Founders day in Akron, OH

Hi, everybody. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Westy Perch. And, you know, it's it's just wild to be back in Akron. You know, I thought I'd never be asked back.

But 44 is a lucky number for me. I remember very distinct. I was saying here and he said 44th anniversary. I said, you know, that used to be the number I played in the numbers. You know?

Not that I could afford it, but in my drinking days, I always put $20 a week on number 44. Never missed it. And one day, I hit. One day, I hit and and they brought me a bag full of money I had a $20 bill on $44, I'd send me the one and they brought a bag full of the dirtiest money I've ever seen. And I asked Rayna, I said, do you want it?

She said, yes. We'll keep it. And so that's the way actually we got started after coming in now, call it synonymous, was by playing number 44. And so here I am again, I'm lucky again with number 44, It's having the opportunity to come back to Akron on the 44th birthday for the 4th Founders Day. And, you know, I'm deeply grateful.

And you know, for years, I didn't understand the word grateful. I didn't under word understand the word thankful because every time I heard it now it seemed that they were synonymous. And and I just never would use them because I knew there must be a difference between the two words. And so one day, by chance, I picked up a book and this was only a few years back and and I opened it up to a page and it happened to say thankful, grateful. And I started reading, and it explained the difference to me between being thankful and being grateful.

It said that whenever you were thankful for something is when you are directly benefited from it. I'm thankful for this invitation to talk to you this morning to tell you to tell you about our colleagues and analysts and what it's done for me. I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for your friendship. These are all benefits that I've directly benefited from.

The food I eat and the love that you give me through this program. These things I'm deeply grateful for. I'm thankful for the through the grace of god. These things, the word grace means an unearned favor. These things, I am not entitled to because I never did anything to be entitled to such as this, but through his grace, he's gave me these wonderful things and I'm thankful for.

And Adam went on and said the letter of Torah went on to say that to be grateful means that you are willing to reciprocate for those things that you are thankful for, to make payment thereof, to be as good to God as God has been good to you. And only through His grace am I saying here. Only through His grace. And the only way that I can show my gratitude is for what He has done for me in the last 32 years is to tell you about the program of our colleagues anonymous and what he's done for me. I tell you that God has done for me when I could not do for myself through this program.

And so you see, I am indeed grateful this morning to be here. I mean, I'm indeed thankful for the opportunity to be your friend. The only through this program have I shared this with you. I love you and I know that you love me. The program of our colleagues anonymous says that we tell a story of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.

But it doesn't say where you have to start. It doesn't say you have to be tell a drunkard. What it was like? What it was like? What it was like when?

I've had 2 or 3 changes since I've been in the AE. I've had the wonderful opportunity to live this program through the prime of my life. I've used this program and with my family, it worked. I used it in business, it worked. I used it in politics, it worked.

I used it in my community, it worked. This program has worked for me since November 13, 1947. It has been just as important to me since that day as the blood in my veins, because without it, I could not have survived. And through his grace again and I learned favor, I received this program on a silver platter. And I misused this program for 4.5 years.

I wanted everybody else to live the Alcoholics Anonymous program and I was going to see that they did it, but I wouldn't do it myself. I don't know. I know this doesn't happen in Ohio, but it didn't surprise me. I was the type of alcoholic in the first four and a half years that still lied, cheated, stole, brought a lot on my wife, and I was another father. I wanted everybody else I preached in this program.

I want everybody else to live this program. If you would just live with 12 sets of alcoholism items, your trouble will be over. And I went down to see my smart show one day, and he told me what was happening. And he says, Wesley, I'm ashamed of you. I'm ashamed that you remember about thought it's anonymous.

He said, Robert, don't come here and tell me about what you're doing and living and how you're treating your fellow man. And he says, I don't know how you stayed sober. But he says, you stayed sober. I'll give you credit for that. And I said, well, Chris, what am I going to do?

He said, you better get busy with the program. And I said, what how do I get busy with the program? He said, you start working the 12 steps in your everyday life. And I said, well, I do. Do I use the cafeteria system?

I said, some of them I don't like. He says, that's the ones you want to try the hardest stone. He says, you take them in the sequence they are written. He said, have you ever seen the steps in print without them being numbered? I said, no.

