The Difference Between Early and Advanced Sobriety – Sandy B.

Thank You George and good afternoon everybody my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic how you all doing you're probably wondering what kind of a workshop on 12 steps we're going to have in an hour and so it's I think workshop maybe a misnomer what I think I'd like to do is to just talk about the whole package of the steps from where I look at them today which is considerably different than when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous when I first came in these steps were going to save me from dying from drinking and my My primary focus was on getting sober and not drinking. And then after I got a little bit of sobriety in me and I started feeling like I could relax a little bit, I just put that book aside and started coasting along, going to meetings and enjoying myself. You know what I mean? Because that's what sobrietry is all about. And then every so often, you know how life is, they'll throw an emergency our way. You know, so your wife will leave you or your boss they'll say, listen, I'd like you to meet your replacement. So now we have a big emergency and I'm like, get that book back down. I need some help again. And so we're back in there and then we get that one straightened out and just kind of slide that thing off to the side and get going on enjoying life again until something else comes along. and then enough of those things come along that we go well maybe I ought to keep this thing a little closer than I've been keeping it maybe, just maybe it would make sense to just do these things all the time just because that's what spirituality is all about it would be like voluntarily working on inventories and prayer and meditation even when you didn't need them. You know what I'm saying? The old way we used to, well, I really don't need anything today so I don't see any sense in working on this stuff. And so I think, you know, as the years went by, I got sober in 1964, so later this year I'll have my 35 years, which is, you Know, and I came in when I was six. So if you're trying to do the math... yeah sure and so as these years have gone by I've been pushed along just like everybody else is I think one of the things that really pushes us along is sponsoring people you know and all of a sudden you get a new person and so now you got to get the books back out again and start doubling up on the meetings and you're sitting there and this guy or whoever you're sponsoring, if it's a woman you sponsor, this gal you sponsor. They are all screwed up. And you are sitting there doubting seriously that this program is powerful enough to straighten this thing out. You know what I mean? So you start telling them the old party line. Don't worry. God is all powerful. You've just come in here. If you follow these steps, your life will be transformed. And in the back of your mind, you're going, maybe. And, jeez, lo and behold, six months later, this person has blossomed into this marvelous thing. And you kind of go, man, this just blows my mind. I'm starting to think this spiritual stuff works. I ought to try it myself. And we just get reinforced into this. And so instead of it becoming an emergency bailout thing that you reach for or something that you've got to pull out when you're sponsoring somebody or maybe you have to give a talk on the 12 steps. Oh, better get the book out and keep going. We start getting into, you know, I think as time goes by, we start looking at this that maybe there's much more to this than I thought back some years ago. Maybe there's more, and of course that's what I think the spiritual journey is all about, is to realize there's always much more. No matter where you are, you're just at the beginning. There's tremendous much more, it's how much do we want to go there. So you'd think that we would eagerly go there, and I think most of us would. By most of Us, I don't mean most of everybody in the room, I mean most of us as individuals. The better part of me would love to go down that path, but I have one part that doesn't want to go down there and it's my ego. My ego is not interested in spirituality. It's not interested in any of this stuff. It wants to handle things on its own. It's that self-sufficient I'm an American I get it done myself and that's the part of me that doesn' t want anything to do with this program. so we come in and I think we're very lucky because this spiritual way of life would benefit any human being there is but most of us would never choose this way of Life unless we had an emergency and that's why us alcoholics I think are very, very blessed and lucky people because we were given a fatal illness and it drove us down to the bottom where you become open-minded as Bill writes in the 12 and 12 after the first step we become as open minded as only the dying can become and that's how you get open minded that's why in the old days somebody would come into AA and say I don't think I'm ready well good go drink some more we don't have to make you open minded what makes you open minded is drinking because drinking just gets us and go are you open-minded yet oh okay boom boom boom how about now bam bam bam and pretty soon you get open-minded that's how you get open-mindered you don't you don' t get intellectually talked into getting open- minded you just drinking grabs your arm just keeps lifting it up you want to give up no and finally we are ready and only you don´t hear that in AA you hear we rephrase what happened and then we say and then I decided to go to AA with a gun at your head you decided to go to AA so we were reduced to this position of powerlessness which enabled us to start the first step by admitting we were powerless and all throughout our literature Bill talks about what our fundamental problem is lack of power that was our dilemma and it's very hard to remember that all through life because as each problem comes along, we analyze it because that's our job. You know what I mean? And how often have you come up with lack of power? This is my dilemma. You know What I mean, you don't have enough money. So do you come Up automatically? Oh, I know what the answer to this is. Lack of power, that's my dilemma No, you Don't, you say lack of money, that' s my dilemma Or lack of a job or lack of health or whatever it is, we just keep going, oh my God, I'm freaking out over a lack of money. If we had enough power, we could have the lack of many and not be freaked out. We could