Bob O. AA Male Disk 2

**Bob Olson** (0:07)
Good morning. I'm Bob Menell Colley. So, I would like to say a couple of things before we get started on the steps. And the first one that I want to say is that you can get as well as you want to here. And there's no endpoint to that. You can continue to recover, you can continue to grow in understanding and effectiveness, you can continue to get closer to God, and all you have to do is just stay in the recovery process. That doesn't mean you got to write inventory once a week or anything like that. It just means that on regular intervals, which can be a year or two years or whatever, whatever suits you, that you go back and take another look. Now, recovery, at least from my perspective in this program, requires us all to be willing to change our mind.
There's a line in the book that says that we can only be defeated by an attitude of belligerent denial, which means I don't want to hear it, I don't want to change my mind, I'm happy with what I believe. You know, maybe that worked for you, but it won't work for me. You might be different than I am. That's, you know, that sounds good, but it's all just BS. The real truth is that if you're an alcoholic, this will work for you. So, you know, how well do you want to get? You want to spend the rest of your life believing lies? If you don't think you've got any lies floating around between your ears, you're wrong.
And we're going to talk about that when we get to inventory. But see, one of the big challenges that we face after we get sober is how do we change our minds sufficiently to have a spiritual experience? And, you know, I have to be... I challenge what I believe once a year.
And I go in to that with the idea that I may not know the truth. And if I don't know the truth, I want to know it. Which means I have to be willing to look, and I have to go through the embarrassment of having been wrong. It's the only way that I can continue to recover is to continue to challenge. All that stuff floating around between my ears. So, you know, you have to make your own decision about how hard you want to do this and how far you want to go. But there is a... there is a proportional response to continuing to look.
As long as you seek a spiritual experience, you'll continue to have spiritual experiences. Now, the only way that I know how to do that is these 12 steps. I wish I knew a different way, and there may be different ways. Let's see, what I do is I just go back and do the same damn thing over and over again, and keep coming up with other stuff. Some of the most significant spiritual experiences I have had have been in the last 10 years. Now, that starts at 27 years as sobriety, and goes to today. So, it isn't like this thing has an endpoint. I believe that as long as you continue to try and recover through this process, that you will. And you can become absolutely spooky.
I have to tell you about this. This lady came up to me and she said, I really need to talk to you. And I said, okay. And she said, when are you free? And I said, why don't we just have lunch? We'll, we can talk over lunch. And she went, oh, God, no.
And that's such a contradiction. And I said, I'd be curious as to why you said that. And she said, you know what I'm going to say before I say it. And that's scary to me. You want to know something? That's not that tough. If you write enough inventory, you know so much about yourself that you know all that about other people too. And as I said last night, we are, we are frighteningly similar. I don't care if you're man, woman, young, old, whatever. We are alike. We think alike. We act alike. And drunks are drunks.
So I think it's important for everyone to know that if you continue to try and do this, you will continue to grow spiritually. And so let's talk, let's talk about the first step. And I, you don't have to be bashful around me. I'm like an old coat. You know, I won't make fun of you. I won't do anything to embarrass you. Well, I certainly wouldn't try to do that. You may embarrass yourself.
No, it just, but it, you know, if you've got to, if you want to ask a question or something, just stop me. I don't feel bad about that. It's a nice break from having to stand up here and talk all the time. So let's talk about the first step. Now, the book talks abou- when it defines an alcoholic, it does so in a number of different ways. It's, one of them is, the book says that if, when you honestly want to, you find you can't quit entirely, which means that at some point you say, I'm never going to do this again, and you do it again. I mean, this fairly simple stuff.