A Design For Living – Sandy B – Bob B – Steve A – Tampa, FL – 06-20-2014

(0:00 – 0:05)
Thank you, Martin. That was just great. I appreciate it.
(0:06 – 0:14)
My name is Sandy. I’m an alcoholic. And we’re delighted to be back again and to have
Steve A. joining us.
(0:15 – 0:43)
What a lucky we are to have him come and be part of this. I just wanted to say a couple
of words about putting this together. I was trying to come up with a format that hadn’t
been used before so that the presenters weren’t really that prepared at having done it
before.
(0:43 – 1:00)
Oh, yeah, I’ve done step four and I have a routine for doing that. So that you are just
being more contemporaneous. You’re just allowing things to flow through you in front of
an audience.
(1:01 – 1:20)
And I think it brings out different perspectives. And I think it’s going to be more exciting.
It’ll just be the real person’s relationship with the program and with their higher power.
(1:23 – 2:11)
And so the first session that we have here is to ask each of us to share our assessment
of our relationship with AA. When we think about ourselves, not other people, but
ourselves and the fellowship of AA, what do we see? And how did it evolve? And anything
that we want to add in there. And then the second thing is, as you come along on the
spiritual path, do you have any specific goals? Anything you can share that were
significant changes made? And so we’re getting personal answers on this first section.
(2:11 – 2:23)
And I hope that it turns out to be interesting. I’m looking forward to it myself. So with
those introduction remarks, we’ll turn it over to our dear friend Steve from Los Angeles.
(2:29 – 2:32)
My name’s Steve. I’m an alcoholic. Hey, Steve.
(2:34 – 2:57)
I am beyond honored to be here. When I got the call to ask me to be here, and it was
Sandy and Bob, I thought, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Eddie Geidel. Eddie Geidel was a
midget who played a major role and played one game in the major leagues as a stunt.
(3:05 – 3:33)
And I wish I got over that feeling. I haven’t yet. Even I sat down and Bob goes, What are
you doing here? These guys are my heroes.
These guys have taught me. They have changed my life. And I’m grateful to be included
here and share my experience with my love for AA.
(3:34 – 3:51)
That’s really what I want to say first is I love AA. I am nothing without my surrender, my
involvement in being a member, active member in this program. I have been walked by
my sponsor to the center of the program.
(3:51 – 4:03)
That’s where I am today. My sobriety date is August 10, 1980, so I’m 33-plus years,
which is a personal record. I just want to say that.
(4:07 – 4:20)
I had 12 days once before, second place. I was so impressed I drank. I was more
impressed.
(4:20 – 4:36)
Well, clearly if you can get 12 days, you’re not an alcoholic. So I drank and I was very
lucky and fortunate to come back, to come back after two years of a dreadful nightmare.
But anyway, I’m thrilled to be here.
(4:36 – 4:45)
Happy birthday to Lee, who’s 60, by the way. 60 is the new 60. There is no spin on that
number.
(4:45 – 4:51)
I know because I’m 62. I’m immature. That’s about it.
(4:51 – 5:09)
I’m the only youth that still lives in this body. So I got to AA on that day. I was walked
over to a meeting I go to still Sunday, August 10, 1980, empty.
(5:10 – 5:25)
I had gotten too hopeless. Out of always looking for the words, we were talking about it
today. We talk about it all the time to try and describe why, why that day, what was
different.
(5:25 – 5:35)
For most of us, it wasn’t the worst dramatic event that happened in our life. It’s an
accumulation of demoralizations. It’s God.
(5:35 – 5:47)
We try and find the words. That spiritual window opens. My new favorite word is
ineffable, which is there are no words to describe what happened on that day.
(5:47 – 5:55)
But I became willing. I couldn’t defend my drinking anymore. I knew as long as I drank, it
would never get better.
(5:56 – 6:04)
And it was just bad. It wasn’t bad in a dramatic way. I don’t have, I guess, in some ways,
a terrible story.
(6:04 – 6:14)
I grew up really on the mean streets of Beverly Hills. But I didn’t care if I lived or died.
And that’s a bottom.
(6:14 – 6:23)
And I think we all have our bottoms. And I walked over to that meeting. A friend, a girl I’d
gone out on a date with, walked me over.
(6:23 – 6:31)
She told me two things. She told me that I remember that alcoholics are more sensitive
than other people. Boy, I believe that.
(6:31 – 6:49)
And she said their IQ is higher than other people. And as my friend Scott Redman used to
say, you will not hear that now and on. But I surrendered, basically, to get on with the
point.
(6:49 – 7:00)
I surrendered drinking. And I went two years just, yes, I’m powerless over alcohol. And
my life is unmanageable because I tried to manage it drunk.
(7:00 – 7:08)
And I really didn’t get involved in the program. I knew I was like you. You drank like me
and you clearly weren’t drinking.
(7:09 – 7:27)
And that was very, very powerful to me that there were other people who had my
feelings and weren’t drinking, but I thought I don’t have any of these defects of
character. I saw a lot of defective characters wandering around that meeting. And
certainly I would go back to law school, graduate, make a lot of money.
(7:27 – 7:44)
And good luck to all of you. And, of course, I was ultimately surrendered and got involved
in this program. And to me, to this day, the most powerful thing is identification.
(7:45 – 7:54)
Every single meeting, it has not diminished in power. When someone shares a feeling, I
go, me too. And I’ve been doing that for at least 33 years.
(7:54 – 8:07)
And AA has become my heart. At two years, I got a sponsor for the first time. I started
working the steps, and I started saying yes to AA requests, which I’m still doing.
(8:08 – 8:24)
And that has been a major part of becoming a member around here, say yes. And it’s
usually inconvenient, actually. But I don’t always know what’s best for me.
(8:24 – 8:36)
So I just keep saying yes. And so this walk, so AA has been, it became a slice of my life
to the heart of my life. It fuels every single thing in my life.
(8:37 – 8:57)
I don’t, I will dry up if I don’t go to AA. And the three areas of my life is work, love, and
play. And without AA, I will end up alone sitting in a yellow rocking chair thinking about
me and my involvement here and the freedom I’ve found here has been about growing
in all those areas.
