't a good deal, what the hell did I want this for? But when I get out of grammar school, look at those high school kids, they got cars. When I get there and we get there and we're at the bottom of the heap again, we don't know what's going on. But when i get in college, I mean you know the whole thing, and then I get out of college, i'll have a degree man, Man, I'll be important. And you start at the bottom of the workplace. But when I get promoted, boy, if I get her a job, boy, If I could ever get this girl to marry me, boy, I could get this, if could get that, if can get that. And so there's a tendency to be just out of reach all the time. We're just about. about. And one thing that put us in the now was alcohol. We really discovered the present moment, the second we drank. I got about three drinks down and I wasn't thinking about how good things could get. I was thinking about how good things are right now. It was wonderful. I just sat there, didn't want it to end. People People would be going home to their wives. No, no, no. Don't end this. Don't End This Moment. So we got a glimpse of it. But now we're sober. We can't do that. We can'T use alcohol to get there. And so I tried to come up with, well, how do you get there? And what would the program say about it if we took our steps and translated it into the present moment? And I came up with this. We do it the same way that we find out the truth about ourselves, by getting rid of everything that isn't the truth, by getting rid of all our defects and old ideas until there's nothing left but the truth about ourselves. So, following that model, the trick would be to get rid of everything that isn't the now. And then that's what we're going to do. If you think about it, we're gonna have to get red of time itself. Anything that's connected with time has to go. And we go, whoops, I don't think that's possible. But we invented time. We invented it as a means of meeting each other for lunch and having everyone show up at the business meeting at the same time and all agreeing to get to the airplane, which is going to take off at 3 o'clock. So it serves a nice function in order to accomplish certain commercial and everyday things, but it has no meaning in our spiritual life. and so if you can imagine we're all now perfectly spiritual beings I know that's a big stretch for some of the people in this room whose names I will not disclose but it is possible and so, if we were there in that precious moment moment, we'd notice that people are still wearing watches. Only they were cooler looking, they were a lot thinner, but they were fashion statements just like watches are today. And we might go up to Jack over there and say, that's a nice watch you got, Jack. What time is it? It's right now. Thanks. And we let what seems like an eternity go by and go back to Jack. Well, Jack, what time is it now? Right now. This watch is never wrong. It has has no moving parts. It just has a beautiful band, and it reminds us that it's always right now. So there's just a visual of it's right now. There's nothing else. Everything that It happens, happens right now. There's no, it's going to happen. That's out of the picture. So the only thing that I now am limited to experiencing is right now, I'm just here. Eckhart Tolle is an author in the back who writes a lot about this. He wrote The Power of Now and The New Earth. And somebody gave me a CD of a lecture he gave in New York City, and he said he went out for a walk, and everybody's walking so fast that he had to increase his pace or be crushed on the sidewalk. If you've been in Newark, you know how fast everybody goes, Well, they're going, man. They're going. And he started watching what the hell everybody was in such a hurry for. And they were really going somewhere. And he finally figured out where they were going was to the next moment because it was going to be better than this moment. And it captured the whole thing of our entire lives. I can hardly wait until. I can hardly wait until. And when you're in such a hurry to get to something that's going to be better than it already is, you never take the time to see how it is. It may already be perfect, but we never stop long enough to go, well, how is it right now? Well, who cares? It's goingto get better later. So we never really looked at it. We just concluded that it couldn't be as good as it's going to get. And with that mindset, we missed the whole show and we could miss it all the way through life and go all theway up to the deathbed going, well, I hope it's better after you die because I never found how good it actually was. was. So the story that comes up next is, the past, the present, and the future were having a conversation, and they decided that there was a lot of tension between them at all times. They were just pulling and tugging in many different directions. So they decided, why why don't we hold a meeting and we'll see if we could compromise and find some way of reducing all the tension. And the future said, you know, we're in a historic building. They were in Philadelphia. And so right upstairs is a very famous room. I think that would be the place to hold the meeting. And they all agreed, boy, that is cool. cool, that is really, that should be quite a meeting. So it was easy to discover the location or to agree upon the location of the meeting. Next came when the meeting's going to be held. This was a horse of a different color because right off the bat, the past said, we got a hold of the meaning two years ago. It's familiar. We'll all be comfortable. We've already been through it. I think we should definitely, out of desire to get something really done, go to some place that's very comfortable. And the future disagreed immediately. I hate that. It's boring. I didn't like the past at all. I don't like you. I think we should make this a very exciting meeting and hold it two years from now. That's when it should be held. We don't have a clue what that'll be. It'll be really