The topic of Spiritual Experience at the Men Among Men's Groups 3rd annual conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

My name is Bob Darrell. I am alcoholic. Their moment of silence, I'd like to start with a prayer. My creator helped me to set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about my fellows, and everything I think I know about my own recovery, all for a new experience in you, lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in my fellows, and a much needed new experience in my own recovery. Amen.

My name is Bob Darrell, and I am an alcoholic through the grace and power of a God I did not believe in, I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion altering substances since October 31, 1978, And for that, I owe you my life. One of the what I just said is I'm sober today only through the grace of God. And you'll hear speakers in Alcoholics Anonymous say that a lot, and yet alcoholics die every day begging God for help. I have, I bet you that there are people in this room that have had that have been saved, had religious experiences, and then drank again after that. I've had the occasion over the last a little over 27 years to sponsor 4 members of clergy.

2 of them drank themselves to death, weeping because they couldn't connect with a god that they knew was there and couldn't access the power. There was never a question of that they believed. They always believed. They devoted their life to God. They prayed and read the bible more in 1 week than most of us will do in a year, and they died of alcoholism.

On, the chapter we agnostics, it makes a statement in here. It says lack of power. That was our dilemma. Not lack of faith, not even it's not lack of religion, lack of power. The power to transform my experience on this planet to 1 where I am integrated and a part of rather than separate and apart from.

The power to come out and play. The power to be a part of. The power to as as Bill talks about or is is talked about in the 12 by 12, to act extemporaneously. That means to be here rather than here. And isn't that really what I drank alcohol for?

Alcohol was power. Alcohol could take a guy like me, who doesn't fit anywhere, who's locked up in his head dying of loneliness, and 4 or 5 drinks would give me the power to be extemporaneous, to be out here with you, present right now, instead of up here alone and dying. That's power. And it had a lot of other aspects of it of the power that I I found in alcohol. I in in a sense, alcohol was cheap grace for the malady of my spirit.

Alcohol and combinations of drugs and alcohol was a treatment and a very immediate and effective treatment for the real malady of alcoholism. The book calls it a spiritual malady. It's the malady of my being. And it was very, very effective. And then when the disease progressed into the neither regions of alcoholism to the to the place where it we all end up coming here, where we can't act the the power is gone.

It becomes more and more elusive. I drink. I take drugs. I do everything I can possibly do desperately, futilely trying to jump start that effect and get back to the good old days, and I can't get back to them. Because if I could, I'd have never come here.

Right? I'd have been out there having fun. You know what I'm saying? I would have never come here except that lack of power was my dilemma. Lack of power.

And the book goes on to say, well, we had to find a power by which we could live because the other one dried up. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. Now, that's not obvious to all of us, but you try to fix yourself long enough and it's obvious. Because out of our own failure is is the it comes the epiphany of I'm screwed here. I can't I can't fix myself.

I can't change myself. I there's nothing I've been able to do. There's no medications. There's no church. There's no new relationship.

There's no amount of money. There's nothing I can do to change my experience sober so that I can be comfortable enough sober to stay sober? Because my experience without the power in sobriety is that it feels like I'm doing time. And I put up with it for a while. But, eventually, I can't I can't see, I can't really fix myself.

I can do it temporarily. It says, well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is enable you to find a power greater than yourself, which will solve your problem. I've often wondered about these 2 guys that I I sponsored that that were clergy, drank themselves to death. I I remember when Frank I found out Frank Frank had called me, when he'd started his last run, and he was he was drinking and he was weepy.

You know, that you know, that boy you get in your drink, and you're sobbing, and you're feel feeling sorry for yourself, and and God doesn't love me. I don't know what's wrong, and I pray, and I ask him, and and I I and when I finally got the news that he had he had, died, I was amazed. I was shocked. Because I knew at that moment in my life something that I know just as much today that I was sober only through God's grace. And the reason I was shocked is if that's true, I mean, wouldn't you think a man of the cloth would have a leg up on the rest of us?

I mean, wouldn't you? I mean, here's he's a priest for God's sakes, and he dies of alcoholism? I'm a I'm a bum. I'm and I'm sober. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.