(8:58 – 9:05)
Also, when I got here, I thought the, a giant surprise. I go, okay, I won’t drink. Okay, got
that part.
(9:06 – 9:23)
I won’t drink, which means I won’t get arrested for drunk driving. But somehow I thought
you would slide an invisible leaden poncho over my shoulders, and this sobriety thing
was just going to wear me out and wear me down. And the fun is over, but I won’t get in
trouble.
(9:23 – 9:43)
And what I saw that day and tonight is that sobriety is buoyant and it lifts us up. And my
job here is to get out of the way and lift up my chin to see what my higher power is
sending me. Because normal Steve State is what’s going to go wrong next.
(9:45 – 10:05)
And through help of these two guys and a lot of wisdom and sponsors and friends, I’ve
been able to get rid of a lot of those blockages in my life and wake up with what’s God
sending my way today. That’s my goal in AA right now. That is it.
(10:05 – 10:14)
I took a note. I wrote a lot of notes in case I froze up here. And the big one, Sandy said
something.
(10:15 – 10:35)
Sandy was out in California a few years ago, and they had a Q&A part of this Brentwood
workshop. And one of the questions was, Sandy, you’re sober 40-some years and you go
to all these meetings and everything. Why do you still go to AA? And Sandy said, I want
to see how awake I can become.
(10:37 – 10:45)
It just, like, nailed me to the wall. And I was like, me too. I want to see.
(10:45 – 10:50)
So what is waking up? Wake up, Steve. Wake up. Wake up.
(10:50 – 11:05)
What is waking up? Why am I asleep? What am I missing? And that’s been this program
of removing the blockages between me and God. God either is or isn’t. I believe, I’ve
experienced that he is.
(11:06 – 11:10)
I have been estranged. I have been blocked out. Why? It’s a behavior.
(11:11 – 11:18)
It’s an amends that needs to be made. It’s a truth that needs to be told. It’s prayer.
(11:19 – 11:37)
It’s meditation. It’s a behavior that’s blocking me. And my goal in sobriety now is to
remove those blockages and have that ongoing, at least as much as humanly possible,
conscious contact with a power greater than myself.
(11:40 – 11:51)
What is that? So I’m awake. So what is this? I think it’s love. That four-letter word, when
you peel it all away, it’s just love.
(11:51 – 12:05)
It’s loving you, accepting you, and then the reward that you’re really not shooting for,
and like all things in AA, it doesn’t come from here. All of a sudden, it’s inside of you. I
feel loved.
(12:06 – 12:19)
It took me over 20 years in AA to know that people love me, and today that’s not true. I
want to love you, and as a reward, I get to feel love. That’s my goal.
(12:19 – 12:22)
I want to wake up. I want to wake up. I want to listen.
(12:23 – 12:34)
I want to pay attention. I want to be in my shoes. I want to be in the now and have a
conscious contact, and all that involves, all the work that it involves.
(12:34 – 12:51)
I hate the word work, by the way. It just makes me sleepy. But do the stuff we do to
remove that stuff, to wake up, and enjoy what’s going on, enjoy the world, enjoy the
people.
(12:51 – 12:54)
So I think that’s enough for me to start. Thanks. Wow.
(12:55 – 13:04)
Isn’t that great? Thanks, Steve. I’m Bob. I’m an alcoholic.
(13:04 – 13:10)
I’m Bob. This is the 10th of December, 1967. For that, I’m very grateful.
(13:15 – 13:42)
Provocative title of this panel, Our Relationship with AA and Our Spiritual Goals. I came, I
had my last drink, and I was a week after my 24th birthday. So I wasn’t, I was as bad as I
wanted to be at 24 years, but I wasn’t as bad as an awful lot of people who walked in the
front door of AA.
(13:44 – 13:56)
But I was as bad as I could get. When I drank, I drank a lot, and I drank poorly. And I got
diagnosed an alcoholic when I was 19.
(13:57 – 14:11)
A friend of mine said, you know, I was born on third base if I congratulated myself for
hitting a triple. I’m one of seven kids. I lived in an Irish Catholic ghetto.
(14:11 – 14:21)
If you had less than seven children, you had a reproduction problem. It was just
wonderful growing up in the 50s. I had a great education.
(14:21 – 14:31)
I had a wonderful mother and father. I had an intact family. And, you know, if you can’t
get someplace from there, I managed to work my way back to first base.
(14:36 – 14:46)
It was a mystery to me why I kept messing up everything in my life. I was a kid that you
would have picked to do well. I was a pretty good student.
(14:47 – 14:54)
Then I got to college, and I wasn’t. I was the class drunk in college. They used my room
as a study hall.
(14:56 – 15:10)
I was a gambler, so I was spending all my time playing pool and bridge and pool. I was
just not present in my own life. And let it all dissolve.
(15:10 – 15:26)
Lost my commission in the Army because of my drinking. Walked out of Notre Dame in
the middle of my senior year in the yearbook with my class ring. Came home, finished
school at a local university.
(15:26 – 15:33)
My dad asked me to leave home. He said, we don’t know what to do with you. We love
you, but we’re at absolute loss.
(15:34 – 15:46)
Later, my wife and I, Linda, who I wish could have been here this weekend, her son came
home from Europe. He works in Geneva, and so she’s not here this weekend. And he’s
there for the last three days of his trip, and she didn’t want to miss it.
(15:50 – 15:59)
And we had three boys that were alcoholic. They now have 25, 23, and 19 years of
sobriety. In that range.
(16:01 – 16:09)
I remember their names, but I don’t. Ages and dates and stuff like that. My father was an
alcoholic synonymous.
(16:11 – 16:23)
I got into a fight with my father, a physical fight with my father, and a 12-step call. If so,
working with family members. I’ve only told that once or twice.
(16:23 – 16:41)
It came to mind. But I was a guy who was well-equipped and never did anything with
what my gifts and opportunities were. So I was the classic potential.
