Harlan G chapter 4: We Agnostics

0:00 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to a special edition of A Vision for You. Today is Sunday, February 7th, 2016. This year ID number for Friday, February 5th, is 8439. That's 84 39. This morning, A Vision for You presents chapter 4, We Agnostics. Once you've accepted step one, admitting that you're powerless over food and that your life has become unmanageable, you've realized that to continue compulsive overeating means disaster. So does continuing to rely entirely on yourself to stop compulsive overeating.

0:49 Now, if you already know that you cannot rely on yourself, then your choice is narrowed down to either relying on some power greater than yourself or being doomed to a compulsive overeater's death. These aren't easy alternatives to face, but they're the only ones you've got. If you truly want to recover from the illness of compulsive overeating, you need a spiritual solution. Chapter 4 of the Big Book, entitled We Agnostics describes discusses and explains the need for a power greater than yourself as the solution to the problem. And this morning, I welcome Harlan G. to

1:34 the line. Harlan is a loyal and very helpful servant of Overeaters Anonymous, so it's with great joy and appreciation that I welcome Harlan this morning. Good morning. Thank you very much, Leia. I'm Harlan G. I'm a I'm a recovered compulsive overeater. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona, and not to make you guys out east jealous, but it's going to be in the 80s here this week. I just thought I'd throw that in there. Uh can you hear me okay, Leia, by the way? Oh, yeah. I'm going to listen. Sounds great. Okay, thanks. Okay. We're going to take a look this morning at chapter 4, We Agnostics. And what we're going to look at first is we're going to look at the word agnostic, which is something that is

2:20 very misunderstood. A lot of people equate agnostic with atheist, and they're different. An agnostic, according to the dictionary, is a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena. A person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. That means a person without knowledge of whether there is a God or there isn't a God. And in Overeaters Anonymous, can atheists recover? Absolutely, they can recover. Can believers recover? Absolutely, they can. Can an agnostic recover? Absolutely, they can. Because

3:06 what we're going to be talking about this morning, and what we're going to be building our life on, is the willingness to believe in a power greater than myself. And that is all that is required for me to recover in this program. And if we take a look at page 44, we're going to see it says in the preceding chapters, you have learned something of alcoholism. What have we learned of alcoholism? We have learned, if we've read the first three chapters and of course the doctor's opinion, we have learned that alcoholism or compulsive overeating is an illness of the mind, the mental twist, and an illness of the body, the

3:51 physical allergy. Now, in order for me to recover from this hopeless condition of mind and body, I am going to have to have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And in order to have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I am going to have to have a a willingness to believe in a power greater than myself. Now, why is that so? The reason that that is so is because if my life has proven anything, if my life is proof positive of anything, it's that I my own, by myself, with my unaided willpower, my unaided broken brain, that my broken brain is

4:37 unable to fix my broken brain. I do not have the necessary power to affect a recovery from this hopeless state of mind and body. That is an extremely important conclusion for me to come to. And everything in this book up to this up to these words, and it's going to be reinforced many times, but up to this point says, I am I am in a position where I must believe that I cannot do it. I cannot. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to turn to a power greater than myself. And we're going to talk this morning about some of the things that we all struggle with in this area. But I believe, and if you've been in meetings

5:23 with me or you've heard me on podcasts, I believe that the most underutilized steps of the 12 are two and 10. I believe that where you see people struggling in four, where you see people struggling in nine, where you see people struggling to live in 10, 11, and 12, they are really struggling in two. So, we're going to look this morning at why we struggle and how I struggle, because I'm the only one that I've lived my life with. So, I'm going to share some of myself with you this morning. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, that is because of the twist of the mind. Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take,

6:09 you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. Now, let's take a look, and I know that this is a long chapter, and I'm trying to condense for the sake of time. But let's just take a look at something that if you've heard me speaking on podcasts or you've been in meetings with me or you've heard me at the convention in Virginia Beach, you know that I believe that food is never the problem to a compulsive overeater. That's something a lot of you may not have heard before if you haven't heard me. Food is never the problem. What is the problem? The problem for the compulsive overeater

6:54 is different from the person who eats compulsively. Now, you may be thinking, eats compulsively, food's the problem, compulsive overeater, food's not the problem. What the heck is this guy talking about? Well, I'm going to explain it. Some of us know people or maybe are people that every once in a while we eat a little compulsively, like today is Super Bowl Sunday, so they may have a few more Doritos or they may have a few more whatevers. And the next day, tomorrow, they kind of hold back on their food and they're fine. To them, food is the problem. Now, a person who is a compulsive overeater may It may sound compulsive overeater, compulsive eating, they sound very similar. Well, let me tell you,

7:39 they are worlds apart. To the compulsive overeater, food is never the problem. Food is the answer to the problem. Now, if food is the answer to the problem, what is the problem? The problem is the build-up of normal human emotions. Every human being on the face of this earth has happiness, anger, jealousy, guilt shame remorse. All human beings have human emotion. But in a normal human being, these emotions dissipate quite nicely by, hmm,

