Episode 241 -- October 6, 2022

Using alcohol or other drugs allowed us to avoid thinking about the effects of our actions. Our addictions kept us focused on protecting ourselves and our secrets—everything and everyone else got treated as secondary. As we move more deeply into a life of recovery, we discover the power of self-awareness, and we can learn how to reflect on our actions and choices. Using what we learn about ourselves each day to change our behavior and keep repairing our relationships is evidence of ongoing growth in recovery and leads to a saner, more serene life.

A Program for You: A Guide to the Big Book's Design for Living is written as a companion to the Big Book. It directly applies to those who are working the Twelve Steps. Understanding that some of us don't frame our recovery according to the Twelve Steps, we can still take lessons and inspiration from this tried-and-true tradition and apply them to our own journey—especially as they help us lead a more integrated, joyful, and emotionally healthy life.

For those of us who are using the Big Book, the following excerpt offers the ongoing challenge of Step Ten, "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it," as a pattern for living out the Program every day. This Step can help us grow into the promises Alcoholics Anonymous makes about how we will feel and what we will experience in recovery.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

Everything in our universe is either growing or dying. Something is either going forward or going back. Nothing ever stays the same.

Most of us can find a young tree near where we live and notice how it grows. It will grow year after year, becoming more beautiful each year, until one day it quits growing. And the day it quits growing it begins to die. Eventually, it dies and turns to earth and dust, returning to its source.

By working Steps One through Nine you've succeeded in transforming your life. But if you try to stay where you are without growing anymore, you'll start dying—not physically, but emotionally and spiritually. Eventually, you'll slip back and start having difficulty with people again. That will cause trouble in your mind, and resentments and fears will start showing up once more. These resentments and fears will begin to block you off from your Higher Power, and eventually you could start telling yourself that you can safely drink or use again, which, if left unchallenged, will surely bring your physical death as well.

So you need to find a way to keep yourself growing. The last three of the Twelve Steps are designed to help you continue your spiritual growth.

A Lifetime of Spiritual Growth
On lines 13-24 of page 25 in the Big Book, Bill W. talks about "a fourth dimension of existence" that he and the other early Alcoholics Anonymous members discovered through their spiritual experiences. Once you've completed Steps One through Nine, you have already recovered in the first three dimensions of life—the spiritual, mental, and physical. You can now begin to live in this fourth dimension as well if you continue to practice the Twelve Step program.

Most of us have never experienced or thought about such a dimension. Before the two of us stopped drinking, neither of us could even begin to imagine it. We didn't know you could live without being mad. We didn't know you could live without being afraid. And we didn't know you could live without hurting other people. But now we not only see this dimension clearly, we live in it—and the result is indescribably wonderful. You have to feel it and experience it to know what it is. But we have felt it, experienced it, and known it ourselves, and we want you to experience it as well.

Working Steps Ten through Twelve will enable you to have this experience.

Some people say that the last three Steps of the Twelve Step program are "maintenance Steps." By this, they mean that Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve keep you from slipping back into old, destructive ways of thinking, acting, and living. We agree that this is one of the purposes of the final three Steps—but we don't agree with the term "maintenance Steps." We don't think you can merely maintain anything. You have got to either grow or regress. Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve will help you to keep growing spiritually and emotionally. Certainly, they keep you from slipping backward—but they also help you to keep moving forward. And you can use them to keep moving forward and growing for the rest of your life. In Step Ten you continue to take personal inventory, and whenever you are wrong you promptly admit it. You also continue to grow in effectiveness, understanding, and spirit. You don't work Step Ten for a day, a week, or ten years—you work it for the rest of your life. Working Step Ten means continuously working Steps Four through Nine on a daily basis.

We have noticed that some people shrink down Step Ten and try to make it shorter and easier than it really is. They think it just means that if you hurt someone during the day, you should make amends, and that's that. But the Big Book shows that Step Ten means far more than that. Step Ten involves all of the six immediately preceding Steps (Steps Four through Nine)—and it means not just making amends, but living a life of the Spirit.

According to the Big Book, Step Ten means continuing to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear (Step Four). When these crop up, we ask God to remove them (Steps Six and Seven), discuss them with someone immediately (Step Five), and make amends quickly if we have harmed someone (Steps Eight and Nine). And you must ask your Higher Power daily how you can best serve that Power's will instead of your own. As the Big Book says in line 23 on page 85, this is the proper use of your will.

The Return of Sanity
All of this adds up to something a great deal more than just admitting when you're wrong and then making amends. It means growing into a fourth dimension of living, the dimension of Spirit. Perhaps, most of all, it means sanity. Because by now, having worked Steps One through Ten, your sanity will have returned. You will no longer be interested in practicing your addictions.

As you continue to work Step Ten in your life, you'll see your character defects become smaller and smaller. Your relationship with God as you understand God will become better and better. So will your relationship with your fellow human beings and with yourself. And at long last you'll have taken responsibility for your own behavior.

The two of us now know, as the result of working the Twelve Steps, that we are responsible for the way we feel and for what we say and do. Before we started working the Steps, especially Step Ten, we didn't know this—we just automatically reacted to people and things. But today we know how to stop ourselves from merely reacting. We know how to stop blaming others.

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