Steps to the Spirit: Recent Episodes

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As a reminder, step 11 is:

I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. Well that was quick

So, today I want to talk about the part of the 11th step that I’ve underlined. The first part of this step is about using prayer and/or meditation in order to dis cover what God’s will is for us. I mentioned, in the first part of this step, that over the years in which I’ve been taking these steps as a way of life, my prayer is not active, so to speak, but more of an act of listening. In this framework, I have learned that setting a specific time for my prayer is not necessary. The relationship that I have with God is both ongoing and constant. I don’t know how many times I connect my thought of God’s will in my day-to-day life. (Maybe I should have a clicker in my pocket and use it every time I think of God during the day.) Oh well, I would probably forget at the time.

I do, however, talk to and listen for God quite a bit. As I said before, most of my talking to God is not what we would call traditional prayer. It is 99.9% thanking God for something or another that I realize God gave me the power to do. This is where the part of the 11th step comes in, the power to carry that out. Exactly where do we get this power from? Usually unbeknown to us, we have never been without this power. Fortunately, I am reminded of this power that is given to me by God in the 2nd step. This is: I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Notice it doesn’t say I’ll get this power after I do “X” amount of steps, nor does it say after the “X” step. It doesn’t say those things because each and every one of us has had the power available to us forever. It is not a question of getting the power. What I needed to do was to become aware of the power.

Once again, this step is not say that we should ask God to give us the power. The step asks us to remember that we have this knowledge of all of the gifts that God has given us. The problem is that I humanity is so strong that it overrides or overshadows these gifts. We think that our humanity is the most important thing that we have to work with. This is wrong. The most important thing I have to work with is my spirit and the fact that God dwells within me, within you, yes, within everyone.

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Today I would like to talk about step 11, and what I would call the second part. What I consider to be the second part is: praying only for knowledge of His will for us. Next episode we will deal with part three which is, you guessed it, the power to carry that out.

So, last week I pretty much told you about my praying habits. I told you that my praying really has nothing to do with speaking to God. For me this is pretty much a misnomer because the word “praying” I think, indicates a back and forth conversation. I don’t have that. I really try to keep my mouth shut when I am in a prayer mode and listen for what my spirit/God has to say to me. I really want you to know that I don’t “hear” anything. I know there are people out there who seem to be a channel for God or Jesus, or what have you, but I am not one of them. My prayer to God is one of listening. I feel as though any response that I get as a result of this prayer is one that is intuitive. As I have often said, I believe that God is within myself as well as within everyone else.

When I say everyone else I mean mostly four categories of people. There are those who say they absolutely do not believe there is a “God”. These are of course the atheists. The next group I would refer to as those who are unsure and cannot seem to make a definite decision as to whether God exists or not. These people we refer to as agnostics. The third group, (which I believe is the largest of the four groups), are those referred to as believers. I do not feel it matters what religion or denomination these people are in. The thing is that they mostly seem to worship a God that is outside of themselves. Granted, there are some non-dualistic folks who, of course, she God as one substance or to those of us in the fourth group one thing of which they are part. These folks are actually close (in a way), to those of us in the fourth group. The fourth group are folks who believe in a God that is a very personal God, one that is sensed as being an inch frantic part of oneself. I believe this fourth group to be the smallest of the groups, probably composed of 2% to 4% of our population. These are people who have decided to turn their lives over to God. They realize that, ultimately, their existence is one that is at the pleasure of God, as well as our correct use of His gift to us of free wil. L.

We are those who choose to listen for God’s direction in our lives. We are not perfect! However, we strive for spiritual perfection. For me, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me, means listening for inspiration from God. It means to follow God’s direction now, every second, every hour, and every year, until we passed from this earth, and beyond. I further believe that once I have said the eternal, wonderful “yes” to God, I am Hers/His forever. I will not be a creature that offends God. I will be a creature that belongs to God in every sense of the word. My humanity will necessarily keep me from being perfect. However, I will try my best to avoid allowing my humanity to have its way.

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As a reminder, this step 11:

I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me on the power to carry that out.

I guess I have had my ups and downs with this step. In my early days, when I was really using this program, prayer was a rote thing. When I praise, (if I even praise at all), I did just small child thing where I knelt beside my bed, and asked God for lots of good things. I neither had any confidence that I would get them, nor any knowledge that I needed to do my part for their fruition.

This is kind of how I learned to pray when I was a child growing up Catholic. It was a whole new experience from that which I have now. I would get on my knees, (you always got on your knees back then, in order to show I was humble and beneath God), clasped my hands, at first in the traditional way with my fingers pointing straight up, but later with my fingers entwined. Back then I would also look up to the ceiling, because that’s where God lived. In those days, even when I read some spiritual books, God seem to be always outside of ourselves. God seem to be at a place, such as in the tabernacle of the church, or somewhere beyond the clouds and we would only meet Him/Her when we die. I would usually pray those things that I wanted terribly, such as a new pair of skates or to pass a test, (without having to study for it of, course). At times, I would pray magnanimously for world peace for that God would intervene to help someone I knew. I feel now, that those prayers were never answered. If they did seem to be answered in some way, I feel now that it was a coincidence.

These days, since I’ve seen the light, (wow, I’ve always wanted to say that phrase), and the praying that I do is nothing like that pictured above. I have learned that God or my Spirit are not out there. They are within me. They are with me always, and I am now with them. I have known for quite some time now, but God is not “live” in those other places, such as a tabernacle, and holy or special churches, Or up above in His home in the sky.

I have also learned a different form of prayer. Generally, I say nothing whatsoever to God. What could I possibly ask for that I don’t know God will take care of in his own time. Most of what I used to ask for would have been material things. I really don’t believe that God is interested in our material lives. We have been given free will, or free choice, and God allows things to play out as they will, or from the choices we make.

My entire prayer life now consists of listening. I do not need to have my hands clasped, or to be kneeling. I need not say anything to God, other than the words “thank you”. Put in a single thing that could be happening in my life, God certainly knows best how to deal with it. Since the third step, when I decided to surrender to God, to give to Him what he already owned anyway, I have been happy and confident in my prayer.

You might wonder what it is I hear when I pray in this manner. Well, generally speaking, I don’t physically hear anything. Sometimes, there seems to be no results at all. At other times what I “hear” is more in the form of an intuition. Your next question may be, how do I know that what I intuit is from God or my Spirit? Believe me, there is no doubt. It is the same kind of situation that I have spoken about before, where at the same time I am doing, or about to do, something wrong, I know intuitively what would really be the right thing to do. As it says in the text of the Big Book, God can. I think I’ll let Him.

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In this episode I’ll continue with step number 10 and talk about the second part of that step. As a reminder, this step is:

I continue to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly admitted it.

I have underlined today’s subject.

I suppose I would consider this the most difficult part of the step. It’s easy enough for me to sit in my chair at night or on the side of my bed and think about who I might have offended during the day, and especially whether or not I need to make amends to them.

Sometimes I may say something offhanded to one of my friends, but it may be that it’s just him and I standing there. Maybe I’ll say something like, “You are such a goofball”. If I think about this before bedtime I would probably just let it go as something that was said in fun or in jest.

However, I may have said it when the two of us were standing around in conversation with, say, six other friends. In that case I may say to myself in the evening that I would have to check that out with him, and ask him if my saying that caused him discomfort. If it did I would have to apologize immediately.

Sometimes, of course, my rationality gets into the picture. I may think that I am, in a way, better than him. This may be because I would say to myself that he shouldn’t be so thin-skinned, and realize that he was a perfect human being. Wow! Ain’t I great?! So what I think about the situation really has nothing to do with whether I may have offended someone or not. One thing I cannot do is transfer my moral or theological feelings to him or her. I really think that would be a violation of their space.

Anyway, the biggest aspect of this step, I think, can be summed up in the word awareness. I know I used to go around all day just running my mouth and saying or doing just about whatever I wanted to without any concern for any of those that were in my path. I try not to do that now, and try to remain aware of how I am affecting other people. It is not always easy, but that is why I try to do this step every night. Sometimes it is easier in retrospect, when it is quieter, to realize how I may have affected someone.

And, as I said I must try to keep my rationalization out of the picture. God, or my Spirit, will let me know what to do, but I will not hear what they are saying if I am allowing myself will and my rationalization to run riot over me.

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In this episode I’ll begin step number 10. As a reminder, step number 10 is:

I continue to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly admitted it.

This is a step that I use almost every day as part of my recovery program. I must admit I don’t really think of it anymore. Simply has become part of me and I have no trouble recognizing that little bit of uneasiness when my Spirit is complaining. I don’t know how to describe it other than a feeling that makes me want to examine what I have been doing this day, and mostly, who I have been interacting with. I say who because it is most likely a person I have interacted with that has produced this uneasiness in me.

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to you guys before, I am now legally blind, I wear to hearing aids, I have two complete titanium knee replacements and after about four years, they still hurt somewhat. I have also had multiple back operations. What all this means is number one, I can’t drive. Number two, I can only walk a short distance. Sometimes, even walking the length of our apartment, (which is very small), I have to sit down on a chair. So there’s not much 10th step work for me to do regarding places and things, but I still interact with people and I still see times when I am wrong in doing that!

So, if you have done a good 4th step and 5th step, you can’t help but remember the things that were on there that are apt to give you problems if you do not look out for them. For me, as soon as I see a situation that stimulates an old situation in my mind having to do with people, places, or things, my awareness level seems to shoot way up. As I’ve said before, I have been sober for many years and it has been a long time since I even think of alcohol as anything other than something I occasionally add to a dish I am cooking. However, although I don’t bequeath them with alcohol and the longer, I still have some of my, “getting along with people”, issues to contend with. I know that sometimes I try to be funny and I’m the only one that’s laughing. That is usually an amends red flag. Also, at times I will let my sarcasm get out of hand with someone I am speaking with. Another red flag! So, it’s not that I have to be always watching myself 24/7, but it’s more that my Spirit and I are so comfortable with each other that we freely speak about things that are bothering either one of us. Next time I will speak about what I consider to be the second part of this step that says, “and when we are wrong, promptly admitted it”.

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So, this episode will be about the last part of step nine. As a refresher, number nine is:

I made direct amends to such persons wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

This episode is about the last part of step nine (the underlined part).

This part of the step can either work for us or against us. It is the ideal, perfect place for our rationalization to rear its ugly head. Of course there are a few instances where it would legitimately be not wise to bring up the past. For instance let’s think about one of the usual scenarios that arise in relation to this step. Let’s say that in your drinking or drugging or whatever promiscuous days you had sex with a person that also happened to be a spouse. Let us further assume that the spouse of this person knew nothing about their promiscuity. Would it be a wise choice to approach the spouse and say, I’m trying to clear my conscience, so I want to let you know that I caused your partner to be unfaithful to you. In this case, what’s the point? I can see no benefit from this action other than clearing the mind or the conscience of the person doing the step. It certainly seems that this action would fall under the purview of injuring them or others, and quite possibly, both.

All of these admissions, or confessions if you will, are asked for by this ninth step for two reasons. The first reason is to try to let the other person or persons involved, know why you did what you did, or said what you said. However, this step is not meant to be used as a harmful thing to another person, or to allow you to feel better as a result of your actions.

The second reason for doing this step is to, (hopefully), allow you some relief from the pressure that might linger in the memory of what you have done. For us to feel better as a result of speaking with someone through step nine is pretty much a byproduct of this step. My main reason for talking about this with that person is to let them know that the issue was entirely me.

Now, let me get to the part where it is possible for me to play games, and not do this step correctly. In almost every item on my list, I realized that I could easily become involved with my old friend rationalization. It was relatively easy for me to say something like, “Oh, they wouldn’t want to hear from me. It would only open up old wounds and cause bad feelings all around.” The real reason is not because I wouldn’t want them to feel bad. The real reason is because I did not want to make myself feel bad by admitting any imperfection. This is what my rationalization does. It tries to convince me that I should take the course of action that makes me look the best. And I certainly do not mean in the eyes of the other person involved. I mean that my rationalization is such that it can almost eliminate the other person or the other person’s feelings in deference to not allowing me to feel bad, or to look bad.

In doing my ninth step, I must remember that hopefully, both parties will benefit from my actions. That may not be possible in all situations. In those cases, the ultimate good thing, is for the other party to feel better or understand better why the situation that caused this amends to take place, happened.

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In this episode I will speak about the first part of step number nine:

I made direct amends to such persons wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Now that I’ve made my list, I’m ready to start actually going through the list and seeking out those people to whom I have to make amends. Some of them, maybe even most of them will be relatively easy to find time to approach. They will usually be those who we are closest to in our lives. They will be our partners, our sons or daughters, our in-laws and other relatives. They will also be our friends, our coworkers, and our employers. They will also be those who we deal with on a regular basis, including folks at the grocery store, hairdresser, barber, restaurants, and other service workers. All of the above mentioned folks, although usually easy to locate are not necessarily the easiest with whom to make amends. Our partner may have left and possibly taken our children with them. Maybe there’s a restraining order because they were so afraid of us or just simply tired of the same old, same old!

So what is our usual modus operandi for dealing with all of these folks. Well, my rule of thumb is to not create a situation where they will feel uncomfortable, just because we have a need to try to clear the air. We must make ourselves available to them, on their terms. If need be, we should tell them ahead of time via phone, mail, or social media, why it is that we need to speak with them and exactly what we are trying to do. We might even mention step number nine and that it is part of a program that I’m trying to use in order to be a well, dependable, and relatively normal human being.

I say relatively normal because our condition, assuming we are doing this as the spiritual program it is meant to be, we are changed. We may be free from whatever issue progress to the 12-step program. If we are allowing the 12-step program to work the way it has been intended, we are changed once again. You now are saying “yes” in the 3rd step, our surrender has worked in two ways. We have given up those things for the past that were insane behavior but now the new us may be difficult for others to understand or even believe.

I believe the best thing is a direct, gentle, and sincere approach, in which we state our recognition of our problem(S), and if appropriate, what we would like to do to try to help rectify our past behaviors and actions.

Other than these easily accessible folks, there will be, (sometimes many), folks that are either difficult or impossible to contact. In these cases I must make sure that my tendency for rationalization is not overworking here. I could very easily tell myself that this person is inaccessible because that’s the answer that would be easy for me. Sometimes I must simply bite the bullet, remember that God is providing me with all the power that I need, and make the attempt to reach these people. If a trip to see them might be out of the question, well, there is always a phone call or social media that I can use to reach them. Remember, which is always be at their convenience. You might say something like, “Hi (name), this is Chuck I would like a little of your time to explain, and apologize for my (whatever) behavior.”

If it turns out to be absolutely impossible to reach a particular person and you know it is a person that you need to make amends to, I would suggest writing a letter. After writing the letter, I would put it in a drawer somewhere with the intention of giving it to them if the occasion ever presents itself.

The whole idea here is to finish clearing up the wreckage of the past wherever possible, especially after doing our 5th stop. It is a continuation of our cleanup in order for us to continue learning our new way of life.

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In today’s episode, I will be finishing up on the 8th step. The 8th step is, “I made a list of all persons I is harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.” The last portion, the one I will be discussing today, is, “became willing to make amends to them all.”

This part of the step I always kind of, took for granted is, “Well, sure, of course I’m going to make amends to them all.” If you notice, I left out the word “willing”. It was always a lot easier to come up with all of the names of those people and shut them down on a list. “There”, I would think, I’m done with that. I thought that all I had to do was include as many folks as I could remember on this list and I would be finished. But, was I? In looking at my list in this, real and final 12-step approach.

This is when the word willingness surfaced. I did not like it one bit! Why couldn’t I just write those names down and be done with it? It turns out that some of those people I didn’t even want to see again, no less visit them with my hat in my hand, telling them I was sorry for what I had done to them. Well, that’s the way I thought about this step before. It’s no wonder I so easily easily and casually left out the word willingness. After all, I knew it was important. When I wrote the book, Gifts from God, the gifts that I associated with the 8th step was willingness! Isn’t it amazing, I thought, how I can twist words around or totally eliminate them when I’m not serious about the steps? So I had to carefully go over my list again, making particular note of those folks that I knew I had to make amends to, but I really didn’t want to. They were either people who I would be really embarrassed to have to face again, never mind the amends I had to make. Or they might be people I just didn’t like at all, but that I had to make amends to in order to follow my program.

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Here we are at the second part of step number eight. The words I would like to talk about our, “and became willing to make amends to them all”. I know that it can be much easier to sit and write a list of all those persons. I know because I did it. Writing the list was easy compared to becoming willing to make amends to everyone on that list.

But this really means is that we try to recollect, as much as possible, those folks who, during whatever behavior we exhibited, or was our problem, were heard because of it. This is not just mean physical or monetary hurt. Sometimes it can be even more important when we heard their feelings. It can be more important when we heard the relationship that we have with them. These are really the important things that I am becoming willing to make amends for

Let’s say I borrowed money when I was drinking from a friend of mine, say, $50. It is a lot easier to think about giving them $50 back then talking to them, and explaining why I needed that $50 and that at the time, all I could think about was drinking some more. I might say to them that I am truly sorry that I was dishonest with them. This is making amends on a feeling level and trying to restore the alliances that I had in the past. In this situation it may be that I don’t even have the $50 available to give them yet. Maybe I can give them $10 as a start, or maybe I don’t even have that. It is still important for me to communicate with them about what I was going through and that I would like to make things right with.

Some of the things we did are not as simple as giving somebody 50 bucks back and making amends. Sometimes the people or institutions we need to make amends to are not willing to accept our reasons for having harm them. In these cases, we may need the help of an intermediary, or even a lawyer. Each of our cases is different, and there is no way to offer advice to everyone. The thing is, that they while back we have made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Everything we do in life, after that point, is done, hopefully, by trying to follow the direction of our Spirit. It is not easy! Quite often we need to do whatever it takes to try to manifest our new way of life in all of our behaviors. We have to remember that we have the power, the unlimited power of God, to help us with our dealings in life. Nothing is more important in our relationship with our Holy Spirit. We will always know the right thing to do. The question is, are we willing to do it?

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Let’s begin by saying what step eight is:

I made a list of all persons I had harmed and became willing to make complete amends to them all.

Now, don’t forget that these are the original 12 steps from the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous not to mention that I’ve written them in the first person because that is easier for me to work with.

I remember when I first read this step, I thought it was just a rehash of the fourth step inventory. It is not. The fourth step was really, primarily, about the things that I had 10 in my life that I considered to be either appropriate or inappropriate. These were things that affected primarily me, and not so much what I had done to cause others harm. I may have mentioned that in one particular year I went on a real bender. I may have wrecked my car, drank all night, and punched some guy in the nose when I was in the bar. All of these things were certainly things I had to look at my fourth step, primarily behavior issues. What I may have left out of my fourth step was that the car that I read was paid for with money that my family loaned me and I never paid back. When I punched the guy in the nose busted his glasses, and he was out of work for two days. Also, the reason I was able to drink all night in the bar was because they had money I borrowed from my cousin Willie, who I told I needed to buy new clothes.

My point is, that I couldn’t just pass off my fourth step from a step. Yes some of those things in the eight step would have been the fourth also, that I really needed to go over everything carefully so that I didn’t miss anything. And even though they may have overlapped, the reason for doing the fourth step was really to examine my defects of character and shortcomings, not so much how they affected others.

I really thought this eight step would be a piece of cake. Let’s face it, during my phony 12 step shenanigans, I never even made an attempt to think of those I had harmed, molest making any restitution’s. But now that I was on my serious attempt at sincerely trying to do these 12 steps the way they were written, well, it wasn’t a walk in the park. I not only listed exactly what it was that I had done to offend these people, I listed how I thought I heard their feelings, especially those that had put (unwarranted) trust in me. The first part of the Safe Step turned out to be a crucial step in my road to recovery.

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the 12-step program, and yet I wasn’t participating at all. Sure I worded the s I did all of the actions that seem to be required of me teps and for anyone who was looking, (and I thought everyone was looking), I did all of the actions that made me look good if not feel-good about myself. This time, I have looked deeply into the original 12 steps and let the reasons doing each and every step burned into my mind.

Actually, I’m not really sure what to call this time. It’s not anything like all of those phony times that I was in the 12 step program. I was in the program in order to benefit, in some material way, so I could go out and do my thing again. But, when I refer to this time, it seems like it is a completely different program for me. I actually became powerless and realized I was not able to truly manage any part of my life. I realized I had to come to terms with how a higher power fit into my life and ultimately realized that my higher power is my life! I became very cognizant and personal about what each of the steps that lay ahead meant to my spirit into my life. I was no longer trying to impress anyone. I was no longer trying to be the object that was necessary in everyone else’s wife. I was trying to do this subject that was necessary in my life. Him

Him So each of these steps became an event for me rather than some many words on paper. I looked at the original version of step number seven. It is:

I humbly, on my knees, I asked Him to remove my shortcomings — holding nothing back.

Wow! I thought of what it said in the book, “Many of us exclaimed, what an order, I cannot go through with it!” But the truth is, I have gotten through it,. Not once, not twice, but many times. You see I had to realize one small fact I am a human being! I could say this step with all of the sincerity I had within, but it has taken me a while to remove the shortcomings, even with God’s help.

Now, I’m not saying that God cannot or will not remove all of your shortcomings immediately. Actually, I hope he does. We are each different in God’s eyes as well as having a different role to play once we become “changed” in His eyes. As we become entrenched in this spiritual journey of the 12 steps, of a new way of life, a lot is asked of us by God in order to bring us even closer to Him, to be able to follow his direction.

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So , my friends, the six step has always been a little bit weird for me. Once again, it says that I was entirely ready to have God remove always defects character. Let me tell you now, that when I finally was honest enough to do the steps in earnest, I was not, in any way shape or form, entirely ready. I had everything that this program has to offer, on my side. I knew I could manage my life. I believe that a higher power was there for me and for my use. I finally, finally, made his decision to turn my will and my wife over to the care of God’s direction. I didn’t fourth and fifth step. They were difficult for me because they entailed dealing with things and problems in my life that weren’t easy to face. Now, here I was at the 6th step. I did not really know how to handle the sixth and seventh steps. Sure, I had gone over and over all those things in my head, with God, and with other people. But I just did not know how I was going to get rid of them.

Although it has been many years since I began doing this program, this way of life, and Ernest, there are still shortcomings around. I don’t like it, and I don’t give into them, but it is really hard to throw them out as if they never existed. I have always pictured this place where I keep my shortcomings in character defects like a room in a dungeon, where each one is tied up neatly in a little or bigger sack, waiting for me to deal with them. Most of those sacks are gone, and I guess my way of dealing with the others has been to behave in the opposite way that they used to dictate. Oh, I know that I have been given for these and I have forgiven myself. That is not the problem. I guess I sometimes live in fear that because I haven’t been able to make a complete tabula rasa, that they will come back to bite me.

So, as I said last week, thank God for step 10! He has given me the desire and the willingness to keep checking on myself and making sure I am following his direction and not mine. Every once in a while, with God’s help, I am able to pick up one of those sacks and heaving into the fire. It is a great relief.

All I can say is that this cleaning up stuff is a lot of work! But because of that third step, I do not have to fight the impulses to do those character defects and shortcomings in the longer. I just have to finally come to terms with them, and, as I said, try to do the opposite of what I used to, because that is God’s direction for me.

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Step number six is the step I am talking about in this episode. Number six is: “I was entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.”

So, some of you may have read my book entitled, Gifts From God, and the gift that I associated this step is the gift of readiness. As you know by now, all of the steps to discuss here are from the first edition of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, but using my personal wording to make them more personal for me. Also, the wording of the steps is little bit different than those steps you will see in the current edition of the Big Book because some of the wording has changed over the years. I, however, preferred the feeling in the wording from the original, first edition.

As I said, I associate this step with the gift of readiness. As I look at the sixth step I can start to imagine my human self beginning to work on that tabula rasa that is one of the goals for my happy humanity. This is due in part, actually mostly, to that third step where I decided to turn my will and my life over to the care of God’s direction. In the fourth step I identified those things, (at least as many as I could at the time), talked about them in the fifth step, and now, at this sixth step, am reviewing them deciding if I truly want to eliminate those things that have not been good in my life. I have gone over each one and decided, with God’s direction, that I would like, in a perfect world, to be free of all these defects of character.

Believe it or not, after making this decision many years ago, I still have a few of those defects arising at the most inopportune times. I forget to depend on God’s power to cleanse myself of these defects. Thank you God for this program, because I still have step number 10 to help me continue to recognize these defects and deal with their appearance almost immediately.

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This is the last episode motel talk about step number five. Again, to remind you, this step is: admitted to God to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.

For many of us, the fourth step is the place for us to really examine our life so far especially those things where we feel like we have not followed the direction that we might have been given by God. If you’re anything like me, especially when I did my final rendition of the fourth step, I was very wordy. I actually think it was symbolic in the way because I was starting to get rid of my ego and pride. When I look back on that fourth step, I realize how puffed up it was, even though I was trying to do that step right, it contained a lot of descriptive text that really did not need to be there.

It is my feeling that when I am referencing those things as I’m doing the fifth step, no matter which percentage I am doing it with, including God, I really need to tone it down. This step is not asking me to read from our fourth step until someone or reminisce over my misspent d life history. In this step I need to be talking about the nature of my wrongs, not necessarily each individual wrong that I did. And this does not mean the things that I did as I was involved in whatever powerlessness I had. For instance, I happen to be an alcoholic. This step is not mean that I should talk about those things I did when I was drinking or drunk. It simply did not say, when I was drinking or drunk, when I was over reading, when I was under the influence of drugs. This is a rehash of our life choices, whether or not we were under the influence of something else. For instance, I may have had an argument with a significant other and got so angry that I jumped in my car and drove like a madman. I ende now d up causing property damage or, God forbid, hurting someone. I may not have been under the influence of anything in this incident, but you can certainly know that I need to talk about it in my fourth and fifth steps. In my fourth step and might’ve described the incident as it happened, and in my fifth step I would talk about the nature that wrong, i.e., that was prone to anger, and at times was only concerned about myself and not the safety of others.

In other words, I may speak about the fact that I was a thief and unnecessarily each individual thing that I stole this is where, if we, hopefully, chose the right person with which to do this fifth step, we can get good sound advice about how to not do these things, (from a human perspective), in the future.

It’s Assuming that I am doing these steps as they were met today done thus far, well, I am aware that I always have God’s protection and power with me. But even though we have a spiritual tabula rasa, it may take a while for us to retrain this human personality of ours. Don’t worry. If you have turned your will and your life over to God, your life will work out just as it should.

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So now we are going to talk about the next part of this fifth step. Again, to remind you, this step is: admitted to God to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. In this episode we will be talking about that “other human being”.

I believe that the most important part of this step is the preparation that we do before doing this part of the step. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of finding the right person to do this part of the fifth step with. In the Oxford group, which I consider the precursor of any twelve-step program, they use the word confession. The person they would usually do this confession with, was one they called changed. I believe a person who is working these 12 steps becomes changed when they honestly absorb the third step as part of their own being. If you are attending meetings and looking around for someone with whom to do this step, please do not rush it. That person is not necessarily someone who you are friends with. It is not necessarily your sponsor. It is someone who is trying to navigate the 12 step program in a way that you would like to emulate for your own way of life. Here are some ideas for that person.

• There are quite a few folk with a religious vocation who are also members of a 12 step program. After all, they are still human.

• I don’t mean to rule out your sponsor at the normal course of action. As a matter of fact if you have found a sponsor who is trying their best to acquire a way of life based on the spiritual surrender indicated in the steps, well, by all means, consider doing this this step with them.

• There is really no person, vocation, or occupation that is ruled out for this fifth step participant. The qualifications I would suggest are someone who is striving for a spiritual way of life, as well as someone who is willing to really listen to what you have to say, and possibly offer some wise suggestions for how you could improve your life in the future.

Sometimes you might be dealing with difficult moral issues or even legal issues, and you would really have to take this into consideration when choosing your fifth step participant. I have heard the occasional story about someone who did 1/5 step with another member of a 12 step program and either overheard or was told that someone was repeating what they had said to others. Many of us, by this time in our program, really have begun a new way of life and hearing someone repeat one of our wrongs is just not important. We might even pray for their awakening. This part of the fifth step

In any event, choose wisely. If you do, you will find it to be an experience to be remembered for its fullness and love. I found a great weight lifted from my shoulders and I really did begin to see life a little differently. This part of the fifth step can be a crucial springboard to a new way of life. Don’t forget, this is a God-given program, and whether you believe it or not, God really does know what He’s doing.

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For part four of the discussion of step five, I would like to speak about admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to ourselves. Once again, I recall asking myself why this was necessary. After all, did not just do ¼ step that went over all of the gory details that I thought were appropriate and/or necessary to include in that writing.

When I had finally decided to be honest, (or at least as honest as I could be at the time), I tried to be as fearless as possible when digging up those incidences from the dregs of my mind. Even though I had decided that I wanted to be “fearless and thorough from the very start”, I remember having a difficult time with step four. Some of the incidents from my past showed up in my brain and very foggy way, and I had to fight to bring them to the front. I had a problem with other memories, not because they were foggy, but because they were just too painful to look at again. This is one of the reasons why I believe this God-given program was given to us in the order it is. It is implied that I definitely need to do the first three steps before tackling the action steps of four through nine. Once I was secure in the first three steps and I knew that I had the actual power of God to help with my day to day life, I was able to look at my past in a different light. I knew that some of the things I had done were downright bad, or at the very least, inappropriate. However, with the strength I was given through the first three steps, I was able to face my “self” in the action steps, four through nine. But according to this part of step five, I was certainly not ready to completely let go of those incidences of which I had become painfully aware.

Now, the fifth step was asking me to look into that mirror one more time. This time it wants me to admit to myself the exact nature of my wrongs! Come on! Give me a break! How many times so I have to go through this? Garbage? It turned out that it really help me to sit down in a quiet place and read my fourth step as if it were being read by a bystander or stranger. It helped me to reinforce the fact that I had become some kind of entity that was absolutely out of control. It helped me to realize that, if I wanted to have some degree of happiness in this world and this life, I needed to reach out to God for help.

So, this part of the fifth step that asks me to admit to myself the nature of my wrongs, was actually right on. But, it didn’t just become a litany of my failures. It was, even more importantly, an awakening to my potential and possibilitie. I had surrendered my way of doing things to God. That in itself was like a huge weight off of my shoulders. Now I got another chance to become aware of exactly what that weight was that was about to, for the most part, leave me. I was becoming aware of a whole new outlook on my life. I realized for the first time that I did not have to do those things that beat myself down. I became no less than, and no more than, any other human being. I was the same as them, with the same heartbreak in the same happiness. The difference was, however, that I had a plan to listen and follow my spiritual self. I have a plan to follow God’s direction.

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In this third part of the topic of step number five, I would like to speak about how I admit to God the exact nature of my wrongs. On first blush, my thought was, “this is crazy, God already knows everything about what I’ve been what I am and what I’m going to be. Why do I need to tell him what he already knows?”.

Well, I believe that the above question is correct. I truly do believe that God knows all there is to know about me. Once again, in case you’re not aware or don’t remember, I believe that we all are, in our essence, God. Now I know that some of you still believe that we find God through whatever particular religion or group that we are involved with. Well, I’m certainly not advising that you give up your relationship with whatever group it is. It’s just that my relationship with God starts from within. It is not really even debatable how many times Christ referred to God as being within us. His words were not some kind of mysterious doublespeak, that you had to be in a club to understand. No, his words were simple and straightforward. Sometimes I think that we must throw some kind of a switch in order to hear those words in their true meaning. I think we have to really, (I really don’t know how many times I can say this), follow the steps as they are presented to us. If I truly believe the first step I know that I just can’t seem to handle life on my own. This leads me to decide whether my belief system will allow me to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. This is step two, step I am talking about here. What I am trying to get you to believe, or I should say, to look within yourself for that belief, is that God has always been within the last, simply waiting for us to become aware of that fact. This might be the most giant leap, other than saying “yes,” I surrender, but I take in my whole life.

Getting back to my reason for including God in this fifth step, well, it doesn’t really have a lot to do with what I just mentioned about car being within us, but I just have to spread that word whenever I can. Anyway, I believe we are urged to include God in this fifth step, not because he does not know about our character defects and shortcomings, but because by talking to God about them we reinforced two things within us. First is just the nature of all those things that we are referring to from our fourth step. Secondly, and I think most importantly, I am reinforcing my belief in God, as well as my belief that God can help me get my life in order.

I have already, in step number three, surrendered to God’s direction for my life. In this step I kind of think of it as getting the record straight. It’s kind of laying all my cards on the table for me to look at them once more, and to believe that I have this union with God that, with our partnership, my life can once again become the beautiful reflection of God’s love that it was meant to be.

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To begin, I would like to make a short detour in order to mention the first words of this step”, admitted”.

In Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), "admitted" means to confess, recognize, and accept the reality of one’s alcoholism, powerlessness over alcohol, and the unmanageability of life. It is the foundation of Step One, moving from denial to acknowledging facts, and in Step Five, it refers to vocalizing the exact nature of one's wrongs. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Aspects of "Admitted" in step five of AA:

· Step Five ("Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being..."): In this step, "admitted" means confession and sharing the "exact nature of our wrongs" to break down shame and build accountability.

This overview from Googles Copilot AI program is mostly directed to alcoholics with references to the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course, this book highlights the 12 steps as being for alcoholics, but in this podcast I recognize, (and hope you do to), that these 12 steps are for everyone.

Anyway, my understanding of the word admitted is to reveal something that we already know the true. Admitting it is a way of reinforcing that truth within ourselves. It may or may not be a reasonable distance within us between the word admission and the word acceptance.

Personally, I was willing to admit this, nature of my wrongs, to God, myself, and other human beings all of my life until I honestly found this 12-step program. It was another way of putting myself down! Mea culpa… Mea culpa!

It wasn’t until I became honest in looking at myself and working this program, that I admitted that all of these things were saved by me as a huge amount to baggage with which to complicate, and hence, destroy my life as much as possible.

Now, with my newfound honesty in truly looking at “me”, I began to see this baggage as something I could let go of or, with God’s direction, accept the things that were left, and easy to do something to make them right, or if that was not possible, leave them in God’s powerful hands.

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Step number five is the second step of our action steps. I have to admit that the first few times that I did step four, I did it with the expectation of doing step number five. In other words step five was kind of hanging over me as I thought of which of the things I had done that I was willing to tell someone else about.

When I finally reached the end of my rope, it became important to me to do step four with complete honesty, (well, as much as I could muster in those early days), with no expectations of doing step number five. I tried to be as honest as possible, and I was going to say it was easier than ever before, but that would be untrue because I had never before our out myself to be seen for the real me. But now, now I had the feeling and knowledge of having real power, (the Power greater than myself from the second step), and I felt I could say anything without fear because God was truly within me.

I would like to talk today about my life leading up to the fifth step. In other words, the preparation that includes honesty and willingness, coupled with a dash of courage, that would lead me into a fitful fifth step.