cool, and we'll go there. That's what I think we should do. And then I said, you guys make a pretty good case. And I'm really torn. I think you both have very good ideas, but I would point out one thing. That if we do go back two years and we settle in for the meeting, it'll be now when we get there. In the past, yeah, I guess so. You know, he said, now, if we wait and go in there two years from now, it'll be now when we go in there. And the future went, yeah. So I think we ought to hold it right now. And they couldn't think of an argument. So they grumpily went up into the room and took their seats at the table to hold the meeting. And observers say that as they sat down, there ended up with just one at the table, the now. And a great peace came over the room. It seemed to light up a little bit and the people watching felt really happy because they saw something of great magnitude happen. happen. And that's the type of meeting we ought to hold with ourselves. End the debate, end the worry, cut the ties and get there. Chuck talked about that, that conscious contact Conscious contact can only happen in the now. And our whole weekend has been designed to talk about conscious contact. The saying on the board behind me, simply allow everything to be as it is, is an automatic ticket to the now, it just places you there And as long as you stay there, you could have everything that needs to be revealed, revealed. Which is much more important than anything we could accomplish by preparing for some future goal. No. So in a way, when we work the steps and we get rid of our old ideas, in this instance, I'm going to give up everything that I've created. And everything that i've created is my identity. I'm actually going to to give up the I, which is my own creation. Which ties into the question yesterday, who am I? And the answer was, I am. So I've got to eliminate anything that connects me to time. Do you follow what I'm saying? I have to eliminate everything about me that connects me to times. I'd remove all my defects of character. If that were accomplished, we would be in the now. There'd be nothing left of my will and I would simply be a servant of God and from moment to moment would simply carry out what guidance I feel I have received And that would be the extent of my entire plan, which sounds vaguely familiar about Chuck Chamberlain saying, for the last 22 years, my entire plan for life is to get up every day and see where God guides me. Which is, you know, we go, well, that's good for Chuck. But I got a real life to lead. Like he didn't run a business and didn't have his marriage and all these other things. It sounds too remarkable. Then on page 57 in the big book, when we drew near to him, he disclosed himself to us. Again, where is near? How do you draw near? Go to Jerusalem no you we have to go in we have to eliminate time and go into the present moment and then he will reveal himself to us and again more will be revealed be still and know that I am there there's hints all over the place about where God can be found and they all lead to the now it's no it's like Like all roads lead to now and all roads need lead to God and all roads lead to the real me, which are my true nature. In the 12 and 12 and the 11th step, it said we may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate reality, God's kingdom. I've always liked that line. It's in the 11th step and the 12th and 12th. We may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate reality, God's kingdom. That's a lot to put in an AA book, isn't it? You're going to be granted a glimpse of God's kingdom. And again, the kingdom is the present moment. That is It is the kingdom. There's nothing beyond that. That's it. It's to somehow get to that present moment. So I made up another story about I'm searching for God and I'm trekking down a path and all of a sudden there's a door in front of me and the door is marked the now. And I go, hey, doesn't get any better than this. So I go up to the door and I knock on the door and a voice said, who's there? And I say, and I go Sandy Beach said, sorry you can't come in you have to figure out the mystery of the now come on back when you've got it figured out Come on back when you think you understand the password to get into the now. So now I got to go back and I got a talk and I gotta get some advice and I gotta get some wisdom and somebody tells me the secret and I went wow I knew that and I forgot it so I came back and knocked on the door and they said who's there I said, the hole in the donut. This is a non-entity. I'm anonymous. Oh, come on in. I was allowed in because I had no identity. I was allows in because there was no I left. There's no room for the I in there. But there's, and that's why our, my name is Joe and I'm an alcoholic is one of the passwords to get in there. That's who I am. Joe, the alcoholic. What does an alcoholic, what do we say, what does it really mean when we say I'm a alcoholic? When you cut through it all, it says, I have a condition that unless I find God, I won't survive. My name is Joe and I'm too far away from God. I need to find God. That's what I'm an alcoholic means. We have a disease that only, from the chapter to the agnostic, a spiritual experience can conquer. So it's a tremendously humble statement to say, I'm anonymous. I'm a person who desperately needs God. Well, come on in. This is where God lives. And we only let people in who desperately need him and are willing to give up that other world in order to get here. Oddly enough, in churches, they would say, I'm a sinner. And the definition of the sinner is, I am too far away from God. It has nothing to do with doing wrong things or this or that. It's a simple statement. I'm too far away from God and I need to get closer to God. So we're saying the same thing. But alcoholics like our version better. You notice how Bill shies away from sin. He sneaks it in, the 12 and 12. We don't like the word sin, but I'm sneaking it in anyway. Here's