(16:41 – 16:48)
Many of us have had that experience. I was a classic potential kid. And when I finished
school, Vietnam was on.
(16:48 – 17:01)
I was supposed to, you know, because I got castrated out of ROTC, I had to, you know.
So I spent the last year of my drinking, drinking a fifth a day. Worked as a delivery boy at
a liquor store for six months of it.
(17:01 – 17:10)
Worked as a waiter for six months of it. It was about as tacky an existence as I could
have. Kind of hiding out, waiting to see what the Army was going to do with me.
(17:10 – 17:22)
And then they lost my file and took another physical, and they failed me, and I didn’t
have to go. And I started my career. And I knew I was in trouble.
(17:22 – 17:34)
I’d known I’d been in trouble for a long time, but everybody was telling me I had a
drinking problem. And I was diagnosed that at 19. I later found out I had a drinking
answer, not a drinking problem.
(17:35 – 17:44)
But I really did have a drinking answer. I did not know how, you know, I had a couple of
spells of sobriety after some very serious trouble. It was horrible.
(17:45 – 17:53)
I didn’t become what I thought everybody was telling me I’d become. I really thought,
okay, I’ll buy it. I’ll see if I can, you know, and I could not not drink.
(17:53 – 18:08)
And when I drank, I could not drink appropriately, as our book talks about. When I moved
back in the house, just before we got engaged, we were married, and I’ve been married
over 46 years. I had my last drink on our honeymoon, married 46 years.
(18:10 – 18:26)
And when I moved back in the house and I got the job as a trainee in a manufacturing
concern and bought my first car and got engaged and married, and I thought, wow, I’m
going to be a grown-up. This is, I mean, I now am going to be a grown-up. And I couldn’t
quit.
(18:27 – 18:45)
And was shocked. And my day, I woke up a Thursday after not having been to work for
three or four days, hugging the toilet, doing my morning exercises, and I looked in the
mirror, and that was my moment. And I called Alcoholics Anonymous.
(18:45 – 18:54)
Two men came out and talked to me. One guy had six years, one guy had six months. I
had been exposed to every kind of help that anybody could be exposed to.
(18:54 – 19:03)
None of it took, in an hour and a half, two men telling me their stories. I had never been
exposed to anybody who had a drinking problem. Altered my life.
(19:04 – 19:15)
They literally, that is the strength of sharing our experience, strength, and hope. Not our
ideology, not our philosophy, not our dogma. They shared themselves with me.
(19:15 – 19:31)
Their backgrounds were different than mine, but their life and issue was right on target.
And I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and met my sponsor. And after, I
had one month sobriety, then three months sobriety, and then I got sober permanently.
(19:31 – 19:40)
I hope permanently. I got sober on the airplane on the way back from our honeymoon. I
threw myself in.
(19:40 – 19:49)
I got this wonderful sponsor. Sandy and I, I had my sponsor for 43 and a half years. He
was an extraordinary, ordinary man.
(19:49 – 19:59)
He was a 12-step champion of the uptown group of Alcoholics Anonymous. Second World
War vet that lost half his crew. A bomb disposal squad lost half his crew in Italy.
(20:00 – 20:14)
And a mailman. And his wife was my wife’s sponsor. And I got to be his wingman, and I
got all the experiences that you could possibly have in Alcoholics Anonymous because I
followed this man around.
(20:16 – 20:27)
He would not be a guy that you would have asked here to give a presentation on the big
book, but he was my big book. He touched and saved a couple hundred lives in
Alcoholics Anonymous. It doesn’t get a hell of a lot better than that.
(20:30 – 20:37)
And for my first six or seven years of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was stark raving sober. I
was everywhere. It’s funny.
(20:37 – 20:52)
I was just visiting one of my buddies who I’ve been friends with for 44 years, and he’s
dying. And he says, I’m ready to go. And he’s got COPD, and we were reliving some of
the days.
(20:52 – 20:58)
We were everywhere. We started, you know. And I was very, very active in Alcoholics
Anonymous.
(20:58 – 21:03)
I did the steps. But I had living issues. Steve said he was immature.
(21:03 – 21:15)
I was pathologically immature. I was deeply shallow, and I couldn’t get my life on track.
The only place that worked for me was Alcoholics Anonymous.
(21:15 – 21:25)
Everybody thought I was the youngest guy in the group. People were patting me on the
head. I was doing well in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I was gambling, had trouble with
work, had trouble at home, had trouble with my parenting.
(21:27 – 21:44)
I just, you know, that wall that we built around us when we committed to Alcoholics
Anonymous, I tore down that wall when I entered Alcoholics Anonymous, and I built it
back up in the first six or seven years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I started to have
problems that I wasn’t. I was telling my sponsors 65 percent of what’s going on.
(21:44 – 21:57)
I know in Florida you do 100 percent. I think that that’s fair. And the reason I’m kind of
going back into my history, at eight years, I was ready to leave Alcoholics Anonymous.
(21:57 – 22:12)
I’m a guy who starts well. I don’t finish anything. And at eight years, I felt like I had
busted my britches trying to get what there was to get out of Alcoholics Anonymous, and
my life circumstantially was as difficult, almost as difficult as it was when I walked in the
front door of AA.
(22:14 – 22:37)
And I had a surrender at that time that was as profound as anything that’s happened to
me in my life. My first surrender was to what I thought my alcoholism was. My second
surrender stripped me naked, and I stood in front of a mirror, and I surrendered my life
to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was allowed to take the steps at a level
that I had not taken them before.
(22:38 – 22:58)
And I entered the program with more depth than I had entered them before, and four or
five of the major issues that I was dealing with in my life altered in that surrender.
Surrender is the entry point. We congratulate ourselves.
(22:58 – 23:12)
If you asked most of us, what’s the most important thing that’s happened to you, we’d
say, well, AA is the most important thing that happened to me. When I surrendered, I
believe, as I get older, I didn’t surrender. I believe I was surrendered.
(23:13 – 23:39)
I believe I hit bottom, and then a trap door opened, and I fell down another ten stories
that I didn’t know existed. In the falling down, in the breaking apart of our lives at that
point, all the structures of your ego dissolve. In the book it talks about, just before the
fourth step, it talks about that first we get well spiritually, then physically, then
emotionally.