be comfortable with what we have, which is what drinking did. Sounds like, oh, I don't think that could be possible. Oh yeah? I can remember being all worried about not having enough rent money. I only had half of it. So I'd go and spend that half on drinking and I didn't worry about the rent money i was living today i might be dead tomorrow who needs rent money then so i was given the power to rise above my problems and just enjoy life because that's what it was all about the problem was i had the wrong higher power alcohol gave the illusion of accomplishing spiritual changes inside of me and spiritual transformations but it let me down the next day. I was all hung over and feeling awful again. So we get this doorway in, in our first step where we finally get low enough to surrender and admit that we are powerless, which means that we're going to need something beyond ourselves. In the beginning it's our sponsor, the AA group, the literature of AA, and then as we move along we eventually get a personal higher power that can help us with this powerless problem that we have. What we really have is a situation where life is overpowering us. Oh, this is too much for me. That's right, it's too much for you, but it's not too much for you and your higher power. If you brought your higher power along, this would be nothing. But we're out there all by ourselves. It's like when I was in grammar school, I always wanted to have a big brother. I mean a big brother and then nobody would mess with me because they knew i had a big brother so wherever i walked i could walk like this you know what i mean because i was sending the signal that i have a big brother and this is how we can walk through life with a higher power we can just go you can do a lot of stuff to me but with the two of us we'll be able to handle it so as we establish this contact with a higher power become less worried about how things are going to go because we know intuitively as a result of this contact that no matter what comes our way it's going to be fine there's going be plenty of resources to deal with it because i'm not going to be dealing with it by myself okay so that's wonderful we got that all established and then the ego comes back in and says well listen if you're gonna always be operating with god then you are never going to get the credit for anything. How does that feel? No, I mean, I'm doing a lot of the leg work here. I ought to get some of the credit. No, all the credit goes to God. Well, maybe I'll handle a couple of things on my own. And we just start taking it back and having days when we just go out. I know I probably should apply the spiritual principles here, but I think I'll go out and handle this alone and then we go out when you go to a meeting that night people go charlie what's wrong and you can see it you just spent the day trying to face the world alone and you got overpowered and so we come back in so we get this powerlessness and once we get that then we're forced in second step to changing our mind about a higher power coming to believe and so it's very interesting that in the program we don't attempt to prove the existence of god you don't you don's like a church would say okay we got the book here and if you read this you'll see god was born 5 000 years ago and here's a little picture of what we think he looks like and and based on this you can change your mind and start believing in this higher power you know there's none of that there's no official aa god it's if there's 200 people in this room there's 200 gods, because we come up with our own experience in this way. So if AA doesn't try to convince us of the existence of God, what does it do? It convinces us of The Need for God. That's what it does. It just says, you have run into a situation called alcoholism, and unless a higher power rescues you from this problem you're in, it's over. Would you like to change your mind about God? You see what I'm saying? Doesn't have anything to do with seeing God or anything. You're just seeing reality and you're deciding, it would be really great if I believed in God right now. And in the spiritual world, things are backwards. You know how you were taught when you were young, Seeing is believing. Well, when you get over here, believing is seeing. And when you believe in this, when you choose and change your mind and say I'm going to buy into this, I'm gonna believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity, it starts to happen. And so when it starts to happen, then we can have the faith that there is such a power as this loving God because we experience it. And that's the difference between religion and spirituality a lot of times, is that this is based on personal experience, not on some historical thing. We actually are forced due to circumstances to change our mind. We don't get presented anything, we just get the reality of where we are. So having changed our mind, then we say, okay, I'll have an open mind about this higher power. I'm going to come to believe, and I look at other people. I go to speaker meetings. I hear people talk. They were just like me, and they changed their mind. And when they did change their mind about a higher power, all kinds of things happened in their lives, and they're just like Me. So maybe if I change my mind, those things will happen to Me. So then we do, and those things happen to us. We start getting serenity. We start being able to sleep at night. We stop shaking. start feeling more comfortable in crowds we start relaxing a little bit and we go wow it is happening to me so now we realize this really does exist like getting the beginning feelings of this and then we find out well if this is happening to you it is now time to make this the centerpiece of your whole life make a decision to turn your will and your life over to this higher power as you understand this higher power we're making a decision to take my sponsor used to explain it this way I was when I came into AA I was an outpatient from a nut ward I had the wristband on from the nut ward and I wasn't released from there for like three months I mean as an out patient but I still had to go back there and so he was saying well let's see Sandy how you say you don't believe in God. No, no, no. And you don' t pray to God. No,no,no. I don't. And you haven' t turned your life over to... No,No,No. I don' T have anything like that. No, No. I definitely don'T have anything like tha. Well, how' s it going? How is it to be out there