Bill W. The Spiritual Experience It's a Matter of Grace

Hey, well now sit down after all of this, doesn't it?

Well, I like the informal discussion type of approach.

It seemed to me that

on occasion like this questions or something of intimately more value than a lecture or a story.

But Rep suggested that I make some remarks here in light, and I'm only too glad to do that.

And coming down on the plane, I got speculating with myself about the early days of a A and about the meaning of them in terms of the grace of God.

I've read somewhere that

if a grain of wheat, which has been stored for centuries in a dry place,

is exposed to the right soil and the right climate and to enough light from above,

it will manifest life

and it will unfold and it will grow.

But this presupposes

the right soil, the right climate, and above all, on the flood.

Well, I think it's that way with a A

I remember years back when we first began to get publicity

and the first very large occasion was a feature piece done in the Saturday Evening Post, which all at once produced us about 6000 members.

This was in 41 and by then

a number of medics had become close friends,

some of them psychiatrists,

and these fellows allowed their names to be used, or rather audacious step in those days. I assure you their names were used in the Post article. I make this point because

the when later asked to testify on another occasion, they refused to do it and these were the circumstances.

The first gal that got sober in a A

is one known to many of you as Marty,

so very much of A growing concern in the education field. Marty was the most difficult case.

Brad knows we're all complex, but Marty was really champ.

And she had been under the care of a doctor, Foster Kennedy, a man of very wide repute in that time worldwide renowned

and neurologists.

And he watched Marley as she was planted in the new soil.

He watched her and received this life

well. He was tremendously impressed. He came to some meetings

and soon he said to me, Bell,

would it be possible

to have two or three of the psychiatrists in institutions who have seen recoveries of very grim cases,

people that you say are friends with yours and who have testified for you in the post piece? Couldn't we get a group of this thought to come to the Academy of Medicine

and explain what they have seen?

Well, we thought this was just great because in those days there were a few friends indeed

saw showing by these people

by reason of Doctor Kennedy. Well, what could be better?

So one by one we went to them

and we said would they come to the Academy? And we supposed they would.

After all, some of the Canada glory could brush off them, you know, they were friends anyhow, and they proved it, so why not? And not a one would do it.

And when pressed for their reasons for not doing it, each one of them separately said the same thing.

In effect, each said look fell.

You folks have added up in one column

more of the resources which have been separately applied to Alcoholics than anyone else.

For example,

you have this kinship in supper. You have possibilities of communication

that others don't have. You have a crude form of self examination or analysis and our catharsis. You have

a great new outgoing interest.

You reduce guilt by restitution

and you have this great, compelling interest in helping others.

And then there is a religious factor, and then there is this factor

of the hopelessness,

so far as the resources of the individual are concerned of this mountain.

Now this is a formidable list,

our forces.

That we still can't come to the Academy?

Well, why not?

Well said. They

we see in a A sometimes

in which

in a few months

ships in motivation

that even the sum of these forces couldn't begin to account for. Because we all do well understand the difficulties of this problem

to subtle compulsion

and the some of them won't add up to the speed of these transformations

in these very grim cases.

So for us,

there is

an unknown factor at work in AA

and

among ourselves

being scientists, we call it The X Factor. We believe you people call it the grace of God.

And who shall go to the Academy to explain the grace of God to that body?

No one can, and we simply aren't wrong.

So I think it is just as futile and average for any of us to presume to explain

this matter of grace

around which our entire

Galaxy of principles and activities challenge and trusted.

We can't do that,

but we can examine this matter of the sort and this matter of fun and this matter of illumination

which for some reason or other,

we have made ourselves ready.

Clearly God's grace is in and through all

sad minds, he said. Why have an alcoholic sobered

many times more often through grace in the head?

It's available.

Why hasn't religion been more successful, numerically at least? Why hasn't medicine more successful?

How is it as laymen

seem to be doing this?

So I would like to tell a story

depicting, at least as it seems to me,

what the soil is and what the climate is and what the light is.

These things of which we have been placed

in such tragic possession,

there is no doubt

that in an ordinary sense of tongue

a began in the office of a psychiatrist.

And we might be mindful of this when we criticize people in this profession.

