Big Book Workshop Weekend in Altamore Springs, FL

Good morning. I'm Bob Darrow, and I am alcoholic. After a moment of silence, would you join me in a prayer? Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, and everything I think I know about my own recovery, all for a new experience in you, lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in my fellows, and a much needed new experience in my own recovery. Amen.

Amen. Good morning. Good morning. We're gonna we're gonna finish up and make the transition from step 2 into step 3 this morning. We had been going through some parts of the of the book that, we agnostics.

And I wanna touch on 2 little parts out of we agnostics. 1 is really the essence of what I have to do in step 2. And it's it's a lot simpler than I than I imagined. And it Bill refers to that in the 12 by 12 when he talks about the the hoops we have to jump through in step 2 are are a lot easier than we ever thought. And in the middle of page 46, there's a paragraph and it talks about 2 things.

It doesn't even really say I have to believe. If I can just do 2 things, I'll be on my way. And it says, the second line down in the middle paragraph in the page, it says, let us make case to reassure you. We found that as soon as we were able to, well, first, lay aside prejudice, and second, express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results even though it was impossible impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power, which is god. I think sometimes one of the most misunderstood things in Alcoholics Anonymous is that is that last couple words in the third step where it says god as we understood him.

And it's easy, and I to imply from that as as a lot of new people do as I did, that I must first understand god. And it's not it's not it's not a it's not a closed end expression. It's a it's a broad and open ended expression, meaning that you don't have to understand anything or anything you understand is approachable. It's it's of your understanding. Whatever from 0 to a100 on any scale, whatever that is.

And I I misinterpreted that as I had to understand God. And the book really comes out and tells me very point blank that you don't even try. And the only reason I would try anyway is because the stuff I try to understand, I can control. I mean, that's the only reason I try to understand. God's like, shoot a couple angles here to get a little bigger piece of the pie.

I want a little more grace of this grace thing that you guys talk about than everybody else has because I definitely need it more. I can tell. I can feel it. And, so I don't I don't have to understand God. If I can do these two things, lay aside prejudice.

I didn't know what prejudice was. It it comes from a Latin word to prejudge. It is all my opinions, my judgments, my preconceived notions about God, about spiritual terms. If I can get to a point or if I can move towards a point of being childlike and know nothing, and that's a hard hard thing to do for, opinionated guys like me, who think they know all kinds of thing. I know stuff I don't even know.

I mean, I could just you can ask me a question about something I don't even know anything about, and I'll tell you the answer. I'll make one up on the spot because I wanna be the I know guy. Right? That's the kind of ego I came in here with. So to get childlike enough to know that I don't know.

And then the second thing it says is to, express even a willingness and the wisdom of the old timers when I was new. They had me taking actions that seemed to me, in my judgment, inappropriate. They had me getting down on my knees and physically physically getting on my knees and praying every morning when I didn't even really believe in god as of yet. You know, I remember arguing with this guy. I said, you know, well, I I kinda feel like a hypocrite doing that.

He says, you've been a hypocrite all your life. What's the difference? Well, it's true. I mean, I was the I was I never did what I said I was gonna do. I I was the guy who owned I was owned by my feelings.

I tell you, oh, yeah. I'll come over and help you. I'm gonna take time to come over and help you. If I didn't feel like it, I'd do something different. I was owned by my emotions, childish emotions.

So I was a hypocrite. So I started I was living in a halfway house, and I I would go in the bathroom, and I'd feel stupid. I'd lock the door, make sure the curtains are pulled over the window tight, throw the push the rug underneath the crack in the door to pray, to get down on my knees as if I think somebody's gonna look under the crack and see me praying or something. I don't know. I'm crazy.

And I get down to my knees, and I'd say that simple little prayers like, whatever's there, I need help today. Please help me to stay sober. And and I get down on my knees at night, and I'd thank whatever that was. And some funny things started happening to me. And I it was a while before I could connect the dots and realize that they were initiated by those actions.

And one of the things that started happening to me was I started having a lot of eerie good luck. Like, eerie good luck. I mean, like like and I'm not a good luck kinda guy. I'm a bad luck magnet. You know what I mean?

