Steps By The Big Book

[bluidkiti]

STEP 7

…to have my new found Friendtake them away, root and branch. (Bill’s Story, 13: 3)
Heard in a meeting: "Step 7 is about DOING what you do not want to do. What are you going to do instead? Will you ask for help to make these changes?"


We may think of a shortcoming as falling short of our potential. In Step 7 we are going to practice new things in our lives, and a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery, a conversion, begins to take place. (567: 1) We are asking for help and strength from the power that we discover within us, through the discipline of the practice of working this program as understood by Alcoholics Anonymous. While we cannot - nor should not - deny our instincts, we are asking the higher power of our understanding to remove that habitual and insatiable demand for the satisfaction of our instincts beyond our true needs.



The effort, or the act of working this Step, is in the asking. We are asking for help to have wisdom and clarity, to be made strong. How we go about asking – through prayer, through meditation or other spiritual practices, or by thinking it over – is up to us. We are not going to ask just once, we will ask again and again throughout our lifetimes until in a moment of grace we find strength to go on without drinking or using. We need spiritual strength to go forth into the world and take those actions that are consistent with, and even demanded by, the understanding we have from our quiet time alone with our higher power. We take refuge in and cooperate with this ‘inner knowing’ in the process of letting go, of opening ourselves to change. We have come to see that we are a part of, rather than apart from, this universal family. This true perspective of humility gives us peace of mind. [12 & 12, 48: 0; 58: 1; 72: 2]



pp. 70-71
http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/