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Source: Sandy B – Crested Butte – Our Problems are of Our Own Making (2006) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: sandy-b-crested-butte-our-problems-are-of-our-own-making-2006-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:58:51
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Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 3.30 workshop on the riddle of our existence. Not the riddle of our existence, problems of our own making. My name is Sandy B. and I'm an alcoholic. Let's start the meeting out with a moment of silence followed by the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes.
Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. And I'm really honored that I was asked to attend this wonderful week. I can see why people have been talking about it so much. It's been absolutely delightful. And the topic this afternoon is our problems are of our own making. And I want to start out with just an observation to demonstrate how problems are how we make them, how we turn something into a problem.
And this may not sound, you'll go, gee whiz, that's not a very good example. But for the point I'm trying to make, it is. And it goes something like this. You know, if we went back, and we were talking about this at lunch today, if we went back about 60 years ago, in most towns and in even small cities, there was only one meeting a week. That's it. One meeting a week. And you think back, you know, and talk to some of the real old timers, and they go, how in God's name are you going to stay sober on one meeting a week? And they were staying sober in possibly higher percentages than we are today.
Well, if you talk to them, they go, this is one thing, you really look forward to that meeting. You really look forward to that meeting. And the second thing, maybe you found somebody else that was in that group, and you made arrangements to have coffee about halfway through. And that cut the time lapse in half. But mostly, you just prayed like hell. I mean, you just prayed and prayed. And now we fast forward to today. And I don't care, even in a small town, you've got 6 a.m. meetings, 8 a.m. meetings, 12 o'clock meetings, 4.45 meetings, 7 o'clock meetings, midnight meetings.
You've got men's meetings, gay meetings, women's meetings, pilots' meetings, lawyers' meetings. You've got a pamphlet on every possible problem there ever was and ever will be. And we have clubs, and we have conventions, and we have dances, and we have CDs, and we have tapes. Hell, you don't have to hardly pray at all. Now, when you think about that, you can end up with middle-of-the-road sobriety on the support system alone.
And Bill Wilson would call that good sobriety, in order to make this point, as he quoted Abraham Lincoln, good is the biggest enemy of the best that there is. And so here we look at success and see that there's a problem even in success. And that's not only in the entire fellowship, but in our programs themselves. It seems to be one of the dynamics of spirituality, that as we start out incredibly desperate, we are doing things that are absolutely necessary for our survival and our moving on and moving on, and we get results from that.
[00:05:16]
And the results themselves are wonderful. It's the serenity that comes in and the new perspective, etc. But with the serenity comes the loss of desperation and a sense of having arrived. Wow, I finally made it. It's so much better now. Well, it depends how we are describing that situation to ourselves. It's so much better now. On the one hand, it could be a healthy explanation. It's so much better that I fully realize I'm still as dependent as I was. Or we could be, without realizing it, telling ourselves, isn't this wonderful to be further along and to be in a much more solid position than I was when I arrived here.
Translated into spiritualist, I don't need God as much now as I did about three years ago. In other words, this is how problems are created inside of us, is by using language that is used very common in the material world and applying it over in the spiritual world. And I have a terrible time with that because I talked to two F4 pilots right before the meeting, and when we look back, I mean, being a pilot isn't any different than learning how to drive a car or whatever it is, but the process goes like this.
You have an instructor pilot, and you both get in the plane together, and then he is teaching you, but the goal is to eventually be on your own. To be on your own. When do I no longer require all of this help, and I am now doing it on my own? Now that happens in all kinds of things. You get sales training, and then you are out on your own. Whatever, nurses training, now I am out on my own. I am fully self-sufficient. And it is real easy to carry that over into our program and start telling ourselves, geez, I have been so over 15 years, I ought to be more on my own than I am.
What is wrong with me? Gee whiz, I am almost like an old newcomer. You know what I mean? I haven't made any progress at all. I am still this far away from a drink. What the heck is that? I ought to be able to do better than this. You can see how the ego is slowly sliding into our program and telling us the song, the little fiddle, you are doing great, you are doing great, oh good, good. I don't need God as much. No, you don't need him as much. We never did need us. You and I are doing great.
