The topic of Unmanageability and step 2 at the 10th Fellowship of the Spirit, NY at the Graymoor Spiritual Retreat Center in Garrison, NY

And I'd like to open with a few more. I'd like to to 1st thank Sal, who I know did a lot of work here, and Bart, who could not attend because of his father's ill health. I'd like to have a few moments of silence. And if you would send some love to Barton, to his dad's, Let's have a few moments of silence.

Amen. I'd like to open with a quotation from the noted American philosopher Hank Williams Senior,

who once said there are a lot of good ideas in a pint, not so many in a quart.

That was my experience, right? Oh man,

a couple of kind of interesting points here. Page 61 and we we flip around the book a little bit here. There's a very powerful concept here that that for me falls under the step one section B, my lifes unmanageable. I don't get to run it just past halfway down the page 61 says, is he not a victim of the delusion that he can rest? That means to take by force that he can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well.

That says I'm so nuts that I still think occasionally if I can get what I wanted to make me happy. Isn't that crazy? Can you leave anything crazier than that? Clearly not true. That. Play with me. I didn't fly in from Nashville to talk to you. I came to talk with you. OK, Play with me. So we're going to do examples here. Who, when you're a kid, wanted a bike. You were certain if you could get a bike, you'd be happy. And you got a bike. Anybody. Thanks. OK. Are you happy? No. OK, that didn't work. Let's try something else. Who wanted him or her should be getting me happy. And you got him. Come on, admit it. OK, now you could be

next to him. I won't ask the other question. Give it a little break there

makes a pretty good who's sure if you get rid of him or her that you. Yeah. OK, so. So I got to look at the great truth. OK, one more thing. I know for sure it's wrong. Get what I want won't make me happy. Never did. My problem was that I had a happy and and pleasure confused. Pleasure is on the spiritual is on the physical plane. There's something out there that if I can acquire it will bring me that pleasure for a limited period of time. Happiness is on the spiritual plane. It's in here. And it's a side effect of having a healthy relationship with God.

And that's in part with these 12 steps are about, I want to talk a little bit. We don't seem to have a definition of alcoholism or alcoholic. You can argue without with a definition, but you can't argue with a description on page 44. Here's the one they got got me with

If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. Like for example, in the back of a police car. A lot of people really, honestly want to in the back of a police car, I'm told.

Yeah. Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take now. But did you ever get drunk? Accidentally

drunk by mistake? Like you maybe caught it from the guy in the next bar. Still, maybe he was contagious and you sort of got it from him. Generally overserved. Yeah, Yeah. Over served by an irresponsible bartender. Something like that. Possibly, Yeah. See, and I didn't think that should count because I didn't mean to do it. And. And. And here I am with with this characteristic or. It doesn't say and,

or either of those if you honestly want to and can't quit entirely or

if when drinking you have little control of the amount. If you get drunk by accident,

you are probably alcoholic. I am probably alcohol. So those are the two characteristics we talk about most often in alcoholism. There's a third characteristic that's only mentioned once, but it was one of the earmark ones for me and it's on page 23 and I don't think we talk about it enough. And it describes me fully in one sentence paragraph in the middle of the page. It says once in a while he may tell the truth,

once in a while, maybe. Right. I don't spread the truth around too thick. I'm saving it for emergencies. I. Jack Nicholson has a great line in the movie, as good as it gets. He says, I'll always give you some version of the truth. Right. Tell me one of our boys didn't write that. Oh, yeah. So. So there it is. I mean, that's just very simply what happens.

And so you're going to hear me over the course of the weekend. Use the the phrase the short form of the step on page 58 and the top of 59, we have what I call the short form of the step, the the Cliff notes. And I want to read to you the first step. The way I saw it when I first read these steps,

we admitted we were powerless of our alcohol, therefore our lives had become unmanageable.

On close examination I have discovered that the word therefore does not appear in step one.

I took it upon myself a number of years ago to look up on a dictionary punctuation and I found that a hyphen or a dash is strangely enough not shorthand for the word therefore, but it actually connects 2 separate thoughts. The reason I was confused was that on the June the 27th, 1984, the day of my most recent drink, the fact that I was powerless over alcohol, that my life was crashing down around my ears. Those facts were related

on August the 1st, 2008. I am powerless of our alcohol. My life is unmanageable.

