The Fourth Dimension of Existence – Joe C.

Let's look at the last three steps, not as just maintenance steps, not just to keep us sober,\nbut to see if we don't actually continue to grow in our relationship with God, with ourselves, and with other human beings.\nTwice in the book, Bill has mentioned a fourth dimension of existence.\nOnce in his story, once in chapter 2, a dimension of living far beyond the normal three.\nYou can't explain it, you can't describe it, you can only feel it.\nAnd that's what the last three steps do, move us into another dimension of living.\nLet's look at them for just a few minutes.\nOne of the things that we did as a fellowship is we took the steps out of the book and we put them on these little cards, put them on the wall.\nAnd if you look at step 10 on this card or on the wall, by the way, we left the instructions on how to work the steps in the book.\nPeople come in there and look on the wall and try to work the steps off the wall without instructions.\nAnd what do they get in trouble?\nBut step 10 off the wall of this card says continue to take personal inventory and when wrong, promptly admitted it.\nAnd it looked like if we just continued to take a little inventory and if we were wrong, promptly admitted it, we would be doing the intent of step 10.\nAnd somehow or other, we got the idea that we do that at night.\nWell, the nighttime portion is over in step 11, it's not in step 10.\nAnd Charlie and I have discussed this in great detail.\nWe don't get in trouble at night in bed anymore.\nWe need a daytime walking around step.\nSo let's look at step 10 in a different light.\nSo this thought brings us to step 10, which suggests that we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.\nWe vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past.\nWe have entered the world of the spirit.\nWe've had a spiritual awakening.\nOur next function is to grow.\nTo grow.\nNot maintain, not stay where we are, but to grow.\nIn understanding and effectiveness.\nNow, this is not an overnight matter.\nIt should continue for our lifetime.\nContinue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.\nWhat step did we use to look at that in the first place?\nAnybody remember?\nStep four, okay.\nAnd when these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.\nWhat steps did we use there?\nSix and seven, all right.\nWe discuss them with someone immediately.\nAnd what step was that?\nFive, okay.\nAnd make amends.\nQuickly, if we've harmed anyone.\nWhat steps did we use there?\nEight and nine.\nThen we'd resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.\nLove and tolerance of others is our code.\nIt looks to me like if we follow the directions in the book,\nthat we will be doing steps four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine\nevery day on a daily basis for the rest of our lives.\nI would defy anybody in this room\nto do four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine on a daily basis.\nAnd stay the way you are.\nYou absolutely cannot do that.\nI've got that little inventory sheet right up here in my head,\njust as plain as day, and you do too.\nAnd what I've trained myself to do,\nif I get screwed up at nine o'clock in the morning,\nused to I'd wait until I went to bed at night to do something about it.\nWell, when I do that, I've wasted another day\nin anger and worry and depression and et cetera.\nI finally train myself.\nAnd when I get screwed up about nine o'clock,\nget off in the corner by myself.\nSay, okay, Charlie, who are you mad at?\nWhat did they do to you?\nWhat part of self is affected?\nWhat did you do, if anything, to set it in motion?\nWhich character defect has come back to the surface?\nI can't get upset unless one of those old character defects\nhas come back selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, or inconsiderate.\nI can't get upset unless one of those old character defects has come back selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, or inconsiderate.\nI can't get upset unless one of those old character defects has come back selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, frightened, or inconsiderate.\nI can spot it in just like that.\nI say, okay, God, you know I don't want to be this way.\nPlease take this away from me, this selfishness or this dishonesty or whatever it is.\nI try to discuss it with someone immediately, preferably my sponsor.\nSometimes I can, sometimes I can't, but I try to.\nThen I make amends quickly if I hurt anybody in this process.\nTen, fifteen, twenty minutes, it's all gone.\nThe rest of the day is okay.\nI have wasted all the time that I want to waste\nin resentments and fear and anger and worry and depression and et cetera.\nI don't have to do that anymore.\nMy God, I love to feel good.\nI just don't want to waste any more time.\nWhat little I've got left in that other kind of jazz.\nI've got a tool here that works every time.\nAnd as you continue to take personal inventory,\nas you continue to look and see\nwho you're mad at and et cetera and et cetera and et cetera,\nyou're going to learn more about yourself.