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So here we are at the ( sometimes dreaded) fourth step. Once again, please allow me to remind you of what the fourth step is:

I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

I have italicized what I consider to be the most important words in this fourth step. I know I’ve spoken about the word fearless, both when I have discussed the steps in the past, as well as last week’s episode. I also know I sound like a broken record at times because I want to keep reminding you how important it is to have the steps become a way of life (as we do them!). Each step really does builds on the previous step.

This means, simply, that I am really led through the steps, once I earnestly want to become honest, in a natural way. Because I found myself truly unmanageable in the first step, well, then I had to look for help. The steps tell me that I can find help in step number two if I come to believe that a power, greater than myself to restore me to sanity. Once I come to believe in that power (God) I will find a strength with which to continue working the rest of the steps. I can only ask you to believe me when I say that this is true. In my earlier years of “fooling around” with this program, I never got to the point where I honestly thought I needed help from anywhere else. I could do it myself. I could get myself well, not drink, get a job and a car, and be on top of the world. That was all fine, but it never lasted very long. I never sought the internal presence of God that could help me and give me strength and power. Now, as I honestly continue this program, I have admitted my powerlessness. Once I did that, I automatically start a power outside of myself. It was there, within me, as it had been there forever. I needed only to become aware of it and make it part of my existence. It was so big and important that in the third snap there was no question in my mind about turning things over to God. Once that happened, my spiritual responsibility wide elsewhere. The only thing I was responsible for, from then on, was to listen for the direction of my spirit.

Now, the fourth step became much easier, as well as much more honest. My Spirit (God) would guide me, and help me, to identify those things I had done in my life that have become the baggage of the present. Now I could begin my list, which would still be difficult, but with the help of my Spirit to honestly look at my past.

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I would like to start by reminding you of a couple of things. First, I am telling you about working the steps from the points of view that I believe is the way the original program was meant to be. That original program, and the 12 steps were designed as a way of life that works with God, (as we, individually, understand God).

You will find that this spiritual program depends, quite often, on using the strengths obtained from the previous steps to do the current step. In other words, the power and support gained from God and doing the first three steps helps me with strength to do this fourth step. As a reminder, that fourth step is:

I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

This is not an easy thing to do, at least not from our purely human standpoint. When I saw the word searching I thought, okay, I can handle that, but fearless, well I just wasn’t in that position yet. I could never have handled the fearless with so little power that I had. I had to depend on that power greater than myself, in order to get back on the roots of sanity. This is what I would like to speak about in this first episode of the fourth step.

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In our last podcast I ended with speaking about duality and how it is now considered to be passé in both sciences and philosophy. I truly do not understand how educated people can look at our makeup and decide that we are ultimately of one substance. The so-called hard problem of what our consciousness is or where he came from, still exists. Many scientists and philosophers seem to brush it off saying, “sure, it’s a problem, but it’s same substance as our physical self and will figure it out at some point”. I think not!

My belief in God begins with my belief that I cannot look outside of myself to find Him. The essence of my “self”, both physically and spiritually is my Spirit/God. I might say that this is the beginning, as well as the end, of me. Without this essence of God, I believe we would be just some lump of flesh, existing much like the wild animals of the earth. What makes us human beings is our indescribable qualities of consciousness and spirituality.

That leaves me in a quandary. What is the purpose of religions in our society? If God is to be found within, as an inseparable part of us, then what are we looking for in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.? What I see them as, are places to share the knowledge of our possession of God with others. They are places where we can support each other with our experience, strength, and hope both for living a life as is requested by God, thereby helping each other to a final end of joy. Exactly what that looks like, no one seems to know. I am, however, looking forward to this wonderful discovery.

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Let’s imagine for a moment, leaving the place that we live in the morning, soon after having breakfast. Our breakfast may have been cornflakes, a bowl of grits, French toast, or what we could call the “Full Monty” of bacon and sausage eggs and home fries. What we decided to have for breakfast wasn’t what I would consider something that would need our consultation with our Spirit. What I believe, and what I would like to tell you about, is our duality. The trend amongst philosophers and scientists (and even geologists) these days is to kick duality out the window in favor of non-duality. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the things to look at is the philosophy of Occam's Razor, which basically says that of all possible solutions to a particular issue, the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one. Look around you, and also look at yourself, maybe in the mirror. Can you really believe from theory or hypothesis that what you see, feel, taste, smell, and touch, is not real, but an illusion! My feeling is similar to that of the philosopher Richard Swinburne, who just said, “That’s just crazy!”.

I know that when I look around and take everything in that, for me it is all real. I also know that besides all that, there is some sort of ethereal situation that I am somehow aware of. I prefer to call it a sense of consciousness, coupled somehow with Spirit. This is my simple, yet rich, duality. This duality is something that I believe has to be accepted in order for us to truly discover that which is part of us as the source of everything. I call it my Essence. Some may call it our Spirit or Spark. What it is called makes no difference. It is always the same thing. The human part of our duality, as much as we may try, cannot change or alter the truth. That truth is our duality. That truth is the constant choice we have two either follow our human desires, or follow our spiritual intuition.

Of course, many of these things that we need to decide for ourselves are a result of the question presented to us in the second step. That is, simply, do I believe in higher power or for the purposes of my podcast, God?

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As a reminder, the third step is: (my version)

I made its decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand God

For me, this is arguably the most important step in this program. From a purely psychological aspect, one could argue that the first step, fourth step, eighth and ninth steps, and the twelfth step, hold equal importance as far as getting our bodies well. I have mentioned before that this program certainly does work as a solution to overcoming our lives difficulties and allows us to live a relatively comfortable, nondependent, and socially acceptable lifestyle. However, these physical and psychological changes and improvements are not what this podcast is all about! The name of this podcast is Steps To The Spirit.

Using this program to get by in life, is not the preferred solution for us. Our solution is to use these steps to discover and work with our Essence or, if you will, Spirit. The fact that after completing the steps in such a way that we are able to function in our job or profession, care for our families, and discover those things within us that have led to any of the life enhancers we had become accustomed to, is certainly good progress on the human scale, but not the goal of this podcast. If you look at the steps in this program there are, overall, six steps that either directly or indirectly involved a higher power. The higher power that this podcast refers to, is always God. There are many ways to get around this, and I personally believe that many, if not most,

folks who become involved in this program, do not put themselves in the hands of God.

So, this is what my podcast is all about — to show that the most important part of recovery in this program is our relationship with God and our Spirit in order to turn our lives over to his care and direction. As is noted in the book, of us do not achieve anything like perfect adherence to these principles. The point is that we look for spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. It is this goal that I hope to help you achieve.

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In this second part of step two, I want to talk about a crucial ingredient that was necessary for me to be successful with this 12 step program. Last episode I spoke about our individual belief in either a higher power (God) or the police in the possibility of the existence of a higher power. Now that I think of it, it may have been better for me to talk about second part of step two first.

Maybe some, it’s a no-brainer that we are, of course, insane. After all, after doing the first step and admitting I was powerless and that my life had become unmanageable, well, that insured the need for help outside of myself. I believe that in the 12-step program, that health is recognized as a power greater than ourselves, or God. There are also adjuncts to God, I think, in the form of helpers, such as a sponsor or a mentor. Now, brace yourself, because here it comes! I personally believe, (know), that my primary higher power can only be God. It is not someone or something that I have conveniently picked up along the way. No, I have discovered that this power has been with me, (as been me), all along.

In retrospect, I had to have become aware of my insanity from the very beginning of my recovery. I wish, for simplicity sake, that I could find a term to refer to this genuine recovery, as compared to all those other, previous, false starts. Maybe I could borrow something dramatic from, say, Star Wars! Maybe I could call it my final frontier! Actually, now that I think of it, recovery seems to fit just fine. The thing that is built into all of those other attempts is that they were not to recovery. They were attempts at going through the motions of doing a program that I knew worked for others, hoping that somehow, by osmosis, it would work for me. I had no honesty. I had no true introspection into my true self. I did not recognize my insanity. In short, I was simply not ready to say yes to God, or to surrender.

Maybe, as I looked at the insanity of step number two before looking at the need for a belief, I would have surrendered sooner. There is no way of knowing. It is what it is.

So, in this episode, I am going to talk about our insanity. Please be vigilant. You may discover yourself somewhere in here.

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This episode begin to our look at the second step of the 12 step program. To refresh your memory the second step is:

I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

When I was first dubbing around you with the 12 step program, I pretty much skipped over the second step. I believe I was like many of us who found ourselves in the grips of whatever life problem constantly hampered us. All I wanted to do at that moment was to get this thing over with. I wanted to find some way to get back to my (normal) life. The fact of the matter was that I really had no normal life. My life was a series of starts, then some advancement, then started drinking all over again, until I lost what meager things I had gained. In those new attempts at life, there always arose from problem area that I needed to deal with. Back then, I never looked for solutions other than drinking. That was normal for me. That was the way I had learned since I was very young, to deal with problems. It had never worked before, yet I continued to try to solve my problems through this method. This is a sign of insanity! Please believe me, if you have any aversion to being thought of as insane, look at what you’ve done in the past. We keep trying to run our lives using the same solutions as before, even though they not only did not work, but ended up making us worse off than we were before.

This, my friends, is one of the sure signs of insanity. We try to continue to solve our life problems with methods that didn’t work before, but that we convince ourselves we will work this time. This is why I say, I know, that unless I can truly believe that there is a higher power that I can look to and depend on, it would be no hope for success in my life. In the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, they pulled no punches. They say, I believe somewhere in the beginning of chapter 5, “,… that one is God, may you find him now”.

I truly, honestly, with all my heart and soul, believe that if we cannot get past this second step, either in this 12 step program or not, will continue to be very much unmanageable. Many of us have had some kind of God figure in our lives at some time, usually when we were younger. That may have included being taught by others what God was all about. It may have included being taught that we had to perform certain actions in order to be on the “good side” of God, and make it into a good, comfortable place when we die. How this all manifests in different religions is not, as far as I’m concerned, the important thing. What I see is the important thing is the direct belief in a personal God as a result of this second step.

The truth about the second step is that it is preparation was step number three. I needed to become a right minded person, or at least get a start on it before I was even able to think about making a commitment to a higher power. And while I’m at it, thinking about the whole purpose of this podcast and all of my writing in my books, I would just as soon forget this term higher power. It is just term that’s been put into the program to make it easier for us to adhere to something that was beyond ourselves. I need to get my ego out of the way when thinking about God. One might think they are not going to give any particular thing that they have heard of before control over their lives. Oh, please, let’s get our egos out of the way! I will tell you right now that for me, God is God, with no if’s, ands or butts that might go along with His name. This is the God that we come to believe in, in the second step. It is not the God that you find in church, and synagogue, or in the mosque. It is the God that is that eternal spark, (essence, if you will), that we discover within. It is that spark I become aware of and come to believe that it is my salvation. It is by my dependents on this Spirit within that will be my strength

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So in step one I personally admitted, finally, that I could not handle alcohol. Alcohol was the substance that I found I could use to escape life and basically, escape myself. That is what I really hated so much I hated me. I did not want to be close to anyone nor did I want anyone to know who I really was. I’m not even sure that I knew who I really was back then.

The second part of this step, when I first took it in earnest, with the admission that my life had become unmanageable. As I have mentioned before I use this program in the past many times and quite often in order to find a place of respite. I had no intention of improving my life or changing any part of it. I would admit, while I was in a 12 step program, but I couldn’t handle alcohol and that I certainly wasn’t going to drink any more of that again. Who was I kidding? Sometimes when I said that I mentioned it or at least I really wanted to mean it. I never really did. I was never at the point where I was going to be honest with myself. I was never at the point where I knew I could not manage my own affairs, no less turning that management over to a higher power or God.

Finally, I hit bottom. I was at the point that I said I would never get to, that of committing suicide. I was at my with tend. I was that person that I often portray in the cartoon in my books that is hanging onto a branch sticking out of the side of the cliff. There is an angel or spirit or something that represented God, saying to me that they would save me or help me. All I had to do was trust them and let go of that branch. It never happened until this last final, desperate, time in my life.

I heard this story from a woman speaker at a 12 step meeting and I like to share it whenever I can. At the time I was in the halfway house and my marriage was on the line. I didn’t really know what direction I was going in from one day to the next. I heard her say that if five years ago I decided that in five years I was going to be completely messed up as the result of my drinking. I said that I wanted to be in a halfway house with no job no money and no real friends. I might have said that my commitment to my wife and my marriage would be coming to an end. If this is the way your life is going today and you had planned for it to be this way five years ago, then you have no problems. Everything is going the way you planned. However if you did not plan for your life to be going this way…!

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Step one can be thought of in three ways. With me remind you that my version of step one is as follows: “We I admitted we were I am powerless over alcohol everything, that our lives my life has become unmanageable.”

I have indicated the original words and cross them out. My new version is indicated in red. All of the versions of the steps that are used are from the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939. The changes that I had made simply work better for me. If you are listening to this podcast, please feel free to use whatever version works for you.

Getting back to the three ways this step can be interpreted: 1. If I have seen this trip before, or I am familiar with the 12 steps, I would almost breeze over it, saying to myself something like, “oh yeah, I know I can’t handle booze, (or anything in my life)”. 2. I might say, “I’m not really one of those people. I just happened to overdo it sometimes.” 3. I might say, being new to the steps, “that sure makes a lot of sense. I don’t seem to be able to manage anything in my life”.

In this episode I like to talk about these three initial responses to the first step. For me, my final acceptance of the first step was caused by hitting my personal bottom. I was extremely familiar with the steps, maybe a little bit too familiar, because I thought I knew it all, and at the same time was lost. So, wh. I remember thinking that En I approached this step for the last time, it seemed like it was brand-new. I remember thinking that it seemed like I was seeing the steps for the first time! When I looked at the first step, it seemed as if I somehow that the trip into my past. I realized how much I was kidding myself with the slightest start that I could manage my life. I realized that I truly needed help. I realized that all my speaking about the steps, all of the understanding that I thought I had, meant nothing. I needed to start to let down my guards and to stop fooling myself into thinking that my life was going just fine.

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So, last time I started to touch on the Oxford Groups influence on the

beginnings of the 12-step program, or more accurately, Bill Wilson. Bill already had the foundations for the 12 step program etched into his mind from the Oxford Group. However, in 1935 he had the luck to encounter Dr. Bob. Bill was feeling a little bit shaky in his sobriety and thought it may be helpful to share his story with another person who is suffering, hence, the meeting with Dr. Bob at his hospital bedside. Dr. Bob saw the value in what was to become a spiritual program of staying sober for himself. They both recognize the value of one alcoholic helping another, thereby gaining strength for their own sobriety. This more acceptable form of confession came directly from the Oxford Groups practices. The only other ingredient that was necessary to begin the 12 step program — in the form of Alcoholics Anonymous, was a requirement that it be non-denominational. This is evident in the term sprinkled throughout the steps of “God, as we understand God”.

Eventually, there were about 100 people who became sober, mostly due to this new way of looking at themselves and at the same time helping others.

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This episode, and possibly the next I am dedicating to the formation of the 12 step program. If any of you have been listening to this podcast for a while, then you will know how much importance I put on the Oxford Group. I would go so far as to say that every one of the steps in the 12 step program has, in some way, I direct connection to the substance of the Oxford Group.

Bill Wilson, the cofounder of the 12 step program, learned about a way to become sober through his friend Ebby Thatcher, a member of the Oxford Group. Bill then attended meetings at the Oxford Group for some time, and became sober as a result of that. One of the things it was hard for Bill to swallow was the overriding inference, or maybe I should say, impact, of Christianity. This was one of the factors that I’ll talk about in today’s episode.

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From time to time, I like to talk to you about why I felt a need to start this podcast, why this podcast continues to exist, and, basically, what it is all about. I know some of you are old-time listeners, and really are kind of in sync with my line of thinking, certainly no what I am all about, including this podcast. Please feel free to skip this week and tune in on 14 January for the actual beginning of this year’s podcasts. I’ll start with another attempt to explain the 12 steps from my point of view. Most of my podcasts will be similar in explaining the steps, but I think I always have some new material to include that might give you some new fodder with which to consider your involvement and success in the 12-step program.

Once again, thank you for listening to this podcast. I certainly hope it helps in managing your life. It certainly helps me to manage mine. If you have any comments or questions, please contact me at:

chuck@1spirit.net

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Let me start by wishing you all very happy new year. In my estimation, 2025 seem to be becoming a little better towards the end of the year. In addition, it seems to me that the year 2026 will continue to be a better one for most of humanity. Of course, I am talking from the United States, and I realize that things, and life in general, is not good in some other parts of the world. All I can say to that is hang in there, do what you can to improve your situation, and please remember that the most important thing for us as humans is our relationship to God. I know, some of you will say, easy for you to say from your comfortable room in the USA. All I can say is that our relationship to God, especially that which we discover in the 12- step program, is separate from anything we may experience in life.

I can tell you that I have had some difficult times since I took the third step, and decided to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. Throughout all of those times I have managed to hold my relationship to God as the most important in my life. I realize that some of you face much more dire and critical life events and I have. The answer is still the same. Whether it may be bringing up children in the way that my Spirit directs me, or facing death itself by looking to that same Spirit for strength and protection, it is all one. The simple idea, no matter what our situation, is to put our relationship with God first.

Ultimately, this is what this 12-step program tells us. It tells us there is a power greater than ourselves, greater than anyone for that matter. It tells us we can decide to follow our humanity or our Spirit, our essence. It tells us we are forgiven, (mostly because there is nothing to forgive once we have said yes to God). It tells us we will do our best if we continue to be vigilant about the kinds of choices we are making. Finally, the 12- step program suggests that we constantly try to follow God’s direction, no matter what Sterk circumstances of life we may find ourselves in. Then as we are learning to turn our lives over to God’s direction, we try to help others to find the same peace and love that we have found as a result of this program.

This all may sound like a lot to some of you, but I imagine, to those of you who are well into this path, it sounds wonderful.

Once again, I hope you have all had wonderful holidays. If not, however, please just keep trying your best. If you have slipped away from the program, well, join the crowd! Many of us had multiple slips before we realized that the most important help for us is in the piece of our Spirit. I guarantee that if you keep asking for help, and keep trying, you will eventually be successful. For those of us who have found peace and love in our Spirit we must remember to look around and share our stands others. Love to all!

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I don’t have much in the way of the description for this episode. It is my last episode of the year, as well as what I am calling my Christmas message. I know that some of you are not Christian, but after all is said and done I would still refer to myself as a Christian. The system of philosophy that I created is called, Mystical Interrelational Trinitarianism. The word Trinitarianism refers to the Trinity of most Christian r anyway , I am really not sure what I’m about to say , so please bear with me. All I can be ,is myself. That being said, I would like to wish A very Merry Christmas!

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This episode will be the end, or last, episode of the six basic assumptions. As a reminder the sixth assumption is:

1. Those who have been “changed” must “change others”.

There are couple of words in this assumption that are a little surprising, and that would never be found in the 12-step program that we have today. The first word of course, is “changed”. Although we do not see this word in the modern 12-step program, it is indicated, especially in step number three, as well as step number 12. Step number three says that we make a decision, and the indication is that after making that decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, we become “changed”. You’ll notice that I enclose the word “changed” in quotation marks, the same way I treat the word “yes” as the answer to our Spirit as it asks us to turn our will and our lives over to God. Of course, the other place that we indicate are “change”, is the 12th step, where we stay, “Having had a spiritual experience…” This would certainly indicate some sort of change on our part. We now say spiritual “awakening”, which was mostly changed because those who oversee this 12-step program wanted to make sure that those working the program did not feel they needed to have an actual physical experience.

The other word is the word must. There really are no musts in the 12-step program. One of the reasons the program seems to work well, is a psychological aspect of not being told what to do. Most of us seem to arrive at the 12-step program with a problem with what is generally referred to as our “ego.” It may be underinflated or overinflated. Either way it is a problem. This thing we call ego is really the sum total of our personality and how it is learn to cope with life in a way that protects us, even though that protection may be harmful in the long run. So, we leave this entire program, and its instrumentation as a suggested way of coping with life in general, and our spi[i]ritual lives, in particular.

As a note, this will be the end of this year’s episodes about the 12-step program, as well as things surrounding it. Next week’s episode, episode number 52, will be a sort of Christmas message, (apologies to those of you who are not Christian). Hopefully, you will listen anyway because I try to make it a message for all human beings.

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This episode brings us to the end of the Oxford group’s six basic assumptions. The sixth: basic assumption is
6. Those who have been “changed” must “change others”.

Any of you who are familiar with the 12-step program will recognize basic assumption as being directly related to step number 12. Of course, the wording is a little different, as well as how they characterize those who are working on the program. There are major differences in the way these ideas are presented. First of all, the way I explain the third step is that I say it is equivalent to saying the word “yes” to God. I am able to discern that my Spirit is asking me to choose God over my humanity. How long does it take for this to happen? I don’t know. It is different for all. I do believe that we all have to come to grips with this question from our Spirit. It is basically saying, “I surrender”. It does not mean that I am going to become like one of the mystics in the desert. It does mean, however, that I will try, as best I can, to choose the path to God in the choices in my life. I also really like that they use the word “changed” in the Oxford Group. I think it relates directly to the results from having done the third step in the 12-step program. I become a new person. Maybe it won’t be evident to someone looking from the outside, but we will certainly know the moment we choose to accept the love of God. The word “changed” means exactly what I said above. We shall look at the world, as well as our place in it, through the eyes of God. As I’ve said before, I have never made a wrong decision that I did not, deep inside, know what the right decision would have been. After becoming “changed”, or saying “yes” to God, we will instinctively, in every situation, know what the way of God would be. I am not saying that we will always choose the way of God. I certainly haven’t always made the correct choice. As a matter of fact, after I first said yes to God, I almost felt like I was fighting Him at every turn. It took me quite a while to start feeling like I was acting with and on the behalf of God.

I’m going to end here for this episode. I decided that, although on first blush, I thought it would be a one episode procedure, it’s not. There is so much in this short statement that I would like to extend the 22 episodes. So next week’s episode will be part two of this procedure.

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This episode is a continuation of the six basic assumptions of the Oxford Group, specifically, assumption number five which is:
5. The ‘Age of Miracles has returned.
These lists were made at the beginning of the existence of the Oxford Group. I am not really familiar with what stage the belief in God or religion in general had gotten to at that point. This seems to have been, at least from the point of view of the Oxford Group, some sort of spiritual revival, at least in England.

That be as it may, many religious leaders are speaking about a revival of, (at least), God centered thought in this modern age. People seem to be asking a lot of questions about how God fits into this new age of artificial intelligence. They are talking about how human beings are influenced by AI, or even manipulated by AI, for instance in trans-humanism. Is it just what you work for Medicare what is that what you want to know that why does it make a difference what I have a card so you don’t know what you’re talking about except what I say thanks don’t call me again by possible that, for instance, a human brain could be kept alive separate from a body. If that can happen, is it at all possible for that brain to have consciousness. Most scientists believe that consciousness is a product of the brain and our non-duelists. Other scientists believe that consciousness exists outside of the human’ s physical self. I believe the 12-step program is one of Dualism, where we see ourselves and essence as being separate from our Spirit. In any event, I think we can always say that miracles are happening.

This is one of the few items in any of the lists from the Oxford Group that I do not agree with. I don’t believe the age of miracles ever ends or needs to begin again. The possibility of miracles happening as a result of our Spirit or God interacting with this earth and us, as human beings, always exists. I believe that the second and third steps certainly put us in a position to achieve greater understanding of God’s miracles, but they are not necessary for miracles to happen or exist. Once again, we arrived at at twilight zone that includes the mystical word, faith! Without faith, I believe it is difficult for us to recognize when miracles happen. After we sincerely take the second and third steps, we are naturally aware, or I should say spiritually aware of the influence God has in our lives as human beings. I know that miracles happen in this 12-step program but I do not know how to convince you of that fact. All I can say is that for me, especially after the second and third steps, miracles seem to happen. I do not believe, as a general rule, that miracles happen for those who apply these 12 steps in a psychological manner without seeking God in their lives. However, for those who follow this program in the spiritual way it was intended, can expect a miracle which is mentioned in the section of the big book about step number 10. Imagine someone who has been possessed of a life centered on some addictive behavior, who may not be able to go one day without succumbing to that addiction. Now, after using this God given life of 12 steps, they hardly ever, or never even consider or think about the problem that got them to the 12 step program in the first place. This is truly a miracle.

I am including below an excerpt from research that I made on Google concerning miracles in the 12 step program. I hope it is helpful for you.

In 12-Step programs, a "miracle" isn't just a supernatural event but refers to the profound, seemingly impossible transformation from addiction to recovery, often seen in the lifting of the obsession to use, spiritual growth, restored sanity, improved relationships, and the ability to live a new life through faith and the program's principles. It's the extraordinary change from being powerless over a substance to finding freedom, a change believed to stem from a

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I don’t know how I missed episode number 48! Maybe my old age of 81 (January 16), is catching up with me. Anyway, to my regular listeners, I’m sorry I missed it. Here it is now.

This episode is about the fourth of the six basic assumptions that are found in the Oxford Group. It is as follows:

1. The changed soul has direct access to God.

So, rather way we notice that, at least in the Oxford Group, the person who has surrendered to God is called a “changed” person. In this particular list of the six basic assumptions, this change happens after, (and seemingly as a result of), the Confession in assumption number three. I must admit that at times I have questioned the positioning of the 12 steps. It seemed that steps number two and three would be better placed after step nine. At the very least I should think of third step should be after steps four and five. However, I have noticed that many people, when doing these steps, pick and choose the steps they want to work on next. In retrospect, I believe I did much the same in the many times I worked the steps, at least before I saw them as a life-and-death solution to my own problems.

As far as having direct access to God, well, I believe that access has always existed from the time we took our first breath. Of course, I always speak of the spirit as trying to kind of knock on the person’s door to get recognition. So, maybe by saying that we always have direct contact with God would sort of mean that the door between us and our Spirit is always open. We no longer need to answer the call of our Spirit. However, what we do need is to remember that, after having said “yes” to God and surrendering, we must make an effort to listen for the direction of our Spirit.

I will not allow that to happen!

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This episode is a continuation of our look at six basic assumptions. Once again, I am including a list of these assumptions. They are:

The 6 Basic Assumptions:
1. Men are sinners.
2. Men can be changed.
3. Confession is prerequisite to change.
4. The changed soul has direct access to God.
5. The ‘Age of Miracles’ has returned.
6. Those who have been “changed” must “change others”.

Today I’ll be speaking about the third assumption, which is, Confession is prerequisite to change.

When I compare these six assumptions to our 12 step program, there is an obvious connection between the two. For that matter, all of the lists, as well as the basic ideals found in the Oxford Group, seem to be directly related to the 12 steps. This third basic assumption is yet another proof of this relationship of the two programs. I believe it is directly related to steps number 4, 5 and 10.

It is related to step four because it is our direct preparation for step number five. Step four says that we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. I would say that we made this inventory with the expectation of speaking to someone about its contents. Step five says we admitted to ourselves to God another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. This, to me, is definitely a confession of sorts. No, it is likely confession that we sometimes think of from Catholicism, although personally, I chose a priest with whom to do my fifth step. That was mostly because of my background as a Catholic, as well as the fact of some assurance of confidentiality. Fortunately I did not have any serious, lawbreaking events to talk about in my fifth step. For some, this would be quite an issue to deal with. For you, I should think it would be necessary to speak with others who might be able to help you decide what to do. I would suggest that it is all important to choose the right persons to speak to, or confide in. If you happen to choose another member of the 12 step program, please choose wisely! In the Oxford group it was suggested to speak with someone who has been, in their terms, changed. In the 12-step programs, it is my personal opinion that a person can only be compared to a “changed person” if they have earnestly completed the third step, and are committed to a life directed by God. I am sorry to say that these folks are sometimes few and far between. However, I believe it is critical to seek them out.

In any event, this confession is critical as a beginning step with which to clear out the wreckage of our past, and start a new way of life. There is much written, both in print and on the web that can help you prepare for this fifth step. Don’t forget, we are given somewhat of a practice step in that we first admit these defects of character and shortcomings to God and to ourselves. You might ask, why would I need to admit these to myself when I just finished writing them all down. Well, believe it or not, there is, (or at least there was for me), somewhat of a catharsis by reading over these things in the fourth step, and recognizing how they applied to my life.

I also mentioned the 10th step because it is a kind of housekeeping or housecleaning. It says I continued to take personal inventory, and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it. This is an ongoing confession with which to keep our house clean. The last thing I need, even after many years of working this program, is to begin to allow any of my past character defects or shortcomings build up and fester inside of me. If I allow that to happen, when the pressure will build up with the possibility of using my old pressure-relief system to feel good again. I will not allow that to happen!

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We are now at the second of the six basic assumptions. That second assumption is, “Men can be changed.” As a reminder, we saw in the first assumption that men are sinners. And I think in our present day language, that that assumption means because of our humanity and our free will, not to mention our proclivity to gain pleasure and happiness for ourselves, we are always ready to sin.

Hopefully, you can all get over this word “sin”, in the realization that we are all participants in the first in the 12-step program. I believe we all that we are powerless, basically, over everything, and that our lives are unmanageable! Sure, some of us can lead lives that can imply that we are managing. Unfortunately, if I have not turned to my Spirit for help, it is a pseudo-manageability.

It is interesting to me that this second assumption says that men “can be changed”. This refers, I believe, that this assumption refers exactly to the second step in the 12-step program. That step says, “I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity”. Then, in the third step, we make the decision to allow exactly that to happen. In other words, to become changed is something that happens in a partnership with our Spirit.

For me, once I made the decision of the third step, I have tried, as much as possible, to listen for the direction of my Spirit. As I have mentioned before, the word changed refers to someone who has turned their lives over to God’s direction. It means that I have said “yes” to God, and that I surrender! It is only by the surrender that I have achieved victory by trying to live my life according to the direction of my Spirit, God.

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In this episode will begin the last of the Oxford Groups lists that we will be looking at in this podcast. This would just called: The Six Basic Assumptions. I am including this list (as it was written), below.

The 6 Basic Assumptions:
1. Men are sinners.
2. Men can be changed.
3. Confession is prerequisite to change.
4. The changed soul has direct access to God.
5. The ‘Age of Miracles’ has returned.
6. Those who have been “changed” must “change others”.

This list, of all the lists From the Oxford Group, is probably the one that is most difficult to compare with the 12 steps. However if we are a little bit lenient with our interpretation of the list, and if we ignore or change some of the conventional wording of this time, I think we can work with this list.

Please remember that the Oxford Group did not share the same, exact goals as, what would become, Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step program. I would say that the Oxford Groups main purpose was to bring people closer to God or, to save their souls. In the 12- step program, the original goal was to save people from the horrible life of alcoholism, (as a primary goal). However, this primary goal was suggested to be accomplished through reaching out for the help of God. It is my opinion that this turned out to be sort of two programs in one. The first program is what I believe to have been the intention of the founders of the 12 step program, wellness through turning our lives over to the care of God, as well as following what is believe to be God’s directions. The second interpretation of the 12-step program, is one of wellness through a psychological cleansing and effort, including sharing the program with those who still suffer. The six basic assumptions do not leave much room for the psychological aspects of wellness and suffering in any form. It is a God centered movement, but then, as it was changed and rewritten to help others with specific issues, which seems to work.

Please remember that this podcast tries to explain the 12-as step program as I/we understand it to be a spiritual way of life.

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In this episode I’ll be speaking about the fifth and last of the Oxford Group’s five procedures. As I have said many times before, the Oxford group was really the precursor to the 12- step program. Just about every one of their various lists can be matched up in some ways to the 12 step program. This current list that were working on, the five procedures, is no different, especially this last procedure. This procedure is:

1. Sharing — for witness and confession.

It obviously compares very favorably to number 12 in the 12 step program. The 12th step, from the first edition of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is, (with my modifications):

Having had a spiritual experience as results of this course of action, I try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Of course, this is exactly what we are talking about in the fifth procedure, but it does have to parts. The first part, for witness, is exactly what we charged you in step number 12. Afterwards begin to reap the benefits of the 12 step program, mostly assuming we have begun to reap the spiritual benefits, we want to share this wonderful news with others. This is the main reason why I do this podcast. This is the best way I know, being legally blind, as well as hearing deficient, and mobilization challenged, to reach others with this great news. It is also the reason that I write books, six so far about the 12 step program. Writing is not a chore to me as it used to be. I look forward, every day, to sharing my love of this 12 step program, and of God, with you all.

The second part of this procedure is using it as confession. Of course, we do not really use the word confession in the 12 step program, but it is certainly the best word I know with which to describe the fifth step. It is, as most of you know, Admitted to God to myself and to another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs. This cleansing, which comes after having done this third step, and after we have said yes to God, is for the preparation for being able to carry the message, in turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. One of the most powerful slogans I know of in the 12 step program is the simple phrase, “TUrn It Over”.

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In this episode I’ll be speaking about number four of the five procedures. The number four procedure is: restitution.

Restitution, of course, at first blush, comprises two of the steps in the 12-step program. Those steps would be steps eight and nine where I make a list of everyone I have harmed in step eight, and then I proceed to go through that list, trying, as best I can, to make amends to those people I harmed. The fact is (I believe) there are three more steps that this word restitution applies to. I’m sure that when I did the fourth and the fifth steps, I could not really avoid including some of the people I had harmed through my drinking. Also, I think when doing the 10th step, continuing in inventory and immediately making things right that I did wrong. I have found over the years that many of the things I discover in step number 10 require making amends some people.

My advice here is to try our best to recognize and deal with whatever wrongs I do, and try to right them before they become a problem. I don’t know about you, but this is something I failed to do, especially before I said “yes” to God. The things that I had been doing wrong, especially where I did wrong people, were allowed to build up within me and form great big ball of guilt and self-loathing. So, I would drink, take anything that might have been important to me, and leave. Thus began another cycle of drinking, running out of resources, detoxing, and probably going to some kind of recovery situation. This was my life, for many years.

Now, I have learned to deal with any of the issues by either not letting them remain within me or dealing with them as soon as they crop up. I cannot afford to allow that ball of guilt and self-loathing to form again.

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In this episode of speaking about the third Procedure. The third procedure is: Check Guidance

This procedur is very simply stated and implies a very simple action. However, I believe it is so much more important than it seems. If you are a frequent flyer to this podcast you are aware that my main objective as a person who has said “yes” to God, is to listen for the direction of my Spirit. There are inherent problems with this action, namely, ego and rationalization. There can be other medical and/or physical problems that may affect our listening, as well as our interpretation of what may or may not come from our Spirit. This can be a serious problem in the functioning of our humanity and in carrying out what we believe to be the directions of God. Let me give you an example.

