The Internal Condition That Makes External Circumstances Better – Chad P.

Welcome to the Sheffield Sunday As Bill Sees It meeting. This is a main share meeting and today it is with great pleasure and much gratitude that we welcome Chad P from New Jersey who's come to share for about 40 minutes after which we'll open up for general sharing or if you'd like to ask a question. Chad, it's wonderful to have you here and the floor is yours. Thank you. And thank you guys for having me. it's an honor to be here with you guys I can tell I'm in what we call a pocket of enthusiasm I can tell I am around people that love this program and love our book and the solution as it is laid out in this book so it's an honor to be here my name is Chad Payne I'm an alcoholic I've been sober since April 2nd of 2003 just picked up 23 years and pretty grateful for that. I do live in New Jersey. I'm not from New Jersey I've spent most of my sobriety in Texas I'm kind of new here in New jersey but we found a pocket of enthusiasm here too so AA is alive and well all over the place that's a great thing to see and it's a thing that Zoom has really opened up to a lot of us I uh my sponsor sends readings from as Bill sees it through text messages um and uh and occasionally I read it and and and I get excited when I see the um the uh the readings that cite the big book and and i started doing a little research on that to see which how many readings in the As Bill Sees It site, our big book, and it's quite a few. And I thought, well, when I'm doing this talk, of course, I was asked to find a passage from As Bill See's It. So I use ChatGPT to hack the system and find big book quotes in As Bill sees it. Because anytime I talk anywhere, I always like to bring it back to our original piece of literature and talk about what the big book is saying. So anyway, I apologize if that bothers anyone, but that's exactly what I did. But before I get going on this reading, I want to tell you that I'm not going to spend, I'm going to spent very little time talking about drinking and I really want to get into what this reading is talking about. But I had my first big surrender to alcohol a few years before I got sober. And what that looked like is because I can't control what happens once I pick up a drink, because I no longer have any say in how much I drink or what I do once I put alcohol in my body, I began to suffer more and more consequences as a result. And as I would get drunker and drunker, and do more and more things outside my values, and drag my wife and daughter through alcoholism, I finally reached a point where I'd had enough. I had a bad wreck, and broke a lot of bones, and spent time in the hospital, and it's not that that was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, or the worst think I'd ever done. It was just that everything that built up to that point, by that time, I'd had enough. No more of this. So I quit drinking and I told those around me I quit drink and I had my kind of big dysfunctional family show up who I pushed out of my life. They showed up for me in the hospital and I looked folks in the eye and said, you know, I'm never going to do this again. I'm not going to drink anymore. No more drugs. No more drinking. No more partying. no more working construction out on the road. I'm going to, you know, stay home and be a good father and a good husband and a Good son and go back to school and straighten my life out and fulfill my potential. And when I got home, I had a broken hip and a broken jaw. And I don't know what was wrong with my shoulder, but I couldn't lift my arm. And so I had A lot of things wrong. I was on a walker, then on crutches and my jaws were wired shut and swearing off, you know, making a firm commitment that I would never drink again. I lasted two days. And then two days later, I was out all night disappearing from home for weeks at a time doing all the same stuff. And my wife took my daughter and left. And, and then that began what nowadays I've been calling the quitting years, you know. So I spent the next few years quitting drinking a lot and I can quit really easy. I just can't stay stopped and the most I would ever make it would be maybe a couple of days and then I would pick up again and that's when I got homeless and it's really started, you now, to go through just the despair of alcoholism. And then a few things happened and events that were, you know, way outside my control. And I found myself sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was grateful to be there. But what I knew was go to a lot of meetings. That's what I was taught. I was told go to meetings. That's where you'll find recovery. And there is truth in that. You know, hopefully through going to meetings, we find someone who scoops us up and helps us understand what's wrong with us and then takes us through the 12 steps. But that's not what I was doing. I just stayed on the go-to-meetings part, and I was going to a lot of meetings, and I Was being a good AA member, and I WAS in the middle of the herd, as we like to say, you know. And I WAS being of service around the meetings and doing those kind of things. And I lasted about a year. And then after about a year, I had come up with a new plan. I was really tired of AA. I wasn't going to drink, but I was going to go ahead and leave AA because I didn't think I needed it anymore. And you guys were bugging me anyway. I was really tired hearing the same old stuff that I'd been hearing. And I wasn'T getting the same amount of relief that I got in the beginning. And maybe this sounds familiar