The Struggle to Be Entirely Ready – Sandy B.

We're alcoholics. You know what I mean? It's a fatal disease so that we have a gun at the back of our head going, you're going to keep working on becoming God-centered or I pull the trigger. And that's our gift compared to the people that don't have agun at theback of their head. I don't know how they get it done. They're doing it voluntarily. It just occurs to them, oh, to become spiritual. whereas you and I we're going to do this and we're gonna suffer dire consequences there's a place and I forget where it is in the 12 and 12 we're doing we're all going to fall by the wayside you ever see that sentence sounds like a bad place to me also sounds biblical I think Bill must have got that out of the Bible fall bythewayside I'm like, oh my God, not the wayside. Anything but the way side. I'm not even sure what it is. But I know I don't want to be there. So this is the struggle. This is the decision in this third step. And of course, why are we trying to do this? You know what I mean? Why are we try to do that? Why are you trying to go through this third step and then you look at that third step prayer so that I may achieve a victory and help others. Already the selfishness is going away. It's not even so that i'll be happy, it's so that my victory over myself, over my character defect will inspire the next new person to try it because this is so common. You know, sometimes we have new people come in here and they get sober and they immediately want to become alcohol counselors. And we put it down a little bit. Oh yeah, everybody wants to become an alcohol counselor. But you know what? There's something beautiful in that. This is what Bill Wilson felt the second after he had that spiritual experience. He wanted to run out and sober all the drunks up in the thing. When spiritual transformations take place, part of the transformation is the desire to give it away. It just comes with it. It's just automatic with the territory. And you find that in the Oxford Movement was the same thing. Frank Buckman had this big spiritual experience and he just raced around trying to share it. Okay, let's start little groups. I've got to share this. I've Got to Show You. I've Gotta Show You." So it comes with the transformation. It's a desire to pass it on. so anyway why can't we just do it why can'T we just turn it over why can'T we allow this transformation to take place well it turns out that there's some problems in accomplishing this and I like to think about them by using the prayer of St. Francis let's just imagine that turning our will and our lives over to the care of God is opening a channel like St. Francis writes about. Make me a channel of thy peace so that I can bring all these things. You know, where there's darkness, I can brings light. Where there's sadness, I can brings joy. So where there is wrong, I can bringing forgiveness. Where there is error, I can be bring truth. In other words, I want this channel to be opened so that everything can flow out. And notice that when we talk about spirituality, we're talking about opening a channel so that things can flow out from us. Whereas intellectually we feel, I need stuff to flow in. My problem is I don't have enough. Right? That's what intellect is. It's another one of those paradoxes. I need more money. I need, I need. And then we go, you don't need anything. You need to open the channel so that you can flow up. What you're experiencing isn't those things that you think it is. What you'RE experiencing is you're blocked. you're blocked from your true nature being able to flow out and it's like all of the water that flows into a dead sea it's wonderful water it's just the most wonderful water in the world and if that was God's energy flowing in if it doesn't flow out it doesn' t exist it doesn''t do anything and we feel there is no God I don' t feel it I don't experience. I don' t experience. So this channel has to be open in order to allow it to go out. So what's blocking it? Well, if you use the analogy of the Suez Canal, you remember when they sank all those ships in there and blocked it and do all that many, many years ago and then they had to go in and clear it? Well, think about that as your channel that we're trying to open is blocked with character defects. There's greed. great big boulder sitting in the middle and here's lust over here and envy and anger and fear. So nothing can come through. And if nothing can come true, it doesn't exist. And that's why we have this hardest time. You know, I want to believe in God. I have faith. I can see. But until it flows through, it's a theory. It's just a comforting theory. But it hasn't penetrated yet so that we can go, now it's a reality. It's not a theory anymore. This is a reality! So really in the beginning, we really stay sober on other people's energy. You know what I mean? Other people's spirituality. The people that came before us and we get inspired by it and we just go, God, I know it's real. I can feel it from them. I can see it. I can still feel it. And eventually we're going to have to rely on our own. so how are we going to open up this channel well we're going to have to find out what these blockages are and get them the heck out of the way and that's the point of an inventory and there's a whole bunch of sheets up here and we're not going to work on them or anything but I want everybody to take one when you go they're wonderful Bob Daryl of Las Vegas prepared these and they're right out of The Big Book resentments, fears, sex relationships, the whole deal on the mechanics of a four-step inventory. In other words, how do I list all these blockages and how do i take a look at them and how do I get them ready to be lifted out? How do I mechanically go through this? And so be sure and take one of these at the end of the meeting. Be helpful with somebody new that you may already have them but I highly recommend them and I think we have Fred was nice enough to make some more copies and I we have enough to go around so I want to talk about the dynamics of this there's the mechanics I'm not going to go through how to do a fourth step but I want to talk about because so many of us have guilt guilt I don't know about you but guilt was one of mine and in the pamphlet the members I view by McGinnis I donno if you've read that members i view of aa with the eyeball on the front if you haven't read that pamphlet yet it's really cool i think in the old days we had better pamphlets uh-oh is general service representative around i don't know what's going on up there but i was at a meeting the other night and there were two pamphets oh i shouldn't be doing this and here's what i swear to god the first pamphlet said is aa for you you know what the second pamphelet said is a for me so i said well i wonder what the difference between is a a for you and is aa for me so i looked in there and there was no difference it's just that one had a better title figure that one out oh so the dynamics of this and the guilt and McGinnis's yeah and he said that guilt was the first to come and the last to go of character defense and it's connected with