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From the books ... Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12 & 12)
Click the page number or the book cover icon
to view that page in the literature.1.
This mighty urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative energy that deeply influences our lives.
2.
The moment we catch even a glimpse of God's will, the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life, we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the
seeming evidence to the
contrary that surrounds
us in purely human affairs.
3.
This odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom.
4.
Judging from what I had seen
in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest.
5.
6.
When this sort of thinking
is fully established in
an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he
has probably placed himself beyond human aid, and unless locked up, may die or go
permanently insane.
7.
We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from
which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of
our intolerable situation as best we could;
and the other, to accept spiritual help.
8.
As we lay aside these very human aspirations, we believe
that each of us takes part in the weaving of a protective mantle which covers our whole Society and under which we may
grow and work in unity.
9.
The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another
human being.
10.
We'd have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves -- the
help of God and another human being.
11.
It had been embarrassing enough when in confidence
we had admitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being.
12.
We knew we would have to quit
the deadly business of living alone with our conflicts, and in honesty
confide these to God and another human being.
13.
So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives.
14.
15.
16.
17.
How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection.
18.
Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some
time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made -- spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.
19.
Psychiatrists and psychologists point out the deep need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his own personality flaws and for a
discussion of them with an understanding and trustworthy person.
20.
Then he asked for the grace to
bring love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being he could.
21.
22.
We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.'s who were only too
eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the
actual or potential financial insecurity of
every human being in the world.
23.
Another great dividend we may expect from
confiding our defects to
another human being is humility -- a word often misunderstood.
24.
25.
This requires action on
our part, which, when completed, will mean that we have admitted to
God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our defects.
26.
Step Five -- "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs."
27.
28.
Most of us would declare that without a fearless admission of our defects to
another human being we could not stay sober.
29.
First, we take a look backward and try to discover where we have
been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop
the best possible relations with every human being we know.
30.
In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward.
31.
32.
33.
Therefore, every nation, in fact every form of society, has to be a government administered by human beings.
34.
Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in
the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that
we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things -- these are
the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.
35.
Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are.
36.
37.
Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation
could yield more satisfying and valuable
rewards than this one.
38.
39.
Instead of regarding the
satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and
function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.
40.
41.
Instead, we looked at the
human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as
a basis of wholesale condemnation.
42.
For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the
basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress.
43.
44.
To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be
called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings -- the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.
45.
We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions.
46.
47.
48.
We'd hardly be human if we
didn't.
49.
Without this proof the expectant purchaser would
be forced to depart empty handed with none of what I later came to believe was the great panacea for all human ills.
50.
Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and
atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last
word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all.
51.
For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and
miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view.
57.
If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care.
58.
Having carefully surveyed this whole area of human relations, and having decided exactly what personality traits in us
injured and disturbed others, we can now commence to ransack memory for the people to whom
we have given offense.
59.
60.
61.
In the face of collapse and
despair, in the face of the
total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.
62.
An illness of this sort --
and we have come to believe
it an illness -- involves
those about us in a way no other human sickness can.
63.
64.
65.
To get completely away from our aversion to the
idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for
itself, takes most of us a long, long time.
66.
He may have forgotten the possibility that his own wishful thinking and the
human tendency to rationalize have distorted his so-called guidance.
67.
These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.
68.
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too,
and cannot possibly meet our
incessant demands.
69.
70.
71.
This statement may surprise newcomers who
have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human will is of no value whatever.
72.
Our sponsors declared
that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it.
73.
Of far more importance was the fact that
he was the first living human with whom I had ever talked, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience.
74.
Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.
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Alcoholics Anonymous, the
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