Step Nine

Made amends to all persons we had harmed, except when to do so would injure them or others. 

source: www.charlieglickman.com

The daunting part of finishing the drastic self-appraisal in Step Eight’s list of persons we have harmed is that the list is useless to us unless we do something with it. What we do with it is repair the damage we have done in the past, otherwise known as Step Nine. 

AA literature advises this step calls for good judgement, a careful sense of timing, and prudence; a crucial differentiation for me here is that what I have always thought of as ‘good’ may not necessarily be so. Good judgement isn’t any good when it is based on ancient fallacious impressions. To assume a universal standard of right and wrong, good and evil, is camping on the same treacherous territory of mind that led me to drink in the first instance; this place in the mindscape has a name: Denial. 

Making amends means taking appropriate action. An action is appropriate when it feels right. For something to feel right it should be free of appeasement, manipulation, and self-righteousness. Thus, amends that are done with proper intention, and when the time feels right, will always feel good to me. 

Coming out of denial means moving away from what I think others think is right and moving into what I know is right for me in my gut. In practical terms, this could translate as not worrying about the perceptions of others vis-a-vis my behaviour, but focusing instead on where I feel I have violated my own ethics. I know I have done wrong when I feel I have done wrong. 

The problem is, I’m not feeling much of anything until I have journeyed through Steps One through Eight honestly and to the best of my ability, which has the accumulative effect of installing an internal bullcrap detector.  Getting this intuitive gear working is a necessary part of putting my life in order and being of maximum service. Being of service, I understand, is not synonymous with people-pleasing or martyrdom. 

Service is cleaving to our true and highest selves to find our right place in the world. 

Our literature does advise us, when approaching ‘the man we hated’, to take the bit in our teeth. This is strong imagery, suggesting not only to bite down, but to do so in an effort to swallow the information our internal guidance system (our feelings) is feeding us, no matter how much it makes us froth at the mouth. 

But this is absurd. I cannot make any sort of amends to a person with whom I am enraged, because no matter what my words express, my energy will be coloured with rage and possibly hatred. So my amend, in denial of these feelings, becomes toxic for both myself and the ‘the man I hated.’ While we are most accustomed to living principally in our physical reality, using our words and our bodies, most of our communication is actually energetic. This is difficult to perceive for some at first because we have been taught for so long and so convincingly to ignore or dismiss other dimensions of experience. 

However, just as I am usually able to tell when someone is being phony with me, or trying to manipulate me, I have to assume that others are capable of sensing this when it happens to them.

So: if I am approaching a prospective amend with the proverbial bit clenched between my teeth, I am essentially trying to choke down my true feelings in order to express a tactful and polite admission of my own faults. These words, if coming from a place stained with lovelessness or hatred, are useless and effectively contradict the very wording of this step. 

So first I need to move my anger, my rage, my hatred, since denying it doesn’t get rid of it. Forgiveness is an essential part of these steps, but it is a two part process. The dictionary defines forgive as to cease to feel resentment against and to give up resentment of or claim requital for an insult. The act of forgiveness thus needs the inward movement of letting go before the outward relinquishing of some energetic debt. If I fail to do the first part, my forgiveness is only hollow acting. 

I must move any anger and fear that comes up, and I must do so in a place that feels safe. For me, moving it vocally, with sound—and not necessarily words—is the best way to release from a gut or feeling level. These feelings such as fear, grief, rage and anxiety, as uncomfortable as they may be, must be honoured, not vilified. Fear of my own feelings is the very thing that made drinking seem so attractive in the first instance, because it gave me a brief respite from feeling my feelings or needing to be on guard against them. 

Isn’t it odd? I almost drank myself to death, essentially to avoid feeling my own feelings! 

Why would I choke them down now or dismiss them in the name of forgiveness? This is only window-dressing for my soul. Which is inevitably futile; my denials will always catch up with me in some reflection or other.

I need to resolve my feelings in my own heart, accepting them all authentically, no matter how infuriating or terrifying they are. This is what I have been preparing for throughout the first eight steps, and it is no coincidence that this is where the promises are listed in the Big Book: Step Nine is a watershed, because it shows me I must make amends to myself for holding on to limited ideas about myself, the world I live in, and the nature of reality. 

At this point I am naturally becoming attuned to what feels right for me rather than what others tell me is right for me, or my perception of what others would likely believe what is right for me. Nobody lives in my body with my chemistry and my life experiences, so here too, after I’ve waded through the swamplands of the soul, I need to recognize the importance of making choices again. Before, my chooser was broken. It still may go on the fritz from time to time, as it can still be buggy. But it is mine, and I am only going to make it stronger and more reliable by using it, then surveying the outcomes of my choices—which is in effect Step Ten. 

Harmony is the overarching principle at play here, and Step Nine is the midpoint to achieving that—harmony with family, friends, workmates and the community of people around us every day.  It starts with finding some aspect of harmony within. 

Step Nine is where we transmute our stated intentions into concrete facts. The two spiritual axioms that underpin harmony are (1) trying to forgive anybody before I forgive myself will lead to empty words, and (2) I can’t have love for anyone else unless I have love for myself.

