The Disease of Perception and the Architecture of Misery – Sandy B.

Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? I got down here for a little bit of Bob's workshop and it was really wonderful. So those of you that weren't here, you'll have to come next time he does it. It's absolutely wonderful. And I'm really happy to be back here. I spoke here not too long ago and it's a very exciting energetic pocket of AA Clancy calls them pockets of enthusiasm that you find around the country and it is fun to be in the middle of one and to feel the energy of sobriety let's see I got sober on December 7th 1964. And I got sober up in Washington, D.C., and I had the same sponsor for 42 years. His name was Bill Terwilliger, and he passed away a couple of years ago. And you should be so lucky as to have the same Sponsor for that many years because it provided a continuity that was just amazing. and he had about a year and a half when he got me and he really called it the blind leading the blind as we plowed our way through all kinds of troubles and divorces and getting thrown out of the Marine Corps and all the things. I remember when his boy ran away during the demonstrations over the Vietnam War and there was just, you know, all these things and everybody stayed sober. You just, that's what you do. You find in AA this immeasurable power that enables you to adjust to anything that comes along and that really is a remarkable advantage on life because we stay centered as life throws all the curveballs. I mean, sometimes success is the hardest thing to handle. But more people get drunk on success than they do on failure. When I'm sponsoring people and I go, oh my God, he was in an automobile accident and he lost an arm. Don't worry, we'll handle that. That's not going to get him drunk. And then I find out his uncle left him $2 million. dollars. And I go, we got a big problem coming up. Because you suddenly don't need help as much as you used to. And the whole thing collapses. But anyway, I'd just like to mention my sponsor's name to just sort of recognize him and how important he was. You know, it was funny when I got sober, you didn't go to AA. You didn't open a directory and go to a meeting. You called the central office, and they sent somebody over to your house, and that person was your sponsor. It really was a nice deal because they explained everything about AA and the meeting, and there'll be a white chip, and you pick it up, and all this stuff. And then when you came to the meeting, they went, okay, this is so-and-so, this is so and so. And you were, it was just really nice. And, um, you didn't have to try and pick your own sponsor. Which I look around, I see nowadays, of course you have to do that. I just go, boy, that must be hard. Like picking your own parents. Now, I want to make sure I get somebody who will really give me a good house and a good place and I want to do this. Well, how the hell are you going to know that? But it gets done. It's different, but it gets done. And it's working just as well as it always has. We still have the same recovery rate that we did 40 years ago in spite of what other people would tell you. It is still 50% of the people who come here who sincerely try the program, never drink again and half of the others eventually make it and maybe the other quarter doesn't make it because we can't count in our statistics a busload that is dropped off of a mixed bag of everything many of whom never give it a try. The statistics are based on those who sincerely tried the program. And that's what goes all the way back. I think that's in the forward to the second edition. So anyway, I'll tell you a little bit about my life because I'm getting old. When you get old, you look back and you go, holy cow. That's a long time ago. And I was born in 1931. And when I look back now, all these years later, the major event of my life was World War II. That was the major of event. So I was like 10 when it started and 15 when it stopped. And so those memories are really powerful of the blackout curtains and the rationing. And I remember my mother every four or five months would go in her kitchen and look for another pot or pan to take over to the center of town and throw it in the, there was a chicken wire fence and then they would melt the pans down for bullets. and everyone was totally involved in this. There wasn't anything else going on. And I guess we lost 70 million people in that war and we lost a half a million Americans. And so when that war ended, the unity that was in the country was staggering and the reason I brought it up like I was telling Carol at the noon meeting yesterday some younger fellow was somehow brought up Norman Rockwell and how all of Norman Rockwell's pictures irritated him so much because they presented this idyllic America with all these little scenes of people sitting around the table this happy little family and they're saying grace or they all have that look on their face like isn't life wonderful isn't Life Wonderful and he felt it was just totally unreal that is just that what the hell is that all these happy people sitting around and he forgets that those paintings were done during and right after World War to and what they have on the people's faces is gratitude that's what is there everybody was so happy just to be alive and to be free to go to the movies or do whatever it was so that expression was really there and it was a it lasted about five ten years that just sense of boy isn't life wonderful, kind of like when you get sober in AA and you suddenly are just happy over everything even though the circumstances have nothing to do with why you're happy. It's an inside job and so there was that great period of gratitude and I can remember being so pumped up as a kid. And of course the 50s were just wonderful. Then everybody succeeded and they all had two cars and money and all that and to hell with gratitude, let's switch to greed. And so we had a whole different energy going on. But I do remember going through that as the major event in my childhood. And so that accounts for, you know, how