The Spiritual Model of the Disease – Sandy B.

I play CD-ROM and we live out in Athens and I spend a good bit of time driving back and forth to Atlanta. And I got the opportunity to listen to that CD a few times and I think probably six more or thereabouts over the last year. He's opened some spiritual doors for me that are just nothing short of life changing. And my wife's listened to him. My parents have listened to them. My wife's parents have listen to them, so I guess that's kind of over the top, but it's true. If you all get just a glimmer out of some of the stuff I think that he will probably share with us, that there is nothing short of life-changing, this whole program. With that, I give you Sandy Bee. Thank you, Brandon. Hi, everybody. My name's Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? Check my watch. I guess people know that my suitcase didn't get here and that's why I'm casual tonight I came into AA in Pearl Harbor Day 1964 and I did all my flying in the Marine Corps in the 50s and 60s and I've seen a lot of changes in AA since I came in and I suppose obviously one of them is that young people are in. The average age was quite a bit older and that's a really wonderful thing. The other thing I've seen is the disappearance of speaker meetings. When I got sober, there was nine speaker meetings for every discussion meeting and you couldn't go to a discussion meeting until you had three months and you weren't allowed to talk until your sponsor said you could say something. So it was a program of listening. And that really is the heart of it, is listening and being able to hear your sponsor instead of yourself, your group instead of yourself, speakers instead of yourselves, and eventually God instead of you. So we started out on the listening path early on. the other thing we were talking about Bob Pearson a little bit earlier who just died, he was the manager of general service office and when he retired he talked about the future of AA and the danger that he saw which was in the 80's and he felt the greatest danger we had was rigidity, which would mean to codify our program down to there's just one way of doing it. You know, that kind of a thing. And in studying the history of AA, someone wrote a letter to Bill that made him aware of something. And this author had done a study of self-help and spiritual help groups that had succeeded, where they came up with an idea, they tried it, and it succeeded. And because it succeeded, they put it in writing. Well, we better sit down and see what we've been doing. And after they put in writing, it took about 25 years, and it became biblified. It was just the phenomenon. What was put together by a group of people suddenly became much bigger than it was, and that was the tendency. And one of the historians I read said that one of reason Bill wrote the 12 in 12 was to prevent the big book from becoming a Bible, if you follow what I'm saying, and becoming so dogmatic that there wasn't the flexibility to do it in some other way. So as I was talking to Branham at lunch, that the way I look at the big book, it's a treasure map and it takes you to a treasure which is God. The book is not the treasure. It takes you there. And from then on, the relationship is between you and the treasure and not between you in the book. So these are just thoughts that I have. Now, what I would say, looking back on it, I don't know how I'm getting off on this tangent. Just what's going through my mind. And if you ask me what do I see that AA is going to have to confront, I would says success. You go, why would that be a problem? Well, success is always a problem. They made a movie, it spoiled somebody. I forget who it was. the struggle is always the most interesting part it's the most challenging part and so to give you an analogy of what I'm talking about, you might think back you don't have to go back that many years maybe 40 maybe 50 or 55 let's say that and in every small city and certainly in every town there was only one AA meeting a week one meeting a week So think about that. Now, how are you going to stay sober on one meeting a week? Well, number one, you really look forward to the meeting. No doubt about that。 Number two, you might meet somebody else in the group and get together for coffee to get halfway through. But mostly, you prayed like hell. And then you prayed some more. And then your prayer was over. You prayed on top of that. so now today we've got 6 a.m meetings 8 a.