(Spring, TX) ’12&12 Step Study’; ‘20040723 Willie B 12 12 Step Study 2004 07 23 – Part 1 – Willie B.

Okay, get my nest built up here you know you have to get these things just right cause if you don't it's sort of like a spittoon you know it has to be in the exact same place. Or you make a big mess. My name is Willie and I am an alcoholic. Lady asked me out in the hall, oh, you're our Elanon speaker? Oh, no. I just looked at her and said, You wish, hon. You wish. As Bill told you, I haven't had a real necessity to take a drink since June the 19th, 1957. And for... Uh-huh. I usually catch a couple, and that one leaned over a young person and said, Oh, she's been sober longer than I've been born. Now, honey, that's all right, yeah. For you to say, don't come up here and say that to me. My job up here this weekend is to do this, out of the 12 in 12, our 12 steps. It's a beautiful little book, and a lot of people that come in sort of are reluctant to get into the 12 in 12 because they think they're being, you know, sort of disloyal to the big book. No. This, as Bill explains in the foreword, Bill, in conjunction with a lot of others, you know, our big book was printed in 1939, and in 1953 this book was published. Bill and the founders had gotten a lot of questions coming up to New York City, and I am glad to be up in New York but I want to tell you right now that I might just slip into some of our particular ways to talk I'm trying to talk like y'all but number one now if you haven't heard you all here lately really all it is is the plural for all y'all it's just it's just an easier way to say it so you bear with me this weekend but y'all but they had gotten a lot of letters from people that had gotten a hold of the big book all over the United States and they would write Bill and call and ask Bill what did you mean by this and what did you mean by that and you know all at once you say we were now at step three where's one in two and if you go back in your big book all the rest of the steps are numbered but not one in two so they realized as they got all these questions on certain paragraphs and certain pages you know how picky we all are and they sent protests and letters to bill and the founders and what exactly did you mean on page so and so when you said this that and the other and they realized that maybe they could go back and not change one word in that big book but to clarify and bill states it in this forward is where we're going to start in our steps one two and three we get right with God or your higher power if you so desire 4, 5, 6 and 7 we get right with ourselves 8 and 9 we get right with our fellow man and then in 10, 11 and 12 we continue to grow doesn't matter how long you've been in this program I hope I hope that I stay green in it because green things grow. And that's what we continually strive to do is to get better because I've moved through a lot of phases in my life since I came in and took that last drink. A lot of things have happened. You know I haven't been just sitting around with a blessed look on my face for 47 years. And I hope I always continue to learn. And that's what our 10, 11, and 12 give us, that good foundation. Now, a beautiful man in Akron, when I had been sober six or seven years, I went up to the Founder's Day and met this man, and really he had been in. He knew Dr. Bob very well, and Dr. Bob had helped him get started. And he gave me, when I questioned him about, you know, what are the principles that they talk about in Step 12? What are they? And they're not really spoken anyplace in the big book. They're not told to us. So I wanted him to sort of help me in working with the girls that I had started to work with and to give them some idea about the principles that are the foundation for our steps. And he said, Willie, I've made up my own set to help me work with other people. i'll pass that on to you it's not written in stone it's not okay in new york and it's uh in our headquarters but it was his own little list of principles that we're going to talk about as we do these 12 steps and that uh anytime you find a principle that you like better than one that i'm going to just suggest that we start working on that principle that we're going to practice in all of our affairs for the rest of our lives we start the work on that principle when we do each one of these steps if you find one that suits you better you mark the one i've given you out and put it in there but each one i'll i'll give you this suggested principle that we start in on in step one In our forward, on page 15 of the 12 and 12, now I do a lot like Charlie and Joe in that I'll be going along, and if you use your finger and follow along and then stop when I stop, I might go off into the wild blue yonder. And then you say, you know, where'd they go? Where'd they go? You can't get back. But just keep your finger there, and when I get back, and I will be back, then you can go on with what i'm saying we tend to get a little confusing when we flip off there all of a sudden in the second paragraph it says this book deals with the 12 steps and the 12 traditions of alcoholics anonymous it presents an explicit view of the principles by which a.a members recover and by which their society functions a.a's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in their nature which if practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole we're going to find a lot of promises there are a lot of promises in this little 12 and 12 that's one of them if i can just practice it doesn't say that i have to become absolutely perfect in them but just to practice a principle is a way of life and it can excel expel this obsession to drink and enable me to shoot to be whole again when i came into alcoholics anonymous i was sort of like a jigsaw puzzle you know you go to a store and you buy your puzzle and you come home and you empty it