He said, well, ain't that one for a reason. I said, why? He says, to keep screwball like you for messing them up. That's exactly why. And he says, you take them in the sequence that they are written, and if you will take them in those statements, he says, things will happen to you beyond your final statement.

And I thank God that Chris took the time my sponsor took the time with me this day to instruct me about this. And he was unkind to me because he said things to me that really embarrassed me. There was the truth though. I had a sponsor that told me the truth. He didn't he he wasn't needy mouthed.

If you've got a sponsor that's needy mouthed, get rid of them. They'll kill you. I'll tell you that right now. Get one that you don't like. Every time he opens his mouth, I'm going to get rid of it.

I can't take this no more. Now this guy will save a gal will save your life. And this is the type of sponsor I had. I would have never made it. I would have never made it.

And so I got busy on the 12 steps and I found out that when Bill W. Put these steps down, he and I went into this book here that's very seldom read in A and I know it's very seldom read in A because I get the conference report every year and I find that last year in 1978 there was only 14 less than 15,000 of these books sold and there's over 30,000 groups in Alcoholics Anonymous. And so that's a half a book per group. So I know it's not many alcoholics read this book. And I find it very enlightening.

This is a history of Alcoholics Anonymous and this is so important to me as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because this book tells me what happened to Bill and how Bill got his spiritual awakening and it tells me that how he found out that he had a spiritual awakening. He found out through William James through the book, a variety of religious experiences that a spiritual experience was deflation at death. Deflation at death. That if an alcoholic was going to stay sober, he had to have a rearrangement.

He had to have a change of attitude. He had to get rid of selfishness and self centeredness. He had to become selfless if he wanted to stay sober. And I find that Doctor. Bob too was full of this too, our other cofounders, because in a book that's not used too much in AA, because everybody thinks a little 24 hour book put out by Hazel, tell me it's AA, but it's not.

This book here, as Bill sees it, is very important. As Bill said on Page 212, he said Doctor. Bob did not need me his spiritual instruction. He had already had more than I. What he did need when we first met was the deflation of death.

The deflation of death. That the understanding that only one drug can have another. You see, Doctor. Bob also needed deflation of death. As I understand the story and if I read it correctly in any terms of age, Bill had a spiritual experience.

In the most manipulation of a time, he was deflated and he had no more trouble with Bill Wilson. He went out on the streets of New York and worked for 6 months without having any success whatsoever. But his spiritual experience kept him in a mental state of attitude where he took spagia and he went to see Doctor. Silkworth and Doctor. Silkworth says, well Bill, he says, your trouble is that you are preaching to these drugs and you can't preach to them.

He says, you've got to develop a program where you tell them how you think and how you feel. And they tell you how they think and how they feel and through this identification, you will seal a bond of friendship. And through this friendship, then you can start talking to them about the spiritual part of this program. And Bill says, I think you've got something there, doc. And doctor Silkworth went on and said, Bill, there's very few people have spiritual awakenings like you had a spiritual experiences like you had.

Very few. And he came to Akron here and he found doctor Bob through Henry Samuelson and we know the story. And he said, now with doctor Bob and doctor Bob said, now I got 15 minutes. That's all I got. I'm a busy man.

Doctor Bob wanted to be sure that he could have a drink in 15 minutes. That's what he wanted. And he did well because everybody had been preaching at doctor Bob. I know he had because well, didn't people always try to take away from you privileges and the rights to drink alcohol? Oh, god.

They preach that you. But they'll sit down and for the first time for the first time, Bill told doctor Bob how he thought and how he felt. And doctor Bob said, well, Bill, I think and I feel just like you do. You're the you know something. He says, I read all types of books, all types of books.

And he says, I've never heard anybody express or say about alcohol like you do. He says, you've got something. Well, he said, I'll go along with you, because Bill told I am, how he thought, and how he felt. And doctor Bob told Bill how he thought and how he felt. At 11 o'clock that night they broke up.

And Doctor. Bob though, you see he wouldn't deflate. He was ashamed that he was an alcoholic and he suffered the fang his fang of being an alcoholic for 3 weeks and finally he got drunk. It's all on the in the big book on page 153, I think it is. And he went to Atlantic City and got drunk and he come back.

