The first three words, "made a decision," may be the most important single group of words in the entirety of the 12 Steps. They tell us that, ultimately, whether or not we will experience sobriety and healing is up to us, to our own decision. This is one place in the 12 Steps where will-power is necessary. We are being asked to use our will-power to turn over our will. This is where the concept of humans having "free will" comes into play. We have the power to choose whether or not to believe in a Higher Power. Free will (for many people) means that we can choose to not believe in a Higher Power at all. Even in choosing not to believe we make a decision, but everyone believes in some kind of Higher Power already, and if you search your mind you will probably see that your actions say it is so. The sun will burn you if you are not careful, a mob of angry people could kill you, so your actions would naturally be to avoid angry mobs. On the positive side we all believe that a group of happy, joking people will affect us. Belief in a power greater than ourselves is all throughout us. Again it is a matter of what you choose to believe in, not a matter of "do you believe?"

Step 3 asks to decide to stop making our own decisions alone. We are being asked to make a conscious decision to entertain the possibility that there may be a different way of perceiving our life situations. There are also many different ways of responding to them, but mainly we are being asked to consciously choose the path of light.

As we have seen in our explorations of the first two Steps, our disease firmly rests upon and is protected by the belief in our false illusions which are a whole series of interlocking false beliefs in which we have unconsciously chosen to place our faith. Step 1 showed us that we are not in ultimate control of our lives, despite our belief (faith) that we are. Step 2 enlightened us to the fact that a Higher Power is in ultimate control of our lives despite our insistence that this is not true. In Step 3 we are asked to consciously choose between these two, mutually exclusive belief systems. The ramifications of this choice are large and in the course of our exploration of Step 3 we will look at some of those ramifications.

What we are specifically challenged to do by Step 3 is to decide to stop deciding on our own. It is implied that the unmanageability unmasked by Step 1 was the result of our making our own decisions concerning our life situations. There is a deeper level decision as to what we choose to believe about ourselves and our relationship to whatever we believe to be our Higher Power. These are two related issues that reflect two different levels of working Step 3. There is the external or material level, and the internal or spiritual level. On the material level we are asked to make a commitment to listen and consider ideas and opinions from outside of ourselves before making a decision, and we are being asked to decide to stop making choices about our lives in isolation. All alone we only see the world through the prism of our own, sometimes skewed, interpretation of our perceived world. We are being asked to seek the guidance of whatever or whomever we believe to be our Higher Power in all matters of decision making. That guidance may come through other people, meditation and prayer, spiritual reading, a walk in the woods, or any combination of these. There are many channels of guidance and all of these channels taken together constitute for each one of us what program literature refers to as "the God of our understanding"—or, if you will, the God of our non-understanding, since none of us understands our Higher Power or ever will. The Higher Power works through other people and circumstances to guide us on our highest divinely-given path. When we choose not to believe we are choosing a lesser path. We are choosing to believe that the whole universe, humans and all, happened by accident and spins precisely around itself by accident. All of a sudden our lives become meaningless and futile, and we mope around with "why bother" attitudes and drink and drug and use people because we believe our pain as well (as our joy) has no significance whatsoever. These negative attitudes exist because of underlying negative and false belief structures. This is faith. Our belief structures are faith, be they negative or positive. All of us believe in something, all of us have faith. So what shall you choose to believe?

Ultimately Step 3 addresses the decision-making process on a deeper, spiritual level. It is on this level that we are asked to let our Higher Power help us choose between buying a new car or not. We are asked to let our Higher Power help us choose whether or not to change jobs. It is suggested that we let our Higher Power help us to decide whether or not we should get into a relationship. Then we simply pay attention to what happens in our lives on a feeling and material/physical level. Our Higher power can’t not move through our lives and guide us because we are all parts of our Higher Power. We were created therefore our Creator exists. We exist, therefore a Higher Power exists.

