The XXXIX Gopher State roundup in Bloomington, MN

Thank you.

Thank you very much. There can. Good morning, everybody. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic

and I'm honored to be here. Lots of old friends

and all the wonderful speakers, all the people that volunteered to put this on and I'm glad you broke your record and that's really exciting.

I came to a A in December 7th, 1964

and I'm one of these,

okay.

And I just got one white chip. I didn't know you could get more.

If you're new, I would recommend just get one and let the guy next to you go out

because you can learn all the lessons of a slip by watching someone. You don't have to do it yourself.

I had the same sponsor for 42 years. Wonderful man. He was another Marine named Bill Terwilliger, and we really became close. And everybody should be so lucky as to have that relationship that lasts that long.

I read somewhere a description of Alcoholics Anonymous that is one of my favorites

and it goes like this. It says in an almost magical manner, Alcoholics Anonymous was able to bring to its religious and non religious members alike a view of the universe and their place in it, which is both comforting and exciting.

In doing so, it borrowed from religion everything that is powerful and uniting while politely declining

everything that is self-serving and divisive.

It could be called the spiritual heist of the century,

and it did it all unconsciously without realizing it.

Now, to me, that's the magic description of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you ask me what our fellowship is, I would say it's a happening.

There is no explanation for it. There's no chain of events for it. It just happened,

and you and I are part of this happening because it's still happening.

I don't know what.

We would call the exact moment in a a history that would be the equivalent of our Big Bang. I think there's probably 3 events that people would argue would fall into that category. I'd be coming to see Bill and Bill in the lobby of the Mayflower, but as far as I'm concerned it was in the bed at Towns Hospital

when Bill said the prayer that started AA.

This prayer probably isn't found in any religion.

I would doubt that any religion would have a prayer that began with if there is a God.

But we all relate to that because that's the prayer of pure desperation. That's the prayer of the human ego being strained to its breaking point

to let go of the intellectual

pride

that there's no such thing as a God.

And that's what it took. It took the the pain and hopelessness of alcoholism to drive Bill Wilson to the point where he said if there is a God, please show himself to me.

And of course the room lit up and and we have this awesome beginning.

And I just think that had that not happened, we'd still be floundering around out there unless God saw fit to bring the message in some other fashion.

But if you're new, you're part of this Big Bang, you're part of this. Everything that happened in that moment is still happening.

We can say that it happened 77 years ago, or we could say it happened. It still happening.

I like to think that it's still happening. That same energy is still exploding in this room.

It's that same energy that allows a human being to go beyond the intellect

and suddenly realized there's another whole dimension to life that their pride had prevented them from even considering.

And it's in the in rooms like this where where suddenly there's this too much there to deny any longer that you put down the resistance and all your old ideas and just let it happen. And that's why I think of it as a happening. And I think everybody's moment when you change your mind

and went along with what your sponsor advised, in spite of it being against your better judgment,

and wonderful things started to happen.

Like everybody else that comes here, I had terrible problems with God. I think Bill said half of the original number were atheists or agnostics. So we come here very troubled about God, whether we're in a church or not in a church. If we're in a church, something's not working because we're getting drunk all the time and we're sad and we're not happy. And so something is wrong.

And so everybody who comes here has to get rid of a lot of old ideas.

And there's something about old ideas that are hard to get rid of because they're mine.

When I hear your ideas, I could see why you ought to get rid of them.

But when I think about mine,

that would be a shame to have those all gone.

And so we put up this great resistance and I remember, boy, I was brought up Catholic and had all of the adverse

reaction to the church. My sister sitting next to me fell in love with it and she loved the church till she died. And so it was. My perception was just different,

but my perception was my reality. So when you asked me what it was like, I told you this is what it was like.

And so when I got here, there was a lot of things about a A that I didn't like. I number one, I didn't like the Lord's Prayer and I didn't say it for the longest time. I would hold hands and I, well, we didn't hold hands for five years and then it comes sneaking in from somewhere.

That's funny. I was reading the history of the international conventions and I was blaming it on the Californians. I said those California people started this hand holding,

umm, and I'll be damned if it didn't say that. At the end of the final meeting, Bill Wilson suggested they all hold hands for the Lord's Prayer. So I apologize to the California people for

So anyway, I would hold hands or not hold hands and I would just go

because you weren't going to catch me changing my mind about that. And I didn't like the word God.

I think I said higher power very carefully and articulately for five years. Yes, I was praying to my higher power last night. My higher power did this and

occurred to me that I could say God a lot faster than higher power.

