The topic of Letting Go at the Usual Suspects Men's Retreat in Camp Garner Creek in Dickson, TN

There we go, Lee.

Hi, everybody. My name Sandy Beach, and I'm an alcoholic

and I'll tell you can't tell you what a pleasure it was to sit and listen to my friend Jerry.

Those of you that are new, you're going to find that as the years go by, one of your most valued gifts will be friends who have gone down this path with you because you share so much in common.

And you'll remember when you first got here and wondered what

the old timers were talking about.

It sounded interesting and people were sure excited about it,

but you didn't see where it had any relevance in your life.

And you'll look back on that and laugh as

your perspective changes,

which it constantly does. Going down this path.

If somebody asked me to try and summarize the entire AA program in two words, the words I would choose is let go.

That's it.

That is, the total package of everything is to let go.

And that is so counterintuitive to a person who controls their life, manages their life, thinks about nothing but their life.

And it leaves us with the sensation there wouldn't be much left for me to do.

Which would reduce your importance significantly, wouldn't it?

Well, that's the point of spirituality is to reduce your significance till it's gone,

and the only significance that is left is God's A.

And

so you go, well, geez, the program looks like it's a lot more than that to me.

But if you start taking it apart step by step, you'll find that it's just this endless process of letting go

and starting out with

surrendering to the fact that you're an alcoholic.

And that is not done intellectually. That is done

mechanically through pain applied by alcohol.

And alcohol just grabs your arm, raises it up behind you and says would you like to give up yet? And you go no. And it so it raises it up a little more. You can feel the bones starting to break and that's how you surrender.

It is

inevitable that it will get worse and worse and worse. And so in a strange way,

the glue that holds a A together in some humorous fashion is alcohol. It just sits out there

wandering around, whistling a little tune

year after year after year, just waiting for somebody to come out and go. The hell with that crap.

And it'll jump up right out of the bushes out there. There's little half pints of vodka all over the place.

Hey, I feel your pain. Come on over here.

And it'll look like God's will that that would just appear out of nowhere. And

and then it'll start applying the pressure to push us towards surrender and surrender and surrender and surrender. And so each one of us is very familiar with the fact that one way or another we had to let go of our drinking.

And so that was the beginning of letting go,

but it's just the beginning.

I'm reminded of a sentence. I think it's in. I've lost track of pages over the years. I have all the material, but I don't have a catalog anymore. I can't tell,

but it seems to me that this is in the beginning of the third step in the 12:00 and 12:00,

where it's being suggested that we turn our whole life over to our higher power.

And, umm, you know how Bill writes? He writes the point that he's trying to make. He does this quite often because he knows us very well. He writes the point he's trying to make, and then he writes what our reaction to it's going to be, which is generally negative. You know what I mean? Like, what are you talking about? And

I have to maintain some independence here. And it's talking about the struggle of letting go of alcohol and pointing out that that's just the beginning, that there's going to be one thing after another. And in my own case, I remember much, you know, I finally, after being in a nut ward and all those things, it, it finally became obvious that I really ought to relinquish this drinking thing

to AAA and whatever was going on here.

But it wasn't too long after that that my sponsor, he noticed that I would be broken. Then I would have about 30 bucks

and he wasn't quite sure where this $30 had appeared from. And

I don't know whether he guessed or what, but it was coming out of the petty cash at work

on a Marine base, which is if you want to be a stickler,

is

technically

embezzling.

And so he

approached me on it and he said, you know, if you're going to stay sober, you can't keep doing that.

You just can't keep doing that. And I said, you can't no. So all I took out of that was that there was actually two things that you had to give up

coming into a A

was drinking and embezzling. And so I remember just going, geez, I, I thought you, I thought it was just drinking, but OK, I'll go along with it. OK, Drinking and embezzling.

They ought to call it DE instead of a A. You know, drinking and embezzling.

And then number of months went by and

he noticed that I had kind of an eye for the girls.

And

he said, you know, I got to talk to you about something. If you're going to stay sober,

you can't be messing around having affairs while you're married.

Oh, so there's three things

and three things. Yeah, yeah, there's three things. And you know, as the months went by, he was coming up with something all the time. It was just 01 more thing that is required to give up

and as the steps unfolded,

it became apparent that I was going to do a lot of work

inventorying

all of the things that were standing in the way of me.

Am I creator?

Well, why was they going to inventory these and why was I going to run them by my sponsor in order to get a true perspective on each one of these items?

It was so that I could be in the perfect position to let them go.

Let them go.

