The Higher Power Plane and a Deep Dive into the Final Three Steps – Sandy B.

I want to thank you all. I mean, I've really had a good time. I've seen a lot of friends I haven't seen in a while, and it's been a great pleasure for me. I enjoyed this. Like I said earlier, it's nothing like handing out good news, and that's all this is, is to just tell everybody. There used to be a radio commentator named H.V. Kalpenborn, And he used to start his program, there's bad news tonight. And I like to start ours, there is good news tonight, all we've got here is good news. And so continuing, my favorite prayer is the St. Francis prayer. and St. Francis was quite a character because he was kind of like us a little bit he was like a crusader with the swords and going off and whacking all the Muslims heads off and just raging heck all over the Middle East in the name of God and he just saw that he didn't want to do that anymore and he started really thinking about what would spirituality be? How do you do it? And he came to the conclusion that you must try to totally eliminate your ego. And that's what he spent his life doing, was trying to find one more thing where his ego was demanding something, so he would sleep outside and he would give away possessions and do various things. Not to be a nice person, but to keep reducing the ego so that the channel between his spiritual energy inside could open and he could feel nothing, he would be closer and closer to the pure energy. And as he did that, people liked to be near him just to feel the energy, just to feel that. And so his very being brought joy wherever he went. And that's the main attraction about St. Francis. And you see the birds and the animals and they're all, this one, hang around. That energy. And of course, that's a lot of people and that's what makes the energy of our higher power. So the real joy of the whole thing was just go hang around your higher power and that is what it is about. But you can't go there because your ego doesn't want you to. So the steps are designed to crash all the blockages between us and this flow of energy. St. Francis calls it the channel. Help me to open the channel of thy peace. I used to think that the peace was God's peace out here, and if I could get my character defects and do all the steps and open this up, then this peace would come in and I'd just be overcome by this wonderful feeling. That's exactly backwards. The peace comes out from me. It can finally, I can see that I was born with that. It's been in there all along. Part of the suffering that we do is that the real us wants to love everybody we see. The real us want to just help other people. But our ego is going, don't fall for that junk. You've got to get out and get yours. You've got to get out and do that. And our real self is crying. Why are you doing that? That's not who I am. Let me out of here. Let me show you who I Am. So your ideas about yourself are totally wrong. You are a magnificent creature who is being blocked by a bunch of ideas that are wrong. Old ideas have failed us nothing. So we go and get the heck out of there. And we learn in the fourth and fifth step that it's impossible to see the truth about ourselves alone. That's why we go to another human being and we get to see the fourth dimension of our four-step inventory, which is our third dimension. It's just sitting there. How do you know anything you wrote down is right? Since you rationalize all the time, that list is probably nothing. so when you self-evaluate you can only do it in two dimensions so we need always another person don't forget the line people of very high spiritual development always insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they're getting from God so high development and they still check with somebody else check with someone check with everybody else how many times we go to our sponsor with this problem. They're after me, they're going to get me and then he goes, wait, wait, there's this, there's that, there's it, there's there, there's here, there's now, and then you say, well, if you look at it that way, it's a different thing. This is what power is. It's the power to see it differently. When we see it differently, it changes everything. So, So, I read a book where the author said that, you know what the planet Earth is? It's a soul school. That's what it is. That's why it's here. There are a whole bunch of souls and they're going to school down here. So every, and we come in here and now we're really in a soul School. In order to get through the school, there have to be quizzes. And there has to be exams. And there haveと be things. And so, okay, now we're in soul school. We're going to show you how to use the power of this wonderful program to get through grief. Wouldn't you like to be able to do that with grace and dignity? Okay, then we've got to kill somebody in your family. Now, see, I'm making a joke, but I'm saying these events have to happen. So now your mother dies. Now we're goingto have to deal with grief. This is the saddest thing. This is, what would the program have us do? Well, my mother died and I've got 10 years in the program. Why don't I try to show the new women in our group how to go through this with grace and dignity so that when their mother dies, they won't be as afraid of it and they won'T be as frightened of the future. I've been given a very noble challenge here. So I will experience my grief, but I will also experience something bigger than that. Oh, what a new way of looking at it. You see the difference? It just takes every challenge that comes along. And if we can get other people to help us see it, see it as having a purpose. It's not to destroy you. It is to destroy more of our ego. it is to have us come out the other side a different person and so that's the way I look at all the early steps are opening