Category: Modern Love Letters to the 12 Steps

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps.

• In Step One, we acknowledge our powerlessness over addiction.
• In Step Two, we find hope of a cure in a loving, personal relationship with a Higher Power. 
• In Step Three, we surrender, casting off our burdens fully into the arms of life’s healing powers. 
• In Step Four, we reclaim our right to be set free by the truth of our tender humanity. 
• In Step Five, we access compassionate witness. 

But the Steps don’t leave us there, midway up the stairway to heaven! Onward, dear friends, to Step Six. During the Sixth Step, we recover our authentic willingness to change. 

Dear Step Six, 

You read, “We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” 

Hold the Phone – Defects?

Okay. Hold on. Step Six, before I go anywhere with this, let’s just take a pause to think about the phrase “defects of character”. 

Really? 

To my contemporary sensibility, the phrasing feels highly unfortunate. Nobody wants to be defective, it’s almost an offensive concept. I take offense!

Nor do I want to believe, honestly, that my defects are so ingrained as to be part of my character. 

Why don’t you just come out and say it, then: it’s all my fault? It’s because I’m bad, something is wrong with me?

Can’t we please call it something else – woundedness, trauma, social programming? Something that’s not so fully my responsibility? 

Ah…I see it now…I will have to take responsibility for something in this step. 

Shoot. OK. Continue.

Deep Breath, Carry On

OK, let me start over. Dear Step Six, I am not here to tell you how things should be. I am not here because I know better. 

I am here to be shaped, softened, to receive the gift of what you have to offer me. I am here for the deeper meaning. 

I am here hat in hand, with reverence and respect for a longstanding tradition. I am here because, whether or not I like it, AA remains the single most effective solution on planet for the problem of addiction. 

Perhaps now is not the most important moment to register my resistance, to call attention to my opposition. 

Let me remember who I am in relation to this solid body of work. In relation to what’s tried, tested, and true. Let me look for the deeper truth in this, the truth behind the pain that these words bring up for me. 

In authentic, chosen humility.

Deep breath. Carry on. 

Malfunctions of Character

Staying open, what does it mean to consider that I have defects in my character? 

If I start with the most basic idea of defectiveness, all it really means is that my character has areas where it doesn’t work. 

Well that’s certainly true! There are so many things about my personality which, frankly, just don’t work as well as I wish they did.  

My self-esteem. My codependence. My tendency to personalize everything, to think everyone is always unhappy with me, attacking me, or doesn’t like me. My tendency to think I don’t matter. 

All of these habits are, sure enough, ingrained in my character. And I am so weary of them, Step Six, I truly am. These ancient habits, these tendencies, these patterns that so deeply inform my experience inside a human skin, so counterproductive, pointless, frustrating. These have long outstayed their welcome. 

If I think about my purpose in life from Spirit’s perspective, I can see even more clearly the ways that my character is broken. 

If my job is to be the best, highest, most natural, most expanded, most authentic expression of Source in this world, I can see what is getting in my way.

It’s these…malfunctions of character. You could even call them defects. 

Small smile. I see it now.

Take these From Me!

Looking at the concept of character this way, I can not only admit that these are problem areas, but begin to feel a huge readiness to have them lifted away from me by God. 

Source, yes, please take away these defects of character, places where the functions of my small self don’t work! Shore me up, rebuild my walls, patch my holes. Give me a whole new structure, whatever.

I have my own wish list ready to go. Please take away my anxiety, my feeling that I have to control things or they’ll go off the rails. Please lift this guilt that I have carried as long as I can remember drawing breath. Please take away the excesses of my self-doubt, the lingering suspicion that I am bad to the bone. 

And Source, I guess you might have your own list. The things you see about me, that I hide from myself, for all the reasons. Those things that loved ones sometimes try to reflect to me, whether I am ready or not, to see these truths. Where I am the opposite of how I mean to be, where my influence brings harm to others. 

I am open. If there is something that you think is getting in my way, have it at, Source. Your will. I have no investment in remaining the same, it is not in my interest. There is nothing in this world that is improved by me continuing to stay the same. 

All right. I’m ready. Entirely.  

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps.

In Step One we acknowledge our powerlessness over addiction. In Step Two we find hope of a cure in a loving, personal relationship with a Higher Power. In Step Three, we surrender, casting off our burdens entirely into the arms of life’s healing powers. In Step Four, we reclaim our right to be set free by the truth of our tender humanity. 

But the Steps don’t leave us there, nearly halfway up the stairway to heaven! Onward, dear friends, to Step Five. During the fifth step, we recover the right to be compassionately witnessed. 

Sounding the Resonances of Truth

Dear Step Five, 

You read, “We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

You can sound like confession, penance. Those of us who tend to beat ourselves up, to punish or correct ourselves, who draw nourishment from a framework of moralization, may take it that way. 