When I feel this, I can proceed. When I have this, it matters not what reaction I get from others as long as my intentions towards making the amend are clean. If I am releasing shame, allowing toxic bubbles of guilt to rise to the surface and break free of me, I am coming more and more into alignment. I begin to unify what I believe with who I truly am. This brings me into harmony with myself, and eventually with others. 

Step Eight

Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step Eight is about getting real with the consequences of the way I have lived, and comprises an undertaking—a physical list, not some nebulous blob of names in my head—that has healing of relationships with others as its goal. Presumably this means means that I have already done a significant amount of healing within when I embark upon this list. I have to get the balance of my relationship to Self healed before I can hope to engage in real healing with others.

Healing my relationships with others doesn’t translate as making everybody happy with me. If I think of my relationships as concentric circles moving away from me, healing means being authentic enough to allow everyone to move to their right place with respect to me, and vice versa. 

In early white-knuckle recovery, when I wasn’t interested in AA any more than I was interested in church, somebody handed me a pamphlet with the 12 Steps written on it. I breezed through them: nope, nope, ha!, not doing that, no thanks, whatever, as if!...hey, oh ya, maybe—

Step Eight caught my eye, or actually Step Nine did, because it seemed to offer a valid excuse to call up an ex-girlfriend. And possibly get lucky! So, without a single meeting under my belt and no exposure to the Steps or a sponsor, I called up Ms. X to explain to her how I’d reformed my ways and hinted how she was, through my amend, lucky enough to have another shot at me. 

I don’t think we need to tell the rest of that story to surmise that acting in ignorance and without awareness of why I made the decisions I made, my attempt at an amend was likely more harm than good—for both of us.

Months later, after having gone through the rest of the Steps, Ms. X came up again in Step Eight, and my sponsor at the time suggested that the best way I could make amends to this woman in particular is to just stay out of her life completely. That was harsh to hear, and more painful to come to understand as truth. 

Sometimes our relationships may seem so broken that it’s difficult to know where to begin; I need to start by reviewing what I have learned so far in the Steps. I have to get it through my head that I am not now in the business of persuading anybody to buy into my newly minted spiritual worth. 

I am here to get authentic. 

When I reach Step Eight, I should have an emerging understanding that the resentments I am holding are often a reflection of what i am denying in myself. Now I have to shine this spotlight of experiential wisdom on all the relationships I have or have had. 

Let’s not pretend that I am responsible for saving or healing anyone other than myself. Yes, I have a Higher Power, but God isn’t going to sort through my feelings for me. However, and this is the ongoing miracle of recovery, my own healing will indirectly provide the help necessary for those willing to receive it. Trying to force healing is as damaging as some of the behaviours I used when I was still drinking.

I can’t get anywhere with this stuff until I accept that I am worthy of healing—and we all are, though it may require some significant trauma reduction work to understand this. 

I also must have a genuine intent to heal.

This is a sticky wicket, especially with years of practice in justification, rationalization and denial. If I simply say I have intent to heal but continue manipulating others by playing the role of denial, then I cannot heal. I can stick around in the rooms for years whining and pointing fingers, but this doesn’t mean I have ever actually moved into the belly of the whale that is the recovery journey, what Joseph Campbell has called The Hero’s Journey. 

When I have a genuine intent to heal, I must recognize that others have the same spiritual rights that I am claiming for myself. 

How am I supposed to deal effectively with raging resentments and heaps of fear when everyone is telling me, at times rather smugly, to clear my side of the street? Sooner or later I’m going to have to deal with the fetid mess in the sewer on my side of the street. This is exactly what I’ve been trying to clear out in Steps Four, Five, Six and Seven—why would I want to dump more garbage in it now by pretending to ignore my resentments, as if there is a magic sober wand that makes my feelings about the other side of the street simply vanish? In truth, it is not simple. It is precarious work, releasing emotions without damaging others or myself. It’s far more effective than denying them.

I had to find ways to deal with resentment, and these ways are multifarious: acting it out with a trusted ally, writing a letter and then burning it, yelling at the top of a mountain, screaming in the belly of a cave. Whatever way I choose—and the best ways come from my own intuition—it is helpful if it can be witnessed by a trusted ally.

I have to get my relationships with myself and my Higher Power as right as possible. And here is a good opportunity to express some of the rage I am holding against  what some call God for these feelings of being terrorized, abandoned, ignored, mistreated, or misunderstood. We each have our own version of the less-than-nurturing aspects of our own existence, and some rage about them. God can take it. 

This isn’t about blame; it’s about release, and release clears the lines of communication to let in more light. Unreleased anger and fear cut me off from others and from myself.  

One of the tricks of false spirituality that I subscribed to for a long time is the notion that either I am operating out of fear or I am operating out of love. Only recently have I discovered how this erroneous premise leads me further into denial by pressuring the fear I’m holding to hide itself under a veneer of centered bliss, or to fragment itself outside of me. Whatever I deny, I’ll eventually have to face in the reflections that come back to me. 

