Sandy Beach - The Presence of the Now - AA Speaker

0:12 before I get started I got two things I want to talk about but I want to get them on the tape there one of them is at 2:15 after the group picture we're going to play in here it's optional you don't have to attend but if you've never seen Chuck Chamberlin giving a talk we have a DVD of him very poor quality and he's giving a talk to college students so it's not an AEA talk but he's talking about spirituality and you'll recognize Chuck and so it's a chance to experience

1:01 his presence for those of you that came in after he passed away or never got a chance to go out to California and we'll play it right here I think it's about 45 minutes but just to get 20 minutes of seeing him we'll put a person connected with new pair of glasses so that'll be available then the other thing is I wanted to talk about this book that's back in the back this one would be very attractive to any AEA history buffs of which I'm one and if you study a a history including the trivia there's a

1:47 name that if you're at a a conferences then that you know they have the trivia quizzes and they'll say what did James Newton contribute to a a and that's the name is James Newton and most people haven't got a clue because he wasn't an AAA member and it turns out that he was Thomas Edison's right-hand man down in Fort Myer and a real estate developer in the 20s and into the early 30s even in the depression he was making money and Harvey Firestone was you know Ford and Firestone and Edison were all very close and Firestone came down to visit Edison and while they were talking he

2:34 said I need a right-hand man out in Akron somebody that can really help run my company and Edison said here's your man right here until they talked and he thought he was really cool so he took him out now Newton had been a member of the Oxford group for a few years and was totally carried away with the power his spiritual power of the oxford meetings and when he got to Akron it didn't take him long to realize that one of Harvey Firestone son was a raging alcoholic so he took it upon himself to take him to an Oxford weekend in connection with a

3:20 business trip and the son was so taken with the whole weekend that he had a spiritual experience and never drank again well when he came back and was sober his father is going well how did what happened and he explained that he went out and went to an Oxford thing and he said what's Oxford movement so he told them and he said so we have to have that knack Rijn and he personally called up Frank Buckman and Buckman brought all his heavy hitters to Akron where the newspapers covered this thing like it was a presidential visit and because of the wide publicity dr. Bob and Smith

4:07 Henriette Seiberling and a whole bunch of others found their way to the Oxford group laying the foundation for Bill Wilson to come out and make the connection and some about ten months ago somebody mentioned to me hey do you ever read the book by James Newton and that's what uncommon friends is this is James Newton's account of his incredibly close relay a ship with Edison Firestone Henry Ford Charles Lindbergh and the Nobel Peace Prize doctor from France named Carell he's one of these guys that when he

4:54 meets somebody like that they immediately make him their best friend and so he is like on the inside of these people sharing his recollections of what it's what these people were really like a in there from his point of view and if you like history this is a lot of fun and it really gives you some insights I kind of changed my mind about Lindbergh I decided I liked him after all I had kind of breed prejudged him when he didn't go along with Roosevelt on the war so anyway that's it and we'll move into one of the more fascinating topics

5:39 that we have this weekend and you see on your schedule was this a exactly practicing the presence of them now now in a a we recognize how important it is to not be consumed by the past in the future and so we talk a lot about a day at a time that's a very common thing you got a sales meeting next week well don't think about it today just just live today today and you give that advice to everyone and we talk to each other about it but that still allows room to spend

6:29 the morning worrying about the afternoon and the afternoon regretting the morning so we took a monstrous step in the right direction by eliminating the last 10 years in addition to the morning and eliminating the next 10 years to worry about and bring you down to just this afternoon but it's still a heavy load to carry why why do we why don't we narrow it down all the way to the present moment and I think everybody I heard that and I said right right and then the

7:16 question comes what is the present moment and how in God's name could you give a talk for an hour and 15 minutes on the present moment so if you were caught unprepared you'd come up and you'd go you know right now you know what I'm talking about in the present right now and then your talk would be over and my Rockies okay so keep going let's draw it out a little more you know like now now now now so it's not an easy