pride the prideful person is inordinately big and good and the guilty person is inordinantly bad and rotten but they're both pride there's an arrogance to guilt real arrogance who are you to say you're worse than everybody else you don't know me man, I'm the worst I'm terrible I'm not just arrogant You just think you're rotten. But you're not. You're just average. So there's a lot of things that have to be accounted for. And guilt will make it seem like it's our fault that we have all these things. And that feeling can be oppressive. And the 12 and 12 is really helpful to this because it says, guess where these character defects came from? They were God-given. That's where they came from. They came from instinctual drives that were born in us, just like they're born in every single person. It's the sex drive, the drive for security and a drive for a place in society. Everybody arrives on this planet with those drives. Period. Nobody's fault they got them, nobody's credit that they got them that's what we arrived with and those drives are what cause us to go ahead and live to reproduce to function to become a society to grow to that's the energy the raw energy that causes us to be alive and to be human beings so their purpose is to supply us the energy to exist as human beings but they are not in charge there's there's just simply there to give us the energy to do this now for most of us since we don't involve we were self-centered we were trying to control these drives on our own and that is impossible as i said earlier we could wish to be moral i wanted to live up to moral standards and i couldn't i kept failing and the only way i knew to solve that was to lower the standards you know what i mean just keep bringing them down bringing them Finally, I got down and I said, well, at least I haven't murdered anybody. So that makes me good. And then if I had killed somebody, I'd have to come up with something else. You know what I mean? Because I couldn't get peace of mind. I couldn'T live up to anything. The problem was I was trying to live upto them on my own power. I wastrying to be godly by myself. And then I could take the credit for it. Don't want to give God the credit. That's what an ego will do. so here these character defects were born in us and they take over our lives and we end up doing terrible things and of course alcohol just lets all the character defects out of the bag unchained you know as soon as we pour it in whatever control was there before here we are we're just out unleashing ourselves on the world we do all these things and then we feel terrible about it and just this cycle runs on and on so I must be a terrible person we come here and they go no you're not a terrible person here is the correct adjective it's used throughout our literature this is the type of person you are stupid you're not a terrible person you're stupid you look in there Bill writes that We were especially stupid in this area. Made a lot of stupid mistakes. We're stupid, a stupid plan to live without a God. What a stupid plant. That would be like deciding to drink without alcohol. Well, I got the glass, I've got the bar, I'v got the music. Hey pal, you're missing the main event. So we had a stupid planet. The only problem is, in order to change it, we've got to admit that it's stupid. That it's wrong. That this plant isn't working. And so, we do that by, we don't convince you, we don'T show you AA's theory and get it on a blackboard and then you intellectually see that it'S superior to your plan for living. We don'T do that at all. But we win the argument every time. We get a new guy in here with a Ph.D. from Princeton. Smarter than the whip. And he keeps losing discussions with somebody who had a second-grade education filled with street smarts. Just keeps losing every discussion. You know why? Because they don't discuss theory. They only discuss results. Oh, I see. You went to Princeton. You have a Ph.D. Well, you're wearing a wristband from a nut ward on your arm. Your family doesn't talk to you. Your mother hates you. You can't hold a job. I, on the other hand, have a third-grade education. I have serenity, peace of mind, 23 years of sobriety. My family loves me. My children love me. My boss loves me." So, you want to talk? so we'll never compare theories we only compare results and if you're a new alcoholic he just moves automatically so we've got to be willing to entertain this idea that we're not guilty none of this is our fault we had a stupid plan it's a mess the channel is blocked it's nobody's fault why don't we clean it up okay You know what I mean? And we can just walk into this thing, no guilt, no nothing. It's just, this is the deal. This stuff was blocked here. There was a hurricane. I don't care what you want to say. It's blocked. Let's clear it up. As soon as we're willing to do that, we now can fearlessly go in, inventory this, has nothing to do with what we did or anything like that. This is just how it is. And then we're able to fill out one of these sheets. We're able to look at it in a little more relaxed fashion. Then we come, and what are we going to do with this information? We've got it all written down. We've Got This Thing. This is an accurate appraisal. This is what the channel is blocked with. Ready to go. Let's go. And we notice on the list that one of the things that shows up all the time is rationalization. Rationalization. We constantly explain things to our advantage. Our ego jumps in and we have motives that are this way and that way. Well, if rationalization is such a powerful force in our lives, how do we know this thing is worth anything? This could be all crap. How do we Know That This Is True? How do We Know This Is The Real Blockages? We don't want to send all this effort in to clear this stuff out and it's wrong information. Well, that's why we have a fifth step. There's a spiritual principle that in order to see the truth about ourselves, we run it by another human being. We admit it to ourselves, to God, and to another human being. It reminds me of trying to see a person trying to see the third dimension in aerial photos so that you can measure height and depth and all that so you get two photos that are just slightly from a different angle and then you use those glasses and then, boom, it jumps out and you can see it. And in order to see the truth about ourselves, we need this second perspective sitting right next to us looking at the same sheet that you're looking at. And it can bring the third dimension out. And stuff that we thought was real serious turns out to be not so serious. Stuff we were hiding and minimizing will suddenly come to light and we have a wonderful picture and we suddenly are free to start forgiving ourselves and we're suddenly free to trust other people. We had secrets that we thought had to go to the grave with us and they held great power over us and we just walked around year after year with this secret knowledge that God, if anybody ever finds out oh my God And the only power that that junk had was that we hadn't told anybody. And that's where it got its power. Well, why is this stuff so powerful? Because