to somebody in here, but what my recovery looked like was I woke up late and showed up for work late and then made my way through a day full of resentment and fear and poor behavior and self-centeredness, full blown self-will. And then I would get off work and I would meet up with my friends and go to a meeting and I would get a sense of relief at the meeting. And then I could make it home and watch TV till way too late and then get to bed and then wake up the next morning late and do it all over again. But what happened is those meetings and hanging out with my friends in AA started to not work anymore. And I was ready to leave. And I ran into a man and I won't go into the whole story, but I ran onto a man And what was meant to be a brief conversation, to be polite on my part, turned into a two-hour talk on the steps of a clubhouse where he 12-stepped me. And it was a very uncomfortable conversation, but at the end of the conversation, he let me sit with that for a little while. And what I realized in that conversation was that my plan wouldn't work, that I was walking my way right out of the only thing that was keeping me sober and I was going to end up drunk. And just like all the other people that I had seen come in and out over the last year. So what he said to me after he let me sit for a little while was, was, Chad, I think I know what you need. And I remember sitting there thinking, I wish I had never talked to you, but okay, what do I need? And he said, I think you need a spiritual awakening as a result of the 12 steps. And I agreed to do that and that kicked off a journey that saved my life. Now, if I fast forward a few years down the road, I moved down to Texas. And in Texas, I didn't want to go. I didn't want to be there, but I found myself in the middle of some special, what I think, and I'll just say it, what i think is some special AA. And I found myself involved in the primary purpose group. I found myself sitting at Charlie and Katie's table on Thursday nights with Charlie Parker on one end of the table and Mark Houston on the other end of the table. And then Katie would come in after the meeting. And it was a really, you know, it was A special time and I didn't know How special that was but What I want to talk about for the rest of this Meeting is what I learned there And one of the big things that I Learned is I had thought The same thing that Charlie had thought When he explained this to me but I Thought that our third step Was just a simple Prayer Which I would say, I didn' t even believe In prayer and a decision to go On and write a fourth step That's really all I thought that it was. This idea of how to turn my will and my life over to God didn't make any sense to me, so I simplified it in a way that was just say the silly prayer and then go on and do a fourth step. And I've heard a lot of folks say that since I learned that. When I got down there, this was around 2008. And since then, I've heard a lot of people say the third step is simply a decision. And that's actually true. It really is just a decision and a prayer. But there's a piece of information that I need. Just like the first step is simple. Simply an admission. That's all it is. It's an admission that I'm alcoholic. It's in acknowledgement of the problem. But in order for me to really, truly acknowledge, concede, surrender, admit that I'm alcoholic, I need to understand what it means to be alcoholic. And the same thing's true in the third step. In order for my will and my life over to God, or let me say that in a better way, in order for me to truly make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I need to understand what's keeping my life and my will from the care of God in the first place. And to me, that's what all the time in the third step takes. And if you'll notice the way it's laid out in our book, we have half of page 60, all of page 61, and all of page 62 to help me understand that before I move over into this prayer, this decision and this prayer over on page 63. And this is where it gets really interesting because what I learned is that in the first step, what I find out in the third step is that I have a fatal, hopeless, progressive illness called alcoholism. And what I mean by those words is, it's hopeless because on my own power, I will pick up another drink. It's just a matter of time. It doesn't matter what reasons I have to not pick up a drink. It doesn'T matter how much I exert my willpower. It DOESN'T matter how afraid I am. None of that stuff matters for the long run. Those things might keep me sober for a little while, but not in the long run. I will pick up another drink. It's progressive because it just gets worse. Even as I stay sober, my alcoholism continues to get worse in the sense of how powerless I am over the first drink. So a length of sobriety is not enough to give me power over the First Drink. And then it's fatal because for an alcoholic who can't control his drinking, it's just a matter of time before it kills me. So that's what I find out in step one, great news. Then in step two, I find OUT, okay, there is a solution. There is a solution. If I can tap into power, the solution is a spiritual awakening. And then in the third step, what I found OUT is that I can't have one. A spiritual awakening is not available for a guy like me. And it's not because of my drinking. And that's where this was all confusing, because the first time, the first few times that I read through our big book on these pages, I remember thinking, man, I really relate to this selfishness and self-centeredness. Back when I