Recently, as I began to think of where the Steps have
brought me, I came to realize that there were differences in
emphasis in those Steps which speak about God and my
relationship to Him. I noticed, for example, that while the
Third Step suggested I turn my will over to God's care, the
Eleventh Step made no mention at all of my will. Rather, it
emphasized God's will and my need to discover it and carry it
out. Clearly, my will had become subordinate to God's will
and this subordination seem to imply that something new had
occurred in my relationship with God. But what was that "new
something"?
People in A.A. have found that it is impossible for them
to recover without their finding some kind of "Higher Power".
That "Higher Power" may be anything at all (for many, it is
the group, or the program's principles) and does not have to
be a "God" in any conventional religious sense of that term.
Nevertheless, there is a "direction" to the Big Book's
thinking of a Higher Power and the recovering person's
relation to It. That direction points to the individual
having a personal relationship with a God who the Third
Tradition describes simply as "loving." And so the closing
lines of the first section of the Big Book speaks of the
"Great Fact" for us: if our relationship with God is right,
then great events will come to pass for us and for countless
others (p. 164).

1.
2.

What is this "right relationship" to which the Steps
lead us? As I reviewed my spiritual growth in the program,
I saw that my relationship to my Higher Power had developed
through three interconnected stages. Those stages began in
the Second and Third Steps; then, after the preparation of
the Fifth Step, in the Sixth and Seventh Steps; and finally
in the Eleventh Step which then led into the Twelfth.
When I finally became aware of the unmanageability of my
life and of my powerlessness over alcohol, I also became
aware that I had lost the ability to turn my life around.
Although I did not then believe in a God who would want to
save me, I had met a very gifted counselor in the treatment
center where I had gone for help. I trusted him. I knew he
wanted to help me get well. I decided to follow his
directions (some of which I didn't like) since I realized
that I didn't know what else to do to stop from drinking. As
I later realized, in those early days that young counselor
was my "Higher Power" and believing in him was enough to get
me started on the road to recovery. Much later on, I came to
realize that beyond him there was indeed a Higher Power who I
called a "Loving God" and who, working through my counselor,
had been the One who had saved me from my active alcoholism.
At this point, and in the context of the Second and Third
Steps, I was related to God as savior.
But -- as we are reminded on the very first page of "As
Bill Sees It" -- "no true alky ever stops drinking

3.

permanently without undergoing a profound personality
change." That change, which my decision to stop drinking
prepared me for, continued through the Fourth and Fifth
Steps.
Those Steps clearly showed me for the first time what my
character defects were and how they had formed the spiritual
and psychological substructure of my active alcoholism. At
least some of these defects were rooted in the very fabric of
my personality and, no matter how hard I tried (I have a
library of "self-help" books that bear witness to my
trying!), I could not remove them by my own unaided efforts.
Doing again what I had done with my drinking --asking for
help since I was helpless -- and having acknowledged to God
what those "wounds of the spirit" or character defects were,
I turned to Him for his help and healing. I still continued
to be related to God as savior from active alcoholism, but I
now began to be related to Him as healer of those character
defects, my spiritual wounds.
The Big Book had mentioned and recommended prayer in its
discussion of some of the earlier Steps, most notably the
Third. I noticed, however, that the Seventh Step's
suggestion that I ask God for help was the first to
explicitly require prayer. Yet it was only when I began
seriously using the Eleventh Step that it became clear to me
that prayer, with meditation as an associated practice, was
to be the mainstay of my spiritual life. Reading what the Big
Book and the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" had to say

4.

about that Step, I also realized that the focus of my praying
now had to change in an important way.
Just as in the Third Step I had turned to God to be
saved from my unmanageability and powerlessness over alcohol,
so in the Seventh Step I had turned to God for the healing of
my spiritual wounds. In both of these instances, what I had
wanted for myself had been my central concern. But in the
Eleventh Step, the focus was no longer on me and what I might
want for myself. Instead it became "only" what God wished:
my own will had now taken second place to God's will for me.
As a result, my relationship to the Higher Power (God) had
taken on a new dimension -- I was to be, if He wanted, an
instrument of His will in the world. Indeed, if love between
two persons can be partly described as one in which they both
have the same will, each desiring the good of the other, then
in this Step I was to be primarily related to the "loving
God" as His lover, as I sought to bring about union between
His will and mine. God remained my savior and healer while
the Eleventh Step, building on those bases, invited me to
enter into a loving, cooperative partnership with Him.
The "God Steps," taken together, have thus meant for me
different stages of a process in which I have been brought to
ever-deepening involvement with God and his work in the
world. With God as savior and as healer, I continue to be
the more or less passive recipient of His generous help: so

5.

far as God is concerned, all that is asked of me is
willingness. But the Eleventh Step opened up to me the
possibility of my taking a more active role in God's work in
the world. As the "Twelve And Twelve" puts it, I could even
become a "channel" through which love, forgiveness, harmony,
truth, faith, hope, light and joy could come to others (p.
101).
The Twelfth Step refers to a "spiritual awakening" which
has occurred in the alcoholic's life. What else can this
"awakening" be but the "Great Fact" of our "right
relationship" with God? For me, and for all recovering
people, this awakening to a "right relationship" allows us to
"love God and call Him by name" (p. 109). But A.A. is a
program of action! And so our awakening allows us also to
serve others by giving them the kind of love that God has
given us -- the "kind of love that has no price tag on it,"
(p. 109) and which constitues the very essence of the Twelfth
Step (p. 106).