Once a person has completed the Twelve Steps in Alcoholics Anonymous, problems can still arise, even decades later. Step Twelve suggests we practise these principles in all our affairs. Here is a format for applying the Twelve Steps to a problem.* **
*Bonus: for each Step, the experience can be deepened by reading the relevant section of the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, alone or with a friend or friends, placing oneself in the text, saying, 'Did this happen to me?' 'Do I think like that?' 'Do I feel like that?' and turning statements into questions, e.g. (page 60) 'Am I driven by a hundred forms of fear?'. The actions below can also be supplemented and fleshed out using the contents of the two books. The labels on the right side of the desktop version of https://first164.blogspot.com/ also provide access to materials on individual steps and/or parts of the step in question. But don't get bogged down. Be as thorough as necessary but as swift as possible. We're here to get the job done, and to get the job done properly, but not to wallow in recovery-related activity or indulge ourselves in interesting but pointless 'alconomics'. We're here to wake up and live out a useful relationship with God in the world, not dream interesting dreams on our own.For great insight into the Steps, listen to the following speakers (available from many websites): Don P (Colorado); Father Tom W (Oakland); Sandy B (Florida); Bob B (Minnesota); Clint H (California); Mike L (Indiana); Dr Paul O (Laguna Beach); Bob O (Colorado); Gary B (Indiana); Paul M (Riverside); Marilyn S (Los Angeles); Clancy I (Los Angeles); Tom I (North Carolina); Mildred F (Toronto); Don C (Colorado); Mark H (Texas); Joe H. (Colorado, California).
** If you get stuck, consult wiser friends and/or a sponsor/spiritual advisor.
Step 0: What is the problem?
Compulsive sexual activity? Compulsive use of sex / dating apps? Sexual / romantic intrigue? Overeating? Undereating? Gambling? Fear? Anger? Guilt / shame? Materialism? What else?
Give a brief description of the problem. What is the mental pattern or behaviour pattern that needs to change?
When you consider changing the pattern, what pain or fear do you experience?
What benefit are you getting out of holding onto the pattern?
What will it cost you if the pattern does not change?
What would you gain if the pattern does change?
How has this pattern threatened or damaged your important relationships?
Has this pattern made your home life unhappy?
Have you lost self-respect and/or reputation due to this pattern?
Has this pattern caused any type of illness?
Does anyone enable you to act out this pattern?
How are the people around you affected by this pattern?
How do the people around you respond to this pattern?
How you have tried to fix, change, or control this pattern (give examples)?
What emotions or states are you using this pattern to avoid, suppress, alter, control, or relieve?
Why do you think you're stuck?
Are you willing to do anything to be relieved of this problem?
If you are willing, you are ready to take certain steps.
1. We admitted we were powerless over ...— that our lives had become unmanageable.
Consider powerlessness as you would with alcohol:
'I keep starting, despite knowing I shouldn't (mental obsession). And when I start, I can't moderate or stop (physical craving).'
Consider unmanageability as you would with alcohol:
'If I keep starting, I can't moderate, and I can't stop, who or what is in control of ('managing') my life and how I experience it?'
(Answer: the ego, the devil, the yetzer hara, the animal soul, the disease, the addiction ... however you describe it, it ain't you!)
What tools of the programme have I been using to solve the problem?
To what extent have they worked/failed?
Where are the gaps?
Why do I think they have failed to solve the problem?
Am I powerless, at my current level of understanding, to solve the problem?
Is my life therefore unmanageable?
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
What false idols have I been worshipping rather than God? (See Annex One below)
What problems has a Higher Power solved before in my life?
Do I know anyone who reports the Higher Power solving a problem like this in their lives?
Do I believe that the Higher Power can solve this problem, too?
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Am I willing to trust God with this area?
Am I willing to re-surrender the rest of my life to God along with this area?
Am I willing to take the remaining Steps in this area?
Am I willing to continue taking the remaining Steps in the rest of my life?
If so: take Step Three (see page 63 of the Big Book).
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
'Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.'
Write out the answers to these eight questions in this area and any related or troublesome area.
If resentment, fear, and sex are particularly troublesome in this area, write out the relevant inventories as well.
Forgive anyone who needs to be forgiven (page 67).
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Read out the inventory (or a summary of it) and discuss it with another person.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all—every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
When ready, we say something like this: 'My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.' We have then completed Step Seven.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Make the list! Become willing!
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Make amends!
