Why Spirituality Is the Air in the Tires – Sandy B.

Well, good morning everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? It's a pleasure to be here this morning. I want to thank you all for inviting me to join in on your excellent conference. And I just love being at AA Functions. It just reinforces the tremendous truth that has slowly sunk in my mind about how wonderful this world is. and I'm just grateful to be part of it and to have been one of the drunks that was selected out of all the drumps that could have been selected for this wonderful thing. You know, when you get selected it doesn't look like it's a good deal. The cop pulls you over instead of all of the other drunk drivers that are out there that night. It doesn't looks like a messenger from God you know pull over here that you're about to be singled out of all the people in that alcoholic hellhole to be let out of there and uh you're resenting it and you're complaining and god look what happened to me and i suppose in a way that's our first um introduction to spirituality that it doesn't look like what it is and I suppose that's what I'm going to talk about this morning is I always give myself a challenge every time I give a talk I go you pick some subject sometimes I'll just pick a number out of the air and then I'll talk about that step or whatever but I feel like talking about spirituality or God as I understand him this morning and just have some fun with that. But I first want to get an announcement out of the way. At dinner last night, somebody mentioned that there was a lot of retired naval officers had settled in this area. And so I just want to see if by any chance a certain person is here. And if you're here, then you'll know who you are and we'll be able to take care of something. But this goes back to 1964 when I was locked up in a nut ward at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. And I had been in there about four months, and they were having a clay class competition of ashtray making. and I had made the best ashtray without anybody everybody in the nut ward said mine was the best ash tray that had been made and the doctors were going to judge it the next morning and you had maybe the second best ashray that was because you were a navy lieutenant commander at that time and you were up in there for some strange thing it was not alcoholism and you came into my room with that big cigar and and just were smoking it and talking and then you put it out in my ashtray and then acting like it was an accident you knocked it off that table by the bed and it smashed and you won first prize in the and I figured hey you know maybe you're an alcoholic and you ended up in AA and maybe after all these years you might be working on steps eight and nine and you're going, I wonder where that Marine captain is, or, you know, that guy that I broke his ashtray. Now, I've totally forgotten about the incident myself, so... If you're here, and you want to do a nice step on it, I'll just be around after the meeting, so. Having gotten that out of the way, I also want to say what a thrill it was to hear Peggy last night. God, I've forgotten what a powerful speaker she is. And we do have the same neighborhood going in our brains. I'm very familiar with that raging debate that goes on up in there. But the program has given me freedom from that. It's given me the power to be set free. and I like to think that perhaps the term peace of mind for some of us is a misstatement that the real term should be peace from mind you know what I'm talking about it's like if I could just get a break from this and I think I got it here the old way that i got a peace from mind was drinking drinking had the power to stop all that turmoil and make me comfortable and make the world a very nice place to live in and very briefly i grew up in new england i was raised in the catholic church and had wonderful parents and was sent to a very nice school and went on into a career in the Marine Corps. And if you were to look at my record and so on down, you'd say, gee, that guy is doing well. And of course, as we look on the outside, everything seems to be in good shape. But what was going on the inside was an entirely different thing and it was a lot of confusion. I got the idea of a punishing God. I gotthe idea of being totally frightened by the world. I don't know what caused that. It might have been physical. It may have been incidents that came along. I know when I was a little boy, I had polio and it was before we had the vaccines that prevent it and all of a sudden you're whisked off into a hospital and they're so terrified about this epidemic that no parents could visit and other little kids are dying. Maybe that scared me or something. I don't know. You can make up all kinds of reasons that you ended up with your own little view of the world, but I don' t think it' s particularly unique to alcoholics. I think everybody in the world has this particular challenge, which is to take a childish, very immature perspective of the world and grow until you get comfortable with it. It's a very complicated process, and it's called growing up. And this is very unfamiliar to most people who arrive in AA. I've never heard people refer to AA as this organization of grown-ups, you know. And Bill writes about that in the 12 and 12. Just somebody sort of analyzed the fellowship after a while, and they were very discouraged to find out that they found it was composed of grandiose, immature, and childish people and that was sort of and I think back on it why is that? well you know why? because alcoholics found a shortcut to growing up drinking you could just get there instantly you didn't have to go through the pain of change you could be there in about 15 minutes and you could be comfortable and so this particular guy when I think about my driving force was fear. That to me is what I remember the most and I feel is the greatest threat to my instability is fear, or to my stability is fear. I never fit in right. I always had that feeling that you all knew what you were doing and you knew what was going on. Somebody had called you aside and said, don't tell Sandy but the secret to life is blah, blah, bla, bla. And then you knew and that's why you could get along. That's why I'm here. That's how you knew how to go to school and check in and get your books and get to the right class and get good grades and you just went about your business and some of you even knew when you were about 15 what you wanted to be when you grew up. I'll never forget talking to a guy who said, I've known since I was nine that I wanted to become a doctor. I said, Jesus, how the hell did