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Source: Sandy B – Akron Homecoming – Steps 2 and 3 (2012) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: sandy-b-akron-homecoming-steps-2-and-3-2012-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:57:15
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Hi everybody, my name is Sandy B., I'm an alcoholic, and I'm delighted to be part of this event. I was very moved by touring around yesterday and what Gail did last night. I just find these historic sites have a lot of energy that I feel when I'm visiting the various places. I feel a lot of it up in Vermont when I've gone up there to Bill's birthplace and his grave and Manchester, etc. Even a couple months ago, because one of my heroes was Chuck Chamberlain, my friend Chris and I went out to Laguna B. just to go by his house, go to three or four meetings I got to talk at that were ones that he attended on a regular basis. And so you can see I really have an enjoyment with the roots of my past and the past of Alcoholics Anonymous, so it's really nice to be part of this, which has been presented so well. Now I'm up here to talk about steps two and three, and I am a late evening person. And I was sitting here and Bob Zanz went by and I said, do you remember what step two is off the top of your head? And he was of no help, he said no I don't quite frankly. So I guess I'll have to plot ahead with the inventory step and just taking a shot that that's step two, I hope it's right. Anyway, when Bob got through last night, I think he did such a wonderful job because I'm of the opinion that step one sets up the whole program. And that's why we take so much time with it and that's why it seems like the first one-sixth of the big book is devoted to step one and to help us keep looking again and again at our situation until we see that it's much worse than we thought. That's what I do with people I sponsor. I would say, well wait a minute, let's look here and then he's going, God, this is, whoa. And now they're getting ready to take step one because they're desperate. And the desperation creates the open mind that is so necessary to advance in the program. And I was in a nut ward, I'd been locked up, I'd been put in a straitjacket, I'd lost about 40 pounds due to malnutrition. My whole life was just a horror, I barely could remember things, everything was very confusing. And I'd been there a couple months and the AA finally talked their way in and they had me go down to an AA meeting and I was all excited about what these guys said. They were young, they were happy, they were all having a lot of fun and I told them afterwards I'd like to get their phone number in case I had a friend who had a drinking problem, I would send them around. So you would think that it might have dawned on me that I had a drinking problem. And so that's why step one is so important, to set us up for what's about to come in these steps because there's no escaping the fact that these steps are all about a higher power. That's the whole point of the steps and then you see in step 12 having had a spiritual awakening, one of these profound personality transformations, that this is the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not just not
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drinking and accumulating sobriety. You could punch a cop and get 30 days sobriety just like that. And just keep doing that and build up years. Come and get your medallion every year. And you could announce proudly you don't need God to stay sober and you'd be right. But you need God to have a spiritual awakening. And this is several levels above raw sobriety. That's a very important thing to understand. You don't want to sell yourself short and you want to set the high goals for yourself if you're new. Don't settle for pretty good sobriety because that is, you'll just regret it. You look back and just go, why didn't I go for the whole nine yards right from the get-go? Just, they have that poker game, all in. You know that Texas Hold'em and then you just go all in. So if you're new, I would go all in to Alcoholics Anonymous. The whole thing, your whole future is in these steps and in the friends and sponsors that you have here in Alcoholics Anonymous. So anyway, when we get this surrendered state, we come up against a challenge to us to take a look at the idea of a higher power in our lives. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And the big book has the chapter, We Agnostics, which I think is brilliant. It just goes after this situation in a very forceful and delicate way, all at the same time. Because everyone who comes into AA has a problem with God. They're all different, but they have a problem with the word, with the idea. We go all the way. Bill said half our number were atheists or agnostics. We just, you know, it's hard to be a spiritual believer when you're drunk all the time. It's just an illusion. And then we have religious people who are wondering what happened that this God I love in my church can't get me sober. So they're confused about it. So we're all in a kind of a mess about this God thing. And we come to this wonderful chapter that is written to that very crowd of people. And what it does to get us started, it reemphasizes step one. It reemphasizes the desperate nature of our situation. Because Bill opens up with, and I'm paraphrasing, if when you drink you have little control over the amount you drink, and when you stop you can't stay stopped, then you're probably an alcoholic. And it kind of leads you, yeah, yeah, that's me, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, that describes me. And then, if that's the case, you're suffering from an illness that only a spiritual experience can conquer. And right away I turned to my sponsor and I went, I don't want anything to do with a spiritual experience. And he said, oh, you're screwed. Just sorry. You want to think about it again? Are you sure you don't want to reconsider and maybe think about allowing the possibility of a spiritual experience? No, I don't want anything to do with a spiritual experience. Okay, well, let's move on a little bit. And it goes right away into facing an alcoholic death or living on a spiritual basis are not easy alternatives to face. Now, only in AA would you find a ludicrous
