Sobriety is a necessary foundation for spiritual growth simply because it is important to have a clear mind if one is going to live a conscious, spiritual life. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines, So-bri-ety, as: 1. Seriousness or gravity in bearing, manner, or treatment; solemnity. We need be mindful of the things that hold us back from our true spirituality, the roadblocks that block the flow of our lives.

Addictive behavior is one of the largest soul-stealers in this highly addictive western society. Behaviors are bred into us and become so second nature that we never know that we don’t know how to live in a truly happy, joyous and free manner.

Whatever our endeavors or dreams, without freedom from our diseases: alcoholism, drug addiction, food addiction, sex addiction and co-dependency, we lose our chance of realizing our true potential as spiritual beings who are having a human experience.

The evidence of hundreds of thousands of recovering people through numerous 12 Step programs worldwide shows that the 12 Steps, if consciously applied, will improve the quality of life, period. Alcoholics Anonymous was begun by a couple of "hopeless" drunks in 1939. What helped them get sober is now "The most important spiritual movement of the 20^th century." Says M. Scott Peck, author of the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled. Why is that? What is it about the 12 Steps that makes them work when all other methods of treating addictive life-patterns have failed? How can everyone benefit from this valuable wisdom? Can anyone relate to and benefit from this incredible and entirely too secretive program of recovery? Are we all dis-eased in some way by the limits and roadblocks of human life in western society? These are the main questions we hope to answer in this book.

Many people believe that the 12 Steps are as important to the spiritual evolution of our society as, say, the Bible, the Koran or the Tao. The 12 Steps are tools that everyone has been given to heal our spiritually unhealthy lifestyles. They are a divinely-given message of hope. We humbly wish to disseminate and offer them to all who want to heal their addictive lives. They are not magic and there is little mystery to them. The 12 Steps work because they make very good common sense. We term this "sandbox wisdom" something most adults seem to have forgotten. Profundity is found in simplicity, not so much in high-sounding philosophy books or esoteric dreaminess. Robert Fulghum says in his best selling book, All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. "

"Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put Things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat

                           Flush.

                           Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life—learn some

and think some and draw and

paint and sing and dance and

play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and       stick together.

Be aware of wonder."

Simple… Profound.

In order to grow spiritually we are not required to stand on our heads in a corner facing the east, while burning sage and chanting "Ohm." We will not effectively advance spiritually until we are willing to face our fears, doubts and insecurities. We are required to look at our "defects of character," as well as our "beauties of character" and view our lives through clearer, more uncolored, less distorted lenses. Until we get honest with ourselves, we are doing little more than contemplating our navels and attempting to creatively visualize our "innies" into "outies" and vice versa.

The word "spirituality" comes from the Latin, spiritus meaning "breath", or "life", that which animates us. Human spirituality is that which makes us uniquely human, as apart from a cat or dog. True spirituality begins in the simple day-to-day things of life. The Zen tradition speaks of authentic spirituality in the phrase "chop wood and carry water." Taking care of daily business and being fully present for life is the foundation for any further spiritual advancement.

The 12 Steps are based on certain givens, these givens we will call "faith statements." We must believe that we are not the Higher Power and that there indeed exists some power greater than ourselves. Have you yet tried to make sunshine? Perhaps defy the power of gravity? Have you alone tried to cure your eating disorder? Failed diets? Painful fasts? Our lives would be much easier if we simply sought the help of others who are in our shoes too.

It has helped thousands of recovering people to simply believe that their recovery group is a power greater than they are. Actually any group of people is more powerful than any one person. Many minds and hearts are stronger than one, especially minds and hearts that have something as great in common as a life-altering disease! We cannot scientifically prove that a loving being created us and the whole world. We can prove to our selves that the sunshine on our skin makes us feel good, that sharing our tears, laughter and screams makes us feel better, helps us live better. Ultimately, the only proof of a power greater than ourselves is found in our daily lives and our hearts. The power of observation of our outer and inner worlds can eventually make us see that …"Something kept me from falling!" "The solution came out of nowhere!" "The sunset is a Higher Power’s artwork." "It was a miracle, my book was published!" "I feel transformed, filled with peace." All of these things are evidence that a Higher Power exists.

We have the power to clear away what clutters our hearts and minds so that we can heal. In healing we become more ourselves. By cleaning and bandaging our wounds we naturally heal, we cannot prevent healing unless we open our wounds up time and time again. Healed is our true, natural state. Being in conscious contact with our Higher Power is our natural state. We only need clean the house of our hearts and minds to let the light of love from our Higher Power shine upon us. In time we will gain the knowledge that It has guided us from at least our first day on earth.

In the beginning stages of recovery we will get cut picking up the broken pieces of our lives and it will be painful at times. Feeling pain is a requirement for healing and it is a given for those of us who wish to put our lives back together. At least we are getting our feelings back.

Without the fundamental assumption that we are not our Higher Power the 12 Steps will not work for us. We are not required to get religion and we don’t have to use the word "God" at all. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous uses the word "Creator." There are many metaphors for one’s Higher Power: God, Creator, Mother Earth, Vishnu or The Force. This is only a name for our Personal Authority Figure. It is up to us to pick one that we can comfortably accept as a power greater than ourselves, the One in charge. Another necessary assumption that underlies the 12 Steps is that we are responsible for our own unmanageability. The 1^st Step demonstrates that our presumption of being in control is the cause of our own unmanageability. We are victims because we make ourselves victims.

Eventually it is necessary in recovery to believe that our relationship with our Higher Power is one of love. That Power loves creation. This idea is traditionally represented by the artistic image of the Madonna and Child. So presupposition number three is that our relationship with our Higher Power is a loving one. Related to this idea is another presupposition: healing is a natural process that happens as a result of the love of our Higher Power for us. The only thing that inhibits this healing/loving process is our own presupposition of power, our need to control.

These spiritual precepts are the underpinnings of the first three Steps. The Steps simply could not exist without them. In the 1^st Step we learn that we create our own unmanageability by presuming we have control when we do not. In the 2^nd Step, we acknowledge that there is One who has control, and that One is our Higher Power. In the 3^rd Step we make the decision to stop fantasizing that we are our Higher Power. We turn over the reigns of control back to our Higher Power, the One who knows us best. This removes the primary obstacle to our healing, our fantasy of control.

The 12 Steps are solid and sound principles of spiritual healing. Their underlying concepts have been around for thousands of years and are enshrined in all of the major world religions. There is no mystery to them. So why do we resist these simple and profound healing beliefs? We are trained in our culture not to believe the presuppositions on which the 12 Steps are based. Our society is based in scientific, left-brained, rationalism. It rejects the reality of any existence of a Higher Power outside of nature. It teaches us that any such "Power" existing outside of our experience cannot exist. Rationalism also teaches us that we are in control of our own destiny, that we have the power to change our innate selves. It attempts to convince the poet he is actually a mathematician and advises the astrologer to become a trucker. Henry David Thoreau observed that, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." This is sadly true because we try and become things that we are not and never were meant to be in the first place. Society in general tells us that being a poet will make you miserable because you’ll be poor all your life. So we become doctors and lawyers and learn what misery is truly all about! This false belief that we can make ourselves be happy no matter how badly we treat others and ourselves is in direct contradiction to the 2^nd Step.

Our social programming also shows us that to voluntarily give up the direction of our own lives to anybody or anything else is admitting weakness and inferiority. Especially the men in our society must always be decisive, right about everything, the first time! This is a direct contradiction to Step Three.

The "mass of (mostly) men" as it were, live in perpetual denial of who they are, who they might be, who they really want to be. Living in this state of denial we become defensive, angry, touchy, careless and violent. Our lives become unmanageable. It takes effort to blame others, circumstances, anything other than ourselves and becomes a full time job. Drugs, alcohol, sex, food, studying, meditation become denial tools to "protect" our fragile egos from the harsh truth. If the trucker discovers she is a poet, or worse, gay, she might shoot herself. So instead she slowly kills herself with drugs and alcohol justifying to her grave that she is simply a victim of circumstance. Her misery, she believed, was a direct result of forces outside of herself, beyond her control. It is no wonder that we find it difficult to accept these simple, but profound principles underlying the first three Steps. Given our socio-religious preconditioning, to even approach the faith-based underlying truths of the first three Steps is, for most of us, scary.

The concepts enshrined in the Steps encourage us to reevaluate everything that we believe—our faith structure—and it is what we believe that forms our self-image, our self-awareness. Acceptance of these articles of faith causes us to question and eventually discard our old image of ourselves. That is scary and can be terrifying, especially when we have not yet anything to take the place of the old image. The process defined by the Steps is simple, and yet difficult for us to realize because of the fear that is entailed in its realization. The principles are not complicated and are only frightening because we do not know what we do not know about ourselves and the world. With courage from a Higher Power we clean up our acts and finally learn what we didn’t have a chance to learn while in alcoholic, drug-addicted, co-dependant hazes that we are better people than we thought we were and that we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

The good news is that the 12 Steps are intended to be internalized within the context of a community of recovering peo ple. They were not envisioned as a set of tools for individuals to use in isolation. Fear is a normal and customary companion for anyone in the process of internalizing the 12 Steps. Of course, there is always the presence of others who have walked the path before us to re-assure us that we will not lose our identity in the process of learning a new structure of belief.

The practice of the 12 Steps to recovery—from any addictive disorder—initiates a process that forms a spiritual belief system. That belief system eventually replaces the old one and reorients one’s perception based upon certain fundamentally true principles. The reason the 12 Steps work is, simply, that they presuppose spiritual truth whereas the belief system we have prior to coming into recovery presupposes spiritual falsehood, which is why we got sick in the first place. The disease is spiritual and comes from believing in things that are not true. The remedy is also spiritual. Healing happens by replacing the old belief system with a new one, which is based on truth. The belief in untrue illusions is what got us sick. The belief in truth is what gets us well. That is what the 12 Steps do and why they work. No mystery, no magic, just faith in the truth.

This book contains a set of lessons. Their purpose is two-fold. First, they are intended to give the student of 12 Step recovery an in-depth look at the 12 Steps, including deliverables in the form of suggested assignments. He or she will have a way of looking back and seeing tangible progress. Each workbook lesson has a suggested assignment at the end of the section, except for those Steps, which already provide for a deliverable. These may be used at the discretion of the sponsor. Second, these workbook lessons are intended to set each of the 12 Steps into the context of their basic inherent truth, so that the student may clearly see the spiritual foundation of each of the Steps. The primary audience for these lessons is those seeking an in-depth understanding of the spiritual foundation of the 12 Steps. Many beginners will be too foggy and too much in denial to approach the 12 Steps on the level of depth that these lessons envision. These chapters are mainly intended for individuals in 12 Step recovery wishing to deepen their own Step work and broaden their understanding of the Steps. The workbook lessons are not intended to take the place of any of the standard program literature, but to augment it. There is no adequate substitute for intimate familiarity with publications like the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the basic texts published by AA World Services, Inc. One caution is in order: It is unwise for anyone to use these workbook lessons outside of a relationship with a competent sponsor or spiritual advisor. This is an in-depth, disciplined approach to the Steps. It will open up areas of emotion and thought which have been closed and hidden behind the steel door of denial. Any attempt to do these lessons alone will most likely fail and could be injurious as well. Given the context of a close working relationship with one’s sponsor, working the Steps in this fashion has produced strong, thorough healing and sobriety.