I'm not playing with you. That's one of the most powerful concepts I ever got. I have actually, to be honest that you read this book more than once. I cannot find a place in the book that says congratulations. Having no achieve this lofty spiritual level, your life is now manageable. The keys are in at the thanks full load up. Go get them. Stanley, can somebody shout out the page number for me on that? I can't find it either. I cannot find it. I'm not playing with you.

See, what's happened here is that I have fired me as general manager of my own life. Based on my performance.

A good manager would have fired me decades ago, right? And part of what I did this morning as I invited God in to run it. Not give me some help, but run it. And whatever He's got in mind suits me just fine. I signed on.

I do find a couple of places and we maybe get one. I'm tonight where it promises me sanity

but I don't find where I get to manage it anymore. And those are very different concepts and that's just how it is for me, but it's so important. Lady friend of mine in my Home group one time and she wasn't trying to make a big heavy point. She was laying her heart on the table. It's the only time it's ever happened to me. When she said this line, I came up out of my chair. She said I'm having trouble getting a grip on letting go.

Isn't that it? Isn't that just exactly right? Boy? That's how it was to me. And by the way, if you're new and it looks to you like the steps are designed to punish you, welcome to AA. That's how they look to us. And we were wrong about that. And you are too. That that what the steps actually did was they brought me relief. They don't look like it,

but that's what they did. And then, as my sponsor insisted I not settle for relief but get all the way to recovery, they also brought me a change of spirit and a change of heart. So I have to admit the truth in the first step. I'm powerless over alcohol. I can't drink and I can't not drink and my life's unmanageable and I don't want to run it anymore. I have enjoyed all I can stand. I don't want what I want anymore.

I was getting what I wanted when I qualified to sit here with you. There's serious doubt as to how much more I could survive of what I want.

I want what God wants me to have. I don't know what it is. I know how to get it. It's by following these directions and by trying to walk the spiritual path today. And as that happens, it unfolds for me. It's not like I do it. It's like it happens, happens to me. I want to talk a little bit about the word obsession. I got a phone call from a young man I was sponsoring and he, I said, listen, I'm tired of hearing about that woman. You're obsessing about her. He said, I'm not obsessing about her. I just think about her all the time.

I stand corrected.

I got to get out of the business of thinking that there's something out there that's going to bring this, this happiness thing to me because it isn't going to happen. You won't. You won't talk about one little bit more.

I'm ready. Good, too. Are you? You want to start it? OK, Go for it. We just make this up. We don't know. We make. We make it up at the brakes. I'm Bob, an alcoholic. Hey Bob,

I'm going to trap.

I cannot spring,

I have this allergic to reaction to alcohol that every time I go to get high I can't stop and I burn my life to the ground even when I don't want to. And I'd swear to myself I won't go too far.

And then when I get rendered abstinent by a detox or running out of money or

getting arrested, I swear to myself I'll never touch that stuff again. And I always, always go back to it

and I don't have the ability to change either one of those two dynamics. And I've tried and I think most of us have. I mean, I through every drug in the mix. I worked out, I did macro biotics also. I could maybe drink and not get so wacky.

I went to therapy. I was hypnotized. I reparented my inner child. I primal screamed. I got on a train and came up to New York to the Rational Motive Institute. I went to gestalt therapy. I did all of this trying to fix me so that I would be the kind of guy that was comfortable enough sober,

and I failed. I couldn't find the power to jumpstart a party that couldn't be jump started to control and enjoy my drinking or to change me and manage me inside enough that I was OK enough sober that I didn't have to go back to that madness. And I was literally stuck and on page. The bottom of page

44 it starts it. It talks a lot about me and I I explored so many things before I ever got sober. I mean, I and and

I tried Buddhism, I tried all kinds of stuff, but it says if a mere code of morals are a better philosophy of life or sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that the need that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral. We could wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact,

we could will these things with all our might,

but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly.

