The False Old Ideas That Block the Real You – Sandy B.

Well, good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? It's great to be back in San Antonio. Oh, I better follow the custom here. My sobriety date is December 7th, 1964, and I am very grateful to be here. So everything this year is my 30th this and 30th that. and um you know you get a long time in aa you don't like to admit that because you just people in the audience are starting to do the math and they're going that guy ain't going to be around much longer you know um i love to hear the promises read they're just very inspiring to me but have you ever thought is there any conflict between chapter five where it says half measure availed us nothing, and the promises where it says we'll be amazed before we're halfway through. Sorry to do that, sponsors. You can explain that now to all your pigeons. Anyway, it's wonderful to be back in San Antonio. I've got a lot of good memories of AA around here, and texas aa is great aa there's certain parts of the country that um just have a little more zest for living than other parts ofthe country and teexas is one of them california's great north carolina washington dc's got it is a real pocket of enthusiasm so we're lucky people to be in AA and have the extra bonus of the joy of living. I mean, I really think that that's what AA is all about, is the joy of living Somebody told me that what AA does, it enables us to get happy and sober, happy and sober I really believe that if you're in AA and you're not happy, you're doing it wrong You're simply doing it wrong. Because we're not expected to be able to stay sober and miserable for the rest of our lives. That's what going on the wagon was. You just not drink, and you walk around trying to not drink. And it's an incredible sacrifice. And people come up, what are you doing? I'm not drinking! And you can see the muscles on your neck standing out. and it's just this tremendous sacrifice well that's what not drinking is but sobriety to me when i think of sobriete i think i'm being absolutely delighted with not drinking i'm absolutely delighted that is something that i am unable to do on my own that is a spiritual dimension to life that is only achievable spiritually And that's what these steps, and that's what our whole program is all about. So it was impossible for me, just on my own, to get happy with not drinking as an alcoholic. Because for me alcohol was how I got happy in the first place. So don't tell me that not drinking could make me happy. I mean, you know, you talk to earth people and try to explain alcoholism to them, and they're the people who kept telling us, don't drink. and everything will be fine and of course we would say you don't understand when I don't drink is when things get bad I mean why did I drink I don' t know why you drank but I'll tell you why I went into a bar I'll say why I went into the bar because I heard that in that bar they had something that would fix sobriety that's why I went in there i was the bartender would go around say you know what's happened to me i'm sober again and i need something that can take care of this condition because i find it very painful to just walk around sober do you have something back there that can help me with this terrible condition that i'm in and go yes it's called alcohol and when i drank i fixed the problem that i had that's what made me an alcoholic alcohol didn't cause problems oh it did in the tangential sense but in the big cosmic sense alcohol to the alcoholic is an answer it's a fundamental answer it fixed things inside of me that were all mixed up it was an answer to me that's why i was willing to go through the pain that i went through that alcohol causes getting your teeth knocked out getting arrested your cars wrecked and trouble all over the place and i would look at all that trouble and i would say that is a small price to pay for what i'm getting i'm much more than that out of alcohol i'm getting the answer to my problems in life non-alcoholics don't have that happen to them they don't that's that's what separates us from the non alcoholics I'm a lobbyist and well not now I'm working for myself I can grow my hair anyway I want but for 18 years I've been a lobby of stuff in Washington for all the credit unions in the country and we get an expense account and we got to take people out and you know they can order drinks or do anything they want and you know people don't drink as much as we thought they did I just imagined everybody with free booze would have it so probably one out of twenty will actually have a drink and then they'll order a drink. And you know the guy I'll say go ahead Fred you won't have a dream yeah maybe I will and waiter bring me a scotch and soda so ten minutes later the waiter comes back and hands him a scotchen soda and And he, thank you, you know, and I've got a Coca-Cola. And he goes, well, cheers. And he starts to take a sip and then he goes you know the banking committee is and puts the drink down. Banking committee's really up to some funny tricks right now, aren't they? You know, waiter comes by and he says, I'll have this sandwich. And he says well, hey how's your golf game? And he puts the drank back down and he's messing around with it and his lunch comes and the ice is melting and you know and I'm sitting there and I're just going Drink the goddamn thing. What are you doing with that thing? You're just sitting there. What did you order that for? What areyou doing with it? And he's just screwing around with it. And I don't know about you, but I call that alcohol abuse. It's just to just sit there and allow. So why is he doing that? Because obviously that alcohol is not important to him like it was to us. that wasn't that isn't the answer to anything i have um i always talk about this in in my talks i have a roommate from college who lives in dallas named roy and years ago and and he knew all the trouble i got in later on and i was very grateful that i got sober and really