But see, it wasn't the problem wasn't, his lack of faith. It was his lack of power. If I were to bring you to where I live in Las Vegas, which is out in the middle of the desert, and I were to bring you there in August. And I could take you in my car outside of town to a place called Lake Mead. It's one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the Western United States.

And I could show you Lake Mead, and then I could drive out into the desert in the middle of nowhere. I've shown you Lake Mead and give you a map of where I'm gonna let you off in the desert, and a map showing you how to get to Lake Mead. In the desert, in August in Las Vegas, it can be over a 115 degrees, and I will let you out of that car. And if you do not follow the directions on that map, you can wander around the desert and die of thirst knowing because you saw it, knowing the water's there. But if you can't find a way to get to the water and access the water, the knowledge and the faith that the water's there does not help you.

You must access the power. And that is the dilemma that guys like me face. I I I, couple years before I got sober, I I, I was in a county jail cell, and I I woke up there. And I don't remember being arrested. And it was horrible.

As it's and that that was not it was not a new experience for me. I used to get arrest I used to get arrested in blackouts sometimes, and I'd I'd wake up in jail. And it was a bad it's always a bad thing. And and this time, I I I have a a extremely bad feeling about the whole thing, and I don't know why I'm there. And they take me into a room, and there's a detective there who's telling me that I'm there because the only friend I have left on the in the world, the only guy that would still have anything to do with me, that the night before I took a knife with a blade this long and I'd opened up his chest, and he was in the hospital in the intensive care ward ward, and he was dying.

And as the detective is telling me that, I'm looking down at my blue jeans, and they are purple with his blood. And I remember sitting there, and I feel like I am going to start screaming. And if I start, I will never stop. That I will be in one of those I love me jackets in some hospital for the rest of my life. But what I did is I pushed pushed the feelings down.

I got hard inside, pushed those feelings down and put on my game face, and and they but they took me back to my jail cell after the interview, and I fell apart. And I and on my knees on a on a hard floor in a county jail, I begged I begged a god that I I felt so estranged from. I begged him not to ever let me drink that stuff again. I got drunk the day I got out. If you have a few of those experiences, it's it's and then you come into Alcoholics Anonymous and these happy go lucky people say, oh, and I'm just sober by the grace of God.

It's not good news for me. Right? That's good news for you. But see, I'm convinced by this point, by the time in by 1978, after 7 years of institutions since I was a kid, 7 years of failure, I am absolutely convinced that if if there is a god and if that is the answer, that I secretly within myself believe that that answer is not available to me. That I have I am too bad.

I have gone too far. I'm too broken. I'm too sick. I'm too something. But I am absolutely convinced that my case is different.

That power may work for 4,000,000 members of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I am convinced that my case is different. I'm I'm absolutely convinced of it. And on page 46, there's a very simple, simple paragraph, and it's it talks about what is necessary to begin to access the power. Not to access the power, but to at least to start going in that direction towards it. And it says I gotta do 2 things.

It says the first thing, it says we found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice. Well, what's prejudice? It comes from the Latin. It means to prejudgments. It's all my opinions, my preconceived notions.

The problem with that is is my prejudices, I don't understand or see that they're prejudices. Those are just things that that's just the way it is. Alright? I don't get that it's a judgment. It's just that way.

And it's sometimes my prejudices are emotional, and they're right below this the horizon within me. And I don't I'm not conscious of them, but yet they drive me and affect my whole view of life, as they are what they talk about in chapter 5 as our old ideas, the things that I just think are so. And I can't lay aside my prejudices because I think they're right. And father Frank and and the other guy who who eventually died of alcoholism, I think one of the reasons that they couldn't get this thing is that they were secretly convinced that their judgments and perception and opinions of God were the right kind, and they couldn't let him go. And it and it says it doesn't say we we throw them away.

It says we lay them aside. Because maybe later, we find out that some of them are right. But for right now, the the important thing to lay them aside is that I must to be surrendered is to be childlike and opinionless. And the more ideas I got, the old ideas and the prejudices and opinions about God that I bring to the table, the more baggage I have between me and God. And I I am absolutely incapable of being humble enough to be childlike in my approach as if I know nothing.

The Buddhists have an old story about the wisdom of knowing the most important thing you would ever know. And it's it's a story of a of an old Chinese farmer who lives on this little meager farm that he doesn't even own it own the farm. The land is owned by a lord, and he grows crops, and he has to tithe and and surrender a portion of his bounty and his crops to this lord for the privilege of of working the fields. And he owns only one thing in his whole in his whole world. One one possession, and that's a horse.

