Step 4

“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

This is one of the most crucial steps on the journey to recovery and to its reward, true and sustainable love lived and experienced one day at a time. Every human being has the potential to bring the love that they are capable of to life every single day. It is one of the facts of human existence that we are rarely ever aware of the beautiful potential that each of us have. We squander this potential again and again by lack of awareness of what we truly possess and what we truly have to give. The function of a personal inventory is to identify all of the negative thoughts, beliefs, and habit patterns-most of which we have innocently learned and turned into habits over the course of our lives, so that we can clearly see what inhibits our ability to be truly loving and caring human beings. Every defect of character, or self-defeating attitude or habit pattern is an ineffectual way of thinking about in responding to life. Invariably each one of them, results in unnecessary suffering for those who have them and to those who are the unfortunate recipients of their effects. In order for recovering addict to achieve true peace of mind and the ability to face them self without shame or guilt, it is imperative to identify these negative expressions, truly realize the consequences that they create, and generate the daily motivation to work on changing them with the help of others in a higher power. Every single pathological illusion must be fearlessly sought out and brought to light so that it can be healed, so that it can be let go of. Every person has both positive and negative characteristics, but for the addict, in order to truly recover with serenity and joy, it is essential to root out these impediments to love and bring them to light. In the end, the result of this is greater self-acceptance and transcendence of the spiritually impoverished and unrealized person that one used to be.

Step 3

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.”

 In our active life as an addict, it is seldom the case that we know what is best for us and frequently the case that we act against what is in our own best interest. We have tried endless experiments to make our use of mood altering substances succeed and have seen these all subsequently end in failure. With our mind and thinking distorted by her disease and controlled by the mindless obsession to use we have created lives of great unmanageability and futility. What should be apparent, is that we have lost our way in life and certainly in regard to our use of drugs and alcohol. What is needed, is a new system of guidance to help us regain awareness of what is in our best interest and we need a new attitude of openness and willingness to try new things, to do things differently, to take necessary risks. This is the central theme of the third step. The founders of AA realized that they could not survive unless they turned their will and their life over the care of a higher power. This is still true for all of us in recovery today, but we can have many different ways of understanding God and a higher power. One of the best acronyms that I have heard in AA about God is: “Good, Orderly, Direction.” This was a very good way of understanding higher power for those of us who had a lot of negative baggage and ideas about God. No one can fully understand the idea of God, for it is beyond the capability of human conception to fully realize this. But we can most certainly have a pragmatic or practical understanding of God and higher power for the 12 steps of the AA program. What we need to find is a new system of guidance and support. We need to find people or information to help us become aware of exactly what it is that we need individually to be healthy and optimally functioning human beings. Whatever our problems or difficulties are, we can find someone who knows a lot about how to deal with such things, and they can provide us very helpful guidance and suggestions about what to do. We may also begin to rely on the improving awareness of our own intuition which is a form of guidance that comes from the healthy part of our mind and being and seldom will lead us astray. Fact is, that we do not know everything, we do not understand everything, and we are not aware of everything. If we do not know what is best for us, we must find this out. Because it is critical in recovery and in life to understand what are true needs are as well as what we must do to get these met. Third step is suggesting that we quit relying on our limited, previous knowledge and understanding of ourselves and everything else-because this was certainly inadequate in solving our alcohol and drug problem. If we can open up our mind to new possibility, and new suggestions, and new guidance, we can certainly come to learn what is best for us. And once having understood this adequately, we can have a new attitude of openness and willingness to take whatever action is necessary to do what is best for us, to meet our true needs, and to strengthen our recovery and enhance our lives.

Step 2

“Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

 Love is a power greater than us. And it has the power to bring sanity to our mind. For true Love is the essence of reality itself, an infinite and mysterious power that from its sheer beauty and radiance has compelled the formless to take form as the life, world, and universe we know. On the human level, love has the power to quiet every mental and emotional disturbance. True love accepted in the heart and given to one’s self quiets inner emotional turmoil, trauma, and distress. True love become known in the mind, adds clarity and perspective to the content of thought and can also quiet mental and emotional disturbance. In addiction, our thoughts are distorted and twisted out of perspective to reality. We have thoughts of self-loathing and contempt. We have thoughts of imminent disaster on a continuing basis. Our whole orientation toward life has been hijacked by malfunction deep within the brain through which the mind believes that use of the substance is as important as survival itself. Love corrects this distortion by presenting the addict with reality and guiding him or her through the process of recovery by which the brain malfunction is corrected. In true recovery, reason is restored to its operational capacity to control impulse and properly assess reality at any given moment. Love has the power to do just this and all of its ways to the recovery process. It replaces the object of addiction with a deep-seated continually satisfying state of awareness in which one is much more in touch with their own and estimable value and the preciousness of life. In recovery, the basic human need of establishing and maintaining a meaningful, ongoing emotional connection with another human being becomes the object of living, instead of the blind, destructive, obsession for chemically induced pleasure. The 12 steps themselves are a prescription to learn and express love in a genuine way and if a person follows their suggestions they identify and correct attitudes and behaviors that are unloving, in that they result in effects that do not honor the value of a person or other people.