Of course, for most of us,

the origin is 2000 years old,

for some of us perhaps older. But I'm Speaking of the situation in an immediate sense. How was it precipitated this sense?

This, too, is a matter of conjecture,

but here's how it seems to me.

There was a certain businessman

of great attainment. He's cut down by the grind. He runs the gamut of treatments in this country

and this would be in the year about 1932 when he was just about at the end of his tether.

So he went abroad and became a patient of Doctor Carl Yung.

And as all of you know, you

was one of the founding fathers

of the Ark. I prefer that instead of Science of psychiatry

and

you, Oddler, Freud

were the three founding fathers. But of these only you

seem to think that man is something more than $2.00 worth of chemicals, a bundle of instincts, and

an uncertain intellect.

Young soul,

you man had something

beyond this.

That man has soul.

So our traveler

had found a truly great human being.

Great indeed, as events

sell out,

he placed himself under that dear man's 2 lynch for a whole year,

becoming more and more confident

where the hidden springs of this baleful compassion to drink.

We're being understood

and removes and attached to what? He began to feel more free.

There was no drinking while he was under treat.

At the end of the year

he left Carl Jung and in one month he was tight

and the Bender was terrific.

So

in infinite despair,

he came back to call you and said,

is there anything now for me?

You were my court of last resort

and this great man, said

Roland.

I saw for a time

after you first came

that you might be one of those rare cases

in which my art has been helpful.

Otherwise, I should not have encouraged you to stay.

But alas, I'm obliged to conclude that you are not,

and that there is nothing

that I have

to offer you.

My art has failed you.

I need not say

that coming from a man of His Eminence,

this was a statement of beautiful humility,

and the whole destiny of AA, you and me

and all of us,

has since hung on that sentence.

So then has it

found that agony was added to despair

and he cried out,

But is there nothing else?

And this was the answer he got.

Rowan

Time out of mine.

Alcoholics

have recovered here and there now and death

through religious experiences, spiritual experiences, let us say,

or very truly through conversion.

A naughty word for our say is we don't use it for obviously.

But, said the doctor,

this benign lightning seldom strike,

and no one can say where or when it will,

or for the resuscitation of food.

So I simply would advise you

place yourself in a religious atmosphere,

remembering the hopelessness

of your doing anything about it on your own, remaining resources alone

and cooperating

where your associates and casting yourself upon whatever God there may be.

So Roland

aligned himself with the Oxford Groups of that time.

A rather evangelical movement, rather aggressive.

It's very easy it is to criticize.

It was non denominational however,

and it used simple common denominators.

Our religions

simple moral principles.

It called upon its members to admit that they could not solve the life problem on their own.

It crawled upon them for self examination.

It called upon them for restitution.

It called upon them

for a kind of giving in the Franciscan manner. The kind of giving

demands no return

in money, power, prestige and the life,

the losing of 1000 lives of others.

That was the nature of the crowd with which he became associate.

Unaccountably to him,

the obsession to drink left,

and for some years he had no more trouble.

At the time, in the groups there were a few alcoholic sober. There is one now at Ann Arbor that goes back to that time,

an old friend who never became an A A

sober up in the Ouch.

So Roland returned to America.

And the groups here in those days were headed by an Episcopal clergyman called Sam Schumacher.

And in his congregation and among the groups,

two or three other Alcoholics that for the nods, for staying broad

and

Hazard, had a summer place near Bennington, Vt.

And these friends, one of them son of a local judge and himself an alcoholic,

described the plight of a boy who was at school

time charm a month

every Thatcher

and Abby had been deteriorating horribly.

They were summer folks in the town above Manchester. Abby had run his car into the side of the farmer's house,

pushed the wall of the kitchen in the door was would still be open to the car. Abby stuck his head out into the poor woman cowering in the corner who hadn't been hit. He said. Hey, what about a cup of coffee?

Well the town fathers had had it. They were going to commit Abby for alcoholic insanity. So the judges son and Hazard picked up the man who was to become my sponsor.

Meanwhile, I had gone the route with what you're all familiar.

I had sobered up the summer before,

scared to death by the verdict of my doctor,

Doctor Selfwood.

