Thread: 2nd Step
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Old 11-06-2010, 01:27 PM
  # 5 (permalink)  
skg
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Mgm, AL
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Send your list PM when you've finished if you want to... Meanwhile, here's one way to look at step #2. There's no commitment to the second step aside from being WILLING and OPEN to the concept of a power greater than ourselves.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Hope, as a tool, relies requires being honest (#1) with myself and, having come to grips with the fact that I cannot do it with all my willpower and/or good intentions, finding the answer outside of ME. Me PLUS something else constitutes something greater than myself, true? Therefore, a group of people or a sponsor or a book or a combination of these, plus myself, is by definition, a 'power greater than myself."

Think about this: I lived on one side of town and I had to walk one certain path to get to where I worked every day and it was the only way I knew and every day I went through the path I'd get my ass beat by thugs. Every day! I knew it was going to hurt but I had no choice at all. I HAD to go that way to get what I wanted. And I'd get beat over and over and over. Finally, one day I asked a friend to come with me--and we made it through without incident. Isn't that a power greater than me alone? We did it a couple more times and I achieved the same results. And if perhaps I took a different person who knew, maybe they'd help? So the seed of HOPE was planted that if I did what they did, I just might get what they got.

It also says, "COULD restore us to sanity." It doesn't say anything about a magical transference from nutzo overnight. If I can rely on a group of people, or a sponsor or a combination--a "Power Greater Than Myself"--to show me the way; If I can do what they did as they did it, then I can reasonably expect to get the same results. If insanity is defined as, "Doing the same thing all the while expecting different results," it then follows that sanity can be defined as, "doing the same thing (as they did) expecting the same result."

The Spiritual Principle of the second step is HOPE. That if I do what they did, I can reasonably expect to get what they got. If I do it often enough, it will become routine. As a spiritual tool, HOPE simply means "If I can't do it alone, perhaps there's someone out there who can help me?" and I CAN BE restored. It's knowing that and asking for help. I no longer have to face ANYTHING alone. ANY THING.

HOPE. It is the power of the Alcoholics Anonymous Fellowship and the second step in becoming usefully and happily whole.
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