no God, no nothing like that? I see you' re got a wristband from a nut ward. I see that Marine Corps can' t stand you. Your family hates you. Your children hate you. Why don't you try something different? Why don'T you change your mind? Why don' t you totally get rid of? And I said, yeah, but I still got to be. It sounds like turn your life over. Like I'm not in charge. And he said, wait a minute. You're totally in charge You're wearing the wristband. You are totally in church You're in charge wearing wristband We could get better results If we had a dart board and took it down to the gorilla in the zoo and let him just throw over there. Yes, no, yes, no. For all the decisions in your life, we would be ahead of where you are now. I don't think the gorilla would get you in the nut ward. I really don't. Statistically, so when you turn your life over, what's happening is we're taking it away from an idiot. and statistically it's going to improve forget about the spirituality forget about all that we're just talking about the raw statistics of getting it away from you just do what your sponsor suggests do what the group suggests and instead of these lousy ideas that i was coming up with they were all based on fear and anger and resentment and being only able to see the world from the gutter. That's all we are. We're down there about as low as you can get making decisions, you know what I mean? Other people are up in helicopters looking out there. Well, we don't want to go that way. We want to do it this way. We want it to go this way, you Know, so we relinquish this. But you can see again, it's a very practical decision. It isn't based on burning bushes. It's just like, do you agree that you have decided your way to the bottom? Yeah, I guess I have. There hasn't been anybody helping me. I used to think that there was something good about that. You remember that song, I Did It My Way? Boy, if I was drinking, that would be my theme song. Yeah,I know I'm in jail. I know I've all screwed up, but I did it myself. I mean, I got here. This is me, man. I went through that suffering. I throw up every day. Whoa! I'm sure any day Hollywood's going to want to do a story about my life, about how I came from a nice family and took myself right down here. It was almost like, wow, isn't that something that I was able to achieve all this horrible mess on my own? So, okay, I'm going to make a decision and that's all it is. I'm gonna make a decission. I haven't turned anything over. I've just made a decision. It's like making a decision to get a college degree. You made a decision to do a lot of work. Go to four years of classes. That's what a decision in step three is. I'm going to really commit myself to doing the rest of the steps, and then our lives get turned over when we have conscious contact or a spiritual awakening up in 11 and 12. But this is the commitment. This is the decision. I am going to officially join AA. You know what I mean? Where do I sign? I'm gonna... The whole deal, whatever the deal is, all the steps. I'm gunna read everything. go to StepMe, get a sponsor, I'm in. Sign me up. I'm making a decision to turn my life over to AA and to these principles and to the resulting relationship with a higher power. So I'm doing that, and now comes all the middle of the program, which is, in order to accomplish this, there's things that are blocking me from this higher power? I like to think of the prayer of St. Francis in the 11th step. It says, Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. Okay, so now that's what I want. I want this peace flowing through me. That's all I really want is peace of mind. But the channel is blocked. It's like the Suez Canal and they sank all those ships in there and then other ships couldn't go through and they had to clear it. They had to pull all these wrecks out. And that's why we have to do this. That's what we have in our lives with character defects. resentment lust greed envy gossip anger and it's all in this spiritual channel and character defects make a lot of noise and the spiritual channel is based on being able to hear a very quiet signal the still small voice and you can't hear this signal that everything is well all is well do not worry everything is fine do not worry well anger's in there going you remember that and then fear is of higher pitch well i'm scared to shoot you know and then lust has another tone you know and they all have this really raw around you got this thing going on And it blocks totally any signal, conscious contact with a higher power. And when that signal is totally blocked, we claim it doesn't exist. And we're telling the truth. Have you ever had a conscious contact? No, I haven't. And so when you don't have that, you conclude there is no such thing as God. There is no personal God for me. I've never been sitting around and really felt that. well you can't hear this small signal when you're sitting next to niagara falls it's like and so we have to clear the channel and we do that on the word of other people who told us that if you will clear that channel it's going to take a lot of work all these inventories and sharing with other people and etc you will start having this awareness so you're willing to do the work yeah i'm willing to do the work so then we start taking an inventory and i like to think of character defects just blockages between me and my higher power between me and serenity i think um just jumping ahead because i'd like to focus on this what do i think sobriety is now compared to what i used to think a lot of years ago and I like to think of the in the 12 and 12 where it talks in the 10th step it said there's a spiritual axiom that says if we are disturbed if something disturbs us no matter what the cause there's something wrong with us and to me that's the center of my whole life now if something disturbs me no matter what the caused There's something wrong with me. Well, what's wrong with me? This guy did that. I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You're disturbed. That's what's wrong. You're resentful. You're angry. You're lustful. You're frightened. You're disturbed. That's what's wrong with you. Yeah, I know, but they did that and this guy did that and she did this. No, no, no. You're disturbed. I know I'm disturbed, but they, they, they. No, you're disturbed and you can get undisturbed. Oh, okay, I can get undisturbed. Yeah, you can. You can get undisturd. Matter of fact, you can make that your top