The Deflation at Depth That Brings a Spiritual Awakening – Wesley P.

My name is Wesley Parrish, and I am an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. Now, you can do better than that. I'm 4,000 miles away from home. Oh, now, that's nice. Isn't that nice? I like that. Now, I like that. My name is Wesley Parish, and I am an alcoholic, as I said before, and I hail from Little Town in South in South Florida by the name of Pompano Beach. Now, a lot of you may not know where Pompino Beach is, so I'll tell you. I belong to the Chamber of Commerce, and I think it's my duty to tell you that the temperature there today was 89 degrees. It lies halfway between Miami and West Palm Beach on the Atlantic Ocean. It's a small town, it was a small town. Today it's got I guess Pompano Beach proper has around 300,000 people and AA flourishes We have a lot of alcoholics that's joined Alcoholics Anonymous and we have a lot of customers getting prepared for AA We have not run out of prospects and I hope that you have in California either. What I will ever be, or what I ever expect to be, I owe to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a very fortunate individual. For the simple reason I've had the time and aid to live the program of Alcoholic Anonymous, what I am today and what I'll ever be I owe it to this program. I found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous November 13th, 1947. I'm in my 30th year in the program. But I am still one drink from a drunk. I need the program more today than I ever needed it in my life. When I came to AA, I had nothing to lose, nothing, because I was qualified to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had no self-respect. I didn't have the love of my family. I lived in a house. I didn t live in a home. I was a bankrupt businessman. I was an individual that was bankrupt morally, physically, and financially. I was unacceptable in the community that I lived in. And the worst of all, I didn't even have a God of my understanding. Now that is total bankruptcy. Today, after the time in AA, I have my self-respect. I have the love of my family. I don't live in a house anymore. I live in home. There's a big difference. and you Al-Anons know the difference and you Aulatines know the different. I live in a home where there's love and there's happiness. I'm a successful businessman. I'm asked to do things in my community and above all, I've found a God of my understanding that I can call my friend but I'm still an alcoholic. I'm one drink from a drunk. I've got an incurable disease called alcoholism. I can arrest it, but I can never cure it. So when I woke up this morning, I had a choice of what I was going to do this day. Did I want the AA way or did I want The Alcoholic Stinking Thinking way? And it was up to me to make the choice still. And I have to choose the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I need this program today because today I've got everything to lose Everything And if you've been in AA sober today You have everything to loose if you're an alcoholic I could tell you a drunk-a-log But I don't think that's necessary I want to tell you about what I have found out About the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I wasted four and a half years in this program Trying to hold on to my old ideas Not realizing that my life was completely unmanageable I stayed sober only through the grace of God And I want emphasize that word grace Because it means an unearned favor Through an unearning favor, I stayed silver for some reason. And finally, I came to a point in my life where I had to do go one way or the other. I had just stay in AA or get out of AA because I had lived on the outer perimeter too long. And so I go down to my sponsor and I asked my sponsor what to do. And he said, well, Wesley, He says, how you stayed sober for this length of time? I don't know how. He says I know you've been sober four and a half years because every time you get around me you tell me you've being sober four an a half year. And he said, how are you staying sober? I don' t know. He said I couldn't have made it. He said my bird dogs are coming in telling me about how you live and he said how you lived I couldn' t say that sober. I just couldn't say it that way. And I says, what am I to do about it? He says, you better get into the program of AA. You have better start looking at the program, at the 12 steps of AA and get on that path they're talking about. He says you know the book, big book says rarely have we seen a person fail that has thoroughly followed our path. And he says you haven't been on the path. And he said you better go on it. He said you know an old Chinaman once said He says, if you're going to start a journey, he says, the first thing you have to do is take the first step. And he says. You haven't even taken the first steps, so you can't be on the path. And I said, well, I've stayed sober. He says. Well, I'll give you credit for that. But what have you done about your unmanageable life? He says, my bird dogs tell me some things that I just don't believe. And I said, well, I'm not getting along too good. He says well it could be better. And so he sent me back home to start on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now this is what I want to talk to you about tonight is what i have found out through the study of this program. It's an amazing thing how God inspired Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob with this program and what the sequence is, how it happened, and what it's all about. And it started from the time that Abby went to see Bill. And Bill got the idea that maybe he could stay sober helping another alcoholic. But he got drunk. and the last drunk that Bill was on he tells about buying the three bottles of beer and he heads toward Dr. Silkworth's hospital and he walks up the stairs and finishing the last beer he walks to the hall and meets Dr. Siltworth and Dr. Silthworth says Bill you better go upstairs and go to bed and the next day Bill awoke in remorse because he had been a failure again And he shouted out, if there's a God, show yourself to me. And what happened? There was a flash of light. And Bill said it was like being on a mountain and that a spirit of wind went through him and he felt clean. And it just scared him to death. He didn't know what had happened. And Dr. Stiltworth came into the room and he was telling Dr. stiltworth about it And Dr. Stiltworth says, well, Bill, he