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There was a man that was with the people in the beginning of AA called Dr. Silkworth.
And he was the one that presented the idea that it was a disease, alcoholism. And a disease,
I heard a very good definition of a disease which is that it has three qualities: it's
progressive, it's chronic, and it's life threatening. So, alcoholism falls under those
three categories. It's progressive, in other words, you'll get the consequences of it,
and also the depth of its takeover will progress. It's chronic, basically there's no break
from it. And it's life threatening. So, he said that the disease is of mind and body.
The aspect of the mind is that it's based on an obsession. In other words, for me the
obsession was to get of the discomfort I felt I was in. That was the imperative. And, a
physical allergy. So, alcoholism, let's just see it this way, alcoholism doesn't
have an arm to reach for a drink. It doesn't have a pore to put a needle in. But it has
a demand, it likes fuel. And its fuel is alcohol, and drugs. If you give it its fuel, it gets
stronger, it's influence. It gets larger, very quickly. And it gets way, way more unruly.
But the thing is, it can't drink. So it has to convince the host that it would be
a great idea to have a drink. Even though the host may have had tons of experiences
that that isn't a great idea, this mental obsession brings you to a point that I like
to call "*** it." It may take a couple of days, it may happen very quickly, but it
starts setting up a story. And that story usually leads the character in it, you, to
a point of "*** it." Once you hit "*** it" and comply with that, it no rushes in
with a solution which is, "Let's get loaded." "Let's get high." "Let's sleep with
my best friend's girlfriend." "Lets --," yes, this. Once that, let's say
if your mind had a tendency to be jealous, let's say. Okay, now you take a drink. That
tendency to be jealous get's amplified. So maybe you were just having trouble, you
know, in your head. Now, you're up on stalking charges. Because now you're breaking into
your girlfriend's emails and stuff. This is the type of thing what happens. So as soon
as it gets its fuel, it's too late. You're basically on a run. You're not gonna listen
to any kind of yapping, because you're not done. So the point is they realized you can't
deal with alcoholism after it's flourished like that. You've got to get it before it
has the first drink. You've got to have a situation that will take care of the insanity
that precedes the first drink. And they found out it has to be, in their view, a spiritual
solution. Now, other people get sober still, and they don't have any believe in a god
or anything like that, but to me, the program in and of itself is quote unquote "spiritual."
It doesn't need a god or any kinda of deity. It's drenched in spirit, there is grace
in it. So, the point is they discovered that they have to deal with it on the obsession
level. And so that it never gets to the point - because you will not get drunk unless you
take the first drink. So the first drink is what you want the immunity to, not the 50th
drink, the first one. And the immunity comes from a spiritual condition, not a mental condition.
In alcoholism, you are totally dominated by a mental condition called alcoholism. You
are not connected, or you're blocked out from what we would call "the sunlight of
the spirit." You cannot find it if it was presented right in front of you because the
mental condition blocks out your spiritual condition. Because that's the only way it
can thrive. Once the light would come in, it can burn the parasitical grasp out. So,
the whole drive of the parasite is to keep you in the mental realm. And the mental realm
is about you, somewhere else at some other time. So, the mind fixates on you as this
object, called Paul, somewhere else at some other time. All your attention and interest
is in this little *** theater about life according to you. Instead of seeing life as
happening, like when you were a kid, or let's say when you're surfing or stuff like that,
now it's seen as life as happening to you all day. It's a huge interpretation. And
therefore, there are many, many slights that now seem to be real. There are many, many
disappointments that come out of this machination of an interpretation -- which demand relief.