priority in life is always number one, try not to get disturbed and number two, if you do, stop everything and get undistURBED and then go on with it. And that is what I think the program is all about is using our higher power and these steps. And that's what, when the 10th step says when we're wrong, i.e. disturbed, promptly admit it. I really think the difference between early sobriety and advanced sobriery is how fast you pick the phone up. You know what I'm saying? Something bothers you. You've been sober for 35 years. You go, bothered hey i'm bothered everything's okay thanks why stay disturbed more than three or four seconds and when we're new we go oh man this is terrible how to call hell would call it i'll handle this alone i'm gonna i'm going to stay in this resentment and then finally a week later we go you know i've had this dinner and they go look it's okay, you can let it go. Oh, thanks. We'll let it go. So we stayed that way for a whole week and didn't have to. And this is, that's the only difference. It isn't that we get beyond being disturbed. It's just that we pick up the phone sooner. And just, you know, something's really got me all upset. Well, you don't have to forget it. You're okay. The world's okay. It's like Chicken Little, you know, when we get off the track, it just looks bad. And we need someone else to tell us that it's okay. Maybe you had this happen when you're talking to your sponsor, and you've got all these things wrong. You know what happened? He won't speak to me anymore. They're down at work. I think they're doing this. And then your sponsor says, well, look, that may be true, but you know, you got this wonderful program. You just got a nice car. Your mother and father are back talking to you, and things are going well there. And you're going to be finishing the school in another six months, and you got this, and your health is really good. And when they get all through that, you say, well, if you put it that way, it's not bad. What happened? They just said, don't look at the world the way you're looking at it. Look at it this way. And all they do, I like, you know, it's like we're all little trains on a little track, and going around every so often, the car falls off. And then the car can't put itself back, but you and I can put the car back. You know, if somebody else falls off, you just walk over and put them back on the track. Oh, that's better. And we just keep going around. And then tomorrow you fall off. Here comes, oh, Mary fell off. We put her back. And it's just a question of going, I fell off the track until you do that. Nobody knows you fell off the track and the ego doesn't want anybody to know we fell off the track, you know what I mean? So we're pretending we're on the track and we're going sideways, you know, anything wrong, Mary? No, no, Why are you asking? It looks like you're going... No, no, I'm just... It's okay. Don't bother me. The ego does not want to accept help. We want to be able to handle it somehow on our own. So the inventory and going through all these things are designed to open this channel so that this serenity can flow through so that we're actually in an undisturbed mode. When we're that way, that's where we're supposed to be. where, undisturbed, we can go out in the world and have everything happen in a different fashion. One of the things I got through... Let me get to 6 and 7 real quick. These are fascinating because here we have this channel. We've gone through all the things that are blocking. We shared them with another human being in the fifth step. And that's a very important thing to do because I think the principle that comes out of the fifth step is that it's impossible to see the truth about ourselves alone. So you have a list, and you wrote it all down. Boy, this is it, and followed the big book. I'm resentful at the IRS, trying to take all my money away. Makes me frightened that I won't have any money left. Boopity-boop. So you get it all done. You get it down there, and then you get through with the fourth step, and there it is. Man, there's me. it's 16 pages of and you don't feel you might feel worse you know what I mean there it is there it goes well how are you doing I don't know there it is there it is well you know a lot of those inventory lists you have one of the things that we have on there is rationalization I just rationalize everything matter of fact I lie a lot I have this dishonesty trend I exaggerate I gossip I do this I do that well if you exaggerate you lie and you rationalize how do we know this list is worth anything how do We Know Anything this could be junk how do You Know Anything so that's why we have to run it through the truth thing we have put it through the third dimension of another person and as it goes through them then we start getting the third dimensional on all these things and stuff we thought was really life-threatening gets dismissed as nothing and then some little thing we go, oh, here's something I think we ought to look at. And we suddenly see ourselves in the third dimension and we can see the real truth of our situation and we an also realize that all of this can be changed and there's great freedom in this because we're no longer alone with this. We have finally brought in another power by admitting the true nature of our situation and this brings about those little set of promises that are in the fifth step in both the big book and the 12 and 12 if you look at them there's a whole little series of transformations that take place because we have made a statement to ourselves that we aren't going to live alone anymore when we take a fifth step and that makes the future look a lot better. It's like, no more am I going to let this stuff pile up like this. No more will I have 16 pages. I'm going to be up in that 10th step promptly picking up the phone, promptly calling to get rid of any disturbance that is coming into my life. So then we're getting into it when George was reading about take a lot of pride and humility. Then we get into this 6th and 7th step, which has a lot to do with that. You've got two problems in the sixth and seventh step. In the sixth step, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. We've got the problem of perfection. You know? What does that say? We're entirely ready to have God remove all defects of character. Do you know what that would mean? It would mean you would be a saint. How does that fit? I know I wouldn't. But I mean, somebody told me, you