“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Page 59, Big Book)
“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. … In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Page 86 Big Book)
One cannot make decisions, except to choose the decision-provider.
When I make decisions without God, I’m not making the decision at all: I’m asking the ego what to do, it tells me, and that’s the decision.
How does structural change take place in accordance with Step Eleven?
Not by making structural changes: rather, by asking God, daily, what to do today. Even changing career, moving house, getting married are not single decisions but chains of small decisions take on a specific days.
And such decisions are not made but asked for.
That means I need not lift my head above the parapet of the day: it is always sufficient to ‘keep it in the day’, and, when a decision must be made today that involves speculation about future events or circumstances, I perform such speculation only as is necessary for the purpose of today’s decision.
I then ask, and what do I get? Inspiration, an intuitive thought, a decision.
Where does wanting come in?
God’s will usually manifests as wanting. For me to be happy doing God’s will consistently, my wanting needs to be brought in line. There’s only so long one can act against one’s emotions without an incident.
So, the normal situation is for God’s will to manifest as wanting, but I cannot infer in the other direction: since the ego’s will also manifests as wanting, I cannot infer from wanting to do something that it is from God. It might equally come from the ego.
Instead, I can test against habit (what is habitually God’s will?), experience, principle, injunction, authority, knowledge, reason, reality, and other testbeds.
The thing I do not do is consult my feeling, because that is uninformative.