I, why I see things different maybe than younger people. There's nothing to do with staying sober. I just was reminiscing about being a young kid up in New England. Of course we on the coast and so my mother had a job as an air spotter and twice a week she went up to the highest hill in the town that we lived in and had some phone that called into New York and reported every airplane that went by I mean it it's really amazing to um remember that because nothing like it uh ever happened except for maybe the civil war so anyway that was a big influence on me I was kind of a happy kid but I didn't belong anywhere there's four of us in my family I've got one sister she's got 32 years in AA and as I sat at dinner I saw the three of them and me and it was just like I'm there but I'm not part of it and I can't explain that but it's a very common thing amongst alcoholics that you you're there but you don't seem to belong like All the other people seem to belong. And we were brought up in the Catholic Church. My sister still goes there, thinks it's the happiest, friendliest, most wonderful place in the world. I thought it was some kind of a German prison operation with these little Gestapo nuns. She thought they were the most friendly. And I just was like, oh my God, they're going to get me. They're going to get me. And everything I was taught, I heard wrong. You follow what I'm saying? They didn't teach me this. I just heard it that way. And I remember confession. I went, you better be careful in confession because all they're doing is gathering evidence for later. And they're goingto use this evidence against you. You know when. So tell them good stuff. Tell them goodstuff. Tell them you've been a good boy. don't give them any ammunition. So you can see, I'm terrified every week, and she's getting comforted. And we're both sitting in the same seat, in the samepew. So when we say it's a disease of perception, you can say that it starts early. Real early. And of course, when you think it up, you believe it, and it becomes the truth for the rest of your life. My only other example is probably about 10 years old. I looked at the crucifix, and it was a big wooden thing in the church there. And I remember just looking at it, and It was like it spoke to me. And it went, little boy, do you see this? Oh, yeah, yeah. I do. I can't miss it. Well, this is what God did to his only son he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you. Now, that's no one taught that. I figured it out myself. Do you follow what I'm saying? but when I figured it out it became true and then I reacted to that truth that I thought up and I literally panicked myself I was so panicky in church from then on you see what I'm saying the reason I give these examples is because when we get to AA we see this sentence that says old ideas availed us nothing those are the ones and everybody has them we all put together in our own little mind with nobody's help our picture of ourselves and the world and that's the world that we lived in that's that's it's not an exaggeration to say that everybody lives in their own little world sometimes we pick on somebody and we go you know her she lives in her own little world well so do you and so does he and so do they and somebody was arguing about that and they said so you're saying that there's 6.7 billion worlds on planet earth yes yes that's what we're saying well certainly there's the real world in addition to those 6.7 billion. And the answer was, well, maybe, but no one lives there. So when we say our problems are of our own making, that's how you make them. How do you make a problem? You think it up and believe it. How about that? You thinking it up, and then you believe it, and when you believe it you react emotionally to it and that seals the deal. Because you've got to trust your feelings. Last thing to trust, but you have to trust your feelings so that seals the deal that whatever it is it's unfair, I'm no good, this is that nobody likes me. You remember that one? No one likes me. I remember telling my sponsor, I said, nobody likes me. He said, don't worry, you haven't met everyone yet. So So anyway, at some point when I got to college, I was so nervous and didn't belong that I decided to drink in spite of the damage it was going to cause me after I died. There was some quarter of a million years off in purgatory if you didn't drink until you were 21. And I knew I was goingto need much more than that. But I got so out of place and couldn't belong and all that, so I decided to have a drink at a little social event. I walked in the room, and there was about 20 people, and you could look around, no one liked me. I mean, it only takes me a minute to look at the energy in people's eyes and just go, whoa, no-one in this room likes me. And the more I studied them, I could see they really would like me to leave. that's what they would like and the point of the get together was to go meet everybody hi, hi, Hi well it's hard to stick your hand out to someone who wants you to leave you know what I mean never mind so I didn't meet anybody but there was a bar there and I said this is it I can't take this my roommate said make it feel good so I had a drink and nothing happened I'm standing there talking to the bartender and I'm going, okay, I'm ready, I am ready, I'm 19 years old having my first drink. And partway through the third drink I put it down and I turned around and I can feel to this day and I think I mention it in every talk that I give I turned round and it was as if those guys were gone and had been replaced by 20 people who wanted to know me desperately. They were all looking at me and with their eyes they were saying anything to be your friend, really, really. And they wanted me, I didn't know where to go, I couldn't know where the start and I just went racing off to the first group to give me to them. And on my way over I realized they were right, they would be lucky to know me. And I intuitively knew how to handle all all those things. Hi, how you doing? Oh, Wisconsin. Oh, the Badgers. Hey, yeah, hi, hi. And I just talked and