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sentence like this. If you were reading a regular book or if you were in grammar school and said, well, the next class is going to be a tough one class. You're going to have to decide between alcoholic death and living on a spiritual basis. And I know you're going to need weeks to think it over. So the nature of the choice is so preposterous, but it's not preposterous when you knew. I remember looking at that and he says, well, what do you think? I said, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I got, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Now, just think about that. You're thinking which would be worse, living on a spiritual basis or dying an alcoholic death. And often the young man says, do I get a phone call? Yes. He calls his doctor. He says, a friend of mine, Doc, is curious, how bad is an alcoholic death? Oh, Jesus. All right, I'll try the spiritual basis. That's the greatest noise in the world to the ears of a sponsor. All right. That is the sound that the gears make when an alcoholic is changing his mind. All right. He's about to do something against his own better judgment. You know what I mean? Because there's nowhere to go. There's just nowhere to go.
We're either going to move ahead with this or you're going to get another sponsor. This is not debatable. We have to keep moving here. And so I think many of us just decide very reluctantly, all right, count me in. I'll try this spiritual stuff. And I think I would just say in the words, to get this guy off my back, okay, I'm going to try the spiritual stuff. But I was telling myself, and it won't work, but go ahead. So you can see how important this is to keep the debate going and to keep moving the new person along. And it's just designed, well, relax. This isn't that hard.
All you need is an open mind. Just do that. If you want, you can make AA your higher power temporarily. You can make your home group a higher power. Just keep an open mind on this higher power thing. Keep an open mind. And then it goes on to start talking about the entire purpose of this book is to enable us to find a power greater than ourselves. The entire purpose of the book. So I guess that explains how important changing our mind is. That's what I call a second step. Changing your mind. Changing your mind. This is not an easy process for people with closed minds. I mean, changing their mind is like admitting you're wrong the first time. When you finally admit you're wrong, you almost feel like calling a press conference and go, I just want the world to know I actually did change my mind on this one point. And we're going to find out. We're going to change our mind on a rather consistent basis for the rest of our sobriety as we get rid of old ideas that are worthless. The only reason we're keeping them is that they're mine. And I thought them up. I know they're dumb, but they're mine. And I don't want to relinquish territory easily in my domain. So we find out that the purpose of this whole book is to find this power which will solve our problem. It's starting to give us a glimpse of what spiritual solutions look like. They involve a higher power.
They Involve a Higher Power.
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And the higher power and the presence of a higher power enables us to see everything differently so that what we thought was a problem really isn't that bad. It really isn't such a big deal. And that is an entirely new approach to dealing with problems. And problems are, as Bill says in these writings, they are our own making, our own making. We never would have thought that. We thought circumstances created the problem and we're just reacting to it.
So we played no part in the fact that I have a problem. And as we get into the spirituality of this situation, we find out that a problem is only a problem if it bothers you. When I first came here, somebody delaying at a green light for more than a millionth of a second was a problem. Now, I just sit there till the guy behind me honks. And I get a kick out of that. You follow what I'm saying? It's like a guy at a green light that hasn't moved ahead is not a problem because it's not bothering me.
It used to be a problem. So you can see the essence of it is it's bothering me. And I ask sometimes, now, maybe I'm wrong, but has someone here got a problem that's not bothering you? No, I guess not. OK. Well, if we could, by getting close to our higher power, have that not bother us anymore, does there still exist a problem? And the answer is no. So you can see it's we're starting to develop an immunity to the outside world and the circumstances that happen there because we're developing an access to power that can allow us to not be disturbed by the circumstances in the world.