The one we have since named the little Doctor Who loved drums, and he must of them because in his lifetime he dealt with some 40,000 of them

as a hack doctor in a drawing out place.

And he had an idea that this thing was an illness

having several components, a spiritual illness, a moral illness,

and also a physical.

And perhaps oversimplifying, he was apartment to describe an alcoholic as a person condemned by a compulsion

to drink against his own interests, to drink in spite of a perfect willingness to stop.

And this drinking was coupled to an increasing sensitivity of the body.

White shifts to drinking went on, guaranteed his insanity and one day is death.

So this sort of a sentence

had been spoken to Lois at long last by my doctor, Doctor Selfport.

So you see,

SAW

was under preparation.

We were beginning to

learn a little more about climate.

Abby and my other friend Roland

had received a considerable amount of life.

Well, I got drunk in about two months even in spite of this sentence that I would have to be locked up.

Fargo nuts. Maybe within a year.

And then my friend Abby, who had been brought to New York and Vermont,

who had unaccountably sobered up for the time being in the Oxford groups,

came to visit me. But I too was in great respect.

Despair is a primary ingredient, indeed, of this sort.

In the medical jargon, we might call it deflation. At depth some deflation.

So I became the sin,

and he tasted me. This list of moral, you might say, cliches. Nothing so new about that.

I was in favor of honesty. I was in favor of helping other people.

I was in favor of practically everything he had to say except one say. I was not in favor of God, for I had received one of these magnificent model modern schoolings, scientific schooling that assured

that by a series of stages

picking up in four months from somewhere as they went along, I could be traced back to a single piece of ooze

and prehistoric seas.

And this was my face, and science

was my God.

So along comes Abby,

and along comes you,

for whom I had respect, and here was my doctor.

Science can't do it. Medicine can't do it. Psychology can't do it. Religion. Sometimes

that was the stars. But how could I buy religion?

So I felt trapped

in either words. I was gripped in the trap which we everyday construct for the drunk or poaches us

saying well I think the group life must be great helping other people and for it. But I couldn't get the spiritual angle as our jargon has

now. As you know,

this gentleman is the newcomer like me is being caught in this trap.

When you and I talk to another alcoholic

and we identify ourselves as having been denizens of this strange world and having emerged,

and we describe this malady in the terms of our God, science, and that God pronounces the sense of hopelessness on us. The sentence

We are deflated at depth.

And then we learn

that now we have accepted our personal hopelessness,

there still isn't any hope. And we identify ourselves as having been denizens of this strange world and having emerged.

And we describe this malady in the terms of our God, science, and that God pronounces the sense of hopelessness on us. The sentence

we are deflated at depth. Didn't say he was on the waterway.

The obsession had just left him

as soon as he became work,

to travel on the basis of these principles,

and indeed as he became willing to appeal to whatever God there might be.

And this was reducing the theological requirements an awful lot.

Well, I went on drinking the bun.

Three weeks

and in no waking hour,

but I forget the face of my friend

respectful of release as I looked out through a haze of Gin and Ruth's face

as he fits this sentences at me. A conversion experience is not for me. I'm an obstinate Vermonter. Besides, I can't, I can't die. People say to me have faith, and I believe I'd have faith if I could have it, but I can't. But anyhow, I'll go and get dried up.

So I went to the hospital.

I must have had a little optimism because I came in with a bag of beer. I tried to share it on the subway up. I was waving a bottle.

Their little doctor Silkworth came out and I yelled at him this time dark. I got it, he said. I'm afraid you have Bill. You better get upstairs and go to bed.

And he looked very sad

for 11,

so I went upstairs and went to bed. I was there while ahead of the DTS

so

in about 3 days I was

all in the clear.

But the more sober I got, the more awful the despair,

the depression.

So I think it was the morning of the 3rd or the 4th day

that my friend Abby showed up in the doorway

and my feeling was I'm Vivienne at once. So I said, well, this is the time he's going to pour on the evangelist.

And on the other hand, I was saying, well, he should be looking for a job. Why is he up there at 11:00 in the morning this evening? He does. Frank's what he preaches,

so

Abby knew my prejudices.