\nAs you ask God to take these things away, they become less and less.\nAs you discuss them with another human being, preferably our sponsor,\nwe know more about ourselves.\nAs we make amends quickly,\nour relationship with the world and everybody in it becomes better and better.\nYou can't do step ten the way the book says and stay the way you are.\nYou just can't.\nYour relationship with God, with yourself,\nand with your fellow man will become better and better and better and better.\nA new dimension of living that we never dreamed existed.\nNow be careful.\nThis is just like six and seven.\nThis is the other changing step.\nAnd if you stay fouled up,\nyou can't blame it on anybody else any longer.\nBecause if you're fouled up and you use step ten,\nyou can get rid of that stuff.\nBut if you stay fouled up and stay angry and worried and depressed and selfish and dishonest,\nit's got to be because that's the way you want to be.\nI can't blame it on anybody or God or anything else any longer.\nAnd once in a great while, I like to be screwed up.\nThere's times I like to be mad.\nBecause when I'm mad, I can romp and stomp and raise hell with everybody around me all day long.\nAnd that gives me a comfortable feeling of superiority.\nAnd once in a while, I just love it.\nThere's times I like to be afraid.\nBecause I can use that to rationalize and justify\nnot doing what I should do or just as importantly doing something I shouldn't do.\nBut when I do that anymore, I don't enjoy it like I used to.\nSome worry about the middle of it.\nI catch myself.\nAnd I say, okay, idiot.\nYou're doing it to yourself again.\nThis thing really does work.\nAnd you'll continue to grow.\nNow after step ten, you've got another set of problems.\nLet's look at them for just a moment.\nI said, and we cease fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol.\nFor by this time, sanity will have returned.\nRemember it said we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity?\nWell, we get our sanity back on page 84, by the way.\nFor by this time, sanity will have returned.\nFor we will seldom be interested in liquor.\nIf tempted, we recall from it as from a hot flame.\nWe react sanely and normally.\nListen.\nFind that this has happened automatically.\nWe can see that our new attitude toward liquor had been given us without any thought or effort on our part.\nIt just comes.\nThat's the miracle of it.\nWe're not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.\nWe feel as though we have been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected.\nWe've not even sworn off.\nInstead, the problem has been removed.\nIt does not exist for us.\nWe are neither cocky nor are we afraid.\nThat is our experience.\nThat is how we react, so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.\nAnd again, remember way back on page 45, it said that the main object of this book was to enable me to find a power greater than myself, which would solve my problem.\nAnd somewhere between there and here, we have the first nine steps or ten steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.\nAnd one day into six or seven or eight months of sobriety, I'm working these steps.\nI looked up one day and I didn't.\nI said, what happened to that desire of drink that I used to have?\nIt's just gone.\nI mean, it was just gone.\nSeemingly, without any effort.\nI found the power and the power solved the problem.\nIt was just gone.\nThat's the miracle of it.\nNow, the next to the last paragraph on page 85.\nMuch has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration and direction, not suggestion from him who has all knowledge and power.\nIf we've carefully followed directions, not suggestions, we've begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us.\nTo some extent, we become.\nGod conscious.\nWe have begun to develop this vital sixth sense, but we must go further.\nAnd that means more action.\nIn other words, what's happened to us in these steps of three through ten?\nWe've removed enough self-will that we're now becoming God conscious.\nAnd by now we're beginning to receive some directions from God.\nNow, if the book says that God has all power and all direction.\nAnd.\nAnd.\nAnd I believe he does.\nThe book says so.\nAnd it says God dwells within each of us.\nAnd I believe he does.\nThe book says so.\nThen it really stands to reason that you and I have within ourselves all the knowledge and all the power that we could ever need to handle any situation which comes up in the future.\nIt's called a sixth sense of direction.\nI've got five senses.\nEverything I know on a conscious level, I learn from those.\nI can see and I can hear and I can smell and I can taste and I can touch.\nBut what little bit I've learned through my five senses of direction is just a small amount of knowledge.\nBut if God has all knowledge and all power, if I can tap into him, then I can handle any situation in the future with God's help, whatever it might be.\nIt's long been known we do that.\nYou develop the sixth sense of direction through.\nPrayer and meditation.