And there is the music being played, and of course it is very seductive and it feels wonderful. And so that is what I am trying to maybe share a little thoughts on. And I am going to just get on the record the quotes from the book that I want to use. And of course the problems of our own making, page 62, I didn't mark these things, I am sorry. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so.
And then on 103, at the very end of working with others, it is all in italics. After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol. Besides, we stopped fighting anybody or anything. We have to. And page 58, right at the beginning of how it works, some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
[00:10:03]
And one of the things I think that is crucial to understanding this is the power of our old ideas and how you think they are gone, but they are not. They are still a tremendous controlling part of our lives, are these old ideas. And the result was nil until we let go absolutely, let go of this idea. And so that becomes a very important part of the process. And let's see, in the 12 and 12, page 90, the spiritual axiom in the 10th step, if something disturbs us, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.
Whoa, what's wrong with us? We're disturbed. We created a problem. And in the old days, we would go, no, we didn't create it. That guy did when he cheated me on the payment. He created the problem. I didn't. And then that's what Bill is trying to say. That may be true under the old guidelines, but under the spiritual lease, and we ought to have a sign outside of all the meetings, spiritually spoken here, so that we know to shift over to this new perspective.
Oh, and then page 36 in the 12 and 12, I really like this. I've only got one more and then I won't have to stop looking down. This is in step three. And Bill is quoting, you know how he always makes a point and then he tells us how we're going to object to it. I always love that way of presenting things. Wait a minute. So he's just explained turning our lives over to the care of God. And the response is, yes, yes. Respecting alcohol, I guess I'll have to depend upon AA. But in all other matters, I must still maintain my independence.
Nothing is going to turn me into a non-entity. Nothing is going to turn me into a non-entity. If I keep turning my life and my will over to something or somebody else, what will become of me? I'll be like the hole in the donut. I'll be the hole in the donut. Okay, so now if we had a spiritualist dictionary and we looked up non-entity and hole in the donut, it would say completely spiritual person. It wouldn't mean the same thing as over here.
And so we got, you see how we got a shift? Oh, non-entity. Good. That's good. In other words, of myself I'm nothing. The higher power does the work. And so these are just some play on words. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. And so I'm going to get to that. It's a very important thing to understand. What is St. Francis talking about? You know what I mean? You just pull out a gun and go, well, eternal life, there I am. And obviously he doesn't mean that at all. He means that we have to kill the ego.
That we have to make an entire separation from this old self in order to experience this. And that understanding that and accepting dying is one of the most wonderful things to do in order to enjoy living. And it sounds almost like a paradox, but it isn't. And as a matter of fact, I'm going to do a men's retreat, some of them in Tampa, and I'm working on a whole hour on dying and death in terms of spirituality, because I think it's that important.
So anyway, those are the foundation out of the big book. And now I'm just going to make up stories and try to illustrate some of these points with my insane perspective. And I always like to start, I heard this so many years ago and I never saw the wonderful value in it until a couple of years ago. It's humorous, but then it just goes on and it becomes deeper and deeper. And it goes like this. Let me get a drink.
The guy got up to tell his story, and he said, Ladies and gentlemen, my story is divided
[00:15:07]
into two parts. What happened during the years that I drank, and what I thought happened during the years that I drank. And then everybody laughs. And they go, oh boy, I can relate to that. Isn't that funny? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm here this afternoon to submit to you that we could tell that about anything else in our life. We could say this. My childhood is divided into two parts. What happened to me when I was a child, and what I thought happened to me when I was a child. My relationship with my boss has two parts. The relationship with my boss, and what I think the relationship with my boss is. And this could go through every situation that we have. There is what happened, and then there's my version of what happened. So in other words, every event that happens gets spin put on it by me as I officially record it. And so when we think about this, so what, it's not by accident that the speaker got up and said, my story is divided into two parts. Well what's a story?
