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A Skeptic's Guide to the 12 Steps
How many of us have felt like Phillip Z? He has a staunch belief in the Twelve Steps, yet struggles with the concept of a Higher Power. In A Skeptic's Guide to the 12 Steps, the author investigates each of the Twelve Steps to gain a deeper understanding of a higher power. He examines what may seem like "unsettling" concepts to us including surrendering one's will and life to God, and he encourages us to understand the spiritual journey of recovery despite our skepticism.
252 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1990
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February 24, 2008
This book provides a great service. A lot of people have had negative experiences with organized religion, or just find its precepts impossible to accept, and find that a barrier blocking their ability to recover from addictive problems through the 12-Step programs. The author was in that position, but found himself so desperate he felt he had no choice but to try to overcome the obstacle.
This book is the narrative of his experience. He found that he was able to reconcile his disbelief with a form of spirituality that enabled him to recover, without compromising his intellectual or spiritual integrity. I have given this book to many people who felt stymied by the same problem.
This book is the narrative of his experience. He found that he was able to reconcile his disbelief with a form of spirituality that enabled him to recover, without compromising his intellectual or spiritual integrity. I have given this book to many people who felt stymied by the same problem.
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June 27, 2026The human dilemma. Alcoholism is a spiritual problem.
N O T E S / R E F L E C T I O N S
CHAPTER ONE "Admitting Powerlessness."
** We admitted we are powerless over over our use of alcohol in a way that reason suggests is harmful -- that our life is unmanageable because we are unable to tolerate the normal frustrations and discomforts of life.**
Critical questions: Why can’t we control our behavior? Why do we continue to believe we can? Unless the level of tension and distress is reduced (by a "profound psychic change"), we will return to the temporary source of relief we know. Abstinence is necessary, because we have to learn how to live without resorting to the quick fix. This must involve spiritual work, "the essence of which is the willingness to face, rather than avoid, pain and suffering."
CHAPTER TWO "Restoring Sanity."
** Came to believe that we can develop contact with a transformative inner Higher Power, greater than our ego/mind, that could alter our beliefs and perceptions so we might recover from alcoholism.**
“Alcoholic insanity" is rooted in beliefs and attitudes that obscure the possibility of healthier solutions. The Steps are a suggested path that alters those attitudes and open us to a belief that we can develop contact with a transformative inner Power, greater than our ego/mind. Greater does not mean separate; it means larger and more inclusive.
CHAPTER THREE “Making A Decision.”
** Made a decision/commitment to change the basis on which we live our life.**
We do not turn anything over to anybody in this Step. “…we decided to change the basis on which we live our life … the change itself comes from working the remaining Steps.” It is a decision, an “intentional” turning from one path to another. An act of commitment.
The fundamental problem of the alcoholic is egocentricity, “the mistaken belief that the ego is the center of one’s being." Recovery shifts our identification with the ego so we can experience our Higher Self, “where these self-serving attitudes were no longer functional” and the ego may be placed in service to our True Self.
CHAPTER FOUR “Writing a Moral Inventory.”
** Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.**
Understand "character defects" as habits of mind that lead to unskillful ways of responding to inner and outer events, not morally right or wrong thoughts and behavior. They are not removed by an external power; they are accepted, integrated, and pass away. Nothing is removed, only integrated into a healing "whole."
A Buddhist-based approach. Character defects are the "defilements," the ways the human mind attempts to hold on to pleasant experiences and hold off the unpleasant ones, the Five Hindrances to enlightenment: desire, aversion, sloth/torpor, restlessness, and doubt. The Middle Way does not fight our character defects but transforms them into objects of meditation. With practice, we notice that these"defects" are impermanent. There is no need for grasping or aversion. **The spiritual path of recovery becomes one of peaceful reconciliation with the world around us and within ourselves.** Rather than fighting to rid ourselves of our "defects," we use the Steps to transform them and integrate them into our consciousness.