To the degree that I recovering addict gets in touch with Love, a true and genuine higher power, and follows the ways of love in their recovery, to that extent do they become restored to sanity. As a person truly engages in the 12 step recovery program, they see over time that their mind functions in a much more productive and effective way. It is by a clear apprehension of reality and appropriate assessment of causes and conditions, that person can make the best decisions in response to that reality of the moment. This is another way of framing sanity and it is a certain result of finding and living a life of true Love.

Step 1

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, drugs, other people, gambling, spending, et al, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Our greatest power as human beings is our capacity to love and care about what is most important in our lives. The exercise of this power is dependent upon clarity of thought and presence of emotion. Any substance, emotion, belief, opinion, or adverse condition that interferes with the proper function of our mind and emotional heart, can render us incapable of adequately expressing love and care through action. The physiological nature of the disease of addiction is such that it has altered the proper functioning of the pleasure center of the brain - so that the obsessive pursuit of pleasure overrides all needs and becomes equivalent to survival. This is a malfunctioning in which the midbrain has now taken control of thought and action over the prefrontal cortex, which is the more advanced functional area of the brain in which reason can exercise control over impulse. Mood altering substances and other pleasurable behaviors that produce sufficient dopamine release can create this adverse effect . In addition, powerful negative thoughts or feelings can also interfere with clear functioning of the mind and receptivity of the emotional heart.

When the midbrain takes control over the mind - we are effectively functioning in a dramatically more primitive state of awareness and are subject to the expression of irrational impulses. This is why it is of utmost importance to identify what is causing this effect in the mind and go to work to counteract it. In the case of drugs and alcohol, it is essential to achieve and maintain abstinence from use of the substance or others with a similar method of action because if used again it will continue to produce the same adverse effect and condition. Related to negative thoughts and beliefs and other self-defeating behaviors, it is essential to recognize the interference of these upon a clear and persistent awareness of the immeasurable value of one self and others. Because it is from this awareness that our capacity to love and care comes forth. Any negative belief or opinion or judgment from which we minimize our own value and/or the value of others will impair our capacity to express love in any meaningful way.

To regain our most essential Power-the ability to love and care, we must restore our brain to proper functioning so that our thoughts and feelings consistently reflect reality. This is why a holistic treatment and recovery approach is essential. Mind, body, and spirit are inextricably connected and dependent upon one another for overall health and well-being. We must restore the condition of our mind to clarity of thought and emotion. We must provide our body with the nutrients and exercise that it needs to function properly and support mental health as well as physical health. We must have a spiritual practice through which we can cultivate and sustain a loving and positive state of mind for ourselves, others and life.

We have been endowed from birth with the capacity to love. It is essential for our health, well-being, and happiness to cultivate and maintain this capacity to the best of our ability. The 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous and all the other 12 step recovery organizations, is the program that does just exactly this. And it all starts with the first step. We must admit that we have become powerless and unable to satisfactorily or effectively demonstrate love for selves and others. Through all of the steps, the spiritual awakening that is produced by working them is an awakening of love which then heals and guides our lives. The whole 12-step program is a prescription to change an addict into a loving, caring human being. The Power of Love, the greatest known power, is the healer of addiction and the creator of a beautiful life - in recovery and otherwise...

Eons ago our universe was created from a sudden unimaginable expansion of a single point into the vast realm of time and space we live within. All that is - has come from that one thing, and regardless of how you look at it, the universe still is that one thing. One way to visualize this is to think of a divine breath breathing the universe into being. So that everything that is, is an expression of that divine inspiration. Everywhere we look in life and in the universe we see and feel the beauty and the miraculous nature of existence. Everything that is, is an expression of that one source come to life. A human being is an expression of that one source. And every human being has the potential to bring fullness to their own expression, their own life.

Unless, something happens that prevents that. Addiction is a tragic aberration of nature, in which the body’s own system of operation and being is hijacked chemically and physiologically into a blindly obsessive mode of needing the substance in order to survive. The human instinct to survive has been turned on its head, usurped by the irrational, and deeply sourced desire to use and use again - on and on until inevitable annihilation. This is not a matter of choice, it is a matter of conditioning and illustrates the downside of the imperfect nature of being human.

Recovery is possible when a human being has restored their capacity to choose their own way and their own destiny, outside of the unconscious influence of any addictive force or process. There is a spiritual solution that enables recovery and it is through the restoration of that human capacity and potential for love that this is possible. The technology to create and sustain this spiritual solution was developed in 1935 by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is within the power of their 12 step program to create such a change within a human being, to enable them through rigorous and sustained action, to become a spiritually oriented person, and thus gain freedom from the blind obsession that is addiction.

This program is then, the 12 steps to Love.