Audio
Transcript
Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Unknown Speaker – DIVINE DISSATISFACTION – RS 06394.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-unknown-speaker-divine-dissatisfaction-rs-06394.mp3 Duration: 01:18:13
============================================================
Hi y'all, wow, this is really something. As your alcoholic intuition probably tells you, I am not Desmond. But I will be moderating this panel today. First of all, I'd like to start off with a moment of silence in gratitude for the AA recoveries of the past 50 years. Okay, will you all please join me in the serenity prayer? God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I'd like to briefly explain the anonymity tradition. There may be some of you here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the public level. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than on promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus, we respectfully ask that no AA speaker or indeed any AA member be identified by full name or photograph in published or broadcast reports of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us.
And our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. The title of today's panel really astounded me when I was asked to moderate it. Divine Dissatisfaction. I thought, well maybe I could try to understand this grammatically. Does that mean God is dissatisfied with us? And then I thought, well perhaps we're going to be discussing our own dissatisfaction with God. And after about three days of contemplating this, I realized that after two and a half years of being in the program that my concept of God is still rather ill-informed.
But I work this program on faith and I can talk just briefly a little bit about that. All of us, by the way, come from various different parts of the country and to match that we have a real variety of thoughts on this topic. My own thoughts, I decided, divine dissatisfaction is really equivalent to my inability to benefit from my own ignorance about things. When I came into this program, I really believed that divine dissatisfaction really was an irrelevant, would have been an irrelevant concept to me because I didn't think God was relevant because I knew it all.
I had done everything that I knew how to to make my life manageable. I had gotten a Ph.D. in psychology, which means that I should understand everything. I had given up a drug habit. I had been through at least 20 years of psychiatrists. I was a marathon runner. I mean, I really had it together, except that I had only two solutions to my problems in my repertoire. One was suicide and the other was drinking. And let me tell you, two and a half years is not a very long time to have added a third solution, which has been for me, to put it very simply, to ask questions and for help when I need them.
And then to listen to the answers and to go wherever they take me, even though I don't really know where that may be, and to continue on that journey. And I think that each of these people up here have a different way of describing that journey, so I'd like to introduce our first speaker. Our first speaker is Tom T. from California, and his two-sentence thought on this topic is that divine dissatisfaction is a great motivator and that we have a lot to benefit from divine dissatisfaction. Tom?
[00:05:04]
Thank you. I'm Tom T. and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. It's a little overwhelming and a joy and an honor to be here and to be participating. This morning there was a lady here who said that she was somewhere between joy and terror, and I identified with that then and I identify with it even more now. I want to share something, talking about terror, that I like to share when I talk about some people that we alcoholics have put a lot of fear and terror into, and those are the people in Al-Anon.
Where I come from, the AA meetings are generally speaking an hour, and the Al-Anon meetings are an hour and a half, so we say that that's because they're sicker than we are. That may or may not be true, but regardless, I have to remember that we made them that way. I made some people that way. There's nothing more fearful than the fear of the unknown, and there's nothing more unpredictable than an alcoholic, certainly the way I was.
I'd just like to say a word of appreciation for that wonderful Al-Anon program that helps them get well the way AA gets us well, and it's really neat that Al-Anon is having their first international convention here now with us at our 50th birthday. As to joy, I felt really happy when I got my loving invitation letter to share here. My ego liked it a lot, and now I'm here, standing here, and I can think of a lot of other people from my area in Northern California that I'd like to be sitting down there listening to sharing, but what we get is me right now.
I'm going to grow in spite of myself, I guess. I've got to be very careful about what I say. My very beautiful Al-Anon wife, Lucy, is here somewhere. Friends from California, and a wonderful thing that makes me have to be especially careful about anything I say is I think here today also is an old childhood friend of mine from Connecticut, Mike. Mike and I grew up together as little kids and all up until about 16, 17 years ago when I moved to California, and completely independently of each other, he in 1971 and I in 1972, we became members of this wonderful fellowship, and this is a wonderful experience for both of us this weekend to share some AA with each other, which we haven't had a chance to do.
The topic of divine dissatisfaction didn't elate me when I first read it, too, in the letter, because it's a positive program, and I try and focus on the positive in Alcoholics Anonymous and in all my affairs, and so I wasn't immediately enthused, but I'm glad for it because it made me stop and think. I must say I was thinking about it last night, too, realizing that I have to discriminate a little bit because I had a feeling of some kind of dissatisfaction waiting in the soft drink line at the Olympic Stadium last night, and it came to me quickly that that was not divine dissatisfaction, but an opportunity to use the serenity prayer instead.
The first time I heard that term or saw it in print was page 243 of Pass It On, and Father Dowling, it's described how Father Dowling teaches Bill W. to accept divine satisfaction and his restless yearnings as a blessing, and it's described, divine dissatisfaction is described, and that explanation of it by Father Ed Dowling to Bill W. as a great gift to him and to Alcoholics Anonymous, spurring him on to do what he did.
[00:10:22]
And reading that reminded me, Father Dowling, of hearing him speak in the filmstrip Markings on the Journey, that dynamite filmstrip of our AA history, 35-minute filmstrip, all the real cast of characters, real voices, real pictures that just blows me away every time I see it. And if some of you haven't seen that, by all means, it's a wonderful thing if you can, and you can through your own groups or your general service representative, get that film and show it.