м meetings noon meetings right after work meetings eight o'clock meetings midnight meetings we got dances we got roundups we got cds we got pamphlets for everything we got such a wide-ranging support system you don't have to hardly pray at all. Now when you think about that, we're eliminating one of the keystones to the whole thing, which is the relationship with our higher power. Now when I came in, I didn't have any interest in the higher power, I was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps, and flying has changed since I started. The greatest technological advance that I felt helped pilots more than anything was the lip mic. You used to have to take your hands off the controls when you were a student and reach over and get the microphone. The plane would almost go in the ground because no one knew how to trim it. And so the lip mic was one of the great technological advances. Wow, you can talk without taking your hands off the stick. And then the second one was a needle that pointed at where you were trying to go. I don't think today people get lost as often as we did, trying to fly that radio range and listen to those signals. And to this day, I still don't remember how that worked, but I'll tell you, I was really leery when you had to use that and the weather was actually bad. But yeah, the first time they came up, they said, well, this needle points to where you're going. I said, man, that's the coolest thing I ever heard. And then it wasn't another year after that they had the thing that told you how many miles it was. And I just said, well, we're home free now. We know where it is and how far away it is and now you can be driving your car and you know exactly where you are with a satellite So I would say those were the... And the other thing was, those jet engines used to quit a lot more than they do today. They just had a way of shutting off when you really didn't want them to. I flew the F-9, one of the early jets that we had in Korea. I don't know if you remember, the F9 was the cougar and the panther painted blue, the bridges of Toko-ri and all that. And the traditional flame-out re-ignition process, you know, was to get control again, push it over, get the air going, go back around the horn, the igniters would go off and it would light the engine. But it didn't always work, so they manually put two shotgun shells in the plenum chamber and you had handles in the cockpit where you could fire a charge in there to get the engine started again. And I remember how primitive we felt that was, that we had to rely on pulling this handle to get the engine started again. In any event, I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, in the 30s. My sister and I both went to the Catholic Church. She still goes, thought it was the most friendly place in the world. I thought it was terrifying. It was like Auschwitz and the nuns were like little Gestapo agents that were watching me like a hawk. They had Latin and incense which I knew was brainwashing us somehow and then you had to go to confession and I knew what they were doing they were gathering up evidence for the sentencing which came much later so I was reluctant to give them too much information that they could use against me later on. So here we have two people sitting side by side with entirely different Catholic churches, which is a very spiritual message in there. She saw a different reality than I did. I saw a terrifying church and she saw a loving church. She still goes there. So which was the church? It was both. And one day I saw the crucifix spoke to me when I was about nine. It said, little boy, do you see this? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, that's what God did to his only son that he loved. Guess what he's going to do to you. And it was so that whole sacrifice and saving everybody was lost. And I ended up with a very panicky feeling. and just going to church was very frightening. So I had no comfort from that, and so when I got old enough to not go, I stopped going because that would give me a more comfortable week. My basic problem was the same as every other alcoholic. I felt isolated, alone, didn't fit in, didn't understand why everybody thought this was a great place to live. I just found everything frightening is intimidating. I got to Yale University, and that was it. Those guys were all smart and rich, and they came from famous families, and I didn't belong there. And I was 19 years old. I hadn't had a drink yet, and I went to a social event. I just couldn't hardly stay there. Just trying to meet these people was too intimidating. And as I looked at them, I could see clearly in their eyes, because people speak with their eyes. And they were all looking at me like saying, we don't want to know you, we wish you would leave, you don't really belong here. And I felt it and I never did want to go over and talk to anybody. But they had a bar there and I went up and had a drink waiting to feel better and I've talked about this for years. And about those two and a half drinks I just decided that it really didn't work that well and I was going to leave when I looked back and everyone in the room wanted to know me. Their eyes had completely changed and they were looking at me like, would you come and join our group? Would you come ин join our групп? And I said, wow, the whole world is new. It's different than it was. And as I walked over to talk to the first group I suddenly realized that they were right. They'd be lucky to know me I had that feeling I was doing them a favor by even going over there. And I talked and talked. It was as if my creativity was set