out on a table and all these pieces are there now on the box you have a picture and it's such a pretty picture and it promises you if you take all those pieces and put them back you can't do it by just grabbing the pieces if you're a newcomer and and throwing those pieces together you know that you have to pick out one at a time and put it in its place and pretty soon you'll see where this is fitting ah there's my cloud right there and you'll pick up another piece and put it into place and pretty soon you have a hole it's not perfect because once in a while you bump against the table and all the pieces fly every place but that's that's what he's trying to tell us is that we can become usefully and happily hold so that's a nice promise on page 17 and of course you can always read what we have to leave out because of time down in the the big paragraph there on page 17 at the bottom of that paragraph the book alcoholics anonymous became the basic text of the fellowship and it still is this present view proposes to broaden and deepen the understanding of the 12 steps as first written in the earlier works bill's telling us there it will never take the place it's sort of like when you were in school and in the beginning of the year the history teacher told us that we're going this is our basic text but here are two others that are supplementary text to make clear what's in that basic text or to expand on it and add to it and that doesn't mean that the basic text is not to be used it means that all these supplementary books are to complement and to give you a little bit broader understanding to broaden he says and to deepen the meaning if um if you've been reluctant to tackle this 12 and 12 don't do it grab it and get into it and i think you'll find it it's another very useful tool when you're working with a newcomer because it helps you to put the 12 and 12 steps down into The working order, day by day. Okay. You know, once in a while somebody asks me, you know, Willie, how do you get to be an old-timer? Well, you don't drink and you don't die. That's the two requirements. So if you're brand new, right out of the chute, then that's all right. You just hang in there one day at a time. That's all we've done. that's the only way to get there is to put those pieces one by one by one because you know it's not falling in the water that'll drown you it's staying there that's what'll do it so you've come to a decision that maybe you need to do something about your life and get it a little bit straightened up and there are two or three women that i know of they're just brand new they almost have you know little water dripping off because they're brand new and i love you men and you those of you who know me know that i do but i'm the only woman on this program this weekend and i'm going to be shooting towards the women now you men be patient because the women are being patient with your two men up here now i'm not saying we're different because we're not all of us in this room men and women we share two things this weekend we share two things in our lives and that's pain and loss of control of our lives otherwise we all are different we come from different social economic spiritual backgrounds but here we have a common goal and that's that pain and the complete loss of control of our lives i don't want to go back there i'll suffer any other kind of pain that that my higher power decides for me but i don't want that kind of pain anymore and you and i know what i'm talking about i don't have to go into any great big details so i'm not excluding y'all i'm just saying every once in a while i'm going to direct some things to the women because you men know that it takes one to understand one if you don't you better learn that real quick the 12 steps you know protect me honey they protect me from myself and the traditions protect a a from me so the traditions are important too but we're concentrating this weekend on the steps step one on page 21 the suggested principle from me that I have used and like I say if you find a better one that suits that step you put it in there it's the principle of honesty there's no one that drank whiskey like we did that can stay honest and we're not talking about robbing a store we're not talking about you know shortchanging somebody or or anything like we're not talking about that kind of honesty are we we're talking about honesty with ourselves i couldn't even tell my hello i couldn't tell myself you know i'd stand flat-footed on the ground and tell a lie and and you know it didn't even make sense to me but i made sense out of it because i it's filled with excuses excuses excuses if you take excuses and rationalizing and justifying put them all in a paper sack and shake them up they're going to all fall out together and the first one's going to be liar because when i start to give you an excuse for any kind of behavior even as simple as being late for a lunch date you let me fool around with that excuse for about five seconds and i'm gonna tell you a lie because see i'm not gonna walk in and say you know i just didn't get started early enough this morning well see that makes me feel bad that that sort of puts me down in that i didn't really plan to get there on time you weren't important enough for me to get there on time but i'm going if i say that then i'm through with it if i just say you know i didn't get i didn't get started in time but most of the time i'm tempted to go on and justify why i wasn't there well i was coming down 45 which is the freeway from houston to dallas and going into houston that's the freeway we have to use and i say you know an 18 wheeler had flipped over on the freeway and and i tried to find a way around and i got lost down in the boom docks and i and you know that's fine i tell you that lie and you say well what what harm does that do to to justify why you were late well i'll