Write out a vision of God's will (the overall destination) and a sane and sound ideal (what I should believe, think, and do) in this area and any related or troublesome area.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Measure my daily progress against the vision of God's will and sane and sound ideal.
Adjust the vision and ideal as necessary.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Work tirelessly to raise my consciousness to a higher level. The purpose of my life is to be in touch with the One Power and to attune myself to that Power.
If you do not feel that God is with you, powering you, and providing you with light and joy all throughout every day, consider rereading and applying all of the contents of Emmet Fox's book Power Through Constructive Thinking in every free moment for 40 days. Download a copy to your phone, and download the audiobook version. Listen constantly. Learn the prayers he suggests off by heart and repeat them morning, noon, and night.
If you're Jewish, subscribe to various different daily and weekly emails from https://www.chabad.org/ and listen to Chabad Radio (available 24 hours a day) on the app. Study Torah. Rabbi Gordon's classes on Torah and Tanya, available as podcasts and on the website, are particularly enlightening, entertaining, and engrossing.
For a whackier approach, try A Course In Miracles, and in particular listen to one of the best ACIM teachers, Ken Wapnick, here: https://facimstore.org/collections/mp3-download (not free of charge). For free classes go to https://www.youtube.com/user/annakujawa1 or https://www.youtube.com/c/EARLPURDY/featured.
Check out the videos below.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to ..., and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Share how God has solved my problem, far and wide.
Annex One: False idols and dependencies
Here are some of the false idols and dependencies we have tried: Sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance.
'Sex' can include hunting for it and having it.
'Money' can include acquiring it, hoarding it, and spending it.
'Power' can include rescuing, policing, bullying, stalking, reform and crusade, over-organisation, living by rules, restriction, asceticism, worry, scheming, and dominating others.
'Prestige' can include pride (what others think of us), self-esteem (what we think of ourselves), attachment to identity (ethnicity, nationality, religion including a specific branch thereof, background, social status, economic status, career status, sex, gender, sexuality, political beliefs, ideology), and spiritual prestige (being good, nice, wise, calm, free of character defects, sought-after, 'recovered', useful, effective, efficient, harmonious, devout or pious, observant, learned, knowledgeable, skilled).
'Comfort' can include food and beverages, numbing out with entertainment, news and other media, social media, compulsive use of electronic devices, computer games, and apps, surrounding ourselves with people, constant activity, constant talking, constant texting, talking about feelings to avoid feeling them, withdrawing from society, duvet-diving, obsessive thinking, meditating to disassociate or zen out ('being a bliss ninny'), and inducing physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social exhaustion.
'Thrills' can include risk-taking, danger-seeking, gambling, romance, exercise-related highs, fantasy, nostalgia, inducing physical injury or pain, engaging in aberrant, immoral, or antisocial behaviour in order to wallow in guilt and shame, creating crises, creating drama, and creating situations from which we require rescue.
'Appearance' can include the fostering of an image, clothes, cosmetic procedures and surgery, make-up & grooming, bodybuilding, body-sculpting, and weight control. We could increase the list ad infinitum.
Annex Two: Video resources to support the Twelve Steps
Rabbi Dr Abraham Twerski: Decisions
Rabbi Manis Friedman: Existing vs living
Rabbi Moshe Bryski: The Courage to Change
Rabbi Shais Taub: You Ruined My Life! Getting Over Resentment
Rabbi Tali Loewenthal: How and Why of Chassidic Prayer
Shimona Tzukernik: A Life Worth Living
Rabbi Manis Friedman: Something from Nothing
Rabbi Dr. Abraham Steinberg
The Biological Interface of the Brain and the Soul
("There are scientists who believe that the mind is wholly material. But this position leaves many important neurological questions unanswered. Scientific and religious arguments both indicate that mind, soul and life in general, are likely irreducible to a purely biological explanation.")
(Rabbi Dr. Abraham Steinberg is a senior pediatric neurologist and Chief of Internal Medicine B at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. He is Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University where he directs the Center for Medical Ethics. He is the author of many books and articles on Jewish medical ethics, general medical ethics, the history of medicine and pediatric neurology. In 1999 he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for his multi volume “Encyclopedia of Medicine and Halacha.”)
Rabbi Shais Taub: Honour your mother and father; a spiritual view on the challenges of the fifth commandment
Rabbi Yitzchok Schochet: Prozac for the Soul?
Rabbi Shais Taub: Finding Yourself, Finding G-d
Rabbi Shais Taub: My Name is and I am a human being
Eckhardt Tolle: How to deal
Earl Purdy & Anna Kujawa on special relationships