I can't tell. But what if you told? Well, then it wouldn't be powerful anymore. You see what I mean? As soon as it's out and the person you're talking to goes, oh, I did that about 12 times. Yeah, yeah. And you go, well, I thought this was going to get me in jail. I thought this would be, nobody would ever talk to me. No? No? What else you got there? It's just, there it is. John facetiously said one night that, and I've heard a lot of footsteps over the years, maybe in a couple hundred, something like that, and I was trying to think if there's anything different. You know what I mean? If you really think about it, everything is almost exactly the same. and I think the only difference is there's two categories that I've been able to determine and that is the group of guys that have not had sex with cows that's about it that's above all that's the that's a bad ad other than that everybody's exactly the same I mean it's just it's remarkable how we agonize over these things. So this sharing in the fifth step is huge and we have a set of promises, we begin to trust other people, we beginto understand that living in isolation is the worst possible thing we can do. And what's our tendency? The next time something goes wrong, stop calling. Uh-oh, something went wrong. I guess I'll handle it alone. Okay, I'll stop going to meetings. Okay,I'll stop calling and that's why what Larry was talking about last night is so important to have a home group So you go there, and people can see that something's wrong. Okay, what is it, Sandy? You're going to tell us now or when we get coffee afterwards? Nothing's wrong? Don't tell me nothing's wrong, I can see your face. What is it? What is It? What is I? What is i? And then finally, okay, and they go, is that it? Yeah. Oh, well, let's go get coffee. All right. You know what I mean? It's just, it's got to be shared. And so there's tremendous lessons in this fifth step about all the rest of our future that we'll never live alone again, that we don't want to do that. But why are we doing all this? It isn't so that we're more social, so that мы get along with people better. It's to open this channel. We've got to keep going back and keeping our eye on the ball. We already went to the end of the book. We already saw the ending. The ending is spiritual awakening, conscious contact. So this is what this is all building up to. This is how we get it. So then we finally do this. And then we sit down and we go, man, wasn't that huge? I just went through the fifth step and now I can go into the big book on steps six and seven, two paragraphs. I'm out of there. I'm almost on eight. Right? We go into this step. Are you ready? Did you skimp? Did you do this? Did you doing that? I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding we have now completed step seven then about twelve years later no I'm going back in history now Bill wrote that in 1938 and then about twelve years later he's writing the twelve and twelve And guess what he says about step six? This is a step that separates the men from the boys. This step separates the girls from the women. This step is huge. This step in alcoholics anonymous. Well, I didn't notice that when I read those two sentences before. Didn't say anything about epic in there. Well, maybe we better go back and look at it. What does that say in there? It says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. That's all it says. It's a pretty simple thing to me. You want to become a better person? You want that channel? Yeah! It's just like when you ask people, you want the federal deficit to be removed? Yeah! Okay, we'll raise your taxes. We'll take that deficit out and nothing flows. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, we've cut your favorite program. Then we can reduce it. It's in the specifics that we run into the problem. You know what I'm talking about? You want to become a better person? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How'd you like to get rid of lust? All of it? Yeah, all of it. 100%. Totally gone. No kidding. 100%. Totally gone, man. Lust-free. what is that mean lust free I want to do it but I'm just trying to get a thought is that like no sex I'll tell you what what I'd like to do is make some progress in the area of lust because after all and then we see this is where we grab something from another part of the book we claim progress not perfection so what I'd like is to get rid of most of my lust I'd love to get out I'd to get read of most of my okay most of your lust yeah yeah okay how about gossiping you know you do a lot of that gossiping you know it's it ruins AA groups It's very destructive. It hurts the other person. What do you think? Totally lifted out of you? Yeah. Yeah, I'm tired. Well, but if there's a really good story... What I'd like to do is get rid of almost all of the gossiping. I'd love to practically eliminate gossiping from my life. That's what I'd really like to doing. What about anger? Yeah,I'd like get rid off anger. I'd like to get rid of unjustified anger. That's what I'd love to do. But once in a while, I mean, you've just got to vent your... So I'd likely get rid... Yeah, I'd actually get rid of most of that. Okay, that's good. How about greed? Trying to get more. Trying to give... Yeah, I think we should get rid of most for that. Actually, I should get rid of most of that greed. We'd go through every character defect there is and we want to get rid of most if it. Isn't that funny? We don't want to get ride of all of it. And Bill writes about why. Why not? Why do we want rid of all of it? Because we like some of them a lot. That's why. And he writes an interesting sentence in there. He says this is the riddle of our existence is knowing that this help is available, we decide not to take advantage of it. Why? Why would we keep holding on to lust or greed or gossip or fear or envy or laziness or gluttony? Why do I keep eating a bag of potato chips every night, a big one? Why do i keep doing that? Because i like to eat a bag of potato chips every night, okay? Makes me feel good. I like to chew. Just makes me feel better, you know? What's wrong with an occasional potato chip? That's a carton a week, Sandy. Okay, okay. So there's this interesting sentence in the 12 and 12. It says we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by. That's what we tend to do. You're in business. You would like to be known as an honest man, an honest woman. I would like the reputation of being totally honest. I don't want to be totally honest, but I would love to have a reputation. I want to reserve the right to stick it to him once in a while just to keep the business going. I don' t want to have the option stripped from me. You see what I'm saying? I remember looking at this and going, holy cow, the implication of step six is perfection. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects here. I'd be Mother Teresa. If I took this step, I'd be Mother Theresa. And then panic started setting in. I think Mother Teresa is great, but don't you think that's a little extreme? I mean, does she bowl? What does she do? I don't want, you know, that's going too far. And so then I've got to make up a reason why not willing to do this am i into this to grow spiritually or not yeah i am well why aren't you doing this well i'll tell you it's because i'm unselfish that's why i don't want to do this if i did this step and became perfect you know what i mean like perfect and then i'm like living in my neighborhood well the rest of the people aren't perfect and there i'd be perfect and they'd be looking over going god that guy is perfect and we're not and it would make them so uncomfortable to live next to a perfect God so for their sake I'm going to stay an ass I got to find a reason for not being willing to do this the ego is just going all over the place so you can see this step is pretty big isn't it we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and so then our ego says hey that's just a theory have you ever met anybody that's perfect what do you mean God will remove all these defects have you seen God remove all these deficits show me one example give me one example and the problem is every one of us has an example what was our worst character defect drinking did it get removed yes why because I got entirely ready to have it removed I was ready to have that totally removed I didn't want any reservations whatsoever So if you can become 100% willing and humbly ask, it can be removed. And so this is the struggle for the rest of our lives is to try and become more willing. Uncover, discover, discard Chuck Chamberlain. What else can I inventory that's wrong about me that maybe this year I could become entirely willing to get rid of? Spirituality is like riding in a balloon. And you throw over some weight, and you get up to 3,000 feet. It's the best view you've ever seen. It'sthe most exciting thing. You look around and say, I never saw a view like this in my life. But if you stay at 3, 000 feet for five years, that view gets old. I've seen 3, 00. I've been seeing 3, 0 for five year. Well, why don't we find a couple more character defects to throw over? And we throw over, we go to 7, 0. Yeah, that's more like it. And we're there for five ears. And then we go, 7,000 sucks, just like 5,000 suck. But what else can I get rid of to get a better view? And so we look in inventory. All right, all right, and over it goes. See, I thought we came here just to stop drinking. I thought that was the deal. Not drinking is the name of the game. You know what's in the fine print? And changing everything about you. That's the other thing. And so this is a huge step. And the reason it's such a huge step is there's a story that I generally tell with this and it came from C.S. Lewis, so I give the proper credit, and involves the story of the little boy with a toothache baseball player who's supposed to go out and play his big game. The coach said get eight hours sleep he goes to bed early and long about 11 o'clock at night starts a little tingling and he knows if he calls his mother she'll bring two aspirin he'll go right back to sleep he'll get eight hours sleep and play the ball game but doesn't call his mother he sits there goes maybe it'll go away by itself and you know after two hours it just tingles a little harder a little harder a bit harder and he's not getting any sleep finally at 3 a.m he calls him out i got a little toothache he gives him the aspirin and he goes back to his sleep but he only gets four hours sleep, makes three errors, and gets no hits. So the question is, what's going on with that kid? What the hell's wrong with that kid? Why didn't he get the two aspirin and get eight hours sleep? Now we'll see what it is. He knew he'd get the 2 aspirin. See, the problem was he knew his mother, who's the supply of help. He knew he'd got the 2 aspirin, but he knew that his mother wouldn't stop there. She would make a dental appointment. You know what I mean? To go in and check this little tingle in the tooth out. And then when he got to the dentist's office, he knew his dentist, and the dentist wouldn't stop there. He would look at that tooth, and then it'd say, while you're here, let me just look at, uh-oh, here's one here, and here's on here, and here' s one here. Let's make three appointments. Now he's going to have three appointments, three little fillings, and when he finishes, he has perfect teeth. He didn't want perfect teeth, he wanted two aspirin. You see what I'm saying? He did not want that kind of help. He wanted limited help. And that's what we're talking about in step six. I'd like to be semi-lustful. I'd love to be a little bit more honest. I'd want to be semionest. I'd almost like to get rid of this. I'd to get a little better in this area. Well, if you're going to do that, you have to do it on your own. Because the only help that's available is perfect help. You see, that's why this is such an epic step Would you ever be willing to allow God to totally come into your life in this area and be totally free of it? Wow, this is hard. This is really huge. So to make this kind of a journey is remarkable. It's the biggest journey that human beings make. We're trying to move from the material world into the spiritual world. We're trying to live in this material world, but not be affected by it, not be jerked around by everything that happens. Because there's something inside of us that tells us where we ought to be heading is towards this God, towards this higher power. Look what happened after the World Trade Center. The churches started filling up. In meetings, we're starting to get a little more crowded. It was as if I need something beyond myself. I need. So this is inside of each of us and the sixth step sends us there and so finally we get this willingness and we go well now I'm on my way and then the seventh step is just as big and very briefly the rest of them go fairly fast so we'll get through them The seventh step is you don't think about it. Now here's what's wrong I finally got willing, now I've just going to ask God to remove them and it just goes like that Okay God, please remove the following That would be asking God to remove. Now the quiz for today is take out a sheet of paper and write down the difference between regular asking and humbly asking. And if you're new, you probably are sitting there with the pencil going, oh, the difference between regular ask, yeah, what is the difference? You ain't like just regular ask. Hey God, get rid of these. That would be regular asking. Now Humbly ask. And I remember when I tried that, I went, how do you humbly ask? Oh, you're probably getting your knees. No, you've got to get humble first. What is humble? Well, humble is when you look like this. There's a look. There's an image. There's the look that humble people have. So you've probably got to do this in front of a mirror. Okay. Hi, God. What is it? And Bill writes, we don't have a nodding acquaintance of humility. We haven't got a clue what humility is. It has no place in the free enterprise system. Hey, drive a Buick, get humble. It would sell nothing. And we talk about pride, pride, bride. And you look in the dictionary and guess what humble says? Humility says a total absence of pride. Zero pride. All