talked, and pretty soon everybody left. I talked until they were gone, and I'm going, where are you going? Where are you Going? Where Are You Going? That's the same mean people that I was afraid to meet. So as far as I was concerned, alcohol didn't change me. It changed the world. It changed the world and this is the world I had heard about. I heard people saying what a wonderful world, what a wonderful world and I'd go where? Now I saw it. So alcohol became very important. I did experiment that night. I said wow three drinks does this. What will 20 do? And of course you know that one. You're sick and dead and just a terrible night throwing up and the important thing is the next morning, as I sat on the edge of the bed wondering if I'm going to live, the thought occurred to me, are you going to drink again tonight? And you know how long it took to come up with a yes? About a split second. Of course I'm gonna drink again tonight. This almost dying is a small price to pay for what I had last night. So I discovered the secret of life on the first night that I drank. It was very close to a spiritual experience. It made me suddenly realize that the rest of my life was going to be wonderful because I had this secret power that would enable me to enjoy everything, to enjoy all the people. I'd always be comfortable. I'd also be able to enjoy the world. I'd almost be at ease. And I was free to be me. I had no anxiety holding me back I had never been this free to just be myself I just loved it and of course I pursued it with a vigor that almost caused me to flunk out and go from very high grades down to barely barely graduating the Korean War was going on the draft was going and we had to join the military so a bunch of us joined the Marine Corps and to make a long story short I fell in love with the Marine Corps I became a fighter pilot and I decided to make it a career it was just the greatest organization and I loved it and I lost my career after 14 years but I would have given anything to have finished it and so I had something that I belonged to and I liked it and I got married we had six kids I got transferred all over the place, did a lot of interesting things. And eventually the drinking, the alcohol, effects of alcohol came into the plane with me and I started having withdrawals and I start having terrible, terrible experiences. And sometimes I would think of ejecting in order to get out of the plane. And it became a real nightmare and I eventually had to give that up and tell them that I couldn't get in those planes anymore. But I had a regular commission, so they took about three months and they retrained me as an air traffic controller, which is the perfect assignment for a person whose alcoholism has rendered them unfit to fly. Now you can confidently bring planes in to the runway in bad weather when they can't see the field. And I went overseas from, this was my last year of drinking and fortunately when I checked in the senior enlisted men took one look at me and they said, Captain, good to have you here, etc. Here's your tent and we'll get the coffee but sir, please don't talk to any airplanes yourself will do the controlling you just try to get to work every day and that was kind of what I was doing I was drinking around the clock I lost 50 pounds due to malnutrition I was very very sick I barely made it through that last year and came back to the states and I was at a career school in Quantico Virginia which is how I ended up getting sober in Virginia and DC and just to tell you how bad I was. This career school was called junior school, and it was where you went to get promoted to major, lieutenant colonel, the next level up. And it was a long school. It was probably about four months and all day long and this and that. And I would come to the school and I couldn't remember what classroom I was in. And then I couldn'T remember where my locker was, and I couldN'T remember the combination. I mean, it was just I was right on the edge of having a seizure. And one day I came, I lived off the base and I drove in the base, saluted the sentries, drove up on the hill where these three great brick buildings are that comprise junior school and they were gone. The buildings were gone! So I went back to the main gate to report this. the hallucinations were starting and I went my god the buildings are gone so I drove out the gate and made a U-turn and came back up and the sentries are looking and they're going yes sir and I said corporal junior school is gone he said what I said I just drove up there it's gone oh my god so they got in the car with the red light going follow us sir and we went up to investigate the junior school being gone and as we drove up the buildings were back and so they came over to my car with that look on their face and I said, they're back so they drove off and I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the guard house when they got back in any event after about two months I had a grand mal seizure in the school and was sent up to the hospital and we had no alcohol programs so when you went in well they didn't know it was alcohol yet they just figured a seizure anybody could have a seizure but after five days I went into the delirium treatments and scared myself to death They were trying to, the CIA was trying to break me with memory tests. And they were faking tests and moving things so that I would memorize them and then they'd move the wall and everything would change. And I was going crazy. And eventually I did and they captured me and put me in a straitjacket and I was locked up for six months as a mental patient. and in that mental ward the local AA group from Bethesda talked the head psychiatrist into having an AA meeting even though he didn't believe they had any alcoholics in there but the corpsman knew that there was the three of us it's not hard to spot the alcoholics and so one night they came on the nut ward and said all drunks fall in and we forward march and we went over to the elevator and went down and there's these two guys from AA and they told their stories and I fell in love with them with