The Resume That Stands Between You and Your Higher Power – Sandy B. 😂

Thank you and good evening everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? Hi Keith. See my old buddy Keith back there. First of all, I want to congratulate you all on getting this roundup started. I know what all the people that worked on it, it really is quite a challenge getting that first one going, but I bet you next year you'll have to get a bigger room and a year after that and a years after that. So, God, you're off to a fantastic start, and I'm delighted to be here at the inaugural event of something that we'll all be hearing about in the years from now. They'll be talking about it. Man, have you been to that Columbus Roundup? That's the biggest event in Ohio. And I'll be able to say, well, I was there when it was real small. It was only 400. AA is fantastic. God, I'll tell you, I love it more every year. In AA, it's the one place you don't hear people talking about the good old days in AA. Well, I remember back when I only had a year. Wow, was that great. You know what I mean? Because we really come to understand that today is where it's at. Today is the greatest day I've ever had. And I hope all of you have that same view that this is it. It never gets any better. This is it, and it's real exciting to be here. I came into AA on Pearl Harbor Day in 1964, so if I can last until December, this will be 30 years, which is a little bit of time. I think I'm one of the few people who came in when they were nine it really bugs me when people come up after me and say hey you've been sober longer than I've been alive didn't your sponsor teach you anything about respect I mean, oh, let's see. My drinking story. God, I'd like to tell a different one. I've told this thing so many times, but I've learned how to shorten it. Boy, I can get it down so that I can spend most of the time talking about AA. Because, you know, when you think about it, all the stories are the same. It's just the background music that's different. I mean, we could all tell our story in about a minute. Well, I drank a lot and got in a lot of trouble. It was awful. And then I got here, and it's pretty good. Thank you very much. But I have to fill up 45 more minutes, so I'll have to amplify on that story a little bit. But that is basically it. Now, I come from New England, and what that has to do with anything, I don't know. But we always identify where we came from. and I didn't start drinking until I got in college. So I got a late start compared to a lot of people. I was trying to get high grades, and I was trying to be an athlete, and I did well in prep school, and I lived right in New Haven, and I went to the university there, which was a hometown university. And within a week after I started drinking, my grades just went down. I got in trouble like I'd never been in trouble before. I'm getting arrested, I'm getting in fights. I mean it's just amazing the disasters that immediately started with the first drink. I do not relate with people who get up here and say well you know I drank for 10 or 15 years relatively trouble-free and then my filter broke and I crossed the line into alcoholic drinking and it was terrible ever since. That's not me. I drank socially for about three minutes and crossed the line that night. So I don't know anything about trouble-free drinking. I mean, it was always like playing Russian roulette to have a drink. I never knew what was going to happen, but I knew that something was going to happen. That was the power of alcohol. Fundamentally, alcohol solved a lot of problems that I had. That's why I'm an alcoholic. I was very uncomfortable. I couldn't fit in. I didn't seem to belong. I always had the feeling something was missing. It just felt like a car battery that hadn't had water poured in it yet. You know what I mean? It couldn't start the car. It was there and it knew that it had a lot of potential, but there's something missing. And finally somebody poured the water in and the battery went and it was full of energy and it could accomplish what it was supposed to do. And that's what I felt happened when I poured a drink in. I was now complete. And then when the drink wore off, I was back where, I don't know, there was always something wrong and I just didn't have, I was dominated by fear and feelings of insecurity and feelings that other people knew what was going on and I didn't know what was goin' on. And I just couldn't understand. I'd hear people say, ever since I was a little boy, I wanted to be a doctor. And, I'd go, how do you know that? I don't know when I want to be now and I'm 60, you know. How do you know these things? You know, I just couldn't figure that out. I was just wandering around. I'm one of these natural-born followers. And just think, where would the natural-borne leaders be without people like me? So I just went along hoping someday to figure out what was going on. If there's any way to characterize my teenage years and the 20s is I'm in the dark, and I'm trying to figure this out, whatever life is, and I don't have a clue. But when I drank, the mystery was revealed to me totally. You talk about a spiritual awakening. My drinking was a spiritual experience for me. I suddenly was able to clearly see the world as it was. I was ableto see why people like the world. I could see the purpose in life. I felt like a complete person. I didn't need you anymore. I had my own internal guidance system once I had