worry all the way home that you know she's going to watch the noon news the afternoon news and she's going to look for that 18 wheeler that was jackknifed on the 45 and she's not going to see anything about it so i've built up some guilt and there wasn't any excuse for it it's just the fact that i i wanted to look better in her eyes so i justify and that's being dishonest and i i want to put this into my life and and have it something that i practice all the time for my own sake and catch willie catch willie when she starts excusing myself for not good behavior, not following up on something that I said I would do, make an excuse, and I'm going to find that it's going to hurt me if I can put this piece into the puzzle and just try as best as I can to just go ahead and tell the burning truth. Because then I can forget it. I don't have to worry about it on the way home. and with that honesty comes acceptance because i can accept myself being a fallible human being and after you sober up and get started in this program and start practicing that's all we're going to be is just ordinary human beings when i took my inventory i found out i was ordinary and that that's okay that's okay i'm just an ordinary human being I'm going to think like they, you know. I don't want to separate myself. Well, I do that because I'm an alcoholic. Well, that's pathetic. And that's getting way off the honesty track. No. I'm just like my neighbors, the people in my town, all those crazy people in Houston that drive like idiots. I have to remember that they're just human beings, and the only car i can take care of is the one i'm riding in so honesty and acceptance we we start in with that on our step one just try to put it into our lives on a daily basis as they have suggested we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable that's a two-part step if we were just you know going to admit that we were powerless over alcohol and stop right there they knew better than that we had to look at the unmanageability that being powerless over alcohol held over us and see i don't want my life to get unmanageable again stone cold sober and if i don't put some of these principles to the best of my ability to use in my everyday life then my life is going to become unmanageable again see if i'm continuing to justify and tell lies and and and have excuses for everything that i do then my life's going to get unmanageable like i say all the way home i worry about the news broadcast and it it's not worth it that honesty is so nice to just practice in the first he says who cares to admit complete defeat practically no one of course every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness it's truly awful to admit that glass in hand we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of providence can remove it from us that's hard pill to swallow and bill's saying you know who cares to admit complete he doesn't say practically no alcoholic he says practically no one see we learned that when we were little old youngins and if you have kids of your own you're going to teach them the same thing you're not meaning to do it but that's a drive that human beings have when you were a little old kid and and you know you were learning to tie your shoes and you know your mama was standing over there watching you and you got those laces in 50 before the days of velcro y'all understand i was before the days but you got those shoelaces all messed up and you got them in a knot what'd mama say she'd come over and help you straighten them out and then she'd say try again honey see that drive to try again to do something that we're trying to do over and over and over we'll try it you men teaching your boy how to catch a ball and you know he'll hold his little hands out here and you'll throw the ball and you'll it'll fall down in between his hands and what do you do you don't say well you'll never be able to catch a ball so let's go fishing no no you go over and you adjust his little hands and say try this and y'all y'all keep practicing until he gets it that's a drive that we had our parents it's a human being drive to overcome what we want to do you know people think well they're crazy over and over and over they're doing the same thing it looks like the bad drunk they were on last week you know looks like that would teach him something it did to try again because that's the human being drive what if we were people that had no desire to overcome an obstacle good lord what kind of people would we be and that drive is given to us as youngins and you're going to give it to your kids and so on and so on and so on you think of it in a practical way and it's not so strange that we tried bill describes in the big book they describe in the big book how many different ways you know only beer or waiting till five o'clock doing all these different things and people have the idea that we're you know just crazier than loons and all we're doing is trying to find a way to do what other folks do the little boy he's seen daddy tie his shoes he's seen dad catch a ball so he's just trying to do what everybody else is doing well wasn't that that's why we did it over and over adjusting here and adjusting there so that we could do it better and that's what bill's saying in this you know who cares to admit complete defeat i still that drive in me you tell me i can't do something oh my i'm gonna think about it a long time and see if i can't figure out a way to do it you brought up riding motorcycles when i first started with my son riding motorcycle i flipped that thing a couple of times but i was determined because i wanted to ride and kept on and kept on i had many skinned knees elbows everything else was skinned but then i kept on adjusting adjusting see you're going to keep on doing that but just stop and think about do i really want to do this am i willing you know a lot of people