The Skeptic's process: a secrets list and a four-column process, consistent with Buddhist practice.
**Column One lists the names of people and things,that make me feel UNCOMFORTABLE. **Column Two briefly describes the events involving these people and things that make us uncomfortable. We move from the general (the person or thing) to the details of the situation causing our discomfort.
**Column Three names the specific feelings that we are still holding on to regarding the situation described in Column Two. The list of possible feelings is not limited to those mentioned in the Big Book. **Column Four asks what particular attitudes, beliefs, or thoughts support the accompanying feelings, past or present. These filter the understanding of our experiences, limiting our thoughts and actions.
The Fourth Step is only a start. Recovery is a life-long process of trying to understand and transform these perceptions that shape our spiritual journey.
CHAPTER FIVE "Sharing the Moral Inventory."
** Admitted to our Higher Self, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.**
Why share? We cannot keep secrets. Admitting to ourselves and to God? The Fourth Step accomplishes the first. The admission to God? Not to an external entity. The action is another encounter between our ego and our Higher Self in hopes that "identification with the ego might be reduced and the alliance between ego and Self enhanced." Our ego argues that this is impractical and unnecessary. Set ego aside by expressing our "intention to acknowledge to my Higher Power the exact nature of character defects and admit all the wrongs done to other people." Then read your inventory aloud, followed by a short meditation.
With another person. It should be done with someone who has experienced the process. Read the Third Step Prayer aloud before beginning. (More ego reduction). Read your Fourth Step. Share your Secrets List. Outcome: "Two human being -- two hearts -- touching in healing." An enhanced sense of oneness, being part of. Fifth Step Promise (BB p. 75): "… we are delighted … look the world in the eye … be alone at peace and ease … WE BEGIN TO HAVE A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE." Then
Afterwards, burn the Fourth Step.
Jung:. Revealing one's shadow to another brings us back into the human family. To be successful, the story teller has to be willing to tell the whole story and the full engagement of the listener by bringing one's own woundedness to the task. "Both the healer and the one being healed share the suffering, the grief common to all human beings…"
CHAPTER SIX "Willingness and Self-Forgiveness."
** Were entirely ready to move further into a relationship with my inner spiritual nature.**
Steps Six and Seven involve "a profound shift in consciousness requiring my willingness to forgo the old protective devices I'd erected…" Those are our character defects, "the attitudes and beliefs that have served to protect and reinforce the illusion of the supremacy of the ego." STEP SIX question: how ready am I to live without them? This not a personality overhaul, replacing its negative aspects with positive ones.
Entirely ready … "to move further into a relationship with my inner spiritual nature." We become less driven by automatic and obsolete responses. We put our faith and trust in "the power and wisdom of our Higher Self." Paradox: "To the extent that we are willing to relinquish control over our character defects, we open to the possibility of altering them." Change begins with accepting ourselves as we are. Willingness involves openness - a welcoming of what could be. We cannot discharge our character defects by crushing them. In Step Six, "we attempt to openly face the pain and hardship of life. Wholeness, not through rejection but through acceptance and integration. Non-judgmental awareness. Observe without reaction. Transformation. GREAT VOWS - delusions are transformed.
Two definitions of "grace." The Christian understanding: unmerited gift. A state of being over which the individual has no control. An alternative understanding: "a quality or capacity within human beings" which can be cultivated. We see adversity as a vehicle to expand our capacity to experience the spirit of God within, TO EXPERIENCE BUDDHA NATURE. Hardship is a teacher rather than a personal affront.
CHAPTER SEVEN "Humbly Asking."
"To work STEP SEVEN I must bring my will to the task of acting in new ways, while at the same time recognizing that whatever psychic changes occur are up to my Higher Power." "… the process of recovery has both active and yielding aspects. … We must cultivate the willingness to work tirelessly to transform our character defects, while understanding the outcome, the extent and speed of change, is beyond our control."