So for efficiency sake, I

gave up my resistance to the word God. Now

I'm probably the only one who's like this who fights.

I certainly didn't like the idea of

taking my own inventory. I thought we could let me take some other people's inventories, and I also didn't think I should make amends until someone made amends to me. But most of all, I didn't like to not drink. In part, that was the SO

there was a lot of things about AA that I didn't like. And I didn't know if I'd only known

God, if I'd only known to say instead of saying I didn't like it, I should have said it offended me. I might have gotten some mileage. Then they would have let me keep my own ideas and and not have to change. And I'm looking back on that. And what if a A had accommodated me, a newcomer?

What if the the the style was? Look, you newcomers have been here a week. Give us a list of what you don't like about a A

and we'll change it.

After all, we want everyone to feel welcome. We want you to feel happy. We certainly want to feel, make you feel disturbed,

upset.

Well, I don't know how you crush the human ego painlessly. I haven't figured that out yet. And I am not in favor of adjusting anything in our fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at all. It has worked perfectly for all these years. And I think the program

is.

After all, the spiritual lesson was for me to adjust to reality rather than demanding that the world adjust to me, which is what all self-centered people want.

So if we adjust things, we're encouraging self centeredness. And I'm so glad that my sponsor just would say to me, no.

Well, there's that answer says it all. You don't need a long explanation or anything on it. Could we stop saying God so much? No, All right.

And of course, after three or four years, I

it happened just like they said. They said you will eventually come to love that prayer,

and I love it. And I remember in New Orleans holding hands and saying the Lord's Prayer. It's probably one of the greatest events that I'll ever have. Those experiences of having 50-60 thousand people all united

around some words that are just very powerful and have meant a lot to people for all these years. It's a it's a wonderful experience.

There was a couple things I wanted to just share before I'm going to tell a little bit about my story. I'm so sick of it that

why don't I have a story like Bob,

I made $50 million, then I lost $50 million, and then I made $50 million and I lost 50 minutes. Now there's a story.

You know, I just hang around the edge of bankruptcy all the time.

There's no story there.

When they're looking for people that donate to start at some corporation, they don't come to my house.

One of the things I think that is under discussed in AA is forgiveness.

It's just not in our literature that much. I mean, it's there, but it's not like humility and some of the other things where Bill really went into a deeper discussion.

And I remember I probably have two years and somebody borrowed something from me and then moved away without returning it.

And I don't know, it could have been a hammer, it could have been pliers. I don't know what it was, but I was complaining to my sponsor

about it and I said I'm just not gonna ever forget this. That guy, I'm boy, I can't believe he moved away. And he said, well, why don't you forgive him?

And I went why?

And he said, because

you'll feel so much better,

you'll just let go of this terrible feeling that you have and understand that he's human. He probably forgot, you know? So I said OK, I just wanted to show off.

I'm gonna forgive him for taking those pliers.

Well, about a year later somebody beat me out of 30 bucks

and I was back.

And again he suggested that I forgive the guy taking the 30 bucks. And now 30 bucks is a lot more than a pair of pliers.

And I remember going, wait a minute, Bill, this isn't applied. This is 30 bucks. You know, I mean, this is a lot more than a pair of pliers. I said how far is this forgiveness go anyway?

I figured there had to be a dollar amount somewhere, that

maximum dollar amount forgiveness it allows.

And he said, Gee, Sandy had never had anybody ask me that question before.

But it seems to me, I recall a story of a man being nailed to a cross,

getting ready to kill him and he said forgive them.

So if you have something worse than being nailed to a cross,

come back and talk to me and we'll discuss it.

So I saw that what he was trying to say is there's no limit.

Now. Over the years, I had, I think I had used forgiveness,

but not at its maximum level.

And that's what I wanted to share here.

About 20 years ago, I saw on the news woman in Washington, DC, whose son had been murdered that morning. And they were interviewing her and asking her how she felt about the boy who did it. And her son was like a good student, and he was in the wrong neighborhood, and he just got shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so they stuck the microphone right in her face and said,

how do you feel about the boy that shot your son this morning?

And she said, I've already forgiven him.

And her face was totally at peace. She was obviously a very spiritual woman. And I remember looking at her and I saying to myself, I didn't know you were allowed to forgive that fast.

I had assumed all along that it probably takes place a year later or longer. I had never seen in front of my eyes the power of forgiving as the event is happening.

And then the second thing I saw was the Amish, and they had the same thing when they had the shootings, and they went over that same day to comfort the family of the shooter.