I'm I'm a bad luck man. And funny things would start happening to me. Like, I I like most new people, my first couple years of sobriety, I would go on these emotional roller coasters for no reason. I could be just sitting in a meeting, feeling good, and all of a sudden, it'd be like some key would turn in my head, and I'd just get depressed all of a sudden and feel like awful. And and sometimes I'd be like that, and I wouldn't know what to do.

And I just I think, well, they say pray this pray thing, prayer prayer. So I'd say, god, please help me. I'd go to a meeting or I'd be at a meeting and somebody had start sharing, some guy I don't even know, and he would be talking exactly about what's going on in my life. I mean, exactly. And I don't know how he got that, and he's got an answer for me.

And that didn't happen to me once or twice. That happened to me over and over and over again. I I was in early sobriety. I couldn't get a job, and the perfect job just came to me. I mean, it wasn't the job I really wanted.

God had that. But it was the perfect job for a guy that for a guy like me. It it got me out of the halfway house. It it got me, gave me room and board. It was a job, is a live in house manager for a treatment center for teenagers.

It put me in a safe, sober recovery environment, gave me room and board, and it got me out of the halfway house. And my one roommate in the halfway house was selling heroin, and the other one was dealing marijuana. I mean, I don't know how much longer I coulda stayed there, you know, without going over the off the deep end. And I started to see that there was something. Something's going on here.

Something. I and I'm a skeptic, and I've always been a skeptic, and I'm a cynic. You know? And I don't believe easily, and I'm I'm the guy that I because I want your approval. I would come to AA meetings and talk like I believe in God way before I really did.

I mean, because I want because it was the thing to it was the proper thing to say in AA. And I god forbid you'd reject me here because I had nowhere else to go. So I wanted to be liked here. But I started to really come to believe the only way that a guy like me, I think, is that's wired the way I'm wired could ever come to believe, god had to come to me. And just I just made a tiny little actions, just tiny little actions, and god came the rest of the way.

He was so so gracious in my life for a guy like me who really was a skeptic and a cynic and a judgmental kind of guy. And I my and what my experience was like as it evolved was very similar to the I heard a story years ago about this over in London, and I just came from there. And I they still do this in some parts of London. The streets are have gas street lights. And there was a guy years ago who would go around the streets of London with a long pole with a flame on the end, and he would light the street lights.

And he was called a lamplighter. And if you crawled up climbed up to the top of one of those towers in London or one of those high buildings and looked out over the city at twilight, you couldn't see where the lamplighter was, but you could always see where he'd been by the lights in the city. And I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at 2 years sober or 2 and a half years sober, and I I couldn't see where god was at that moment. But I'll tell you, I could see where he'd been, in my life so so clearly. And even more distinctly, I could see where he'd been in the guys that I watched get sober after me.

You know, I started doing HNI work when I was brand new, and I would go back into the detoxes in the in the prison. And I I some of these guys I'd watch, I would see them in detox, and I would talk to them. And they were more dead than alive. These were hopeless, hopeless, homeless, used up human beings that don't have a chance that alcohol has just demoralized them and screwed them up mentally and emotionally, that they'll never save their own life. They don't even like themselves enough to do that.

And then they start taking simple actions that open this door. And then 6 or 8 months later, I see them get their kids back. I see them I see them in meetings with guys that they're trying to sponsor, and the lights are on. And I watch him turn the corner. And, man, I I that has to be some kind of power that is beyond anything I could imagine.

That's that is changing them. And it's easier, I think, for us to see God's hand in others as than it is in ourselves because God's hand works so slow. I mean, well, he's old. I mean, he's very and and it's hard to see him work in my life because it's such a slow evolution sometimes, and I live the change. It's like trying to stand in front of a mirror and watch your hair grow.

It doesn't doesn't mean that it doesn't grow. It's just a slow thing. But I could see it in you much clearer and easier. Took a longer time to see it in me. On page 55, there's the big book is, this is an amazing page.

And the 2 paragraphs in the middle of this page, it it it says exactly when, exactly where, and exactly how I will connect with this juice, this grace, this power in the universe, that I I I will die without. The book had said lack of power is my dilemma. Alcoholics anonymous is really a quest for power by people who are dying and desperate for power, for by people who have exhausted every source of power they could find. And alcohol, and combinations of alcohol and drugs was a tremendous source of power for a while. I mean, it was I mean, well, think about it.

What you have something that at one time, no matter how bleak and lonely and desolate this world seemed, no matter how depressing it was, 5 shots of of Jack Daniels, and the world would shape up. It would just get better. That's power. That's true. It's power to come out and play.