We're entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.

God, God, God. I mean, every time you turn around in here,

God, God, I mean, it's what does he got a PR guy like the Marine Corps. And

you know,

I'm sort of an action guy. You follow what I'm saying and letting go sounds pretty passive. You know, you follow what I'm saying. It's it's like, OK, I got the letting go. Now, when do I

get involved here?

I mean is I just come up and I got something and then you go what do you got there? Financial thing or job? Give me that

No.

And then we start no, no in the finally. All right,

now this sounds silly, but this is the whole deal.

I mean, it really is

if you're worried about something right now. In other words, you, you, it sounds like you end up doing nothing. And I that's because it's a paradox.

If something's bothering you today and you just got fired and you don't know what to do about a job and you don't know what to do and you are really upset about it.

And I, I'm not going to do this, but I would ask somebody, OK, come on up here and tell, tell me exactly what it is. Well, I'm terrified about money and I, I don't know where I'm going to find a job and all that. And I said, OK, would you let me work on that for a while

because I happen to know how to put this into the abundance of the universe. I happen to know how to get the word out. I would you be willing to give me the entire package that you're working on?

And if you were willing to do that and just say, all right,

and then I wait till tomorrow

and you come back,

you might very well say to me, you know what occurred to me last night,

I really ought to call my uncle.

He's got the type of company that I have. I don't know why I didn't think of his name before, but I really think he's the perfect guy for me to talk to about this.

So what happened?

Because you gave me, I'm just using me as a symbol. The disturbance,

your channel of serenity can be opened so that your truth can arrive.

That's what we're talking about.

It is in order to get the answer to anything, we have to stop demanding it.

We have to relinquish the need. You see, the need or any,

anything other than undisturbed state blocks us from receiving the guidance from our own Creator because we contain inside of ourselves all the truth that there is. And I'm not a source of truth for you. I am a way shower

you can come to me and I can go. This is the direction to go. Get that

now until I'm speaking now of the spiritual principles involved

while we're evolving in this direction. We give each other very specific advice all the time in order to stay alive long enough to have the program work. But what I'm talking about is the whole point of the program is to end up in a state of surrender

and a lot of interesting things happen

and I'm just stream of conscious on what these things are.

What I've thought about lately when I'm working with people with problems

is to sit down and discuss the problem until they see that they don't have a problem.

And I got that idea when I was brand new and I would go to my sponsor with the sky is falling, you remember the sky is falling it you know, I didn't, it wasn't even a specific thing. I would just come over to his house. What's the matter? What's the dog is going to do this? My wife is going to run away, my children and the Colonel at the job, Max there, you know, and he'd go through the whole thing

or I'd go through the whole thing and then he'd go, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got a point there. Yeah. But

on the other hand,

your health is starting to return. You've got six months of sobriety. You're making coffee in your Home group.

People are really starting to like you. They're talking about how happy they are that you're in the group. And I talk to your family and they see some hope here that this is really coming around. And then he would talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And then when he got through, I would say, well, if you look at it that way,

maybe I had it wrong,

maybe I had it wrong. So the problem

concerned an incorrect perspective on it,

an incorrect perspective on it, and well, how does that perspective get changed? By letting go of the old perspective, which are all of the old ideas

that Jerry and I have been talking about in our lives.

And his story about his dog. What was his dog's name? Patches or Yeah. And all they wanted to do was to let go

of

these huge animals he was attacking.

And so there's something inside of us that doesn't want to let go

and that is our self centeredness, which was being talked about, our selfishness. But it boils down to it is our ego, it is our sense of self that

according to our story is absolutely necessary for me to continue functioning as an individual.

Now the

IT is true that for that individual to keep functioning I would have to keep behaving in that fashion. But we don't want that identity to continue anymore.

We don't do not want to exist as a self-centered ego driven

entity, which is what our story is when we get here.

And so as we start through this inventory and sharing with another human being, and then coming into

step six and seven, which

is monumentally important in the program because Jerry was talking about the absolutes and how frightening the absolutes. Oh God, we can't get those absolutes here. The drunks don't want to hear about absolute anything. Why don't we want to hear about absolute anything? We want wiggle room.

We want wiggle room. We like our favorite expression. What's our favorite expression when we start talking about absolutes in any of this stuff. But remember now progress, not perfection.

Now that's an out of context interpretation

of that,

because when we get to step six, it's clear as a bell that's talking about perfection. That's what the 12 and 12 says.

The clear implication of having God remove all our defects of character

is perfection.

And you know why it's perfection?