And so a couple years ago when my daughter was murdered and I got the phone call from my other daughter, that woman's face was right there, as my daughter was telling, giving me the phone call. And it was possible before she hung up to forgive whoever did it. And that left me with just sorrow. No anger, no resentment, no hatred.

And God will help us with sorrow, but it won't help us with anger, resentment or hatred.

And so I'm just passing that on. And then the second daughter died three months later of alcoholism. And in the lesson I got out of that

was that when you get bad news, really shocking news,

there is a period of time before you react to it. Generally you go sit down,

you just go what she's my father has cancer and they take a deep breath and then you sit down and then you let it all sink in. And when I had read about and seen someone else do was in the period before you react to it. You go to God immediately and you say God. I just want you to know this will

not change how I feel about you. You come ahead of everything.

This situation doesn't matter. You come first, and I just want you to know that before I go over and react to it.

And then when I went down to, yeah,

when I sat down to react to it, God came with me and it was almost like, yes, this is a terrible shock, but I'm here to comfort you.

And those two things were just so amazing because the power comes in doing it now

and not a year later. So if I were to give advice to anyone on forgiveness, I would say make a decision to be a forgiving person.

This just decide that that everything that happens you're going to forgive. It's a when you make a decision, you transform yourself.

That's why the third step is so powerful. It looks like there isn't any action, but that decisions are major.

And so

if you do that, I honestly believe that two years from now is something shocking comes along. You will find yourself handling it in an entirely different way because you've already decided to be a forgiving person. You're going to move yourself into that league.

Let's see,

I'm trying to shorten my story and give you the condensed version.

I would say the

everything about my life is like everybody else in AAI felt that I didn't belong. I'm in a family of four at a dinner table, My sister, myself, my mother, my father. There's the three of them, the family, and then there's me. And then I'm down at church. There's all the people in church and then there's me. I'm in a little, I'm in the kindergarten. There's all these other kids and then there's me.

And it's, it was just that amazing feeling

of not belonging, isolation

and separateness.

And of course, we were talking about Chuck Chamberlain earlier. He is my hero. And earlier this year, my friend Chris and I went out to Laguna Beach. We went by his house just to see it and took some pictures of it, went to the meetings he used to go to. I got to talk at a few Laguna things that were sort of my

honoring the role that he played in my sobriety and it was just wonderful. It just, it's very important, I think, to have

people that you feel are great teachers and

it's just a gift that they were given.

And Chuck's made it so simple.

And if those of you that are new, if you haven't seen new pair of glasses or know about Chuck, ask your sponsor and make sure you find out about this great AA. And he just had this wonderful diagram that he did every time he gave a talk and he drew a big circle on the blackboard and he said this circle represents the entire universe. Everything that there is, this is God and everything there is, everything that exists is in this circle

and this little dot outside the circle

is you.

And I would go and I really related to that. That's me. All right, I'm over here and

the entire. SO

we actually believe that we exist in addition to everything.

Now, how could you exist in addition to everything?

I mean, think about how could you exist in addition to everything. It's easy. You just make up a story that you exist in addition to everything and believe it.

After all, that's the world that we live in. We live in the world of our ideas, and then we react to our ideas emotionally. And since we live over here all by ourselves, we're lonely.

It's rough

existing in addition to everything. No one hangs around with me

because they're all inside the circle

and I'm outside the circle.

And

the amazing part is I'm sitting there going, yeah,

yeah.

So when you get here and the program suggests that you get rid of your old ideas, that's how you get back inside the circle

is to abandon all those old ideas.

Isn't it funny that spiritual growth is done by getting rid of stuff?

We get read, get read, get read, and then we start discovering

that there's parts of us that we couldn't see and weren't aware of, and they start coming into view and we realize that this Spirit and this God has been there all along, but we couldn't see it or be aware of it.

That's a very comforting thing to me. I don't know about you, but I find it just the most rewarding thing in the world.

And the amazing thing is that I fought a tooth and nail

and I resisted it. I didn't want to race ahead. I didn't want interested in spirituality. I just thought you could just not drink, go to meetings, not drink, go to meetings, Put the plug in the jug. We had a bunch of guys up in Northern Virginia, old timer, just put the plug in the jug. And, and you know, you can stay sober that way. You can have raw sobriety.

You could actually have what you could label as pretty good

sobriety,

and Bill had something to say about that, he said. Good is the biggest enemy of the best that there is.

Good is a terrible thing because it's just offers enough comfort so you'd never change.