8:27 walking the dog, hmm, going to the gym, having a glass of wine, eating a Butterfinger bar, uh whatever. These emotions do not dissipate so easily in the mind of a compulsive overeater. In the mind of a compulsive overeater, when these emotions are colliding around in the emotional side of the brain, the brain will scream out for a solution to the problem of the discomfort of these emotions. And in a compulsive overeater's mind, soul, in their in their soul, in their I'll teach you a Yiddish word this morning, in their gedarm, their insides, their

9:13 guts, these emotions produce intense, searing, unrelenting levels of pain. And in an attempt to assuage that pain, to lessen that pain, to kill that pain, our brain goes to its go-to move. And the go-to move that my brain will go to is to demand of me to eat a Kit Kat bar. Now, the intelligence side of my brain says, oh, no, don't you dare eat that Kit Kat bar. That Kit Kat bar is going to make you fatter. Come on, you you you've been single now for 5 and 1/2 years after the divorce. You'd like to get a You want to look good. You want to feel

9:59 good. You want to weigh less. But, the emotional side of the brain says, "Eat the Kit Kat bar." And the intelligent side of the brain says, "No, no, no." And the emotional side of the brain says, "Yes, yes, yes." Now, anytime there is a conflict between the emotional side of the brain and the intelligent side of the brain, the emotional side of the brain will win in a walk. And it will make me say things to myself like, "I deserve that Kit Kat bar. They're not going to treat me that way. They're not going to talk to me that way. They're not going to do that to me. I'm going to eat a Kit Kat bar and tomorrow I'll get back on the on the diet. Tomorrow everything will be

10:45 different." So, I eat the Kit Kat bar. And what happens when I eat the Kit Kat bar? For about 9 seconds, I am on top of the world. I feel fantastic. See, the brain was right. That Kit Kat bar will make me feel fantastic. The only problem is now I've triggered the physical allergy. For further explanation of all this stuff, see the doctor's opinion because that's where this knowledge is coming from. Now, I eat the Kit Kat bar and I trigger the physical allergy and I cannot stop. So, it begs the question. What if I could find a way to live where my mind does not lock in on the

11:30 sense of ease and comfort that comes instantly from eating a Butterfinger bar? What if I could find a way to live where these emotions do not build up to the level of toxicity which drives me irresistibly into the food in search of a relief from the pain of not eating? What if I could find a way to live where I already feel better? And the process of bringing a higher power into the equation so as to make me feel better instantly and to do for me what the food does for me, not to me, for me. Food makes me feel great. Dr. Silkworth in the doctor's opinion calls it the effect.

12:15 And that effect is the sense of ease and comfort that comes instantly from eating it. Now, I work the steps and God is doing for me slowly what the food did for me instantly, but with none of the devastating side effects. I have never been to the doctor yet where he said to me, "Harlan, I want you working less 11 steps. You're really getting out of hand with those things. You're doing them every morning and every night and I want you to cut that." I've never heard that from a doctor. I've never had a side effect because I worked too many fifth steps with people that I sponsor. Never once. Now, the process again of bringing a power greater than myself, whether you

13:01 call that power whatever it is you call it, whether you call it he, she, it, whatever, it doesn't matter. That process of bringing the necessary power into the equation is called recovery. And that's what this is all about, Charlie Brown. This is about bringing the necessary power into the equation so that my willpower, my brain, is not going to be overmatched against the allure of a Butterfinger bar because the Butterfinger bar will win every time. So, let's continue with the chapter with that in mind. To one who feels he is an atheist

13:47 or agnostic, such an experience seems impossible. But, to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. Now, that I see that word hopeless and I have to say to myself, "Am I hopeless?" Yes, I am. Dr. Silkworth puts in there several times the word hopeless. I have to be of the conclusion that I cannot do this by myself. I am of that conclusion today. That nothing Harlan is going to do is going to overcome the power of this vicious, murderous illness. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always

14:33 easy alternatives to face. Now, seemingly, living on a spiritual basis would be much better than going to an alcoholic death. But, when ego is involved, when my ego is involved, it becomes a more difficult situation. Now, you want to be talking about doomed to an alcoholic death? I weighed 700 lb. I was 335 lb in high school. I was 500 almost 600 lb in college. I broke a lot of furniture. I have been laughed at from cars. I have been the object of ridicule by people who did not even know me. I went on my first date with a girl. I

15:19 was 35 years of age. I have known loneliness. I have known filth and squalor and shame. I have known what this illness can do to a human being and I know it firsthand. And you do too or you wouldn't be on the line this morning. We are all seekers. Seekers of a way out of the pain. But, because so many of us have blamed God and so many of us have wrestled with this idea of God who screwed us over and didn't give us a pony or let us get molested or let us get raped or let us live in poverty or let us live in loneliness that we get angry at God, so

16:05 we just shut him out. Because it says in this book and it says in this program, I get to choose my own conception of God. Every one of us on this line and every one of us in Overeaters Anonymous, wherever it is we go, we have had bad things happen to us. And we have screamed into the night up at the sky, "Why my parents? Why my child? Why me? Why my friend? Why my wife? Why my husband?" And there's a lot I don't have explanations for. There's a lot none of us have explanations for. But, there are two things that I know

