We will talk a little about this when we talk about AA in business-of practicing these principles in business. But here I was, still trying to clean up my desk at the office, and business was good. It was plum good. That was a pretty good discovery! Then another year went by, and I discovered that my Being was better than anything that I had ever dreamed of in my life.
My looking-glass, being myself, was better than anything that I ever dreamed of. And now five, maybe six years have passed, and I made another discovery, which I believe to be the Great Discovery. When we make this discovery, the search is over and life begins-life isn't over, life just begins. And this discovery was that I was never alone anymore. I, who had waked alone for forty-three years, totally alone, I was never alone anymore.
I had a God of my very own. And where I am, He is. Im often by myself, but never alone. And this has been the way it's been ever since the discovery, and it's the way it was before the discovery.
Because I hadn't been alone since my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I believe that this program of ours the Alcoholics Anonymous program, is a program of uncovering, discovering, and discarding. That's the AA program to me. Uncovering, Discovering, and Discarding. The first nine steps of the program are the uncovering steps, clearing away the wreckage of the past. Squeezing us out of ourselves, ego-wise; to get rid of the human ego, temporarily, because we never get rid of it totally, in my opinion.
I am convinced that nobody can honestly take the first nine steps in this program without making the discovery that something has happened, and it's terrific! Because 'when we honestly apply the first nine steps of this program ego is temporarily gone.
Now I am convinced in my own mind, totally and completely convinced from my toenails to the top of my longest hair, that there's only one problem in this life. One 4. Now that's oversimplification, isn't it? One problem that includes all problems, and one answer that includes all answers. I am totally convinced that the only roadblock between me and you and me and my God is the human ego. The only roadblock there is. I further believe that the best definition youll ever hear of human ego is, The feeling of conscious separation from.
The feeling of conscious separation from. From what? From everything. From God. I like to use three words: Life, Good, God, which to me are synonymous words. Conscious separation from God, from each other, and eventually from ourselves. That is the thing that says to me, Here are my big me, little me, smart me, dumb me, rich me, poor me against the whole world. Ive got to out think, out perform, and out-maneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe. That's what they laid on me as a kid.
The very cliches of life, "The early bird gets the worm" The Devil takes the hindmost". Here am I against the whole world. I've got to out-think, out-perform and out-maneuver. Consciously separated from each other and from God.
I think that's the greatest roadblock there is, the only one, as a matter of fact, the only roadblock there is between me and you and me and my God. And thats the human ego. The seat of all obsessions of the mind.
Thats where they come from. It is also my total conviction that there is no possibility under Heaven to satisfy the human ego. Its a divine impossibility. I like to sit up there in my big chair Many of you have seen it. Some of you have sat in it for a minute, but I won't let you sit in it much longer!
It's about thirty-four or thirty-five miles from where I live. I look down at that water, that channel, and that thirty-five miles is just the top of it. It's deep, too. And I say to myself, "Suppose that entire channel was bourbon whiskey. Would that satisfy my obsession for whiskey? And I have to say no. The whole damn thing could not satisfy my obsession to drink, because when I get started drinking, before long I'm flat on my back in bed, drinking the clock around, and every time I open my eyes I drink, and there's no way to satisfy that obsession.
No way. Now suppose my obsession had been for money instead of drinking. How about that? It's totally impossible to satisfy an obsession for dough. I had a client through many years who lived in Phoenix. He was a Syrian named Eddy who bad gone from one bead of lettuce to thirty-five million bucks, and he was one of the poorest men I 5. Because unfortunately, be had a partner in one of his business enterprises, which happened to be oil, and this old boy was worth one-hundred and fifty million.
They had a suite in the Jonathan Club, most beautiful thing you ever looked at in your life, all paneled with the finest wood in the world, gun racks and elephant tusks all over it, and feet and gazelles and everything else.
And when I'd be sitting there with the two of them, Eddy was trying to get under the davenport. Poor thing, he had only thirty-five million, and here was old Steele with one-hundred and fifty million. Poor man! Eddy use to say to me, "Charley I was 'Charley' in business. Don't be silly! You can buy anything you want, including women, and you do. Who needs God when you've got thirty-five million bucks?