It's something we make up. It is our old ideas. And as long as we keep playing that story, we are going to keep getting the same results. And I was thinking about this, and I went, that couldn't be true. I mean that's too simple. What are you talking about? And here's a couple of points. If you went back and listened to the talks telling my story that I gave in 1970, say, and then compared it to today, you would suddenly notice that today I had a better childhood than I did in 1970. Now how in God's name is that possible? How could I have a better childhood? Part of it is, I've been getting rid of old ideas that I have been trying to get free from the problem creation of my own ego in order to enjoy conscious contact with my own creator. And this contact and this new perspective makes it look that way. That's all. I'm just reporting what I see today. And when I look at it from a relatively undisturbed center compared to 1970, my parents did a great job. And my sincere apologies to all the things I said about the Catholic Church. I would like to admit right now, I was wrong. But that was my story and I was sticking to it. And so I'm going to tell you a story. And so it's just a fascinating thing. Now here was, just as I was starting to realize this and maybe work it into a talk and think about it, one of the girls in my home group had the most amazing thing to contribute to this. She came in one day, and I'm guessing that she's in her 40s, and she said, we went to dinner, and there's several of us, and she said, oh, I'm so excited, I'm so excited. I guess all of you, did you know I was adopted?
No, we didn't know you were adopted. Well, I am, and I've always wanted to meet my real father. And I finally found him about six months ago, and I contacted him, and we agreed that it would be wonderful to meet. And I'm so excited, and we're having the meeting this weekend up in St. Louis, and I'm so excited. And off she went, and of course we're all waiting to hear the report on how it went, because sometimes those go good, and sometimes they're painful or whatever. When she came back, and she was so excited, it was just the greatest thing. It was a new friend, they're going to stay in touch, etc., etc. And then she got to one point, and she said, God, it was really amazing, because we got talking about my childhood, and there were several things that I thought happened that didn't happen. And then she said these words, so I had to change my story. I had to change
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my story. So, I think one thing that we can start thinking of in terms of one of our AA slogans, when we say let go and let God, we're letting go of our story, letting go of the power that those things that we keep repeating to ourselves have over us, and any disturbance in a story, and old ideas are probably all the disturbance that we really ever get, is the main thing that blocks us from conscious contact with our higher power. That's why that axiom is so important, that we are disturbed, because disturbed means the channel that St.
Francis talks about in the beginning of his prayer is blocked. One way of looking at the entire AA program is, just from the perspective of the St. Francis prayer, is make me a channel of thy peace. The channel is blocked by character defects, and so we have a process for opening the channel, and that's what all these steps are for, and to maintain it open in the tenth step. This continual inventory of whenever I'm disturbed in the four part thing that's in the twelve and twelve of self-restraint, honest analysis of what's wrong, willingness to make amends if it's my fault, and the willingness to forgive if it's somebody else's, what is that for? It's to become undisturbed right away. Whenever a disturbance comes and I want to get undisturbed, now the channel is still open, and I am still in a much different perspective than I was when I was disturbed. You suddenly realize that the entire point of this is to always stay plugged in. Now, I don't know why alcoholics wouldn't know this, what was the whole point of being an alcoholic? It was to never run out of booze. We have one solution for all problems, and that solution was drinking. I mean, think back. You're in a bar and your friend comes in and he says, oh my God, I just found out my wife is going to divorce me and I may get fired. How do we help him with his problem? What do we say?
Let me buy you a drink. We didn't discuss the ins and outs and ups and downs and this and that, we just went, here, this is a problem remover. This is a problem remover. And when we come over into spiritual ease, this is, Bill doesn't talk about problem solving, he talks about problem removing. And so when I'm working with my sponsees, pigeons we used to call them, and they, I don't say this to them, but when they come and they want to talk about a problem, my job is to convince them that they don't have a problem. That everything is already okay, and that you are looking at it wrong. And this is what spiritual perspective means. Well, let's take another look at that. I remember going to my sponsor early on, and you come running in, oh my God, the Marine Corps is going to fire me, the sky is falling, my car is going to, and then he'd go, okay, okay, okay, but listen, what about the fact that you're in the program now, you've got lots of new friends, you're on this path, things are changing, your family is starting, what about all that? And I said, well, if you look at it that way, not so bad. If you look at it that way, which lays the foundation for telling us that, as Clancy says, life is a disease of perception. That every time we get round up about something, we're looking at it incorrectly. And we're looking at it incorrectly because we're disturbed. And so, how can we get to look at it correctly, get undisturbed? In other words, that becomes the new top priority. So, what's necessary is a new way of looking at everything. And I was trying to find a way of looking at the ego. You know, make up a story so we could have some dynamics about what the ego is.