There is a deeper question of turning over our old beliefs about who we are, what we were created to be, and the nature of our relationship to a Higher Power. Notice that we do not even have to choose to believe in anything, including a Higher Power. We only have to stop making the decision not to believe. We are being asked to wake up (and this is one classical definition of a "spiritual awakening"). This points to a foundational concept in the spirituality of healing: the state of wholeness and peacefulness within ourselves and with our Higher Power is our natural state. All we need do is decide to stop placing roadblocks in the way (using people, drugs and alcohol, etc.) and we will naturally become healed. The 12 Steps are a cleaning out and bandaging process. The healing is accomplished by Higher Power solely by virtue of the fact that we are the creation of Higher Power. We cannot force healing any more than we can happily force ourselves to control our unmanageable lives until the day we die. We are deciding to stop inhibiting the natural healing process. All wounds heal, in time, by keeping them clean of impurities or roadblocks, which also is a loving act by a Higher Power.

The intrinsic nature of our relationship with a Higher Power is unconditional love. An appropriate metaphor this relationship is the mother and child. One of the most moving and universal symbols of our Higher Power’s love for us in traditional Christian art is the Madonna and Child. The mother loves her child solely because the child is a creation of her own body. That love is not dependent upon anything the child does. So is our Higher Power’s love for us. We cannot prevent our Higher Power from loving us no matter how much we cut ourselves off from its natural healing energy. We cut ourselves off by continuing to completely control our own internal and external lives while making use of our addictive substances. It is not within our power to alter our Higher Power’s will or relationship with us in any way. It is within our power, by virtue of our free will, to choose to fight against our Higher Power’s will. This effort has already been proven futile as we clearly saw in Step 1. All Step 3 asks is that we choose to stop fighting.

Let us consider the notion of our Higher Power’s will compared to our own will. The most common phrase that comes to mind is a line from the Lord’s Prayer, "thy will be done." We often think of this as a request, presuming that our petition or imploration in some way brings about our Higher Power’s will. This implies that without our requesting or begging for it, our Higher Power’s will would not be done. But the prayer is, in reality, a recognition of the truth that our Higher Power’s will is always being done, whether we pray for it or not. "Thy will be done" is nothing short of a 3^rd Step decision to turn over our will and our lives to a Higher Power. The only aspect of a request being made in this prayer is an implied request to receive the grace to accept the will of a Power greater than ourselves. We must stop fighting that will, and give up the battle (acceptance). We should consider allowing our Higher Power’s will for us (sobriety, healing and peace of mind) to flow freely into our lives. We do not have to beg our Higher Power to heal us any more than a baby has to beg its mother to love it. Ultimately, the only thing that stands in the way of our sobriety is our decision that we don’t want it. The 3^rd Step is our opportunity to choose again.

At this point we must logically ask the question: "Why would any reasonably sane person voluntarily choose sickness over health?" Sadly this is many peoples’ choice because they do not choose an addiction and compulsion-free life. The two key words are sane and voluntary. No sane person would choose illness over wellness. This is why the 2^nd Step tells us that we need to be restored to sanity. For so long as we continue choosing to make our own isolated, independent and diseased decisions, we are insane. By so doing we choose to remain in the progressive grip of our addiction. As to the second key word, voluntary, it is important to understand that such a disastrous decision to remain sick is not at all made from voluntary free will. It is made out of fear, sometimes utter terror. The diseased beliefs, thoughts and behaviors we have known all our lives may be painful, but to a large extent they form our entire self-image. Any decision which threatens our illusions about our self-image is bound to be terrifying. Those who choose not in favor of healing and sobriety do so not out of rational sanity, but out of total insanity. They are driven by fear, not voluntary freedom. The choice is between faith and fear, between standing ground and running away. We have the opportunity to make this choice every day of our lives.