I believe I hear my Spirit direct me to attend church/spiritual services in order to see if there is any way I can match my newfound spiritual relationships with the activities of the services and the people that are there. As a result of this (length: a conversation) with my Spirit, my ego might think it’s a good idea but that I should stay aloof from those people that normally attend the services. Now, as you know, I do not believe we have any”thing” in us that would be considered an ego. What is usually referred to as the ego, is really a sum total of our psychological makeup and a protection system we have built-in as a human being. My ego sometimes wants to override what I am hearing from my Spirit. Sometimes that other thing called rationalization wants to also modified or even eliminate my spiritual direction.

In a worst-case scenario, if I am victim of some mental issue that might make it impossible for me to truly understand my Spirit or impossible to discern whether what I hear truly is my Spirit, or maybe some other made-up voice

A solution to these issues is to check out what we think we are hearing with a trusted advisor or mentor. In the Oxford group it is suggested that a person check things out with another person in the group that is considered changed. Today, those who are participating in a 12-step group might want to find someone who can be used as (what is referred to in the 12-step program) as a sponsor. I urge you to be very selective, especially if you are new to the 12-step programs and finding or choosing a sponsor. It is not necessarily the person who has lots of newcomers hanging on their every word. It is not necessarily the person who has 20 years in the 12-step program. It is not necessarily the speaker sounds like to have it all together and makes us all laugh. It would be better to find a person as your sponsor seems to be working this 12-step program with some spiritual success and humility.

I urge you to choose a sponsor as if your life depended on it, mostly because, it might!

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As a reminder, these are the five procedures:

The Five Procedures
1. Give in toGod.
2. Listen to God’s direction.
3. Check guidance.
4. Restitution.
5. Sharing — for witness and confession.

This is episode three, and I will be speaking about procedure number two, Listen to God’s direction.

I see this procedure as being aligned with steps number three and eleven. As we take step three on as our own, and say that holy “yes”, I surrender to God, I am implying that by turning over my will and my life, I will be following the directions of God and my Spirit.

Step number 11 takes us even further as I seek to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me.

So, in these two steps, I am telling God that I realize I cannot run my own life, that I know He can I will just get out of the way. Not only will I allow God to direct my life, but in step 11 I this by praying only for knowledge of His will for me!

In our 12 step program, this whole procedure is sort into a single, simple phrase, “I can’t handle it. God can. I believe I’ll let Him.”

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Below is the list of the five procedures:

The Five Procedures
1. Give in toGod.
2. Listen to God’s direction.
3. Check guidance.
4. Restitution.
5. Sharing — for witness and confession.

As we have seen before, this list not only mirrors, but preempts a list of 12-steps. The first, and simply stated, procedure is, “Give in to God.” This procedure, simple in its wording, is what I believe to be the most important action we can take in any of the lists. This first procedure is the exact same concept provided in step number three of the 12 step program, “I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God”. In this step, when taken with all of the honesty and seriousness at our command, is the holy and eternal utterance of the word “yes”to God. It is the indication of our total surrender to God’s direction. It is the acknowledgment that from that moment on I will try to listen for direction, through my Spirit, and live my life according to God’s desire.

I realize, possibly more than you could ever know, that this is not an easy task. The thing is, I no longer believe that I am being tested. I now have that “blessed assurance” that no matter what happens or how I am able to perform, (or not perform), I am now forever reentangled with God. God, especially, understands that we are of a dual nature, and that our humanity is usually trying to overcome our spirituality. Humanity has a personality that has developed as a result of our human experiences. The sum total of our personal experience always believes that it knows what is best for our survival and happiness. My goal as a changed person, (one who has surrendered to God), is to listen to, and act upon, that which is the direction of my Spirit versus the wishes of my humanity.

This is a constant war. Many of us will never win this war but through listening to our Spirits advice, we shall assuredly be victorious and more in more of the battles.

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In this episode I will be going over yet another group of tenets, or reminders from the Oxford group. The five items in this list are referred to as the five procedures. I’m not sure when, why, or where these lists of things or develop, but they seem to help the members of the Oxford group to stay on their spiritual course and become what seems to have been the main goal, changed. You may ask, why it is that I find the snippets from the Oxford group to be important. Well, this entire podcast is about the 12-step program in general, and how I use it as a way of life, in particular. I have found that every single one of these groups of ideas from the Oxford Group is related in some way to the 12 steps in the 12-step program.

The closeness of the ideas in the two programs is undisputable. As far as I can see, the only difference between the two groups is that of the Oxford group being a strong advocate of Christianity. Otherwise, the two programs would be nearly indistinguishable, one from the other.

Here is the Procedure list:

The Five Procedures
1. Give in toGod.
2. Listen to God’s direction.
3. Check guidance.
4. Restitution.
5. Sharing — for witness and confession

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In this final episode about the list of the 5 C’s from the Oxford group, I will speak about the relationship to step number 12 and the last of the C’s, continuance.

While the word continuance makes a definite, personal connection with steps number 10 and 11, it makes both the personal and “others” connection in the 12th step. On the one hand it speaks of our personal, spiritual experience and practicing this program in all our affairs. On the other hand, the step encourages us to share the experience we have have had with others.

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The fifth item in this list of five C’s is Continuance. The placing of this word continuance makes a lot of sense, only compare the list to the 12 steps. The word continuance holds so much meaning as a pointer to the 12-step program that I have decided to use two episodes to discuss it.

In this episode, I would like to use this word continuance as a pointer to the 10th, 11th step. As a reminder the 10th step is I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong, promptly admit it. And the 11th step is I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out.

The connection to step number 10 is obvious because the word continue is included in this step itself. This step means that the suggestion is to continue to look at ourselves, especially in those areas that we discussed in both the fourth and fifth steps. Of course, that’s not all. We need to always be aware of new character defects or shortcomings that rear their ugly heads.

Step 11 is also a continuation of the third step. We must, kind of, check if we are attempting to follow God’s will. It is suggested that we do this through prayer and meditation. If you are familiar with my previous writings and podcasts, you will know that my idea of prayer is not one of speaking, but of listening. This is how I continue in my spiritual program. Of course, to me, this whole 12 step is a spiritual one program is a spiritual one, given to us by God.

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The subject for this episode is the word for (or idea of) a change in our spiritual attitude. This is the fourth in the current group of episodes having to do with the five C’s, as they were called in the Oxford Group. This word is:
Conversion
As I have said before, these lists from the Oxford Group, and the order in which they are presented do not necessarily match the order of the 12 steps. This is, of course, because we do not have a comparison of the two programs that is word for word. I would say, however, that these two programs have a more exact comparison in their ideas.

Actually, if it were up to me, I might have placed what we now call steps two and three, after the fourth and fifth steps. But, that’s just me. It is probably a really good thing that I had nothing to do with the organization of the 12 steps! I still believe strongly that these steps were influenced and perpetuated through the love of God.

I believe this fourth word in the list of C’s, conversion, is the precursor for the second step in the 12-step program, “I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” There seems to be no doubt in my mind that these two ideas are very closely related. I also believe that the 11th step, “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God”, is the continuation of step number two.

I feel strongly that after seriously and honestly, (at least as honest as I could have been in that final doing of the steps), doing step number one, I really needed some powers to latch onto. After all, I just admitted I was powerless! Not only that, I was admitting that I could not manage my own life! I sure needed something! I needed something that I could understand as being more powerful and certainly wiser than myself. Left to my own devices, I managed my life into a shambles. Fortunately, for me, I still held onto somewhat of a belief in God. I know, as I look at my life in retrospect, that I had it much easier in a way, and someone who didn’t even want to hear the name of God spoken. Of course my podcast is all about the 12- steps, and how they work with God! So I can give you no other advice than to please, please, please, try to find your connection to God and to your Spirit. If you have had a problem with God in the past, please try to work it out. Remember the saying that, If you find yourself further away from God, who moved? All I can say is that for me, salvation has been a result of “turning it over” to God. This is where I find all of my strength, power, and love. It is only through the love of God that I am able to bring my life out from under the basket and, hopefully, let it shine for others.

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In this episode I am going to share my thoughts on the third of the five C’s list from the Oxford group the third in the list of the five C’s is:
Contrition
So, in the Oxford dictionary, contrition is listed as a noun and it means to be in the state of remorseful and penitent. This definition reminds me somehow, of the old “mea culpa”, hair shirts and self flagellation! This is certainly not my interpretation of the word contrition. In the first place, my God never requires any penitents for anything I do.

This word applies particularly well to the end of step five in the 12- step program. After doing all of this admitting to God, ourselves, and another human being, I went to a quiet place, and I remember thinking I was in a sort of Twilight Zone. Again, I had done a pseudo-version of these 12 steps and many times, but that last, and final time I just knew was in fact, the last and final time. I was beginning to clear away the wreckage of the past, but exactly how did I feel about that wreckage, character defects, and shortcomings. I felt strangely disconnected from them. I remember the sorrow I felt as a human being but it was the sorrow for having turned away from God. I somehow remembered what my life had been like to this point, but I somehow knew that it was all, truly, in the past. It was almost as if it had never happened.

Now, I am not advocating, in any way, a forgetting of the issues that got us to this place in the 12-step program, especially that thing (whatever it might be) that got us here in the first place. What I am advocating is the realization that God, unlike our fellow humans, hold nothing against us. My concept of God is a supernatural being who only wants to give us love and hopes for love and return. The only thing that might impede that love in return is our free will. Once I had said yes to God, and came to the end of the fifth step, any remorse I felt was that of not having surrender to God sooner.

Any contrition I felt was purely human, and once recognized, was acknowledged and fleeting.

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In this episode I’ll be speaking about the second see in this list of five C’s from the Oxford Group, which is:

Confession

of course, because we didn’t take the 12 steps directly from the Oxford Group, the order in which we do things sometimes different. The actions, however, are always the same as well as the intent.

We find the correlation to this act of confession in step number five of the 12 steps. Step number five says, “we admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrong.”. If this isn’t confession of the sword, well, I don’t know what is. This step comes after number four, our inventory, as well it should. Admitting these things to God is, well, not exactly looking Him in the face, (unless you are much more spiritually advanced than I am). Talking over this inventory with ourselves is certainly a helpful step, but one that I had to get help with because of my subjectivity, not to mention my rationalization skills.

So, ultimately, I got the best results by swallowing any pride I had speaking to another human being (in my case, a priest), and taking under advisement any observations that might have been offered. I believe that the old saying, “confession is good for the soul.”, Is a true one, at least it was for me. At first, doing the fifth step was a chore and an affront to what at this time I thought was my humility. As I progressed with my fifth step and spoke with that priest, I truly did feel some relief of pressure from my being. I believe that was the first confession that I ever did with any kind of complete honesty, and with the absence of the thought that being a chore. It was truly an act on my part be able to unload from my wreckage of the past.

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I’m sure you realize by now that the Oxford Group had many lists with which they remembered those things that were important to their spiritual growth. Today we will be starting to look at one of their lists which they called the 5 C’s.

I hope you have noticed that, as promised, I am naming these episodes according to the name of the list that I will discuss. This will make it easier for folks we’ll need to search this podcast for a particular subject.

Here is the list of the 5 C’s:

The 5 C’s
1. Conviction
2. Confession
3. Contrition
4. Conversion
5. Continuance

In today’s episode, I’ll take a look at the first of these very important items in the list of the 5 C’s. As you can see, the first word is conviction. I have a graphic that I have designed that links the lists hat I found in the Oxford group with the 12 steps. This first wordi is linked to the first and second steps in the 12 step program.

I’m trying to find a way to link or insert a graphic in this description of my podcast. I sure hope I can because I spent a lot of time on that graphic. For now, Please enjoy the podcast.

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This episode is about the third of four practices from the Oxford Group the third practice is

1. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly

Obviously, this practice is directly related to the eighth and ninth step in the 12 step program. Again, at the risk of repeating myself, it is undeniable that the 12 step program, or I should say, the 12 steps, directly originated from the Oxford Group.

One of the errors that I made one approaching the eighth or ninth steps was to list those that I had harmed in a monetary way. However, the ninth step says all persons I had harmed, and the third practice in the Oxford group says, those we have wronged. When it finally sunk in of the those that I really had to make amends to, well, it really expanded the list of those to which end is to make amends.

Restitution is a repeating theme in all of the lists of the Oxford Group, as far as trying to “get right with God”, and just as important, to get right with ourselves. Doing these steps as thoroughly as possible was a huge advantage for my cleaning house. I had to look deep within to find those I had harmed in any way as results of my inappropriate behaviors. Sometimes it could be a bigger thing, such as having sex with the wrong person, or something that was seemingly innocuous, like making a sarcastic remark. All of these things had to be examined, and I had to decide who I really needed to make amends to.

Believe me, my friends, it has been so important to clean up this wreckage of my past. After many years there are still two names on that list that I have been able to approach. I just discovered that one of them has passed, so that leaves one name left. I do not have a clue where they might be today, but I may run across them some point. But, let’s not forget that these steps and practices are also included in step number 10, where I continue to take personal inventory. Being human, is change the need for me to make a man never really ends. I changed the sarcastic and sometimes at inappropriate times. I must always try to keep on top of things and make amends word necessary, in order to not add more wreckage to my past.

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So, my friends, I don’t really have a lot to say in this description of episode number 30, which is a continuation of 29, the second of the four practices of the Oxford Group.

It is just that the third step in the12-step program is so important to me that I would just like to say a little bit more about both of these important things.

I also believe this is a really good example of the influence of the Oxford Group on the 12 step program. Almost all of these ideas can be directly related to the 12 steps. It is almost like the same person wrote all of these ideas. Well, Bill Wilson apparently began his sobriety through the Oxford Group, and when he started to author the 12 steps, the things he learned had to be at the forefront of his brain. The correlation is really not that surprising.

_____________________________. _________________________._

Calendar Week #31

Episode 31, Sunday, August 3, 2025
The Oxford Group’s Influence (part 9)
TAGS: God, Spirit, 12-steps, AA, recovery, honesty, sharing, love

(Length: (xx:xx)

1. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly.

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This week I’ll be speaking about the second of the four spiritual practices that are proposed by the Oxford Group. This second practice is:

1. Surrender our life past, present and future, into God's keeping and direction.
   Well, my friends, as soon as I saw that word surrender, I knew that this was going to be one of my favorites of any of the Oxford Groups writings. This particular practice, that of surrender to God, is a corners of my faith And spiritual practices. This practice is almost an exact duplicate of step number three in the 12-step program. In fact, my current book I am working on is titled, “Yes: I surrender”. I believe I have been consistent in chaffing the third step as the most important action I could complete as a human being.

This second spiritual principle, as well as the third step in the 12-steps, means to me that I must try as best I can to perform all of my human functions as they may be approved and fortified through my Spirit. I suppose that this is my duality, which is frowned upon these days by a majority of philosophers, theologians, and scientists. It is my opinion that those who do not believe in the duality of physical and spiritual are plain, out-and-out, wrong.

I am certainly excited to begin this podcast!

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This episode is about the last two “steps” in the list that Abby Thatcher left for Bill Wilson on that crumpled piece of paper. Little did he know at that time, the impact that that little piece of paper would have on both addiction and the lives of thousands of others with just plain living problems.

Below are the fifth and sixth items on that list:

1. Restitution.
2. Continued work with others in need.

Once again, I am sure that those of you who are familiar with the 12-step program, will recognize the direct connection that these items have to the 12 steps.

Number five in the list is, of course, directly linked to steps number eight and nine. Many of us, when reading these two steps, immediately put our rationalization tool to work. Many of us, including myself, balked at the idea of facing those people that we have heard before we were changed. I’m not sure if I have used this word. In this go round of looking at the Oxford Group. However, exactly how they describe themselves after making their spiritual connection with God. I really like this word and I would certainly attribute it to those of us who have sincerely said “yes” to God.

Number six on the list is certainly connected to the 12- step program in step number 12. One of the most important aspects of the 12 step program concerns keeping what we have found in the steps by giving it freely away to others.

In the original 12 steps that were penned by Bill Wilson, there was no mention of alcohol or any particular hindrance to our once happy lives. The original 12 step simply suggested that we give this program and what we have learned through it to “others”. The word alcohol it was added later in order to, in part, focus the group in a particular direction and to a particular group.

In conclusion I would like to emphasize the facts of this being a God-given program. Even though it began as a wonderful way to alcoholics, it was soon recognized by groups of folks who had other, threatening issues. The 12 step program is now reaching out to over 200 various groups of folks with problems.

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So, my friends, I will be talking about the third and fourth item in this list of six steps that Abby Thatcher gave Bill W as he was composing the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, commonly referred to as The Big Book.

The third and fourth steps, from the Oxford step, are:

1. A Moral inventory.
2. Confession.
   These two steps match up perfectly with the fourth and fifth steps in the current 12 step program. The Oxford third step, Moral Inventory, and the 12-step programs fourth step, made a searching and fearless moral inventory, is basically the same.

This idea of cleaning house and making room for a new way of life, is key to our recovery. Now, I know that the original 12 step program was written and designed for folks with problems with alcohol. However, this program has been adapted by, I would say, millions of people. They have discovered that the program works for any kind of problem in life. That is because the basic idea of the program is to find a new way of life through dependence on, ou Spirit and God.

The fourth step from the Oxford group is simply, confession. This step s aligns perfectly with the fifth step in the 12 step program.. We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the nature of our wrongs . Some who used this 12 are Catholics, actually use their sacrament of confession as part of this fifth step.

I shall talk about these two steps in today’s episode.

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In the next few episodes I am going to talk about five of the writings or lists from the Oxford Group that have influenced the 12 step program. The first list I would like to speak about the six steps that every left with Bill Wilson, (the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous),. It was a handwritten list which I think very succinctly summed up the 12 steps as we know them today. I am not sure how they got these steps. I am sure that their ideas were the result of the Oxford group. However, I. It is my feeling that Abby ’m quite certain that they were not made a list somewhere. It is my feeling that Ebby, after becoming sober as a result of his affiliation with the Oxford Group, and these steps from what he had learned.

I have never believe that Ebby Thatcher received enough accreditation for his part in the 12 step program. On the other hand, that’s me. Ebby would probably not have cared one way or the other. It seems to me that he would have been happy just knowing he contributed to the welfare of others.

Below, are the six steps that Ebby gave to Bill W. in a handwritten note.

1. A Complete deflation.
2. Dependence on God.
3. A Moral inventory.
4. Confession.
5. Restitution.
6. Continued work with others in need.

Below, I am also showing the chart that I have made up to show the relationship of these lists to the 12 steps.

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In this episode, I shall continue with the influence of the Oxford group on the 12 step program. Of course, in the beginning, the 12 step program was known as Alcoholics Anonymous, or maybe I should say that the 12 step program was contained within the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

There are many anecdotes and stories about the beginning of the 12 step program, and even though the format was new, there is no doubt in my mind that it could have been called the Noenominational Oxford Group.

This will be a rather short episode. I just want to finish up on the initial connection between the Oxford group and Alcoholics Anonymous.

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Although I am still speaking about the Oxford group, I have changed the podcasts from an introduction to the Oxford group to how it actually influenced the beginnings of the 12 step program. Hence, I gave a new title to the rest of this series, which is, “The Oxford Group’s Influence”.

The influence of the Oxford group reinforces my belief that this is a God-given program, or at the very least, we God inspired program. As you have, hopefully, read, the Oxford group seems to be credited with only three or four or at the most five of the steps in the 12 step program. I maintain that all of the steps in the 12 step program are influenced by the Oxford group. Below, is a diagram I have created that links many of the Oxford Groups ingredients to the 12 step program.

SORRY! AM NOT ABLE TO POST GRAPHIC! I WILL TRY TO HAVE A LINK AVAILABLE BEFORE THE END OF THIS SERIES - OR EMAIL ME AND I WILL SEND IT TO YOU.

Email: chuck@stepstothespirit.com

In these episodes I will be speaking about all of these connections between the Oxford group and the 12 step program. It is my feeling, and I cannot emphasize that enough, that this is ultimately a God-given program and that those who contributed to it were working entirely on His behalf. I hope you enjoy the episode as well as enjoy learning about this connection.

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To continue with the Oxford group, I have once again used AI to give you a description of Frank Buchanan by giving you a brief biography of his life.

BEGIN AI EXCERPT

Frank Buchmann

Certainly! Here's a biography of Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford Group:

Frank Buchman: Founder of the Oxford Group

Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman (June 4, 1878 – August 7, 1961) was an American Lutheran minister and evangelist best known for founding the Oxford Group, a Christian movement that emphasized personal transformation through honesty, confession, and spiritual guidance. His work later evolved into Moral Re-Armament (MRA), which played a significant role in post-war reconciliation efforts.

Early Life and Education

Born in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, Buchman was raised in a devout Lutheran household. His mother was deeply religious, while his father was a businessman, operating a general store and later a restaurant. At sixteen, Buchman moved with his family to Allentown, where he attended high school before enrolling at Muhlenberg College. He later pursued theological studies at Mount Airy Lutheran Seminary, becoming an ordained minister in 1902.

Career and Spiritual Awakening

Buchman initially hoped to lead a prestigious city church but instead accepted a position in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, where he established a small congregation and a hospice for young men. However, financial disputes with the board led to his resignation, leaving him exhausted and disillusioned. Seeking solace, he traveled to Europe, where he attended the Keswick Convention in England. There, he experienced a profound spiritual awakening, realizing the importance of personal confession and reconciliation.

The Oxford Group and Moral Re-Armament

Inspired by his experience, Buchman began promoting a movement centered on personal transformation through spiritual principles. In 1921, he founded the First Century Christian Fellowship, which was later renamed the Oxford Group in 1928. The movement emphasized honesty, confession, restitution, and guidance, attracting followers worldwide. In 1938, as tensions escalated before World War II, Buchman launched Moral Re-Armament (MRA), advocating for ethical leadership and international reconciliation.

Legacy and Impact

Buchman’s work influenced various social and political movements, including the early development of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), which adopted some of the Oxford Group’s principles. His efforts in post-war Europe earned him recognition from both France and Germany, receiving the Croix de Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and the German Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for his contributions to Franco-German reconciliation.

Frank Buchman passed away in Freudenstadt, West Germany, in 1961, leaving behind a legacy of spiritual renewal and international peace efforts.

END OF AI EXCERPT.

Frank Buckman was, for the most part, a God loving and unassuming minister. It is my belief that, in the descriptions of what the 12 step programs have gleaned from the Oxford group is very

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The following episodes, (I’m not sure how many there will be), are about my opinions, both historic and personal, Of the Role Played by the Oxford Group in the founding of AA. I have included below an excerpt from the Internet that I asked AI to research. I don’t make a habit of using AI for anything, but it was just easier in this case because I wanted to get the information to you.

BEGIN AI EXCERPT.

Frank Buchman (1878–1961) was an American Lutheran minister and the founder of the Oxford Group, a Christian evangelical movement that later evolved into Moral Re-Armament (MRA) and eventually became Initiatives of Change. His work focused on personal transformation and reconciliation, and he played a role in fostering peace between France and Germany after World War II.

Born in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, Buchman was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 1902. He initially worked in Philadelphia, where he established a hospice for young men. However, after a dispute over funding, he resigned and traveled to Europe, where he had a profound spiritual experience at the Keswick Convention in England. This experience led him to develop his philosophy of personal change through surrender to God, which became the foundation of the Oxford Group.

The Oxford Group, originally called "A First Century Christian Fellowship," emphasized moral and spiritual renewal. It promoted principles such as absolute honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. The movement encouraged individuals to confess their sins, surrender to God, and seek guidance through prayer and fellowship.

The Oxford Group played a significant role in shaping the early principles of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The Oxford Group emphasized spiritual transformation through honesty, confession, restitution, and reliance on divine guidance. These ideas deeply influenced AA’s co-founder, Bill Wilson.

Wilson initially attended Oxford Group meetings, where he learned the importance of surrendering to a higher power and seeking moral and spiritual renewal. Many of the Oxford Group’s teachings—such as self-examination, making amends, and helping others—became foundational elements of AA’s Twelve Steps. However, AA eventually separated from the Oxford Group to focus specifically on alcoholism recovery

AA and the Oxford Group shared foundational principles, but their approaches diverged in key ways. The Oxford Group, founded by Frank Buchman, was a Christian evangelical movement that emphasized moral purification through confession, restitution, and surrender to God. It focused on eliminating sin and achieving spiritual fitness.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), while influenced by the Oxford Group, adapted its approach to be more inclusive and less religiously rigid. AA’s Twelve Steps retained elements of self-examination, making amends, and reliance on a higher power, but framed them in a way that allowed individuals to define their own spirituality. Unlike the Oxford Group, AA did not require adherence to specific religious doctrines and instead emphasized personal recovery from alcoholism.

Another key difference was AA’s focus on anonymity and mutual support. While the Oxford Group encouraged public confession and evangelism, AA created a safe space for alcoholics to share their struggles privately and support one another without external pressures.

END OF AI EXCERPT.

So, I realize this is a lot to read, but I wanted to give you some idea of where I am going with these next few episodes.

I think it is important for good understanding about the Oxford Group. After all it is web Bill W got sober, and also where he formed most of his about how he was going to formulate the 12 step program, including, of course the 12 steps!

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This is the last of our four-part series this 12.) I would like to talk about the phrase, practice these principles in all my affairs. This is certainly nothing new. I would almost say that, for me, this is an extension, or reiteration, of step number three.

For me, it seems to be like a person on television getting a total makeover. Going back to one of the references in the Oxford Group, which talk about consulting someone who is changed. The word changed seems to indicate that this person has decided to turn over their will and their life to God.

For me, this is a no-brainer. I am constantly (almost) aware of the direction my Spirit wants me to go. Sometimes I am talking in order to go my way because I have rationalized what the Spirit has said in order to satisfy my human needs. I know now that these are generally not important. I also know that if I stop myself from continuing on whatever tasks humanity has given me, I will certainly be able to discern what is that God, or my Spirit wants for me.

I realize now, that I must be constantly vigilant in order to receive the directions from my Spirit. It is sometimes difficult to strike out what I think is right for me to do, in favor of what I know the Spirit desires.

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In this episode , I would like to talk about the phrase we tried to carry this message to others. I tried to remember that these original 12 steppers were pretty much just putting 1 foot in front of the other each day. They knew that, in most cases, they began their journey to recovery as a result of someone else sharing with them what it used to be like, what happened, and what it was like now. They knew it was important to try to help others and all they knew was to help them in the same way in which they themselves were helped.

This is how it all began. There was no book. There were no posters of this 12 steps hanging on the meeting walls. Heck, there weren’t even any meetings, at least not like we know them today. It was all about passing it on and mostly was the it was, well, “it was God, and hope, and love, and a chance to once again live the life without the insanity.

Some of you who are reading this and/or listening to my podcasts no special gifts we have been given. Today it may not be the same as when a couple of folks went to the bedside of one who was still suffering to offer them hope, but things are different, as well as the same. In some cities or towns it is hard to walk more than a few blocks without discovering another place where there is a meeting that night. New editions of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, are widely distributed. Other literature about addiction and recovery is abundant. We see stories about recovery on TV. All in all, it would be hard to claim ignorance as a reason to continue to drink, to drugs, for any of the other myriads6 of addiction.

Of course, we can, in no way, either relax or rest on our laurels. It seems that as much work is done there seems to be more to do.

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Step 12 is not only an important step in order to help me maintain my new way of life but it is also important because it helps to keep these 12 step programs flourishing. One of the best phrases I’ve heard in the 12 step rooms is that of, pass it on. The 12 step program originated in the homes of alcoholics. This is where they had their meeting, probably more like get-togethers back then. These were very active groups of recovering people, people who were actually finding a new way of life through the 12 steps. Back in those days, the 12 step may have been even more important than it is today because it help people to know that there was help out there for them.

So, in this original version of the 12th step, I doubt that the actual concept of a 12 step program was front and center. The 12 steps were a part of the book, a part of the program. This is why, I think, it says “as a result of this course of action”. I don’t believe they could yet put their finger on exactly what was happening.; They knew they had to clean their own house; they knew they had to help others; they knew that somehow this all has to do with their trust in God.

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step 12 is the wonderful conclusion to the 12 steps. Mind you, I don’t mean the conclusion to working the steps. Step 12 is simply the last step in the order and gives us the wonderful opportunity to pay back the new way of life we’ve received.

As a reminder step 12 is:

Having had a spiritual experience as a result of this course of action I tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

I have decided that this step should be coupled with the Gift of Compassion.

As I have said before in my writings, some of the words of the steps been changed since the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I am not absolutely sure what the reason was for these changes. In this step, I think the most important change that has been made is the change of the word experience to the word awakening. I feel this change was made in order to make the program more appealing to those who did not want to consider having a spiritual experience. Again, as I said before, I think it is wonderful that this program, in a psychological format, is helping people become well. However, all my writing is geared toward helping people recognize that this is a God-given program, and above all, one that teaches us to depend on God in order to become whole once again.

As far as my experience with step number 12, I discovered that I needed to get my pride out of the way, and stop thinking in terms of what “I” was going to do to spread God’s word and help everyone recover. This is what I will be talking about in this first part of step12. Did I indeed have a spiritual experience? Maybe it has been a slower spiritual awakening. Well, for me it has been both.

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In this episode, I will be speaking about the last phrase in step number 11, “and the power to carry that out”.

At this point in my life, I find that I am constantly returning to the words of the first few steps in this program. For instance, in the first step I referred to my powerlessness, (over everything), and that my life was not manageable. In essence I was living a life of (as described in step number two) insanity, or insane behavior. So, sticking with the second step, “I came to believe that a power could restore me to sanity”. This is very same power is that to which I refer and step number 11

What I need to say here is that now is not the time to start looking for this power. This power is ours for the taking or maybe I should say asking, as a result of step number three. This is where I have turned my will and my life over to the care of God. All the power I will ever need, flows through and around me from my Spirit, as a result of saying “ye”s to God. Some parts of this program can be done piecemeal, but I do not believe that developing my union with God is one of them. This is also why I am certain that this God-given program has been designed in an order that demand that we follow it. In the second step we learned that there was hope for that insanity we discovered in the first step. The third step provides us with the most simple yet most difficult decision we will ever make in our lives. This is where I surrendered to God’s way. This is where I knew that everything was going to be okay. This led me to cleaning up the wreckage of my past by identifying the problems, asking God to take them away for me, making amends to those I had harmed, and accepting the methods to continue my life in a way that would be pleasing to God. A piece of cake, right? Well, for those of us who are working the program, there is the assurance of an ultimate, wonderful, reality. You also know what I mean when I say we have to work for it.

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In this episode, I will still be talking about step number 11 and this is part number three, in particular the part of this step that says, “knowledge of His will for us”.

I don’t believe there is much of a problem understanding that I must try to live my life by fulfilling God’s will for me. In step number three when I said I decided to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I was truly sincere, but if the truth be known, a little confused. Where in the world, or how, what I ever be able to discern exactly? What God’s will for me is? Of course, it was many years ago that I asked this question, and now I have learned what the answer is.

For me, the way to discern God’s will for me is through my Spirit. Now, you may ask, “how in the world do you communicate with your Spirit?” Well, as I’ve mentioned before, my idea of prayer is not the conventional one. My idea of prayer is not to show or say words of adoration for God. My idea of prayer is not to ask for anything from God. My idea of prayer is not even to give thanks to God for all that I received from Him. No, I have developed the habit of giving thanks to God many times throughout the day. Now, you may consider this a form of prayer, and I would have a difficult time arguing that point. For me, I simply refer to them as moments of gratitude.

Prayer, for me, is simply listening. The listening that I do have certainly not come overnight nor is it anywhere perfected. I used to try to sit quietly in a quiet place and filter out the thoughts that were running through my head concerning my humanity. I slowly learn to separate those spiritual inspirations from the run of the mill, daily thoughts. Now, I need not be in a particular place or even be in a particular state of mind in order to hear but my Spirit has to say to me. These inspiration seem to come throughout the day. The only requirement is that I try to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak I know that a lot of what the Spirit has to say to me sort of goes in one spiritual ear and out the other! The important thing is that I am trying.

There are many ways and methods by which we can get ourselves into a quiet place, and prepare for meditation or contact with her Spirit. Some of these methods may be helpful at first. For me, I am slowly learning to filter out those thoughts which are not from my Spirit. Believe me, even though very frustrating at the beginning, it will eventually become second nature as long as we work for it.

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In this episode, I am going to talk about the idea of improving our contact with God. As I said last episode my ability to contact God through my Spirit has certainly improved over the years. It is, however, nothing like what I expected or would like it to be. As it says in the literature, we strive for perfection. I cannot remember it saying anywhere that we have become perfect. As a matter of fact, I would hope I remember that as soon as I felt like I were doing things perfectly I will stop and try to figure out what is wrong! I have found that spiritual inspiration that I receive is always perfect. To transfer that inspiration into a human action, is another thing altogether. I have, hopefully, accepted the fact that my humanity will never be perfect. It may be true that some folks really do manage something like a perfect union with God, or nirvana, or something like that when they are still alive, but I certainly can’t imagine it happening to me. However, I, will certainly keep striving for that perfection.

This is how I approach this 11th step every single day. I try to listen and detect exactly what it is my Spirit is trying to direct me to do. Sometimes, for fleeting moments, I get it. Then, for some unknown reason, it becomes watered down. My humanity has taken that perfect thing, that perfect inspiration that I received from my Spirit, and made it into something I felt I could more easily live with. I’m not sure what it is what happens between the time I listen to my spirit and I try to put that inspiration into action, but something happens that it’s not nearly as pure as it started. This is why am constantly trying to improve my attempt to contact with God. I think I really am getting better at it!

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As a reminder ,this is the 11th step is:

“I seek, through prayer and meditation, to improve my contract with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out.”

This step is taken from the first edition of what is called the big book, or otherwise, Alcoholics Anonymous.

I almost feel like, wow, I finally have gotten to step 11. This is one of my favorite steps. It has been from the beginning, even before I was serious about the 12 step program. I have tried many ways of praying and meditating. None of them seem to work, at least not to my liking.

I know now what I was doing wrong. I always try to force a connection between myself and God. Since then, and especially since I have done the third step with all of my heart and soul. I have discovered what this step means for me. Please note that I say for me. I hope you remember that all of the things that I write and talk about in this podcast, as well as everything you hear in the 12 step program, are suggestions. This program is a bit of a dichotomy because it is both a “way of life” and a “suggested way of life”.

That being said, I would like to speak about the meaning this step has come to have for me. I guess the most important thing that I would mention is that I do not think of prayer in the usual sense that others think of it. I suppose I would say that I simply do not pray in the usual sense of prayer. I do not say anything nor do I try to talk to God in any way. My motive prayer is simply listening. It is not listening as if I were listening to a lecture in school, or listening to someone else in a conversation. The listening I am speaking about is mostly that of dissemination.

