Twelve Steps to Personal Transformation: Lesson 2

The master teacher Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God and that the second is like unto it - to love your neighbor as yourself¹. I like to think of the words of Jesus, as given to us in the Scripture, as messages from the voice of the Christ within. It helps me to feel more connected to them as an internal inspiration rather than as an external commandment or law imposed upon me. I enjoy knowing that my true self, my Christ self, is constantly reminding me to always return to love, to the one Source of Love, God, and to share that love with all people and with myself.

This Sunday, I will continue with my series, “Twelve Steps to Personal Transformation” based on The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The “program,” as it is often referred to, is more than a sobriety program; it is a path to spiritual awakening which embodies the intention of Jesus’ commandments. It encourages conscious connection with a Higher Power, honest self-connection and compassionate connection with others.

Through spiritual awakening, which may also be called “spiritual recovery,” we reclaim the divine light of love within us. We must recover it in order to express that love in thought, word and action for others and for ourselves.

Last week, I talked about the first three steps. These steps require our willingness to admit that we, alone and of our own best thinking, are powerless to renew our minds and transform our lives. Even with our best intentions, when we rely solely on ourselves to affect change, we most often fail. We must come to the realization that there is a Higher Power that can restore us to love and transform us at depth. This transformation requires us to be willing and open. We must invite the conscious awareness of our Higher Power and let go of our attachment to predefined notions of how things, others, and even ourselves are “supposed” to be. Then, we must set a conscious intention to allow that Higher Power to do its work in and through us.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven².” The kingdom of heaven is the ever expanding conscious awareness of God and Good and Truth. When we are willing to be “poor in spirit,” which means to be humble of heart and malleable in mind, the love of God is able to do its work in us.

The awareness of God never forces itself upon us. It is only revealed to an open and receptive mind and heart. We must approach Spirit with humility and willingness in order to be transformed. Only then can we truly be the vessels through which the love of God is known and then expressed to our neighbors and ourselves.

This week we will explore the fourth and fifth steps of The Twelve Steps.

The fourth step asks us to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That may sound a bit overwhelming and possibly daunting.

The fourth step invites us into a powerful process of honest self-connection. It asks us to look at our lives and make a list, an inventory, of our moral shortcomings. I prefer to think of them as the ways we have acted out of integrity with our highest values. When I was first faced with the prospect of making this list, I resisted. I did not want to look at all the ways I had stimulated pain for others or for myself.  It can be a daunting proposition, especially if approached from the supposition that because of our actions we are innately bad or unworthy. It can, if not approached from a consciousness of loving the self as Jesus commanded, exacerbate feelings of guilt and shame, and stimulate overwhelming pain for us in the process.

How do we make a list of all the ways we have acted out of integrity with love and still love ourselves in the process?  How do we love ourselves right where we are, and avoid harshly judging ourselves as unlovable or unworthy of love?

Before taking action on the fourth step it is imperative that we are clearly aligned with the first three steps. We must not only make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand God, we must actually DO IT.

To love God as Jesus commanded, and as the voice of the Christ within inspires, means to devote time and energy to the conscious awareness of the divine love that is our nature. It is vital that we have a conscious connection with the love of God prior to undertaking the fourth step. We establish and solidify our connection through prayer and meditation. Only in conscious connection and surrender to the love of God can we possibly be centered in the consciousness required of us to make a searching and fearless inventory.

Our highest calling and the highest intention of our souls is to be the expression of divine love in the world. When we, in our humanity, fall short of that intention we may stimulate pain in another or in some way injure ourselves. Rather than damning ourselves and thinking ourselves unworthy, we can instead choose to center our awareness in the Love of God and hold ourselves, in all our humanness, in the light of that love. We are then able to see our thoughts, words and actions as expressions of our own pain. Our pain is primarily the effect of our belief in and focus on the image of the false self. The false self is an image that was created and is maintained through our attachment to the myths, false message and beliefs about who we are.

God’s love moving through us is the only power to renew our minds and transform our lives. It is the love of God, and only the love of God, that is the power to reveal and illumine the illusion of who we have believed ourselves to be and to transform us at depth.

The fourth step calls us to absolute honesty with ourselves as we come face to face with our thoughts, words and actions that have not been expressions of love. Loving our humanity does not mean that we don’t recognize and acknowledge when our thoughts, words, or actions are out of alignment with Love. We admit them, while holding others and ourselves in the light of love.

The fifth step asks that we admit to God, to ourselves and to another person the exact nature of the ways we have been out of integrity with the love that we are. This is a means of freeing ourselves from the energy of guilt, shame and blame which weighs us down and only serves to stimulate more pain.

We have all heard the adage, “Confession is good for the soul.” It is good for the soul because confession is way of clearing the energy of the past. The energy of the past resides within our energy field as painful memories and regret.  Confession is an active practice through which we free ourselves.

Going back to my previous point, confession is not about shaming ourselves. That would not be adhering to the commandment to love ourselves. It is about holding ourselves lovingly accountable, taking responsibility, and growing our spiritual awareness. It is about acknowledging where we have been out of alignment with divine love; where we have not been living from our highest values and intentions. Once freed from the bonds of our shame, we can then make conscious choices based in love.

God does not need our confession. We confess for ourselves so that we can bridge the gap of guilt and shame formed from our belief in separation. In truth, we are never separate from God. There can only be a sense of separation created in our minds. Admitting to God the nature of our thoughts, words and actions in this step is a conscious act of surrendering the illusion that we are separate. In doing so, we are able once again to experience being held in the embrace of divine love that never judges or condemns.

Admitting to ourselves the effects of our actions on others and ourselves is a necessary step toward ending our denial, as well as our blame of others. It restores us to the place of accountability and responsibility.

Sharing our pain, fear, and remorse with another person is an opportunity for us to have an experience of being held in love and respect by another person, even when they are aware of the pain and injury we have caused. For this reason, it is vitally important to choose a person who is capable of extending such love. This was the original intent of the practice of confessing to a priest. The priest is charged with being God’s servant of love and extending God’s forgiveness. However, all too often, confession has become more about penance and earning God’s love than about simply giving and receiving it.

The Twelve Steps offer us practical ways to embody Jesus’ greatest commandments. They are more than a program; they are a way of living. They can help us not only awaken spiritually and transform personally, they can also help us live the truth we know in keeping with Unity’s fifth basic principle.

Regardless of where you are in your personal spiritual journey, these long-standing program tools can be applied in your life for a greater conscious connection with your Higher Power, yourself and others. Join me for the remainder of this series as we continue to explore the power of The Twelve Steps of Personal Transformation.

¹ Matthew 22:37-39

² Matthew 5:3