the seven deadly sins. You remember that? Okay, I'll concede that they're there. But I like having a disease better. And that's how we get everybody in here. We don't tell them they're sinners, we tell them they're sick. Oh, okay. I just don't want to be a sinner. You're not. You're sick? Okay, come on in. Well, what do you do about being sick? Same thing about being a sinner? Oh, I'm sorry. No, we have this thing that will help you with your disease. What is it? Finding God. Wow, that's what the minister told me over there. Yeah, but don't listen to him. We got it right here. So you can see it's really been packaged in a most remarkable way and we talked about that earlier the manner in which it's presented what we've done who presents it somebody on the level playing field all of this leads us to this door and we finally come in and we're learn the password to get in so how do we stay nothing nothing. The only way to get in there is if you're nothing, the hole in the donut. I remember that in, I think it's step three in the 12 and 12. If I turn my life over, remember he said you've got to turn over everything, including not just alcohol. And then as Bill writes a lot, if you notice how he writes that, he'll advance a point and then he'll tell you the objection that you're going to have to that point. And so he goes, some fictitious Voight goes, well, if I do that, I'll be the hole in the donut. You remember that? And as you study that, you realize the hole in the doughnut is a completely spiritual person. It's nothing. I have gone all the way from a big shot to a servant, which is the highest pay grade in Alcoholics Anonymous. Everybody arrives here a bigshot. And if you win, you become nothing. Nothing. You become so small you can go through a screen on a screen door because you have nothing that you are grabbing onto that has to come in with you. Now, that's a lot to get rid of. There's a Lot of things that we take with us. George Carlin had a funny routine about our stuff. I don't know if you remember that. You're going on vacation. First, your house is designed to hold all your stuff. And sometimes you need to build an addition on the garage because you've got some more stuff. Your boat, and then you have a smaller boat and an RV and a motorcycle that you tow behind the RV and a fishing thing that you throw behind the... Yeah, a lot of stuff. up. And when you go on vacation, you can't take all the stuff from your house. So you got to pick out what stuff you think you're going to need when you're on the vacation and you go through the whole routine. And then sometimes you're in the hotel, you're on vacation and somebody wants you to go up there for one night. So, you want to take a little bit of the stuff that you took on the vacations from the stuff in your house and it's all your stuff. Well, you cant come in, knock knock, no stuff allowed. Cant bring Bring it in. See, now we see the now. You've really got to be a nothing to get in there. How about that? I'd like to vouch for my friend Dennis. He's a nothing. That would be a spiritual endorsement. Trust him. He's an nothing. Do you ever think you'd want to be a nothing someday? Have somebody say, what a man, he's a Nothing. It doesn't sound attractive, does it? It doesn' t sound like that should be the answer. I'm a nothing. Of course, a nothing means I'm a perfect instrument for God. Now, he, I'm a pen and he's the writer. That's a nothing, but without the pen, none of Shakespeare's words would be written. so that pen is pretty important amazing so I said well what can we design to get us into the now we need a club we need something powerful to get up there to get it there most people can't do it on their own in the catholic church they have orders priests that belong to different orders and they specialize in taking a group somewhere. And the Jesuits focus on knowledge. These guys are smart, and they can debate. They've really focused their minds. We're not going to qualify for that, so we're not gonna organize anything like that. But the Franciscans, on the other hand, and we're all familiar with St. Francis, we have his prayer out and the stations of the cross where you can read one line at a time so I thought that that's who we ought to model ourselves after the Franciscans now St. Francis devoted his whole life to get rid of his ego he got rid of all his material possessions he just went around and if he saw somebody that was cold he gave them his clothes so that they could get warm He was only concerned about other people. So he was obviously sacrificed, getting rid of, getting read of, simply trying to devote his whole life into killing his ego. And I said to myself, I'm not going to be able to create one of those in AA where these guys have to get rid of all their stuff. So I came up with an order that we can form here in AA. And I called it the Wilsonian Order of the Present Moment, named after our co-founder. I thought there'd be a lot of guys, oh yeah, and I'm telling you ahead of time, you get to keep all your stuff. Oh. So I see a few hands. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to wear a little pin. Wilsonian order of the present moment. I'd like to join that. Now just before you come in, I'm gonna read you the pledge to get into the Wilsonian in order of the present moment. And I want to see how many hands are still up when I get through, okay? Okay, you would raise your right hands, but we're not going to do that. You solemnly swear to abandon and renounce your own personality, all of your goals, all of the causes you are involved in, all of your opinions, all of yours, all of our fears, all of Your memories of the past, all beliefs, all hope, all power to choose, all faith, all resentments, all desire to know or understand all plans for the future you solemnly swear to let go absolutely and I can hear the voices what an order I can't go through joining it do not be discouraged discouraged, none of us are saints. We're willing to