was drinking, I was also selfish and self centered. That was my experience with this. And I thought, OK, it's just another description of how I used to be. And I had no idea that this applies more to me in sobriety than it does when I was drinking. And let me kind of explain how that has worked for me. What keeps me from having a spiritual awakening is the failure of self-will. What keeps me from Having a Spiritual Awakening is I use all my effort and all my energy to arrange my life in a way that suits me. Now, when I was drinking, I only needed one thing. Just one thing, I needed to have plenty of alcohol or other substance to stay loaded. And then I was fine. Nothing else really mattered. Keep the job, lose the job. I don't care. Keep the girl, lose The Girl. I Don't Care What My Reputation Looks Like. I DON'T CARE. None of that matters as long as I have alcohol. But once you sober me up, now I become very interested in the details of my life. Now I really have a high stake in whether or not I have the right amount of money, whether or Not I have The Right Relationship, whether Or Not I Have The Right Career, whether OR Not I HAVE The Right Reputation, how I look to others, whether or not you like me, all those things become extremely important to me once I get sober. And that's what's really interesting. So what happens then is because I have this spiritual malady, this deep down sense that I'm not okay, I need a lot of things to make me okay. And when that feeling comes up, that need to be okay comes up. My mind gets a hold of it and my mind says, okay, we can fix this. I know how we can make everything okay. Here's what we need. We need the right amount of money, the right relationship, the right... I need all these things outside of me to be in place in order for me to Be Okay. And the problem with that is it's backwards. Self-will is not bad. It's not wrong. It doesn't mean that I'm a terrible person. All self-will means is that I have it backwards. And what I mean by that is, is self-will says, I need to fix everything out here so I'll be okay in here. But that's not true. The truth is, if I get okay in hear, everything out here is okay. But not only does my perspective change, because this is what's really interesting. When I get okay in here, the first thing that happens is my perspective on everything changes. But check this out. As I stay okay in hier, as my internal condition gets better and better, my external circumstances actually get better. And I think the message that God's trying to tell me is, Chad, stop trying to manage your life to fix your internal condition. Shift that. Focus on your internal condition and I'll manage your life. And that's a much better approach it turns out. So when we get to this third step then, this is an introduction to what the rest of the work in AA is going to be about. And that's why when we get to the fourth step, we don't write inventories on how we drank and why we drank and what we did when we drank, because this program is not about sobriety. this program is about ultimately about hooking up with power but what that that's the goal of the program but what the work is about is getting free of self-will so that's why we write inventory on manifestations of self that's while we clean up the past because what we're doing is we're trying to get self to go down so that god consciousness can go up and that's why a guy like me who came in very much agnostic or even atheist can have a spiritual awakening. See, I didn't work the steps because I believed in God. I didn' t work the steps because i really thought they would work. I worked the steps because i believed in alcoholism and what happened when i worked the steps is i had an experience with a god i didn't believe in and the reason that i was able to have an experience with this God that I didn't believe in is because as self-will goes down, God consciousness goes up. It's an automatic thing regardless of what I may or may not believe. So I want to talk a little bit about what's in these pages 60 to 63 because it's really interesting and it sets the tone for what we do throughout the rest of our sobriety. So it tells me that I've got to be convinced. The first thing that this thing talks about when it's talking about get the third step is it says, OK, what we're going to ask you to do is make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the God of your understanding. And if you're like me, you're going, OK. I don't know what that means and I don'T KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO. But what they're goingto do here is over the next couple pages, tell us what they mean. And then when we get into the fourth step and the rest of the steps, they're going to tell us what we do, how we carry out this decision. So what do we mean by that? Well, the first requirement is I got to be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. I'm not only not convinced of that, I'm 100% convinced of the opposite. well first off i don't even understand what self-will is but once i do then i'm convinced of the opposite and and and the best way that i can describe self-willed is what i said earlier if i just get everything that i think i need then i'll be okay and that's the way i've been living my life and i remember the first time that i was reading um really studying this book this part of the book with some other guys. And we read this line that says, is he not a victim of the delusion? He can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well. And you know, sometimes the way this book is written, it