free for the first time in my life. I was free to be myself. I wasn't stuck inside where fear was blocking everything. And I actually was pretty entertaining. I just talked and taught, and pretty soon they all went home. And I was still there talking. And I went back to the bar And I said to the squadron, which is the F-86, and that was the greatest year. God, we were just a unit over there, and I loved the colonel, and they all drank a lot, and it was just, I just couldn't have been happier. And I was about two-thirds through the tour, and I was out in the runway with the maintenance officer, a big redheaded guy. He was talking about getting his own squadron. He wanted to get the best pilots, and he looked at me as a lieutenant and said, and I want you in his squadron. And I just felt so flattered. And then he said, but I wouldn't let you drink. And now this is a guy that I drank with all the time. We all drank the same amount. We were all partying. And I had no idea what he was saying until I got an AA and I realized that even in a group of heavy drinkers, my drinking scared them. There was something about the intensity with which I drank that party guys looked and went, we're just partying. I don't know what he's doing, but it's scary what he is doing. I have no idea what I was doing, but he could see, and of course when they came back from overseas to rejoin their families, they all switched their drinking habits back to what was acceptable wherever they were. I continued exactly the same when you drink, you drink to get drunk it's a complete act you don't just get halfway there and so that's what I did we had six kids and I went on to be a forward air controller and a flight instructor and then flew crusaders in the Cuban Missile Crisis And eventually I had withdrawal symptoms coming because I would not drink for 12 hours. I'm in the advanced stages now, and I was shaking like a leaf. Just the whole alcohol. I thought I was going to have a seizure and all that, and so I'd be in that plane. I didn't know how long I could stay in there. so I'd fly sometimes with my hand on the ejection seat and my theory was if I had a tight enough grip I could pass out and fire it on the way down and I'd go out chute would open automatically the plane would crash problem solved I mean that was the way I looked at it well they almost had the old fox here but look at this he just thawed up and there you are in a photo plane And you could fly the whole, all this stuff with the cameras was on a stick. And you Could fly the mission and have your other hand up here. And I would somehow survive these flights, but my flight suit would be soaking wet. I was just perspiring from alcohol coming out of my system. And eventually I was on across country and I just had to get out of the plane. So I called and declared an oxygen emergency, and the flight of four landed at the nearest Air Force base, and they checked the oxygen. There wasn't anything wrong. And I just said, I can't do it anymore. And that was the last time I flew, and I made an air traffic controller after that and did that for one more year before I came back to the States. Now, I want to tell a story about that last flight. When I announced I couldn't fly anymore, I would say the top emotion that I had was shame. I was in a very exclusive squadron. There was only 15 pilots. We had two lieutenant colonels, a major, and all the rest were captains. And it was this photo squadron, And it was very elite, and it was a great privilege to be in there. And when I announced, you know, I just had no choice. I'm just starting to freak out. All I felt was they're looking at me when I came to work. And that I had to wait three months while I got different orders. And I could feel those guys looking in the office where I did all the legal work just to justify my existence. And I could see them looking and going, look at that rotten piece of slime in there. I mean, I could just feel them seeing the failure and wishing that I wasn't in their midst. And that went on for about three months. And I'll tell you, I felt that shame for all these years. And I was out in California last year, and I was talking to Clancy's group and then at Brentwood. And I Was getting ready to do the Brentwood thing, and a girl in AA was coming up to get her 30-year medallion. And her husband is not in AA, but he supports her and he was driving her to the meeting and then he was going to go get coffee and she told him, oh, we're all happy Sandy Beach is going to be. He said, I think I know him. Tell him to come out and let me talk to him. So I went outside and this guy looked at me. I've never seen him. And he looked at my face and he said, In 1962, you were flying an F-3D-2Q radar plane on a cross country in the flight of four. You declared an oxygen emergency. The planes all landed and you never flew again. And I went, how the hell did you know that? He said, I was in the plane with you. Now what are the odds on that? and it turned out see I didn't remember there was a hurricane coming to Cherry