But he talks there about the negative, and about not being so tough on the negative, and he uses a phrase something like, getting to heaven by backing away from hell. And the negative does have a place. You know, there are two poles of electricity too. There's a positive and a negative, and the negative can be very, very useful. And I realize now that it has been for me, and it has been a great motivator for me, and that I've received many wonderful gifts from divine dissatisfaction as I reflect on it.
And the first one is sobriety itself. Because I was certainly driven to this program by something like divine dissatisfaction. Feelings that I know you can identify with. Remorse. Not that satisfaction so much as self-hate. Not understanding. Not understanding the promises that I meant to keep. Those broken promises. To myself and to others. Promises like, I will have only one or two drinks tonight, don't worry, when we're going out, or companies coming in, or whatever may be going on.
And of course it wasn't until I came to, now see I really have to watch out because he's here, Mike, my friend that I was talking about before. He just walked in the door late too. He's going to keep me honest. It wasn't until I came into AA that I learned that with some of the chemical of alcohol in my body, there's no such thing as a promise. And so I learned, through divine dissatisfaction if you will, that in that sense it's the first drink that gets you drunk.
Then I became obsessed with the idea that I was never going to be able to have another drink again for as long as I lived. I guess I thought I was going to live a long, long time and I was really feeling sorry for myself about that one. And it was driving me right up the wall. Maybe some of you have had that feeling too. And that obsession or dissatisfaction did fortunately lead me to the realization that I didn't have to be concerned about not having another drink again for as long as I live.
I just had to be concerned about not having a drink today because tomorrow maybe I'll have a couple of fifths, that's all right. But today I'm not going to have a drink. So I realized that in a sense that was a wonderful way of fooling myself because what would happen obviously if I said that every morning and did that every day, but no matter how I wriggled around I couldn't get off the hook and I really had to allow myself to feel good about that.
And that was the first real awakening in AA that just was like the great weight lifted off my shoulders that allowed me to carry on with the program. And I got sober and I got involved driven by a desire to get involved, a desire to make things better. Desire to Get Involved, A Desire to Make Things Better, and Part of That Desire Had Divine
[00:15:02]
Dissatisfaction Behind It. I Became Involved in the Steps, I Became Involved in Recovery, I Became Involved in Other People's Recovery, in Twelve Step Work, Being a Coffee Maker, Being a Secretary, and after a few years, two or three or whatever it was, I found myself in a position of being, I don't quite know how to describe it, looking back on it, really unhappy and uptight. I was going to about one meeting a week, same one, and I was not happy. I was in a rut, and a dry drunk perhaps, and I was just climbing the walls. I was fearful, I wasn't happy getting up in the morning, and as I look back on that, I can identify that as a form of divine dissatisfaction, and it did spur me, in spite of myself, to do something. I started to go to different meetings. I started to become involved again. I became a secretary again. I became involved in general service. I learned more about the history of our wonderful fellowship, and became active in it, and also became active at the same time in sponsorship of other people, Twelve Step Work, and I got out of those doldrums, and I felt a lot better about it, and in thinking about this, it's just so wonderful that, for me, the thing that I couldn't do, one of the hardest things for me to do while I was drinking, just getting within myself, not getting out, I couldn't communicate, and the answer is in exactly that. It's in communicating.
It's in communicating and sharing one-on-one with ourselves in our recovery, and that's what general service is too, I discovered. Simply communicating. Communicating, and it just has to do with our first tradition, unity. We communicate with each other as groups through the general service office. It's beautiful, and it's been very rewarding for me to carry the message in that way, and exciting for me. I'm involved right now in literature and films, and it's exciting to carry the message with films and with literature, and to motivate other people to do that. It's fun, and I wouldn't be doing it if I hadn't had the pride of that divine dissatisfaction. I've allowed myself to change other things in my life, because I wasn't happy with them. I think our program itself, it just becomes a way of life, and we allow ourselves to be good to ourselves. We allow our good to come to us, as opposed to alcohol, which is so self-destructive. I remember when I first ran into that concept of alcohol being self-destructive, and it took me a long time to allow that to sink in, because of course I hadn't been used to thinking in that way. But things that I never thought would happen, physical things, allowed myself to stop smoking five years ago, stop drinking coffee a couple of years ago.
Diet, don't use any salt or sugar, little things, but I'm allowing myself to be good to myself, and it's harder for me in the mental area, but in the rest of my life, organization, giving myself more time to do the things that are important to me. I think divine dissatisfaction is a great motivator for me, speaking for myself, that has gotten me off my duff, into action, doing things that are good for me. But I don't agree with Father Dowling, as he's quoted in Pass It On, with one thing that he said to Bill W. Bill W. had asked, is there never to be any
[00:20:12]
satisfaction? And Father Dowling is quoted as saying, no, never, as most of you probably remember reading that book and going on to explain divine dissatisfaction and to allow Bill to accept that. But the no, never doesn't apply to me, because through AA, I've had a lot of wonderful satisfaction throughout my life, throughout my years of sobriety, and here this weekend. I'll mention in closing, one event here this week, yesterday, that just brought me immense satisfaction, at the AA Around the World call-up yesterday, that I'm sure some of you were there.
It's just a beautiful thing, brought tears to my eyes. Here's a dark-skinned man from a far-off land, saying to all of us in that room, as he closed what he was saying, my father is your father, and we are all one with the same God. Thank you. Our second speaker is Noreen, and when I asked her what her thoughts were on this topic, she said to me that she'd like to talk about the interpretation of a power greater than ourselves when we come into the program, that that's the issue that we're dealing with here, and that for her, eventually, she worked her way toward having no divine dissatisfaction. Noreen?