What actions? Seventh Step Prayer. Reading spiritual literature emphasizing that the goal was not the destruction of the ego but placing it in the service of our Higher Self. "Something more is required than simply applying reason and logic to irrational beliefs …" If our character defects are to be altered, work must be done at the deeper level of the unconscious." Danger: spiritual materialism - outcome driven.
Spiritual approach? Non-dual experience. Acceptance rather than good/bad classification. Become conscious of our reaction to unpleasant experiences. Awareness, investigation, choice. Response: chosen not automatic, "the essence of responsibility." "… allowing all thoughts and emotions into the light of awareness, while consciously choosing which to express."
Examples. Right Speech. Right Action. Pause, reflect, investigate before speaking or acting. "The Eightfold Path… is an effective framework for actively working with character defects."
CHAPTER EIGHT "Making a List of Amends And Becoming Willing To Make Them." Do not try to make the list or the amends until we are psychically prepared by the preceding Steps. We can then make a list from a position of humility and forgiveness. Three stages: identify the harms, make the list, make the amends. Then live on a new basis of non-harming. Hindrance: my actions were justified! THE COURT IN OUR HEAD. Self-justification reinforces egocentric thinking.
Resistance softens with realization that making amends is primarily for our own benefit, to complete MY unfinished business of healing, "to relieve me of the psychic burden of guilt …" It involves both interpersonal relationships and inner work "to clear the channel between my unconscious self and my Higher Power."
FORGIVENESS. We can't put a name on the list until we find forgiveness in our heart. It does not mean we condone another's acts. It means that we no longer want resentment and guilt to keep "our heart frozen and closed." ** "Forgiveness means resolution, completion. To make amends is to forgive: to forgive is to complete the work of the past so we can experience the present with a freshness of vision and an openness of heart." **
In making the list, we need to identify "patterns of interaction" that damage our relationships. We come to realize that our character defects, not the behavior of others, motivated my actions. We come to see others as wounded children, like ourselves. A shift in consciousness. A PROFOUND ALTERATION IN OUR REACTION TO LIFE. "We can forgive more readily to the extent we are able to surrender our belief that other people are intending us harm."
CHAPTER NINE "Making Amends." Outcome: peace and self-forgiveness. A radical inner transformation. A sense of completeness and freedom. We hope that we improve the relationship, that the other person becomes less fearful and resentful. But the central motivation is because the actions transform us by "broadening the conscious contact with our Higher Power in order to advance our spiritual awakening. … Our direction and guidance comes from the still, silent voice within, and we must work to become quiet enough to hears its message." Living amends: taking actions in the present that express our intention to avoid causing others the kind of harm done" in the past.
Promises - two types. (1) Found in paragraph one, those that happen while making amends - the psychological and emotional changes brought about by working the Steps. (2) Those fulfilled while working Step Ten - the lifting the obsession to drink. First come the personality changes. Then, and only then, the obsession can be lifted. We are not promised material gain or freedom from pain, sorrow, or grief. "What we are promised is this: through our willingness and efforts to grow spiritually, we will become capable of living a meaningful, useful life." The world does not change and we are not promised divine intervention. Our attitudes and personalities are transformed so we can face life's challenges. We perceive the world with new eyes.
CHAPTER TEN "Making Daily Inventories and Amends." STEP TEN - a transition point. The first nine prepared us for a new way of life. This Step gives us a life-long daily practice to further our transition.
The first of the MAINTENANCE STEPS - not maintenance of our current condition, but maintenance of the spiritual practice that got us to this point, allowing our growth to continue.
Constructive Review. Its function is identifying expressions of egocentricity. It is not a vehicle for self-esteem building, not an assets and liabilities assessment. Our purpose is to bring the egocentricity to the surface so it does not fester and increase. It helps create space between the urge to act and the action. Recovery is about maturation - "growing up and learning to accept life as it is, not as I wish it to be."
