When I want help, it's no good leaning on myself. With my little arsenal of facts, ideas, and opinions, my programme, my understanding, my approach, my perception, my demands for what the help should look like.
Step Two says: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
Step Twelve says: "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."
This means, if I'm fixing to work the Steps, I must be insane. If I were not, I would not need the Steps, and the Steps will not even help, because they're there solely to treat insanity.
If I've done the programme before, if I've read the book a hundred times, if I've taken a hundred sponsees through the book, if I'm upset or disordered, I am insane.
To move from where one is, one has to know where one is.
The switch from insanity (mentally stuck in the world) to sanity (spiritual awakening).
How is sanity restored? Conscious contact with God. That's it. Everything else is commentary.
This process is only about establishing a relationship with God and acting on that basis.
It's not about taking the ideas and tools and bolting them onto the existing system.
It's about abandoning the existing system.
When I'm fucked, the most and the least I can do is find someone who isn't and let them guide me.
If I'm fucked, I don't stipulate, argue, carp, quibble, question, challenge, or otherwise negotiate with what is coming down the pipes from the Solution Cistern, and its kindly operator. I'm insane. They're not. My view is of no interest or value. They will ask me questions. I get to answer them honestly. They will present ideas. I will be open-minded enough to adopt them as they stand. They will suggest action. I will take the action, because I am willing to do whatever is necessary.
H.O.W. spells how. That's how it works.