There Is a Solution – Part 4 – Bob – 2004

died. It was amazing that Bill happened to write him. I think six months later he had died. And he wrote back and said, dear Mr. Wilson, no, I didn't know what happened to Roland. I'm so glad to hear that. That is absolutely wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. He said, now when I was seeing Roland Hazard, it was so early in the century, I knew that spirituality was the answer to this. But it wasn't safe for me as a psychiatrist to talk about that because I would have been laughed out of my profession. But now, many psychiatrists are seeing that there are spiritual powers and that this is an important component of human beings. And he said, this is what I felt about alcoholics back then. And he went on to describe the situation of being an alcoholic as having a thirst for something. Something beyond ourselves. And the implication is that alcoholics have an extraordinary longing for God. They all sense that something's missing in their lives and they are constantly aware of this emptiness and they search for something to fill this, not knowing what it is. This is called misdiagnosis. We think it's money or sex or power or whatever it is. And we find out what it is through the process of elimination. Money doesn't fix it. This doesn't fix it. This doesn't fix it. We show up at this hokey pokey program that says, oh, we know how to fix that thing. You know that thing inside of you? You know that thing? That's because you're too far away from God. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, lo and behold, that does fix it. Now, there is the core of the problem. So we always have to remember that no matter what we're diagnosing as our problem today, we're misdiagnosing. This is the core problem. So when we go into the big book and it's, what does it say our dilemma is? Lack of power. Now, do we always diagnose it that way? Oh, I just got fired. My kid ran away. I don't know where the heck he is. Oh, my God. What are these feelings that I'm having? It's hard to go. Oh, this is lack of power. You follow what I'm saying? Because our mind just is quickly interpreting and going, oh, no, I need more money and I have to go find my son and I have to do that. That's why I am so upset. No, that is not the case. Not why you're upset. My friend Marley says misery is optional. So if we are troubled, it is because we have a circumstance which is neutral that is bothering us. That's the problem, not the circumstance. See, the guy next door has the same circumstance, but his spiritual condition is such that it's not troubling him. It is just a circumstance. Oh, I lost my car. Oh, I'll find it tomorrow. You see what I'm saying? It's not a major event. He just, well, I'll notify the police. And the guy over here is losing, he can hardly breathe. My car, my car, my car's going to be . They both have the same circumstance. This guy is not being troubled by it. This guy is being troubled by the circumstance. What's his problem? Lack of power. Lack of power. Lack of power. If you will go to, the power doesn't make you find your car. The power gets you undisturbed. And the problem wasn't the car missing. The problem was that it bothered you that it was missing. You see the difference? It is, it is a very core issue. And so as we go, even in the beginning, of course, we can't even conceptualize this. I'm sure there's people sitting out here now going, what? What do you think? I'm just saying that the problem's there. I'm sure there's people sitting out here now going, what do you think? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? No, no, no, and that's not the problem. I'm just saying that the problem is something we can't have a life without, without circumstantial issues and problems. Yeah. I mean, it's unavailable. If we think the solution's going to be that we're going to get to a point where we just aren't going to have problems ... No, it'll never happen. No, it never happened. But we have to, that's why we have friends. That's why we go to meetings. That's why we go in there and we just go, well, I've, . and they have problems? No, it'll never happen. No, it'll never happen, but that's why we have friends. That's why we go to meetings. That's why we go in there and we just go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then you just go. Well, we have to surrender. We're going to get this, and we can get undisturbed again and then move into the situations and resolve them on the other level. Now, this is brought out beautifully. It's my favorite thing to talk about in the fundamental nature of the problem in the chapter of the agnostic, and I think I do this every time I talk. I go to those first two paragraphs in the chapter of the agnostic, and it says, okay, are you new? Let me explain spirituality to you. I'm going to explain. It's very simple. It's a real easy thing. It's not like religion where we tell you about a certain higher power who was born 4,000 years ago. This is our best guess of what he looked like, and this was over an interwar. He was born in India, and he left these messages, and so you believe what I'm saying, then trust this power, and you're going to be fine. We don't have an AA power. There's no such thing, and spirituality doesn't have a power. It has a path. It has a technique to get in touch, and then you can describe what this power is. So they lay it out. So how do you get spiritual then if there's nothing to believe in? You see what I'm saying? How do you do this? Well, you go to the. The problem as it's laid out in that chapter, and it says very simply, and see if you can