It's power to, talk to people. Power to integrate myself when I felt like I was dying of loneliness. Power to be a part of. Power to to to have some control over my emotional nature. Power to just rise above my depressive tendencies.

Power to shake off the anxieties that just seem to eat my lunch and the worries. That's power. And I must find this power somehow, or I I will perish. And on page 55, it starts says in the middle of the page is this first second full paragraph, it says, actually, we were fooling ourselves for deep down in every man, woman, and child, deep down within me is the fundamental idea of god. It may be obscured, which it may be blocked.

It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things. But in some form or other, it is there for faith in a power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of god was a part of our makeup just as much as the feeling we had for a friend. Sometimes, we had to search fearlessly. Fearless and searching.

Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality in capital letters, the great reality deep down within us. And when? In the last analysis, after I've looked everywhere else on the planet for power, in this in this cosmic Easter egg to claim my Easter egg hunt to claim my inheritance as I look after I look everywhere else and find nothing in the last analysis.

It is only there that he may be found. It was so with us. And that's really my story of this this last analysis stuff. You know, I I spent, seven and a half years fighting alcoholism, and I sought help and power to do that in a lot of places. I went to some of the greatest psychiatrists in the world.

I my my dad was politically connected. He got me in to see people that you couldn't get in to see unless you were like a movie star or something. These amazing psychiatrists that had found a whole movements of psychotherapy, and I went to therapy for them and nothing changed. I tried the medications of the era that were popular at the time in the in the by psychiatrist for guys like me, and nothing changed. I did religions.

I've I did a lie. I did meditations. I did, chanting. I did, everything that was available, and nothing seemed to change. And and through all of that, on a regular basis, I keep ending up in rooms full of alcoholics.

Now it's not that I have alcoholism, but every time I drink, I end up where all the alcoholics are at. You know? Like, I don't I haven't connected the dots with that one yet. And I'm looking everywhere else and I keep ending up with you. And I come in here and I look for power for my first couple years of sobriety everywhere else.

Jobs and relationships, money, activities, committee positions, general service. I'm looking for juice. I'm looking for validation. I'm looking for security. I'm looking for the power to shore up my life and fill my vacancies everywhere else.

And then it after several years of sobriety, I started to be as Scott talked about on page 53 last night, I be started to become crushed by these self imposed crises I could not postpone or evade. And I had to fearlessly face this proposition and start to go back through the work again because I had missed a lot of stuff. And much to my surprise is that I I started as I did the work to clear away this channel, to clear away the pomp, the calamity, the worship of other things, which really is is completely touched on and cleared away in steps 4 through 7. As I cleared away that stuff, something star a presence started to come into my life. Not a constant presence, but a presence that is often overshadowed by as Bill uses a term I love, the the worldly clamors.

You know, when I get in my head and all I can't when I'm in my head, god's not I don't feel god's presence in my head. You know why? Because when I'm in my head, I'm not in the place where god is. It tells you in chapter 5 exactly where you're gonna find god. Says there is one who has all power that one is God.

May you find him in a place it refers to that's most of us seldom visit and you find him now. Right? I mean, now. Even as I'm saying that, some of you aren't even here. You're you're in your head thinking, oh, I can't wait to tell Joe that, and oh, boy.

You're not even here as I'm saying that. You're somewhere else. Right? So that I would start to connect if I could clear away those those three things. And I heard a story, by a guy who wasn't in AA.

A guy named Earl Earl Nightingale, who's a he told this story, and he said he said this is a true story, and it was an account of of a thing that happened in South Africa. When I I heard this story, it blew my mind because it it's it was exactly what had happened to me. And he's he was told the story about this guy who grew up in South Africa, and he had inherited a a ranch from his dad. And it wasn't a, like, spectacular ranch, but it was a nice ranch. A ranch that would have secured him and his family a nice living for generations to come.

A nice comfortable existence. And but he inherited the ranch at a time when the diamond boom was on in South Africa, and there were people that were becoming overnight, Rockefeller, Bill Gates, mega rich. And the more he heard the stories of their wealth and their, abundance, the more dissatisfied he became with what he had. Sound familiar? Yeah.

