Twelve Steps to Personal Transformation: Lesson 1

This Sunday, June 26, I will begin a new series of lessons which I am calling “Twelve Steps to Personal Transformation.” Each week’s lesson will be based on one or more of The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I know what you’re thinking, “But, I’m not an alcoholic. What can the Twelve Steps do for me?”

In the Forward to what is known as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is says, “We are sure our way of living has its advantages for all.” I agree. The Twelves Steps are more than a sobriety program. It is a program of spiritual recovery. It is a program that can support us all in living lives of conscious connection with God, ourselves and each other. I am sure that practicing The Twelve Steps can help us at Unity Spiritual Center Denver to live our mission as we awaken spiritually and transform personally.

It has long been taught that alcoholism is a disease, some have said an incurable disease. Recent research by the Baldwin Research Institute indicates that, although a genetic predisposition has been proven, alcoholism is not a disease. Alcohol use is one of many mechanisms human beings use to escape pain.

Addiction, whether to alcohol, drugs, sex, spending, or any activity or behavior, is actually a symptom of a dis-ease. This dis-ease is spiritual, not physical. The cure is not treatment, but spiritual awakening. In fact, the twelfth step says, “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” Further, the twelfth promise of the AA tradition states, “We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” This is another acknowledgement of the power of the program to inspire spiritual awakening. 

This Sunday we will explore the first three steps.

The first step in this program of spiritual awakening is our willingness to admit we are powerless. What?!

This is a tough one, especially for those of us in New Thought who have been taught that we have the power to change our thinking and change our lives. I shared some thoughts about this adage in my post, STOP! Don’t Change Your Thinking on April 14, 2016. You may read it here. As Albert Einstein once said, “You cannot solve the problem with the same thinking that created it.” When all we have is our habitual way of thinking, which by the way we are addicted to (read my blog post from September 30, 2015), we are powerless to transform our lives on our own. When we are willing and ready to admit that we cannot truly affect lasting change on our own, from our ego/personality perspective, we are then ready and open to ask for and receive the help we need.

The help we need comes from a power greater than ourselves.

Lasting change can only come as a result of a conscious spiritual awakening. We must awaken to the awareness of something greater than ourselves. By that I mean something that is greater than who we have believed ourselves to be. This limited perspective of self is primarily shaped by the myths, messages and beliefs of others. In Unity we teach that the power and presence of God are within us. While that is an eternal truth, it remains a concept until we are willing to accept it and have a personal experience of it. We must awaken to the power and presence of God within us.

Not only must we awaken to it; we must also surrender to it. We must surrender our illusion of control and allow the power greater than ourselves to do the work.

Transformation requires us to stop giving lip service to the often repeated affirmation, “Let God, and let God,” and begin to actually live it. It necessitates that we make a conscious decision to be transformed by the renewing of our minds¹. It is not something we can do because we do not know how to do it. This kind of transformation can only be done through us by a power greater than we know ourselves to be. As Unity minister and author, Eric Butterworth said, “God can only do for you what [God] can do through you.”

The Twelve Steps offer us some practical tools with which to awaken to our spiritual nature and transform our lives. They are a way of life that can support us all in living in integrity with our divine nature and creating lives of connection, compassion and forgiveness for each other and ourselves.

I hope you will join me on this journey as together we explore and use these steps to transform our lives.

¹ Romans 12:2