Bob D. AA Male Disk #2

**Bob Darrell** (0:01)
And to those of you who have done meditation, you really get that in step 11, as you separate the listener from what it's listening to. I am not the chatter in my head, I am the observer, the neutral observer that this chatters at. And see, my self or ego or whatever you want to call it, this thing inside me that I'm in the bondage of, if it wants me to play God in my life, and that's one of the things it talks about in step 3 First of all, we had to quit playing God. You don't get, you don't take a guy who's a surrendered servant and just push him instantly into the throne of control where he's playing God. You've got to scare me there. You worry me there slowly and incrementally as this chatters at me. Do you ever have the experience of waking up and your head just starts about, you know, your boss, I don't think your boss likes you. You know, it just starts a little.
Did you see her hug that guy at the meeting last night? She's probably cheating on you. You know, it just starts. It's just, it's got to worry me into the control center, right? It just, you just don't jump in there. And that's the enemy. This is the enemy.
If you were to go back and read the Old Testament, in the original language, it was written in the Hebrew, and you were to go to the Book of Genesis, and you were to read the part in the original Hebrew where it talks about the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve's first encounter with the serpent. The word that they used in the Hebrew would not literally translate into the English as the word for serpent. In actuality, it was the word that the Hebrews used to describe the sound the serpent made. It's the hiss in the slither. It's the thing that chatters to you all the time, isn't it? It just talks to you. It just says things like, don't listen to your sponsor, he's old.
They didn't want, they don't want you to date the newcomers because they're saving them for themselves.
You don't have to pay all your taxes. You don't have to pay all your amends. What about the people that don't know you owe them? You know, it just chatters. It's a self-serving, self-fear-induced chatter in my head. And I'll tell you what I've discovered. We'll talk about this in step 11
Contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. That this thing, when I'm in a fit spiritual condition, what happens is it goes over here and becomes like music in a doctor's office. It's there, but I don't really pay any attention to it. It's just like a vague whispering that I don't even listen to really. It's just nothing. Stupid. Nothing. It gets me afraid and scares me. It gets right here.
And why does it scare me? Because I stop trusting God and I start trusting it. I start listening to that. I start listening to the hiss of the snake.
And so my goal in Alcoholics Anonymous is really and truly is to keep my life out of the hands of the idiot. But it would be wonderful if the third step was some sort of arrival point, but all it is really is a decision to head my, it's the beginning of the road of recovery. It's not the end. And a lot of us don't get that. We come into Alcoholics Anonymous and we do that dance. Step one, two, three, join a gym, drink. One, two, three, get married, drink. One, two, three, have a business, drink. It's the AA cha-cha-cha is what it is.
Because it's, it's, the problem is, is you, you can intend with every ounce of your being to carry out this decision in step three and you can't. You can't.
We're blocked. The bottom of page 63, and we'll end with this little passage. This is coming up off your knees after taking the third step prayer. It says, next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal house cleaning which many of us never attempted. Though our decision, step three, was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once, my case four years, unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves that had been blocking us.
I remember in my first four years of sobriety, I'd get down after I'd said that third step prayer, I started doing it every morning, every single morning. I'd get down on my knees and with great intention, I would say the words of the third step prayer. I'd get up off my knees and within five minutes, I'm in my head in the control center running the universe. I'm driving to work, having conversations in the car with people that aren't in the car.