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Source: Paul M – Steel City Woodstock (2024) – Steps 10 and 11 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: paul-m-steel-city-woodstock-2024-steps-10-and-11-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:59:24
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My name is Paul, I'm an alcoholic, and it's good to be in, it's good to be sober, and it's been a wonderful weekend, and thank you so much, had a great time, and I can't believe how many people are here on a Sunday morning, you know, a lot of these conferences on a Sunday morning, it's like tumbleweeds blowing through the place, you know, so, these guys in Pittsburgh must be really sick alcoholics, you know, you need every meeting before you head back out into the world there, you know, and it's just been really wonderful, and if it's okay, we'll start off with a joke, right, get ourselves started here, so there's a guy driving to work one day, and he's late for work, and he's going heavy on the gas, and a cop pulls him over and says, hey, you were going a bit faster, and the cop looks in on the passenger seat, and he sees all these knives, and swords, and bayonets, and he goes, what's the story with this?
The guy says, don't panic, I'm in a cabaret act, I'm a juggler, and I juggle all this stuff, and the cop says, wow, that must be some act, and the guy says, I'll tell you what, let me go with a warning, I'll give you a quick demo, so the cop says, okay, so the guy gets out of the car, and he's standing next to the car, and he's juggling these swords, and knives, and bayonets, and across the street, there's an AA meeting that's just ending, and the old timer says to his sponsee, aren't you glad you stopped drinking, look at the sobriety tests they're giving these days, you know?
This whole weekend, we're talking about the steps, and if you're new here today, you know, this is not spiritual calculus, you may be thinking, oh, you know, these steps, and multiply the second step by the third step, I mean, it's just too much, the steps of alcoholics and non-alcoholics will meet you exactly where you are, you know how I know that, I mean, I think the brilliance, and it's been said here all weekend, the brilliance of these, if it's spiritual, it's simple, and it's simple if it's spiritual, and these steps, they'll meet you, how do I know that, the same steps that are on the wall this morning, are the same steps that were on the wall when I walked into my first meeting 31 years ago, the steps don't change, it's not like you're 10 years sober, they go, Paul, come up here, here's the steps you get when you're 10 years sober, you know, you're like this here, you know, or 20 years sober, or 30 years sober, the steps don't change, so that can only mean one other thing, I change, and that's why this program, I used to use that word revealed, and Bob pointed out to me one time, it doesn't say revealed, it says disclosed, and these steps constantly disclosing themselves, as Chuck Chamberlain would say, uncovering, discovering, and that's what this program, it's organic, it's living, it's breathing, the program of AIA is not intellectual, it's experiential, you've heard it here, we talk about our experience, and our strength, and our hope, and I love the fact in AIA, we've all worked in value, some of the, I've told this story before, a friend of mine was at a meeting one time in Brooklyn years ago, and about 20 minutes into the meeting, in comes this woman, who's visibly drunk, and the meeting took a bit of a pause, and someone helped her to a seat, and they got her a cup of coffee, and they said to the lady, listen, the meeting's in progress, but if you just sit here and try to focus on the speaker, someone will talk to you after the meeting, so the meeting starts up again, and about 20 more minutes go by, and in comes this guy, and he's visibly drunk, what's the old saying today, is it order, is it God, he happens to sit right across from this woman, and she gets up out of her seat, and she goes and gets him a half cup of coffee, and she says to him, if you sit quietly, and listen to the speaker, someone will talk to you after the meeting, I mean, is that not alcoholic synonymous, is that not the personification of AA, the one that's blind, helping the one that's blinder than him, them, we're not into spiritual elitism here,
[00:05:01]
you know, we're into like, alcoholics together, and these steps, I mean, these, there was a talk this weekend, the speakers have been absolutely wonderful, I mean, our co-founders, I'm so glad they've been talked about too, Bill Wilson, you know, people say, well, if it hadn't have been Bill and Bob, it'd have been, well, it wasn't John and Jim, and it wasn't Judy, it was Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, and the old space race, they used to talk about when a spacecraft was coming back into the Earth's atmosphere, and it had to hit the atmosphere at exactly the right angle, or it would skim off into space, and they called that the window of opportunity. In the spring of 1935, there was a window of opportunity, and Bill Wilson stepped through it, and took Dr. Bob with him. Now, I don't know if that window of opportunity would have come around again, but thank God, we can trace this moment in time back to that moment in time, and I am so blessed, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I never took sobriety for granted, always been very grateful, especially on a Sunday morning, to wake up