follow this. Now, if when you drink, you have little control over the amount you drink. Everybody. If when you stop, you can't stay stopped. Everybody. Then you're an alcoholic. Okay, so there it is. Yeah, I'm an alcoholic. Okay, now let me tell you what that means when you just said you're an alcoholic. If that's the case, you are suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience can cause. And you go, what? I remember my sponsor talking to me, and he says, did you hear what I said? You're suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience. It's one of the rare illnesses in the American Medical Association that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And I said, Bill, I don't believe in spiritual experience. Oh, you're screwed. I'm sorry. Well, what am I going to do? Why don't you change your mind? You're going to get a spiritual experience. You're going to get a spiritual experience. You're going to get a spiritual experience. Why don't you change your mind? Become a former agnostic. Become a . And then I'm going, spiritual experience, what is that? You know, I'm going to believe in the power. What is that? And I had the same feeling Bob did. I don't want to get spiritual that made me give all my crap away to the poor. What if it overtakes you and your mother Teresa, and she doesn't go bowling or anything? So I don't want that. You know, I don't want to become entirely spiritual. I want to be partial. Whoa. So then the next paragraph confronts us. Okay, you're almost spiritual. You're almost there. It says, to be doomed in alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face. That's a Jack Benny punchline right there. That is a comedy line. Do you understand it? Okay, you're on the quiz program. You're called up. Okay, Mary, you got to choose one of these doors, door A or door B. Die in alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis. And guess what? Wow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Is there another door? Oh. Doctor, how bad is an alcoholic death? Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Okay, I'll do the spiritual door. Why do we get spirituals? Nowhere else to go. They made us a deal we couldn't refuse. We didn't believe in it. We believed that there had to be something behind that door or it's over. So AA doesn't try to prove the existence of a higher power, but it sure convinces you of the need for one. Okay. You accept to your core gut that you need a higher power, you're 95% there. That's the way I feel. The game is almost over. We just have the other 11 steps. But there's, you see, but that's hardly anything. The steps are very easy. It's debating whether you're going to do them that is the hard part. How long does it take to do a fourth step? Oh, four years and three hours. Four years of delaying and three hours of doing it. But if we desperately have to get through it all, these things go bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You can just go through because we're eager to get there. Why are we eager to get there? Are we convinced there's a pot of gold at the end? No. We're convinced that what will happen if we don't get there is that we're going to die. What will happen if we don't do it? And then when we get there, we go, oh, my God, I had no idea I was going to get this jackpot. And then when we tell our stories, it doesn't sound like that. We go, well, I came in, I saw this beautiful spiritual program, and I just went for it. And then your sponsor goes, yeah, with my hands around your neck. Hands around your neck choking you. You eagerly sought the spiritual program. So what I'm just covering there is don't misdiagnose anything. The last thing I'll turn back to Bob is I don't think I've missed more than four days without going to a meeting. And I'll tell you why. I don't want to ever do that. Because I've heard stories about guys with gals with solid, solid programs. And they moved. And when they first moved, there was a screw-up, and the house heating system wasn't working, and this thing, and their job sent them over here. And then they got sick. And through no real deliberate action on their part, they went maybe a month without meetings. And here comes the tricky part. And they felt even better than when they were going to meetings. Ladies and gentlemen, I could not handle that. You put that in my computer that I feel better after a month without meetings than I did with 25 years with meetings, I would not know how to handle that. Where do you file that? You see what I'm saying? Wow. Maybe I overreacted. You were pretty young. Yeah, I was young. You know. Maybe in 25 years they've taken the impurities out of booze that hurts you. Maybe I didn't need those meetings all the time. Maybe I was brainwashed. Maybe I'm doing great. I can't believe that. I don't know how to handle that. I never want to have that situation. So I'm just going to keep going and going so that I never have to deal with that. Okay. Enough out of me. Back in here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The problem is that you say things so well, it doesn't need anything added to it. I mean, think of it. Think of how well he just, you know, went back to something that I have read three or four times in the last three or four months. But drew my attention. You know, strong enough. Strong enough. In a stronger way than it was when I read it. And again, that's the nature of a spiritual book. Is that when you really bring your attention to it, it is new. I mean, I think most of us heard that new. Not like, you know, the first two paragraphs of the chapter to the agnostic. And isn't