you know that? How could you possibly have known that? I have no idea what I want to do tonight. Much less what you want to be when you grow up. How do you know this? So I was always sort of overpowered by what the devil was going on in the world. I suppose most teenagers are. You're just wandering around, wondering what's going on, pretending that you do know. And I didn't realize everybody else was sort of pretending. I guess that's what being cool is, pretending that, you know, what's going on. Hey, I know. I know, you now. Why? Do I look like I don't know? I must not be standing right. There. Do I looks like I know now? I'll get some sunglasses there now I know what I know and all that so see my problem was I was buying into all of that I really thought everybody else knew and alcohol fixed it God it was amazing what alcohol did it just came in and turned the world into a wonderful place to live in that was basically what happened. Alcohol had the power to change the world into a place that I liked. It was Alice in Wonderland. When I drank, I walked through the looking glass and there was the world that everybody was talking about. That was what they were talking about. They said, I would hear this from people, my friends and they'd say, isn't this a great world? You know, aren't people just great? And I would think about that And I'd go, Jesus, who are they talking about? Are people great? People were very threatening. They were very intimidating. And so how could they be saying, aren't people great, isn't this a great world and all that? And I just go, well, I don't understand what they're talking about. But after three drinks, then I knew what they were talking about, damn, they were right. This is a wonderful world. People are marvelous. Alcohol had this great power to transform you into the kind of people I just wanted to be with all the time. I just couldn't have enough of people when I had alcohol in me. As soon as it was drained out of my system, you became threatening again, and I wanted to isolate. I wanted To get away from you because you were draining, and you just, I didn't know how to handle you. And then when I Had alcohol in, I couldn't get enough of you. I just loved being with you. I would go into a strange town and go into A bar and have three or four drinks. The bartender would find me sobbing. He'd say, What's the matter? And I said, I was just sitting here in your bar, and I was suddenly overcome by the beauty of your customers. I've never seen such magnificent people in my life. What town is this? I mean, it's just, God, you have, the quality of the people that are in here is just overpowering. It was almost like the spirituality of these other drunks was too much for me. I just buy them all around. I mean, just tell him I love him, you know. Please. God, it was just wonderful, the power of alcohol to transform my world. So that's what makes me an alcoholic. Because alcohol doesn't do that for non-alcoholics. I thought it did, but it doesn't. And I always tell this story that I started drinking with this guy up at Yale, which was my hometown in New Haven, but I ended up going to the university there and he and I started drinking together and now he's down in Dallas and he's a big businessman and he is not an alcoholic but I thought we both drank the same he got arrested one night and we were just getting in trouble and always had a beer and this and that so I always thought Roy was one of us you know what I mean I thought he was just like me turns out he is just a regular person and when I would speak in Dallas I guess starting about 20 years ago or 15 years ago I'd invite Roy over. I said, Roy, I'm in AA, and he took a look at me and saw what wonderful things AA did, and he wanted to go see what AA was. He said, God, that must be some outfit, and he loved it. So when I go down to Dallas, we make Roy an honorary member of AA, and he comes over to the meetings. And the reason I tell you this background is one time when I was about 50, I was over at Roy's house, and I said to him, Roy, you and I started drinking together, and I thought we were very similar. I mean, you don't remember all the trouble and this and that. And I said, now you're 50 years old, you're looking back, how would you describe alcohol? What would you say to a reporter if he walked up and said, Roy, what does alcohol mean to you? What is the significance of it in your life? And he thought about it a little bit, and he said, well, the first thing that just comes to my mind that's very important to me alcohol enhances the taste of food alcohol enhances the taste of food something I would never have come up with in a million years as the top quality of alcohol and I felt like saying it but I didn't but I always say it at AA meetings It's going, is that going down or coming up? You know, that makes food taste better. It just, that was one of the top things. And then he went on to say that at the end of the workday comes home and he may get a drink and have a few sips out of the drink and go take a shower and it's sort of a transition from the work day into the relaxing after the end of the work day. And then sometimes during the year, I'll have some friends over and they'll have a few drinks and it'll be sort of a social mixer and people will get to talk to each other. And that was the endof his discussion of alcohol. He never said, alcohol? It's the secret of life. The most important thing in the world, alcohol. That's what it is. So it wasn't that important to him. Alcohol did not fix anything for my friend. It didn't fix, it didn't change the world that he lived in. Didn't do any of the things it was doing for me, but I thought it did. I thought that we were all alike. And I find out that that's what makes us alcoholic. We're the 10% that alcohol comes in and solves a problem. Alcohol doesn't cause problems, it solves problems. That's why we keep on drinking. That's, you know, it's worth the price of admission. Sure, there's some problems that it causes later on. You go to jail, you get your teeth knocked out, liver damage, DTs, convulsions, nut warts. But hey, that's just sort of that fringe area stuff. The main thing is it solves the fundamental problem of life. It solves not knowing what's going on. It solves living in a world that's too overpowering. It solves problems. That's what makes me an alcoholic. Alcohol fixed the fundamental problems that I had. So anyway, I did my drinking in the Marine Corps and I was a fighter pilot and I have all these exciting stories about that. But mostly I was drunk. And when I look back and get honest about it, Drinking was my full-time obsession, and being in