Hi, I'm Noreen, and I'm a member of the Pompano Beach Workshop group, and I'm an alcoholic, and my sobriety is an unearned gift from God. When I arrived here, I was told I suffered from a threefold disease, mental, physical, and spiritual, and today we're discussing this divine dissatisfaction, which to me would encompass the spiritual part of the program. When I arrived here, I was told that I had to let go of my old ideas, and one of my old ideas was that I bargained with this God of my understanding. Get me out of this mess, and I won't do it again.
I used and abused him just like I used and abused my fellow man, and the one I hurt the most was myself because I used and abused me, and when I called for help, I had reached a point where I couldn't get drunk, and I couldn't get sober, and one minute I was afraid I was going to die, and the next minute I thought I was going to live, and when I reached out for help, I would have listened to anything you people had told me, and I feel that God works through people, and when I went to see this party that I had called, I really didn't know what he was saying, but I saw something in his eyes, and he had something that I didn't have, and I wanted what this man had because I knew he had something. I couldn't pinpoint it, but I just felt comfortable with him.
There was like love coming through the eyes. I listened to what he said as far as getting to my meetings, and we'd work it one day at a time. If he had told me to stand on my head in the middle of the street, I would do it, and when I mentioned about all of a sudden all of my problems and about going back to the church and all this and that because, see, I had tried that route before I
[00:25:00]
even arrived here. I had exhausted everything. I didn't want to come to AA because, you see, the power that I had was in that bottle, and I'm a believer that we have to go through two surrenders when we come in here. One, we have to surrender to the power in the bottle, and then when we start becoming restless and irritable and bored and impatient, we have to surrender to this God of our understanding. My God is probably completely different than everybody else's God in this room today. God has been very good to me. My cup runneth over. My cup runneth over. God has taken care of all of my needs and all of my wants. Today when I get up, I ask not what Noreen's will is, but what is God's will, because I believe that God uses all of us as instruments. I believe that when we go along in our sobriety, if we're not careful, the ego starts taking over, and I was also told EGO is edging God out, and I know what that means, too, because, you see, I like to take charge. I like to run the show, but my life was unmanageable because I had tried to run this show for so many years, and I had to let go of that idea, and it took me a long time in this program to finally surrender. I would admit to anything when I got here, and it took me a long time to fully accept, fully accept. I do not take my sobriety for granted, and when I said that, when I got up here, I said my sobriety is an unearned gift from God. I meant it because I did not do anything to earn this gift of sobriety. When I walked in this door, there was no halo around my head. There still is no halo around my head. I think the only way that we can maintain a sobriety where we are comfortable is by giving it away. We cannot keep it unless we give it away. This program has taught me a lot about me. This is a selfish program. I take what I can use and use it, and what I can't use, I discard because, let's face it, some of the people that we meet in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, the kindest thing that you can say about them is that they're an alcoholic. But in time, if they don't belong with us, they move on. We can calm the outside people, but we sure can't calm each other. I know what pain is. I know what it means to be uncomfortable. I know what it means to be alone. I have been to many places prior to coming into this program with thousands and thousands of people, and I felt alone. And I walked around with a hole here, like a football, they say. Well, you know what I filled this hole up with? I filled it up with this God of my understanding. Someone had given me a little card yesterday, and he's sitting over here on the left, and it came from a mutual friend of ours and his sponsor. And I'm just going to read it. I cut a couple of things out, but it gives food for thought. If we meet and you forget me, you have lost nothing. But if you have met your God of your understanding and forget him, you have lost everything. Thank you.
You know, when I came into the program, I came in to get cured of compulsive running.
[00:30:13]
And the reason I thought I was drinking so much was because I had been running 90 miles a week. That's all I did was run and drink. But I ran so much, you know, that I couldn't run anymore because I had gotten a stress fracture. So where was I going with this? Trying to be like, you know, Ed Sullivan up here. It's really, you know, they say act as if, but, well, where I was going with this was that Tom told me something that goes along with this running idea that I had.
He said that before he came into the program that he was feeling spiritually unfit. And that through exercising these weak spiritual muscles that he's been put onto the spiritual path. And that's what he's going to be talking about. Hello, my name is Todd and I'm an alcoholic. Through the grace and glory of my higher power and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm sober today. I'm a little bit nervous and I guess I just have to give me a second here.
But when I first heard about this topic, divine dissatisfaction, I was very puzzled and I searched through a lot of the literature and I didn't find anything on it. And I thought a lot about it for the past two months and I still find it a very difficult topic to share with you about. So I'm not really sure exactly what is meant by having this topic at this meeting. But I know for myself it does, it is a significant topic to me.
I think when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I was very dissatisfied with my life. I don't think anybody comes into this program satisfied with their life. And I happen to believe that nobody comes here on their own. You can say you do it for yourself and it's a selfish program and we do it for ourselves, but I firmly believe that we are led to this program. That there is a reason why we are all in this room here today and that there is a reason why we all stay here and there's even a reason why some people leave.
And I think that that is real significant. And I think that that's kind of what this topic means to me. It's funny, I'd like to share with you the first brush I had with Alcoholics Anonymous. Ten years ago, I went on a vacation and did some camping with some high school friends of mine. I was 16 years old. And we went through the Rockies and did some camping. And we were packing quite a bit of alcohol and quite a bit of drugs and we had a wonderful time, let me tell you.