Point and they hurrivacked the planes out to some Air Force base and when you go in a hurrivack you just go and drink until the hurricane goes away so it's very choice duty and that meant the radar observers didn't get to go but there was pilot in the right seat and this guy was one of the new pilots in the squadron and I remembered that he was a radar guy and I was thinking of getting out of the plane. And I said, well, I'm going to leave him. He won't know how to fly. And I said, really? And he said, yeah. And then I vaguely remembered him and he started talking about some of the people that were there. And then he said this. He said, did you know how popular you were in that squadron? Do you know How much everybody loved you and how hard they were trying to help you? The colonel went up to see the commandant twice trying to help you. And I realized my version of what happened was wrong. And I had to go back and go, erase, erase, erase, erase and put in the truth. And I really believe that that's what spirituality is. That's what the whole program is. We have a saying in our big book, old ideas availed us nothing. That's what they are. It's every idea that we put inside of us about what reality is that isn't true. And probably almost all of them aren't true, and so when that was taken out and the truth was placed in, I felt much better. I felt wonderful about that incident. Made me into a new man. Isn't that amazing? I felt wonderful because I was able to get rid of my version of what happened. And everybody lives with their version. Anyway, before I get to that part, I eventually had a ground-mouse seizure, was taken up to the hospital to try and figure out what caused it. We didn't have any alcohol programs, and they were just studying me, whether it was the food or whatever. And then I had the DTs, scared the hell out of myself. They put me in a straitjacket and I went up to the nut ward and I was locked up in there for six months. And Dr. Joe was one of the psychiatrists in there and that's where we met in 1964. And it's been a privilege to be around him all these years. He's a doctor who I honestly feel knows what it feels like to be an alcoholic, not just knows all about alcoholism, but knows what it feels like inside of an alcoholic's mind and body. And that's a great thing, Joe, and you've really given us a lot in the Navy. I made it through there and came back to duty. I will tell you this just to show you how primitive it was. I came back to Quantico, and they're deciding what they're going to do with me, so I checked into the officer of the day on a Friday, and he said, we'll come back Monday, and we'll process you and see where you're going be assigned. In the meantime, we've got to get you home. And they weren't going to let an alcoholic just go home on his own. So he got this major. Major, I want you to escort this alcoholic home. So I get in the car with this major and he says, I'm not going straight home, I'm going to happy hour. Because it's Friday. And he said, I don't want you drinking. I said, okay. So I'm in the club and we're not there two minutes and he goes up to the bar and rings this bell to get everybody's attention And he says, that man over there is an alcoholic. If anybody sees him drinking, let me know because I'm guarding him. Woo! In any event, I stayed sober. Once I got to AA, I never had another drink. My sponsor was a Marine captain, Bill Terwilliger. He was my sponsor for 42 years. He passed away last year. and he came to my house after I got out of the nut ward, brought me to my first meeting, and began this great journey. He finally made it to major. I didn't get promoted, and I had to leave. That was one of my great regrets. I didn' t get to finish my career. And I had a hard time financially for about 15 years in AA with those six kids. I'm just not a money winner businessman or anything. I was just trying anything, selling and all that real estate and insurance. And eventually I got an interview for a job. I was talking to Brandon about this. A buddy of mine who was ex-Marine, he was a POW in Korea, he was working on the house banking committee and he said I know a government agency that a marine general took over and the general counsel is a marine colonel, retired lawyer and they're looking for a congressional liaison officer and I can get you an interview I said what's that but I got the interview and I met with this colonel and talked to him about how I'd like the job and told him you know a marine officer can do it yeah, I can learn it. I know I don't know anything about Congress yet, but I can learning it and I can do all this. He said, I don�t know. I�ll have to think about it. By the way, why did you get out of the Marine Corps? And I sat there going, yeah. There�s a lot of answers I could have given him. And the one I chose was I got thrown out for drinking, but I�ve been in AA for 10 years and I knowI can do this job. And he said, oh, well, we�ll let you know. And two weeks later, I got a call. You want the job? It's yours. So I came in