the Marine Corps was a hobby. You know what I mean? It got some attention when I could take my eye off of the alcoholism and make up the stories and the lies and deal with the physical problems and all of these bizarre events that go on. You can't go to the dentist. I could never go tothe dentist because dentists would smell the alcohol and they would look in my eyes and see that I'd been drinking and then somewhere during the dental appointment he would say to me, do you see that little cup up there that I have filled about a sixteenth of an inch over the rim? Well just reach out there and take that cup and rinse your mouth out. I knew that was a trap for us alcoholics because we got our hand out there and it would just go you know how could I couldn't get that cup there's no way I could get that cup sober with the shakes there's nowhere I could get that cup over to me I mean I was one of these guys that needed my first drink at the bar to use two hands and then later on I had to bend over and just get those first couple drinks I remember joking around some guy showed me how to take a handkerchief around your thing and hold the drink here and just pull it up this way any you know so actually there's no way i could go to the dentist so you had to reschedule going to the dentists you get an annual physical as a pilot and they're looking at go well your high blood pressure a little bit high your vision starting to get this way but your teeth they're about to fall out of your head you have free dental care why don't you go to oh i've got an appointment i'm right over there and now the dentist says you better be back here I didn't see you, and I had to just reschedule for the whole year. This is Captain Beach calling. I won't be able to make that appointment. Reschedule me for next Tuesday. So 50 rescheduling, and I'm back in there, and the dentist is just going, I can't believe this guy. Well, he didn't know I was an alcoholic. He didn't no that it was the disease of alcoholism. And so those are sort of the flavor of what went on during those years. And then eventually I ended up in the nut ward with the DTs and convulsions and straitjackets and was locked up for six months because there was no AA. And that was in 1964, as Peggy said. And I got out of there after six months. And as an outpatient, I was out and I drank again for about a week. And then I called AA on my own, outside AA. They had gotten a couple meetings into the nut word and a big guy came to my house, my sponsor, still my sponsor coming up on 29 years and he just took over he just walked into this shaking skinny neurotic mess and just said, my name is Bill this is a 12 step call, I talk you listen and I was just going well if you could just leave some literature and all this and he's just get in the car you know just get in the cart was just there was there was a threat of physical violence that went with the get in my car it was like there was no discussion there was no but you know it just look at you Jesus and it would just go to the meeting sit in the front row incurable row just sit there and if you need an opinion i'll give you an opinion shut up and just sit there and so this was like boot camp and i did and i shook and shook i just shook i still can shake i can still i get up in the morning sometimes i'll go out and i like healthy things and i'll get wheat germ and i take a spoonful of that and i'd be starting to bring it up and my brain will remember you know that you're not steady you're a shaker and that crap will go all over the only difference is it doesn't bother me you know what I mean I just go hey I got money for tons of wheat germ but it's still there whatever all that is about is still there if I ever let it out of the cage if I never let it out of a cage God knows that's why me staying sober for me today is more important than it was in 1964 I got too much to lose now oh man I probably never get back you read about old-timers they go out aren't too many of them get back so um I know what's waiting that um type of thinking is in my brain it's a channel five rerun whatever i don't know what the reruns are in this area but in washington dc it's channel five father knows best i mean all of the programs that for many many years ago you want to watch them you just watch that channel and that stuff is right up here all i have to do turn it on is take one drink and that'll just come back in and that be the program that I'm watching and it'll be just like it was only worse. It's just there, that was so my own thinking is that's what it's all about. I mean what other thing is there in life other than your own thinking? That's that's like 100 of the whole game is your own thinking. Did you ever try and change it? Okay, thinking negatively all the time. I'm just going to think positively. I remember hearing that, just think positively or don't think about a drink. That was the first time I tried that. Somebody's trying to tell me how to get sober. Don't think about a drinking. You're thinking about, I know I'm thinking about a drank. My whole life depends on me thinking about a drink. If I'm not thinking about it, who's going to think about it? You know, I mean, I've got to think about it. I've Got to know where the money for the next drink is. I've GOT to know where the drink is, what time the store is closed and I mean Jesus, I have to keep it. No, you've got to be set free from that. Don't think about drinking and I remember just okay, I won't think about drinking. I'm starting now. Here it is. 11 o'clock Sunday, March 5th, whatever day or April 5th whatever it is that's it starting right now 11 o'clock no more thinking about drinking okay Budweiser ah damn there goes that somehow that's not okay it's 1101 I'll start again no thinking about and then you realize you're not in charge of that process doesn't matter what you decide to do it's going to keep going just on and on and as soon as you stop to take a breath it just takes over i know what you're trying to do but you got to take care i mean there's a whole committee up there i understand what you'RE TRYING TO DO out there you'RE trying to get sober and all that but and uh i just need some relief from that and that's what drinking did it shut that up and it put me in touch with something I didn't know what it was but it was a power greater than myself and it was very wonderful and there was promises the promises were read here this morning I remember those promises on a vodka bottle they're the same ones you will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle you fear of economic insecurity will leave you buy around for 200 people you know what i mean just hey