And you go, oh, geez, that sounds like a fairy tale. There's a power that if you get close to it, it takes away all the things that are bothering you. Geez, well, do you remember the third drink? Do you remember going into a bar with a million problems and then one, two, and then you waited and then all of a sudden you just went, now, that's more like it. Yeah, this is more like it. What about all those problems?
Oh, geez, we don't need to worry about those. Let me buy you a drink. And they were there the next day, but at that moment, we had found a power that just eliminated all the disturbances. So we already know there's such a thing. It's just that we're going to find that it's possible to do it spiritually. There are various debates that go on in our mind about this relationship with a higher power. In the chapter of the agnostic, it is just something that if you're sponsoring someone and you just lead them through it, it'll help overcome all the resistance, it'll make it exciting, and it'll eventually lead up to that wonderful decision where it says, God is everything or he's nothing.
He either is or he isn't. What is your choice going to be? Now, this choice is probably the most important choice we'll ever make. I sometimes think that this is the extent of our free will. This is the one place where we have free will. We can choose God or not choose him. And if we choose God, we're going to turn our life over to him, so that's the end of our free will. If we don't choose him, our character defects are going to make all our decisions.
So it was just a joke that we had it in the first place. So that's just my own. What is our choice going to be? And isn't it funny that we're going to sit there and debate
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in our own minds whether God can exist and he's just sitting up there breathless hoping you make the right decision. Either God is or he isn't. He's either everything or he's nothing. What is your choice going to be? And I don't know. I think I finally just said, I'm in. I'm all in on this God thing. Well, how could you be all in if you don't know anything about this higher power? I don't know. I just went all in.
I went all in the drinking. I don't really understand chemically what it does. I just, I went down and turned my life over to the Marine Corps. After the first month, I thought maybe I'd made a big mistake. But it is a process that is essential to the rest of our sobriety. This, all of this that's happening right here is going to affect all the rest of the steps. The second thing I'll say about this return us, restore us to sanity.
I came up in probably 10 years ago for myself a definition of sanity and insanity. Sanity is God-centered. Insanity is self-centered. When you're self-centered, everything you see is not right. It's totally out of whack. It's like when they thought the earth was the center of the solar system. It's distorted. It doesn't fit right. It's not right. You're not the center. And as you try seeing things with you at the center, everything is screwed up.
And not seeing things, in other words, seeing things incorrectly is what insane people do. They think they're Napoleon. They see that the world hates them. They see this and they see that because they're looking at it from a self-centered perspective. So, that's why it says self-centeredness is the root of our problems. We're not the center. And I remember the first time my sponsor pointed out, you see how self-centered you are?
Everything revolves around you. Everything, yeah. And finally, I went, wow. You know, when it sinks in, it's a shock, isn't it? You feel like, well, maybe I am a little, holy cow. My name is Mr. Self-Centered. Holy geez, this is, and boy, I want to tell you, it's just, it was just a millisecond. And I said, and I'm going to do something about that. That was my self-centeredness. Yes, I'm self-centered, but I'm going to fix it.
Really, what are you going to do? What are you going to do to not be self-centered? Well, I'm, I think I told, I'm going to stand over there. That would be a different center. I'll be looking at things from that side of the room. And I suddenly realized, how can I not be, how can I become un-self-centered? I need a new center. I need God as the center. And now, when we eventually get there, which occurs later in the steps, as we look around, the world starts coming into focus.
And when we get up in the morning and go out and look around, it's a much friendlier place. It's just the same world, but we're looking at it from a different center. And this is God's world instead of ours. And it's much more comfortable to live there, as long as we maintain that connection. As soon as we lose it, we go back and the world's very intimidating and people are overpowering, et cetera.
So there's a, such a huge thing is happening in this coming to believe. The thing that helped me was speaker meetings. I'm a big advocate of speaker meetings. We had tons of them in D.C. We had two speakers. And I think everybody had to talk at least eight times a year to fill the quota of all the speaker meetings around. So you were attending speaker meetings and when you attend speaker meetings, you hear the whole deal.
The identification process is so much more powerful than some discussion. And during that time, I would hear a guy and I'd go, this guy is just like me. And then he came to the point where he changed his mind about God. And I would go, man, if that guy did it,
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I'm not going to lose face if I do it. You know, the ego is worried about losing face. I remember when I was going to get into prayer, I said, okay, I'm going to pray but I'm not going to tell anybody if it works. Because I've been bad-mouthing prayer for 25 years. And that's, nothing happened to that. And what if it works out and they're all going to go, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So that's how self-centered and egocentric we are.