alcohol inside of me, and I suddenly felt a part of something. I felt equal with other people. I wasn't above them or below them. I was an integral part of society, and the world made sense to me when I had three drinks in me. I had the power to see the world in a fashion that I did not have when I was sober. So it's very important for this alcoholic to understand that alcohol was an answer. Now, it caused a lot of problems on its own, But the fundamental relationship between me and alcohol was, it was an answer to problems that existed absent alcohol. And that's what made me an alcoholic. I really agree with Clancy when he says, it's not what alcohol does to us that makes us alcoholics, it's what alcohol do for us that make us alcoholic. It doesn't do that for non-alcoholics. I've been up in Washington, D.C., in the lobbying business for a lot of years and we have expense accounts and we take people out to lunch and I was astounded, you know, in these high-powered luncheons and all that, the amount of non-drinking that goes on. Of course, back when we were drinking, we thought everybody else was drinking because we wanted to think everybody else was drinking. But it's really fun to be around alcohol when you're sober and occasionally somebody will order a drink with lunch and of course as soon as a drink arrives at the table my alarm system gets ready to keep my eye on it in case they're trying to switch it with my coke and so you know it's like bringing a lion in or something, there's alcohol at the tabler warning bells go off and all of that And it's just fun to watch this, you know. So this guy will say, well, maybe I will have a scotch. Yeah, go ahead, Joe, order a scotchen soda. And he orders a scottchen soda and it'll arrive and he gets the drink from the waiter and I'm watching him and he'll hold the drink and I'll have my Coke and I go, well cheers. And he'll go, cheers. And then he'll start to take a sip and he goes, you know, it's a funny thing about the health bill. What do you think is going to happen to the health Bill? And I'm going, well I don't know what's going to, it's hard to say with that. And he says, well, I'll tell you what I think is going to happen. He starts to take a sip and he says I think that it's going to fail. Then the waiter comes over and he's looking at the menu and he orders and I'm looking at it and I don't know what's going on. I'm trying to have this casual conversation with him but part of me is going drink the goddamn thing! What are you doing with that thing? Why do you order that and you're just sitting around? if you just want to screw around with a glass just get some water why would you order a glass of whiskey and just slush it around like that I call that alcohol abuse I don't know about you clearly this guy is not an alcoholic you know what i'm saying he doesn't he's not looking forward to that drink to give him the answers to all kinds of things and to enable him to make a decision and carry on a conversation he's carrying on a conversion without it he's fine and so So he can have this, it's not an answer to anything for him. As a matter of fact, I have no idea why people like that drink. It's beyond me what a social drinker is doing with that stuff. So my relationship was one of dependence. This was an answer. It was my secret weapon. As soon as I established this rapport with alcohol, I knew that I need not fear the future as long as I kept drinking money available. Because no matter what situation confronted me, I could always go get a drink and figure it out. I never remember having a problem where I said to myself, Now here's a problem I won't be drinking over. Did you? Here's one I'm just going to think through sober. Never, never, never never, NEVER Step 1 in all problem solving for me was get a drink. That was step 1. You know you get a summons in the mail you're at home and you get summoned. You will appear in court What the hell do you do when you get summons? I know what you do when you get a summons. You go out in the kitchen, you get a glass, you pour the whiskey in, you drink it, and then you'll know what to do with the summons! I don't know if... I had the same relationship with vodka as I now have with the Ninth Step, where the promises are. Drink the vodka and I will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me. There it would be. More will be revealed. and more was revealed i always got answers i mean i that's how i made decisions you just drink you can't make your mind up drink and i drink like a clear as a bell i could see it it was just clear so this is the relationship i had with alcohol now i've gotten a lot of trouble with alcohol and an outside observer might say why does he put up with that he goes to jail he's going over here, he's going over there, but they don't know what's going on inside my head. Inside my head I'm evaluating this. I see jail. I see getting my teeth knocked out. I see fights. I see grades dropping. That's on the negative side. Maybe you put that on the positive side, but that's another problem. And on the positive side was this problem solving, that it gave me all these answers and the insights. And I weighed them, and it wasn't even close. I determined that all that inconvenience, the loss of blood and whatever, was a small price to pay for what I was getting out of it. So to me, there was no question. I hadn't even come close to the amount of trouble that would caused me to reconsider my relationship