says, I don't know what happened, but whatever it is, you better hold on to it. And the next day, and I show you this is divinely inspired, the next Day Abbey brought Bill a book. Annette talked about it today, and this book was a variety of religious experiences by William James. And he handed Bill this book, and he said, read it. and Bill started to read it and it was heavy reading but Bill became so engrossed in the book and so fascinated by it that he plowed through it and he found out one thing in this book what a spiritual experience was because he found that he had a spiritual experiencing that's what he had the day before and he find out that a spiritual experiences was deflation at depth deflation at depth and when bill found this out he says that is my answer how many of you have ever heard that statement in the program of alcoholics anonymous deflation act there pull up your hand that's good that's you find that in a comes of age if you haven't read this book you've missed something. You've missed up. This has told you of the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Bill says, that's my answer. And so he, Dr. Silkworth come in the room and he gave Dr. Silkworth the book and a couple of days Bill was dismissed. And he went out on the streets of New York for six months. He tried to get an alcoholic to pay attention to him or to go along with him and what he wanted to do but he didn't sober up one alcoholic. But this spiritual experience kept his enthusiasm up because he knew that he had, he had hold of the right thing. And a little discouraged he went to see Dr. Silkworth and he said, Doc, he says something's wrong. And doc says I know it's something wrong Bill. He says well what is it? He says whether you're preaching of these drunks. You can't preach to an alcoholic. He says, you're telling them about that spiritual experience you had and about the four absolutes. You know, he was a member of the Oxford group, absolute purity, absolute love, absolute unselfishness, and absolute honesty. And he says, You cannot talk to alcoholics like that. He said, They'll listen to you, then they go like that when you turn your back and they go out and get drunk. They say, You're crazy. and he says you know Bill you've got to get a new approach you've gotta start talking to alcoholics about the middle and the physical part of this disease the allergies the body and the obsession of the mind and then that you will identify with them because they know that you know exactly how they feel and how they think and whenever you identify with them then you can go into the spiritual values of your program the principles that you have set down, but not until then. He said, Bill, it's very few people that have a spiritual awakening like you have. He says most people have a gradual experience, a spiritual awakenings. And Bill said, well, you know, I think he got something there, Doc. You know, Bill Wilson says that the AA program came from three places. He says, William James, that's the book of religious experiences, Dr. Silkworth and the Oxford Group. He came from those three places. Well, Bill says, I think he got something there, Doc. And you know, a couple of days later, Bill got tied in with this business deal and he sent him to Akron, Ohio. And you knows what happened? The business deal went to pot. And so standing in the Mayflower Hotel, he looks over at a bar and he looks at a church director. And finally he walks over to the church director and he says, he looked at her name and he said, I'll call this minister. He called him and he gave him this Henrietta Seidel in his name. And she says, I got a drug for you. He's a doctor. She says, she says I'll make arrangements for y'all to get together. and so henrietta got the two co-founders together dr bob and bill now this is a spiritual experience another one this is divinely inspired it had to be for these things to happen in these sequences and then what happened was that when bill started talking to dr bob he remembered what Dr. Siltworth had said, and he talked to Dr. Bob about the physical and the mental part of this disease of alcoholism, and Dr. Robb sat there in amazement because Bill was the only man that he ever met that knew anything about alcoholism. He says, my God, he says, I've read everything I to get my hands on. I've studied the Bible, I've been going to Oxford Group for two and a half years. And he says, you know what you're talking about. You see, Bill identified with Dr. Bob. Dr. Rob was a hundred times more spiritual man than Bill ever thought about being. But did you know that it took Dr. Robert two and half years to have a spiritual awakening? He had a phenomenal craving in his gut for alcohol, and he was the greatest 12-stepper that was ever in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because this is the way he stayed sober, working with others. And he is the one that developed the cardinal rule in the Program of Alcoholic Anonymous that we do not charge for 12-step calls. Although he was a medical doctor, he never charged one cent for any alcoholic that he ever attended. You'll find that in this book. You see, Bill had a spiritual experience. Dr. Bob had a Spiritual Awakening. And so when Bill put the 12 steps together in 30 minutes, as it says in this Book, I don't want you to think this is some Florida propaganda, because it's not. This is the reason I keep going back to these books. I want you read these books! Did you know that it's a million alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous today, and last year there was only 20,000 of these books sold? My God, that's a shame. Because after you've read the big book, this is number two. This is number one. Number two. When Bill put the 12 steps together in 30 minutes, he had this in mind. He used the process of deflation at depth. And all through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous it says time and time and time and you've got to get yourself out of the way. You've got to get self out of the way. Selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of all of our troubles. That's what it says right in here, and it's written in the plural, we. It's a we. That's the root. Of all of your troubles, selfishness and selfishness. Self-centered. So when Bill put the 12 steps together, he put them together as a hammer and chisel. where as we took these steps in the sequence that they are written it was like a hammer and chisel