I'm praying, hoping it doesn't work so that I can go around, I tried and it didn't work. And of course, it works and then you go, oh, God, now I got this terrible problem. And then you realize how blessed you are to have been talked in to changing your mind. And while I'm on the subject, when I came to AA, there was a lot of things I didn't like. I mean, number one, my sponsor is going to go to a meeting every night.
So I wanted to not go to a meeting every night. Then when I got there, I didn't want to hear about God. God, God, God, God, God, I just said, jeez, could we tone that down? Then they're praying. I didn't like the serenity prayer and I did not like the Lord's Prayer. I would be for the first six months, I was just going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I'm not saying that and I wouldn't say God. I said, higher power for three or four years just to hold on to my old ideas, oh, I'm not changing my mind.
And then I realized you could say God faster than higher power and I went, oh, yeah. I got on an efficiency kick and I realized this was absurd that I didn't want to hear the word God. I didn't want the Lord's Prayer. I didn't want this. I didn't want to do an inventory. I think people should make amends to me, but topping the list of the things that I didn't like about AA was the not drinking part.
I just, jeez, how about one drink a week? I mean, come on, it's got to be, cut me some slack here. So supposing just for discussion purposes that we had a kinder, gentler, more understanding, more inclusive AA who were sensitive to my feelings and accommodated me, got rid of the Lord's Prayer, stopped talking about God so much, didn't make me rush into any of this, allowed me to keep my old beliefs, I'd be dead.
That would be a death sentence to an alcoholic. And we're getting awful kind these days. We're getting very, we're getting very weird. A person grows spiritually by having their ego diminished and by not getting their way. Alcoholics are self-centered. They're used to getting their way. We don't want to teach people to get their way. We want people to get rid of their way and learn God's way. So anytime we accommodate someone out of some false sense of kindness, we're really stunting their spiritual growth.
We're making a very bad judgment to change AA to accommodate any newcomer. It is an absolute dilute the message out of some ridiculous act of kindness. What has that got to do with anything? We're here to transform all the old ideas of this newcomer and to cheat them out of the great rewards that come from a spiritual awakening is just, it shouldn't be in our hands to do anything like that. So that's the end of my speech.
So I will, I'll just stop there. Thank you very much for your time and for your care. This remains one of the best chapters in the big book, is that chapter of the agnostic. I just find it brilliant. It just takes this situation of all types
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slides them along very politely, very gently, just keep an open mind, come on, let's just keep moving, let's go to another speaker meeting, allow the process of what they hear at meetings to help transform the person inside. And all of a sudden, after hearing ten speakers, they feel the resistance dropping. And they're finally free of that old prejudice and those old ideas that just, they have to die. They're the worst thing we can carry around. But pride loves old ideas. And pride is just there. It's the biggest character defect we'll ever face is pride. The new crowd isn't anti-God, it's just they've realized that God is no longer necessary. He's a wonderful guy, but in the modern world, with science and everything, he's sort of a has-been and too bad, but we really just don't need him anymore. Now, there's pride at its peak to speak in those terms. We have evolved so far that we can get spiritual on our own. And we can get sober through our brain power. And we can get sober one way or the other. What a shame if someone were to miss out on what we found and was evolved right here. The greatest gift that a human being can have is conscious contact with their own creator. That's what I will go down on record as saying that is it. That's the jackpot.
You just can't hardly have a bigger experience than that. So anyway, we finally get to this point where we're coming to believe and we're willing to let go of a lot of our old ideas and suddenly we're up against, rather rapidly, made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him. Now it's not just that I'm going to start believing that this might be possible. Just look how fast this hits us in the beginning of AA. Now we're going to turn our whole life over there. I mean, it's just like, hey, wait a minute, I'm just getting used to the idea that there might be a higher power and now you want me to entertain the idea.