only got half the rent money anyway so might as well put it to good use day at a time that's right a day at the time philosophy drinking eat drink and be married today tomorrow you may be dead so i had a lot of those things i hit this and there was this power there's a great parallel to me between drinking and spirituality at least for us alcoholics i was willing to turn my life completely over to the care of vodka completely over i didn't realize i had done that i didn' t realize i'd done that but i really did i didn''t know what was going to happen when i drank i had no idea what was gonna happen when I drank i couldn't guarantee what was going to happen when I drank. But I knew something was going to happen. That I knew. I knew I wasn't going to drink and then go, hey, nothing's happening. I'm still in this uncomfortable world. For me, drinking a bottle of vodka was like checking a book out of the library. You know, an adventure novel. You can look at the cover. Maybe you've read the author before. And somebody told you a little bit about the book. But until you read that book, you really don't know what's in store for you when you check it out. It may be filled with sex and then a little bit of traveling towards the end and a couple of fights. And that wasn't what you expected at all. You thought this thing was primarily a political novel, you know what I mean? And boy, what a surprise this was. Same thing with a bottle of vodka. I could hold it up. I wonder what's in this damn stuff. I'd like the trouble-free kind, basically. Bought a bottle in here last week, went right to jail. Didn't even, I got halfway through the damn stuff, boom, I'm in jail. And you could smell it and you never knew. It could be traveling whiskey. You know, you just, you go down in your rec room, have a couple of drinks. you've got the basketball tournament on and you wake up in Wiggins, Mississippi and your wife says how did you get from the rec room to Wiggings well I know it sounds impossible but I heard this accident out there I went out to help a guy said he had a business deal in Wiggs who knows or it was I like the kind where you bought the bottle and the big blonde showed up that was my favorite kind and you'd go back and you go look I saved the bottle here's the serial number where is the case this came out of if I could get that but there was no such guarantee you didn't know you just you could smell it shake up there and you said well take the top off of this mother and find out what's going to happen now if that isn't turning your life over I mean there was no guarantee what was going to happen it's just that something had to happen though I mean it had to happened it had to take me away from where I was that was the key thing was to take me away from where my mind had me at that moment, because near the end, I can remember jumping, trying to jump out of my mind, get out of My skin. That was what I was trying to do. I was trying to get free from Me. It just let Me out of here. In the very end, that's funny, that happened in Atlanta, Georgia. I had been down through, I've forgotten about that. I had been done my last, when I got grounded from flying and I was in Pensacola and they were watching me for a couple of weeks, all the doctors. What happened to this guy? His hands are shaking. He's this and that. And we got to figure out what happened to him. And they couldn't find anything. And so they left it up to the psychiatrist who concluded that I had a childhood fear of flying. That's what was causing withdrawal symptoms and stuff in airplanes. And now I was no longer going to fly. It was a terrible, terrible moment. And then they were sending me back to Cherry Point, North Carolina. And you had to come through Atlanta. And I got on that plane and I started freaking out on the plane. I was almost trying to take the door off and just get out of there because I couldn't stay there. I had to be somewhere else. And when that plane landed in Atlanta, it just stopped here to get some more people and then go on to Cherry Point. I got off. And they said, your bag is still. I said, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. I'm out of here. And I don't know how I got downtown. I don't remember getting downtown, but I got checked into some hotel and I called my wife up in Cherry Point and I said, send money. I had to get off the plane in Atlanta. I have to get out of there. I remember sometimes getting a haircut and the guy would be halfway through and I'd say, it's over. I'll not hear. I am out of here. He said, but I'm only forget it. I am out here. Here is your money i had to get out of there because i couldn't stand being what was going on and it was all in my mind i could whatever was just driving me crazy so this was a uncomfortable place to be was inside of there anyway this big sponsor comes along now all of a sudden they go don't drink and i'm just going don't drinking you don't understand don't when i don't drank that's when all the problems come. That's why when you tell an alcoholic, don't drink, he says or she says, you don't understand that you're sentencing me to incredible pain. You know, Clancy talks about that. Alcohol is what prevents a lot of us from going insane. I mean, that's what takes the pressure off of our basic problem or my basic problem. My basic problem was sobriety. Every time I was sober, it was awful. I'd walk into the bar and I'd go, bartender, have you got anything for sobriete? And I find myself totally sober at the moment, and have been so for a number of hours. And as each hour goes by, it gets increasingly more threatening. And if it keeps going, if I keep staying sober, and this pressure keeps building, I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. Yes, I've got something to fix that, and you'd hand me a drink, and I'd thank him, and it would fix it, and I would be comfortable again. So I came in here, and he said, Don't drink. And I said, At all? he said no just one day at a time well I saw through that one day at a times guys are up there it's my 10th anniversary another guy is 20th 5 years this and that people planning on staying sober the rest of their lives in here I mean you know oh it's just a day at the time I knew there was a conspiracy in here that secretly people were hoping to never drink again you know what I mean so I'm sitting out there interpreting this don't ever drink again which to me meant, see how you feel now? Stay that way forever. Right? Stay that way for ever. And I can't stay this way forever, I'll freak out, I'm going to explode out of my skin trying to stay this way for forever. And that's when they said, well we're going