loved aa because he got me sober and so when i'd speak in d Dallas he would come to the meetings and grew to like aa even more after he met all the folks up there and i think we're both 50 years old and i was over his house and i said roy you and i started drinking together back in the 50s and i thought we were fairly similar you remember we got in trouble and you got arrested once and this happened and that happened and uh but obviously we're very different when it comes to alcohol and i sad so just sit back and pure stream of consciousness you're 50 years old successful businessman here in dow tell me what comes into your mind when you think of alcohol so he said okay so he sat there for a second he said first thought first thing that comes into my mind it makes food taste better that was his top thing that he was going to say about alcohol and that's that's not something i think that would to come up in this room as the first thing you know what's your first thought when you think about alcohol you know and i remember thinking to myself is that going down or coming up you know that it makes food taste better and then he went on to say that um at the end of the day he'll come home and he's had a hard day at work and then you mix a little drink in the kitchen have a couple sips out of it and go take a shower and it's sort of a transition from the work day to coming home being with the family so i didn't relate to that and then he said sometimes during the year we'll have parties we'll get groups of people together and it's a way for people to interact and socialize a little better and that was his full description of alcohol he never said oh alcohol it's the secret of life he didn't say that he because for him it just wasn't that important. And the reason it wasn't as important, it didn't do all the things for him that it did for me. See, it was a tremendous answer. Alcohol was a tremendous power in my life. I felt like the reason I was an alcoholic is kind of like a car battery. When you buy it and you put it in your car and you go to start the car and it won't start. And the guy says, oh, you got to put water in first and then it activates it and it gets all this power and it can function the way it's supposed to function. You have to put this liquid in there. I felt like I was a car battery, you know, without a drink and nothing worked right until one day somebody poured some alcohol in and the whole system fired up and I went there. That's, now I see the world. Now I am a person. Now everything makes sense to me. And as soon as the alcohol wore off, I was back where I was before, where you were very intimidating to me and I felt very threatened by the world and I didn't fit in. And I felt that somehow you all knew what was going on and I didn't. And I heard the stuff that you talked about and I went to church and I was taught about a higher power and I Was taught a lot of principles, but none of them ever registered. I never could see what people were talking about or experience it until I had a drink and the drink seemed to make me a complete person. And that's why I'm an alcoholic is the great power that alcohol had on the inside of me to make the world a wonderful place to live in. That's what I call my, why I say that I'm an alcoholic. Um, I drank my first drink in college. Um, it was back during the Korean war and I think we all had to join. If we didn't, there was a great mistake made because I went down and volunteered for the Marine Corps on the theory that you had to join. And a bunch of guys were standing around on a Saturday afternoon, what do you want to do? Well, let's join the Marine Corps. So right out of college, I went down and signed up and got down to a training base in Virginia, and it was wintertime, and the guys are out sleeping in the snow and loving it and talking about killing with your bare hands. And I'm just going, whew, where's that brochure about the officer's club golf courses and those things? That's just not who I am. So I saw a training movie about pilots. And the pilots in the training movie were at a bar. And they were talking like this. And they had their drinks there and their good-looking uniforms. And so I immediately went over and said, where do you sign up for being a pilot? And they actually let me sign up. And I went, and they said, have you ever flown? No, I've never been in an airplane. I don't know anything about them, but I know that I'd be a good pilot for you guys. And somehow I made it through and took the test, and boy, now I'm off to flight school. I got married at the end of this one school, and I'm on the plane down to Pensacola to become a pilot, and I get airsick on the plain, the commercial plane. First time I've been in a plane, it's bounced a little bit. I'm all throwing up all over the place. But as an alcoholic, I was so used to throwing up that it didn't hardly matter. I could do that at the drop of a hat. And after some bad throwing-up experiences in the old SNJ, I finally settled down and went on to become a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. and that's what I did for most of my drinking career was flying jet airplanes for the Marine Corps and I can tell you a lot of great stories there's a lot camaraderie there's lots of fun associated with that way of life but my story is about alcohol and so while all this excitement is going on alcohol is progressing and I am becoming more and more dependent on alcohol I am getting more physical symptoms of the disease of alcoholism withdrawal symptoms in particular and we had a thing about flying and I supposed to have anything to drink for 12 hours prior to flying which would put me in the cockpit during withdrawal you know what I mean that was if I had my way we had an active alcoholic as a pilot I would insist that he have a drink before we take off so he doesn't go into a convulsion or DTS on the way to the destination but I didn't know those things so at after about 11 years of flying I found myself