Mindfulness, another 10th Step tool. CONTINUE TO WATCH. "What allows me freedom and flexibility inn my responses to life is awareness that the source of my trouble is within me, not our in the world. … the voices trying to draw me off course are within me, and what gives them much of their power is my failure to recognize that fact." External events are merely triggers.
The Tenth Step promises an end to the obsession through a spiritual experience. It does not promise control. We are restored to sanity - the impulse loses its power to drive the person to act. BB STEP TEN, PARAGRAPH 2.
CHAPTER ELEVEN "Improving Conscious Contact." The human dilemma: we experience a hunger, a craving that we believe can be satisfied by connecting to something outside ourselves. The spiritual yearning can only be satisfied "by establishing and maintaining contact with an inner source of power. " One of the universal methods of turning inward is PRAYER and MEDITATION. "Prayerful meditation." A.A. literature - purpose of prayer to ask for guidance and strength or express gratitude, not to request favors. Yet everyone is free to pray in any way they want.
Intuition. BB Eleventh Step - pray for "inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision" in response to indecision. Jung - four functions. Two judging functions: (1) Thinking function: intellectual cognition and logic. (2) The feeling function: subjective judgment (gut feel). Two perception functions. (3) the sensation function: perceptions formed by sense organs. (4) the intuition function: knowledge is dependent on the unconscious (dreams, imagining). Each of us has preferred judgment and perception functions. Spiritual truth is revealed is revealed by feeling - intuitive functions. Most of us arrive with reliance upon the thinking-feeling functions. These are necessary for everyday living. The Steps help us develop the feeling and intuitive functions.
CHAPTER TWELVE "Practicing the Principles And Carrying the Message." The message of the Twelfth Step: we have experienced a personality transformation that has freed us from the mental obsession, and have become willing to carry the message of our awakening to others with the same problem.
Silkworth: medical science can get an alcoholic sober but only a radical psychic transformation can keep him that way. William James - "religious conversion experiences have a common denominator: ego collapse at depth." Jung and Wilson agreed: alcoholism is a spiritual problem having physical and mental symptoms.
Ego deflation (Step 1) is a prerequisite for recovery. This is not driven by external circumstances. It is when we realize that nothing can keep us from taking a drink when the urge is strong enough. Two principle types of spiritual experiences: the cataclysmic and the educational variety.
Having had a spiritual experience, we are compelled to share it with others. "Our compulsion has been transformed into compassion …. opening our hearts to the suffering of others and offering to help if help is wanted." We must remain detached from outcomes. Sponsorship is "the path of the wounded healer."
N O T E S / R E F L E C T I O N S
CHAPTER ONE "Admitting Powerlessness."
** We admitted we are powerless over over our use of alcohol in a way that reason suggests is harmful -- that our life is unmanageable because we are unable to tolerate the normal frustrations and discomforts of life.**
Critical questions: Why can’t we control our behavior? Why do we continue to believe we can? Unless the level of tension and distress is reduced (by a "profound psychic change"), we will return to the temporary source of relief we know. Abstinence is necessary, because we have to learn how to live without resorting to the quick fix. This must involve spiritual work, "the essence of which is the willingness to face, rather than avoid, pain and suffering."
CHAPTER TWO "Restoring Sanity."
** Came to believe that we can develop contact with a transformative inner Higher Power, greater than our ego/mind, that could alter our beliefs and perceptions so we might recover from alcoholism.**
“Alcoholic insanity" is rooted in beliefs and attitudes that obscure the possibility of healthier solutions. The Steps are a suggested path that alters those attitudes and open us to a belief that we can develop contact with a transformative inner Power, greater than our ego/mind. Greater does not mean separate; it means larger and more inclusive.
CHAPTER THREE “Making A Decision.”
** Made a decision/commitment to change the basis on which we live our life.**
We do not turn anything over to anybody in this Step. “…we decided to change the basis on which we live our life … the change itself comes from working the remaining Steps.” It is a decision, an “intentional” turning from one path to another. An act of commitment.