The answer for me is to accept terror and rage as part of love. If I don’t, part of me is outside of love, and that cannot be. As soon as I accept my feelings and allow them to move, something else gets released, one of the most toxic elements to humanity: guilt. 

At my first AA meeting some young punk had a Screw Guilt badge pinned to his jean jacket. It has taken me over a decade to fully understand this simple message: Guilt is never true. 

I can allow that everything has its place without needing to understand how or why; who’s to say I’m not a reflection of Divine fear or Divine anger? A preposterous notion for most, but even the smallest meditation on this prospect leads me further into the appreciation of how truly very little I cognitively understand. 

If guilt isn’t true, and Step eight is about relationships, I need to explore the limitations on intimacy, connection, and sexuality that I’ve learned and rehearsed during my time on this planet in this body. I’m looking for a sane perspective on relationships and a reasonable comprehension of where I stand in relation to others. 

This can’t be clear until I have an honest perspective on where I stand with myself and with God, Source, the Ultimate Reality. 

To glean the granular details about the beliefs I am holding, I’ll likely have to comb through my Step Four to review the recurring patterns in my behaviour and my life. 

One of the most important understandings I can have here is that while it is useful to have a sponsor as a sounding board, I am not evaluating harm in terms of someone else’s perspective, but on my current, active and most informed beliefs about how to treat another human in an honest and spiritually authentic way—not based on perceived slights that others may wish to hold over me. 

It is notable that being truly authentic is sometimes the opposite of conventional notions of what it means to be polite. 

This is precarious ground, because my own denials might wish to convince me that I am not in the wrong when in fact I have done harm. I can’t engage in ‘purposeful forgetting’ when attempting a ‘deep and honest search of motives and actions.’ 

I’ve heard a lot in AA that my instincts are garbage, and that I shouldn’t trust my own feelings, my feelings aren’t facts, and that they are just going to get me drunk. This is true on the one hand, if I’m having the feeling that a single malt scotch wouldn’t be a bad idea to enhance my research on recovery. 

On the other hand, there has to be some trust in my intuition as my own will comes into alignment with Divine will.  

As nobody else lives in my body with my history and my chemistry, nobody should be given the power to tell me what to do or how to feel here. My sponsor—if I have an honest one, not one interested in supporting his own beliefs my making me parrot them—can offer a helpful reflection here. 

I need to do much inner work and release to gain the perspective necessary to understand the nature of my relationships. This is what the Steps leading up to number Eight have been all about.  Then I can examine the relationships I have and have had, starting with the circle closest to me, and moving outward, applying the new perspective I carry to my actions vis-à-vis these relationships of my turbid past. 

The formation and substance of my Step Eight List will shift every time I gain a new insight. As Ghandi said, I must be dedicated to truth, not to consistency. 

This process is potentially painful, but ultimately proves to be an edifying and uplifting one. 

Where have I been an energy vampire? Where have I enabled others to use me as a doormat in order to get the benefit I feel from playing the victim? I need to have a clear understanding, an intuitive knowing, about which releases of anger and fear are cleansing and which are damaging. I also need to define what selfishness means to me, and whether or not I am going to subscribe to a general, vague interpretation of it, which often gets misconstrued and remedied with the erroneously harmful act of putting the needs of others above my own. 

This is playing the martyr, a passive type of victimhood that kills the very thing it is attempting to uplift and protect. 

More and more, the understanding is that I need to stop treating my physical body as a rented vehicle, and treating my emotional body and will as a whipping boy to conform to the ideals of ‘Spirit’. It is all one package that must find its balance in the Heart. 

Step Eight, if done with right intention, can go a long way to accomplishing this, and lifting the veil on a whole new way of living, which has been called the beginning of the end of isolation from others and from God. 

I would also add: from Ourselves. 

Step Seven

Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out that humility is much different than humiliation. Humiliation was the shame I felt from the degradation of my life circumstances that led me to the recognition of my need to do something about my life. Eventually, in the face of so much humiliation, it was extremely difficult not to admit my powerlessness. 

Humility is different, and is defined by the wisdom of honest experience, and the acceptance of this experience. The big book calls it being ‘right-sized;’ I think of it in terms of seeing things as what they really are, not as I wish them to be and not as I fear them to be. Humility is the experiential truth of my daily reality.

Before I can ask God to remove my shortcomings in Step Seven, I have to admit to them, and to admit to them I must be able to recognize them. This recognition of my own character defects demands the ability to see my inventory unadorned; it demands humility.

I have learned that it is possible for me to trick myself into thinking I am humble when I am anything but. For instance, I used to feel I was filled with anger;  I admitted freely to my anger, and shared openly about this character defect. I was probably on the right track at times, but at other times I had fear about how others perceived me, and I would deny this fear, even to myself, because I also have guilt about caring so much about what other people think. That’s how things get really screwy, because then I ended up sharing ‘honestly’ about my anger, falsely claiming the humility to do so, when really what I was doing was bragging about being a tough guy with a short fuse. 