And he lives there with his only son, and they work this they work the fields, and it's it's a it's a hard life. And one day, the horse, his only possession runs off. And his friends and family and neighbors come over to console him, to tell him how terrible this is that he's lost his whole estate. This is awful. And the little old Chinese man just shrugs his shoulders and says, I don't know if it's awful.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. And they look at him like he's crazy. A couple days later, the the horse returns, and it's leading a whole herd of wild horses right into his corral. Now he's the richest man in the valley, and his friends and neighbors come over to congratulate him.

This is great. This is good. And the little old man says, I don't know if it's good. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. And they look at him like, what are you smoking?

I mean, you know right? I mean, you got you hit the goddamn lottery for for Christ's sakes. You know? It's good. He just keeps going, I don't know if it's good.

Couple days later, his son is trying to break in one of the wild horses, and he's thrown, and he's crippled, and he can't walk, and he can't work. And they immediately rush over to console him, to tell him how bad this is. And he says, I don't know if it's bad. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. And they think, my god, that's your only son.

How cold. How you can't you can't see that this is bad. And he just kept saying, I don't know if it's bad. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. And if and a week or so later, the Chinese army, under a warlord, came through the valley, and they forced all the young men to go and fight in a battle where none of them would survive and they couldn't take the sun because of his leg.

And he was he was able to live. And see, the old man knew the most important thing that he would ever know is that he doesn't know. And the most important thing I will ever know is that I don't know. If I we talk in Alcoholics Anonymous about this surrender process, and to be surrendered is to be opinionless. Because what am I surrendering, really?

I'm surrendering my judgment about my life. When I you know, I had a lot of prejudices, about my childhood religion. And I I grew up, I think I suspect in a very similar religious background to a lot of you guys with very a lot of Christianity and the bible and all of that kind of thing. And I had shut the door on most of that, and I I found fault with it. And then after my spiritual experience or awakening through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, a funny thing happened.

I was able to go back and revisit some of those things from my childhood, but I looked at them now through through different eyes. I looked at them through the the awakening that was within me. And what I I started looking at the at the story of creation in Genesis, and it's the story of Adam and Eve. And and it's a it's an amazing story, really, when I look at it through the through the eyes that I have today. Here's here's Adam and Eve.

God made Adam and Eve, and he put them in heaven on earth, the Garden of Eden, which was like literally a paradise on earth. Perfect paradise. Heaven on earth. He tell he told him, this is yours. You can do anything you want.

Have a good time. Live it up. Have fun. We suggest that you can't you don't eat the fruit of this one tree. You don't eat.

It's probably a good idea if you don't do that. And what's the tree? It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And they were great. It was heaven on earth.

It was wonderful. And I think one day they ate that fruit of the and got the knowledge of good and evil, got the discernment, got the judgment, got the aspect of trying to play God from the throne of judgment. And all of a sudden, Adam's going, I thought this was nice, but it's crap. God, there's crabgrass. God, leaves got cellulite for Christ's sakes.

I mean, what were you thinking? And what had been heaven immediately became awful, and what had changed? Nothing except the judgment. Right? One of my spiritual mentors was a a guy named Chuck Chamberlain, and Chuck used to used to tell a story about sitting in his house in in Southern California in this chair that he had that he always sat in.

And he said he just he'd just come off a bad drunk, and he he was having problems in every area of his life. And he sat in this chair. He was married to this woman, and he worked at a certain place, and he lived in this house, and he felt like he was in hell, and it was awful. And years later, he sat in the same chair in the same house, working at the same place, married to the same woman, and he felt like he had tears in his eyes because he felt like he was in heaven, and he said he realized that heaven's just a new pair of glasses. What had changed except his perception and judgment of what was going on?

And that really is is this what I have to undo and get rid of, uncover, discover, and discard in this journey to remove the separation between me and God. And it starts with laying aside my prejudices. With the a lot of the guys I sponsor, I encourage them. We sit and we'll I'll have them either write down a list of their prejudices or else we'll talk about it. What are what are the things within you?