8:06 subject so I've made up some stories and some ways of looking at it and I actually made cards because I want to make sure it comes out right and I started out with the ABCs at the end of chapter 5 or the end of what we read in chapter 5 the third one God couldn't would if he were sawed and we all know that line God couldn't would if he were thought and we talked a lot about seeking here becoming a seeker and so if we were going to seek God where do you go to find him you know

8:56 what do you go down by the water do you go in your bedroom do you go over there do you go over there and there is a place where people throughout the ages have gone in order to find their higher power and I wrote a little my thoughts on where this place is and it goes like this I dream of a place where all dreams end a place where love truth and light were born a place known as out of our literature the land of the ages God's kingdom the ultimate reality or the world of the Spirit a

9:44 place far away from us in distance and time a place called right here right now I dream of someday awakening and returning to my land of origin a land known as the now the eternal God's only home so that kind of narrows it down that if you're not in the present moment you're never going to find God you're just not going to find many place else if you are not there the contact won't be made now religion and science have

10:33 both addressed the past in the future in great detail I mean science can take you back to I think it's about 2 millionth of a second after the Big Bang and take us all the way up through 11 billion years and tell us everything and what is going to happen and all these projections but there's very little written about the present moment it's almost like it doesn't exist we're not going to study that because it doesn't really fit in and the same thing with a lot of religions they talk about the origin of

11:23 divinity and what happened and what was taught and they talk about what's going to happen a lot about the future and somewhere off in the future this entire contact will be made and there's all of these things and once again there isn't a tremendous focus on the present moment matter of fact there's a lot of emphasis on the good that's going to happen to you if you continue to pray if you continue to do this something wonderful will happen will happen and as a result of

12:14 that we spend a lot of time anticipating those things that will make us happy and we can hardly wait to get there and I think we're tilt you know when we're little we go oh boy oh boy pretty soon I'll be in school like my grown-up sister and then that'll be a good deal then we go there this isn't a good deal what the hell that I want this for but when I get out of grammar school look at those high school kids they've got cars but when I get there and then we get there and we're the bottom of the heap again we don't know what's going to hit but when I get in college yeah me you know the whole thing and then I get out of college I'll have a degree man I'm

12:59 being important and you start at the bottom of the workplace and but when I get promoted but if I get her a job boy if I could ever get this girl to marry me well if I could get this if I could get that if I could get that and so there's a tendency to be just out of reach all the time we're just about and one thing that put us in the now was alcohol we really discovered the present moment the second we drank I got about three drinks down I wasn't thinking about how good things could get I was thinking about how good things are right now it was wonderful it was that

13:50 just sat there didn't want it to end people would be going home to their wives no no don't end this don't end this moment so we got a glimpse of it but now we're sober we can't do that we can't use alcohol to get there and so I tried to come up with well how do you get there and what would the program say about it if we took our steps and translated it into the present moment and I came up with this we do it the same way that we find out the truth

14:35 about ourselves by getting rid of everything that isn't the truth by getting rid of all our defects and old ideas until there's nothing left but the truth about ourselves so following that model the trick would be to get rid of everything that isn't there now and then that's what would if you think about it we're going to have to get rid of time itself anything that's connected with time has to go and we all whoops I don't think that's possible but we

15:23 invented time we invented it as a means of meeting each other for one and having everyone show up at the business meeting at the same time and all agreeing to get to the airplane which is going to take off at 3 o'clock so it serves a nice function in order to accomplish certain commercial and everyday things but it has no meaning in our spiritual life and so if you can imagine we're all now perfectly spiritual beings I know that's a big

16:10 stretch for some of the people in this room whose names I will not disclose bring that out but it is possible and so if we were there in that precious moment we'd notice that people are still wearing watches only they had they were cooler looking they were a lot thinner but they were fashion statements just like watches are today and we might go up to Jack over there that's a nice watch you got Jack what time is it it's right now Thanks and we let what seems like an eternity

