Spiritual Principles
In the Seventh Step, we will focus on surrender, trust and faith, patience, and humility. In the Seventh Step, we take our surrender to a deeper level. What began in Step One with an acknowledgement of our addiction now includes an acknowledgement of the short-comings that go along with our addiction. We also take our Second Step surrender to a deeper level. We come to believe that our Higher Power can do more than help us stay clean. We look to that Power to relieve us of our shortcomings as well. As time goes by, we place more and more of our trust in a Higher Power and in the process of recovery.
*Have I accepted my powerlessness over my shortcomings as well as my addiction?
Expand on this.
*How has my surrender deepened?
The spiritual principles of trust and faith arec central to the Seventh Step. We must be sure enough of our Higher Power to trust that Power with our shortcomings. We have to believe our Higher Power is going to do something with them, or how can we ask with any faith that they be removed? We must avoid any tendency to keep score of how we think God's doing in removing our defects. It's not too hard to see where this kind of thinking can lead if we find we still have certain character defects after some arbitrary amount of time has passed. Instead, we focus on the action we must take in this step: humbly asking, practicing spiritual principles, and getting out of God's way. The results of the Seventh Step may not materialize immediately but they will in time.
*Do I believe that my Higher Power will remove my shortcomings or grant me freedom from the compulsion to act on them?
Do I believe that I'll be a better person as a result of working this step?
*How does my faith in the God of my understanding become stronger as a result of working this step?
Trust and faith alone can never carry us through a lifetime of working this step; we need to practice patience too. Even if it's been a long time since we started asking for the removal of a shortcoming, we still must be patient. Maybe, in fact, impatience is one of our shortcomings. We can look at the times when we have to wait as gifts----the times when we most need to practice the principle of patience. After all, one of the surest ways we progress is by rising up over the barriers we run into on our spiritual path.
*Where have I had opportunities for growth lately? What did I make of them?
Finally, we need to maintain our awareness of the principle of humility, more than any other, as we work this step. It's fairly easy to see if we're approaching this step with humility by asking ourselves a few questions:
*Do I believe that only my Higher Power can remove my shortcomings? Or have I been trying to do it myself?
*Have I become impatient that my shortcomings haven't been removed right away, as soon as I asked? Or am I confident that they will be removed in God's time?
*Has my sense of perspective been out of proportion lately? Have I begun thinking of myself as more significant or more powerful than I really am?