Step Three in the 12 x 12: a summary

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 Summary of Step Three in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Basics

  • Step Three seems abstract
  • It's actually very specific
  • It requires only willingness
    • Casting out:
      • One's own ideas
      • One's own will (= the course of action committed to)
    • In favour of:
      • Other ideas
      • Other will
  • Step Three thus involves action based on ideas
  • Action cuts away what blocks us from God
  • We need God because, alone, we're doomed to drink

Reservation and dependence

  • The fear: there will be nothing left of the person
  • The truth: the person is not destroyed; the person can live more effectively
    • Look at how dependence on electricity strengthens rather than weakening
  • What is self-reliance?
    • Making final decisions ourselves
    • Trusting intelligence
    • Trusting willpower
    • The belief that this package will bring success
    • = playing God in one's own life
  • Does it work?
    • Look in the mirror
      • Remorse, guilt
      • Bitterness, envy, hate
      • Financial insecurity
      • Panic
      • Separation from loved ones
      • 'Awful jams'
    • What hasn't worked:
      • Personal determination
      • Lone courage
      • Unaided will
    • Look at the world
      • Anger
      • Fear
      • Dissolution into fragments
      • War
      • Belief in own rightness and others' wrongness
      • Less peace
      • Less brotherhood
      • Ruin
  • Is dependence unhealthy?
    • Only when it is on others (e.g. as an adult, emotional dependence on a parent)
  • Example of dependence on God under fire:
    • World War II serving persons relapsing less than those at home
    • God serving as an effective source of strength

The role of will

  • Will is required
    • Not bombarding problems with it ('headlong assault powered by the individual alone')
    • But bringing it into agreement with God's intention
  • This takes the form of sustained and personal exertion to conform to the principles of the Twelve Steps
  • Step Three thus establishes the fact of continuous action
  • The other Steps provide the content of this continuous action
  • If self-will arises, readopt willingness, and progress is restored

The Serenity Prayer

  • Step Three also suggests a response to disturbance and / or confusion
    • Pause
    • Ask for quiet
    • In the stillness, simply say:
    • 'God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done.'
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