What are the ideas, the feelings, the sense within you that will make it very hard for you to approach God on a day where you've just did something that you hate yourself for. It's good. It's able it's really easy to what about the day? Do you have a God that you that will be there for you when you beat your kids sober? Do you have a God that'll be there for you when you've just done some stuff that, God, you just wish you'd have never done?

Do you have a God that will be there for you when you've done some things with money that you're ashamed of, that you wanna keep secret? Or do you have a God that's only there for you when you're good? Because if you have a God that's only there for you when you're good, you are in a lot of trouble. Because when you need him the most, he's becomes the most inaccessible. Right?

So what are your prejudices? What are your old ideas? And then the second thing it says to do is and it says, and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves. And I I I didn't know the wisdom of the old timers in AA and what their in their direction for me when I was new until many years later when I read this in the book. But when I when I was new, they told me to get physically down on my knees every single morning and ask whatever was running the universe for help to stay sober for that day, and then to physically get down on my knees that night and thank whatever that was, and know that I didn't do it.

And know that that was something other than me. And I I didn't wanna do it. I I didn't, I don't believe in God. I felt I felt hypocrite. I told this guy, I said, what I did it one day, and I went to him.

I said, I don't wanna do this. I feel like a hypocrite. He says, what he says, you've been a hypocrite all your life. What's the difference? Just just do it.

And he was right. I've been the guy that I'd say one thing and do something else. I'll say I'll meet you at 8 o'clock, and if 8 o'clock came, if I don't feel like it, I didn't go. I was a hypocrite. I had no integrity, no oneness of person.

And he said, just do it. And I started doing it. I lived in this halfway house and with I lived in a room with, 3 other guys in bunk beds. And I would, get up in the morning and I'd I'd go into the bathroom and I'd lock the door, and I'd make sure the drapes over the window were closed. And then I'd take the throw rug, and I'd push it up under the crack underneath the door so nobody can look under there and see me pray.

You know? And I get down, and I it was embarrassing. It was it was I felt funny about it. But I just did it. I did it not because I believed it would work, I did it because I believed in my own hopelessness, and I was desperate, and I would have done anything you told me to do.

Because I had and you know where that comes from? Relapse for 7 years and fail, and try to commit suicide and fail. And you I tell you, it you eventually get to a point where you'll do anything. You'll do stupid things just in a hope that you will get better. Just just hope that something will change.

And I was doing this, and, from the moment I started praying and then turning my consciousness towards something that I really didn't even believe in, really, some funny things started happening to me. And there's a line in the big book that says, god does not make hard terms with those who seek him. And I I did it. I I'm telling you, if if if if my approach to god was measured on honesty or belief or faith, I would have scored probably 0. But I did it anyway, because all I had was the willingness.

And I found out later that what the that physically getting down on my knees is really a fantastic demonstration of a willingness. It's not a demonstration of faith. I didn't have that yet. You know, it was not it wasn't even clear. It wasn't even near a demonstration of some kind of trust, but it was a demonstration of a willingness.

And I started experiencing these coincidences in my life as a result of those actions. It was the only thing that was different, really, that and going to meetings. And the coincidences were were all in my favor. They were all good. It was like I I was becoming like lucky.

And and weird things would happen to me, like I would, I would have a problem, and I don't feel good, and my mind's crazy, and I don't know what's wrong with me. And I would ask this power I don't really believe in for help, and I would go to some meeting, and there would be a stranger in the meeting talking about exactly what's going on with me. And and he's got not only not only he's and he's talking about it in a way where I'm able to connect the dots in me, where I'm able to sit there and go, oh, yeah. That's exactly what's going on. That's what I'm doing.

And he's got the answer. And now I know what to do. I gotta go back to work, and I gotta make amends to my boss, and it becomes very clear. And this didn't this kind of didn't happen to me once or twice. It happened to me over and over and over, and even the skeptic that I am started to come to believe as a result of my actions.

I I could there came a point where I could not deny the overwhelming evidence in my life, in my reality that there was the hand of something was there. Over in, I just came from London. And over in London, actually, there's still parts of London that are like this, but all of London, years ago, the streets were lit with gas street lights, gas lamps. And you could go out, at twilight when the sun's starting to go down, and you could climb up to the top of the highest building in London and look out over the city. And no matter there was a guy that would go around the streets of London and light the gas lamps with a long pole with a flame on the end.