\nMost of us we get here, I didn't know anything about meditation.\nI thought meditation is when you tried to clear your mind of all thought.\nWell, I've never been able to do that.\nWhen I wake up in the morning, that sucker turns on and it will not clear out.\nI thought maybe it was chanting, listening to soft music.\nThat's probably some forms of meditation.\nBut I knew nothing about any of it.\nI knew very little about it.\nI knew very little about it.\nI knew very little about it.\nI knew very little about prayer, even raised in church.\nI only knew two prayers.\nOne went like this.\nNow I lay me down to sleep.\nI pray the Lord my soul to keep.\nAnd if I die before I wake, I'm not into that prayer anymore.\nThat's dealing with death and I don't want nothing to do with that.\nThe other prayer that I used, and I bet you used it too, went like this.\nGod, if you get me out of this damn mess, I swear I'll never do this again.\nNow I'm going to have to develop a life of prayer and meditation.\nIt would seem to be impossible, wouldn't it?\nBill Wilson is faced with the job of teaching people who are spiritually bankrupt\nhow to pray and meditate, and Bill Wilson don't know how to do it either.\nThank God he didn't.\nBecause if he had really been knowledgeable,\nhe would have written in such a manner that I could never have understood it.\nBut he didn't know enough about it to be able to do that.\nWhat he did do is what he's done all the way through the book.\nHe gives us some definite, valuable knowledge.\nHe gives us some practical suggestions.\nAnd he said if we will use those in our lives today,\nwe will develop our own life of prayer and meditation.\nHe couldn't tell us how to pray and meditate,\nbut he could tell us how to develop our own.\nHe starts for just a few moments over on page 86.\nHe tells us what to do when we go to bed at night.\nHere it is now in step 11.\nHe said when we retire at night, we constructively view our day.\nWere we resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid?\nI believe that.\nStep 4 again, isn't it?\nDo we owe an apology?\nThat must be steps 8 and 9 again.\nHave we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?\nI believe that's step 5 again.\nWere we kind and loving toward all?\nWhat could we have done better?\nWere we thinking of ourselves most of the time?\nOr were we thinking what we could do for others?\nOr what we could pack into the stream of life?\nBut we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection.\nFor that would diminish our usefulness to others.\nAfter making our review, we ask God's forgiveness\nand inquire what corrective measures must be taken or should be taken.\nThere are steps 6 and 7 again.\nSo what the book is really suggesting is when we go to bed at night,\nwe sit down and kind of take another little inventory.\nStep 10 was during the day when we're disturbed.\nStep 11 is before we go to bed at night.\nWe made up a little sheet here you could use.\nYou can use anything you want to.\nThe main thing is do we inventory or not?\nIn one side of the sheet, we took the basic character defects,\nselfish, self-seeking, dishonest, frightened, inconsideration.\nWe took all the other defects in the 12 and 12,\nwhich are the offshoots of those first four,\nput them on the left-hand side of the sheet,\nand called them the personality characteristics of a self-will person.\nWe tried to find the opposite and put them on the right-hand side of the sheet.\nCalled that the personality characteristics of a God-will person.\nNow all we're trying to do is get from the left-hand side of the sheet to the right-hand side.\nAnd I can sit down at night with this little sheet and run down through it,\nmaking a few check marks.\nThat shows me where I've been that day.\nShows me what I need to continue to work on.\nNever do I find myself on either side of the sheet.\nThe check marks change locations from time to time.\nBut I'm beginning to notice that I'm marking,\nmore of them on the right than I am on the left.\nAnd slowly over a period of time we continue to become a different human being.\nNow I've learned one thing about my sobriety.\nI am going to inventory.\nI've got one of two choices.\nI can put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off\nuntil I'm so sick that I'm almost drunk.\nAnd then I start trying to dig myself up.\nAnd then I start trying to dig myself out from under that mess.\nOr I can take just a few minutes each day.\nAnd by doing it a few minutes each day,\nI keep myself in reasonably good condition.\nAnd I'm in much less chance of drinking.\nI find that it takes less energy to do it on a daily basis\nthan it does to wait until I'm almost drunk\nand then start trying to dig myself out from under it.\nA very definite, valuable suggestion.\nOkay.\nThe next paragraph tells us what to do in the morning when we get up.\nOn awakening, let's think about the 24 hours ahead.\nWe consider our plans for the day before we begin.\nWe ask God to direct our thinking,\nespecially asking that it be divorce and self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives.\nUnder these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance.\nFor after all,\nour thoughts will be placed on a much higher plane\nwhen our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.\nMost of us get up in the morning.\nFirst thing we do is go to the bathroom.\nOne guy told me the first thing he did was get on a treadmill.\nI said, man, you've got a better bladder than I've got.\nI go to the bathroom first.\nThen we head for the kitchen.\nAnd we get a cup of coffee and maybe a little food,\nand we feed the body.\nWe get the body taken care of.\nWe go back to the bathroom again.\nAnd you ladies fix your hair,\nand we men fix our beards or faces or whatever.\nAnd we get that part of us done.\nWe go to the closet.\nAnd we begin to pick out the clothes that's going to cover the body during the day.\nWe've got to make sure they match now.\nWe've got to make sure they match.\nThey're the right color.\nWe spend lots of time on our clothes.\nAfter we get the body all taken care of,\nwe feed the cat or the dog.\nWe start out the door.\nWe lock the door behind us.\nWe don't have to do anything.\nWe don't want anybody to steal our junk.\nWe go out to the car, and we check the air in the tires,\nand we check the fuel in the fuel tank.\nWe turn the switch on, start the motor, and we take off down the road.\nBut what did we do about our minds that morning?\nWe took care of all the material things, including our body.\nWhat did we do about our minds?\nOur minds are going to run the whole show all day.\nDid we check the air there?\nDid we check the fuel level there?\nDid we feed the mind a little bit?\nIf we would take five to ten minutes in the morning\nto ask God to direct our thinking throughout the day,\nask God to give us the right thought and action,\nbefore we even start thinking about the day,\nthen chances are our thoughts about the day are going to be in better shape.\nIf we spent five minutes in the morning there,\ncoupled with five minutes,\nin the evening when we go to bed,\nthere's no telling what we could do with our minds.\nIf we spent as much time on our minds as we do on our bodies,\nmy God, we could become anything, couldn't we?\nIf you spent five in the morning and five in the evening,\nyou've still got 23 hours and 50 minutes to screw the thing up.\nIt only takes a little bit of time.\nVery definite, valuable suggestion.\nIn thinking about our day, we may face indecision.\nWe may not be able to determine which course to take.\nHere we ask God for inspiration, intuitive thought or a decision.\nWe relax and take it easy.\nWe don't struggle.\nThis is a form of meditation for busy people.\nWe alcoholics don't have time to lay down on the floor and listen to soft music.\nWe don't have time for chanting and all that stuff.\nWe're busy people.\nThe book says when you face indecision,\nyou can't decide what to do.\nRecognize you don't have the answer.\nTurn to God and ask God for the right thought or decision.\nDon't struggle. Relax and take it easy.\nNow, think what it means is get your mind off on something else.\nAnd the way I get my mind off on something else is I go start mowing the grass,\npainting the house or washing the dishes.\nAnd quite often my mind goes back to that subject\nand I've got information I didn't have before.\nIt says, why don't you call Bill, maybe he'll know.\nAnd I call Bill and Bill's got the answer.\nThey used to say, my, wasn't it lucky I called Bill.\nNo.\nThis is a form of tapping into the sixth sense of direction.\nAnd if you practice at it, practice at it, practice at it, practice at it,\nit gets to where it becomes a common thing to do.\nIt's amazing how this stuff works.\nVery simple suggestions.\nPage 87.\nFirst full paragraph down there toward the middle of the page tells us how to pray.\nSee, we usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer\nthat we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be,\nthat we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.\nWe ask especially for freedom from self-will\nand we're careful to make no requests for ourselves only.\nWe may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.\nWe're careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.\nMany of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn't work.\nYou can easily see why.\nAs I said, I used to use God like an errand boy, send him out to get this done, get that done.\nIt didn't work.\nHe never did come back with nothing.\nBut I learned through doing that to start praying only for the knowledge of his will for me\nand the power to carry that out.\nAnd today I can't think of anything that would be better than to have God's will done in my life.\nOnly.\nIt would be a whole lot better than anything that I could ever dream of.\nBecause as I said here today, I am in places today in many, many areas of my life that you can't get to\nother than by God's grace.\nIt cannot be done.\nYou know, I was practicing this thing around and one day I was listening to the radio\nand I heard a song that I heard all my life.\nAnd it talks about having a plane of inspiration.