and met the young lawyers that work with him. And I said, what does congressional liaison do? And they said, oh, you write all the testimony when we appear before Congress and you write the general speeches when he's talking about congressionalism. I said really? Yeah, and he's testifying in a month on his banking bill. I'm going, really? and he eats people for lunch, so you better do a good job. So they built up this big scary stuff, and I'm going, God bless, what am I going to do? And there was one history book in my office. It was the only book in there. It was The History of the Credit Union Movement, and it was started by Filene's department store up in Boston. You know, Filene, he was a philanthropist, and he saw these credit unions in India, and he wanted to get one for his employees so they could save money and loan it to themselves because people couldn't get loans, just businesses. And they told him he couldn't do it unless he got the state law changed so he hired this born-again lawyer to get the laws passed and he wrote all the literature and he worked spirituality into everything. It was just amazing to read his thinking on how these credit unions ought to behave and how they should never let greed get in the way. And if you save up a lot of money, don't you go in there trying to get the savings rates to go up and bring those loan rates up. You've got to keep those loan rights down. You just sacrifice. You follow what I'm saying? And so all these principles were there. So when they gave me the banking bill to look at, the lawyers explained what it was, but I had to comment on it for our general. So I wrote just based on the principles that were in the book, which reminded me of A.A. And so I write all this stuff and the lawyer said, God, that's flowery. What is all that? These big principles and all that. So I sent it in to the general and they said, Boy, I don't think he's going to like that. Well, his secretary came out about four hours later and said, The general wants to see you. And I went in and he said, Did you write this? I hadn't even met him yet. Did you writing this? And I said, Yes, sir. He said, This is great! and I became like his golden boy. I'm riding in the car, and I'm doing all that, and these lawyers are going, what are you doing in there? So I think God was taking care of me, and I really did, I wrote for years for them and the trade association, but the reason I told this story is that I'd been there a couple years and the colonel and I, we're about the same age, and I was down at his house at a party and he asked me, do you ever wonder why I hired you? And I said, yeah, to tell you the truth. He said, I just wonder what it would be like to work with a guy that honest. That was the reason. And so I never give advice to people about what you should do about your disease, but I found that the truth paid off handsomely in my case. And soI finished that. I worked for them and the Trade Association for 20 years and retired to Tampa, which I love. I've been there 13 years, and I spend most of my time AA. I go to AA meetings at lunch. I go out after lunch. I take new guys, and we do this, and I start a men's retreat down there, and I travel around. I am so excited about the spirituality in AA, And we heard alcoholism looked at from the medical model. And I'll tell you what it looks like to me with the spiritual model, which is an entirely different starting point. And I'm telling you the starting point that I'd like to use. Last week I was in Rapid City, South Dakota at an AA roundup, and that's where Mount Rushmore is. and also it's where Crazy Horse Mountain is and Crazy Horse was one of the top spiritual people in the Lakota tribe and about 25 years ago the elders wanted to find a sculptor who could carve this holy mountain and put Crazy Horse up there and they found a Polish sculptor from the east coast invited him out and talked to him, and he agreed to do it, which is a lifelong commitment. And he started out in a tent at the bottom and he would climb up 700 feet with primitive tools, a star drill and a striking hammer and drill the holes for the dynamite and then boom! And eventually he built a log cabin, eventually he build stairway up there, eventually he got a compressor and he worked all by himself for years then he built the log cabin he got married they had 10 kids and he died and eight of the kids and his wife are still carrying it on they turned down an offer from the government of five million dollars because they don't want government control and they've got a big viewing area and a lot of indian history and indian relics and they have a movie. And this is what I'm on to talk about. And the movie is narrated by one of the elders of that tribe. And when he came on and started talking, I knew him. And his name was Billy Mills. And Billy Mills in 1964 was a Marine Corps second lieutenant who won the 10,000 meters in the Tokyo Olympics. and nobody thought he could do it. And he beat his own personal best by like 30 seconds. So I remember his name. Now