with alcohol. Now, as the years went by, the price got higher and the rewards got lower, and I still was able to balance the equation because my ability to rationalize increased. And near the end, I was balancing the equation after a blackout by talking to other people to ascertain if I had a good time the night before. Are you sure I had a good time? Because I spent the night in jail, and it's going to cost me about $800. Oh, you had a wonderful time. You were dancing on the ceiling. I said, boy, am I glad to hear that, because I paid a hell of a price to have that good time. So I was willing to balance the equation with the rumor that I had a good times the night before, and it was worth it. Somehow I made it through the university. It was back in the Korean War times, and we had to join the military. If we didn't, then a great fraud was perpetrated on me. But I went down and joined the Marine Corps and became a fighter pilot, and I spent the next 12 years drinking and flying airplanes for the Marine Corp. And that was my drinking story. And the drinking got worse, and I can tell you a lot of fun, great stories about flying, and there was a lot OF camaraderie, and it was exciting and glamorous. but there was an internal destruction that was going on where whatever was left of me as a human being was being eroded from the inside out and I was putting up a bigger front every year. I had more to hide and what I was hiding was all that's left is a shell. The inside is now gone but part of being an alcoholic, and I think possibly the hardest part of being an alcoholic is pretending that nothing is wrong and trying to convince the outside world, stay away from me. Don't come in and investigate my life. It's fine. And so we'd get up when we're dying and we'd go to work when we were dying and we put a smile on and just high, high, hi. And if I ever got that sick today, I'd lie in bed for a week. You know what I mean? But I wouldn't do anything. But you couldn't do that with the alcoholism. You had to pretend you're all right, or people would get in and they might say, you ought to stop drinking. And of course we knew that that was unacceptable, and they wouldn't understand or they wouldn'T say a sentence like, you ought TO give up your oxygen. I mean, that's how important alcohol was. Your problem, your lungs are bad, there's a lot of pollution getting in there, so stop breathing. I mean, that was what it was like to say to me, stop drinking. It was life-threatening because you were taking away my secret power to exist as a human being. So I never considered seriously not drinking. And so that got me to where in my last year of drinking in 1964, I was overseas. I had malnutrition. I had lost 50 pounds. I didn't hang around with anybody anymore. I just stayed in a Quonset hut and drank vodka And tried to show up at work I had been grounded from flying Because I was having withdrawal symptoms In high performance aircraft And I was losing vision, heart palpitations Sweating, couldn't see And was starting to distrust the pilot of the plane Which was me And there was a lot of physical symptoms And when I explained this to the doctors They agreed we had a terrible problem These planes cost millions And we don't need this guy flying them And so I was taken off flight status, and then I waited three months for the Marine Corps to decide what to do with a guy who had gotten himself in such bad shape that his hands shook, his eyes were just bloodshot, he sweat all the time, he didn't know where he was, and I got orders to become an air traffic controller. So that's what I did in my last year of drinking was bring the planes in in bad weather when they couldn't see the runway. And so if there's any air traffic controllers here, you probably already know this. But if you're bringing people in on final approach, you know, and you have a runway that you're lining them up to and you see two runways, cover up one eye and it'll go away. So anyway, now I'm coming into my last year drinking. I don't know that this is going to happen and it was just a dreadful year. I was terrified all the time. I just shook. My hand shook so bad that my hand shook for eight or nine years in sobriety. I didn't think that shaking was ever going to go away It just was there and just i just walked around terrified all the time and eventually i was in a school in quantico virginia and i had a grand mal seizure just about bit my tongue in half and finally they said something's wrong with this guy and i was carted off to bethesda naval hospital and i was there for four days under observation what caused this convulsion as people still didn't know what the problem was. And I went into the DTs. I just freaked out. I had all these hallucinations and was going after people, and it was a terrifying experience. I took notes during those DTs that were so real, and I remember writing all the things that happened down. It's just bizarre. And they finally came in and got me and put me in a straitjacket and took me back to the nut ward and locked me up for six months. They just stuck me in the nut word because they had no alcohol program in the military at that time. You just were thrown in with the crazy people, and it was in that environment that a corpsman came in probably in early November of 64 and said, all drunks fall in. Right face, and three of us were marched down to an AA meeting, and AA had finally talked their way into the hospital. The head psychiatrist