Just before our last leg of the trip, just before we headed, I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and just before we, it's about a 14 hour drive, and just before we headed back to Minneapolis, we stopped in Denver. And I went to the Registry Hotel at 10 o'clock in the morning, on Friday morning, and I saw this sign as I'm bringing in my luggage, I saw this sign, Alcoholics Anonymous. So this conference was the first time I ever had any brush with you people.
And at that time, what I did to make things fit with that, I went out and bought a 12-pack of beer. We already had plenty to get us by, but I thought, well, since we're in the company of alcoholics, we better act like alcoholics. And so we had a good evening that evening and we headed back to Minneapolis. You know, I think that, I think it's really significant that, for me to talk about this topic because spirituality is very important to me.
I'm not a religious person, but I am a very spiritual person. And I thought, you know, when I first looked at this topic, I thought, well, you know, this is ridiculous. There's absolutely nothing divine about being dissatisfied, you know. And I thought, you know, how am I going to talk about this topic? But I took what was important to me, and that was the first word, and I related it to divine
[00:35:08]
or deity or God, whatever, and found that this has really been the most significant part of my program is my spirituality. And I believe that this is a very spiritual program. And I think sometimes new people have a hard time deciding for themselves just exactly what we mean when we say that. I always believed in God. I was raised Catholic, and I guess it's not my fault, but that's just the way it was.
I'm not a religious person, though, and I don't have anything against religion. You know, I think religion is a wonderful thing. And, you know, being here in Montreal, we are amongst a very religious society. There are over 150 churches in the city of Montreal alone, and if you've seen any of them, you know what I mean. They are just absolutely beautiful. You have people at St. Joe's, a man at St. Joe's Cathedral there, Andre, a magnificent spiritual healer.
And if you walk into the temple there at that church like we did on Tuesday, you see thousands, thousands of crutches and leg braces for the healings this man performed. So I think, and he was a very religious man, and I think religion is very insignificant to our society and very important, but I just don't find my place there in a religion. And I think that that is one of the wonderful things about our fellowship.
That's what makes us brothers and sisters, all of us. Whether we worship the God Muhammad or Buddha, or whether we worship the God Jesus Christ or whoever, I think that we're able to share together and have one common feeling about each other with God, and I think that's real significant. I was a pretty heavy user of marijuana and alcohol, beer mainly mostly, and I was a pretty sick person, and mostly I thought my problems had to do with emotional and mental problems, and actually I was pretty correct in thinking that.
I was institutionalized three times by my own choice, and I have suffered these grave emotional and mental disorders that it speaks about in the big book. And I always thought that something isn't right with me. I wouldn't sleep and I wouldn't eat and I didn't notice it, and after three or four days it would catch up to me and I would be a very sick person and I would be psychotic. And I would go, I remember I was about 14 when I went to my mother and I said, geez, I don't know, there's something wrong with me, I'm just sick, I'm sad all the time and I can't sleep and I don't eat and whatever.
She directed me to a doctor and twice I was institutionalized with the same symptoms. The third time it came around, between the second and the third time it came around, I sought counseling and this counselor advised me to go through an evaluation for drug and alcohol. I went through the evaluation, I went to treatment and I went to a 13-week treatment program and I found AA through that treatment program.
I really think that for me, the spiritual part of this program has to be the most significant part of this program. There's something that's very magical and mystical about what happens between the exchange of two alcoholics or all of us when we're together. But sometimes for us people who suffer with very deeper, more serious problems, we need more than that. I sought psychological help and I was successful with it.
I know there's been a lot of people who can stand up and make testimonials, how shrinks are no good and this program is all we need. But I understand that for my problem, it's not always like that. This program saved my life and keeps me alive and keeps me content. But I have to understand that there are other things in this world besides alcoholism in my life that I have to deal with and so I deal with them.
[00:40:02]
After three years of sobriety, I became very ill and sought counseling again. I couldn't understand it. Three years of sobriety, what is going on? There's something that's wrong. I mean, jeez, I'm doing everything, I'm very immersed myself in it. After I got out of treatment, I immersed myself in service. I got involved with the 24th International Conference of Young People and Alcoholics Anonymous, which was in Minneapolis a couple of years ago.
I got involved with a regional conference, I was involved, I was on the board of our central office and I was very active in service and very willing to give my time and everything. You know, I had a sponsor and had a good group and everything and it was very puzzling to me why God had put this obstacle in my path. It was funny because I thought I was really, I thought I was nuts again. I went to this hospital and I went to my doctor and said, gee doc, I can't sleep, I can't eat and what do you do for me?
I think the Martians are coming, what's going on? It's funny because I was able to relate these things. Most people are pretty embarrassed about mental illness and stuff, but I'm a pretty honest person and I face the facts and the facts are that I'm nuts and I tell them I'm nuts and I see what the hell they can do. And if they can't do anything, then that's the way it is. But there wasn't the answers in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had spoken to my sponsor, I had spoken to my friends and they understood and they supported me in what I did and that was the right thing for them to do. They didn't say, you know, you don't need that, you just need this. They accepted that, they trusted me and that was a wonderful feeling and I don't think you'd have that feeling in other organizations. But anyways, I went into the hospital and I went in on a Thursday and on a Saturday I asked my doctor if I could go to this Alcoholics Anonymous conference in North Dakota and they have some real good AA up there in Fargo, North Dakota and I went with some friends and I came back and on a Monday I became violently physically ill and they didn't know what I had and I had the kiss of death, I'll tell you, I spent two weeks on an ice water bed and had a temperature of 105 and it was just terrible, you know, and it was really something, it was really one heck of an experience, it took me 12 weeks in the hospital and three months in Florida to recover and you know, geez, I'm three and a half years sober, what's going on?