So he waited

for me to ask him again

for that neat little formula through which he had achieved relates and dutifully went through. If you got honest with yourself, with another person and confidence, you made restitution, you helped others, and you prayed to God as you understood it, I think he might have even used that choice.

And without much more ado, He was strong. No pressure

and again

I could have trucks with God. And again the despair deeper

until the last of this prideful absence seat momentarily

was apparently crushed up.

And then, like a child crying out in the dark, I said, If there is a father, if there is a God, really show himself.

And the place lit up in a great glare.

Our wondrous white life.

And then I began to have images

in the mind's eye, so to speak,

and one came in which I seemed to see myself standing on a mountain,

and a great clean wind was blown.

And it's blowing

at first went around, and then it seemed to go through.

And then the ecstasy redoubled and I found myself exclaiming.

I am free men,

so this is the God of the torture.

And little by little the ecstasy subsided,

and I found myself in a new world of consciousness

and one of the earliest reflections in this world of great peace which stole over me.

Why is that? All is well with God.

I am a part of this cosmos at flesh.

Even evil

be in his hands

can be transmuted into growth.

So I had been deflated at depth

by a fellow software.

Oh yes, the scientific verdict

to deflate me.

Who used his ability to communicate me through our kinship of common suffering?

And who made the exam?

I have a person who practiced for the approach

sell them for me

here. Indeed,

why is this soft air was fun

and God knows the light of his prey.

Now I ventured this assertion of A. A

has

a spiritual awakening or experience

of exactly this character.

Certainly it is not for me to differ with theologians,

but let me say I prefer things

that there is no essential difference between what happened to me and what happens

to leave sound a a accepting the time, though

going back to those characters who said we can't understand this tremendous shift in motivation despite all your resources.

Well, in my case the shift.

But the fruits have been the same

and one of the most terrible compulsions and obsessions

known has been expelled from us

almost wholesale

through this happy sentences,

medicine, religion

and our own experience in suffering, in recovery and

and sharing the grace of this one with the next. So far as there's my speech,

I know there'll be some questions, Bill, so if you have any fathers shooting, I've got the chance.

Relative in the sense of illumination

must be not everyone of us has gone through the experience of

ecstasy or and the light shining or you know,

OK, maybe you know, this is a curbstone opinion, but here's how I look at it.

You go to a meeting

and somebody gets up when this happens time after time, and he says, now folks, I ain't got the spiritual angle

yet. I'm making the group my higher power

there sober and I was. So I got a higher power, but I ain't got spiritual angle away. You probably did. And As for Bill's thing, well, he looked sane in other respects. But you know,

now this guy will get up there and tell a story.

Are losing this compulsion

and if it's being cleared out of them and is being remorted, motivated in many other ways, just like Joseph Fabi said, in a matter of months

or six months or a year. Now just take one of those fellows and try to imagine all of those shifts in motivation taking place within six months or within 6 minutes instead of six months. I think as this happened to that felony too, what have had ecstasy. So I think it's a time element, and I personally see no great advantage

in these tremendous

experiences. Saving my case only once,

it did give me an instant fiction

of the presence of God,

which has never left me from that moment

in spite of the worst iPhone doe. And it's often been damn bad.

And no matter what pressure.

And I feel that that extra dividend may have made the difference whether I would have persisted with a A in the early years or not.

Actually, it has some liabilities and I've seen it in others who have had these experiences in IA and there are quite a lot.

And this is the Cannon City and I think you've seen logs give us some excuse for it too. Are beginning to think that because we have these tremendous illuminations

that we are something special.

So you begin to develop a kind of a paranoia alongside are a perfectly valid experience and this is just what happened to me. I damn near botched up the whole world

by coming out of this working furiously with drunks,

and before anybody had been sobered up, I got so far off base as to loudly declare

one time to an audience by number means spellbound, that I was going to sober up all the goddamn drunks in the world.

Now that is pure paranoia.

Now don't long for the illumination.

I think

you're apartment to have the experience that's appropriate.

Why not longing for it? Well, some people do, you know. Oh my God, if I can only have one like Bill. Now actually, this may be said very sincerely because this may be guys slipping around,

but he may be slipping around on account of the fact that he's a little sketchy and needs some of them vitamin B3. So now we're put on Hawking.