[Excerpts from the sharing at the Sunday morning joint SA/S-Anon Panel on Spirituality, Portland, Oregon International Convention, July 10, 1994]

Hi, my name is Roy and I’m a sexaholic. None of you knew this, but all of the speakers got together and designed the perfect program, just so we could all complement each other [laughter].

We’re all growing and if I can’t see the growth in you, then I’m not growing. If I’m not willing to see God in you, then I can’t grow. The thought came to me, looking at people’s faces, how terrifying it was when I first came to the tables in 1974. I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand looking into your faces.

Today I had a strange experience. Just before I came in, somebody was telling me about his wife’s face, and I began to look into the faces of women, up here, just now, and I saw—there’s no way of describing it—that life for me is incomplete if I can’t let a woman into my life. If I can’t let her face into my life. All I can tell you is Life is there. God is there. Then I got to thinking, well, I watched Gordon when he was speaking, and I’m also afraid to look into the face of men.

I haven’t figured this out yet, but I can know God and know recovery no more than I can know you, and let you into my life. Look into your face and take you. That’s why at the couples meeting last night my action item was to look into Iris’s face, look into her eyes, and smile, because I can’t do that. I’m an isolate.

What I think I would like to talk about is something new that I’m confronting in my spiritual experience. I don’t know what it is, so I’m going to be trying to figure it out with you by giving you my inventory, and the only way I can give myself is to bear witness to the truth of my experience. That’s what I want to do.

I’m coming to a conclusion, and I don’t even know how accurate it is, so please take what I’m going to say as something I’m struggling with. The substance and basis of my whole life until just a few days ago was the fact that I am an ego, that there is a self in me that demands my care, attention and devotion. That self is in me. It’s almost like an alter ego, a super ego. That self is something that dictates to me, that judges the world, perceives the world, and demands my attention, care and devotion. I have unwittingly accepted that all my life. I see today that’s a delusion. That is a pseudo-self, that I create.

Let’s say I meet you. And let’s say I get to know you. And I see something in you I don’t like. I create a pseudo-person in that instant. I see those few characteristics and I build, and create a person, and this is the creative power of God that we have, and I think we can do this, but we misuse it. My impression of you is built on those selected impressions, and so I create a pseudo-person. Now why do I have to create a pseudo-person? If we can understand this, this is the bedrock underlying our addiction. I have to mis-perceive the reality of your being to keep love out, because I’m a child of God, and the natural instinct of my spirit is Love, is God, who is my Father, creator of my spirit. But somehow, in childhood, sometime, I don’t know how, I chose to shut love out, and I have a hunch most of us did the same thing. And to do that I had to create an entity to take its place.

Listen to this. This is from a book [I have found helpful]. “The man thinks his consciousness is himself. Whereas his life,” my life, “consists of the inbreathing of God, and the consciousness of the universe of truth. To have himself, to know himself, to enjoy himself, he calls life,” right? “Whereas if he would forget himself, tenfold would be his life in God and in his neighbors.”

This is so powerful, and I want this, and I believe that somehow I’ve been living a delusion, and therefore owe an amends to most of the people I know in the fellowship, because my first instinct is this perversion of reality, to only look at those things, and to find and seek those things in your words, your demeanor, your face, your actions that will give me a reason for creating the pseudo-person and rejecting you and therefore keeping God out and keeping Love out. That’s why the essence of this program, as Bill says, is deflation of ego at depth. This ego of Roy has to die, not just be deflated. I don’t want that self anymore. I want the love of God. I want the natural inbreathing that will make me my full self. The self that can look in your face and just take you in.

This began to dawn on me a few years ago when the four-year-old from next door would come knocking at the door when I’m in the middle of great thoughts! [Laughter] I would open the door reluctantly, and the instinct is, “get out of here!” But he will not go away until the invisible curtain goes down and I take him in, and it’s such a marvelous experience!

I want a new beginning. I want the love of God. And it takes death of this ego, and all I have to do is recognize the lie that you are what I have created out of my need to shut love out.

My prayer and my hope for myself today—is to deeply know that I can’t do this without you. I can’t do this without looking into your face, the face I don’t like, the face I know something “wrong” about. Sober is not well. I don’t have any greater degree of recovery than I have with you, and with my wife.

Let us pray together, “Our God, we just want your Love, and we don’t know how to have it. We need it, we’re all working toward it, we open our hearts to this and we’re willing to ‘go into the ground’ and we are willing to ‘die’ to see the beauty of each other in your light and love.” Thank you.