16:57 go by and go back to Jack well Jack what time is it now right now this watch is never wrong it has no moving parts it just has a beautiful band and it reminds us that it's always right now so there's a just a visual of it's right now there's nothing else everything that happens happens right now there's no it's going to

17:43 happen that's out of the picture so the only thing that I now am limited to experiencing is right now I'm just here Eckart Tolle is an author in the back who writes a lot about this he wrote the power now in the new earth and I somebody gave me a CD of a lecture he gave in New York City and he said he went out for a walk and everybody's walking so fast that he had to increase his pace or be crushed on the sidewalk

18:31 he been in New York you know how fast they're very woman but they're going man they're going and he started watching what the hell everybody was in such a hurry for and they were really going somewhere and he finally figured out where they were going was to the next moment because it was going to be better than this moment and and it captured the whole thing of our entire lives I can hardly wait until I can hardly wait until and when you're in such a hurry to get to something that's going to be better than it already is you never take the time to see how it is it may already be perfect but we never

19:18 stopped long enough to go well how is it right now well who cares it's going to get better later so we never really looked at it we just concluded that it couldn't be as good as it's going to get and with that mindset we missed the whole show and we could miss it all the way through life and go all the way up to the deathbed going well I hope it's better after you die because I never found how good it actually was so the story that comes up next is the past the present and we're having a

20:04 conversation and they decided that there was a lot of tension between them at all times they were just pulling and tugging in many different directions so they decided why don't we hold a meeting and we'll see if we could compromise and find some way of reducing all the tension and the future said you know we're in a historic building they're in Philadelphia it's a right upstairs is a very famous room I think that would be the place to hold the meeting and they all agreed but that is cool that is really that should be quite a meeting so

20:52 it was easy to discover the location or to agreement on the location of the meeting next came when the meetings going to be helped this was the horse of a different color because right off the bat the past said we got to hold the meeting two years ago it's familiar we'll all be comfortable we've already been through it I think we should definitely out of desire to get something really done go to someplace that's very comfortable and the future disagreed immediately I hate that it's boring I didn't like to pass at all I don't like you I think we should make this a very exciting meeting

21:38 and hold it two years from now that's when it should be held we don't have a clue what that'll be it'll be really cool and we'll go there that's what I think we should do and then I'll said you guys make a pretty good case and I'm really torn I think you both have very good ideas but I would point out one thing that if we do go back two years and we settle in for the meeting it'll be now when we get there in the past year I guess so he said now if we wait and go in there two years from now it'll be now when we go in there in the future when yeah he

22:24 said I think we ought to hold it right now and they couldn't think of a argument so they grumpily went up into the room and took their seats at the table to hold the meeting and observers say that as they sat down there ended up with just one at the table than now and a great peace came over the room it seemed to light up a little bit and the people watching felt really happy because they saw something of great magnitude happen and that's the type of meeting we ought to hold with ourselves in the debate in the worry cut the ties

23:13 and get there Chuck talked about that that conscious contact can only happen in the now and our whole weekend has been designed to talk about conscious contact the saying on the board behind me simply allow everything to be as it is is an automatic ticket to the now it just places you there and as long as you stay there you could have everything that needs to be revealed revealed which is

24:00 much more important than anything we could accomplish by preparing for some future goal so in a way when we work the steps then we get rid of our old ideas in this instance I'm going to give up everything that I've created and everything that I've created is my identity I'm actually going to give up the AI which is my own creation which ties into the question yesterday Who am I and the answer was I am so I've got to eliminate anything that connects me to

24:48 time do you follow what I'm saying you I have to eliminate anything about me that connects me to time I remove all my defects of character if that were accomplished we would be in the now there'd be nothing left of my will and I would simply be a servant of God and from moment to moment would simply carry out what guidance I feel I have received and that would be the extent of my entire plan which sounds vaguely familiar about Chuck Chamberlain saying

