Eyre Lines

12 Step as a spiritual programme

These are the twelve steps, slightly modified by me from those originally developed by Alcoholics Anonymous (source Wikipedia). Different twelve step programmes insert different words where I have a blank in Step 1:

1. We admitted we were powerless over [   ] – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God to be.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God to be, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to those suffering from [the source of our own powerlessness], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

They represent a development of the spiritual programme of the Oxford Group, splitting their spiritual practices down into elements and adding Steps 1 and 2 and step 12.

Where “God” appears, commonly with the words “as you understand God to be” or some variant added, all that is needed is some “higher power” than yourself; some who have problems with the whole concept of God have considered it to be the group of fellow sufferers to which they belong and on which Twelve Step programmes are based, some substitute “Good” for “God” or consider it an acronym for “Good Orderly Direction”. It is, I think, necessary for it not to be within you yourself, though some have considered it “their higher selves” with success; if possible it should not be another human being, as there are huge pitfalls there.

What you insert in the blank in Step 1 differs from programme to programme; alcohol was the original, drugs are another including specifically narcotics, nicotine, cocaine and prescription pills; obsessive behaviours such as gambling, shopping and overeating all have their own programmes, as do psychological disorders such as co-dependency and other emotional disorders. The whole list is considerable (and my link fails to include one or two I know of).

A lot of people, including myself,  have gained some freedom from these various sources of difficulty in their lives through Twelve Step and have, in the process, embarked on a spiritual programme which to my mind results in improvements far wider than the narrow specific they start with. Many people I know have effectively moved beyond, say, “alcohol” as the source of powerlessness and are mentally using “people, places and things” in its place.

It seems to me that anyone could probably find some item over which they are powerless to slot into that blank, even if they do not fit into one of the many categories for which there are existing Twelve Step groups. Many people in Twelve Step programmes feel somewhat sorry for those who do not have such a source of powerlessness which they can identify, as they feel they have gained so much themselves from following their particular programme.

However, Twelve Steppers will generally agree that in order to use a Twelve Step programme, someone must reach an “emotional rock bottom” as a result of their particular problem. Although you may be able to fit anything in to the box, it is therefore necessary for it to have taken you to that sticking point where you can emotionally commit to “this far and no further” with absolute assurance. On the plus side, there are people I have met whose emotional rock bottoms have been far, far less traumatic than my own or those of the majority of Twelve Steppers, such as one lady whose rock bottom was feeling her social standing slipping as she was becoming erratic and undependable. For her, that was “this far and no further”, and I am immensely happy for her that this was, for her, enough (once, I felt envy, but dealt with this through a Step 4- Step 7 procedure).

I leave it to the reader whether they feel this to be an useful tool for them, either individually or as part of a wider spiritual programme (which Step 11 really demands). If there really is no root of powerlessness, it is possible to start with Step 3, but commonly people are unable to give this a complete commitment unless they have Steps 1 and 2 behind them.

Alternatively, you might like to look at the Oxford Group programme. All the elements of that were in my own spiritual programme before I ever learned of Twelve Step. I admit that it was something of a surprise to me to find that I was called to share my sins and temptations with another, but I did find myself doing this on a long railway journey with a priest whose name I never asked, back in 1972. After the event, the best metaphor I can find is that of ringing a friend whose house I had never been to, and asking for directions. The first question, of course, was “Where are you now”, so I looked around and described it; directions then followed.

If you don’t know where you are now, it is more difficult to know which direction to go in to reach your goal.