HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
The second step of the 12-step program is, “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step two is a conclusion in our minds (souls), that does not require physical action,” but it does require willingness. For many of us the second step was finished when we looked at sober people around us and knew they had been as powerless over alcohol as us, and saw they were now sober. We became willing to conduct the same simple experiment our sponsors had (worked the steps) and when we changed or daily actions, mysterious coincidences began to happen that couldn’t be explained. This experiment is free and all that is required of us is an open mind, and the willingness of a mustard seed.
Doctor Sam Shoemaker (not alcoholic) said of the early AA’s (Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thatcher and Bill Wilson), “here is real proof of spiritual power, they remind me of a story in the Bible about Peter and John, healing a lame man at a city gate. The Levites asked, “In whose name was this man healed?” Peter said, “In the name of Jesus,” the Levites wanted to argue, but they could not because the lame man stood among them. “We can argue about from whence, the power came that sobered these chronic alcoholics, but we cannot argue that they are standing among us sober.”
In his Book, “The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program,” professor Chesnut said: We learn the A.A. spiritual program by going to A.A. meetings and doing what the people there tell us to do, work the steps with our sponsors, with complete honesty and total commitment, over an extended period of time and learn too pass it on to others. A.A. spirituality is learned at a deep level by humbly working all 12 steps with a sponsor.
We have to work a lot of the program without understanding what we’re doing while we’re doing it, and it is only after working the first eleven steps that we come to the twelfth step: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.”
It’s another one of those A.A. paradoxes: We have to practice the program until we can practically do it in our sleep. And then is when we wake up! Then is when it begins to dawn on us why we had to do some of those things we did, without really understanding what we were doing. And then we are so grateful we did. To be continued…
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