Anybody ever get sober and really tried to be good? I mean,

Jared noticed how you kind after a while you kind of out good yourself. I mean, it's like it's like a slingshot almost, you know, All right, I'm good. I'm really good now. I'm so good. I'm so good that I'm superior to the people that aren't good. I'm really good and then I run out of power, and

some of the worst, most degrading runs I've ever been on have been after huge app periods of abstinence. Willfully. There's a principle in the universe for every action there's an opposite equal reaction. If I put willpower into that, I give it torque to go the other way, right?

Did you get that? Did you get that right?

And it go. It says and here's the. Here's the problem,

and it's

it sounds so simple, but it's really the whole crux of the matter. Lack of power. That was our dilemma. Now here's a point in Alcoholics Anonymous where we lose a lot of people because they misinterpret this as being lack of religion

or even lack of faith. And it's not.

I've had the occasion to sponsor 4 men of the cloth over the years. Two of them are sober and doing all right. Two of them are dead.

And the one guy, God, he was such a nice guy. And I'm not talking about a, I'm not talking about like a guy with a lot of deviancy. These were good, good men.

And this guy Frank, he called me up about a week before they found him dead. And he'd been back to drinking and he was weeping into the phone because he could not comprehend why a guy who's dedicated his whole life to God could beg God not to ever let him drink again. And he was drunk again. And there were there were bums in a A that were staying sober it seemingly effortlessly.

And he didn't get it.

And I, I didn't get it either. It blew my mind when they when I found out he died, he had literally drank himself to death. I couldn't believe it because here's a guy who

prayed probably more in one day than I did in a week, who read spiritual literature every single day of his life for years,

and he died of alcoholism. And here I am, a bum who's staying sober, and I'm getting a good life.

But Frank's dilemma was not lack of religion. It wasn't even lack of faith. It was lack of power. And he couldn't get it. I live in a city where in July and August, especially in August, it their their days were in Las Vegas. It'll get to be 120. Yeah. The Chamber of Commerce will tell you it's a dry heat. Yes. So so's hell.

It's hot.

I mean, it's hot. And if I were to take you in my car outside of Las Vegas, there's a huge freshwater lake called Lake Mead, one of the biggest ones in the western United States. And I take you there, drive you right up to the edge of the lake, let you get out, dip your hand in the water, drink some of the water,

and then stick you back in my car, drive you about 20 miles out into the desert, drop you off, give you a map showing you on the map where I'm dropping you off, showing you where Lake Mead is.

You can wander around that desert and die of thirst if you don't follow the directions and get to that water. And you will die of thirst with absolute faith that the waters there.

And Frank knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was there. The problem was his not a lack of faith. He could not access the power. He died knowing it was there. And I think Alcoholics die of alcoholism every day, like starving men at a banquet.

The food's there, but they can't get at it. The power, they know the powers there, they can't get at it. Matter of fact, I'll tell you something that I, I believe this, everything in me, I think in the history of the human race,

Alcoholics Anonymous is the first process that's come down the Pike that's designed specifically to connect people who are damaged spiritually to a power greater than themselves. That they live in a world that other people seem to be able to connect with so easily. And there's something wrong with us. We have a malady of our spirit. And it goes on later in the book to explain that. And I started to get it. The problem is I got too much of me between me and God

right? And the ego. The self is a funny thing. It will take scripture, it'll take the traditions, it'll take the steps, it'll take the knowledge of God and use it to its own self aggrandizement in order to feel superior to other people.

The ego doesn't care. You know the Christians, A lot of some Christians will tell you the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince you he wasn't there. The greatest trick my ego ever pulls on me on a regular basis is to convince me it's not there. That's not ego. That guy is a jerk.

It's not ego. He doesn't have a good program,

right?

Lack of power, not lack of religion. That's the dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. Obviously, Obviously. But where and how redefined that power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself, which will solve your problem.

Page 46, it's, it's a simplistic

but realistic and dynamic approach to Step 2. It says something in the middle of page 46 that is so simple it hardly seems like it's enough until you try it. And it really is the essence of step Step 2. It says, yes, we have agnostic temperament, had these thoughts and experiences. Well, just one on a couple, two paragraphs to talk about our doubts, our prejudices, our fears of God

and everybody's got that.