Then there was a shift. As I did more work on the steps and spent more time breathing sober air, I saw the frequent connections between my anger and something else. What was it? I looked and I looked and eventually figured out a way to make myself feel it: FEAR.

I’d made a great discovery: fear is at the heart of my anger! A selfish, brooding, shame-based brand of fear. I ran to my sponsor with the news, explaining that I’d figured something out that would be of great benefit not only to AA but to humanity. My time had finally come. I had always known my brilliance would one day erupt and pour forth upon the miserable masses.

My sponsor laughed and had me read page 62 of the Big Book: “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.”

I was deflated at first. My great discovery was written in a book that was printed decades ago. But my mood brightened when I realized that I had discovered this truth. It didn’t matter how many times it had been discovered before, or how many times I’d already read that paragraph without registering its true meaning. I now had experiential knowledge of it, which is true knowledge. 

This was the beginning of my sojourn into real humility, a journey which is ongoing. But still I didn’t have the whole truth, because I immediately began pronouncing that all my anger was fear masquerading as something else. For years I considered that I had pierced the nature of my own denial when I was actively living in it. It turns out that anger can be rooted in a sense of injustice as well as fear. It can be rooted in passion. It can be rooted in old rage and hatred that my psyche and my body so desperately need to move and release, but which I denied for years, decades, perhaps lifetimes as I have been taught that anger and rage and hatred is evil. I now know this to be rubbish. Acting on anger or hatred or rage in a way that is harmful to myself or others isn’t going to help anybody, but acknowledging that these emotions are natural, and that they have been denied, and demand release—often vocally, with sound. I personally like to scream from hilltops or play the drums and shout until I am hoarse. Rage and Terror are encompassed within spirituality: knowing this is a necessary step towards real cleansing and genuine humility. With authentic humility I understand that all feelings are appropriate and valid. 

Ignorance of my true feelings’ ties to guilt and denial is at the root of the inappropriate and harmful behaviours I exhibit. Fundamentally, the denial of my feelings and the need to express them safely is part of the original cause which led to my addiction. 

It’s impossible to ask for my character defects to be lifted from me until I know their essential nature. Knowing them is seeing them as they truly are, i.e. seeing them with humility. 

We need to acknowledge the Source from which we come. We need to acknowledge who and what we truly are. To negate the darker feelings that are in us through denying them, only makes them stronger and come out sideways; to suppress them or ignore them or shun them in any way, particularly in the name of recovery, is only setting us up for potentially catastrophic outcomes in future reflections of this denial. 

There is no avoiding what we are carrying. We might as well get real with it sooner rather than later.

I am building a home for myself in recovery, as such, I need to be centered in my body, and it is my awareness that determines the quality of my foundation. I can either be thorough about the true nature of my habit patterns and their impact on me and others, or I can pretend to do the work, merely rearranging the surface of the problem while claiming humility and yet continually denying my heart, and my guts, their say in this left-brain driven maniacal world. 

Step Seven, for me, is about getting creative, getting intuitive, and realizing that Love is what’s left when I let go of everything I don’t need. In this state I am independent of my shortcomings, and can put them outside of myself at least long enough to see them objectively and ask that they be removed. And yet I can cultivate at the very same time an abiding compassion for myself in the form of unconditional self-acceptance. Herein lies my need that I copped to already in the very first step: lack of Power. I must draw on source and find gratitude for having the willingness to do so, while still seeing that there may be some niggling doubt, objection, fear, or rage about this incessant dependence. 

In the bud of awareness of this dependence blooms the reality of my newly functional state of interdependence: life, including recovery, is done neither by myself alone nor done without my active involvement.

Denial and guilt can double-team me if I am not connected to Source. Together they weave the blanket of obfuscation that prevents me from seeing the genesis of my suffering. 

I believe that this is how so many people who claim to be in recovery are beset by other behavioural (porn, sex, gambling, internet, TV, playing the victim) or chemical (nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fatty foods, pills, anti-depressants) addictions in an effort to quell the discomfort and pain that denial causes. 

The blanket weaved by denial and guilt is reinforced with the thread of resistance. When I attempt to probe my own mind through meditation, I can often be filled with doubt—doubt about my own abilities, the technique of meditation I am using, meditation in general, AA or recovery as a whole. Sometimes I can skip doubt altogether and move right into unconsciousness. There are periods where every attempt at meditation seems to instantly bring torpor. When trying to find humility, my habit patterns react and make me, literally, go back to sleep. Other times I become hyperactive: one moment I am sitting on my meditation cushion watching my breath, and suddenly—what happened?—I am updating facebook or wiping my kitchen countertop. How did I get here? This is resistance, a desperate kick from within to keep me stagnant in the rut of my familiar patterns. 

Most times it is difficult to rationally understand what is fear and what is anger, and where guilt, shame, denial, aversion and craving fit in. It’s not a rational process. It is a feeling process. We cannot think our way through to humility. 

