The Tradition of Having No Opinion on Outside Issues – Sandy B.

It's a pleasure to introduce our main speaker, Sandy B. from Tampa, Florida. Hi everybody, my name is Sandy Beach. I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing? I'm going to put this up a little. Yeah, I came here 42 years ago. So I was in the Marine Corps, and another Marine came to my house and picked me up and took me to my first meeting at the Manassas Virginia Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the meeting lasted about five hours. It was a group anniversary, and they had a million people celebrating. They had turkey and ham and square dancing, country fiddles. And when I got to the meeting, I'd been sober about five hours. And I had ten hours when the meeting ended and I was not agreeing with anyone when they came up and said, isn't sobriety wonderful? I don't think so. And I wanted to leave that meeting. I wanted it to just get away. But it was in an old odd fellow's house out there in Manassas, real country. And there wasn't even a street light or where you could go. And it was sleeting and I just stood out there and felt really terrible. And I felt this hand on my shoulder and I turned around. It was an Al-Anon lady who I since got to know her and her husband. And her name was Betsy Lynch. And she said, it's going to be all right. and I believed her. And I turned around and went back in and sat down. That was the end of my struggle. I just believed her and about a month ago the Manassas group of Virginia was celebrating its 55th year and they asked me to come and talk at the group anniversary and I went there and like Bob my sponsor was there and he's got lung cancer and has been really struggling for the last year or so. I didn't think he'd make it up from a little bit further south in Virginia, but his home group brought him up, had him in a wheelchair and so there we were. You know, it was like the bookends of this wonderful period of time in the same group where he brought me. and so it was very moving and I got a picture in my wallet of the two of us that night and it was just remarkable and about a week later his home group members who I stay in touch with called me up and they said well, it looks like it's getting real close it's renal, kidney shutdown, failure his family's assembling and we're hoping that he lasts until his son gets back from Germany where his son is in the German symphony orchestra playing French horn. And his son has told him, I'm coming home and I'm going to play an entire symphony for you. So we all said, well, we know he's going to last until that son gets home. There's no way he's not going tolast to that. So his son came and went. and I called them yesterday. I mean, this is like two more weeks later. And I said, Bill, how are you doing? I'm going out to Vegas. I wanted to, you know, tell you that I'm so happy you're my sponsor and all that. And he said, I said how are your feelings? Oh, doing great. I'm walking again. So we left it that we would shoot for 50 years together And we'll just see. He's a tough old guy, and it's been – I just wanted to share that with you, how important sponsors are. And it's not that often that you can get to both stay alive that long. And so it's meant a wonderful journey, and he taught me a lot about AA, They taught me a lot about service. And so as I stand up here tonight, you know, I like to talk about whatever pops into my head. And I was thinking when you were reading the traditions, you know Alcoholics Anonymous is universally respected and loved. It is, there's no one, Now, there's no group that hates AA. There's no segment of society or segment of the world that doesn't love AA. News reporters run around and dig up dirt on everybody. I mean, it's gotten bad. You know how easy it would be to sit out in front of an AA meeting and pick off the celebrities with a camera? It'd be like shooting duck in a pond out back. Never happens. Doesn't happen. Why? Just not going to touch AA. Something special about AA. And if they did, their editor wouldn't let them use it. Now isn't that remarkable? There's no law against it. We just happen to have a tradition. And it's being respected. And I was thinking, you know, why would it be so respected? And you know what I came to the conclusion? Because we don't take an opinion on anything. That little, sneaky, tent tradition. AA has no opinion on any outside issues. Sounds pretty innocuous. Oh, so they don't have it. And I always tell this story about when I was in Washington and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee was trying to decide whether to put warning labels on alcohol like they did on cigarettes. And they said, we've got to get expert witnesses as to whether it would be a good idea or not. And somebody on the staff said, well, who could be a bigger expert than Alcoholics Anonymous? So let's call them up. So they called the General Service office and said, we're having this, could you send somebody? Oh, be glad to. So they sent somebody down to interview the staff person. They explained the whole bill, and they said, now where do you think A.A. would stand on this? Oh, we don't have any opinion on that at all. And the senators in the committee staff couldn't believe that someone had no opinion. It was beyond them. They have an opinion on everything, you know what I'm saying. No opinion. whatsoever. Now, I have an opinion. Personally, you can have opinions and I think there should be a warning label and I can tell you exactly what it should say so it would do some good. It should say, Warning! This bottle may run out. You... You should consider buying two. Think of all the lives that might be saved when the alcoholic's at home and it's about quarter to twelve at midnight and he ran out and he's got fifteen