And I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but I came up with an analogy to a tree and that the elm trees in New Haven, where I grew up, were very big and they had
[00:25:01]
15 million leaves. I looked it up. And the tree is this incredible entity that functions like a symphony orchestra. And there's obviously some divine guidance going on and all of the components of this tree work together and it's in harmony. It does amazing things and the leaves are very important. And in this analogy, the higher power gives the leaves free will. And after a while, they're sitting on the branch board and they're looking around going, well, this low branch has a lousy view compared to those guys. And we're much bigger and they're doing more work and we're doing more work than they are. We're producing more sugar than they are. We ought to organize. And all kinds of things happen to them. And after years go by, they're all frustrated. They hate being a leaf on a tree. It sucks.
It's the worst thing that ever happened. And the only thing holding them together, and they're almost born with it, is a desire to go back and just be a leaf like they were. And when you read spiritual writings, it's like we were all born with something that was causing us unrest. And Carl Jung, and I'll get to that a little bit later, talks about that. C.S. Lewis, all the writers talk about God in terms of the unrest that is inside of every human being and the human being's attempts to try and fix it. And the alcoholic found alcohol and it really was a spiritual quest. And Dr. Jung insisted on it. That's exactly what alcoholics are doing. They're trying to slake their thirst for God. And they're off on this tangent thinking that alcohol is doing it. And drinking in a way was a spiritual experience. It was a very transforming thing so that because of a power greater than ourselves, it changed the way we looked at everything. And we liked the world when we saw it under the influence of that power. But anyway, instead of using that one, I like to listen to these programs about space. I mean the universe and these cosmologists and they're trying to figure it all out. So these guys were talking about quantum mechanics and some of the things that they're discovering. And then they go, and then we have to just throw away all our ideas because everything, this is impossible. And they're talking about how open-minded you have to be to make any progress whatsoever. He said you just have to be able to see everything entirely different. For example, one way of looking at a chicken, it's an egg's way of reproducing itself. Now that's a rather different way of looking at a chicken, isn't it? A chicken is an egg's way of reproducing itself. Well, if you sat there as an egg, you could go, you're damn right it is. That's how it's done. So anyway, that got me thinking that perhaps we're all eggs. So now we've got to imagine that we've got little legs and arms and little heads sitting on top there and we're just eggs.
I don't know how many on the planet, 10 billion? 10 billion eggs. They're all going around. Some of them are painted white. Some are painted black. Some are painted brown. Some are painted yellow. And they're just eggs. They're all going. And most of them just end up rotting and falling by the wayside. Some of them get scrambled, fried. Some of them go into cakes. Some of them go into cookies. Some of them go into fudge. I mean, they just have all these different places they end up. But they're trying to have a house and a family and a car and get ahead of the other eggs and doing all these things. But one of the things that happens to some of them is they hatch. You know what I mean? They hatch. Now that's a whole different deal than the scrambled eggs and the fried eggs and the rotten eggs and the cakes. There's a small percentage that hatch. And as the people started studying the egg population, they noticed that there was a large amount of hatching going on in the alcoholic population of eggs. You know what I mean?
You know what I mean? Now, granted, a whole bunch of them just fall off of buildings and splat on the road, or just drive a car into a tree, and then that's the end of them, but there's a percentage there, there's about 10% that somehow
[00:30:14]
get singled out for this thing called hatching, and it's a very funny process, how an alcoholic, A, gets singled out for hatching. It looks something like this, the alcoholic's A, driving his car, it's 2 in the morning, he's been in the bar all night, he's on his way home, but he forgot where he lived, but he has lots of gas, and he's got the radio all the way up, and he's singing, he's got six more beers under the seat, and he's singing his favorite song, I Did It My Way, I mean, obviously, that's the ultimate alcoholic theme song, and a Texas State Trooper suddenly is behind him with the red and blue light going, and he has to pull over, and he's cursing, why is he picking on me?