to tell you about the program and we're going to introduce you to something as revolutionary as drinking. And a great parallel to drinking, it's not going to look like it will work. You must understand this ahead of time. It will not look like. It will work on the other hand, drinking doesn't look like it should work. What if you were a doubter about alcohol and all your friends start drink and tell you the wonders of alcohol? And you said, I can tell without drinking that stuff that it wouldn't do that for me. And how could they prove it to you? How could they convince you that if you drank this, you will know how to dance and go right out there and ask somebody how to danc and you will have a wonderful time and you're terrified to go out on that dance floor. You just drink this and you'll intuitively know how to ask women out and how to dans. Let me smell that stuff. Christ, it smells like motor oil. You telling me I poured this inside inside and dancing lessons come with it, and it just goes down in there. That's the damnedest story I ever heard. I don't believe that. I do not believe in the power of alcohol. We could have doubted that because it really does not look like it should be able to do that. Just this one glass of clear liquid would go inside and make the world a better place to live in fix all of these deep-seated problems that have been racing around in there it sounds like a far-fetched story to me just a bottle that stuff so it didn't look like it had that kind of power but it did and the only way you knew it was by doing it there's only way you could know the truth about alcohol was to do it and so if you're new i think you're going to find the same thing in AA. It does not look like it should work. This spirituality doesn't look like it could produce the results that it does produce, which is why AA is a big show-and-tell operation. You don't have to take much on faith in AA at all. We have all these meetings, and we just get various amounts of sobriety up in various backgrounds up in front of you. Hi, I'm Mary. I used to be a prostitute, and now I'm in charge of all of AA in this area, and now I'm this, and now I am that. And how I did it was through these 12 steps. So we get to see what sobriety and spirituality look like ahead of time. And I think that's important because it will never make sense looking at it. Did you ever try to explain to your friends about Alcoholics Anonymous? You've been sober for about four or five months. Somebody at work says, Miriam, what the hell is different about you? Are you on a diet? Are in a health club or, God, you just look so wonderful. What has happened to you? And if they're a good friend, maybe you get them aside and you just go, well, let me tell you, I joined AA. And you look like this. You look this, what is AA? What is that all about that this transformation takes place? Oh, it's great. Now you get enthusiastic. You want to tell them about it. And, and you just go. It's the most remarkable thing in the world. I've never felt better. Well, what do you do well let me give you a typical meeting okay so like it's 8 30 maybe like on wednesday night all right so maybe 25 of us will be down in a church basement so we all get some coffee you know and get some cigarettes and get around the table and uh okay so one of us'll be the leader like we take turns and so they'll get up there and they'll find a topic that we can all talk about you know like maybe resentment so then like they'll say something about resentment and then each person you see as you go around the table they get to say something like about resentment and then it'll be eight be 9 30 like an hour takes roughly an hour then like we'll all hold hands and we'll say the lord's prayer and then we go home and they go and it's uh no food supplements or there's not a it's not like an exercise program no that's it maybe five times a week you just do that and it's neat you don't get too many people going could i go with you So AA does not look like it should work. It just doesn't look like it should be a good thing. It should work The problem is, it does It does So if you're new, you know when you're knew the reason that you never win an argument in AA You ever notice that? You come in with a PhD and you're sitting next to a guy who's street smart and you feel superior even though he has 10 years sobriety whatever that means ten years of failing to graduate from this institute. And then you engage in a dialogue and you keep losing. You know what I mean? You keep losing the discussion and you Keep losing. And the reason is all we talk about in AA are results. No theory. We just talk about action and results. Action and results and I remember having this long discussion with someone in that situation when I was new. And I got through with a rather lengthy explanation of some of the finer points of life. And the guy looked at me and he said, it was very interesting what you said, but I just have a problem following the advice of a guy wearing a wristband. Oh, still had the wristband on from the nut ward and tucked it back in. And so all they do, if you're new, we just listen to all your BS and then we simply point at the results of your philosophy of life. And we go, well, it's very interesting what you say, John, but your children don't speak to you. I find that inconsistent with what you are espousing here All of your employers hate you You have no friends and you've attempted suicide several times in the last five or six years And you're asking me to buy into your plan for living On the contrary, what I would suggest, John, is you shit can your plan for living. And go adopt any plan other than yours. And that's why you can't win a discussion when you're new in AA, because all they talk about is results. And the last thing you want to talk about are results, because nobody gets to AA on a roll. Boy, things are just going so good I think I'll join AA get it on my resume and go even higher so the reason this is a spiritual program is it has and we all have in common the absolute requirement for spirituality which is the first step in all things you know our steps were borrowed from religions and philosophies and the early experience of the fellowship itself the Oxford group and all that everywhere when you read in whatever country wherever you go for people who start to get spiritual they all have one thing in common they hit a bottom they hit some sort of a reversal in life that made them reappraise their own views on everything because the human being does not gently let go of their views on things that's very personal we put it together I know I know it may be a little flawed but it's