The Spiritual Awakening – 12 & 12 summary of the first 11 steps pages 107-109

Step One showed us an amazing paradox : We found that we were totally unable to be rid of the alcohol obsession until we first admitted that we were powerless over it . In Step Two we saw that since we could not restore ourselves to sanity , some Higher Power must necessarily do so if we were to survive . Consequently , in Step Three we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him . For the time being , we who were atheist or agnostic discovered that our own group , or A.A . as a whole , would suffice as a higher power . Beginning with Step Four , we commenced to search out the things in ourselves which had brought us to physical , moral , and spiritual bankruptcy . We made a searching and fearless moral inventory . Looking at Step Five , we decided that an inventory , taken alone , wouldn’t be enough . We knew we would have to quit the deadly business of living alone with our conflicts , and in honesty confide these to God and an – other human being . At Step Six , many of us balked — for the practical reason that we did not wish to have all our defects of character removed , because we still loved some of them too much . Yet we knew we had to make a settlement with the fundamental principle of Step Six . So we decided that while we still had some flaws of character that we could not yet relinquish , we ought nevertheless to quit our stubborn , rebellious hanging on to them . We said to ourselves , “ This I cannot do today , perhaps , but I can stop crying out ‘ No , never ! ‘ ” Then , in Step Seven , we humbly asked God to remove our short comings such as He could or would under the conditions of the day we asked . In Step Eight , we continued our housecleaning , for we saw that we were not only in conflict with ourselves , but also with people and situations in the world in which we lived . We had to begin to make our peace , and so we listed the people we had harmed and became willing to set things right . We followed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to those concerned , except when it would injure them or other people . By this time , at Step Ten , we had begun to get a basis for daily living , and we keenly realized that we would need to continue taking personal inventory , and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly . In Step Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us to sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace of mind in a sorely troubled world , then such a Higher Power was worth knowing better , by as direct contact as possible . The persistent use of meditation and prayer , we found , did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle , there now was a river which led to sure power and safe guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to understand Him . So , practicing these Steps , we had a spiritual awakening about which finally there was no question .