16:51 about God. I know this about God. I don't have to be taught this in in I don't have to There are theologians. There are There are clergy people. There are artists. There are people of all manner of poets, all manner of vocations this morning that are going to be thinking about what God is and what God isn't. There are two things I need to know about God today. There is one and it's not me. And based on that, now I can recover. Now, I can recover. But, it isn't so difficult. About half our original fellowship were of exactly that type. At first, some of us tried to

17:37 avoid the issue hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. I am a true compulsive overeater. I have eaten in the face of every known reason not to. I have embarrassed myself. I have become When I came into Overeaters Anonymous in 1979, on February 2nd, 1979, I had become everything I detested in a human being. A liar, a thief. I wrote tens of thousands of dollars worth of bad checks. I lied when the truth would have served me better. I had become everything I hated in a human being. But, after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis

18:24 of life {dash} warning or else. Now, it takes away any type of vestige of resentment I had about God as a block because I have to find a higher power warning or else. Or else what? I'm going to die in the food. Now, we're all going to die. But, for the last 17 years that I've had abstinence, when I lost over 500 lb, I have lived. I am free because I know that there's a God and it's not me. If I die today, I will have died knowing that for 17 years I was alive.

19:10 That's a lot to know. The sadest words of tongue or pen are these few words, "It might have been." And there's a lot of things I missed out on in life. But, for 17 years I have been emancipated from the food and I have not been its slave. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But, cheer up. Something like half of us have thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted. If a mere code of morals or better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. I'd be willing to bet something right now that if I really had a chance to know every person on this line or every

19:57 person listening on this podcast, I would be astounded at the earthly things you have been able to do. The businesses that you've started, the families that you've raised and been a part of. The things that you've accomplished in your life would astound me at many levels. But there's one thing you can't do. You cannot control the amount of food you eat once you've started because you have a physical allergy. And we cannot keep from eating now that we want to because of the twist of the mind activated by the build-up of human emotion. We can't do that. But we found that such

20:42 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 complete. 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. Again, my broken brain can't fix my broken brain. Lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. Notice that that's in italics. Obviously, but where and how are we to find this power? Now, we're going to get to the thesis line of the big book right here. The second sentence we're going to read

21:28 here is the thesis line of this entire book. Well, that's exactly what this book is about. It's main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That's the thesis line of the big book. Let's take it a little further. If the main object of this book is to enable me to find a power greater than myself which will solve my problem. I'm changing pronouns here, I know that. Then that's also the main object of my life. The main object of my life is to find a power greater than myself which will solve my problem. Now, if you have a book in your hands or if you're go to page XIII or 13 in Roman numerals

22:17 and that is in the forward to the first edition, first paragraph. I'll give you a second to get over there. Page XIII in the forward to the first edition, that's 13 in Roman numerals. First paragraph, it says, "We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body." This next sentence is what I'm looking for here. "To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book." Is that consistent? Of course it is. To find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. The main object is precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. They are absolutely consistent.

23:03 Now, let's go to page 20 in Arabic numerals, that's in chapter two. I'll give you a second to get over there. We're going to reference not a lot of things, I could reference more but I won't because of time. But on page 20 in the second paragraph, it says, "It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically." What questions are they talking about? What do I have to do to recover? Is that consistent with what with what we're reading on page 45? You got it is. Now, let's go to page 42. Give you a second to go there. The very bottom of page 42. It says, "Quite as important was the discovery the spiritual principles." What are spiritual principles? There's 12 of them, they're the steps. "Would

23:50 solve all my problems." Now, notice that in problems on page 42, it's plural but on page 45, it's singular. Now, why is that? Well, let's take a look at my life. In a normal person's life, they have some brain power for recreation. They have some brain power for family. They have some brain power for job. They have some brain power for whatever it is they need to do. They have the necessary brain power to tackle those things as well as human beings can tackle those things. In my mind and my body,

24:36 when I'm in this illness, there's only one word that I can deal with on a daily basis and that word is food. I'm either actively eating or actively not eating, dieting. I'm either getting food or hiding food or hiding myself from people so I can eat food and it's maddening. The monkey chatter in my mind when I'm in this illness is unfreakingbelievable. I cannot even hear myself think beyond the roar of the food. Now, when you remove that from me because of a spiritual awakening, now I have the brain power to run my business. Now, I

25:21 have the brain power to interact with my friends. Now, I have the brain power to tackle human endeavor. So, when you solve my problem, you enable me to tackle problems plural. Let's move forward. That means you we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral and it means of course that we are going to talk about God. Here difficulty arises with the agnostics. Many times we talk to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems plural and explain our fellowship, but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters, especially when we mention God, for we have reopened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or

26:08 entirely ignored. Now, in Bill's story, after Ebby Thacher brings Bill the solution to this problem at the bottom of page eight and he's talking to him on page nine, page 10, and Bill starts to wrestle with this idea of God. Can I relate to that? You bet I can. Because if this God is so wonderful, how come I was so fat? If this God is so wonderful, then why did my mom die when I was 22 and my dad died when I was 24? If this God is so wonderful, how come I feel so much pain? How come I feel so much inadequacy? How come I can't look at the world when I'm

26:55 in the illness and be a part of it? Why is it that my quivering, jealous, scared to death, angry as get out, why is it that my insides never seem to match your outsides? But you give me a Butterfinger bar and there's a click, I match up perfectly. So, now God is going to do for me what that Kit Kat bar did for me. It's going to let me be part of this world looking right at you, not up at you, not down at you, at you. And be a part of the world. I can be what I always wanted to be but never could verbalize it, another bozo on the bus.