didn't think they needed AA, but here was this meeting on an experimental basis. And so I was marched in and heard about AA, thought it was very wonderful, and told the speaker afterwards, if I ever run into a guy with a drinking problem, I'm going to send him around to see you. Just no connect with me, you know, that kind of thing. And at some point, I was let out as an outpatient to go back down to Quantico and drive back every morning and so on down. And that very next weekend I started drinking again and brought vodka back into the nut ward and I knew they were going to catch me and they told me my career would be over if I ever got had another drink and so I knew I was in serious trouble and on this Pearl Harbor Day weekend I was home and I decided I better join the real AA you know what I mean not the one in the hospital but this outside one that I heard about whatever it was so I called the operator I said I want to talk to Alcoholics Anonymous, and she connected me. Some voice said yes, and I said, I need to go to AA, and they got my phone number. And about an hour later, I changed my mind because I got some booze to stay down, and I called them, and они сказали, It's too late, he's on his way over. And pretty soon there was a knock on the door, and the house shook. It was like... boom that made me a little nervous and i went over and i opened the door and no light came in through the door frame because my sponsor filled the whole door frame you know it was like and he was one of those ground marines infantry guys with this head shaved and he's like this His neck was out to here, and he, you know, like that. And he just went, hi, my name is Bill. This is a 12-step call. I talk, you listen. You know, it's, oh, shit. And I was just going, well, maybe you could drop off some literature and all that. And he said something like, we're getting in the car. you're going to a meeting, do everything I tell you we'll be going to meetings every night for 10 or 20 years and then I'll let you out of here I think he had a decade at a time program there isn't anything else in the world except AA you might as well understand that now boy I gotta get out of this outfit they're too fanatical I mean, this is crazy. And I went to a meeting and people were celebrating anniversaries and it was a group anniversary and they had square dancing afterwards and this thing went on and on. And I knew I had to get out of that outfit. If I didn't get out that night, I might end up staying there like these people did, you know, forever. And I tried to make up excuses on the way home and all I got out of him was, I'm picking you up tomorrow night at 7.30. You better not drink. And he just drove off. so now I'm either going to go through withdrawal again that night and all the agony of withdrawal or get hurt by him that was sort of that's the way I perceived my two choices and so I stayed sober in the early days out of fear of sponsor it was just a fundamental Bill, smell my breath And pretty soon, a lot of time went by, and before I forget it, last August was his 30th anniversary. He's still my sponsor. He's in the Washington, D.C. area. And so to celebrate, we went to dinner, and I said, well, pick a restaurant. He said, I got just the restaurant, and it's a German restaurant near Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. And we went there, and that restaurant used to be the house I lived in when he 12-stepped me. And we sat at a table, and the front door was about as far as that door over there. And it was partway through the meal, and he said to me, We've come quite a ways from that door to this table. And it really is. You know, I was at an old-timers meeting in Manassas last night, which was my first meeting, the ManassAS Virginia group. And there was a bunch of people with 25 to 40 years sobriety. And we were all saying, it's just like yesterday on the one hand, and it's 8 million light years on the other hand. I mean, it really is just like Yesterday. And the reason it's just like yesterday is that I'm still only this far away from a drink. I'm Still Only This Far Away, and I see it every time I meet a new person, and I ask them, is it still bad? And they go, awful. That's what I thought. It's what i thought, and there it is. And nothing has changed vis-a-vis me and one drink in almost 30 years. It's exactly the same as it was when my sponsor came into my house. The relationship between me and a drink is exactly the samem. I am just as powerless today as I was then. As a matter of fact, I think it would be more dangerous to have a drink the longer you've been sober, because the odds of getting back would be too staggering because the loss would be so great. The ego shattering of losing 20. Whenever I hear somebody with 20 or so more years, I just pray and pray because I know what a miracle it's going to be for that person to be able to get back. And yet we're talking about just being right there. I don't know about you, but sometimes I go on 12-step calls when the person isn't there. You know what I'm talking about? You can say everything, but it can't be heard. They're trying to hear, but they can't get in. And they might as well be in Russia, and you can touch them. They're right here, and there's no way that we can save them that day. I sometimes think that the odds on getting sober are staggering for an alcoholic. I don't think we're any closer today to understanding alcoholism than we were when I got