My Spirit is always giving me information. The trick (for me) is to try to separate that which comes from my Spirit from the myriad of other things that are streaming through my mind. It is certainly not easy. When I first began doing this it seemed like my head was Grand Central station. There was so much going on as a result of just being a human being and living in this busy and confusing world, that it was almost impossible to focus on anything that might be spiritual. It took me a long time, (I would say six months to a year), before I could clear my clients enough in order to separate my humanity from my spiritual input. Practice, (a lot of it) eventually help me to isolate that which was from my Spirit. Now, after many years of trying to listen, and trying to perfect my abilities to listen for my Spirit, I am better at it, but nowhere near where I would like to be. I have certainly discovered that this turning my will and life over to the care of God requires a lot of work. However, it is the most satisfying work I have ever done.

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So, my friends, in this final part of step number 10, I would just like to talk about the last part of step, namely, when I was wrong, promptly admitted it. As a reminder for those of you who may be new, the 10th step is, I continued to take personal inventory, and when I was wrong promptly admitted it.

What I have to keep in mind as I do this step every day, is the last part of the ninth step, which says, except when to do so would injure them or others. It would be easy for me to seem like some kind “of holy roller”, and walk up to a crowd of friends, and say to one of them, “Hey, sorry I mentioned that ‘ blankety-blank’thing that you did the other day!”.

For me the big thing is to try to take a mini inventory each night (or sometimes more often) and do the best I can, if I find I have done something wrong, to try to make it right. As I said it beginning this series of episodes, starting with 10th step, these are the maintenance steps. I have already done the work necessary in order to get a good start in cleaning up the wreckage of the past. Thank you God! Now, my goal is to keep my humanity free and clear of any new shortcomings and character defects, including those old one that would like to once again rear their ugly heads.

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In this second episode of step number 10 and how I handled it, I would like to say a little more about confidence. I believe there are two kinds of confidence associated step number 10. I am talking about what it says in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, 1st Edition. It talks about folks early in the program that, at this point me steps, were no longer concerned about the things, (alcohol, food, drugs, etc.), that had been a catalyst for roomed lives. I believe this feeling can come, in a minor way, through a psychological use of the program. However, I believe, as in my case, this feeling of freedom comes in a major way only through our spiritual development.

I think it is important to understand what the authors of this book and the 12 steps are saying. They are saying that for them, the reason they feel free is due to their acceptance of God and inviting God to run their lives through our Spirit. Again, I am not saying that those of you who may be agnostics or atheists cannot be successful at this program. I am saying that you will most likely get a minor rather than a major result from it.

Just before the section about the 10th step in the aforementioned book, there is a section of text commonly referred to as the Promises, and I would like to included below:

The Promises

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self- pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, some- times slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.

Every one of the promises listed above has come true for me. If I am ever in a place in my life where any of these promises don’t seem to be working well, and I know I have to look at myself through the program and my Spirit to find out what’s going wrong. It’s just like the old saying, “If You Find Yourself further away from God, who moved?”.

I know this is kind of a side stepping from this 10th step, but I think it is appropriate. In the next episode, I will be back full throttle to the 10th step itself. I was just reminded about how I felt when I was doing the 10th step read those lines, and, after all, I am trying to relate my feelings as I did/do the steps.

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Well, my friends, here I am at step number 10. As a reminder, my version of step number 10 is: I continue to take personal inventory and when I am wrong, promptly admit it.

These final three steps, 10, 11, and 12, are commonly known as the maintenance steps. These steps don’t provide me with maintenance in the same way as my car, say, every 5000 miles. Hopefully, I learned to apply these maintenance steps at least once every day, and usually, more often than that. Yes, it would be like driving my car to the shop every morning for a checkup. The mechanic, probably after saying, “oh my God, not him again!”, would start noticing even the smallest of problems.

Staying with the analogy of my car, the mechanic may notice some big thing that has to be fixed immediately, or you may find an issue and tell me that he’ll keep an eye on it and see if it gets worse. This is somewhat how it is for me in applying this 10th step to my spiritual progress. Sometimes I would do something and it bothers me so much that I know I have to try to repair the damage as soon as possible, both for my well-being, as well as that of the person I may have harmed. For me, this step is a continuation of the fourth through ninth steps. That is why it is a maintenance step. It allows me to sort of keep an eye on myself as I continue to see my life through the eyes of my Holy Spirit and God.

There is no need for maintenance on the first three (Grace) steps. Once I have earnestly and solemnly done them, and said “yes” to God, I became a changed (the word used in the Oxford group) human being. I need not repeat those first three steps because my “yes” to God is an eternal one. However, saying “yes”, while consecrating us for eternity as a child of God, does nothing, in most cases to smooth over our human foibles. No, this is our constant human battle to become the person God has designed us to be, with the help of our Holy Spirit.

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Here we are at part two of step number nine. To refresh your memory, step nine is, “Made direct amends to such persons wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others”.

So, I am looking at the phrase, except when to do so would injure them or others, as the second part of this step. Now, the key phrase within this phrase of the ninth step, is them or others. As I recall doing this step myself, I sometimes hesitated or downright avoided making amends, because I, myself, felt uncomfortable in approaching whomever it might’ve been. I got over it, with God’s help, and eventually made the amends. I realized as I was doing the step that my discomfort was not on of the reasons to avoid making amends!

There were a couple of instances when I knew in my heart that by speaking to a particular person might cause animosity between them and another. For that reason, only in those two instances, I avoided the amends process. However, I completed my list for all the other names except for two. One of the two had died and the others whereabouts is unknown to me. I am truly hoping that someday I will meet with them and fulfill be amends process.

I would like to mention here that some of you may have a difficult time trying to make amends. Some of you will face the possibility of repercussions of legal, or even criminal sort. I cannot advise you in these matters. You may want to obtain legal counsel, and/or speak with a sponsor, mentor, or clergy. Remember, ever since the second and third steps, you are working with the power and support of God and your Spirit. I hope you are able to put yourself in God’s hands.

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In this episode I will try to relate what it was like for me to wrestle with step nine. My version of step nine reads as follows: “I made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

I am going to treat this step in two parts. The first part has to do with making direct amends wherever possible. The second part will deal with injuring them or others. Let me tell you at the get-go that the mere existence of this step triggered my unbelievable skill at rationalization. In the first part of this step, my rationalization seemed to argue with the word direct. I mean, there are so many other ways to contact people these days, and so much easier than some crazy need to approach them face to face. However, this step directs us to do exactly that, using that word direct. I truly needed to look people I had harmed in the eye as I made my amends. What form did my amends take? Well, they went something like this:

“Hi, (name here), remember the time I argued and said those nasty things to you? Well, the reason for most of that was what I’ve discovered to be my problems with alcohol. I am here to let you know that I am sorry for what I did. I’m doing this as part of a program I am working that will help me to treat myself better, as well as those around me. I am doing this with the help of God. My hope is that you will understand and accept my apology.”

In this podcast I will talk about doing this ninth step, as well as the pitfalls of trying to use other than direct communication with those I had harmed.

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so, in the first part of this step I made a serious attempt at writing a list of those persons I had harmed. I did my best to hold nothing back. At times, my rationalization got the best of me. In those early days of my current sobriety I made some serious excuses for not adding people to that list of amends. Of course, none of those excuses were valid, but they make perfectly good sense to me. For example, (and this is only one of many), there was that guy I borrow $200 from and never paid back. I decided that I really knew that guy and he wouldn’t want to even see me, no less allow me to explain the situation. I left him off the list. There were others that I made some excuse to leave off the list. Since then, I have grown stronger in my Spirit, and have been able to revisit that list and add most, if not all I had harmed to it. Looking at step number nine, I will admit there are two names on that list that, after many years, I have not been able to resolve. One has died, and the other I have complete track of. Maybe someday I will come across them.

As far as being willing to make amends to all those on my list, well, I was still afraid to approach many of them. However, God has given us the gift of willingness which truth did support me and gave me the courage to at least, at this point, list their names.

Don’t forget that in this step we are purely making a list. There are no ramifications, although I did feel pain just writing a couple of those names. I realize now that the more I was able to empty myself onto the page, the more successful the eighth step felt.

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This eighth step is one that I remember well. I remember it mostly because of all of the false starts I had in the 12 step program. In all of those many times that I convinced myself I was truly “working” the program, I conveniently left out some steps that I considered irrelevant to me. I remember starting with step number one (sort of), going to steps number four and five, (mostly as an ego trip). Then I considered myself ready to save my fellows by practicing step number 12. Of course, I have since learned, when I finally decided to look at this 12-step program through the eyes of my Spirit, that indeed, all of the steps are necessary.

This eighth step is (my version of the steps as they are written in the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous): I made a list of all persons I had harmed, and became willing to make complete amends to them all. The word complete has been removed from the modern version of the 12 steps.

In this first part of step number eight, I would like to talk about the, what seems to be, the simple act of making a list. I remember struggling with this list and maybe you can benefit if I share the way I treated making the list. One thing I realized was that this list was for my eyes only! I would be able to use this newfound tool called “honesty”, as I try to recall and list those persons I had harmed. One of the first things I noticed was that my rationalization skills try to complete the influence my selection of list-ees. I remember making excuses such as that an incident with a particular person was not really that bad! I also reasoned in some cases, that the odds of seeing a particular person in the future were pretty nil, hence why bother to list them? Some of the folks I thought I should exclude from my list, had died, so I could leave them off the list. There were also those who were family members, and I rationalized that they already knew how I felt about hurting them, on there was no need to rehash all of those things. Had I followed up or allowed these rationalizations to dominate my thinking, I would’ve had a very short list.

I discovered, as a result of my newfound honesty, that they could really be no excuses for not adding someone to whom making amends was necessary. It did not matter what their situation, or my relationship to them was at the current time. Some of those names that I tried to rationalize off the list were difficult to write down. However, I found that they were usually those that I needed to make amends to the most.

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I need to start this episode with an apology. When I went to publish the first part of this step last week, I realized that the MP3 files were not uploading. Then, as I looked at the episodes, I realized that none of the episodes for the past three weeks had uploaded. The reason was that I installed a new modem-router and I said it to work constantly on a 5G speed. Well, the 5G wasn’t compatible with my podcast provider and I needed to change the setting to 2.4 in order to upload the files. Anyway, all of the episodes are now live and I hope you will go back and read the descriptions as well as listen to the podcasts.

Now, let’s get back to step number seven, part 2. What I would like to speak about is the final phrase of this step as it is listed in the original 12 steps, (taken from the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous). The phrase is, “holding nothing back”, and for me, it was a very difficult concept to hang onto. Some of these shortcomings and character defects had been my friends for many years. They were my “go to” behaviors, and I was hesitant to do away with them. The founders and originators of this 12 step program knew that, as human beings, we cherish and depend on some of these character defects and shortcomings. Hence, they inserted that phrase, holding nothing back. They knew, (as they were inspired by God) when they wrote this program, that many of us that needed and used this program, have a propensity to look for the easy way out. That was certainly me! I really wanted to hold many things back, just in case my humanity needed to fall back on them.

As I did this seventh step, it would be nice if I could tell you that I overcame the tendency to hold a few things back, but I cannot. I held on to a few of these things, (some, for many years), because, well, because I’m human. I had already said “yes” to God and I was determined to do my best in turning my will and my life over to Him. However, the fact of the matter was that I was still a human being that depended on shortcomings and character defects with which to get by in my day-to-day life. Even though I earnestly and honestly wanted to allow my Spirit to control my life I am, what is referred to as, a duality. Many of today’s fads and teachings tend to negate duality and insist that we are non-dual entities. Some even say that we are figments of the Holy Imagination, and/or actors on a stage and in a movie called life. My common sense, as well as my Spirit, has indicated to me that this is nonsense, and that God has created me as a human being with free choice. I have been given that power of free choice with which to choose either the things my humanity, or to follow the will of God to live the life that is spiritually assigned to me. In order to follow that path, I must humbly, on my knees, continually try to do away with my shortcomings and defects of character.

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The second part of step six has a couple of keywords that I really paid attention to as I was doing the step. Those keywords are God and all. As a result of the first three steps, I learn and feel that my spirit is perfect. I learned this through the love of God which truly manifested itself in my life as a result of my surrender. My goal now was to conform my humanity to my Spirit. I knew that the power I received from God could truly restore me to sanity. This restoration to sanity was entirely dependent on how well I could follow the direction of my Spirit in order to remove those defects of character my humanity had developed as defense mechanisms. How did I know God would help me? The one, simple word that describes my belief, is the word, Faith. I knew that God was on my side and would give me all the power I needed with which to conform my life to His direction. I knew that God’s power was therefore all of my shortcomings. However, as it turned out, and as I believe it is for most of us, I insisted on hanging onto some of those shortcomings. I realized the truth of the saying, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”. In my writings I have associated this step with the word and the gift of Readiness. There is also another gift of God that comes into play here, and that is the gift of Willingness. We have always possessed all of the gifts of God, simply waiting to be accepted and used by us. I have used them for much of my life. I am constantly using the gifts and power of God in a never ending attempt to conform my humanity to the wishes of my Spirit. I have never had a fight that has been so fulfilling and worthwhile.

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Well, my friends, we are almost halfway through describing these 12 steps as I recall “I” worked through the. The sixth step is the third in what we call the action steps. As a reminder, the sixth step is: I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

In this podcast, I will talk about how I became and how I knew I was entirely ready. Actually, in retrospect, I don’t believe I was entirely ready! As I remember, my fourth step was relatively complete, other than a few things that I just couldn’t or wouldn’t allowed to occupy my mind at the time. I have certainly discovered them after many years of practicing this program. Some of them I have dealt with, with the help of my Spirit. Some, still rear their ugly heads and I try to deal with them as they arise. In my fifth step, which I really see as a continuation of the fourth step, I try to be as honest as possible with God, myself, and another human being. That took care of the first two action steps. Now, I had to try to become entirely ready for God to remove these defects of character.

I think it is important to tell you that I always have, and I imagine, always will, feel that there are two parts of me. There is, of course, the Spiritual me that I believe is perfect and joined in some way with all of your Spirits. There is also my humanity, which I believe is separate from my spiritual self. By saying “yes” to God in step number three, I made the decision to surrender the independence of my humanity. I decided to subject, as much as possible, my humanity, to that direction I could discern from my Spirit. Was I entirely ready? Not by a longshot! I did the best I could with all of the honesty that I could muster at the time.

My humanity was so used to taking care of itself that it was hard for me to get it to let go. The sum total of my personality, (that some people call ego), was screaming at me to continue to do things in the same manner I had done for many years. I really did not have the new human tools to replace those that had been ruining my life. I had to retrain my person to handle life according to the direction of my Spirit, and allow my personhood (ego) to develop accordingly I maintain that what some folks refer to as the ego, and give it an actual identity, does not exist. It is purely a construct, developed by Sigmund Freud, to describe behavior in a more understandable way. Ego is simply a construct, not an actual thing in any stretch of the imagination. I believe the term ego is happily accepted by some folks as an easy substitute on which to load or blame our wrongs. It is a little like the character Geraldine, played by flip Wilson, who became famous for saying, The devil made me do it! In reality, it is our entire personality that is responsible for our actions, or lack thereof.

So, what this step is really all about is preparing us for the actual, humble, request and step number seven. Remember, all of these steps are immeasurably easier because I have sincerely and honestly surrendered my life to God and my Spirit.

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I would say that step number seven was yet another turning point in my 12-step program. As a reminder, step number seven, (from the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, and as slightly edited by me), is: “I humbly, on my knees, asked Him to remove my shortcomings, holding nothing back.”

In step number six I took a hard look at all of the shortcomings that I had, (and for some, still have). I became entirely ready, or, at least as ready as I could be at the time, to have the shortcomings removed by God. This did not mean that the Holy, Almighty, finger of God would somehow appear, touch me on my head, and I would become as pure as the driven snow. No, it meant that I was entirely ready to cooperate with God, and try to control my physical self to get in line and follow God’s directions.

It wasn’t too bad to say that I was entirely ready because, after all, I didn’t really have to stop, or lose, or give up anything at that point in my recovery. Now, and step number seven, I have to put my money where my mouth was. I had to actually ask God to remove all of those character defects, and I had to do it with this thing called humility! At that point in working the steps, I hardly knew what humility meant.! It turned out that what I needed to do was to get on my knees, and trust that God would steer me in the right direction to find that elusive thing called humility. Most of all, I had to try my best to remember that humility is the gift from God that is associated with step number seven. Of course, it didn’t just appear when I decided to do the seventh step. It is a gift we receive at our inception. We need only to get our humanity out of the way enough in order to avail ourselves of this beautiful gift from God.

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Well, the holidays are over and I am trying to get back to a normal routine. As promised, I am going to finish up on step number five. This will be part five, and I would like to speak about some of the rewards I felt after doing the fifth step. As I’m sure you will recall, in this examination of the steps, I am trying to relate what it was like for me as I did each step.

As a reminder, step five is: I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs.

As I approached doing step number five (with a priest), I was in possession of lots of baggage that I discovered as I did the fourth step. However, I did not feel as though I had to be forgiven for any of these shortcomings and character defects. The reason for this was that I was truly, for the first time, trying to do this program in the way it was designed, as a God-given safety line for us all. In the fifth step I honestly said the holy yes to my Spirit and to God. As a result, I realized I no longer needed forgiveness as I was truly a spiritual gift from God. But, that awareness did not remove the shortcomings and character defects of my human self. With all knowing perfection, God gave us steps four through twelve in order for us to improve our humanity.

Two of the things that I believe are immensely helpful in starting to clear away the “wreckage of my past”, are introspection and confession. The fourth step was the introspection I needed in order to identify those things of my humanity that had prevented me from being close to my Spirit and God. They prevented me from turning my will and my life over to God, and hence, giving the will of God.

The confession part came in the form of the fifth step. It wasn’t really what we think of as a typical confession. I had asked the priest that we not do that, and he and I would just have a conversation. Again, I did not feel as though I needed forgiveness, but the human me needed to get these things out and “on the table”, so to speak. It worked quite well.

After finishing my fifth step I took the advice presented in the “big book”, and went to a quiet place to reflect on what had just happened. I actually did feel a sense of calmness and relief, probably more so than any I could remember in my life. Even though the spiritual me felt God’s love, and knew but I was now, spiritually, God’s child, I was still left with my humanity. It was my humanity that needed to understand those defects of character and shortcomings in myself that needed to be removed, (some slowly, and some quickly), before I could be truly committed to doing God’s work.

After the fifth step, I sat in a pew in the church, and somehow knew, as I listen to my Spirit, that I would find the determination, through God, to become a better human being. I knew that I wanted to tell people about my experience in about this wonderful 12 step program. I see the fifth step as a sort of springboard to help me find my way.

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Once again, I hope you’re having a wonderful holiday season and that you will have a safe, and spiritually prosperous new year.

I will continue on step number five, part five, which will be about the possible rewards of doing step number five.

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I’ll just say here that I hope you have a happy, joyful, and safe holiday season!

Please enjoy my Christmas message.

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So, my friends, in this episode I will be speaking about what many people refer to as the actual fifth step. As a reminder, the fifth step is, I admitted to God, to myself, and another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs. Of course, of the 12 steps in this podcast I use my version. I use the original version of the 12 steps from the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. That version in itself is slightly different and the version we see on the meeting walls today. In addition, when I adapt that version I change the pronouns to personal pronouns, which seems to work better for me. As a reminder, I no longer am a member of any 12 step group, so to use the word “we” would be inappropriate.

I believe at first, as I did, most of us gloss over the first two parts of the fifth step. My main thought about the whole step was, “Oh my God, you mean I have to tell someone else about the things I did?”.

Well, my hope for you now is that you received much strength from the second step, and realize that the power of God will see you through all of the steps. After all, we have already been through the act of speaking to God about our fourth step and have looked at ourselves in a mirror of sorts, going over these “adventures” in our own mind. All that is left now is to speak with another person. This part of the fifth step can be very enlightening and cleansing. Telling someone else about our shortcomings and character defects is like a sort of confession, but we are not seeking forgiveness. Not only was forgiveness granted as soon as we said our holy yes as a result of the third step, but we then realized it was never necessary at all.

I cannot urge you enough to spend whatever time is necessary in order to find that person with whom you would like to share your fourth step. That person could be someone you have watched in your program. They may have some time under their belt, as well as being a person who “walks the talk”, so to speak. It may be, as in my case, a priest, or minister, or some other religious figure. I did this because of my many years as a Catholic and because, quite honestly I really did not have many people in the way our friends. There is also the fact that a priest will not divulge to another person anything that I say in the form of confession. This is usually the case, not only with priests, but also psychiatrists, psychologists, attorneys, and usually counselor/therapists.

I cannot emphasize enough, the importance of finding the correct person for you with whom to do your fifth step. I have heard stories from folks that participate in 12-step recovery programs, who’s supposedly confidential fifth step was somehow leaked to others. Please be careful.

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So, in part three of the fifth step I want to talk about the second entity that is mentioned in the step. Who or what is this entity that we need to confide in. Well, it’s an entity that we have not found ourselves (usually) in which to willingly confide in the past. It always seemed to me, when I looked in the mirror, that this was the last person in the world that I wanted to be honest with. Why would I change that now? The first three steps, is the answer!

You see, when I looked in the mirror before, I was alone. Now, I firmly believed what the first three steps told me. Number one, my life with certainly unmanageable. Number two I really and truly believed that I was certainly insane and that there was a power I could turn to to direct me in my effort to become sane.

(I realized this condition of insanity when my is an honest fourth step.)

And third, I had said yes, with all the earnestness at my command, and decided, in short, to allow God to influence (as best I can) the decisions I make as a human being.

So, now I could talk to myself, and look at myself in the mirror, and see a person that really is loved by God and has the potential to demonstrate the changes in myself.

It certainly did help for me to look in that mirror, or at myself, and rehash the fourth step as a reminder of the forgiveness of God and not only the changes that were happening, but also the newfound love I was developing for myself.

This most certainly is an important part of this fifth step.

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So, what I would like to do in this episode, is to speak a little about the first entity that is mentioned in this step, God. As a reminder, this step is, admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. (You’ll find the wording a little bit different in the literature but just as a reminder, this is my version, that works well for me.)

Now, you may wonder, as I did, why it is necessary to admit anything to God. After all, doesn’t he know everything anyway? Well, it’s not like I’m letting God is on something he doesn’t already know. When I finally did the steps in earnest, and incomplete honesty, it seemed to me like an assurance that I had formed the respondent with God.

So it wasn’t that He didn’t know, more like I was cementing that He knows all about me, and that as soon as I said “yes” to God and my Holy Spirit, I knew that there was complete forgiveness for any possible guilt I felt in my soul.

Ultimately, it was good for me to renew and strengthen this relationship with God.

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I had read this step many, many, times before. All the times I was very much involved in the 12 step program, I tended to focus on just a few of the steps. I focused on the first step because I, well, was in a detox center, or halfway house or recovery program of some sort. It was difficult to look at myself as anything but unmanageable. I focused on the fourth step because I could make myself look like I was trying to work the program and depending on how I wrote fourth step, I could actually look good. After that I zoomed to the 10th step, and told everyone how I was continuing to take a look at myself. Oh, brother! Mea culpa, mea culpa! Me and my Spirit were one! Ha! That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Of course, when I worked as a counselor/therapist, I showed people how to prepare for, and do the fifth step. Some folks would do the fifth step with me. I would help them as best I could because I was good at giving advice but not so good at taking it. It would be a while before I could even begin to find humility and truly surrender to God by saying the Almighty “yes”.

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For this episode I will finish up on the fourth step by trying to remember exactly how I performed it. For me, although I made the lengthy list, it wasn’t so much about the things I did, but more so about the feelings I was having during my drinking days and especially the feelings I developed before I started to drink.

This was very important for me because I was truly starting to become in touch with my own feelings and not those that I believe that others would want to hear. I can’t possibly explain to you the feeling I had after doing the third step. In short, I felt powerful. I truly felt like God was on my side and that I would be able to honestly look at myself, my character defects and shortcomings, in such a way that they would be useful in my ongoing quest for Spirit. And, let’s face it, that is what this is all about for me, forming a true relationship with my Spirit. All of the books I have written, this podcast, my experience in the 12 step program,, my relationships with people, and my life itself, have all been about strengthening my relationship with my Spirit.

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Well, my friends, this is of course the continuation of step number four.

I really don’t have much of a description for this episode. The main thing I want to get across to you is my belief that this being a God-given program. I know that because each step seems to flow so naturally from the previous step and God seems to give us His power so that we can plod on to the next step.

This is the first of the action steps. There call that because, after the first three steps we are finally required to do something, something that is physical. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Again, I am sorry for the sketchiness in the microphone. I hope to have it repaired by the next episode. Also, at the end of this episode I think I led you to believe that that would be the last of this step for series. Well, it’s not. There will be one more episode dedicated to the fourth step.

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The fourth step is the beginning of the action steps. Let me just mention a quick overview of the sections of the steps. I don’t remember reading anywhere what the first three steps are generally called. I have decided to call them the Grace steps because I believe that it is through God’s grace that leads us to them and helps us through them.

The fourth through the ninth steps are generally considered to be the “action” steps. I/we use them to identify, explain, ask forgiveness for, and try to make great things in our past. We refer to these things as shortcomings and character defects and they could range from thinking ill of a person, all the way to murder. Even when I became absolutely serious about this program, I was still unable to discover all of these character defects within me. Many of them are still within what I call, my dungeon. Every once in a while I find or discover another to work on and try to eliminate.

The next three steps, steps 10, 11, and 12, are considered the “maintenance” steps. It is by utilizing these three steps that we are able to keep a check on ourselves, stay in contact with God, and try to help others as a result of what we have learned about ourselves.

By the time I became deadly serious about this 12 step program, I had written many fort steps. I know now that I wrote them because I knew someone else was going to read them and I wanted to look good. Even if I put things in the fourth step that would be generally considered to be “bad”, I still try to make myself look good in the way I portrayed them. Of course, when I became serious about the steps and more, if you will, honest, I looked at the whole thing differently.

In this episode I will try to explain how I approached the fourth step before I realized its importance.

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So, my friends, this may be the only step that in my estimation needs fourth part. For me, this step says it all. It was my opportunity to say the almighty, eternal, “yes” to God. What could possibly be more important in my life.

Since I have taken a step, and said “yes” to God, my life has been (mostly) a spiritual one. The wonderful part is, that by using this beautiful, God-given 12-step program, I always have the chance for correcting my course.

I firmly believe that my “yes” to God is eternal and your revocable. This connection with God; this surrender to God, is the holy grail of any spiritual practice. Since I have surrendered, thereby achieving victory, perfection still very much eludes me. But with the knowledge of my union with God, I have a new willingness and urgency to raise my humanity to a new, spiritually directed course of action.

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Well, now that I’ve gotten God’s attention, not I could get on with the problem of turning things over. After all, my old life was still pulling me fiercely. I believe, for a brief while, I thought I was in a position to negotiate with God. I realize now how difficult it was for me to surrender my old way of life. It was like, I could go along with leaving the spiritual stuff to God, but I will continue to handle the day-to-day “living” stuff.

Believe me, my friends, when I think of my attitude in those early days, I truly wonder how I made it at all!

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As I alluded to in the previous three description, I knew I had a thread, or spark, if you will, somewhere deep inside of me. Even though my life was almost totally negative, I seem to always carry that “idea” of God with me. Now it was time for what I call, the big conversation with God. I had no idea how, or where, to begin.

This wonderful and glorious spiritual awakening

Took Pl. in Lewiston, Maine. Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize it a was a glorious and/or wonderful experience. One day, however, I found myself kneeling in a beautiful, magnificent, cathedral close by. I wondered why there was such a huge church in a smallish town like Auburn, Maine. It seemed to me, at that time, that it was important there was no one around. Even though I planned on a silent conversation with God, I was sure there was people around, they would hear me.

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So, as many of you know, this is my most favorite of all of the steps. Now I am going to tell you why, but not only why, but how I actually approached this step when I decided to work the program in earnest. I have constantly touted how this is, in my estimation and experience, a God-given program. I have also remarked about its organization and how well one particular step leads naturally and spiritually into the next. When I reached the third step, I was literally broken. I was, however, hanging onto some semblance of a higher power. This really saved me, I’m kept me from floundering in the program without direction. I believe now that this little thread of higher power, this faint awareness of the knocking of our Holy Spirit, can get us on track to begin the repair of our lives.

The third step tells me that I need to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. What would necessitate such a decision? What could overcome this so-called ego of mine so much that I would think that there might be a better way? Well, for me it wasn’t difficult! At that point I seem to have one foot in the ice cold water, and the other foot on thin ice.

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As I continue, I found myself at step number two, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. As in step one, it seemed like my first time seeing or understanding, in my limited way, step number two.

I had always had some beliefs in God. It was my self that I had a real problem with. Most of my life I forced myself to be separate from God, mainly because I did not believe God could love a loser like me. But for some reason, those words of the second step seemed to burn into my being. I could see, just how insane my life had become. I believed, as it said in the first step, that I had not been able to manage my own life. I needed help desperately, and perhaps for the first time in all seriousness, I completely threw myself at the feet of God. I truly believed that God could help if I was able to get my self out of the way.

For the first time I was able to understand that my life was truly insane. It was truly unmanageable. I needed a manager and I believed, for the first time, that my only option left, my only chance at life itself, was to accept the help of God.

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Well, I have just accepted step number one as a “fact” of my life. I was truly at the very lowest point in my existence. Nothing else mattered, other than to run away, keep drinking, and wallow in my bottomed-out self-esteem and self-pity.

Now, here comes one of the many miraculous parts of this 12-step program. It is the answer to the problem I recognized and admitted in step one. As you may have heard me say many times before, I easily compared myself to the story about the person that got hit by a bus. They were trying to cross a busy street in downtown New York City. The life had changed to “don’t walk”, but that person decided they could make it across the street anyway, and avoid the oncoming traffic. Well, they no sooner stepped off the curb when they were hit by a bus. After spending quite a while in the hospital, they were finally released to continue with their life. They found themselves at the same street crossing, with the blinking “don’t walk” sign. Once again, the insanity set in and they said to themselves, “this time I can do it. This time it will be different”. Once again they were hit by the bus and started the cycle all over again. They kept repeating their behavior and became sad and devastated. This is what happened to my life, my “bus” being alcohol. I was truly at bottom when it seemed like I saw the first step for the first time. I could not manage my life! My behavior had truly become a sign of insanity. One definition of insanity I found is: unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship. This is certainly the point I was at. Was I doomed to this wife forever? No, because here is the beginning of an answer. Here is step number two.

I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

I hope you enjoy and derive a benefit from this podcast.

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So, in the last episode, I drank my way out of the service and began a life that I could only describe as a life of insanity. After all, every single time I drank, it was like a means to an end that was never a good one. The cycle during those years was usually coming off a drunk, usually ending up in some sort of rescue facility, or a cheap room somewhere, getting a job, possibly attending 12 step meetings and becoming involved, (at least on a surface level), and always meeting nice, helpful people. Finally I once again arrived at the point where I felt I couldn’t play this charade any longer, and began to drink once more. No matter where I was or what I was doing, as soon as I took that first drink, all was over. Thus began the cycle once more.

As I said, over those years, there were periods of deep involvement with the 12 step program, and eventually, slightly longer periods of sobriety, enabling me to do some work as a therapist and counselor as well as attend three or four schools to learn about addiction counseling. When my drinking brought me to yet another program of therapy as a patient, I had already learned so much about myself, about alcoholism, and about the 12 step program, that I really tuned myself out, yet still went through the motions.

Finally, during my last drunk, I was so far at the bottom that I actually was considering ending it all, something that never seemed possible for me because I thought it would completely remove any connection, however slight, I had with God. I asked the bartender for a phone book so I could look up auto supply stores where I could buy along to run from my exhaust. As I thumbed through the A’s in the “A” listings in the phone book, my finger landed on a phone number for AA. I decided to call the number and they told me where a meeting would be that evening. I believe that bartender was my first “angel” that evening. I also believe that moment in that bar was the first moment of my troop Enlightenment, the gift associated with the first step.

In this episode, I will continue the story as I describe my next two angels.

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I left off in the last episode or podcast where I was headed into the Army. After running away from home and having a couple of minor run-ins with the law I wanted to get away my parents thought it might be a really good idea for the Army to “straighten me out”. It did not work! I guess I really saw the Army has one big drinking club. I somehow ended up as a military policeman. Basically the Army took a 17-year-old alcoholic and gave him a 45 and a carbine, and sent them off to work. I was lucky I didn’t kill someone because, of course, I could never be trusted to not be drinking.

After leaving the service, my life developed a pattern. The details were different in each episode, but the overall scenario was the same. I started off somewhere, possibly at my parents home, or in some state that I ended up in, and began all over again. I would find a job, that I may or may not have been qualified to do, (I sometimes lied about my experiences, but I had the ability to adapt and learn just about any job), and usually do well at the job. I was always likable, at least if I was sober. I always concurrently was involved with 12-step program where I went through the motions, but never truly participated in.

Eventually, the connections that I made with people, and the usual success in doing whatever job I had acquired, became too much for me. The whole mask and armor thing was too much to bear. I have described it in other writings as being similar to a pressure boiler with water inside, fire below, and steam pressure building up. There was an outlet valve to release the pressure, but unfortunately that relief valve for me was alcohol and escape. In a nutshell, my life became a series of good starts, some success, meeting new friends, and eventually through drinking, tearing the rug out from under myself.

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Step number one, when I took it, went like this: “I admitted I was powerless over alcohol, that my life had become unmanageable”. Now, as most of you know, I have developed a personal set of steps, in a form that works for me. So, my version of this step is: “I admitted I was powerless over myself, and that my life had become unmanageable”.

By the time I was ready to take this step for real, I was absolutely at the bottom for me. By that time I had been through, (approximately), 20 detox places and maybe seven or eight alcohol and drug rehab programs. I knew much of the big book, (Alcoholics Anonymous), including chapter 5, including the steps. I went to a few schools to learn about the disease of alcoholism and counseling. I worked as a counselor or therapist and knew quite a bit about addiction and the 12 step program. I, or anyone, would not have thought I would continue to be addicted to anything.

But, I kept kidding myself with the thought that this time, if I succumbed to my addiction, it would be different. This time I would be able to handle it. Well, that changed one day when I was working as a counselor or at a religious center in New York State. One day I held off and went into town to buy some clothing. I was walking along a street, saw a bar, walked right in, and sat down. The bartender came over and I ordered a beer. In the time it took for the bartender to draw that beer, many thoughts went through my head.

“You know if you drink this beer, you will not be able to stop at one, or 10 or 20.”

“You know if you do this you will lose everything you have

worked for in the past year or so.”

“You know you are going to run once more and lose all the friends you have developed so far.”

As I was thinking these thoughts, these truths, the bartender came over with my beer and I picked it up, drank it with the thought of “down the hatch”, and proceeded to order more. It was at that time in my addiction that I stopped fooling myself. I no longer could tell myself that I would just have a couple. I no longer could tell myself that this time would be different. From that point on I knew exactly who and what I was. Unfortunately, it would still be many years of wearing my mask and armor, before I would take any serious steps towards wellness.