He was called a lamplighter. And you could climb up to the top of this high building and look out over the city at twilight, and no matter how hard you looked, you could not see where the lamplighter was. But you could always see where he'd been. And I could sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at 2a half, 2 years sober, and I could not see where God was, but I could see where he'd been. And even more distinctly than seeing where he'd been in my life, and it's I could see clearly where he'd been in years, Especially the guys that got sober 3, 4, 5, 6 months after me, because I watched them in detox.

I watched them in the halfway house. I watched them coming to their first meetings. I watched the fear and the deadness in the eyes. I saw the hopelessness. I knew that they had I I knew that they had a life that was unredeemable.

I knew that they'd never because of the the the because of the, restraining orders and the things that had happened to them through the courts, I knew they would never see their kids again. I knew that the they had damaged themselves to such a point that they would never really have any self respect. And then 2 years later, I'm seeing him in the back of a meeting, and they got their kids with him. And their the kids are looking at him like, that's my hero. Or I'm seeing them with their first couple of sponsees, and they're laughing, and they're they're picking on them the way that we picked on them.

Right? And they got the lights in the eyes, and and they're joking around, and you know that they have claimed something here, that you know that they have come into their inheritance, and you can't get from where they were to where they are. You can't get there. There's no medicine. There's no therapy.

There's nothing. It would take a miracle. And I you sit in Alcoholics Anonymous and you stay in the trenches here, and it's to stay on the front lines of a continuous transformation, a miracle. And I came started coming to believe, and I could do that by watching you easier than I could watching me. It's hard to see the hand of God in your own life, because God is very slow, because he's old.

I mean, he's very old. I mean and to watch to watch God work in your life is like trying to stand in front of a mirror and watch your hair grow. I mean, it's just it's not that it's not growing. It's just a very slow thing. But I could see it in you clearly.

And I started to come to believe in the only the only way the only way a guy like me could. But does it the coming to believe in and of itself is not the solution because faith is not the answer. My problem is power, a lack of power. You know, the the one of the great the the guy who's noted, often referred to as the founder of modern psychology is a guy named William James. And William James wrote a book who a book that influenced Bill Wilson greatly.

Matter of fact, right after Bill had had his conversion, Bill had went through this the old Oxford group, sketch your version of the steps that which is really what we have. He he did it in Towns Hospital. After Bill went through the steps and he'd had his conversion experience, he was given a copy of William James's book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. And I I suspect that Bill found in that book the same thing I found. I've read that book twice in my sobriety.

The first time I read it, it was I I couldn't get very much out of it because it's it's written in a very difficult language for a guy like me. The second time I read it several years ago, I started to connect with it. And here's what I found in William James's variety religious experience. William James, from a scientific from an academic point of view. He wanted to to analyze people who'd had conversion, spiritual surrender, born again style experiences.

And these experiences have been going on for for 1000 of years. People who were die. Carl Jung referred to it when he was talking to Roland Hazard, that once in a while, occasionally, there's these phenomenons that occur. And he wanted to study these phenomenons from an academic point of view. And he realized as he started to chronicle these experiences that they they invariably had 2 things in common.

The first thing that they had in common is you never had an experience like that when your life was really good. Never. You just didn't get back from Las Vegas where you won a $1,000,000 and you married a showgirl, and you're gonna fine God. I mean, it's just not like that. It's never like that.

It's it's always your it's always your a very lows you're at the low spot of your life. You're demoralized, you're hopeless, you're desperate, and you hate yourself. You hate what you've become. There's nothing good going on. It's a bad spot.

That's the first thing they have in common. And the second thing that they had in common is that those experiences, invariably, are transitory experiences, which means they don't last. The shine of them eventually wears off for most people. There's a few exceptions. And and most people, the the the old person that they were eventually reasserts itself, and the old ego grows back.

And the ego, doc doctor Harry Thiebaud, in a comes of age, talks about the amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego. You can be absolutely surrendered 1 week and 3 weeks later, you know what's wrong with everybody. You know, It it just grows back like a bad tumor. You know what I mean? It just it just comes back.