experiencing extreme withdrawal symptoms in the airplane I would lose vision minor thing to have happen heart palpitations sweating, trembling hands, loss of coordination, minor things that would go on. And so I started developing a terrible distrust of the pilot of the plane I was in, which was me, because I knew that there were some things happening that were real serious. And so eventually I went to the doctors as a last resort and they agreed it was very serious, and they sent me off to Pensacola, Florida, Special Board of Flight Surgeons. What is wrong with this man? Now, this is in 1962, and the Navy did not even have alcoholism as an illness. So there were no alcoholics in the Navy. You follow what I'm saying? There was no such thing as alcoholism as a thing you could be diagnosed with. And so they studied me, and The symptoms I had was shaking hands, high blood pressure, sweat all the time, trembling all over, voice quavers, eyes bloodshot, reeks of alcohol. His whole body smells of alcohol, what does this man have? And so I was there for two weeks and they're testing me, sticking needles in, a dentist, psychiatrists and the whole thing and I at the end of the two weeks all the physical doctors said nothing physically wrong it must be a mental problem so we'll leave it up to the psychiatrist and so my write-up was childhood fear of flying has manifested itself at this late date and so don't let this guy fly anymore and everything will be alright and I knew that that wasn't it but I I didn't have the wherewithal to fight anything. I mean, I'm just at the last stages now and I just sort of, just give me a drink and I'll get through this. And we waited for a couple months to see what the Marine Corps was going to do with a pilot who was in such bad shape that he had to be taken off flight status. And all I get orders to become an air traffic controller. so that's what I did in my last year of drinking was sit in front of a radar scope and bring planes in in bad weather when they couldn't see the runway so any air traffic controllers out here I'm sure you know if you see two runways you just cover up one eye and everything will be fine. But I'm very lucky that there were no accidents or anything. As a matter of fact, I was sent overseas last year in my drinking as an officer in charge of a little radar unit in Japan. And the real professionals, the enlisted men in the unit who were the real professional they said, Captain, come on down to the unit any time you want. Sit around, have some coffee. But don't go near the radar. You just ride your bicycle over here and try and find a unit every morning, which I was having an extreme problem finding anything at that point because I was in the last year. Now I'd had no restraints on drinking, so I'm just drinking around the clock. I lost 50 pounds that year, malnutrition. I couldn't eat. Teeth are rotting out. I mean, it's just amazing that I would go for annual physicals and medical people would look and they'd just go, this man is dying right in front of us. Well, see you next year. So things have really changed now. There's some wonderful alcohol programs in the military as there are everywhere. But my story didn't include that. I just kept on going and just sort of hanging in there. It was a very frightened year. I just withdrew from everybody. I didn't go eat with the guys over in the mess hall. I just would buy soup and hang around my room and drink vodka and just try to survive a day at a time. I was starting to get hallucinations, and it was just a very tough year. And I got a set of orders to a career school in Quantico, Virginia, which is how I ended up in the Washington, D.C. area. and I'm in this school trying to, you know, follow these complicated classes and I am having a problem finding the school in the morning. I mean it is just right near the end and eventually in probably November of 64 I just was in a classroom and my body stood up as if to ask a question and I had a grand mal seizure and bit my tongue and it almost came in half and I was out on the floor with a seizure And now they have to do something because this guy is lying there with a seizure. So they put me in an ambulance, take me to Bethesda Naval Hospital, put me up for observation. What could have caused a seizure in the middle of this school? And I was being tested for all kinds of things for three days to determine what caused the seizure when I went into the DTs. I mean, the real DTs just freaked out. and I wrote down the DTs. I still have all these notes because they seem so real and of course none of it was happening but it just freaked me out and I guess I lost it completely so they put me in a straitjacket and took me off of this regular ward and put me back in where they throw away the key and just locked me up in the nut ward for six months. You're just in there while they figured out what do you do with a guy who freaks out and that was the new problem and again there was no alcohol it was not alcoholism so back in there the very strange environment you get back in the nut ward how do you get out of a nut ward i mean i'm telling you this is uh when you walk up and say hey there's nothing wrong with me they say that's what everybody says that's in here you know well let me take a test so you take a test and they said well it looks normal but a lot of crazy people look normal i mean it's like Like one of those strange TV shows, you know. I said, God, I'm in here and I may never get out. That was sort of the feeling that I had. But Alcoholics Anonymous came to the head psychiatrist and said there are some alcoholics in there and we think there should be an AA meeting. Won't you let us bring a meeting into the nut ward? And he agreed. And so somewhere in late November, I was in the nut ward and a corpsman came in. We all have our messengers who come to bring AA to us. And in my case, it was a corpsmen. And the corpsman said, all drunks fall in. Right face. Boom. Over to the elevator and we marched down. There