takes me a minute. I have to stop because I don't talk this way. I do talk thisway now. It's funny, you can spot someone in AA by some of the language that they use. You know, if you ever hear someone use the word malady, they're probably in AA. But anyway, so it says here that I'm the victim of this delusion. I can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if I manage well. And what I realized that means in my simple language is, if I just get everything I want, then I'll be okay. And I thought, okay, you're telling me that's a delusion? That's not a delution. That's all I know. If I get everything I want, of course I'll be okay. And that's not true. It turns out that's Not True. That is a delusion. And because I believe this lie that I've been telling myself, that if I get Everything I Want, then I'll Be Okay, I've become a victim of that delusion because I've Been Living, back over here on this other page, an Unsuccessful Life. The reason I'm living an unsuccessful life is because I've devoted my whole life to fulfilling this idea that if I get everything I want, then I'll be okay. And the way that that works when I really stop and think about it is it creates two scenarios. Scenario number one is I don't get what I want and then I'm not okay and that's no way to live. Scenario number two is I do get what i want and now I'm okay for about 10 minutes. And then I need something else. And that's how I've been living. I'm constantly either upset because I didn't get what I want, or I'm disappointed because I did get what i want and now i just want something else and and i remember charlie telling me about his friend danny and when they started to have some financial success in their in their lives later, you know, in sobriety. And they would call each other and say, man, I just got this new red pickup truck. You know, it's got this feature and this feature, and this and this, and you know what? And then the other one would say, what? That's not it. And that's kind of how my life has gone. I get this, these gifts of sobriete, and I get them. And then somewhere down the road, I realized, darn it, that's not either. And my mind still works this way. It's interesting the way my mind works because, and it's a good thing that what the steps allow us to do is transcend the mind. I'm going to say that again. What the steps allowed me to do, the spirit awakens and I transcend the mind, so the beautiful result of a spiritual awakening is that the mind is no longer running the show. I see the mind, and it's not me, right? It's something that I have, like I have a hand. I have A Mind, but it's Not Me. So as I transcend The Mind, The Mind's not running the show. Bill says common sense would thus become uncommon sense. Well, common sense says things like this. Come on, Chad. If you really don't want to drink, just don't pick up the first drink. That's common sense. Uncommon sense says, no, Chad, that's not going to work for you because you're alcoholic. You're powerless over the first drink. Now, my common sense says. Come on, Chad. There's no God. You can't see God. You can hear God. You can touch God. It's a story people make up to feel better. That's what common sense is. Uncommon sense says, wow, there's a God behind all this. And everything I'm looking at is an illusion. And I'm truly connected to all those around me. And I're never alone. And I actually spirit manifest in a body. Folks, that's uncommon sense. And another thing that my mind says, and this is common sense. Chad, if you get this, this, and this, then you'll be okay. That's common sense. But when the mind is no longer in charge and now I'm back here as spirit observing all this, I find out the truth. Uncommon sense says, no, Chad, when your internal condition is better, when you're awake to spirit, when the ego is no long running the show, your external circumstances are fine. Everything is okay. And that's a completely different way of, um, of living. Yeah. So it would be kind of like if I young, if I came to you and said, Hey buddy, I got a headache. Do you have any aspirin? And you said, no, I don't. Uh, why do you have a headache? And I said, because you don't have any aspirin. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right? What's the actual problem? And that's what I'm trying to get down to here. See, the actual problem is not that I don'thave this, this, and this. Those are the things I'mtrying to find to treat the actual problem. The actual problemis this spiritual malady within. And it's interesting because the book says a line where it says when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. And if alcoholism has three aspects, a physical aspect, a mental aspect, and a spiritual aspect, well, really the two that are exclusive to alcoholics are the physical and the mental. The two things that are inclusive to alcoholists is an inability to control my drinking once I start and then not having a choice over whether or not I pick up the first drink. That's the physical and mental. The spiritual part of alcoholism is not exclusive to alcoholics. Lots of people have a spiritual malady that are not alcoholic. My sister is not powerless over the first drink, but she has got a severe spiritual malody, a deep sense of not being okay, especially when she's sober. Well, then why do we treat the spiritual malady? That's where we attack alcoholism. Now check this out. If we treated the physical allergy, here's what the solution in AA would be. It would be come on into this meeting and we're going to teach you how to drink successfully. We're going