(23:39 – 23:46)
I always thought that was backwards. I thought, oh, no, physical first, emotional second.
Spiritual is the most sophisticated.
(23:46 – 23:49)
Spiritual is last. It isn’t last. It’s first.
(23:49 – 24:08)
There’s something that happens to us that opens our heart, that surrenders us, that
makes us teachable. All of a sudden, the person that didn’t give a damn for whatever the
hell you were saying, wasn’t a listener, was asking questions, asking for help, going to
five or six meetings a week. All of a sudden, we were doing things that we never would
have done voluntarily, and we were interested in it.
(24:09 – 24:19)
You don’t do that. When Bill Wilson had his surrender experience, and he worked with 75
people for six months and no one got sober, something happened to that man. That man
wasn’t the same man.
(24:20 – 24:25)
People question what was his spiritual experience. It was just extraordinary. He never
gave up.
(24:26 – 24:49)
Every time God in the universe asked him to get in the game, he got in the game. He
said, yes, I’m here. Take me.
I’ll do it. He lived in 52 different locations, he and Lois, in the first two years of the start
of Alcoholics Anonymous, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, I don’t know,
you know, if I could have had the courage to do what that man did.
(24:50 – 25:10)
But as Steve talked about, so AA has become my life. I swim in AA. I had a conversation
in my head when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous that was killing me.
(25:11 – 25:22)
Most of us have an internal dialogue that is, you know, alcoholics commit suicide at the
rate of probably two to three times what anybody else does. We’re not afraid of dying.
We’re afraid of living.
(25:23 – 25:29)
We are absolutely afraid of living. We are full of fear. We are not under-equipped.
(25:30 – 25:41)
But somehow our engagement with life is off. And we are unable to get our gifts out of
the box and play our instruments in the orchestra of life. And so we’re an odd group of
people.
(25:41 – 25:47)
Most of us don’t work for large corporations. We don’t fit in. Many of us are kind of selfemployed.
(25:47 – 25:55)
We’re, you know, we’re flawed. It’s an interesting, but it’s a, it really is an interesting sort
of thing. We are, you know, we’re one sandwich short of a picnic.
(25:56 – 26:09)
It is not. So when I show up in my life, I look like I’m really going to do something. But I’m
a guy who had never done much with what my gifts were.
(26:09 – 26:27)
Alcoholics Anonymous altered that. I was always able to participate in Alcoholics
Anonymous and do the things that were asked of me in AA, but I wasn’t able to
participate in my life. I wasn’t able to participate in my marriage and do the things that
were asked of me.
(26:27 – 26:43)
I wasn’t able to participate in my fathership and do what it asked of me. At eight years,
when I made that surrender, I made those areas of my life an AA request. Now that’s an
artifice.
(26:43 – 26:46)
I don’t know. They weren’t, they aren’t AA requests. They’re part of life.
(26:46 – 27:07)
But all of a sudden it didn’t matter whether I thought I could do it or wanted to do it. I
just started doing it. And that was, and as a result of that, my life, I didn’t have any areas
of my life that I built a fence around, which is what I did in my early sobriety, unwittingly.
(27:07 – 27:30)
I thought, you get me sober and I’ll take it from here. And little did I, Chamberlain has
said so many wonderful things. But in the book, when he’s talking at that conference,
and he’s talking about he’s outside the front door of his first meeting of AA, and the guy
at the front door says, are you looking for something, sir? And he said, if it would interest
you, I’m looking for sobriety.
(27:30 – 27:45)
And he said the man’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. He said, little did I know that I
was entering a place that was going to teach me how to live. Now if you looked at Chuck
Chamberlain, you wouldn’t ever think that man had a problem with living.
(27:46 – 27:58)
He was a very bright man. He was as deep and insightful as any man I’ve ever heard in
the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And here’s a guy that was in his 50s, I think.
(27:59 – 28:08)
Gets sober in 47, I don’t know how. No, he must not have been that old. He said, little did
I know that I was standing in a place that was going to teach me how to live.
(28:10 – 28:26)
So it has given me the keys to the kingdom. It has given me a relationship that I did not
know that I had. It has given me, I was suffering from an illness that only a spiritual
experience could, that only a spiritual way of life could resolve and solve.
(28:27 – 28:34)
I now have a spiritual way of life. It is like a lamp that has never been plugged in the
wall. And I got plugged in.
(28:35 – 28:57)
And I had a totally different experience as being connected to the mainframe of the
universe, as opposed to my little handheld computer that I’ve been dragging around
looking for all the answers on my iPad. And I got plugged into the mainframe. And I don’t
do that perfectly, but I am connected to the source.
(28:59 – 29:10)
And in some extent, I’m an ant on a log going down a river. It looks like I’m steering it,
but it is a more passive cooperation. It is literally a cooperation.
(29:10 – 29:28)
It is being able to put myself in the stream of life, in the stream of life, rather than put
myself where I want to be, doing what, getting what I want to get. Now I still, the results
of my life are better than they have ever been before. So I can’t separate my relationship
with AA.
(29:29 – 29:36)
I can’t separate. I want to talk a couple of minutes about some of the difficulties of my
relationship with Alcoholics Anonymous. My life is changing.
(29:37 – 29:54)
I retired two years ago. And my wife and I have had the benefit of being able to spend
the last three years or so, three or four months a year in Mexico. So all of a sudden I’m
out, and this has been happening to us over a period of time.
(29:54 – 30:06)
We’ve done more travel, and I am less connected to my AA community than I am used to
being. I used to be a guy up until the last maybe 10 or 15 years. I was at the core of
what was happening, and I’m not anymore.
(30:07 – 30:19)
That’s different for me. As a result of that, I don’t get asked to do a lot of things because
I’m gone a lot. In addition, when I’m home, I’m gone 20, 25 weekends a year doing this.
(30:20 – 30:31)
And then we have other travel and family and different things that we do. So I’m less
connected and less, well, I’m less connected. And it’s a different feeling for me.