The fundamental problem of the alcoholic is egocentricity, “the mistaken belief that the ego is the center of one’s being." Recovery shifts our identification with the ego so we can experience our Higher Self, “where these self-serving attitudes were no longer functional” and the ego may be placed in service to our True Self.
CHAPTER FOUR “Writing a Moral Inventory.”
** Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.**
Understand "character defects" as habits of mind that lead to unskillful ways of responding to inner and outer events, not morally right or wrong thoughts and behavior. They are not removed by an external power; they are accepted, integrated, and pass away. Nothing is removed, only integrated into a healing "whole."
A Buddhist-based approach. Character defects are the "defilements," the ways the human mind attempts to hold on to pleasant experiences and hold off the unpleasant ones, the Five Hindrances to enlightenment: desire, aversion, sloth/torpor, restlessness, and doubt. The Middle Way does not fight our character defects but transforms them into objects of meditation. With practice, we notice that these"defects" are impermanent. There is no need for grasping or aversion. **The spiritual path of recovery becomes one of peaceful reconciliation with the world around us and within ourselves.** Rather than fighting to rid ourselves of our "defects," we use the Steps to transform them and integrate them into our consciousness.
The Skeptic's process: a secrets list and a four-column process, consistent with Buddhist practice.
**Column One lists the names of people and things,that make me feel UNCOMFORTABLE. **Column Two briefly describes the events involving these people and things that make us uncomfortable. We move from the general (the person or thing) to the details of the situation causing our discomfort.
**Column Three names the specific feelings that we are still holding on to regarding the situation described in Column Two. The list of possible feelings is not limited to those mentioned in the Big Book. **Column Four asks what particular attitudes, beliefs, or thoughts support the accompanying feelings, past or present. These filter the understanding of our experiences, limiting our thoughts and actions.
The Fourth Step is only a start. Recovery is a life-long process of trying to understand and transform these perceptions that shape our spiritual journey.
CHAPTER FIVE "Sharing the Moral Inventory."
** Admitted to our Higher Self, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.**
Why share? We cannot keep secrets. Admitting to ourselves and to God? The Fourth Step accomplishes the first. The admission to God? Not to an external entity. The action is another encounter between our ego and our Higher Self in hopes that "identification with the ego might be reduced and the alliance between ego and Self enhanced." Our ego argues that this is impractical and unnecessary. Set ego aside by expressing our "intention to acknowledge to my Higher Power the exact nature of character defects and admit all the wrongs done to other people." Then read your inventory aloud, followed by a short meditation.
With another person. It should be done with someone who has experienced the process. Read the Third Step Prayer aloud before beginning. (More ego reduction). Read your Fourth Step. Share your Secrets List. Outcome: "Two human being -- two hearts -- touching in healing." An enhanced sense of oneness, being part of. Fifth Step Promise (BB p. 75): "… we are delighted … look the world in the eye … be alone at peace and ease … WE BEGIN TO HAVE A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE." Then
Afterwards, burn the Fourth Step.
Jung:. Revealing one's shadow to another brings us back into the human family. To be successful, the story teller has to be willing to tell the whole story and the full engagement of the listener by bringing one's own woundedness to the task. "Both the healer and the one being healed share the suffering, the grief common to all human beings…"
CHAPTER SIX "Willingness and Self-Forgiveness."
** Were entirely ready to move further into a relationship with my inner spiritual nature.**
Steps Six and Seven involve "a profound shift in consciousness requiring my willingness to forgo the old protective devices I'd erected…" Those are our character defects, "the attitudes and beliefs that have served to protect and reinforce the illusion of the supremacy of the ego." STEP SIX question: how ready am I to live without them? This not a personality overhaul, replacing its negative aspects with positive ones.