\nAnd I heard this song all my life. It's called, In the Garden.\nAnd we all know that song.\nAnd it came to me.\nI said, well, that's a song about prayer and meditation, isn't it?\nIn the morning while the dew is still on the roses.\nThat's about prayer and meditation.\nAnd I didn't know that.\nIt just came to me.\nAnd I can read these things and I can see these things today and I know what they mean.\nI mean, I really do know what they mean.\nI don't know where that came from either.\nIt certainly wasn't anything for me.\nI think it's God working in my life.\nI believe that.\nThey said to me, pray only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out.\nI said, how in the hell is he going to know what I want?\nAnd they said, he don't care what you want.\nThey said, he's interested in what you need.\nAnd he knows more about what you need than you know yourself.\nAnd that's turned out to be exactly true.\nIf I had written a list of things that I thought I needed when I first came to AA.\nIf I had said, God give me these things\nand I will be satisfied for the rest of my life.\nI would have cheated myself.\nGod has given me things far, far, far beyond my dreams could possibly be when I first came to AA.\nAbsolutely amazing.\nThe things that take place in our life by simply, simply trying to follow God's will.\nPeople who have been self-willed like us.\nWho have literally destroyed ourselves on self-will.\nWe don't need to be telling God what we want.\nGod knows what we need.\nAnd if we do his will, he's going to see that we get it.\nWho could ever dream years and years ago, we could be sitting in this room today doing what we're doing.\nA week ago, we were in Reykjavik, Iceland.\nThe place I'd wanted to visit all my life.\nAnd by golly, I got to tour Iceland.\nHell, I'm 69 years old now before I got to do it.\nBut I finally got to do it.\nI couldn't have done that if I'd been drinking.\nA year or two ago, I got to go through the channel under the English Channel.\nI read something in a magazine when I was a kid about nine years old.\nIt said sooner or later, the English and the French would build that thing.\nI said then, if they ever build it, I'm going to go through it.\nFinally, finally, I got to go through the channel and ride that damn channel train doing 200 miles an hour.\nSixty years I dreamed that dream.\nFinally got to do it.\nOh yeah, God knows what we need.\nHe's not interested in what we want.\nPage 87.\nGo ahead, Joe.\nWe asked our wives and our friends to join us in morning meditation.\nAbout 15 years ago, we were sitting in my living room, my wife over there in her chair and me in mine.\nAnd I'm reading my prayer and meditation stuff and she's reading her prayer and meditation stuff.\nAnd she looked over and said, Joe, would you...\nOh, she said, honey.\nThat's what she said.\nI said, I'm not ready for that this morning.\nShe said, oh, you old silly thing.\nShe said, I want you to read this for me and tell me what it says.\nI said, well, I can do that.\nSo I read that for her and I told her what she...\nWhat it said and I told her a lot more than she wanted to know about it.\nAnd the next morning she said, would you read this and tell me what this says?\nAnd I did and we discussed that a little bit.\nAnd that kind of set up a little deal in our house of praying together and sharing together.\nWe hadn't done that before.\nAnd all my life, those people that pray together stayed together.\nJoe, how long has it been since you and Phyllis have had a divorce?\nIt's been 21 years.\nYeah.\nAnd I done never thought about that.\nShe'd come up with that.\nBottom of page 87.\nAs we go through the day, we pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action.\nWe constantly remind ourselves we're no longer running the show.\nHow many saying to ourselves many times each day, thy will be done.\nWe are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.\nWe become much more efficient.\nWe do not tire so easily, for we're not burning up energy foolishly, did we?\nWe were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.\nIt works. It really does.\nThat's the full paragraph right there.\nWe alcoholics are undisciplined, so we let God discipline us in the simple way we just outlined.\nAnd if you'll follow these definite and valuable suggestions on page 86, 87,\nyou will develop your own life of prayer and meditation.\nYou'll make your conscious contact.\nYou'll be able to tap into that sixth sense of direction.\nAnd it's amazing the things that we can learn by doing that.\nOkay, we're going to talk now just a little bit about step 12, and then we'll be done.\nWe don't want to go through this next chapter.\nWe don't have the time.\nBut at the end of the day, we're going to talk about step 12.\nWe don't have the time.\nBut I do want to look at two or three things in it very briefly.\nLet's go to page 92.\nNow, this is telling us how to work with other people,\nhow to do our 12-step call, how to sponsor and et cetera.\nThe first paragraph says,\nTell him how baffled you were, how you finally learned that you were sick.\nGive him an account of the struggles you made to stop.