And I I believe that out of that, Bill Wilson got the motivation. That, coupled with his spiritual experience and the what he observed in the varieties of religious experience, he got the motivation to throw himself into 2 things, into trying to find a spiritual community, which he found in the Oxford group temporarily until he could 12 step enough people to start AA. And then also to throw himself in trying to transmit to someone else this this shaky, shaky thing that he'd found. This slim, shaky read that's connected him to this power. And so he throw he threw himself obsessively at trying to help other drunks.

And I believe if Bill Wilson would have just done one if he had done either one of those things but not both, we wouldn't be here. If he would've just settled in with the Oxford group to study and enhance his spiritual life and did not throw himself into helping other alcoholics, we would all be dead. Or if not dead, we'd be sitting somewhere wishing we were. So what is the problem that that that guys like me encounter? Why is it that people like my friend, Tim, with 31a half years, takes a pistol a couple years ago and puts it to his head and kills himself.

Or my friend Frank, with 23 and a half years, he puts a plastic bag over his head with a rubber band and takes his own life. Or my friend Bright Eyes, who is a great gal. She put a pistol to her head at 17 and a half years of sobriety, or the countless people who drink again. What is it that gets us back to that point of desolation? Why why can't this new found flush of spiritualism that we encounter in AA sustain a guy like me?

Why can't the fellowship sustain a guy like me? On page 55, it talks about a little bit of the riddle. It starts to solve a little bit of the riddle. And this is what I've I've discovered, not and this that this is was not only true when I knew in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm in the desolation and separation from me and you and me and God, but it it is also recurringly true at times in my sobriety, in my 11th year of sobriety, when I'm when I'm disconnected again, and I'm wrapped up in myself, and in my 15th year and my 19th year, that that this is really what the problem is. It's the lack of power, but how, where, and when do I access that power or reaccess it?

And on page 55, the book talks exactly about that. It it is a an unbelieving unbelievable prediction of exactly what'll happen to me as a result of cleaning house, as a result of removing the things between me and God. On page 55, it says, actually, we are fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. Deep down within me? No.

My old prejudices tell me that can't be so. How could something so good and so powerful be inside something so weak and so pathetic and so bad? It doesn't make sense to me. Deep down in here? No.

It must be out here somewhere. It can't be in here. Because if if if that's true, I can't there's no evidence that that's true to me. Because I don't know about you guys, but when I was new did you ever try to meditate when you're new? Oh, you might as well just don't be around any guns.

I mean, it's not good. I mean, because what happens, I try to get quiet. When it gets quiet when it gets quiet out here, it gets noisy in here. It's bad. I mean, I just because I just what's what's he mean?

What's this meditation mean? What do you think anyway? I don't know. It's like having the mind of a chronic alcoholic blocked in a state of separation from God is like being confined in a small room with an ADD hyperactive kid that just ate a lot of sugar. I mean, he just you know, just it's crazy.

Deep down within me? Ah, but here's the here's the deal. It is there, but it says it may be obscured, which means it might be blocked off by 3 things, by calamity. We all know calamity. You wanna know what calamity is?

Imagine that they on a bad day, when you're full of fear, that a that a doctor could surgically implant a microphone into your brain hooked up to some speakers, and we could hear what you think, we would hear calamity. We are producers of calamity. The books calls us producers of confusion rather than harmony. I think there's something in in every alcoholic with it drives us, this malady of the spirit to wanna be out on the edge, juggling stuff, just out right there on the edge. Producers of confusion, calamity.

I'm blocked by calamity. God if god really was in me, I mean, I he even with a megaphone, I wouldn't hear him over the chatter in the my my head. Right? Calamity. Second thing, pump.

Pump's a good word for ego. That I get so full of myself and my perception and my opinions and my judgments of life that there's no room, like a glass of water filled to the top. There's no room for anything else. When it says in the big book that self selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our troubles, is it isn't my focus really, 1st and foremost, above and beyond alcohol, drugs, sex? Isn't it really the great obsession of my focus is myself and my security, my feelings, my well-being.

Me me me me me. And it's the pump of being the center of the universe, of being the great I am that keeps me separate from God. Because you can't connect with God and play God at the same time. They're mutually exclusive positions. And then the third thing, worship of other things.

Now this, I could not see for a long time. You you could have put me on a lie detector in early sobriety and said to me, well, now that you're sober, Bob, do you worship anything? I just said, no. Absolutely not. And the lie detector would've said I was telling the truth.