(30:31 – 30:39)
I sponsor a lot of men. I think I do an okay job at that. I think I have a good relationship
with most of the men that I sponsor.
(30:39 – 30:56)
And when they come to me, I’m not as formal about taking everybody through the step.
But most of the guys I’ve had, I’ve had for years. And the conversations I have with them
is, how are the steps working in your life? I mean, it is, you know, and I think I’m able to
have that conversation in a more real way than I’ve ever been able to have it.
(30:57 – 31:15)
New guys, they, of course, take through the steps. So life changes, and your role in the
group changes. And if we get too in love with the circumstances that we have, it can
cause a great deal of difficulty.
(31:15 – 31:23)
So I’m adjusting to that, and I don’t know exactly, you know, it’s awkward for me. I just
want to share that, that that’s a different experience than I’m having. I don’t like all of it.
(31:24 – 31:38)
But it is what it is. For spiritual goals, I want to be more loving, and I want to be happier.
I’m too serious.
(31:38 – 32:00)
For a man who’s had the grace of life, for a man who has the wife I have, for the man
who has the family that I have, for a man who’s had some of the blessings that I’ve had, I
am not as joyous as I think I should be. And that’s because I’m like Steve. I tend to look
to the dark side too much.
(32:01 – 32:10)
And that’s my issue. That’s my struggle. My solution to that, mostly, is that I don’t listen
to it.
(32:11 – 32:16)
I mean, it is. It’s just chatter. It is just, you know, it’s monkey chatter.
(32:16 – 32:29)
I just, it doesn’t interest me. I am less interested in me than I have ever been in my life. I
would like, frankly, to be through with me.
(32:31 – 32:45)
But it is because the neurotic, egoic self-involvement is the separator. And that doesn’t
mean, I mean, that I don’t, you know, have goals, and I don’t like things, or I don’t like
that I’m not going to do anything. I’m going to do all of that.
(32:45 – 32:57)
But it is like when Cabran said, you know, your children come through, you’re a
privileged observer. I want to be a privileged observer of life. I’m a participant.
(32:58 – 33:12)
But I’d like to be through with my agenda. I want to stop bringing my agenda into my
life, and I just want to be present to life. Present to my wife, present to my children.
(33:13 – 33:24)
That’s my goal. I have always had a parochial Catholic education, a lot of it. And I always
had God more external.
(33:25 – 33:49)
As I’ve gotten older, and I’ve gotten more in the program, God is much more internal and
has nothing to do with most of the ideas that I had of God throughout my whole life. My
idea today of my relationship with my higher power, at the essence of me, I am part of
God. So God’s will for me is what my will is for me.
(33:50 – 34:03)
Not my false self, not my ego, not my agenda. God’s will for me is my real self’s will for
me. There is no conflict.
(34:03 – 34:25)
When I’m at my best, when I’m at my most open, I think at that spot, which Elk College
Anonymous has brought me to, I don’t stay there. I think by nature, you can’t get rid of
our egos. It’s the space suit.
You need it for the trip. But somehow we think we’re going to kill our ego. You can’t and
won’t.
(34:25 – 34:36)
So no one owns that territory. But it is, I spend more time. I’m less upset about what
happens in life today than I have ever been.
(34:37 – 34:50)
And most of my life, I’ve been driving a team of four wild horses, barely holding them in
check. And now I’m kind of a burnt out old guy. And I don’t struggle with what’s going on,
mostly.
(34:51 – 35:01)
So I just want to be present. I want to be through with me as much as I can possibly be
through with me. Because the me is what causes most of the issues in my life.
(35:05 – 35:20)
I love Elk College Anonymous. I don’t know where I could have found the combination of
spirituality and common sense. It is in the lack of dogma that we share our experience.
(35:20 – 35:47)
And in that experience, I’ve been able to find, with your language and your words and
your book, I’ve been able to find a relationship that is the most single important thing in
my life today. Wow. Thank you, guys.
(35:49 – 35:55)
I just sat here. I could have listened for the next half hour. My name is Bob.
(35:55 – 36:05)
Okay. Okay. Keep going.
(36:07 – 36:24)
Before I get started, I want to encourage everybody to stay for the DVD that follows this.
A lot of times you look and you just go, oh, another one of those movies, another one of
those. This is really fascinating.
(36:24 – 36:45)
It is an interview with Ernie Kurtz, who wrote the history book, Not God. And he tells the
story of how he, as a Harvard graduate student, decided to write a Ph.D. about AA. First
he had to convince Harvard that that was a good idea.
(36:46 – 37:12)
Then he had to come to the New York office and see if they would grant him access to all
the files. And he got there just as they were releasing, I think, about 200 or 300 new
letters from Bill that had been archived somewhere, but they were now becoming
available. And he is so fascinating.
(37:13 – 37:37)
You will really know more about your new home when he finishes. He’ll just put it all in
perspective. And I’ve seen it two or three times, and I’ve read the book at least ten
times, because history really is important.
(37:37 – 37:49)
I, as a student growing up, thought history was stupid. It already happened. What do I
want to know about that for? It already happened.
(37:50 – 38:02)
I already know the ending. I know who won the Revolutionary War. Why should I study it?
And now I’m fascinated by it.
(38:02 – 38:19)
We’ve formed a history meeting here in Tampa, and we’re now doing a book study on Dr.
Bob and the good old-timers. We had a young lady there. I didn’t realize it, but she was
in her first three weeks.
(38:20 – 38:37)
And she said, yeah, nobody told me this was a history meeting until I came here. And we
were at this point that you were talking about where Bill had this big spiritual awakening
and was out trying to sober up the alcoholic. Nobody was getting sober.
(38:38 – 38:46)
He didn’t have any money. They had to live another… And she felt this is what’s going on
in her life. She has to stay with somebody else.
(38:46 – 38:54)
She has no money. And she totally connected and identified with that. And it just
surprised the rest of us quite a bit.
(38:55 – 39:10)
So please stay for that. When Steve was… Oh, well, let’s see. What am I going to say
about myself? I obviously was not interested in spirituality.