And he finally, after a while, he couldn't take it anymore. He sold his ranch, took the money, invested in an equipment to go prospecting and searching for diamonds, and went out to the bush obsessed with striking it rich. And he never did find diamonds out there, and he died out there bitter and alone in a he had a miserable existence. It came to pass that this ranch he sold, he sold it to 2 developers, and they were gonna develop some of the property. And they were moving these stones out of the way one day.

One day, and, they found these unusual looking rocks, and they never seen anything quite like them before. And they took them to a guy, and the guy said, well, they're diamonds. Diamonds in the rough. And when you they cut them and clean them up, and they found it. This ranch was the largest diamond deposit ever found on the planet.

And these brothers, one day, they all of a sudden, they have to form this huge corporation to to mine and market these diamonds. And the one guy says the other, well, what do we call this corporation? And the guy the guy says, I don't know. He said, well, why don't we name it after that poor SOB that died out in the bush we bought this ranch from? And the guy said, that's a good idea.

What was his name again? Oh, it was De Beers. That's right. And they named this company after De Beers. And I'm reading that, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm that idiot.

I'm that guy. I'm looking everywhere else and God keeps throwing this stuff at me. You know, I go, I'm sitting in meetings. You know? I'm sitting in meetings thinking how I'm gonna connect with God, and what what should I do to make my recovery better?

And and in the background, somebody's reading these things goes, and these are the steps we took. What you're suggested is a program recovery. And I'm god, I wish he'd stop getting that over. I was interfered with my thinking here. I'm that nut.

And this this this thing that I'm that I will find the great reality, the the presence of god. Presence like as opposed to past and future. The presence of god in my life if I can clear away the things that keep me from showing up in my life right now. The things that keep me up in here, They keep me in the bondage of self. This pump.

And if you don't know what pump is, it's ego. I think I I I am capable of being so full of myself and my judgments and my opinions. There's no room for god's grace. I could be that self consumed. And calamity oh, we all know what calamity is.

The book says we're producers of confusion rather than harmony. You know? I'm a producer of calamity. I father Martin had a great saying once I heard him say this one of his talk talks, and it was so bright on. He said, you can go to any workplace in the country and pick out the alcoholics, not by the alcohol in their breath.

He says, look for the people that everybody walks on eggshells around. You know, we produce calamity. We produce confusion. We are we are not we we are not ins. There's no alcoholic with untreated alcoholism is ever accused of being a source of harmony.

I mean, it just never it never happens. We're the opposite. You know? And this worship of other things, this I didn't get that for a long time. And I I was sober about a year and a half, and I I was coming out of my first sober relationship.

And I'll tell you, there's not a person on the planet more self obsessed than a guy ending his first sober relationship. I mean, it's you can go up to a guy like that and say, I just came from the doctor. I have terminal cancer in 2 weeks to live, and he'll go, and you know what else she said, man? You know, you just got it's just on you. Right here like that creature and alien that attaches itself to you.

You're just odd. It's on you. And so I'm like that. And I go to this meeting, and I can't hear anything in the meeting because I'm because she's a member of AA, and she's not in that meeting. And because she's not in that meeting, some hideous force has implanted a spring in the back of my neck.

And every time the door to the meeting opens, I just go like that. You know? I can't help it. It's just it's like and and then when the door is not opening, I'm not listening to anything because I'm in my head thinking about driving by her house and thinking about you know, I'll say this to her, and then she'll say that, and then I'll say this, and then she'll say that, and then I'll hit her with this. Oh, and it'll humble her.

She'll realize how wrong she was, beg my forgiveness, be properly ashamed of herself, and it'll be wonderful. And when you're like, you're so god could be trying to talk to me through the people in the meeting, and I'm not hearing anything. I'm locked up in here. And the meeting's over. I've heard nothing.

I end up going out to coffee with some people, and I end up in this coffee shop, me and a guy from California who was a visitor, a guy from Glendale, and and, who I've never seen since. I've even actually looked for him. I don't know. I've never found him since. And this guy's sitting there, and he's patiently listening to me talk about this relationship for 20 or 30 minutes.

I think his eyes glazed over about 10, you know. But he's he's a very patient guy. He's listening to me go on and on about her and her. And when I'm done and I run out of gas, he says to me he says, you ever thought about the first commandment? And I'm, you know, I'm kinda new.