In truth, admitting the exact nature of our wrongs to another person out loud, acknowledging the truth in our own hearts as audible resonances, spoken, resounded through our bodies, will be the liberating cure of truth. 

Spoken Truth Cures the Sickness

Truthtelling sets us free, even when what we have to say isn’t pretty. The body responds to truth’s vibrations, blooms to it. 

When we say truth out loud with the music of the voice, speaking to ourselves, a trusted other, and also to God inside us, we follow through on the freedom we claimed for ourselves in Step Four.

Why is it so important to share truth out loud with another? Because as they say in AA, we are only as sick as our secrets. And secrets do keep us sick. 

Just as it’s dysfunctional to ask children to keep the secrets of the family to themselves, so as not to bring shame on the family, the same holds true when we ask portions of ourselves to hide, to pretend we are healthier than we are. 

The Need to Be Seen

Underneath our shields, our weapons, our armor, there lies a hidden desire to be seen and known, not only for the best of who we are, but also for the worst of what we have become. Because what was done to us is visible in what we became.

It is a terrible burden to the soul to be forced to hide its darkness. It contorts, perverts, and destroys soul to be bound to always wear the costumes and masks of a false self. Nevertheless, that is the assignment given to ego. 

The poor ego. The ego is not much more than a parentified child, trying to, as they say in AA, whistle in the dark.

The Flower of our Soul Revives

What lies underneath the protective bluster of the ego is damage. Harm, hurt, and ways in which we have been mangled out of our original divine human form. Like crushed flowers, the more tender, vulnerable sides of us have become mashed underfoot. 

But these sides of us would spring back to life and full form given the right conditions, like sand being jostled into beautiful patterns by the right sound tones, as seen in cymatics. 

Step Five, you respond to something real. That within us which has been forced to live underground, in reversal, pressed out of shape through the forces of traumatization. That which longs to be seen in its damaged form. 

These parts of us all need our own recognition, our compassion, our understanding of the story of how they got to be this way.

The Longing to Be Good

Deep in the soul, we want to be good. Those sides of us who have wanted, on their worst days, to spread their damage to others, they do to. The parts that want to enact patterns that were enacted upon us – even those sides, if they felt it was an option, would choose to be good if they could. 

Lacking a pathway back to the light, parts frozen in darkness communicate in the language and tools of their world of darkness. If given a pathway back out of isolation, exile and marginalization, these parts will take on different forms, recognizable as aspects and colors of our divine nature. 

The journey back to our basic goodness starts with admitting fully what the current situation is. What we have become, where we have fallen short of our own integrity. 

Asking for What We Want

Step Five, it is healing to recognize this, and even more healing to recognize it in the light of compassionate witness from another. With one who knows all about how darkness corrodes the best of intentions when we are playing a game that it is impossible to win. 

The God nature inside us forgives all, when we ask for forgiveness. If we do not admit to ourselves that we know deep down, and feel deep down, the dissonance of our actions, we will never ask to be freed of those burdens. We want to be good. We must find the frequency of humility, to ask for what we want, receive our own permission to return to who and what we are. 

Step Five, you are the beginning of a genuine ask.

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps.

In Step One we acknowledge our powerlessness over addiction. In Step Two we find hope of a cure in a loving, personal relationship with a Higher Power. In Step Three, we surrender, casting off our burdens fully into the arms of life’s healing powers. 

But the Steps don’t leave us there, only a quarter way up the stairway to heaven! Onward, dear friends, to Step Four, in which we recover the right to be set free by the truth. 

Dear Step Four, 

You read, “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

The Scary Step

Step Four, I was so afraid of you at first. I was scared of what you would uncover, what truths you might point out, what inadequacies in my nature you would expose for all to see. 

I was afraid of the heaviness of guilt. Implacable shame, the black blanket of soul-crushing self-condemnation, awareness of my disappointing nature. 

I was afraid, dear Step Four, that you would be my worst enemy, that you would align with those who told me I am nothing, who said I was bad, who said I had no worth.

I thought you would bear evidence to validate those who interpreted me in the worst light, who pinned me in the corner with judgments and interpretations of who I am, why I do what I do, what I meant. 

The Dark Wave of Shame

Imagining making a fearless, searching inventory of the ways I had fallen short of my own values of kindness, compassion, and goodness, what came roaring back to my ears was the sound of a massive black wave of shame. 

A sea of memories of all the ways I have ever been misunderstood, unseen, interpreted as though expressing the worst sides of human nature. 

Worst of all how, finding no way to refute these interpretations, I sided with Them against my Self. This is what I was afraid you would bring: my own, damning self-judgment, that original Self-betrayal. 

The Surprise Blessing

But I was surprised. What you brought me instead was a gift. 