And then when he got back, he knew what he had to do. And Doctor. Bob made had the operation made the operation that he was supposed to do that morning and then he went out and he made restitution and he never had any trouble with alcohol since then. But he had a phenomenal craving in his stomach for alcohol. And he went for two and a half years, as I understand the story, with this phenomenal craving for alcohol.

And the only way he could get rid of it was by working with others. He was the greatest 12 stepper that's ever been known in Mississippi. They've sponsored, I think, 5,000 alcoholics and alcoholics and all of us in the in the Cleveland, Akron area. And finally, after two and a half years, doctor Bob doctor Bob had a spiritual awakening. It was a slow process for doctor Bob, this deflation at depth.

And so as Bill says when he wrote sit down and wrote the 12 steps this night, I think he had all this in mind and that he laid these steps out in such a way that if you and I will take them in the sequence of their written, we will get rid of our greatest enemy. My greatest enemy is self, s e l f. You see my way is the wrong way. My way is the wrong way. Every time I take over, there's devastation.

A lot of people don't like to hear this, but I believe this very strongly in my own heart and it's so true in my particular case, it may not be in your case, but it is in my case, is I feel that alcoholism is a self inflicted disease. I inflicted myself with alcohol and I became addicted and became an alcoholic because I drank alcohol. And I know what causes alcoholism. Alcohol. Is that simple?

I have been drunk for 32 years. And you know why I have been drunk? I haven't taken the drink. That's all I read. So alcohol must call alcoholism.

I know they're still searching. But that's what it tells And so so Bill sat down and he laid out a program of the 12 steps of alcoholics and all this. And if we will take these these steps in the sequence they are written, we will go through a process of deflation. And you have to take them in the sequence that they're in, because you have to eliminate self self knowledge. You can't stay sober with self knowledge.

So all this does in the big book tells us that. It's impossible. We cannot stay sober in self efficiency. We have to have God efficiency and the only way that we can find God efficiency and get this God conscious that that we have to have to maintain this program is through the 12 steps to get this spiritual awakening. There's no other way that I know of.

I don't know no other way. And as mad as sad out any other way, I haven't been told about it. The first thing Bill said that you had to stop drinking. That one drink was too many and a thousand wasn't enough that you was powerless over something. Whoever heard it, tell them the Napoli, he was powerless over anything.

But Bill sit down and told doctor Bob how he thought and how he felt, and he told him it wasn't 20th grade, the goddamn drug, it was the first one. And doctor Bob said that's the same way with me, Bill. And so therefore, they agreed that it wasn't the 20th Drake that got him drunk. It was the first one. And if they knew that they left it first one off, they didn't have to worry about the 20th one.

And it started off from there and then and then Bill then then he said that our lives are unmanageable. Whoever heard of telling the alcoholic that his life was unmanageable? The great I. All the great things I've done in my life. Well, if I was so great, I would have never become an alcoholic.

Is there anybody in the sound of my voice this morning said when they took their first drink of alcohol, I'm gonna drink this stuff until I become an alcoholic so I can be qualified for membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. Is anyone here? I never heard of such thing, but yet we could not manage. That's the reason we became alcoholics. We could not manage our own lives.

And so therefore, we lost our wages the wrong way if we're alcoholics. This is what we have to deflate. We cannot rely on self knowledge or self efficiency. And then he says that we have to came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If you're restored from sanity, where you have to come from?

It's a good question. And then he says to us, you have to surrender to self just like you surrender to alcohol. When you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, you're in 2 states of bondage. You're in the bondage of alcohol and you're the bondage of self. And so therefore, you you could you get rid of the bondage of self by just not alcohol by just not taking a drink.

That's it. But you get rid of bondage of self by trusting God. There's no other way. Trusting God. It says somewhere about page 9 in the big book, it says, brand on every man's mind that he can stay sober regardless of anyone.

The only thing he has to do is trust God and clean house. It doesn't say clean house and trust God. It says you can't even start cleaning house until you trust God. Because you have to eliminate your greatest enemy and that is self. Because self is creating all the insecurity inside of you.

It's it's the all the inner fears that you have. Inhibition. And so therefore, you have to turn your life and your will over the care of God because my way is the wrong way and I've got to do God's way if I want to say so. And then I become one of God's children. And when I come to one of God's children, I have no fears.