Because we're not going to remove them ourselves

if we try to. As Jerry said, if we tried to become unself centered on our own, it can't be done.

How can you become unself centered even if you have enough humility as a self-centered person to say, you know these guys are right,

I really am self-centered. All I walk around, I just think about myself.

That's all I think about

when he was talking about walking down the street with his friend and whatever's happening. I can remember that I'm walking down the street with my friend is a sudden downpour of rain. And I remember telling my friends about, he said, boy, the rain came down, I got soaked. I said, what about Joe? I guess he got soaked too.

I guess he yeah, that's right. He probably got soaked too. He was standing right next to me.

I didn't think we both got soaked. I, I got soaked. So then, you know, it gets pointed out and you know, you're right. I am, that is my, I am self-centered. Wow. What is a self-centered persons reaction to that? You know what? I'm going to do something about that.

I'm going home and I'm going to work on that self centeredness. I'm going to sit in my little den, in my chair, looking at my pictures on my wall,

and I'm gonna sit there and work on stop being self-centered. I'm gonna say, Sandy, you've gotta stop thinking about you. Yeah, you're right. I gotta stop thinking about myself.

Well, I'm glad you understand that. That's the oh I know, it's the problem. I'm glad we're in here working on this self centeredness

and I can report to my spot. You know, I spent three hours alone in my room working on self centeredness,

just sitting there thinking about how I think about myself all the time. And

did anything happen? No, we're probably more self-centered.

So how in the world

if self centeredness changed?

There has to be a new center.

That's how it has to happen.

There has to be a new center. In the new center is God.

That's how we become unselfent. There's no other way.

And whenever I talk about that, I always go back to when they thought the Earth was the center of the solar system.

And of course, it was the center, because that's where I live,

and the people back then weren't any different than we are. Well, look all around. There's all those other places. We don't live in all those other places. So what do you think the center of all of this is? It's where we are, right? Yeah, damn right it is. I don't have to study any instruments or anything. It's clear

we're here. This is the center.

And then of course.

Anyway, as they start measuring things that it wasn't making sense

and they finally,

some of the more astute observers began to realize that all the information

that the emperors and the big shots had was wrong. And the trick is, who's going to tell them

they're not going to like it?

Because what's going to happen if you're the emperor and you don't even know the center of where you are, I suppose you might look bad. And we ain't having anybody. I'm not looking bad. You're going to die before I look bad. And

that's what they were doing.

Because that is a monstrous change. Can you imagine that? Suppose you had a

maps of the solar system. That was your business. This would be bad news for your business.

Those things would be obsolete like that. The entire arrangement would have to be reprogrammed. I mean, you understand the difference between the earth being the center and the sun being the center. I mean, you'd have to move everything

and all the thinking that we did and all the we're very important because we're the Senate. Well, now we're not. How can we get important again?

I mean, it was, it must have been him. One heck of a adjustment to switch over.

Well, that's what we have to do. And the second hour

old ideas, which is one way of saying our story or one way of saying our ego. Once they get wind of this, the full implications of making God the center, it doesn't take long for everything inside of us to go, well, if he's going to be the center, then this is wrong. This is wrong, this is wrong. And I was also wrong about that, and I was wrong about that, and I was wrong about that and I was wrong about that. Holy cow.

And there's great resistance to this new center,

but there's those pints of vodka patrolling out there.

If it wasn't for them, I would never go through this humiliation of becoming just one of the planets orbiting the sun. Put a reduction in importance

and that's what's involved in moving from self-centered to God centered, letting go of every single perspective. It calls into question every idea you have on everything because all of your previous ideas were put together from self-centered view. That's your textbook.

Everything that you looked at was from that old textbook.

You follow what I'm saying,

whether this is right or that's better to do this, this is the rules to live by. This is what you should do. My assessment of all my family members,

I wonder if they're different than I said they were.

See how many old ideas are gone now? Because they we're going to have to look at everything from a new place and let go of thousands and thousands of old points of view about everything.

When my parents were having their 50th wedding anniversary, and I've told this story before my sister, who next month will have 30 years in AAI Suppose back then she had 15,

maybe 10.

And, and it was up in New Haven and I was in, um,

Washington, DC. And she was going over the guest list who was coming, old friends, et cetera, et cetera. And I, oh, yeah, Oh, good. Oh, yeah, yeah. She had a Country Club and it was going to be quite a nice event. And she got the one uncle. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, let's not invite. Don't even tell him about it. Don't tell him about it. He is so abrasive, Sue, He'll ruin the energy. We're trying to have peaceful spiritual energy at the event.