25:35 for the last 22 years my entire plan for life is to get up every day and see where God guides me which is you know we go well that's good for Chuck but I got a real life to lead like he didn't run a business and didn't have his marriage and all these other things it sounds too remarkable then on page 757 in the big book when we drew near to him he disclosed himself to us well again where is near how do you draw near go to Jerusalem know you we have to go in we have to eliminate time and go into

26:23 the present moment and then he will reveal himself to us and again more will be revealed be still and know that I am there there's hints all over the place about where God can be found and they all lead to the now it's nope it's like all roads lead to now and all roads niat lead to God and all roads lead to the real me which or my true nature in the 12 and 12 and the 11th step it said we may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate

27:11 reality God's kingdom I've always liked that lines in the 11 step in the 12 and 12 we may be granted a glimpse of the ultimate reality God's kingdom that's a lot to put in a AAA book isn't it you're going to be granted a glimpse of God's kingdom and again the kingdom is the present moment that is the kingdom there's that there's nothing beyond that that's it it's the somehow get to that present moment so I made up another story about a I'm searching for God

27:57 and I'm tricked trekking down a path and all of a sudden there's a door in front of me and the door is marked the now can I go hey doesn't get any better than this so I go up to the door and I knock on the door and the voice said who's there and I go Sandy Beach said sorry you can't come in you have to figure out the mystery of the now come on back when you've got it figured out come on back when you think you understand the password to get into the now so now I

28:44 got to go back and I got a talk and I got to get some advice and I got to get some wisdom and somebody tells me the secret and I went wow I knew that and I forgot it so I came back and I knocked on the door and they said who's there I said the hole in the doughnut this is a nonentity I'm anonymous oh come on in I was allowed in because they had no identity I was allowed in because there was no I left there's no room for the I in there but there's and that's why our

29:34 my name is Joe and I'm an alcoholic is one of the passwords to get in there that's who I am Joe the alcoholic what is it alcohol what do we say what do you really mean when we say I'm an alcoholic when you cut through it all it says I have a condition that unless I find God I won't survive my name is Joe and I'm too far away from God I need to find God that's what I'm an alcoholic means we have a disease

30:22 that only from the chapters of the agnostic a spiritual experience can conquer so it's a tremendously humble statement to say I'm anonymous I'm a person who desperately needs God well come on in this is where God lives and we only let people in who desperately need him and are willing to give up that other world in order to get here oddly enough in churches they would say I'm a sinner and the definition of the

31:07 sinner is I'm too far away from God it has nothing to do with doing wrong things or this or that it's a simple statement I'm too far away from God and I need to get closer to God so we're saying the same thing but alcoholics like our version better you notice how bill shiz away from sin he sneaks it into 12 and 12 we don't like the word sin but I'm sneaking it in anyway here's the seven deadly sins remember that and go okay Alex I'll concede that they're there but I like having a disease better and that's how we get everybody in here we don't tell them they're sinners we tell them they're sick oh okay I just don't want to be a sinner you're not you're sick okay come on in

31:54 well what do you do about being sick same thing about being the sin oh I'm sorry no no we have this thing that'll help you with your disease or what is it finding God Wow it's one of the minister told me over that yep don't listen to him we got it right here so you can see it's really been packaged in a most remarkable way and we talked about that earlier the manner in which it's presented but we've done who presents it somebody on the level playing field all of this leads us to this door and we finally come in and we're learn the password to get in so how do we stay

32:39 nothing the only way to get in there is if you're nothing the hole in the doughnut I remember that and then I think it step three in the twelve and twelve if I turn my life over remember he said you got to turn over everything including not just alcohol and then as bill writes a lot you notice how he writes that he'll advance a point and then he'll tell you the objection that you're going to have to that point and so you go some fictitious voice goes well if I do that I'll be the hole in the doughnut you remember that and as you study that you realize the hole in the doughnut is a completely spiritual person it's nothing I have be gone all the way from a big shot to a servant