And I have courage for the first time in my life to look at myself exactly the way I was, not the way I pretended to be. All my life I pretended to be something that I wasn't. Something that I wasn't. But through courage, through my trust in God, through the first three steps that I found, I had courage to get out a piece of legal piece of paper and start writing and putting down the exact natures of my rooms. Making a list, making an inventory, and I didn't turn my head.

I looked at myself as a way I was. And it wasn't one man in my life that were heard put it into words exactly what I found after I took the 4 step in our college numbers. And his name was Howard Benhopp of Cleveland, Ohio. I don't know if you knew Howard. A greater A never was born.

And Howard said he found out that he had gangrene of the soul. And that's what I had. But it's the greatest thing I ever ever found out about me because I was willing to take the medicine for it. And 12 and 12 tells me that step number 5 can be taken only one way. You've got to be honest with yourself, you've got to be honest with God and you've got to be honest with your fellow man.

There's no other way and if that's not deflation, I don't know what deflation is. And then it says number 6, that we have to make a become willing to remove all our defects of character. I was since the commission. The things we know that we shouldn't do every day that we do, that we become willing to change these things, our attitudes toward this. We are willing to get rid of our old ideas.

The big book says we try to hold on to our old ideas and the results is nil until we let go absolutely. And so we have to let go and this is deflation. And then it says that we humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. We humble ourselves before God. You know, it used to be an old guy from Michigan called Cy Walker.

Cy used to say, you know, he said, I had a hard time getting down on my knees. But he said run that out. I throw my shoes underneath the bed and my boots underneath the bed. And the next morning, I just got down there to get them out and I said to myself, well, while I'm down here, I think I'll say a few words. You know?

And he says the amazing thing, I started throwing my boots under the bed every night. And he said after a while, you know, he said I got comfortable down on my knees. Humbly as I'd remove all these shortcomings. The sense of sense of omission, the things that we don't do every day that we should do. I got a jig another.

And then it says to make amends. You see the process of this deflation, make amends to people that you harm. But the night says that be careful. Now don't make amends at the expense of others. For the first time, he brings in other personalities.

And you start giving you're not in the room of the child to close it anymore. You start reasoning things out and you don't hurt people anymore. And then number 9 number 10 says that although you've come this far, although you've come this far, you sell a human being and you're going to make human error. So when you lay your head on the pillar at night, you take an inventory. And when you take this inventory, if you've done anything through that day, That's not right.

You probably admit it. You've seen the site every day. Don't let these little things pile up on you. And then, then it says through prayer and meditation, through talking and listening to God, through talking and listening. You've got a better understanding of God and ask God for His will not your will.

God's will not my will. My will is wrong. And I said to God, I said God, he said to me, he said, build a better world. And I said, how? You asked me to do these things.

How can I build a better world? I'm so small in Houston Sam. And God in all his wisdom says, well, all you've got to do is just build a better you. That's all. That's all God expects of each and every one of us.

For each and every one of us just to build a better you. You know, the greatest 12 step work anybody can do in Akron, Ohio or Pompano Beach, Florida, Troy, Michigan or wherever it might be is just walk the streets of our hometown sober with this lips of a smile of a a on our lips. This is God working in our hearts and showing love for our fellow man. And when we do this, then having had a spiritual awakening as the results of these steps, As the results of what we've gone through, we've had a spiritual awakening and now we've got a God conscience. We don't.

We and self knowledge is out the window. No more self efficiency. We depend upon God. And we find that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. And then we have something to carry.

Then we try to carry this message to other narcotics. You know, this is still a program of attraction, not promotion. The 11th tradition of AA says, we don't brag on what we've got. We let our friends recommend us. We don't go out here and tell our friends what they're gonna do with alcoholics.

That's promotion. But we attract. We are we we we cooperate, but we do not affiliate. And this is deflation because I see a lot of these people having out oh, it's I don't like the way they're handling them. Don't you?

Do you feel like we're some type? Well, that's not our business. Not our business. We try to carry the message to the alcoholic and the practice sees principles in all of our affairs. Practice the truth, the truth and this is the truth that we are layman and we have a program that we can offer an alcoholic that if he will follow our path of the 12 steps, he will receive what we have.

Now I'm in AA 8 years. I'm in 8 years. I'm getting the epitome of this program. The Apex, you know, I'm in tune with the world and the world's in tune for me. I became part of the universe.