When I am hungry, I should eat, and eat food that is high in vibration. When I am tired, I should take rest. Similarly, when my Will wants to move and release old stuff, I should allow Her to do this without judgement of what it looks like. Sometimes it gets a bit messy in recovery before things start looking cleaner. The Will has been beaten into submission by our systems of education, economy, and politics. Even in AA, we often hear that our own will is garbage and needs to be shunned. 

Bollocks. The Will needs to be felt, acknowledged, and released in order to align with Divine Will. In fact, the two are one and the same. 

One part is just lost.

Step Six

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

The more I involve myself with the Steps, the deeper I understand that each one is a practice, not a finite event. It is the practice that whets against the edges of insight, honing it. As insight grows sharper, it is able to cut deeper into ignorance and open space for more profound humility and a deeper peace. But first, I must practice. 

Part of removing ignorance is removing denial. 

denial |diˈnīəl|, from Apple dictionary:

noun

the action of declaring something to be untrue: she shook her head in denial .

• the refusal of something requested or desired: the denial of insurance to people with certain medical conditions.

• a statement that something is not true: official denials | his denial that he was having an affair.

• Psychology failure to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion or to admit it into consciousness, used as a defense mechanism: you're living in denial .

• short for self-denial.

• disavowal of a person as one's leader.

Denial, as it applies to our lives as humans on this planet, is essentially the disavowal or failure to acknowledge some truth that appears unacceptable to either our psyche or to social norms. Denial has a strong presence in most alcoholics because we need it in order to go on hurting ourselves and others in order to continue consuming vast quantities of the substance that is killing us. In the most blunt example, we are in denial of our own disease until we decide that we are in recovery and we need help.

Yet there are multiple layers of denial, and they grow subtler and subtler in turn. I cannot ask for any character defect to be removed if I don’t do the work of recognizing it; to see my character defects, I need to release denial, and to do this I must cultivate humility. With humility I can see things as they truly are, and how shame and guilt have been blocking me from the abundant reality that I inherently understand to be my birthright.

I have learned that I mustn’t turn my back on shame and guilt. I need to feel these things, and all the rage, pain, fear and sadness that accompany them—but I need to feel this without judgment of myself or others. At first this seems like an impossible task; we may be trying to do this while we are still severely wounded. Whatever emotions come up, they need to be accepted, not pushed away or denied further. This is a challenge for me, because when I was younger some emotions, particularly anger, were unacceptable. This creates a lasting impression on my psyche, and it is sometimes difficult to convince myself that feeling my anger is safe and in fact very helpful. Feeling these things releases them.

I used to drink, I can see now, as a way of not feeling, when in fact the feelings I feared would have been the easiest path to freedom. There’s no way of realizing this other than by experiencing it, and as with other elements of recovery, I am often only able to experience it when driven by suffering.  

This step sounds so bloody absolute, though—do I really have to be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character? I sense attachment rearing its sticky head immediately. This is why non-attachment is so important in this step. I can only be open to solving my problems if I am open to change, and in Step Six I am repeatedly given the opportunity to let go of ineffective, low-level and limiting beliefs, perceptions and practices. 

Again, this tricky notion of letting go. I can’t count the number of times I ‘let go’ of my anger, often right before losing my temper. What does letting go entail, then? I believe it involves unconditional self-acceptance and the courage to FEEL whatever comes up. By feeling something I am vibrating it, and when it vibrates, it moves, and if it’s moving, it can be released. But nothing is going to move if I don’t trust myself or have compassion for myself. This has been a very important learning point for me. So my job is to feel whatever comes up, remain equanimous, and have compassion for myself. Otherwise I am bound to revisit the same old cycle of thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours that keep me on the merry-go-round of problem-reaction-problem.

Stop reacting. Feel. Let time pass. Breathe. Trust the process. 

Part of this process leads me to take a closer look at my thoughts and beliefs; I need to determine which ones are borne of true insight based on my own objective analysis of my life experiences. The answer: almost none. 

Most of the thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes I had been carrying were borrowed from parents, teachers, media, and the norms of society at large. These were not actually my beliefs, but habit patterns engrained in me through training and practice. Habits become pervasive; they define, both in the mental and physical realm, most of our thoughts, words and actions.

In habits, we’re stuck. 

Thus, I need to unpack my habits, which I have done in Steps Four and Five, in order to have at least a superficial awareness of what isn’t serving me and what needs letting go of. 

This non-attachment, this letting go—particularly of deeply engrained habits—can make me feel as if I’m coming unhinged, without any point of reference. It may also involve the re-experiencing of old grief, fear or trauma, as many of our character defects can be in place as survival tools. The truth that we need to experience ourselves is that these old tools can’t work in recovery and become cumbersome and self-limiting. 

It is crucial that I gain some insight in Step Four in order to see how the elements I share in my Step Five are still exerting active power in my life. I need to bring my awareness into the present moment, and to do this, I may require some emotional releasing in order to achieve truly effective self-scrutiny. Anger may come up. Resistance may raise its toothy head. A tsunami of ear and guilt may wash through me.  