27:43 I'm at peace with God today because I've been able to choose my own conception. We'll talk about that more in just a second. We know how he feels, bottom of page 45. We have shared his honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been which with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. Perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate. With that rejection, we imagine, excuse me, we imagine we had abandoned the God idea entirely. We were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a power, watch your capitals here, beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological

28:30 systems, and inexplainable calamity, inexplicable calamity, excuse me, with deep skepticism. We looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly. How could such How could a supreme being have anything to do with it all? And who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow? Yet in other moments, we found ourselves thinking when enchanted by a starlit night, "Who then made all this?" There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost. I can look at the sky, I can look at Lake Michigan. I can look at I can look at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. I can look at these things in awe and wonder. But then what happens is worldly clamor start coming back into view. "Oh my God,

29:16 I got a bill to pay. Oh my God, I like that girl, she doesn't like me. Oh my God, I'm this and that." So, all of a sudden, the God idea is fleeting and soon lost. But if I work the steps, I bring him with me into all those things. "Yes, we have agnostic temperament and have these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you, we found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results even though it was impossible for any of us, excuse me, to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another's conception of God. Remember what what Ebby said to Bill? He

30:01 said, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?" That opened the door to countless millions of people. Then if I say the word God on this phone line for however many people are on this phone line or however many people are going to listen on the podcast, there's going to be a unique and personal definition of that God in your mind. Maybe some of you are atheists. Maybe some of you are strong believers. Maybe some of you are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic. Maybe some of you are are Eastern Catholic. Whatever that is, you have a conception of God that is unique unto you

30:48 already. So, let's continue. Excuse me. Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to affect a contact with him. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed by a sense of power and direction, by a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps. In other words, what is he saying to me here? I can't stop at step two. I must continue and do the next 10 steps. But if step one, and the steps are divided into four distinct sections. Number one, admission. Number two, submission. Number three,

31:35 restitution. Number four, construction. We've already taken step one by this point in the book. That's admission. Now we're going to start the submission phase. And submission is two through seven. And in two through seven, I am going to submit to that higher power. I'm going to abdicate the debating society. I have seen the diagnosis. I have seen the hopelessness of the mind. I have seen the hopelessness of the body.

32:21 And at the very core of my soul, I admit powerlessness. Now I'm going to submit to that higher power. And the pedestal on which we are going to build everything is going to be step two. But without a relationship with a power greater than myself, I can't do it. And that power for me is ever-changing because life changes. Life go we go through things in life. We have things happening in our lives which require a different type of higher power for me. And that's why God for me is alive because what can living things do that dead things cannot do? They can change and grow and adapt.

33:09 We found that God, bottom of 46, does not make too hard terms with those who seek him. And that's another thing for me to remember because I thought that because I yelled F U at my mother, because I yelled F U at my dad, because I was ashamed and embarrassed and angered by my mother's mental illness. My mother had three distinct personalities. She could be a screaming, raving lunatic. She could be a three-year-old or a completely together person. And I resented her for that. She says, "And I felt God really screwed me over there." Excuse me. I found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him. I can get to him even though I've done all those things. He loves me

33:55 anyway. To us, the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. Now, if you haven't figured it out by now, I was born Jewish in Chicago. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona now, but I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. And in the synagogues that I attended as a child, I never felt religious enough. I never felt worthy of God. I never felt like I was Jewish enough. And so at some point in my life, my brain just went, "So, goodbye. If I can't make the grade, I can't make the grade." I can make the grade. All I have to do is want to enough and start to take action. Top of 47, action is the key.

34:40 This is not a program for people who need it. It's not a program for people who want it. It's a program for people who do it. Top of 47, "When therefore we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies to the other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to affect our first conscious relation with God as we understood him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wish to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So, we used our own conception, however limited it was.

