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Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. — Step Twelve of the Twelve Steps
Step Twelve found a way to expose and transform people’s basic selfishness and egocentricity by telling us early on that we must serve others. We do not truly comprehend any spiritual thing until we ourselves give it away. Spiritual gifts increase only by using them.
Step Twelve is a karmic law of in and out, and what Jesus really meant when he sent the disciples out “to cast out devils, and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness” (Matthew 10:1) or to “Go out to the world and proclaim the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). He knew we had to hand the message over before we really understood it or could appreciate it ourselves.
Bill Wilson described his experience of working with alcoholics during the first six months of his own sobriety. None of the alcoholics responded, but his very work kept him sober. Bill realized the alcoholics couldn’t meet his need for success or whatever it might be. Rather, his own stability came through giving and not demanding that they receive. I think that is the necessary crossover point to maturity for any minister.
Like St. Francis, Bill taught us that it is better to give than to receive. Once you get in contact with the flow and the ultimate Source that is within you, then your stability comes from the only stable Source there is, whom most of us call God. Then you know that “you must do what is yours to do,” and the flow outward is your security, not the dependence upon somebody else’s response. In other words, we stop depending on something outside of us to fill our needs inside. We reverse the flow and draw what we need from the inside, from our absolute union between God and the soul. We let God’s energy, God’s Spirit, flow out from us to others, and then we know on a cellular level that God dwells within us.
Adapted from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps,
pp. 105, 107, 109 (also available as CD audiobook)
and Emotional Sobriety: Rewiring Our Programs for “Happiness”
(CD, DVD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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