minutes to get back down to the bar and he wouldn't have to get in his car, so it would probably do some good. But anyway, getting back to this no opinion. Let's say that just, for example, A.A. took a very narrow opinion on wool blankets. So we shouldn't have any wool blankets The people who liked wool blankets would no longer have the same opinion of A.E. And then if they took an opinion on the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts or the left wing or the right wing, anything you take an opinion upon, the opposing opinion no longer holds you in that exalted position. It just segments, segments, segment. As soon as that, it's the most amazing thing in the world how powerful that tradition is on making AA universal. There just is no little narrow segment that can't stand AA. And that's because we have kept that and our primary purpose, which is what you call this group, right? Or no, the specific group. You talk about the primary purpose. And it's so easy to say, well, gee, there are certain things in the world that we ought to get behind, that we are to have an opinion on. I mean, it just seems to come up from inside. And this miracle that these traditions got stuck in there, that we don't do that, has left us in that position. And the same thing with primary purpose. How tempting it is to take a powerful solution like this and try to apply it into a much wider range. And somehow they had the wisdom to say, yes, these 12 steps are indeed miraculous. and you, with other problems, are welcome to them. Help yourself will help you understand them as you use them against gambling or as you used them against sex addiction or whatever the problem is. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping 140 problems because that 140 pounds, when you have one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, you have the equivalent of a magnifying glass taking the sun and focusing it until there's a fire. And if you tried to do the same thing and spread that so that the magnifying glasses could put some heat on a wider area, You wouldn't get it on fire. You'd just have it warm. It would be diluted. The power of this message wouldn't work. And then we'd wonder, what happened? What happened? We thought these things should apply to every type of problem. They do, but only with a primary purpose behind it. So when one alcoholic is talking to another alcoholic, One drug addict is talking to another drug addict. One gambler is talking to another gambler. Not one alcoholic talking to a person with a weight problem. The miracle would not generate enough force to happen. It's one of those things that sounds good. Sounds like we ought to be able to solve all these things. And I look at that and I just go, wow. because all of AA, these conferences, the committees, the literature, everything, only serves one purpose, to continue to supply the one alcoholic talking to another. That's where it all happens. This is where we celebrate the fact that it happens, but it is the one alcoholic. It's the sitting there and there's this thing and you suddenly trust and you suddenly realize your home. And so I just wanted to get some thoughts in on those two traditions. They just are amazing how we came up with these things. And back with the Washingtonians, when they got involved in some outside issues, They were gone in four years, disappeared off the planet. And they had a bigger percentage of the population sober than AA does today. A lot of people. But off went. So anyway, that's enough out of that. Now let me tell you what some of the things that happened in my life. I don't want to tell my whole story. I grew up in the 30s in New England. Wonderful parents, nice sister, four of us. I didn't feel like I belonged. My sister has come on up on 30 years in AA. And I went to the Catholic Church. My sister sat next to me. She thought it was the cutest, friendliest, warmest place in the world. She still goes there, just thinks that she thought the nuns were cute. She thought the Latin was cute. She thought The Incense was cute and the costumes and the poop and all of that. I thought it was the equivalent of the Holocaust. That I read the catechism, the same one she read, and it scared me to death. It was, I can't believe this is going to happen to me. And I would just, I would hyperventilate sitting in the church, just sitting there next to my sister who's going, isn't this fun? And so, and when I was eight or nine, I was staring at the crucifix and it spoke to me when my first spiritual insight, little boy, do you see this? Oh yeah, yeah, I see that. Well, that's what God did to his only son that he loved. But guess what he's going to do to you? So, what was being assembled here is my story. My old ideas that avail us nothing. These are the old ideas that avails us nothing This is the story. And I heard a speaker talk one night, and he said, he was being funny, and he says, my story is divided into two parts. What happened during the years that I drank, and what I thought happened during those years. What happened in the years when I drank? And as you think about it, I could make the same statement about your childhood. Your childhood is divided in two parts, what happened when you were a child and what you thought happened when you were a child in other words it's a story my story is a story that i put together in my little head about what happened there was this mean uncle who came over well comes to find out he's a very nice man he wasn't a mean uncle but he was in my story Here's a real mean uncle that came over. The reason I'm saying all this is that if you were to listen to the talks I gave when I had 10 years sobriety compared to now, you'd find out that now I had a much better childhood than I used to. Well, how is that possible? How