12 Steps for Anyone Who Wants Them
What Do I Have in Common with People in Recovery? Why Would I Need or Want to Do the 12 Steps?
Well, you may not need to! OR want to. If you don’t relate to the following 2 short paragraphs, (which I call the “Instincts and Bedevilments”), or if you have another method for keeping fairly emotionally balanced in your life, then you keep on keepin’ on! But if you agree with/relate to the following 2 paragraphs, then you might want to consider doing the Steps. It’s truly the BEST FREE THERAPY around! And you’ll make friendships like you never dreamed were possible.
(Psssst! Sneak Peek! This is also how I start Step 1 with my Sponsees.)
The Instincts and Bedevilments:
In the 12 and 12, we read that we are all born with natural instincts: for Emotional Security, for Sex & Relationships, for a Place in Society, and for Financial Security. These are all normal, God-given, instincts. It’s when these get too far out of whack we suffer, and our fellows around us suffer. That’s when we see that our instincts have now turned into physical and mental liabilities.
This paragraph describes *some* of the common ailments, but not all….. however, a starting place is on Page 52 of the Big Book. We see listed here a list of some of the “bedevilments” of the person who has let those instincts get all out of whack:
'We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people.” (These are *some* of the common ailments, but certainly not all.) Point is, once we really see that we’ve let our instincts run wild and wreak havoc in our life, we can eventually see that these bedevilments have left us powerless over our situation- and perhaps- just maybe- there is a solution to this.
What If I’m Not an Alcoholic? How Do I Read the Big Book and Apply it to My Own Situation?
Easy. Every time you come across the word drinking, cross it out and write “thinking” if you’re a slave to your thoughts. Or write “gambling”, or “sexual conduct” or whatever it is that’s holding you captive in your own life. It’s really that easy. And if you do this work authentically from the very start, it works. It really does.
What is a Spiritual Malady?
See the “Instincts and Bedevilments” Paragraphs above. The Spiritual Malady is the result of the Instincts and the Bedevilments combined. (Instincts+Bedevilments=Spiritual Malady) Although yours might not be that severe, It’s the great human emotional sickness that connects us: Anything that holds us back in life, anything that makes us feel like a slave to it. Any square peg that we are trying to fit into a round “hole in our soul.” It can be intelligence. It can It can be having sex with strangers in crazy places. It can be a reliable food addiction. It can workaholism. It can be gambling. It can be gossiping. It can be a shopping. It can be an unnatural level of reliance on self. A phrase often heard with he women in the program is “Money, Men & Mansions.” It’s basically any external solution we use to try to solve an internal problem.
What does a Spiritual Malady Feel Like Emotionally?
At first it’s not bad, in fact, it’s kind of fun when our instincts run wild- for a bit. But when hangovers kill the following day, the silence from a post-coital partner has us making up false narratives and doubting ourselves, the credit card bill shows up…. these things seem small but piled up over time, they begin to take their toll on us. They leave us feeling empty and unfulfilled. Sometimes, we end up taking it to extreme measures and participating in the behavior(s) so much that we realize secretly that we can’t and don’t want to live without it, though secretly we convince ourselves that we can.
If we’re one of the ones who has let one or more of these instincts and run buck-ass wild and suffered the consequences of the bedevilments, it can stop it there if we recognize the malady and want to stop this train before it gets too far down the tracks. But many of us live in denial and decide to go ahead and see how far we can ride…..still rationalizing to ourselves and/or others that we can quit anytime we want to.
Then it escalates: it’s loneliness like we’ve never felt before, because we only have energy to put on our full masks every so often in public so others won’t see what’s really going on inside of us. So we choose to isolate, and people begin to tolerate our BS less anyway, to which our reaction is usually, “well, screw them!” We’re angry. We’re bitter. We’re resentful. And the cherry on top is we’ve developed a fear where we’re afraid to be with our own self. We can always surrender then, but if not…..
It escalates again and becomes this terrible feeling of impending doom- like the walls of what was formerly known as our life are slowly rumbling and about to start caving in all around us. We can begin to start having panic attacks. We realize we are terrified at the thought of looking in the mirror for fear of seeing reality: we are simply a mere fraction of a fraction of who we were truly meant to be. It’s a self-loathing so great that we’re actually secretly afraid to have the TV off, or other seemingly strange and paranoid things. We want constant distraction so we don’t have to be quiet, because quiet leaves us with the risk of that empty, dark feeling screaming so loud in our head that we have to hear it and stare at the stark reality that we have become what we have feared.
How Exactly Can We Rid Ourselves of this Spiritual Malady?
A Desire is the only key ingredient necessary to begin healing from the Spiritual Malady.
Arial view, our AA coins are printed with a triangle symbol and on the left angle is the word “Unity”, while the right side says “Service.” The bottom foundation of that triangle says “Recovery.” I could do a whole blog about the triangle, but the Triangle symbolizes are those 3 pillars of AA, and that all are necessary to recover- sort of like a 3 legged stool balances. We use Honesty and Openness to achieve Unity with our fellows. We need to be Open and Willing to provide Service to our fellows (help others.) even though we ay not understand immediately what serving others has to do with Recovering. It’s through this Openness and Willingness that we Recover.