the channel opening the channels so this power can flow through we have to clear up the wreckage of the past and then when it comes back to me I want to make a comment about six but what I wanted to get to now is I talked about the promises earlier and the verbs and the promises at the end of the ninth step you know, it's all these abstract verbs that are only spiritual verbs. You couldn't get that from figuring anything out. It is just a gift. It's just handed to you. Peace is handed toyou. A way of seeing things. Suddenly life takes on a real meaning. How? Don't worry about how. It just happens. It just happened. You're doing these stupid steps that you don't believe in and all these things are just happening because the power is causing them to happen in you. And in the big book, it's an interesting sentence right after the promises. It says, now we're at step 10. And it's about the fourth sentence down. It says, we have entered the world of the spirit. And we saw that we entered it when we saw the promises. The promises are using verbs that describe the world of the Spirit. So after the first nine steps, now we're going to enter the world of the spirit. And that world exists in 10, 11 and 12. This is the world of spirit. So where is the world to the spirit? You know what I mean? Is it another planet? Is over there when you go to India up in the Himalayas and Where's the world of the Spirit? And we find out the world of the spirit is in the now, which is exactly what Bob was talking about in the book that he was kind enough to get me a copy of. The spirit only exists in the now. There's no other place to find it. So anytime we're worried about the past or frightened about the future, we're cut off from the spirit. So the whole tenth step and eleven and twelve passing the message on and practicing principles in all our affairs. You look at the 12th step, it lists a hundred different problems. You know what I'm saying? You remember the 12 step in the 12 and 12? It's just a hundred different problems and then this is going to happen and this is gonna happen and that's gonna happen. Those are all spiritual quizzes. They're all little tests to show you the power that you now have access to and it'll show, it just talks in there about now when this happens and you just get closer to your higher power and it'll lift you out of that one. It'll give you a different way of looking at it. It'll always show you how these are designed to have you grow and not get destroyed. Your ego's getting destroyed, but you're being set free. So problems, our attitude towards problems or circumstances changes. And it says that in the seventh step that our attitude toward pain changes because pain is just the ego being crushed some more and some more. And as we see the outcome and the growth that comes out of every bit of that pain, Bill writes our attitude about pain changes and we suddenly see, oh boy, I'm going to be going somewhere. And so all of a sudden it becomes effort. It's kind of like when you're out of shape and you haven't worked out. When you first start, Isn't it painful to go over and work out and the muscles are going and this and that? Well, what about three months later when you're in shape? You're still doing the same thing that was so painful. Now you're over there going, God, it feels so good and it's energizing me and I'm doing this. So your whole attitude about pain has changed because you see the results that are coming. Before we got to AA, we were going to the gutter and every bit of pain was driving us down and now every bit of pain is guiding us up. the course of spirituality is like a beam when I was taught flying and I think Creighton the same thing the only navigation they had was the radio range you remember the radio range Creightons there was no needle you didn't have anything in there to tell you you had to listen and pick up this beam and then if you were off the beam to the right you heard an A you know and then if you went off to the left you heard an N dot whichever they are and so So if you ever got on a radio beam and heard nothing but a solid beam, you knew there was something wrong. Nobody can fly that beam with wind and altitude and planes and the diserratic equipment and everything without constantly going off it. And then that told you to get right back on it. So in order to get communicated to that you are on the right path, you had to get a signal that you're going off. Now, in our spiritual life, we call that pain. It's to get if we never if we just sat in oblivion the whole time, we couldn't believe that it was real. And so the pain that comes into our lives are these corrections so that we can continue to grow from it. So it's built in. It's the way it's supposed to be, is to experience these discomforts along the way. So if you're experiencing them, you're not doing anything at all wrong. It's how God set the radio range up so that you will be able to follow his guidance to this freedom that is out in front of you. And it is simply a matter of maintaining that. And so that's what this step is talking about. The essence of the last three steps, in my judgment, is staying undisturbed. That's what the whole deal is. Staying undisturd. Because when you're undisturb, you're in the now. When you're un-disturbed, you have conscious contact. So all we've got to do when we feel ourselves getting disturbed is to go, time out! There's four little things in the tenth step. Just stop and say, I'm getting disturbed. But we don't like to promptly admit that there's something wrong with us. You know what I'm saying? We don't want to go, oh, I'm off course. I'm starting to go a little bit off course We like to pretend we're still on course and we'll stay in that pain for a month. You know how far off course you can get in a month? It takes forever to get back on the AA beam