\nShow him the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree.\nWe suggest you do this as we've done it in the chapter.\nIn the chapter on alcoholism, if he was alcoholic, he will understand you at once.\nSee, this is what Silkworth told Bill to do.\nHe will match your mental inconsistency with some of his own.\nIf you're satisfied that he's a real alcoholic, begin to dwell on the hopeless feature of the malady.\nShow him from your own experience how the queer mental conditions surrounding that first drink\nprevents normal functioning of the willpower.\nIn other words, we share our story, and we show him our allergy,\nour obsession with the mind, our hopeless condition of the mind and body,\nand if he's a real alcoholic, he'll match it immediately.\nWe get his attention that way.\nWe tell him exactly what's wrong with him.\nPage 93.\nLet him ask you that question, if he will.\nTell him exactly what happened to you.\nStress the spiritual feature freely.\nIf the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic.\nHe does not have to agree with your conception of the mind.\nHe can use any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him.\nThe main thing is that he be willing to believe in the power greater than himself\nand that he live by spiritual principles in sharing our story and telling him what happened.\nThen we get the idea of the need for the spiritual experience across to him\nafter we got his attention by talking about the problem.\nPage 94.\nOutline the program of action.\nExplaining how you made a self-appraisal,\nhow you straightened out your past and why you are now endeavoring to be helpful to him.\nTalk to him about the program of action.\nTake him by the hand and walk with him through the program of action.\nYou see, it's suggesting here that we do the same thing the first 100 did.\nIt's suggesting here we do the same thing the big book does.\nYou see, the big book was the 12th step in print.\nThey could not go call on that person individually.\nSo the book had to tell him the problem, tell him the solution, show him the program of action.\nNow it's just as valid today working with other alcoholics as it was in 1939.\nWe need to have no question about how to 12 step.\nWe need to have no question about how to sponsor.\nThis chapter tells us exactly how to do it.\nAnd I said to my sponsor one time, I said, I'm afraid to work with another person.\nI'm afraid I'll hurt them.\nAnd he said, Charlie, you can't hurt them.\nHe said, they're going to die from alcoholism anyhow.\nHe said, there's no way you can hurt them and you might help yourself.\nSo if you're not working with others yet, for God's sake, start.\nThe 12th step has three pieces in it, very briefly.\nThe first part is the greatest promise in the book.\nHaving had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps.\nI think that promises to me that if I apply the first 11 steps in my life to the best of my ability,\nI will have a spiritual awakening.\nNow what is a spiritual awakening?\nA personality change sufficient to recover from alcoholism.\nBill tells us in the 12 and 12, there's many kinds of spiritual awakenings.\nThere are people in AA.\nBut they've all got certain things in common.\nThat is that we're able to feel, believe, and do things we could never do before on our own strength unaided.\nI feel things I've never felt before.\nI feel love, patience, tolerance, compassion, and goodwill toward my fellow man.\nBefore AA, I could have cared less about you.\nOh yeah, you could have some.\nBut I always got mine first.\nI don't feel that way anymore.\nI believe things I've never believed before.\nI believe God is a kind and a loving God.\nI believe He stands ready to help any human being, anywhere in the world,\nthe instant they're ready to give up on self-will and turn to Him.\nWhen I came here, I thought He was hell, fire, and brimstone.\nI thought He was a God of justice.\nThank God He's not a God of justice.\nIf He was, I wouldn't be here today, would I?\nSome of you guys wouldn't be here either if He was.\nSurely, surely, He's pure mercy, pure love.\nBelieve that with all my heart.\nI can do things I never could do before.\nBy God, I can stay sober.\nI never could do that before.\nAnd because of the fact I'm sober, I'm allowed to do many, many, many, many things\nthat I never dreamed that I could ever do.\nLike being here, going to Iceland, riding under the Chunnel, going to Paris, France.\nThings that I never could do before.\nSo surely, I've had some kind of spiritual awakening.\nNow, I'm charged though with a responsibility.\nThere really are no free rides.\nYou do have to pay for what you receive.\nI'm now charged with the responsibility of carrying this message to other alcoholics.\nNot a message, not the message, not some message, this message.\nWhat is this message?\nHaving had a spiritual awakening is the result of these steps.\nI'm not like I used to be.\nNow, if you're in AA today and you're all screwed up and you don't feel good.\nIf you've been doing a little drinking or even thinking about doing a little drinking.