As sobriety grows we must continually remind ourselves that no matter what the current situation seems to be, what is happening is our Higher Power’s will for us right now. Especially in the beginning stages our recovery will be painful and fearful. Our Higher Power’s will is like the flow of the rivers to the sea. It is not dependent on our belief, perceptions, or reactions to it. We can utilize our free will to choose either to swim upstream and battle the painful current, or choose to enter the natural flow of life and let go. One will make us sicker and the other will make us whole and at peace. Our addictive disease has taught us to fear anything painful and to try to alter it. We change our perceived reality by drinking, taking mood-altering drugs and using people in a variety of ways. This shows how we (vainly) believe that we can somehow change the course of our Higher Power’s current or will. The 3^rd Step challenges us to choose again.

The difference between our will and our Higher Power’s will is an issue faced by each of us in recovery. We ask, "why is it that our will and our Higher Power’s will seem, at times, to be in opposition?" If our Higher Power’s will for us is to be perfectly whole, peaceful and soundly sober, why do we often feel so ambivalent that our Higher Power’s will is right for us? The answer is that our Higher Power’s will and our will are the same, and they cannot be conflicted except as perceived through the lenses of our disease. When we pray for peace, we might receive a violent circumstance that will strengthen our sense of peace in some way, so be careful what you pray for, you might get it. Remember the goal as you are struggling through the experiences. Higher Power will never be co-dependent, but rather guides us to do it for ourselves. Our perceptions are also diseased, and we believe in false illusions and run away from them. We believe there is a difference between our will and our Higher Power’s will. This difference that we think we perceive is the result of us believing we are in the ultimate control seat. Like little kids we yell and scream at daddy for removing us from the middle of the street where we were playing so nicely. All alone and isolated we cannot be expected to know the difference between playing in the dangerous street and in the safety of a playpen. Especially in the beginning, we don’t know any better. The 1^st Step graphically portrays the negative effects of our belief in the impossible illusion of our own control. If we believe that it is our Higher Power’s will for us to be happy, joyous and free (not to mention healthy) and we also want these things for ourselves, then how is it possible for our Higher Power’s will to be conflicted with our own? There are things we have to do in order to attain these goals, and they are sometimes painful and difficult, but our real goals and our Higher Power’s will for us are the same. Sometimes we will choose to take back control of our own independent decision-making process, and that is when it seems that our will and our Higher power’s will conflict. During these times we might experience all of the predictable consequences: confusion, anger, distrust, pain and fear. These inevitably result from harboring two, mutually exclusive belief systems. Whenever we seem to experience conflict between our will and our Higher Power’s will, it can only be because we have (at some point) made a choice based on the fantasy of our own control. The 3^rd Step is not a singularly accomplishable goal. It is a discipline which, when practiced over time will change our way of living on the material level. It will also change our way of believing on the spiritual level. Each day, in every event of our lives, we are given the opportunity to choose again.

Suggested Assignment: For a period of two weeks set aside a time at the end of each day to write down a list of all decisions you made during the day. Include all decisions about which you noticed any feelings whatsoever, good or bad. It is important to remember not only the decisions which were uncomfortable, but to record the comfortable ones as well. We are looking for decisions which have an emotional impact, regardless of the specific emotion. You will be surprised to learn how many decisions you make which are emotionally charged for you.

For the following two weeks continue making the list. Make a conscious effort at each decision point to seek guidance. You can get guidance through things like prayer, meditation and other people. Try to become more aware of how often you have the opportunity to make a 3^rd Step choice. At first it may be difficult to remember to seek guidance before making a decision. We are in the habit of making decisions unilaterally and without delay. The 3^rd Step is not a one-time experience of turning over our whole life all at once, but rather a discipline of turning over one decision at a time. As with any other discipline, we get better at it the more we practice. Begin each day with a prayer asking for guidance in your decisions in addition to your regular prayer for a sober day. If you wish, you may use this prayer: "Higher Power, help me this day to make no decisions by myself. Help me listen and give me courage to face my fear." Amen.