And the relief will usually end up to drinking and using. This is alcoholism. This is what
you would call "the bondage to self." So they found the solution was not trying
to deal with it on that level, but to provoke, or to surrender to, another realm, which they
would call the spiritual realm. So let's say that if you had a deck of cards, the way
I was taught in the society I grew up in was, if you got your circumstances right, and you
got your condition right, you would translate into being happy. They were the most sought
after cards in the deck; get everything together, get the girl, get the job, get this, get that,
go to college, and it will translate into a sense or real wellbeing. That, first of
all, didn't work for me. Then they say, okay now, a lot of people, "Let's make
the body really good, let's get really healthy and that will translate in me being really
okay." Then there's the mental condition; so, if you look at it, your circumstances
and situations can be overridden by a mental condition, like that. You could have everything
you'd want, everything is perfect, and yet you're being driven crazy your head. So
the mental condition overrides the circumstances. The mental condition overrides the physical
condition. You could be healthy as an ox, and yet be totally bummed out. So many people
are trying to have the circumstances and maybe they try to get healthy, but the mental condition
keeps overriding the effects of the other two. What AA offered was a fourth card in
the deck, which is the spiritual condition. Now, I've experienced the spiritual condition
can override the mental condition, it can override the body condition, and it can override
the circumstances and the situational condition. To me, this is the ace that AA presents, it'
s the ace in the deck, yeah? If you rely on the spiritual condition it will outshine the
mental condition. It will allow you to be here, and really be here. And I'll tell
ya, the joy of living is not in remember it, how great it once was, or the hope that it
will be great, but the sense of being on, now. To be alive now, is the only place where
life is. This is what the spiritual condition does. So first we admit that we were powerless
over this alcohol. We can't have a drink, because if we do, it's like, you drink the
bottle, the genie is out of the bottle. Man, you are totally possessed. And yet, it's
caused our own unmanageability. I believe the aspect of the disease today, and I haven't
drank in almost 24 years, is the desire to manage, or play God. That to me I believe
is the real root of the dilemma. There's an identification as what's playing God,
and so you play God. What my experience is, if you ever access God, it's not playing
God, it is God. It's very, very different than when the mental process is playing God.
It's very, very different to be under the guidance of "God," if you want to call
it that, than under the guidance of what's playing God. So, what happened to me was that
I admitted the first step, and I looked at the unmanageability. And I had a strong experience
of it when I was in Delancey Street, that program. Because I had spent two years there,
and when I left I didn't like those people, I didn't like what they did, but I had to
admit my life looked better with them running it than it ever did with me running it. And
I came to the conclusion that I could turn my life over to a freakin' dog catcher and
he'd do a better job with it than me. Because the real root of the problem is playing God,
or managing, in my view. I haven't drank in a while, and yet you can still suffer from
alcoholism without drinking, yeah? You can still be under the influence of alcoholism
without having touched a drop for years. Because alcoholism, the drinking and the drug use
is just a symptom of it. It's just a way of trying to manage what's totally unmanageable.
Which is, you've got full blown alcoholism. And your drive to manage it is the root of
the problem. So we have a statement in recovery that "self, cannot get out of self." So
you can't seek a solution from the problem. You can't. It will present many solutions,
but none of them will be a solution to the problem. They'll be solutions from the problem,
which just exasperate the problem, over and over and over and over again. So, the whole
point is if self can't get out of self, and I'm identified as self, then every time
I rely on me, I'm relying on the problem. There is no solution in that. So let's just
say, maybe, just maybe I'm not that. If I am not that idea of being Paul, you know
what is going to happen if I'm not that? My mind is going to lose interest and attention
in it. And that interest and attention that was now enslaving me, because its incessant
gluing to all the thoughts about me, and all the feelings about me, now is freed from all
that. And that same interest and attention enriches my life; exact same interest and
attention. It's freed from worshipping that black hole of "me," the "I, me, my,"
and now, it goes out and touches upon things and gets interested in other things, and attention.
And I lose interest in myself and gain interest in others. And all this occurs, and what was
bonding me to like, let's say to a life of unhappiness, is now enriching me. It's
just a shift of mind. Yeah? So, the second step to me, is an observational step. And
what AA said is "you do not have to believe in anything. All you need to do is to be willing
to believe." Willing to become to believe. And what happened, it says here, the step
two is "We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity." Now, for me that was observational. I came into recovery and I started to do what
they told me to do, and I started to get better. So, my observation was, "Hey, I've gotten
restored to sanity." And it's talking about a very specific insanity. It's not
saying insanity about this or that, it's says "the insanity that proceeds the first
drink." So that's what we get restored to sanity about. We get restored to the initial
trigger that causes us to want to get loaded. We get restored to a sanity, or a sound mind
- about that. A lot of people think, "Oh well, it hasn't really worked because I'm
still insane." You can be insane about a lot a lot of things but you won't be insane
about that first drink anymore. So, to me, the second step is observational. I came to
believe that something greater than me was storing me to sanity because, it was. Instead
of being on the street anymore, I got a residence hotel. I had room that I shared with a German
tourist who was here to learn English. I got a job again. I wasn't going to jail. And
what happened is, my solution to my problems before I got into AA was to make more problems
to distract me from the older problems. So, in other words, I didn't want to deal with
that pile of *** so I made a new pile of *** that I had to deal with. And so on and
so forth. What happened is, after the first few months of being sober, I realized I hadn't
created any new ***. And so I got the balls to look back at the old ***, and start to
tell the truth about the old ***. And I started to get relief, because now, I wasn't relying
on a failed system! I was relying on some sound principles that actually work - that
can produce an incredible, uh, it's like recycling. Recovery is like the greatest recycler.