the organization and I told them afterwards I said this is amazing I could see how excited they were I said if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem I'd like your phone number I'm going to send people. I had no connection that I belonged there. And this one guy tapped me on the chest, and he said, hey, man, let me ask you something. I said, yeah. He said, which one of us is going to put their coat on and go out and go home to their family? And which one is goingto put his little blue bathrobe on and go up the stairs and get locked up like an animal? And I remember going, I just met this guy. What a way to talk to somebody that you just met. I wasn't used to AA honesty, you know what I mean? So I wasnít convinced I was an alcoholic and after another month or so I was going to be sent back to active duty so I was allowed to be an outpatient and drive all the way down to Quantico and then back up to Bethesda each morning and then on weekends I could be home and so the second weekend I was home there was a Redskins game on and I had a rule that you can't watch the Redskings game without a beer it was just a rule I've had it for a long time if you're coming over to my house so I said man if I don't have a beer I'll have to sit here with the TV set off because of my rule so I decided to get one beer to watch the football game because they had told me if I ever drank again I would lose my career and I knew on the way home that they meant to say if I got drunk again I would loose my career not if I drank again and the strange thing is I drank one beer and watched the game and nothing happened I enjoyed the game, I slept that night and that dispelled the whole story about the first drink getting you drunk. I suddenly realized I had no problem with alcohol, I had a beer, nothing happened, I went to bed and I drove up to the nut ward the next morning, Monday morning and you couldn't have seen a happier guy. A former alcoholic is driving back to the Nut Ward totally free from alcohol and I couldn't eat lunch that day because I was so excited about the beer I drank that didn't bother me and I could not eat dinner because I were so excited and I did not even sleep that night I stayed up all night celebrating being free from alcohol and I didn't eat the next day and I stayed for about four days obsessing over the fact that I had a beer and it didn't bothered me well if you want to see an obsession there it is and that first drink was working very hard to make sure I got drunk which I did the next weekend because on the way home I said wow, I have total control over alcohol and I really prefer vodka to beer and I swear if I had a lie detector on my wrist I went in and I bought a quart of vodka and I honestly believed I was buying a year's supply. That's what I believed in my heart. I said, yep, I'll be having one shot every weekend maybe one on Saturday and it is so cool to only drink one. Well, you know what happened? That bottle was gone that Sunday and on the way into the nut ward I had to buy another one to keep in the car outside the nut word because I was starting to shake. And all week, I knew they were going to catch me. I knew they could see me. The paranoia had set in, and I knew I was going to lose my career, and it was just the end of the world. So on Pearl Harbor Day, on that weekend, I called the intergroup, and they said, well, we'll send somebody over. There's one Marine in AA at Quantico. The whole base had one day member and it was my sponsor. And by God, two or three hours later he showed up and before he showed I had gotten some alcohol to stay down and I didn't have a problem anymore and I called the intergroup back and told them that I didn t need help after all. And they said it s too late, he's on his way. And I said well when he gets here I ll just blow him off. Well you don t do that to my sponsor, he didn t even talk to me, he went right by me into my family, tell me about him. And they all squealed on me, made up horrible stories that I was a terrible father and a terrible husband and an awful drunk who didn't know what he was doing. He's dying, he's sick and all that. So I was cheated before I could even plead my own case. And when he came to talk to me, I said, well, let me explain. He said, get in the car. We're going to a meeting in Manassas. So for a long time I thought A.A.'s first step was get in the car. And I'm going, whoa, whoa. And he's kind of big. So I decided to stay sober out of fear of sponsor until I could find a way out of this damn trap that I was in, which as he's talking, well, we'll go to the meeting every night. And I'M GOING, OH, MY GOD, I GOT TO GET OUT OF A. A. TONIGHT OR I'LL NEVER GET OUT Of IT. that was my plan I'm going to go to this meeting and then during the meeting I'll come up with my plan for getting the hell out of here these people are too serious and it was a group anniversary and they had people celebrating five years and somebody with ten years and they said they had turkey and ham and it wasn't an old odd fellows hall and and the meeting went on forever and then the food went on and then they had square dancing they had fiddle players and it was in a remote area there was no street lights and I'm looking outside it was kind of sleeting a little bit and I got to make a break for it but there was no place to break to it was just the woods or something like that and I am standing outside debating how the hell I am going to go and this hand touched my shoulder and it was an Al-Anon lady named Betsy Lynch and she saw what was going on and I turned around and she said come on back in everything's going to be fine and I believed her I'll never forget that I just saw her face and I went okay and I think I gave up that night so my hat's off to Al-A-Nan and I got to know her and her husband They were a great couple, and I never had another drink. Now, life went on. My sponsor kept his career in the Marine Corps. He'd been through the same nut ward, but I lost mine. And I was quite bitter because I'd gone to an AA meeting every night for two years. I was making coffee, talking at