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So, to continue with this introduction, or should I say my introduction to the 12 step program, well, it’s not pretty.

The root cause, or reason, for me becoming introduced to or involved with the 12-step program was alcohol. Well, let me correct myself. The root cause was actually my low self-esteem and the inability or unwillingness to incorporate God into my life. My drinking of alcohol was a very destructive and terrible symptom of my underlying lack of self-worth. It was a tool that I could use to pull the rug out from under any progress I made in thinking I might be good enough to even be alive.

I believe I was about 10 years old when I discovered the personality changing effects of alcohol. When my adoptive parents had company I was sometimes allowed to make drinks for them. I remember trying some of the alcohol to see what it tasted like. I even remember being given a small taste of one of the drinks with the reasoning that, “it was better I tried it at home than to do it outside”. From the first moment I was introduced to alcohol, I like the way it made me feel. I felt like someone other than who I really was, and any time I could feel that way was a blessing.

Eventually, in my childhood, and teenage years, “going out” always included alcohol of some sort. I began drinking at a local bar in the Bronx by the time I was 16 years old.

I also ran away from home for the second time when I was 16. I got on the plane with another kid from my school and we flew to San Juan Puerto Rico from New York. I remember being able to drink a lot for the week we were there before we were discovered as runaways and sent back to New York. I eventually joined the Army when I was 17 years old., My parents signed the papers for me to enlist, hoping it would help me. It didn’t! I saw the Army as one big drinking, club. After the service I continue drinking, spending time occasionally in hospitals and rehab facilities. Nothing worked. Sometime during those episodes I created a son with the help of a woman who I’m sure had, in different ways, many of the problems that I had. I was on yet another bender when I was told that the baby was stillborn. I had no reason to not believe this, and it wasn’t until recently that I found I had a son. We connected for time, (happily, I thought), but he has since decided to end our connection. I have no idea why, but it is his choice and I will not impose on that.

I ended up in more rehab facilities than I can remember. I finally received my first DWI and ended up in jail overnight. This all has to do, I know now, with “me” running away from “me”. I was a person who was doing the exact opposite of what this 12 step program suggested. I also had periods of sobriety when I seem to do well, at least in a physical sense. I managed to get some schooling and work for a while in a rehabilitation facility. All the while I thought, “Who am I kidding? ”, I knew the book and the steps inside out, but had yet to apply any of them to my life. I lied about working the steps and I lied about my life becoming better. Every time I seem to make progress, I pulled the rug out from under myself.

One afternoon I found myself considering the one thing I said I would never do, suicide. Through the grace of God in that terrible, devastating time of my life, I ended up at yet another 12-step meeting. But, miraculously, this one was different. I was finally ready to become honest. I was finally ready to surrender.

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I have not posted much about the 12 steps in quite some time. It seems like it might be time to take another look at the steps. I’m not going to just rehash what I’ve said before. I’m going to try to take a personal look at the steps from my vantage point. I am going to try, (with as much honesty as I can), to share how I have worked and am working this 12-step program. As those of you who have been following this podcast, or reading my books, know, I believe this program to be a God-given one. I believe, with all of my being, that this is a spiritually based roadmap with which to learn to live my life under the direction and guidance of God.

If I were to read what I have just written (above) years ago, it would have been quite intimidating. Believe me, my friends, traveling on this spiritual road is not difficult. As a matter of fact, once I have accepted the strength and guidance of God and my Spirit, the road is as smooth as silk. However, I still have my humanity to deal with, which becomes, at times, quite the rocky road.

My blindness doesn’t allow me to speak to groups any longer. When I did speak to them, especially after finding my beautiful place in the Spirit, I was not well received. You see, twelve-step groups are, ultimately, a cross-section of the same society that exists everywhere else. The only difference is that they are fighting a particular addiction, or life problem, that is common to that group. Generally speaking, they are happier and more comfortable listening to a speaker relate humorous, exciting personal, and dramatic stories. Most folks are more comfortable with narrations that seem to zero in on their human emotions rather than their spiritual selves.

I truly, (and sadly), believe as I write this podcast description, that a very small percentage of humanity will ultimately choose Spirit over their physical selves. The Spirit knocks at our human shell continuously. It asks to be recognized. It asks to be allowed to help us. We need only to answer in the affirmative. We need only to say “yes” to our Spirit and to God. If you are familiar with the steps or are involved in the 12-step program, you are probably aware that this beautiful decision can be found in the first three steps.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of absorbing the message of the first three steps into our beings. These steps, and their absorption into our lives, signify the new beginning that most of us are looking for.

It can be, through these three steps, that I can say the eternal, loving, “yes” to God. It is through these three steps that I can surrender. It is through these three steps that I can be victorious.

It is through these three steps that I can have the greatest power ever imagined at my beck and call. It is through these three steps that I can begin to reclaim my sanity. It is through these three steps that the yoke of human suffering can be shed from my shoulders. They represent a new power, a new beginning, a new freedom, and a new love that is eternally ours.

It is through these first three steps that we receive the power and the fearless ability to delve into the following nine steps. Once those first three steps are taken completely and sincerely, nothing can ever hurt us again! This is why we are urged to take these first three steps. As it says in the literature, “ What an order I can’t go through with it… but there is one who is all power, that one is God, may you find Him now”.

These are some of the things I will be describing, from my point of view, in the next episodes about the 12 steps. In my early experiences with the 12 step program, I tried to get through these steps as quickly as possible, and to do them on my own. It took me many, many tries before I realized my rationalization had to be prevented, and I had to abandon myself to God in order to get anywhere. I finally realized

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Yes, I am finally at the summary of this series of episodes about the beginnings of our way of life, and how those beginnings are so closely related to the Oxford Group. So, when I think about all of the lists, steps?, And the general way of life given to us by the Oxford Group, I need to let it all go.

Although the Oxford group provided us (Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob), with all of the ingredients with which to create our 12 step program, they had to disappear. We now have what has become a new set of spiritual principles that are encased in our 12 steps. Maybe this is the way that God allowed the 12 step program to be born. He didn’t control us. When all is said and done we must hold true to the concept of free will. The choice is ours. The choice will forever be ours until there is no longer a choice to make.

Those of us who choose to say “yes” to God, realize that in some way, or many ways, this is a God-given program. We realize that as a result of our surrender, we achieve a victory surpassed by none other. My wish is that you have said “yes”, and are also on the path to experience and feel the eternal, perfect, love of God.

Thank you for listening. In the next series of episodes I will once again, go through the 12-steps in greater depth than I have in the past, and attempt to describe how they affected me personally .

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I know, I know, once again this is supposed to be the summary of the influence of the Oxford group on the 12 step program. However I listen to a talk yesterday on the 12 steps and the Oxford group and I discovered some information that I had never, heard before. The speaker, who was anonymous because it was a talk hosted by an Alcoholics Anonymous group, describes what he referred to as, “the 4 steps” of the Oxford group. Well, I certainly couldn’t and these episodes without informing you about these 4 steps. The speaker said they came from a book called, “What Is the Oxford Group”, by L.W. Grensted. I am including those 4 steps below:

The 4 Steps of the Oxford Group:

1. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to God, and to use sharing as witness to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins.

2. Surrender our life, past, present, and future into God’s keeping and direction.

3. Restitution to all whom we have harmed directly or indirectly.

4. Listening to, accepting, and relying on Gaia God’s guidance and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small.

I realize that the language, and words, are a little foreign in this day and age, especially in this first step. However, isn’t this basically saying what the fourth and fifth steps in today’s program say? Of course, we don’t need to do the six step with a “Christian”, and we have our own terms or way of looking at the words sin and temptation, but I think they all come down to the same thing in each of us.

Step 2 is all about surrender. This term is certainly implied in the first three steps. Ultimately, this is my goal as a result of the whole of the 12 step program… to learn to completely listen and surrender to God’s wishes and direction.

The 3rd step is all about trying to make those things we did that affected people in a negative way, right. Restitution keeps cropping up in the Oxford group literature because they saw it as being so important to their recovery and reconnection with God.

Step number 4, happens to be my current, favorite step, at least in this particular list. I think it encompasses steps 10, 11 and 12. Of course, any of you who have read my writings know that I have created a philosophical/theological system called Mystical Interrelational Trinitarianism, or, MIT. It happens to be all about learning to listen for the influence of our Spirit; learning to discern and disseminate what we truly hear from her Spirit; and using what we hear to direct our humanity. After I say that everlasting, permanent, and eternal “yes” to God, listening for His/Her direction becomes my most important spiritual activity.

I certainly hope you will enjoy this podcast and I promise that part number 10 in the series will be a summary of the influence of the Oxford Group.

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Yes, I realize that I was going to write a summary of these past episodes concerning the Oxford group and its connection to the 12 steps. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized that I needed to speak more about the last episode and the Four Absolutes we have inherited from the Oxford group. Whereas the 12 step program is not a direct continuation of the Oxford Group concepts, they are, in my opinion, totally derive from the Oxford Group Movement.

So, I’m going to use this episode to sort of, rehash the 4 Absolutes from the previous episode. I’m going to, once again, show the connection between these four absolutes and our 12-step program. As a reminder, the 4 Absolutes are:

1. Honesty

2. Purity

3. Unselfishness

4. Love

These absolutes are the crux of the 12 step program.

The first, Honesty, is really synonymous with the first 3 steps in the 12 step program. The second, Purity, I believe to be described as steps six and seven.

The 3rd, unselfishness, is most certainly referenced beautifully by the 12th of step.

The 4th Absolute, Love, references the whole of the 12 steps in that they epitomize love of self, love of others, and love of God.

I sincerely hope that you enjoy this podcast. Once again, I would be honored to receive any questions or comments about this podcast. My email address is: chuck@stepstothespirit.com

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This episode is about a list of four items that I discovered as I was reading some information about the Oxford group. It is a list of four, I guess you might call them “ideas”, that I think is the most comprehensive and straightforward list of all of the lists in the Oxford group.

This list is not included in the chart that you can find in my description of episode 24. The list is:

The 4 Absolutes1. Honesty

1. Purity

2. Unselfishness

3. Love

When I first saw this list, I thought, “Wow! This is a list of the ingredients that I would like to have in order to define my life.” I believe they really include everything that is in all of the other lists. As a matter of fact, I believe they sum up all of the ideas that are in the 12 step program.

Number 1 is “Honesty”. The idea of honesty, I believe, overrides all of the 12 steps in some form or another. It may be honesty with myself, honesty with another, honesty with God, or any combination of these. For some reason the movie, Liar, Liar comes to mind. The star, who I seem to remember as Jim Carrey, became unable to tell a lie. I would like my life to become more one of a person that and more one of a person who needs to be honest at all times. I’m not sure how this affects a feeling that I need to lie in order to protect another. I think that will be addressed in the 4th part of this list.

Number 2 on the list is “Purity”. My sense of purity that is meant by the word in this list is that which comes from our Spirit I believe it means that I should try to be pure in thought, and pure in my actions. Please remember that I also believe one of the operative words in that sentence is to try. I firmly believe that over time, after I say “yes” to God, I will find a greater and greater ability to follow through on these Four Absolutes.

Absolute number 3 is “Unselfishness”. Quite often I find that when I experience something good or wonderful, I want to share it with someone else. (Of course, the urge to share something terrible or evil that might happen to me is a subject for different podcast). As I become more and more involved in these 12 steps, and I slowly begin to change and experience a new way of life, I find that it is a mandate from my Spirit to share “this good news” with others. Notice it is similar to the term corporate that is used in the Christian New Testament. I believe that that is because it was the news of a saving God, and available to each of us by living our lives like the example provided by the life of Jesus. I further believe that these 12 steps provide us with an outline for living that very same life.

Absolute number 4 is “Love”.

It is interesting to me that it does not say to love one another or to love ourselves, or to love our neighbor as ourselves, as is written in the New Testament. It is simply the word Love. All I want to say about this right now, in this description, is to share with you the definition of love that I have adapted for my life. It is as follows:

Love is wanting to do for the good of another.

My Holy Spirit constantly provides me with all of the strength and direction with which to accomplish this definition in my life. Anytime I choose not to consider the needs of another before my own needs, (which happens more often than I care to admit), it is usually do to my incorrect, spirit-overwriting, human rationalization. This does not happen beyond my control, nor am I unable to change it. No matter what, I always have my God-given power of free choice. The more I learn to listen to my Spirit, and remember the kind of life I am trying to lead, I shall make the right choice.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the podcast.

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In this episode I will be speaking about the six basic assumptions. They are listed below:

The 6 basic assumptions

1. Men are sinners;

2. Men can be changed;

3. Confession is prerequisite to change;

4. The changed soul has direct access to God;

5. The ‘Age of Miracles’ has returned;

6. Those who have been “changed” must “change others.”

As you can see, although they are in line with the tenets of the 12 step program, I think the language, when compared to today’s spirituality needs a little bit of explaining.

First of all, we are working with the word “sinners”. I need to remember where these words originated, which was the Oxford group of the early 1900s. I actually believe that some of their preaching borders on that “old time religion” format. When I come across the word sinners, it doesn’t bother me. When I think about the word sin, I reference the first step in the 12-step program. There, in that very first step of admitting our powerlessness and unmanageability, it is synonymous with sin. The definition of sin seems to be a transgression against the law of God, or, the breaking down of some moral code which is implanted in us at the time of our creation.

I see sin as allowing our physical selves to act, sometimes in a poor or abusive way, in contrast to what our Spirit, or God, would have us do. Those of us who belong in this group called humanity, have been given this gift of free choice. This, my friends, is what it is all about. I must learn to listen! I must learn to try, to the best of my ability, to try to discern and follow through on the directions of God. In other words, I must choose God! How do I do this? Well, I believe there are two ways. The first is when we say that holy, forever, “yes” to God. I believe when we finally answer our Spirit, and say “yes, God, I will do things your way to the best of my ability, there is no turning back. We are no, w as our Spirit, inextricably linked to God forever as an imperfect human being. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, meaning that we now are free of any moral dilemma. It means that we are going to try our best, and for us humans this is not exactly the best. It is our best.

Well this is been a lot of time on the first assumption, I hope it is worth it. The second assumption says that humankind can change. Of course in the steps, I believe there are two incidences of change. The first is the third step permit decide to change our lives and to change how we run our lives by turning our very well and our lives over to the care of God and attempting, (as is mentioned above), to follow the direction of our Spirit. The other instance of change in the 12 steps is an steps number six and seven where we humbly ask God to remove all of our defects of character and our shortcomings. I think this may be considered redundant because I believe that as soon as we make connection with our spirit and decide to follow God’s direction our past transgressions are completely erased.

Other things that might be complicated for some or the need for confession, step number five and step number 10, as well as the word, (which I think is usually slightly ambiguous), miracle. The best definition I have seen of the word miracle say that it is something that makes us smile and something that is wondrous. I had to get over the idea that has been planted in my head since I was a child that a miracle needs to be a physical happening such as changing water to wine. As we complete these steps are whole being is in wonder about the changes that have happened to us. These changes are certainly, in my experience anyway, miracles.

So I think I will stop here and get on with the podcast.

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In this episode, we shall be looking at the next list from the Oxford Group. This list has four items in it and is called 4 Spiritual Practices. They are as follows:

4 Spiritual Practices. (Expanded)1¶. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian.
Life given all to God and sharing as witness to help others still unchanged, to recognize and acknowledge their sins.

2¶. Surrender our life passed, present, and future, into God’s keeping and direction.
3. Restitution to all we have wronged, either directly or indirectly.
4. Listening to, accepting, relying on God’s Guidance and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small.

I believe that, once again, these things support how much of the recovery programs, twelve-step programs that we know today, have been influenced by the Oxford Group.

Of course, the first item is linked to steps four and five, and particularly step five in the 12 step program of today. As the program says, admitted to God ourselves another human being those things that we have considered to be wrong.

Item number three is, of course, directly related to steps number eight and nine in today’s 12 step program.

Item number two, for me, is one of the most important in this list because it refers to my favorite step, which is step number three. The act of surrender, for me and I believe, for all involved in the 12 step program is the most important aspect I need to accept the love of God and I should give it my full attention.

The fourth item, listening, is without a doubt my favorite item in this list. I believe this item is directly related to step number 11 in the 12 step program, sought through prayer and meditation… praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me. I believe with all of my heart, as I have written here and in my books, that my main connection to spirit and God is that of listening. Even the Buddha said something to the effect of not listening to tradition, hearsay, wise people, or even our teachers, but to go back to our rooms (or wherever) and look within to find our answers. Then, act on those things we have found to be true within ourselves. I firmly believe that with our allowance, willingness, and practice to learn to discern the sounds of our spirit from the sounds of our rationalization, we shall live in this world as God would direct us.

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The 5 Procedures:

1. Give in to God

2. Listen to God’s direction

3. Check Guidance

4. Restitution

5. Sharing – For witness and for confession

In this episode I’m going to speak about yet another list from the Oxford group. This one is called the five procedures and I’ve listed them above. As you can see, these procedures are also in line with the overall ideas of the 12 steps.

In the first procedure it says to “give into God”. This., Along with the second procedure of “listening to God’s direction”, we are thoroughly involved with the first three steps.

Procedure 3 is comparable, I think, to the beginning of our spiritual lives when, in the fifth step we talk to another human being about both our history and our solutions. It is also connected to steps 10 and 11, in which we continue to try to follow the directions of God.

There is no question that procedure number 4, “restitution” refers to steps 8 and 9.

Procedure number 5, certainly refers to step number five which includes a confession of sorts, and step number 12 where we talk to others, explaining our history, and hopefully, encouraging them to take a similar path.

Once again, all of these tidbits that I keep finding in the Oxford group are definitely pointers to the creation of the 12-step program.

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This week we’re going to talk about the next in a group of list tidbits that I have found connected to the Oxford group.

This particular tidbit is called “The Five C’s”. Here is the list

1. Conviction

2. Confession

3. Contrition

4. Conversion

5. Continuing

So, I believe the first thing we have to remember, is that this list was probably written in the early 1900s. In today’s language we might refer to number 1 as “yeah I did that”, number 2 as “hey, can I talk to you about something?”, number 3, “I’m sorry I did that”, number 4, I think “I’ll try this Your way”, and number 5, “hey, I like this way to live and I’m going to keep doing it!”.

So, once again, if you are thinking anything like I’m thinking, these five C’s are certainly going to trigger a connection to the steps. Of course, by definition, they are nowhere near as wordy or explanatory as the steps are, but they certainly do lead us in the same direction. If I allow them to, they can ring in my head of that old time religion, but of course, if I’m being honest with myself, that interpretation would be a cop-out. After all, especially for me, being a Catholic, the words confession and contrition certainly hit pretty hard. But I am not ruled by any church or religious doctrine at this time in my life. I have decided, as a result of learning and using these 12 steps that my spirit is my guide. After all, I do this confession and contrition on a daily basis in the 10th step. I continue to take a moral inventory and when I am wrong I certainly try to promptly admit it. For me, it all has to do with my point of view, and choosing to remember that I am an entirely new person now, and with an entirely new outlook on life.

Isn’t it amazing how we can sometimes hear a word and, according to our situation and mindset at the time, we can get a completely different meaning from that word than the person who may be sitting next to us would get. For instance, I could be in a crowded room and hear the word punch. Some who hear it may think of a refreshing convivial beverage. Others might envision something that arises from violence and may end up in the bloodied nose. For me, it depends on how I have worked on, (and keep working on), steps number six and seven. I still have a few things in that dungeon of mine that need to be tossed out.

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So, my friends, even though I have heard about the Oxford group in the past, I am learning so much more as I revisit it. A couple of years ago I created a chart that compares the different ideas of the Oxford group to the 12 step program. I was amazed then, and I am still amazed, that every single group of ideas from the Oxford group relate directly to the 12 step program.

Of course, we know of the influence love Ebby Thatcher on Bill Wilson. Debbie was a good friend of Bill’s and I would go as far to say that he acted as Bill’s sponsor in his early days of sobriety.

Ebby, as I mentioned in the last episode, left a handwritten note for Bill as Bill was writing the 12 steps. The note contained six steps from the Oxford group of which Ebby was a member.

I have found more and more connections to the Oxford group, and at this point I feel I am more likely to believe that the crux of the 12 step program originated from the Oxford group. A few years ago I created a chart, (see below), that shows some of the tenets of the Oxford group and how they compare to the 12 steps. There are none that did not compare in some way and most compared very directly these tenets of the Oxford group and their comparison to the 12 step program are what I would like to speak about in this episode.

Chart of Oxford Group/12 step comparisons

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I have been thinking about all of the information that I have been talking about in these podcasts. Of course, it is all about the 12 steps. However, lately I have been feeling like I haven’t given enough background on what the 12 steps are all about and how they got started. So I am going to use the next (few) episodes to talk about but I feel are the real origins of the 12 step program.

Most of you who have been with me for a while are aware that I use the first edition of what is commonly referred to as, The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I refer to the first edition of this book because I assume it is copyright free. Also, most of you are aware that this 12 step programs was originally created in order to help folks with problems concerning the use of alcohol.

I am also certain that most of you know my feelings about these 12 steps. I believe they are in a spiritual way of life, designed according to the spiritual direction and protection of God, (whatever you may concede God to be). I am certainly not saying that by using this program in their purely psychological way or method, that it is not helpful and sometimes miraculous. What I am saying is that by using this program without the overall understanding of God’s inclusion, well, I feel that those who do will ultimately be lacking the full experience of this beautiful way of life.

For now, I am including below, but are commonly referred to as the first six steps of the 12 step program. Legend has it that a friend of Bill Wilson, (Ebby), gave a hastily written note to him and these steps were written on.

If you are familiar with the 12 steps, and the 12 step program, you will easily make the connection. If you are new, I’m sure you will also make the connection in very short time. The next few podcasts will address this connection between the 12 step program and what is commonly known as the Oxford Group.

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Step 1: Admitted hopeless

Step 2: Got honest with self

Step 3: Got honest with another

Step 4: Made amends

Step 5: Helped others without demand

Step 6: Prayed to God as you understand him

it is my feeling that the 12 steps were not just influenced by the Oxford group, but were basically modeled from it, almost entirely. I hope you enjoy the podcasts.

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So, I feel that sometimes, okay, most of the time, I am sharing with you the wonderful connection I developed with my Spirit as a result of this 12 step program. I don’t think I am sharing the human part of me and all its foibles as much as I could. I really hope that I do not sound like I am pontificating. That is certainly not my intent. It would be so easy to suggest that you do what I say and not do what I do.

I have been thinking that it may be helpful for me to include you in some of my activities, whether they be good, bad, strenuous, or peaceful. I would like to tell you about these situations and how I was able to, (or not able to), use this wonderful way of life, the 12 step program to deal with these situations.

In today’s podcast I would like to talk about our big move that is been going on for a couple of weeks now. Some of it is joyful, and some, mostly due to my inadequacies has been stressful.

I hope that by sharing these events with you I can somehow be helpful in your continued recovery.

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Now that we are done with the promises, there are a few things I have thought about in the past couple of weeks. They have to do with what happens to us in my day-to-day experiences.

Everything I speak about in these podcasts has to do with my 12-step program. These steps are the guidance for my humanity. They are not my spiritual program. The spiritual me is the me that listens for the inspiration of my Spirit and God. The 12 step program, however, is that way of life that puts me in a position to listen.

In the last couple of weeks we have been moving, because we are selling our house on Plum Island. So we are moving from a three bedroom two bath condominium to a two bedroom one bath apartment. We have been in our Plum Island home for 35 years so it’s been a while since we have had to move. We thought it would be a lot easier this time. We used to rent the truck and move everything with the help of family members, ourselves. This time we had a mover do it and we thought it would be a piece of cake for us. It has been anything but a piece of cake. So I would like to speak to how my way of life as help me through this move.

But first I would like to talk about a subject of one of the readings that my wife and I read every morning. Quite often, it is a book having to do with ACIM because my wife has been very involved in learning their spirituality and we have a lot of
literature around which has been written from that point of view. The book that we are reading now is one of those books. (Love Without Conditions: Reflections of the Christ Mind by Paul Ferrini). In the first few chapters, the author spoke about the spirit and spiritual things and my hopes were high because I liked what I heard in those chapters. However as we have muddled through, the chapters seem to be leaning more and more toward a non-dual existence.. This morning’s chapter was about love in general and in particular, self-love. So today I would like to speak about those issues and what they mean to me.

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They will always materialize if I work for them.

Once again, I humbly believe that these promises are, or may be directed to two different groups of people. If you recall the X and Y groups from the previous podcast, there are two groups who may, although approaching the 12 step program differently, get similar results. I believe that, while some of these promises will come true, even for those who are approaching the 12-step program from a purely psychological point of view. I do not, however, believe that these promises will achieve total fruition unless they are preceded by my total surrender by saying “yes” to God.

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Are these extravagant promises? I think not. They are being fulfilled in me – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if I work for them.

So, for this question at the end of the promises, I really have to say that there is an X and Y group that I would be addressing at the same time.

The X group are those that are doing or have done this beautiful, God-given, 12-step program based on God and the promise of the new, spiritual way of life. Of course you know who you are. These promises will not come as a surprise to you. Some of them may seem, still, as extravagant promises. However, I believe you know in your heart from even having the smallest spiritual experiences with these 12-steps, that they are certainly a possibility. I can assure you, you are correct!

I named the second group, group Y. I think this might have been, if there is such a thing, a Freudian writing slip. The folks in his group may be asking themselves why always things happen to them. Some may be asking why God allowed their lives to evolve the way it did. Yet others may be questioning why it might be beneficial to try to turn to God in this time of need.

Well, as I said before, I wish I had the words to convince you to try a spiritual to the 12 step program and/or a spiritual way of life. I truly do not. I can only suggest that you become involved in some kind of 12-step group and look around you to see who are the seemingly happiest persons there. I’m not saying to look for those that seem to be trouble-free or making the most money or have the seemingly outstanding partner on their arm. I am asking that you look for those who are happy. My guess would be that those are usually the folks who have not only adopted a 12-step way of life, but a spiritual way of life.

This is not necessarily an easy task or assignment, but no one said it would be easy. I can only say that to do the work will certainly make it worthwhile.

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Promise #12: I will suddenly realize that God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.

So my friends, I think of this promise in terms of what we used to say in the Bronx when I was a kid, a no-brainer. No, I am not trying to be condescending at all. I suppose that some of you who have not chosen to use this 12-step program in its truest sense with its truest core values, well, you may not fully understand this promise. For those of you who have fully surrendered in the first three steps; for those of you who have said the Almighty “yes” to God; and for those of you who have not fully grasped the meaning of the first three steps, well, this promise may seem meaningless to you.

I guess I feel like I want to do a sales pitch now, mostly because I am so aware of how this program has changed my life. I know the painful difference of doing this program as a psychological exercise versus doing it as a God centered changing of my way of life. I truly wish I had the words that by writing them or saying them I would know they would change your life immediately. I wish I had the words to help you see the beautiful freedom and rewards that are result of our absolute surrender. Alas, I do not. All I can ask that you is to give this program a try for yourself. Try, no matter what your problems have been in the past and no matter what baggage you seem to be carrying with you now, to give God another chance. I believe you will find the truth in this promise, that God will do for you what you have not able to do for yourself. You will receive a sanity in your life such as you never could have imagined.

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Promise #11: I will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me

when I see this promise the first word that comes to my mind is fear. I personally believe that I knew how to handle many situations that seem to baffle me, but my self-esteem or self-worth was absolutely nowhere to be found. Without feeling confident, competent, or strong, i.e. powerful, I wasn’t even to think about handling a situation. However, as I mentioned in the last podcast, I have a new way of life, given to me by this 12 step program and managed by my Spirit.

I have a newfound confidence, mostly because God is my support. Furthermore, because I am, to the best of my ability, turning my will and my life over to the care of God via my Spirit, I am able to allow my ego to do its job in keeping me on and even human keel.

In order to be able to handle the so-called situations that used to baffle me in the past, I do not get any more physical strength, bravery, or intelligence that I didn’t have in the past. I simply know that I have the power that has been always available to me whenever I chose to surrender. It is by this surrender that the world of humanity becomes mine to deal with in a kind and loving way, and at the same time, without any fear at all.

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Promise #10: Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave me.

I am sincerely not sure why these two aspects of the promises were listed together. However, the uncommon to nominate the Diaz linking them. It is the second step. As we form this new way of life, for me anyway, the second step always works in the back of my mind. I not only believe that I have been restored to sanity, (although at times, my wife and others that know me may object to that), that the power is so much more.

I firmly believe that the power I received in the first three steps has made me invincible, as long as I am able to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. Am I and invincible human being in my day-to-day life, no, I am certainly not. I am invincible in my spiritual life. Even if what I am doing may not turn out the way I think it should, as long as I trust in my Spirit, all will be fine.

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Promise #9:My whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

Those of you who have found a new way of life as a result of this program will have no trouble in understanding this promise. Of course, I mean those of you who have truly this program. This means that it has not been simply a psychological exercise, but a way of connecting to God and your Spirit, and using God and your Spirit as direction for your life. By becoming this person, this individual inhumanity who desires only to follow the will of God, is a changed person.

How could we possibly not have a new attitude, as well as an outlook on life in which we see the spiritual possibilities of doing good.

I really need to say, at this point, that those who are using this program is a psychological recovery tool, will miss the boat. As I have said many times in my previous writing, I firmly believe this program has been given to us by God. It is the most simple way

I have found in my experience, both with this program, and other religious practices, that it is the most simple and direct way to form my relationship with one’s Spirit and with God. I further believe that these promises will not come to fruition without the application of the spiritual aspects of this 12-step program.

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Promise #8: Self-seeking will slip away.
So, what does it mean when promise number eight is that we will lose self-seeking? Does it mean that we will not be trying to accomplish anything? Does it mean that we will not try to provide for ourselves and our significant others? No, that is not the case at all.

Let me rephrase this promise as far as what I believe that means we will find ourselves with doing. I will seek what is good as I try my best to follow the direction of my Holy Spirit. What this means to me is that in whatever activity I am involved with as a human being, whether it might be love of another, a partner, children, working at a job, working from home, being retired, or just simply living life. In doing any of these things, I will filter the doing through my Spirit.

The 12th step says it perfectly, I will practice these principles in all my affairs. As far as possible, I will try not to make excuses if I do not practice these principles in all my affairs. I will just thank God for the awareness, and move on.

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I will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in my fellows.

I believe that this promise, promise number seven, is closely tied to promise number six. Once I lose the feeling of uselessness, as I said in the last episode, the program steered me in the direction of looking for ways to share this beautiful way of life.

At one time I was very much involved in meetings and speaking and helping in some physical ways. Lately, my physical self has become more or less detrimental to attending outside functions. My hearing is getting worse, even with hearing aids it is sometimes difficult. I am now legally blind, so you don’t really want to see me behind the wheel of a car! I have to complete artificial knees and some fairly severe sciatica. So I have decided, with the help of my beautiful wife Pat, the best way to share this way of life is through podcasts and writing books. I did not know how I would do in either one of these but I am discovering that much like the old slogan, “ let your fingers do the walking”, the more I let my Spirit to the talking and writing, the less likely I am to fail.

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That feeling of uselessness and self- pity will disappear.

So, once again, this promise really hit the nail on the head for me. Personally, I feel that most of us who have an addiction or a life problem of some kind, are above average in our abilities. I was fortunate to be born with an above average IQ. I believe they gave us IQ tests when we were in the sixth grade or so and Catholic parochial school. You would think that the fact that I scored high on it would be a good thing can result in joy and happiness. That wasn’t the case for me. They call my parents in and says I was performing at level that was way below where I should be. Hey, that was the story of my life! No matter how smart I might have been or how well I could do a job, I always felt inferior. What’s more, I always felt that I was getting the crappy end of the stick. I realize now that I always felt sorry for myself. I mostly felt sorry for myself because I felt I had the wrong adoptive parents as I grew up. If only things could have been different! If only… if only… if only! One of the sayings derived from the 12 step program, “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink!”, Was a perfect fit for me.

After I started to work the 12 step program the way I realized it should be done, (spiritually), this promise came to be true. I received, through love and truth, my marching orders from my Spirit. I learn to listen to my spirit versus listening to my thoughts. I learned that I already possessed the gifts from God of self-worth and self-esteem. I learned that my purpose, at least the most important of many purposes I discovered, is to share this beautiful program with others.

As far as self-pity, well, either you are aware or you can take my word for it, once I trust my Spirit and say “yes” to God, there is absolutely no room for self-pity. You may have heard the term, “there is no crying in baseball”, well there is no crying when we live through our Spirit. That is, notwithstanding any possible tears of joy!

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No matter how far down the scale I have gone, I will see how my experience can benefit others.

This promise is one of the promises that always felt was written specifically for me. If I only looked at myself, I know how far down the scale I really have gone. But when I have talked to others, I have realized that all of our scales are different. I realize that our bottom is what it is. It could be simply a loss of control and not being able to have just a couple of drinks or one drink at night and stopping at that, or maybe not being able to not that drink at night. Some folks I have spoken with were heard tell their story, make my slide down the scale feel like nothing. I must say, however, that I am absolutely grateful for all of the experiences I have had during my life before the 12 step program, and especially before I said “yes” to God and asked him to guide my life.

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I will comprehend the word serenity and I will know peace.

This promise is one of the best of the 12 promises. I know, I am likely to say each one is the best of the promises. Well they are also true and comforting that I can’t help myself.

When I think of this promise, I think of what I considered to be serenity before my earnest association with the 12-step program. If you asked me those many years back what serenity was, there were a few things I would’ve thought of. May be sitting by a mountain like on a spring day with my fishing pole and a sixpack keeping cool in the water would’ve been my first thought. Or, it may have been sitting at home in a comfortable chair and reading a good book. Of course, when I think of serenity now it has nothing to do with those things. Oh sure, those might be things I would like to do to be comfortable in my physical self, but not in order to be serene. Serenity to me today is not a place or thing or even an idea. Serenity comes as a direct result of saying “yes” to God serenity is the knowledge that I no longer have anything to forgive and my character defects and shortcomings or as cleaned up as possible for the moment. Serenity is knowing that no matter what is going on on the outside, I am loved by God and am at peace with my fellow humans because I know they are made of the same spiritual stuff as I. The knowledge that I am loved by God, that I am one with all in the spiritual ether, and that I am trying to live my life according to God’s wishes, brings me the peace that is mentioned in the second part of this promise.

However, comprehending serenity and knowing these does not keep us from living our lives with love, caring, and exuberance. The fact is that we now have a different focus for our lives, trying to live as our Spirit would have us live, rather than following our own directions.

