STEP TWELVE

 

Step Twelve is about carrying the message and practicing the principles embodied in these steps as a way of life. We do this because our spirit has awakened and we know its because we took these steps. Naturally, we want to shout it from the rooftops. It isn't necessary to go that far. There are lots of people all around us who are suffering the same as we once did. They are not that hard to find. I find them in meetings.

Sometimes the new fellows I sponsor wonder why I go to so many beginner meetings. I'm not a beginner anymore. The answer is simple. That's where you find the new people. A common misconception in 12-step programs is that we go there to get better and then once we've licked the problem, then we need to cut back on our meetings and go out and enjoy life. We should do the enjoying part. For years we stayed at home with the door locked, the drapes drawn, drinking in the dark. Or gambling at the bar. Or working ourselves into the ground or whatever the case might have been. We shied away from life and all its realities. Now that we are sober we ought to re-integrate as much as possible back into life.

But we should never forget how we got sober. Remember those old-timers who took all that time out of their lives to see that we felt welcome. The ones that seemed to be at every meeting we went to. Well, that's us now. I'm not saying you have to “live” in AA or NA or GA. I went to meetings every day when I got sober. I still go to three or four a week, sometimes more if I'm helping out a new guy. As I mentioned before, I've opened my home to these guys (and gals) and not just for a meeting, but lots of other times me and a new guy will sit around reading the book, going over the steps or just talking about cars or baseball.

Someone once asked me what was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I don't even have to think about my reply. It's the look in their eyes when they realize they don't have to live like that anymore. They come in the same as we all did, head down, staring at the floor, confused, embarrassed, lonely. And after a few days, they start to look a bit better, they might even talk back when you speak to them. In a week, they're full of life. We are often aware of the transformation long before they are. A fellow told me once that he had a spiritual awakening the day I took my sunglasses off and sat up front.

I am convinced that one of the reasons I have been sober as long as I have is because of the work I do with new people. Every time I go through the twelve steps with a new person, I take the twelve steps again, with myself. So, it's safe for me to say I've taken them at least 50 times. I don't think that makes me a step guru because every time I take them I learn something new about myself.

Probably the biggest test you will ever face is applying these steps outside of whatever fellowship you're in. At home. On the job. At the ball field. In rush hour traffic.

In the fourth step, there's a prayer that we can say whenever people get under our skin and start pushing our buttons. “God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.” Its easier said than done. I hope someday I'll be as well as everyone thinks I think I am. Then I won't ever need to say that prayer. But, that day hasn't arrived yet. I'm a work in progress.

I hope you have learned something from these essays on the Twelve Steps. I know I did.

STEP ELEVEN

 

When I came back into recovery this time around, Step Eleven was the scariest step because the wording of it sounded so religious to me. Fortunately, my sponsor had good news for me. He said there are ten steps in between this step and the one you're currently on. So I didn't have to worry about it in the beginning.

In Step Two, I expressed a willingness to believe in the possibility of a power greater than myself, and that was enough. In the third step I began to put to the test the things this power was capable of. I didn't go through my day waiting around for God to show me what to do. I'm an adult. I know the difference between what's right and what's wrong. The only difference in my way of thinking was that now I would strive to do what was right instead of what was wrong.

Then I got into the inventory steps, 4, 5 and 6, and I learned more about what I had been doing wrong and why I had been doing it, so I became more conscious of what areas of my life I had to work on. In many cases it was just my thinking. My perception of reality needed to change. I had to try to be less selfish, less dishonest, less angry, less afraid, not so greedy or lustful or self-centered. And by becoming less of the wrong things I became more of the right things.

I found that despite all my attempts to remove my shortcomings, I was unable to do it on my own resources. I had to have the guidance and the care of this power I had become acquainted with in steps 2 and three. In Step 7, I got that guidance. My perception of God and humility began to change. It was helpful that I had been separated from my drug of choice for quite some time. My thinking was becoming more clear and I could see that my shortcomings had really been getting in the way.

Then I did my eighth and ninth steps, trying to improve not only my understanding of myself and my understanding of the people around me, but also improving upon my understanding of God. There were times when I needed to know God was with me when I approached some people. So, all this time, on this journey I was on, my understanding of God and of spirituality was changing. It didn't seem so frightening anymore. I'm not a religious person in the sense that I used to relate that to. I don't belong to a church. I don't go to mass. I don't wear an orange bathrobe and I don't eat walnuts. I'm just a guy that used to think there was no such thing as God.