safe, sane, and sober, but I took AA for granted. Oh, there's an AA meeting, and it's there, and then you hang around here, and you realize that this is lightning in the bottle. This is, for thousands of years, it's been people like us, run at life with drink, run away from life with drink, we were society's first outcasts, and there's not, you look at a Sunday morning, we're all sitting here sober, there's not a lot of options out there for people like us. I'm going to go to a jail, I'm going to go to an institution, or I'm going to go to a graveyard, and the sad thing about this disease, by the time you're actually graveyard dead, you've been dead mentally, and spiritually, and emotionally for years, and anybody who mattered in your life is long gone, because that's what we do, we squeeze, and we squeeze the people like, go away and drink, or go away and don't drink, but you have to go, you can't stay here anymore, and Bill Wilson, I mean, it's so, I was quite, I knew the guy that wrote that book, When Love Is Not Enough, and he wrote the play for the screenplay, but my name is Bill W, a guy from Queens originally, Bill B, and he used to go up the stepping stones when Lois was still alive, Bill had passed away, and he would just sit there and ask her questions, and run the old tape recorder, and she'd be telling the stories about early AA, and Bill, and what one thing and another, and then she's, this phrase came out of her mouth about Bill's drinking, and she says, When Love Is Not Enough, and he stopped the tape, and he said, that's the title of the book, they both looked at each other, and it's not the truth, thank God for AA, if love could have got me sober, I'd have been sober a long time before Alcoholics Anonymous, good people, people that cured for me deeply, tried to get me sober, nothing worked, and all of a sudden, I come into Alcoholics Anonymous, I bartended in a crazy bar in Rockaway, I bartended the last five years drinking, and I bartended the first 12 years in AA, and I'll tell you something you probably know, and this is purely anecdotal, most alcoholics die drunk, they don't even darken the door of an AA meeting, now why did I get sober, I seen, this is not false humility, I seen guys in that bar that I worked in, good men, working class, blue collar, the salt of the earth in New York City, guys that give you the shirt off your back, off their backs, drink themselves to death, and I got sober, and what has Alcoholics Anonymous ever asked me to do, all they've asked me to do is to stay sober and help another alcoholic, and in doing that, which I don't do perfectly, I've been so grossly overpaid, it's embarrassing, I'm paid of things of real value, and this 10th step here today, that I've been asked to speak on, and if you're new here today, as I said don't think because another line I misquoted for years in AA, I would have said the road to happy destiny, it doesn't say that, it says the road of happy destiny, if you're one day sober, look down, you're on the road, you're on the road with us, and thank God you're with us,
[00:10:04]
my first sponsor was sober a long, long time, and he says Paul, if you trudge that road long enough and far enough, you'll look off to the left, and you'll look off to the right, and you'll see the carcasses, you'll see the gravestones of the lone wolves of AA, the go it alone crew, I got this, thank you very much, and I did that in Alcoholics Anonymous, people were trying to help me, and it was like the AA Heisman trophy, you know, not today, my arms are open, because I know, and this is not hyperbole, standing here on this Sunday morning, I need the help of every person in this room today to stay sober, because I cannot do this alone, my record has proved that, and this 10th step, it talks about staying in fit spiritual condition, it was read there by Rob, and thank you Rob for a wonderful weekend, it's so easy to let up on our spiritual program, the only way that I coached in Alcoholics Anonymous is downhill, it would be nice to talk about spiritual condition, it'd be nice, you know if you ever go to a concert, or you go to the airport, and they warned you, it'd be nice if somebody stand at the door, hey Paul step over here, let me warn you, and the thing goes, oh you know you're not in fit spiritual condition, look at this, and there's like a scan, the body like this here, see all those red areas, that's untreated alcoholism, you need to call your sponsor, you need to make coffee, it'd be so nice if it was that simple, but it's not, and that's why I got to continue to come to AA, I got to be in the lifeboat of AA, I mean this is purely anecdotal, but you see a lot of anniversaries being read, if you're in a big home group, and you'll hear a lot of anniversaries from zero to five, you'll hear a lot of anniversaries from ten on, but between five and ten, you don't hear a lot of anniversaries, and there's a reason for that, I think, that it takes about five years to get your life back together again in AA, to get that job, to get that degree, to get that relationship, to get those children, and it's so easy in Alcoholics Anonymous to take your foot off the gas, and my sponsor would say to me, Paul, and this sounds like a no-brainer, don't let the life that AA has given you keep you from going to AA, because AA will give you a life, but here's the thing, I start to think that I got that job, that I got that relationship, that I got that promotion, no I didn't, I got that as a result of being in a spiritual program of Alcoholics