know, if you could work this program and really put your heart into it, you could be like Mother Teresa. I was back there, and on the outside I'm going, oh yeah, and inside I'm Going, whoa, whoa. That's a little extreme, man. I don't think Mother Teresa bowls or goes to ball games or has sex or anything. I mean have you got a different saint? Have you got some other, whoo, have you got some middle ground between where I am and Mother Teresa? That's going, I'd like to go, you know, like just be a little better than I am now. Well, it doesn't say that. It says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these demons. You, I think I'm going to slide by that mother. That's, I've gone, that's, that, I like the thing in the big book where it says progress not perfection that's what i like i like to think about that just a little progress now and then don't be talking to me about we're entirely ready to have god remove all those defects but that's it says and we find out that perfection is what we got to aim at because we can't stop on this journey see the spiritual journey is like climbing a mountain we start out we're in the gutter. The view is terrible, right? Everybody agrees that's a terrible view from the gutters. So we come in the program, we work with doing a bunch of steps for trying this. We get up to 1,000 feet. That's a nice view up there. We're looking around, you know, life is better. It's really cool, man. I like it up here. It's like the pink cloud and it looks wonderful. We're happy we're there but you stay at 1, 000 feet for two years. You know that view you start looking and you said, I've seen this. Is this all there is? You hear it around AA every time. You know, AA used to be more exciting than it is now. I used to really get a bigger kick out of the meetings. I think people are, I don't know what's going on, but it isn't as much fun as it used to been. And then somebody comes over and says, you've been at 1,000 feet for six years. You've got to go up to 2,000. Well, how do you get to 2,000 feet. That involves work. I have to climb again. I have to go back and become willing to have more removed. You could think about spirituality like a balloon ride and the only way you can get higher is to throw over more ballast. So what else can I find about me that I'm willing to get rid of? And then I go up to 2.000 feet and I go, now this is more like it. And then you see me around the meetings and I'm going, AA's picked up the old spirit again. The meetings are getting like they used to be. It's a lot better now. I like it, I like it, and then we stay there and now it's time to move on. But we don't want to move on. You know what I mean? I'm tired of all that work. So we stay at 2,000 feet for six years, almost have a drink, and somebody finally gets us, let's go back and keep working on this. And then after a while we go, I don't know what to do. I don' t want to waste six years at every 1,000 foot increment. Why don't I just climb, enjoy it for a while, climb, joy it for awhile, climb. And that's what sobriety is. It's just keep going. And then so it's a period of effort and rest, effort and res. So there's a thing in the 24-hour book that said, I pray that I may be never satisfied with my spiritual condition. That sounds wonderful. But if you think about it, it's saying I pray I stay frustrated all the time. You know, and so... So that's what perfection, I think, means. It's our goal, and we've just got to keep going. We've got to keeps going. We can never say, this is it. And then the other thing Bill talks about in there is our ego and our intellect will say, well, I've never seen anybody with all their character defects removed, so I don't think it's possible. I mean, I don't think you could get entirely rid of lust or greed or envy. And Bill writes, well, that's a dilemma and it's a hard one to figure out. Why is it that we were able to get 100% ready to get rid of our drinking problem and it was totally removed? So we were given firsthand evidence of the sixth step when we got rid of the drinking because we did get entirely ready to have that mother removed from us. And Bill writes, yeah, and the reason we were able to get entirely ready is that was life-threatening. And the rest of these things are optional. They are life-messing up, but they're not life-Threatening, so it's much harder to become entirely ready to get rid of gossip because it's fun too you know what i'm saying but what does it do it keeps us at 2 000 feet see it doesn't kill us but it just keeps us there and we stay there and then we start complaining about the quality of our life it's time to move on and we got to go back and get more willing and look at something else that i could become willing he has an interesting sentence in there he says we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by instead of what the step says. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. And I remember reading that. We tend to get as much perfection. That's right. I want to be known as an honest businessman. I want a reputation as a totally honest businessman then people will deal with me. I didn't say I want to be an honest business man and always be totally honest with everybody because occasionally I may need to skizzle somebody because I need the do-re-mi, and I want to keep a little of that weaselness about me in case I need it. So I don't want the honesty totally or dishonesty totally taken away. I like most of it taken away so they think I'm honest. And this is all the struggle between the ego and the greed and all of that and the part of us that wants to grow spiritually. And so there's this thing, and this goes on. I remember down in Florida I heard some of the old timers, they've got a lot of old timbers in Florida. You want to find old timERS? We're talking about old timeres. You go to a meeting and you go, well, let's have the junior man make the coffee. How much time have you got? He says, almost 35 years. Make the coffee! And so the old guys and gals, and they're going, well, what are you doing these days in the program? And then they go, oh, six and seven, six and seven, six and seven. So that's what it is. You're just going back going, well, what else can I get rid of? What else can i work on? So you're jumping over to seven. Now we're here, we talked about we're entirely ready. Getting this willingness and inventorying, what else can l get rid of. And you get over to seven. Humbly ask God to remove these