want to get sober but they don't want to pay the price and there's price of having to pull back and say okay maybe i better not do this maybe it isn't good for you of course came into this thing when i was in my 20s and nothing was impossible then but i'm having to make adjustments in my life now of getting older but see i've made the determination that i'm not going to get old i don't have to get old i want to get older and older and older and older i don't even mind that you know all my wrinkles thank god wrinkles don't hurt see i can make adjustments now in a practical protective way of not sitting around in a rocking chair and and bemoan the fact that oh lord i don't have much time left and especially to my only son I don't have to tell him you know I won't be around very long you better be good to me why punish him for the fact that you know the years are mounting up we can still make these adjustments that's what I'm trying to say is that I found out that I can still adjust but I can do it in a in a building way towards something okay down at the bottom of the page that last paragraph it says we know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins a a unless he had first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences i always have ring around words and that's one of them is a double l all all of its consequences in other words we're not here because we got drunk over and over and over and over we're come here because of all those scattered pieces and we're not what we want to be all of its consequences what has it robbed us of truth and honesty and dignity and us women know that you know us gals you men can get drunk and you're still pretty fairly respectable looking but you know you take a drunk woman we get drunk all over even our hair gets drunk you know the interesting thing is you never see a cartoon about a woman drunk there's always a man hanging on that light post you never do hear a joke when you start when somebody starts out to tell you a good joke and else say you know they'll say there's he's too old drunk sitting on a barstool you know they're talking about men because see if they said there's two old broads sitting on a barstool then there's going to be a little bit of a edge taken off that story it's not going to be nearly because there's something in us we're the wives and we're the mothers of the world and honey you'll get that dignity back you will I promise you that you'll get that feeling of worthiness back that we've lost even if you haven't been hitting bars and staggering down streets or anything else because there'll come a time when you'll realize that you want it back. You want that deep down feeling of being a woman, of being a lady. All of its consequences, not just getting drunk. To me, that's the least of them. Because a lot of folks are going to be drunk over this weekend. We don't do anything. I have never heard a story, and God, you know how many I've heard in these 47 years. But I've never heard a story yet that had anything different that happened to a drunk than I hadn't heard before. jails and hospitals and losing arms and limbs and families and everything they had just to being drunk is not all that unusual because we you know you can't get drunk in too many unusual ways you just are and it's it's what it's done to you on the inside that you want to repair i promise you this program will help you repair it until he so humbles himself another promise here his sobriety if any will be precarious of real happiness he will find none at all proved beyond doubt by an immense experience this is one of aa's the facts of aa life the principle that he shall find no enduring strength until he first admits complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole society has sprung and flowered and that's hard to do we know that all of us that complete defeat but keep working on it in that one area they're not asking you to be you know defeatist about life just that one area until you really know I've had all of this I can stand when first challenged it to meet defeat most of us revolted we had approached AA expecting to be taught self-confidence then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned self-confidence was no good whatever in fact it was a total liability you look around and you see all the people that had given it everything they had and they didn't make it that's enough of a convincer if you let it be our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human will power could break it you're going to notice the word subtle all through the 12 and 12 there was they said no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will reluctantly deepening our dilemma our sponsors part pointed out that our increasing sensitivity to alcohol an allergy they called it the tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking and then by an allergy of the body that ensured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. Dear God, if I could have just latched on to this quicker and used common sense about this beautiful thing that Dr. Silkworth has given us that he showed us that we had an allergy of the body some of us were born with it when you go to meetings you'll hear people say i was alcoholic from the very first time i ever took a drink and honey they're they're telling you the truth but then you're going to find just as many of us that'll tell you that this allergy grew they didn't start drinking from the cradle they weren't allergic to it from the first drink i had a lot of good years of just good drinking not a lot about six but that was a lot at the time and that's the average for most women you men can go ahead at it for 15 years but us gals go under in the average of about six seven years and you will destroy yourself in the process of trying it over and over and you'll hear about this allergy but don't don't let it be something