Step Two of Twelve Steps: The Spiritual Treatment of our Disease

Step Two: We came to believe

that a power greater than ourselves

could restore us to sanity.

The Courage to Change
July 29th
Al-Anon is a spiritual program based on no particular religion and no religious belief is required. To those of us who have had less than wonderful experiences with religion in the past, this freedom is important. Spirituality doesn’t have to imply a particular philosophy or moral code; it simply means that there is a Power greater than ourselves upon which we can rely. Whether we call this a Higher Power, God, good orderly direction, Allah, the universe, or another name, it is vital to our recovery that we come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves (Step Two). Until we do, the rest of the Steps will not make much sense.

The Higher Power might be likened to the electricity that operates the lights and machinery of our recovery. It’s not necessary to understand what electricity actually is to enjoy its use – all we need to do is turn on the switch!

I may be seeking a more loving God in Whom I can place my trust, or facing a challenge that puts my long established belief to a test, or struggling with the very idea of a Higher Power. Whatever I believe, I can pray for greater faith today. Just that little act of willingness can work miracles.

When I have at last realize that my problems are too big to solve by myself…I need not be alone with them if I am willing to accept help from a Higher Power.
Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

January 17th
Al-Anon was the first place where I ever thought to question my own sanity. I found that I couldn’t overcome the effects of this disease by force of will or reason....
I knew that I felt more rational in an Al-Anon meeting than I did at any other time, and so turned to the Power that seemed to flow through these meetings.

If we do not change our direction,
we are likely to end up where we are headed.
Ancient Chinese Proverb

June 4th
The second step is about possibility, about hope… We are asked to open our minds to the possibility that help is available…We don’t have to believe that it will happen, only that it could…

This little bit of hope, this chink in the armor of despair, is enough to show that we are willing to move in the direction healing…it seems worthwhile to explore a relationship with a Higher Power.

Finding inner strength is looking beyond the visible
and focusing life’s search on the unseen.
As We Understood Him

Considering that the source of our problems, as identified in Step One, is the trauma of our being abandoned by and separated from others – which in turn separated us from God and ourselves, Step Two is about restoring us to conscious contact with a higher Presence (Power), which restores us to conscious contact with ourselves and others. Our problem is a lack of power – Presence – which empowers our brain to begin to operate sanely – with emotional balance, and with healthy self-care.


So this step is about coming to believe – experience consciously -- connection with our higher power – who many call God. The result is being restored to sanity—the natural consciousness and wisdom we had as children – through consistent conscious intimacy with our God --and with ourselves and others. This intimacy with our God changes the programming of our brains, reconnects the conflicting parts, and begins to heal the damaged areas. This results in a transformation of our perceptions and reactions, and in the improving of the quality of our life experiences and relationships.

How do we improve our conscious contact with God –
come to believe?

The experience of Al-Anon and AA is that it can begin with reconnecting with others. Typically this occurs by talking and listening to others in meetings, as sponsors and recovering friends, and in reading the program literature.

An assumption that I was taught early in recovery was that my higher power will, and can speak through anyone, anything, and any situation that I am listening to. The Eleventh Step gives a sequence to this listening process. First there is prayer – personal self-disclosure; then one listens – or meditates; and then one has improved conscious with their God.

Self-disclosure takes two forms. Passively we express our need and powerlessness when we attend meetings, whether we talk or not. Actively, there is a need to verbally and emotionally express what we are experiencing, and have experienced. These two “actions” opens a communication channel to our higher power.

To begin opening this channel, we need to experience two aspects of what we are communicating:
1. Level of necessity: on a scale of 1-10, how great is our discomfort. This will determine what level of conscious contact – belief – we will need, and what level of intimate self-disclosure we need to make.
2. The Goal of Self-disclosure: the purpose of the self-disclosure is to become open to our God’s higher presence, which can give us relief and healing by restoring to us what we are missing as a result of others’ alcoholism.

This self disclosure is an expression of Step One, and the listening takes us into conscious intimate contact with our God – Step Two.

Twelve Step Spiritual Life Management --Workbook

Click here for Introduction to Twelve Steps Spiritual Life Management

Click here for Step One -- The Neurophysiology of Powerlessness



Click here for Step Two of Twelve Steps: the Spiritual Treatment of Our Disease



Click here for Step Three of Twelve Steps: Spiritual Maintenance through Surrender

Step One -- Neurophysiology of Powerlessness -- Twelve Steps

Step One: Neurophysiology of Powerlessness

We admitted we were powerless –

that our lives had become unmanageable.