And we freeze frame right now, because this is God's agent coming in and selecting this one for hatching, and pretty soon he's up in front of the, he has no idea, he thinks this is the worst thing that ever happened to him, you know, the unjust treatment, you know, he tried to slip a $100 bet, didn't do any good. And next thing he's in front of a judge, and the judge's going, okay, it's going to be, this is your fifth DWI, so it's going to be like four years in jail, or you can join AA.
And so he goes, oh my God, I don't want to join those guys, that's the last place I want to go. And so he goes, and they go, okay, we're going to start you through the hatching process, you're not going to believe it, because everything as you see it now isn't going to be the way you're going to see it when we get through with you. And now that you're here, you can't go back. We're going to take you through a process where you're going to hatch. And of course, this is like, whoa, whoa, these guys are weird. I mean, what is that? Yeah, we have a 12-step hatching process.
And you just have to keep attending these incubation sessions. We have little meetings, and we're going to put you right there. And of course, you don't believe it. But you're there a while, and you feel something inside of you that feels like it's alive, and that it is seeing things a little bit. You have no idea what is happening, but you know something is happening. There is an awareness. And then they go, we just need you to poke, because nobody can do this for you. And if you can imagine how hard it is to poke through your entire support system.
On the grounds that there's something over there. And we're not going to tell you what it is, but you're going to love it. It's like, you want me to poke through and break this? I mean, you know, the word was, this is it. If this breaks, you're in a lot of trouble. You'll be dead. And so finally, you can see that there's something out there. And you go, look, we've got to get you all the way out. You've got to keep poking until that's bigger. And we have steps for that. And it's very painful. Every time you poke one of these things, it's going to hurt. You're getting rid of this stuff, and you feel totally naked and exposed, and you have no protection to anything.
And you have to keep on poking. And you come out, and you start to realize that there is something out there. And you have actually made it out. And the shell is sitting here with this little hole, so it's like a secret home. And we spend a little time out here, and then we go back in there, and we're looking out a little bit more. What is this spiritual dimension that I'm supposed to be going into? Now, the problem is, the shell doesn't want to give up its existence. That has been in charge of everything.
That's where all of the perspective on the world has come from. It's from the egg. But we have something other than an egg that is now starting to take a look around and see what's what. Start questioning all the ideas that the shell had. And so this is the struggle that we have, is to stop listening to this entire package of information. And so when we find ourselves making progress in the spiritual world, the shell is beckoning us, come on back, it's not safe out there, you're having a hard time. You've lost contact with God, you're having a little bit of anxiety.
[00:35:23]
Come here, come here. I'm always here for you. Don't worry, you can come back into the safety of self-centeredness. You can come back into the old, familiar, they may be crappy ideas, but they're familiar. These are your comfort zone. You don't want to stay out of the comfort zone too long. So now we have established the dynamics of trying to grow spiritually versus the comfort of the familiar that we were raised in and that has been part of us forever.
And it's very difficult to make a total separation. And so, you know, maybe St. Francis did it and maybe there are other examples throughout history. But our challenge is to see how far away we can get from the power of that shell. One of the things I was going to do in this workshop was I ran across a poem, I was talking to Mike about it, and it was a poem called High Flight. And it was written by a young man named William McGee.
I don't know if you've heard it or not, but it's many years ago when television used to go off the air. Everybody remember that? You talk to younger people off the air? What is that? Well, at 12 o'clock at night, they just stopped broadcasting and they played the Star Spangled Banner and then there was a test pattern until nine in the morning. And if you couldn't sleep, you just sat there and looked at the test pattern. But there was no program on.
Well, when they played the Star Spangled Banner, they also always played a movie of an Air Force fighter pilot climbing up higher and higher and higher. And this poem would be read about breaking the bonds of earth and climbing and soaring. And then the last line, and then the TV would go off the air was, and I reached out to touch the face of God. And so the astronaut program, they had to get to the point where they got free from Earth's gravity. That you would call total freedom from planet Earth.
Was to get where you were no longer being pulled by the forces of gravity on the planet. And then you could say, wow, we are now on to another journey. And the same thing exists in the power of our ego to hold us from going any further towards touching the face of our own creator. And so the dynamics of the whole program describe that. They don't use those exact words. So I'm trying to paint a picture of what each one of us is struggling against. And you know, gravity on planet Earth is that pretty hard thing to get away from.