Have you ever felt that way? Part of the universe. But, you know, I've got a life ahead of me to live one day at a time. And it's an old cliche and a a says you gotta grow or you gotta go. Did you ever hear that?

And so therefore you have worked the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Did you know that the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is only 1 third of the program? You know, Bill knew better than this and Bob knew better than this because, you know, they went on and they knew that they had to go farther. They had to go farther than just the 12 steps. They had not only learned to live with themselves, they had to learn to live with others.

And so what did they do? They knew if we stop growing self importance would creep back in our lives and we will become egotistical just like we were the day we came into our politics anonymous. And we would inflate not deflate. And so therefore, they had to find some way to keep this deflation in progress in an alcoholic mind. A way to grow.

And this I'm so true of because on page 136 and AE comes of age, it says this and I want to read it to you. It says, therefore, each of our 12 traditions is really an expression of the inflation that each of us has to take, of the sacrifice that we shall all have to make in order to live and work together. Just because we have had a spiritual awakening, just because we've made a few 12 step calls, just because we have sponsored a few people, there's no sign that we can rest on our laurels. I know nobody here is guilty of that, but I want to call it your attention only. Well, I did.

I made this mistake. I made this mistake. I made this mistake. And how did it all start? Well, it started this way.

One day, cunning and baffling as we all call it, sir, I became worried about my life, my future. I had not made any good arrangement for my retirement. I I, I I was going to be a poor man one of these days. I was gonna be old and I wouldn't have anything to live in my golden years twilight then, you know. Social Security, yes, would not be enough.

Inflation has set in. And so that boy, I thought I said, now I have been great service to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I've got to start taking and putting in consideration my future. Forgetting that God has done for me what I couldn't even do by myself and not relying and trusting God, God would have kept that on doing it for me, you know. What did I have to worry about?

I'm one of God's children. But you see, I quit growing. I let self get back in the way and I started to inflate. I became start getting selfish all over again. And after this time, I was very religious about my group.

Yes, sir. I was in my group every every week. My group couldn't open up without me being there. And so one day the telephone rang. And this man it was Wednesday.

My group met met Wednesday night. The telephone rang and he said, Wesley, I'm going to be home tonight, the only night during the week. And he said, I would like to air condition my home. And won't you come out and talk to me about it? And I said, well now this is a good chance, you know, Connie.

This is a good stand chance for me to start my retirement plan. I'll do a little extra work knowing in my mind that this was meeting night, knowing it, you know. And I says to myself, I said, well, now I've been wanting to go here to this group, I mean it's on Thursday night for a long time, but I just don't have been getting able to get over there. Now I'll just go to that and sell this air condition tonight and tomorrow night I'll go over to this other group. And so this I I justified it.

And so that night, self justification, I went out to sell this air conditioning job and I sold it and how sweet it is. Had a wonderful day. I had such a good day, the next day I wanted to do it all over again and I forgot about going to meet no fair tonight. At least, you know, the old devil got after me. You know, let me tell you something right here.

You know, we talk about the high power all the time. But what do we ever say about this lower power? You know, he's always sitting right up there whispering in the ear. Come on, boy, man. Let's do this.

Just like the play yesterday, you know. Bad attitude or whatever. What was that guy's name, Justin? Oh, that's so true. And I enjoyed that plan.

I wanna thank the actors for it. It was a great thing. Miguel put on a good show. This is so true. And we don't pay attention to this to to this lower power.

We always have to pay attention to the higher power. Listen. I was one of his chief lieutenants, and he forced me back in full. I'll tell you. And so he gave me a chance, Lois, and he started whispering that ear.

Boy, you're doing a good job. You're gonna get retired in real farm, boy. You just keep this up. Well, you whispered in my ears so strong, I didn't go to hay for a week. The next Wednesday night, I went to my group.

I walked in and you know not one soul missed me. I said, here for years, I've been coming to this meeting, and I went home discouraged. I said, I don't mean too much to that group after all. And then what happened? When what happened?

You see I was at the apex of this program. I started getting complacent. You know what complacency means a quiet pleasure inside. I started justifying. And what happened was I would look around and I would justify what all I had done and I'll call it some honor because I would pick these individuals out and say if it hadn't been for me, he would have never made it.