inside of us kept chiseling out that old self that old alcoholic self and when we have got through chiselling out this self then we have a spiritual awakening that's why it says in the 12th step having had a spiritual awakening as the results of these steps. It has to be that way, there's no other way. And so if you don't mind, I'd like to go through the 12 steps tonight and show you how they deflated me. How they defilated me to have a spiritual awaken. I was one of those that took a long time. It was a gradual situation, and I mean it was gradual. I didn't get no spiritual awakening in a great big flash. Took a lot of misery and heartaches and everything that goes along with it to bring me down to size. The first step says we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol. Do you mean to tell me that I can't take one little old lousy drink of alcohol? You tell me that it's bigger than I am? Why, what are you talking about? Maybe that 20th drink that gets me, but not that first one. Huh. Well, I have to tell you something. It ain't the 20th that gets to me, it's the first one that finds me. The first one I don't have to worry about, the 20nd one. I'm an alcoholic. I had to surrender to that one little lousy drink of alcohol. It's bigger than I am. One's too many and a thousand's not enough. and this is the first thing I have to do it's surrender and if that's not deflation for an alcoholic there's no such thing that's deflation that's letting a lot of hot air out of an alcoholic doesn't let him say it's bigger than I am well, it's greater than I'm it's better than I'll guarantee you it's bigger than I are today and it'll be bigger than I am the day I die It's just that way. I'm an alcoholic. I've got an incurable disease called alcoholism. I can arrest it, but I can never cure it. And I have to use the program of Alcoholics Anonymous every day of my life for maintenance to arrest this disease. And then there's a dash in this step. And when there's the dash, they tell me in Webster's Dictionary that that dash means that the context of the sentence is changing. And so you're supposed to pause there and you say this. It says, we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol. That our lives have become unmanageable. How about that? You mean to tell me that I can't even manage my life? Yes, I'm telling you, you can't ever manage your life. Well, I am sober. That doesn't make any difference. The simple ABCs of AA says, A, that we're alcoholic and we cannot manage our lives. That's what it says. And in the first step it says we cannot mange our lives, drunk or sober. Now I found out that I was in worse shape after four and a half years than I was the day I came in AA because I had tried to manage my life. and so one day out of a clear blue sky i said you know my trouble is i can't manage my life is that amazing and i said now if you can't manager your own life i think the smart thing to do would get you some managers now what type of managers are managers do i need manager or do i mean managers? And I said, well, I need managers. And I said, my finances is in one hell of a mess. I need me a financial manager. And i said, My living is one helluva mess. I don't know how to live. And this spiritual thing they talk about, I don't know nothing about it, so I got to start from scratch. So I need me a spiritual manager. So I come up with three managers in my life that I needed to straighten it out. And of course, my nose runs and my feet smell. The big book says I always do things opposite. The Big Book says that you get spiritually well, you'll get materially well, but I ain't got time for that. So I think that materially, I got to get well immediately. You know, I was hurting. People were saying unkind things to me. And And so I said, Well, I'll get me a CPA. And I says, No, I can't afford to let him know I can manage my money. And I said well, I'm getting me a bookkeeper. I said Well, and I have an affair with her, so I better not try that either. And I say well, but two weeks later, I said what do you know when I married my wife Rena? She was running a little dry cleaning place down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and when I married her she had saved $1,000 during the Depression in this little old bitty dry cleaning business. I says, that gal knows how to handle money. I know she had $1 ,000 because we spent it, you know? So I go home to talk to Rena. I figured out, now I don't have, she knows all about me, so as not letting the cat out of the bag that I can't manage money. She knows that. So I knew I had the ability to make money, but I didn't have the ability, the ability to manage money, so I go to see Rena, and we live in this little apartment, and I walks up the stairs at about 10 o'clock in the morning, and sit down on the settee, and she was in the kitchen, And I said, Rena, you know, I wanted something for her and honey was running off my lips, you know. And she says, I haven't got time for that this morning. I said you don't even know what I came to talk to you about. She said, I got a good idea. I says, Rena come in here. I want to talk for you. So she came in and she sat down on the couch and I said, I want you to go to work for me. She says, that's a switch. What could I do for you? You know how they are. The Florida women are no worse than that of California, you know. What can I do für you? When you left this morning, you didn't want nothing to do with me. Now you want me to come to work für you. What canI do füryou? I said I wantyou to manage my money. She says, I thought you said you wanted me to come to work. I says, yes, I do. She says what money do you have to manage? I said don't be facetious. Look at the security it will give you. Look at this security. My God, you know the spouses of alcoholics will have a sense of insecurity. I don't know why but they have that little sense of insecurities. I says look at the securety it will get you. She says, Wesley, we have tried everything else We'd just well to try that And so I said, okay, let's go to work I was ready Do you know that was the first time in my life That I ever gave away just a little part of me You know, up to this time I was everything to everything You know And I ended up being nothing to nothing I had to throw in the can. And so Rena took over the finances. Now, I don't know why that... I was just lucky to have me a built-in financial manager, that's all. I don' t know whether this will help