I'm a year and a half sober. I'm still have a little bit of prejudices from my childhood. And I said to him something like, oh, I'm not really into that. I'm just into AA. And he go he smiles and he goes, yeah.

He says, I know. He says, guys like me and you, we never get past the thou shalt not. He said, I think I think the 10 commandments lost something in the translation out of the Aramaic and through the Latin into the English. And and I he says, I think they were originally written as statements of spiritual cause and effect. He said that in the first commandment, I am the lord thy god, thou shall not have false gods before me.

He said he said, I think you could throw out the thou shalt not. It's it's he said, I think with god, he loves you no matter what. You can put anything you want between you and God. It's perfectly alright with God. The problem is you've just put something between you and God.

You've just blocked the light. You now are in the shadow. You live in the shadow of what you put there. And he said, what you worship or put between you and God is the worship, he says, doesn't mean to bow down to something. It means to just obsessively turn your consciousness towards.

Said you wanna know what you worship? He says at the end of the day, make a pie graph of everything you've been thinking about, and the thing that owns the pie graph is what you have been obsessively turning your consciousness towards. And when he said that, I pictured a pie with a tiny little sliver for work and a little sliver for a and the rest of the pie was her. And no wonder I felt lost and desolate in in the dark of my the soul was my soul was in the dark because I put myself there, and I did that. I did that in a false quest for power because I was functioning under an illusion.

The illusion is if I had her in my life, that then it would complete me. I will I will have rested happiness and satisfaction of this world by managing well. And I wish I could tell you from that moment on, I have never done that again, but I've done that a lot. I've done that with relationships. I've done it with work.

I've done it with things I wanna be right about, and I gotta make you see. I've done it about resentments. I've done it about fears that I have obsessed on and we'll talk about this in the inventory, obsessed on to the point where I've made them come true. I've done it about a lot of stuff. And every time I do that, I live in its shadow and I'm cut off from the light.

And it's not a moral judgment. God doesn't stop stop loving me. I I sort of sometimes imagine that he weeps for the loss of me, that he loves me that much. There's a line in our book that says that god does not make too hard terms with those who seek him, and that is really, really been my case. I I, I'll tell you, if if if god was somebody like me, Bob wouldn't have got helped.

When a George I think it was George Bernard Shaw Shaw said the he said one of the he said he said something that was remarkable. He said that god created us in his own image, and then unfortunately, we turned around and returned the favor. Mhmm. And start to imagine that god has all the little judgments and the pettiness that I have. And, you know, because if I was God, first of all, half he'd be dead right before the end of the day.

Just and, I started that's part of my prejudices. And I heard a guy a few years ago, a friend of mine from California named Jim, tell a story about going to Florence, Italy. And I'm going I've I've ever since I heard this story, I'm going there for about 10 days with, before the international with a couple of the guys I sponsored because I've always wanted to go there. And he said he was in Florence, and and it's the center of the renaissance art. And he he told the story about walking around looking at all these sculptures, and he was looking at it.

He said it was a Donatelli, exhibit. And he walked into this one room, and he said there was a a staff, a life-sized statue of the Mary Magdalene that that stopped his heart. And he said it was unlike any statue of Mary Magdalene he'd ever seen. It was a it most of the depictions he'd seen of Mary Magdalene showed her with long flowing hair and robes, and she was very beautiful. He said this was not like that.

This was a a depiction of Mary Magdalene where her face was etched with pain and emotion. And he said that she looked like she had been turning tricks on the back alleys of Jerusalem for years. And he she stood there, and he said as he looked at her, he started to weep because she had her hand out like this and an expression on her face as if it said, this could be for me? For me? And when Jim's told that story, I started crying because I it touched something within me, a deep seated feeling of unworthiness.

And and this this a friend of mine says something that he says, maybe your maybe your feeling of unworthiness is just good judgment. Because the truth is, I probably don't deserve the help I've gotten, you know, which really gives me a different view of the universe than I've always had. It it is the treatment I have gotten from this gracious creator of the universe that lets me know how wrong all all my old ideas have been, that this could be for me and is and always will be. And if I ever lose this, it will not be from God's end. It will be from mine.

Because I will be the guy that will put something obsessively between me and God. He will never turn his back on me. He will wait patiently as as we would wait for our children if they get lost. He would wait. And that, to know that doesn't make me any less alcoholic, but it sure gives me hope.