35:25 And that can change over time. It does for me all the time. 5 and 1/2 years ago, I was a married man with a big house and a big backyard. Now I'm single. 5 and 1/2 10 years ago, whatever it was, my business was five times better than it is today. I'm just crawling out financially. I'm just crawling out financially. But in these times when I had really, really bad times in the business, I didn't miss a meal. I've had clothes on my back. I've had a car that works. I've had a roof over my head. I've had all the things I needed. All the things I've needed were there for me even though it looked bleak at the time. God reached out his hand and provided

36:11 the things for me which he knew that I needed. And the most important thing he knows what I need is a big book and a meeting and a sponsor and a sponsee and steps. That was That was growth, but if we wish to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So, we used our own conception, however limited it was. We needed to ask ourselves, page 47, but one short question. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? This is the essence of step two right here. There is nothing in this program that says you must believe. All that is required of you is to be willing to believe. You do not have to believe a darn thing in this program. You just have to be

36:57 willing to believe. In other words, you have to be willing to be willing at times to just know that you are not the be-all and the end-all of the world and that there is a power greater than yourself. As soon as a man can say that he does believe or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone, a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. Please be sure to read appendix two on spiritual experience. We don't have time to go into appendix two on page 567 in the fourth edition. Just very briefly, a little history. When the big book was written in '37 and '38 and published in April of '39,

37:43 it said in the 12 step, "Having had a spiritual experience." And the book is written in such a way so as to describe Bill's and others' bang spiritual experience. It came to them like a hammer. And people were writing in to the little office in New York and they were asking, "What are we doing wrong? What seems to be the matter with us? We're doing all the things it says to do, but we're not having this spiritual experience." So, they changed the 12 steps to reflect spiritual awakening and they wrote appendix two. Now, in the daily recordings of a vision for you as we sit here in February of 2016, you guys were just talking

38:31 about it. I don't get to necessarily listen live to the meetings. I usually listen either later that day or, excuse me, the next day to whatever the latest one is, but you guys just covered this. And it says in there that to some people, they don't have this bang spiritual experience, that God comes to them more slowly. And that's how God came to me. I do not have a history of a big bang spiritual experience. I have a history of a slow growth. It says the educational variety. The educational variety is going to a meeting, listening on the line here, interacting with other compulsive overeaters. That's how I learn. And that's how I've had my spiritual

39:17 awakening. This was great news That was great news for us for we had assumed, page 47, we could not make use of spiritual principles unless we accepted many things on faith which seemed difficult to believe. When people presented us with spiritual approaches, how frequently did we all say, "I wish I had what that man has. I'm sure it would work if I could only believe as he believes, but I cannot accept as surely true the many articles of faith which are so plain to him. So, it was comforting to learn that we could commence at a simpler level. God will always meet me where I am. If I was talking to a 4-year-old right now, I would not be having the same conversation that I'm having with you on the line right now. I would be having a

40:03 conversation about do you go to preschool, where is what's your teacher's name, let's color, let's God will meet me where I'm at. He knows my growth. He understands where I am. At least the God I have in my heart does. And that's why it's so vital for me to have that job description of a higher power that I have close to my heart. He My God meets me where I'm at. Bottom of 47. Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by abstinence sensitiveness and unreasoning prejudice. In other words ego. In other words, self-will run riot.

40:50 Ego means God out. And my confusion on these matters is equivalent to what my ego does not want me to see. And my ego will throw things into the into the equation that will confuse me. That my confusion is equal to what my ego does not want me to see. Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Again, this is a very specific instruction. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Now, there are people on this line that have had horrific things done to them.

41:37 Through no fault of their own. But I must hold God's hands, and I must leave restitution to him because as a human being, I cannot handle it. There are people on this line that have had horrific rapes and and and molestation and and abandonment issues and all manner of injustice in their life. I'm aware of that. But if I'm aware of it, God is too. So, instead of stamping my feet and saying, "Screw you, God." I must hold his hand and say, "Let's work these steps together so that I can live in freedom." Because if I'm going to let people that did me wrong

42:22 control the amount of Kit Kat bars I eat, they win. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. I know I said it twice, three times because it's so important. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. Let me read that again. Faced with alcoholic destruction, am I willing to be destroyed by candy bars and pizza? No, I don't want that. We soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other

43:08 other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader. Alcohol for me is not the great persuader. Pain is the great persuader. Pain is the only persuader. Now, I misspoke before. I don't like that I said this, so I'm going to correct it. If these people that did me wrong and I eat candy bars, they win. No, they don't win. Nobody wins. Nobody wins. I wanted to clear that up. But let's take a look at the sentence that we just read. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader.

43:54 Pain is the only persuader. Now, I have been a believer of this for decades. Every OA meeting should have Dutch doors. If you don't know what Dutch doors are, they open independently on the top and on the bottom. There's a top half and a bottom half. And I really believe this. The top half should be nailed shut because if you don't crawl in, chances are good you're not going to stay. Because the only way you're going to recover is if you've suffered enough pain. If you've suffered enough humiliation. If you haven't, as my friend in in in Utah or in Montana says, "If it's still fun, you ain't done." If you If you've got any more beatings left in you, you're probably not going

44:40 to stay. If you had enough pain, that's when you do the pro That's when you'll do the work. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process. We hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were. The reader may still ask why he should believe in a power greater than himself. We think there are good reasons. Let's have a look at some of them. The practical individual of today is a stickler for facts and results. Nevertheless, the 20th century readily accepts theories of all kinds provided they are firmly grounded in fact. We have numerous theories, for example, about electricity. Everybody believes them without a murmur of doubt. Why this ready acceptance? Simply because it is impossible to explain what we see, feel, direct, and use without a reasonable assumption as a starting point.