anybody else, but it sure helped me because I'm going to tell you something. I'd have never stayed sober as long as I've stayed sober if I'd had that money to worry about. I just wouldn't have done it. You know, I'm the type of individual that I don'T buy what I need. I buy what I want. And if you'll sell it to me on credit, I'll take two. And if he'll give me a checkbook full of blank checks, I got signatures for every check. And that's the way I am. I can't help it. I just can't manage money. I don't have time for federal income tax and things like that you know they're just not important not important I've got put my mind to more things of importance than that but this small minute stuff I don' t pay no attention to it well I gave you see part of myself I gave to Rena to handle and do you know I've never had one bad financial day since that day isn't that amazing, isn't it? And then to show you how it works, I had time to do what I like to do. You see, it released me of a lot of time that I was spending on this money deal, you know. And so that released me and so then I started doing the things that I like to do. I like make money. And I turn it over to her and never think about it no more. I I still don't think about it. I don't care about it as long as I get what I want. That's all I care about. So, I got that straightened out. Then I went down to see my sponsor, Chris. And I says, Chris, I want you to be my living manager. He said, What the hell are you talking about? I said, I don' t know how to live. I want to be honest and I want to be I want to be I want to be honest and I want to quit lying and stealing and I want to be a good husband and I want to be a good father you see I was an unfaithful husband and I was no good father along with the rest of it and he says I don't want to live like that anymore he says I wouldn't take it off all the tea in China I said why not he says just too much wrong with you And I says, Chris, I need you. You see, a lot of people don't understand what a sponsor is. You think because somebody takes you to a 12-step call on you, takes you through your first day meeting, that's your sponsor. That's a bunch of hooey. A sponsor is somebody that, listen, will help you with your living problems, that you can sit down toe-to-toe, eyeball-to eyeball, and talk to them about your living problem. This is a sponsor, and this is in the little pamphlet on sponsorship. It tells you this in that pamphelet. He helps you with your living. And so Chris took me up, and Chris was my living manager for 25 years, and he taught me how to live and how to be a good husband and a good father. see things around my house changed to a home for one little thing for instance you know up to this time my son detested me he wouldn't want nothing to do with me but as soon as I started changing we started getting a different relationship and the first thing I know he's married he's in the army and he's over at El Paso Texas and one night he called me and says, Daddy, I got a son. I says, That's wonderful. How's the mother? She says, Fine. He says, Five. And when he's six and hanging up, I said, What you going to name the boy? He says I'm going to named him A. Wesley Parrish III. This is a difference. This is the difference. Because I became willing to give away part of myself to listen and to learn how to live. I had lost the art of living. I knew nothing about it. But it's an amazing thing in how it works here. You know what it says? It says A, that we are alcoholic and we cannot manage our own lives, B, that probably no human being can relieve us of our alcoholism. How about that? These two people that I had went to and deflated myself to a point where I decided that I wasn't as big a shot as I thought it was and I was going to listen to them for the first time and start changing my ways. These two people can't help me a bit as far as my alcoholism is concerned. I still had that football in my stomach. I was still running scared. I was still the most uncomfortable person in an alcoholic's mind. And she tells me what to do. She says that God could and would if he was salt. And I was a perfect stranger to God and God was a stranger to me. I had nothing to do with God and God had nothing to do it's just that simple. And so I was the type of alcoholic that would say now let's soft pedal this God business. Just soft pedal it we'll run alcoholics out of AA. The big book don't tell you that it says talk freely about the spiritual part of this program. So I started from release of money and living and head in the right direction that way, my mind opened up enough where I started listening more intense to people that spoke from the podium. And every person that I run across from the stadium that I admired and I would like to be like, that I thought the quality of their age was superb, those type of people that just radiated with this program, every one of them stood up and just talked about God freely, unashamed. And I kept noticing it. I said, it must be something to this God business. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I better start looking. I said I haven't done nothing about this spiritual matter. I better started looking. So I picked this woman out. The most beautiful thing. She was cold black headed and black eyes. And she just radiated with this program. Serene, peaceful. and I went to talk to her about how she lived every day to have this beautiful personality. And I knew she'd got it from there, a program. So I knocked on her door and she comes to the door and she says, come on in, Wesley, I'm baking a cake. Go in and sit down, says, in the living room, I'll be right there and we'll talk. So I go in the leaving room and sit now in a rocking chair and when I leaned back My eyes went to the wall, and there was a picture. It was a 9-by-12 picture, just a little picture. I guess it cost a dollar in the 10-cent store, frame and all. And this picture just fascinated me because it was a pictures of a sailor standing at the wheel of a ship, and all around this ship was a very rough sea. And this man, this kid was, a young man, was staring at this ship in this storm unafraid. He has the same look in his face that this woman had in her face that I came to see. And I said, my goodness, that boy should be full of fear because I'd rode out three typhoons in the China seas and I know what a rough sea is. But I kept looking at the picture and finally I realized that in silhouette right