It is this feeling of serenity,

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This episode is about Promise number #3. Promise #3 is:

I will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

As you may know, I have written before about us becoming a “tabula rasa” in order to accept new powers and new thoughts that arrive from our Spirit. Becoming tabula rasa however, does not mean that all of our old experiences are gone. It means that I’m freeing my life from the past and making a new place receive direction from my Spirit. This is a result of the third step. This is a result of my surrender of my physical self to the will of God. This means I have thrown out the bathwater but certainly have kept the baby. That baby is my new way of life. We, as that baby, are ready to develop our spiritual personality. I will take the liberty to call it my spiritual id, my spiritual ego, and my spiritual superego.

My spiritual id is providing the basic needs of my Spirit. In the spiritual sense, my basic needs are no more or less than God’s love. Likewise, my spiritual superego is that which is the authority for my spiritual personality. As is said in the literature, that one is God, may you find him now.

Now we are left with our spiritual ego.

As you may know, my view of the human ego is that it wants to do whatever it can to protect us. Whether or not it’s actions may be interpreted as good or bad, seems to make no difference. It simply does whatever it can in order to keep our physical self in a good light. Our spiritual ego, however, does it best to keep us aligned with the will of God.

I think it is important to remember that our spiritual ego is not our human, physical ego trying to manipulate our spiritual being. That, of course, certainly happens. This would be like being involved in some spiritual/religious setting and the human personality doing whatever to make the person look good spiritually. However, our spiritual ego wants only to help us in dedicating our will and our lives to God’s standard.

Once I have completed the action steps, and as long as I have been honest in looking at and dealing with my old life, I realize that all things in the past are forgiven by God. It leaves me with, as the promise as, nothing to regret. However, I never want to forget my past experiences because they may help me to help others. It is this potential for loving our

fellow sufferers that this 3rd Promise indicates.

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This week we will explore promise number two of the 12 promises. The second promise is as follows:

I am going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

Wow, this sure seems like a huge promise. Well right off the bat, I will tell you that I am experiencing this promise. It has come true in my life and it manifests itself every day. I also must admit that sometimes I think it manifests itself too much. Sometimes I feel like the star (I think it’s Jim Carey), of the movie Liar Liar. He wasn’t able to tell a lie. Well, with my new freedom, I have no need to hide who I really am from myself or others. In the past I never wanted to stand out from the crowd. As a matter of fact I wanted to be as invisible as possible. Now, I am no longer afraid of other people’s opinion. In the second step I really did come to believe that I was going to be assisted by a power greater than myself. The jury is still out as far as me being restored to sanity. However, I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful this feeling of freedom is in knowing that I no longer have to be afraid to be me.

This newfound freedom also allows me to eliminate the judgments of others. Because I am able to look at my “real” self, in other words, the spiritual self that was created by God, I need not be afraid. In essence, no one can hurt me!

I must also, however, be aware that others may not have experienced this awareness and may not be ready for my open, unafraid behavior. I have learned, I hope, that the gifts that I have received from God come with the certain amount of responsibility. My/our goal, as receivers of this beautiful 12-step program, must use it to help others to find this beautiful way of life that we have found.

It is in living this responsible and loving way of life that I received this newfound happiness. I’m not sure if I should even use the word happiness because what I feel now is not seem like the same kind of happiness as before. My happiness of the past seem to be shallow and almost unreal. The happiness I feel now is wholesome, loving and connected to my Spirit and God.

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In this episode I will be talking about what I consider the first of the promises from the first edition of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. The promises start on page 83. Once again, I consider the following to be the first of the 12 promises:

Promise 1: I will be amazed before I am halfway through.

As I have said, I am not absolutely sure to what the term, before I am halfway through, refers. I think it is possible that it refers to step nine where I have made amends to such people wherever possible, but I do not feel confident that this is what it refers to. I feel more confident that it refers to the 12 steps in general but not necessarily a literal interpretation, meaning the end of step number six. I think it means that generally speaking, I will realize, if I have been painstakingly applying the 12 steps to my life, I will undergo a radical change in the way I look at life in general, and my spiritual connection to it in particular.

For me, the most radical change came at the end of the first three steps — and definitely after step three. I consider step three to be my absolute, on ambiguous, commitment to try to live my life as God would have me do it. Again, for me, this was my defining moment of surrender. It was my admission that I had not been able to manage my life up to that point and that I was ready and willing to give up the insanity of thinking I could keep running my life in the same manner, and get a different result. In short, I was ready to confine my actions as directed by God, but at the same time, I felt as though I had more freedom than ever before. Yes, I was truly amazed.

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In this episode I would like to continue with a discussion about (what I call) the introduction to the promises. It is the paragraph before, or at the beginning of, the promises, depending on how you like to look at them. The following is the line of which I’m speaking:

If I am painstaking about this phase of my development …

To begin, I feel a little confused about exactly what phase of my development we are talking about. Does it mean the end of the ninth step? Does it mean before we are finished the sixth step, (halfway through the steps)? I like to think it means halfway through the program, which to me is the steps.

For me, these promises began to come true when I was only about ¼ of the way through the steps. As I’m sure you know from reading just about anything I’ve written, the real “aha” moment for me was the first three steps, and the third step in particular.

Of course, I couldn’t do this all at once and, as a matter of fact, I still have difficulty in turning things in my life over to God. It is much better than ever, but I certainly do still have my “moments”. Once again, I do not expect this episode to be a long one.

As a side, you may want to know that I write these descriptions just before I start to actually do the podcasts. This way I am looking at the material and I start to formalize in my mind exactly what the things are that I would like to talk about. Hopefully, by doing things in this manner I will not come across as a total idiot in the podcast. I think, however, it is my willingness to “turn things over” to God when I actually do the podcast. Believe me, I really, really do try to let my Spirit do the talking as much as possible.

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I have been looking forward to these upcoming episodes on the Promises. As I have said many times, all of my references to the 12-step program text are from the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, (p. 83). In most of the current list of Promises that you will see throughout the 12-step meeting rooms will have a slightly different version of the 12 promises than that which you will see here. Most will split the promise for serenity and peace into two promises; one promise for serenity and one promise for peace. In my version, which you will see below, and the version we will be using in these episodes, combined serenity and peace into one Promise. I think this is the way it was meant to be in original text. That, of course, results with 11 promises, not 12! However, I think they can be a strong argument made or the line, “you will be amazed before your halfway through”, as being one of the 12 promises. So for these episodes, I am going to make that line the first promise of the 12.

I’m sure there are many interpretations of different parts of the, what we call, the Big Book. I certainly believe that, in the end, all versions lead to the same call for us to clean up our wreckage of the past, and in the future, say “yes” to God.

Here is my version of the Promises. In addition to making the change of the first Promise, I have converted the pronouns “we” to the pronoun “I”, the same as I have done in my version of the 12 steps. It simply works better for me.

Promises – My Version
(adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous, 1st edition, p. 83, [the “Big Book])

If I am painstaking about this phase of my development:

1. I will be amazed before I am halfway through.

2. I am going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

3. I will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

4. I will comprehend the word serenity and I will know peace.

5. No matter how far down the scale I have gone, I will see how my experience can benefit others.

6. That feeling of uselessness and self- pity will disappear.

7. I will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in my fellows.

8. Self-seeking will slip away.

9. My whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave me.

11. I will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me.

12. I will suddenly realize that God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.

Are these extravagant promises? I think not. They are being fulfilled in me – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if I work for them.

I hope you enjoy this series

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In this final episode I will talk about last two lines in Reinhold Niebuhr’ s Serenity Prayer. They are below:

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

So, what do you think about these two lines? For me, they are kind of superfluous. After all in the first line he asks for God to pay him back. It seems to me that this part of the prayer asks God, if I live my life according to the serenity prayer, He will give me at least the basic amount of happiness in my life. I feel like I have already asked God for serenity, courage, and wisdom. I know in my heart that God has already given me these things and I need only to use them. As I said before, I try not to actually ask God for anything when I pray. My praying is a one-way street where I only listen for my Spirit (God), for direction in living my life. I choose not to ask God for anything, just to be able to use the things that He has abundantly given me. Then, to me, the prayer goes on to ask God to act favorably toward us as far as granting us happiness and to be able to be with Him when we die.

This reminds me of my Catholic childhood, when I learned in parochial school about perfect and an imperfect act of contrition. A perfect act of contrition was basically me telling God that I was sorry for the things that I had done, only because I have (supposedly) offended God. An imperfect act of contrition was the same sorrow for offending God, but then I throw in because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. In school we were often told about the terrible things (the loss of God, the wrath of God, and the terrible fires that would burn us forever).

This is not the loving God that I have come to trust and believe in as a result of the 12-step program.

I guess, after our discussion of the serenity prayer, you will have to decide if it is something that you would like to use in your spiritual life. As for me, I choose to avoid any kind of formal prayer, and to simply listen for God’s direction.

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In this episode I am making a break in the Serenity Prayer series in order to talk about the events we’ve experienced in the last week. It just so happens that these events emerge perfectly with our series on the Serenity Prayer. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to remember and resort to serenity prayer during our flood.

As some of you know I, and my beautiful child bride, Pat, live on Plum Island, Massachusetts. I call Pat my child bride because I’ve always liked younger women, and she is a mere 77 years old while I just turned 79 last week! Anyway, we have lived on Plum Island or about 25 years and have experienced flooding before. However, the water level in our basement ever reached more than 16 inches in depth. I built accordingly, with everything of importance at 24 inches or higher. Unfortunately, the flooding of last week came to a depth of 43 inches in our basement. We had stopped paying for flood insurance (certainly an error in judgment), as just about everything, including our heat, hot water system and most of the tools in my shop were a total loss. Ultimately, I think this was helpful for me.

I have lost most of my vision in the last two years and I am not really able to do any woodworking at all. I think the shop stood there is a monument and every time I passed it, or had to go in there, I felt a sense of loss. Now, a big decision was made for me. We ordered a dumpster and the things we couldn’t give to friends and family are now gone. They will no longer interfere with my life of writing, podcasting, and trying to help folks know the benefits of saying “yes” to God. God has helped me to accept the things I cannot change, given me the courage to change the things I can, and, hopefully, the wisdom to know the difference.

I really do feel free of that anecdotal, monkey on my back. I must admit, however, that I made myself scarce as our son, Erik, and our granddaughters boyfriend, Brady, dealt with the tools in my shop.

Today, I really do feel unencumbered by that part of my life. Thank you God!

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The next three lines in the Serenity Prayer, (I’ve noted them below), are, to me, the definition of step number three in the 12-step program.

Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,

I don’t believe my newfound union and surrender could be described in a better way than this. I am saying in simple and direct terms, “God, I am going to let You direct my life, as best I can.” I hope you appreciate, as I do, great importance of this simple statement. As you will see you see in my new book, titled “3”, (available on Amazon around March or April of 2024), I have developed a new theological system called Mystical Interrelational Trinitarianism, (MIT for short). I know it is quite a mouthful of words, but the essence of the book is that our relationship with God is an extremely simple one. It may take some complicated, human, steps in order to get to the place of true surrender, but once that happens, our relationship with God and our Spirit is more simple than we could ever have imagined. In theory, what could be simpler than allowing God to take over completely? This is what we ask, and do, in the third step. We say the ultimate, eternal, and all encompassing, “yes” to God. The implications that accompany this “yes” are, for the most part, not even understandable by us. We are not able, at first, to completely live our lives as children of God in the beginning. We know that something dramatic and all encompassing has happened to us. Sometimes it is both beautiful and terrifying to realize I have made this surrender. However, in time, we shall learn to appreciate the beauty of this surrender and every moment of every day.

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Now that we are in our new season, number 4, episode 1, I will begin by continuing with the Serenity Prayer, as written by Reinhold Niebur. I’ll begin after the prayer says, (in our new version: Wisdom to know the difference) and the original, which is the one we will be using, (wisdom to distinguish one from the other).

I have included the remainder of the prayer below:

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

One of the most familiar and important slogans in the 12-step programs is, One Day at a Time. I believe that the original serenity prayer is where this slogan originated. In this respect,

the prayer doesn’t just talk about living one day at a time, but in the it says enjoying one moment at a time.

Personally, I believe the author wrote the words as he did, simply because words in the spiritual realm are useless and meaningless. Once I have surrendered to my Spirit, and, of course, to God, time is not a factor. There is no spiritual day or spiritual moment. There are these things, however, interwoven with our humanity. Once I have surrendered, (via the third step), I am able to accept and enjoy my world in a completely different way. I can begin to see God in everything, and my Spirit and humanity begin to act as one. As a bit of a side, when I hear the word atonement, I interpret it as, “at-one-ment”. I believe that when we reach the point of our Surrender, which, by the way is the most emptying yet fulfilling act of our human lives, we view our humanity in a completely different light. We are able to still slice time into different pieces, such as a day a year or a lifetime. These pieces, however, we begin to see as a useful tool with which to run our lives.

The spirit sees time as constant and eternal. As I surrender, I learned that I can use these segments to give my Spirit meaning in my humanity.

By saying one day at a time, or one moment at a time, I am able to manage this beautiful spiritual gift in my human environment. I do not believe I am able to see all of the ramifications of Surrender. I think I understand but a smidgen of the wonders of my Spirit, and true understanding will come when I move on to the next phase of our existence.

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It’s a New Year tomorrow everyone and we all have a lot to celebrate and look forward to!. It all depends on our point of view!

Happy New Year to all all!

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I certainly would like to start this episode by wishing you all a Merry Christmas! As I thought of what kind of Christmas message I would like to give in this podcast I found myself in a quandary of sorts. I guess it’s nothing new, but each year all the Santa and gift-giving hoopla seems to be more prominent. I think I’ve decided it may be better to have two separate Christmas holidays. The traditional day of December 25 could then be called Xmas. But then be just considered the day to give gifts to others, especially children, and decorate our homes with lights and and trees. However, the traditional wreath would be deemed inappropriate for the holiday of Xmas. The wreath has too much religious or spiritual symbolism attached to it and it should be reserved for the new holiday of Christmas. When would Christmas be celebrated? I think sometime in the summer when we are easily able to travel to each other’s homes and not be distracted by such things as snow and a white Christmas. We could start our Advent calendar on, say, August 1st and celebrate Christmas on August 25! Then we could give Christmas all of the spiritual consideration that it certainly deserves.

Well, it’s just a thought. It probably wouldn’t be long before we start hearing, “you only have 90 shopping days until August 25th!”

Merry Christmas everyone!

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This episode on the serenity prayer is going to be about our wisdom to know the difference between what we can and cannot change.

In the original Serenity Prayer, it goes like this: and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Now, wisdom sounds like a pretty awesome and inspired thing. But when I researched the word wisdom, I discovered that it is very often interchanged with the word knowledge. This doesn’t sound quite so intimidating to me. So, using the idea of knowledge, I am pretty much asking for help to know what it is that can be changed, versus what cannot be changed. At face value this does not seem like a big problem. If I look at the time that the sun appears on the horizon, it is pretty obvious that I cannot change the time that this happens. If I like having cream in my coffee and decide one morning to drink it black, well, I certainly can make that change happen. I guess I could also consider myself a wise man in that I know which of the aforementioned events I can change and which I cannot change.

But,, what if I am sitting in a restaurant and the person at the next table begins to choke on a piece of food? Now I am aware, that if I insert myself into the situation, knowing the Heimlich method, I can change the outcome of that person’s life. So, you might say I had the wisdom to realize I had the ability to help, or change, that situation, and save that person’s life. There are other life situations that may not be so clear-cut. Maybe a friend of mine is doing drugs and I have done as much as I know you try to help them, to no avail. Up to a certain point, I felt that I might be able to help my friend, but then, after exhausting all possibilities, it was time to let go. This is where our wisdom kicks in! I may look to my spirit for help in finding the knowledge necessary for me to let the situation go.

Wisdom, for a human being, is a very difficult persona to come by. It takes years of learning, often followed by trial and error, then learning some more. Then, we would need to retain all that knowledge to be used at an appropriate time. Phew! This could be a lifelong job! However, if I incorporate my Spirit into whatever situation may arise, my resulting actions will usually feel more sincere and powerful. After all, the Spirit is the definition of wisdom – the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

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So, here we are, right after me describing to you my idea of prayer, we are asking God to give us courage. I believe, with all my heart, that we receive every single gift, strength, knowledge through the grace of God when we were created. I say this prayer as a reminder of the wonderful things I have been given that are available to me whenever I choose to use them.

In this part of Niebuhr’s prayer, asking for courage to change those things which should be changed the word “should” bothers me. Every time a use the word should, my wife cringes. I guess I’m starting to have similar feelings and I want to replaceshouldwith the phrase, “have a spiritual need to”.

Season three episode titles and descriptions exiting area We all have courage. For the most part, we use it every day in our human lives. I believe, however, that spiritual courage is different. For me, it has to do with putting my spiritual self out there and making a stand for someone or something that I find to be important as a result of listening to my Spirit. Much like the lion in the Wizard of Oz, we shall find that courage is already there!

I have been trying to formulate my description of the idea of courage. For me, it is something like the following:
”Using a supernatural power or gift for an ultimately good purpose while overcoming the tendencies of my human nature”.

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This episode is going to be a little bit of a diversion from our discussion of the actual Serenity Prayer. At the end of the last episode I went off track a bit. I discovered somewhere in this head of mine, that I wanted to talk to you about my thoughts on prayer and how it is when I pray.

When I was receiving my Catholic education there were many prayers. There were prayers in school as well as prayers in church, and prayers at home. I think when I prayed the most, seemed to be right after I went to confession, at least in the beginning. I was naïve than and I confessed every possible infraction of God’s law. Priest gave me many prayers to recite in hope of forgiveness from God. As I got older, I learned to gloss over any of the more serious offenses and was able to save my knees for another day. After I started my addiction, I don’t remember any real prayer involved for many years.

Now, I consider prayer to be a communication with God. In that communication, God talks… and I listen. I no longer have the need to ask for anything from God. The only speaking I do to God these days is to let him know how grateful I am, for many things. However, I think I used those thank-yous as a constant reminder union with God. I know now that God certainly does not need to hear my thanks or gratitude. His love is constant and has no requirements.

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This is part two of my series on the serenity prayer. In the last episode I wrote about the origins of the serenity prayer. Many folks think it is part of the 12-step program, but of course, it is not, although it is interwoven quite nicely throughout the program.

In this episode we will get into the meat of the prayer. I am going to be using the original serenity prayer as written by Reinhold Niebuhr. It is not certain when he penned the full version, but it is assumed to be somewhere in the 1930s or 40s. The first part of his prayer is as follows:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,

The serenity prayer of today goes, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,”. So, as some of you know, I am not big on asking God (in any of His or Her forms), for anything. I have said many times in my books and in this podcast that my part in any communication with God, is as listener. For me it is so important to remember that God automatically provides for everything I might need, including any moral necessities. However, I certainly understand any need for prayer in our traditional sense. After all, in the Our Father, we ask God to “give us this day our daily bread”. Again, I have nothing against this manner of prayer. It is just not for me.

I think it is interesting that Rev. Niebuhr use the word Grace in his original prayer, and I’ll speak about this in the podcasts.

I’m sorry, but I just can’t let it go. Just the thought of asking God for Grace, (something I know was ours from the moment of our creation), seems so redundant to me. Maybe you can see which way I am leaning throughout the discussion of the serenity prayer. I am certainly not minimizing its importance, but it serves a much better purpose for me as a reminder rather than a plea. I have written about the fact of the 12-step program being a psychological help as well as its main use as a spiritual program. Perhaps the active praying to God with a request for some kind of assistance can be a way of reminding ourselves of His omnipotence. In other words, a two-way prayer connection with God or the Holy Spirit may provide some human, psychological support.

I’ll speak about this more in the next podcast.

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This is part one of a series about the Serenity Prayer. The Serenity Prayer is very well known and popular in all of the variations of 12-step programs. It is not an official part of any of these programs and it was certainly not included in the original publication of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. However, its ideas are woven into the very fabric of the 12-step program.

In this first episode, (part one), I will be speaking about the origins of the serenity prayer, offers that it was erroneously attributed to, and the actual author. That was an American theologian by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr, who is said to have written prayer sometime in the early 1930s. I have found, however, the prayer written in a similar form my Niebuhr in a 1927 theological student newsletter. It is as follows:
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.

The original, (as far as I know)
text of the prayer, by Niebuhr, probably written a few years later, is as follows:
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

The Serenity Prayer has been attributed to many different authors, including a Sanskrit version as well as Aristotle, St. Augustine Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, and others. The version that is now seen and heard in the meeting rooms of the various 12-step programs is:
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.

In future episodes, go into detail about the meanings implied by the full version of the Serenity Prayer, as written by Reinhold Niebuhr.

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Now that we have reached the end of this series of episodes about in the 12 steps in our day-to-day lives, I would like to end with an episode about me and how I think of myself as a citizen of the world. As I’ve said in the episodes on the 12 step, even though we sometimes think of these steps as originating in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, I do not feel as though they were meant for only one group of people. After all, the steps did originate, (albeit, in a different format), in the Oxford group, and these steps or tenets meant for all mankind.

Although I have identified in the past as an alcoholic, especially during the time when I was a member of A A, I no longer identified as an alcoholic. Please don’t get me wrong. This is important! I do not in any way think that I could possibly drink alcohol again. I believe that anyone who has had a problem with alcohol and that it has affected their lives in any way, it’s simply not even think of drinking again. I believe that one of the signs of becoming psychologically and spiritually well is that I would be able to look at my past experiences in an open and honest way. I know now that anyone had negative experiences while drinking alcohol or using any other substances, would simply say themselves, “hey, it would be absolutely crazy for me to even try to use that substance again!” So the reason I mean that identify as a person’s life has been seriously affected by alcohol, I know that alcohol was but a symptom of my real problems. God has given me the opportunity to become well. To me, becoming well it’s being restored to sanity and any return a former way of defeating myself certainly indicate a return to insanity!

In any event, I want to take this opportunity to bring myself and my current outlook on life through, if you will, a spiritual basis. Maybe I would even call it a sort of manifesto. It seems to be a lot of those going around these days. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. The next series of episodes will be dedicated to Serenity Prayer. This prayer has been a mainstay of 12-step programs, almost since their beginning.

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in the first two episodes in which we examined step number 12, I spoke about what I consider to be the first two parts of the 12th step. This third, and final part of both the steps and of this series of episodes, is the perfect ending, or if you will, beginning!

This final phrase of the 12th step is that I practice these principles in all my affairs. What better idea could describe the philosophy behind this series of episodes? As I have been involved in this program, from the 1st step through the 11th step, it has been mostly about me. Sure, there have been others involved in the 5th and 9th steps, but they were mostly there in order for me to become a better spiritual person. Actually, I haven’t been entirely truthful with you describing it as the end of the steps or of the program. The real secret of this program, and the way in which we derive the most benefit from it, is in the following sentence.

The secret to getting the most benefit from a beautiful idea, is to give it away!

I think I will leave it at that.

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In the last episode we spoke about a spiritual experience versus a spiritual awakening as well as the change, really inconsequential, in the 12th step where it says as a result of these steps versus as a result of this course of action. In this episode I will be speaking about the next phrase in the 12th step which says in the original, first edition 12 steps, I tried to carry this message to others.

I believe the main reason for this use of the word others was because the 12 steps were originally adapted from some of the tenets of the Oxford Group. The Oxford group was a spiritual movement for all people. They certainly would not have limited carrying this message of hope to alcoholics only. But this is the way Bill Wilson penned the 12 steps for the first edition of the Big Book and they were left that way until the second edition. I can understand how the people that were benefiting from this miraculous program, (pretty much all alcoholics), would have wanted the 12th-step to say, carry this message to alcoholics!

However, the cat was soon to be out of the bag. As the 12 steps became known around the world there was no stopping the realization that they would be helpful for anyone. One did not need to be an alcoholic for their lives to be unmanageable. They did not need to be an alcoholic in order to be restored to sanity. We certainly did not need to suffer any particular ailment or condition in order to discover our need to be loved by and depend on, a higher power.

These truths and ideas are really the crux of our willingness and desire to spread this program wherever in order to share its ideas with all those we can.

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Step number 12 is, perhaps, the step might think of the most is using in our day-to-day lives. My version of this step comes from the first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I have taken those steps and changed the wording slightly in order to make them more personal. So, my version of step 12 is as follows: Having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action, I try to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all my affairs. I have underlined the words that have been changed since the original, first edition.

The word experience has been changed to awakening. This course of action is been changed to these steps. Others as been changed to alcoholics. As a reminder, I believe the word experience was replaced with awakening so that folks wouldn’t think they had to expect some physical spiritual experience. I believe the change to awakening is a good one, even though it may represent an easier softer way. Also, I can understand the word others being replaced by alcoholics. After all, these are the folks that the program was originally designed to help. Now that there are so many variations of the types of problems the 12-steps help, it may be good to indicate the problem(s) that each iteration was formed to help. Personally, I truly believe that this program was given to us by God to help all human beings and all human problems. For the purpose of using our 12-steps, and specifically the 12th step, I believe the term others is much more appropriate.

In part one of using the 12 step in our daily lives, it is probably important that we distinguish between an experience and an awakening. It is important in the sense of when speaking with others and trying to explain the 12-steps, we tell folks that our connection to the Spirit can come in many forms. The only thing that we promote is an actual connection to our Spirit whatever way works for us. If we encounter someone that we can help, possibly by being open to share our experience, strength, and hope with them, it is important to share the idea of the Spirit, without any particular expectations of how it should work in them.

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Hello my friends, I’m so sorry for this interruption in these podcasts episodes four Steps to the Spirit. Today is Thursday, October 12, and I am doing this episode for Sunday, October 15. We would be on step number 12, however, with the news In Israel this past week, I feel as though I must do a special episode to address these events.

I have been wondering, in the past few years, I we do things to hurt each other. Of course, I have been thinking about wars, but also less drastic forms of hurting each other. I simply cannot wrap my head around any justification for allowing our ego anger to get so out of hand as to physically hurt another human being. Then there are sports such as boxing and cage fighting, to name just two, where the sole object is to hurt the other individual, at times to the point of unconsciousness. I simply do not understand the purpose or so-called “fun” in participating in, or viewing, these activities. Why, in God’s name would we want to do anything but help another human being. Unfortunately, many people get some kind of ego satisfying pleasure from hurting another human being. I would even include animals in this podcast, but that would take me into a whole new area of exasperation.

So, I see “normal”, day to day incidents where human beings are hurt in the name of fun, sport, or ego satisfaction, or in the name of country. I suppose that I see the protection of others is the only justifiable reason for force or hurting another, for me, the jury is still out on that.

Now, however, we have the events of this past Saturday in Israel that are beyond the scope of anything I could imagine or believe to be possible, as far as hurting other human beings. The atrocities that were done to people, children, and even babies were so horrific that I am hurting even as I write about this episode.

How does this effect me? Well, I have tried to understand in some way rationalize the behaviors of the past week, but I can’t. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but I have not been able to find an answer anywhere inside of me other than to attribute this to pure evil and insanity. I thank God forthis 12-step program, and this week, steps number two and three. In step two I have come to believe that a power greater than us can restore us to sanity. In step three I have decided to turn my will and my life, everything, over to the care of God. For those of us who are not close to our Spirit; who do not have God to turn to in order to stay sane in this crazy world; it’s hard to see hope as a result of these 12-steps and the power of the spirit, it would be a much tougher week.

I hope, in the light of these events, that you who are listening are able to turn to your Spirit and to God for support.

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In this second part of step 11,… praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out, there is no question in my mind that the thing phrase, the power to carry that out, is the result of the belief and realization of the power we have in step number two. I would like to speak more about praying only for knowledge of His will for us. The knowledge and direction that I received from my Spirit, assuming I am focused on the right way, is never wrong. Sometimes my “self” will fight to avoid listening to the direction of my Spirit. In many things I read, this “self” is given an actual personality called ego.

I must say that there is no actual thing that is our ego! The ego is a convenient name to give to certain personality traits of the person in general. The ego is not a bad thing. It is actually the self, doing what it must do in order to protect us and keep us safe. Our goal in these 12 steps, is not to eliminate that part of our selves that wants to keep us well, safe, and strong. No, our goal is to not need ourselves or our self worth, to be artificially inflated in any way. My goal is to allow my Spirit to override any possible aggrandizement at my “self” tries to add as some kind of artificial empowerment. My ultimate goal is to listen to my Spirit and follow that advice without any impediment from my “self”. Hence, I will try to develop a way of life that is more and more in line God’s wishes for me.

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So, here we are at step number 11. As I was speaking about steps number eight, nine, and ten I kind of realized that there wasn’t a whole lot of application of those steps in my everyday life. Of course, it is important to remember those folks I had harmed, including those new, harmful things I might do today. It is also important, on a daily basis, to try to make amends to those folks I have harmed, whether in the past or recently. Step ten works with 8 & 9 as far as cleaning things up as I go along in life. After many years of working this program, I made amends, as best as I was able, to almost everyone who was on my eighth step list. There are some that I have not been able to make amends to because they have either died or I just don’t know how to find them. I am more concerned now making amends in my day-to-day life.

This step, step 11, however, is one that seems to pop up for me all day, every day. I seem to have an awareness going on, and my tendency is to speak to God day. Of course, I don’t go around mumbling or talking out loud to God, but I do have an ongoing, intermittent connection with my Spirit throughout the day. I certainly don’t want to sound like a crazy person here (although my wife may argue that point) but, at times, it’s almost like a three-way conversation between myself, my ego, and my Spirit. I seem to always be listening to have some awareness of what direction my Spirit wishes me to go, but sometimes there is pushback my ego and its pal, rationalization. At this point and time in my 12-step work, I am usually able to choose the direction of my Spirit over that of the desires of my humanity. I’ll talk about this more in the second part of the step, “praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out”.

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Step¶ number 10 could be the poster child for working the steps in my day-to-day life. Of course, this step is an extension of step number four where we began our action steps. Step four was most likely a very cleansing experience if there were two things present. The first was our determination and sincerity in doing this step. This would actually help to satisfy the psychological cleansing of the 12-step program. However, there is a second, spiritual ingredient that is absolutely necessary if I am doing these steps in order to receive their designed spiritual cleansing. That necessity is the accomplishment of the second and third steps. I must “come to believe” that the power of God is with me. Next, in step number three, I say the holy and eternal “yes” to God. These 2 Items Pl. me on the spiritual path versus a simple, psychological cleaning. Now, because this podcast assumes that we are all attempting to do these 12-steps spiritually, as they were meant to be done, I will assume that you, the listener, is on the spiritual path.

This indicates that as I am trying to do the 10th step in my day-to-day life, I will do it with the assurance of having every ounce of God’s power at my disposal. It becomes a way of life to examine my day at the end of it, realize who I may have offended, and admit when I am wrong. This truly does, with practice and faith, become a way of life. I automatically catch myself, sometimes when I am actually in the process of fighting my Spirit in order to do, or say, what I would like to do. However, I, as well as all of you, have that voice of our Spirit constantly acting as our advisor. We need only to be willing to listen to It. The longer I practice this way of life, the shorter the space between noticing or realizing my defects of character or shortcomings, for me to admit those things to myself and admitting them to others.

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All of the action steps can certainly be used in our daily routines. Step nine is the last of the action steps. Step nine is: “I made direct amends to such persons wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others”.

I hate to admit it but, yes, I am human! During the day, (actually, quite often during the day), I say or do things that might be egocentric, with little regard for how they might affect others. It’s not enough that I might, during my daily inventory, recognize these things and be sorry that I said or did them. That, of course, is a start, but it does nothing to repair the damage done by what I did or said. It is important that I confront these folks as soon as possible, in order to make direct amends. I have learned in my years of practicing this way of life, that to catch myself as soon as these things might happen, and say I’m sorry, is the best possible practice of this step. I have found that sometimes, the longer I wait to make amends for something I have said or done, the more my little friend, rationalization has a chance to do its thing. As time goes on I might tell myself the incident has probably been forgotten, was not that big a deal, or that it never even happened. Yes, believe it or not, some things that I may be ashamed of, or just do not want to admit to, have a way of magically disappearing into the land of Eagleville, never to be seen again. This, while it might be convenient and easier for me, it turns into that stuff I’ve mentioned many times, “baggage”. I hate baggage! I am doing as much as I can, each and every day, to get rid of my old baggage. The last thing I need is to create more of it. That is why I need to try to deal with any of these incidents as soon as possible.

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When I apply step eight to my day-to-day life there is one word that constantly shows itself. That word is awareness. If I try to make a list of all persons I have room, harmed, well, must be aware of who they are. Let’s face it, if I am living and working this 12-step program the way I it is directing me, there should be no persons I am harming on a daily basis. If I am making that daily decision to turn my will and my will and my life over to the care of God, and follow okay ing through with it, I must be doing well. However, God has not taken full control of my life. The point is, He makes suggestions, through my Spirit, and the depth to me to choose whether or not to follow them. Quite often, my little friend, rationalization, will show up and attempt to eliminate things or change them around into what it thinks is my favor.

So, my job in doing this step in the world is to be aware of my behavior, and note any persons I may have harmed during the day.

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Steps six and seven are the least likely steps that we will use in our daily living. At the big take-away from these steps are the gifts that accompany them. The gift that accompanies step six is the gift of readiness. It is good for me to remember that as part of my new way of life, I try to be always ready to let go of those old defects of character and shortcomings.

The gift that accompanies step number seven is the gift of humility. If I am doing this program and these steps in the way in which they were designed, humility becomes a thing I am rather than something I have. In this step I am asking God to remove these unwanted things from my life. However, in my day-to-day life, I try to humbly remember the selfishness of my old way of life as I am dealing with others.

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Well, we got to finish up step five and how we work with it when we are living our day-to-day lives. As part of “working” this 12 step program, talking to myself, and to God, about the nature of my wrongs. I don’t believe I’ve had one day go by that I didn’t feel the need to do that. It may be something small and seemingly insignificant, such as being in a hurry and brushing someone off. I may not have been considerate in my everyday life or possibly driving too fast. Of course, I don’t really, at 78, rush anymore, and now that I am legally blind I am not allowed to drive, but I’m sure you get the picture.

I’m thinking as I’m writing this, that after many years working this program, some of these things would no longer be a problem. I think when I was a “newbie”, I thought that someday I would have this all down perfectly and sit in my ivory tower, passing down sage advice to all those below. Well, my friends, it just doesn’t work that way! It might be nice if I could tell you that after X amount of time, if you learn to do this program perfectly, you can consider yourself done, and relax. I would never say it’s impossible. There may be one of you out there that is reached perfection. I, and most of us, will not. After a year doing these 12 steps, or after many years, we are still “striving” for perfection!

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When I was doing the fifth step in the 12-step program, I had no problem whatsoever talking to God and to myself, but I dreaded the day when I would have to speak with someone else about my character defects. Well, I guess dread is a strong word. After the first four steps, especially steps number two and three, I really did feel a power that I had never felt my life. By the fifth step I was beginning to feel confident and I felt that God truly did love me.

As a reminder, my version of step five following: “I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs”.