I must not ignore these things or turn away from them. They have a right to be felt. It is my job to feel them. If I need to release, I must release in safe ways. Maybe I find a small hilltop and I scream to the heavens from it. Or I could spend a weekend watching tear-jerkers and bawl my eyes out. Maybe I join a punk band. Perhaps I dance like Napoleon Dynamite until I drop. Whatever safe way to release comes up naturally—and often for me this is by expressing some kind of sound, intelligible or not—I have to trust that at some point, a point known as ignition, the body will intuitively know what it needs to do to release. I have learned that I should follow it, no matter how silly it seems to convention.  

Convention even slips into the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which states that “no matter how far we have progressed, desires will always be found which oppose the grace of God.” I’d like to meet the person who thinks he is in charge of deciding what opposed the grace of God for me, personally. Nobody lives in my body with my chemistry and with my connections and experiences; therefore, nobody has the ability to understand an appropriate moral code for me, much less impose one. 

The other issue I take with “conventional wisdom” is the perseverance of the harmful themes, the most notable example being that sex is somehow dirty or sinful. AA literature asks us “how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds?” This question presumes love is a precursor to, and thus divorced from, any expression of the body. It also assumes there is a conventional understanding of and abhorrence for what is commonly considered to be ‘lust’. One woman’s lust may be another woman’s passion. One man’s perception of lust may be another man’s source of creativity and inspiration. We are so quick to judge others, as well as ourselves. More than one great thinker has determined that most of the problems of the West, including addictions, come from sexual repression. This is a valid consideration in Step Six because it is vital to me that I understand if my actions are truly harmful to myself or another, or if they simply lie outside the acceptable (read: harmful) conventions of my Judeo-Christian upbringing. This is a key part of stepping into my own freedom and guided by Divine intention.

Understandably, it is often easier to list our character defects than to willingly release them. The blockage to change is almost always fear, and one of the deepest fears we can carry in recovery is that it is not safe to feel what is present. Once we release old fear, doubt, denial, ignorance, we are truly ready to allow our will to naturally align with Divine will. Form this point forward, we will rarely forget that we are never alone. 

Step Five

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

The practice of confession, to have the awareness of the nature of one’s own flaws witnessed by another human being, and thus sanctified in spirit, is widespread among numerous religious and spiritual traditions. The practice speaks to the very inherent instinct for cleansing.

It is notable that Step Five is the first step described in the chapter entitled “Into Action” in the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous. The completion of my inventory in Step Four means I have stirred up the silt of my past to take a look at the granular details of the shifting moral foundation I have built my life upon. Step Five is the crucial step to begin the repair of this foundation by recognizing and admitting my responsibility for the detritus in my life. This stirring of muddy waters can sometimes make for a pretty murky view, and if I hang on to this inventory by myself for too long, it may be difficult to remember that this is the way to light. 

There is a risk involved in Step Five; this is the hero’s journey, where Jonah leaps into the belly of the whale. We face the darkness, knowing not where it will ultimately transport us. In our minds, there is the risk of being rejected, of ridicule, of full exposure to the depths of the shame we have been carrying, and as alcoholics who are almost universally sensitive to criticism, Step Five can be intimidating. 

The only solution I’ve found is to, yet again, surrender. I need to open myself completely. I wouldn’t advocate making oneself completely vulnerable to this process if there weren’t tremendous gains to be made in doing so. No matter how much the vulnerability scares me, it serves me, because it provokes me to step out of isolation. When I step out of the old pattern of sequestering my spirit, I step out of the illusion that I am separate from others or from Source. 

I sought my soul,

But my soul I could not see

I sought my God,

But my god eluded me.

I sought my brother,

And I found all three. 

—Anonymous

Sharing this stuff, particularly if I have been unflinchingly honest, can be a daunting task; what generally prevents us from bringing all of our story to another person is shame. Shame is at the root of endless diversions, justifications, rationalizations, and general delays of putting Step Five into practice. It is important to contemplate how, left in the darkness of self, my Step Four is bound to fester. My moral inventory, and my awareness of its implications upon the habit patterns of my actions and attitudes, needs to be exposed to the sunlight of the Spirit in order to be transmuted into a lasting gift of awareness. 

If I have reached this stage, I have my personal moral inventory in hand; now I need a witness. It is important that the person who hears my fifth is not someone who has all the answers. I need to trust my gut and find someone who has humility and a sense of humour; humility will enable my witness to detect which shame belongs to me and what I have been carrying for others. A sense of humour will ensure that I don’t take myself too seriously. I needn’t panic over who is going to share this experience with me; if I have done my work, the right person will appear.

All my ancient, twisted karma,

From beginingless greed, hate and delusion,

Born through body, speech and mind,

I now fully avow.

—Zen chant for Ryaku Fusatu

Once I make a commitment to have this undertaking validated by another human being, I will become aware of what an empowering process it can be. The relief from the burden of my secrets and my ignorance will be commensurate with the level of honesty I apply to this step. The power of one spirit coming to another with humility and vulnerability calls in the sunlight of the Spirit and sanctifies the act of surrender. Here, I can break old patterns of isolation—spiritual and otherwise.