meetings, you know, doing everything I was asked, trusting God again putting aside all those old ideas about the one I saw on the crucifix and embracing the idea of a loving God doing everything and then I got my notice that I didn't get promoted to major and I will be leaving the Marine Corps shortly and I had the feeling that I had done everything right in sobriety and God was now rewarding me and I felt that that old God had come back that he was after me even in sobriety and so I developed what is called a resentment over the fact that this wasn't fair here's a guy with six kids he went to a meeting every night for two years and he's being crapped on by the Marine Corps and boy you should have heard me if there was a discussion anybody got a topic yeah getting thrown out of the Marine Corp getting thrown out of the Marine Corps and people get tired of seeing me they go no no don't go near him you want to hear him in the middle so finally I think at one discussion meeting they said alright alright we'll have the topic is getting thrown off the Marine Corps so they go around the meeting the first guy said you're getting thrown on the Marine Corp well say the serenity prayer it really helps when you're being thrown out the Marine Oh, yeah, thank you. That's good. Somebody else says, double up on your meetings. You've got a lot of time. Go help another alcoholic. Take your mind off of yourself. And the last one was, say the prayer of St. Francis. He used to be a Marine. So I went home that night and I said, you know, I didn't explain my problem very well because obviously if they knew the real problem, and they never would say that stupid crap they just said. Friendly prayer, all that stuff. I didn't realize those are the same things you get no matter what your problem is. Turns out we have one solution for all problems in here. It's called a spiritual solution. And that doesn't sound right to a thinking person, people who analyze things, people who think a lot about things. Obviously, there's not one solution for all problems. You have to carefully think through each problem that's caused, you know what I'm saying, the feelings associated with it. The more you discuss it, the closer you could come to never getting rid of it. Anyway, somehow I survived all that. I got some kind of a selling job. I wasn't making any money. We were really kind of broke. I couldn't get rid of the resentment I stopped talking about it because I knew if you kept talking about the resentment somebody would get it away from you and I said I'm going to keep this one this is a world class injustice this isn't like some of this other stuff where somebody's husband left this is really unfair it's much more unfair than anything I've ever heard of in my whole life this is more unfair than Auschwitz This is really unfair. And we all know the reason it's so unfair is because it's happening to you. And about, I guess about six months later, the team that I was on down at Quantico, which traveled around to other service schools putting on a big presentation about the Marine Corps, they were killed in a plane crash going to Denver to put on a presentation and if life had been fair and I had been promoted I would have been on that plane so I remember reading that and I went well that makes a little different spin here and then I knew God knew that I read it I just knew he was watching me read this article and he's kind of saying, well and I'm just kind of hunching down and I mumbled something like well if you just told me that was going to happen I wouldn't have been complaining all this time and so it was quite a lesson about life that you shouldn't modify anything. You were the one that puts the label on it, good or bad and then we live with the we suffer from the consequences of the label. This is awful what just happened to me. It's not awful something just happened. I put awful on it and that is how I create my own problems by taking an event and modifying it, interpreting it, turning it into a very painful event. It was just an event until I got through thinking about it and putting these labels on it. And so when I... You know how in our literature as you start learning about spirituality they never talk about solving problems. They talk about removing them. There's a big difference. We removed problems when we drank. You'd walk into the bar, you'd just be upset over ten different things. Oh my God, one, two, three, hey, more like it. This is more like It. You got any problems? No problems now. Nope, I'm just living a day at a time. I'm in the moment. What about the rent? Oh, I'll worry about that tomorrow. I'm living in the now. So we have the power with alcohol to remove problems. So we should be familiar with that, that they simply don't exist. And that's what spirituality does. It removes them. So when I sponsor people and they have a problem they want to come over and talk to me about, my job is to convince them that they're wrong they don't have a problem and I first learned that from my sponsor when early in sobriety when you know how you're constantly getting a hold of your sponsor the sky is falling it's really falling this time it really is can I come over yes chicken little come on over and you're over there with this problem well you won't believe you know and I'd get through with all this stuff I'm never going to eat again. I'm going to be fine. And he'd go, well, that's interesting. I really thought, but you know, you've got eight months of sobriety now. Did you ever think you'd have that? And I said, oh man, I never thought of it. You've got a lot of new friends. You know Joe, you know Fred, you know what Alan was telling me the other day. He said, that Sandy is a hell of a guy. He really likes hanging around you. I said yeah, yeah, right. And you're making coffee, you're scheduled to speak tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. yeah I am and he would go on and on for about 15 minutes and I remember saying to him well if you look at it that way there it was the problem was gone because someone showed me how to look at is that way how