And I started taking credit taking credit. In other words, I started playing God all over again. Complacency, a quiet pleasure inside of what a tremendous job I'm doing. And I started missing meetings because I wasn't important to my meeting anymore. It was time for the newcomers to take over, you know.

I had worked long and hard. You see, I quit growing. And from there, I went to apathy. I became indifferent and I said to myself, well, I'll go there once a month. I'll sit on the back row and if the newcomers wants a few pearls of wisdom, I'll send it to them, you know.

And that went on for a while and then I started then I made the mistake of dependency. I started dependent entirely upon my own individual myself. Now an alcoholic dependent on myself, that is the worst mistake an alcoholic can make. And I started dependent upon Wesley Parish. I forgot about my family.

I forgot about my group. I forgot about my sponsor. I forgot about my friends, and the worst thing of all, I forgot about my God. See, I was deteriorating. I was inflating all over again.

And my sponsor at that time grabbed me by the bootstraps and he pulled me out and said, what more do you know where you're headed? And he explained it to me in those uncertain words and he would write. And through the grace of God, I didn't go back to bondage again. You see, AA is a vicious circle. It starts off in bondage.

You start off in bondage. From bondage, you go to faith. From faith, you go to courage. From courage, you go to freedom. You get the freedom of self.

No greater freedom can man have than freedom of self. If anyone should know what freedom is, he's an alcoholic who's free of his old alcoholic thinking. He's in tune with the world, and then he starts to get the abundance of this program. He gets material abundance and he gets spiritual abundance. God does for him what he cannot do for himself.

And this is why he works the way he's got to work the hardest. When you're on top in this program is where you got to work the hardest. You can't slack off because if you slack off what happens, you become complacent. From complacency, you go to apathy. From apathy, you go to dependency.

And from dependency, you go right back into bondage. Doctor. Thibault, a great friend of our college anonymous on Page 249 and 88 times of 8 says this, It is common knowledge that the return of the full fledged ego can happen at any time. Years of sobriety has no insurance against its reoccurrence. No AA, regardless of his veteran status, can ever relax his guard against the encroachment of a revising ego.

Recently, 1 AA writing to another reported that he was suffering, he feared, from halotosis. A reference to the smugness and self complacency that so easily can treat them to an individual with years of sobriety behind them. You understand why you have to work this program one day at a time? Am I getting that over to you? This is it.

Well, as I read you before, the traditions as a continuation of the 12 steps of deflation, as far as I'm concerned. Now this is what I found out. And if I had not found this out, I wouldn't have been sober for 32 years. Now I don't care what you think, but that's an important figure to me because anybody that stays sober for 32 years, if he's a real alcoholic, he's had to do something right. That's all they stood.

So right here. Right? Right? And you've got to follow this program. Well, by chance, I found the 12 traditions.

And I started using the 12 traditions in my everyday life at the eye level. Now I'm not trying to change the program, but what I am doing, I'm using this program to be to find a way that I can live and be happy with that alcohol. And this is what I think the program is all about. It's learning to be happy. And if you're one of God's children, you've got to be happy because that's that's his formula.

He gives us happiness within ourselves. And so therefore, I went to using the 12 traditions at the eye level. And I'm going through a few of them here and show you what I mean. So that you might take this home and you might try it. You might one of these days find a useful.

And if it does, I hope you you remember me and use them because these things have things have happened to me beyond my fondest dreams since I started applying. The first tradition says, my common way, I won't read them at the eye level, not trying to change them, but I want to put them to Western Parish. I said my common welfare comes first. My common welfare is to stay sober. I am an alcoholic.

I have an incurable disease called alcoholism. I can arrest it, but I can never cure it. And so, therefore, it's got to be the biggest business every day of my life. I need the program more today than I needed 32 years ago because 32 years ago, I had nothing to lose. Today, I've got everything to lose.

And so therefore, it has got to be that way. It's got to be that way. I never want to forget that. That's my common note there staying sober because without me it's being sober I am nothing. My personal recovery depends upon AA Unity.

My personal recovery depends upon me living in unity with you, not you living in unity with me. That has nothing to do with it. I've got to live in unity with you whether you live in unity with me or not. I've got to love you whether you love me or not. I've got to accept you just the way you are, not the way I want you to be If I want to be happy.