And so where does Bill write about this? Where does Bill write about this struggle? Where does Bill cover this particular situation that I'm talking about? And I'm going to suggest to you that he writes about it in the 12 and 12 in the sixth step. Because the sixth step, we're entirely ready to have God remove all defects of character. Could be rephrased to have God remove all of our old ideas, which is where all the defects of character come from.
Which is to say, to totally remove the shell so that there's just me and God. And then my total identity is, well, who are you? I'm a child of God. And that feels so good to my heart. My heart would love it if every time anybody asked me who I am, I said, I'm a child of God.
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But my ego goes, wait a minute, pal, you're more than that. You're a lot more than that. You know what I mean? You're a real estate giant. You're a mother of five. You know, so it's a child of God and a, you know what I mean? I'm an alcoholic and a, and we start down the whole list of other things that qualify us to be more unique than just an alcoholic. And so in this step, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Bill says it right out.
The clear implication of this step is perfection. Perfection. To which the eggshell replies, yes, but remember, progress, not perfection. Don't go too far. Come on back, pal. Now, so progress, not perfection, can be a very healthy statement. It can help us to not feel bad about ourselves as we're trying to work along, but it can also be a limiting thing. Well, why try to go any further from the shell? After all, who could get up there? Oops, they did.
And so Bill says, well, wait a minute. You know, what proof do we have? And he writes that right in the sixth step. What proof do we have? What is this? You know, this is a theory. Remember that? You've got it up here somewhere. Spiritual life is not a theory. We have to, this is just a theory. He said, well, let me give you an example. We'll see if it's a theory or not, because we like practical things. What was your biggest problem? Oh, my drinking. Well, did you get entirely willing to have that removed? Oh yeah, God, boy, that thing was killing me. Well, did you humbly admit it? Yeah, yeah. What happened? It's gone.
Oh, so your most serious problem has been perfectly removed and you can feel it and you saw it happen with your very eyes. So you've been given absolute proof that this works. And you go, yeah, but it happens in God's time. That's the shell. It's not me. It's not me. That is still closer to the shell than up here. It's when it's supposed to happen. It's going to happen. Does that sound like a little rationalizing? Like it couldn't be that I'm not willing.
Could it? And what does Bill write about it? He says, we can't get the same willingness on our other character defects. They aren't killing us. They aren't killing us like alcohol was. So even the shell, our ego, could agree we ought to give up drinking because it knew it was going to get squashed if we kept on drinking. So we had the ego and the heart agreeing on asking God to get involved in giving up drinking. But what about all the other areas? Why can't we get the willingness to have God remove all these other defects and then we'll be sitting in here, a room full of perfect people?
Wouldn't that be nice? And he says, well, the answer probably may only lie in the mind of God. But he speculates that it really has to do with the fact that they aren't killing us and that we enjoy them, that we enjoy these defects, even though we want to get rid of them. And he uses the wonderful line in there, we tend to settle for as much perfection as will get us by. And I like to use the example, what about total honesty? That's what I want. That's what I want. Total honesty.
However, in my business, I want to reserve the right to occasionally re-explain things so the deal goes my way. So what I really want is an honest reputation. That's what I'd really like. And we find ourselves gossip. Dr. Bob's gossip is a terrible thing. It's going to destroy AA World and the airing. Remember our tongue and all of this. And so we go, well, how about gossip? Jeez, at least we could just say to God, please take every piece of gossip machinery out of my body. Just remove it. Just yank it out.
Yeah, yeah. You see, we always go, yeah, yeah. And then part of us goes, hey, wait, wait, wait, let's talk it over. Why don't we agree that originating gossip is pretty darn rotten? Darn Rotten. And that we ought to just sign a blank contract. No more originating gossip. Now if somebody else originates it, and I am simply like a telephone pole so that it's
[00:45:06]
just passing through me going on to someone else, that doesn't seem as serious. So what I would like, I would like all gossip origination lifted out of me today. It's gone. Gone. And the same thing with greed. I'd like a 90% reduction in greed. I would like at least 80% of this lust taken out of me. I'd like to be free from that. I would like this. So what are we doing? We're without realizing it because there's fun involved or feeling superior or feeling whatever. Pride and C.S. Lewis says, people who stick up banks have a better shot of getting into heaven than somebody who feels superior to the people who stick up banks. You follow what I'm saying? In other words, pride is the ultimate one to try and get that reduced. Anytime you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else, that's pride. Well, I'm doing better than her. I'm better looking than him. Got more money than him. I mean, if everything is comparing, comparing, being rich is greed.
