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Post Info TOPIC: Translating the 12 steps into .. real life
sius


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Translating the 12 steps into .. real life
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I am actually writing this for my non computer friend!  Let me start out by saying he is agnostic so has trouble with some of the steps and translating the "god" and "higher power" into real life.  He is asking me to ask others how they interpret and use steps 3, 6, 7, 11 and 12 (and the god part of 5) in.. everyday life.   He feels he already practices and has a good grasp on the other steps.   Any comments would be helpful.


Edit, I just saw the steps board, I will ask there.

-- Edited by sius on Saturday 5th of February 2011 01:56:54 PM

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mikef


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Hello SIUS...WELCOME,,HAS YOUR FRIEND READ WE AGNOSTICS' IN THE bIG bOOK?3RD EDITION PG 44-57...Says  IT PRETTY WELL.Keep coming back ,nice meeting you!smile

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Klaatu


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Not sure what kind of response your going to get. Sounds to me like your asking us for "our" version of the steps? The steps work exactly the way they are. It took me 5 years of doing the steps my way, or changing them to suit me before I got sober. Why did I finally get sober? Because I followed the steps, word for word, line for line, exactly the way they are laid out in the BB. So here's the version I use daily...

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


Brian


-- Edited by Klaatu on Saturday 5th of February 2011 05:49:25 PM

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LinBaba


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Klaatu wrote:

Not sure what kind of response your going to get. Sounds to me like your asking us for "our" version of the steps? The steps work exactly the way they are. It took me 5 years of doing the steps my way, or changing them to suit me before I got sober. Why did I finally get sober? Because I followed the steps, word for word, line for line, exactly the way they are laid out in the BB. So here's the version I use daily...


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


Brian


-- Edited by Klaatu on Saturday 5th of February 2011 05:49:25 PM

 



In addition, strangely enough the first 164 pages of The "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous is actually a "textbook" which describes precisely how to work each step, the folks who work the steps successfully do so with the aid of a teacher, someone who has worked the steps with someone who has worked the steps straight out of that book, we call them sponsors in AA, and they are easy to acquire, just go to a meeting, raise your hand, and ask for a sponsor

when someone approaches you after the meeting that seems competent, they will ask "are you willing to go to any length?"

answer yes and then do so

The steps are something we do, not something we study per se, until after we have done them a few times, they are simple, and the instructions are laid out step by step, line by line

Click me

Step 3 for agnostics click me

Those links I put in are how I happen to work the steps, they are no substitute for working the steps themselves, if he has further questions about working the steps without a deity after reading "We Agnostics" in the Big Book feel free to PM me, I am no substitute for a face to face sponsor but I can explain at least how the steps can be done without having to have a Christian Deity

 



-- Edited by LinBaba on Saturday 5th of February 2011 06:05:03 PM

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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Aquaman


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Yielding to s Higher Power becomes a lot easier for those of us who lived our lives in atheism when
1) We realize that whatever we were doing at the helm of our own destiny wasn't working &
2) Faith in Higher powers has comforted and sustained the human condition for millennia. What makes me so f&%ing special?

Easy as falling off an ivory tower.

Peace,
Rob


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gladlee


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I'm coming in a bit late on this here, but I am still so struck by the title of this post... "real life."

I don't understand atheism perhaps because I was raised with a religious tradition. When I came into program though, I definitely had to reinvent my HP, the one I had was waay too "parental"... and since my parents were never there for me... you get the idea.

Today, I am so easily reminded of HP by considering the miracle of my own body... which is so full of divine intelligence, I just don't know how anyone doesn't "get it." Can I control my breathing? Do I have any control over my circulatory system? I accidentally cut my hand on a knife this week, I was thinking how intelligent it is, the platelets in the blood will form a clot and close the wound for me and white blood cells immediately rush in to destroy anything harmful that may have entered the wound... to protect me!!! It's beautiful. All the systems in the body are nothing less than a miracle. And, it works on its own, without help from me, quietly doing its thing.... keeping me alive.

I just came from a meeting, we had someone celebrating 30 days. She spoke about being in the ER 30 days ago, how it never occurred to her to ask God for help. I sat in quiet gratitude because what I see .... God was there. God didn't need to be asked. To me, God *is* life......... Real Life. Life seems to love me, despite all the ways I have taken it for granted, all the abuse I put my body through.

What I have come to believe..... I cannot be separated from Higher Power. It is impossible. However... I can deny it.

If I struggle with making conscious contact, (I've been taught to back up to step 10 to see my part.... My part is....) I am just not ALLOWING it. It's always there, whether I believe, or not.

I'm probably off-topic, but... just had to share.



-- Edited by gladlee on Sunday 6th of February 2011 02:09:14 PM

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billyjack


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A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein)

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)





This is a link to the Big Book of AA " WE Agnostics " chapter
http://www.whytehouse.com/big_book_search/aspbook/ch4p44.asp 



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