pride. And I was in the Marine Corps and I'm going, Pride? What is this, a communist organization? Get rid of pride. Pride is a wonderful, powerful energy if you're not going to use God. You know what I mean? It'll motivate people. It'll get something done. But totally is self-centered. That's what you can accomplish on your own. And what this is saying is you can go way beyond what you're going to accomplish on your home if you involve God. Why just bring your power? Why not bring infinite power to everything that you encounter? And so humility is the awareness of me being nothing and God being everything. Instead of becoming a big shot, I want to become a small shot. You know what I mean? I want it to be so tiny I can go through a screen door. I don't want to be this big. See, big shots have to push all that bigness through the universe. They have to put it into the shopping center. Hey, I can't walk through the mall. Everybody's in my way. You know, we're so big going out there and everything goes against us and we feel the resistance as we try to push this ego through the world. And then we go, well, I'll just be nothing. And then We just go through the World like, I'm not even here, man. I don't have a way. I'm just doing God's work. I don't have nothing can go against my way because I don' t have a way do you ever think that your only problem you ever have is not getting your way you'd be a servant of God servant is the highest pay grade we have in AA you know that you can't go higher than that that's the top you've got to work and work and climb your way all the way to servant and that's what a winner is is a servant and you say I'm just out here just doing what God gives me this intuition to do. And so, when this transformation takes place, our needs are being met from the inside so we don't have to go out and get anything to get fixed. We're already fixed. We already have everything that we need and we're simply moving through life. And so humility is an awareness that we want to go through whatever it takes to become God-centered. That means we're going to have to go through the pain of not getting our way in everything. And so we're gonna voluntarily go through this transforming pain. The story I always tell on this one is there were some horseshoes at Bars of Iron, you heard this story? I told it, I'm sure. And they were up in the horseshoers' shelf and they'd been there for 25 years hidden behind brown paper. And they Were complaining up there, they've been 25 years and they're going this is it this is all there is to life just hanging around listening to all that damn noise out there and it's dusty there ought to be more to life than this sounds like us on a bar stool in a bar you know what I mean and one day they ripped the paper off and the blacksmith said my god these guys look at this where are you guys doing up here you're not supposed to be on that yeah I knew we weren't supposed to be you're supposed to be a horseshoe what the hell is that well that's the most beautiful thing in the world you're going to be on this great animal You're going to be traveling all around the world. You are going to become the most useful thing. Oh, it's so exciting. You're gonna be a horseshoe. Wow! We're ready. We're going be a horse shoe. Right then, they could ask to be a Horseshoe. Okay? They just said, you want to be Horseshoe? Yeah, yeah. Let me show you how you become a Horeshoe. So they stuck it in the fire, got red hot, put it on the anvil. Boom! Bam! Bam!! And they were watching. Their eyes were popping out. In the hot water, the steam is coming up. and more banging, shaping, and then punching holes in and they held it up and said, there, that's a horseshoe. Now, if you ask, you're humbly asking, you know what's involved. You know that it is not going to be easy, but you want it anyway. Spirituality is changing our attitude about pain. It is looking through the pain to see the beauty of what is coming. The transformation is just on the other side of the willingness to experience not getting my way. And as soon as we go through it, it wasn't even painful. It becomes effort. It's kind of like when you're out of shape and you want to get back in shape, it's hard. Remember that first week in the gym and you go home at night and every damn thing hurts everywhere. And you're like, ah, I'm dying. But as you keep it up, three weeks later you go in the gym, it's not painful, it's just effort. And it's wonderful because you know the results it's going to produce. And I love going down there and pushing myself through this because I get these results. And the same thing can happen in the spiritual world. I understand I'm not going to be comfortable but I'm going to go through with it anyway. And that's really what humility is. Now 8 and 9 are making amends, making a list of people we had harmed, and that is learning a new thing about harm. And harm, you know, it's gossiping. Harm is withholding affection. It's not punching and all that. It turns out that us alcoholics, self-centered in the extreme, even after we get sober, until we work the program, have a very unusual talent. We can bring out the worst in everyone. We just walk in the room and da-da-da da, And people start fighting with each other and they start causing trouble and doing all this. And this is our secret talent because we've got to keep everybody off balance and we've got to do that. So we do a lot of harm. I can remember coming to work Monday hungover and people would come in all happy with their weekend and I didn't think it was fair. They were happy and I wasn't, so I would just be grump. I don't want to hear about your weekend. I wanted to bring everybody down to my level. You know, this is the type. So harm, harm, harmful. Well, that's fine. we're going to go make amends to those people but let's see and learn what it is that we do to harm so that we can stop it why would we want to stop it so that people will behave differently when we're around we transform the world this way my parents were having their 50th wedding anniversary my sister was doing the list of people that were coming and this was quite a few years ago there was this one uncle and I said oh no Sue you're not going to invite him No, no, no. God, God. He's so abrasive. He's just one argument after another. And my sister said, he only does that when you're around. What? Oh, no! Everybody loves him. He's great. He's wonderful. And she had about 20 years in the program then so I had to believe her. I hadと believe that this was true. And so I just pretended he was as great as my sister was saying when I saw him. Hey, John, how are you doing? I'm so glad to see you. And I started shaking his hand, and he, hi, I'm glad to see you. You see what I'm saying? It was just transforming. And that's what step eight is. Learn how, what it is about us that is causing this in the other people. And once we do that, we now bring a program of attraction in. I'm talking about the dry cleaning lady. I'm not talking about that. I'm going to talk about the gasoline station. I'm taking about the supermarket where the line is too long. I'm talking about every