There's something that's not right and yet I realized a lot of spiritual principles, I think that there is a lot of significance, God does these things to all of us, he gives us these obstacles for a reason and maybe I don't know the exact reason right now but I have a feeling that I learned a lot from that experience, I have a feeling that I learned a lot about myself and I have a feeling that I learned a lot about how to improve myself.
So I've had a lot of things in my life that have been dissatisfying and probably the number one reason why I came to Alcoholics Anonymous was because I was just very depressed and very unhappy with the way my body and my mind worked and someone said, don't use alcohol and drugs and see what that does to you and I never knew that it would mean that I would meet you people, I never knew that that's what that meant when I first heard someone tell me to try to go straight and when I met you people it was so overwhelming that I found a home and I found my niche and I got very involved in service and very involved in the steps and have met some wonderful people and have learned quite a bit about myself again and I think that's really the significance of Alcoholics Anonymous is how to better ourselves, how to live a halfway normal life with a disease and we have a great time doing it, don't we? I mean conferences like this, you know, I think it's wonderful that we do this for ourselves every five years and we have to For Ourselves Every Five Years. And we have to recognize that that's what this is. This is us doing this for, this is our, this is for us. We, we do this for ourselves. It isn't
[00:45:01]
some people in New York. It's us. We, we, we do this. This is our conference. And I think that's real important for all of us to remember. I've been to quite a few conferences and, and, and they're real special to me, conferences. Usually it takes a couple of weeks after the conference to absorb everything that happened or happens. And I, I just think the wanting to improve ourselves and learn more and, and be a better person and be more happy and be more content. And I get that from reading and hearing about what people tell me about most of the, the prophets and the sages and the seers and the, what you have throughout mankind. You know, all the, all the prophets and throughout mankind, you know, the, the Buddha and the Muhammad and the Jesus have all taught that, that the kingdom or that heaven or that God is, is within. And this, this, this was one thing that they all taught. You know, this is one thing that we can say they all, you know, was pretty much the same about all the different religions and stuff is that the kingdom or that God is within us. And it is the eye at the center of our being. It is, it is right here. It's not out there. And I think in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's real easy to practice the out there-ness, you know, because we see a lot of the in harmonies and discords in life. You know, we, we come into contact with the, probably the sickest people and, and, you know, we see the worst things. You know, we see wonderful people come in the door and leave and never come back or come back beat up or maimed or whatever. And, and we, we, we witness these things and we see these in harmonies and discords, but we have within us something that has the capacity to heal them as we've been healed. And I think that that's real special to know that we have that, that just by our experiences, just by relating our experiences to each other, we can give another person an opportunity to, to be healed. And, you know, I, I think that exempt, you know, makes it a real example of how spiritual this program is. I know that, you know, it's, it's said where two or more of us are gathered, you know, there I am and, and I believe that. And, and I think I always like to relate it in a little different way.
I think of this room as a very empty room, but when we come into this room, it's a very full room. We are the ones individually, each one of us are the ones that make this room what it is because this room in itself is just an empty room. And I think that that's real important for me to practice. I think that that's the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous is to practice that, that we are this fellowship and that we carry it with us wherever we go.
And probably one of the most significant members of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've ever met was Clarence Snyder. And he wrote the, in the big book, the chapter Home Brewmaster. And a while back, I was going through indoctrination to become a Mason and he's a Mason. And I was talking to him and we became very good friends. And about four, I don't know exactly how long ago, a little over a year ago, I went to Florida to visit my folks and I understood that Clarence was very ill. And I went to the hospital to see Clarence and I think he's got something like 47 years or something he had or whatever. And he passed away about a month later after I saw him. And I'll never forget the one of the things that he told me. I met this girl at a rock concert in Fort Lauderdale, okay. And it was a Joan Jett concert and I met this girl and I'm waiting in line and it's pouring rain, you know, it's just pouring rain and I've got an umbrella, you know, and here's these two beautiful young girls walking along and I'm sitting here with this umbrella and, you know, so I said, you know, would you like to stand under my umbrella? And so I got to talk to them, you know. And one of them had gone to St. Mary's for drug treatment, which is in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I got to know her quite well. And we stood right in front and everything at the concert
[00:50:01]
and stuff. And she was pretty new into the program and I think she had about six months and I was telling her that I was going up to see this man who was very ill, who was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, in fact, one of the original people who, in fact, you know, one of the authors of the big book. He has a story in the big book. And, you know, she gave me her book and I didn't even notice it, but she had the cover turned inside out, you know. And I brought it to Clarence and I said, Clarence, I met this young lady from Fort Lauderdale and I'd like you to sign her big book, you know, because I told her about you and stuff. And I came back the next day and the whole, I mean, the whole cover inside on the hardback, everything he must have wrote, about ten pages on there. And he must have talked to me for half an hour about Alcoholics Anonymous and about this person who I just, you know, I just met. I don't know her that well, you know. I just spent a little time with her and talked or went to a meeting with her and stuff. And he said, you know, Todd, he said, the most important thing about Alcoholics Anonymous to me is that we sell this program, is that we take the fifth tradition to heart, that we carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. That's the guts of this program.
