In an article he once wrote, Dr. Silkworth said that it was the failure to take the second step that was responsible for so many slips. Interesting thought. I can certainly identify with what he said. Not that I slipped ever, but the difficulty it presents for most of us is certainly real.<\/p>\n
Like the sixth and seventh steps, as presented in the BB, it’s so easy to pass them by with just a glance and think that we’ve done them. In fact, I can remember reading the first four chapters in the BB and arriving at the fifth and reading that we had arrived at the third step. My reaction was what happened to the first two steps? I had missed the whole point of the previous chapters. I had just assumed I had done what was necessary, as far as the first two steps asked of us. In fact, I had really only scratched the surface; barely.<\/p>\n
Certainly, I had gotten the first part of the first step. There was no question of my being powerless. But that led to a problem. Even having read those chapters, I was to run into difficulty, because the second part, about the unmanageability, I hardly taken notice. Like a lot of people said, I presumed it merely referred to it being the result of my drinking. I failed to notice how it was written. There was no “and” in the statement, after the word “powerless”. There were three dots.<\/p>\n
Tom was to later point the importance of the construction of that statement out to me. He said the reason they wrote it that way was because our lives were unamanageable long before we picked up the drink. That was borne out in the fourth and eighth steps. In the eighth step it tells us that we were to go back as far as memory will take us. As I did, I could see that the unamanageability had always been there. That’s why, I realized, that when I first drank, it fixed “something”. What it did was that it fixed what was wrong. I didn’t have a clue that anything was wrong, except that for the first time in my life I felt better. Better than better. It should have been a clue that something was wrong to begin with. But it went right over my head.<\/p>\n
But, how dangerous or precarious it was to just gloss over the second. Yeah, I had a Higher Power. God. Or did I? I think I began to get into trouble, when I jumped on what someone said at a meeting. He said that the second step was a step of hope. I grabbed that and told myself that I had hope. I really did. Hope that what worked for all the people in those rooms would work for me. That there was a solution to my drinking problem.
\nThat I got…but I didn’t see that there was more to it than that.<\/p>\n
Back in the third chapter, Dr. Jung, when his patient, Roland H. said he was a religious man, told him that was all well and good, but that it was not enough if he was to recover from his alcoholism. He was going to have to go further. Imagine; religion or faith was not enough! More was going to be required. Even though I had read those words, in my egotism and arrogance, I had made the assumption that I had what it took. I really never thought, as I read on, that a spiritual experience or an awakening was all that necessary or even attainable. Oh, yeah, okay. I’ll be all right. Wrong.<\/p>\n
Even Tom’s urging me to read the fourth chapter had little impact. I had avoided reading that, because of my studies in the seminary had covered aganosticism and I felt that I didn’t have to, because I knew all about that stuff. Yet, Tom kept insisting. Finally, just to get him off my back, I did. What a revelation. Like so many others, who had come from religious backgrounds, I found that all the time I had been an agnostic. I didn’t know that. But there it was. What a shock, but what a relief. I finally knew something about why I had “lost” my faith, while I was in the seminary and why I left. I now knew that I really never had it to begin with. I had a lot of knowledge, but it was just words in my head. Nothing more. Talk about years of sleepwalking.<\/p>\n
I think in the rush to “get” sober, like about ten years in ten months, I was rushing right past the words I was reading and beginning to study. Words like, either God is or He isn’t. He’s everything, or He’s nothing.<\/p>\n
We’re told that the first two propositions are not action steps. And they’re not. We’re told that we have to consider them. I looked that word up. It’s original meaning was to observe the stars. But it’s meaning in English is to think about with care or caution; to reflect or deliberate. I always thought it meant something more casual. That’s how I treated the second step. Casually.<\/p>\n
What a wise man Silkworth was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an article he once wrote, Dr. Silkworth said that it was the failure to take the second step that was responsible for so many slips. Interesting thought. I can certainly identify with what he said. Not that I slipped ever, but the difficulty it presents for most of us is certainly real. Like the … <\/p>\n