Step Two and Three Breakdown

Some recent breakthroughs on my stepwork.  

I've on and off had some suspicions about my sanity, and about what sanity is and what it isn't.  

And a casual look at the wording of AA's Step Two suddenly stopped me in my tracks. 

"We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

 A lot of the program literature about Step Two is about convincing atheists, agnostics, and folks with different ideas of God  to look inside for an unsuspected inner spiritual resource that might have little relationship to what any established religion has tried to tell you about God.  I had no problems with that, having discovered that inner resource in work with a gifted counselor, and so as I read the literature I figured that I had Step Two sorted. 

"...could restore us to sanity."
What does that mean?  I realised that I had been interpreting it as a rhetorical flourish.  I hadn't really questioned how my belief in a Higher Power had ANYTHING to do with sanity or Sanity.

As I thought more about it, almost everything I do that smacks of insanity is the selfish, self-centered, self-pity, egotistical, self-gratification stuff.  This is the area where I find downward spirals, compulsion, and addictive acting out.  This is where I'm stuffing the emptiness, where those feelings of irritability, restlessness and discontent can only be conquered by brute force addictive behaviour.  (Is irritable, restless and discontent the opposite or negation of Grace and Love?)

And sanity? ...this is when I am connected to my Higher Power and am serene and healthy.

If we take one of the popular AA memes: that God acts through other people, then we can say that God must also be acting for other people through me.  But I can't be a conduit for God unless I'm cleaning house and moving upwards rather than in a downward spiral.  You have to earn and practice having contact with your HP.

And suddenly the Third Step Prayer makes sense for me: 

God, I offer myself to Thee-
To build with meand to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self,
that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties,
that victory over them may bear witness
to those I would help of Thy Power,Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.
May I do Thy will always!


I had been chafing at the "build with me and do with me as thou wilt" - the passivity of that made me feel like a screwdriver or a brick, just a tool; I feel I have something to contribute, I'm not just a God Zombie.

Is that pride? Sounds like I'm not turning my will over, doesn't it?  Well I knew I had Step Three issues, it was the Step Two stuff about sanity that had eluded me.

But after thinking about what a Higher Power has to do with sanity, now I realise that this prayer is talking about being a Conduit for God.  About living a life informed by the presence of Grace.  Turning your will and your life over means that you are operating from a different center, not from your old ego & personality, but that old self modulated through conscious contact with your Higher Power.

Another way to think about this is to say that the time given to you on this planet is yours to do with as you wish, and it can be God's time or your time.

Let it be God's time.

Up or Down?

You can either be moving up or down in your response to life.

I like the Vedic notion of Chakras, that 7-step ladder of energy points along the spine.  At the base of your spine, near the groin, is the Root Chakra, which is very primal, perhaps almost animal energy.  It's vital, but it's raw.  The idea is to harness and sublimate this energy up the spine, to ever more refined energy centers of serenity, wisdom, love, and grace.  The Crown Chakra is actually outside your body above your head, and it represents the highest spiritual energy.  The metaphysics of it aside, I like the notion of spiritual energy as a continuum.

My addictive behaviours are downstream reactions to more subtle impulses that in themselves are quite blameless, normal, and human.  Say that I don't exercise, for instance, so my body gets tense and jerky, and moving downward, I might think of sex as a release for that energy.  Moving upward instead I might have a daily practice and regimen of yoga or exercise that expresses that natural body energy in a healthy, disciplined way.  I'm not saying that sex is wrong, but when I obsess about sex, or food, or anything really, I am learning that I am responding to a quite normal impulse but in a downward-moving way.  

That other AA/recovery notion of "stuffing your feelings" - of "filling that void" with your various addictive/compulsive behaviours, comes to mind.  AA is a program that seeks to replace your downward-moving behaviours with appropriate "filler" of an upward-moving kind.  Service, a daily practice, connecting with others, having a sponsor and guide, and being a guide yourself.

All this interrelates very closely for me in a way that it didn't last week.  I'm not sure I've done it justice here in this post, but at least I've written it down and can use it as a starting point for the next step.

Whatever that is.