Step Two

[MajestyJo]

Step Two

" Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."


The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a
dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, "Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle.

Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?" Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened.

It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself?

At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society, but he got through with room to spare."

"Well," says the newcomer, "I know you're telling me the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A, is full of people who once believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances, does a fellow `take it easy'? That's what I want to know."

"That," agrees the sponsor, "is a very good question indeed. I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't have to work at it very hard, either.

Listen, if you will, to these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay sober, you don't have to swallow all of Step Two right now. Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal myself. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came first. Again I say, all you need is the open mind."

The sponsor continues, "Take, for example, my own case. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected, venerated, even worshipped science. As a matter of fact, I still do--all except the worship part. Time after time, my instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific progress: search and research, again and again, always with the open mind. When I first looked at A.A, my reaction was just like yours. This A.A, business, I thought, is totally unscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't consider such nonsense.

"Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A, showed results, prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A, that had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could.

"This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience, of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don't care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your `higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough.

You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession, their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk of God."

Consider next the plight of those who once had faith, but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with
self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who have become prejudiced against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tell all these they may still find a faith that works?

Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.

Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go. The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.

Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, "Yes, we were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious and hardworking. We became convinced that such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough."As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good enough for us.

The will to win would carry us through. But then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when all our score cards read `zero,' and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it. And so can you."

Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking.

The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.

This faith is for you, too."
Another crowd of A.A.'s says: "We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the `begats.' In spots its morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so many `believers' even in their Sunday best.

How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the `good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to A.A,, we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very
thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to A.A,, we learned better.

"As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding
characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that.

But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. `d**n this faith
business!' we said."When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too.

Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A, we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay." Now let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries
to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then, can be the matter?

To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's answer.

This answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, "Grant me my wishes" instead of "Thy will be done." The love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained self-deceived,
and so incapable of receiving enough grace to restore us to sanity.
Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill.

They are abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism." Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind." Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining-room
furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim "soundness of mind" for himself.

Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every A.A, meeting is an assurance that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him.

[MajestyJo]

Material I posted on another on the topic of Step Two.

In Step One, I came to the doors of recovery, in Step Two, I came to.

I was very sick when I got here, I also thought I had seen and heard everything and there was nothing new under the sun.

I came to realize that the program would work for me. I came to realize that God was an old tape like everything else in my life.
I came to realize that I need to open my mind, listen and learn. More importantly, I needed to learn to listen. I heard many alcoholics and addicts, young and old who had their own understanding of God and I realized that I had to find my own and went on a spiritual journey.

They say we don't get this Step all at once, and this was how it was for me. I was one year sober when I realized I didn't know what God meant to me. It was the beginning of my spiritual journey.

Over the years my mind has opened to many new things and I have come to believe that God is all things. When I limit God with my narrow outlook then I limit Him/Her/It as to how much my life can change and grow.

In Step Two I received hope and learned to open my mind to a new way of living and change.

When I came into recovery, I knew there was a God and I didn't believe I was insane.

At a year sober, I didn't know who God was, and I knew I was insane.

What is sanity? I have a Canadian Dictionary and Thesaurus and it doesn't have the word in it.

Insanity means mentally deranged, crazy, madly, excessively. Sounds like a lot of my thinking and actions when I was using.

Everything was in excess, and if it wasn't, I blew it up so it was. The smallest thing was a big deal. When I got sober, I remember telling my cousin that I had discovered the concept of one day at a time. Her husband said, "Doesn't everyone live that way?"

Even when I am not using, I can slip into that insanity when dealing with life. I am so grateful that my program can take me out of there. The longer I stay sober, the crazier I get. Not like the insantiy of when I was using, but in away where I enjoy life and better still, enjoy the things I missed out on, like my childhood.

It is up to me 'the adult' to give the child within all the love and attention she never got. To give her the fun and laughter and the ability to be able to laugh at herself and know it is okay.

To give her the knowledge that it is okay to do silly things, make mistakes and let her know she isn't a mistake or stupid.

They say we should become as little children, to find the belief and faith that works.

Step Two is about a power, a force working in my life, doing for me what I could not do for myself.

Over the years, I have learned to tap into many power sources. The greatest being my Creator and what I call the Spirit of the Universe.

For me it isn't the people in the rooms, but the power of the people in the rooms gathered together for a common good to help each other.

A meeting is what I call a 'God Village.' A spirit within each person present, bonded together with a common goal. Sobriety for me is soundness of mind. It doesn't matter what substance takes me away from that state, what is important is that I find a source that can bring me back or keep me in a place of serenity and at peace with myself and those around me.

