Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
“Having had a spiritual awakening….”
This is the only Step where the subject pronoun (“we”) does not begin the sentence, even by inference. For the first time since the First Step, the subject pronoun need not be inferred: it is explicitly stated; however, unlike all the other Steps, this one begins not with that pronoun (“we”), but with a dependent clause: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps….” This idea is important enough to be stated first, even before the subject of the sentence appears.
Anecdotes are recounted in AA, often in a koan-like way, about those having trouble with “the spiritual part of the program.” This engenders consideration and discussion regarding which parts of the Program are spiritual and which are not. These anecdotes seem designed as an aid to bring the adherent from a state where spiritual matters are either not considered, or rejected, to a state where they are of primary concern. The Steps advertise the fact that this change of outlook is not the result of an instant’s epiphany, but a literal step-by-step advance over time.
The First Step appears to have no spiritual component. A bodily addiction to a physical substance has shown itself in repeated, unsound action. Why would someone seeking relief from addiction seek anything other than a physical, bodily solution? Addiction is in a physical action: ingesting an intoxicant. If one simply stops the activity of ingesting the intoxicant, addiction ends.
Step One does not even directly address the unsound thinking involved, although the inference to it is unmistakable: “our lives were unmanageable.” None of the remaining Steps address themselves, even remotely, to the physical activity of addiction. There is no Step that says, “and we stopped drinking.” The culmination is, instead: “Having had a spiritual awakening….”
The definition of spiritual carries with it a long history of the word’s use in English, having first been attributed in 1303. [OED Online] That history reflects centuries of a culture which had no “separation of church and spiritual,” much as there had been no separation of church and state. To speak of the “spiritual” was to speak of the religious and ecclesiastic. In current use, to speak of the spiritual is more akin to its primary construction: spirit with the suffix -ual: of, or relating to, spirit.
Spirit derives from Latin spiritus—a breathing, from spirare—to breathe. From time immemorial, humans have recognized that breathing is the primary action separating the living from the dead. While there is still no scientific grasp of spirit, it is completely recognizable in its action as an animating force of living things, compared with its absence in the dead.
Awakening is, perhaps, a very American word in this context. We may have had spiritual growth, spiritual experience, spiritual insight, spiritual awareness…but the words chosen for the Steps were spiritual awakening. Set against the backdrop of American religious history—the history which gave birth to the Oxford Movement, the cradle of Alcoholics Anonymous—spiritual awakening seems almost redundant.
Thanks to New England minister Joseph Tracy, awakening, in American English, is subtly but inextricably tied to “spiritual.” Tracy’s 1841 book about that period of American religious history a century before was titled, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield. (Jonathan Edwards was another prominent New England minister (1703-1758), and George Whitefield was the Anglican minister from Old England (1714-1770), credited with almost single-handedly exporting the Great Awakening to the Colonies.)
“Great Awakening” refers to more than one period of American religious history. “The First Great Awakening” is said to have happened in the 1730s & 40s. Tracy’s book was written near the end of the “Second Great Awakening,” which began as early as 1790. This religious revival was not confined to America; in a way, it was just another European export to the Colonies, but it certainly gained a peculiarly American flavor once it took root. Its effects were so deep and widespread that it helped define the entire nation. Much of what we take for granted today in religious and civic freedoms, as well as the style of “revivalist preaching” famous from tent to internet, finds its genesis in America’s Great Awakening. Likewise, the temperance movement had its roots in the Second Awakening.
Lest we forget, Protestant Christianity is woven, warp and woof, into nascent America and remains a formidable part of American culture to this day.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics,
The action denoted in this Step is not, as may seem at first glance, to carry or to practice or both. The action is to try—past tense “tried.”
For a generation raised on Star Wars, what may quickly come to mind is Jedi Master Yoda scolding young Skywalker in his first lessons: “There is no try; there is only do or do not.” This is no light-hearted or irrelevant reference. This long-running, iconic movie saga has mythic status in America, and though its historic effect can only be judged in the distant future, its reflection of current cultural values can hardly be overstated.
This small scene starring main characters struck a chord and became one of the first and biggest memes of the entire series. It says something about a distinction either seen or created by the culture. It is about language and about action, subsuming cultural ideas and norms of success, failure, and effort. This cinema snippet may not so much reflect static or traditional values as it does an ongoing valuation, an unsettled inquiry: what constitutes success or failure in an attempt to do something? How is a sincere, or honest try differentiated from an insincere, dishonest try?
There is a view that makes this an inquiry into the fundamentals of existence—thus, perhaps, its popularity. That fundamental is the capture, storage, and release of energy by living things. When we speak of effort or trying, we are talking about the release—the use—of stored energy. If this use or release continues without resulting in the capture of energy—hunting or foraging without eating—death will result. How much, how many times, do I try to do whatever it is before the payoff is no longer sufficient for the effort? Can I afford to “fail” at this in order to seek “success” elsewhere?
While the action in this Step isn’t directly related to food gathering and physical sustenance, it is a release of energy: “tried to carry this message….” To convey, communicate, transmit a message requires effort, even if as little as an eye or finger motion. And, until an acknowlegement of some kind, there is no certainty that the message has been successfully received.
Indeed, the transmission space, the distance between sender (or carrier) of the message and the receiver is a no-man’s land, an uncontrollable, unmanageable area, no matter how small or great. Thus, in every case, the carrier can at best only try to carry the message; its successful receipt is a circumstance beyond the carrier’s control. Afterall, even when the message arrives in its clearest form for the recipient, will the recipient understand the meaning?
So, we’ve come full circle: no meaning, no message.
In this instance, what is “this message?” Since there is no direct reference to another Step—neither message nor a similar word is found elsewhere in the Steps—many members come to different conclusions. Using a bit of Occam’s Razor, it’s advantageous to avoid wandering while wondering.