If I balk too long or refuse this step, I risk retreating into denial. I need only review Step One to remember that there is no peace in a life of denial. 

The first time I took this vital step, I stumbled for a while on another major hurdle: grief—grief over losing myself, the only identity I’d been consciously aware of for years. Even if I have recognized and inwardly admitted to old beliefs, judgments and patterns of denial that don’t truly belong to me through the process of taking a moral inventory, the prospect of overtly admitting to them in a Step Five might provoke a kick from within. For instance, I may suddenly become forgetful, and have a blank mind. Or doubt may raise its head. 

There are many varieties of doubt: doubt about AA, the Steps, my sponsor, my own abilities.

The good news is that this resistance is a last-ditch effort of the old framework of living to re-assert itself, because once I take Step Five as fearlessly and honestly as practicable, this old scheme of interacting with the world and the things in it is utterly altered. Just as darkness cannot stay in a room when a light is turned on, the film of ignorance and denial that I’d cloaked myself in will no longer fit. 

I need to treat myself like I am someone I can trust. 

Step Five is not just about admitting my wrongs, but about becoming vulnerable enough to share how and when I have suffered. Tough love in this program is for suckers; it may seem easier because I’m used to beating myself up and haven’t had much cause to trust others, but we’ve had enough of tough times, haven’t we? I suggest trying tenderness.

If this step is causing me to shut down emotionally, I may need to get outside help and do grief work or trauma reduction. I can also always look to Step Eleven for support and guidance. Often this stuff that we are dragging up through this process gets stored or stuck in the body, and this is where breathing techniques, a healthy diet, yoga, massage and energy work can all be helpful in getting through Steps Four and Five. These steps are as much about moving from the brain to the heart as any other; this cannot simply be an intellectual exercise in truth-telling. We have to feel our way through this process, and we need to feel it without reacting in order to surpass the small idea of our once-disconnected selves to the Unity with our true and highest selves that is our birthright.

Step Four

How do we find a reality that we can own? We need a map. “Start where you are,” advises Pema Chodron. There is really no other place for us to begin, obviously—but most of us alcoholics aren’t sure where we are. 

We were initially thrust into reality with the admission of the true nature of our relationship to alcohol in Step One, and then continued the process by observing what resources were available to us by considering Steps Two and Three. Through this process, we invariably examine the tip of the iceberg that is our persistent denial and penchant for magical thinking. We begin to suspect that there is much more to our habit of judging ourselves and others, and the cause-and-effect in our broken lives. In Step 4 we roll up our sleeves and, as fearlessly as possible, do our work of mapping our own attitudes and actions. Step 4 provides the training necessary to obtain, and then use, the insight necessary to find ourselves in bumpy terrain of our own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual geography.

Until we sober up, we are unable and unwilling to recognize that our dismal consequences are the direct result of our own volitional activity. As my meditation teacher likes to say: “You can’t continue to plant bitter neem seeds and then cry out for sweet mangoes!” So in step 4 I need to acknowledge my own participation in the creation of my own life: what I do matters. Moreover, what I think matters: thoughts are waveforms of energy, and they have an impact. The sooner I stop casting myself as a victim of external circumstances or other people, the healthier I will be. 

Once I understand this, I understand that I have created the environment of my current circumstances with the thoughts, words and actions of my past; now that I am sober, however, and committed to engaging outside help to compensate for my lack of power, I have a choice in how I respond to whatever my present situation may be. 

At first the word moral was slightly off-putting to me; then I came to the understanding that immoral simply means anything that transgresses my inner knowing of right action, word and thought, and while this concept implies a certain universality, it is ultimately subjective. Some of us are so confused by an off-putting and self-interested system of morals we grew up with, that Step 4 can seem daunting, even insurmountable, especially if we clearly no longer ascribe to this system. Others of us may be so deeply programmed with the corrupt values systems of others—commonly through trauma—that we are not yet aware of what value systems are motivating us. 

The good news is that there is a sure way out, as long as I am still subscribing to the spiritual principles of Steps One, Two, and Three, namely: honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. These magic three principles give birth to the fourth, which is insight. And this insight enables us to do the work of Step 4. 

I need a value system against which to judge the morality of my own thoughts, words, and deeds. It is important for me to keep in mind that my value system doesn’t necessarily apply to others, so there is no need or point in judging them; this just creates more knots for me to untangle. 

One thing I can say is that in sobriety it quickly becomes clear that ethical conduct is highly pragmatic, because it is impossible for me to have peace of mind when I am transgressing my own value system. For a while, when I was drinking, I could squelch this inner turmoil with booze. But Step 4—the mechanics of which are clearly laid out in AA literature and which I need to go through with a sponsor—begins to show me that alcoholism was not my root problem, but actually the temporary and unsustainable solution to my internal disquiet and spiritual torpor. When I understood this, I knew inherently I had made a solid beginning on Step 4. With persistent work and feedback from my sponsor, I began to see the nature of my relationship not only with alcohol and others, but with fear itself; when I see my own ignorance and fear as reflexes to protect the self from imagined threats to its integrity, I have truly made a significant step in the acquisition of spiritual insight. 

