Climbing The Twelve Steps (Daily Meditations For The Soul)

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Many of us in Twelve-step recovery come kicking and screaming into our first meetings. We are “forced” there by counselors, bosses, the courts, spouses, parents, children, and friends. We haven’t gone on our own because we are not interested in any program that not only makes us claim powerlessness but also requires turning our lives over to some kind of Higher Power. Having rejected the traditional notions of God and religion that we grew up with, we had no faith that a program which had us praying to something outside ourselves even if it was to something “of our understanding,” could do us any goo

Some of us, atheist and agnostic, either didn’t believe in a supreme being or we questioned its existence. Women, who had been reconnecting with the Infinite by means of a feminine deity or deities, often spurned the Anonymous programs because of the sexist language of the “He”-”God” of Alcoholics Anonymous.

But, once dragged there, some of us found something we liked and stayed. There are those of us who simply surrendered to the language and accepted some version as stated in the twelve steps. Others changed the language to more inclusive terms, repeating “God” instead of “He” or “Him,” or changing the pronoun to “Her” or “It.”

Many stayed for a while, got themselves on their feet, and then left again because they didn’t want to adapt to what they perceived as such limiting language and simply didn’t find enough there to keep them coming back.

Very few people who continue to adhere to a disbelief in a god or ascendant entity have left and come back over and over again because they know that the principles of the program are sound. They value the experience, strength, and hope of the members of their groups. They have finally figured out ways of “practicing these principles in all [their] affairs” even as they maintain rejection of a supreme being.

They don’t necessarily call themselves atheists or agnostic; they do acknowledge the second step “power greater than themselves.” They simply find that the twelve steps keep their lives on an even keel; that the promises of Twelve-step programs can be achieved; and they believe that Anonymous programs are valuable for all when the steps are rid of the baggage of the traditional religion upon which they were originally founded.

This book is for those folks. Climbing The 12 Steps provides a way to apply the twelve steps without “God.” It describes an understanding of a “power greater than ourselves” that can be used by anyone, religious and non-religious, believers or not, to work the twelfth step, and “carry this message to others” who are still suffering, and “to practice these principles in all [their] affairs.” The book also delineates a process through which many of us go in order to reconcile our spiritual beliefs with the more religious-sounding language of the twelve steps and of adherents to the Twelve-step philosophy.