Sapling--As I said earlier, I had a sponsor--who was extremely patient and made it clear that he was always there for when I was ready to do the fourth step. Since leaving the program I have learned that some sponsors do help sponsee's with the first few steps. None of mine ever did.
keithj--We read the step differently. To parse it out as you do feels to me like legalistic hairsplitting.
In the context a willingness to believe seems to be the same thing as belief. If you are a person with cancer and the doctor asks you to eat pasta three times a day--is a willingness to believe that pasta will cure cancer any different than believing that pasta will cure cancer? In meetings I never heard step two referred to anything other than a discovery of religious faith (or an imitation of it in the case of the guy who made a rock he found on the street his hp).
Early on I said to myself that I had actually done all the first three steps. But I soon realized that I was fooling myself. I did not want to get around the steps--if I was going to do them, I felt I had to do them completely--follow the intent as well as the letter.
This was an important stage of the journey. You may feel I was wrong in my interpretation of the step, but I was choosing honestly and integrity. I could have continued to claim I did the first three steps and gotten to work with a sponsor, maybe worked my way into the "inner circle" of the group. But I decided I had to do it honestly--which started me on my path to recovery.
Though I think the program misses an opportunity to help by leaving alcoholics/addicts on their own in the beginning and not offering practical advice for dealing with the urges, some good came of it in my case. Since I could not get external help I had to look within and decide what I wanted recovery to be. I had to define my values.
The downside is that newbies often come to different conclusions (like keithj and I apparently did), but maybe there is some good in the fact that we each as individuals had to decide what would be important in our recovery.