33:28 which is the highest pay grade and Alcoholics Anonymous everybody arrives here a big shot and if you win you become nothing you become so small you can go through a screen on a screen door because you have nothing that you are grabbing on to that has to come in with you now that's a lot to get rid of there's a lot of things that we take with us George Carlin had a funny routine about our stuff don't you remember that you're going on vacation first your house is designed to hold all your stuff and sometimes you

34:14 need to build an addition on the garage because you got some more stuff you both need a smaller boat an RV and a motorcycle that you tow behind the RV and a fishing blimp if that you told behind it didn't yeah a lot of stuff and when you go on vacation you can't take all the stuff from your house so you got to pick out what stuff you think you're going to need when you go on the vacation and you go through the whole routine and then sometimes you're in the hotel you're on vacation somebody wants you to go up there for one night so you want to take a little bit of the stuff that you took on the vacation from the stuff from your out and it's all your stuff well you can't come in knock knock no stuff allowed can't bring it in pee now we see the now you really got to be

35:04 a nothing to get in there how about that I'd like to vouch for my friend Dennis he's a nothing that would be a spiritual endorsement trust him he's a nothing do you ever think you'd want to be a nothing someday have somebody say what a man he said nothing [Music] doesn't sound attractive does it doesn't sound like that should be the answer I'm a nothing course a nothing means I'm a perfect instrument for God now he I'm a pen and he's the writer that's a nothing but without the pen

35:51 none of Shakespeare's words would be written so that pen is pretty important amazing so I said well what can we design to get us into the now we need a club we need something powerful to get us there most people can't do it on their own in the Catholic Church they have orders priests that belong to different orders and they specialize in taking a group somewhere and the Jesuits focus on knowledge these guys are smart they can debate they've really focused their minds we're not going to qualify for

36:39 that so we're not going to organize anything like that but the Franciscans on the other hand and we're all familiar with st. Francis we have his prayer out and the Stations of the Cross where you can read one line at a time so I thought that that's who we ought to model ourselves after the Franciscans now st. Francis devote his whole life to get rid of his ego he got rid of all his material possessions he just went around and the feed saw somebody with that was cold he gave him his clothes so that they could get warm he was only concerned about other people so he was obviously sacrificed getting rid of getting rid of simply trying to devote

37:28 his whole life into killing his ego and I said to myself I'm not going to be able to create one of those in a a where these guys have to get rid of all their stuff so I came up with an order that we can form here in a a and I called it the Wilsonian order of the present moment named after our co-founder I thought it'd be a lot of guys oh yeah and I'm telling you at a time you get to keep all your stuff ah so I see a few hands yeah yeah well you I'm gonna wear a little pin

38:14 wilsonian order of the present moment I'd like to join that now just before you come in I'm going to read you the pledge to get in to the Wilsonian order of the present moment and I want to see how many hands are still up when I get through okay okay you would raise your right hands but we're not going to do that do you solemnly swear to abandon and renounce your own personality all of your goals all of the causes you are involved in all of your opinions all of

39:03 your fears all of your memories of the past all beliefs all hope all power to choose all faiths all resentments all desire to know or understand all plans for the future you solemnly swear to let go absolutely and I can hear the voices what an order I can't go through joining it do not be

39:50 discouraged none of us are Saints we're willing to grow so that the ticket to the now and I could see as we go through the list okay I'll get rid of the resentment I'm not getting rid of my causes oh no no no no I gotta save the world how about your plans for the film not get rid of all my plans for the future I've got a plan for my retirement I got a plan for this my kids are going to go to college go ahead but you're not allowed in so we're gonna have to

40:35 reconsider you remember that oh I forget where that is in our literature is you're gonna have to reconsider or die it was over the fact of whether you're an alcoholic or not or whether you're gonna choose god or not we consider or die huh what's this god stuff here it is what's the last line the prayer st. Francis it's by dying that we awaken to life eternal what dies not the body we're not talking about that where we bury you in the ground we're talking about the I your personality your view on everything what what constitutes you