shorts. If we don't get rid them ourselves, we're now going to put them in the spiritual process of having God remove them. And of course, this is where that humility came in. You know, I'm proud that I'm so humble. Bill writes in the 12 and 12, humility has not had a good time of it in our society. You don't see beer ads, drink bud, get humble. Or if you drive this Porsche, everyone will think you're humble. It's not a big buzzword in our society. So we are left with this dilemma is, and if we were to pass out papers, I bet this would be a tough question for everybody to fill out, especially maybe the new people. You understand what asking God to remove the defects. It goes something like this. Hey, God, would you remove these defects? There would be asking God. So that's one. But the test question is, what's the difference between regular asking and humbly asking there's the test question you know i remember i would i just i wouldn't have a clue you know humbly humbly i remember them thinking humbly humbly what the heck is humbly and i remember seeing a movie i think was going our way or my way with bing crosby and there was a nun in there and all throughout the movie she looked humble to me whenever they showed a close-up of this nun she was like there was just and I officially recorded that as humble you know what I'm saying so I guess to me when I first got an AA if you said what's the difference between regular asking and humbly asking I would go you gotta get like this hey God could you that was my best shot I don't know what would you all say you know That was my humbly asking. You had to look humble or something. So then we go around and we start learning a little bit about it, and dictionaries suggest that humility is a total absence of pride. Total absence of Pride. Total! You mean no pride? No pride? There's no such thing as good pride? No, no such things. I don't think so. I was trying to think up all the kind of sentences where pride would be a legitimate word I'm very proud of my son's accomplishments. Now there's a good sentence that will hold up spiritually until we analyze it. Why am I so proud of myself? Why amI so proudofmyson'saccomplishments? Because I want everyone to know that I am the father of those accomplishments. As a matter of fact, he didn't have much to do with what he was doing out there. if it hadn't been for me he wouldn't be hitting any home runs and so you know it turns out it becomes very self-serving the pride wants to just grab everything keep pointing the attention back here you know i'm proud of this and proud of that so i had to look at my motives when i was saying these things and we get sober a long time we suddenly realize we got a better word for that for expressing that i'm grateful that he's such a talented kid and when i say that what am i saying i'm thankful that god gave him all those great talents and that i're here to see it you know what i mean and i'm not trying to direct the credit back so we find that gratitude is a much better word than pride and so we hear with this humility so when we start getting grateful we're starting to get humble because we're getting rid of that word pride and so humility the best way I can describe humility would be that since I was in the Marine Corps for a long time if somebody said I would like I would ask I would want to ask to be a Marine so you just say okay now let's have you ask I would love to be could I please be a marine there I would be asking to be an Marine now we're going to help you humbly ask. And the way we do that is we're going to take you down to Parris Island and you're going to stay there for ten weeks and watch every single thing that's going to happen to you. Ooh, wow. Ooh, I didn't know they did that. Ooh, ooh. Now at the end of ten weeks now you can humbly ask because you know what's in store. Knowing what's in store, knowing that it's going to be painful to get rid of these character defects in the sixth step, I still am raising my hand because I believe it's worth it. And the pain then becomes effort. You know, when we try to get in shape, it's painful the first couple weeks, and then it's just effort to maintain it. and we like it because we go over, we work out, and we know the nice results that we get. We've got more breath, we've got muscle tone, we got all that, and we don't think of it as painful anymore. But it is. It's the same thing that was painful. And the same things happen in spiritual growth. It looks painful to not get our way because that's what spiritual growth is all about. I sometimes say I think there's only one problem that human beings have, not getting our way. There's nothing else that ever happens. It all comes in different ways. I didn't get enough money, I didn' t get this or I didn''t get that but it's all a function of not getting my way. And look what we're doing in the spiritual program. Made a decision to turn my way over to God's. I don' t want to have my way anymore. Well, my ego, and that's very painful to give up having my way What am I going to be? I'm going to become the hole in the donut. See, I always looked at life and I saw I'm in a lot of pain and my instinctual drives which cause the character defects are telling me, you're in a lot of pain. Things aren't right. And then I'm going, what's wrong? You don't have enough money. Okay, then I've got to get, I have a demand to get a lot OF money. I've GOT demand for sex. And I've Got all these things that are driving me crazy and the only way I saw to solve this was to go get all those things. But then you talk to people who became millionaires and they got all the money they could get and they still are walking around not happy. It still wasn't enough. There's still something missing. It was a misdiagnosis. Our problem wasn't a lack of money. Our problem was lack of power. Our problem with spiritual and it looked material. So this is, AA says, there's a different way of solving that problem that you have. You have these demands that are driving you crazy. You have to go meet them. How about we spiritually reduce the demand so they're not asking for anything? Well, I could agree that technically that's a solution to that problem, but it sounds dangerous. What would it mean to have no lust? Don't you think you ought to have a little just in case? I mean, what would zero lust be? Or not have a way at all? I mean, you know, who would you be? And then remember in the 12 and 12 it says, I'll be the hole in the donut. Who