That no matter how far out I may ever get, if I can just turn my consciousness back towards him and back towards my primary purpose of helping his kids, that I will be reunited with that power source. And if I'm the guy who gets to choose every day, god is either everything or he's nothing, either is or he isn't. Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, what's your choice gonna be? Every day, I get set I've had days where I've chosen poorly. I've had days where I've bad spiritually bad hair days where I just can't imagine life without something, some kind of thing.

And it's they can be different. It can be different and I just grab onto that. And yeah. You know what? I think hell is it's it's holding on to something that you intellectually know you should be letting go of.

You know? Between what I'm really doing and what I know I should be doing. Yeah. I'm really doing and what I know I should be doing. That brings us to one of my favorite favorite parts of the book, a a part of the book that turned my life around and was really the beginning for me.

And it starts on page 60, and it's the section that leads up to the 3rd step prayer. And it's really it's really the best description of why my life is unmanageable sober. And I'll tell you, I don't think that what they're talking about is drunken behavior. I think they're talking about me when I quit drinking. This is me when I quit drinking.

And it it it starts on page 60, and it talks about the 3 pertinent ideas that everything we've done in Alcoholics Anonymous up to this point. The chapter diagnostics, the description of the alcoholic, and there's several, the personal adventures, our stories, our experience, strength, and hope. Everything we do to this point brings me to 3 pertinent ideas. A, pertinent idea a, that I am alcoholic and could not manage could not manage my own life. I have the guys I sponsor go through this and take a pencil and cross out the plural pronouns and change them to the singular and read it like that.

It reads different when you read it like that. It's easy to read this in the plural pronouns and and, you know, as I did in early sobriety, my sponsor had me read this. I'd read this. It wasn't me, but I boy, I could sure see how this was a lot of those people at AA, this self centeredness and this want to run the whole show thing they're talking about in there. It became very clear to me.

And I thought, well, you know, he wanted me to read this so I could straighten them out because they need straighten it out. But I couldn't see it was me. And Bill, Bill in the ABCs, when he says and could not manage your own life, that's really very clear for me. See, I can take step 1 as it is in the beginning of this chapter. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable.

Had to me, I can interpret that as past tense. I can interpret that as, you know, when I was drinking. But now I'm not not drinking, and I'm starting to think clearly. Let me at my life. There used to be talk in AA years ago, and I haven't heard it.

I I'm the only one who ever talks about it anymore, of about the second surrender. How we come here broken by the bag and the bottle and in sobriety, in this delusion of resting happiness and satisfaction out of this world by managing well, that I will crash and burn and fail and be demoralized and crushed by self imposed crises in sobriety, then eventually, I will try to keep from hitting that bottom sober by juggling this juggling act of my life, and I will do everything to keep from hitting that bottom. But it is the brokenness of my sobriety and my absolute failure to rest happiness and satisfaction in this world by my own management to my failure at fixing me. That is the is the greatest blessing I will ever have because that and that only will bring a guy like me to the table when it comes to God in sobriety. Why would I do it?

It? If I if I can manage my own life sober, why would I have to desperately seek new management? I will just manage it. And as long as I have the delusion that I can rest happiness and satisfaction out of this world, I am not really brought to the table. I'll circle the table, but I ain't sitting down at it because I don't have to.

And I'm one of those have to guys. I'm just I wish I I wish I've kind of wished for years that I was one of those kind of guys that could kinda just sort of see how I should be doing something. And, oh, yeah. And I'll just go be that way. I ain't that way.

I am brought to the table either through pain and occasionally by inspiration, but never by never by cognizant decision. So I could not manage my own life sober, be that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. And the only way that we know that is by trying. We try everything we can. Earlier in the book and there is a a solution, it says we get to a place where there was nothing left but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet.

We get to that point because we've tried everything there was and there's nothing left. I don't know what would have become of me if if the day I was checking in to detox, if I'd have seen an ad for a new treatment for alcoholism or new medication or something. I I don't know. I don't know if what if I'd probably have a different sobriety date if somebody would've given me a $100 the day I was checking into detox. You know, I I wish I had more moral fiber than that, but I don't.

I just I've been a different sobriety date, if I had one at all. So no human power could have relieved my alcoholism that god could and would if he were sought. So I my job is to become a seeker. And I don't think that we know that this is true. I don't think c is really real.