real mysterious and remote that's not the way dr silkworth wanted us he wanted us to realize that a lot of us have allergies that begin in very small ways and they grow you come down to south texas and we'll show you allergies that you didn't even know about let alone you're gonna have them you're gonna be allergic to our pine trees and you're going to be allergic to the pollen from all the idiot plants that we have growing down there we're right off the gulf of mexico and you know they send us all this stuff in their breezes and we have it in our backyards and you come down there there was a fellow that said he just moved to the urban is out in the woodlands now and i'll bet you that you've gone have gotten allergic to things that you never even knew about because you weren't around them on a consistent basis if i was in up here there would probably be things that would affect me that i haven't been exposed to but if i could have just settled down and not feared this thing so much and better be afraid of of trying to understand it because at first i didn't want to be i could have saved myself four long years of heartache because i came to my first meeting in omaha nebraska in 1950 then i didn't sober up until 1957 back and forth i went i fought this thing with everything i had honey and you can too but i'll tell you one thing i don't think you're going to win the battle This is the easy way. Come on and see how it works. Because if we look at it in the way of a new adventure, then we're going to be making some progress. Do you see very many unhappy faces around this weekend? I don't think so. just let one drunk talk to you whether they ever speak to you or not but look at them see how they're doing few we would uh ultimately destroy ourselves in the process few indeed were those who so assailed had ever won out through single-handed combat it was a statistical fact that alcoholics almost never recovered on their own resources. Doesn't say that we're the only resource, but he's saying that, you know, ultimately, the alcoholic almost never recovered on their own. Some people find their way in a different way. We don't say we're the only way, but we're saying it's a pretty happy way and a useful way to get those pieces back. And this has been true, apparently, ever since man has first crushed grapes just accept that that acceptance the second principle co-principle of step one just the acceptance of the fact that okay this has happened just try to accept it for a little while he started like the old boy in alabama when they when i was there we were stationed there at maxwell air force base in in alabama and a man at a meeting one time passed this on to me he said you know willie you remind me because i was fighting the acceptance part of it i just wasn't going to accept that there wasn't some way that i could possibly drink because it was you know i thought what are people gonna think until somebody said you know think about me until somebody said willie they very seldom do and i thought well now that's ugly for them to say that but it's true taking myself out of the it wasn't all about me and what i'm here i'm here i'm here yeah yeah i'm okay well we have stout souls in here that are enduring this last session step two my name's still Willie and I'm still an alcoholic because I met one man in the elevator that he was just now getting here so maybe there's another one Don't know who in the world is up here. Okay, our suggested principle behind step two is hope. You know, if we can grab on to that when we're doing step two and sort of give it some practice, we're going to be a lot better off because this is a world in chaos, the whole mess. and you know if we don't have a little hope in our heart if we think oh lord things are just going to go from bad to worse and even if they do it doesn't help to worry about them ahead of time I know Wesley told me one time down there in Florida he said you know Willie if you're going to pray don't worry and if you're going to worry don't pray and that makes a lot of sense because you know We ask our higher power to help us do this, help us do that. And when he doesn't do it on time, we sort of, okay, why didn't you do it? And it's that hope in our heart that things will be better. It's a lot better to think in that direction than it is the other way because it doesn't cost you any money. It's not going to put you in a poor house just to keep on hoping. and to have that in your attitude towards life we need it now we always will be able to look at a situation and say okay i hope it's going to be better and that makes us feel well it's just going to be worse from now on and and that doesn't help attitude is so important so we put down a little suggested principle here of hope that we can practice in in all of our stuff before i go into step two this morning was we're on a different schedule than we've ever been doing these seminars so that's why charlie was apologizing because he ran over i said we're all going to run over and under and through and around because this is a new schedule for us we usually start thursday and so we're confined we're cramming it down so y'all be patient but this morning when i was doing or when was it this afternoon yeah i told y'all i'm not gonna apologize for senility because i'm proud of it like i have a message on my phone you know i don't fight insanity i enjoy every minute of it but i wanted to pass on to you a little something that you know and more and more today it's getting more complicated in our step one because there's all these surveys and you know you go into go into some of the facilities to visit and they've invited me to come in and look over their facilities for helping alcoholics and i'm always glad to go but my goodness how times have changed they have questionnaires now for the old drunk to to question you know to answer before he can