were three of us. Marched down to an AA meeting. So that's how I got to AA. and maybe you got to A.A. because a big cop singled you out of all the drunk drivers in San Antonio that night. He reached over and went, You! And he brought you over and said, Breathe in here. And you didn't see that cop, and I didn't See that corpsman as a messenger from God, did you? who was sent into your life to rescue you from a hell that you never would have gotten out of. And he didn't look like a messenger from God, did he? That great big cop, breathe in here. Well, this is the beginning of a spiritual lesson that spirituality doesn't look like it should work. Nothing appears the way it is. Once you get into this realm, and I'm sure even if you're brand new, you're starting to understand some of what I'm saying is that it just isn't the same in here as it looks. And so this Corman, I thought he was just causing me more trouble when he said all drunks fall in, go down there. But where did he take me? He took me to this great fellowship called Alcoholics Anonymous and there were three guys down there and they had a message and I was all excited i couldn't believe how excited these guys were about this organization that they were in and i remember going up to them afterwards and i said you know that you guys really got something here there's no doubt about it i can just feel it and i say give me your phone number i'll tell you if i ever run into a guy with a drinking problem um i'm gonna send him over here and I'd see I just didn't connect that um that I was an alcoholic it just hadn't nothing been explained to me along these lines but I certainly liked AA I'll have to tell you that and so there came a time about a week or two later that I Was allowed out of there as an outpatient and I could go home over the weekends and I guess I yeah I could go home at night at the end of this thing come back at eight o'clock in the morning it was about a 40 mile drive and so as soon as i was let out i decided it'd be all right to drink on weekends and i had one beer and then the next weekend i got a lifetime supply of vodka you know a quart because i was going to ration it you know one drink a month for the next whatever of course it was gone that weekend and i had to go back in the nut ward and i knew they were going to catch me and they told me if i ever had another drink. My career was over, and I had put in about 13 years of commissioned service. I was going to make a little career out of this, and so I had to do something, and for some reason, I thought of AA. I'm sitting at home, and it's Sunday, and i got to go back the next day, and I've been drinking all day,and I dialed in her group, and said, I'd like somebody from AA to come over and see me, and they said, all right, we'll get somebody. About an hour later, there was a knock at the front door of my house, and the house moved. You know, it was like boom, boom. And I went over and opened the door, and no light came through the door frame after I opened the door because my sponsor filled the whole door frame, you know, when he was standing there. And he was one of those infantry marines with his head shaved and a neck that was thicker than his head. And his waist came in here, and his shoulders were out to here. And he just looked at me and he went, hi, my name is Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. And I just saw trouble with this guy. It was very fundamental AA. I think he said something like, well, we'll be going to a meeting every night for 10 years, and then... And if you ever drink, I will hurt you so bad you won't be able to drink again so he didn't say that but i could see it in his face you know what i'm saying it was like i'm gonna get rid of this guy soon and you know it was just get in the car we're gonna meet sit in the front row if you want an opinion i'll give you one shut up don't drink quiet quiet don't talk quiet quiet if you could stop thinking, stop thinking. Just sit. And so that was my fundamental AA training for the first month or two and it saved my life. I mean this guy just literally took over and gave me my marching orders day by day by way and I didn't drink. And pretty soon I got out of that nut ward and I got a job down there and I was doing good and I went to meetings every night for two years. And at the end of the first year, I was up for promotion to major and didn't get it. And then the second year, I went to a meeting every night, and I wasup for promotion to major, andI didn'tgetit. And if that happens, you're thrown out. So I remember going, sitting home, I didn't tell him. You never get any sympathy from him. But I'm thinking in my mind, hey, wait a minute i got six kids to feed i got a career got all these years down the tubes i go to a meeting every night this program sucks that's what i thought i'm out of here you know what i mean i'm on the marine corps what the hell deal is this i'm here i am god grant me the serenity screw you you know what kind of a deal isthis i've gone a meeting everything Does anybody ever have anything happen in sobriety that wasn't supposed to happen because you started behaving yourself and everything's supposed to straighten out? Well, anyway, you know how I was thinking and I know how you feel when you have some of the little growth experiences that come along in the program. So anyway, I'm sitting around the house and I tried to get a job selling stuff. And what do you do? You're just bounced out. So I'm trying to get a job selling stuff, and I'm not selling anything. There ain't any money coming in, and I've been sitting around my room a lot working on a resentment, and I found that if you want to really work on one, don't let anybody in. Just stay in there with the door shut, and you can get a resentment so big you can't even fit in the room with it anymore. And I'm just working on this thing. Mostly it was a resentment against God, whatever this God was that A.A. was trying to tell me about. because it shouldn't