You restored my right to be set free by the truth. The truth of what lives on in me, and why it does. What corroding, enchained, corrupted forces, what shadow-bound, what small-spirited and narrow-minded desperations live in the shadows of my soul, where I did not want to see or know them. 

Step Four, thank you for all you brought me. You are the courage to face my humanness, you are the truth that none of us is better or worse than another. You are true humility, true recognition of our shared wounds, our interdependence. 

Ego, the Resistance Fighter

Step Four, my ego wants me to be different than the others, so, so bad. It wants me to be better, it wants me to be more moral, smarter, more gifted or in some other way not fully part of the messy, heartbreaking psychological fray. 

Why does my ego wants this? Because the ego was once my consolation, my way of not having to wonder if I deserve to belong. Ego grew over the pains of wondering if I maybe am only my failures, my lack of courage, my smallness, my not-yet-ness, my incompleteness. 

Ego was the part that said, no, I will not be those bad things. I will be something different. I will resist, I will fight. I will make myself something good, something worthy, something beautiful, something strong.

Prying Off the Ego Shell

Ever since then, I never wanted to look back at shadows cast. Who I hurt, how I hurt them. I couldn’t bear to see the darkness, cast by the need to hold onto some kind of self-concept that feels acceptable, good, admirable. Step Four, I was afraid you would take my ego from me, its protections and its comforting illusions. 

And you did! Oh, lordy. 

What I did not know is that when ego is cracked off, crow-barred away, and the vulnerability within me is exposed to the light, that I would find not that I judged myself, not that I was especially hateful or bad, not that I was worse than all the rest … only the same as everyone else. 

The Unifying Wound

The same. Not better, not worse. Marred by the same darkness, injured with the same instruments, carrying the same burdens as all of humanity. Gifted with the same bright lights. 

Like all who came before me. Struggling with the same wounds, the same self-rejection, the same longing to return to divinity. The same potential for reunion with all that is. 

Step Four, what you gave me was my inclusion and belonging. That in my goodness-mixed-with flaws, I am one with all. That I do not have to get away from that which connects me with everyone else. That I am always and forever together.

So I slowly love myself, for all of us, and love all of us, for me. Thank you Step Four, for your mysterious blessings. I reclaim my right to be set free by your truth. 

Love, 

Me

For more about the power of Step Four, check out The Heart Chakra and the Fourth Step.

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps.

In Step One we acknowledge our powerlessness over addiction. In Step Two we find hope of a cure in a loving, personal relationship with a Higher Power. 

But the Steps don’t leave us there, so close to the bottom of the stairway to heaven! This is just the beginning. Onward, dear friends, to Step Three, in which we recover the right to surrender.

Surrender is a Decision

Dear Step Three, you read as follows: 

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God”. 

Step Three, my friend, you are a daily practice. You are a relief, a perennial, a returning. A vow to renew and refresh every day. An orientation, a way of approaching life. 

Step Three, you are a voluntary decision, a free will choice. You are the determination that in any given matter, God will be the ultimate decider. 

My Life will be Directed by Source

Yes, that’s right. God, aka Source, Spirit, the Universe, Higher Power, All That Is, the Benevolent Heart of Creation, will decide. God is my authority, to whom I defer. 

Regardless of the wild chaos of desires, conflicts, pain, and confusion that may bloom inside my heartspace on any given day, through the cacophony, I will hold out for the clean clear tones of Your music.   

Healing the Power of Will

Step Three, you teach us to turn two things over to the Highest and Best within us. The first is our broken, ineffective willpower. 

Like dropping our willpower off at the emergency room of spirit, Step Three, with you we say Ok, God, I don’t know what to do to cure and fix this hurting, aching will. Please take it out of my hands, repair and restore it.

The second thing you teach us to turn over, dear Step Three, is our lives themselves. What they look like from the outside, and what they feel like from the inside.

Step Three and Manifestation

The word will is related to an older version of the word, equivalent to the meaning currently mapped to the word want. Our will represents our desire, what we’re after, what we’re trying to experience. And it is a predictive statement – declaring intentions for what our future will be.  

What does it mean when we acknowledge that addiction captivated our will? That our willpower was no longer free and clear from a negative, controlling influence? 

It means that the very machinery of manifestation, the way we out-pictured our lives, was in the hands of something that was not on our side. 

Addiction only ever serves itself, as everyone knows.

Surrender is a Practical Practice

When our will isn’t free, we are not successful at manifestation. Our will must be solidly, securely surrendered into the hands of our Highest Self, for it to work in a way that co-creates what we actually, deeply wish to experience in the out-there world. 

It follows naturally, therefore, Step Three, that we surrender also the results of our lives. Who we are, how we are, what other people think of us, what our work in the world will ultimately be, the highest path and purpose of us, how we embody and inhabit this earthly plane – all of this belongs to God, when we insist that it does. 

