In Greek mythology, Cerberus, often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from his body. Cerberus is primarily known for his capture by Heracles, the last of Heracles' twelve labours.
If Cerberus can be taken out of action, hell can be quit.
To do this, the three heads must be dealt with individually, and in order. The beast will then collapse, inert, and, with some persistence, you can make your way up and out into the sunlight.
The first head is the head of self-belief. Under this doctrine, a thought I have is true by virtue of my having had it. Each time a first fearful, resentful, selfish thought on a topic occurs to me, I have the choice: do I lend it my belief, or do I dismiss it? If the thought is a seed, the dismissal is, as it were, chewing it between the teeth of reason until it disintegrates. If the thought is believed, the seed is allowed, as it were, to germinate, to produce a plant, which, in turn, produces thousands of seeds. The job, therefore, is to disbelieve the fearful, resentful, selfish thought. The underpinning dishonesty behind all three is the failure to recognise the fearful thought, the resentful thought, the selfish thought as automatically invalid, an artefact of self, the blood in its veins, its sticky sap. Hence:
Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. (Step Ten)
The second head is the head of self-centeredness. Under this doctrine, what is proximal (near) to the self is important and worthy of considerable attention, whilst what is distal to (distant from) the self is unimportant and unworthy of attention. In a self-centered condition, I think it vital and interesting to think and talk about myself. Concomitant with this is the belief that I need to figure out what is wrong with me and my life, solve my problems, and monitor my own progress constantly. This provides the perfect climatic conditions for the seeds (see the first head) to germinate, growth, thrive, bloom, and in turn produce a new generation of seeds.
Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. (Step Three)
Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all. (Bill's Story)
The third head is the head of self-indulgence. Under this doctrine, I avoid reality, avoid challenge, avoid my responsibilities, run away, conjure reasons not to simply get on with it, whatever the it is. Self-indulgence holds that I cannot act right until I feel better. It justifies acting out in a hundred ways, which is fertiliser for the problematic thoughts, and licenses inaction where action is due, likewise fostering fear, guilt, and inadequacy, both the sense of inadequacy and actual inadequacy to my potential and obligations. Self-indulgence is the deliberate disregard of God's will in favour of one's own immediate comfort.
How can Cerberus be killed?
1. Disavow self. Spot any fearful, resentful, or selfish thought as it arises, recognise its axiomatic fraudulence, and turn instead to God and to the discernment of God's will: the right thought or action. This stops the evil from taking hold. This is the right form of denial: mockery of the God-usurping hubris of Wormtongue ego, the repudiation of the junior devil Wormwood, the denial of the God-denying Mephistopheles, the alter ego of the liar in the mirror. In denying the denial of God, in saying 'no' to the 'no' to God, we are undoing the original error and paving the way for a return to God.
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” (Step Eleven)
2. Wake up. Take a strictly minimal interest in myself and a great interest in what God has to offer. I'm the agent of my own awakening by making this policy decision, from which everything else flows. This reduces the magnitude of my partly imagined, and certainly bloated psychological problems. Elephants are hard to eat but gnats can easily be squashed. Chimera need not be eaten at all or squashed: they disappear when the spell is broken.. This awakening also gives me a substitute far greater than what it is a substitute for. No hungry person chooses bubblegum over a proper meal. This awakening is the antidote to the nodding drowsiness of self-centeredness.
3. Get to work. Fill the day with constructive activity. Drive the sickening preoccupation with self out of the consciousness by occupying the consciousness with genuinely weightier matters. In fulfilling God's purpose for me, self ceases to have any interest or relevance. I literally forget myself and acquire, in its place, a real life with value and purpose. Such work, involving self-denial, is the antidote to self-indulgence.
There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if many of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens. (Elizabeth Berg)
From Alcoholics Anonymous:
Surrender to me has meant the ability to run my home, to face my responsibilities as they should be faced, to take life as it comes to me day by day .... That’s what surrender has meant to me. I surrendered once to the bottle, and I couldn’t do these things. Since I gave my will over to A.A., whatever A.A. has wanted of me I’ve tried to do to the best of my ability. When I’m asked to go out on a call, I go. I’m not going; A.A. is leading me there. ... That life for me is lived one day at a time, letting the problems of the future rest with the future. When the time comes to solve them, God will give me strength for that day. (Alcoholics Anonymous, The Housewife Who Drank At Home)
To sum up, the programme is simple. It's available to anyone who is willing to give up concern with themselves, their problems, their circumstances, their feelings, their thoughts, and show up for duty: to literally stop thinking and talking about oneself and instead to get active. Self need not be dealt with: only abandoned.
Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. (A Vision For You)
For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. ... I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. (Bill's Story)
Also:
‘Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste.’
‘It seems big enough when you’re in it, Sir.’
‘And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. If all Hell’s miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop of ink had been dropped into that Great Ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific itself is only a molecule.’ (C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce)