The Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions, Power Posts

[bluidkiti]

THE PRINCIPLES ARE THE STEPS

1. HONESTY
2. HOPE
3. FAITH
4. COURAGE
5. INTEGRITY
6. WILLINGNESS
7. HUMILITY
8. BROTHERLY LOVE
9. JUSTICE
10. PERSEVERANCE
11. SPIRITUAL AWARENESS
12. SERVICE

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1. Admission of powerlessness. / Honesty
2. Reliance on a Higher Power. / Hope
3. Total surrender to God. / Faith
4. Moral inventory. / Courage
5. Admission of the exact nature of our wrongs. / Integrity
6. Commitment to total change. / Willingness
7. Prayer for wholeness. / Humility
8. Total willingness to amend. / Brotherly Love
9. Making amends where possible. / Reconciliation
10. Continuing inventory. /Perseverance
11. Prayer meditation, leading to improved conscious contact with God. / Awareness of God
12. Spiritual awakening, carrying the message and practicing the principles in all our affairs. / Service.



Principles of the Twelve Traditions
1. Unity
2. Direction
3. Equality/Recovery
4. Understanding
5. Sharing
6. Simplicity
7. Independence
8. Selflessness
9. Service
10. Survival
11. Self Reliance
12. Humility



12 Steps With Promises

Twelve Steps with the Promises
"We will be amazed!"

1. We Admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable Promise: We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Promise: We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Promise:We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Promise: No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others..

5. Admitted to God, ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Promise:That feeling of uselessness and self- pity will disappear.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Promise: We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.. Promise: Self-seeking will slip away.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Promise: Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Promise: Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Promise: We will intuitively know how to handle situtions which used to baffle us.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our concise contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Promise: We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the results of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principals in all our affairs. Promise: Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.


12 Step History Reflections

by thingy B.

How Can History Help?

Authors seem recently to have pounced on 12 Step and A.A. history. Our
Fellowship members pour into our web sites asking for information or sending
us comments. And the search engines have really done the subject a great
service as well.

But what good can this interest in history do? Some charge we have become
obsessed with early A.A. (1935 to 1938 and the 40 pioneers). Perhaps that's
true. Some are troubled that this rebirth of history interest speaks of an
A.A. of yesteryear, not today. That is true! Still others seem dismayed that
it will slow the onrush of A.A. and other 12 Step groups toward
universalization, toward idolatry, toward treatment language, and toward
meeting emphasis rather than upon the original spiritual program of
recovery. Maybe; and, if so, good!

Therefore, if you put these and other thoughts together, you may find why
the rapidly disappearing spiritual roots of A.A. are important. The
reflections in this article, however, are just designed to remind us all of
some principal historical roots of the 12 Steps. And to show how they can
help you, as they did me, to see what the Twelve Steps are really about-or
at least were, when Bill Wilson first penned them.

Principal Sources

For sure, the Twelve Steps did not come from Akron or the early A.A. program
there as it was reported to Rockefeller by Frank Amos in 1938. Amos said
there were seven basic points, and they bear no resemblance to the Steps
Bill Wilson wrote (See thingy B., God and Alcoholism). Nor did the Twelve
Steps arise from any earlier steps of any kind at all. There were no Steps
in Akron Number One's program. There were no Steps in the Oxford Group in
1935. There were no "six steps" either in the Oxford Group or in early A.A.
as some have thought. And there never have been any steps in the Oxford
Group at all, though there are twenty-eight Oxford Group principles that
impacted on the Steps as Bill finally wrote them in a brief period of
meditation in late 1938 (See thingy B., The Oxford Group and Alcoholics
Anonymous).

Let's reiterate the Akron picture: Dr. Bob said he didn't write the Twelve
Steps or have anything to do with the writing of them. He said the basic
ideas came from the pioneers' study of the Bible. He specifically pointed to
three Bible segments he said old timers considered "absolutely essential"
(See DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers; and thingy B., The Good Book and The Big
Book; Why Early A.A. Succeeded: The Good Book in A.A. Yesterday and Today).
The three Bible segments were Jesus' sermon on the mount (Matthew, Chapters
Five to Seven), the entire Book of James, and 1 Corinthians 13.

Where, then, did the Twelve Steps really come from?

Bill Wilson said many times in many ways that nobody invented A.A. He often
added that everything in the program was borrowed-from medicine, religion,
and experience. Many years later, Bill Pittman put his finger on the button
when he wrote AA The Way It Began. Pittman concluded (and he was correct)
that the Twelve Step program came from Rev. Sam Shoemaker and from the
Oxford Group writings. Over the years, Wilson himself began conceding this
point but not detailing it. Remember, however, that there were no Steps in
Calvary Church, in the Oxford Group, or in pioneer A.A. But the major ideas
were present in 1934. If you will read my title Turning Point, you will see
that Ebby Thacher (Bill's "sponsor" passed along to Bill in much detail the
basic ideas of the Twelve Steps. They came from Ebby's Oxford Group
experience. Most don't know that, but you can see the traces in pages 12 to
15 of the Big Book.

Then there's the matter of Reverend Sam Shoemaker, rector of Calvary
Episcopal Church in New York, chief lieutenant of Oxford Group founder Dr.
Frank Buchman, and prolific Oxford Group writer. You'll find Shoemaker ideas
and language sprinkled throughout the Big Book and the Steps. You'll find
the corresponding words, language, and ideas in Shoemaker's writings. And
you'll find them in Bill's acknowledgments in letters and talks about
Shoemaker's importance. Twelve years of reading Shoemaker's books, examining
the Stepping Stones archives, seeing Shoemaker's personal journals and his
papers at the Episcopal Church Archives in Texas have made those points
quite clear to me. Strikingly also, I learned that Bill had actually asked
Shoemaker to write the Twelve Steps, and Shoemaker declined. It's all in my
title, thingy B., New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A., 2d
ed.

Now the last principal source is the one I keep harping on. I do so because
no one has been told much about it in A.A. or in Twelve Step groups. I
stress this source because it either covered or actually taught most of A.A.
's Oxford Group, Shoemaker, and Bible ideas in detail in the 1930's, long
before the Big Book was published. And I do so because it had a direct daily
impact on Bill Wilson, Dr. Bob, and the A.A. pioneers. That source is found
in the 64 page journal I was able to obtain from A.A. General Services in
New York, with the help of Dr. Bob's daughter Sue Smith Windows and Bill
Wilson's secretary Nell Wing. It is laid out in some detail in my book,
Anne Smith's Journal, 1933-1939. And if you want to see A.A. history in the
making, see it as it was shared with AAs and their families in the earliest
days, and see it as a bona fide explanation of A.A.'s Twelve Step ideas
before the Steps were written, you should get a copy of Anne Ripley Smith's
journal. You sure won't find it in A.A. itself!