Anonymous and being an active member, and this program is so simple, I almost missed it, see when I'm off the, Ralph talked about it last night, and you don't hear that term too often in AA anymore, on the beam, and it's a point of navigation on the beam, when I'm off the beam, I want to tell you some big shaggy dog story, he said, she said, you know, like we said, I'm a prosecuting attorney building my case of why life isn't going, I've got to the point now in my life, it's unity, it's service and recovery, when I'm sponsoring somebody that comes to me and says, Paul, my life's upside down, and I want to tell you a bit, I said, let's go to the triangle, what's unity looking like in your life, are you tethered to AA and service, are you in recovery, are you part of the chain, and invariably one or more of those areas is missing, so I want to complicate this, but this thing, and that's the wonderful thing about AA, I think, I'll tell a story here, I don't know if Bob remembers this, he gave me a number of a guy, this is a guy in Long Island that was going through a difficult time in sobriety, and Bob says, do you mind if this guy called you, it was a few years ago, I said, sure, and the guy called me, and I used a little formula that Bob had shared with me, Little formula that Bob had shared with me, the guy was sober like 20 years, and he was
[00:15:04]
in a lot of problems, he was being investigated for insider trading on Wall Street, his wife was leaving him, and his kids weren't talking to him, and I asked him what was, Bob had shared with me, I said to this guy, because I've never had an original thought since I got here, I said to this guy, when do you think you're at your most effective or even happiest in AA? Oh, he says in my first year. I said, well, what were you doing in your first year that you think had you so, that you were, oh, I was making coffee in three different groups, we had a detox commitment, oh, we should drive around this old car, four or five guys every night, and you could almost see him smiling over the phone just thinking about it, and I said to him what Bob had shared with me, I said to this guy, well, how about we do this, how about for 90 days we go back to doing what you were doing in your first year, silence, and I know why there was silence, because the alcoholic ego, which is in me too, was telling him, I got a 20 year sober problem, and this guy is giving me a 90 day solution. And here's the thing about AA, there's people sitting out here today, and I guarantee you're going through difficult times, going through complex situations, but the good news for us in AA, no matter how complex the problem, the solution is simple, and it's always the same, it's unity, it's service, and recovery. See, my ego would tell me a complex problem requires a complex solution, I need a team of psychiatrists working around the clock, like some psychiatric Manhattan project, you know, working night and day on me. No it's not, I need to get to the group early and make coffee, greet at the door. I'm so self-centred.
My holy trinity is always me, me, and me. And I catch myself, oh my god, I'm almost embarrassed to tell this story. In the last couple of years, I had avascular necrosis from drinking, I had the two ankle replacements, it's a long surgery, a long rehab, it's like a one year rehab for each one. And my wife, when I put that woman through, laying in the back room, about two months ago, they found a tumour in my wife's leg, and thank god it was benign, and she had to have it removed. And for about a week, just a week, she was in the back room with her foot up. The same back room that I was in for months, with my foot up. So I go to my home group, and one of the guys, before it was very early, one of the guys says, how's Catherine doing, how's the patient? I'm like, how's she doing? If she shouts Paul one more time out of that back room, I'm going to go back there and put a pillow over her face, you know? And one of the other guys goes, were you not in that back room for months? And she was helping you? It was like, one more time. I should have a thing in the mirror, I should have a tattoo to my head, I am the problem. But thank god, and I really went home that night, and I told my wife the story and we laughed about it. And that's the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not responsible for the first thought in AA, but I am responsible for the second thought. And the second thought is usually one of used people. Because if I have learned anything in the last 31 years in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's this, that God works through people. The spiritual conduit that he uses to spread his love and grace is the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love that analogy, when Bill Wilson got sober in that town's hospital, he had this idea, a metaphor, analogy, and he thought of a chain. He thought of a chain of drunks. One drunk helping another.
And my 10th step really is asking me, how strong is my link in the chain today? Is it
[00:20:00]
strong to the people that went ahead of me? Am I linked in? And is it strong to the people coming back? If someone says to me today, Paul, can I comprehend the word serenity? Can I know peace? Absolutely, walk this journey with us. And this 10th step asks me, you know the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it doesn't have any pictures, but it has a lot of mirrors. And that's what I love about AA. There were some people would confuse AA with group therapy.