that, I mean, there is nothing in our society that would support what Sandy said. . I mean, there is not much. I mean, the other thing is what you need is, you know, younger women, faster horses and more money. Or whatever that song was. You know, I mean, that's what you need. That's where your answer is. There is a guy, there is a book I was reading by Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. And one of the distinctions he makes is the difference between happiness. He says happiness is a condition that is based on your perception that circumstances are okay. So most of us are thinking that what do you want? I want to be happy. But peace and joy are not conditioned upon circumstances being okay. You can have peace and joy and have trouble. Most of us identify the trouble with ourselves. We think we are the problem. That something is wrong with my life. Not my life circumstances. And it's really tough to change your life. You know, it isn't so tough to get on a budget. But it's tough to change who you think you are. And I think that many of us have these distinctions collapsed. And what we are trying to do is kind of change our essential selves. What Sandy, part of what Sandy was saying is when you access the power, the problem just becomes circumstances. You are now able to be in front of those circumstances. I for the longest time had an issue of being angry and occasionally violent with my middle boy. He was just a pain in the ass. He was just a challenge to me. He just, and it wasn't like there weren't issues. You know, he would occasionally get arrested or get thrown out of school or something like that. And my attitude was what are you going to do? I mean, what the heck are you going to do? I don't know what to do. And I was doing what my dad did with me. And my wonderful, wonderful man, my father. But I was doing what my dad did with me. It wasn't working. But, you know, it's a family thing. And somewhere into the unworkability of that, I got the thought that Sandy talked about with his neighbor. If my brother was parenting my son, my brother would not be doing what I am doing. If there were ten men who had my son as their son, only two of us would have struck them. And I think that's what Sandy was saying. If there were ten men who had my son as their son, only two of us would have struck them. Where is the problem? Okay. The problem is not in the circumstance. The problem is in my reaction to the circumstance. Life is just full of circumstances. I'll tell you something else about circumstances and problems. I don't think about problems being opportunities. How is God going to get our attention if something wants to change? How is the universe going to get our attention if it wants to get the message to us? And the message is it's not working. Okay. Pain. Or your spouse. Or your father. Or your son. It's going to come from the people in your life. Maybe your creditors. Maybe a cop. But depending upon how integrated your life is. That is the universe giving you evidence of the workability and unworkability of your life. And it is a signal to pay attention. And you can change. Make decisions. Start to do something different. And we take it as, you know, why am I getting this message? Something is wrong. We panic when we do this. And I really think that what it is, is guideposts. You know when they say what do I do to become enlightened? Chop wood and carry water. What it means is live your life. As you live your life, you will be presented with the material you need to become spiritually enlightened. To become spiritually awake. As you live your life with your spouse. You will be presented with the unworkability of yourself in relationships. Or with your father. Or with your mother. Or with your son. Or with your boss. When you live your life in long term relationships. You will be presented with what needs to be dealt with for you to become spiritually awake. And then you bring it back into the process. You know, you bring it back into our practice. And as Andy said, once you start to believe that your resolution is in finding the power. The circumstances don't, it isn't personal. That's the thing that is just so profound to me over a period of time. Your life isn't personal. It isn't, it's almost like it's not about you. I mean, I mean that sounds nuts. But I mean there's a freedom in that. The biggest freedom I've been able to maintain in my, access in my life. And I don't even know if this relates to what the heck we're talking about. But I am a reactor. You know, that spring loaded 60 miles an hour head first type thing. I would get a thought and I would react. And the thought, when I would have it, would be printed on my eyeball. When a thought is printed on your eyeball, it is your reality. There is no other place to look. Okay. So I would think, what else can you do? You know, I mean, I get it and I act on it. Okay. After a period of time, as you start to access, you know, the first three steps, you start to rely on the God of your understanding. When you start to get out of your way and you start to realize that your thoughts are not reality. There's something wrong with the pattern. I mean, one of the things, one of the great conversations we have in Alcoholics Anonymous is you have to have a healthy questioning of your own thinking. Not a neurotic questioning, but a healthy questioning of what goes through your mind. It is, you know, that's, you know, our thinkers are not, you know, always in tune. And so when you have that thought, I now have a space between my thought and when I act. I have a choice. I didn't, I think I've always had that