\nI know exactly where you're coming from.\nThat's where I came from too.\nBut I applied these first 11 steps and I had a spiritual awakening and I'm not that way anymore.\nAnd if you don't want to be that way anymore, then you apply the first 11 steps\nand you won't be that way anymore either.\nBecause you'll have a spiritual awakening.\nIt's the only message that AA's got.\nSome of us start fancying ourselves as healers,\nmarital advisors, spiritual advisors, economic advisors.\nGod, I don't know of anybody that screwed those things up worse than we have.\nNo, we just know one thing.\nAnd let me tell you something.\nThe one thing we know, we know it better than anybody alive.\nYou and I know more about alcoholism than anybody alive.\nWe're the only people that's ever experienced it.\nWe know more about recovery from alcoholism than anybody alive.\nWe're the only people that's ever done it.\nI think we're the luckiest people in the world.\nI think surely, surely, surely, God got tired of seeing people like us die back in the 1930s.\nI think He decided to do something about it.\nAnd He's always worked with people through people.\nI believe He picked Bill and Bob, the first 100.\nI think He picked me.\nI think He picked Abby Thatcher and Dr. Jung and Dr. Silkworth\nand the Oxford groupers and that whole bunch and put it together so we could have it today.\nNow, if that's true and He picked people then,\nthen we've got to realize that all those people are dead and gone.\nThey're no longer here.\nIf He picked them then, then surely He's still picking them today.\nThere's not an alcoholic in this room that ought to be here.\nEvery one of us ought to be dead.\nSome of us two or three times.\nAnd we said, my, wasn't we lucky last night?\nI don't think luck had anything to do with it.\nI think God picked you out, let you suffer your alcoholism so you would learn what He wants you to know.\nAnd then when He got ready to use you, He removed the obsession to drink.\nAnd that's the only reason we're here today, to be able to help other alcoholics.\nThey tell me that 97 out of 100 of us are going to die.\nNever even knowing we're alcoholic.\nIf that's true, 3% of us are stumbling in the doors of AA.\nLess than half of us are recovering.\nWe're talking about 1 out of 100.\nI used to say, God, why am I an alcoholic?\nToday I say, God, why am I not one of those dying from alcoholism?\nHe's got a job for me.\nHe's got a job for you.\nAnd it's only when you fit into God's plan for you.\nThat you really become happy.\nI think every human being on earth today, God's got a certain purpose for them.\nAnd I think ours is to carry this message of recovery to other alcoholics.\nWe have the ability to avert death in countless thousands and thousands of people.\nVery few people have that opportunity.\nCarrying this message is very simple.\nJust do it like the book says to do it.\nAnd it always works for those that do it.\nFor those that want it.\nIf they don't want it, we can't do a thing about that.\nThe final thing I have to do is practice these principles in all my affairs.\nNow what are the principles?\nOh, we hear arguments about this all the time.\nThe principle of one is this, and the principle of the one, two is that.\nNo, no, I think he's referring to the steps.\nHe said, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.\nHe already used steps once in step 12, so he's not going to use it twice.\nSo this time he'll call them principles.\nAnother place he calls them proposals.\nIn the front of the 12 and 12, he says the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are a set of principles.\nHe's referring to the steps.\nNow it's easy for me to practice the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, NAA.\nI love you.\nI hope you love me.\nAnd we're going to do our best.\nWe're going to do our best not to hurt each other.\nBut I'm only NAA at the most an average of an hour a day.\nWhat do I do the other 23 hours?\nCan I practice these principles, these steps in my home with my spouse?\nCan I realize just how powerless I really am with that lady?\nCan I realize the insanity of trying to control her knowing full well I can't?\nCan I make a decision and turn her will and her life over to the care of God as I understand it?\nCan I inventory me and find those defects of character that keep me trying to control?\nCan I talk about that to another human being?\nCan I become willing to have God remove and ask him to do so and take those away?\nCan I make amends to her quickly when I've harmed her?\nNow there's times I'm ashamed of me.\nThere's times I treat absolute strangers on the street with more courtesy than I treat my own wife and my own home.\nJust think.\nIf I could practice these principles there with her and she with me,\nwell, we might pick up 10, 12 hours a day where we could be peaceful, happy, and free in our home.\nIf we don't practice them, we don't stand a chance where each other's throat continually.\nCan I practice them with my children?\nIf I can do this with my children, what little time I have left with them is good times.