Why don't we just not have him come? And she said he's only like that when you're around.

Everybody loves him. He's great. He's absolutely wonderful

now. If he hadn't have, I think if she didn't have 10 years,

I would have been very suspicious about her assessment of this situation. But since she did, and since I was trying to have a new attitude of open mindedness about things

and some of the hardest things to have open mindedness about our old ideas, I mean the ones that you've had for a long time

that really dug in. But I said, I'm going to take her. I'm going to assume she's right, I'm wrong. So if she's right and I run up to him and am happy to see him and all that, he's going to be thrilled. And that's exactly what happened.

I ran up and Uncle John, I'm so glad you're here. Boy, isn't this fun? He did look a little funny. And then he went, yeah, isn't it? And we just had the best time.

So guess who was wrong

now? Was I wrong or was my perspective wrong?

There's two separate issues.

From my old perspective, I wasn't wrong. That's exactly what I saw. I wasn't being malicious. I was reporting. If you would put a lie detector on me and said, is he an obnoxious jerk, I would go, yes, he is. And I would have registered that I was telling the truth.

So it had nothing to do with honesty. It has to do with perspective. It has to do with, as Chuck says, a new pair of glasses. So now I'm wearing these glasses and I say he's the most wonderful guy in the world. And again, I'm telling the truth because I'm accurately reporting what my world looks like now.

My sister helped me make the transition.

You see what I'm saying? She helped me to see my uncle differently. And once I saw him differently than what I said about him was different, I did not be grudgingly say, OK, from now on I'll say he's a nice guy. You see what? That would have been the old way. OK, I'll say he's a nice guy. My uncle's a nice guy, but he's really an asshole and he's a nice guy.

So in that sense, I would have been trying to go along with truth but not believing it

because my perspective was wrong.

Bill writes about when we hear about kindness, well, we really ought to be kind to people. And I remember going, why?

Oh, I know, because then they'll trust you and you can get stuff from them.

You know what I mean? I thought, well, what is kind?

And somebody would say, well, see this movie and see what that guy's doing. He's helping that person. That is a kind man. And I go, OK, I got to study that so that I can act kindly from time to time.

Because as a self-centered person I can't be kind. I have to act kindly. I have to learn what kindness is and behave that way.

We had to learn all his self-centered or until we let go has no room for the true nature of us to come out because we're not centered on our true nature. We're centered on our ego and our selfishness.

So we have no idea who we really are.

We have no idea what the core of us is. We just know what we have told ourselves that we are, and then we believed it. And so I had this uncle and I had all these things

that when you told me that God was the center, I was going to have to let go of all of them.

They just had to individually be questioned for the rest of my life. And my hero, Chuck Chamberlain, he talks about it all the way to his death. And what are you doing today? Uncovered, discovered, discard. What was he really saying? He said, I'm just looking for one more thing I'm wrong about so I can throw it away. It was just the happiest feeling in the world. What

other secret little old idea is lurking down in there

that is making my life less joyful than it should be, that is blocking the energy of my Creator from flowing out from me?

And so we're beginning all this with the very fundamentals of letting go. And at first, they have to pry our hands open to get that drinking problem away from us. But as we see the benefits of letting go, we may have a little more of an open mind

and start moving on.

And So what is 8:00 and 9:00? What is that for? What is the most haunting thing we drag around with us? Hardly. It must weigh close to 15,000 tons. The past,

the past with all of the stuff we did. And there it is. It just, yeah, I'm trying to live in the now, but I can't get here.

I mean, I'm, I got the now and I got the

for you guys, that may be the 90s. For me, it was the 40s that I was dragging around with me in the 50s.

That's a heavy burden. And so they said, well, we're going to show you how to let go of that burden. Here are the steps that are designed so that you can accomplish that. We're going to list all the people that you harmed and then we're going to study what harm is

from a God centered point of view and not. You don't know what harm is from a self-centered point of view. There's no way you can see harm. It all looked justified to you, so I wouldn't have done it.

I had to do it.

I have to take care of myself. I have to survive. I have to. It's all up to me. And he's doing the same thing. And so there's only one winner. So what do you think I'm doing? I'm doing it before he does it to me.

We're all being honest. It's the only way you could possibly have behaved from that perspective, which is why the world is such a turmoil. I mean, it's just a room. And it's hard to imagine when you sit back from a spiritual perspective, how could we ever expect peace if we can't get at peace with ourselves?