grow. So the ticket to the now and I could see as we go through the list, okay, I'll get rid of the resentments. I'm not getting rid of my causes. Oh no, no,no,no. I got to save the world. How about your plans for the future? I'm going to get rid rid of all my plans for the future. I've got a plan for my retirement. I got a plan for this. My kids are going to go to college. Go ahead, but you're not allowed in. So we're going to have to reconsider. You remember that? I forget where that is in our literature where it says you're going to have to reconsider or die. It was over the fact of whether you're an alcoholic or or not, or whether you're going to choose God or not. Reconsider or die. What's this God stuff? Here it is. What's the last line in the prayer of St. Francis? It's by dying that we awaken to life eternal. What dies? Not the body. We're not talking about that where we bury you in the ground. We're talking about the I. I, your personality, your view on everything. What constitutes you in the world that you put together? Well, in my world, I'm famous this. And in my word, I am famous that. In my world and in my worldview, but my world sucks. That's what we finally agree. Wouldn't you like to go to God's world? Yes. Then get rid of yours and you'll be there. it's no big mystery it's the same as the sixth step it's exactly the same would I be willing to get rid of every piece of identity that is connected with me in order that God can shape me into what I could be going back to when I think about when you're a kid it's your life, you have to take care of it and we should have been told it's not your life, it's God's life turn it over to him and let him make something out of you and so you see the parallel of our steps in the present moment work it's almost an exact parallel that we and spirituality is very much like this, it is a paradox if you want to get there you have to eliminate everything that isn't it and in this case we have to illuminate time and we end up in the eternal moment. And then I wrote some lines down that helped me understand this. And I'm not saying they'll all fit, but this one I really like. The question that is asked me is, do I believe in God? And my answer now is, no, I believe in letting go. What am I saying? I'm saying my belief in God is limiting me from letting go and finding God. I'm at the point, my belief got me to the point where I'm going to let go. I don't know who God is. I haven't got a clue what it is. So I'm now willing to jump off the platform of my beliefs and stick my hand out and see what grabs it. But I can't go there with my belief. I have to just go. I have get rid of faith. I'm going to let go absolutely. There's no room for any of those things now. And it was astounding when I felt that. The power of letting go supersedes all hope, faith, beliefs, everything. They were holding me back. Isn't that funny that you would suddenly be abandoning your beliefs? It's as if they got you to the point where you let go. go. But you can't keep them with you. They're too restrictive. There's too much of me at what I believe is going to be. I've got too many things that I made up in my head. Then I saw a definition of faith. Faith is letting go. There is no other need for faith. It serves There's no other purpose whatsoever other than to allow us to let go. It takes a lot of faith to let Go. I'm going to let my world and see what's there. I have no idea what it is. I don't have a clue. And again, I found that different. The moment is the door of heaven. The present moment. And I covered this yesterday. There is only life. There is nobody who has a life. I'm simply part of life. And that's what Chuck was trying to say, is this conscious separation gives me the feeling that I exist by myself and there's no such existence. the universe is life and I'm part of it as soon as I realize that then I'm part of you this whole room we're all part of something bigger than us nobody is an individual here we're all leaves on a tree we're all leaves on a tree just a leaf doesn't have an identity of its own well I'm tired of this tree I think I'll go for a walk and go over were there. He may make it up in his head if we gave a leaf an ego. I did a whole routine on the elm trees in Connecticut. They were fine until we gave them an ego, and then the leaves, these leaves were on the bottom limb, and they're looking around, and they're going, wow, this is kind of cool. Look at this, and then they look up at the top, and They go, those guys got a lot better view than we do. How the hell did I get down here? And they're a lot smaller than we are. We do a lot more work than they do. We process and we keep the tree alive. And we're down here. We have a freaking bug ate part of a hole in me. I look like a piece of crap sitting down here this really sucks there's got to be something better than this freaking tree on the bottom limb birds shitting all over me what the hell this is really awful what's that down on the ground shit dead leaves dead leaves leaves. We're going to freaking die. We're on the bottom limb and we're going to freaking Die. Let's stop synthesized photosynthesis process and bring this freaking tree to a halt. Why should we be? What do we care what happens to the tree? We got I got to take care of myself sell for God's sakes. I can't be loafing around feeding this tree. You can just see the loss of awareness that they are the tree. There's no such thing as a leaf. There is a tree with all its parts, but no part has a separate identity. And we think we're separate. We've created that, which was normal because it looks like we're a little kid and we're at the center of everything. So we know what that is, but that's what we're trying to destroy through through the steps to destroy that. There's a parallel story where the hands and the feet are having a discussion, and they said, you know something? We do all the work. We're out in the field. You're pushing, digging, legs are lifting. thing. We