Now if I want to be unhappy, what do I have to do? I just have a personality clash with you. And you and I start arguing with each other. And my big book tells me that resentments are fatal. And so, therefore, I have to love you whether you love me or not.

I destroy the very same thing that I'm trying to acquire in this program. So I have to live in unity with my fellow man. The greatest teacher once said, what is what is it to love those who love you? That's nothing. But to love those who hate you is something.

And so, therefore, for my common welfare and for me to remain an alcoholic synonymous, I have to accept you just the way you are and I have to live in unity with you regardless of This is what it says and this is what I have to do. I have a one other authority. A loving God as he expresses by himself in my conscience. I have a one authority. And this all of authority is the same god that I turned my life and my will over to in the 3rd step when I made the decision to turn my will and my life over to it.

And this all of authority has to go with me and be with me continuously. It has to be just like part of me as as my own mind. It's 11:11. You know, the reason I was attracted to Alcoholics Anonymous was through love, and I didn't know what love was. But it's a word it's a Greek word called achope or gape.

It means the divine love of God. It it design it defines a certain type of love as the Greeks have in their language. And it divide it defines this love. It's called agape. It's a love that's spontaneous, it's unlimited, and it's unmotivated.

Now when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you somebody approached you and made a 12 step call over you. Now it seemed to me when this person started to talking to me, it was spontaneously there was something different about this guy that he wanted to he wanted to shower me with love. That he he wanted me to be part of what he was part of, and nobody treated me that like that in a long time. And it seemed as he talked, it was unlimited what he wanted to offer me. And I knew it was nothing about me that would motivate such a thing.

Was there anything about you that would motivate love the first time you'd approach in our father's knowledge? Or none none none about me that motivated love. But this is what attracted me, the divine love of God. And this is a loving God that we're talking about here, that I have to show to you. I have to show to you every time you see me spontaneous unlimited and unmotivated love.

The divine love of God. God loves me in spite of me. And it's just the just the manipulation of time he lets me know if I would just offer myself to it. And this is the way it is and this is what I have. None of them are neither motivated love, but this is what attracted me, the divine love of God.

And this is the loving God that we're talking about here, That I have to show to you. I have to show to you every time you see me spontaneous, unlimited, and unmotivated love. He lets me know if I would just offer myself to it. And this is the way it is. And this is what I have.

And it says that I do not govern. I'm only a servant. I I don't I don't I'm only a servant and I'll call it synonymous. I came to get but I stayed to give. And that's it through the grace of God.

The only requirement for a membership is desire to stop drinking. That's it. It doesn't say anything about nothing else. I don't get all confused anymore about what a a is all about. AA is about a desire to stop drinking.

It's about alcoholics. Anybody that's got a desire to stop drinking is a member of the alcoholic's lungs if they so wanna be. Did anybody tell you that you was an alcoholic? Nobody told me I was an alcoholic. They said, that's your business.

You diagnose your own case. Did anybody say, why why don't you come join us? I joined our politics anonymous. I didn't ask nobody whether I could join it or not. Did you?

I just became a member. How many times have I did this? He'll never make it. He'll never make it. He's too educated.

He's not educated enough. That's how about your holy. They took book on me. Who am I to say that somebody will not make this program? Who am I to say that somebody can't be a member?

Uh-uh. I don't take people's inventory like that anymore and it gives me more time for my own. And so, therefore, I'm happier. I should always be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or 80 years old. I should always be autonomous.

The word autonomous is self governed. I should always be self governed. I've got a doctor's degree in negative thinking. I know right from wrong. The reason I'm in number of our products anonymous is because I know what is right and what's wrong.

And my program tells me that anything just about right is wrong. You say that over again? Anything just about right is wrong. And if I do something wrong, I've got to scare the hounds of heaven back at 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm the guy that's gotta pay the penalty, not you.

And so I've got to stand on my own 2 feet and be an individual. And so I'm one of God's children and I never apologize for that. And that's what the book Alcoholics Anonymous says. You never apologize for believing in God. Never.

Every hedge group ought to be fully self supporting declining outside contributions. You say, well, what's that got to do with being happy? That has everything to do with being happy. You show me a person that don't meet their responsibilities and I'll show you a person that's not happy. That's all I'm just asking.