You go ahead and make one hundred and fifty million, and you will, if you live. Because everything that old boy touched turned to gold. And when you've made one hundred and fifty million, you will have then found that it won't do for you what you have to have done inside you.
And you will come to me and say, 'Charley, how can I be like you? He'd say, "Well, talk to me about it, anyway. But poor Eddy didn't make his onehundred and fifty; he got so many things in his head that it exploded. He was ten years younger than 1, and he's been gone five or six years.
He died. Impossible to satisfy an obsession for money. Suppose my obsession had been for power. No possibility. Witness Watergate; there's a nice power struggle. It's absolutely impossible to satisfy an obsession for power. If you were President of the United States, no good, because every dictator in the world has more power than our President. Old Genghis Khan had more than all of them. So, no way. What about women? I started to say sex, but that brings up a bad connotation!
I've been getting invitations, lately, to gab and talk to the deviates, and God bless me, I can't hardly make it. So far I've been able to sort of have some other thing to do, or get something else to do.
So, let's say women. Suppose my obsession had been for women. And suppose that I had been the greatest lothario of all times, and suppose I had captured every chick I set out to catch, but one. Now at my age that would be a pretty good size army, don't you think? Would they satifsy my obsession for women?
Uh-uh, This one kills me! The one I can't get kills me dead. So, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Weve got to get rid of the obsessions of the mind. And in order to get rid of the obsessions of 6. I want, I dont want, I like, I dont like, I. Thats it. Now that's the reason that the wording in the book, "Alcoholics Anonymous" is like it is. There are four hundred and fifty-two pitches in the first page and two paragraphs in our Chapter Five.
Boy, there's a lot of things said in that deal! And that would be to take out the "Rarely" and put in "Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. If he had said, Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.. I see about four people here at the front table looking right at me that would have said, "Oh, they've never seen a failure.
Well, by God, I'll show 'em one! That's the reason it's "Rarely". And Bill did tell me that, himself. I happened to know him pretty well. Some guy got up here and he read it, "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly enjoyed our path. Honesty and following the path. There're two pitches, right there. To be honest, and to follow the path, thoroughly follow the path. Grasping and developing. You see, we're people who never were able to settle for status quo.
Never in our lives, long before we had a drink, were able to settle for the status quo. Nothing that was normal ever merited our attention for more than a split second. If it wasnt better than normal, we didnt like it. And thats before we ever had a drink. So, we had-better jolly well grasp and develop, because a happy sobriety will turn into a drunk unless we develop. We've got to walk. We've got to keep going. All we need to do is get fat and complacent and quit walking, and we're in trouble.
So grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty is a full time job. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.
Well, I'm sure that if you're still breathing and you don't have two or three of those wheels missing entirely, there's no way you can hide behind that, but it's the sort of thing that we use once in a while.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
Many of you have heard it, I'm sure. In the early days in Los Angeles, we didn't have anybody out here that had ever been in an AA meeting, and then a Jewish gentleman came out here with a book. He didn't know he had it.
He "came to" in Palm Springs, and started looking through his luggage for some whiskey, and he found this book. Alcoholics Anonymous-the first edition, that red one.
And he didn't know how it had gotten in his suitcase. But he didn't have any whiskey, so he read it, and he just kept reading it, and he liked it; he liked what he read. And he came into Los Angeles with this book, and he got hold of some people and they started a meeting, but they didn't know how to start it. And so the custom that has spread pretty well all over the world was established right here in Los Angeles' first meeting: reading a portion of Chapter Five.
This Jewish boy says, "I don't know how to start a meeting, but there's a chapter in this book entitled 'How it Works' and it gives us this thing, and let's read it. And you'd be surprised how much of the world that's covered up until now. They read this all over, and it's beautiful. Every time I read it, it reminds me that my survival depends on this thing right here in Chapter Five.
Now a little bit later, this bunch, maybe a half-dozen of them at this time, got a hold of an old boy off skid-row. His name was Whitey, and Whitey had been a little bit too close and too long with the vino.