(39:10 – 39:26)
I don’t know anybody that was. I felt that alcohol, the consumption of alcohol, certainly
had spiritual aspects to it. And so did Dr. Young.
(39:28 – 39:39)
It changed the world that I lived in. It made people seem more approachable. The world
just lit up.
(39:40 – 39:55)
And there was just a wonderful quality to the consumption of alcohol. There were
downsides. But that was because I wasn’t doing it right.
(39:55 – 40:03)
I had to learn how to control this a little better. And I got closer and closer. And a
straitjacket helped.
(40:06 – 40:41)
You can’t get the drink up. But as the years have gone by, I really agree with many
spiritual writers who say that God deliberately makes us feel the absence of him. He puts
in all of us a sense that something’s missing.
(40:42 – 40:54)
And I’ve never met anybody who didn’t have that feeling. And now what was missing, we
all were guessing. And for some people it was money or sex.
(40:54 – 41:05)
It was, I’ve got to be the president. And for us, it was alcohol. Alcohol appeared to take
care of that problem.
(41:06 – 41:18)
It really did. There were those, especially around the third drink, three or four, right in
that range. You looked around and you said, now this is more like it.
(41:19 – 41:32)
And you were totally comfortable with all the people that 20 minutes earlier were driving
you crazy. Because they’re all jerks. And now you reassessed it and you said, well, I was
wrong.
(41:32 – 41:38)
They’re all wonderful people. I think I’ll buy them all a drink. That’s how wonderful they
are.
(41:42 – 41:59)
And so I think that if I see that now, as I look back, it all seems to make sense. That I was
trying to figure out what was missing. And it appeared that alcohol fixed it.
(42:00 – 42:11)
So when I come to AA and you say we’re going to take away alcohol, you’ve taken away
my whole game. I don’t have another game. I don’t have another way of living.
(42:12 – 42:25)
That’s it. My solution to every problem was let’s go have a drink and the answer will
come. It’s almost like in the spiritual world you’re wrestling with something.
(42:25 – 42:38)
So you take it and let it go into the universe. And eventually you’ll get an answer or the
question will go away. And so that was what I did with drinking.
(42:38 – 43:08)
Just totally relied on it to provide the wisdom and guidance that I needed. Where I got
sober at that time, some of the old timers, not all of them, but they were put the plug in
the jug and go to meetings. Put the plug in the jug and go to meetings.
(43:09 – 43:26)
There was none of the do the steps and this and that. And we had a character out in
Virginia, Buck Doyle, and I see friends of mine here from up that area that knew him.
And he didn’t talk much about the steps.
(43:27 – 43:35)
And it used to drive my friend Hal Marley nuts. And Hal got sober the same year I did.
And he’d go, look at that Buck Doyle.
(43:35 – 43:50)
I don’t know if he ever did the steps. I just, well, right. And I probably had about 10 or 15
years when I suddenly realized Buck already was completely unselfish.
(43:52 – 44:17)
He already was where the steps are designed to take you. And he couldn’t understand
why the rest of us just didn’t behave like he did and have at least one drunk living in
your house at all times, answering the phone, off on track. I mean, the man just devoted
his entire life to helping new alcoholics, to running meetings and all this.
(44:18 – 44:53)
And we’re sitting there going, when’s he going to do the steps? Never hear him talking
about it. And now, you know, you look and you just see that he had already been
touched with the gift of spiritual awakening and the desire to give it away. And so when
Steve was talking about awakening, that’s an interesting question to ask yourself, having
had a spiritual awakening.
(44:53 – 45:09)
Awakening from what? We know when the alarm goes off, we awaken from sleep. But
here we’re talking about having had a spiritual awakening. And I got thinking about that.
(45:09 – 45:24)
And I don’t know, there’s probably people with better answers. But it occurred to me that
it’s more akin to a trance. And it’s a trance of being locked in to old ideas.
(45:25 – 45:41)
We’re only capable of repeating those same old ideas. And they trap us. And we have no
idea that there are many other ideas that are far superior to ours.
(45:41 – 46:00)
And that probably 95% of ours are not true. And yet we’re sitting there defending them
as if our life depended on it. And we go year after year getting the same terrible results.
(46:02 – 46:16)
And then next time the problem comes, we apply the same ideas to it. And we get the
same crappy results. And people say, have you noticed the results you’re getting? Yeah,
bad luck, bad luck.
(46:16 – 46:33)
Doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of my ideas. And it’s amazing how we’re
locked in to only inventorying the world. And never looking at ourselves.
(46:34 – 47:01)
Now that’s a trance. And when you awaken out of that and you see, that’s why these
fourth and fifth steps clearly set us up to have this awakening. You know, it’s one thing
that you’re 33 years old, and you turn to your sponsor and you say, I’m going to say
something that I’ve never said before in my life.
(47:02 – 47:19)
I’m wrong about this issue. Now if you’ve gone 33 years and never been wrong, you’re
missing something. You’re missing the fact that you’ve been wrong 80% of the time.
(47:21 – 47:34)
And aren’t aware of it. And so the freedom that we get by discarding wrong ideas is
tremendous. It’s huge.
(47:35 – 47:48)
And it can put a blow on the ego that is substantial. I mean, it’s chopping it to pieces.
Just like one karate blow after another.
(47:48 – 47:55)
Sorry, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. What was your part in it? I had no part. Yes, you did.
(47:55 – 48:02)
You did this. You did this. And then you go, well, when do I win? You’re winning right
now.
(48:05 – 48:21)
This is what winning feels like. This is what it looks like. And if there was a scale that we
were standing on, we would see we’re getting lighter and lighter and lighter.
(48:23 – 48:36)
Because it’s very hard work to carry around wrong ideas. There’s part of us that knows
they’re wrong, and then we have to defend them. All the time.
(48:38 – 48:45)
And so there’s just this. And that had a big effect on me, to be wrong. As a matter of
fact, I didn’t say that.
(48:45 – 48:55)
I said, you’re right, Bill. And he said, no, you’re wrong, Sandy. I said, well, it’s the same
thing.