45:26 Everybody nowadays believes in scores of assumptions for which there is good evidence, but no perfect visual proof. And does not science demonstrate that visual proof is the weakest proof? It is being constantly revealed as mankind studies the material world that outward appearances are not inward reality at all. To illustrate, the prosaic steel girder Prosaic means simple. Steel girder is a mass of electrons whirling around each other at incredible speed. These tiny bodies are governed by precise laws, and these laws hold true throughout the material world. Science tells us so. We have no reason to doubt it. When, however, the perfectly logical assumption is suggested that underneath the material world and life as we see it, there is an all-powerful all-powerful guiding creative

46:13 intelligence, right there our perverse streak comes to the surface, and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so. We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow that life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere. Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever-advancing creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of it all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it? We who have traveled this dubious path beg you to lay aside prejudice even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be,

46:59 those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about. Actually, we used to have We used to have no reasonable conception whatever. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness, and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Top of 50. This is something I've been guilty with. I looked in the synagogue of my childhood and I said, "Oh, that guy's a yutz or that guy's this or that guy's that." That has nothing to do with the religion. That has nothing to do with God.

47:44 I looked at these human beings and because I didn't judge them as perfect, then there was something wrong with the whole thing. And that's insane. Top of 50. Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance while we were intolerant ourselves. Now, I could talk for days on that one. I would pick you apart and criticize you, but if you said it to me, I would have been livid. We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees. We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. In our personal stories, you will find a wide variation in the

48:30 way each teller approaches and conceives of the power which is greater than himself. Whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference. Experience has taught us that these matters about which for our purpose we need not be worried. They are questions for each individual to settle for himself. On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. Every one of them has gained access to and believes in a power greater than himself. This power in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible. As a celebrated American statesman put it, "Let's look at the record." What did Ebby bring Bill? He brought him a a drunk,

49:15 an alcoholic that was sober. And Bill looked at Ebby, and it took all argument away from him. It took all argument away from him. He says, "Never mind the musty past. Here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table shouting great tidings." Would I have it? Of course I would. There are people on this line right now or listening on the podcast right now and you may be struggling with food. You may be actively eating. You may be actively miserable. Now, when you look at Overeaters Anonymous or you look at the people on this line that identify themselves as

50:01 recovered or the people that are not talking on the line that are recovered, what is it that they have that you want? What it is that they have that you want is freedom and serenity and sanity, cuz we're talking about step two. And restored us to sanity. Sanity not just around food, but sanity around their life. And for the people that are struggling and the people that are recovered, there's a vast difference. The people that are recovered are not actively eating and we don't want to. Why haven't I not compulsively overeaten in 17 years? I don't want to. I don't want the food.

50:50 I'm not sitting here wrestling with food. I'm not sitting here wrestling with oh my god, how am I going to get one of those with nobody seeing or a thousand of them with nobody seeing. I'm not wrestling with that today. I am emancipated. I am free. And that's what we're holding out for you. Bottom of 50. Here's the Excuse me, Harlan. Yeah. Hi, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. There's some noise on the line. I'm going to clear the line and you're going to need to press star one to unmute. I apologize. No problem. Am I back there?

51:36 You sure are. Thank you. Okay good. Here are bottom of 50. Here are thousands of men and women worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater than themselves to take a certain attitude toward that power and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, and happiness and sense of direction flowed into them. This happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements. What are the requirements? The steps. Once confused and baffled by the seeming futility of existence, they showed the underlying reasons why they were making heavy going of life. Leaving

52:23 aside the drink question, they tell why living was so unsatisfactory. They show how the change came over them. When many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness of the presence of God is today the most important fact of their lives, they present a powerful reason why one should have faith. I'll give you the reason why I have faith in God today. Because everything else in my life is an utter failure. There is something about my life that calls me to do the wrong thing. There is something in my brain, something in my psyche, something in my soul, which necessitates me to try every wrong answer under the sun repeatedly before I

53:10 will submit to the right answer. I don't know what it is, but it's it was destroying me. And when I came in here, I didn't like it. I didn't want this. I left. I came back. I left. I came back. I did it. I I I'm doing the deal. The bottom line is there is something about me that will have to try every wrong answer before I will do the right thing. When many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness of the presence of God is today the most important fact of their lives, they present a powerful reason why one should have faith. I read that sentence twice because it's vital. Again, if you're listening to this and you're struggling, there are human

53:57 beings with no more power than you that are easily living their lives free of the food because of these 12 simple steps. This world of ours, 51, has made more material progress in the last century than in all the millenniums which went before. Almost everyone knows the reason. Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today, yet in ancient times the material progress was painfully slow. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research, and invention was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas. Some of the

54:42 contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for his astronomical heresies. We asked ourselves this, are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of the material? Even in the present century, American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the Wright brothers' first successful flight at Kitty Hawk. Had not all efforts at flight failed before? Did not Professor Langley's flying machine go to the bottom of the Potomac River? Was it not true that the best mathematical mind had proved man could never fly? Had not people said that God had reserved this privilege to the birds? Only 30 years later the conquest of the air was almost an old story and airplane travel was in full swing.