mine I know i'm in jail and I probably never get out but I got here all by my goddamn self you know what I'm talking about I said it It may be a lousy book, but I wrote it. There's that great pride of authorship in our, and we just don't wanna let go of that. You just don' talk people out of their philosophy of life, of their views on life. It's closely held. I put it together myself. I got it from other little kids. I got her from crazy things I read in bathrooms. I got from the nun. I got some of this from here and here it is. And this is the real me. And then our chapter five said, old ideas availed us nothing, nothing. So we hold on to old ideas. If we get rid of some of them, we still get nothing. We have to get rid off all of them in order to get more than nothing. There's total surrender. This does not happen with human beings easily. You just, you compromise. Well, I'm willing to give a little here or give a little there. That's about what we will do intellectually. But this isn't an intellectual program. It's a spiritual program. And I'm going to have to totally let go of intellectual problem solving. Totally let go. Let go of it and come over here and surrender into this. And the only way that's going to happen, I think, is we get selected out by hitting a bottom, a convulsion, a drunk driving. A husband leaves you. The boss calls you in and says, I'd like you to brief your replacement. A doctor calls you and says if I was you, I wouldn't buy any long playing records. Peggy was talking about our friend Buck Doyle and he had the best thing that he talked about. Just sums it up. Sums it up for years. His doctor told him, Buck, you're going to have to stop drinking. It's going to kill you. Tell you, it's going to kill you. And one year the doctor added one word to that message and Buck came into AA. You know what the word was? Soon. It's gonna kill you soon. Soon? How soon? Well, let's see. About 3 30. bam a bottom something hit each one of us that jarred us loose from our death grip on our own ideas and mine was a convulsion and the DTs and a nut wart and and it just it was ripped away from me and I death grip you know somebody who's drowning sometimes the rescuer has to knock them out in order to save them they're struggling so hard with life that something has to come along a convulsion a bottom and bam and we let go and that is the magic moment in each one of our lives that will is changes things forever if the hand of a there is there at that moment and it was there it was this big guy and he just came in and he just went sit here and while that opening was there called an open mind and it didn't open intellectually it opened because of circumstances it opened because of pain and desperation the AA message was there to come through that opening and all that sobriety consists of is keeping that opening open and as the years go by opening wider so that more of what came in on that initial 12 step call can make its way in and to me that's what the spiritual journey is so all of a sudden if you ask me today well what is God as you understand him Sandy what is spirituality what is all of this I'd have a lot of different answers I suppose one that I thought of recently is my God is a total absence of me that's my higher power if I can totally get rid of me that what's left is pure higher power total absence of me and when you think about it that's what AA does talks about in one of our steps living in harmony with the world around us. And whenever I talk about that stuff, I go, harmony! That implies a musical score and that there's some conductor somewhere and that There's a master musical score that's been written. And if we would just read the notes, if we were to read the music, if we'd be open to receiving the notes on this beautiful score, we could all live in harmony because we'd then be playing notes. As a self-centered alcoholic, I only knew one note. me and i just played that note wherever i went i just went and i said hi would you like to know the real me and I just thought telling you all about me was my job and once I had briefed you you would know how to live in harmony with me and my job was simply to tell you about me that talk show host there's a great one-liner on there and the guest said well enough about me What do you think about me? You know, it's just that self-centeredness is self-centeredness. It's the most painful trap that we can be in, to be self- centered. And when you finally admit you're self- centered, a self-censored person says, I am self- center and I will do something about that. Now how are you going to do something about self-center? You're still the center. So what's the opposite of self- centered? Unself-centered? What the hell does that mean? well just be unself-centered I'll I'll be un self-centered that's what I'll do you can't get on self-center you're stuck there how are you gonna get unself centered so the opposite of self-centred is God centered funny thing about shifting from self-centric to God centered I'm not the center of the universe you're not the Center of the universe so when you look at the universe with you as the center it's all screwed up doesn't look right and that's when i look at the world from a self-centered perspective it's lousy you know why because it's not real i'm not the center you're not supposed to look at it from there it'll always look screwed up if you look at it as you as center as soon as you look with god is the center then it all makes sense that's what Chuck Chamberlain's book, A New Pair of Glasses. We're looking at it from the correct perspective. So the same view is magnificent from this new perspective. The trick is to get away from this perspective and get over into a God-centered perspective. Not an easy thing to do, but we got the kit here to do it. And so for me, what I think happens, what I really think happens is very simple. I think we are given a plan for living, a very simple 12-step plan that simply removes all of the obstacles in us, our self-centered character defects, whatever you want to call them. They're blockages. It's like you're the Suez Canal and somebody has piled huge blocks of granite and no water can flow through there. The problem is blockages. It's not a lack of water. It'snot that there's no canal. It'snothat the whole world is screwed up. It's simply blockages, and as soon as we lift those out of there, everything will be perfect. Everything will be just the way it was meant to be. There's nothing that has to be added. Do you ever think about character building that you don't acquire anything? You get rid of things. That's spirituality. It doesn't look like that's the way it