Three legged stool Step Three

[nandm]

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

Step Three puts the last leg on our recovery stool which now stands solidly upon three strong legs, ready for useful service.

It brings us face to face with the thing we have long avoided---a standard for spiritual living. A rough standard for those who are not ready, but a real lifesaver for those who are.

Step Three is just as important to successful recovery from alcoholism as the thrid leg is to our stool. We need spiritual help to revocer. Without it we have little more than unhappy sobriety, often not even that.

This becomes apparent to those whoare ready for A.A., but it is a mystery to those who are not. Being unwilling to regard alcoholism as an incureble malady (pysical---mental---spiritual), they seek a cure for this incurable illness. Not realizing that admission of their illness is the first requisite of recovery, they face future trouble.

Borrowing this thought from The Little Red Book, we are reminded that "The first three steps are a composite A.A. package. Conceived in meditaiton and experience, they are a basic recovery prescription, and when taken with proper timing and in correct proportion, they quickly arrest our alcoholic condition. Complementing each other, however, they fail to work if any one of them is omitted."

To agree with this theory is much easier than to live it. Lip service gets us nowhere. Successful A.A. members are those who sacrifice their reservations upon the alter of sobriety and lose themselves in 12 Step living.

There is certain spiritual illness in alcoholism. Step Three gives a solution for its treatment. This is a simple solution, yet for some it is quite difficult. Its success lies in our willingness to discipline our minds with spiritual thinking. Indifference and prejudice are the chief barriers to success. Alcoholic minds rebel against the surrender which this step suggests.

Our decision to enter A.A. was not made with the knowledge that it would be a spiritual way of life. A.A.'s help and understanding are welcome, but Step Three has a familiar ring---it smacks of religion adn some do not like it. They ask, "Is A.A. a religion?" Our answer is "No, it is a 24-hour recovery program borrowed from medicine, psychology and religion--a daily way of life by which we arrest alcoholism."

Before decided against the logic of A.A.'s spiritual benefit, why not first consider our reasons for being here? Are we here to rebel or recover? To rewrite the 12 Steps, or to live them? To make fools of over four hundred thousand alcholics who recovered by them, or to try and recovery too? Dare we pass up our only source of help left? Yes, we can if we wish. But that is hardly consistent with our A.A. purpose.

Our aversion to spiritual law is a good example of alcoholic inconsistency. We accept the Creator's natural laws without questio, but reject the spiritual laws necessary to recovery. What is our reason? Why do we accept God's physical laws and lack the faith to benefit from spiritual help?

Few of us believe that at sundown the sun will never rise again, or that the earth, moon, stars and other terrestrial bodies will cease revolving in their orbits. Our faith in their performance is unlimited.

There are no grounds for doubting the law of gravity. We believe in it. We can't defy it. Elevators prove this contention and are still used to descend from the top floors of high buildings. This practive will probably continue unless some alcoholic discovers how to disprove faster methods of descent, such as jumping down elecator shafts or leaping out of window.

Oddly enough, though, this does happen to some who persist in violating God's physical, mental, and spiritual laws. Not all leap out of windpws. Some pay penalties in other ways, but there are penalties to be paid and drinking alcoholics pay them, one way or another.

On the other hand, there are many rewards for spiritual living. To be quite definite about the matter, they outnumber the penalties and should be good reasons for accepting Step Three.

By the daily spiritual practices of A.A., we lift ourselves our of the depths of alcoholic weakness and ignorance to strength, health and a new understanding of our purpose in life.

The 12 Steps teach us how to exchange old goods for new. Daily we trade fear for courage, drunkenness for sobriety, and despair for assurance.

Members are often reluctant to use the new source of power which Step 3 opens up for them. We should us it. It is a sources of power which will assure us sobriety and peace of mind. We always rise above out problems when we resign our reservations to God's Will.

These are the satisfying results of spiritual living. These are the rewards to be gained from surrender of our will to that of a Higher Power. It is not hard to do, or too difficult to understand, providing we have been hurt enough and are determined to stop at nothing short of recovery.

Nobody tells us how we shall live the program or how we must understand God. That is our privilege. But we can draw helpful conclusions from the experiences of successful older members who are ready and willing to help us. The purpose of this discussion is directed toward that end.

Since there will be as many interpretations of God as there are members in A.A., no fixed plan of action can be given. But it is obvious that studying the 12 Steps and asking God's Will daily should be most helpful.

Step Three covers a lot of territory and, at times, becomes confusing......

A section of this chapter is intentionally left outto save space, it can be referenced by reading page 44-52. It is relevant and important information so please read it if the opportunity presents itself.