to see it differently and that's all that a spiritual solution does it enables us to see it differently and the main thing that happens and that's the end of my story I've got some time left here so I'm just going to talk about anything that pops into my head mostly about God because Bob's going through the big book and all the steps and it's wonderful and we all study it and we all are familiar with it. But it doesn't matter what part of the book or what anything we're talking about, we're taking a look at the Bible and we're not just talking about God. There's no part of AA that isn't God. God is everything or he's nothing. Remember that sentence in the big book, God is Everything? Early on, somewhere, I don't know, in the 20s, it just throws it at us. and then it says he either exists or he doesn't and then he says what is your choice going to be? Like I get the choice of whether God exists or not. Isn't that interesting? It's my choice and my choice before I got here was he didn't exist and I had a big lesson about that with my you wouldn't think the choice just we call it a decision like in step three made a decision that God exists and I'm going to turn my life over no bush shows up no light in the sky just a decision why would you ever make a decision? Like that what would cause someone to make a decision like that well this is what happened to me my sponsor after about I was fighting all this I don't want to hear about God I want to hear spiritual. I don't want to hear anything. Just, I just want some money. I was looking for the money step. It was in there somewhere and with all these kids and all that. So you could see I'm obsessed with money. Money's going to solve all these things. And so he sat me down after about six months and he said, do you mind if we get brutally honest and you help me with your spiritual inventory? And just don't lie to me. Just tell me the exact truth. I said okay he said okay how much do you pray and I went I don't I don' t believe in it I think it's a bunch of crap when they're saying the Lord's prayer I go I don''t pray it's ridiculous and I don ''t pray zero praying he said ok no problem zero praying do you ever go to church Do you like to go in and sit in churches or some spiritual place and try to get some spiritual? I said, no, I don't like churches. They terrify me. It's a big joke. They've caused more damage. I hate them. I don' t want anything. Even when I'm in Europe and there's old churches and you could sightsee, I d'nt even go in them. Screw them. I d'don't want anything to do with them. No, I dont have anything to deal with that. Okay, fine, zero. What about spiritual reading? We got books from all over, New Age. We got this stuff. There's ways of changing the way you feel and there's this meditation and all these things and I went, no, no I don't even go near that section of the bookstore I think it's a joke they're just ripping people off I don'y have anything to do with that what about meditation where you sit quietly I said, no I'm busy I got stuff to do I got time for a sit around so my answer was zero so zero, zero, two, zero zero and then he asked the question so how's it going what does it feel like to be inside of you it's awful in here I can't stand it I'm afraid all the time I'm angry I think I'm gonna die I'm joking I'm just I hate it I hate everybody he said okay so those are the results of your plan you just told me the results of 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, so all I'm asking you to do is to make a decision to try this plan and then write down the results and you want to know what I thought I said I'm not going to do this what if it works I'm going to look like a jerk after all this stuff I've been saying all these years I'll have to eat my own words can you imagine that you won't do it because you're afraid it might work well we have a line in the big book about the scientist who refuses to perform or it's 12 and 12 I guess it is a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong what if you prayed and it worked you'd look like a jerk you were wrong all these years but he had me I was stuck I had I was going nowhere with my plan so you can see the way they get us here in AA is not by theory but by results how are the results of your plan working and we all go why don't you look at the results of AA. Go to speaker meetings. Look in the people's eyes. What do you see? Do you see something that you might want to have? And I had to say yes. I would give anything to have peace of mind that I saw people had. Well, then why don't you conduct this experiment? And finally, I was almost out of default. I went. I made the noise. This is the noise that if you're sponsoring people, you just wait for this noise it's my favorite noise it's the noise of willingness and the noise sounds like this okay you know that noise I'm going totally against what I think ought to be done I want you to go do that no, I want your to go okay and as soon as they say okay they're going to feel better they're gonna feel better they just got willing they just get willing and willful disappears as you get willing you can feel the freedom of saying okay and so then you go over and do whatever these things are that you don't think will ever work and they work and you start getting lighter the burden gets lighter you start looking around the world and it's shaping up your own family shapes up look at that my family is shaping up maybe I was wrong about this maybe Iwas wrong about that all of this is God being revealed when we say more will be revealed this is what it is We're slowly allowing our sponsor and the process of the 12 steps, piece by piece, idea by idea, to destroy our world. The one we built. The one that we put together in our own head. and as it gets destroyed granted it's reluctantly like Bob was talking about this afternoon go make those amends I don't want to make those amends those are the final blockade before the promises that's the final frontier of the old world is to actually go make those amens admit I'm wrong. And the things that come home after that are