An atheist Twelve Steps participant recently wrote that the Twelve Steps do not require him to believe in God, but rather, to stop playing God. This statement expresses beautifully what sits at the foundation of any true spiritual journey: humility. The Twelve Steps offers this truth – which is a process – perhaps better than any other tradition.
In America we love to play Master, riding the two delusions of our own absolute rightness and own absolute control. Deep down we know the truth – we ache inside its walls – but our ego, oh our ego – as poet W.H. Auden put it, our ego would rather us “be ruined than changed.”
The spiritual journey begins and continues with humbly facing the truth of your own life. It is being honest about what is, accepting it as part of your story and then including it as you transcend it. This is the process – not the destination – of enlightenment, salvation, recovery, liberation, whatever-you-want-to-call-it. True freedom is knowing “all is well” not because God is in control but because we have access to a Consciousness – some call it God – that allows us to be strangely at peace with not being in control.
And then, despite this knowing, to get to work anyway. Because, it is not just our own journey that will continue (or not) with whether we humbly face the truth, but our American journey as well. The Twelve Steps knows this; the whole process is done in community, and eventually, for community.
This is the spiritual path of the twelve steps. Join us over the next eight weeks as we raise our consciousness. To do so is for our own wholeness and peace as well as the communities in which we live.
Week of...
April 3 - The Four Assumptions
April 10 - Power(lessness) (Steps 1 & 2)
April 17 - What Does "Surrender" Mean? (Step 3)
April 24 - 360 Degrees of Honesty (Steps 4 & 5)
May 1 - Letting Go & Opening Up (Steps 6 & 7)
May 8 - Transcend & Include (Steps 8 & 9)
May 15 - Consciousness (Steps 10 & 11)
May 22 - A Love That Is Greater Than I (Step 12)
Click for group meeting times and locations, cost, and to sign up.
