12 Step Workshop - Fast Track To Sobriety
Intro to Part 3:
WHAT WE WILL COVER in the 3rd Session: Steps 6, 7, 8 & 9
- Are you still afraid to look the world in the eye?
- Can you be alone and be peace and ease?
- Are your fears starting to disappear?
- Do you feel closer to your Creator?
- Have you left anything out of your step 4?
- Are you ready to let G-d remove all your defects?
- Are you willing to do whatever it takes to be FREE from the addiction?
- Do you know what your REAL purpose in life is?
- How does one make a proper amends?
- How do I make an amends to someone I truly hate?
- What if I wronged someone who I cannot contact anymore?
- What about someone who owes ME an amends?
- Sorry is not enough
Step 6
"We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."
Step 7
"We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."
P.75/at the bottom: “Is our work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? If we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all - every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.”
Q: Are we now ready to let G-d remove the obstacles blocking us from Him?
Step 6 is about getting ready. It’s about Willingness.
Q: Can He now take them all?
If we have taken step 6 and are ready, then we say something like this:
the Big Book and turn them into questions, which we ask ourselves:
Q: Do we have the power to experience a psychic change in our thinking?
Well, if we were capable of doing that, then why would we need this program?!
If we could just change our thinking, we would have done it a long time ago!
The Big Book states:
“One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change”
Q: Are we willing to consider that unless we experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope for recovery?
Q: Can anyone produce that psychic change for us? Can our wife? Children? Money?
Q: Are we willing to believe that nothing human can make this happen?
P.11/paragraph 4: “Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at the minute; and this was none at all.”
This is the very essence of step 1. The Authors of the Big Book spend 43 pages teaching us step 1!
This program is not about our acting out. Step 1 is not about acting out.
If step 1 was about acting out, it would just say QUIT or STOP!
We have come to realize that we will act out no matter what. Why? because we have no Power.
If we had the power then we wouldn't need this program.
At first we thought we just needed more information.
We wanted the program to teach us little techniques. We were sure that more information will keep us from acting out.
But ALL the information is worthless because we found that we have NO POWER.
Q: If we have no power, how manageable is our lives going to be? Probably pretty UNMANAGEABLE!
P.20/Last Paragraph (slightly reworded): “Normal people have little trouble in giving up acting out entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone. Then we have a certain type of hard addict. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time… But what about the real addict? He may start off as a moderate addict; he may or may not become a continuous hard addict; but at some stage of his acting-out career he begins to lose all control of his behavioral/emotional state once he starts to act out.”
Q: Do we really need this program?
Q: With enough pain can we give up acting out?
There are people who had - and have - more trouble in life than we did, yet they may not be addicts because they don’t need to act out if they CHOOSE not to.
It’s not about how much we act out but whether we can choose to stop.
P.23/paragraph 1: “Therefore, the main problem of the addict centers in his mind, rather than in his body.”
So the authors are telling us that acting-out is not our problem. Our THINKING is our problem.
Our minds have caused us more pain than anything else.
And it turns out that it is not about what happens to us in our lives, but rather our mind’s interpretation of what is happening!
P.24/paragraph 1: “The fact is that most addicts, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in acting out. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.”
Q: Have we lost power to choose?
Remembering the pain and suffering will NOT keep us from acting out!
Why? Because NOTHING will keep us from acting out through our own will. We will act out no matter what.
Even old-timers know that unless they are constantly working with newcomers, they will act out even if they have been clean for years. Why? Because “the memory of the suffering of even a week or a month” ago is not sufficient to stop us, so imagine trying to stop ourselves based on the suffering of 20 years ago!
P.34/paragraph 2: “… the question is how to stop altogether. We are assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop. Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will act-out or not”
Q: Can we stop on a nonspiritual basis?
If we want to know if we have taken the first step, let us ask ourselves this question …
Q: Can we choose not to act out today?
P.25/paragraph 3: “If you are as seriously an addict as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help.”
There is no middle road solution!
Q: Are we willing to accept spiritual help?
We can be free men. We don’t have to suffer from the compulsion to act out. And most of the time we can be free from our own heads, the very thing that caused us more suffering than anything else.
UNMANAGEABILITY
P.52/paragraph 2: “We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people”
Let’s turn this into questions:
Q: Are we having trouble with personal relationships?
Q: Can we control our feelings?
Q: Are we subject to misery and depression?
Q: Can we make a living? (this has little to do with making money)
Q: Do we sometimes feel useless?
Q: Are we full of fear?
Q: Are we unhappy?
Step 1e steps, we need to LIVE the steps. This program is a new design for living.
“There may be some wrongs we can never fully right. We don't worry about them if we can honestly say to ourselves that we would right them if we could. Some people cannot be seen - we send them an honest letter. And there may be a valid reason for postponement in some cases. But we don't delay if it can be avoided. We should be sensible, tactful, considerate and humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone.”
Sometimes it is not possible to make an amends in person. It could be someone we have hurt is no longer alive.
Step 9 promises:
P.83/Bottom of page: “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
So if we want to experience these promises we have to be willing to take the action.
Step 9 is hard. It takes humility and courage. But we must ask ourselves… HOW FREE DO WE WANT TO BE?
So how do we make an amends?
A. Gain consent if necessary.
B. Better in person but if not, then on the phone or write a letter.
C. First name the thing that we did wrong and say “We were wrong”.
D. Just saying “We’re sorry” is not enough - an apology is not an amends. We must attempt to ‘right’ the wrong. So ask the person “is there anything we can do to make things right?”
E. Don’t make excuses! (i.e. We’re sorry, BUT…)
F. Don’t point out any of the other person’s errors (remember, we only need to clean OUR side of the street).
We don’t like making amends but we have to in order to be free. And we try not to harm people nowadays because we don’t want to have to make an amends!
Remember, if we leave out anyone we will not be able to be free.
Step 9 moves into step 10, so just get started and don’t worry about finishing.