(48:55 – 49:04)
He said, well, let me hear you say it. It stuck in my throat. Wrong, wrong.
(49:07 – 49:29)
And now, it’s one of the most wonderful things. I had given a talk on forgiveness starting
about four years ago. And people have thanked me and done all this, and I gave it again.
(49:30 – 49:36)
And there’s a man here. He’s here tonight. And he has about four months.
(49:37 – 49:49)
And he came up and he said, I think you made a mistake in what you said in that talk.
And I said, really? What did I say wrong? And he said, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I went,
wow.
(49:50 – 49:56)
You’re absolutely right. I gave that. That is absolutely wrong, what I said.
(49:57 – 50:33)
So now I have to correct it in front of all of you. I said that if we use the power of
forgiveness, we can eliminate hatred, anger, and resentment, and we’re just left with
sorrow over the perpetrator. And I said, now, God won’t help us with anger, resentment,
and hatred, but he will help us with sorrow.
(50:35 – 50:55)
And it was pointed out that he’d be glad to help us with anger, resentment, and hatred,
that my anger, hatred, and resentment had cut me off from God. God did not cut himself
off from me. And it felt so good to have that straightened out.
(50:56 – 51:26)
It felt like, well, here’s a little piece of this that wasn’t quite right, and now it’s right. So I
thank my new friend for being observant enough to point that out. As the years went on,
up in Washington, we started having step studies, and we caught up with the rest of the
country.
(51:29 – 51:56)
And, you know, I don’t remember, we had discussion meetings, but we had 90% speaker
meetings, which I think are very powerful. You’ve got to have a lot of those, because
that’s where the identification takes place. That’s where you sit there, and somebody’s
up telling their story, and you feel like your wife briefed him.
(51:58 – 52:36)
You know, where the booze was hidden, and the lies that you told the priest, and the lies
that you told the neighbors, and you’re just going, man, this can’t be possible that this
guy hid his booze in the toilet, and that he, you know, did this with the money, and so on
down. And I just, I never thought I’d meet someone who was just like me, who was that
crazy, who did all these things. And that’s what made me curious about staying here,
and in particular, talking to that guy.
(52:38 – 52:55)
I trusted him. He’s the only guy that I had met in my whole life so far that knew what it
felt like to be me. And that’s what Dr. Bob said, after Bill finished talking to him.
(52:55 – 53:14)
He said, here’s a guy who knows what’s going on with us alcoholics. And so those are
important type meetings, and I certainly went to a lot of them. But then we started in,
and I became very interested in a closer look at the Big Book, a closer look at the 12 and
12.
(53:15 – 53:30)
And I had a very lucky thing where people invited me to teach. You know, would you
come over and do a series of 12 talks at our group on the 12 steps? So then I’d be going
over to College Park. I think they’re still doing it over there.
(53:33 – 54:03)
And, you know, on the first Monday of 12 months, I did get a chance to go over there and
talk to these people. And as the years went on, I found that through anything that I did,
but somehow I had the gift of explaining. That I could take something and explain it.
(54:03 – 54:28)
And I found that out when I got out of the Marine Corps and I got a job writing speeches
and testimony and stuff like that. And I would take complicated things and try and
reduce it down to a paragraph. And when you attempt to do that, you get rid of a lot of
things that just don’t really apply.
(54:29 – 54:51)
And if there’s anything that describes spirituality, it’s simplicity. Bill described Alcoholics
Anonymous as an utter simplicity which encases a complete mystery. Now there is a
package of two terms that are just fascinating.
(54:52 – 55:15)
There’s nothing complicated about how AA works. We have 12 steps, and when you
finish doing them, you have a spiritual awakening, your desire to drink is gone, and you
have a desire to pass it on to other people. But when you go, okay, I see that.
(55:17 – 55:44)
But what are the dynamics of why that happens? I mean, my God, why didn’t somebody
think of that before? And since it came from God, it’ll always remain a mystery. And if
you’re new, there’s two things that people like to do with mysteries. They like to figure
them out.
(55:46 – 56:09)
Or they like to admire them and just behold the magnificence of the mystery itself. And I
enjoyed a certain amount of amateur magic. And I see a TV show which is designed to
expose all the tricks.
(56:10 – 56:37)
And I go, what a terrible joy killer that is. To expose all the tricks so that we just have a
steady barrage of, there is no Santa Claus, no, there’s no Easter Bunny, no, there’s no…
None of that is true, no, no, nothing. And there’s no God either, so don’t even worry
about that.
(56:39 – 57:18)
And so, I suppose the biggest mystery that we have is ourselves. And the closest we can
come to understanding God would be to understand ourselves. So I think that spirituality
leads us to spend some time reflecting or contemplating on what am I exactly? What is
the point of me? And I might come up with an entirely different answer than you.
(57:20 – 57:48)
Which is why both our 11 steps tell us that this spirituality is an individual adventure.
And it’s up to you whether you take it or not. You can come up, give it a little lip service,
get enough evidence to you that there is such a thing as God, and then move on.
(57:49 – 58:01)
Oh yeah, yes, I’m satisfied there’s enough evidence for God. So I won’t be arguing that
anymore. So the issue has been put to rest.
(58:02 – 58:19)
Boy, that’s really not much of an exploration of God. I’m just going to acknowledge that
it’s okay for him to exist. And that he gets the credit for me being sober.
(58:20 – 58:33)
So there, I’ll move on. And then you wonder why after 15 years of sobriety some guy
with 10 years is talking about stuff you don’t even know what he’s talking about. He’s so
far ahead of you.
(58:34 – 59:08)
But you’ve got more money than him, so who the hell cares? So what are some of the
things that anybody who spends time with this realizes that it’s not information. I would
call it a new perspective. It just shows up.
(59:09 – 59:31)
You’re not expecting it. You’re sitting around, maybe you’re reading some philosophy
book or some spiritual book, and then you put it down and you reflect on something. And
all of a sudden, you’re given this wisdom that answers a question that you had two years
ago.