And again, Bill is an interesting writer. Whenever he advances us to the next thing, he then tells us what our resistance is going to be. Do you ever notice that? He just goes, okay, now I advance that. This is what you're probably going to say. Wait a minute. I came here to stop drinking. I didn't come here to become a saint. I just want to let God have my drinking problem. But the rest of it, I haven't decided on. I mean, you're rushing me into such an extreme position here in this second step. In the 12 and 12, you know, if I go around this, I'll be the, remember this is my favorite character. I'll be the hole in the doughnut. If I turn everything over, I will be the hole in the, I will be a non-entity. In other words, my ego will be gone. And to an egocentric person, this is quite terrifying. What will be left if my character defects are gone? I am my character defects. That's who I am. I'm going to turn all this over. Oh my God, this is going way too far. And that's when we start. And I remember, and it is, it occurs in different ways. For me, it was, I saw my sponsors. Look, drinking is out. Zero drinking. None. And we're going to keep going along. So I've got about three months. We're both in the Marine Corps. And he says to me, Sandy, I see you taking money out of the petty cash at work. That's federal money. That's embezzling. You can't do that and stay sober. So, and I remember going home going, oh, so there's two parts to AA. No drinking, no embezzling. Okay. They ought to put that up front. I didn't
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see anything embezzlers or none. I didn't see any of that. Oh, two things are involved. Then, a month later, Sandy, you're married. You can't keep flirting with these other women. It's, it ruins your marriage and you can't stay sober if you keep doing that. And I went home and I said, ha ha. So there's three things involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. No drinking, no embezzling, flirting. Well, I'm glad we covered all those. Okay. You know, and then every month. Oh, and also, none of that. And also, none of this. It seemed like there was an endless parade of things that AA secretly, in some fine print somewhere, didn't allow. But didn't tell you about it up front. They kept it as a secret. They said, no, just don't drink. That's all. Don't drink. Just don't. Go to meetings, don't drink. Go to meetings, don't drink. And here's all this fine print down here. Well, actually, there's a few more things. I was just kidding. And so a brand new venture in open-mindedness had to take place here. And once again, I go back to speaker meetings. I looked at people and they told their story and then they told about how they decided to just turn everything over and then just see what transpired. They would survive on the guidance they received from their higher power, their sponsor, and the group. And they were going to compare the results of this guidance to self-guidance when they made up their own answers and they're totally in charge. It was almost like an experiment. You stop deciding anything. Allow decisions to come from over here.
Your job is to compare the results. Okay? And then I'm going, yeah, because I can lie about the results and I'll win anyway. So see how the ego is? Even if it works better, I'm going to say it doesn't. And it did. And I heard people tell stories about that. And the funny thing is, you could see it on their face. You could see they weren't making it up. They were genuinely all excited and happy about this decision that they made to allow something other than their self-centeredness to control the direction of their decision making in their lives. In other words, the reason AA is so successful is we're dealing with people who have totally failed. This would be a hard sell in a group full of successful people. You follow what I'm saying? They would go, look, you don't have to sit there just being successful. We can take you behind. Why don't you turn your life over to a higher power? But we're desperate. And when that was advanced to me, you are in charge of evaluating the results. That really caught my attention. And I went, okay. I'm in for turning my life over. I think I'm going to go all in on this God thing. I don't even know what this God is. Because this is not a religion. So we don't have any God. There is no AA God. There are just principles that cause an experience.
And in that experience, you personally understand what your creator can do. You don't understand what this creator is because it's a mystery beyond our comprehension. So in AA, God is experienced. Not really understood. That's a misterm. The understanding is the accumulation of all the experiences of this higher power. And so we can't tell you what this God is. We can only show you the results. Results. Look at that girl over there. Six months ago, she was out on the streets.
Look at this. She got her child back. She got a job. Look. Listen to her story. Let her tell the story. Stories. How important are stories? If this is just a hypothetical, but if someone
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challenged us to prove that AA's 12 steps work, you claim that these 12 steps get people sober and that they have spiritual awakenings and they do all that. You prove that to me. I want to see this proved in a court of law with lawyers and cross-examination and the whole thing. Do you know how easy that would be? We just select 25 people from this room and they would be our 25 witnesses. Your honor, for my first witness, I call Ralph. Ralph, do you swear to tell the jury?