AA is not group therapy. In group therapy, you're encouraged to challenge the other people in the group, not AA. We work on a different format. We work on, you share your experience, strength and hope, and I share my experience, strength and hope. We work on the philosophy, the old John Kennedy line, a rising tide lifts all boats. I was talking to Nancy, the spiritual energy this weekend, building and building. That's what we work on. And that's the thing about AA. AA doesn't tell me what to do. People in AA tell me what they did. That's the difference. And that's what you do. You hold up this book, Paul, does this look familiar? Oh yeah, I know that guy. What about this guy? Does this guy look familiar? Oh, I know that guy too. And none of us are immune from these things. I mean, what I used to, I remember my sponsor telling me one time, and we're sitting in the meeting, before the meeting, and there's big round tables, and he says, Paul, take a look around this room. You see all the people that are here tonight? They won't always be here. What the hell? I didn't, it was like, you know, I said, what's this guy, like a Zen master? You know what I mean? It's like going right over my head. But I know today, people leave, I mean, I don't know about tomorrow, but right now, I'm connected, and I'm right in the middle of AA. I'm not, thank God today, I'm not in that gracial drift of the door. Wouldn't it be nice? You know when you hear a big truck backing up, and it goes beep? Wouldn't it be nice if you're leaving AA, and you hear beep, beep, beep, I'm leaving AA? It'd be so simple. But it's not that simple. This disease is so cunning. It's so baffling. It's so powerful. They use the word insidious. It lies in wait. My disease never comes at me over the hill, because I can see it. Oh, there's my disease. It comes in the flank, comes from behind, middle of the night, when there's nobody around. Whispering. You don't need to go to that meeting. Let somebody else make coffee for you. Are you the only guy in Rockaway, you know? And I gotta go that. This tenth step, I know I've mentioned it a few times this weekend, Clarence Samuelson used to say, the program of AA will help you to act better than you feel. And that's so true.
These altruistic actions don't come naturally to me. I'll tell you a quick story. It wasn't that long ago, and you heard me saying last night, I got a six-year-old daughter. And one Sunday afternoon, my wife says to me, I'm taking Dahlia over for a play date with her friend. We'll be gone for two or three hours. You have the house to yourself. I'm like, yeah! So then, I'm like, see you later. I'm right here if you need me. I couldn't close the door quick enough, you know. I'm straight down to the back room.
Oh, this is going to be great. I'm an old movie fan. I had the Maltese Falcon on. All these treats. Oh, man, this is beautiful. This is Nirvana. And the phone rings. A concert. It's a guy I sponsor. And we'd just done his fifth step that week. And he says, Paul, you know he asked me at the end, was there anything I'd left out? And I said, no. Well, that's not true. I left something out, and it's eaten my… I'm like, come on over. Turn the TV off. He comes over. And sure enough, it was a big furball. And he coughed it up, and we talked about it.
And just as he was leaving, my wife pulls up. Well, did you enjoy your three hours? What am I going to say? I said, of course I did. Alcoholics Anonymous teaches me in this tenth step to act better than I feel.
[00:25:12]
They give us all these freedoms in the tenth step. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. And we talked about freedom. We would sit in pubs singing about freedom. We would march in the streets for freedom. I wouldn't have known freedom if it jumped up next to me. I'm free today. At the end of my drinking, alcohol had become the common denominator in my life. Every decision I made was divided through a drink at least once.
Even the most mundane, going from here to the town centre. Will there be enough drink to get me there? Will there be enough drink when I get there? Will there be enough drink to get me back here? And when you live your life under those parameters, your life gets smaller and smaller with less people. It talks about, in the tenth step, all these freedoms we have. Freedom to go here. I mean, it might not seem like much to the guy who lives next door to me to get on a plane and fly to Pittsburgh, but that was a freedom I didn't have before AA.
It gives all these freedoms, and I'm going to read them, and then there's one caveat. As long as we stay in fit spiritual condition. And Bill Wilson, that's why I love this fact in AA, that this program is written by alcoholics for alcoholics. Because you understand me, and I understand you. Bill Wilson was two and a half or three years sober, and he got put out of his house. It wasn't even his house, it was his father-in-law's house. I know it pretty well because I live not too far, 182 Clinton Street.
And I think of Bill Wilson that time, because just around the corner is Livingston Street, where he lived when he had plenty of money. He talks about wording checks in and out of the banker's drawer. In fact, he had one apartment, but that wasn't enough. He bought the apartment next to it, knocked them into, you know, typical alcoholic, two apartments. He was a high flyer. Then he'd end up with nothing. And he's in Alcoholics Anonymous, and he's sober two and a half, three years. And him and his wife had moved like 35 times. They were homeless. That's calling for what it is. They were homeless.
And because of the group conscience that was mentioned, he had turned down that job at Towns Hospital. And they were going from one apartment to the other, sleeping in somebody's summer bungalow with no heat. There was one day in particular, they were going through Grand Central Station, and Lois just sat down on the marble floor and started crying. And Bill just sat down beside her and just goes, Bill, when am I going to get my forever home? And they ended up living above the 23rd Street Clubhouse in Manhattan.
Here's a woman that was a debutante at one time from a wealthy family, and they're living using orange crates and packing crates for furniture, covered with cloths. And Bill Wilson was sitting there, feeling sorry for himself. What does it say in our book? What do we got to watch for? Self-pity. It's a killer. The two twin killers for the alcoholic in the tenth step is resentment and self-pity. Because these emotions have no IQ. I'm experiencing it like it's happening right now. This self-pity.
And he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself, living above this clubhouse. His wife had this part-time job in a department store. And the guy who was the caretaker comes upstairs and he says, Bill, there's a priest here that wants to see you. Do you want to see him? He looks a bit rough around the edges. I don't know if he's drinking or not, you know. And Bill was like, I need this like a hole in the head, you know. He was having one of his imaginary ulcers. And he says, send the guy up. And here's this guy laboring up the steps. And who was the guy? It was Father Ed Dowling.
A brilliant Jesuit had arthritis. A brilliant Jesuit had arthritis, labored up the steps, and Bill Wilson's sitting there feeling sorry for himself, and he thought this was some rummy priest maybe on a bender, and Father Ed Darling came in, and he sat there and he says, listen, I'm a Jesuit priest, and we have the twelve spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola,
[00:30:20]
and I looked and someone gave me a copy of the twelve steps, and I looked at the similarities between the twelve steps and these spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, our founder, of our order, and I want to meet the guy that wrote them, and he traveled all the way from St. Louis up to New York to meet Bill Wilson, and Bill Wilson did like a tenth step with him, Bill Wilson says, you know what, I'm full of resentment right now, I'm full of self-pity, there's people downstairs getting on with their lives, and the program that I started, when's my ship going to come in?
How many times have I said that in sobriety, when's my ship going to come in? And Father Ed Darling looked at him and says, Bill, you are blessed with something called divine dissatisfaction, and that will push you to go places you don't want to go, to do things you don't want to do, but in doing that you are brought to a place, isn't that the truth today, in this tenth step? It seems like constantly putting out spiritual fires, I mean, but I need this, I need to be doing this stuff, because I have that divine dissatisfaction, I have that stone in the shoe.
There's a line in the big book that says, we are bodily and mentally different from our fellows, I used to think that just meant, with my allergic reaction to alcohol, it's so much more than that. How do I know that? Alcohol is only mentioned in the first step, the other eleven steps are about living sober, and I realize that I'm different, I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows. I like to say alcoholic emotions because it sounds sort of sexy, you know, I've got these alcoholic emotions. You know what they are? They're childish emotions.
Harry Thiebaud, a great friend of Eric, his majesty the baby, and he talked about the recuperative power of the alcoholic ego. Why do I have to continue? Because if I don't treat my alcoholism in this tenth and eleventh step, my alcoholism will treat me, and it doesn't treat me very well. Everybody's at the party and I'm sitting here all alone. That type of thinking. And the emotional immaturity. I mean, you hear people saying, oh, when you start drinking, your emotional maturity, I don't really know that formula, but I'll tell you this, I really do believe that once I started drinking, all emotional growth came to a pretty screeching halt.
One of our speakers used to say, you know, we talk about our drinking, our drinking stories are very powerful, our identification. But real alcoholism is, I've been sitting here all weekend, my problem is not alcohol, the problem is that alcohol is my solution. If alcohol is my problem, I do the first step, and I live happily ever after. Why do I have to do the other eleven steps? Why do I have to make coffee? Sponsor? Unity? Sir? Why? Because I have alcoholism. And it's this emotional immaturity that I have.
Because I believe that life, and it's pretty probably set up this way, life puts these situations in your path as you grow up. And you go through them, and you grow emotionally. But I discovered drink. So when life was presenting these normal life growing experiences, I circumvented them with a drink. Like whenever the coach says, Paul, I want you to sit on the bench this week. And a normal emotionally mature person sits on the bench and cheers the team on, even though he's not playing. That's emotional maturity happening.
What do I do? You can keep your team. I'm not playing. And I go off with a bottle. When that girl says, Paul, this isn't really working out between us, a person who's growing up normal will go through that heartache. Not me. I've got drink now. I don't need you. I don't need nobody.
[00:35:08]
And the thing is, I think I've got the tiger by the tail. I've got this magic elixir, this panacea for all problems. No matter what life throws at me, gung, gung, gung, gung, gung, doesn't matter. But then what happens? I end up drinking alcoholically and I deny it and I end up in a… I create a world even I can't live in. And what's that world called? It's called the jumping off place. I can't live with drink and I can't live without drink.
And I've been avoiding all these life lessons and now I'm 30 years of age sitting in my first meeting of AA and I'm a child in a man's body. And these whole steps that we talk about are to help me to grow emotionally. I hope that someday my chronological age will intersect with my emotional age. It hasn't happened yet. Hopefully. And the funny thing is, I know what emotional immaturity looks like when I see it. I worked with this guy for years. He was my supervisor.