I want to be rich. I want to be rich. That's not pride. I want to be richer than you. That's pride. You see what I'm saying? It's always the comparison. And humility is when we're able to look around and not have to compare anything. We just are. And you just are. And we're all children of God. And there's nothing to compare. There's just, it's a great freedom. So anyway, we're in this dilemma of the sixth step. And this is our struggle, is to try to continuously increase the amount of willingness that we have in having things removed.
The dilemma that is faced there, there's a spiritual writer, C.S. Lewis. He wrote a wonderful story. And I have it on a lot of my takes. I work it into my talk a lot because it describes to me the problem. It's a 10-year-old boy who's a baseball player. And he has the big game tomorrow. And his coach says, I don't want you to think about the game. I want you to have a big meal. I want you to go to bed at nine o'clock and get eight hours sleep.
That's all he told the kids. If you get eight hours sleep, we're going to kick their butts. So he went home and told his mom, I've got to get eight hours sleep. Feed me now. He's in bed. He's out. He's out, out, nine o'clock sharp. He's out like a light. About midnight, he feels the beginning of a toothache. It's just that little twinge. You know how you get that. And immediately his mind says, call your mother and get two aspirin. She'll run right in. She'll have the glass. She'll hand them to you. You'll drink them down. And in about 15 minutes, you'll be back to sleep. It'll take care of it. I've done it before.
But he says, no, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to wait and see if it goes away by itself. I'm just going to hang in here. I think it could disappear on its own. And he waits and waits. And pretty soon there's another twinge. No, it's not going away. No, no, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait. And he waits two hours. And then he gets the two aspirin. Then he goes back to sleep. Doesn't get the eight hours sleep. Makes two errors. Gets no hits. Team doesn't win. So we're down to the question, well, why? What's going on in his mind that he waited two hours to get the two aspirin? The answer to the question is, he knew his mother. And he knew that she would immediately get the two aspirin and give him. But she wouldn't stop there. The next morning she would call the dentist and set up an appointment so that the dentist could go look at this tooth, even if it wasn't hurting anymore. And he knew the dentist. The dentist not only would look at that tooth, he would look at every tooth in his head to make sure there was not any other problems.
And if there were, he would have a series of appointments until he had perfect teeth. He didn't want perfect teeth. He wanted two aspirin. We don't want perfect health. We just want to move a little further along. And the problem is, the only health that's available is perfect health. That's the only health. So we have to, we can't get semi-sober. You've got to do that on your own. You want to try a controlled drink, you've got to do that on your own. We want to try all these things. So our whole problem making is involved in this resistance to this perfect health. The other two things I'll talk about real
[00:50:05]
quick and then I'm going to try and stop after an hour. Because that's about as long as I like to sit. It is how a problem is created by the ego. A problem is nothing more than an event. That's all it is. It's just an event. This happened, that happened, this happened. So you read the paper. Every day you read the paper. What's in the paper? Events. Sporting events, political events, business events. They're all over there. There must be, when you read a paper, there must be 500 events. And you just go down. Event, event, event, event, event, event, event, event, event, problem. I don't like that event. That event shouldn't have happened. I'm very upset with that event. I turned that event into a problem by myself. In other words, I imposed my judgment on the situation and decided that it never should have happened in the first place and I'm very upset about it. This event didn't happen just to upset me. It just happened. In other words, it's a neutral thing. I remember when I was first sober, and I always use this example, everything was driving me crazy.
