A Reading on "How it Worked" Step One showed us an amazing paradox: We found that we were totally unable to be
rid of the alcohol obsession until we first admitted that we were powerless over
it. In Step Two we saw that since we could not restore ourselves to sanity,
some Higher Power must necessarily do so if we were to survive. Consequently, in
Step Three we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood
Him. For the time being, we who were atheist or agnostic discovered
that our own group, or A.A. as a whole, would suffice as a higher power. Beginning
with Step Four, we commenced to search out the things in ourselves which
had brought us to physical, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory. Looking at Step Five, we decided that an
inventory, taken alone, wouldn't be enough. We knew we would have to quit the deadly
business of living alone with our conflicts, and in honesty confide these
to God and another human being. At Step Six, many of us balked - for the practical
reason that we did not wish to have all our defects of character removed,
because we still loved some of them too much. Yet we knew we had to make a settlement
with the fundamental principle of Step Six. So we decided that while we
still had some flaws of character that we could not yet relinquish, we ought nevertheless
to quit our stubborn, rebellious hanging on to them. We said to ourselves,
"This I cannot do today, perhaps, but I can stop crying out 'No, never!'
" Then, in Step Seven, we humbly asked God to remove our short comings such as
He could or would under the conditions of the day we asked. In Step Eight, we
continued our housecleaning, for we saw that we were not only in conflict with
ourselves, but also with people and situations in the world in which we lived.
We had to begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we had harmed and
became willing to set things right. We followed this up in Step Nine by making
direct amends to those concerned, except when it would injure them or other people.
By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis for daily living,
and we keenly realized that we would need to continue taking personal inventory,
and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly. In Step Eleven
we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us to sanity and had enabled us
to live with some peace of mind in a sorely troubled world, then such a Higher
Power was worth knowing better, by as direct contact as possible. The persistent
use of meditation and prayer, we found, did open the channel so that where there
had been a trickle, there now was a river which led to sure power and safe
guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to understand Him. So, practicing these Steps, we had a spiritual awakening about which finally there was no question. ---from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services, pages 107-109 |