sober. We make lots of talks about it, and we were talking about this at dinner. This is my prediction. They will find a cure for alcoholism on the same day they find a pure for sadness. that's what I think I just think it is an incredible mystery there's so many components and I believe myself that alcoholism is primarily a spiritual disease and that until we come to grips with that that that is the part that is the worst off that we will never understand why Alcoholics Anonymous is such a powerful solution oh jeez i forgot where i was going i got talking about whatever um anyway i did get into alcoholics anonymous i guess we've established that that um and that i think by now possibly you believe that i am an alcoholic so i hope i've established that so now i'm just going to make some random thoughts um about aa and some of the wonderful things that are here. And I do this for those of you that may be new, because AA is many-faceted. And the reason it's so exciting is it's always going to look different. Because the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, it's impossible to stay where you are. You always have to be growing. You can't stop. It just won't work. There's no way that you can stop and continue to have happy sobriety. What gave you happy sobrietty in year two will be insufficient in year four. And I'll tell you why I think that is. I think it's like climbing a mountain. You start, and of course, in order to climb a mountain, you've got to get in shape, and it's tough work. But once you do get in shape, it's no longer painful struggling. It's just an expenditure of effort that is well worth it because at the end of each day's climb, the view is better. And the new view is what inspires us to go through the effort tomorrow to climb up even higher. And so there's always an expenditure or effort. We find this in Step 7. Bill talks about pain and coming to understand that growth will always involve pain, but once we change our attitudes about pain, we call it effort. It's like getting in shape. When you first get in shape, it's painful, but when you get in shake in order to stay in shape it's the same expenditure of energy, but it's effort and you almost look forward to it. The reason we look forward to is because we know the results we're going to get and so in this climb it is the view itself that inspires us to recognize and to be grateful for what we have today but if the view stays the same for a month and two months and three months it's old and it's hard to be great for it we start complaining about it and sobriety starts losing its glow we started bitching about our home group And we start taking the serenity prayer and tear it up. That's it. It upsets me to read it. Because the view is getting old. It's getting old, and it's time to move on. That's one reason. The second reason is we're in Alcoholics Anonymous. And the main function of Alcoholics Anonymous, in my judgment, after you've been in a while, is so that we will remind each other to keep on climbing. We will remind the other that the steps are the path that we must continue to follow because I don't know about you, but I've been sober a long time and I constantly, my ego will assess a life problem that is thrown at me and it will tell me here's one the steps don't apply to. take care of this one on your own in my judgment i'm gonna have to handle this one differently and then we get all screwed up you know and we come to the meeting and somebody goes what's the matter well what's a matter with the serenity prayer what about spiritual putting spiritual values first what about the 10th step let's get undisturbed and then take another look at it. And it's like I'm hearing it for the first time. And I go, huh? Huh? And then we go, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And so I got off track that day. So I come to the meeting and those of you that are on track go, Oh, he's off track and they put me back on track. And the next time you're off track and you come in the door and I go off tracks. All right. And then I put you back on track. And that's the function of groups and sponsors, is to put each other back on track so that we all stay on track. So when we become part of an AA group, the group succeeds and all of us within the group succeed. We go on this journey together. And each one of us falls off the track and the other one puts on and then the next time somebody else. And that's how one day at a time we just keep going now one of the things see where this watch is but this crazy watch runs backwards somebody gave it to me as a joke and I can't read it too well. I'll show it to you after the meeting. How much time do I have left? What time is it for real? Somebody, how much? Quarter of eight, okay. Well that's what it says, it's backwards. Let me make some thoughts or throw some thoughts out to those of you that are new. And what it's going to be is I'm going to try and share some observations about a spiritual program versus what you've been used to before you got here. Now, what you're being used to as a human being, we're all the same, what you've being used do is problem solving on the intellectual level. You have been used the challenge is being thrown at you as a human being, you look at them. You study it. You get to know what the problem is. And you figure out an answer and then you go do it. And so you sort of see the solution. It makes sense to you. You buy it because you can see how that is