could you have a better childhood now? I'm looking at it from a different perspective. Bob was talking exactly about it. Our consciousness changes. And from that new perspective, we see parents that were trying as hard as they could. They had tons of problems. And we just didn't really see their side of anything. And so this is the freedom that is obtained in Alcoholics Anonymous, is freedom from those old ideas. The willingness to let go of things. I've been working eight months on a men's retreat down in Tampa. It's next weekend. and I've been doing a lot of thinking, you know, preparing some lectures and I suddenly realized something that a lot of you may already know but it just came to me in just like boom, holy cow, I never thought of that that the 12 steps says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. That means the entire point of Alcoholics Anonymous is to have a spiritual awakening. That's it. That's why you come here. That's what the steps are for, which is to change your consciousness. And we carry this message to other alcoholics. What's the message? How to have a spiritual awakening. That's the message. Well, boy, it's a program of action. What is the action? I'm going to tell you in two words what the entire action of the AA program is. Letting go. Every step that we take is designed to make us let go further. We admit we're powerless over Africa, so we've got to let go of that. Then we have to come to believe something's going to take care of us, so I have to let goes of me taking care of them. And then I'm going to start inventorying all the things I want to let go of. And I'm gonna share with my sponsor, this is all the stuff. These are all the defects and everything that I need to let go of good. Well, now we got a list of there. And then i'm gonna go and i'm gonna ask my higher power to un grip my hand so that I can let go of these things. And i'm gonna let go of the past and then i'M gonna go through every day letting and go of anything that disturbs me so that I can maintain this awakening with this higher power. So, it's a strange situation when you come here and you think you need to learn and get knowledge and move, grow spiritually. Grow spiritually is to shrink. You follow what I'm saying? You become smaller. As a matter of fact, you look at all the information you have and you go, whoops, wrong, gone. You don't learn anything, you unlearn. We had a guy, I remember when my first month, I didn't know what he was talking about. A little guy, he's a lawyer for the House of Representatives, Charlie Bruton from Alabama. He'd been passed away a long time ago. I hadn't thought about them in years. And he used to get up there and say, well, you know, it isn't the things you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's knowing things for sure that just ain't so. That's what we did. We knew a lot of things for surer that weren't true. and we lived under the specter of this misinformation that drove ourselves crazy. Drove ourselves crazy that I'm a terrible person living in a terrible world with people you can't trust. There's no such thing as a loving God. And they just said, well, we're just going to have to get rid of everything that isn't true. And pretty soon there was nothing left. You know what I'm talking about? You know, it just, no, that's wrong. Chuck talked about it all the time. Uncover, discover, discard. Oh, wrong again. Look at the tenth step. Oh, what else am I wrong about? Who ever would have thought that we would delight in being wrong? That was the hardest thing for any of us to do, was to admit I was wrong about anything. The first time I did it, my sponsor finally said, well, do you see where you're wrong about that? And I said, you know something, Bill, you're right. And he said, no, you'RE WRONG. Same thing. He said, well, SAY IT! It didn't want to come out of my mouth. It did not want to comes out of MY MOUTH that I was WRONG! I said I WAS WRONG!!! That would be the end of the world. And so it is very paradoxical, a lot of the things that happen in here. That it is, I was in the Marine Corps and they told me the key to the whole thing is surrendering. Just put up a white flag. Complete, unconditional surrender. And it seemed like such a foreign thing for somebody to want to do to solve a problem was to let go of it. and I you know I was thinking that my higher power came into my room and said I'm here to help you what's going on and I would say well I'm really frightened about this situation here he'd say well that's not yours give me that and whatever I brought up he just said no no no you're not supposed to who do you think you are God give me That's Not Yours and I wouldn't have anything left there wouldn't be anything left He would have taken everything away from me. And I'd say, what am I supposed to do now? He says, go out and play. Absolutely insist on enjoying life. Your job is to be happy, joyous, and free. I'll take care of all the problems. Sounds too simple, doesn't it? Alcoholics don't like simple things. Remember what they said in the very beginning? OK, just don't drink. I know, but I got like all these things I got to go. No, no, no. No, not now. No. Just don't think you understand. I got about eight million problems. It's much more. I mean, the solution to my problem is going to be about 40 pages. Not don't dream. That's true. You couldn't be. Don't drink and then everybody would go. Just don t drink even if your butt s falling off. Don t drink. OK. So we have the same feeling when somebody says, just let go. Couldn't be that easy. Just let go? Let go? You mean let go is the answer to all the problems? Yes. One solution for all problems. Oh, come on. The world's a lot more complex than one solution for all problems. I mean, that couldn't possibly be true. Okay, what were you doing before you got here? What did you do when you had a problem? Well, I went out in the kitchen, I got a glass, I poured some whiskey in it and poured it down. One solution for All Problems. I don't ever remember saying well here's a problem I won't be drinking over I'll be I'll solve this one sober how are you going to solve anything sober so we already know one solution for all problems what was the solution We took something that changed us inside so that everything looked all right. You know what I mean? The world didn't change. I just was in the bars on my third drink and I suddenly said, That's more like it. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Well, I thought everything was all screwed up. Well, it was, but it's not now. Everything's fine right now. How could it be fine? I don't know, but at least... Everything looks different. And the first time I saw that was with my sponsor. I came in, you know, about every three days he'd come running in. Bill, this time the sky really is falling. I was just out there and it's coming down hard. And hit sit down. All right, what is it? Well, my wife is going to go over there and I've got six kids and then I'm going to hear the Marine Corps. Okay, all right, all Right, all Righ. And then hit start in. Well, you Know, that's true. Yeah, that'S true. But don't forget, you've got all these new friends and you've got this program and it's taking you on a wonderful direction and your heart is just being filled with all these... When he got all through, I'd say, well, if you look at it that way, not so bad. If you look at it in that way. So, strangely, when Chuck came out with the new pair of glasses, he really captured the whole deal in sobriety. And sometimes I think we ought to have a ceremony of two years. And if they've successfully worked the steps, we call them up to the podium. We take off the life sucks glasses. And we say, we got these for you. We want you to put these on and tell us what you see. So we put on a pair of spiritual glasses. We look around and we go, God, this is wonderful. This is the most beautiful world I've ever seen. It really is. It's an awakening. I'm just so happy. Now, here's the problem. We say to the person, we strongly suggest that you throw away those life-suck glasses. Oh yeah, I will. I'm going to keep them in my pocket for a while. Well, it's sort of a memento of the old bad days. And about a week later, we get the phone call. Oh God, you're not going to believe they're firing them over there. Everything's terrible at work. Have you still got those new glasses? No. I put on the old ones and I'm very familiar with having problems. I'm not used to not having problems. We're problem people. Bill writes that we create our own problems. Our problems, we think, are of our own making. And it is in the problems that we separate ourselves from our higher power. That is why we feel so lonely Why we sit and wonder why it's so lonely deep inside of us. And there was one thing that used to fix that. That's the cosmic loneliness that mankind feels. And we wondered, how do you fix this? And alcohol came along and we found a way of really fixing that core problem that human beings have. and of course it was the right path it was the wrong higher power it had the idea that this could not be fixed in any traditional way but it had to be fixed as an inside job which is what alcohol was and it was very hard for me to believe that these 12 steps could do what you all said they would I knew you believed it and I knew that you had it work but it did not look like it could possibly be the answer to the problems I had inside of me when my sponsor said read them, read them just take a look this is where it all is I read and read and I went back to him and I said I know I'm slow but which one is the money step because if I don't get some money for my wife and six kids, we're going to be evicted and the whole world is coming down. Which one is the money step? And he says there is no money step. What we can do with your financial insecurity is to give you spiritual comfort even though you don't have any money. And I felt like I was in a used car dealer when I heard that. You can what? We can give you the spiritual perspective so that not having money won't worry you, and you'll be just as comfortable as if you did have money. And I remember going, okay, technically I can see that, but could we stick to where you actually get the money part of the solution and we'll get to the God stuff later. And he said, no, this is all God stuff. So I was getting my first glimpse of you can have financial security without money. I mean, that was like, well, what is that? But it is the power of our own creator to make us realize that we are being taken care of as we sit here. I love to tell new people in Tampa, now, I know you all have a lot of problems. But I will give you a written contract that all your problems are now being worked on. They're all being worked upon. So go get some ice cream. take a look at them tomorrow see they're going to be good stuff's being worked out isn't it yeah you never saw it was going to work out that way did you they're all being worked on so the last thing that we have to do is worry about them the action that we take is to transform ourselves my latest thing with people that i sponsor is They want to come over and talk about a problem. And I go, okay, come on over. And then my job is to show them that they really don't have a problem, that they are not seeing it correctly. You have a situation, but you don't know what's going on. You don't see it as a problem or you don' t have a problem. You have labeled it a problem and then if that doesn't work, we're starting in on statute of limitations on problems. And they fit in, there's