behind this young man stood the Prince of Peace and he had his hand on his shoulder and he was pointing the way. And I said, this young man's got a friend And as I sat there in this rocking chair My mind went back to the first day I was an AA Now let your mind go back to The first day you were an AA Did you have one friend? Did you know him? Did you not have somebody You could confide in? Did you never have somebody You could trust? Did you ever have someone That understood you? I didn't I didn' t want nobody I'm an alcoholic Everybody I got around was always criticizing me for what I was. My wife would say, my God, why did I marry you? I had 50 to pick from and I got you out of the letter. Why, why, why? I don't like to be talked to like that, do you? My mother would yell out, why did God give me a son like you? I don'T like to hear things like that. My minister would say My minister would say, you're going to hell. And my doctor said, if you don't quit drinking, it's going to kill you, you know? I don't like to hear things like that. And my customers, I was an electoral contractor, the worst type. And my consumers would say to me, boy, let me tell you one thing. When you get through with this one, don't you ever put your foot on my property again. Never. I don't like to hear things like that. Well, you know what happened? I put a shell around me that nobody could penetrate. Nobody. When you said something to me, it was just like pouring water on a duck's back. I wasn't going to let you hurt me no more. And so I didn't have one friend. I didn' t want any friends. You see, you have to be a friend to have a friend. So I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, and through communication with other members, we talked and we identified with each other through the physical and mental and spiritual, whatever you want to call it. And through this, we identified and we sealed the bond of friendship through communication. Communication is the start of all understanding. If you wantto find out something about any given thing, you have to communicate. There's no other way. If you want to find out anything about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you have to communicate with it. It says right here, the basic text of Alcoholic Anonymous. This book is not for reading. This book ist for study. How about that? This is a textbook. A textbook. The first 184 pages, 164 pages. If you will do, follow those 164 page to the best of your ability, one day at a time things will happen to you beyond your fondest dreams but if you don't study them you don' t even know what the first 164 pages say there' s no use taking it second handed go first class get you one of these books and read it I' m not lying to you we got the same book in Florida exactly like it every place you go you find them this is not the latest edition but it'll do until you get a late addition. So my mind went back to this picture, and I said, This young man's got a friend. Wouldn't it make sense that if you have to be a friend to have a friend? Wouldn't It make sense if you've got to be a friend to God for God to be a friend of you? Doesn't That make sense? And how are you going to be a friend with God if you don't communicate with Him? i'm talking to myself now not you how am i going to be a friend of god if i don't communicate with him and so so i didn't even talk to the woman what i came to talk to her about i left what went about my business after saying good morning and i was driving a little town delivery truck and it's about half the size of this podium uh the seat i mean i was a little head there at this time delivery trucking had one seat in it and i got me a wooden box about half the size of this podium and I put in this little truck and as I rode around to my electoral job I would talk to the Prince of Peace just like I'm talking to you. People used to stop me come in the drugstore and see me drinking coffee and say, Wesley we tried to stop you three times today and all you do is talk to yourself. You're going to hell if you don't quit talking to yourself like that. You don't pay attention to nothing. Little did they know I was talking to the prince of peace. I was cultivating this friendship, this friendship. And the more I talked to him, the more I could feel his presence. Now, this is true. You see, it's a state of mind. And he was answering me the questions. And I would tell him about these insane things I did under the influence of alcohol. And you know what he'd say to me? He says, Wesley, you don't live like that today. You're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Won't you forget that stuff live today like the program says I says I did him He says Wesley. You remember about college synonymous. I says, I did them He said one day he said now let me tell you something boy He says you got one eye cocked on yesterday and another eye cock told tomorrow if you ain't damn careful You're gonna be cockeyed today You better start doing what this program tells you to do I said I don't know what you're talking about I don' t know what you're talkin' about he said well he says look at it this way he says yesterday's a council check tomorrow's a promissory note today is cash spend that cash you understand that don't you I said I don''t know what you''re talkin' about he said well you wouldn''t try to redeposit a council check would you I said I'd have tried it if I'd have thought of it I couldn't get that through my head this one day at a time You know, I was living eight years back You know Oh, just that football in my stomach He says, Wesley, you're not living that way anymore And I said, well, I don't know One night I went to an AA meeting under pressure You know, when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. Never forget that. When you're ready to do something, the, the teach will be there. One night I went to a meeting and this woman got up under protest. I went into this meeting and then this woman got up at the podium and I've never seen him before. And it was all right after, as she made this simple little statement, she says, you know, the greatest thing on earth is to learn to forgive others. But the greatest of greatest thing on earth is to learn to forgive yourself. And I said, my God, that's my hang-up. That's my hang up. I am condemning myself of something that I did under the insanity of alcoholism eight years back. I says, how silly can you get, Wesley? No wonder you don't have