very logically going to cause this problem to resolve itself. And then you work very hard towards that solution. That's not how it works in here. There's a lot of paradoxes in a spiritual approach that have no similarity whatsoever to the traditional problem-solving that you've been used to. Number one, you will not be able to see the solution until after you do it. You will not see it ahead of time. Nothing in AA will look like it works. I'm going to tell you that ahead of time. Because nothing in the spiritual realm looks like anything. It does not make sense because it is not designed to make sense. It is designed so that it requires faith. So we have to take the word of the people who came before us that these steps, these meetings, this whole program, there is a higher power that you can't see. But if you take certain actions, you will be able to see this higher power. By see, I mean you will experience it in your life and you will come to believe in it as a result of following certain actions. so what I'm saying is if you have analyzed the steps if you have looked at them because someone told you see these 12 steps go study them they are the answer to your problem after you study them they will not look like the answer your problem and that's what I want to tell you ahead of time so if you've studied this stuff and concluded that it doesn't look like it has anything to do with your problems correct that's exactly right. That's right. It will not look like it's going to work. AA meetings don't look like they should work, do they? I'm sure some of you have had this happen. You've been sober five, six, seven months. You're down at work and somebody comes up and says, Helen, you look wonderful. I just can't get over it. One of your co-workers that you know real well. Are you on a diet? Are you in a health club? No, no, no. What is it? I mean, yoga? Are you into it? No? No. Finally, if you know them real well, come over here. I'll tell you what it is. Okay. And they're all excited about it because you look wonderful. There's a sparkle that's come back in your eye and you're positive and there's something that's happened. And so you go, I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. Do they work out? No, no, they don't work out. They don't work out well. What do you do that makes you look like that? Well, mostly it's the meetings makes me look like this. Well, what do you doing at the meetings? well let me tell you about my home group and maybe i can communicate that's my favorite one it's on tuesday night i love it i just love it's a group it's about 23 of us in my home group and we go down the basement of this church at 8 30 and everybody gets some coffee and we sit around and one person is like the leader okay so they get up at the front and they think up a topic. You know, like, hey, one day at a time. Okay? So it's one day a time and they'll say something about it and then we go all the way around the table and everyone gets to share what they think about a day at the time. Then we hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer and then you know, and then when we go home and do you want to come? so the co-worker walks off going i think they must serve drugs down there or something just so meetings don't look like they should work steps don't like that nothing in the spiritual realm looks ahead of time like it's going to work so i say that for those of you that are new and You've been reading and hoping to see something that you can relate to. You won't. What you're seeing are the instructions of how to do something, and after you do it, you will then see the results. So what we're saying is if you will do something that doesn't look like it'll work, amazing things will happen. now of all the people in the world who should not doubt that it's alcoholics when I was 16 and I didn't know how to dance someone came up to me and said you want to know howto dance I said yes drink this I said if I drink that I'll know howtodance yes there are dancing lessons in this glass that you're handing me and I will know how to dance? Yes. It doesn't look like I would know how to dance from drinking this. Phew! It doesn' t smell like I would now how to dance from doing that. I could still be refusing to take that first drink right now on the basis that you couldn' t prove to me ahead of time that there were dancing instructions in that glass. After I drank it and danced for a couple hours I knew that there were dancing instructions in that glass And there was a lot more in there A lot more So, in a very similar fashion Alcohol doesn't look like it should work But once we tried it And experienced the power of alcohol Then we became believers You couldn't become a believer in alcohol By studying about it Well, H2OCH, here's the chemical up here. I still don't believe it'll teach you to dance, I can tell you that. I mean, we could doubt all of this power. We have to experience it. So I'm telling you that that is one of the great struggles that goes on. The other thing is, is that this journey that we're talking about no longer occurs in the external world. It occurs inthe internal world. It's an inside journey. Oh, I don't believe in inside journeys. Whoa! Alcohol was an inside journey. See, we had a lot of parallels over there. We just had the wrong higher power. Vodka was the wrong higher power." There's a lot of paradoxes that happen in a spiritual program. Problems never get figured out. They never get