We all got that. The sun, even guys like who clergy have old ideas about God. The problem is that the ego tells you your ideas are right. Have you ever had it? You ever had a judgment in the middle of the judgment? Think you know that might not be right? Not me. The things I know are so. I just know are so

the atomacy is in the ego,

the spirit is free, the ego is like that.

So let us make haste. The book says to reassure you he found as soon as we were able to do 2 things. The first thing it sounds so simple and yet it's so difficult. The first thing it says is to lay aside prejudice. Well,

I tell you, I carried prejudices into Alcoholics Anonymous for years that I didn't even know that I had them because my prejudices don't seem like prejudices. It just seems like, well, that's just, that's the way it is. It's my emotional reaction to life. It's old ideas that are so entrenched in me. I believe them. Not not only do I believe them, there's no room for argument. That's just the way it is,

and I will position and conduct myself towards life and towards God and towards you

based on those ideas. And I don't even know I'm doing it.

So it doesn't say we have to, that they're wrong, these prejudices. It doesn't even say we have to give them up completely. Can I lay them aside? Can I, can I get humble enough to almost be like a child that knows nothing? Can I come to the table with God with no preconceived notions, no judgments, no opinions, right or wrong, nothing? A clean

child like state.

Can I do that?

It's very hard if you're like me and I sit with the guys I sponsor and I ask them just have, I have two guys doing this right now that are brand new, what are your prejudice? And I want you to sit and think about it. And we talk about a little bit and I'll tell you one common one,

and it seems to be in every one of us to some degree. And and you might verbalize it differently to yourself, but is that sense that unconscious feeling?

That I really don't measure up to God's help.

That feeling of unworthiness, that sense that if there was 5 billion people on the planet and God was going to help 4,499,499,999, He's going to leave a few out. I know what group I'm going to be in, right? You know that, you know in your pit of your stomach when you're alone in the middle of night, you know, you know what group you're in.

And so consequently, I can't turn towards the light

because I I can't believe it would be there for me.

I can't turn towards it.

Scott and I and Linda and a bunch of other

A's and Alan odds were over in Europe last summer and we want, we went to

different cities and one of the places we went to is Florence. And I, I was kind of there on this mission. I, there's a statue that I'd heard about that the year before I was over and looked and I went in the wrong museums and didn't find. And it's a statue by the sculptor Donatelli. And it's, it's called the Magdalena. It's a statue of Mary Magdalene. A friend of mine from LA had seen and told me about it. I really wanted to see it.

So if I do this research, we find out it's at the opera museum right behind the Domo. And we get there and and I get a little over fixated on stuff like I get, you know, and I get something in my crosshairs. I'm going after it. So there's a whole bunch of show up within two minutes. I've lost everybody else in the group because I'm zipping through this museum on a mission to find this statue of Magdalena of Mary Magdalene.

And I, I've gone up these stairs and I shoot in this one room and there's this huge crucifix on the wall.

It's life-size. What? Yeah, but it's a big, full, big cross for the thing with Christ. Life's life-size, 6 foot probably of Christ on the cross. I turn and there's the statue of Mary Magdalene. And it just, it almost stopped my heart. It's unlike any depiction of Mary Magdalene you'd ever see. Most of them you see, with the very Pretty Woman with the wrong reddish brown hair and the flowing robes. And she's gorgeous.

This is not like that. This is a statue of a woman who's scarred. She suffers from malnutrition. She's wearing rags. She has an expression of of shame and self loathing and and hopelessness on her face, as if she'd been turning nickel and dime tricks on the back alleys of Jerusalem for years.

Her teeth have been kicked out and you can see the broken stubs of her teeth where somebody kicked them out.

And she's standing there and she's, she's not praying. She's there's a hesitancy in her hands as if she's afraid to go like this, like she doesn't deserve to go like this. And she's almost bringing her hands together and her head is cocked and she's looking up at something. And I don't know what she's looking up at at first. And I look over and she's looking up at the crucifix and she has an expression on her face

that is saying this could be for me,

for me.

And I'm looking at her with her kicked out teeth and her hopelessness. And I'm, I'm weeping

because she has captured my soul.

Next thing I know, Scott and Lyndon, a bunch of other people are standing around. We're all weeping. Scott weeps at dog food commercials. I mean, she's, I can try reading the menu. I really can't.