Most of us come to Alanon for help as a last resort. We have tried everything else. Perhaps we have seen its effects on others; it seems to have worked like magic, and we want some of that! Then we find out it isn’t magic – it’s a kind of spiritual common sense that we must buckle down and learn.

We start, like children in the first grade, with the First Step: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable...

Step One must be learned and repeated until it becomes a part of me. Whenever I give in to my natural impulse and habit to take over and try to force a change, I’m in trouble again. I know I can only make progress when I really believe in and practice the First Step.

I pray to be released from my compulsion to control my situation. I have often proved that I was unable to control it. Let me think, feel and know my powerlessness; then I will at least learn to let go and let God.

One Day At A Time, January 30th

What ever the obsessions that define our specific “illness” – whether it be alcohol, alcoholics, feelings, thoughts, food, drugs, sex etc…, we are powerless – or we would simply stop doing the things that harm us.

It is critical to first understand the neurochemistry of powerlessness that makes our lives – our perceptions and reactions and actions – unmanageable. This step is also critical because Step One is the foundation for all spirituality – and the missing link – in my experience – with all religious and psychological “theories” of recovery.

Our brains have three major areas of function:
1. The cerebral cortex, which thinks, reason, judges, evaluates – seemingly responds to facts and information.
2. The primitive or lower brain which operates based on impulse, energy levels, and programmed reactions, without the benefit of logic, reasoning, or intellectual judgement. Based on levels of neural energy within the brain, and programmed responses – perceptions and reactions – it acts to maintain and protect the brains balance of neural energies so that the brain does not have a real or perceived “nervous breakdown.”
3. The rest of the brain, other than for bodily functions, is basically for storage of memories and reactions in neural energy. The primitive brain suppresses those areas of risk for surges and eruptions of neural energy – creating an unconscious reservior of suppressed energy (e-motion) and unresolved pain and fear.

To the primitive brain, abandonment is as serious as physical death. And so abandonment experiences are stored and suppressed in the brain in the same format and intensity as actual physical trauma and threat. The brain actually can have post traumatic stress reactions to frequencies and levels of abandonment, as it would to prolonged exposure to life threatening circumstances.

As a result of the traumatic stress, the brain constricts its neural energy, storing woundedness and pain in pockets of unconscious infection, and resists external events and stimuli of abandonment which would puncture and release this infection back into current consciousness.

The importance of all of this is that the primitive brain can override, and actually use the cerebral cortex functions – doing serious irrational harm to oneself and others – in an attempt to control and survive the pain and fear of past and pending abandonment. The “will” actually becomes damaged and inoperable, and as a result a person can have illogical, irrational, and insane actions, thoughts, and reactions – without any choice to do otherwise.

This fact begins as a cognitive understanding, but must ultimately become experienced – improving conscious contact with ourselves. It must become a living reality or nothing can actually ever change.

What we will be working on here is improving our conscious experience of our powerlessness, and identifying where our primitive brain seems most sensitive and controlling. We will develop a practice of this step in “all our affairs” to match our levels of necessity and our specific symptoms.

How do we know when our primitive brain is in control?

The primitive brain operates on changes and levels of neural energy being experienced within our brain. It monitors and records energy levels, perceiving certain energy levels, and certain changes in energy level as “life threatening”. When it perceives a threat to the brain, it constricts and resists the energy. At that point, what we will consciously experience, if we can, are feelings. Feelings are neural energy – e-motions, energy in motion -- in the brain that has been constricted and resisted. The absence of constriction and resistance – possible only with a high level of conscious contact with God as we understand Him – is experienced as “serenity” – the absence of control – acceptance.

So to begin experiencing and identifying control – the opposite of acceptance of our powerlessness – we must learn to become conscious of and to experience “feelings”.

The Basics of E-motion:

The most basic feelings are: Numb, Angry, Afraid, Sad and Ashamed.

In every situation, in every circumstance, with every person and object, whether actual or only in thought, humans will experience some level of all of these feelings. Some levels may not be high enough to be significant or to require major work. It is important to identify which feelings seem to be the strongest indicators of control, and which areas of our lives causes the greatest neural response and constriction within the brain – or feelings.

Introduction to Twelve Step Spiritual Life Management

The following is the result of my experience, strength and hope. My experience is that I have a disease – maybe a group of diseases – which renders me powerless – and my life unmanageable -- and which will destroy the very fiber and quality of my existence if I do not – regularly and routinely – practice certain spiritual life principles.