figured out, they get removed. They just get lifted away I don't understand my alcoholism anymore now than I did when I got here. I just don't care anymore. Why do I care why I'm an alcoholic? I'm sober and happy. If the problem isn't bothering me, I lose interest in it. But our egos, I'll tell you, this is the funniest thing. See, we get our alcohol problem removed, and then we talk about in steps six and seven, well, why don't we do that with all the rest of the problems? Well, none of the restof the problems are life-threatening. So it's very difficult to become entirely willing to have anything else removed at all. I can almost get willing. I'd like to get willing to have part of the rest of this stuff removed. It's because my ego wants to figure stuff out first. Then let's get it removed. You know what I'm saying? Doesn't make sense to me. You know, you get in a complex relationship and this happens, you gets hurt. I'm going to figure all this out. And she said that and he said that. Why don't you go to God and just ask that the whole thing be removed and not really understand what happened. Yeah, just have it go away. It doesn't even bother you anymore. Eh. No, I think I'll keep it. I've seen a lot of us with a lot of sobriety, with a red hot charcoal in our hand saying, I'm not dropping this sucker till I figure out how it got there. God is killing me! Who put it there? My ego wants to go back to traditional problem-solving instead of relying on a power greater than myself to set me free from any problem that I'm willing to let go of, unfigured out, unanalyzed, just gone. So spiritual solutions are quite different than the ones we're used to and it just takes a lot of reminding that it's possible to simply let go of a problem no matter what stage it's in. And we've been given that power and this program here to do that. another paradox is that we win by giving up and we it's really hard to understand i remember coming in the marine corps and i'm sure keith had that same feeling and another marine and just you want me to surrender and i will win the surrendering is an inside job i have and i're going to talk about this and i can talk about one more thing and then i'm going to sort to wrap it up, but I just have different things that are fun, that I like to think about and if you don't find them interesting, what the hell. When I say it's an inside job, it's the struggle, my whole struggle has nothing to do with the external world. It only has to do with me against me. The only world that I know exists in my mind, I'm sure if there's 350 people in this room, there are 350 different rooms that are being seen by the 350 of us here. There's maybe 25 of us sitting in here who find this room threatening right now who find this entire procedure tonight intimidating there's maybe another hundred fifty people having the best thing better around their life twenty of us have to go the bathroom real bad and we're hoping that the speaker wraps it up soon because we don't know if he's like Clancy, and he's going to pick on us if we go to the bathroom. So the room really doesn't exist at all as an entity. It is simply how 350 of us see it differently. So my whole world is in my mind. It's what I think about, what I see. And so my struggle all through my life is against my own thoughts. And I'm always trying to operate at the thinking level. And it's such a struggle to operate there. And what Bill and what our whole program is trying to do is to let us operate at that next level up, which is the intuitive level. Instead of trying to figure out life, what if we could abandon trying to to figure out life and move up to a level where you get guided through life, where you can tune in to a signal just as I tuned in when I was flying airplanes and couldn't see the ground. And someone told me, there's two big mountains out there, Sandy, and the airfield is in between them. And it's socked in totally. But luckily for you, there is an invisible radio beam that comes up through the clouds right into your airplane, and if you will turn your life over to this radio beam and simply fly it right down at the last second, you'll break out of the clouds. The runway will be right there. You buying that? You willing to put your whole life on the line for this invisible beam story? Oh yeah, Christ, I can buy an invisible beam. I bought that when I was a Boy Scout and they gave me the compass. So if you're in the woods all you have to do is open this thing and this needle kids will point at a big rock at the north pole are you buying that are you buying that big rock of the north poll hey i'm buying a big rocket the north pole i'm going to give me that compass i'm out there i'm gonna starve to death but i got the compass now i won't die i'm outta here i can navigate i didn't say hey i am going up to the north pole i want to see the rock man i'm not going to just run it so you know look how many times we're willing to put our lives on the line. Yes, I believe in the invisible line coming up through the two mountains and I'll fly this plane and there will be the runway. Well, how about buying into the idea that there's a higher power that you can tune into that will guide you through your whole life? Oh, come on. You want me to buy into that? Geez, I can't buy into that. You know why I don't want to buy into that? My ego doesn't want to buy into that. If I buy into that, who am I? Where's my identity? I was talking to a guy the other