And we're all crying, right? We're all sitting around staying around crying. And this is a public museum where there's tourists from all countries are coming through here. And they're like looking at these old Americans that are standing around weeping, looking at a statue of what looks like an ugly woman. But they don't see what we see.

They don't see what we see. They see a statue of an ugly woman. We see ourselves.

I have some pictures of that. If it doesn't do the statue justice, anybody wants to look at it during the break.

And that is a prejudice that is of that was so expressive for me of how my soul reached out. I'm going to tell that in a couple of minutes that that this could be for me, somebody as unworthy as I am, someone who's done the things that I have done. It could be for me. I got it. Excuse me.

So we must lay aside our prejudice.

What if you're wrong?

Are you willing to be wrong?

I tell you something, if you're one of those kind of people that can't be wrong, you're gonna have a hard time with recovery.

What if you're wrong about everything? What if you're wrong about you and what you're worth? What about what if you're wrong about how bad you are or how good you are? What if you're wrong about God? What if you're wrong about life? What if you're wrong about everything? What if you're wrong about your childhood?

What if you're wrong about the people you have been in relationships with? What if you're wrong about everything? Are you humble enough to entertain the fact that once again, and I say once again, because you know, you've you've caught yourself, your perception could be wrong again.

Are you will are you, can you be humble enough to get that? I could be maybe I'm even wrong about this stuff that God, if I was wrong about what a piece of crap I am.

See, my ego doesn't even want to be wrong about that.

It will defend that. It defends everything. So if I can lay aside these prejudice and then the second thing it says you're still in 46. Yeah, 446, middle of lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than myself. If I can do those two things, the book promises me, I will commence.

Which means I will begin. I will move into getting results

even though it's impossible for any of us to understand fully defined or comprehend that power which is God.

So how do you express a willingness?

Well,

take actions that you don't believe in.

I think there's a universal experience in alcoholic psalmist. I've never found an exception to this shed.

I've never met a newcomer yet that came to AA in the middle of the hopelessness and despair and self loathing of another bottom looks at the 12 steps and went, Oh yeah, that would work.

I've never made it, but I don't know where I've seen a couple of Al Anon's that yeah, it worked for him. But I, I I've never met an alcoholic that came to a A and looked at the steps and thought that would matter of fact. We have a common, a common experience is that we don't even get that it works until after we do it. Then we all say the same thing.

Oh, I should have done that years ago.

Then the ego grabs on to it. Then we feel smugly superior to the people that don't do it right.

If I can express even a willingness and and the old timers had me do two things. They had me start praying on my knees in the morning.

I didn't want to matter of fact I semi or I didn't. I did it, but I kind of tried to talk this guy out of it. I had a pretty good case build. I'd heard people in a talk about they don't pray on their means. They pray laying in bed. They pray. I had one guy pray sitting on the crapper. Another guy prays driving the car.

I said those guys don't pray sitting on their knees, how come I do? And he says, well, not everybody has to. Just people with egos like yours

don't even if if you're new, don't even engage with the old timers. Just do what they say because they got some kind of spiritual jujitsu. You know, it's you can't win. You can't win.

So I started, I was living in this half W men's halfway house and I'm in a room with bunk beds, all these guys. Now I'm not going to get on my knees in front of a bunch of guys in a halfway house. I know what I've been to jail too much. You don't do that. I mean, you just

that ain't happening. So I go in the bathroom, lock the door, take the throw rug, throw it up under the crack of the door so nobody can peek under the door and see me pray and get down on my knees. And I feel I feel like a hypocrite. Went told the guy said, you know, I feel like a hypocrite because I don't really believe in God. He says you've been a hypocrite all your life. What the heck's the difference? And he went to explain it to me since you've all your whole life you've been a flake. You said one thing, did something else

just do it and what they were. And then eventually they started getting into the steps and what

where I would start clearing away the things that would help me to access the power. But what I was engaging in, I didn't know about it. And Scott mentioned talks about this sometimes is what you could call a working hypothesis. People in a are telling me something, something I don't really believe because it is outside my experience. What they're telling me is behind the very veil and fabric of the universe,