any self-respect. How can you have self- respect all filled with guilt and shame? Wesley, you're not living that way anymore. You're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. You are a member of AA." And I says, well, I don't regret the drink I ever took. After a period of time, I said to myself, I do not regret a drink I've ever took, I did not regret the heartaches, I don't regret a dime I ever spent on it. I don' t regret an insane thing I ever did. I regret the heartaches I caused my loved ones, yes. But if that's what it took, that's what it too. If I had it all to live over, I'd take it moment by moment by moment. Because you see, if I had not been an alcoholic, I wouldn't be standing here today. I wouldn't have what I have today if I had not been an alcoholic. It took every bit of the suffering and pain I went through to bring me to where I am today, and I don't regret a moment of it, through the grace of God. You see, my trouble was that I didn't want to declare myself insane. You see? The second step said my vanity got in my way and my pride. I didn' t want to deflate. I didn't want to deflate to the point of insanity. But what does this... You see, Wesley Parrish's way is the wrong way. My God, it's the wrongway. My life is unmanageable. And the second step says, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore you to sanity. Well, my God, if you're going to be restored to sanity, where'd that come from? Didn't I have to come from insanity? Where else could you come from? Sure I said Wesley how stupid you are And you know all of a sudden This football in my stomach Started to dissipate To deflate And the first thing you know For the first time in my life I was comfortable Because I found the faith In a God of my understanding faith is the absence of fear and fear is the absence of faith and then I started toward the third step the third step to me is the most important step in the book because you see the third step is a commitment of trust you have to trust God if you're going any farther in the 12th in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous when you get to the third you've got to learn how to trust God. Somewhere in the big book, about page 90, it says, brand on every man's mind that he can stay sober regardless of anyone. The only thing he has to do is trust God and clean house. Trust God and clear house. It don't say clean house and trust God, it says trust Godandcleanhouse. And this is why we have to take this third step. Because the third step is a step of courage. Courage is without fear. And if you have any fear left in you, you can't go any farther than the second step until you relieve yourself of it. You have to trust God completely. You haveと have complete faith and trust in him. The big book says somewhere, he says all men of faith have courage. And for the first time in your life you have to look at yourself exactly the way you are, not the way that you pretend to be. And to do this, you face reality. And to doing this, it takes guts. And you have courage to do it. I was something like this, and I spent a long time doing this. I like to tell this story because I like hearing it. I just do. It's about an airless that stretched the cable across Niagara Falls. And he spent 30 days advertising that he was going to walk across this cable because he wanted to be the world's greatest airless. And so in 30 days, he had a multitude of people there, and he walked across this table and walked back. Well, he got a nice hand. But you know, he wasn't satisfied. He wanted more recognition than that. And so he noticed the wheelbar over there, so he got the wheel bar and he rolled it across and rolled it back, and he got a bigger hand. He still wasn't satisfied. He wanted more recognition than that. So he put 200 pounds of sand in the wheelbar and he rolled that across it, and you know, the weight on the cable went down like this and come back like this, and he gotta rise an ovation. This is what he was looking for. So he had to give an encore to arise an oervation. So there's a little boy standing over there and this little boy was all gargolied. He was so excited He had never seen anything like this before in his life. And this man walks over to this kid and he says, You know, son, you sure do like me on that wire, don't you? And the little boy says, I sure do. He says, You're the world's greatest herald. She says,I'd trust you on that fire any time. The man says,You'd even trust me on there, would you? He says,"I sure would. I'd trust your anytime on that water." And the man said,Now,son,do you really mean that?" The little boy said,I sure do." And the men said, Now,you really trust me on that word. The little boy says, I sure do. He says, Well, get in the wheelbarrow. And you know what the little boy said? Hell no, not me. Well, now listen to what the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous tells you to do. It says, Made a decision to turn my life and my will over to care of God as I understand it. That's telling you to get in the wheelbarrow and stay there because you see it's nothing big enough on earth to hurt you but you did you know that if you let these other things happening in the world comes in and affects you. That's your fault, not these things out here. The only things that hurt you are the things that you let hurt you. Every man and every woman put on their britches the first thing in the morning just the same, one leg at a time. It don't make any difference. You're all, in the eyes of God, one and the same. It doesn't make Any Difference. Make any difference? You've got to trust God because, you see, you've got to put all of this reality down on paper Woo! You know what I mean? And if you've got any fear left in you, you'll cheat yourself. That's all this says. It says make a moral and fearless inventory of ourselves. My God, ain't that awful? We've got to put that down. Well, I've gotto put this on the locking key when I get at that too, but I'm gonna put it down there. You know? Don't make any difference whether you put it on the lock or key or not. You've gotta face the reality. And this takes guts. But you see, and in how it works, this is what it says. It says, and we try to hold on to our old ideas and the result is nil until we let go absolutely. And as long as you're trying to hold onto these old ideas, you don't stand a chance. You don't have a chance, you've got to realize that this is a new way of life that