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

Twelve Step Classes Beginning March 28th and April 11th

I am giving information about Alanon related groups that will beginning soon at the Token III Club (Louisville, KY). If you are interested in any of the following please feel free to read the rest of the information and/or respond. All are free and open to all interested in improving their practice of Alanon/Twelve Step principles in their lives and relationships.
1. Spiritual Maintenance Group – Steps 1,2,3 &10, 11&12. (Beginning with an organizational meeting Sunday, March 28thst , and classes starting April 11th, both 3-4:30, lasting for 4-6 weeks)
2. Fourth Step Group (to begin after Spiritual Maintenance Group ends, or at another time and date if enough interest, and if another day and time can be determined that is acceptable to the group. Please note in emails other days/nights and times that may fit your schedule)
3. Ongoing Spiritual Maintenance Group (Thursday’s, 3:00 – 4:30 pm)
4. Other groups to be determined based on interest and available dates and times, for example:
• Eighth and Ninth Step Group
• The Alanon Grief and Loss Book
• Other Alanon and Twelve Steps principles, and literature.
• Other Alanon and Twelve Step life issues.

If you are interested in any of the above, please email me at wwass12@aol.com or call 499-0581. More information is provided below.

Thanks, Will



More Information:
For over a year, we have had two groups studying the Alanon Twelve Steps at the Token III Club. From these groups, some new groups and studies will beginning soon.

Sunday, 3-4:30pm:
After completing going through the steps, this group took a break for the holidays and will be resuming Sunday, March 28th /April 11th from 3:00 to 4:30 pm, . The chosen topic is Spiritual Maintenance: Practicing These Principles in All our Affairs. The group will last 4 to 6 weeks, and will focus on understanding, integrating, and practicing Steps 1,2,3, and 10, 11, and 12. The intent is:
1. To understand and experience principles of powerlessness and unmanageability.
2. To experience and practice a growing conscious contact with our higher power that is restoring us to sanity and emotional balance.
3. To develop a personal spiritual action plan for consistently practicing and living the Alanon principles.
4. To potentially provide ongoing weekly spiritual support groups for the daily practice of the Alanon steps and principles “in all our affairs”.

The group room in the back of the Token Club can hold an approximate maximum of 15 people comfortably, so the initial group will be limited to around that number. Please email me (wwass12@aol.com) or call me (499-0581) if you or someone you know is interested.

When this group is complete, there will be a Fourth Step Group starting at the same time and day of the week. Or if there is enough interest, the Token Club is available on Thursdays from 1:30 to 3:00. Also, if you are interested in an evening time, please note nights and times you would be available in your email or call.

The Fourth Step Group will last approximately six weeks, and will focus on the standard four column inventory, and the Alanon Blue Print for Progress.

Also, being considered is an Eighth and Ninth Step Group, which will depend on level of interest.

Second Group: Thursdays from 3-4:30 pm:
After completing once through the steps, this group has become an ongoing spiritual support group, and focusing practicing the Alanon steps and principles regarding current personal life issues of the group member. This group may have a review and spiritual training, as described with the first group above, if there is sufficient interest. For the present, it is continuing to focus on personal spiritual maintenance issues, and ALL ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND.

It is recommended that persons who have never attended either of the first two step groups might first consider attending the first couple of sessions of the Spiritual Maintenance Group (Sundays) in order to better understand the Thursday Group format. Although rooted in Alanon steps and principles, the format is considerably more in depth than regular meetings.

Other days and times, and the main room at the club can be made available if there is adequate interest. Also, other Alanon topics can become available, depending on interest. (for example, Step 11 -- prayer and meditation, and discovering God’s will for our lives, and the new excellent Alanon grief and loss book).

Although these groups use the Alanon steps, principles, and literature, they are not official or registered Alanon meetings. They are intended to provide extra outside help with understanding and practicing personally Alanon principles. All persons who are interested in improving their use of Alanon steps with any area or problem of their lives – or are merely curious -- are welcome.

There is no cost for the group. Contributions will be received and given to the Club for the use of the room. Workbooks and literature may be purchased if desired.

Again, if you or someone you know is interested in any of the above and/or have questions, please email me at wwass12@aol.com or call me at 499-0581.

Thanks, Will W.

Becoming The Child Through Twelve Step Recovery

The child is the almost universal symbol for the soul’s transformation. The child is whole – not yet divided....When we would heal the mind...we ask the child to speak to us.

Susan Griffin

Many years ago, I went through some major inner child healing work as part of my spiritual recovery. In my journaling and meditation, I realized and experienced that past traumas of abandonment and abuse had triggered divisions within my inner child self, and I was cracked and fragmented.

As I began to practice and live the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps with these inner child selves, they became more and more present and loved by my God – Mom and Dad. As they began to live and breathe again in my conscious experience of my selves and Mom and Dad’s unconditional Presence -- they began to interact and share and heal. I experienced their reintegrating, their being restored to active consciousness, and their becoming increasing whole and alive.

Today, they appear reborn into a new and stable fluid child self, who responds and experiences and loves naturally and intuitively – a very present heart self.

Other separations still exists as adult selves. And as I am practicing spiritual principles of Presence, they are continuing their paths of returning “home” to my deepest and purest child self.

I experience today that I am not an adult – I have several isolated adult selves – and all of these adult selves are artificial selves that my brain created in order to protect me from the suffering of abandonment, separation, and abuse. I am being reborn within each moment – being restored with each breath – to the child my Parent-God originally gave birth to – within the wombs of their hearts.