because we didn't want them to admit we were going off it in the first place. Oh no, I don't go off the beam. I've got the program. I've been sober 20 years. I'd just fly right straight ahead. That's what it's saying. When we're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. What's wrong with you? You're disturbed. That's it. What's going on with you. And so all you have to do is change your priorities to my new goal is to always get undisturbed. I'm going to pray to not get as disturbed in the first place. But then my new role is I get disturbed. I'm going to get undisturbed. So in other words, you're going down the field. It's almost like we have a referee. You're going through your day. Oh, disturbed. You can't go forward until you get unddisturbed time out, time out. You can'T move the ball any further till you get Undisturred. Why? We don'T want you moving down the Field Disturbed You're Going To Throw The Ball At The Referee. You'Re Going To Do This. Now You'Re Going To Have To Make Commands. Now It'S Going To Take Forever To Clean The Thing Up. So When Somebody Comes Into Your Office And Your Boss Comes Up To You And Says You know this memo you wrote last night? It sucks. You're disturbed. If we don't go time out, we're liable to say, Hey! Take this job and shove it. And as those words are leaving our mouth, we're trying to get them back. We need this job. And he goes, Too late. Out of here. so we got to go oh disturbed get on the phone call up i call up my friend dan i go dan let me run something by you that's my favorite thing to do see the longer you're sober the quicker you pick up the phone newcomers take forever to pick up when you're around a long time you just oh we're getting a little tiny bit disturbed hey let me runs something by I did that, the boss came in, he did that. And he'll say one of two things. He will either say that other person's being totally outrageous. They're totally off the wall, forgive them. Or they'll say, you're all screwed up, go make an amend. The goal is, once I finish, I'm back to being undisturbed. Now I can proceed through the day. Now, as you proceed through a day undisturbed, you are generating St. Francis-like energy. You follow what I'm talking about? You don't think of yourself as St. Frances, but you have the same center that he did. It's all the same. The same amount of wonderful, spiritual, loving energies inside of everybody in the room. It's All Put In There is exactly the same It's just a question of getting the channel open wider so that it can go. And when it's disturbed, boom, it's gone. So let's compare a disturbed person and an undisturbed person through a couple of normal events during a day. The disturbed person walks into the dry cleaning on the way home to pick up his tuxedo for this very important wedding tomorrow morning and is told that it won't be back. Now, guess what that poor clerk is feeling when he has to tell Mr. X that his tuxedo isn't gone. They are shaking in their boots. And when he finds out, he goes, do you know who the hell I am? Let me talk to your boss. And then she reacts in some horrible way and he goes home. And everywhere he went that day, over at the pharmacy, they didn't have something else. And they would take their business somewhere else. And he comes home and he just goes, the world is filled with rotten, grumpy people. That's all I ran into today was rotten, Grumpy people, the same person undisturbed. He had that channel open, goes into the dry clean. He says, I'm sorry, your tuxedo isn't going to be ready. It's got a mess up in the truck or whatever, and it won't be until Monday. And he sits there and he goes, God, I am glad I am not this clerk. What a terrible message you'd have to give to somebody. Look, I'll wear a dark suit. It's not a peak deal. It's just a freaking wedding. Relax. God, I love coming in here. Do you know what you did to their day? Have any idea what you Did? They glow. And the same thing at the pharmacy. I'll be back Monday. Yeah, relax. Jeez, you probably get a lot of people in here chewing your head off. Relax. It's Just Wonderful. As you go through the day, you get the feedback from that kind of energy and you conclude as you're going to bed that night that the world is filled with wonderful people. And they're all wonderful because of you. And you created your own reality out of this reversal of energy and putting a priority on being undisturbed. And so that's sort of what that means to enter the world of the spirit. And we have to stay there. As Bob said, we have a daily reprieve. I did a routine one time where I said, let's stop working the program. And then I went back and took the promises and had them go in reverse. We will lose serenity and peace. And it just all gets taken away. In other words, none of that stuff is permanent. And so we just maintain this undisturbedness. and developing the channel further is the whole realm of the spirit in 10, 11, and 12. Those are some thoughts that I had. I'll pass it on to Bob. Sandy talked about ego. There's a couple of things I want to read. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are based on personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept through constant thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here, it means the false self created by unconscious identification with the mind. He starts the book when he says there is an eternal, ever-present one life behind the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it. But I often use the world being. And I think when each of us get a sense that there is something beyond form that we connect with, that we call God. And he said you can only know it when the mind is still. One of the things we've talked about when he talks about being undisturbed, in order to access the now, in order to access God, we talk about prayer and meditation in our program. Over a period of time, we have to become more still. We have to be more of a silence in the center of our being because we have too much velocity in our minds. We have too many thoughts and too much chatter that occupies us as we go through our daily business. And so part of the reason we talk about having the discipline of prayer and meditation is to offer ourselves a chance to step aside and to calm down and to quiet down. One of the things you notice when you step aside and you do that is how busy your mind is. You're not even aware of it until you stepped aside to try to be quiet. But that practice over a period of time is, it says you can only know it when your mind is still, when you are present, and when your attention is fully and intensely in the now. Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. A couple of people have said, you guys are talking and I have trouble understanding. I like what you're saying. And the nature of spiritual material is that you can't hold the ocean of the world in the teacup of your mind. It is pointing to God. You can't contain God in words. You can point to God, but as the Master said, when the Master points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger. The words are the pointer, not the item. It says to regain awareness of being, to abide in the state of feeling realization is enlightenment. But enlightenment is really simply your natural state of felt oneness with being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and destructible. Something that almost paradoxically is essentially you, yet is much greater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. I love, you know, I think if you've been in the program a while, you get kind of themes or ideas. And one of the things that has attracted, There's two things that have attracted my attention in the last year a little bit. One of them is, in the third step, the word decision. I never paid as much attention to that word as I have in the past year. And the book talks about, you know, ask the guy who wants to come over to your house and make a decision. I think sometimes we skip over that word. When Sandy talked about make a decison to believe in God. You know, I mean, what a thought. Most of us say, I don't believe. Why don't you decide differently? And there's a real act of will kind of directing your attention to it. And one of the other words that has caught my attention in the call steps is spiritual awakening. So when we're talking about, what are we talking about being in the now? And being present, being enlightened, being more aware, being More Spiritual. I think what happens to us is you become more awakened. I think the analogy that most of us have been sleepwalking would not be an incorrect analogy. Most of us have been doing things in our lives that we are not very conscious to. Been hurting people, making decisions at a low level. Now as you start to become, as you starts to do the work, as you started to get sober, as your start to go through the steps and go to meetings, little by little you start hear something. You go, oh yeah, someone says something in the meeting and you go, yeah I had that experience. And what's happening to you is part of you is waking up that wasn't conscious. And as you increase your consciousness, you start to see the world differently. I mean, I love the word that Carl Jung said to Roland. What page is that on? Find that for me, will you? When he said the central ideas of our lives are suddenly cast aside. The ideas and values that I had are, you know, And whenever the book talks using the result of a spiritual experience, you often see the word suddenly, almost at once. You know, I mean, the preface is, the moment I made the decision to go through my life, I really felt, and one of my favorite things when we're... So what we're talking about is that if you use this practice, you are not the same person. One of the things we forget is we're not who we used to be. We're not the unthinking, unconscious person we used to be. Maybe we still do some of the same things, same Chevy, you know, we're driving the same car, same hubcaps, but there's an alteration. There's a raising of consciousness. And I like, one of my favorite passages is right after step 10 when Sandy was talking about, you now, we have entered the world of the spirit. But at the bottom of page 84 it says, and we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor if tempted with a coil as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally. And we find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude towards liquor, gambling, sex, whatever, our new attitudes towards liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That's the miracle of it. We're not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It doesn't exist for us. We are neither cocky nor afraid. This is our experience. This is how we react as long as we are in fit spiritual condition. Drop another sentence, and it says, We are not cured of alcoholism. We're granted a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition." We're not the same people when we are in connection. But the memory, sometimes I think we are too strongly connected to our past. When Sandy talked about being in the present, because our past is our ego of the identity. Without our past, who are we? So our story becomes ever important to us. Well, when you have that story, you've got some place life is not okay. You've got someplace you have to go for it to be okay. So we've got an enormous amount of attention in the future where our salvation is going to be. As soon as I find the right woman, it's going to do okay. As soon I make 50 grand, it will be okay. As soon get rid of this, as soon as get rid that. So we're in the past running towards the future having almost no experience. I