And this guy, you hear people say, the whole world doesn't need the 12 steps. I do. This guy had these principles in his life normally. He would help people normally. I have to get beaten half to death by alcohol. Okay, I'll help somebody else. It just came to him naturally. And I would see this guy at work dealing with situations. So I know what emotional… I'm like, that's what emotional maturity looks like. He's not taking it personal.
My sponsor says to me, you know what you take personal? I'm like, what? Everything. I'm like, I'm sensitive. He says, no you're not, you're touchy. And it's true. I would see that so I know. And that's why I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I hear people sharing, you're my people. You ever sit in the back of a meeting of AA and someone's up at the front and they say something along the lines, I sat in a crowded bar and I felt totally alone. And you'll see people's heads. We all get that. This disease of disconnection.
And that's what that 11 step helps me to do. Now that I've addressed these problems in step 10, I've got to make that spiritual connection in step 11. I, in my job, I'm a special education teacher. I didn't have a high school diploma until I got sober. I was 32 years of age in AA without a high school diploma, two years sober. And because of your help, able to take on long term goals. I remember going back to school, or as my sponsor says, why don't you go to school for the first time? You're not going back anywhere.
And I bartended at night and went to college during the day, got a high school equivalency, then went to college, became a teacher, and got into special ed. And these children, oh my god, I work with children. They're so spiritually pure. I work with children that don't know anything but the present moment. They think I'm helping them. I learn more from them. They do naturally what comes to me unnaturally. They live in the present moment. They're spiritually, they're as close to God as you can get.
And in the course of my job, working for the New York City Department of Education, I go to a lot of homes for children who cannot get to school. And I constantly have my phone with me because my supervisor might be calling me or whatever. I can tell you within five minutes, I've been to different buildings in New York City, different apartment buildings, all over the place. Some of them have got good phone service, some don't. I can tell you within five minutes if I have a connection on my phone.
And I remember thinking to myself one time, if I was as quick to check my spiritual connection as I do my phone connection, I'd be in a lot better shape in AA. Because I can go spiritually sleepwalking around AA for days, for longer than I care to admit. And life has a sort of a thing where all of a sudden, that cosmic 2×4 to the back of the head, and all of a sudden you wake up in AA.
[00:40:13]
And that's all this step asked me in 11 Step, Upon Awakening. I'm so glad that this book's written by alcoholics for alcoholics. There's days in sobriety, it's like my disease is sitting on the edge of the bed. Are you getting up? Let's go. I've got some plans for us today, you know. Upon Awakening, make that connection, you know. And try to grow along. The lines that helped me the most in this program, Bill Wilson says about finding a spiritual basis for living.
And he says some alcoholics would rather make a date with an undertaker than live by spiritual principles. But I'm so glad in AA that we talk about spiritual progress. In how it works, we aren't saints. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Who among us can claim perfect adherence to these principles? That's my get-out clause. That gives me a chance for a spiritual do-over each day out there. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying underachievement is a virtue worth striving for.
But that perfection is a hope, it's an illusion. But it's funny how we alcoholics are, we're sort of the people, well if I can't do it 100% right, well then let's not do it at all. And AA says no. I love an alcoholic synonymous. You never say to me, how many times have you fallen down? All you ask me to do, are you willing to get back up again? And we go on down the road of happy destiny. And I love that.
And I love that. So I'm not into that, you know, because the alcoholic ego loves to operate in a either-or world. Either I'm all good or I'm all bad. It loves that. Because I'm a minimizer, I'm a maximizer, I'm a justifier, I'm a rationalizer, I'm a maker of excuses. I love the fact that our spiritual program and these principles in the 11th step, it's not about either-or, it's yes and. Yes, I'm 31 years sober and I still do things in sobriety that cause me problems.
But I'm willing to try today to grow along spiritual lines. The day that I wake up and go, I'm not reading the books, I'm not calling my sponsor, I'm not taking phone calls, I'm not going back to that home group, is the day I'm getting ready to get drunk again. And I love that AA. You know, I'm far from Rockaway. We have a meeting in our church basement. Don't get me wrong, I go to mass, my wife sings in the choir, I go to church. If I'm home, I'm at mass with my daughter. We have a lot of meetings in New York City in church basements.
And there's a guy who's the pastor, in fact it's a woman now, and she came down recently, we had a party at the holidays, and she sort of looked around like this, and she says, you know something, there's more going on here in the basement on a Saturday night than there is upstairs on a Sunday morning. And she wasn't being, because, she's a non-alcoholic, she goes, there's something, and that's the truth, AA is real. We're authentic. I just love that. We're sure. And the head's going up and down.
And we sure are. I mean, we're just, I wouldn't say, we're the island of the misfit toys, you know what I mean? I'm a jack-in-the-box, but my name is Paul, you know? So I guess I gotta keep coming to Alcoholics Anonymous. And these people just laugh and whatever, and that's the laughter. It's not the oil that greases the wheels of Alcoholics Anonymous. You think of the Sunday mornings we woke up and wished we hadn't, and here we're sitting here laughing with our brothers and sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous.
There's a port roomie, and he says, out there, way out there. Way Out There, Beyond Good and Bad, There Is a Garden, I Will Meet You There,
[00:45:02]
That's the AA Garden, Way Out There, Beyond Good and Bad, We Don't Get Into That, That's Where We Meet, We Don't Get Into the Good and the Bad, We Meet Each Other Exactly Where We're At, and I Love the fact that in AA you meet me exactly where I am today, on difficult times in sobriety, and I go to my sponsor and I talk to him about this stuff, and I talk to some of my friends in AA, and you help me hold up those mirrors, what does Robbie Burns the poet say, the Scottish poet, God give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us, and you help me put on those new pair of glasses and see things, and I just love the fact that we're in here, the spiritual bases, I talked about it last night in Northern Ireland, I had such a rage against divinity when I came to AA, I grew up during the Troubles, I said it last night, we were burnt out of our house by the opposing power militaries, and in the middle of the night they came to the door and put a gun to my father's head, I thought they were going to shoot him, and we had to move out, so you'd have mentioned God when I got to AA, I would have said he didn't come down our street very often, but I learned that that's not true, this is about spirituality, this is about, you know what I love about the spiritual, you know what the most spiritual thing in the world, there's nothing more spiritual in this world than one person helping another person, and if that be true, and I believe it to be true, then Alcoholics Anonymous is the very essence of spirituality, because you asked me to help you for no other reason than to stay sober and grow along spiritual lines, and I love the fact, I used to put the great miracles of AA, you know, Bill meeting Dr. Bob, you know, or Towns Hospital, one of the greatest miracles in AA was on that November, when Bill Wilson was sitting at his kitchen table, half drunk, and Ebby Thatcher was sitting across the table, and Bill was a sort of an educated guy, and Bill was ready for a whole debate, and Ebby just looked across the table and said to Bill, why don't you choose your own conception of God?
Right there in that moment, AA went from being potentially a religious movement, to being a spiritual movement, and that statement, why don't you choose your own conception of God, has left that door broad, roomy, and inclusive, that there's room for everybody, where you are in the spiritual spectrum, there's room for you and Alcoholics Anonymous. I was in Thailand one time, and I'm at this meeting, and I'm talking to these guys, there was a lot of expats at this thing, some guys that were living in Vietnam, some guys were living in Cambodia, and Hong Kong, and different places, and there was one guy that was living in China, he was sober, and he talked about AA in China, which is a whole story in itself, but he says, I travel for business, and he says, we go to Mongolia a lot, and he says, we're trying to get AA started in Mongolia, and he says it's terrible, he says, and I looked at it, apparently the alcoholism in Mongolia is off the charts, terrible problem, and he goes, it's like the 1930s, like the mid-1930s in America, there's no meetings, there's nobody sober, there's no literature, and I said, what are you doing? He says, well, we went to the hospital, and we bring the alcoholics, and we're trying to, and see, we got one guy sober, he's like sober two weeks, and we have him talking to the other guys, and we have an interpreter, and he goes, he says, it's amazing what happened, he says, the guy, we're talking to the interpreter, who's telling the guy with two weeks, and he's trying to tell the other guys, who are only sober a couple of days, some of them, about our program, and what AA is, and the guy with two weeks says to the interpreter, and the question was, these guys want to know, because the Mongolian people are a great people of a spirit of nature, not unlike our Native American civilization, a god of nature, and he says, these guys are saying, that if they do these steps, if they do this program, will they be able to soar like a bird, and the guy says, that's exactly what I'm trying to say,
[00:50:05]
and the guy went back, and he says, you can see all the heads going up and down, our spirituality, the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous will allow you to soar like a bird, now, not every day, as there's days of spiritual warfare out there, but thank God, Alcoholics Anonymous is not a meritocracy, by where your good deeds out there, ensure how far you get in here, because there's a lot of days, more than I deserve, that I get to soar like a bird, and get to live a life, that I didn't know existed, and it's because of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I just love that these people, and this journey that we're on here together, and there was something else I wanted to say, I'll just end on this here, and I love the back and forth, you know, because, and there's days it's difficult, I went through difficult times in Sobriety, talk about that resentment, I talked about here last night, I went through a divorce at 20 years sober, almost put my head away, resentment, another guy involved, and it was terrible, so anyway, I get divorced, and my wife, ex-wife, married