The Tenth Step Axiom: If You’re Disturbed the Problem Is Always You – Sandy B.

About This Speaker Tape

Sandy B. shares how spirituality was gradually built into his recovery, starting from a place of total resistance. Sober since December 7, 1964, with the same sponsor the entire time, he describes his early encounters with spiritual concepts -- particularly his sponsor's explanation of the Prayer of St. Francis, which flipped his understanding: the channel of peace flows from inside out, not outside in. He humorously recounts faking his way through the Big Book by aging the pages with coffee stains and cigarette burns, only to later discover that the chapter "We Agnostics" essentially says three words: change your mind.

He traces AA's spiritual lineage through Carl Jung, Roland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher, and Bill Wilson, highlighting Jung's profound observation that alcoholics suffer from "an inordinate longing for God" -- a restless emptiness that no amount of money, fitness, relationships, or success can fill. Alcohol, he argues, was the closest counterfeit to a spiritual experience: a power greater than ourselves that fixed us from the inside out, except vodka is not a loving higher power.

Sandy walks through the seven deadly sins with characteristic humor -- his Marine Corps pride, his attempts to keep "just a little" of each defect, his realization that pride in his son's home run was really about himself, and his reluctant examination of lust ("Zero? Does that worry anyone?"). He lands on the Tenth Step axiom as his most treasured spiritual tool: if you are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with you. He proposes "Undisturbed Thursday" as a practice -- going through an entire day refusing to get disturbed, discovering the extraordinary energy and intuition that flows when we stay spiritually connected.

He closes with forgiveness, using the crucifixion as the ultimate benchmark: unless your injury exceeds being nailed to a cross and killed, it qualifies for forgiveness. The real secret, he says, is that when self is removed, there is nothing left to remember the injury. His final message to newcomers is that AA's gift is you -- the magnificent, loving person trapped beneath layers of fear and ego, waiting to be unwrapped.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Howard introduces Sandy B. at the Georgia roundup
• 2:00 Sandy shares his sobriety date (December 7, 1964) and having the same sponsor since day one
• 4:00 Sponsor asks about his spiritual life -- no prayer, no Higher Power, no meditation -- then asks 'how's it going?'
• 7:00 The Prayer of St. Francis explained: the channel flows from inside out, not outside in
• 11:00 Faking his way through the Big Book with coffee stains and cigarette burns; We Agnostics chapter means 'change your mind'
• 16:00 A disease only a spiritual experience will conquer -- the two-door quiz show: alcoholic death or spiritual living
• 22:00 Walking through the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, procrastination -- finding exceptions for each one
• 30:00 Carl Jung, Roland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher, and the founding chain of AA -- Jung's observation that alcoholics have an inordinate longing for Higher Power
• 40:00 Seeking Higher Power vs. 63 seconds of daily devotion; the hide-and-seek analogy for spiritual seeking
• 50:00 Tenth Step axiom: if you're disturbed there's something wrong with you; Undisturbed Thursday; Uncle John story
• 58:00 Forgiveness has no limit -- the crucifixion as the benchmark; killing self so nothing remains to remember the injury