little place where you take yourself and I take myself during the day's march. And as I take that old personality in and stir up every little pocket as I go around, I just come home at the end of the day and I go, man, it's awful out there. Everybody's got an attitude. I say, this place sucks. I work this stuff. I start seeing my role in it. And I go out and I'm this different person. And I goes from here, the dry cleaning lady and over here and over there And everybody responds to a different energy. And I come home at night and I go, what a day. These people are great. Those people are green out there. And it was all because of me. It all came out of this eighth step. This learning about myself. And then we finally do make these amends in order to not drag the past with us. Very hard to live a day at a time and drag the 1990s with us and all the memories and the people we don't want to run into. So we can go out and we can do this. but it's a bigger purpose than that. We're getting closer to God. All of this is designed to get us closer to god. About 15 years ago I was sitting in a townhouse on Capitol Hill where I was living at the time. I was getting ready to watch the Redskins. I love to watch football on Sunday afternoon. I had everything all set up. I'm all excited. And I was just sitting there and this memory bubble came up right on the couch. And it said, back in 1954, in Pensacola, Florida, you borrowed $70 from Bill Marseille to pay your rent and you beat him out of it. You got transferred and then you forget and every time you saw him, you may believe you didn't remember, you beat them out of the 70 bucks. And I went, right, yep, I did. Now let's get the game on and we're going to watch the Redskins. and this energy just said no you're gonna find bill marseille you gotta pay him back yeah i know but you know not now yeah now not during the game i'm not gonna be calling i haven't seen the guy in 20 years how am i going to find him i can't find him I don't know where he is how am I going to find him on a sunday you could try what what am I gonna do how do I know we need this is me talking to me you know what I mean I want to watch the game I don' t want to call Bill Marseille I don mine is $70. I just don't want to call. Why now? It wouldn't let me alone. I'm just going and going. So I finally cut a deal. I said, okay, here's the deal. I know you like to ski. And I don't know where all the ski thing is, but I know Vermont has skiing. Here's the deal. I called Vermont, asked information. He's not there. I watched the game. And it was like the other end, whoever's on the other end said, okay. So I go to the operator. Hello, Vermont? Yeah. Have you got a William P. Martin? You do? What's his number? Okay, so I call him up. And I'm trying to get this all done. They're kicking off, you know. Hello, Bill, I've got to talk fast. So I get him on the line. He's thrilled to hear from me. Oh, my God, because we weren't close buddies and drinking and all that. And I said, Bill. Bill, let me get right to the point. 1955, I borrowed $70. You remember that? We were in the apartment, my wife and I. And I never had the rent. Vaguely, I think so. Yeah, but I did. I did, Bill." And listen, I'm in AA and we do these steps. And your name came up. I've got to do these Steps. What Steps? Well, you know, there are 12 Steps in the program. So I started telling him how happy I was and all this kind of stuff. And he said, okay, okay. And I said, well, $70, all these years of interest, I'll send you $150. He said, Okay. I mail off the $150 A couple weeks later, he sends me back a box. He ran a gift shop at this ski resort. I must have had $200 worth of stuff in it, you know, wind chimes and this and that. Then he called me a year later and he said, I'm moving to North Carolina. Here's my phone number. We've got to get together. Yeah, Bill, we've got TO get together and now years go by and I'm speaking down in North Carolina after the meeting, a lady comes up and introduces herself and she says, you don't know me. My name is Mary Marseille. Well, it's such an unusual name. I said, oh, Bill Marseilles' wife. She said, no, his widow and I went, oh God, I am so sorry. When did that happen? Oh, it happened a couple of years ago. oh I'm so sorry and then I'm going what is she doing here and she's got an Al-Anon badge on and she said you know that day you called and you told him how great AA was he joined the next day and so this had nothing to do with the 70 bucks this had nothing to do with working the eight steps so that I could get to watch the Redskin game. This had to do with how do we get Bill Marseille sober? How do we cause that to happen? And so there's we never know when we make an amend. When you make an amendment you tell the person I'm in AA and I'm trying to do this how many times they will say can you help my sister? Can you help my brother? It's amazing what's here. It's so much bigger than we think it is in steps 8 and 9. we finally finish with this settling of the path ready to live a day at a time in the tenth step and ten is I'm going to talk a little bit about and eleven twelve will be real quick and we'll be out of here day at the time is the tenth step how to live a day all it says is continue to take personal inventory when wrong promptly admit so what does that got to do with living a day at a time well if you look at the twelve and twelve this is what I think spirituality is I think this one little sentence has the whole package in it. And it's that spiritual axiom that's in the 12th step. And it says, whenever we're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with us. What's wrong with you? We're disturbed. That is what's wrong with us were disturbed. That is what's wrong with us. You know where it says we have a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition. Disturbed is a bad spiritual condition That is a very bad spiritual condition. That is non-spiritual condition. That is God is blocked off. Don't worry about you feel bad. God is locked off. The channel just got shut. Disturbance is shut. No energy from God flowing through us. We're blocked again. We're alone. We are out, just us, against the world. And we're overpowered. Because it's just us. When we have God with us, it's like having your big brother in grammar school. Nobody picks on you. You see what I'm saying? And so disturbed is the biggest warning thing we can get. That's why Bill talks about a spot check inventory. Uh-oh, disturbed. Time out. Why time out? I don't want to do things when I'm disturbed. Then I've got a lot of messes to clean up. The boss comes in. He said, hey, Sandy, you wrote this memo about Congressman so-and-so? Yeah. It stinks. Well, screw you. I quit. And the words are going across the room to his ear. And I need the money. I don't really want to quit. And I'm trying to get the words back before he hears them. And he hears him and he says, you're out of here. Don't want to act when you're disturbed. So what can we do? What can we do about that? Self-restraint. You know that right out of the 12 and 12? We pray for self-restраint. We pray for this wonderful