Entirely ready … "to move further into a relationship with my inner spiritual nature." We become less driven by automatic and obsolete responses. We put our faith and trust in "the power and wisdom of our Higher Self." Paradox: "To the extent that we are willing to relinquish control over our character defects, we open to the possibility of altering them." Change begins with accepting ourselves as we are. Willingness involves openness - a welcoming of what could be. We cannot discharge our character defects by crushing them. In Step Six, "we attempt to openly face the pain and hardship of life. Wholeness, not through rejection but through acceptance and integration. Non-judgmental awareness. Observe without reaction. Transformation. GREAT VOWS - delusions are transformed.
Two definitions of "grace." The Christian understanding: unmerited gift. A state of being over which the individual has no control. An alternative understanding: "a quality or capacity within human beings" which can be cultivated. We see adversity as a vehicle to expand our capacity to experience the spirit of God within, TO EXPERIENCE BUDDHA NATURE. Hardship is a teacher rather than a personal affront.
CHAPTER SEVEN "Humbly Asking."
"To work STEP SEVEN I must bring my will to the task of acting in new ways, while at the same time recognizing that whatever psychic changes occur are up to my Higher Power." "… the process of recovery has both active and yielding aspects. … We must cultivate the willingness to work tirelessly to transform our character defects, while understanding the outcome, the extent and speed of change, is beyond our control."
What actions? Seventh Step Prayer. Reading spiritual literature emphasizing that the goal was not the destruction of the ego but placing it in the service of our Higher Self. "Something more is required than simply applying reason and logic to irrational beliefs …" If our character defects are to be altered, work must be done at the deeper level of the unconscious." Danger: spiritual materialism - outcome driven.
Spiritual approach? Non-dual experience. Acceptance rather than good/bad classification. Become conscious of our reaction to unpleasant experiences. Awareness, investigation, choice. Response: chosen not automatic, "the essence of responsibility." "… allowing all thoughts and emotions into the light of awareness, while consciously choosing which to express."
Examples. Right Speech. Right Action. Pause, reflect, investigate before speaking or acting. "The Eightfold Path… is an effective framework for actively working with character defects."
CHAPTER EIGHT "Making a List of Amends And Becoming Willing To Make Them." Do not try to make the list or the amends until we are psychically prepared by the preceding Steps. We can then make a list from a position of humility and forgiveness. Three stages: identify the harms, make the list, make the amends. Then live on a new basis of non-harming. Hindrance: my actions were justified! THE COURT IN OUR HEAD. Self-justification reinforces egocentric thinking.
Resistance softens with realization that making amends is primarily for our own benefit, to complete MY unfinished business of healing, "to relieve me of the psychic burden of guilt …" It involves both interpersonal relationships and inner work "to clear the channel between my unconscious self and my Higher Power."
FORGIVENESS. We can't put a name on the list until we find forgiveness in our heart. It does not mean we condone another's acts. It means that we no longer want resentment and guilt to keep "our heart frozen and closed." ** "Forgiveness means resolution, completion. To make amends is to forgive: to forgive is to complete the work of the past so we can experience the present with a freshness of vision and an openness of heart." **
In making the list, we need to identify "patterns of interaction" that damage our relationships. We come to realize that our character defects, not the behavior of others, motivated my actions. We come to see others as wounded children, like ourselves. A shift in consciousness. A PROFOUND ALTERATION IN OUR REACTION TO LIFE. "We can forgive more readily to the extent we are able to surrender our belief that other people are intending us harm."
CHAPTER NINE "Making Amends." Outcome: peace and self-forgiveness. A radical inner transformation. A sense of completeness and freedom. We hope that we improve the relationship, that the other person becomes less fearful and resentful. But the central motivation is because the actions transform us by "broadening the conscious contact with our Higher Power in order to advance our spiritual awakening. … Our direction and guidance comes from the still, silent voice within, and we must work to become quiet enough to hears its message." Living amends: taking actions in the present that express our intention to avoid causing others the kind of harm done" in the past.