mean, today, now, is just something we have to pass through to get to where we have to get through for it to be okay when the only peace And the only place you can ever be is now. And right at this moment, I suspect for most of us, right now, it's all okay. For every person that's present and in this conversation, and if you like this conversation the reason we're able to have it is because of you. This conversation is contingent upon pitching and catching. you know there is you can't say the same thing to a different group there is something that we are doing together we are creating that you're pulling out of us what is coming out of us if we did this to another group it would be a different conversation so we are creating this together but so our level of consciousness as we wake up we just be different and when you are present in this moment there's nothing wrong pain when you talk with Helm saying misery is optional, okay? Suffering is optional. Suffering and pain have to do with one thing, rejection of what is. When something happens, we're just confident that it should not happen. Flat tire, tuxedo getting screwed up, not getting a check in the mail. We're just confidence that that shouldn't happen. The person who has some spiritual development, who has advanced, it is the way it is. It just is the way it Is. It isn't personal. It's just the way It is. And my job is to be with that. They told me when I came in, they said there's two ways for you to be at peace. Get everything you want or change the way you react to whatever happens in your life. The second thing is not contingent upon anything. When you can be comfortable with whatever is happening around you. You can have peace regardless of the circumstances. And so when you say to yourself, all I really want to do is be happy, I've been changing that word. All I want to really do is to be at peace. I just want to be here now. There's nothing wrong. Most of us, we've had this busted sense inside of us. The sense of what Sandy talks about, this deep longing for God. It shows up as a sense of separation because the ego is the separator. Chuck used to talk about the The ego is the sense of conscious separation from. And that is what makes you over there, me over here. It makes me different, puts us in opposition, wants me to be right, you wrong, wants meto dominate, wants you to be dominated. That is the business of the ego. When our fundamental spiritual business is to be loving. This is a soul school. The subject is love. You want to know if your life's moving in the right direction? If it's moving towards love, it's going to be a good thing. If it was moving inthe right direction. So rather than happiness, rather than trying to keep assembling the circumstances of our life, what if we remain undisturbed? What if we just trusted that it is the way it is supposed to be? It's just the way that it was. And became lovers of reality. And allowed ourselves to simply be in that process. Because right now, there's nothing wrong with us. Because we've had a busted sense, we've always had a sense that it's not okay and I am not okay. That busted sense came from the sense of separation. When we start taking the spiritual journey, we get reconnected. When we are reconnected, we are not separate. It is okay and I am okay. And then you can be in the present. You're not running from the past to some salvation in the future and never being in the now. And what I think that is, is a different sense of consciousness. It's a different, it's an elevated awareness. It is an elevated awakening. And as you are more awake, many of the things that you did that don't work in your life, you just no longer do. You see through them. They don't look good. They don' t work. Okay, two more little stories and then we'll do questions. And you better have some. Bob made me think of something. A lot of us knew Dr. Paul. What a wonderful man. And Dr. Paul used to cause some controversy. People used to write in the central office, not about Dr. Alcoholic Addict, but about acceptance is the key to everything. Acceptance is the keys to everything, the key. The key to every thing. Now, when you see that, you would go, what about the serenity prayer? There are things you accept and then there are things that you change. And I have to get the wisdom to know the difference. So you don't accept everything. So Dr. Paul was wrong. and that was the am I making my point that it's like you can't accept everything if the serenity prayer says no when things come along they're in two categories there are those you accept and those you change they're both right they're all right they're not both right we have to accept everything in order to return to undisturbedness so that we can make any evaluation at all about the serenity prayer. So everything does have to be accepted because that's what happened. Then, from an undisturbed point of view, we can in fact decide if something needs to be changed. Now, if we're not disturbed... None is an action, not a reaction. Yeah. If we're not disturbed, we may just not change it. Because what was driving us to want to change it in the first place? Something happened that... Now there's going to be categories of things where you would absolutely calm as can be, decide to get a lawyer and sue somebody. But it wouldn't be... It would be because it was the right thing. You talked it over with people and they say, yeah, this is the right step to take. I'm using that. It could be many other things. But it's being done from a calm point of view and undisturbed. So if we're going to get the wisdom from our higher power, he can't communicate to us while we're disturbed because we can't hear him. There's too much noise. The still small voice can't get through the rage. So you see that they're both right. I just wanted to make that point that acceptance is