have happened. That's all, it's just that simple. You're not supposed to go to a meeting every night and get thrown out of the Marine Corps. That is just not supposed to happen. And one day after about two months after I was thrown out, I was reading the Washington Post newspaper and back in local section there was a little paragraph about that big and it said it was reporting a plane crash and I had been a member of this presentation team out of Quantico. We went around to schools and put on a big future show about the Marine Corps. It was a very good job, and it had very high-ranking officers on it, and I was the operations officer. And a plane carrying this team had just flown into a mountain in Denver, and everybody was killed. So if I had had my way and been promoted, I would have been on the plane. And so I'm reading this, and the first thought that I had as I read it was God knows I'm reading this that was the first thought that i had and i remember just feeling very uncomfortable with all the complaining that i had been doing and all i could come up with was well if you just told me this was going to happen i wouldn't have been i wouldn't have been complaining so much about all that so if something bad has happened to you you haven't seen the end of the story yet and it's amazing how these things work out and so that took care of that resentment in a big hurry and life marched on and i've had lots of other jobs and like i say ended up doing this lobbying thing and somehow my kids all made it through college and they're all grown up and I'm the happy bachelor, so I just have my little place to take care of and I got plenty of money. And all of a sudden, I'm just sitting around and I's going, boy this life turned out pretty good after all these things that happened. So what happened? You know, I am talking about things that are really happening at the material level, just so I can identify and you can identify that I'm a human being just like everybody else is, but that's not my AA story. That's the external story, but everything that we talk about in AA when we tell our sobriety or when we tell about our drinking, we talk a lot about how we felt and what was going on on the inside, and that's what we connect with, and I think the same thing happens in sobriete, that it's an inside job just like drinking was, and when the inside gets straightened out. The world blossoms and becomes wonderful, and you love being in this world. And the world never changed one bit. It was simply an inside job. I've been sober almost 30 years, and it was only two weeks ago that I finally came up with my God as I understand him. You know how we talk about in our AA program, we have this God as you understood him. And for me, my definition of my God is very simple. It is an absence of ego. That's my definition. Of a higher power. And I'm going to tell you why I think that's what it is. all of the problems that i can think of i'm able to reduce to one now maybe you've had more problems than this one that i'm going to mention but i seriously doubt it this is the one problem that i think we all have things aren't going your way that can you think of another problem besides that how do you fix that problem you get things to go differently until you succeed in getting things to your way right that's what I remember trying you go around trying to explain things to people you try to get active in things and get this changed and get that change you get in a relationship and it's all screwed up and so you communicate and you just go you go to the counselor he says there's communication problem and you go i know there's a communication problem she won't listen to me and so i'll tell her about me again you know what i mean and we think if we just tell the world about us often enough they'll understand finally and adjust to us and so that's what I thought communication was was talking to the world about me and my favorite subject was me there was a talk show host and it was a great line on the talk show well enough about me what do you think about me I think as alcoholics we're self-centered in the extreme in the extreme and self-centeredness, things not going your way, my way is the cause of all our pain. I mean it really is and our literature tells us that. And so we come in here and we come up with the most bizarre answer that I've ever, ever seen. What is the answer to things not going your way guess what the program suggests don't have a way don't Have A Way then nothing can be in conflict with it you go Don't Have A Way well who the hell would I be I mean Who Am I except for my character defects Right? I mean, we're so used to our self-centeredness that we don't know there's anything beyond it. I mean... I forget which step it's in. I think it's step three. It says, I'll be like the hole in the donut. You remember that in the 12 and 12? I'll Be Like the Hole in the Donut. I won't be anybody if I didn't have a way. I mean it seems like the most preposterous solution to life to not have a away. But what is step three? What is it talking about? Made a decision to turn our way, our will and our lives over to the care of God. Which means I want to stop manufacturing this thing called willfulness. It just comes naturally from inside of me to just exude how everything ought to be. Does anybody else do that? You just sort of walk around. There ought to been more people sitting on that side. Why are you all over there? You ought to balance the room out. I mean, you know, everywhere you look, something isn't quite right and you just get real good at that. And you can take your self-centeredness and send it out to the edge of the universe. And then you pick up the paper and it said, astronomers just discovered three more moons around Uranus. And you go, Jesus, not more moons Around Uranus? God damn. Now I got to learn that? What? They stopped screwing around out there. I've got enough. What are those astronomers going to do to me next? You know what I mean? It's as if you could tell the only reason that they went after those moons was to get you. That's self-centeredness in the extreme. When our self-centeredness is out there, we talk this way. You know, it happened to me today. No, what happened to you today? That Bosnia thing got all screwed up. Oh, I see. That's what happened to me today, that Bosnia things. Something else happened in South America. It's just stuff happening to me all over the world. And then later on as we move along in the program, people start talking this. You know what happened today? And then they talk about things that happened but didn't happen to them. It just happened out there. And so we can see this willfulness, this self-centeredness, this generation within ourselves of how everything has to be is the cause of all our pain. That's really what our 12-step program is showing us, that that is the heart of the pain that we find ourselves in. And if we do not get rid of that pain, we're going to be looking for a way to get rid OF that pain. And as alcoholics, we know that alcohol will get rid Of that pain And so the program shows us a road to go down to stop generating self-centeredness, to get rid of this product which is my way. Things not going my way, so geez if you don't have a way, then you won't have any vision, how can you have any goals, how can we have all these things that we worry about taking care of ourselves in life, how will we have objectives, how will move forward? I remember worrying about all that stuff and you know what the program says? The program says there is a dimension superior to that one that you can tie into. Sure, you can try and figure life out yourself. You can try and set your own goals and get there and try and figure out what's best for you and then go get it and then find out it doesn't work. How many people have set goals? I'm going to get a Cadillac and when I do, then I'll feel better. I'm going to get a different wife and when I do then I'll feel better I'm gonna get the head of the company then I feel better and then what happens you get there and you don't feel better because we misdiagnosed our problem in the first place our problem was spiritual and we were trying to solve it with material answers we were tying to solve as human beings with intellectual solutions to spiritual problems it's just a question of misdiagonosing what that fundamental thing is inside of us when we say it's still not quite right there's still something missing in my life see that's the signal that i think each one of us has as a human being is that there's till something missing that haven't quite got my hands on yet in life and and it's alcoholics alcohol did it that boy it was the ant it really had a spiritual quality to it in that it did address that fundamental thing, that pain. It's the spiritual pain that's inside of us as human beings. And lo and behold, we come in here. So let me just make some observations to those of you that are new if you've followed this so far. And that is when a spiritual program such as Alcoholics Anonymous is suggested to you, you as an intellectual human being are going to try and absorb it intellectually, and it won't absorb. This program will never make sense. Don't try to read it and understand it so that when you finally read the steps enough and you go, now I see why this will work so well. You will never be able to see it by reading it. You will only be ableto experience it by doing it. This is the difference now between an intellectual solution and a spiritual solution. It will never look like it's going to work. Meetings don't look like they should work, do they? Does a meeting look like it should work to you? Did you ever try and explain AA to your friends? Fred, you look wonderful. What are you doing? Working out? No, I'm in AA. Oh really? Well, do the people jog? I mean, why do you look so well? Why do you look happy and your eyes are clear and you just have a different look of a... It's the meetings, Harry. It's the meetings. Well, what do you do in the meetings? Oh, God, they're wonderful. They're wonderful. I have a home group. We meet on Tuesday night in the church basement. Well, What do you do down there that makes you look so good? Well, we have a discussion meeting, Harry. About 20 of us guys get around a table, okay? We get some coffee and we get around this table and one of us will be the leader, okay, come up with a topic. Resentment. And then each person gets to share about, like, resentment. Okay? And we do that for an hour. And then we hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer and go home. You want to come? You want it? You want a seat? You want us to see it? and Harry walks over to Fred and said he's on drugs again it doesn't look like it should work but of course alcohol doesn't looks like it should works does it? do you remember when you were in high school and you were afraid to dance and somebody said you want to dance? drink this 14 Arthur Murray lessons right there and you go 14 arthur murray lessons right here that's right just drink it and you'll be out there did that look like it held dancing lessons to you did it smell like it had what happened when you drank it you remember that just the spiritual promises of vodka you will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle you so i say that to you those of you that are new spirituality will never look like it should work so you have to take it on faith from the people who came before you that's why we have aa meetings so they stand up here and they go this is what spirituality looks like this is what happens when you try these things if you want what we have here's how you get there because it ain't going to look like it's going to work. So that's why we're up here to show you what sobriety looks like, what joy, what you see it in people's eyes. It's a program of attraction so that your human soul is attracted to the human soul of the other person in AA. That is the message of AA. That's what the hand of AA