you're searching for. and you can't bring these old ideas along with these new ideas and mix them together and come up with a new way. There's no way. It's not your drinking that's stinking, it's your thinking right up there. You're malnutritious between the ears. I can't help it. That's what this program tells me. I'm talking to me now, I'm not talking to you. Talking to me. I'm malnutritionist up here and I've got to put it down. I've got to get rid of these old alcoholic stinking ways. It ain't my drinking that's stinking, it's my thinking, and I can't bring none of this stuff with me. And so I got a clean house. Got a cleanhouse, and that's what it says. And for me to clean house, I got to take that third step completely. I went and go to Chris, and I said, Chris, I'm having trouble with that fourth step. He said, well, I've Got the answer for that, Wesley. I said,"What is it, Chris?" He says, you ain't taking a third. I said, well, I'm not getting along too well with a third He said, Well, what about the second? I said I ain't doing none of that either He said without you I'd go start all over again This is just that way I can't help it This is the way it taught me And so You have to be fearless The word fearless means without fear and the only way that you can be fearless is in complete trust in God. There's no other way. The only way that I've ever found or heard that man ever got rid of his inner fears was through a spiritual faith. I know no other ways if it's found that I never heard. Have you ever heard any way other than that, Father? No other way, no other one. So then if you do that then you take the fourth step that you said it says make the honest and thorough make be honest and third from the very start now if you take the fourth step and completely take it you will use that in the fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth and ninth and tenth steps you got a record of what you're going to do there no steps and those is where you clean house you cleanhouse you don't sweep anything under the rug You just clean the house. And this is the way this program works. The first thing you do in house cleaning is you admit to yourself, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs. The exact natureof your wrong. And every bit of this I fail to bring in the point of deflation. You see, you are being deflated at depth. You are relieving yourself of self. You see, self is in your way of happiness. And what we're striving for here is a way that we can live and be happy without alcohol. And as long as self is on your way, you'll never be happy. You cannot have your mind on yourself and be unhappy. If you are happy, you have your heart and your mind on your fellow man. on God and your fellow man. You're preparing yourself to be a maximum service to God and to your fellow men. And so, therefore, you are continuously removing self as you complete these 12 steps. And you admit to yourself another human being of the exact nature of your wrongs. And then you take that same lesson and you say we are entirely, you become entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. you know what your defects of character is because you've taken an inventory in the fourth and you might have thought of a couple of more by the time you got six put them down defects of care to the best definition i know for my own use is doing the things that i know that i should not do oh it's so many things that I do every day that I shouldn't do I shouldn't be impatient, intolerant, full of resentment, short-tempered. Lack of respect for my fellow man, taking my fellow mans inventory. I know I shouldn' do those things but I do it. And I'm entirely ready to God help me remove all these things. I'm not in no big hurry to have perfect perfection on this. They tell me that I can have progress in this particular part of the program. Now, right here in 12 and 12, it brings out this one point I would like to bring out. It's the sixth step. You hear in AA a cliche that says that this is a program of progress, not perfection. That is not true. Not 100%. From the second step forward, through the twelve, yes, it's a spiritual growth, spiritual progress instead of spiritual perfection. Yes. But the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous has to be played to perfection. There ain't no drinking in AA, Hey, did you know that? There just ain't no drinking. So don't let anybody kid you about this is a program of progress because you say, well, that first step, I've got to play that 100%. You're darn right you have, and you'll find that in 12 and 12 when it talks to you about the sixth step. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. The word humbly tells us what we should do. You know, when Bill wrote this, he said, humbly down on your knees. Ask God to remove your shortcomings. So the agnostics and the atheists made him take those words out, on your knee, and he just said humbly. But we know what humbly is, and we know how to get humble. And we know now to go to God and ask him to remove our shortcomings A shortcoming to me is the sin of omission, not doing what I'm supposed to do, a procrastination. If I live the six and seven steps to the best of my ability, I will always be a success. Not doing the things I know that I should not do every day, and doing the thing that I know I should do every time, I've got to have a good day. made a list of all persons who had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. We walk down the streets of our hometowns now sober, and we don't carry this load of guilt and burden on our shoulders anymore. We are getting where we can face any man, and we can do what any normal man can do. We're God's chosen people, and hold our hands and we never apologize for believing in God. We say that spiritual values are a sign of strength, not weakness. And so therefore, we are not afraid or we become willing. For these people that we have harmed, we are willing to make restitution to them and sit down and talk to them and tell them we're sorry. But the first thing you have to do is take our full-step our list and look at this, and be sure the list is all there, and become willing. We don't do it right at that moment, we become willing because the next step is a further process of deflation. It says, may direct demands to such people except wherever possible, except when to do so with each of them or others. We quit being a bull in the china closet. We do not do things