he's an elder and gave this talk and this is what he said to put it in the frame of reference. Twice he said it in The Talk. He said, We believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. That's what he says. He said they believe. We are spiritual being having a humane experience. Now I hear that in AA quite a bit. That that's a wonderful way to start to frame the discussion of spirituality. That everyone is a spiritual being having a human experience. And so what is the problem? Why aren't we aware that we're spiritual beings having a humane experience? because as we started having this experience, we also have a mind that's capable of thinking up and commenting on the human experience that we're having. And as we're Having It, we're making up a story about it just like I made up a history about how those guys felt about me in that squadron. And as the years go on, The story becomes the reality, and the conscious awareness of how we started is gone. It's that simple. And so if, as Chuck Chamberlain said, the only problem that we have is conscious separation. There are no other problems when you look at it from a spiritual point. We think we're separate. And as our consciousness thinks about things, we see ourselves as a separate person, alone in the universe, with all these other people. And it scares the hell out of us. It's lonely being just yourself. And so Chuck said, that's our only problem. In our consciousness, we think we're separate. well what does AA have for us conscious contact so it's as if through our storytelling we created a dream world that we think is real and the answer to a dream is simple you wake up and then it's gone then you go oh it was just a dream Just like I woke up. Oh, it was just me thinking they hated me. They really loved me. Imagine that. And that's why when we look at our program, there's only one result that we're supposed to get. And it's right in the 12th step. Having had an awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics. What message? how to awaken. You see what I'm saying? How to awaken so when for example the language of spirituality is just the opposite of everything we're familiar with and you all know the first paradox that we run into okay if you want to win you have to give up you have surrender you put up the white flag and you are the winner but where did that ever come in? it's just revolutionary the transformation you have to make in order to think in spiritual terms I'm still in the Marine Corps and they tell me pride is a character defect I'm going what? have you heard of the few, the proud? what? pride is a character defeat is this a communist organization? are you trying to undermine the safety of the United States? Telling us that pride is a character defect? What are you talking about? Turns out, in the spiritual world, it's probably the top character defect that you can have. And the opposite is humility. Now if you're not going to use a higher power, pride is the great motivator. But we're not living in that world. We're living in this world. The heart of every problem is seeing the situation incorrectly. And that's the purpose of a sponsor or a spiritual advisor. Someone comes to me with a problem and I go, well actually, you're looking at it wrong. Let's look at it from a different perspective. This happened with my sponsor early on. I was running in, And you know how we run in when we're new. Oh, the sky's falling again. It's really falling. I just saw pieces coming down. And then he would sit me down and go, Yes, okay, well maybe the sky is falling. But on the other hand, there's this and that. You got the new friends. You got six months now. People like you. And then I'd get all through and I'd go, Well, if you look at it that way, it's not so bad. He didn't solve my problem. He showed me how to look at things differently so there wasn't a problem. So you can see, again, the heart of everything is seeing it wrong. Where do we see that in our literature? Our problems, we think, are of our own making. We make them. I was amazed to find out that if I imagine that someone in the back of the room doesn't like me, then I tell myself he doesn't like me. Emotionally, I feel terrible because I'm sitting in a room with a guy that can't stand me. There he is back there just glaring at me. I feel as bad as if he came up and said, I don't like you. The first one, I made up. I just had a thought that he doesn'T like me Then I reacted to it. And then it became the truth. And they said, what's your problem? He doesn't like me. Did you ask him? No. Well, how do you know he doesn't love me? I can feel it. I can see it. Does anybody ever do that? I can feeling it. And then you go talk to him just like I felt shame. And then I went and talked to people and said, oh no, we all love you. Oh, wrong. Yes, I'm wrong. I remember the first time my sponsor finally goes, look Sandy, Andy, you're wrong. Let me explain it. And he went through the whole thing and finally I went, okay, you are right. He said, no, you were wrong. I said, well, that's