Promises - two types. (1) Found in paragraph one, those that happen while making amends - the psychological and emotional changes brought about by working the Steps. (2) Those fulfilled while working Step Ten - the lifting the obsession to drink. First come the personality changes. Then, and only then, the obsession can be lifted. We are not promised material gain or freedom from pain, sorrow, or grief. "What we are promised is this: through our willingness and efforts to grow spiritually, we will become capable of living a meaningful, useful life." The world does not change and we are not promised divine intervention. Our attitudes and personalities are transformed so we can face life's challenges. We perceive the world with new eyes.
CHAPTER TEN "Making Daily Inventories and Amends." STEP TEN - a transition point. The first nine prepared us for a new way of life. This Step gives us a life-long daily practice to further our transition.
The first of the MAINTENANCE STEPS - not maintenance of our current condition, but maintenance of the spiritual practice that got us to this point, allowing our growth to continue.
Constructive Review. Its function is identifying expressions of egocentricity. It is not a vehicle for self-esteem building, not an assets and liabilities assessment. Our purpose is to bring the egocentricity to the surface so it does not fester and increase. It helps create space between the urge to act and the action. Recovery is about maturation - "growing up and learning to accept life as it is, not as I wish it to be."
Mindfulness, another 10th Step tool. CONTINUE TO WATCH. "What allows me freedom and flexibility inn my responses to life is awareness that the source of my trouble is within me, not our in the world. … the voices trying to draw me off course are within me, and what gives them much of their power is my failure to recognize that fact." External events are merely triggers.
The Tenth Step promises an end to the obsession through a spiritual experience. It does not promise control. We are restored to sanity - the impulse loses its power to drive the person to act. BB STEP TEN, PARAGRAPH 2.
CHAPTER ELEVEN "Improving Conscious Contact." The human dilemma: we experience a hunger, a craving that we believe can be satisfied by connecting to something outside ourselves. The spiritual yearning can only be satisfied "by establishing and maintaining contact with an inner source of power. " One of the universal methods of turning inward is PRAYER and MEDITATION. "Prayerful meditation." A.A. literature - purpose of prayer to ask for guidance and strength or express gratitude, not to request favors. Yet everyone is free to pray in any way they want.
Intuition. BB Eleventh Step - pray for "inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision" in response to indecision. Jung - four functions. Two judging functions: (1) Thinking function: intellectual cognition and logic. (2) The feeling function: subjective judgment (gut feel). Two perception functions. (3) the sensation function: perceptions formed by sense organs. (4) the intuition function: knowledge is dependent on the unconscious (dreams, imagining). Each of us has preferred judgment and perception functions. Spiritual truth is revealed is revealed by feeling - intuitive functions. Most of us arrive with reliance upon the thinking-feeling functions. These are necessary for everyday living. The Steps help us develop the feeling and intuitive functions.
CHAPTER TWELVE "Practicing the Principles And Carrying the Message." The message of the Twelfth Step: we have experienced a personality transformation that has freed us from the mental obsession, and have become willing to carry the message of our awakening to others with the same problem.
Silkworth: medical science can get an alcoholic sober but only a radical psychic transformation can keep him that way. William James - "religious conversion experiences have a common denominator: ego collapse at depth." Jung and Wilson agreed: alcoholism is a spiritual problem having physical and mental symptoms.
Ego deflation (Step 1) is a prerequisite for recovery. This is not driven by external circumstances. It is when we realize that nothing can keep us from taking a drink when the urge is strong enough. Two principle types of spiritual experiences: the cataclysmic and the educational variety.
Having had a spiritual experience, we are compelled to share it with others. "Our compulsion has been transformed into compassion …. opening our hearts to the suffering of others and offering to help if help is wanted." We must remain detached from outcomes. Sponsorship is "the path of the wounded healer."
December 10, 2016
Nothing skeptical about mindlessly accepting religious concepts.
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