I've been proven wrong.

Step Eleven says we seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand him. Prayer to me is talking to God and meditation is listening for the answer. It's about communication. Communication is an important ingredient in any relationship. I don't always like the answers I get, but I don't have to like it I just have to do it.

Step Eleven even taught me the proper way to pray. I was always saying gimme gimme gimme when what I should have been saying was thank you thank you thank you. We don't pray for jobs or for cars or girlfriends or for long happy lives. We pray only for the knowledge of Gods will for us and for the strength to carry out that will.

My sponsor used to say that God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. Hey, that's what I want too. To be happy, to be joyous, to be free. So, God and me, we want the same things. Why would I perceive that as something to be afraid of? Because my perception of reality was twisted. I thought believing in God meant that I would have to give up things that I enjoyed doing when in reality believing in God meant I could receive things that would be even more enjoyable than what I knew.

Every Tuesday night at 7:30, I get together with a handful of drunks Some are business people. Bartenders. Ex-cons. And what do we all talk about? We talk about how we established and developed a working relationship with the god of our understanding. We laugh and kid around but there's a deadly earnestness about what we do. Most of us know where we would be if we weren't doing what we do. We would be sleeping in a box under a bridge or lying in a gutter with a needle sticking out of our arm.

By the end of the hour, I tell you no lie, you can feel the presence of God in that room. It is said that deep down in us is the fundamental idea of God. He is within us and he comes in many forms. I spent years looking out there for God and all this time He was right here. Of course, that's just how I see it. So, my perceptions have changed and they continue to do so. In the Bible somewhere it says seek the kingdom of heaven and all else will follow. It doesn't say you have find the kingdom, you just have to look for it.

So if you seek through talking to god and listening to god to improve your conscious contact with god and you pray only for knowledge of his will for us and for the power to carry that out, well that's how we do step eleven.

Step Ten

 

When I was about halfway through Step 9, I noticed that the problem I had been having with alcohol, and with life in general, had gone away. My life was no longer unmanageable, I no longer suffered from an obsession of the mind where drinking was concerned, and I was actually enjoying life instead of shying away from it. I told my sponsor about this. He didn't seem too surprised.

“It's perfectly natural,” he said. “The 12 steps are a spiritual way of life and they have 2 purposes. The first is to expel your obsession to drink and the second is to help you to become happily and usefully whole. It seems they are working for you.”

Ever the skeptic, I questioned this. “But, what do I do if the problem comes back?”

My sponsor just laughed. “Oh don't worry. If you do steps 10, 11, and 12 every day for the rest of your life, the problem will never come back.”

I've been doing that for slightly more than 23 years and although not all of my days are priceless, none of my days are worthless.

Step Ten suggests that we “continue to take personal inventory”. I do mine before I go to sleep. I do shift work so that's not always at night. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, on page 86, there are some questions we can ask ourselves about our day. The passage is actually during the discussion on Step Eleven but I find it is very appropriate for Step Ten. I am not going to quote it because I am going to reword the questions. Just imagine it's the end of the day. Ask yourself the following questions:

Was I resentful today?

Was I selfish today?

Was I dishonest today?

Was I afraid today?

Do I owe someone an apology?

Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with another person at once?

Was I kind and loving toward all?

What could I have done better?

Was I thinking of myself most of the time?

Or was I thinking of what I could do for others?

I find that I don't always get the answers I would like to get, but that my answers always help me strive to be a better person the following day. If you can remember when we did Step 4, we ended up with those 2 columns. Our liabilities and our assets. We can just look at that list, see where we were wrong today and try to do better tomorrow. The second half of step ten says, “when we were wrong we promptly admitted it.” It doesn't say, “if we were wrong.” You see, the guys who originally wrote these steps, they knew we were going to make mistakes. We are all human. None of us are saints. The idea is not to keep beating ourselves over the head with that big bat. We just keep taking stock of ourselves, we keep up the honest analysis, take what corrective measures are necessary, keep trying to live up to our chosen ideal.

So, if you continue to do this, then you are doing Step Ten.