the same thing. Well, let me hear you say it. Let me hear your answer. Let me see how you say it. I don't know about you but saying I'm wrong is stuck in my throat. I can't hear you. Okay, okay, okay. And finally I said okay, I'm wrong. I felt wonderful. It's the greatest relief to admit that you're wrong. We have a whole step designed for that, 10th step. When you're right, when you're not right, when you are wrong, it doesn't say if you're wrong, when your wrong. What could I be wrong about? How about everything? What if every idea you have about the world is wrong? what if you did right now what if you forgave every person or every incident that was unfair to you in your entire life I don't think there'd be much left to carry around you forgive every unfair incident or every time a person was unfair and you forgove them, what would you have to think about. Man, I'd be the hole in the donut. Remember that in the 12 and 12? I'd be nobody. I am the guy that thinks about all this stuff. And so I have created a place to live that is quite painful, unsatisfactory, and no matter what I do, I never get happy. because in the church world or even in the science world, they're experts on the past and the future. But there's no consideration of the present moment which is the only place that God is. He's in this moment. He exists in the now. So in order to be with God, I have to be in this movement. So where is this moment? See, this is the thing about spirituality. It's just constantly filled with this backward stuff There's no straight answer. All spiritual growth is done by getting rid of things. You don't get anything. You follow what I'm saying? We get rid of old ideas. Okay, get rid OF that, get RID OF that. And what's left is the truth, which is already inside of us. It's there, but then we made up a big story that contradicts it all. So as we dismantle through inventory process and we see, oh, I was wrong about that. Okay, I'll forgive him. Okay, I'm slowly getting rid of everything that isn't the real me. So if the search is really for the true self, you get there by getting rid of everything that Isn't It. And to get to the now, I get rid of everything that isn' t the now. Every resentment about the past and every fear about the future. And again, fear is the product of this illusion. I wanted to read out of page 30 because it describes it so well, the point I'm trying to make. I have to take my glasses off to read. The idea that somehow someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinking. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. So we have an illusion that we pursue into the Gates of Insanity or Death. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people or presently may be has to be smashed. So what do we do with old ideas? Smash them. You find what I'm saying? Smash them! I've got to get rid of the delusion, the illusion that I can drink like other people. And as that is smashed, I'm no longer tormented by it. and so you can see that the Chuck used to say my hero was Chuck Chamberlain uncover, discover, discard what else am I wrong about and wouldn't it be wonderful to be wrong about ten things today and get rid of all ten he saw this freedom was throwing away everything that was wrong every idea that I had that wasn't true so how am I going to find that through our inventory process. And what do we learn out of our inventory process? We can't see the truth alone. That's why we go to our sponsor with the fifth step. And here's our fifth step, and one of the things we have is rationalization, distortion of reality. So the question is, how do we know anything on here is right? You don't. But you will after you run it by your sponsor. He'll bring out the third dimension in every one of the things we've written down. That's not as bad as you think it is. This is much more serious. Look at it this way, look at it that way. When he gets through running it through a second pair of eyes, it's like 3D movies. You need two cameras and then you see a dimension that was never there before. You're seeing the reality and the real truth of your own life. So there we learn right off the bat the value of running everything by someone else, which is just the opposite of pride. Well, maybe you have to run it by. I don't. I'm cool. I figure it all out myself. I'm a self-made man. All of those things that are killers in terms of staying sober and happy. And so we value greatly running everything buy someone else. it's absolutely counterintuitive and one of the things that happens with spirituality is that it works that's one ofthe problems i said success that'soneoftheproblemswithspiritualityitworks and you get your family back and yougetyourselfrespectback and one day the ego says a prayer you didn't know egos prayed well if it did pray this is what it would say We get down on our knees and we go, God, I want to thank you. You took this lowly mess. You restored him to his place in society, a place in his family. He has his own respect back. His brain is back. And I