works, but that's what happens. I sometimes think of a new person in AA and you can see the beauty in that person if you've been around the program a while before they can and you just can hardly wait for the garbage to get scraped away and for this true magnificence to emerge and I think that's where the steps are all about. A sculptor said when asked How did you make that beautiful sculptor? That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, this beautiful woman standing there with the long flowing gowns and just so smooth and magnificent. And he just said, well, I started with a block of granite and I just took away everything that wasn't beautiful. I just take away everything. I took away anything that wasn t beautiful. Just chipped away until what was left was this incredibly beautiful statue that was already inside the block of Granite. And I say that because I firmly believe that. Already inside of you, if you're a new person, already is this magnificent, beautiful, wonderful, loving, caring creature. It's simply been covered over with garbage. It's just piled on the disease of alcoholism, self-centeredness. It's just covered with this thing we call, for lack of a better word, blockages, character defects, whatever you want. And our assignment in sobriety is simply unwrap us. Just unwrap and get rid of this garbage so that the real you, the real Henry, the Real Mary, the Reel Marian can be seen and that you can experience this. This is the part of us that couldn't stand our drinking. This is why people commit suicide. Because there's a part of us inside that can't stand the way we're living. And we try to become Bobby Badass. That's how I was trying to achieve peace of mind since I knew I couldn't change the way I lived. I tried to kill my soul in order to have peace of mine. If I could just shut up my soul, I wouldn't be thinking of suicide. I would be happy with being a rotten father. I would be happy with being a terrible Marine. Disgrace to the core. I would just go, big deal, disgrace. I'd be able to go right to sleep. But I can't. Why? Because there's a part of me that wants to be a good father. Part of me wants to have friends. There's a party of me who wants to just love people. And it couldn't get out. So that was the insanity for a lot of us alcoholics who are going to try and kill the very good in us. When I see those movies about, would you trade your soul? I go, you're goddamn right. Because then I'd have peace of mind. I would then be able to get a break from the pressure of the conflict between what I wanted to be and what I was. And the other thing that I was trying to do, that many of us were trying to doing, I was doing it on my own. I was just trying to use myself. Trying to do it on My Own. And this is self-centered, ego-driven. I was Trying to Be Spiritual Without a Higher Power. I was trying to live up to values on my own you know that's our own higher power sure other people need God to be of high values I can have my own values and live up to them by myself well values and that type of life that implies beyond human ability we're going to have to rely on something greater than ourselves in order to get there so I was trying to flap my wings and fly like a bird and I'm a human being. You can't become a spiritual person on your own, and I thought you could, and so I felt that I was a terrible person, that I couldn't achieve this, and that's where guilt came from. My own crazy ideas about trying to be good on yourown and overcome your own humanness with your willpower. You know what mean? Overcome that bad in you. That's not the way the ball game works. That is why alcohol was the great relief. As soon as I had that, I had the power to put all that to rest. So I come in here and that is what you told me. There it is. Everywhere in our literature there is only one problem that we have. Lack of power. Nothing else. No psychological problem. Nothing. All this crazy mind, this and that. Forget it. The problem? Lack of power! All you have to do is always stay plugged in. And you know this power is absolutely free. It's just as free as the air that we breathe, and I love to think about air, how important it is to life. And I think about hair in terms of spirituality, and my favorite example is an automobile. You know, an automobile is what we ride in, and we get a wonderful ride. We might buy a BMW and spend $55,000 on it. And what's the most important thing in that smooth ride? Air in the tires. $55,000 car, $400 tires and the air leaks out and you got a crappy ride. Very bumpy, very disconcerting, out of control and you've got the most expensive equipment in the world but you're failing to put in the one free ingredient, air, in the tires. Air in the tyres is our spirituality. It has to be maintained. It's free, but it has to be maintained on a daily basis so you look at the tires. And if they're low, you go get air. You just do that. It's automatic. But sometimes you don't have time to get the leak fixed. Oh! I'll put some air in and I'll get it fixed later. This is a slip developing. This is what a slip looks like in the program. Oh, I know I need a meeting, but I'm busy. I'm very important person, and I'll go tomorrow night. I'll put some air in me tomorrow night, but I don't have time to do that. I don' t have time fix that tire right now. I'm going to close this deal. I' ll add a little air. That will take care of it. Driving around, now it's leaking out faster the next day. Well, put air in twice, but to take the time, you know, you go to the mechanic. They're busy. It could take an hour before the guy gets there. I d n't have an hour, and what happens? You know what happens. You're driving along and all of a sudden in Washington one of our great potholes shows up about 12 feet deep and there's about this much air left in the tire and it ain't enough cushion to take the impact and the tire self-destructs from the inside out. The rim cuts through from the outside and destroys the tire, the ride's over, the car's over my day's over and that's the end of it and that's exactly what a slip looks like. That's exactly what a flip looks like we let the air pressure get low and low and low and we're screwing around now where we're up and on the margin and guess what life hands us a biggie that day when there's no reserves left in our tank and bam and the only thing it'll fix that is a drink and we've gone and we're out of here and all we did was let the air pressure get low? And if we were to ask the person, well, what happened? Oh, geez, you wouldn't believe it. You know what happened. The guy down at work and he came in, he wanted to do my work and he took my