And he says, you've got to tell, when you go back to Fort Lauderdale, you've got to tell this girl not to turn the cover inside out, but to be proud that she carries this book. And, you know, I says, well, you know, Clarence, I have a hard time being proud of my disease. I says, I'm grateful that I'm an alcoholic, but I'm not really proud of it, you know, because us alcoholics, you know, we're pretty wicked people to deal with, you know. And he said, yeah, but he says, you know, the real, the twelfth step, you know, the twelfth step really is carrying this program out to the world. And, I mean, he says, we have a mission, you know. God has given us these two men who started this fellowship and has manifested into what it's manifested in for a reason. And each one of us are chosen to carry this message if we choose to do that. If we choose to stay sober and we choose to be members of Alcoholics Anonymous, then we should live by this program. And I think that's real important. And so I brought it back to her and I don't know, she thought it was pretty strange, you know. She couldn't believe her big book was all written over and stuff. I says, this is history, you know. This is, I mean, this is, you know, this guy's a prophet, you know. I mean, geez. You know, she doesn't understand this, you know. And, but, I guess the way that I practice this spiritual program is to just do whatever comes natural, to do whatever is, whatever appears, whatever appears in front of me, if it's there to do, then I do it. And I think that if we hang around and we keep going to the meetings and we read the big book, a lot of things appear. And they're all opportunities. You know, I found that by immersing myself in service work, that that's what, that's what brought me the real contented sobriety. That's what gave me more than just sobriety. It gave me contented sobriety. And it allowed me, after six years of sobriety, to recognize that Alcoholics Anonymous and AA and alcoholism isn't the only thing in my life. You know, I have a job. I have a family. I have a home. I have friends outside of AA and inside of AA. And I think sometimes, you know, we get so wrapped up in AA that, you know, that's all there is is AA, you know. And I don't think that's the point. I think that the point is that, you know, AA is wonderful and it's very special, but I think the point is that we go out and we live a normal life or, you know, that we live a happy life. And to some people, and I know to me for a long time, AA was 24 hours a day and I was doing that, you know. But now I've recognized that these opportunities, I'm more able to, after a while now, I'm more able to judge just how much I can commit myself and just how much I can't. Just what's practical and just what isn't practical. And I've found a balance in my life. And I think that as far as this topic, divine dissatisfaction, is concerned, I think that the most significant
[00:55:03]
thing in the big book that's written about this topic has nothing to do with this topic, but it's the promises, the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, you know, there is something definitely divine about all the stuff that we went through to get here. And the reason why we're here and stay here, I feel, is in the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's funny, it says in the fifth chapter, we see how our experience can benefit others.
And I think that that is amazing. It's a miracle. Because all of our experiences are terrible. You know? They're awful. And yet they benefit other people. And, you know, where do you find that in this world? Nowhere. Only in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I think I've learned that AA is the most important thing in my life. And sobriety is the most important thing in my life. But it's not the only thing in my life. And it is a very spiritual program. But there are other spiritual programs. There are other aspects of spirituality. But they usually all can be tied back to AA. And I've found that, you know, Clarence told me that, you know, you work the first nine steps. And you go through the first nine steps and you stop. And that's a pivoting point. And you live this program in 10, 11, and 12. And I believe that that is very true. I believe that 10, 11, and 12 are the living, that's the living part of this program. And that once you've gone through the first nine steps, you know, there's no need to go back. I really believe that. Now, I know a lot of people may not agree with that. But I really believe that's true. Because if you look at 10, 11, and 12, that's everything that it takes to make our lives whole. And I've found that step 11 and 12 to be so special. The daily meditation and contact with God and giving away what we have here, you know. It's funny because, you know, where can you go and to, you know, where can you go and know that you have friends, Alcoholics Anonymous? That's where you can go and know that you have friends there. And I think that that's pretty special.
Especially for us. And I think being so sensitive as we all are, it makes it so very special for us to go to a strange place and come to a city like this and just know by this little tag here, we all can smile and talk to each other and share. You know, wouldn't it be wonderful if the whole world practiced the 12 steps in their own way? But I think what's more realistic is, isn't it wonderful when we do? When I do.
Thank you. Okay, what I'd like to do is open up this meeting for sharing. And I'd like to invite the speakers to come in. I'm sorry that we're not sharing until 3. The speakers, however, reminded me of my own spiritual program. When I came into the program, I had no spiritual program. That wasn't my biggest problem, however. I had no faith in anything. And the beginning of that faith started when I was sitting around in a meeting. I'd run out of stuff to complain about. I dumped on everybody's pink cloud. And what I realized was that I was feeling better in spite of the fact that I hadn't planned on recovering. And I didn't know why I was feeling better, but I did know that for the first time in my life, I was following somebody else's recommendation. And that was the beginning of my faith in a power at least other than myself. And if any of you wish to share some of your feelings and thoughts, I think we'd be glad to respond. Please raise your hand.
My name is Helen and I'm an alcoholic.
[01:00:13]
My home group is the Sonoma Valley Fellowship in California, that's wine country. This subject, Divine Dissatisfaction, has been very important for me because I agreed with it so much when I read it, about it in AA Comes of Age, in As Bill Sees It, in Pass It On, and in Bill W. In the Big Book, there's some sentences about an oasis. It says that we alcoholics love an oasis, and that we drinkers are just like that, period, end of paragraph, we drinkers are just like that.
I'm a craving person, I'll probably be a craver until I die, and I hope it never changes. I have the yearning and the restlessness and the thirst, the Divine Dissatisfaction. I heard an old-timer yesterday talk about that at bottom, we humans are filled with an indestructible urge to return to God, and I find that that's inside of me too. Alcohol drove me on the dark side, it was that indestructible urge to return.