to teach you how to drink without losing control. That's what my mother did when I was in high school. She said, Chad, when you're at a party, here's how you drink. Have a couple and when you start to feel a buzz, stop drinking and have a glass of tea or something. I'm like, great mom, that works for you. I have zero experience with that. Okay. Now, if we were to treat the mental condition, that would be a lot of things I've heard in meetings before. It would be things like just don't drink no matter what. It would be like exert your willpower. If your ass falls off, pick it up and carry it to a meeting. You know, it would be play the tape all the way through out of our brilliant living sober book that it would, uh, it Would be things like change people, places, and things. Those are mental defenses. And you know what the truth is? A mental defense will work for an alcoholic right up until it doesn't. So no real alcoholic can maintain long-term sobriety on those mental defenses, so then what are we left with? We treat the spiritual malady with a spiritual solution, and that's why it's so important that We look at this spiritual malady, because that's what we're trying to treat. When the spiritual malty is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. And same thing here. Why are we looking at the failure of self-will? Because in order for me to turn my will and my life over to God, which is the solution to alcoholism, I've got to get free of self. So as we get over here to page 62, which ist where that reading comes from, when I hacked the system and found a big book reading out of As Bill Sees It, over here on page 62, it says selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. And what that means to me, the way that I understand that today, is as I'm walking throughout my day, and I have this sense of stress all the time, what the cause of that stress is, is this selfishness and self-centeredness, but I've got to expand my definition of selfishness and self-centeredness. I thought what that meant was maybe I'm stingy, maybe I don't share, maybe I'm conceited, maybe i think I'm better than everybody. And those can be characteristics of selfishess and self centeredness. But what it's really talking about is identification with self. What that means is I make everything about me. Everything's about me I am concerned about you, Kathy, but mainly I'm concerned about how you affect me. I'm a self-seeker even when trying to be kind, which means I am kind. As a matter of fact, it tells me that on the top of page 61. It says, I may be kind considerate, patient, generous, even modest and self-sacrificing, I will sacrifice myself for you as long as when you benefit, it benefits me. And that's really the only reason I know to ever sacrifice in myself is that when I do something for you, it will benefit me. And I'm always looking for something. Maybe it's just validation. Maybe it doesn't look good. That's what we often find in AA. We show up in AA and we find out that it looks good to be kind. It looks good to be spiritual. So what do we do then? We set out to look spiritual. Anybody ever gone on the path of looking spiritual? so what is actually the root of my troubles what's actually the cause of my daily stress that mental anxiety that so many of us walk around with it's my attempts to arrange life in a way that suits me i've constantly got my hands in it god has laid out an amazing life for all of us right here on planet earth. It's an amazing place. Now, when I say amazing, I don't mean it's all good. There are bad things happen to people all the time, but it's an Amazing Life. What a show. But I don' t have a relationship with life. What I have is a sick, toxic relationship with the way I think life should be. and I'm not experiencing life because I'm obsessed with this fantasy of how I think life should be. And I'm sound asleep to it. I'm sounds asleep to it because it's all I know. It's like if you ask a fish, how's the water? And the fish says, what's water? That's how it is for me to live in self-will. It's all that I know, all I knew is that I was born here somewhere along the way. I decided I didn't like it. And the reason I didn'T like it is not because of what's out here, but I didn' t know this. The reason I DIDN'T like is because of WHAT'S IN HERE. So then what I'VE BEEN DOING THE ENTIRE TIME IS FANTASIZING AND TRYING TO CREATE A LIFE THAT'S OKAY WITH ME. It's like I told my mind somewhere along the way, I said, okay, mind, I DON'T KNOW WHEN I DID THIS. Maybe I was a teenager, maybe even younger. I said, okay, mind, here's your job. Arrange life in a way where I don't ever have to experience any discomfort or any inconvenience. And my mind's been working at it ever since. And you know what? My mind's outclassed. It's not enough for that job. Wakes me up at 2 o'clock in the morning thinking, and I'm like, God, shut up, mind. and my mind's going, you gave me the job. I'm trying. And what I need to get to is a place where I realize that everything is okay. And then the mind can back. I had an experience a few years ago. Most of the spiritual awakening, spiritual experiences that I've had throughout AA through my time in AA have all been of the gradual educational kind. I am not the kind of guy that has these burning bush, sudden and profound spiritual experiences. But I did have one kind of like that a couple years ago at a meditation retreat, and what happened in that moment is I went from very uncomfortable. I was at a mediation retreat with a lot of people, 1,900 people, and it's weird people. Any of