....Unless we can find some power that is greater than our own, something more important thatn alcohol, we have nothing to live for. Why keep on drinking and subjecting our will to John Barleycorn, that sneaky, double-crossing guy who only rewards in despair, insanity, and alcoholic death?

This does not infer that sobriety should be gained through fear. On the contrary, we gain it through faith and courage. Fear is a form of ignorance. Faith, based on knowledge, is a sign of intelligence. Fear is not lasting. It leaves us quickly and we start drinking again. Craving a drink, we fear no consequence, which is ample reason for making the decision suggested by Step 3. Armed with it and truth about our alcoholis, we start our recovery. ..............We are now at the second division of the step---that part dealing with our will and lives which suggests we turn them over to the care of God.

The question before us is simple. What is an alcoholic's will? We shall deal with it in all simplicity to avoid the many complexities we would otherwise encounter. The truth is---We will drink when and where we choose, resigned to drinking's penalties. The fact that we have lost the power of choice narrows down the purpose of our will to one choice, namely---to drink.

This flat statement of an alcoholic's will relates to this unpredictable drinking behavior and is open to arguement. Few of us drank all of the time. Some members served their communities. Others held responsible positions contributing to the welfare of their families. But only by bluff, lies, imposition, and the co-operative support of friends and families did we mange to conduct much important business.

Therein lies the rub, for when the urge to drink came, familes, religion, and business were neglected and disregarded in favor of drunkeness. We have rationlized this all too long. We're in A.A. now. Let's stop it. .......

There is not identical pattern of behavior to which alsocholics conform. There is a fixed ratio of binges, however, for those who swear off for certain periods of time. The new binges are always in proportion to the resolutions to stop drinking. That is how the alcoholic functions.

Even on the wagon, we were never sure just how long we'd be there. We knew exactly the number of days we'd been sober, but had no idea of when we might take that first drink. The exception being, when on a definite period of sobriety, we were counting the days until the next drunk.

We claimed that we wanted to quit drinking. We thought we meant it. We didn't want to quit. We only wished that we wanted to. What we actually wanted was to control our drinking, at least enough to keep out of trouble. ........

It is not a Step of slavery but of freedom from self-centerd willfulness. It gives us mastery of our will by sublimating its destructive energy with love, service, and spiritual power. ...... Thus enlightened about our will and the inward thoughts which mold our destiny, we are ready to turn our will to drink at any cost over to the care of "God as we understood Him."

Step Three poses certain unpleasant issues which we have dodged for years. What has drinking done to our lives? Have we deteriorated spiritually because of drinking? What is an alcoholic's life?

For nomal people, life is a vital thing---a series of happy experiences of mind and body, exciting them to acts of creative, useful service. It is a conscious, living state of growth and reproduction which brings them peace of mind and zest for further living. It has that animated quality which distinguishes between dead and living things. ...............

We often wished to die but could not. The longer we lived, the more we drank. The more we drank, the less we had to live for. The less we had to live for, the more we rationalized our reason for living. Such was the progressive nature of our alcoholic illness. Such is the nature of life that alcohol exacted from us, the life which we now entrust to God's care. ..................

Having arrived at an honest understanding of the harmful, pursposeless nature of our alcoholic lives, there should be no question about what we propose entrusting to God's care. This brings our discussion up to the last division of Step Three.

It may appear presumptuous to discuss a definite plan of understanding God and of having personal contact with HIm, but since it is the ultimate result of Step Three there is no other choice. .............

Understanding God is not beyond our power of reason and attainment. We begin to sense His help as soon as we make a our decision and start living the 12 Steps. Personality changes in the lives of members who live the Steps are proof of this. Evidence is found in their happy, sober lives. We can vouch for this. It is the explanation of our daily contact with God which defied description. It cannot be defined. We are not spiritually awakened by a single act but by many A.A. thoughts and acts which we perform each day. .............

In reality, our future security is dependent upon our willingness to be reborn from lives of alcoholic deterioration to healthy, sober lives ruled by just motives and maintained by a regular spiritual contact with God.

The secret to successful recover is surrender. Surrender of what? Surrender of false pride, spiritual prejudice and our other alcoholic weaknesses to a Higher Power for help. ........................

Step 3 adds a third leg to our recovery stool. Its simple requirement is a final decision to surrender our will to drink to "God as we understood Him" and to gain our understanding of Him by living the 12 Steps. To do this we must learn a few facts about ourselves. It's time to pull up our stool to the inventory table and go to work.

[Tazman53]

Are we here to rebel or recover?

That just jumps out at me, so many of us go through this rebellious phase, fighting to maintain self will right up until the point we either surrender or drink again! Sadly part of our disease is being rebelious even in the face of death, jail, insanity, or combinations of these.