The God of my understanding is loving, caring, honest, has a great sense of humour, forgiving, and most of all my best friend. My confidant and advisor, who shows me the way to stay clean and sober. Who helps me to live in today, drop the past, and plan for a new tomorrow.

[MajestyJo]

Hope

from: "He Sold Himself Short"

"I can still remember very distinctly getting into Akron at eleven p.m. and routing this same Howard out of bed to do something about me. He spent two hours with me that night telling me his story. He said he had finally learned that drinking was a fatal illness made up of an allergy plus an obsession, and once the drinking had passed from habit to obsession, we were completely hopeless....

"I thought at times that he was telling my story!....

“Here was a man with essentially the same outlook on life, except that he had done something about it.... As I look back on that first evening, I realize that I began to hope, then, for the first time."

© 2001, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 261

My first Promises meeting is what gave me hope, It was shortly after I came out of treatment. I was promised a new freedom. Didn't know the extent of that promise! Today it has come true many times on many levels.

To know that I am powerless, to surrender to a Higher Power, empowers me to do what I need to do for myself. I am not the Power, I am not the Source, I am the Channel, I am the Co-Creator of my own life. God doesn't do for me what I can do for myself. He leads and directs, He give me strength and courage, He is always with me and I am never alone.

When I came to the rooms, I heard others tell my story. It gave me hope to know I wasn't the only one!

STEP TWO: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
"The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel....I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could."

c. 1952, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 27

The best thing for me is when I get out of the way. God is as He reveals Himself to me today.

[MajestyJo]

Our Path

I just spent several hours with someone from my group, and I feel like I'm losing my mind. This woman insisted that the only way I would make progress in my program was to go to her church and succumb to her religious rules. She pushed and insisted, and insisted and pushed. She's been in the program so much longer than I have. I kept thinking that she must know what she's talking about. But it didn't feel right. And now I feel crazy, afraid, guilty, and ashamed.

--Anonymous

The spiritual path and growth promised to us by the Twelve Steps does not depend on any religious belief. They are not contingent upon any denomination or sect. They are not, as the traditions of Twelve Step programs state, affiliated with any religious denomination or organization.

We do not have to allow anyone to badger us about religion in recovery. We do not have to allow people to make us feel ashamed, afraid, or less than because we do not subscribe to their beliefs about religion.

We do not have to let them do it to us in the name of God, love, or recovery.

The spiritual experience we will find as a result of recovery and the Twelve Steps will be our own spiritual experience. It will be a relationship with God, a Higher Power, as we understand God.

Each of us must find our own spiritual path. Each of us must build our own relationship with God, as we understand God. Each of us needs a Power greater than ourselves. These concepts are critical to recovery.

So is the freedom to choose how to do that.

Higher Power, help me know that I don't have to allow anyone to shame or badger me into religious beliefs. If they confuse that with the spirituality available in recovery, help me give their issue back to them. Help me discover and develop my own spirituality, a path that works for me. Guide me, with Divine Wisdom, as I grow spiritually.

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater
than ourselves could restore us to sanity

"When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance
was revealed. At no time had we asked what God’s will
was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought
to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him,
too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance. In A.A. we saw the
fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol’s
final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their
other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible
situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was
not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions.
We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must
pay, we would pay.'"

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 31

I always had a belief in God but didn't have much faith in Him because I was told that I was a bad girl and everything I did was a sin. I walked in fear of being struck down at any moment and yet I didn't know how to change. There were so many rules and though shall nots that I didn't feel like I could live that way. I didn't have faith in myself, and it wasn't until I came to believe that God had faith in me that I could find it within myself. It was through the program that I found that faith.

From: "Changing Beliefs"

Slowly and painfully, I became aware of myself. I began
to see it wasn’t true that I didn’t believe in anything.
Rather, I had believed in the wrong things:
I had believed I needed a drink for confidence.
I had believed I was unattractive.
I had believed I was unworthy.
I had believed no one loved me.
I had believed I never had a break.

Someone said at a closed meeting, “There is good in all
of us. Seek it out, nurture it, tend it, and it will flourish.”
So I began searching for the positives within me. I
realized that my feeling of inferiority was just one aspect
of ego, and the arrogance I projected was the other. I
must find the center median. So I tried to act as if:
AA was giving me confidence.
I had an attractive personality, even though I was not beautiful.
I was worthy, like all others.
I loved myself and could therefore love others.
Faith was freeing me from the fear that had always gripped me.

Came to Believe…, pages 103-104

I came, I came to, and I came to believe the program would work for me. The more I stay sober, the crazier I get. Thankfully it isn't the same insanity of when I was using. Some times I just can't believe myself, what was I thinking?