But I I could not see what I could not see. And I'll tell you what happened to me. I was I was ending, my first sober relationship. It was a little over a year year and a half sober probably. And I I don't think there's a person on earth more self obsessed than an alcoholic ending a relationship.

I mean, you can go up to a guy like that and say, you know, I just came from the doctor. I have terminal cancer and 3 weeks to live. And he'll go, you know what else she said, man? You know, I just. Because it just gets on you.

It just gets on you. You can't get it off of you. And I it's it's and I'm Meg I'm like that, and it's it's bad. And I'm I'm dying and I'm dying like that. And I go I go I go to meetings, but when you're like that, you can't hear anything in a meeting.

I mean, first of all, I I remember I went to this meeting, late night meeting. The girl I broke up with is in AA, which makes it worse. And she's not in the meeting, which means that some force has put a spring in the back of my neck. And every time the door to the meeting hall opens up, my head goes like this. I'd say it's hard to hear any if God's trying to talk to you through the people in the meeting, you can't hear nothing.

You're blocked. I mean, because I'm in my head. I'm thinking about what I should say to her. I'll say this, and then then she'll say that, and then I'll say this, and then she'll say that, and then I'll say this. And it'll humble her, and she'll realize how wrong she was.

She'll be properly ashamed of herself and beg for me to come back. You know, I and while the meeting is going on, God's probably trying to talk to me through the people in a and I just I can't get this off of me. Right? So the meeting is over. I have heard nothing in the meeting.

I probably feel worse. And I end up going out to coffee with some people in AA, and I end up sitting in this coffee shop with one other person, a visitor from California who was sober 28 years. And after this everybody else left who were tired of hearing me talk about the relationship. I had this guy, an audience alone, and I started telling him about this relationship, for 20 or 30 minutes until his eyes have glazed over from from listening to me ramble on about it. When I'm done, he and the guy listened very patiently to me.

And when I was done, he said some things to me that just rocked my world. He said to me he he said to me he says, kid, have you ever thought about the first commandment? And I said, no. I'm not really into that. He he he laughed.

He says, yeah, I don't. He says, you and I are a lot alike. He says, guys like us, we can't get past the thou shalt not. He said in the he says, I believe the 10 commandments were originally written as statements of spiritual cause and effect. That somehow, as they were translated out of the Aramaic and the Latin and different languages, they got a little authoritarian spin put on them.

He said, but I don't think it's like that at all. He said, the first commandment is, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not put false gods before me. He says, I don't think God cares, really. He said, I think he'll love you no matter what. I think you can put whatever you want between you and god.

It's absolutely alright with him. The problem is you just put something between you and god. You've just blocked the light, and you will and your your being will live in the darkness of that. And when he said that, I knew what he was talking about because I felt that. I felt desolate.

And he said, when you worship something else he said, worship doesn't mean to bow down to. Worship means to obsessively turn your consciousness towards you say, wanna know what you worship? Make a pie graph of everything you've been thinking about. And the thing that owns the pie is what you have been obsessively turning your consciousness towards. And when he said that I could picture this pie graph with a little sliver for a a little sliver for work, the rest of the pie was her.

And no wonder I was so desolate, because I had put something between me and God, and I had put something between me and you also. Because my friends don't they it's it gets to the point when you're like that, where this that they don't even wanna hear from you in the meetings. Don't call on him. He'll tell whine about that. You know, it's it's you're you're separate, and I was lost.

It say, so I'm obscured. I'm cut off from God by calamity, by pomp, by worship, by other things. And oddly enough, in the 4th step, as it's set up in the in the big book, it's set up to uncover, discover, and discard precisely those three things in different forms. As I dismantle the judgment machine that is behind the pump in my resentment list, my hit list of the people I've I've built the cases against, as I dismantle that as as what Calvin talked about on page 66 and 67. And as I move away from my old ideas and my fears, from my self reliance into god reliance, and as I look at the sex behavior that puts me in a state of separation between me and other people, and consequently, between me and God, because you can't be close to God and separate from people.

It doesn't work that. I wanted it to be that way. I thought me and God are good, and the rest of you are assholes. But it don't work that way. I mean, if I'm uncomfortable around you, I am God, it becomes less accessible to me.