Remember that, how self-centered your ego was out to the edges of the universe? And I remember there was a TV thing and they had just discovered another moon on Uranus. And I remember going, another moon on Uranus? Jesus, I can't keep track of the moons that are there now. Why do they keep looking? Why do they do this to me? They're driving me crazy. Leave me alone with this stuff. But we still have our radar out and our bingo, bingo. And so we have a thing in the program, this too shall pass. Everything that happens passes. That event happens and here's another event, another event, because everything is in the now. And so in order to have that saying apply, this too shall pass, we have to not ever grab anything. We have to just not. There it goes. We have to not resist anything. Oh, I don't want that to have happened. So now I'm trying to resist it. And last but not least, we shouldn't be judging all these things. It's not our job to read the paper and go, that's bad, that's good, that's bad, that's good. That just is. So you see, in one sentence in AA, this too shall pass, we've captured all the Eastern philosophies of judge not, attach not, all in that simple thing. Each one of those are creating our own problem. We just took an event, it ain't going to pass me. Maybe it's all right with you, but that one. And so we just collect all these things and we're carrying them around. The last thing is the book God Calling. And I think it's just great. And you see it around the AA meetings. And I saw a painting in a church. And when I saw it, it made me think of God Calling. And what it was, it was an old cottage back in the 1800s, big thick door, big round iron door knocker. And a God figure is standing there with a robe and a beard. And you can see he's just getting ready to knock. And when I saw that, I said, there it is. That's a painting of God Calling. So I said to myself, what if that happened to me? You know what I mean? What if I was sitting in my condo, watching TV, and all of a sudden, I go, who's there? God. Yeah, yeah. Sure, God, I believe that.
You know, I'm sure you're there. No, it really is God. You've been asking me to come. You remember that? You've been saying that 11 step prayer. You want me to come and take over your life and give you the power and put you in the now? This is your goal. I'm here. All you have to do is let me in. Oh, come on, God, I don't think you're out there. I mean, how do I know it's God? Could be a neighbor playing a joke. I'm getting a little antsy. I don't know, maybe you all would go, boy, I'd be right over there. Get that door open. But there's part of me that's just going, I want to make this sure here. And he said, well, I can understand you wouldn't just a voice. So why don't I have your mother passed away about five years ago? Why don't I have her show up in the living room? There's my mother. Hi, son. Hi, mom. Is that God out there? Yeah, that's really God. Open the door. I'm thinking
[00:55:07]
about it, mom. I really am. I'm thinking about it. I really am. Well, son, it's him. You just have to open the door. He can't open the door for you. You have to open the door. You've been given free will. You have to open the door. Mom, I'm thinking. I really am. Well, son, I have to go, but I want you to promise me that you will. Mom, trust me. Now I'm still sitting there. Are you going to open the door? Well, let me try something else. What's your favorite animal? A panther. There's one. Okay, I believe. Okay, I know you're there. The panther's gone. Now I say something. This may sound incredibly stupid. God, I know this is going to sound funny, but you started knocking right as I was watching the last episode of The Sopranos, where we're going to find out what happens to Tony, the final thing of what happens to Tony. I know this may sound selfish, but is there any chance you could come back at a different time?
Total silence. I watch the end of The Sopranos. Are you still there, God? Nothing. So I go over the door and I open it. There's nobody there. He wasn't there. That couldn't be true. So you can see, even under those conditions, this shell does not want to give up and have the most wonderful thing in the world that could happen to us. But we know that and we have to forgive ourselves for not answering the door or we're not going to have a happy life.
And I'll tell you where I saw that. For my own personal, it gave me the greatest peace of mind. And it was in the movie The Crucifixion. And it wasn't all about all of the suffering and all of that. It was about St. Peter. And they walked up and they said, Hey, aren't you a buddy of this guy? Aren't you guys very close friends? I never saw the guy in my life. And I'm going, Holy cow, you can't get any closer than St. Peter was. And his fear made him say that. So why am I beating myself up every time that I may let myself down on this great struggle?
As long as I'm continuing to try, as long as I personally am making the efforts through prayer and meditation, sharing with others so I could see it differently and working towards this wonderful jackpot that's available to all of us, I should be able to live in peace with this great dynamic that's going on inside of me. Okay, we're at the end of the time. Lee, that's it for taping. Take a five minute break and then if we have any questions, if you want to stick around, I'll be happy to use the rest of the time. But if not, feel free to hit the trail. Thank you all for your attention.