It is the third part of this step that will come into play as I leave my day-to-day life

according to the 12 steps, my Spirit, the will of God. We are told in the literature that by the time we complete these 12 steps, we have in our arsenal the actual power of God! We are told that the thing that was originally our problem, at least the thing that we thought was our problem, is no longer even in the picture. We simply do not have time for it in this new way of life. We are too busy living according to our Spirit, and believe me our Spirit usually has some wild stuff in store for us, (at least, that was the case for me).

This step implies for me, in my day-to-day life, that I could, without fear, or to others about overcoming whatever it is that we overcame. Because I had God’s strength, I spoke of my recovery without fear or guilt. It was like the whole world became a huge meeting and I was there to tell everyone my story. I cannot begin to tell you how rewarding it is to be able to give back what I was so freely given.

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There really isn’t too much more to say about step number four. Of course, if we look at it in the light of step number 10 then their really is a lot to do in the course of our normal day. After all, step 10 starts with the word “continued”.

What I would like to mention here is the very last word in step number four, “ourselves”. Much of the time during the day I feel my old friend rationalization kick in. It tells me that when an incident might happen during the day that should certainly apply to my searching and fearless inventory, I have a need little way of putting it in a different cubbyhole. I can find million and one excuses or reasons to not chalk that incident up to one of my shortcomings or character defects. I know, from my first personal inventory, that my so-called ego can certainly do a wonderful job in building me up to be blameless, a victim, or perfect. The most important thing I have to do as a result of these steps is to always be on my guard against slipping into old habits. In my case, they are there, in the shadows, waiting to rear their ugly heads. I can’t stop them from popping up from time to time but if I remain diligent and work on my conscious contact with God, it can learn to slay these beasts as soon as they pop up.

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It seems like we never really get away from this inventory business. No, I did not say that as a negative statement. It’s true that before I seriously committed myself to this 12-step program, the last thing I wanted to do was to look at myself. When I looked in the mirror, not to shave, but to try to look at the real me, it was a terrible experience. My self-esteem was, pretty much, non-existent. I thought that I had so many flaws, character defects, and shortcomings, that the last thing that I, or God once it was for us to have any kind of a relationship.

Of course, I have learned, through sweating, cursing, crawling, and crying my way through this program, that somewhere inside I am perfect. Yes, you read that right! I was a person who saw absolutely no hope for myself, and certainly, no love. Through this program I have been able to discard those things that I had allowed to cover up the true me and my two personality. Part of the way I did that was by honestly look-ing at myself and enabling myself to see all those character defects and shortcomings without running away from them or trying to rationalize them out of existence.

In other words, I took the 4th step. I made, as best I could at that time, a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I try to avoid the “blame game”, and I tried, as best I could, to leave others out of that personal inventory. I cannot begin to tell you how important that inventory turned out to be.

It is this same inventory that I will speak about, and how to keep using it in our daily lives. Of course, I won’t be able to talk about this step as far as using it as part of our day, without talking about the 10th step, which is:, “Continued to take personal inventory, and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it.”

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Once again we are looking at step three in the context of how to apply these steps in the real world. At first blush, this program seems to be one that you can do these steps and be done with them and have them under your belt. This is certainly not the case. This step is probably the best example of that. It’s the step where we surrender, where we change our lives completely and have decided to turn to God in the everyday living of our lives. But we just don’t let go and let God take over. If that were the case, all I would have to do is make the decision and let go and let God! I’m not sure if it’s fortunate or unfortunate, but we still have our humanity. We still have this thing called our ego that would like to fight a lot of what God wants us to do tooth and nail. Another thing that we have is called “rationalization”, and this is what I would like to speak about today. No matter how clearly I think I hear the voice of my Spirit’s, my humanity sometimes wants to be define it into something that would be more in the interest of my body. I believe in this dualistic nature of my humanity it speaks to my soul and somehow things got a little mixed up in the translation between my soul and my body.

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Well, now we can get back to the steps and how they will work for us as we live our day-to-day lives. After all, I’m sure you have figured out by now that these steps aren’t just something that we do, and we are finished with them after step number 12. No, if I am taking these steps and if I have learned lessons that they attempt to teach me, I have discovered that they are indeed a way of life.

This third step is especially suited to helping me live my life, hopefully, in a way that God wishes me to live it. In this episode I’ll talk about the first part of this step, and how it is so important for me to remember that I have decided to allow God to influence my life. It seems to be so easy to slide back into the way I used to behave, which was to put one foot in front of the other, and behave like some automaton, just going along with all of the others in the world.

That is not what this program is asking me to do. I believe I have mentioned that there seem to be indications in many places that out of the billions and billions of people who lived in the world, only 1 to 2% will “be with God”, whatever that means! I do not have a clue what it means, nor do I know in any way, shape, or form, what could possibly be in store for the other 98%. At one point in my life, it may have been important to me, but now I realize that I need only be responsible to follow the direction of my Spirit in order to be in that one or two %.

I suggest that you may want to look around and try to imagine what the people see as most important in their lives. I certainly don’t mean to try to judge people, but just try to discern what is important to them. I, and I hope you, know that God should be foremost in our lives. This is the reason I do this podcast and write books about our Spirit. I/we need to keep the 12-step foremost in our lives and do our best to share with others the power, love, and joy we have discovered in this 12-step program.

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I have one more interruption in this series of episodes. My wife Pat and I usually read some text each morning at breakfast time. Most of the time, because Pat is interested in such things, we read text with a non-dualistic point of view. I usually have somewhat of a difficult time with these readings because my belief is of a dualistic nature. I believe we were created as Spirit and humanity and that it is our mission to surrender the things of humanity in favor of inviting our Spirit as a guide.

However, I would like to talk about one aspect of these non-dualistic approaches, mostly, the ego. It seems that many of these non-dualistic approaches see ego as some kind of construct that is basically evil. I don’t believe the ego has any such attributes nor does it even exist as a “thing” within us. I would describe the ego simply as a process that is the result or culmination of many parts of our humanity.

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I would like to speak a little more about step number two, which I have associated with the gift of belief. Well, I guess that was kind of a “no-brainer”! I guess what I want you to know in this second part of living step two is the fact that my insanity still rears its ugly head from time to time. I also would like to talk about the fact that none of these steps are an island. As I am growing in the 12-step program, I am learning to “mix and match” these steps in combinations of one two, or even more, to help me through a situation. Frankly, I am sometimes amazed, when I look, in retrospect, at the way I dealt with a situation by listening to my Spirit applying the appropriate step(S).

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I feel as though it is an unending battle. I didn’t have a difficult time believing in a power greater than myself. I was not always a fully functional Catholic, but I was always a spiritual person. I never had a problem knowing that there is a higher power or, for me, God. I did however, believe that He had forgotten me. I really identified with one of the songs in the musical Chicago. I’m not sure, but the name of it might be Cellophane. It’s about a person who feels like they are cellophane or invisible. The person sings about no one caring about him or even knowing his name. That is exactly the way I felt as I hit bottom and finally grasped, for all I was worth, onto these 12 steps. I guess I still feel like cellophane after all these years of working the 12 steps, but for a different reason. I now feel that my humanity is in the world as an extension of my Spirit. In essence, I want to do good in the world, according to my Spirit, but I need not be recognized for it.

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I feel like I would like to squeeze in this episode in order to let you know my position as far as God is concerned. After all, I am saying that I am spiritual and that I believe these step programs have been given to us by God. I also talk a lot about my relationship with God and how it affects my way of life. So I think it is only fitting that you are aware of where I am coming from. I think you should know how I think and feel about God and my Spirit and, hopefully, that will help you to put my words in a spiritual context.

I would like to have a word of some sort that defines exactly what I think of my spiritual self. I haven’t been able to find one. Some have come up, such as theist or deist. Neither one really works for me. I guess what I would really like to call myself would be a “Spiritualist”, but that seems to be reserved for folks of a paranormal belief system. So maybe for now I’ll just keep calling myself Chuck.

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Continuing with our practical application of step one, and trying to remember I am powerless over everything! For many years, as I thought it was doing this step, I only thought of my powerlessness as having to do with alcohol. When I finally did these 12 steps in earnest, which I guess means really living the steps, I was so sick and disgusted with my life that I realized I was powerless over everything. So, I guess these episodes are about my functioning in the world, knowing full well that nothing is really under my control. This realization, at least for me, was both frightening and exhilarating when it happened. The frightening part was in knowing that I had to “let go”, that I had to “lose control”. Was I ready and willing to do that?

The exhilarating part was that in some way, some wonderful, spiritual way, I would not be responsible. I know. I know. Of course, I was responsible for my actions as a human being my motivation was that of muck my Spirit.

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We have spoken quite a bit in the last couple of years out each step and the gifts that are associated with them. The steps themselves (including the gifts), are certainly nice reading but not very practical as I am able to make use of them in my day-to-day life. In the next few episodes I would like to talk about how I have used the steps and the step program in my everyday life.

I am not really sure how this is going to work, or if it will work at all. I haven’t really thought very much about how the steps work for me in my daily life. As I do the podcasts, I am going to attempt, or I should say, live, a day and think about each step and how it applies to helping me get through the day. I know that most of the time I am living life without actually thinking of the steps. But I have been doing this program for so long that I just automatically live my life, or at least try to, with the steps as my guide.

I have asked you all for suggestions on how to proceed with this podcast but no one has really said anything. So here we go, and I hope this works for you. Once again, if you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them. Please send them to chuck@stepstothespirit.com.

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This is the final episode about the gifts that accompany the steps. In this episode I will speak about steps number 8 through 12. Of course, steps 8 and 9 are the last of the action steps. Steps 10 and 11 and 12 are commonly referred to as the maintenance steps. We will be talking about those and the gifts that accompany them.
 Next week, in episode number 24, I will most likely be speaking about applying these steps in our everyday life. I have asked in this episode that those of you who are listening will provide me with any suggestions you may have for future episodes. Once again, my email address is: chuck@stepstothespirit.com. Please feel free to offer any suggestions you might have for the podcast. Also, if there is any particular part or subject in any of the podcasts, please let me know and I will be glad to address them in the future.
Once again, thank you for listening!

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In this second part of the overview, I will continue with these gifts, giving my impression of how they help, both in the step program and in living our lives. I sometimes take these gifts for granted but I am quickly taken back to the reality of my Spirit. I remember, and realize, that these are some of the greatest tools with which to combat negative influences as I try to live with a new, positive way of life.

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In this episode I’ll begin a review of these 12 gifts that accompany the 12 steps. I guess I should not describe them as accompanying the steps. These are gifts from God that have been ours for the using since the time of our creation. We do not have to perform in any way, be any particular way, or make any commitments in order to receive these gifts. We need only to be aware of their existence and reach out to make use of them. As a matter of fact, these are not the only gifts that God has given us. They just happened to be those that I associate with the 12 steps. Actually, I am not saying in any way that these gifts are written in stone. You might decide that different gifts are more appropriate in the way that you view the step. Please, have at it. This is your program in your way of life. Use it in the way it helps you to connect to your Spirit. However, before making drastic changes to the program, I would strongly advise you to consult with a mentor or sponsor who is familiar with the program, with you, and with what you are trying to accomplish.

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This episode is a continuation of the last part of step number 12, “practice these principles in all our affairs”. This phrase makes a lot of assumptions. It assumes that we have done the 12 steps to the best of our ability, and that we are ready and willing to incorporate them into our way of life. One could really say that this is the basis of the 12 step program, helping ourselves by helping others. God has made available, all of the strength and power that we could possibly need. It is now our God-directed mission the use this “course of action” to keep ourselves humanly well and to grow in our Spirit. This allows us to develop our compassion and empathy and as a result to do what we can in order to help our fellow human beings. 

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In this episode, I would like to begin speaking about the last part of step number 12 and how we use this beautiful gift of compassion in order to share the gifts that we have received from God. The step tells us to practice these principles in all our affairs. This immediately brought to my mind, when I had finally decided to make these steps the foundation of my way of life, a phrase from a song, “easier said than done…”! At that time, I was struggling to put aside the automatic biases that I assigned to just about everyone. Believe me, my friends, it was difficult for me to look past the painted and molded shells that we all wear and see their true Spirit. This, for me, is one of the areas I have the most difficulty with, even today. When I pray, I tried my best to listen for my Spirits direction because it is what turning my will and my life over to God, means. I am still learning. My Spirit always steps the same answer, and that answer is always the same word, love! It’s a good thing I am reminded by the literature that we strive for perfection. I realize now, more than ever, that I am a work in progress, but it is infinitely better than the life I had before saying “yes” to God.
By the way, I am realizing that this gift of compassion is asking for one more episode. I have learned (the hard way) never to argue with my muse. So there will be episode five for this gift. Also, at the end of this series about the steps and gifts that are related to them, I will do a one- or two-part wrap-up of the series.

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In this episode I will talk about the part of step that is referred to as “carrying the message”. This is one way of describing the 12th step, however, it is so much more than that. When we become aware of the gift of compassion, we learn to have empathy for others. We learn to experience the feelings, hopes, dreams, and struggles of others by “walking in their shoes”. This is partly due to the fact that in the previous 11 steps we have learned to count on the strength of God, examined our lives, and have started to become somewhat of an “open book”, both to ourselves and to our fellow human beings. This is the message we are ready to carry in the 12th step. To the extent by which we have done these 12 steps as a means to connect to our Holy Spirit, will we use the gift of compassion to carry this message as an honor and privilege. We will no longer see it as a step, but as a normal and blessed way of life. 

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In this second episode I will continue to talk about the gift of compassion and how it helps me to work these steps in the normal course of living life. What happened to me was a huge loss of self-importance. Many people who are representatives of the so-called “new age” religions, or, maybe I should say new age spirituality, are proponents of the ego having an actual presence and personality in our lives. This is not true. The ego is not a thing. It is a “construct”, originated by Sigmund Freud, and latched onto in an inordinate way, by many professionals and self-proclaimed spiritualists. What is described as the ego is simply a way of explaining our behavior and natural tendency of self-protection. It does not control us nor is it able to control us. It is used to describe either our self-protective, or sometimes aberrant behaviors. The gift of compassion allows us to keep what is called the ego in check. This gift also allows us to get out of ourselves and consider the plight of others. We receive the gift of compassion as a result, (one of the many results), of what the original steps called “this course of action”, and now referred to as the “steps”.

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The best definition that I have found for the word “compassion” is the following: sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings and misfortunes of others. However, in this definition just to the phrase “sympathetic pity”. When I feel sympathy or pity for someone, it almost seems like an ego thing. While I am saying, on the one hand, I feel sympathetic toward that person, I’m thinking, on the other hand that I am glad it isn’t me! It seems almost like there is a hint of ego in there somewhere. So, for our definition of compassion, I would choose the word empathy over sympathy. To me, empathy’s inns to be my ability and desire to somehow put myself in that other persons place. It is more a feeling of, “Yes, I understand, as much as I possibly can, what you are feeling and what you’re going through”.

In this first episode about the 12th step and the gift of compassion, I’ll speak about the initial for is in the step, “Having had a spiritual experience…”, This was the phraseology of the 12th step in the first edition of the steps, as well as my preferred format. It has since been changed to, “Having had a spiritual awakening…” It’s my contention that over the years, those in control of the printing of the 12 steps decided to present them in a way that might be more inclusive to those who have a difficult time with the concept of God. 

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Now, in this episode we will look at the last part of the 11th step, which is, “… the power to carry that out”. Oh my God! Don’t tell me we have to go back to the first three Grace steps! Well, yes, these are the meat and potatoes or, foundation, of my program and really, of my life. Asking God or power, at this point in the 12 steps, is really kind of redundant. In step two, I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, I receive from God all of the power I will ever need for the rest of my life.

I believe this phrase at the end of the step is, more than anything else, a reminder to me. It helps me to remember that God wants me to succeed. It’s not that I could really “fail” at this point. I have, as I sincerely hope you have, said my holy, and eternal “yes” to God. After I had that realization of what it was I needed to do, and totally committed myself to be in the service of God, I knew that no matter what, I would be forgiven and ultimately with God for eternity. How good is that? Before I took this program to heart, I was not only living hand-to-mouth, and day-to-day. I was living my so-called spiritual life, moment-to-moment, with no assurance of a spiritually healthy outcome. Now, as my life is changed, this step reminds me that I am in possession of the greatest power that has ever, or will ever exist. 

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In this portion of the step, “… Praying only for knowledge of His will for us”, I guess it is a reminder to avoid allowing the decisions that I thought I should make, to enter the picture. Sometimes, when I communicate with God, I realize that I have already decided exactly what God’s advice would be. When I realize what I am doing, I really kind of chuckle and wonder how I became so powerful that I know the mind of God.

Of course, in those instances, my ego is trying to become dominant in order for me to get what I want. Hopefully, when this happens, I come to my senses and remember that this active praying is all about giving God direction over my life.

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In this second part of step 11, I will be speaking about improving our contact with God. Obviously, if I am going to improve something, it would imply that I already have something going. If I already have a conversation or communication with God, how could I really improve on it? It is really my feeling that to improve implies two particular words. Those words are awareness and presence. So as I said in the last episode, prayer, for me, has become listening. I haven’t really thought of this before, but maybe it would be active listening. Even then, I think there would be only one aspect of active listening that would apply to God; that is, being present. As I continued to attempt to listen for God’s word, I will become more able to isolate myself from the world around me and become more focused on God.

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A quick reminder of my version of step eleven: “I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.”

Step eleven is the second of the three maintenance steps. I see step eleven as having four main parts, and that is how we’ll look at this step in this, and the next three episodes. In this part, part one, I would like to speak about what prayer and meditation mean to me. These episodes, rather than being about the steps themselves, have to do with the gifts that we received from God in conjunction with the steps. I have assigned to this particular step, the gift of communication.

This step has prompted me to reconsider exactly what it is I think about prayer. Of course, I learned a lot about prayer as a Catholic, but most of the prayers were memorized words that I usually recited without thinking much about their content. I eventually let go of that form of prayer as I felt that my prayers should be a reflection of those things I was thinking and wanted to say to God. Eventually, as my idea of my relationship with God changed, I decided that for me, prayer and meditation did not involve my active participation at all. If you believe, as I do, that God is all-powerful, always present, and all knowing, well, I what I think that He doesn’t already know everything I am about to say! So my communication with God has become a one-way communication as God, (or my Spirit), sends influencing knowledge my way, and my job is to listen and, through my Spirit, try to interpret what is being said to me. I believe this is still communication, but maybe I should call it one-way communication on a spiritual level. In any event, I am certainly looking forward to these next four episodes.

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First , I would like to mention that from here on out I am going to try to get these podcasts out on Sundays. Hope that doesn’t inconvenience you, but my original thought was to publish these on Sunday at 6 PM and somehow I’ve slipped to publishing them on Saturday. I think I can attribute that to being 78 years old!

Next, my thoughts about step 10 and the gift of perseverance is obviously going to an unusual four parts. I am doing this I remembered how important a part of step 10 in the literature is to me. I think, on one hand, that reading the following from the 1st edition of the “Big Book”, or Alcoholics Anonymous, it can be a little scary. On the other hand, (and I hope this is the case with you), we will say, “Yes, thank you God for leading me back to sanity”. As is referred to in the excerpt, and I paraphrase, This is the miracle of the 12 step program!

Talk about our actual addiction not being “in our face”, or important any longer. Here is the excerpt:

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone— even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have re- turned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new atti- tude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.

This is what I will be speaking about in this episode. Thanks again for listening, and as a reminder, any of your comments are welcome. My email address is: chuck@stepstothespirit.com .

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This will be the final episode on the gift of perseverance. I would like to talk about the last part of step 10 which is, “… and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” The inability to admit when we are wrong is a lot to do with our so-called, ego. I often allude to the ego is skipping along in my mind, with its two pals, procrastination, and rationalization. This scenario is not just the ego, but it’s the ego being allowed to influence us in an inappropriate way. The ego is not a “real” thing. It is a psychological construct that is used to explain some of our behaviors. This “ego” is neither good nor bad. How could it be? It does not even exist as a real thing.

However, our thinking and our behavior is used to protecting ourselves. At this point in our program, although our Spirit is trying to influence us, we are still human, as we shall always be until our death. It is difficult to let go of our old attempts to protect ourselves. I tended to rationalize as I’m taking my inventory and say to myself, “well, that thing I did wasn’t really that bad.” I might also procrastinate and say to myself, “I’ll take care of that the next time it happens.” Neither of these is a good idea, especially now that I am trying to listen to my Spirit. My Spirit encourages me to take the bull by the horns and deal with these things in a rational and timely manner.

We are told in the literature that at this point in our step program the actual reason we are here, i.e., alcohol, overeating, drug addiction, etc., has probably faded out of the picture. Our goal now, is to slowly but surely live a life that reflects our new-found spiritual basis for life. 

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So, when I left off my audio in the last episode, I was devising that, as usual, there is more about this step than meets the eye. It seems like every time I look at one of the steps even if it might be for the thousandth time, I find something else that I may have overbooked before! I have the feeling that that might have something to do with our spiritual growth. Maybe my Spirit sort of pokes me with new information or insights when It thinks I’m ready for them.

In any event, whether it’s from my Spirit or my brain, I would like to speak about some ways of actually doing this 10th step. It certainly does not have to be as formal as the fourth step. It really does take the form of the person doing it. So let’s talk about some of those forms in this episode. 

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With this episode we enter what are generally referred to as the maintenance steps. Just as a refresher, I have dubbed three steps as the “Grace” steps. I haven’t heard that expression before but it seems appropriate to me. Steps four through nine are usually referred to as the “action” steps. Of course, they are called that because they involve some kind of action. We are either writing or talking or otherwise doing something to help clear away our defects and shortcomings of the past.

Steps 10, 11, and 12 are referred to as the maintenance steps. While the action steps deal with our actions of the past, the maintenance steps 10 to deal with our actions of the present and those of the future. While I believe that living for today is very important in my spiritual learning and recovery, there are some instances that require me to plan in some ways for the future, or at least, my future behavior.

We are starting in this episode with step number 10 which, at first blush, seems like a rehash of step number four. Believe me, it is not. While the things that we wrote in step four can be helpful to jog our memories of past behavior and to help us recognize those behaviors if they reassert themselves, step 10 deals with the present. I will begin step 10 with the first part of the step, “I continue to take personal inventory”. 

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In this episode I will talk about my old friend “ego”, and its buddies, at least in my case, “procrastination” and “rationalization”. They are always around, trying to mess with my head my heart and my Spirit, but as I worked on this step, they seemed to be more active than ever. They kept saying things like, “you don’t have to do that now.” “That incident wasn’t so bad.” “You’ll never see that person again, so don’t worry about it.” “That person is angry enough with you already, so don’t make things any worse”.

So I really had to apply the power of God and my Spirit to keep me on the right track, and to allow me to continue to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. 

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I never liked the very thought of having to do this step. It didn’t bother me in my early days of involvement in a 12-step program. That was because, in the early days, I only did the steps in a cursory way, if at all. When I finally realized that doing these steps would save my life, actually, at the time I realized they were the only things that would save my life, I read, got help, and began to take the steps seriously.

Of course, I had read the book, and I knew what steps were coming next. It was hard enough to do step eight, just thinking about all of folks I had harmed, no less facing the prospect of actually going to see them face-to-face. However, if I had learned nothing else, I definitely learned about the power of God, and how much it was available to me after my surrender in the first three steps. I had all of that power with me when I had to finally face those people I harmed. That didn’t make it much easier, but it made it bearable!

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In this episode I want to talk about willingness and exactly how willing I have been in the past to, as they say in this step, “I became willing to make complete amends to them all”. I realized that when I made my list in this step, I absolutely believed that I was willing and, I was gung ho to get out there and start making amends. However, I finally got in touch with some fear that was hiding inside of me, and I realized that this step wasn’t going to be the piece of cake I thought it was. Once again, I needed to draw on God’s power that I received in steps number two and three. And I most certainly discovered that I needed to accept God’s gift of willingness if I were to be fully involved in this step and receive the beautiful rewards that it can bring. 

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In this episode I’ll continue with the action steps and specifically step number eight. If that I have associated with step number eight is the gift of willingness. There is no problem whatsoever in receiving and using this gift from God. The real problem lies within. Most of us, in reading about the 12 steps, have some sense of where each step is leading us. It doesn’t take a super amount of intelligence to realize that this step is preparation for step number nine. This is where my ego kicks in and says, “Hey check, be careful and don’t get yourself mired in this quicksand of willingness. I certainly have to keep learning to listen to my spirit instead of my ego.

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So, my friends, if last week was about humility, then this week is really going to be about humility plus. I am going to talk about the last part of the seventh step, the way it was originally written. The seventh step you will find today, both in the literature and hanging on the meeting place walls is as follows: “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings”. The original version read as follows: “Humbly asked Him, on our knees, to remove our shortcomings, holding nothing back”. A little bit has been lost from the first edition of work is called the “Big Book”. In this episode I’ll speak about the last phrase in the old seventh step,”holding nothing back”. I fought over this phrase quite a bit in my single early days, even more after I truly discovered and began to apply these 12 steps to my life, and today still, I am discovering little bits and pieces that I would like to hold back. 

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In this episode we begin to speak about the gift of humility and how important it is in any kind of recovery program. The thing that is, in my opinion, the provider of the most adversely to humility is our ego. I don’t believe our ego is a bad thing. I really believe it is something that helps us to navigate some obstacles in our human lives. However, it is a thing that needs to be kept under control and subject to our spiritual path. With the gift of humility, I am able to put my ego in its proper place.

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It is a little interesting that this episode, in relation to the steps and the gifts that were doing in my regular podcast, comes at step six and the gift of willingness.

Quite often, we make New Year’s resolutions. These are usually promises to ourselves to stop doing, or start doing, things that affect our humanity. For many of us, by the month of February, those New Year’s resolutions have become null and void! This year, I’m making one resolution that concerns my human self and another resolution that concerns my spiritual growth. On the human side, I am resolving to lose some weight because both my knees and my back would certainly benefit from it. On the spiritual side, I am simply resolving to keep my ego in tow as I listen for God’s plans for my life.

I wish you all a very happy, healthy, and spiritually guided New Year!

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Christmas seems to have become synonymous with gift giving and gift receiving. I think that really is what it is all about. After all, from the very first Christmas, Jesus was given gifts of gold, frankincense, and Myrrh.

Of course, many parts of the world have turned Christmas into a commercial holiday rather than a spiritual holy day. I have already received the best gift possible; the rewards of saying my spiritual “yes” to God.

I hope I am able to give gifts to others as well. The best gift I could think of to give someone has to do with the definition I use for love, “Wanting to do for the good of another.” Merry Christmas to all Christians and to all those of other beliefs, please have a happy and joyous holiday!

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As I have said in the last couple of episodes on the gift of cleansing, these three steps, steps five, six, and seven work almost simultaneously. For me, after step five, and especially after speaking with another human being about the nature of my wrongs, I was immediately ready for steps six and seven.

I might say that I worked myself into a corner. All of a sudden, I have unburdened myself from that oppressive baggage of my past. What am I going to do now? Once again, I feel I must tell you how important it is that I have not only done but absorbed the first three steps as part of my being. I am becoming ready to surrender all of that old baggage and to begin my new life as a person who will try their best to live life according to the direction of my Spirit (God).

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In this second part about the gift of cleansing, I will talk about how it affects doing this step and what actually is meant by cleansing. As I said in part one, cleansing doesn’t really refer to the actual removal of anything. It’s not like using a solution to remove the spot from your clothing or carpet. To me, and my understanding of this step and how it works with the gift of cleansing, I would say it is more synonymous with the word “emptying”.

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Let me begin by explaining that even though this particular’s gift includes the word cleansing, which might imply the removal of something, it doesn’t! I like to think of this step and this gifts as intermediaries between the fourth step and the sixth and seventh step. We have written everything we could think of as we did the fourth step. What I referred to previously as ‘dirty laundry’, is referred to in the literature and the steps as our character defects and shortcomings. Now, this gift of cleansing, gives me the opportunity to start moving this “stuff” out of those hidden corners of my being and lay it out in the open for all to see. I haven’t necessarily made the commitment to do away with all of these things, but I am cleaning out that part of me that has been holding onto it all asked if I could not live without it. 

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So, as we continue with the gift of Honesty, I would like to talk a little bit about exactly what we mean by honesty, and how to apply it to the fourth step. We can go back as far as Socrates, (470-399 BC), who said, “an honest man is always a child.” This isn’t really too far away from our discussion because in our attempt to become a spiritual person, we must try to find in ourselves the purity of the child.

I will also talk about the childlike qualities that were mentioned by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. 

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In step four, we begin what are called or commonly referred to as the action steps. Once again, these steps are in the order they are for a reason. I cannot stress enough that being at step four strongly implies that I have applied myself thoroughly to the first three steps. I urge you not to become involved in these action steps until you have surrendered to your spirit, (i. e., God). The gift that is received with this step is the gift of Honesty. In order to be rigorously honest with myself, I need to have the knowledge and strength of God in my life. That knowledge and strength comes from the first three steps and my willingness to surrender my life to the wishes and direction of God.

This belief is absolutely important to my success with these 12 steps. The literature says that some of us fail due to an inability to be honest with ourselves. God shall give us this gift of Honesty, but I believe, only in relation to our willingness to surrender to Him.

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I continue the last episode about trust. I really can say unequivocally that I believe this to be both the most important step and the most important gift that God gives us in these 12 steps. From this point on, it would be impossible for me to treat this program as a spiritual gift from God, if I am not able to view God as my Savior and mentor. Hey, I am literally making a decision to turn everything over to Him. As the step says, “I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God”. I how much trust does that imply? I’m sure you figured it out, but it really implies total trust!

Here is the best definition I have been able to find that works for our purposes, of trust: a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength in of someone or something [God].

For me, the biggest enemy of trusting someone or something outside of myself, is my ego, along with its pal, rationalization. However, I know that as long as I am able to listen earnestly and honestly, and trust that I will never get a better solution from anywhere or anything that I will from my Spirit. It is imperative that in doing this third step I ask God to give me the gift of Trust!

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I think of this gift is one of the most important gifts we can possibly receive from God. Yes, I know, I seem to speak of many of these gifts as the one that is most important. I think it any one time, depending on where I am at in both my Spirit and my head, any one of these gifts could seem the most important. However, once I have realized and admitted my powerlessness and the unmanageability of my life as a result of the first step, I knew I needed help. Then, in the second step, after much introspection and soul-searching, I further realized that that Power greater than myself, that Power that would restore me to sanity, could be… would be… none other than God Himself.

Now was the real time to either fish or cut bait. It was now time to decide, to make the most important decision of my life. I must do what they talk about in the 12-step literature, to surrender my life, to ‘turn it over’ to God. This is when I am about to say the word that I have spoken about often in previous posts, and written about in my recent book, Steps To The Spirit. I am about to say that honest, their revocable, and eternal word. I am about to say, “YES”, to God! 

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(Just a quick note about the last episode. I’m not sure where I was at last time, but I believe I called it the wrong episode number, not to mention, having Pythagoras living in the 17th century. So, it was actually episode number 43, and of course, Pythagoras was circa 500 BC. No, I didn’t succumb to my addiction. It was just one of those days.)

In the last episode, I pretty much left us at a place where it seemed our backs were against the wall. We admitted we were powerless, that our lives were unmanageable, and that we were pretty much insane! The situation reminds me of St. Paul, I think in Romans, who declared, “Oh, what a wretched man I am”. We find ourselves in a quagmire, very much the same as St. Paul did. What was his solution? In simple terms, his solution was the realization that even though the laws governing his flash, or body, seemed to take control of him, God was also present in him, always available to help him.

I never like to include things from religion in these podcasts, or for that matter in my books. However, St. Paul is one of my personal heroes and this reference to him seems appropriate. I see him is going through the same struggle as I did when I began this 12-step program in earnest. I was certainly at the point where no matter how I looked at myself, I saw a wretched person, as well as one who was helpless and hopeless. In short, I needed some serious help. I needed to look beyond my religion, which seem to be operating in a superficial manner. I needed to stop thinking of God in terms of any religious, theological, or philosophical information that I have received throughout my life. I had to finally realized that God was not in that building where I might have kneeled and prayed. He lives in me and was waiting for my recognition of him.

This is what this episode is all about.

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Now that I have admitted that I’m powerless, and can’t seem to manage my own life, what do I do? After all, my whole life, (and it doesn’t matter whether I’m 12 years old or 75 years old), seems to have been one of blissful ignorance. It seems to have been a life, now that I have been given a glimpse of it through the gift of Enlightenment, that was both narcissistic and self-defeating. In any case, if I accept the gift of Enlightenment and I am willing to see myself for what I have become, where do I turn? It’s fairly obvious that I’m going to need some heavy hitting help to begin being good to myself.

Some of us already have a strong belief of some kind in God, either because of the religion that we have long to, knowing someone else who has a belief, or having been exposed to the ‘spiritual world’, in some other way. In this episode I’ll attempt to talk about what belief is, why we needed, I most important, how we get it. 

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so, in this episode I’ll continue to speak about step one and continue to talk about the gift of Enlightenment. There really isn’t too much in the literature that tells us exactly how we go about doing the first two steps. After the steps are listed, there is a brief section that describes our dilemma and struggle to even get started with the steps. The literature says, “What an order, I can’t go through with it”. Any of us who, up to that point in our lives, remember the sheer helplessness, pain, and frustration of not being able to be in control, know what I’m talking about. “We stood at the turning point”. However, there is a glimmer, a sort of overview of what our lives have come to, in which we have an inkling that there may be a way out. It is at this point that we are ready to receive the gift of Enlightenment. This gift, provided through the grace of God, helps us realize that we are truly powerless, and cannot manage our own lives. What a wonderful, appropriate gift. 

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This episode is about the gift of Enlightenment, which is the gift I associate with the first step. I know there may be some questions concerning my selection of the word Enlightenment to describe this gift. It may be a little confusing because Enlightenment is usually in a different, more ethereal way.

I suppose it may have been simpler to refer to this gift as something like, ‘awareness’. I did think of a few other terms, but the word Enlightenment kept coming back to me as the correct term. I also found a definition of Enlightenment for the way I use this gift in this particular step. That definition is: The act of giving someone knowledge or understanding .Anyway, it is what it is. In part one I plan to speak about how this Enlightenment comes to be, and how we can recognize it. In part two, I hope to describe it more thoroughly, and speak about how it has affected my growth in the 12- step program.

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So, I’d like to talk a little bit more about this thing called Grace. On one hand, it seems like it might be elusive. However, it is allusive only in our minds. I say that because, as I said in part one, Grace isn’t gift that all of a sudden show up. Grace has been with us from the time our resistance began as a thought in the mind of God.