there is a power source that is absolutely crazy about me

and that if I could, if I will just reach into the veil to access that power, it will change my life

and to reach in as goes through here. It's a journey inside, but I don't believe it

and it doesn't matter. I started to take the actions in. Some amazing things started to happen in my life

and I started to experience an endless series of coincidences. Funny, funny stuff would happen to me, you know,

like I I'd be, I remember in my, my first year or so, a sobriety, crazy stuff. I I'd be sinking into a depression and my phone had ring and there'd be some guy in a, a wants to talk to me

who had him call right at that moment,

right who had him called him. I was at work one morning and I'm ready to quit my job. I went to work and my, my boss

disrespected me. That's what he did. And I'm, I'm enraged, man. I'm just, you can't talk to me that way. And I'm and I'm, I'm ready to quit my job and I, I'm working harder there than anybody else. Nobody appreciates me. I'm insane. I want to punch him, but he was a a boxing commissioner and I didn't know the next ex boxing golden gloves guys, I'm not going to punch him. You know,

and I, I didn't take my lunch shower that day and I just had this, I was this compelling idea

to go to a noon meeting instead of eating lunch. And I got my car and I rushed across town and I walked into a meeting I normally don't go to. And I'm sitting in a meeting and I'll tell you, I'm not in that meeting more than 5 minutes. And there's a stranger in there who's talking about an incident that happened with his boss and he was going to quit his job. And his sponsor turned his head around and he realized he had to go make amends to his boss. And I'm sitting there and I'm going, Oh my God,

see, he, he, he pulled me up for, not for screwing up at work. And I don't take criticism very well.

And my ego was hurt and I was going to and I was going to, I wanted to retaliate. And I heard this guy talking about himself. And because he's not trying to tell me I'm wrong, I'm just listening to him. And I, the light went on. I thought, Oh my God, that's exactly what happened today. And I went back to work that afternoon. I made amends to my my boss and I didn't have to quit my job.

Who made him say that? Then?

Who put the compulsion in me to go to that meeting? Who brought us together, which by what I consider divine appointment.

And I don't know how many dozens of instances have to happen like that before a guy who's even a skeptic like me starts to. It's not, it's more than believe it's, it's like you're overwhelmed

by the reality in your life that something's going on here. We were over. I was just over in London last month with one of my sponsors. We're doing some a, a stuff and we're walking around Hyde Park, down near Buckingham Palace. And there's, the streets are lit down there with gas streetlights and there's and the sides of the, of the poles. There are these little doors that are now welded shut. But years ago, before the technology was in place,

there was a guy whose job it was is to come up and down the streets of London. And he'd open those little doors on the side of the poles. And he'd reach in with a key and he turned the gas on. And then he'd reach up with a pole with a flame on the end and light it. And at twilight you could go up to the top of the highest building in London. And no matter how hard you looked, you could not see where that guy was, but you could see where he'd been.

And I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at two years sober. I, the truth be told, I couldn't see where God was, but I could see where he'd been

not only in my life, but in the lives of the new people that I, I had the privilege of helping and talk, giving rides to meetings. And I got to, I got to see them in detox when they were more dead than alive. And I got to see him two years later when the restraining orders have come off and they got their kids back. I got to see the homeless guys, the guys that were living in the bushes. Did you hear he's buying a house?

Remember the guy that had the mental illness? Remember the guy? Remember the guy that was so wacky and depressed you knew he'd not only should be on medication, probably gonna be on medication all his life? Did you know he's not taking anything? Do you see him with those three guys he sponsors?

Did you see the light in his eyes? Did you hear him laughing after the meeting? Kidding. The guys he sponsors

And I started to see the hand of God. You know, the ego and the Spirit are in competition with, in conflict with each other, almost diametrically opposed and connected

in some sort of weird tug of war.

You know, I have never seen my ego directly,

but I see its work. And I've never seen God directly, but I see his work.

I I read a lot and there's some authors I've read every book they've ever written. I've never met them, but I'll tell you something. I feel like I know them because I have studied their creation

in an alcoholic synonymous. We study very diligently the enemy self, centeredness and all the manifestations of self and we open ourselves up very lovingly and openly to to God. I don't. I see the manifestations of God in my life continuing every once in a while. I really get a strong glimpse of it when I'm not, when I'm not looking intentionally.

