On page 52 of the Big Book, we have a description of what has come to be known as the ‘bedevilments’. The bedevilments are fundamental life problems many of us were unable to solve in our active addiction and perhaps in our dry drunk state of abstinence without the practice of the Twelve Steps.
Dan Sherman in his book Big Book Awakening has found this very interesting connection between each of these bedevilments and the 9th step promises which are described on pages 83 and 84 of the Big Book.
The chart below shows this relationship between what it was like and what it’s like now that is promised as we go through the decision steps of 1 thru 3 and then the action steps of 4 thru 9. We also know that if we keep growing up with the maintenance steps of 10 thru 12; we can sustain and enlarge these promises described in the 9th step.
I found this a very helpful way to quickly crystallize some of the fundamental changes we experience in recovery. It’s a way to more specifically describe the ‘profound alteration in our reaction to life’ mentioned in the Spiritual Experience Appendix 2 of the Big Book (BB p.567) as we learn how to maintain a conscious contact with an ‘unsuspected inner resource’ that can do for us what we can’t do for ourselves.
I also believe you can take the final paragraphs of the classic Big Book Story ‘Keys to the Kingdom’ as a further promise if we adopt this as a way of life.
You might find this collection of promises article helpful in revealing the limitless expansion of our daily sober way of living. I like the way this is described in the Foreword of the Twelve & Twelve:
“A.A.’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.” – Bruce M.
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