That was on the dark side, and I came through that tunnel that an old-timer was talking to this morning about the 24th Street Club, the first one in New York, this long, dark corridor that she traveled through, and at the end of the corridor there was the light, which was the AA meeting. Always here, this meeting, and every meeting I've been to, is my oasis. I still seek because I still thirst, because I still get restless, and I'm very, very, very thankful in my life for Divine Dissatisfaction.
I made a mistake, which turned out to be one of my wonderful AA errors that taught me. Bill said we could profit by our errors as much as by our successes, and it was to lust after comfort between my sixth and seventh year sober for satisfaction. It didn't work. I realized I was doing the wrong thing for me. I have a grandson who was born my second grandchild seven months ago. I hold him in my arms.
He weighs barely 11 pounds, has a very, very large hole in his heart, and is due for surgery when I go home from Montreal. I can't change that. It doesn't satisfy me that he's this way, skinny bones, this part that's pounding and heavy breathing and asthma and pneumonia and everything to compound at life, death, life, death on a daily basis. It doesn't satisfy me at all. But I'm not after human satisfaction.
I'm not exempt from all things human. I'm going to have all the unsatisfying things human and the dissatisfying things divine because I'm still in the flesh. I have two sisters sitting over there. We were in the kitchen one time, and I was six years sober, and they were on the other side of the room drinking their wine. And I looked at them, and I saw their eyes, and their eyes fell because they knew that I was sober and that they weren't, and they were hurting because they, too, had this thirst and this urge to return to God and didn't know how to get it.
My sponsor had admonished me early on. She said, baby, you have got to learn to have a quiet mouth. She said, you just practice being an example and to pray because prayer is living energy just like all the steps will always be living energy. You can use any one whenever you need it. And when you pray in God's time, it will go to where God wants it to go, that that energy must go somewhere and cannot be wasted.
If it doesn't go to your sisters now, it will go to someone somewhere on the face of the earth. And so I prayed every day for six years for those two over there. And you know, we'd been very close all our lives, just like this, because we're identical triplets. Six years after I came to AA, Dorothy came to AA.
[01:05:00]
She came to my house because she was on a path to suicide, and she was gray. I've seen Alkies in AA in hospitals and so on, real yellow, but she was gray, a vivid gray. And two months later, Joni came in, and the reason she took two months was because she was afraid her husband would think she was doing it just because we did. Gave her two more months to drink. Thank you, everybody. Okay, I would, I'd rather just have everyone share from the floor, okay, so that we can get as many people in as possible.
Go ahead. I'm Justin Crowley, I'm an alcoholic. As some of you know, I'm supposed to be leading this meeting, and in defiance of satisfaction that I'm confronted with, I'm supposed to lead another meeting on AA and the medium. And I had a lot of trouble with the topic, too, because I didn't know what it meant. And this morning, as I was going over to lead the other meetings and showing how things work, I picked up the book, passed it on, and of course, as some of you know, there's a whole chapter there entitled, The Minds of Satisfaction.
And it recounts the story of how Bill was looking for more money for success in a spiritual search for a unique father, Ed Dowling. And there was a particular paragraph, I'll just read a quick section of it to you. He asked Bill, Bill asked Dowling, does it ever speak, does it ever stop? And Dowling says, never. He continues from the chapter itself, describing as, the minds of satisfaction, that which would keep Wilson going, always reaching out for unattainable goals, but only by so reaching would he attain what was hidden from him were God's goals.
This acceptance, that his dissatisfaction, that his very thirst would be divine, was one of Dowling's great gifts to Bill Wilson, and through him to Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the experiences that I had over the past few weeks has been the experience, what? It's being recorded, so we need to make sure. There's no need to repeat it. I think you heard it. But the experience I had over the last few weeks was that I was confronted with something which was a very hostile situation in my business.
And I was willing to allow myself to be carried by the positive things in that situation. And there were always positive things, although I can't always see them. And as a result of that, I kind of felt like I was in the boat, you know. And the captain of the boat looked up from the boat and he says, why are you afraid? Because I'm here. And I was reading the other day the statement in one of the Gospels that when the apostles were on the land, or on the sea I should say, Jesus said to them, forget about your fear.
It's useless. Your fear doesn't work anymore. You've got to use trust. And I met my friend Jack Tobin on Fridays in New York City on 63rd Street and 2nd Avenue that very day. And Jack said to me, Jack's an alcoholic counselor. He said, Des, I found a new slogan for us. I said, really? I said, Jack, what is it? He said, it's TIG. I said, TIG? I said, do you use that in place of ah? He said, yeah, you use that.
You should go say ah TIG instead. And I said, okay, Jack, tell me, what does TIG mean? And TIG means trust in God. And my experience has been over the last few weeks, and of course my experience has been in AA as all of yours experience. And I can feel those rumblings in the pit of my stomach. I don't have to act from them. I can disown those and say I acknowledge they're there, move on, go about being where I am as a human being, find the good stuff here, which is that divine spark that's in the situation here and now, not somewhere else.
And I can go on to trust, and that disappears. Ask for that to be removed, and that disappears. And so the journey that I'm on is a journey I don't know where it's going. I kind of feel like I'm walking into the darkness, but I also know, as the man read the poem the other night, that there's light at the end of that, that the movement is towards the east, towards the rising sun. Thanks. Thanks. All right, we have to speak at the microphone because the meeting is being recorded, I was told.
Hi, everybody. I'm Bing, an alcoholic.
