Awakening Spiritually with Step Twelve

Addictive Eaters Anonymous Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addictive eaters, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

A member of Addictive Eaters Anonymous spoke to other AEA members about their experience of living the Twelve Steps. This blog is Part One of the edited transcript of one member's interview on Step Twelve. All the readings referred to come from Step Twelve in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous book.

The first paragraph of Step 12 reads: “… here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety” (Pg. 106).

Step 12 has three prongs: There is having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, and we tried to carry this message to addictive eaters. The third part is about practicing these principles in all our affairs. They are completely entwined and complementary, but it would be nice to talk about each part.  How have you arrived at a spiritual awakening in Step 12?

To get to the point of a spiritual awakening, I had to take the steps. For years, I thought I could just go to meetings and absorb recovery by osmosis. That has never worked for me. In particular, in Addictive Eaters Anonymous (AEA), nothing worked until I was off the food, until the obsession to eat was removed. I spent years in AA, basically as a two-stepper. I took the first part of the first step and tried to help others by taking them to meetings or doing a little bit of service. But I could not make any progress until I was willing to surrender all substances. And that took a long time. I would sit in meetings where people were talking so gratefully about their own lives, wondering when the “Promises” were going to kick in for me. But you can't get the Promises of 12 Step recovery without the first step (Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter Six: Into Action). 

So I had to get bad enough to be willing to give up my old thinking around food and get a sponsor. That took years. One of the things that I was really grateful for was that once I made that decision to ask for help, I was gifted with a beginner's mind and I forgot how long I had been in AA. I acted like a beginner here in AEA and started to follow the directions of my sponsor around the steps. I really started working the steps for the first time in my life, despite all those years in the other fellowship. Then things started to change.  My thinking started to change and I felt some of the promises. 

I started to experience that spiritual awakening, particularly through taking the action steps of four and five, six and seven, eight and nine. The thing I like about a spiritual awakening is that it is ongoing. It is not just something that I did when I first took the steps with my sponsor. When I first came across recovery, I had a closed mind to the concept of God. My mind was opened to quite a degree here, which surprises me, and I believe that will continue to go on, provided I keep doing what is suggested here. Everything is predicated on admitting my powerlessness over food, asking for help, and following the directions of somebody else who has taken these steps. 

Your spiritual awakening, in some ways, sounds like an attitudinal change, a change in your thinking, and presumably, a change in the way you acted and behaved. Would you say that is how you are describing your spiritual experience?

For a long time, I was hung up on the difference between a spiritual experience and spiritual awakening. I thought everyone had to have the same ‘bright lights’ sudden experience that AA co-founder Bill W. had in hospital. I must have been a spiritual seeker without realizing it because I went around a lot of places looking for that, including churches, beaches and the countryside. I've come to believe now that that process takes place within. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about the great reality within. In my case, it required a change in attitude and action.  It's nothing I've done as I no longer impulsively act on my thinking, which I always did in the past and placed myself and others in a position to be hurt, like it says in the Big Book. So any time there is a bit of a pause between that first self-centered thought and the action I take, I know it must come from a spiritual place from a power greater than me.