If there's a war raging inside of you,

how could anybody else be at peace? So what we're doing in here is

trying to resolve the inner conflict so that we have Peace of Mind. I really think Peace of Mind should say peace from mind

because that's where the disturbance comes from. I used to think it came from all of you, but it doesn't. It comes from me.

That's a different topic

and and so steps. I would submit to you that steps 8:00 and 9:00 can be put in the category of letting go. Let me go to the past letting go of all of the,

um, burdens that we're carrying around.

Another principle that is totally concerned with letting go is forgiveness.

That

that may be one of the most powerful things that can be done to achieve Peace of Mind is forgiveness.

When I look at the 10th step and I go, what is the essence of the 10th step? The essence of the 10th step is

to stay undisturbed and to have

a cushion of self restraint so that when the events of the world happen

and it does cause me to lose my connection with my higher power,

I immediately make the top priority, reestablishing the connection with my higher power.

So how is this done? Well, it says self restraint, honest analysis of what's wrong. How could you have an honest analysis of what's going on in your disturbed moment?

Ask somebody else.

So I call a friend and I go look, let me just run something by you. This just happened. I was down at work. The boss came in, He said this. How do you see it? You see what I'm saying? How do you see it?

Well, the way I see it, your boss is totally off the wall.

I mean, he must have some problems at home to come in and do something like that. Oh my God, that's totally out of line. Forgive them.

Follow what I'm saying. The answer to your solution is forgiveness. Or he could say no, he was right and that you overreacted. Go make an amend.

There's only two things that that are happening so that I can let go of the disturbance

and then move on.

Once I have reestablished my connection, I'm free to simply

enjoy the day and be part of God's plan for whatever is supposed to unfold during the day.

And then we get to 11:00 and 12:00. I can clearly look at meditation and prayer as a powerful technique for letting go.

I am now trying to get even closer to the power and direction as to how I should live my life. If you look at the wording in the 11th step itself, what does it say? Praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out. It never says take your plan to Him and ask Him to help you get it.

Now, maybe that would work. I'm not going to say that that wouldn't work,

and you may get great results from that working,

but if you allowed him to choose the plan,

you would be happier.

Who can think up the best plan for you, You or God?

So even if you got just what you asked for, you would still be way short of where you'd be if you ask God to figure out what would be best for you.

So I don't dispute that God can help people obtain their goals.

I would suggest just this is just my own perspective, that you'd be even happier allowing him to figure out what would be best for you. Just my take on it. So I don't have no quarrel with the idea that you could pray for this and it would happen and pray for this and that would happen. And I think that's wonderful. I just think there's another level of happiness

and another level of less willfulness

in even thinking up what would be best for me. These are just my own thoughts.

And then we get to the jackpot

of letting go, which is a spiritual awakening.

This is what we've been trying to accomplish the whole time. In other words, in order to move from self-centered to God centered, then

I have to let go of the whole ball of wax.

And from that view, I mean, if you just every time I think back on the astronomers when they were observing the motions of everything and just going crazy trying to make it come out right with the Earth as the center. And then when they said, no, it's really the sun. And then they went, yeah, wow. Now that I check Venus, that's yeah, look at this. Well, that worked. OK, let's check Pluto. Holy cow works for Pluto. Holy cow. Works for this.

It worked. It works for the whole thing. The whole thing makes sense. So every

problem that I was trying to figure out will be revealed in an awakening,

and awakenings are a relative term.

I think of it as

allowing light to come in, and at first there's just a little tiny

crack, a light coming through a black window, which is

me seeing my first glimpse of a different world other than mine. Mine was the black world that I assembled in my own mind.

And some people get a big burst early on like Bill Wilson did,

and it has to be maintained and it has to be sustained and it has to be

sought to broaden, which is why seeking is such a huge part of our program.

God couldn't would if he were sought. And so there's a constant level of seeking. But to me, it's important to understand what we're seeking. We're seeking more light. We're seeking more awakening. We're seeking more revelations. I just want more to be revealed to me. And so when I I look at the Big Book, I look at any

spiritual guidance.

The Big Book is a signpost

and you read it and the book says that way. You follow what I'm saying. So if you come up to me and say which way should I go? I can't say that way. I said read this and it'll be revealed to you. Do these steps and it will be revealed to you. Now, granted, while we're going through them, we're brand new. We're having people go, oh, don't go over there. There's a Cliff.