choice, but it didn't appear to me that I had that space nor that choice. So I get a, I get, and at 37 years of sobriety, I get the same thought when I'm angry. I might have a thought to strike someone. But I look at that today and I think, wow, I haven't had that thought in two months. Where the heck did that come from? I haven't had that thought in a year and a half. Where the hell did that come from? I am not my thought. I'm no longer the monkey on a string. I'm not a jukebox. You can put a coin in me and push B5. I don't have to play B5. I used to have to play it. You put me in front of the circumstance, we're going to dance, baby. You want to dance? We'll dance. Okay. But now you put the coin in, you push the button, and I have to, I get to choose. That is like being let out of jail. Without any circumstance in my life being changed, I get to be at peace. In the circumstances, I get to be untroubled, as our book talks about. That is the priority. And therein lies, there is a significant part of the practice and solution. Good job, buddy. We're at the break. Folks, we're getting down to the final hour. And before I get started, I want to thank you all. I mean, I've really had a good time. I've seen a lot of friends I haven't seen in a while. And it's been a great pleasure for me. I enjoy this. Like I said earlier, it's nothing like handing a knife around the house. like handing out good news. And that's all this is, is to just tell everybody. There used to be a radio commentator named H.V. Kaltenborn, and he used to start his program, There's Bad News Tonight. And I like to start ours, There's Good News Tonight. All we got here is good news. And so continuing, my favorite prayer is the St. Francis prayer. And St. Francis was quite a character because he was kind of like us a little bit. He was like a crusader with the swords and going off and whacking all the Muslims' heads off and just raging heck all over. The Middle East and in the name of God. And he just saw that he didn't want to do that anymore. And he started really thinking about what would spirituality be? How do you do it? And he came to the conclusion that you must try to totally eliminate your ego. And that's what he spent his life doing, was trying to find one more thing. And he found one thing where his ego was demanding something. So he would sleep outside and he would give away his possessions and do various things. Not to be a nice person, but to keep reducing the ego so that the channel between his spiritual energy inside could open and he could feel nothing. He would be closer and closer to the pure energy. And as he did that, people liked to be near him. Just to feel the energy. Just to feel that. And so his very being brought joy wherever he went. And that's the main attraction about St. Francis. And you see the birds and the animals and they're all, they just want to hang around. That energy. And of course, that's the energy of our higher power. So the real joy of the whole thing was just go hang around your higher power. I mean, that's what it's about. But you can't go there because your ego doesn't want you to. So the steps are designed to crash all the blockages between us and this flow of energy. St. Francis called it the channel. Help me to open the channel of thy peace. I used to think that the peace was God's peace out here. And if I could get my character defects and do all the steps and open this up, then this peace would come in and I'd just be overcome by this wonderful feeling. That's exactly backwards. The peace comes out from me. It can finally, I can see that I was born with that. It's been in there all along. Part of the suffering that we do is that the real us wants to love everybody we see. The real us wants to just help other people. But our ego is going, don't fall for that junk. You've got to get out and get yours. You've got to get out and do that. And our real self is crying. It's going, why are you doing that? That's not who I am. Let me out of here. Let me show you who I am. So your ideas about yourself are totally wrong. You are a magnificent creature who is being blocked. By a bunch of ideas that are wrong. Old ideas that failed us nothing. So we go and get the heck out of there. And we learn in the fourth and fifth step that it's impossible to see the truth about ourselves alone. That's why we go to another human being and we get to see the fourth dimension of our four-step inventory. Our third dimension. It's just sitting there. How do you know anything you wrote down is right? Since you wrote it down. You rationalize all the time. That list is probably nothing. So when you self-evaluate, you can only do it in two dimensions. So we need always another person. Don't forget the line. People of very high spiritual development always insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they're getting from God. So high development. And they still check with somebody else. Check with somebody else. How many? How many times we go to our sponsor with this problem. They're after me. They're going to get me. And then he goes, wait, wait. There's this. There's that. There's this. There's that. And then you say, well, if you look at it that way, it's a different thing. This is what power is. It's the power to see it differently. When we see it differently, it changes everything. So I read a book where the author said that, you know what the planet Earth is? It's a soul school. That's what it is. That's why it's here. You know, a whole bunch of souls, and they're going to school down here. So every, and we come in here, and now we're really in a soul school. In order to get