You through a life in, you might want to call it yours; that you have deemed to be totally
valueless. I mean, I didn't think I had been doing anything good for years. You throw
that in there and what you get back is a renovated life. And that life, that past life gets valuable
to help other people who suffer from the same disease that you're in. It's an incredible
recycling system. And it's so beautiful in recovery because I need to hear to message
and some people need to carry the message. And that shifts, some days I need to hear
the message, and that person needs to carry it. S ome days I need to carry the message,
that person needs to hear it. So it's like a symbiotic relation, the "we" of the
program that produces almost like a field of grace that if you're a little bit open
to it and willing, you can have some power greater than you influence your day and you'll
live as if the problem doesn't exist for you for that day. That's a powerful solution
for that problem, because that problem is pretty damn influential when you're under
it. To have it not seem to be real for you, just at a day at a time is an incredible miracle
to me. So in AA they say "We are not people who have problems, we are the problem."
So, that's where I see that the problem is identification, because we are the problem,
we take ourselves to be the problem. The problem isn't attacking us, it's aspects are attacking
us, but it's attacking itself - we are identified. So, this is a very high form of relief when
the problem doesn't exist for you, how it stabilizes when it doesn't exist as you
anymore. That's how it changed for me. While I was still identified, I got moments and
sometimes days of relief, where it looked like it didn't exist for me anymore, but
it always seemed to come back. When I realized I'm not that, then it doesn't exist as
me anymore. And now that relief has stabilized; stabilized, radically. I'm like a free range
alcoholic, in a sense now. I've been freed from alcoholism. I mean literally. [chuckling]
It's just mind boggling to me. So, I find it's like, let's say you have a cold and
you think you have a flu, and you take a lot of flue medicine. And you follow the directions
religiously. And you spent a lot of money on it. And you read all about the flu. The
flu and the cold may share some common symptoms, but not completely. You're not going to
get relief from the cold, because you've taken it to be the flu. I believe now, over
time, we need to shift the emphasis in AA, we don't need to this is just an invitation
for people who are in the community, that maybe the root of the problem isn't obsession
with self, maybe the root of the problem is identification as self. So really get specific
about the cause and then you'll realize the diminishments of the effects. You'll
see, once you tell the truth about that, and start entertaining, "Hey, I may not be that,"
then radical relief comes in. And you'll know the tree by its fruits, basically. You
know you are on to something by the results. That's what happened with me. I was in recovery,
and then I heard this message outside of recovery. In maybe my tenth year or something. And it
really hit me pretty strongly and I entertained it, and it became like an unspoken "yes"
in my gut. And when I went back to this book, and I saw statements sort of like, "Self
is what has defeated us. Any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." And that all these
things are presented as something you need to be convinced of, I mean you've got to
know with certainty that you are ***, basically - because that's the starting point. Because
then you will be open to leaving a failed system. You will be open to leave the failed
system. Now how I found I left the failed system wasn't as an aspect of the system.
Self isn't gonna get out of self. I left the failed system when I realized I wasn't
its center. I am not a long lasting independent separate entity. I am not a body having a
spiritual experience. I would say I'm spirit. Yes? That's translating through a body to
have an experience. Yes? Once that was entertained, then radical relief came in. And that radical
relieve has stabilized, so I feel like I'm on to something. Yeah? That's basically
it you know? [laughing] And I come out of a tribe and I have a drive to want to be of
help, you know. If anything can happen through this talk that would illuminate someone's
view, that's the whole point of it. It's sort of like, if you were in hell and someone
brought you to a bus stop, and that bus took you out of hell; I would sort of like to mimeograph
that bus route and send it back into hell. So people could get out! If you just take
this bus, sit back, relax, entertain, you'll be taken out of hell. That's the point.