gift. This is a five second cushion around us. A time cushion if you will. So that when events happen we have five seconds before we do anything. And during that five or six seconds we can allow us to come back down to a state of undisturbed. We can make an honest analysis of what's wrong. if the fault is out there we can forgive them if the falt is here we can make an amend and we can go back to being undisturbed and that's all there is to life is always going back to being un-disturbed because if we're undisturd we don't need anything we're just existing how are things going? great man well I hear you don't have your job yet I know but right now I have everything I need it is absolutely wonderful That's undisturbed. So undisturb is the point. Because when we're undistburbed, people react to us that way. We bring it everywhere that we go. And so this is what the tenth step is. Anytime I'm starting to get undisturd, I want to go time out. Time out. Call up my sponsor. What's the matter? I'm disturbed. Okay, let's talk about it and get you undisturned. You got to forgive him. But he did something that's unforgivable. It goes way beyond the limit. Did you ever set a limit on what's forgivable? Well, I let my sister do that, but holy cow, now she did this. So I was trying to think of myself, where do you draw the line on forgiveness? You know, how far do you let somebody go? Where is the limit? So I Was thinking of, do we have any examples anywhere of where the line is great spiritual teachers? And I was thinking of one who was around a couple thousand years ago and they were nailing him to a cross. And he said, forgive them, they know not what they do. So it appears that forgiving goes up to and includes nailing to a cross. Now my problem is I'm always having stuff worse than getting nailed to a cross happen to me. See, nailing to a cross is happening to somebody else. But cutting me off in traffic is happening to me. So I have to expand forgiveness. Why? To let people off the hook. Is that what it is? It has nothing to do with them. It's to get undisturbed. It's so that I win. I want to be a winner all the time. I want you to win. I want him to be undistURBED. If I let you off the HOOK and I get undISTURBed, I win! Who cares whether it was fair? Who cares? Fairness is a one-way street. It only goes out from me. It doesn't come back. It's not supposed to come back I'm supposed to be fair. That's what the spiritual program says. If I'm fair, the whole world will be fair That's it. Because if I'm not acting fairly, if I don't trust, I'm my own role model and if I do not trust, then nobody does because nobody is better than me. So that means you can't trust anybody. You see what I'm saying? And if I'm not fair, nobody is because nobody's better than me and I'm the one who's better. I'm that fair. So that mean nobody in the world can be trusted and nobody inthe world will ever treat you fairly. So then we just... You've got the energy going the wrong way. Fairness isn't supposed to come in. Trust isn't suppose to come. It's suppose to go out. So now I trust people. I'm fair to people and the world becomes a trusting place and the world becomes a fair place. It just does. So, I trust everybody that I talk to and I get taken for 50 bucks once in a while. So? So? What's that? You want the 50 bucks back and stay disturbed all the time? You want to not trust anything in the world and still have your 50 bucks? Would you pay 50 bucks to be free of all those insecurities? I'd pay millions. that's cheap getting hit up for 50 bucks every so often just because you're too trusting the dynamics is just huge in the 10th step undisturbed remember that the end of the day inventory how can I go through and do this better and then as we get into 11 and the prayer of St. Francis which let me just read now that we can think about it we've been talking all about the jackpot we're right at the very end What does it feel like? What did a saint think about what we're trying to accomplish as a human being? What are your goals? Let me see. He probably said yacht. Probably wanted a mansion. Probably wanted big family and a lot of security and the President of the United States. Let's see. What did he really want? Look what he wanted, my God. That doesn't look like anything. Make me a channel of thy peace that where there's hatred I may bring love, that where THERE'S WRONG I MAY BRING A SPIRIT OF FORGIVENESS. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where this error may be truth, that where there's doubt and may bring faith, that where this despair may bring hope, that were their shadows and may bring light, that whether it's sadness and may bring joy, Lord grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand them, to be understood, to love them, to be loved for it is by self-forgetting that one finds it is by forgiving that one is forgiven is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. this isn't some abstract words that a saint wrote. This is us. Each one of us can look at this and go, hey, make me a channel. You know, hey God, cancel the yacht. Cancel the yacht! I want to be a channel! I'd rather be a Channel! Forget the yacht, make ME a channel, Make me bring harmony. Let me flow through me as I go out. Use me to sober this guy up. Use me to help somebody forgive. Please, let me use that. It's just a question, what are you asking for? See, I was asking for yachts. I was askin' that this stop and that this person be healed and this person do that. None of that's in the 11th step. Pray only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Who am I to know if somebody should get well? Maybe it's God's will that they go up to the big meeting. I'm trying to block it. You know, God's going, Mary, I love you, come on up. Come on up, and I'm going, no! You know what I mean? So that's why this is it. Let me just do thy will. And so that's the new thing to ask for. This is the in thing. It's hip, it's cool. Right here, prayer of St. Francis. Let's become a channel. Let's be a channel, and a channel goes out. and then in our 12th step and we wrap it up right here forget about we're going to carry the message it just comes with the territory it's hard to hold people back from carrying the message they've been sober a week man, they're out there they don't know what the message is but by God, they are carrying it and you know something all they got to do is get that car and go pick that guy up or that gal up and put her on the front row okay Mary, watch what happens and that's enough of a message i mean we're there we're doing it we're doing this but what about and we having had a spiritual awakening obviously we even ourselves will see this we now see the world differently we now as chuck chamberlain says we got a new pair of glasses we just couldn't see the word and now we see it clearly we've been given a new vision as the energy from this channel is coming through and causing us to see everything differently. We see the world as a wonderful place. We see human beings as children of God. We see that maybe we don't understand it right now, but it'll all come about. And we'll see the