41:20 in the world that you put together well in my world I'm a famous this and in my world in my world in my way but my world sucks that's what we finally agree would you like to go to God's world yes then get rid of yours and you'll be there it's no big mystery it's the same as the sixth step it's exactly the same would I be willing to get rid of every piece of identity that is connected with me in order that God can shape me into what I could be going back to and that thing

42:06 about when you're a kid it's your life you have to take care of it and we should have been told it's not your life it's God's life turn it over to him and let him make something out of you and so you see the parallel of our steps in the present moment work it's almost an exact parallel that we in its spirituality is very much like this it's a paradox if you want to get there you have to eliminate everything that isn't it and in this case we have to eliminate time and we end up in the eternal moment and then I wrote some lines down that helped me understand this and I'm not

42:55 saying they'll all fit but this one I really like the question that is asked me is do I believe in God and my answer now is no I believe in letting go what am I saying I'm saying my belief in God is limiting me from letting go and finding God I'm at the point my belief got me to the point where I'm going to let go I don't know who God is I haven't got a clue what it is so I'm now willing to jump off the platform of my beliefs and stick my hand

43:43 out and see what grabs it but I can't go there with my belief I have to just go I have to get rid of faith I have to go I'm going to let go absolutely there's no room for any of those things now and it was suspending when I felt that the power of letting go supersedes all hope faith beliefs every they were holding me back isn't that funny that you would suddenly be abandon your beliefs it's as if they got you to the point where you let go but you can't keep them with you they're too restrictive there's

44:30 too much of me at what I believe is going to be theirs I've got too many things that I made up in my head then I saw a definition of faith faith is letting go there's no other need for faith it serves no other purpose whatsoever other than to allow us to let go I think a lot of faith to let go I'm going to let my world and see what's there I've no idea what this is I don't have a clue and again I found that different the moment is the door of heaven the present moment and I covered this

45:16 yesterday there is only life there is nobody who has a life I'm simply part of life and that's what truck was trying to say is this conscious separation gives me the feeling that I exist by myself and there's no such existence the universe is life and I'm part of it as soon as I realize that then I'm part of you you yeah I this whole room we're all part of something bigger than us nobody is an individual here we're all leaves on a tree we're all leaves on a tree

46:01 this leaf doesn't have an identity of its own well entire this tree I think I'll go for a walk and go over there he may make it up in his head if we gave the leaf an ego I did a whole routine on the elm trees in Connecticut they were fine until we gave him an ego and then the leaves that these leaves are on the bottom limb and they're looking around and they're going wow this is kind of cool it is and then they look up at the top and they go those guys got a lot better view and we do how the hell did I get down here and they're a lot smaller than we are we do a lot more work than they do we process

46:49 and we keep the tree alive and we're down here we have freakin bug eight-part a hole in me I look like a piece of crap sitting down here this really sucks there's got to be some better than this frickin tree on the bottom limb bird [ __ ] all over me what the hell this is really awful what's that down on the ground [ __ ] dead leaves dead leaves we're gonna frickin die we're on the

47:34 bottom limb and we're gonna freakin die let's stop synthesized photosynthesis process and bring this frickin tree to a halt why should we be what do we care what happens to the tree we got I got to take care of myself for God's sakes I can't be loafing around feeding this tree I think that you can just see the loss of awareness that they are the tree there's not that thing of the leaf there's a tree with all its parts but no

48:21 part has a separate identity and we think we're separate we've created that which normal because it looks like we're little kitten we're at the center of everything so we know what that is but that's what we're trying to destroy through the steps to destroy that there's a parallel story where the hands and the feet are having a discussion and they said you know something we do all the work we're out in the field you're pushing digging legs are lifting we do all the work in order to get the food to

49:09 feed the stomach the stomach does nothing it just sits there where the what we do all the work let's stop feeding them screw them can you imagine doing that what would happen freakin arms and lay and feet would starve to death until they realized they were all part of the same body there's no such thing as a separate part everything functions as a unit and so this is what we're trying to do is to understand I'm part of God that's some authors would say