that guy, and my little nine-year-old daughter, at this stage now, she's 14, and she's graduating from Catholic grade school, and they're having a big ceremony at the church, in Rockaway, St. Francis DeSales Church, if you know Rockaway, and the place is packed, and each family is allowed one half a pew, and people are sitting like this, now I had gotten remarried myself in a year, and I've got a little daughter, Dolly was like a year old at that time, so I get there late to the, they're having a ceremony, and there's, I have to squeeze in at the end of the pew, and who's sitting there, that guy, now I'd given this guy, my sleep, I had given my appetite, I had given my serenity, the only thing that I hadn't given was my Sobriety, and I had to squeeze in, and when I tell you, you couldn't have put a piece of paper between my arm and his arm, but I squeezed in there, and because of this 10th step, and because of sponsorship, and because of taking actions I didn't want to take, and doing things that I didn't believe in, what has praying for him going to help me, by taking the spiritual high road, when I wanted to take the resentment low road, and I was sitting there that day, and I was watching the ceremony of my daughter walking across the altar, and I was free, I thought to myself at 22, 23 years sober, once again, these men and women are right, because it's not the way the Sobriety is, it's lived forward, understood backwards, and I realized, wow, I took those actions I didn't want to take, I did things I didn't want to do, and this guy sitting there, he could have been a mannequin, there was no connection, I was able to watch my daughter, now not every day is like that, there's difficult times, but the God of my understanding, the 11th step is always there, what does Carl Jung say, bitten or not bitten, God is present, even when I was lying on a ballroom floor, so drunk that I couldn't stand on my own two feet, my higher power was there, I was just so marred in my disease, that I couldn't relate to him, and there's been times, I remember it was mentioned last day, I remember one time, and maybe this is part of the spiritual journey, I remember one time, I was in Jerusalem, and at Easter time, and I was sitting at daybreak, on top of the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem, and I've never been there, they have the Lord's Prayer, in all different languages, and I was sitting up there by myself, and sun rises coming up over Jerusalem, and I'm looking down over the city, I felt like almost that Sistine Chapel, I felt
[00:55:00]
if I reached out, I could have touched the hand of my higher power, but there's been times in AA that I have woke up, and I felt like I was on a spiritual desert, where is God, and I realized in Alcoholics Anonymous, they say about finding God, my sponsor said he's not lost, he's here, you will find him, in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you will find him, it's so easy, you will have a spiritual awakening in AA, the key to success in AA is to stay awake, it's so easy when you've been here a while, to fall asleep in AA, you become a nerd, hear this stuff and just nod off, and that's why I'm so glad that service was talked about here all weekend, service and Alcoholics Anonymous, if you want to stay spiritually caffeinated, service and Alcoholics Anonymous will keep you awake in AA, so I'm standing here this morning, my life is far from perfect, I used to think if I was a good boy in AA, and ate my vegetables, that everything would be good, we don't get immunity from life, we get the ability with this program to live life on life's terms, and I know there's people here this weekend going through difficult times, and I want to say to you what was said to me, I always resisted pain in AA, I realized today, lean in, lean in, I know Bob's going to get mad at me here, when I was going through that divorce, Bob called me, and I says Bob, he asked me to speak at something, I was like Bob, you don't want me speaking, I said my life's falling apart right in the middle of AA, and he says Paul there's one or two things can happen here, this can kick you into AA, or this can kick you out of AA, and it's usually what way you're facing, if you're going through difficult times now, I hope you're facing in, if you're not, you're at the turning point, turn back in, face in, lean into the change, embrace it, and get through it a day at a time, and I look back in the rear view mirror now at those difficult times, and I realize that everything happened just the way it was meant to happen, God is never late, there's a retreat house upstate on the doormat, you feel far from God, who moved? It's always me, it's always me, but I come here this weekend, there's a pamphlet and they're talking about getting rid of it, don't get me started on that, a member's eye view of AA, it's the last pamphlet was written by one person, now they're written by committee, and in that pamphlet, I'm thinking about this weekend, all sitting here with you, and not just the speakers, the conversations that we've had with different people, I can't, it touches my heart, I'll take all of you back to Rockaway Beach, and it says in that pamphlet, the old John the Baptist line, it says, just go back and tell them what you've seen and what you've heard, and that's what we do here at these conventions, we come here and we fill up our spiritual tanks, and we go back to our respective home groups, and we tell people, I've seen people that are blind at Nisei, I've seen people that couldn't walk, I've seen people that were spiritually dead come back to life again, and that's what we do here in these weekends, we just go back to our home groups, and we tell them what we have seen this weekend, and what we have heard this weekend, so I thank you for my sobriety, it's been a blessing being here with you, and that's all I'll say, thank you very much.