STEP NINE

 

Some of the groups round here have a reading that they call the 12 Promises. The reading they took those promises from is page 83-84 of the Big Book. I'm not sure how they arrived at the number 12. There are no numbers in front of them. At our group we do that reading but we call them the Step 9 Promises because the reading is nestled in between the ending of Step 9 and the beginning of Step 10. Doesn't take too much thinking to figure that one out.

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. This thought brings us to Step Ten........"

This phase of our development is step 9. So, if you're going to meetings, if you joined a group, managed to get a sponsor and have been on the journey of the steps up to this point, you've probably noticed some of these promises coming true. But, if you're just going to meetings and sitting on your hands, thinking you can't trust anyone enough to let them sponsor you, that you might get around to the steps at some point and that none of these so-called promises are becoming evident in your life, well then maybe you should get off your lazy butt and start doing some work in this program because the step 9 promises won't materialize unless you do the work.

STEP EIGHT

 

Now that we've established a relationship with God (Steps 2, 3, 6 and 7) and established a relationship with ourselves (Step 1 and 4) and begun to establish a relationship with the people around us (Step 5), it's time to really roll up our sleeves and get that garden weeded. In Step 8 we make a list of all the people we have harmed in our attempt to do things our way and we become willing to make amends to them all. I actually have a cute story about that.

One of the guys I sponsor came over to my house to get his steps 8 and 9 started. So we said a little prayer and I grabbed the big book, turned to page 76 and read, "We have a list of all persons we have harmed and are willing to make amends. We made it when we took inventory."

My guy got this worried look on his face and said, "Uh-oh."

I turned to him and said, "What's wrong?"

He gives me one of those guilty looks. "I was in a meeting a few months ago and this guy said that after he did step 5, he burned his inventory. I didn't burn mine though. I buried it in North Carolina."

We live in Canada.

I closed the book and told him to rewrite his inventory. He wasn't too happy about doing that, but he did do it. This raises a good point about sponsorship in general. If you are in a 12-step program and if you have a sponsor, you should follow his advice and guidance because he (or she) probably knows best. Don't get me wrong. There are many people in our fellowships who have sound advice and guidance and you should listen to these people, but if you decide to put into action a suggestion that they made to you, it might be a good plan to mention this advice to your current sponsor.

By the way, nowhere in the literature does it suggest that you dispose of your written inventory. Naturally, you may wish to keep this information safe and secure, for whatever reasons you may have, but you should be able to retrieve it.

Back to the matter at hand. Step 8. If you have followed directions and you have a written inventory (or typed or on a thumb drive, etc), then you can refer back to it, look at the wrongs you have done to others, the people you have harmed by your sexual conduct or your financial greed and ambition or just by being an all-around jerk. You may wish to put this information on a separate sheet of paper and when you have that completed you will have your amends list.

Keep in mind that it says ALL the people we have harmed. So, if you have caused them harm, their name goes on the list. It doesn't matter what they did or what you think they have done, this is not their amends list. It is yours. You do not make amends in this step. You simply make the list and exercise that wonderful character trait we discovered in the first few steps. Willingness.

If you have the list and you are willing to make the amends, then you have completed Step Eight.

Step Seven

 

More review, but just of the action steps:

In Step 4 we begin doing the work that is necessary in order to apply the solution to the problem. This was a thorough self-examination of our assets and liabilities. Our liabilities we referred to as defects of character or wrongs and were those things which had been blocking us from a relationship with God, with ourselves, and with the people around us.

In Step 5 we admitted our wrongs to God, to ourselves, and to at least one other human being.

In Step 6 we became ready to have these defects of character removed from us. At my home group, during our discussions on the Sixth Step, I would sometimes pose this question, "What's the difference between being willing and being ready." There is a popular quote from the book Alcoholics Anonymous that gives the answer to that question. It says, "If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take these steps." So if a person is willing, then that person is ready.

In the 2nd and 3rd steps, that's where we commence to form a relationship with God and we don't have to have an overpowering sense of god-consciousness. A willingness to believe is all that is required to make a beginning in step 2 and it is often said that willingness is the key to taking step 3. So, if I am willing to do steps 2 and 3, then I am ready to take the action steps 4 - 9. And thus, in Step 6 we see that we are ready now to have the things that have blocking us removed from us.