Whose Lord? Whose Prayer?

The hypocrisy of choice in AA

Let me begin by pointing out the obvious: (a) the Lord’s Prayer is nowhere to be found in conference-approved literature and is not recited at the General Service Conference for very good reason (b) we do not live in Akron, Ohio in the 1930’s, (c) we are not a small group of recovering alcoholics in a small town, we are part of a global network of spiritually awakening beings, (d) most of us are not Christian, (e) Canada welcomes a quarter-million newcomers to Canada every year, the USA even more, and most of these newcomers are not Christian either. But some of them are alcoholics, and eventually some of those alcoholics will be looking for help.

The Lord’s Prayer at AA meetings is not a new topic. It has been ongoing for sometime but rears its head these days with greater and greater frequency, illustrating that it is not an issue that is going to go away, but begs some sort of resolution. It is telling that business meetings focused on dropping the Lord's Prayer often swell in numbers of well-meaning Christians who want to ensure that "group conscience" keeps the status quo.

Sure, the first members might have used the Bible and the Oxford Group literature before the writing of our basic text, but things changed - so did the make-up of AA. The Lord’s Prayer was a tradition of the Oxford Group. Theirs was a different tradition with a different purpose from ours, and for a different membership.

The purpose of any meeting is to carry the message - the message of AA, that is. Not the message of any particular Judeo-Christian deity. Incorporating the Lord’s Prayer as a standard part of an AA meeting alienates all potential newcomers who do not identify with this particular deity; not only might they not identify, but many members of AA have a shame-based experience of their Christian background. Some have even been violently abused by clergy or practitioners of that faith. I have met a few of them and heard their stories. Why, then, would some groups want to risk alienating the newcomer - the person we insist is the most important one in the room? Is this just lip service?

Surely the insistence that we all join hands and say the Lord’s prayer (the adage “for those who wish” is merely the window-dressing of freedom of belief, and practically insulting for alcoholics at a stage in recovery where they can reason and identify healthy boundaries). Held hostage by the “true believers”, members of AA have often no choice but to stand silently to listen to a prayer that may be beautiful and inspiring for some, but which in effect violates a few of the most important traditions we have - traditions one, two, three, and five.

Those who wish to say the Lord’s prayer can do so any time they wish, at any moment of the day. To expect others to listen to it at an AA meeting after trumpeting that anyone can come to understand a “higher power” in any way that works for them smacks of hypocrisy and at these meetings I smell the old brew of missionaries, obsessed even subconsciously with conversion and/or the illusion of a moral high ground. I happen to think that the Lord’s Prayer is a rich and inviting string of words that can unlock spiritual truths for those able to come to them with an open heart and recognize them as they are presented in the prayer. I also think that the

chanting of the Heart Sutra is a lovely way for Buddhists to open their fourth chakra. Repeated chanting of the universal sound “Om” can bring profound awareness and union with universal consciousness, which vibrates

at the same frequency as this sound. The mantra of Hare Krishna or Govinda Jaya Jaya can give birth to clarity and destroy ignorance and obstacles on the spiritual path. I believe that “Let It Be” by the Beatles can melt the heart and release old emotional charges, bringing spiritual meaning and awakening into one’s life. But making any of these things a set part of an AA meeting is putting personalities before principles - not everybody is going to agree with me on what I believe is the best representation for prayer, right? For the same reasons, Christians

shouldn’t expect everybody else to agree with them and continue reciting their prayer, which is not codified in AA traditions or literature. The Lord's Prayer is not part of the 12 step program. To act otherwise brings on an Orwellian twist of “all faiths are created equal, but some faiths are more equal than others”. That’s why Step 11 is a very personal endeavour.

How can we agree with this and have it written plainly in our literature, and then mock it’s vitality and strength by closing every meeting with a Christian prayer?

Saying that it is not a Christian prayer, but a “prayer for Everybody” is something one generally hears only from Christians not-so-solid in their own faith who are dedicated to preserving the status quo for their own sense of security. It’s not a prayer for Everybody if everybody doesn’t agree that it is.

Bill W. had it wrong when he said “the worst that happens to objectors is that they have to listen to [the Lord’s Prayer]. This is doubtless a salutary exercise in tolerance at their stage of progress.” It is not the role of AA to test the patience and tolerance of newcomers, but to share experience, strength and hope to help others recover from alcoholism. Rather, the removal of the Lord’s Prayer would represent a shift in enlightenment and tolerance and acceptance of the realities of our fellowship by “the old guard.”

Dear Christian: Keep your traditions, embrace them. May your faith flourish and bring you real peace, real harmony and real happiness. But remember also: while you claim your spiritual freedom and space, you must not deny others theirs. Keep the Lord's prayer for your personal prayers and for Church. Imposing this prayer on other alcoholics doesn't make your faith stronger, does it? I wish that you may become so solid in your own beliefs

that your fear dissolves and you become an advocate for removing the Lord’s prayer from all meetings you attend to help others to achieve the freedom that is such a crucial part of the spiritual revolution that is AA.