Recovery does not mean that I have to become a different person. It means I need to start being myself again...

There is innocence within me that already knows how to trust my Higher Power, to cherish life while holding it lightly, to live fully and simply in the present moment. I will allow that part of myself to come forward and nourish me as I continue on this journey.

The Courage to Change

It takes one a long time to become young.

Pablo Picasso

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The Myth of Santa God -- Step One and Higher Power

Bill W. from Alcoholics Anonymous
Some of us have been violently anti-religious. To others, the word “God” brought up a particular idea of Him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood...
We looked upon this world of warring individuals, warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity, with deep skepticism.

Today, I attended two spiritual support meetings for alcoholics – and I listened.

The first meeting discussed Step 2 of the Twelve Steps, and the word “God”. Step Two says, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

As I listened, I remembered as a child being taught to believe in Santa Claus – paralleled by being taught to believe in God. Santa rewarded good little boys and girls for good behavior all year long – “you reap what you sow.” Santa kept a list, and checked it twice, going to find out who has been naughty or nice – kind of like eventually everyone will stand before God at the white throne judgment to give an account of all their “sins”. And you write a letter to Santa telling him what you wanted – “if you ask anything in faith believing, God will give it to you.”

Interesting and amazing parallels of mythology.

Fortunately it only took nine or ten years to demythologize Santa. Unfortunately, it took another twenty five years, and major helpless and hopeless depression and alcoholism before I could demythologize “God”. Santa God was my last remaining hope that someday I would stop hurting – if I could just find out his “will” – rules and demands – and then I would choose to meet them. Without Santa God, I was not waiting a year to get what I “wanted” – but an eternity.

In my hopeless and helpless state of mind and heart, I was brought to a fork in the road of my life. I would continue my useless myth of “God”, or I would risk a different course and direction. I would have to consciously face my endless shame and dread of impending doom – the expectation of getting what I believed I deserved -- or trying again – over and over – to be “good enough”.

I realize now, over twenty years later, that the lie that kept the myth of God alive was the lie of “free will”. Religion traditionally has needed a “hell”, and a punishment for ‘sin” in order to operate. And consequently, it has needed “free will” and choice to justify and defend its judgment and condemnation. If a person has no choice, he or she cannot technically be held responsible. (Actually, having no choice or free will does not take away consequences only “eternal damnation” and abandonment.)

The fork in the road was between continuing to believe the religious myth of God, and moving into intimate conscious Presence with a Higher Power or spirituality. The fork was Step One of the Twelve Steps:
"We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable."

In my experience, I “turned” when I experienced, admitted, and accepted that I was powerless over my perceptions, reactions, and actions – I do not have – alone – any will or power to choose my attitudes or behavior. I had to consciously experience my desperate and helpless hopelessness to change, and to be empowered to act in my own best interests. My conscious and willing experience of my wretched pain opened my heart, and with the help of others, I experienced an intimacy beyond mental thought and reasoning, that began changing my perceptions, reactions and actions. Bathed in Their intimate Presence, I began to heal. And my life began to become a better and better place.

Today, we (Mom, Dad and me) seem to be as intimate and close as my level of conscious experience of my powerlessness. The myths disappear – and in my heart I can be what is real – their unconditionally beloved son.

Bill W. from Alcoholics Anonymous.
Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.
Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.....As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His Presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter. We were REBORN.

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Twelve Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations And Spiritual Enlightenment: Part Two

Introduction
My life is the product of my level of spiritual enlightenment, created and maintained by a steady diet of daily inspirations, and supported by spiritual coaching. In maintaining my spiritual life, I need spiritual principles – living guidelines – which direct and fashion my spiritual journey toward the spiritual enlightenment I am seeking. This is an introduction to these spiritual principles.

(These spiritual principles were adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous using my experience, strength, hope, and daily inspirations)

First Spiritual Principle: We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Our species is addicted to living, and therefore to outcomes that seem to determine our survival -- existence and comfort – we are addicted to Control and Outcomes. With control of outcomes being a major life task of humans, we begin to believe that we are responsible for all outcomes. Such beliefs are encouraged by the following myths:
1. “You can be or do anything you want, if you put your mind to it, and if you try hard enough.”
2. “A person is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be” (attributed to Abraham Lincoln).
3. Everyone’s ultimate success is determined by his or her “choices”.

Shame begins as we judge and evaluate ourselves by these myths.

Many will struggle with this concept in specific situations, which will be addressed later. For now, let’s follow a simple course of consideration: Our perceptions and reactions to life ultimately determine the quality of our lives – not the specific events and outcomes of life. Research has shown that the major perceptual filters of our brain are actually controlled by a primitive part of our brain that does not operate in thought, facts, reasoning, or judgment. It operates simply in neural impulses.

So when my brain perceives a person, thing, or situation, the major filters that the sensations go through are unconscious to my thinking brain. Therefore, my “happiness” or “success” is not based on reality or fact, but on the unconscious programming that was created either genetically, and/or by prior life experiences stored as suppressed neural energy within the brain.

We are powerless over our mental perceptions and over our emotional reactions and therefore the experience of our lives is unmanageable. Spiritual enlightenment requires that we start here and move forward with finding daily inspirations that begins to address our powerlessness.

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