the key to everything. And from that, you can move into that. Now, the thing I was going to talk about was mercy because you brought this up and I just love it. You said, we don't want justice, we want mercy. And I think mercy is a very powerful thing. And there's someone who needs a lot of mercy and I'm going to ask you all to be especially merciful. And this person is you. It's you. get off your back. Get off of it. Who the heck are you to be beating up you? You deserve the love from you. So let me show you where the dilemma comes. And this is the last point I want to make. It's in the sixth step. And it's called the riddle of our existence. And it is going to get back to this co-existence in spiritual and material worlds. In the sixth step, we're tolerated to have God remove all these defects of character. We find out that the implication of that step is perfection. It doesn't say some of our character defects. It says all. Have you ever seen anybody with all their character defects gone? Nobody ever made it. Nobody ever make it. So what does that mean? See, Bill sees that this could create a mental problem. Why do you put a step up there that can't be done? I mean, why would we have that step? And he goes to explain it. And I'm going to try to see if I can get this clear. First, he says, we have to say to ourselves, well, what proof do we have that if I got entirely ready, God would remove entirely a character defect? He said, unfortunately, my friends, we don't have that. We have perfect proof. You're drinking. The biggest problem you ever had, you became entirely willing to have this problem removed and it was removed after you humbly asked. So we already know that this principle works. If you get entirely willing, well, why don't we get entirely willing on all the rest of them? And Bill calls that the riddle of our existence. And he says the true answer may be only in the mind of God, but he speculates on what it might be. And what he speculations is that the rest of the character defects are not fatal like alcohol is. They're annoying. They are definitely blocking us from a closer contact with a higher power. And they are controlled by our ego. and so when someone comes up to us and says okay I've got this see everybody has the same character defects they were issued to us at birth so you didn't create any of them so you can't take credit well I made myself lustful no we put that in when you came out to shoot that's just part of the deal but we have the power here and we know we just saw what we did with alcohol and so here's your chance That's really kind of ruining your life, right? Right. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm doing things. I'm embarrassed and, you know. Well, come here. We have a step for that. How would you like 100% of your lust removed? 100%. What would that be? What is that? Like he joined a nunnery? What is 100%? What I'd like is to be, I like 80% removed. I might get lucky once in a while. All right, all right. So you want 80% with the lust. Okay, fine. What about greed? Stop wanting stuff and getting all this stuff. How about greed, you know? It made you cheat in business and it made you lie on your income. Wouldn't you like to get rid of all greed? Well, I would... Yeah, I'd like to gets rid of most the greed. I would really like to get rid a most greed. You see what we're saying? Most. Most greed. Put me down for 70%. Well, how about gossip? Dr. Bob said, Gossip is one of the worst problems we have in Alcoholics Anonymous. Watch that erring member of the tongue. Gossip, gossip. Don't you see the harm it does? Yes, yes, it does. I really hate gossip. I hate gossip and I would like to stop originating gossip. Now, if somebody else originated it and I'm just the conduit, it's technically not my gossip I'm simply reporting so I'd like to no longer originate gossip and as we go through this stuff we find nobody wants to write down all and so why? This is the riddle this is the problem and it was that's the way the system was set up and it was set up because we're spiritual beings in a material world and we have our instinctual drives no one's been able to ever get rid of all of them and we have our quest to become closer to our higher power in opposition to the instinctual drives that's our challenge and we're never going to get there. I forget exactly, maybe on the fourth day. It says, desires will always exist that oppose the grace of God. So what we have to do is accept that this is the deal, that this conflict is built into our system and that we will strive towards perfection knowing we will never get there, so you can't beat yourself up because it wasn't set up that you can become perfect it wasn't set up that you're not going to screw up and so get off your backs you're doing the best that you can and and this is the a very important point or we have no fun in the journey because the journey is in and if there wasn't this conflict it wouldn't keep on going and so we have to enjoy the fact that we're on the journey and we never get there And as soon as you can get happy with the conflict, you have peace of mind. So I don't know if that made any sense, but I wanted to throw it out on the table. And going along with the mercy sort of thing, the lack of mercy means we're judgmental. Many of us are judgmental, we have the right answer. Some of us, and what happens if you're too judgmental, forgive me my trespasses as I forgive others. You turn the blade on yourself. In order to get deeper and deeper into what we have to take a look at in our lives, you need compassion, compassion for yourself. You have to be able to be gentle in the examination of your life or you will not be up to examine it. You will suppress it and deny it and be not able to deal with it. You need a gentleness in that process, and I couldn't be more supportive of that.