Message is modified by this. As an adjective, this indicates that the noun modified is “present, near, or just mentioned.” This is a clue that we need not, and ought not, wander off, that the message is “present, near, or just mentioned.” The subordinate clause beginning the sentence fits the description very well; it is all three: present, near, and just mentioned: “having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.” “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,” is “this message.”
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
Principle: “a general law or rule adopted or professed as a guide to action; a settled ground or basis of conduct or practice; a fundamental motive or reason for action, esp. one consciously recognized and followed.”
On occasion, one may find a member of AA reciting a list of twelve one-word-or-so attributes that he or she opines are the “principles” of, or behind, each of the Steps, e.g.: honesty, hope, faith, courage, etc. Here, it may be opportune to caution keep-it-simple students with an aphorism sometimes credited to Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” The principles referred to in Step Twelve are the Twelve Steps.
From the popular website of a longstanding AA member:
“I was recently asked where the AA principles came from that I have in my page Barefoot’s Writings — and as I remember, as they are shown below, these came from a plaque on the wall in the Orange-Olive Friendship Club where I got sober… and may have come from an article in the Grapevine or the local area newsletter…???
“The 12 Steps of AA ARE the Principles of the Program that we practice, as listed on BigBook pages 59 and 60! Over the years many lists of virtues that correspond to each of the Twelve Steps and their underlying spiritual nature have been printed in local area AA newsletters and on pocket cards. The origins of these lists are unknown, although they are used by many Twelve step members.”
–barefootsworld.net
At about 15 years into recovery, I noticed I had been plying a different Step Twelve for much of that time. It occurred to me—after long contact with that famous touchstone of spiritual growth—pain—that my Step Twelve read: “Having gotten what we wanted as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
Of course, I had NOT gotten what I wanted as the result of these Steps, so it was impossible for me to carry the message to other alcoholics that I HAD gotten what I wanted, or to practice any principles based on having gotten what I wanted, no matter how hard I tried. Not being able to carry the message is a major handicap to recovery, of course; we are told time and again that nothing so ensures our own recovery and restores peace of mind as carrying the message to another sufferer. My experience concurred: on those occasions when I carried a truer message of recovery, in spite of my dysfunctional, rewritten Twelfth Step—a message at least akin to “this thing works”—my state of mind was much improved.
Unfortunately, those occasions became greatly outweighed by the practice of my Step Twelve, which led me only to carry this message: “I have not gotten what I wanted as the result of these Steps.” Knowing this is a message neither attractive, nor helpful, I just as often simply remained mute.
If not for the Fellowship of recovering people that now exists after the better part of a hundred years of promulgating the Twelve Step Program, I may have remained at this dead end until I was also dead. My sponsors had taught me: the name of the game is not “home alone.” The fix is in the mix. No matter how consuming the morass of self-pity, I was somehow saved from the next downward step: isolation. I continued to return to meetings and spend time with other recovering people. They reminded me by word and deed that it is a Twelve Step Program, not a Twelfth Step Program.
“Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,” the old saying goes. I can’t say if it’s common or not for practitioners of the Program to be lost in little eddies and byways, to have seemingly “thoroughly followed the path,” only to find themselves in as deep despair without intoxicants as they were with intoxicants. I can only say that this happened to me.
Probably just like many another delusional addict-head coming into the Program, I felt as though my life was a jigsaw puzzle, and though I was playing it fairly putting the pieces together, I’d been cheated overall: one of the pieces was missing, so it would never be complete no matter how hard I tried. If I could only find that missing piece, the whole picture would be perfect.
After a bit of coming to meetings, getting to know the people and a little of the Program, I really began to believe I may have found that missing piece. Eureka! As I continued along, that became a very hopeful outlook. Again, the ultimate goal always was getting what I wanted: car, house, job, girl, or—barring those—enlightenment as the consolation prize.
One day, in a meeting, the whole notion turned around on me completely. Suddenly, I saw that I didn’t have a piece of my puzzle missing: I only had one piece and all the rest were missing! I was totally clueless—on my own. Right behind this stunning realization came the notion that everyone sitting around the table at that meeting also had a piece of the puzzle, and when each one of us put our piece on the table, the puzzle began to come together.
Surely, this epiphany was sufficient for me to finally let go of my ultimate goal…but no.
The speaker one night said it well. I heard it. I repeated it to others. And still I wasn’t listening. He said, “The Twelve Steps are about control: everybody wants it; only your Higher Power has it.” Yet, I trudged on, meeting after meeting, year after year, knowing that the Steps would grant me control over my destiny—even while they were telling me exactly the opposite.
After several years of recovery, I returned to school. One day, a classmate—not in the Program—taught me an axiom which was more important to me than anything I learned that entire semester. “Everything ain’t for everybody,” he said.
Big Pat and I would often “debrief” after a meeting. We’d critique what we heard (or what we thought we heard) and decide who was blowing smoke and who was telling the real deal. We always agreed. A couple of instances reminded us, it was just our opinion, afterall, and not necessarily any indication of truth or reality for everyone else in the room.
We’d decide that somebody was full of crap, and nothing they had to say had any meaning. But someone else during the meeting would thank that person with emotional and heartfelt gratitude for a message that meant everything to them that day. Pat and I learned: that message wasn’t for us. Just because it wasn’t for us didn’t make it bad or useless or detrimental. Clearly, for someone else in the room, it was quite the opposite.
My message isn’t for every addict-head, much as I’d like to believe otherwise. Even the message of the Program isn’t for every addict-head; the Founders and first-comers knew that, and everyone working the Program, today, is better off remembering that. Each of us has just a piece of the puzzle, and everyone should be encouraged to share theirs. It might be the only chance we have to get the picture.