We own c for a while here. Maybe you take it on faith and then eventually the faith becomes trust because it becomes real. But I, you know, I did a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous in my early sobriety not because I would believe they were they would work. I just was so demoralized. I just would do whatever you said to do, and often doing it thinking this is a waste of time.

And then you do that a couple times and it works, and then you start to think a little different. You start thinking maybe it's not a waste of time. Maybe there really is something. And I'll tell you something. Your track record and God's track record with me has been 100%.

There's nothing in this book or that my sponsors told me to do to date that hasn't been for my ultimate fulfillment, my ultimate happiness and satisfaction, my ultimate improvement of my ability to love, to be a part of, to enhance my spirit. There's nothing you've told me to do that has it. And I'm waiting because I'll I'll dime you all out. The The minute you give me one bad thing, I'll dime you all out. I'll be around telling everybody.

You know what they told me to do? Not yet. Not once. But I've been very, very blessed with sponsorship. And I think sponsorship is a is a blessing.

I think God's hands not my my sponsor is not infallible. But you know what's infallible? The power that shows up between us when he's trying to help me. That is what I bet my life on. I'm not infallible with my own guys.

But if you if you're sitting here and you sponsor a lot of people, you will you will notice a dynamic that happens. They'll a guy will come to me with a problem, and I will sit there in amazement as I listen to my mouth say things I don't even know. That are true. That are right. Not only true.

Right on the money. And then he'll go months later, be telling everybody how I really helped him. And then I'll kinda take credit for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Aren't I wonderful? That ain't me. There's something happens to me. Something happens to me when I'm thinking about you and I put me aside. Some presence moves into my life.

I don't and I that's the juice in Alcoholics Anonymous. Couple things I I wanna talk about. Page 62, it talks about the the, the root of our problem, selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles. The root. Without the root, nothing that grows can exist.

It's what feeds the bush, the tree, the plant. It's what it all comes from. And if that's true, then what they're saying is that underneath every trouble that I will ever have in my life, underneath my obsession with alcohol, underneath sex and rom romance problems, underneath work problems, underneath people problems, underneath emotional problems, underneath mental problems, underneath finance problems, under every underneath every trouble or problem I would ever have, the root is selfishness, self centeredness. The root. It's where it all comes from.

And I couldn't see that. I I tell you, I I didn't even think I was self centered when I first got sober. I couldn't I didn't know what's I didn't know what self centered meant. I thought self centered people were overconfident and composed and put together and kinda self assured people. And I was none of that.

I just felt like just as I was a squirrel cage. I I felt I had no self esteem. I I think think and feel very poorly about myself continually. And I'm, I'm in a meeting one day, and and a woman is sharing her experience on on with with selfishness, self centeredness. It's a topic.

And I'm sitting in the meeting, and I'm not really even paying attention. I'm I'm a my mind is wandering, and and I hear her use a term that blew my mind. She used the term self absorbed. And it it hit me like a like a 2 by 4 because I'm sitting in the meeting thinking about myself, thinking about what I'll say if I'm called on, what it'll sound like, what you'll think of what I'll say, how I should sit while I'm saying it to look like I know what I'm talking about. I'm thinking about my relationships.

I'm thinking about my job. I'm thinking about my finances. I'm examining my emotions to the point of excruciating pain. I'm I'm sitting there totally absorbed in myself. It uses the term self absorbed.

And it was like a light went on. It was like, oh my god. I'm sitting here totally consumed in myself. That's what self centered means. Means my consciousness is centered on myself.

And I'd never I didn't get that up into that and it was an amazing revolution realization for me. And from that, all of a sudden, I could it was like a a curtain had lifted. And I could start to see it in all these aspects of my life. I I started realizing the reason I have never sober, felt like I fit out here in the world is that the reality is I don't even live out here. I live up here.

And self obsessed, self centered people are not of this world. We're of this one. Right? And I I live up here most of the time. I, you know, it talks earlier in the book about, being rocketed into the 4th dimension.

And that 4th Scott talked about it, about the physicist talking about the 4th dimension being time. I remember asking a guy that was in our group scientists, what does this that mean, this 4th dimension? He told me about time. I says, but what's that mean to what's that have to do with me? And he said he said, well, maybe if you were rocketed into the 4th dimension, you'd hear this loud pop as your head came out of your butt.