Here’s “how” you do it: HOW. (Honesty, Openness, Willingness.) These 3 concepts are the found in the first 3 Steps.
“HOW” Explained: Transitioning from Spiritual Malady to Psychic Change.
Honesty: Most of us believe we’re honest. Most of us believe we don’t lie. But many times, the truth is we use all kind of magic to make it look like we’re honest. But the smoke and mirrors we’ve used to present a certain face to the world turn out to be manipulation, denial, avoidance, deflection on various levels and justifications.Step 1 teaches us Honesty.
Openness: This is just the ability to be open to considering that we might have throw out several lifelong conceptions. We can consider that we may have thought for years upon years may not be right. Many of us were brought up in blame-and-shame based homes, by parents who were brought up in a similar environment, where it wasn’t ok to be wrong, and it was a bad reflection on us and our parents. Many of us were were raised to have a big ego, although it was never posed as such. Breaking the hard shell of the ego and admittance when we’re wrong is actually the beginning of emotional security. We demonstrate this maturity when we can admit that maybe our beliefs could be wrong, OR we’re correct AND OTHER BELIEFS ARE CORRECT TOO! (whatever they were: A particular religion; Agnostic, Atheist, Existence of Aliens, A belief that the World is Flat, etc.) Step 2 teaches us Openness.
Willingness: When we have truly “had it”, and we’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, we become ready to try anything to achieve freedom. Even place ourselves totally in someone else’s care. I’ve personally done some crazy and extreme things to achieve sobriety. After a while, I began to settle in to my own recovery groove and trust in that individual process, but that took years. I believe for me it happened because of my crazy level of willingness in the beginning. We must be willing to do new things, and be open to trying whatever it takes, including getting a whole set of playgrounds and playmates. Even if this goes against some very strict personal codes we have for ourselves. It’s getting in the habit of asking ourselves with every decision we make, “How Free Do I Want to Be?” Step 3 teaches us Willingness.
Honesty+Openness+Willingness= A “Psychic Change”
If anything above resonates with you or catches your interest, or sounds attractive to you, I totally encourage you to consider doing the 12 Steps. After all, what do you have to lose? Just maybe more years of waking up every day as if it’s Groundhog Day…. building into more years of personal misery and captivity. Plus, we offer a full refund if you don’t like the results- you can have your spiritual malady back instantly, and for free.
During the process of doing the Stepwork, you slowly realize there’s been a complete shift in the way you view life. A whole new perspective has landed on you; a breath of fresh air. It’s like a softening to the rhythm of the universe unfolding, and a lack of fear around the idea of free falling into the mystery of life. Almost like watching a sunrise, beginning with a few light watercolor brushstrokes at the horizon line, and as time goes on, brilliant colors begin the appear and spread across the sky like a love song, or a personalized display from the universe to us. It’s an awakening, a level of freedom so enticing, you don’t even want to drink anymore. Suddenly, you find that you’re intoxicated by the freedom from bondage and the joy of living that you experience with others doing the same work, and also with those who aren’t. This awakening, this path to freedom, is the “Psychic Change”.
What Exactly Is the Psychic Change?
The Big Book references The Variety of Religious Experiences by William James. In his book, James describes four qualities of spiritual/religious experiences that are shared and agreed upon by those who have had one:
The experiences are…..
Ineffable: one is unable to adequately describe them in written language.
Noetic: they express some inner knowledge of the universe.
Transient: the feeling does not last long; or similar feelings come and go over the course of time.
Passive: one accepts/allows what happens without resistance, and without active response.
There’s an oldtimer in the meetings I go to who’s basically a legend named Dean.(I’m telling you, there is a “Dean” in every AA group.) The guy has like 47,000 years of sobriety. (I’m exaggerating…) But he’s seen it all, he’s got self-awareness like you’ve never heard anyone before, and most importantly he’s got a phrase he’s known for saying, and his phrase happens to explain a psychic change very well. The phrase is: “Something Happened”, meaning there was an occurrence that doesn’t make sense to the finite mind. A miracle, if you call it that.
When you experience a psychic change/miracle at this deeply personal level, there’s a strange phenomenon that occurs. The experience itself has so deeply altered your soul and the trajectory of your entire inner guidance that you just literally don’t even care that you can’t explain it very well. It’s like this perplexing and mystical experience that’s a humming in the spirit; it’s a deep, solid, knowing. It would be like trying to explain being in love- if you haven’t been in love, you won’t be able to truly understand, no matter how it’s explained. (And the person in love absolutely does not care that he can’t explain it in a way that you’ll be able to understand!)
For more on this topic of Psychic Change, I highly recommend 2 of my favorite books by Franciscan Friar Father Richard Rohr: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. And another fantastic one of his books, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self.
So I know many of you have God Baggage, or Church Baggage. Join the throngs of us, you’re in good company (many of us do, at some level) and remember you get to choose your own conception of God. So if you find yourself getting all squirmy, tangled, and hung up on the spiritual nature of recovery, just…..don’t. I invite you to just honest, open, and willing to consider that maybe our addictions and habits are both a physical and mental issue that can be treated with a spiritual, mystical OR religious solution, if you perfer. And you can leave it as loose as that. :)