will I be? Well, what happens is Bill is talking, remember how he writes about the fourth dimension of existence? We don't lose control here. We don' t do any of that. We're simply moving from the intellectual problem-solving level to the intuitive level. Remember how it says in the promises we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us? when information comes intuitively it didn't come through the i gotta figure this out it came from i can't figure this house i need help and your sponsor sleep on it and see how it is tomorrow you get up the next thing you have an idea you ever have that happen i have an idea i think i see a solution to something and it just came to us when we got at the intuitive level, which is conscious contact, undisturbed. And so this is what is being suggested in this whole thing is we're going to move to a different level of operation where instead of figuring life out, we're gonna get guided. We're gonna get moved along on a different frequency than we've been operating at. And so that's what I think six and seven and eight and nine are just merely enabling us to live a day at a time by settling up with the past, by going back and seeing how our self-centeredness caused a lot of friction in the world. If there's anything we get out of the eighth step, other than getting ready to do the ninth step, is to see the friction that we cause in life as a self-centred person. When I went to my parents' 50th anniversary a long time ago, they both passed away recently, my sister was reading the list of people that were coming and she went, oh good, oh good. Everybody was coming and she got this one uncle and I went, oh, does he have to come? He's so abrasive. It's just like a wet blanket on the party. Do we have to invite him? He's just terrible and she said and she had 15 years in AA at the time she said, he only does that when you're around. What? Oh, no. Everybody loves him. He's great. He's wonderful. He only does that when you're around him. What? So I said, well, I'm going to believe her. You know what I mean? I just said, okay. All right. I'm gonna buy that. I'm gong to pretend that he is the guy that my sister says he is rather than the one I have seen. So when I got there, I went up, Uncle John, how you doing? I'm so glad to see you. And he said, Sandy, I've been waiting for you. I'm sorry. I'm glad to be able to see you. I couldn't believe it, and he was just delightful. He was delightful. So what did I learn out of this? What did I learn? Bill writes in the Eighth Step, we as self-centered alcoholics have the power to bring out the very worst in people. Isn't that a wonderful power to have. The power to bring out the very worst in people. So we go around with this power, spreading it all over the place, boom, boom. Wherever we go, people are now fighting with each other and behaving terrible and just awful. And then when we get through our day, we complain about the people in this world and how they behave. And we never see our role in it. And that's what we can learn out of the eight step is, wow, my job is to go out and live in harmony in God's world. God composed the music and I'm going to go out and just try to live in harmonies with all these other musicians. That means I'm going to have to get tuned into the musical score. I'm going to have to contact with this master writer of this big orchestra that's going on." Well, before we came to AA, we didn't know anything about the master writer. We wrote our own music, you know? And we went out there and we only knew one note, me. And we just played that note. And we thought if we played it long enough and hard enough, people would get in harmony with our note. And that's what we did. We just told them more about me. Let me tell you more about me. And then maybe if I tell you enough, you can get in harmony with me. You'll see how to cook eggs and you'll see how to do this. And so then we come here and we go, oh no, I've got to play all these different notes. And we learn how to listen instead of talk. And that's our thing. We can get into harmony with the world. And that comes out of the eighth step. And the ninth step is to get rid of the past so that we can live a day at a time. And in the tenth step It's very hard to live a day at a time and drag the 80s with you. All these people that you're afraid to run into and all this. So we finally go make these amends. We take God with us, and we go in there. We're doing the right thing. We don't crawl in making an amend. We come there with great dignity. Say, I'm here because the right things to be doing is to tell you I was a terrible employee, and I feel terrible about it. And I'm in AA, andI'm trying to get my life straightened out, and thank you for your time. and we've done it. And if he says, oh, wonderful, we give God the credit. If he says I still hate you, we go, well, I'm sorry but we've gone our side and it's over. We're finished. We've completed the ninth step and then we can go into the day at a time which I was talking about trying to be undisturbed and to change the best way I can describe and I'm going to finish exactly on time. I got eight more minutes. best way i can describe this if we're trying to reverse the flow of our lives think about a resume probably most of you at one time or another have either made one for yourself or helped one of your kids make one or help one ofyour friends make a resume so what do you put on a resume we got the you know sheet of paper like this so we're going to put down there our name, our address and our phone number and then we're going to put on there everything that we can possibly think of that's good about us. And we're going to get letters of recommendation from people even if we have to pay them to put in here because we want to end up with a document that when we insert it in to the system out there will entitle us to as much as possible. You know what I'm saying? Well I want to get a job this resume will only get me $50,000. I've got to get a better resume. I'm going to put some more stuff on here so that I put it out there and you can see, look, I went and I got this degree and I accomplished that and I'm very good with communications and I can fix this kind of stuff and I could work with people. So I'm entitled to and then we put in there and we go, please give me everything I'm titled to and then if we get a good job we go oh, it's all right but I still think I should have gotten more based on this piece of paper