In this episode, I would like to speak a little bit about how the Grace of God is useful in our lives. This will be a problem because Grace isn’t exactly something you can touch or get a good handle on. Maybe it could be thought of a little like using the Google assistant to turn on your reading lamp. All I need do is say what I want, and the light comes on. I think God’s Grace is similar, especially when I’m ready to acquire one of God’s gifts. Grace is always there to provide us with additional support when we need it.

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The first gift we will look at is Grace. I am, of course including it with this section of episodes about the gifts that accompany the steps, but I hesitate to call Grace an actual gift. When we are conceived or created or whatever you choose to call it, (I choose to think of it as coming into existence as a result of the thought of God), I believe that Grace accompanies us as part of our being. I will expand on this idea in part one. 

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Looking at the 12-steps for the second time, I would like to spend more time looking at the gifts that God has given us with each of the steps.  I have just published my book, Steps To The Spirit, and it is available on Amazon, in both hardcover and paperback.

During the writing of the book I, of course, frequently mentioned the gifts I believe accompany the steps. However, I feel they are so important to both acknowledge and use, that I am doing this series of podcast episodes to explore them.

This episode will be an overview of the series about the 12 gifts and the all-encompassing gift of Grace.

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In this final episode in this series of the steps, I will talk about practicing these principles in all my affairs. It is no longer something I work at, at least not consciously, during my days. It seems, at long last, to have become a sort of ‘rote’ thing. A lot has changed in my personality, my humanity, if you will. I have learned to ‘be myself’, which, unless tempered by the direction of my Spirit, can be problematic.

I recently purchased a new T-shirt with the inscription, “In my defense, I was left unsupervised”. Of course, everyone says it is perfect for me! However, as I am sitting here, writing this description of the podcast, I thought, “Wow! That is exactly what happens when I forget to turn my will and my life over to God”. 

Oh well, I’m trying my best, my friends. 

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In this episode, I’ll talk about the last of the maintenance steps, as well as the last step of the 12 steps. I dislike referring to step 12 as the last step because, to me, it is so much more. It seems more like the saying, the first step of the rest of my life.

If I have been fearless and thorough from the very start, then I now have had a spiritual experience. Simply doing these steps in an honest and sincere manner cannot help but provide me with a spiritual experience of some degree. This step reinforces that knowledge of my awakening. It assures me I have access to a power greater than anything I could have imagined and I am poised to help myself, especially through helping others, (this episode), and by practicing these principles, (steps), for the rest of my life. 

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In this episode, I want to speak about the second part of step eleven, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.

I know I told you that these are my version of the steps, mostly to make them ‘mine’, and they are, as far as I know, the original steps from the first edition of the Big Book. I really wanted to remove the words ‘prayer’ and ‘meditation’ but I haven’t, for two reasons. First of all, many, (most?), of you believe in the concept of prayer. That is fine. Prayer has been around for as long as humanity and I have to believe that God hears our prayers. But I must be honest with you as a writer. I don’t want to alienate you so that you might throw out the baby with the bath water.

Secondly, I simply don’t have it in me to alter these beautiful steps that much. I’ll just leave well enough alone! 

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I am limiting this step to two podcasts. I aired five episodes in season one, about step eleven. I looked them over recently and they seem fairly good so why rehash the same thing. I believe they were episodes 23-28 of season 1, (I believe episode 24 was about depression). 

I do, however, want to do two episodes this season. The first is about the first half of the step, I sought through prayer and meditation, to improve my conscious contact with God. I realize that, even in this one year, my understanding of step eleven has changed, yet again! I think it may have to do with a phrase I remember hearing a few years ago, ‘Your God is too small’. I believe it is the title of a book by J.B. Phillips. Anyway, I am feeling like I have to do less and less on my part, to communicate with God. It is not like a ham radio where I say ‘over’ when I finish talking. Now, it has become more of a broadcast from God and I am required to keep the receiver turned on and to listen. 

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We will take a brief look at the second half of this step, “when I was wrong, I promptly admitted it”.

This phrase reminds me of my constant battle with my nemesis, ego, and its constant companions, rationalization, and procrastination! When I identify a character defect or shortcoming, my ego, (which is always working to get me to think I am looking good), automatically goes into overdrive in order to protect its human from the slightest hint of inferiority. 

Unfortunately for the ego, we have, at this point in the steps, discovered our capability of free choice. Not only have we found this God-given tool, along with the Grace to use it, but we now utilize the power of Spirit as well.

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Steps 10, 11, and 12 are referred to as the maintenance steps. In step ten, we are actually doing a, (hopefully), lighter version of the fourth step. A lot of work has been put into getting well in the first nine steps, and now we are going to keep a vigilant eye on ourselves … through our Spirit and try to immediately spot any tendency to revert to our old, unwanted behaviors.

In this episode, we’ll talk mostly about the need to be vigilant and make as certain as possible that none of our old ways try to invade our new, spiritual life. Yes, I said our new spiritual life. By now, by this step in the 12-step program, we should be living an entirely new way of life. It may not be near perfection, but we have a whole new set of directions to live by. We have cleared away much of the wreckage of the past. We are building a new, God centered life that nothing or no one can defeat.

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This is the part of this step that is absolutely made for my two archenemies, Mr. Ego and his sidekick, Master Rationalization! The questions I must ask myself are the following. Will I truly feel that making amends to that person will do more harm than good (for them)? Or am I simply trying to protect myself? This can be a gray area but, if I truly am concerned, (for the right reasons), then I probably should eliminate that person. There might be a way to make amends anonymously. In any event, amends must never be such that, by dealing with my shortcomings, I cause even more harm to another. I may as well just add them back to my list!

Notice, this part of step 9 does not say anything about ‘injuring me’. I am not approaching those on my list in a groveling way. I am approaching them with the Power of my Holy Spirit at my side, knowing I shall remain strong, yet understanding. I will tell them I have had certain issues; I am sorry if I hurt them, and I am willing to do whatever I can to help make things better. Be cognizant of the effect your words have had and take it from there. It could be anything from, “Go away and don’t ever come back”, to, “Lets have a cup of coffee and talk”. Either way, you have done that instance of the step. Thank God for the strength he has provided, and move on. 

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In theory, much of this step has been done when we did step 4. It would be hard to imagine any people or institutions that would not automatically transfer to the 9th step list. However, like it or not, we are human and subject to pangs of conscience or plain old forgetfulness. In any event, we need to go over this list of folks we have harmed, (in any way), because the more wreckage of the past that we can truly and honestly put behind us, the smoother the road ahead. If you are like me, some other folks will come to mind as I made amends. I guess I have been wasting time, even in writing about this. I have learned that the thing to do is just take that bull by the horns and go for it.

How? Good question. I found it hard to plan ahead. Most folks I just went to them, told them I discovered I had a problem, and I was trying to make amends to those I might have hurt, mostly by apologizing and asking what I could, if anything, to make things right. That was pretty much it. I mentioned the steps but didn’t get into the spiritual stuff. It sometimes makes people uncomfortable.

Of course, if they were understanding, and wanted to know more, I was more than happy to speak with them. I must tell you, when I was new to my spiritual growth, I didn’t have much confidence, but God gave me the strength I needed. 

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Now that I have this list of all of the persons I have harmed, what’s next? Here I am, excited and looking forward to my new way of life, a life lived under the care and direction of my Spirit, and BAM! I thought the hardest steps were behind me. Steps 4 & 5, while ultimately a blessing, were the toughest ‘action’ steps so far. I had to dig deep to overcome the protests of my ego. Now, here we are again! No problem!

Once I am willing to allow my Spirit to direct me and my life, I am more powerful than any possible human adversity. Don’t forget, I am doing one step at a time! Right now, I need only to make this list, and become willing to try my best to make things right, or at least, try to clear away some of the wreckage of the past. 

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Step 8 is all about interpersonal relationships and how our behaviors caused others harm. There are many, many ways we cause harm. There are, of course, the things we say or do to others. We might lie, steal, or cheat. We not only hurt people by what we say to them but just as much, if not more, by what we say about them. When doing this list, it was also necessary for me to think about things like anger and jealousy that I had toward others. All of these things from my past also manifest as bumps and potholes in the road ahead and by dealing with them now, I can help smooth out my future travels.

Before any repair happens, I must first identify and acknowledge all of those issues. Some of them might be relatively easy to list, maybe an uncalled for word or statement or money or property that can be paid back. However, some of us are guilty of some terrible actions that seem monumental and impossible to rectify. Some things may require incarceration as a remedy. Decisions will have to be made in the ninth step. For now, it is important to admit our need for amends with the willingness to make things right.

Remember, our Holy Spirit and our new way of life is the ultimate goal. Ultimately, we shall each have to decide how much we are willing to ‘turn over’. For now, admission is key. 

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I believe we all know the meaning of humility, even if we might not want to face our lack of it in our lives. For me, there has even a lack of spiritual humility, especially when I am convinced by my ego that I can ‘go it alone’, and not need the guidance of my Spirit.

This striking-out on my own, this crazy attempt at independence, is the exact opposite of humility. I’m saying, I don’t want your help, God, (because, if I ask for it, my ego will not like the answer). So, my tendency is to defer to God when it is convenient but give control to my ego when I know the spiritual solution will be too uncomfortable.

In this last episode concerning the seventh step, I will talk about the phrase – ‘holding nothing back’.

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Humility: Once you think you have it … you don't! This is my way of remembering what humility is. This step is all about being humble. I have brought all the previous steps together and this is the place to which they have brought me – humbly, on my knees!

If you have been working at this 12-step program, you know that to get to this point, it has been a 'super-human' undertaking. I have surrendered! I have taken a hard look at myself. I have admitted that I had become, basically, an 'out-of-control' mess. I have understood the meaning of, 'what an order, I can't go through with it'. Fortunately, I also believe the solution, 'there is One who has all power. That one is God'. I also put myself in the position of humility when acting on the words, 'may you find Him now'.

This step is the culmination of that work. I am beginning to recognize that I am entirely dependent on God. No matter if I am a laborer, retired or a queen, I am a child of God and subservient to Him or Her. My ego hates any remark like this. It wants me to be boss and it will take all of my strength and determination to turn to my Holy Spirit for guidance. 

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As I said in the previous episode, this step does not require a whole lot of explanation. In episode 24 I spoke about the gift of readiness and that I really needed to take a hard look at my willingness to surrender.

Now, I would like to spend just a few minutes on what I am willing to surrender. I have this list of character defects and I would like to refer to it as my ‘baggage full of dirty laundry’. Now, let me examine once more, what exactly it is that I am ‘ready’ to remove.

Is some of my laundry not quite ready for the wash? Am I not ready to throw it in because, well, because it is so comfortable, and I depend on it every day? For ne to have a chance at listening to my Spirit and changing my behavior, my life, I must be ‘ready’ to let it ‘all’ go! 

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This is, basically, a step of reflection and introspection. After finishing step 5, they say it is good to go to a quiet place and really think about what has transpired. They say that we can feel like a great weight has been lifted from us. They are correct, at least that’s the way it was for me. I felt like I could finally use the word ‘honest’ in the same sentence as my own name. Now this program is asking me to take one last look at all of these character defects, or wrongs, or … whatever I choose to call those negative parts of my life.

I feel like I did this step almost immediately after the fifth step. The life I lived, until that point, was as fresh in my mind as it would ever be. Now I was ready to examine the scales that contained my past and future. All of the negativity of my past was on one side, and all of the possibilities of a future guided by my Holy Spirit on the other. For the most part, the future was unknown and a little intimidating, as I realized I would not have my old crutches for support. However, I now knew that, as a result of the first three steps, I have more power available to me than I could ever have imagined.

Our Spirits are strong and powerful and have been waiting for this moment to happen. We are ready to move on to a new way of life! 

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This is the last part of this step and I want to talk about the phrase, ‘the exact nature of my wrongs’. In the fourth step, it is a good idea to take a moral inventory of both the god and problematic traits we possess. Now, however, I am not here to blow my own horn. I am here to lay my issues on the table and get some insight and suggestions about improvements.

Notice, these are not our wrongs we are talking about. It is the exact nature of our wrongs. It is not a laundry list of each thing I did, but I try to prepare by grouping things into behaviors I may need help with changing or understanding. 

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I have thoroughly examined those parts of this step that have to do with my honesty with myself and my willingness to level with God about what I have done with my life. Now is the time to tackle sharing my discoveries about myself with another person. If you find this to be a nerve wracking and daunting task, well, welcome to your ego. Many of us get to this point in spiritual recovery and think, whoa, I didn’t sign up for this. I’ve had a hard enough time just looking at this self-examination myself. Now I have to share it with someone else?

Once again, I need to solidify my newly discovered union with God. Yes, revisit the first three steps, (which, by the way, you might realize by now, is a life-long activity), and rededicate myself to those principles. I may be a babe in this spiritual world but I must realize I’m in possession of all of the Power of my Spirit. It’s not that the Power is less at the beginning of my awareness, it’s just that I haven’t learned to depend on it. Let me repeat my analogy of the switch. Once I say ‘yes’ to God, His Power is instantly available to me. It is not a switch. It is more of a rheostat, like a dimmer switch. I only need, over time, and learning to ‘turn things over’, to God, and I will be able to use all of God’s Power.

Once I am firmly immersed in the first three steps, this step, including this part of the step, becomes a beautiful opportunity of hope and progress in my life to come.

In this audio I will talk about who you might choose and some particulars about actually ‘doing’ this part of step five.

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In this 2nd episode, or 2nd part of this step, I am going to look at just what is meant (to me), to admit these wrongs to myself. Whereas the last part had to do with taking an honest look at my relationship with God, and basically, making sure we are on the same page, this part helps me to take a hard look at the human me.

Please, understand, these parts are not mutually exclusive. There will be a lot of overlap between them. After all, the goal is, at this point in my spiritual step program, I am beginning to feel my humanity being inextricably intertwined with my Spirit. This is the goal. Some (those that ascribe to a non-dualistic theology), that all that exists is God and Spirit and that it is all one. I do not. I believe my humanity is very much a vessel that can be spiritually directed to share the love of God. Either way, I believe we are not at odds here. The ultimate goal is to discover (remember, if you will), our loved and loving God self and apply it to whatever we perceive our lives to be. 

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Please pardon my humor in the title. Yet, you may want to keep it in mind as you look for the right person to share you4th step. In this and the next three episodes, I’m going to talk about four parts of this step. This first episode has to do with ‘admitting to God’ the exact nature of our wrongs. At first blush, it seems a little unnecessary, sacrilegious, even, that I think there is stuff I have been able to hide from God. Well, I’m going out on a limb here, and saying that despite the terminology, this part of the step has to do with me. 

I now have the opportunity to really look at my life as I try to be in communion with God. I am meeting God, like mano a mano, or should it be mano a Dios? In any event, I am not treating this on my own as so many words, or actions, on paper. I must look at every aspect of this step and, my life, with God! I must include Him in my decisions, my wrongs, my aspirations, my life, and my love. In other words, this step is my kickstart to a life of partnership with God – the beautiful, powerful results of my surrender. 

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Just to wrap up this this 4th step, I would like to speak a little about looking toward the next step, step 5.

In a nutshell … DON’T!

I know that those of you who are involved with these steps are, as a rule, bright folks. You are not doing each step in a vacuum. You have, as I did,  looked ahead at the steps that follow. If you are like me, you may have said to yourself, “Uh, oh, I’m going to have to tell SOMEONE ELSE about the stuff I discover about myself!”

Please, try not to think about step 5 and remember the love strength, fortitude, and courage you have gained from the first three steps. The only thing that can hurt you is the power you relinquish to your ego! As long as you continue to turn your will and your life over to your Spirit / God, you have nothing to worry about. Remember, this step has been designed by God to prepare you for your life to come … to begin to clear away the wreckage or our past. We must simply trust that God will lead us to our spiritual awakening.

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In this 3rd episode about step 4, I talk about the words “searching and fearless”. 

These words were the antithesis of any morality I had back in the day. My words back then would have been more like, “complacent and ‘scared to death’” My Spirit, on the other hand, substitutes ‘love’ for any of my words! When I said YES to God, all vocabulary became useless, at least in a spiritual sense. If I need strength, or insight, or perseverance, they all were available in the form of love. That is the result of the 1st three steps. The love of our Spirit automatically transfers into human strength, etc. Now I can do this step without fear. I can use it as a steppingstone on my path to spiritual enlightenment. This step will not result in a ‘tabula rasa’ of my soul. It will result in, if you will, a ‘tabula-guidelines’. It will be an insight and learning experience for my future challenges.

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I am going to skip around a little in this step. In this 2nd episode about step 4, I’ll talk about the word “moral”. What does moral mean? Well, here is what it means to me when I am trying to use these steps as a spiritual guide for my life. Morals are those guidelines, a spiritual yardstick, if you will, that I apply to the actions I have performed in my life to evaluate whether I have performed them in an acceptable or unacceptable manner. These actions can be right or wrong, depending, at this time of my life, on how much I am able to ‘turn things over’ to God. 

Please remember, the idea is not to write a biography or list of all my rights and wrongs. I am looking for the deep connections, the root causes of my actions. For example, if I stole a hundred dollars from my father’s wallet, how do I deal with that? I stole $100? No. I am a thief? No. I wanted to feed my ego at the expense of others? Yeah, that’s the one!

I am not looking for particulars as much as ‘root causes’ – the things that motivated me to do the ‘wrong’ thing.

Finally, I must not forget those things I did (there may not be many) where I followed the golden rule, to treat others as I would want to be treated! 

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This step is the perfect example why the steps are in this order. When I was in the throes of my addiction and even when I became addiction free, this 4th step was a huge challenge. It was like asking a person with a mental illness, (insanity, if you will), to make a rational judgement about their life. They usually can’t, unless they start to clear up what is causing their mental ‘fog’.

After accepting the first 3 steps, I developed a sense of God’s love, a feeling of ‘blessed assurance’ that I was now consecrated to God and would be safe no matter what.

This step, and those that follow, especially 5,6,7,8, and 9, are not meant to make us ‘right with God’. That has already happened. My Spirit is A-OK and needs no help. These steps are to help my human self clear the way, to create, as close as possible, a ‘tabula rasa’ to allow my Spirit to use me and to work through me.

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It can’t get any better than this! With my little human mind, I have the incredible opportunity to align myself with God, the Creator of everything, and the source of perfect love! I have made the decision. I have surrendered. I have affirmed my consecration to God by saying, with my entire being, the eternal, miraculous, and spiritual, YES!

My life (and yours, if you have joined me) is chanced forever. Most likely, there will be no outward signs; no glowing, no perfection, and no recognition by humanity. I do, however, get that thing they sing about, blessed assurance, assurance that we are one with each other’s Spirits and one with God. By listening to our spiritual direction, I learn to strive. I strive to be better. I strive to be perfect. I strive to share God’s love.

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The following is a definition I found of ‘will’, and it works for our purposes here:

Will: the power of control over one's own actions or emotions

For me, this has been no less than surrender, and I think that word/idea really explains it. So, what does surrender mean to you? Is it like opening an artery and letting your life as you know it flow out of you? Or, on the other hand, can you see it as I have learned, a tactical surrender?

Let me put it in terms of a soldier fighting in a war. He is fighting for a country that is oppressive, non-democratic and Godless. The enemy is a country that is the antithesis of all that. So, he surrenders and becomes a citizen of that country. To me, surrender in this case, is a good thing.

In this step, I surrender my will & life to God, my Spirit in order to achieve everlasting life.

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Exactly what does the phrase, ‘turn it over’, mean? We see this used in 12 step programs and it is obviously from this 3rd step. I may even have seen a poster saying, “Turn It over’. Of course, the best saying that exemplifies this step is, ‘Let Go and Let God’!

In this episode, I will talk about how this phrase is used and what it means to me.

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I am about to make the most important decision of my life! No pressure, right? There are many ways, or words, I use to describe this surrender to my spirit and God. It is the infinite, or absolute, or ultimate, or eternal yes. I prefer, simply, ‘the Spiritual Yes’.

No matter how I describe it, the one thing that is certain is that there is nothing, not one assertion or decision on earth that can compare with it. It is the decision that, when made with absolute sincerity, makes is holy (consecrated to God)! I believe this to be the ultimate reason for our freedom of choice … that I can choose to accept God’s love.

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So, if you have been listening, I had a sort of epiphany when I did the episodes on step 2. There was never a doubt in my mind that the 3rd step was the most important and life changing. However, I now realize that without the belief I found in step 2, there would be no God on which to base the next ten steps!

Now, I must take that information, that belief, and use it to make the most important decision of my life and my future.

It is time to fish or cut bait, time to surrender, time to immerse myself in God’s love and protection.

It is time to answer God’s call with the infinite, holy, and spiritual, YES!

Without this step, I am left to my own devices, and I only need to ask myself how that approach worked out for me in the past. Maybe I need to view this step with equal importance to step 2.

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I’ll conclude step 2 by speaking a little about my/our insanity. What does “restore me to sanity” mean? A dictionary meaning says sanity is: the ability to think and behave in a normal and rational manner.

Well, I’m not even sure I knew what sanity was, no less, be restored to it. As a matter of fact, I still wonder if my addiction actually kept me from going off the deep end.

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In this episode I will finish up with my experience of God and how I connect with God on a daily basis.

Warning: There will NOT be any bright lights, angels, or voices from above in this episode! I’m sure you can find stories of such things all over the internet. I don’t knock them or disbelieve them. For me, however, it has not happened that way. I am a simple, ordinary guy who, I believe, is part of the same spiritual realm as you are. 

When I began to earnestly seek my Spirit, I happened to find the epistle of Paul to the Romans and his words have been etched in my brain and heart. Some are below.

“I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing” (verses 18-19).

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”

This was me. I have since discovered it is the quandry of many others. In short, I had to find strength, a Power greater than myself, … God, in order to turn away from my insanity.

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Before we are restored to sanity, I would like to speak a little (maybe a lot!), about my experience and path to the discovery of God within myself. Let me be crystal clear, for me, a Higher Power or Power greater than myself, is God! It is NOT a group, a person or sponsor or any other physical or earthly thing. God may be described as He or She, (I do not believe God has a sex. I think God is referred to as He or Father due to the social context of the times), but I am most comfortable with thinking of God as Love!

I also believe that Jesus, (as well as others), was sent as a sort of emissary from God, as an example of what God expects from us. I believe that Jesus, and others like Him, have a special connection to God and can be a sort of conduit between me and God.

I also believe in my Spirit and that it is the ‘real’, or should I say, ‘God me’, that I try to give control of my life.

I hope this does not sound too complicated. It really isn’t! I hope to simplify it in this podcast.

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So, this is the step that my spiritual program is really based on. In step 3 I must decide my path and if I will be willing to allow my Spirit to lead me. However, it is in this step that I MUST declare my belief in God! It is with this awareness of God’s love, protection, and Power, that I am able to find the strength and support to continue on this path.

The literature says, “what an order; I can’t go through with it”, but then immediately offers the solution, “there is one who has all power, that one is God. May you find Him now.” My (our) Spirit(s) are always pleading with us to allow them in. Now is the time to say yes. Now is the moment to surrender in order to win!

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In this episode I want to say just a little about the 2nd part of this step, admitting that my life is unmanageable. When I was finally ready to experience these steps in honesty, God helped me to see the ‘real’ me.

Before I surrendered to my spirit, I was like a train wreck. Now I become ready to relinquish the control that I never even had. I realized that, looking at where I ended up and the actions that got me there were those of an insane person and that I desperately needed help. I had set myself up for step #2.

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The last thing I wanted to admit was that I was not captain of my own vessel. My ego, and its partner, rationalization, would never let go of their control without some kind of outside intervention! Maybe I should say, ‘inside’ intervention. My Spirit was, (as I believe everyone’s Spirit does), poking and pleading more and more. Yes, I had a sense it was there, but I managed to keep it at bay. Each time, after creating yet another shambles of my life, I said that the next time would be different. Now, I knew it wouldn’t improve without help. As it says in the literature, I stood at the turning point and I was ready and willing to ask for His protection and care with complete abandon.

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In my 77 years I have attempted these steps in 3 ways. The first attempt was purely through and for my ego. My life was a mess and I simply wanted to feel and look good.

The 2nd attempt was more sincere. I absolutely believed my life to be in shambles and I had become willing to change. I realized that by living my life in the same way as before, I would get the same results. As a result, I did make some changes in my life, however, there was still something missing. There was a nagging feeling of incompleteness, a sense of emptiness that I could not escape. I know now that it was the constant plea of my Holy Spirit; an insistent poking, if you will, to get my attention. I finally am answering that ‘poke’, realizing it is asking for my complete surrender.

Don’t worry! It’s not a bad thing! It simply cleared the path for me to discover God’s unconditional love for me! Simply stated, I was now able to say ‘YES’ to God.

I hope you join me in these next episodes as I attempt to share with you what these steps mean to me, not just as a ‘program’, but as a spiritual invitation from God and our Holy Spirit.

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I know, the plan was to start the spiritual aspects of the steps, but, it kept gnawing at me that I kind of left you hanging when I described my great relationship with my Spirit and stopped. In actuality, it was a wonderful beginning and I thought it important to at least touch on that.

So, this episode is about what to do with my life after discovering the presence of God.

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I continue with my spiritual adventure. In this episode I will talk about my hearing the pleas of my spirit and finally becoming willing to surrender all in order to gain so much more!

In the next episode, I will talk about the steps as a spiritual way of life.

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As a start to this 2nd year of my podcast, Steps to the Spirit, I think it is only fitting that I explain my experience wit my spiritual discovery. Of coarse, I can’t describe this perfectly; I don’t believe anyone can. After all, I am using human words to try to describe a spiritual experience!

I shall do my best and hope to encourage you (if you haven’t already), to find your own, very, very personal relationship with God.

I’ll finish sharing my life/Spirit adventure in episode 2, and then begin a spiritual examination of these beautiful steps in episode 3.

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Christmas is a special time for me, both as a Christian, and as a learner and worker of these 12 steps.

Now, I hope, I am looking at Christmas as the true beginning of a story that ends with receiving the Holy gift of Spirit.

So, for this final episode of my first season of podcasts, I will share my thoughts of the Christmas season. I’ll also talk about the greatest person to ever “carry the message”.

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Now what? We have examined the 12 steps, admittedly, in a rudimentary way, and we are ready to forge ahead!

In this episode, I want to talk about motivation – what benefit do I expect from them? Of course, I can use them to change my lifestyle and put those things that ‘held me back’, behind me, or, will I use them to discover my true self?

In this episode, in preparation for Season 2, beginning on 01/01/22, I’ll do a run through of the steps and touch on the spiritual power they can add to our lives.

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In part 5 of step 12, we will talk about the all-encompassing payoff of doing my best with this program – practicing these principles in ALL my affairs!

I will also talk about how to get the most from a twelve step program.

I will end with a prayer I wrote years ago, I tried to cover all of the steps in one prayer. The next 2 episodes will be 1 week before Christmas and Christmas day. Then, beginning on New Year’s day, 2022, I’ll begin a new discussion of the steps, strictly from a spiritual perspective.

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In part 4 of step 12, we will discuss “carrying the message”. What are the different ways to allow my newly found light to shine and thus, help others?

Also, what was meant by “others”?

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In part 3 of step 12, we will talk about timing and what is meant by “as a result of this course of action”. When can I start 12th step work? Is it sometimes dangerous for me?

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In part 2 of step 12, we will compare the different forms of this step. The original step 12 was worded “had a spiritual experience” and has since become “a spiritual awakening”.

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Step 12 is the third, and last, maintenance step, as well as the final step. However, this step can just as easily be thought of as the spiritual container for all of these steps. This step encourages us to adapt our very lives to the tenets of these steps, and to allow them to direct us in a new way of life. It also lays the groundwork for us to help one another in a true spirit of love. In this episode, a little overview of step 12.

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To remind you, step 11 is the 2nd of the maintenance steps. In Part 5, I will finish up step 11 (I know, finally, right?) with an overview of what it means to me and why it is an integral and oh so necessary part of my life. 

The next episode will begin step 12, the final maintenance step. It will also be presented in multiple parts, due to its importance in my addiction free and spiritually full life – not to mention the joy of ‘giving back’! 

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To remind you, step 11 is the 2nd of the maintenance steps. In Part 4, I will address exactly what it is that I am praying for. Of course, my idea of a relationship with God is that God always will provide exactly what I need and that asking is unnecessary. Then I ask for the power to achieve these things which, I feel is also already ours. However, perhaps prayer such as this reminds me of the gifts I have received and reinforces my humility. Next time, in Part 5, I’ll do a quick recap of step 11.

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To remind you, step 11 is the 2nd of the maintenance steps. In Part 3, I am adding another dimension to prayer, contemplation. In prayer and meditation, I speak to and think about, God. However, in contemplation, I feel as though the circle becomes complete as I wait for God to speak to me. I cannot try to describe the experience of learning to be ‘with’ God. It is purely personal, yet …!

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To remind you, step 11 is the 2nd of the maintenance steps. In Part 2, I continue briefly about prayer and go on to meditation. I don’t seem to be motivated towards either of these forms of communicating with God, but I want to share my thoughts about them with you.

Actually, I have changed the ‘gift’ I associate with this step from prayer to communication. It just seems more appropriate to me. The next episode (Part 3), will be my favorite form of prayer, contemplation.

There could be 6 parts to this step! Hey, I warned you. This step is very important to me.

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We interrupt this podcast for an important announcement: 

These steps are guidelines for life! 

When I heard this week that depression has increased threefold since Covid, I had to present a few helpful (I hope), thoughts. Please, if you are experiencing depression, take a look at what a twelve step program has to offer, and how these steps can change your life.

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Step 11 is the 2nd of the maintenance steps. If it is possible to have a ‘favorite’ step, then this would be mine. Steps 11 & 12 are simply loaded with possibilities for growth, both in my life, and my connection to my Spirit.

I’m calling this Part 1 because I’m certain I will need at least 3 parts to give this step the attention it deserves.

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This is the first ‘maintenance’ step. It is a combination of steps #4 and #5, but designed to be done on (at least), a daily basis. Yup, sorry, we never get to ‘finish’ step 10 or, for that matter, steps 11 and 12. Hey, that’s what maintenance means.

I have discovered that it is soooo easy for me to slip back into some of my old, undermining habits, especially when my archenemy, Mr. Rationalization, shows up!

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I finally answered ‘YES’ to the constant pleas of my Holy Spirit.

I began a new experience with the 12 step program with the awareness that I desperately needed to surrender in order to ‘win’ a new control of my life. 

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Continuing Part 1, I talk about more incidents in my life that reinforced my lack of self esteem and brought me closer to despair.

Finding God was becoming a matter of life and death.

I stood at the turning point!

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We finished the action steps with step 9 last week, and we will start on the last three  (maintenance) steps next.

However, this podcast is all about these steps helping us to discover God’s help, both in us and for us. I am adding a couple of episodes to let you know the personal meaning of God in my life, and how God is present in my daily existence.

In this first part, I’ll relate how I became completely separated from the very idea of God in my life.

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So, this is the action step where we follow through with actually making amends to those we listed in step 8.

Of course, amends can take many forms, from a simple ‘sorry’, to paying back money, or more. The 2 main points I want to make are: 1. Get started and 2. Avoid rationalization.

I’m also looking for feedback about the podcast after finishing up on the actual 12 steps. Thinking about “Steps for Life”, and how to use the steps as living tools.

Contact me: chuck@stepstothespirit.com 

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We refer to it sometimes, as the “wreckage of the past”. At this point, I have decided to let God influence my decisions, taken inventory, and asked Him to remove those things that keep me separated from Him.

Now, possibly for the first time, I am ready to share my attempt to make my life ‘right’ with others. But, the 8th step is a thinking and willingness step. It is best done without aby thought of its actual fruition in the next step.

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So, now at the 7th step, I am ready to lay it all on the line in a continued surrender to God’s will, not mine! I muster as much humility as I can, (not much at this stage of recovery), and surrender to begin living my life according to God’s plan for me.

Yes, it’s a powerful step I am taking and a powerful moment, (one of many), to begin a new way of life.

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For a long while, when I was first involved with the steps, 6 & 7 never seemed tohave much importance. Folks always seemed to tout the big guys, like steps 3, 4,11 & 12.

I now realize 6  & 7 are equally important. After all, I feel these steps to be God given, so I don’t think She threw them in there as fillers in order to make 12 steps! The 6th step is critical to reinforcing my commitment for change,

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This episode is special because I got to introduce my best friend and wife, Pat! She has been in a position to listen to a few 5th steps and she shares how that was for her. We also share some of our spiritual thoughts about the 12 steps and ACIM.

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This episode is more about MY spiritual experience with step 5. In the past I avoided the parts of my life that were too painful and well hidden, yet the most necessary to face and deal with.  Next week, I will be joined by my wife and best friend, Pat.

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Now that I have collected all of this (mostly dirty) laundry in one place, it’s time to do the wash! This step provides me help to throw away most and clean, fold and save what is good. In this practical approach, I’ll save much more than in the spiritual approach in part 2.

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While the basic doing of step 4 remains the same, the comfort level changes dramatically between the practical and spiritual approaches.

In this recording, I talk about the spiritual security I developed as a result of ‘turning it over’ to God.

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Stfp 4 is the first of what I call, the action steps. The first three (awareness) steps, got me to realize I need help and direction, and … that it is available for the asking. I have decided to do steps 4 and 5 in 2 parts each. They are so important as a base for the following steps.

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The continuation of Step 3, focusing on the spiritual aspects of this step. I know this episode runs a bit long, but this is the step that was instrumental in discovering my Spirit. It is the turning point to spiritual victory … via surrender!

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The first 3 steps, and especially step 3, are referred to as the ‘turning point’ in a program of recovery. Whether you are using there steps in a ‘practical’ way, or for the true spiritual discovery they can provide, step 3 is key. This episode looks at the practical approach to the third step and episode 9 will look at the spiritual approach.

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I have always thought of these beginning steps as not much more than ‘a step in the right direction’ or things to consider in retrospect. However, as I became aware of the deeply spiritual nature of this way of life, I realized they are a crucial foundation that must be well fortified.

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I begin a look at the 12 steps, from both a practical and spiritual approach. I used to not give step 1 the importance it deserves, but it is in fact, a crucial foundation stone!

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In the last episode I spoke about the practical approach to the 12 steps, while certainly able to heal our addictive nature, needs more substance to provide a truly changed lifestyle.

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Having been around since 1935, there are many ways to look at and use these tools. In this episode, I talk about the first of 2 ways I think are predominant, the ‘practical’ way. Next week, the ‘spiritual’ way.

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In this episode I gontinue my downward slide, oblivious to my loss of self.

No matter how much I learned of addiction, it was worthless without an (honest) willingness to look within. Sorry, I said episode 4 in the audio.

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In this episode I hope to touch you on a “feeling” level, as I relate my early experiences as a child and teenager.

It is not the experience that matters, but who we became as a result. In Episode 3, I will finish up with me and we’ll begin to look for a solution!

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I (Chuck), tell you a little about me and why our Spirit is important to learn about.