you guys ever been to a meditation retweet? It's kind of like AA. It attracts some strange people, you know, and I'm one of them. I'm not judging. Well, I judge people all the time. That's kind of the point, but I'm not, I'm in there with you. You know, don't please don't we're, we're a strange group of folks. Same thing at this meditation retreat. And here I did this meditation and something suddenly opened. It's like my heart opened. And all of a sudden I could, I was experiencing love. Wow. Not love for anyone, not love from anyone, just love because my heart was open. I was experienced in gratitude, But it wasn't for anything in particular. I was just grateful. I was experiencing wholeness. And what I mean by wholenESS is, I had everything I needed. I had this deep sense of I have everything I need. There's nothing else that I need, everything's okay, just as it is. And then what happened over the next couple of days is my mind slowed down, because its primary job was no longer needed. And by primary job, I mean the primary job that I had given my mind was to make sure to arrange life in a way where I could always feel good. Well, I was fine. So my mind was like, okay, I can finally relax. And then I started thinking of how I can help. wow I wasn't judging anyone around me all I could really think about is how could I and I don't mean how could I help so that I look like a good helper I mean how Could I actually help and I started thinking a lot about the guys that I sponsor and how I could create this and this and bring us closer together make us more effective and all these kind of things it was such a cool gift so then I had another thought and the thought was, okay, this is probably not going to last. Because in my experience of people that I know, a sudden spiritual experience has a shelf life. And then we kind of go back to the daily grind of life, to trudging the road. The next thing that I thought was okay, well I'm going to commit now to doing whatever it takes to remove whatever's blocking me from being like this all the time. And this is it. This is what blocks me from being like that all the time, is this failure of self-will. So it goes on to talk about how I'm driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self seeking and self pity. And that just describes what I've been talking about. I'm afraid I'm not going to get what I want. Then I go into self- delusion. If I can get this and if I can get this, then I'll be okay. It's not true. That's a delusion and then I'm driven by self-seeking. I go out and try to get it and then i'm back in self-pity because you know what happened? Whether I got it or I didn't, I'm still not okay and I live in that cycle of self-will and then it goes on down here what we read is that so our troubles we think are basically of our own making so I've been thinking life is presenting me with a lot of problems and it turns out that because of my attempts to live on self-willed my problems are actually coming from me. I'm trying to smooth out the water with my hands, and that doesn't work. As I put my hands in my life, what I do is make a bigger mess of it most of the time. So it tells me that I'm an extreme example of self-will run riot, though I usually don't think so. And all this stuff, if you're kind of new in here or this is new to you, maybe you've been in here a while, but what I'm talking about seems kind of new to you, and I know to a lot of you this doesn't. This is not new information, but for those of you who do, if you're thinking, wow, I see this in AA, but it's not me, welcome to AA because we don't think it's us either, and that's the really interesting thing about this selfishness and self-centeredness is it tells me I don't have it. It tells me that I don' t have it I can see it in all of you, but I can't see it in me. And that's why we have to write inventory and hold ourselves accountable to a sponsor and stay as connected to God as we can. And now, how important is this? Okay. Check this out. Back here in Bill's story, it says he's talking about having a new relationship with his creator. Okay, that's cool. But check this next part out. The elements of a way of living which answer all my problems. Okay, that one I really want. How do I get that? And then over here on the next page, it says if you want this new relationship with God, if you wanna way of life, if you're gonna live your life, which will answer all your problems, it's simple but not easy. A price had to be paid. What price do I have to pay to have a new relationship with God and to have a wayofliving which will answer all our problems? the price is destruction of self-centeredness. And then over here on page 62, it says, I'm going to read this to you the way Charlie read it to me. Above everything we alcoholics must stop drinking. But you already heard the reading. That's not what it says. But here's what's interesting to me It also does not say above everything we alcoholics muss find God. It doesn't say that. It says, above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. And the reason that's above everything is because as self goes down, it doesn't do anything to my belief in God. It's just somewhere down the road. But in the moment, it does not change my belief en God, but it does give me an experience with God. Because as the channel is unblocked, the God consciousness flows. so the rest of the work that we do throughout the rest of this program is to decrease self and increase God consciousness awaken the spirit and then go out and carry the message thank you guys for having me