I mean, there are practical things that we can say, but the goal of it all is to allow ourselves to awaken so that we're receiving guidance. But even there, since we're up against our old enemy, the ego, who does not want to give up on all these ideas that are, we still haven't let go of and he will jump in. I mean, the ego is the cleverest.

I mean, it's us. Who knows us better than us?

How do you get around your own self? We use other people,

Bill writes. People of very high spiritual development always insist on checking with others the guidance they feel they got from God. So if people very high spiritual development, that means that even when we're connected and we're praying and we're meditating, we're liable to suddenly feel very strong guidance that we should leave our wife and run off to Guatemala with a 19 year old

him.

It came right to me. I was there. I have my hands like this.

I'd say if your sponsor agrees to go ahead,

now you know what's going to happen. They're going to go. No, that was your ego jumped in there going hi, Sandy. Yes, this is God. Oh, good God. You never really talked to me.

I'll give you an example how subtle it is. Maybe I did this. No, not here, but I

it's called the ego prayer. Now, a lot of people don't know that egos pray. If they do, you want to be very, very cautious. But it looks something like this.

God, I'm here tonight to thank you for what you've done for me. You've taken me from the gutter. You've taken me absolutely hopeless, shaking, lost

piece of junk in society

and you have restored me so that I now have friends, I have self esteem, I'm liked in my community, I feel good about myself, I have a job, I'm committed to all kinds of activities.

I never could have gotten here by myself. I owe everything that I have to you. I am so grateful that you have placed me where I no longer need you.

Thank you for restoring me to self-sufficiency, but I'll take it over from now on. Thank you,

That's an ego prayer starts out with all of the wonderful words about how grateful I am that you, blah blah blah. And it's all leading up to,

I get to play now, right?

I get to manage my own life in some way. I get to take back everything I let go of. Which from the ego's point of view, is the only reason for letting go is to temporarily get all the results so that I can take credit and take it all back later and walk around going. It's been a tough struggle, but I made it.

I came from down there to up here.

You see what That's not a story that sells very well.

No matter where we are. We're simply there giving God the credit for everything,

given the God the credit for everything. Now that takes a lot of letting go to ever get to the point where we want to give God the credit for everything.

And so

I guess I've just used up about an hour

just rambling on the general topic of letting go. And I never said let God.

Why do I not have to say let God?

Kind of a trick question

because in the beginning I had a very hard problem with God.

I had the Catholic crucifix that was ready to get me. And so my sponsor said, well, in your case, why don't you turn it over to whatever will take it?

You'll feel something that will come into your life and start straightening it out. Really. Yeah. Yeah. So in your case, just turn it over to whatever will take it.

And of course, that's what I did.

In other words, as I let go,

I am now in touch with my Creator, whether I believe in Him or not.

And as the results flow in from letting go, I can explain those results in any way I want.

Most of us, I said, Oh, all the credit goes to the wonderful force that was available as I let go to enter in and take over my life. Do you know how long it takes to say that?

And somewhere in the eighth year, I got on an efficiency kick, and I said God, because that's the common word that is used for the invisible force that somehow comes in when I'm willing to let go, to straighten out my life and start working. All kinds of. You mean God? Yeah. Well, I guess. I guess I do.

I guess I do. If that is, yeah. You see, Sandy, that's the word we use for the big long thing that you were describing.

So in an efficiency kick, I just ended up going God.

And I just assume that you all know I'm not talking about the crucifix that's about to get me and take me down in the hole, but rather

the power source that restored me to a different perspective and one that is so pleasant to look out from. In the beginning. We hear about the perspective from others so that we know it's there. That's what a program of attraction is. We hear what the world looks like

from someone who we see is very, very happy. And we goes that what it looks like is that, you know, it seems like we're climbing the mountain and we're finally going to get up and look over the top. And the first one of us that's up there, you guys aren't going to believe what you can see from a well, tell us, tell us. We got to still go. Well, there's this and there's that and there's this. And that's what we're doing in a a we got one hand, one hand and we're all climbing higher and higher and we're reporting back. Oh my God, you're not going to believe this.

So when we have a sponsor and we bring a problem to him, he's looking at it from up here instead of where we are, and he says from here, looks like you ought to do this. Wow, I never would have thought of that. You know why? Because I'm dumb. No, because you're not up here.

As soon as you get here, that's what you'll see. It's got nothing to do with learning anything. It has to do with unlearning and letting go. Letting go, letting go so that the new perspective can come in. That's it for me. We've been sitting long enough. Is is it that we do questions or I'll leave that up to you guys. If you've been sitting long enough, I will not be offended if you just decide let's take a freaking break.