And that's what step 7 is for. The wording of the step is that we "Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings." Originally, the step included the phrase "on our knees". The early members of AA were part of a religious movement known as the Oxford Group. They were a predominantly Christian movement from which many of the principles embodied in the 12 steps were derived. They believed in a lot of things that we still believe today. Self-examination, prayer, confession of defects, making amends, dependence upon a higher power, and carrying the message. But they also had beliefs that were based on specific religious dogma whereas in modern-day 12 step programs we view God as our concept of God. And not all persons from all beliefs find it necessary to get on their knees to pray, so that phrase was removed.

It is still necessary for us to be humble but the expression of humility is not as intimidating as it looks. In my opinion, being humble is knowing that although I may be good at many things, that doesn't make me better than anyone else. And in the case of prayer to a higher power, it reminds me that any success I am having today is not entirely my doing. It is a result of the concerted efforts of myself and god as I understand God.

I should also mention that just because I ask God to remove my shortcomings does not mean they are going to instantly be removed. I did think that was going to happen, but that was back in my early days before the guidance of a sponsor, back when I used to sit in meetings and do the steps as a mental exercise. I would look at them and think oh yeah by the time I get to step seven, I'll be okay. All my character defects will evaporate and I'll be as pure as driven snow. I'll go on the speaker circuit, start writing for the grapevine, and every newcomer that crawls through the doors of AA will immediately sense that I am a spiritual giant, they'll ask me to sponsor them, we'll go to conferences together and they'll brag about how sober I'm getting them.

That's not exactly what happened. My character defects did not evaporate. I still have them, but on a daily basis God removes from me those shortcomings which stand in the way of my usefulness to Him and to others. And each day I move closer to my chosen ideal of how I should be living my life. Remember we discovered what that chosen ideal was when we did columns 4 and 5 of our personal inventory.

And for the record, I do have a speaker circuit but its only about 60 miles in diameter, I did write a few items for the grapevine. You know if you send an editor enough material eventually he will print something just to get you to stop. And a few newcomers have agreed to let me sponsor them, and we do go to meetings and conferences together, but when they talk about me I doubt very much they are singing my praises. It's probably more along the lines of criticism. Oh well. they don't have to like it; they just have to do it.

By the way, the introduction to step 7 reads like this: "When we are ready, we say something like this My Creator I am now willing....." So if you're ready, then you're willing. :)

Step Six

 

I was told that once I completed Step 5, I should go somewhere where it was quiet and spend a hour or so carefully reflecting on the first 5 steps. I should ask myself if I had taken them to the best of my ability. Let's see what conclusions I arrived at:

I was sleeping in a cardboard box under the bridge. I had no job, no place to live, my personal possessions could fit in a shopping bag, my family had all but disowned me and the only friends I had were a bunch of drunks at the local AA club. I had tried 39 times to stop drinking and I was unsuccessful in my attempts. I think it was safe to conclude that I was powerless over alcohol and that it had made my life unmanageable.

When I was under the bridge one day, sitting on one of the concrete pylons, smoking a TM I had got from a friend down at the meeting, it occurred to me that I hadn't had a drink in almost two months and that ever since I had humbled myself enough to ask God for help, I hadn't even wanted to take a drink. Here it was another two months later and the thought of drinking had never occurred to me. So I had come to believe that there was a power greater than Bernie that could restore me to some modicum of sanity.

That day under the bridge was the day I actually took Step Three for the first time. I had taken it every day since and my life was improving. So I was giving step three a determined and persistent trial.

I had completed my 4th step inventory according to the clear-cut directions in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and I had admitted my findings to God, to myself, and to another human being. So I was satisfied that I had taken these steps to the best of my ability.

My sponsor used to say if you do the first five steps the way they're supposed to be done, they give you Step Six as a freebie. This step is one of the easiest to explain. In step 4, I learned what my defects of character were - the Liabilities from column 4. In step 5, I admitted those defects. And in step 6, I become ready to have those defects of character removed. It's that simple. Why would I want to continue to be selfish, dishonest, angry and afraid? I had gained nothing and lost everything by holding on to those things. Of course I was ready to get rid of them. And how do I get rid of them?

That's the next step.