[01:10:00]
Good to be here sober. Divine dissatisfaction is a good subject for me at all times. It helps me remember the steps. Step 10 says to me that I continue to take personal inventory, and when wrong, promptly admit it, which I'll proceed to do at this moment. Early this morning, I did a little something that I should know better. I won't go into details, but I'm sorry about it. It was asking a question that was none of my business.
And I should know better than that. Someone had a medallion. I said, how long you got on it? And it's none of my business. It came out. But that isn't why I'm here. The only way I can hope to maintain daily sobriety is by constantly checking up on Bing. I have to do this. And I have to remember that if I hope to stay away from booze, and if I hope to live my life in such a manner that I won't have to sober up again, I have to do this.
I don't know about anybody else, but this is how I have to do it. This is the way that I have to maintain my sobriety. If I say I do anything that's out of line, I have to make restitution for it right away. And I was raised that way as a kid, but of course, I forgot about it all when I began to drink. And I said, well, that applies to other people, but I'm above that. No way am I above that. So this is good.
And meetings remind me of this. Step 10 is there for a reason. It's not there to fill up space on a page. It's there for a reason. I believe it. This has been a magnificent experience for me this entire three and a half days, and we're looking forward to what's left of it. 22 years ago today, I took what I fervently hoped to have been my last drink of booze on a daily basis. Thank you. Divine dissatisfaction says to me, okay, you're going to sit on your duff and say, hooray, it's all over, I've got it made?
No way. Divine dissatisfaction says to me, okay, how come it isn't 24 years? How come it isn't 26 years? Why isn't it 30 years? Divine dissatisfaction says to me, you get out and you get to a meeting today, and you keep your ears open. God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Remember that. Keep coming to meetings if you know what's good for you. See, this is the way I have to read it to me.
The 24-hour book is somewhere in our literature. It says we're tough on ourselves. We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating the crannies. And this is what I have to do for Bing. When I first came around to this program, I said, I'm not that bad, hooray, and I went out and drank some more. When I came back in again, I said, oh, God, I hope it isn't too late. It will be too late if I pick up another drink.
Divine dissatisfaction says to me, keep coming, keep listening. You're a newcomer. Every morning you open your baby blues, and there'll be a day when you won't open them, but don't worry about that. It hasn't come yet. While you're here, keep working on Bing. You are a newcomer. Listen to what these people say. Every day that I wake up, I ask for help and to try to be a better person. I've made a lot of mistakes, and I've done some things I'm not proud of since I've been sober, but I'm very human, a very human person.
I want to thank every one of you here and across the world for my 22 years without a drink of booze. I hope that some of that time has been sober time. Thank you. My name is John. I'm an alkine addict. How are you doing? I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. That's it? Great people, huh? I celebrated two years in April, and all I can say about divine dissatisfaction is that I think I know what you're talking about.
I want to say that this whole thing is just overwhelming right now. I recently got a new job, and I've been on the road for the last month. Not on the road, but out of town, and it's something that I chose to do, and a lot more responsibilities come my way, and it's tiring. It's real tiring. I shot up here at the last minute. I got someone else's registration. I came up with someone. He called me on a Monday, and we left Thursday to come up here.
No plans. That works well for me, no plans, because I don't have to go through the letdown or any of the explanations if I don't plan it, and it just happens. A lot of my sobriety has gone like that. For me, it's called showing up and bring the body, and eventually the mind will follow. I fought the program for the first year, and it was a total gift. And it was a total gift. Like Noreen said, this thing is a gift, and I feel that way today.
And the more meetings that I do come to, and the more active I do get in the program, the better I feel in spite of myself. And I'd just like to say thanks to everyone for being here.
[01:15:00]
Thank you. My name is Bill. I'm an alcoholic. And I'm from Billerica, Mass. Same thing happened again. It's good to be here, but you know, I didn't know what, uh, what is it? Spiritual? No, divine dissatisfaction. I didn't know what it was when I came in here. And, uh, you know, I think I discovered what it is. Because when I came over here, you know, I, uh, somebody was talking about the Oasis. And I think the first day, that's what I did. I was in a complete withdrawal about everything.
But then I met a couple of people, you know. And you know what I wanted to do when I first come here? I wanted to just sip up everything, go to every meeting, go and meet everybody that I could, do everything. All I want, not sleep for three days. This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to have it all. And, you know, it's a good thing I met these two guys because they slowed me down, you know. I'm making three meetings and, you know, and really, I think that's why I'm compulsive. That's why I drank, you know. When I come into the program, I was drinking all the time, you know. I wanted to have all the bottle plus the alcohol, you know. I wanted everything. And, uh, you know, it's, it's wonderful to be here and to listen to people. I'm learning quite a lot and I'm glad I learned about, uh, what is it again?
All right. Thank you. Okay. This will be our last sharing person and then we'll close the meeting. Hi, my name is Lynn. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I'm from Waltham, Mass. I'm a member of the best group in AA, the care group, and I'm the secretary too. I'm grateful to be here sober and clean. And, um, my friend, I just asked one of my friends, what does it mean? I still didn't know what it means. And, uh, he said it's motivation and AA has been a great motivator for me. Alcohol is a great motivator for me and so is drugs. And, um, God's, God's helped me a lot. He's been real good to me. He's given me this fellowship. He's given me a very loving and caring family here and the family I was brought up with. Um, I'm overwhelmed by this.
I was blown away yesterday at the stadium. It just, I was crying. I had tears in my eyes, goosebumps. Um, I'm so, I celebrated 10 months clean and not quite serene today. I got a lot of gratitude in my heart and I'd like to thank all of you for being here and sharing with me.