be admitted into for really if they think he can be helped well we had a fellow around for many many years named wino joe and wino decided these questions were getting too complicated because i know a lot of you that are just coming in you know you're being told well if you didn't do this or didn't do that or if you did do this you're you're alcoholic for sure for sure and you were to answer all these questions and so one old decided he'd he'd uh make up his own set of questions i said this morning you know we didn't get drunk in any different ways but we came out of it sometimes thinking, what? What happened? Number one, have you ever had the roof of your mouth sunburned? Those of you close to a beach, I imagine you, you know, started taking a little nap out on the beach after 14 beers. number two is have you ever been arrested while in jail the look on some of you men's faces uh huh have you ever been run over by your own car while driving it have you ever waited in line behind parked cars have you ever been spiritually inspired by the mildew stain on a shower curtain now see i can feel y'all understand those questions because they're insanity in the wildest imagination. And we understand that. If you don't fight the word insanity when you get to this step two, if you don't fight it, just sort of remember why you call somebody at 3 o'clock in the morning on December the 4th and ask them just what did they mean by what they said at the July picnic. now i know i know some of you gals because we we know how to carry resentments much better than you men do but we carry them so don't don't hesitate with that word insanity think of the way you reacted in your attitude when you were stone cold sober before you decided to change your life around. Some of the things, that's what was where I was a periodic, as the majority of women are. Not all, but the majority of women, periodics. And we understand why. And we can sober up. You know, you get a drunk sober, and all you have is a dry drug. he's just sober and that's all you have there has to be more to get out of the insanity of really carrying something when you're stone cold sober and hurting somebody with it and we get to be experts at that so let's don't shy away from that word insanity in our step two you know we came because we came into AA to get sober and we stay in AA to get changed. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. See, there's where the hope comes in. And we can start it. The moment they read Step 2, most AA newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a very serious one. How often have we heard them cry? Now look what you people have done to us. you have convinced us that we are alcoholic and that our lives are unmanageable having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness you now declare that none but a higher power can remove our obsession some of us won't believe in god others can't and still others who do believe that god exists have no faith whatever that he will perform this miracle yeah you've got us over a barrel all right but where do we go from here this step two and the way it's written up in this 12 and 12 is very valuable when you're working with a with a new person and you because he lists for us here various kinds of people we're going to encounter as we do try to help that other alcoholic and it's good for us to be aware of that i know that as i told you we all have those different fingerprints so i never treat two of my gals alike i try to sort of sum them up first when they ask me to sponsor them i'll say you know let's get acquainted let's go to lunch a couple of times let's just do some bull shooting and and rodeoing and things like this and and then then we'll we'll see you may not like what you see in me after a while and i need to understand you so it's it's this isn't a nice tool to have he lists for us the various kinds of people we're going to encounter and if you're new on the program you might find yourself in one of these descriptions said let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe the belligerent one he's in a state of mind which can be described only as savage his whole philosophy of life in which he's so gloried is threatened it's bad enough he thinks to admit alcohol has him down for keeps but now still smarting from that admission he's faced with something really impossible you know i can't i he questions himself about wait a minute don't don't mess with my faith life here number one i might not even have one and i don't want to hear you preaching how many of us were tired of preaching because we had heard those songs not only from preachers but from those people that were trying to put up with us page 26 at this juncture his AA sponsor usually laughs this the newcomer thinks is just about the last straw this is the beginning of the end and so it is the beginning of an end of his old life and the beginning of emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, now just take it easy. You remember how aggravated you were the first time somebody said that to you? Just take it easy. My world's falling apart here. I can't find half of the pieces that are going to make this picture. I've knocked half of them off. The dog ate a bunch of them. And you're telling me to take it easy? Hello. The hoop you have to jump through, he says, is a lot wider than you think at least i've found it so so did a friend of mine who was a one-time vice president of the american atheist society but he got through with room to spare well says a newcomer i know you're telling me the truth it's no doubt a fact that aa is just full of people who once believed as i do but just how in these circumstances does a fella take it easy that's what i want to know that agrees the sponsor is a very good question indeed i think i can tell you exactly how to relax you won't have to work at it very hard either listen if you will to these three statements these are real important statements i pass them on to a gal real quick especially if there is a i can feel a tenseness there about anything about a higher power it says first alcoholics anonymous does not demand that you believe anything and that's good to keep in mind because we can't tell them if you're going to get sober you're going to have to have a higher power there's no use in telling them that right away it's so much better and it's a positive thing to tell them we don't demand that you believe in anything all of its 12 steps are but suggestions. Now second, to get sober and to stay sober, you don't have to swallow all of step two right now. Looking back, I find I took it piecemeal myself. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came first. All I say, again I say, all you need is an open mind. The sponsor continues, take for example my own case. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected and venerated, even worshipped science. As a matter of fact, I still do, all except the worship part. Time after time my instructors held up to me the basic principles of all scientific progress search and research again and again always with an open mind when i first looked at aa my reaction was just like yours this is aa business i thought this aa business i thought is totally unscientific well when you get to thinking about it so is a drug this i can't swallow he thinks i simply won't consider such nonsense and he says then i woke up i had to admit that aa showed results i saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific it wasn't aa that had the closed mind it was me the minute i stopped arguing i could begin to see and feel right there step two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life i can't say upon what occasion or upon what day i came to believe in a power that was greater than myself but i certainly had that belief now to acquire it i had only to stop fighting and practiced the rest of a a's program as enthusiastically as i could just sort of you know it's telling us that the same thing a little story heard one time about a lion he cranked came across this bull and he killed it and ate it and he was so satisfied so satisfied Instead of going on off and taking a nap, he climbed up on a rock and roared as loud as he could. Well, a hunter came along and shot him. Now, the moral to that story is, if you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut. You know? See, I wanted it to be so deep when I got here. I had two college degrees hanging up on the wall, and I just wanted to be so deep. And deep and penetrating and psychological was not what got me here today. It's simple things like that. When that man told that story, I said, yeah, right. If he'd have just kept his mouth shut. I was so busy debating them, you know, debating with them. Every time they would say something about a higher power, my mind would go back into that strict, strict religion that I was raised in, the German Lutheran Church. And back in those days, it was strict. I had to study for two years, and then on Palm Sunday, they marched you down the aisle and asked you a bunch of questions in front of the whole congregation. And if you didn't answer those questions, you had to go back and study another year. I mean I was serious about how I felt about religion and I didn't understand what it was all about to begin with it was how I felt about anything bigger than I was it wasn't about a church God, it wasn't about a you know there's a difference between religion and spirituality what we have here religion is man's attempt to show God how good he is spiritualism is our humble attempt to show god how good he is that's what we're doing here this weekend learning how to help other alcoholics and and telling god you know how good he is when he steps in and helps us every step of the way because i never work with anybody alone i'm not their higher power and i'll let them know that real quick it says this is the only one man's opinion based on his own experience of course i must quickly assure you that aas tread in innumerable paths in their quest for faith if you don't care for the one i've suggested you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen many a man like you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make AA itself your higher power. Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. If you're new, all of these other people, honey, they aren't new. A lot of them had been here 15, 20 years. Like I said, you know, it doesn't take anything to be an old-timer just don't drink and don't die but the thing is they're they're here to fill a bucket that's already filled and dumped over and filled and dumped over and filled again so if you can't latch on to a higher power from somewhere that you don't understand look into the faces of the people that are sitting around telling you how hopeless they were and how somehow that they don't even understand because I can't explain how this thing has worked for 47 years in my life it boggles my mind let alone anybody else's how, because life has gone on, like I say, I haven't been hiding someplace in an AA room all these years in that interim I have lost my entire family except my son I lost my mother, my father my brother and my husband and life wasn't protecting me because I was trying to do what's right life was just busy happening these are natural if you live long enough you're going to suffer as far as pain and grief and sorrow but you don't have to be miserable misery is optional the pain and sorrow and grief that's not optional but misery is I don't have to wallow around and I don't have any body so I'm going to hold up some place and live all by myself and turn into an ugly crabby old hermit I don't have to do that that's optional God wasn't punishing me for anything I was swimming