The first and most important spiritual principle in Step Twelve is service. It would seem that the Twelfth Step would be the culmination of all the previous steps. Is AA right for you? To find out, it's important to carefully explore the principles of AA. For Wilson and Smith, surrendering to a “higher power” was an integral part of developing their plan.
Today, some critics of the program find that aspect of AA problematic, arguing that self-empowerment is an effective way to control addiction and achieve lasting recovery. The first step in AA is to admit your helplessness, which boils down to a level of honesty that many addicts have not achieved until now. Many people under the spell of addiction or alcoholism think that “it's not that bad or that they can” stop at any time. Step 2 is about finding faith in some higher power, and the accompanying principle of hope means that you should never give up that faith, even when you suffer a setback.
This virtue is easy to understand when it comes to practicing it on a daily basis. In recovery, not every moment will be positive, but if you keep that hope and faith alive, you will return to the other side. Step 4, which involves documenting all the mistakes you've made, is clearly linked to courage. Part of your past will be painful, and you may have to deal with some of your biggest regrets.
Living courageously means that you can start from scratch without forgetting your past completely. Step 5 consists of taking the moral inventory made in step 4 and admitting first to God, to yourself and finally to another person. You can practice integrity in your recovery by talking about everything that makes you feel guilty and your mistakes. Basically, having integrity is living honestly.
In step 6, you need to prepare to have your sins taken away by admitting to yourself that you are fully ready to overcome them. Will as a virtue means that you have to be prepared to be acquitted in order to move forward without looking back. You must have a good disposition in everything you do. In step 4, you catalogued your past, and in step 6, you admitted them and freed yourself from guilt and shame.
Step 7 is to be willing to free yourself from your past. In step 8, you ask God for forgiveness, or another higher power. Humility is one of the simplest principles to understand because it is simple. When you're humble, you're aware of the fact that you're not an important part of the big picture.
Humility in daily practice means never seeing you more important than you are. Love is empathy and compassion, and Step 8 asks you to make a list of all the people you've hurt on your journey to where you are now. You also have to be willing to make amends, which shows that you really care about the people on your list. Practicing your sobriety with the principle of love means that you not only exist for yourself, but that you are at the service of the people you care about.
Step 10 refers very clearly to its own principle. It's one thing to take a personal inventory and admit our mistakes once. Discipline is needed to continue doing this throughout life. Step 11 tries to move forward without losing the notion of a higher power.
The ongoing awareness that this requires makes it easy to match the step with the principle that accompanies it. Each of the 12 steps has a spiritual principle behind it. The purpose of a 12-step program is to help people overcome addiction. Each step helps a person to live daily life without the need for substances.
The Big Book also describes the 12 principles of AA, which are unique words that encompass the virtues needed to pass each step. Working on Step 12 is one way to safeguard your own sobriety while helping others live better and sober lives day by day. However we do it, the point is that every time we find ourselves powerless in the face of our addiction, every time more is revealed about our deficiencies or about the people we have harmed, steps are available as our path to recovery. The 12 Principles of AA are essentially the work of the founders of AA, but early in AA's history, the organization listed six principles, many of which were influenced by the founders' experience with The Oxford Group.
After learning its principles, you may want to try the program or include it as part of your post-rehabilitation care plan. The way to carry out this principle is to always remind yourself that you are at the mercy of a higher power and that you are not the first. The Spiritual Principles of Recovery are a guide to realization and strength in recovery that correspond to the original 12 steps of 12-step recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Gambler's Anonymous, etc.. The 12 spiritual principles group these steps into digestible virtues and provide a roadmap to lifelong health and sobriety.
Principles help them move from feeding their addiction to nurturing their spirituality and focusing on their relationship with others and the world around them. The short form of spiritual bypass is when a person wears a mask or presents a false spiritual self that suppresses aspects of that person's true self. Regardless of whether you subscribe to a monotheistic religion such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, a non-theistic religion such as Buddhism or Taoism, or even fall into an agnostic or atheistic line of thought, spirituality is a vital part of your recovery experience. The notion of service inherited from the Oxford Group was the founding principle that led Bill Wilson and Dr.
AA, of course, focuses heavily on the principles of Christianity, but many of the current groups have modernized the principles to reflect a more diverse audience. . .
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