customer away. And we think that that's the answer. And it wasn't. You know what the answer was? Low air, low air. That's why Clancy puts people on the aha machine. His pigeons call up, tell him what is the problems are. You don't want to do that. you know what it is, my girlfriend just puts the phone down, walks around, lets him talk for ten minutes and comes by every so often and goes, uh-huh, uh-uh. You don't have to listen to the problems. You know why? Because the answer's always going to be the same. How about the air? Because there are no other problems. There are no other problems When the air is full, the ride is good. When the hair is low, to ride is bad what we do is misdiagnose our problems see when we're talking about spirituality like i told you it isn't what it looks like so we always misdiagnoze our own problems you know my problem is bad relationship no it doesn't low air my problem i don't have enough money if i had some more no that's not your problem from low air whatever the problem is it isn t because when we are proper, have that proper air pressure, when we have fit spiritual condition, there are no problems. There are none. Because from that vantage point, everything is fine. We've been given in this program tools to give us access to a power that makes the world look wonderful just the way it is. Just the way It is. No more do we say, boy I can hardly wait till I get this promotion. Then I'm going to be happy, or whatever it is. That's wrong. Right now is the time to be unhappy. Would you like access to a power to make you happy on the day you got fired? How about that for a power? Would you like to be happier on the date you got fire? That sounds outrageous! almost say, I'm not going to let myself be happy under those conditions. It's such a revolutionary idea. Shouldn't be revolutionary to us. We used to drink on all kinds of days and get happy. So this is this wonderful thing that's offered. God is the power to see the world as it really is. And when we see the world, just like when I had those six drinks in that bar out in some city somewhere and I became overcome by the magnificence of the customers in that bar, that's what we're given in here, is the power to see the magnificance everywhere. And ladies and gentlemen, that is not just in AA. Everywhere. We should be just as happy in our work setting at work as we are in our home group. If we're not, we're no using the power there. We're not seeing what we should be able to see. That's what the 12th says. Practice these principles in all our affairs. we're given here the ability to see the world as it really is. It isn't the ability, it's the power to seethe world asit really is and when I take advantage of that the world always looks wonderful. What do meetings do? Let me just close with this. You know what I think meetings do and why we need each other? It gets back to the fact that spirituality doesn't look like it should work and my human mind after almost 29 years of sobriety every day I will have a problem that I look at and go here's an exception to the steps here's one I think I better handle myself and I start messing into that sucker with the old way of handling problems and we're all going to do this because we're part human and part spiritual and part physical. So our humanness just wants to do this. You can't stay spiritual all the time. And so I'll just do that and then I come to a meeting that night and they go, what's the matter? God damn! What is it? People at work and then she came in and who the hell is she? And then somebody goes, oh, low air pressure, huh? I don't want to hear that. You ever notice that? Whatever your problem is, they got the same answer here. One solution fits all problems. One solution. So what we need each other for is to just remind us of that very simple thing. Because our humanness tells us, well, life is all screwed up if Jesus is the end of the world. And then you come in and your sponsor goes, no, life ist wonderful, it's not the endoftheworld. Oh, okay. Never mind. Remember Roseanne? Never mind! That's the endofthat. Was there a problem? No. There was only one problem right here. My thinking came in, that thinking, that view of the world. I became self-centered again. When I get self-centred everything's wrong. Everything gets wrong again. Why did it get wrong? I'm not the center. I'm looking at it from the wrong place. Come on over here and look at it. That's all that happens when you talk to your sponsor. Sponsor says oh yes I see all that now come on over here and let me show you you from over here. Hey, from over here it looks fine. All they did was take you to a different vantage point. Take you so that you can see the situation as it really is. Not as our self-centered, frightened little minds said it was. And that's the power of the program. To just reinforce one another every single day. We use each other. Just go no, that's not it. It's low air, man. Come here. And we just take them out. Pump them back up. Come on now. We'll get a cup of coffee how about a donut there now how's it look looks all right well come on back when you get low we'll pump you up again so that's all meetings are that's all spirituality that's what the 24-hour day book get up in the morning put some cushion in there that's all you want to have always pump up never go out low if you're new never go out low just always remember every day get pumped up read a little 24 hour day book say a couple little prayers that's what it's all about then when you go out the world is going to look like it should and you wonder why you have good days you don't have good dates you have a good perspective on them you have a spiritual perspective that day and that's all life ever is it just today you wonder what day should i get happy what day should i try all this stuff right now oh i can't she just left me and he did that and i'm still getting over this and that it'll always be that what we're given is is the power to be happy right now. You already are a perfect person. You already ARE a spiritual person. The whole world is yours for the taking, right now! There's no reason to wait for anything. Our mind tells us to do that. But the truth is, today is it. You can re-decide, start your whole day over right after this meeting, and just go, I'm just going to have a wonderful afternoon. And this is what we're given. It's the most marvelous thing to be in touch with this higher power and to remind each other to do that. That's what these conferences do. They reinforce ourselves. Yes, we're on the right track. This is what it's all about. And thank you for letting me be part of this. God bless you all. Thanks.