(59:32 – 59:58)
And you just go, wow, that was worth waiting for. I mean, those type of things are so
fascinating. Well, the things that have occurred to me, this was that God created the
universe and the basic building block of the whole universe is love.
(1:00:00 – 1:00:22)
That everything in the universe, that’s the basic component in its existence. And that
includes you and me and clouds and water and animals and black holes and all of that.
That there is nowhere that love is absent.
(1:00:24 – 1:00:49)
It’s just nowhere. I can tell myself that it doesn’t exist, but it keeps on existing whether I
allow it to be or not. I feel that it’s very similar to darkness, that it doesn’t exist, it’s just
the absence of light.
(1:00:50 – 1:01:04)
And God is very close to light and love. Those things are just the basic. And so when
people talk about spiritual awakening, you generally hear them talk about light.
(1:01:05 – 1:01:35)
The room lit up, there was a wind, there was a sense that everything’s all right. And
these things can be brought closer together. As you work on your own journey, you’re
going to come across things that allow you to experience God on a more regular basis.
(1:01:35 – 1:02:08)
Or experience love, experience light, experience the sense of belonging to something
much bigger than the third dimension. And so it’s a question of, how interested are you
in this? Now I wasn’t that interested for 20 plus years, so don’t think that it’s something
you can just, you know, that happens quickly. We’ve got the rest of our life for these
things.
(1:02:10 – 1:02:36)
And quite frankly, when I first met Chuck Chamberlain, just to give you an example, I
ended up through a series of things where he invited me to talk at Palm Springs, but he
never heard me. His wife told him that he had to invite me. So he was very nervous that
if I gave a bad talk, then he was going to look bad or something like that.
(1:02:37 – 1:02:51)
So that’s where Drops of Rock came from, and everybody went crazy. So he was so
happy, he invited me down to his house. So I got to go down and sit in his chair and look
out over the ocean.
(1:02:51 – 1:03:18)
And I think between that time and over the next three years, I got to spend time with
him maybe nine times, 10 times. But it is the singular biggest experience that you guys,
when you spent time with him, you just had this sense that, wow, this is amazing. So I
sat with other people at his feet while he was talking and just going on and on and on.
(1:03:18 – 1:03:39)
And I just went, this is so great to be in the presence of truth and in this tremendous
wisdom. And then as I was driving home, I realized I hadn’t a clue what he was talking
about. I just knew that it was really something.
(1:03:42 – 1:03:55)
You know, probably 10 years later, I went, well, so that’s, you know. It was impossible for
me to know at that time. I had to go through this stage and this stage and this stage.
(1:03:56 – 1:04:18)
And then, boom, it fits together. And so we say there’s no personalities in AA, but there
are. There was just, if you go through our history, we were very lucky to have certain
personalities.
(1:04:18 – 1:04:41)
Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob and Hank Parkhurst and, oh, who’s the guy, troublemaker from
Cleveland? Clarence Snyder. Everybody said, you know, oh, Clarence, he was causing all
this trouble. Well, boy, he added a lot to AA.
(1:04:41 – 1:04:54)
I’m going to tell you, he was the champion 12-stepper. He started intergroups and first
guy to write pamphlets and organize things. It’s just that he, I don’t think he wanted to
be liked.
(1:04:58 – 1:05:27)
I think if Bill Wilson had said, Clarence, I really love you, we’d go, god damn, how did that
happen? And so you’ll find that each area of the country has certain personalities. And
they had a great effect on AA in that area. And I think it’s a joy to see the differences as
you travel around.
(1:05:29 – 1:06:04)
If you’re new, you’re going to find out that when you, the next time you move and you
go to some AA meetings, you’re going to have this thing, who do I report this to? They’re
doing it wrong in North Dakota. And I think I should call New York and tell them. The red
chip is for 30 days, not three months.
(1:06:06 – 1:06:22)
Who do I report this to? And then the next thing you feel, I never could have got sober
here. I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t come to AA in North Dakota.
(1:06:22 – 1:06:32)
I never would have got sober. And you don’t realize that a guy from North Dakota just
moved to Virginia and saying the same thing to himself. Oh, my god.
(1:06:35 – 1:07:02)
And these wonderful little differences are really a precious part of AA. And I’m glad that
we allow them to continue and allow them to remain part of our history. I think, where
was it, Hot Springs? They had the five-day deal.
(1:07:02 – 1:07:13)
Do you remember that? Arkansas? Yeah. Little Rock? Little Rock. Anyway, we’re almost
out of time, sorry.
(1:07:15 – 1:07:37)
The first 12-step call that they had, they had two guys, and so they got this third guy,
and they said, okay, Joe, come on over to our house, and we’re going to go through the
book until we finish the steps. That’s the way they interpreted the book. So it took five
days.
(1:07:39 – 1:07:58)
Now, if you’re a real organizer, you’ve just established a tradition. So the second guy
who came, they said to him, call your employer and tell him you won’t be in for five
days. They had already established how you work with new people.
(1:07:59 – 1:08:27)
You take five days to take them through the steps. And they kept it up for years until
somebody was visiting from New York and said, what’s that, five days? You’re the only
place in the country that’s doing it this way, just so you know. So I think they still have a
five-day retreat down there where they go through the steps, but they do allow a
newcomer to go back to work if he’s capable.
(1:08:32 – 1:09:05)
Okay, we’re at the end of the time, and we’re going to take a 15-minute break and then
come back, and you’re going to get to enjoy a wonderful DVD. I just want to say, use this
weekend to inspire yourself to take you further along the spiritual path. Just ask in the
silence to be guided somewhere.
(1:09:06 – 1:09:18)
Maybe you’re going to see something in the newspaper. There’s a lecture on meditation.
Maybe you’re going to be in a bookstore, and you’re going to see, well, this looks
interesting.
(1:09:18 – 1:09:36)
And you pick it up, and you take it home, and it gets you started. And so when little
signals come along, don’t reject them. Follow them and see where they take you, and
then report back to us, because it’s very interesting.
(1:09:36 – 1:09:42)
Thank you all very much. Okay, we did good, guys.