\nIf I don't, I try to control, they resist.\nWe have no good times at all.\nI might pick up another hour, two or three a day there.\nCan I do it on the job with my coworkers?\nYou know, if I could do it on the job with my coworkers,\nwell, I might be peaceful, happy, and free there for eight or nine or ten hours a day.\nAren't we really saying that we have a set of tools\nthat if we practice them in all our affairs,\nwe can be peaceful, happy, free, and serene\n24 hours a day, 365 days a year if we wish to.\nMy sponsor used to say, Charlie, you can be just as happy as you want to be.\nAnd I'd say, you old fart, you have no idea what you're talking about.\nToday I hear myself saying, you can be just as happy as you want to be.\nYou got the tools to do it well.\nNow make no mistake, God is not going to do this for you.\nOther people are not going to do this for you.\nBut you, with God's help and the help of other people, can do it for yourself.\nI think we're the luckiest people in the world.\nI really do.\nJoe?\nWhere does all this stuff come from?\nWell, it comes from the best of medicine, psychology, and religion.\nAnd there's a story in that other book about this fellow,\nand he was walking around practicing these principles and carrying this message.\nAnd one night he told the people there, he said,\nthe things that I do, you can do also and even greater.\nWell, a couple of guys heard this, and they went back,\nand they went back to the little village.\nThey had a sick friend there.\nThey brought him to the meeting the next night.\nNow I like to think they were alcoholics,\nbecause they went up on the roof and they chopped a hole in the roof.\nAnd they let the guy down in there.\nAnd he looked at that guy, and he looked up at them,\nand he said, well, it's by your faith that this man was healed.\nSee, it was by the faith of the people in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous\nwhen I arrived that I was able to hang around until I could come to believe,\nso that I could come to take some decisions,\nso that I too could come to have faith.\nThe Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous,\nit was by their faith for me.\nLater on, he was in a little town called Surnan.\nAnd after the meeting that night,\nand he was leading the meeting or speaking at the meeting,\nand after the meeting that night,\nthey were standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking wine, I guess,\nor coffee or whatever they were doing.\nAnd they were talking.\nAnd they told him a fellow they had locked in a cave on the side of the hill.\nNow this might have been the first treatment center.\nI don't know.\nAnd he said, I want to go up and talk to this guy.\nI said, no, you don't want to talk to this guy.\nThis guy is full of resentments, and he's full of fear.\nHe's harmed a lot of people.\nWe've got him chained to the wall up there,\nso he won't harm himself or other people.\nYou don't want to go up and talk to him.\nHe said, yeah, I do.\nI said, what's his name?\nHe said, his name is Legions, for he is many,\nmany defects of character, you see.\nSo he went up there and talked to this guy for a little while and turned him loose,\ncut loose of his resentment, cut loose of his fear,\ncut loose of his guilt, shame, remorse, and set him free.\nNow he wrote a little step for us right here.\nBecause the other people that he'd helped,\nthose other 12 guys he'd helped, he took them with him.\nAnd Legions wanted to go with him.\nHe said, can I go with you and do what you do?\nAnd he said, no, Legions.\nHe said, I want you to stay here and tell people what happened to you.\nI think they call that pass it on, is what Bill Wilson said.\nIs Barbara in the room?\nBarbara, are you here?\nWhere are you, hon?\nYeah, stand up.\nI want you all to meet Barbara in case you haven't got to meet her.\nYou can tell by looking at her why I'm in love with her.\nShe's red-headed.\nOkay, let's go to page 164.\nIt said, our book is meant to be suggestive only.\nWe realize we know only a little.\nGod will constantly disclose more to you and to us.\nAsk him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who's still sick.\nThe answers will come if your own house is in order.\nBut obviously, you cannot transmit.\nThat's something you haven't got.\nSee to it that your relationship with him is right.\nThat's the only relationship this book talks about, by the way.\nSee to it that your relationship with him is right.\nAnd great events will come to pass for you and countless others.\nThis is a great fact for us.\nAbandon yourself to God as you understand God.\nWe did that in steps one, two, and three.\nAdmit your faults to him and to your fellows.\nWe did that in four, five, six, and seven.\nClear away the wreckage of your past.\nWe did that in eight and nine.\nWe will do freely what you find and join us.\nWe'll do that in ten, eleven, and twelve.\nAnd we shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit.\nAnd you will surely meet some of us as you tread the road of happy destiny.\nMay God bless you and keep you until then.\nWe love you all.\nThanks for letting us be here.