Step Twelve
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of
these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.”
The joy of
living is the theme of A.A.’s Twelfth Step, and action is the key word. Here we turn outward toward our fellow
alcoholics who are still in distress.
Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of
the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional
sobriety. When the Twelfth Step is seen
in its full imlicatoin, it is really talking about
the kind of love that has no price tag on it.
Our Twelfth Step also says that as a
result of practicing all the Steps, we have each found something called a
spiritual awakening. To new A.A.’s this
often seems like a very dubious and improbable state of affairs. “What do you mean when you talk about a ‘spiritual
awakening’?” they ask.
A.A.’s manner of making ready to
receive this gift lies in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program. So let’s consider briefly what we have been
trying to do up to this point: 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 would 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 shortcomings 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. Looking at those who were only beginning and
still doubted themselves, the rest of us were able to see the change setting
in. From great numbers of such
experiences, we could predict that the doubter who still claimed that he hadn’t
got the “spiritual angle,” and who still considered his well-loved A.A. group
the higher power, would presently love God and call Him by name.
Practically every A.A. member
declares that no satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a
Twelfth Step job well done. To watch the
eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness into light,
to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, to see whole
families reassembled, to see the alcoholic outcast received back into his
community in full citizenship, and above all to watch these people awaken to
the presence of a loving God in their lives—these things are the substance of
what we receive as we carry A.A.’s message to the next alcoholic.
When we developed still more, we discovered
the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect
justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where
nothing else would. If we really
depended upon God we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel
the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. These were the new attitudes that finally brought
many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be deeply shaken by the shortcoming
of others or by any calamity not of our own making.
Still more wonderful is the feeling
that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to
be useful and profoundly happy. Not many
of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations
squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge
that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the
well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the
proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we
are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that
we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s
scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right
living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material
possessions, could possibly be substitutes.
True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the desire
to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.