Yes, I do. Ralph, would you just tell your whole story to the jury? Thank you, Ralph. Any questions? And when we finish, I think it's unanimous. The 12 steps work miracles because the stories told it. Storytelling is an essential part of spirituality. See, you can't describe something that's undescribable, but you can have people who've experienced it tell their stories and in the telling, you understand everything. You don't need it explained in textbook fashion.
You just saw it with your own eyes. And then when you experience it yourself, that becomes all the proof you need of the existence of this thing that we call our creator and our higher power. Until you've had that experience, it's just a theory. You realize that other people have had it, but sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes slowly, it will always materialize. It always will happen if you work for it.
And the decision to do this is all contained in this third step. A decision is a much more important act than we realize. It doesn't look like a big action step, made a decision. But have you ever thought about going back to school and getting some sort of a computer degree so you could be more useful? And then you talk to people about, you know, I'm thinking of going back to the computer school. Matter of fact, I got a book here and it tells where the computer schools are. Matter of fact, I called up and I've, you know, and a year goes by and, you know, I checked out another school. And your friends are going, well, when are you going to go to the school?
You're talking about it, you're getting ready, you're doing it. The day you make a decision to go to that school, you go over and register. You purchase the books and you clear time in your schedule and you're in your first class. Now, it's going to take two years for that decision to be completed. But without the decision, you'd still be talking about maybe going to a computer school. So we're talking about getting spiritual. I might get spiritual. I might do this. When you decide, that is huge. I have decided to do whatever it takes to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. Well, how do I do that? How does one turn it over when you suddenly realize you are trying to turn over something, your will, there's probably a thousand ropes tied to this tree behind me. Those are all the different defects that I have.
And in order to turn it over, these all have to be untied or I don't move anywhere. And that is the purpose of the rest of the steps is to carry out the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God. So the decision is essential but it has to be immediately followed by action which are the remaining steps. And we must always keep in mind as we're doing the steps like you're making an amend.
And then you go, why am I making this amend? And we have to remember because I'm trying to get my life turned over to this higher power. And this is one of those things that has to be done in One of the things that has to be done in order for me to experience this conscious contact. So the ninth step is part of turning our life over.
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It is an essential part of the third step. All the rest of the steps are the carrying out of the decision that we made in the third step. So we want to keep that in mind as we go along because sometimes we're halfway through making a mental, we're going, God, I'll be glad when this is over and it just seems so strong. And it seems, why do I just have to keep doing this? We're going after the jackpot.
We're going after what I call conscious contact. One of the reasons I was so taken with Chuck Chamberlain was the simplicity of his approach to things and how he could take concepts and reduce them down. And I just remember, and all of you that have listened to or read New Pair of Glasses remember a couple of things and you remember how he drew that big circle. And I love talking about this in case there's somebody in the room that hasn't heard it.
Chuck draws a circle on the blackboard and he said, this is the entire universe. This is everything that there is. This is God and everything that there is is contained in this circle. Do you understand that? That's pretty easy to understand. Then he draws a dot outside the circle and he said, this is you. That's a pretty, isn't that, see how simple that is? And you're going, yeah. I remember when I was new, it was almost like I was proud to be outside the circle.
I'm not one of the crowd inside, I'm outside. Now wait a minute, how could you exist in addition to everything? I don't know, but I do. Really yeah, I do, I do exist in addition to everything. There's everything, there's my whole family, they're all like this and then there's me. There's everybody at work and then there's me. So it turns out that the way you exist in addition to the entire universe is to make up a story that you exist in addition to the whole universe and believe it and live in that world.
Turns out you're the only one there. It's your world. Nobody can screw with it, but you're the only one in it and it gets real lonely. And the guy that lives there, the gal that lives there is crazy and you're being subjected to crazy thinking all the time, you can't even sleep in your world. And Chuck is trying to show us how to come back and be part of the real universe. And he goes on to say that there's only one problem that includes all problems and one solution that includes all solutions.
And the problem is conscious separation from God. Conscious separation from God means you live outside the circle. You don't, there is no such thing as God. When you, people, and I probably could have done, they could have put a lie detector on me and say, have you ever experienced God? Do you believe there is a God? Is there anything? And I'd go, no. And the needle wouldn't have moved. I had never had any evidence that there was a God.