through the school, there have to be quizzes. And there has to be exams. And there have to be things. And so, okay, now we're in soul school. We're going to show you how. We're going to show you how to use the power of this wonderful program to get through grief. Wouldn't you like to be able to do that with grace and dignity? Okay, then we've got to kill somebody in your family. Now, see, I'm making a joke, but I'm saying these events have to happen. So now your mother dies. Now we're going to have to deal with grief. This is the saddest thing. This is, I don't know. What would the program have us do? Wow. My mother died, and I've got 10 years in the program. Why don't I try to show the new women in our group how to go through this with grace and dignity, so that when their mother dies, they won't be as afraid of it, and they won't be as frightened of the future? I've been given a very noble challenge here. So I will experience my grief, but I will also experience something bigger than that. Oh, what a great story. Thank you. Okay. So I've got a new way of looking at it. You see the difference? It just takes every challenge that comes along. And if we can get other people to help us see it, see it as having a purpose. It's not to destroy you. It is to destroy more of our ego. It is to have us come out the other side a different person. And so that's the way I look at all the early steps. are opening the channel, opening the channel so this power can flow through. We have to clear up the wreckage of the past, and then when it comes back to me, I'm going to make a comment about six. But what I wanted to get to now is I talked about the promises earlier and the verbs in the promises at the end of the ninth step. It's all these abstract verbs that are only spiritual verbs. You couldn't get that from figuring anything out. It is just a gift that's just handed to you. Peace is handed to you, a way of seeing things. Suddenly life takes on a real meaning. How? Hey, don't worry about how. It just happens. It just happens. You're doing these stupid steps that you don't believe in, and all these things are just happening because the power is causing them to happen in you. In the big book, there's an interesting sentence. Right after the promises, it says now we're at step ten. And it's about the fourth sentence down. It says, we have entered the world of the spirit. And we saw that we entered it when we saw the promises. See, the promises are using verbs that describe the world of the spirit. So after the first nine steps, now we're going to enter the world of the spirit, and that world exists. This and ten, eleven, and twelve. This is the world of the spirit. So where is the world of the spirit? You know what I mean? Is it another planet? Is it over there? Or you go to India, up in the Himalayas? I mean, where is the world of the spirit? And we find out the world of the spirit is in the now, which is exactly what Bob was talking about in the book that he was kind enough to get me a copy of. The spirit only exists in the now. There's no other place to find it. So anytime we're worried about the past or frightened about the future, we're cut off from the spirit. So the whole tenth step and eleven and twelve, passing the message on and practicing principles in all our affairs, you look at the twelfth step, it lists a hundred different problems. You know what I'm saying? You remember the twelfth step in the twelve and twelve? It's just a hundred different problems. And then this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and that's going to happen. Those are all spiritual quizzes. They're all little tests to show you the power that you now have access to. And it'll show, it just talks in there about, now when this happens, and you just get closer to your higher power, and it'll lift you out of that one. It'll give you a different way of looking at it. It'll always show you how these are designed to have you grow and not get destroyed. Your ego's getting destroyed, but you're being set free. So problems, our attitude towards problems or circumstances changes. And it says that in the seventh step, that our attitude towards pain changes. Because pain is just the ego being crushed some more and some more. And as we see the outcome and the growth that comes out of every bit of that pain, Bill writes, our attitude about pain changes. We suddenly see it. Oh boy, here, I'm going to be going somewhere. And so, it all of a sudden, it becomes effort. It's kind of like when you're out of shape and you haven't worked out. When you first start, isn't it painful to go over and work out, and the muscles are going, and this and that? Well, what about three months later when you're in shape? You're still doing the same thing that was so painful. Now you're over there going, God, this feels so good, and it's energizing me, and I'm doing this. So your whole attitude about pain has changed because you see the results that are coming. Before we got to AA, we were going to the gutter, and every bit of pain was driving us down, and now every bit of pain is guiding us up. The course of spirituality is like a beam. When I was taught flying, and I think Creighton, the same thing, the only navigation they had was the radio range. You remember the radio range, Creighton? There was no needle. You didn't have anything in there to tell you. You had to listen and pick up this beam, and then if you were off the beam to the right, you heard an A, you know, and then if you went off to the left, you heard an N, dot, dot, whichever they are. And so if you ever got on a radio beam and heard nothing but a solid beam,