Step Three, thank you for assisting with this process, for helping to lay the groundwork of a deep and practical form of surrender, in which we rise each day to receive direction from that which is best within and around us. 

Taking Our Will Back during Times of Forgetting

Step Three, you know as well as I do that the call of self-will can come knocking on any given day. It is triggered any time I meet suffering, and my trust in God isn’t robust enough. 

When I go into that fear and doubt, that maybe there is no God, or maybe God is there but doesn’t care about me personally, or God doesn’t love me, (otherwise why all this pain?)… Another round on the wheel of samsara.

In these ways, Step Three, it is my weakness to map onto God those other authorities whom I met in my early childhood. I confuse Source with parents, teachers, bosses who at different stages in my life, seemed to have a superior understanding, control, and power to impact the circumstances of my life. 

Hence the need to decide, again and again. To remember who Source really is, which face of God I am choosing to serve and receive love from. I choose the unconditional, loving, wonderful Source, the deep Who, full of heart, heavenliness and power.

A Determination of How Life will Be

Step Three, you dispel the lie that all we can do is be alone and unloved, that our abuse patterns are all we can ask or hope for in this life. What makes that no longer true, anymore, is this instantaneous, daily, forever-now, always fresh decision. 

To say, what has come before will not once again come to pass, because this time, I will be with God, and my life will be the proof of that difference. 

Much love, 

Me 

This post is part of a series of modern love letters to the 12 Steps. To start at the very beginning, read To Whom We Owe Our Recovery: Modern Love Letters to the Twelve Steps. 

Dear Step One, 

You read as follows: “We admitted we were powerless over [our drug of choice], and that our lives had become unmanageable.”

The Start of A Good Life

Step One, I will always love you for one simple reason: you are the beginning of everything that’s good in my life now. 

Embracing powerlessness was the greatest relief, the starting point of freedom. The first step is a doorway into a completely different life, a life in which I am cared for, in which I matter. Step One is the kind invitation to drop an enormous burden, into the soft lap of a power so far better equipped to handle it than I am. 

Step One is clear and straight to the point. It acknowledges the plain truth. The addicted state is powerlessness. Whether it should or should not be that way, managing the situation is no longer a thing when we’re talking about addiction. 

Burdens Acknowledged

Thank you, Step One, for acknowledging the burden I have carried on my back for so long. Of not being able to force myself to be different than I am. Of things getting more and more out of hand. It seems that you understand what happened, that somehow in the course of my life I went from having things kind of together, to one day losing the balance and falling off the beam.  

Under a gun I had to admit that addiction had the upper hand. Addiction commandeered me, hijacked my life. This was the real reason for my trouble, my failures. Not for lack of trying, not for lack of wanting, nor for lack of goodness inside me. 

I now understand why this happened, why my own life force shut the path of addiction down. Addiction is not the way. If we keep trying that way, it closes up for us. Thank God.

Know Your Enemy

To understand our foe, to understand what we cannot truck with, cannot mess with, sometimes we have to find out the hard way. Addiction leads us to finding out about those spirits and energies in this world that we should not be messing around with, because we will lose our sovereignty to them. 

Addiction taught me we must always think about what kind of forces we are in consent with, who get into bed with, who we make deals with. When we make a deal with addiction, it’s a bad deal. 

Maybe we said, “Addiction, I’ll give you all of me, in exchange for feeling good, for numbing, for avoiding, for delaying.” Such deals are never worth it, because the power addiction gives us ultimately destroys the nature of what we are.  

The Paradox of Powerlessness

What does it mean to admit powerlessness over addiction, long past the deal was made? We tear up the old deal, but now what? Does it mean we’re powerless over everything?  

Maybe we are neither completely powerless in our lives, nor all-powerful. Sometimes I struggle in my head between these two poles, as though it could be finally decided once and for all, but perhaps it cannot. 

The space in the middle, where we have some influence, some power over our destinies, but not, specifically, the choice to use substances to avoid ourselves without ill effect, is an interesting space to sit in.

Choosing Life

Just because we are powerless does not mean we can abdicate our responsibilities. It actually does really matter what we do and don’t do. But all we can do is influence, choose, try, prefer, opt in or opt out, say yes or say no, do our best – but not control. 

What do we choose, knowing that we aren’t in control? What do we energetically vote for with our every breath? How do we choose to devote ourselves, what habits do we want to practice, for everyone’s sake?

It is within this curious existential place that we are confronted with Step One – to admit that we are powerless over our addictions and that life is/does become unmanageable when addiction is present. 

If I do what I must to make sure I’m not in the hands of addiction, I have some freedoms and some choices. In these parameters, we walk the beautiful path of recovery. With some freedom, but not all the freedom. Some power, but not all the power. Human life in a nutshell.  

Love, 

Me