just remarkable. And that's when you see the words, we suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves, which is a very accurate description of a spiritual awakening. A spiritual awakening is a personal awareness that something has happened inside of you that can only be attributable to this thing called spirit of the universe, God, whatever it is. That it is, you were personally contacted that all this stuff is true and that the spiritual life is no longer a theory. It only happens to us individually, one at a time. This doesn't happen as a we event. and it happens as it says sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly but it will always materialize all the promises are spiritual magic words disappear, slip away and materialize and that's what to me God is he is the world and the vision that existed before I put together my world through these ideas the ideas that I am a separate person from God as a matter of fact Chuck Chamberlain who's one of my heroes the old time AA from California And he talks about separation being the only problem that exists for human beings. That's it. It's the idea that I exist separate from you and separate from God. And he draws a picture of the universe, this great big circle, and then a little dot outside, which is me. and that I actually and so I'm looking at this and I'm going you know I exist out here in addition to the universe how could you exist in addition to the university in addition to the universe how could you exist in addition to your family in addition to God how could you possibly if the universe is everything how could you exist in addition to everything. It's easy. You make up a story that you exist in addition of everything and believe it. And that's where you live. I'm in my little world where there is no God, there are no other people, there's just me. And it's very cool because I'm totally in charge of it, but it's also very lonely. I'm the only one in there. and when I'm in there I scare myself with a lot of thoughts about what's going on out there and that's where we all hang out and in that world there is no God because it's not a real world it's all of the ideas so we come in here it's no psychological process we just take the steps and as we take them all these pieces get smashed one idea after another and finally we say the most freeing words you can say well I guess I'm wrong do you remember how hard that was to say the first time he worked me into a corner I forget what the issue was I'm much smarter than he is and he worked me into this corner where he had me trapped and I finally had to say okay you're right and he said no you're wrong and I went well it's the same thing he said say it and it wouldn't come out of my throat I'm wrong I'm right he said I can't hear you wrong it was almost like I can'T be wrong my whole world could collapse I got to hold it together I can't be wrong about anything wrong what if I'm wrong about this you could be wrong about everything and then as soon as you say you're wrong you go wow boy does that feel good does that feel good and then we have a whole step on it tenth step from a wrong promptly admitted what else am I wrong about and Chuck talks about how exciting it is to find another thing that you're right wrong about oh I just found another one. Bye. And just throw it away. Throw away ideas that are wrong. Well, I'm wrong about that. I'm wrong about this. Did you ever do that with someone? You go, you know, I never could stand them. Well you ever tried loving them and go over and take them out to lunch? No. Well try it. Hey, you want to go to lunch. Yeah, I'd love to go to launch. I've always wanted to talk. Really? You want to know? I didn't know that. And then you walk away and you go, You know, I was really wrong about that guy. I was wrong. So this is the beginning of that freedom from the old ideas. So when we talk about, when I say to myself, what is God as I understand him? God asIunderstandhim is what appears when I get rid of my old world. And suddenly, I'm seeing the world through God's eyes. And I'm seeing everybody as my brother and sister. I'm seen peace and harmony. I'm see that everything makes sense. I'm se that all we're ever supposed to do is help the person next to us. That's it. And it will change the whole world. Change the whole World. Can you imagine changing the whole wold by just helping the person nex to you? how could that ever have a huge impact well let's see Bob's telling the story of 1935 one drunk helping another and then they started finding a third guy and then a fourth guy then they wrote a book and then the book got mailed all over somebody read the book and said oh I'm supposed to find somebody else Now, you would think a plan that is going to unfold with no great expenditure of money, just one person going, oh, hey, come on over. I'll show you how to do this. I'll tell you what to do. I'll teach you how it's done. I'll talk to you how the do this so look in this in now all of AA happened in my lifetime so in my lifetime we went from no hope for any alcoholic anywhere to AA in 140 countries, translated into 50 languages, 3 million miracles, all happening by one person grabbing the person next to them and saying, let me show you the way. That's a pretty big impact on the world. Huge. And so our mission in this society is so simple we don't need to do anything else except show another person how to awaken and i really think that um all of this came out of bill wilson's spiritual experience which for myself i call the origin of a.a some people will say it was when Ebby came over, some people say it was the Mayflower. I like to think that it took place, not the Mayflowership. But I like to think in that instant when Bill said if there is a God let him show himself and there was this fantastic moment when his obsession was lifted he felt a great peace, he realized he'd never drink again, and he had a total commitment that he could never stop to pass this message to every alcoholic in the world. And it was all part of that split second. In that split-second came our whole AA program. This