at the expense of others anymore. For the first time in my life, I do things for my fellow man. I take him in consideration. I've started really giving away from self. And when I think that I should make amends, I go to my sponsor, I goto God, and I talk it over with them, and then I'd get into the quietness of my room and humbly ask God what to do about it. And I am sure that when I do it, that I am not trying to clean my own skirts at the expense of others. That I do this because it's the best thing to be done at that particular time. Oh, that's deflation. That is deflation at death. And then Tim says continued, continued. In other words, you haven't learned nothing yet. You haven't learn nothing yet, now you start all over again and come on back. Continue to do as you have done in your past. You're a human being and you're going to make human errors. And for the first time in your life when you're wrong, promptly admit it. Promptly admit it, is that not deflation? God. and then you'll never have perfect contact with God in other words your relationship with him will never be perfect you're a human being but you can show progress and how do you show progress is through the seventh step through prayer and meditation you talk to God and listen to God to improve your conscious contact with him as we understand him I'm praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. What is God's will for me? God's Will for me is for me to build just a better me. God said, Build a better world. I said, How? It's so large and so complicated now. And I'm so small and useless. Sam, there's nothing I can do. And God in all his wisdom said, Just build a better you. That's all. Isn't that fantastic? Just build another you. That's the only thing God ever expected of me, and I'm quite sure that's all he ever expected of you. It's just for me and you to build a better we. And then number 12 says, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, of the previous 11 steps, I have taken the hammer and chisel and I've chiseled out inside of me. And I've prepared myself to be the maximum service to God and my fellow man. I have got self out of the way, and so therefore I'm happy. I'm at it. I am happy without alcohol and I become part of the human race. And, I've got something to go out to the hilltops and shout about. I' m an alcoholic and I've this wonderful program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The best 12-step job I can do is just walk down the streets of my hometown sober. That's all. That's the best 12 step job I could do. You know, it's an amazing thing in Pompano Beach. It's a little town. I've lived there for 50 years. I became a drunk there and I've been an A member there for 30 years. I never in my life, there's no stigma in being an alcoholic. I never in my life ever had anybody come up to me and slap me on the back and say, Wesley, I'm glad to see you're all wall-eyed and look-legged. Has anybody here ever been congratulated for being drunk? I've never found a person that's been ever congratulated of being drunk. But I've had hundreds of people come upto me and slap me ontheback and say Wesley, you're doing a good job. You're a credit to the community. Keep it up. But, you see, the attraction of this program is when you have that spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. We try. We try to carry the message to other alcoholics. We have something to carry. We have a message. Message of love and understanding. We have it. We have what the world needs, and the world needs us. And above all, practice these principles in all your affairs. Above all. What principles? The spiritual principles that we have taught in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is the principles that we talk about and we all know what the spiritual principles are when i came to a i said where can i find him where is his only son wise men asking i'm asking still where is this man of goodwill is he far away in some distant place ruling unseen from a throne of grace there's no place on earth that i might see to give me proof of eternity Show him coming. This is the way I was when I came in AA. But there's a legend that's often been told of the boy who searched for the wonders of gold. The wonders of Gold he saw far away as he looked in the valley at sunrise each day. And he longed to go down in the Valley below, but he lived up on the mountain all covered with snow. And this was a trip that he wanted to make, so he planned by day and dreamed by night of how he would reach this great shining light. And one morning as the dawn broke through and the valley sparkled with diamonds of dew, he started to climb down the mountainside with the wonders of gold as his golden disguise. He traveled all day, all wearied and worn, bleeding feet and clothes that were torn, and finally he entered into this little peaceful valley town just as the golden sun went down. But lo, he lost his shining light because the wonders were dark that had once been bright and tired and hungry and lonely and cold. He yelled, Oh please, oh please, won't you show me the windows of gold? And a kind hand touched him and said, Behold, high on the mountain is the windows with gold. For the sun going down in a great golden ball had vanished the windows off his cabin so small. Now the kingdom of God, with its great shining light, is like the windows that shine so bright. It's no far distant place somewhere. it's just as close to you and I as a silent prayer your search and my search for God will end and begin when we look for God and find him within right in here so after 30 years I can tell you this it is true that I have never seen his face but I see his presence every place the hand of God is everywhere where along my life's busy thoroughfare. The things I see and touch and feel, this is what makes God so very real. The silent stars and timely skies, the wonderment in my children's eyes, the ghost mere wing or a humming bird, the joy of a kindly word, the autumn break, the breath of spring, the chirping song the cricket sings, a rosebud in the sun, a vase, a smile upon a friendly face. In everything both great and small you see the hand of God in all. for who can watch a new day birth or feel the warm light giving earth or look at skies through lacy trees or feel that softness of the breeze and say they have never felt his grace or looked upon his face I can't I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous Thank you