You just sit there getting a medallion every year with the same resentment you had 10 years earlier. But it ain't killing you. It's just making you semi restless, irritable and discontent.

But I'm sober,

and so

if you're sponsoring people, I'm sure that you try to take them to the higher level. When Bill writes the 4th dimension of existence, he's not kidding. This is not a theory.

And to me it was all so simple when we got to that paragraph and we agnostics when Bill suddenly said, look, God either is or he isn't. He's either everything or he's nothing. And then he says, what's your choice going to be?

And I'm going. You mean I get to choose whether God exists?

I'm sure God is hanging with baited breath right now.

He's trying to coach me into allowing Him to exist

and and that looks so simple, like it's some kind of 2nd grade exercise. What is your choice going to be?

Well, your whole future depends on this choice, because if you choose no God, you're going to live with the with that choice. And if you choose God, you're going to live with the results of that choice.

Sometimes when I talk, especially in the last 20 years,

people are having a hard time. I don't know why they're having a harder time now than they used to, but they're having a hard time with the word. God

got, got, got, got, got. I don't want to. I don't want to hear that word.

And if you're here today and you're having a hard time with that word, I'm going to tell you why you're having a hard time.

You're having a hard time because you're deciding for me what I mean when I say the word.

It's called making your own problem.

You're deciding what I mean when I say the word, but you're not going to ask me

and you don't like your definition or whatever it is, and so you're uncomfortable with it. So I'm going to tell you what the word, how I use the word in my A, a life

God is an experience that occurs as the result of these steps.

Once you have that experience, you will say to yourself, so this is the God they're talking about.

God in A, A is totally an experience. There's no definition. A A has no definition. It simply has a series of steps that causes an experience. That's the whole point of the steps is to have that spiritual experience. As a result of that experience, you suddenly become aware of your own Creator, and you either have become aware or you haven't become aware.

And

it's your choice whether you want to try and become aware. And what do I mean by aware? I remember years ago they used to have reading rooms in big hotels and you could go in and they had overstuffed chairs and books and everything. And I remember going in there several times and looked around. There's no one there and it's nice to have the whole room to yourself. And I got a book and I've been reading about 15 minutes. And all of a sudden I became aware there was another person in there

that I wasn't aware of. When I came in, they were sitting, you know, with their back to me behind a big chair over there. And I so I stood up and I looked and I said, my God, he was here all along

and I wasn't aware of it.

And then I became aware of it,

and that's what happens in the spiritual world.

You suddenly become aware. It is a very personal experience. It only happens to us as individuals, but it can't happen unless we have an open mind.

We hold the power to block out spirituality for the rest of our lives.

We can prevent these awakenings from occurring, thereby proving that a A doesn't work.

It's rather stupid exercise

and I remember doing it. That's why I know

what a stupid exercise it is.

But I was proud of my position.

I was proud of my stupidity.

I was proud of not caving in.

Man, those were the days.

The good old days.

Anyway, I drank for about 15 years and got it all done.

All done. Couldn't go any further. I couldn't have finished anymore.

And from the second I put alcohol inside of Maine, the world transformed and it turned into a great place to live and it was filled with great people and I just loved the people that showed up after the third drink.

They were.

They were just wonderful.

Sometimes I've been a bar. I've been maybe the 4th drink. I'd look around, I'd have tears in my eyes

because I was in the company of such magnificent people. They

guys over on the shuffle board and the guys in the fight and the guys over puking and

was just

God's children.

And then when I sovered up, then all the jerks reappeared

and you were all mean. You didn't like me and I didn't like you. And it was terrible, terrible, terrible. So

the reason I went into a bar was because I was sober.

And I couldn't stand it.

And I said to the bartender, you got anything for sobriety?

He knew what I was talking about. He slide a double across there and I said this world sucked. It's just awful. I can't stand it. One I did my boss hate the room too all of a sudden.

Yeah.

Oh, that's more like it. Yeah, I

but of all those problems you had. Oh,

don't worry about them. Live a day at a time, eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow we could be dead. Let me take the rent money and set up the bar.

I just,

boy, I'll tell you, alcohol was really a spiritual experience and I didn't realize it, but it was the closest thing to the real thing. It was just if just the price was too high and it was the wrong higher power.

Eventually I had a career in the Marine Corps flying jet airplanes.

But mostly I was an alcoholic,

and it slowly took my career away. It took away my family. They were afraid of me.