reaches out and touches. It doesn't touch your intellect. It touches your soul and you feel something inside of you and you go, I'm on a path now. And that's what happens. Instead of using your brain power as limited as it is compared to that of a higher power to figure out life, you use your resources to get in touch with the power that can guide you through life. We move from the intellectual level as Bill talks about to the intuitive level. intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. So if we really want to move into an area of what's best for us, then we abandon trying to figure it out ourselves. That's what surrender is all about, surrendering the ego. And so this is a very fun process, but it's one that takes great ego deflation because our ego wants to do it ourselves. Yes, I understand God can take perfect care of me, but I'd rather screw it up myself. I'm a trailblazer, you see. Anybody can follow God. I'm going to get there. You know how your ego goes and you want to be out there moving along. And so you come up, your ego says, who's to say there's a God? What's this guide? Who's to talk about that? You want me to put my life on the line for something I can't see that you're talking about in some 12 half-baked steps that were put together by some drunk from New York? Come on. I mean, you know, a guy with brains isn't going to do something like that. Anybody here ever join the Boy Scouts? And you go, I remember I was in for one year and I went there and we weren't there too long when the scoutmaster said, By the way, boys, I want to show you something tonight. And it was very similar to my little pocket watch. It was a compass. And he held it up and he said, This is what you do if your life is on the line and you've been lost in the woods. And if you don't find your way out, you're going to starve to death. You carry this little compass in your pocket and this will guide you out of there and you can rest your life on it. And the way it works is you open the top and there's a needle in here and it points to a big rock at the North Pole. And that'll tell you where north is. And from that, you can just navigate your way out of the woods and I don't remember sitting there going, excuse me, big rock at the North Pole? Could we go see The Rock Man before I put my life on the line for a story about a rock at The North Pole you want me to buy that intellectually you got a needle in a little wish watch that points to a rock whoa, sorry pal no, I just said hey boy, I'm glad to have one of those damn things I got it in my pocket You know, if I'm ever out in the woods and my life's on the line, I'm opening the door. I'm out of here. Thank God for that rock at the North Pole. So I bought that. Later on, I got in flight school, and they said, you know, by the way, guys, when you're flying, the weather always isn't clear. There are days when you can't see anything. I was like, right. Yeah, and you're going to have to come in between two mountains to a runway that you can see. But do not worry. we have an invisible radio beam that comes up through the clouds into your plane right into your plane and if you get on this beam when you come down at the last second there will be the runway did i say radio beam in the clouds in my plane no i just said hey mountain over here mountain over here, I'm going right down. I love invisible beams, right down that thing and there's the runway. Come in AA and they said well there's a spiritual guidance system much more powerful than a compass, much more powerful than radio beam. It's called a higher power, God of your understanding. We're going to show you how to get in touch with this guidance system. It will take you through life on the journey that is beyond your wildest expectations. And what do we all do. Guidance system. God. Hey, pal, I'm going to be taking care of myself. And this, to me, is the wonderful struggle of sobriety. It's between our egos and the guidance system that is already implanted inside of us. Bill said the fundamental idea of God was born inside of each man, woman, and child, just as the idea of a friend was. It is already there. We don't have to get anything. This is another one of the paradoxes for those of you that are new about spirituality. You don't get anything, you get rid of things. Isn't that interesting? You get rid off things. We get ridof character defects. Chuck Chambers said, uncover, discover, discard. Just keep getting rid ofthings. Well, geez, if I get rid everything, I'll be the hole in the donut. There won't be anything left. Wrong. You know what will be left? What will be left is the real you, the spiritual you that's already there. It's already there. See, that's the wonderful thing. If you're new, let me tell you. The wonderful news is you already are a magnificent, loving, wonderful person. You already are that. What's blocking that are false old ideas that you have collected with your ego about you. None of that is true and that's what we get rid of. We get rid off all the things that are blocking the real you. Sobriety to me is a wonderful process of getting rid of things. It's like a balloon ride. If you want a better view, you throw stuff overboard and then you float higher. And the view has to get better every year. That's why we have to always move in a spiritual program. It's Like climbing a mountain. You work your butt off. You climb up. The view is wonderful. It takes your breath away. But if you live there for three years, you get tired of it. Same old view, 3,000 feet. I've seen it for three ears. Is this it? Is this all life has? climb a little higher okay back to the drawing board you climb it's work it's hard to get rid of things but you turn around and the view is better and then suddenly all that change was worth the effort you know it talks about that in our seventh step that there's a lot of pain involved in spiritual growth but after you take the action the pain becomes effort oh really was nothing, because it was worthwhile. It's