That's where I was, totally separated. And because of that separation, it caused all the other problems. Because I'm alone, because I see things incorrectly, because I'm the center of everything, all these other problems arise. And they're all problems of perception. Clancy covers this, he's been doing that for all the years I've known him. It's a disease of perception. You're seeing things wrong. If we could clear up your vision with a new pair of glasses, as Chuck talks about, then you would see that everything's all right.
And there's one solution that includes all solutions, and that's conscious contact with a higher power. In other words, when we're this close, problems can't exist. It's just impossible, because we're totally in the solution. And again, I go back to, for me, it was the action of the third drink. That was conscious contact. I'm waiting to establish conscious contact with vodka.
[00:50:00]
And as soon as I get it, everything will be fine. And it took about 12 minutes at the bar. Oh, boy, come on, come on, vodka, let's go, let's go, come on, vodka, let's go. All right, waiting, waiting. Yeah, okay, let's start talking. Now I'm in the right world. Now this is more like it. Yes, problem free. That's what AA's solution looks like, is that sense of well-being for which there is no real reason.
It is just a spiritual sense of well-being. You didn't get promoted. You didn't just get a girlfriend or a boyfriend. You just suddenly felt really nice about everything. That is quite a gift. And the third step for making this decision, the decision is to go after that gift. The decision is to go after conscious contact, to go after a spiritual awakening. And this is where the sentence in the big book that, for me, describes a spiritual awakening.
We suddenly realize God's doing for us what we couldn't do for ourselves. That to me describes it. In other words, other people have seen us changing. They know that AA is kicking in, so to speak. They sense, they see the lines on our face. They see our eyes lighting up. We on the other hand are so consumed with, you know, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And then one day it dawns on us that all this good things that have apparently come as coincidences aren't coincidences.
And you suddenly become aware that this power has been there all along. I remember in hotels they used to have reading rooms. And if you were waiting for somebody, you could go in there. They had big overstuffed chairs and they had books and you could take a book and sit there and read it. And I remember two or three times going in and casing the room and there was no one in there. And I got my book and I was reading, probably reading about 15 minutes.
All of a sudden I realized there was someone in there. And they'd been there all along. I just wasn't aware of it. I don't know why I suddenly became aware. Maybe you've had that experience and you just go, well, there's a guy, he's over there. I thought I was empty in this room. And it's an interesting feeling to suddenly become aware of something. And when you suddenly become aware that this has happened to you, it's a very personal, it's a very quiet and exhilarating, it sometimes brings tears.
And you just go, wow, they weren't lying, were they? They weren't exaggerating. They were leading me towards my birthright. This is what I was intended to have happen. This is the prodigal son coming home. We all had this sense that something was missing. And we tried to fix it with everything there was, liquor, sex, power, fighter planes, whatever it was. And you're never there. You're almost there.
You're almost there. But there's still something. And since we're little, people are going, now don't forget about God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Little did we know that this is what's missing because it doesn't look like that. It doesn't feel like that. And yet, when it happens, it's the first time we feel complete. I think you read yesterday when you were reading the foreword to the 12 and 12, right out of the 12 steps where it says, group of principles, spiritual nature, if they're practiced as a way of life will expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.
Remember that word, whole. You suddenly realize there isn't anything missing now. All the pieces are together. That's what whole means.
[00:55:00]
I am a complete person now. And until this piece is finally put in, that sense of being whole and complete will evade us and it'll just be there. And I think it's there so that it pushes us to try and solve the mystery. You don't have the peace of mind until this piece comes in. So I've used up my time in some approach to looking at steps two and three. And I want to say to those of you that are new that it sounds kind of far out.
It may sound this, but it's very practical. It's the most practical thing you can imagine. AA is very result-oriented. It's very one-step-at-a-time-oriented. And the secret to the whole thing is you not thinking. That's, you got to, ooh, don't, don't, don't. Try to eliminate the word but from your vocabulary. Yeah, I like that idea, Ralph, but. And I think if you were to ask only one question of your sponsor, you would be guaranteed success.
And the question is, what do you want me to do next? It's that simple. And if the results don't improve, I will be astounded. They always improve. And they will always materialize if we work for them. So thank you all very much. It's been a pleasure.