answer later on. And this is very powerful stuff. But then it says, practice these principles in all our affairs. And it really means that. It doesn't mean just an AA. We shouldn't feel as safe an AA and not safe out of AA. Those are all God's children at the office place down here, over there. I make everybody an honorary member of AA and meet them on the plane wherever it is and boy if I'm talking to a guy on a plane for five minutes AA's in the conversation. Oh yeah well I joined AA 35 million years ago saved my life it's a great damn thing in the world yeah I used to be a marine fighter there's other things but I always work that in and guess what one out of five Can you help my sister? Can you help my sister? I mean, so I'm this way. Everybody sets their own comfort level in that area. But the thing I want to wrap up with, practice these principles in all our affairs. And my favorite example of this, and I use it in a lot of talks, is, let's see, I've been sober about two years, went to a meeting every night, the Marine Corps wouldn't promote me and they pushed me out. So I'm at home and I'm going, let's see. What did God do for me lately? This great loving God that we got in AA. I go to a meeting every night, now I'm out. I got no money, I got six kids, I've got no job, what am I going to do? I got a resentment, I can't stand it, this sucks, you call AA a loving program, anybody ever get that way? In sobriety? So I get to a meet and I never do this, I never raise my hand, you go to meetings, anybody got a topic, anybody get a topic? I never raised my hand but that night I'm mad and they go yeah I got a topic well what's your topic Sandy getting thrown out of the Marine Corps oh I don't think that's a good topic for AA you know I mean getting thrown out of the Marine Corps okay okay topic getting thrown out of the Marine Corps that's the topic topic tonight getting thrown out of the Marine Corps and I figured this is an AA group they love me you know God everything will help I figured the first guy is going to raise his hand Sandy, you get thrown out of the Marine Corps? That means you're available. I have a company, a large corporation, looking for a smart guy like you to come add to our corporation with $75,000 a year and a car and a new home. Would that be good? Now see, that would be help. That would be health. Guess what I get? Oh, thrown out in the Marine Corp? Say the serenity prayer. You got thrown out of the Marine Corps? Double up on your meetings. You've got a lot of time in your hand anyway. Another guy says, you got thrown off the Marine Corp? Help a new guy. Take your mind off yourself. What's wrong with you? The last guy said a prayer to St. Francis. He was a Marine. I went home that night and I said, I don't think I explained my problem very well. What was that? What was that? I couldn't believe my ears what I heard there. So I never raised my hand again. Maybe seven years went by and boom! 20-year marriage explodes like an atomic bomb. I'm gone, another guy's moving in. There are kids like him, they don't like me. Whoa, whoa, whoa! So I'm at a meeting. Anybody got a top tip? Getting thrown out of your own house, another guy is moving in Oh, Sandy, I don't think that's a good topic. all right okay topic tonight getting thrown out of your own house another guy moves you know what happened the guy says throw it out of our house throw it on your own house serenity prayer you've got to say this serenite prayer throw it out of your own house double up on your meetings you've got a lot of time on your hands you've got to throw it out of your own house work with new people take your mind off of that take your mind off of that. Just work with new people. And the last guy, prayer St. Francis. He got thrown out of many homes. Five more years went by. I'm in the real estate business. There's no mortgage money. Everything's gone. You're not supposed to have all this sobriety and be almost broke. What is going on? So I'm at a meeting. Anybody got a topic? Bankruptcy. Oh, Sandy, bankruptcy is not a topic. I want to... Okay, bankruptcy. Guess what happens? We go around the room. Oh, bankruptcy! Surrendered prayer. That's what you've got to do for bankruptcy. Double up on your meetings. Go to the eating meetings. Get free food. Work with the new people. Take your mind off of that. Take your mine off of it. Prayer of St. Francis. He took a vow of poverty. now why am I telling that story you already know it you can see it what does it say it says there's one solution for all problems that's what it's saying first things first get right spiritually and see if there's any problems left just as we read in that wonderful chapter it just happens it's automatic it just happened we're freedom from all of this Sure, those are problems. But if I'm close to my higher power, I don't care. You know, this will get straightened out. I'll get a job. I'll give back with this. I'll do that. But in the meantime, I'm relatively comfortable. So what is the wonderful thing that happens? And then this is the absolute wrap-up. There's a lot of pain that happens in life. Larry was talking about it last night. This is not a pain-free thing once we get sober. But let's try to measure pain. Let's say that you just got laid off because of cutbacks, and you've got four kids and you're not quite sure how you're going to feed them. And let's all agree in this room that that is worth 2,000 units of pain. Okay? That's a universally accepted standard. You have now been inflicted with 2,00 units of paint. now we're going to add on to that the fact that you are irate over the fact that you got laid off matter of fact you've got a resentment you think you got screwed in getting laid off you're going get your boss you hate the fact that you get laid off oh this is 10,000 more units now we are at 12,000 but the 10,00 is optional And the program can enable us to get rid of those 10,000 and always keep the pain level down at where it should be. Somebody dies, there's a mourning period that goes through. But we add on top of that, because we're so self-centered, they shouldn't have died to me. They hurt me so much. They did this, and I build it up so that I quadruple the amount of pain that is supposed to go with the event. And so it really feels like a wonderful world, even when the pain is coming because we don't quadrupole it with our self-centeredness. It is tremendous freedom. We just accept it. Acceptance is so powerful because God is in charge of this. And we just go, okay, so now I don't have a car. I accept it. Now I've got to deal with the anxiety of getting one. Instead of the rage that this happened to me. You all connect with that. That is what we get free from. So if you're new, I want to just wish you the best of luck. It has been an absolute pleasure to share with you. And as I said in the very, very beginning, that if one new person out of this gets motivated to take the action to get closer to your personal God, that would be the greatest reward I can imagine. We're at the end of the time. Why don't we wrap it up with the Lord's Prayer for everybody who would care to join in. Thank you.