55:30 But in most fields our generation has witnessed complete liberation of our thinking. Show him a long article in a Sunday supplement describing a proposal to explore the moon by means of a rocket and he will say, "I bet they do it, maybe not so long either." Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new? Excuse me. By the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does. Now, this is pretty prophetic stuff here in the big book. Man landed on the moon in 1969 and you take this 1938, let's just say, and 31 years after this book was written, there we were, human being, Neil Armstrong, standing on the

56:17 moon. Isn't that amazing how prophetic this book really was? Now, here's the bedevilments. Now, we talk a lot here in program about the promises. And the promises are wonderful. We don't have to wait for page 83 to get promises. We can get promises all over this book. But here are the bedevilments and the bedevilments are kind of the anti-promises. They're the things that happen that we have to look at when we don't work the program. Let's take a look at these bedevilments. We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships. Was I having trouble with personal

57:02 relationships? You bet I was. I didn't have personal relationships. I had people in my life that were held by me as hostages. I had people in my life that I held in high esteem because I felt they could maybe do something for me. I had people that I held in high esteem because of other reasons which I was envious of them or whatever, but I didn't really have good, solid personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. Could I control my emotional nature when I'm in the food? Let me see. No. I was constantly scared to death. I was constantly angry. I was constantly critical.

57:49 And it's it's exhausting. When I can't control my emotional nature because of my jealousy, my guilt, my fear, my anger, that's an exhausting way to live. We were a prey to misery and depression. You bet. We couldn't make a living. Excuse me. I couldn't get out of my own way to make a living in the food. Food was more important than anything. Food was my god. Now, I I talked a lot this morning about defining God. I talked a lot this morning about your own conception of God. But besides what I'm thinking, I have to look at what I'm doing.

58:36 And if every living waking moment of my life is spent eating food, food is my god. If every living waking moment I spent gambling, then gambling is my god. If every living waking moment I have spent seeking out women, then women are my god. When it says we couldn't make a living, I also take it to mean we couldn't move our lives forward by ourselves. We had a feeling of uselessness. Yes, I did. But we were and we were full of It doesn't say and. We were full of fear. That's all I knew was fear. I didn't realize how scared to death I was until I took inventory. We were unhappy. We couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. Is not a basic solution of these

59:21 bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight? Of course it was. And the suicidal. I didn't have the onions to actually take a gun and kill myself. I didn't have a gun. I didn't actually have the onions to take a knife and cut my throat. But I was going to go out death by Doritos. I was going to go out death death by Doritos because I knew no other way. And when people would say to me, "You're going to die." I couldn't show this to them, but inside secretly I wanted to die. I begged God for death. Every day was a curse. Every minute was a curse. Every minute was physically uncomfortable. Every minute was emotionally uncomfortable. Every minute

1:00:07 was a curse in my life. And now I'm glad to be alive. I don't know how much more time I have in life. I don't know how many more days, how many more years, whatever, but I'm going to live my life to the fullest by working these steps. I am no longer going to throw away the beautiful God, the beautiful life that God gave me. That's why they call it the present day, the present moment. The reason that they call it is a present moment or a present day is because it is a gift, it's a present. And what I do with it is my gift back to the God that gave it to me. When we saw others solve their problems, page 52, by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe, we had to stop

1:00:54 Excuse me, doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God idea did. Is he pounding that home enough times that my ideas do not work, but the God idea did. There are solutions to problems I could never have seen, but God brought them into my life at just the right moment. The right idea, the right person told me something, helped me with something. Something happened that solved the problem and my life kept moving. I would have never been able to see that on my own. Bottom of 52. The Wright brothers' almost childish faith that they could build a machine which would fly was the mainspring of their accomplishment. They believed that they could. Are you on this line thinking you

1:01:41 can recover? Or are you on this line thinking you can't recover? Because as Gandhi said, "There are people who believe they can and people who believe they cannot. Both are correct." It starts with that belief that you can. If we did it, you can do it, too. You can do it, too. "Yes, I can." Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems, and it doesn't. When others showed that us that God-sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the Wrights would never fly. Logic is great stuff. We liked it, we still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to

1:02:27 reason, to examine the evidence of our senses and to draw conclusions. That is one of man's magnificent attributes. We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to reasonable approach and interpretation. Hence, we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe. When we say our former thinking was soft and mushy, we threw up our hands in doubt and said, "We don't know." When we became alcoholics crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What is our choice to be? And again, that tells me that God is not

1:03:14 just somebody that stands at the refrigerator and stops me from eating. It is not the eating God. It is the God that I practice all my affairs with, everything in my life. From my finances to my clothing, to the things I do on a daily basis. Now, I alluded a little bit before this that my business at its worst went down 80%. I was making 20% of what I used to make in this business not long ago. Now, I'm just crawling out of that hole. Last year was better, the year before was a little bit better, last year was better than that, and this year

