One Day at a Time

Resting On Laurels

Look at Step Ten. If you think I mean read the summary of Step Ten off the Twelve Steps shades hanging on the wall or what can be gleaned off of page 59 -- I do not. I have noticed that  folks who "do the steps" off  the wall end up being "off the wall" themselves.

I mean read the actual directions for taking Step Ten. They are on page 84 and they are followed by some unbelievably wonderful promises to be had as the result. They will BLOW YOUR MIND!

Now, here's where some life changing challenges comes in. We begin to see that practicing these principles in all of our affairs is much more than a week or month long spurt of 4th step inventory writing and an afternoon of fifth step talking.

It means changing the way we approach our daily lives - moment by moment and day by day. It takes commitment - a commitment that is not so hard for those of us who have by now felt a miracle and are experiencing a new flow of power into our lives. We have come to believe and making drastic changes is now possible where before it was not. But it can be impossibly difficult for anyone who has not taken the previous steps and consequently begun to have the spiritual experience promised.

People who “take the steps” through non-AA, watered down easier-softer alternatives like AWOL programs or by reading the 12 & 12 may not get the powerful new flow of Gods grace. When or if they do, it seems short-lived.

We have allowed what probably began as a small clutch of non-alcoholic, hard drinking, problem drinkers evolve into a glut of alternative solutions masquerading as AA and it is now so top heavy that it has weighed down the entire fellowship to the point were interlopers and generations of non-AA thought has dragged the Fellowship into a throw-back of its former self. We are made out to be a laughing stock.

If only we would do what real alcoholics have to do in order to recover- if we wouldn’t change the words of the Big Book and excuse it off as “semantics” as if “semantics” is a good reason n excuse to re-write the directions to fit middle-of-the-road solutions that are more agreeable to Addictions Counselors and the treatment center 'for profit' philosophies - their apodictic tone in direct conflict with AA's Big Book experience. Then we might see some of the Step Ten promises come true.

They have come true and for that I am truly grateful that these 12 promises and of course the 9th step amends promises have become operative in my life. And you thought "The Promises" read in your last meeting where only ones. HA!

STEP TEN PROMISES

• And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol.
• For by this time sanity will have returned.
• We will seldom be interested in liquor.
• If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.
• We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.
• We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.
• We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.
• We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected.
• We have not even sworn off.
• Instead, the problem has been removed.
• It does not exist for us.
• We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.

Not too shabby, huh? This is my experience and these are all delivered every single day, when I maintain my spiritual fitness through the daily 10th step practices prescribed by the first one hundred alcoholics.

So what do you want to do? Do you want and read and quote Emmett Fox - or do you want to recover from alcoholism and show others how to do the same?

Peace,

Danny S