day and we say, I got to update my resume. And we are talking about resumes. Everybody have a resume? You ever write your own resume and you look at it and you go, that isn't jazzy enough. You know what I mean? So you go back. I wasn't a cleanup up, man. I was a sanitary engineer is what I was. Right? And so you put together a resume. And we both came up with this observation. Get your resume and hold it up and look at it closely because everything on that resume is standing between you and your higher power. Everything on that resume is your identity as an ego-driven person. That's who I am, and who I really am is take all those things away, and then I'll find out who I really am. Unlike the intellectual approach, where we go out and gather things, accumulate, get more, more degrees, more this in order to become something, in order to become something in a spiritual program, we get rid of things. We get rid of things. Chapter 5, old ideas availed us nothing. Spiritual growth is like a balloon ride. You throw stuff away in order to go up higher. So I heard spirituality explained by a sculptress one time who had done the most beautiful statue you can imagine. And she said, how did you do this? And she said I just got rid of everything that wasn't beautiful. I just took away everything that wasn't beautiful, and what was left was the statue that was there all along. If you really think about it, that statue was inside that block of granite in all its magnificence, and all she did was take away everything that wasn't statue and sobriety is we strip away all of the phony identity. We get rid of character defects, we get rid of old ideas. If you're new, you already are a magnificent person. You already are. you don't become one you were created one, you already are a child of God filled with love that is trapped in there by a bunch of garbage and human character defects and all of that and all we have to do and all sobriety consists of is getting rid of the garbage just getting rid of the false information my ego tells me it's intimidating world It's filled with people that are no good. This is rotten, and I'm no good, and I'm an animal. All those ideas are mine, and they're not true. They're wrong. I was wrong about being an alcoholic. I was right about this. And so sobriety, in a strange way, as Chuck Chamberlain talks about, uncover, discover, discard. Find one more wrong thing and dump it. But in order to get rid of something, we have to admit we're wrong." oh man, alcoholics aren't any good at that I had about six months sobriety Yale education this group's lucky I'm here finally I saw the wisdom in what my sponsor had said and I said, you know something Bill you're right and he said, no I'm not you're wrong I said hey same thing he said then say it I couldn't hardly get the words out you know hard it is to say uh-huh wrong and look at our steps and look at like a tenth step when we're wrong promptly admit it wrong promptly admit it. That's all sobriety consists of. Am I wrong here? Get out of here! What does our ego say? Defend it! Explain it! But never be wrong! Because if you're wrong, you'll look bad. And so it's just this wonderful struggle within ourselves to get rid of old wrong ideas in order that the truth, which is already there can emerge. Now in closing, let me say this to those of you that are new. You may not believe this. You might not think you're this wonderful magnificent creation because you can't see it yet but maybe just maybe this has already happened to you. Maybe you've got three months sobriety and you're at your home group and some guy comes walking in who's got about one day and he goes over the coffee pot and he's trying to get some coffee and his hands are shaking and you relate to him because you were there just three months ago. And you just go, come on, man. Come on, man. Get over here. It's okay. It is going to be all right. And, you are starting to root for someone other than you. You have never rooted for anyone else in your life. And your secretly rooting for this guy. And he comes over and he sits down for a moment. He can hardly drink their coffee. But you're so new, you don't run up like a lot of the others do. You almost do, but you don't want to... It feels foreign to run up and be nice to someone. So you don' t quite do it. But at home during the week, you think about him a little bit. You go, boy, I hope he's there next week. I hope he's here next week, and then you come in, and he's not there, and the meeting starts, and you go, damn, I wish he was here. I wish I had talked to him, and And about 20 minutes later, he comes in, and he's still sober. And you sit over there, and you don't change your facial expression, but inside you go, yay! Wouldn't want anyone to see that I care about other people at all. That's not who I am. The real you is starting to come out. The real you is a center filled with raw love. That's your higher power. It put it there. It wants to get out. It was being suppressed by our character defects and our alcoholism. That's why we wanted to commit suicide, because we were in conflict with this wonderful truth that was deep inside of us. and so believe us when we tell you you are truly as magnificent a creature as anyone else in this room and we want to help strip away the garbage so that you can look in the mirror not too long in the future and just smile and go I love that person in the mirrow because we already love you thank you very much