1:03:59 hopefully will will will do even better. And I used to go to the grocery store, I still do, but I went with In those days, I would go to the grocery store and I would pray in the checkout line, "God, is there anything in this cart that you do not want me to have?" Because I could convince myself, which I did, that everything in this cart is of necessity, that is something you want me to have, God. Then where God guides, God provides. And one month at a time, one year at a time, I made it through and paid every bill. One credit card bill, one mortgage payment or one rent payment, one car

1:04:46 payment at a time, one insurance payment at a time, one tax bill at a time. I made it through. I could never have done that. I could never have engineered that by myself. I'm too scared and I'm too immature. Because I'm going to reach for things I think I deserve rather than stay with things I need, and I'm going to create more financial havoc in my life. God is not just the guardian of the refrigerator door in my life. God is everything to me. He is everything. Page 53. Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of

1:05:31 faith. We couldn't duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the bridge of reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of a new land had brought luster to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands had stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that reason had brought us so far, but somehow we couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on reason that last mile, and we didn't like to lose our support. That was natural, but let us think a little more closely. Without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain type of kind of faith? Or did not we believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God

1:06:16 of reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time. We found, too, that we had been worshipers. What a state of mental gooseflesh that used to bring on. We Had we not variously worshiped people, sentiments, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully held beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us has not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith or love or worship. In one form or another, we had been living by faith and little else. Imagine life without faith, where

1:07:03 nothing left but pure reason. It wouldn't be life. But we believed in life, of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two point two points, yet there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Of course we couldn't. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that, at least so the chemists said. Thus, we saw that reason isn't everything. Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, though it emanates from our best minds. What about people who proved man could never fly? Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible, and we only smiled.

1:07:50 We had seen spiritual release, but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't so. Actually, we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of a God. Now, right there is something that is very important. We have to understand that in every one of us there is a fundamental idea of God. It is very very important for me to remember that. But I had been fighting that. I had been fighting that all my life. It may I'm on page 55. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by

1:08:36 worship of other things, Excuse me, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our makeup, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there that he may be found. It was so with us. We can only clear the ground a bit. If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then if you wish, you can join us on the broad highway.

1:09:22 Now, here is a sentence I have to etch in my mind. With this attitude, you cannot fail. Remember on page 88, it says it works, it really does. Here's another guarantee. We have promises, we have bedevilments, but we have guarantees, guarantees with this attitude. What attitude is he talking about? The attitude that he's talking about is to sweep away the prejudice I have against God. And with that attitude, I cannot fail. And for 17 years, I have not compulsively overeaten. The consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you. In this book, you will read the experience of a man who thought he was an atheist. His story is so interesting that some of it should be told now. His

1:10:09 change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving. Now, before we read these last few paragraphs here and we'll be finished, we're going to talk what The man that we're talking about is John Henry Fitz Hugh Mayo or Fitz Mayo. And he was one of the first 100. One of the distinctions he had is his story will never be deleted from the book because it's referred to in the first 164 pages, which we know they will probably never, hopefully, hopefully never change. So, if you're going to refer to this story, you have to include the story. But Fitz Mayo was one of the few success stories out of New York. He was actually born in Maryland. And he founded Alcoholics Anonymous in Baltimore, Maryland. He died not long

1:10:55 after the book was published. He actually died in 1943. And the title of the story in the back of the book, which is his story, is our southern friend. And he was very close friend, Fitz Mayo was very close friends with Jimmy Burwell. And Jimmy Burwell was an atheist, and he was one of these people who pounded in that idea of God as you understand him. God as you understand him is a very, very integral part of this whole thing. So, Fitz Mayo's story, our friend And again, if you want to read the rest of it, it's our southern friend. Our friend was a minister's son. He attended church school where he

1:11:41 became rebellious at what he thought was an overdose of religious education. For years thereafter, he was dogged by trouble and frustration, business failure, insanity, fatal illness, suicide. These calamities in his immediate family enbittered and depressed him. Post-war disillusionment, ever more serious alcoholism, impending mental and physical collapse brought into the point of self-destruction. One night, when confined in a hospital, he was approached by an alcoholic who had known a spiritual experience, Bill Wilson. Our friend's gorge rose as he bitterly cried out, "If there is a God, he certainly hasn't done anything for me." But later, alone in his room, he asked himself this question. Is it possible that all the religious people I have known are wrong? While pondering the question, he felt as

1:12:27 though he lived in hell. Then, like a thunderbolt, a great thought came. It crowded out It crowded out all else. Who are you to say there is no God? The man This man recounts as he tumbled out of bed to his knees. In a few seconds, he was overwhelmed by conviction of the presence of God. It poured over and through him with the certainty and majesty of a great tide at flood. The barriers he had built through the years were swept away. He stood in the presence of infinite power and love. He had stepped from bridge to shore. For the first time, he lived in conscious companionship with his creator. Conscious companionship. God is no longer my adversary. Now, I work at this.

1:13:14 He's no longer my adversary. He and I are friends. I love him, and he loves me. Now, earlier on when I started this, I told you there were two things I knew about God. That there is one, and that

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