My strength and perception is that this spiritual practice takes different specific forms and frequencies of activity, depending on the current and changing levels of the personal symptoms of my disease(s). I have gone to 90 meetings in ninety days, meditated, and journalled daily for over twenty years. I don’t believe this is necessary for most people – but it was necessary for me -- if I am to feel a reasonable level of serenity and well being.

What I have attempted to do in this workbook is:
1. To put together an organized understanding of the spiritual principles involved in Steps 1, 2, 3, & 10, 11, &12 of AA and Alanon.
2. To present an organized means of developing spiritual life skills using these spiritual principles.
3. To assist in finding a personalized daily lifestyle of spiritual maintenance, by first practicing and then living these specific spiritual principles.

This workbook is only the product and expression of my experience, strength and hope, and is not intended in anyway to imply a standard that all recovering persons should follow to practice spiritual recovery.

It will, I believe, only be as helpful as one’s level of conscious pain, and one’s ability to relate to others’ experience, strength and hope.

Also. I recommend that persons read the chapters on each step in the books Paths to Recovery, and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and consider the insight questions that are provided. Also, it has been helpful to me to look in the indexes of books like The Courage to Change, and read the readings relevant to each step. Again, how much one reads and prepares will be personal and unique to each individual’s needs.

Willingness is a Key to Spiritual Awakening and Healing

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him.

Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: “This is the way to a faith that works.”
Bill W.

Willingness opens the door to spiritual enlightenment and spiritual healing. It requires the experience of two prior spiritual principles:

1. “We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.” We, first, have to admit and experience that we cannot change or control the ultimate outcomes of our lives – nor can we become willing by simply willing it so. As long as this illusion persists, willingness and spiritual enlightenment is virtually impossible.

2. “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” In the presence of others who are struggling with the same problems, we begin to experience a Presence greater than all ourselves. This intimate Presence begins to access our unconscious minds and reprogram our perceptions and reactions – spiritual healing. We begin to experience a sanity that allows us to care for ourselves and others – and enables us to be willing to be recreated into our truest selves.


Willingness ultimately requires and causes a life changing spiritual enlightenment that occurs when a higher loving Presence enters our lives and gives us choices and not just options.

For complete article, click here: Willingness is the Key to Spiritual Enlightenment and Spiritual Healing

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Spiritual Healing and the Fourth Step -- Doing a Spiritual History

The Courage to Change May 4th
Recovery is a wonderful word. It means getting something back. Today I will try to remember that that something is me.

If a man happens to find himself ....he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

James Michener

Step Four: We made a searching and fearless

moral inventory of ourselves.

We have lost some very precious parts of oursel

ves – and without spiritual healing and recovery, we are still losing parts of ourselves.

1. People in our lives, under the influence of alcohol, and other mental illnesses, were absent, unavailable, distracted -- unpresent, and sometimes abusive – at least emotionally and verbally. The separation from others – the loss of conscious caring contact with others – subjected us to mental and emotional trauma. This affected our brains by programming us to be disconnected from our God, and ultimately from ourselves. We lost vital and special parts of our selves.

2. These lost selves became compartmentalized within our brains as separated pockets of pain, infection, and disease. The walls between my selves are burning hot, and freezing cold – and they are intended to allow me to survive without being flooded and overwhelmed by uncontrollable shame and pain.

3. In order to heal, we must reaccess these wounded abandoned selves, and allow healing conscious Presence to flow in their compartments. This process of spiritual healing begins with identifying people, and institutions that abandoned and abused us. What are being listed in this inventory are the people and events where there is still illness and infection, evidenced by the swelling and inflammation of resentment, and the sensitivity and self protectiveness of fear.

4. This is a moral inventory in two ways:

• This is a spiritual inventory of our separation from others, our selves and our God. Spirituality is the conscious contact we have with our God, which directly affects our conscious contact with our selves and others.
• Moral, as such, relates to anything that hurts or helps us. Anything we or others do that harms us is “wrong”. And this spiritual inventory is about making a written history of how we have been harmed so we can begin a process of spiritual healing.

5. In my experience, it is important to realize that this spiritual history is about what we experienced and perceived, whether it really happened or not. Perception is actually stronger than facts, and so what is listed does not have to be verified by some outside source.

6. There is a metaphor which I find very helpful in dealing with a Fourth Step Inventory:

• • When we go to a doctor’s office, he or she will normally have us complete a medical history so an accurate diagnosis and plan of treatment can be established. The medical history lists all major injuries, infections, and illnesses that a person has experienced – especially focusing on the symptoms of the medical problems.
• The “character defects” that become identified ultimately in this spiritual history are only the symptoms of the spiritual losses of conscious contact with our God.