minor, medium, serious, all the way up. You know what I mean? And minor problems are three days. You can't have it after three days Sorry, but don't even bring it up Nope, nope, that's too long to hold that problem You have to let it go All the way out to six months for some major thing It's all to dramatize the point that the solutions we seek in here are not normal. They're not what we are accustomed to in our own problem solving. One time I was feeling bad and I decided to trick myself into feeling good. Now, I don't know if anybody's ever done that. I said, God, you're feeling real depressed and really upset about this issue. Go get the movie section out of the paper. And as soon as I said movie section, I went, yeah, movies. I love movies. I always go there. So I got the movie section out and I said, God, that's a good one. Well, I'm going to take you tonight. Oh, thank you. That's me taking me. Do I get popcorn? Yeah, I get popcorner. And after a while, I had tricked myself into feeling better. Now, here's the part that we leave out. If we really understand it, we tricked ourselves into feeling bad in the first place. It was us. We just took some situation and made it into a problem. And the reason that we do this is to maintain this separate identity from our higher power. to maintain the fact that we exist in addition to being a child of God, as Chuck called us. And it's that second identity that we make up that is driving us crazy. It is that story that's going on in our head, that's been going on there since we were a little kid, about all the trouble and this is bad. Oh, I'm so upset. I just found out about this and I just got upset. and I found out about that. None of it has to be there. And it took me years to realize I could ask for freedom from all of that. And it came in the form of awakening. When we talk about our twelfth step and the spiritual awakening, it is the power to see things in a much different way. and the rest of the program is to awaken further bill calls it more spiritual growth it is to work on being able to see it even differently than we do now and so um i know i'm kind of getting off on a lot of um things have been running around in my head so let me get back to those of you that are new Clancy calls the disease a disease of perception. And when we come in, what we see is a very troubling world. So you're not lying when you look and go, God, everything's so overpowering. And we agree with you that that's what you see. And alcohol made you see it differently. It was more of a happy world. In here, you're just going to have to take our word that your perspective is going to change very soon so that you will look at the same world and be quite comfortable in it, that you Will look around and it will make sense. It's like you're in the shower and you can't shave because the mirror is covered with the steam. But if you wait long enough, you'll be able to see very clearly everything. And so right now, the only thing that is troubling you is the inability to see what the other people in this room can see. And you just have to hold our hand and we will take you along until it clears up. and the clearing up is very exciting. You will see for yourself, you won't be taking somebody else's word, how wonderful it is for you. And after that happens, you will be unable to stop yourself from sharing that with the next person. You will be over there in a heartbeat. Yeah, yeah, I used to be able to not see worth a damn either. Give me your hand, I'm going to lead you along until you see it. This is kind of like a hologram. My kids had me up, I was up in Baltimore about 15 years ago, I'd never heard of them. And my son had one on the wall and my grandchildren could see it! They went out there and they said, yeah, if you look over the left-hand corner, then whoop, it's 3D and you'll see it. And I'm out there, and I would be eating dinner, and I'd say, I'll be right back. And I'd go back out in the hall, and I stand out there staring at this thing. Okay, relax. Just have your eyes, just that. It's going to pop in any second. I never saw it. We all went home, andI never sawit. Well, part of me wants to go back there if he still has it. Because everybody else saw it. So, you know, I was thinking about this and an awakening in AA. You know what I mean? It happens sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. It will always happen if you go back and stare at that damn thing long enough. So how could you shortcut all that? How could you write a book about how to see a hologram? Well, you could write all you want. Wouldn't help, would it? You'd still have to stand there until you saw it. So this is what we say in here. Keep coming back until the miracle happens. Don't give up on seeking. Don't think just because another six months has gone by and that you can't see it yet, that you're not going to see it tomorrow or maybe in the next minute. It could happen. When it does, this is your ticket into this new level of existence. This now becomes the proof that you've been looking for that the spiritual life is not a theory. Your own personal, I see it. I see it. That is worth being alive for, to have that. There isn't a bigger experience. I can't think of a bigger experience than human beings could have than to see the truth about themselves in that fashion. And once that happens, you're a seeker for more of it. I want more to be revealed. Bill talks about that. I want More to Be Revealed. I want to see the whole picture. And this is the organization we're in. We're in this society that we belong to enables us to continue this journey and to share it with those that are coming behind us. I'm out of time, and I just want to tell you how happy I am to have spent my anniversary here with all of you, and God bless. Thanks.