was the moment, the singular moment in history. that moment is still happening. That energy that appeared so that when you have this awakening, nothing can stop you from carrying it to the next person. It's an irresistible force. You just are looking for someone to show how to get out of the hell of living in your own world and enabling them to have this transformation so they see a very loving world in which you can be very comfortable and show the next person. If you think about it, there couldn't be a higher calling than showing one other human being how to see the real deal. It's a very rare experience. Only 10% of the alcoholics even get a shot at it. And so we're like a very select crowd. And how did they select this crowd? Oh, they look in the garbage can and they look in the nut wards and they Look in the jails and they just look all over the trash heap of society. And out of that trash heap comes this society. And if you don't think this is God at work, what else could it possibly be? What other explanation is there for this whole event, for the workshop, for your life being changed and the next person's? We're part of something that was laid out and it's happening through us. It's not happening by us. It's happening in our lives. It's going to be happening through us. Most of the things that I do in AA just come to me. Just somebody's asked and I go, okay. and then I'm over here and then we're saying this and you just realize the prayer of St. Francis make me an instrument that's all I need to be is an instrument and how do you become an instrument? You become willing I'm willing to be guided and suddenly my plan for life is to be guided isn't that amazing? I try not to be involved much at all in my own life. Because it's just going to unfold the way it's going to unfold, and I don't have any say-so in it. I'd like to think that I really have a say-So in myownlife. And if you think you have a Say-So, then let me ask you a question. What could you have done to get to AA two years sooner? Anybody got a plan for that one? Or do you agree that you couldn't have done a damn thing. You had to hit the bottom that you hit, and that's that. And so we realize that we're much more observers of our lives rather than architects of it. That this beautiful story that is unfolding, which is called your sobriety, your home group, whatever it is, is happening and you're part of it. And it takes a lot of the pressure off to have to run the show and worry about all the results and all of that. And it sounds almost impossible. It sounds like it couldn't possibly be true. And there's a great resistance and a desire to stay in control. and that is as Bill writes in the sixth step in the 12 and 12 the riddle of our existence why in God's name having been granted a perfect release from alcohol we won't give up the rest the other parts of our life and as he says it is a riddle he offers the thought that the alcohol was fatal so it was a little easier to give up control on that one Because it was killing us. But all the other areas, it seems important that we at least meddle. If not control. Have a passing interest. And so as we look at these other areas and ask if we're 100% willing to have God take over lust. That troubles everyone. Doesn't that trouble you? More people get in trouble with butt and thinking and all that. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just have it just removed? I mean, God, you see how great that would be? How many people wanted 100% removed? No hands. Okay, so now we go... Why don't you want it 100% remove? Well, that seems a little extreme. Don't you think that's a little extremely? What would it be like if it had no lust at all? What is that, dead? You're going to be dead? No, I would like to get rid of 50%. I would like to. And so then we see we do that with greed and we do that with them and we do that with right through the whole thing and as Bill writes a little later we settle for as much perfection as will get us by and so the struggle that you and I have in the rest of our sobriety is to try however difficult it may be to continually take another chunk of our terrain of our closely guarded kingdom and give it away now in the beginning we're going to do that because we get in trouble and we get humiliated and we finally go and it's getting me in trouble anyway and bill writes and this i'll close with this that a great turning point came in our spiritual life when we sought humility as something we wanted rather than something we had to have. And so when we suddenly realize we would like to go through the pain of getting rid of this and actually make an effort to become willing to have it taken away, that we really are on the path to seeing sights that only the privileged will get to see, which is complete freedom from our own little world I think I've been waxing philosophically up here but when you get old you can do any damn thing you want and if it didn't make sense don't worry about it if it's at odds with anything your sponsor says pay attention to your sponsor you're just hearing one old man's view of what the hell I think is going on But I live in a very happy world, and I've been happy a long time here. And I really would close with this. The whole AA program can be summed up in two words, let go. This is the action verb in AA. They call it a program of action. Okay, what do I do? I'm ready. Let go. let go that's the whole plan and yeah because it this is your fist let go oh you mean this let go let go I don't know I think I better watch that a little longer I think i better I think I better and so good luck in letting go and when you let go you'll find that everything changes and you suddenly realize that it was God and you really did let go and let God and there's no escaping the fact that it's all God it's just coming to grips with accepting that and for many of us the only way to do that is to be wrong alright, okay I'll try the God stuff that's how you get spiritual every time you go against your own better judgment and utter the magic words okay, you're on your way thank you all very much