He babbled all through the meeting, he'd just sit there and babble, and he was bothering them. So they decided they ought to take him to the doctor and see what was the matter with him, and they did. They took Whitey to a doctor, and this doctor took a few quick passes at him and he said, "Boys, give him up. This one you can't help. Spend your time on somebody that's got a chance.
He has such bad brain damage that you're just wasting your time. And the whole gang of them wanted to dump Whitey and keep him from interrupting the procedure with his babbling. But there was one guy there that had read something in the book, 8. It says right here that the only requirement for sobriety is a desire to stop drinking, and Whitey wants to get sober.
We can't kick him out. And its a matter of medical record and AA record that one year later Whitey was accepted in the United States Marines. Last I heard of Whitey, he was running a newspaper in the middle-west.
So, there's a miracle here. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it,"-any length to get it-"then you are ready to take certain steps. You have to go clear back to the first line of the second paragraph, Chapter Three, and read a line that says, "We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.
This is the first step in recovery. Why clear back there? The first word of the second paragraph, Chapter Three? The program of recovery is over here in Chapter Five! It's there in Chapter Three because if we be alcoholic we are caught in a trap we cannot spring. We have to have help, and we cant get help untill we recognize the need for it.
Its impossible. Were a peculiar breed of cat. We cant hear until we can hear, and we cant see until we can see. And it doesnt make a bit of difference whos talking.
For instance, a number of years back, in the state of Virginia, I spent a good deal of time with a great celebrity of films and TV, and he and his wife were both alkys, and I was very fond of them and I was very hopeful that something good was going to happen.
We sat for almost all day in Richmond, Virginia, yakking. And everything I said, this guy's wife would say, "Why, that's the way I live. I've known that forever. This is not new to us. We know the whole thing. Well, they didn't know I knew that they'd just gotten out of Menninger's.
Both of them! Menninger's, for those of you who don't know, is a booby hatch. But they had never heard it, and they didn't hear it when I said it, either.
And you're going to hear a lot of things that you think you know this weekend; maybe you do. You may hear a lot of things that you disagree with. That's alright with me, too. If you disagree with them, and know why you disagree with them, maybe you should be up here, and me back there. But for now this is the way it's going to be. Another condition, of course, is that sobriety has to come first. And unless it remains first we cannot keep it.
That's what it says here. This is very positive stuff. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. The Mandolin Lesson is an evocative memoir from the only female professional classical mandolinist in the country — and the only British person to have studied mandolin in Italy at Conservatoire level. The theme of the book is both timeless and universal, about a journey we are all on; a journey to find out about ourselves and to reconnect with who we really are.
It will resonate with readers interested in inspirational self-development books, and will also appeal to fans of human interest stories, as well as those interested in Italy and its culture, music in general and the mandolin. It shows the lengths to which an excellent musician will go to become an even better one. Score: 4. Now, as a patient-expert, she guides all those newly diagnosed through everything they need to learn and do in the crucial first year after diagnosis. This indispensable guide simplifies but never patronises and offers a wider approach than any so far adhered to by doctors.
It answers all the questions that assail the newly diagnosed: How to cope with daily maintenance? How to make sense of the terminology about measurement of blood-glucose levels? How to build self-knowledge and confidence? How, overall, best to adjust to life with diabetes. Drawing on a wide range of sources--Party Congress transcripts, the classics of early Soviet literature, sex education pamphlets, the cinema, crime reports, and early Soviet ventures into popular science--the author seeks to explain the period's preoccupation with crime, disease, and, especially, sex.
Using strategies of reading developed by literary scholars, he devotes special care to exploring the role of narrative in authoritative political texts. The book breaks new ground in its attention to the ideological importance of the female body during this important formative stage of Bolshevik rule.
Sex in Public provides a fundamentally new history of the New Economic Policy and offers important revisionist readings of many of the fundamental cultural products of the early Soviet period. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3.
Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. It appears your browser does not have it turned on.
Please see your browser settings for this feature. EMBED for wordpress. Want more?
0コメント