50:00 that what's going on right now is God is sandy beach Inge I'm his creation and you're watching his creation talking that's how intimate and closely connected God is in all of us and the search for God it's almost like a practical joke the the classic story is the two little fish out in the ocean real young little fish and the big fish goes by and says to them how's the water boys and swims off and one turns to the other says what's water what is it another fisher playing - Oh water you got to go all the way - why and you'll

50:47 find some over there okay okay okay weather where is the water where is God he he this is God here right now this whole room is the question is to be able to see it the only place to see it is in the present moment the only way to get there is to destroy everything that we've built that connects us to time and so that's where we're going in this then as we get down to the home stretch one author suggested this and I really liked it and I found that when I use

51:33 this as a target meditation it really works the whole point of meditation is to have a sudden change in consciousness that's the point of it and so I just look forward to that I look forward to sitting on a bench and just breathing until I see something different in other words it's as if I expected it isn't that I expected because that's you know the future this or that it's like I'm aware that that's exactly what will happen that something will be revealed and it always is there's a sense of dropping burdens I'll

52:23 just feel something go away from me but I don't have to deal with anymore it's gone and so I've always liked that definition bill writes something of great moment is apt to occur I've always liked that something of great moment is apt to occur I forget what we were doing when he wrote what he's writing about when he says that and the great moment is the presence of God in other words the conscious contact actually happens and when I think of a great moment and this is the end of this when we say something of great moment

53:10 what that means is after that great moment things are different and will be different from then on the printing press the second the printing press was invented the world changed dramatically it was never the same again and we can the atomic bomb the second it went off that was a singular moment people's peace of mind has been affected by that just didn't know that was much power was

53:56 there a black hole when they first found that they go fine freaking star was burning for nine billion years and it just would do and it imploded and now light can't escape it's the only thing that light can't get out of you know wow I would say that would change the neighborhood you know what I'm talking about if our star just went to man things would be a little different singular moment the Big Bang that is a they call that a singularity so if you

54:43 eliminated time which is what we're trying to talk about the way you would refer to the universe is instead of dividing it up into 1 billion 2 billion 3 billion 4 billion we would simply say the Big Bang is still happening we're part of it we there when it started and it's still going on we were part of that present moment and we're still part of the expanding universe that's a whole different way of looking at it and so I

55:28 started thinking about AEA was there a big bang just for us to look at and if you talk to people who've been around a while there's probably three big bangs that would be submitted for consideration one would be the Mayflower Hotel there's a budge plenty of people in AAA that like that one at that moment AAA was born other people might choose the kitchen table when EBI and Bill were sitting there and something allowed bill to change his mind about God and the third one the one I happen to like was his spiritual experience in towns

56:15 hospital because up until that singular moment there was no hope for alcoholics anywhere and hadn't been forever right up until that moment and in that instant everything was changed forever in that instant was an awareness of God and awareness that the obsession to drink had been lifted and an absolute compulsion to make sure other alcoholics had the same awakening all contained in

57:01 a split second and the compulsion the desire to save every alcoholic in the world was so strong that it never wavered and bill went through a lot of times being evicted couldn't raise money every ID he had didn't work and he could not stop he just kept going and eventually it the whole vision that he had came true he actually saw one alcoholic passing to another alcoholic all around the world all in a second

57:49 boom and so I like to think that that moment is still happening and you and I are part of that moment it's still going on inside of you right this second so we're still present at December of 1934 we're still experiencing that now and I think you can feel it you can feel that spiritual energy flowing through everybody in this room as if it were 1934 and there's nothing we can do about

58:37 stopping it because no matter what happens to you you will be unable to not help the next alcoholic you will crawl out of bed you will have to have fun when you don't want whoo and you will pass this message because that's the power of that moment that's my best shot at the now so let's wrap it up thank you [Applause] you