I, I tell you a little story. I was, this happened to me probably 15 years ago. I was with a bunch of people in a a we're at this mall

and in the middle of the mall there's a kiosk and they're selling these framed pictures, weird looking pictures, looked like Rorschach pictures to me, kind of weird looking. And the one person says, Oh my God, come on, you got to see these. I went over and look at these, a whole bunch of different ones. I'm looking at them. I don't just weird looking stuff to me,

he says. Don't you see it?

I said no, I don't see nothing, he says. That's a ship to see it popping right out of the pic.

I don't see no ship, he says. That's planets. It's the solar system. They see that. No, man, I don't. I don't know what you're talking about. I felt it almost felt like when your newcomer and people are telling you, oh, God's going to solve all your problem, you go,

yeah, I don't know, you know, come on, come on. Yeah. God, in the tooth fairy. I bet you know, because I can't see it. And they said just look, they're telling you. There's these are holographic pictures. Look at you'll see it. All of a sudden it'll just pop right out at you in three dimensions.

And I'm looking so, so I'm a kind of a determined guy. I want to see what I'm not seeing. So I'm really looking and all I'm getting is like a headache. I'm just, you know, I'm looking, trying to look. If I had done it long enough, I think I'd end up with a headache and hemorrhoids probably. If I really look, I can't. And the harder I look, the less I see it. And this guy says, he says just relax,

just relax.

Be still and know that I am God.

And there was a moment when I was looking at one of these pictures and all of a sudden, BAM.

And it was like,

Oh my God, did you see that?

And I think God's sometimes like that. The problem is, is if I believe the pictures, if I believe that the guys kid me and it's not really there, I won't be able to see the picture.

Or if I look through an act of will because I want power, significance, I won't see the picture.

I can't approach God. That's why spiritual growth is always it's never from education and it's never from addition. It's always from subtraction. It's always as a result of letting go.

Letting go of the things that stand between me and God.

Let me do it for a minute. OK, you got some. I would like to get 55. Go ahead.

Yeah, OK. Page 55.

Let's do it really fast. All right, Age 55

page 55 is a vision is a vision of what what will happen to me and what I'll find as a result of steps 4 through 9

middle of the page first second full paragraphs is actually fooling ourselves for deep down and every man, woman and child is the fundamental of idea of God deep down in me. And it's hard. That's almost hard to believe when you're new, because how could something so powerful and good be inside something that is so weak and bad?

But the old timers kept saying that they used to even talk. I watched Chuck Chamberlain after a meeting one time. Some guy said where how do you find God? And Chuck was poking him in the checks. He said chest, saying he's not lost, he's right in there.

When I go inside me, I don't run into God. I run into craziness. I run into a pack of nut cases just chattering nonstop. I run into Legion,

and the reason is that it says in the next sentence it says because this this portal, this thing inside me, this to the divine, this piece of the divine, this is obscured. It's blocked by three things, by calamity. We all know calamity. You want to know what calamity sounds like? Imagine a doctor could surgically implant a microphone into your brain on a bad day. Through loud speakers, we get to hear what you're thinking.

We hear the voice of calamity.

I mean, when you think about it, God could have to. If you had a megaphone, you might not hear Him.

And then the second thing is Pomp is that I get so full of what I believe is right, my pumps, another word for ego.

I just puff up on myself. I get so full of myself and and the last thing is worship of other things.

I that was a hard one to see when I was about a year and a half sober

through an experience, it really was an epiphany for me. I was ending my first sober relationship. Now I don't think there's a person on the planet more narcissistically self involved than an alcoholic ending a relationship. You can go up to a person like that and say, you know, I just came from the doctor, I've terminal cancer, two weeks to live and you'll go, do you know what else she said? I mean,

you know, 'cause you just get it right. It's just right here on you, man. You can't get it off. And and I, I am wacko, man. I am just nuts. And I'm in this meeting and I can't hear nothing because I'm in my head

thinking about if I see her, I'll say this and then she'll say that and I'll say this, and then I'll hit her with that and she'll realize how wrong she'd been, be properly ashamed of herself and begged for me to come back.