do all the work in order to get the food to feed the stomach. The stomach does nothing. It just sits there. We're the one, we do all the work. Let's stop feeding them. Screw them. Can you imagine doing that? What would would happen? Freaking arms and feet would starve to death until they realized they were all part of the same body. There's no such thing as a separate part. Everything functions As a unit. And so this is what we're trying to do is to understand I'm part of God. That's some authors would say that what's going on right now is God is Sandy Beeching. i'm his creation and you're watching his creation talking that's how intimate and closely connected god is in all of us and the search for god it's almost like a practical joke the classic story is the two little fish out in the ocean real young little fish and a big Big fish goes by and says to them, how's the water, boys? And swims off. And one turns to the other and says, what's water? What is it? And other fish are playing. Oh, water. You've got to go all the way to Hawaii. And then you'll find some over there. OK, OK,OK. Where is the water? Where is God? This is God here right now. This whole room is. The question is to be able to see it. The only place to see it is in the present moment. The only way to get there is to destroy everything that we've built that connects us to time. And so that's where we're going in this. Then as we get down to the home stretch, one author suggested this and I really liked it. and I found that when I use this as a target in meditation, it really works. The whole point of meditation is to have a sudden change in consciousness. That's the point of it. And so I just look forward to that. I look forward to sitting on a bench and just breathing until I see something different. In other words, it's as if I expect it. It isn't that I expect that because that's the future or this or that. It's like I'm aware that that's exactly what will happen, that something will be revealed. And it always is. There's a sense of dropping burdens. I'll just feel something go away from me that I don't have to deal with anymore. It's gone. And so I've always liked that definition. Bill writes, something of great moment is apt to occur. I've almost liked that. Something of great movement is apt for you. Something of what we were doing when he wrote, or what he's writing about when he says that. And the great moment is the presence of God. In other words, the conscious contact actually happens. And when I think of a great moment, and this is the end of this, when we say something of great moment what that means is after that great moment things are different and will be different from then on the printing press the second the printing Press was invented the world changed dramatically it It was never the same again. And we can, the atomic bomb. The second it went off, that was a singular moment. People's peace of mind has been affected by that. Just the, ah, didn't know that much power was there. A black hole, when they first found that, and they go, wow, freaking star was burning. for nine billion years, and it just went boom. And it imploded, and now light can't escape. It's the only thing that light can get out of. You know, wow. I would say that would change the neighborhood. You know what I'm talking about? If our star just went, boom. Man, things would be a little different. Singular moments. The Big Bang. That is a, they call that a singularity. So, if you eliminated time, which is what we're trying to talk about, the way you would refer to the universe is, instead of dividing it up into 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion, we would simply say the Big Bang is still happening. we're part of it. We were there when it started, and it's still going on. We are part of that present moment, and we're still part of the expanding universe. That's a whole different way of looking at it. And so I started thinking about AA. Was there a Big Bang? just for us to look at. And if you talk to people who've been around a while, there's probably three big bangs that would be submitted for consideration. One would be the Mayflower Hotel. There's plenty of people in AA that like that one. At that moment, AA was born. Other people might choose the kitchen table. When Ebi and Bill were sitting there and something allowed Bill to change his mind about God. And the third one, the one I happened to like, was his spiritual experience in Towns Hospital. Because up until that singular moment, there was no hope for alcoholics anywhere and hadn't been forever. Right up until that moment. And in that instant, everything was changed forever. In that instant was an awareness of God, an awareness that the obsession to drink had been lifted, and an absolute compulsion to make sure other alcoholics had the same awakening, all contained in a split second. And the compulsion, the desire to save every alcoholic in the world was so strong that it never wavered. And Bill went through a lot of bad times. Being evicted. Couldn't raise money. Every ID he had didn't work. And he could not stop. He just kept going. And eventually, the whole vision that he had came true. He actually saw one alcoholic passing to another alcoholic all around the world, all in a second. Boom! And so I like to think that that moment is still happening and you and I are part of that moment. It's still going on inside of you right this second. So we're still present at December of 1934. We're still experiencing that now, and I think you can feel it. You can feel that spiritual energy flowing through everybody in this room as if it were 1934, for. And there's nothing we can do about stopping it, because no matter what happens to you, you will be unable to not help the next alcoholic. You will crawl out of bed. You will answer that phone when you don't want to, and you will pass this message, because that's the power of that moment. That's my best shot at the now, so let's wrap it up. Thank you.