We're all together, but boy, those kids would be real leery when I got home. And who's going to get whacked? And who's going to get yelled at?

Where's all the money going?

They're not storm out to go get drunk because this family was so misunderstanding and all that.

And my performance at work slowly got worse and worse. And

I remember flying with alcoholic withdrawals.

I didn't know what to do. There was number a a, there was number alcohol programs. And I just said, I guess I'll have to keep just going out and getting in this plane and see what happens. And that crusader was climbed way up high to get in the thing. And I would just take a deep breath and I'd say, God, I hope it goes OK today.

And some days I wouldn't have those withdrawals and I would have a halfway decent flight. But other times they would just hit and start sweating. My heart would start racing and my eyes so I couldn't see that well and just felt like I was going to pass out. And you've heard the story. I would fly with one hand on the ejection seat. This is my new secret theory

and flew the mission. The cameras were all on the stick,

and my theory was that if I actually did pass out, I'd fire the seat. I go out, the chute opens automatically at 10,000 feet, the plane crashes. Problem solved, I'm safe

and I remember a couple of times feeling so smug sitting there

flying, thinking of the other pilots with similar situations who didn't know to put their hand on the ejection seat.

They didn't have anything in the handbook

on the F8 Crusader about flying with alcoholic withdrawals.

I think it was something they didn't think would ever happen.

And so

eventually I, and I just tell this story because it's the ending of it is fairly recent, but I was on a flight of four on a cross country and I had to get out of the plane. I suddenly reached the end of my line. I just said you have to get out now. I think I thought I was going to have a seizure, but it was a two seated plane and the radar guy didn't know how to fly so I couldn't get out. So I declared an oxygen emergency. We all landed,

I went to the club, had a couple of drinks, feel a little better the next morning. There was nothing wrong with the oxygen

and I looked at the planes and I looked at the flight leader and I said I'm not going to fly anymore.

And in that moment,

alcohol decided that my 14 year fighter pilot career was over.

This was what I loved more than anything in my life. This is who I was. This is what I've been doing. It's why I'm alive. And I just stood there going, I'm not going to fly anymore. And he said what? I said, I'm not going to fly anymore. So somebody else flew us back and I had to see the Colonel. And the Colonel couldn't believe it. And he called me in at least five times. Sandy, you have to give me a reason. I said no, I'm just not going to fly anymore. I don't have a reason.

So eventually they had to get me a new thing and take away my flight status and I went off to three months later to a different

specialty, but eventually crashed and burned with the grand Mal seizure and nut ward for five months. And so that kind of ended my career,

but waiting for the orders to come. I did the legal work in that photo squadron at Cherry Point, and it was in a very exclusive squadron. It had no lieutenants. It was all captains, one major and one Lieutenant Colonel. There's only 15 guys. It was really

an honor to be in there and I knew the rest of those guys. I couldn't look them in the eye and they would combine with legal work and I would just take it. I wouldn't look up at them because I knew they were going. How did this piece of junk get in our squadron?

God makes me sick to go in this and see that guy beach in there. That's how I felt. It was just like all I felt was pure shame and these eyes of those people looking at me.

And that stayed that way until two years ago. And a lot of you have heard the story. I was out in California at the Brentwood Group and the lady was getting her 30 year medallion and her husband drove her there. He was not an A A, but he knew a A. He'd been hanging around it for a long time. And she said Sandy Beach is leading the meeting. He said, was he a pilot? And she said, yeah. And he said, I think I know I'm telling to come out here. So I went out and

this guy's standing there. I've never seen him. And he looked at me and said

in 1962 you were in the flight of 4F3D radar planes on a cross country going back to Cherry Point. You declared an oxygen emergency and all the planes landed and you never flew again. And I went, how do you know that? He said I was in the plane with you

and

I went, what?

So what are the odds that I would run into this guy who was sitting there,

and he wasn't a radar guy. He was a pilot who had been recalled from American Airlines for the Cuban missile crisis.

And so he showed up the next day at Oxnard at the convention. He had all these photographs of the squadron

and he was refreshing my memory. Oh yeah, I remember that, Colonel. And then they're the planes and all the stuff they were doing. And then he said to me,

did you know how popular you were in that squadron? Did you know what it did to the Colonel and the rest of us when you left? Do you know how hard the Colonel tried to figure this out? It almost broke our hearts that you couldn't fly anymore.

And I went, well, that's not how I remember it.

So I had to go back 42 years ago and change my past

and substitute the truth for what I thought happened.

And that's why I like to tell that story,

because a lot of our lives consists of thoughts about events that aren't true.