realize that I owe it all to you. You have taken this mess and returned it to a place where I no longer need you. that's the death rattle right there you have returned me to a position of self-sufficiency might as well start packing it in because things are going to get really bad in a short while as we become self- sufficient inadvertently the sense of success gives that feeling I have the power back instead of the pure gratitude for being held here in the hands of our higher power. And so I would say that the spiritual model of this disease hangs on the word awakening. That the answer to every problem is to see that it's not there. And that requires an abandoning, as Bill likes to use it, of our point of view. Of our judgment. Relying on judgments. If we're going to turn our life over, we can't have any goals. Can't have many causes. Can't even have any opinions. Can't ever have any judgments. We either turn it over or we don't. In other words, the goal of spirituality is not to get some higher power to help you with your goal. It's to ask Him what He would like you to do. So I would submit that when I was little I was told the wrong things about how to live as a man. I was taught that it's my life, nobody else is going to live it for me, and that I better make something out of me. And if you're going to make something out of you, you better go to school, you better study hard, You better go get high grades and then get a job. And then if you persist, you will be successful and you'll finally make something out of you. And many times people at age 55 have a million dollars and they're thinking of suicide at the same time because they're still alone, they're Still Afraid, and they haven't figured out anything. And perhaps the instruction should have been, it's not your life. It's not Your life at all. It's God's. You just get out of the way and let Him make something out of you. And then you'll be able to find happiness. And you will be molded into what you were intended to be. And so we go from self-centered objectives into a process of guidance. And we all are familiar with guidance, air traffic control. There they are, blah, blah. Take this heading, you won't hit the mountain. Are you sure? Oh yeah, I'm sure. And we just go, good. I'm glad that guy's guiding me. And we take us right through danger on both sides. Full trust in whoever's talking to us or whoever designed the equipment. Full trust with our lives on the line with an electronic box. And yet when it comes to trusting God I don't think so. I think I'd better keep a little control to myself. And this is the sixth step of our program, and I'll wrap it up with this. The sixth step really deals with perfection. We're entirely willing to have God remove all our defects. And when Bill wrote the 12 in 12, somebody asked him about the four absolutes of the Oxford group, which Cleveland still prints them in the inner group. Absolute, absolute love, unselfishness, honesty, purity. And he said, no, I think for new alcoholics that just setting those standards up there, absolute would just be too high, be too hard on them. So in the big book we have progress not perfection. Everybody quotes it all the time. But once you get through reading the 12 and 12 and the sixth step, you suddenly realize that it's progress towards perfection. and therein lies the dilemma well if it's progress towards perfection why haven't we gotten rid of all our character defects we got rid of our drinking but the rest of them are still hanging around to some degree or another and a lot of times the six-step prayer will be misinterpreted to say well god didn't get rid of that because it's not standing in the way of my being useful You know how it says remove everything that's blocking me from being useful? I think that's just rationalization. God would be happy to remove anything that you would let go of. The resistance is not in the perfect help that's available. The resistance isn't, I don't want perfect help. I'd like to get rid of most of lust but not all of it. What would that be? I'd like to stop all this gossiping. It's a terrible thing. It ruins people's reputations, and we've got to stop gossiping, and I go, that's right, we've Got to Stop. I'm stopping as of now. Well, I'm going to stop originating gossip. However, if someone starts it here and simply wants it relayed over there, I could serve as a telephone wire allowing... Why? Because it makes me feel good. And so as we go through all of the pride, greed, envy lessons, etc., we find that we want to settle for as much perfection as will get us by. And that is the dilemma of spirituality, is year by year to try and find what else we can let go of. And as we let go of it, we see fewer problems. Fewer and fewer. Things that used to infuriate you are gone. Families, members that used to bug the hell out of you have turned into nice people. And so through a process of getting rid of old ideas, we live in a very happy world. And sorry for the lecture, but that's what was on my mind tonight. Thank you all very much.