here so you can see that this resume is to cause everything to flow into us. So now we could get an AA and we work all the steps, and now we bring the same piece of paper out. We said what does this resume look like now? We haven't changed one word on it. So we asked the person, Mary I see your name's on this resume, what does this piece of paper have? Well that piece of paper has all of the qualities that God gave to me that enables me to be useful out in the world. As you can see, I could go out and really help in certain domestic situations. I could do it. I could really be useful in a situation where this happened. And that's what this is. And people go, wow, that's wonderful. I'm very attracted to your resume. This is a program of attraction, and we become individual programs. When you went out and talked during the job interview from that perspective, bosses go, whoo, I would like to have that selfless person working here. That would be a very refreshing thing to have in our company, someone who says I see where I can be useful and I think I could offer this to your company instead of well as you can see I should be at least an assistant boss when I need these kind of perks and I want a car you know what I mean so then we find that things are happening to us that weren't happening before it's because we've reversed the polarity and we have simply gone out What does it say in the front of the 12 and 12? The AA's 12 steps are a group of principles, spiritual nature, which enable the sufferer to get rid of the obsession to drink and to become happily and usefully whole. And useful, useful, helpful is the word that we keep hearing. I can just be useful. So it must be a very powerful word. Useful equals happiness because when we're useful, the flow is going the way it's supposed to go. it's supposed to flow out from us when we have contact with a higher power which is all the power there is in the whole universe we have no need for anything we just are in a position to be useful somewhere and as we go out and allow this to flow through us on a 12-step call or sponsoring or just being nice to somebody at the checkout counter and just going, man, it must be tough working here all day you're doing a good job, I'm glad you're healthy and then walk out it's just amazing. People start responding to us differently. As we stay undisturbed and go out trying to spread the joy that is flowing through us, the entire world transforms. And we keep coming home going, you know, life is great. Life is great, and all it is is God is great and I've reversed the flow, and it's now flowing out from me. And it's wonderful. The problem is our ego does not like this plan at all. Because this plan, God gets all the credit. God gets all the cred for everything. I'm sick and tired about it. Did you ever do that? I hate to confess. God, God, god, god. All I hear is about God. What about me? well that's your ego talking god god god god god we're going to stop talking about god how about me me me and let's get rid of that now we're asking for trouble now we're gonna reverse the polarity here comes the resentment here comes the self center here comes all this stuff zooming back in and we're just there left with this what is going on and thank God we have each other we just fell off the track we raise our hand and the guy or the galvan oh fell off the track and puts us back on thank you so in aa we never work any of this stuff alone we it's a we program and we're here reminding each other day after day after day that's what our 12th step practice these principles in all our affairs well i got three minutes let me get in one word on prayer just maybe it's one you haven't heard before but prayer think of the prayer of saint francis there's here's prayers very wonderful people have written these unbelievably beautiful words. What is the most powerful thing for me that happens with these prayers? Take a prayer for St. Francis. Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. There was hatred I may bring love. What could I tell you about that prayer? I could tell you that I don't think that way. That's what I can tell you. I do not wake up going, oh man, make be a channel like peace. I wake up going, oh, God, it's going to be bad out there today. I better get taken care of. I've got trouble. And don't forget, Sandy, you're nothing, you'RE nothing, you'RE notHING. Okay, I remember, I remeber. You'RE nothing you'RE NOTHING, you'Re nothing you'RE nothing, you'RE Nothing you'RE NotHING have a good day. So that's what's going on in my head. There's no make me a channel. None of that going on In My Head. So think of your head as a stage. And there's only so much air time in a day. if you could get that other guy off the stage you're no good, you're not good and replace him with an actor who's going make me a channel of thy peace that's a much better show to watch you follow what I'm saying you go through a whole day of make me channel of thy piece these are great enlightening thoughts these are up at the highest level one of my favorite prayers is hi God just hi God, hi God As long as I'm doing that, the guy who says you're nothing can't get on the stage. I could go for an hour and never hear you're Nothing because I'm going, Hi God, hi God, isn't AA great? Hey, great, I love being grateful. If I keep that stuff going, the other stuff can't getting in there. You get a whole day of never hearing you're no good. It's a wonderful day. So for me, some of the power of prayer is shutting up all that other stuff. and lifting my thinking to an entirely different level. So in wrapping this thing up, what can happen here is that we can literally transform the world that we live in. And we do that together so that when you forget it, I can look over and go, hey, did you forget this? Oh, I forgot that. Yeah, prayer, yeah, inventory and all that. When I forget it you can come over, get me back on the track and that's why AA succeeds. deeds. We care so much about each other, and we trust each other that we're willing to not only give help but we're wiling to ask for it. Sometimes it's much harder to ask for help than just to give it. So let's make a promise. Wherever we fall off the track raise your hand. I'm off the tracks so that we can come over and help each other back And it'll work beautifully. We'll be in this wonderful world of AA until the final day. And God bless you all. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you. Thank you very much.