And we don't know it until we inventory it, until we pray about it, until life reveals these things. There was a speaker who always started this talk with my story divided into two parts, what happened during the years that I drank and what I thought happened during the years that I drank. And everybody laughs. But that could be said about your entire life,

your grammar school years, divided into two parts, what happened and what you thought happened.

It's just astounding.

And we start seeing that early on when our family straightens out

after we've been sober about three years and we go, you know, I don't know what's happening to my family, but they're turning into pretty good people.

Maybe I was wrong that they.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong.

So when we say old ideas of veil is nothing, those are the ideas we're talking about. It's your views, your opinions, your memories, your everything.

Most of it is wrong

and you should be happy.

Why do you want to keep that crap? What

Want that to be the truth?

The truth is, everybody was mean to me. No, a lot of them were nice. I don't want to hear that. I like it better that they were all mean to me. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm staying with Suffering's my middle name. Come on

boy, we hold on to things with a death grip.

I am so grateful that I had many good teachers,

a good sponsor, good home groups that would force me to reconsider my position on things, especially on God.

Boy am I glad I changed my mind about that.

That is the single greatest

decision that I made was to embrace fully

the idea

that I could have a transformation that would make me see the universe and the people in it in entirely different fashion.

I know this is a WE program, but when we get to

steps 10:00 and 11:00,

it's really an eye program.

We're either going to make the decision to become God's seekers or we aren't.

We're either going to go get outside books. We're going to attend lectures. We're going to

listen to talks. We're going to see how far we can go as an individual or we're not.

And it is an individual decision. And Bill writes that and both the 11th step and the 12 and 12 in the big book, it's up to each one of us to decide how far we want to take it. Do you want to just be sober? Great. Or would you like to go for the jackpot

now? That's up to you.

You're the one. You don't have to

do what everybody else is doing. You can strike out on your own and look for these materials.

Both the Big Book in 12 and 12 encouraged us to go to the libraries, talk to spiritual people, find wonderful new ways of seeing things. The breakthroughs that I had between 39 and 41 years were bigger than anything I had in my whole sobriety. That's saying a lot, isn't it? Isn't it? I find that absolutely astounding

that there is that much to go. And in the spiritual world, it's limitless. There's no ending to this.

What a spectacular

fellowship we walked into.

It is probably the most amazing society that has been on the planet in many, many centuries

and I'm so delighted

that it now includes young people and different languages. And we got the handicap taken care of and we're just, we're just doing a wonderful job of reaching out and opening the arms of a a wider and wider and wider.

But the program

is the constant factor that we unify around. To me, that's how we stay unified. We agree that we have one problem, alcoholism, and we have one solution,

the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And I think if we use that as the compass for the future, we're going to be in great shape. We are going to really be in great shape.

It's been a oh, that's all right.

It's been a real privilege to be here today.

I'm 80 years old and I've been sober 47 years and

yeah.

And I get, I get some health things that come along and there's a lot of pain involved. And every so often I'll say to God, hey, God, I'm eighty. I've freaking done my time down here.

When the hell do I get up into the next level, you know? And he said you're not through yet. Get on the plane and go.

So I'm afraid as we reach this age that we look around and maybe express our opinions a little too forcefully on

what we think about a A. But if the 80 years old don't do it, who the hell will?

Let me offer this one piece of advice to those of you that

with less than a year,

I'm sure you've been impressed by the energy of being part of this celebration. I mean, you just can't miss it.

But energy can wear off and you can be home and sitting around and your mind is trained to ruin good things.

You walk in, you sit down. You say to yourself, you know, I've never been so happy. Never. I've never been so happy.

And your mind says, well, let's think about that a second.

You know, they're cutting back at work quite a bit

and you know that pain you've had down there in the near the liver that's could be really bad

and pretty soon you're very in a very negative way.

You will find that it's impossible to stop that mind talk. It's going to go on for the rest of your life,

but there is a way of not listening to it.

There's a way of getting separated from it

and that's what spirituality can do. It can lift you away so that you don't hear the dialogue. It's just run on and on.

So don't give up hope that this year stuck in that

and early on start finding get some Aacds, get some spiritual books, have techniques that you use to break the mind thought trap that comes after all of us

and get close friends. One of the greatest things that I did early on and other people have done is I get three or four people that I really trust and I give them permission to stick their nose in my business

so that when there's something wrong and it's obvious, they know it's OK to cross the boundary and go what's going on. And they don't leave until they find out.