7. Each person has a Level of Necessity which motivates him or her to do this spiritual history, and begin this process of spiritual healing. This “Level of Necessity” involves two factors:

• • First, we each have lost different parts and different amounts of ourselves – our levels of personal injury and woundedness will differ.
• • Second, we have each experienced and presently are experiencing the resulting pain of our injuries with different levels of consciousness. Each person experiences his or her own levels of conscious pain regarding the unpresent events of their past.

What is needed for doing Step 4 – our spiritual history?

Step One – We admitted we were powerless –

that our lives had become unmanageable.

First we need a conscious contact and experience of our selves – a conscious experience of our pain and fear.
1. Motivation – Without discomfort, there is no awareness of a problem, and no need for spiritual healing.
2. Direction – Conscious experience of our pain and fear tells us where our woundedness is, and allows us to monitor and review the progress of our spiritual healing.
3. Responsibility – We need an awareness that we did not cause, and we can’t control or cure “them” -- or ourselves. We have no choice or control over our injuries and diseases – perceptions, reactions, actions. Shame is the pain related to belief that we are responsible for our being harmed and ill, and this pain causes massive resistance to the process of spiritual healing.

Step Two and Three – We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to

the care of God as we understood Him.

Secondly, we need a conscious contact with the higher Presence of our God. Our illness is caused by unhealthy and inadequate levels of conscious intimate contact and Presence with our God.
1. We need to consciously experience our God’s unconditional acceptance and love in order to verify our shameless state of powerlessness, and personal unmanageability. This unconditional Presence is the Source of spiritual healing and restoration of lost selves.
2. As spiritual Presence flows into our hearts and minds, the resistance to completing the initial spiritual history begins to dissolve, and we experience a beginning of spiritual healing of our perceptions, reactions, and actions.
3. The action of spiritual surrender to our God’s care occurs with each word we record on our spiritual history.

Lastly, we need specific directions as to how to begin and continue our spiritual healing and history. For example:
1. A personal life story, preferably broken up into significant periods or events of our lives.
2. The Blueprint for Progress from Al-Anon literature is one of the best organized and thorough compilations of spiritual history questions. I have suggested that at least initially that persons pick out three to four most pertinent sections to work on, or three to four questions in each section.
3. AA has developed a very effective four column approach using resentment, fear, and “our part” to address specific people and events. Also, there are other related inventories such as sex. In the column. “our part”, we are looking at how we may have contributed to the harm done to us, and how the harm to ourselves resulted in our practicing harmful behaviors.
4. There are several other personal questionnaires and guides that also could be used as they seem to fit.

In conclusion, I would like us to be conscious of another factor related to the spiritual history aspect of spiritual healing:

The Courage to Change – September 11th

During the entire process of working on my Fourth Step (making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself), I felt nagging suspicion that I wasn’t doing it right. With my Higher Power’s help, I finally realized that the problem wasn’t that I had done my Fourth Step wrong; the fact was that I had same sense of inadequacy about my whole life. Whatever I’m doing, I’m inclined to feel that I’m doing it wrong, that my best is not good enough. And that is simply not true. I am doing just fine.

I have done three extensive Fourth Steps, and the second and third revealed major holes in the spiritual history done before. They were all “perfect” – they were all the best that I could do at the time. And I continue – even today – to hear, write, and remember more.

This step and spiritual history is a major part of a process of spiritual healing that will continue, I believe, as long as I am alive. Spiritual healing is the experience of a better present by changing the experience and healing woundedness of our past. We can't change the details of our pasts, but our God can change the perceptiona of our past -- which is what the past really is anyway.

Related Inspirational Life Quotes

Isn’t it exasperating to go to the grocery for an item, only to find the shelf empty? Fortunately grocers can correct that situation by taking inventory to learn which shelves need replenishment.
The Courage to Change.

We all wish good things to happen to us, but we cannot just pray and then sit down and expect miracles to happen. We must back up our prayers with action.
Freedom from Despair

Before sunlight can shine through a window, the blinds must be raised.
American Proverb

All progress must grow from a seed of self-appreciation...
The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage

As I worked my way through Step Four, I listed my character traits as honestly as I could. I was struck by a great irony: Many things I had once thought of as virtues – taking care of everyone around me, worrying about other people’s lives sacrificing my own happiness and prosperity – turned out to be the causes of my misery.
The Courage of To Change November 28th