like working out. You remember when you get out of shape and then the thought of getting back in shape? And you go, I can't go through it. Oh no, I can'T start that. And it's very painful for the first couple weeks, but once you start, you'll love it, because you know the effort you're putting in every day brings tremendous results in how you're feeling and how you see the world. a sculptress once said that the way she made this beautiful statue was by getting rid of everything that wasn't beautiful as if this beautiful statute was already inside of the block of granite it was already there all you had to do is get rid of the stuff that was surrounding it. And that's what you are as a new person. You are this magnificent statue that has a bunch of crap that's just been put on there from this disease of alcoholism, from old ideas that you got when you were real little. None of them are worth the powder to blow them to hell and all we're going to do is scrape that away so that we can see the real you. If you're new, you've already had glimpses of this new you, the real you. You've suddenly allowed some of this facade to fall away and you know what? You found a big lesson about yourself. You found out you care about the other drunk in the room. You didn't know you cared about anybody and your heart cares about somebody. You go to bed at night thinking about somebody other than yourself. If you're even brand new in AEA, There's another new person that's occupying some space in your head, and you're wanting them to make it too. Well, who is that that wants that other person to make It? It's you. That's who you really are. It's this other stuff that just has to be moved out of the way. The great gift of Alcoholics Anonymous to all of us is to see ourselves as we really are, because we were put together as loving, caring, spiritual beings. And this is what AA draws out and allows us to get rid of the other identity. Anonymity is a wonderful example of that. Think about anonymity. Let me just wrap up by talking for three minutes on anonymity I never know where these talks are going to go and I haven't talked about anonymacy in a long time. anonymity as as you know i'm not talking about the anonymity at the level of press radio and television which just helps us not be big shots in front of the television but the anonymities the spiritual foundation of our program now when bill wrote about this they didn't start out knowing that anonymity was going to be the spiritual Foundation they only found out about it later on it was just an accident that they even used anonymity but they were very worried in the early days that if anybody knew who they were, there'd be too many alcoholics trying to come in and join AA and they wouldn't be able to handle them all. And so they came up with the let's stay anonymous and then we can control how many people we're working with, which turned out to be a fear that they didn't have to worry about. But that's why they had that. And as time went on, Bill saw the value in anonymity because what it did it enabled me who i had an identity when i came into a.a and my identity was my resume you know what i'm talking about you want who is sandy beach well i'll tell you who he is born new haven connecticut went to yale university has majored in this pilot of study this income so-and-so this many belongs to this club and he's this and he bowls this in his golf score and that's who he is. And we come into AA and we go, wrong. You know who you are? No, who am I? You're a drunk. That's your identity. You're drunk. Well now, what was the value in suddenly having me be a drunk? The value was it took away the other identity. It said, that's not who you are. Because that's who I was. i had a lot invested in that in my mind that's who i am i'm a housewife who raised three kids i'm martyr i sacrifice for all my children ha ha that's Who I am you know what i mean and you have this this identity and anonymity takes that identity away that's gone that's not who you are and we start out with they say well who am i well you're drunk that gets us down to one common level And then we find out, we find out who we all really are. Anonymity teaches us, you want to know who you really are? You're a child of God. That's your total identity. And the only way to get there is to get rid of the other identity. The only way to move ahead in spirituality is to get rid off things. So by getting rid of your resume it is the major step in becoming a child of god i mean this is why it's such a spiritual foundation to us is to get rid of old ideas they just have never worked and so i've rambled long enough tonight as you can see i love talking about aa and and if you're new trust us stop using your better judgment that's the worst sentence i ever heard well in my judgment i ought to skip step six and learn to trust in the process just take this home with you if you stay in the solution you will barely be able to see the problems you will rarely be able to see them the solution is so powerful it removes problems. That's the last paradox I'm going to throw out if you're new. We don't ever solve problems spiritually. Your alcoholism never got solved. It never gets figured out. It gets removed in the spiritual world. We just remove things. It's very difficult sometimes to go along with that. Think about a resentment, think about a harm that somebody did you and it burns you. A resentment is like a burning, burning thing. It's screwing up your whole spiritual serenity and all of that because somebody did something that wasn't what you wanted them to do. And it's like a red hot coal that somebody handed to you said here I'm going to give you a resentment hold it and it's burning the hell out of your hand. And your sponsor comes along and says why don't you let that go. Just let it go. I'm not dropping this hot coal till I found out who put it in here. I'm NOT destroying the evidence. So if you're new, let it Go and let God and just have a ball. Thanks a lot.