A few weeks ago I was a guest on the show “Here’s Tom with the Weather”. As part of the preparation I was asked to familiarize myself with the twelve steps that are part of the AA curriculum. I found it interesting how well they meshed with the internal spiritual journey each of us are embarked upon. The Earth experience is a rich and expansive course of study. As a result it is easy to get lost in the corridors as you are attempting to navigate to your intended classrooms. There is no right or wrong path, but there are dead end streets that we must eventually find our own way out of if we are to continue the journey.
I hope you find my interpretation as rewarding as I found the exploration of the twelve steps.
A RESPONSE TO THE TWELVE STEPS
1. We admitted that we were powerless over (insert addiction/obsession here) and our lives had become unmanageable.
When we incarnate into a lifetime, we have a general outline of the experiences we want to obtain. We create this outline while we still have access to all the other lifetimes we have ever lived. Using this knowledge, we attempt to fill in the gaps of our experiences to gain a complete understanding of the varying perspectives. This creates balance and wisdom within our consciousness. However, we live in a construct that employs a veil of forgetfulness. This allows us to start each lifetime with a clean slate so that previous biases do not impede our new path. We then live our lives with no recollection of what we had hoped to learn. Earth is a deeply immersive sensory experience, and it is easy to get off track and lose sight of your intended life path. Sometimes you go so far off your path that you find yourself on a dark street that is a dead end. This is the proverbial dark night of the soul and when you find yourself there you have two choices; you can stay in the darkness and live the rest of your life there, or you can look up from that path and search for an exit. This brings us to the second step.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Most of us think that the consciousness we possess is a product of the experiences and choices we have made in this single lifetime. The reality is that who we are now has a lot to do with who we have been in prior lifetimes. We have all lived many lifetimes before we incarnated into this one. I have given hundreds of past life regressions and in these sessions, I take my clients to past lives. Many had unresolved issues that were bleeding over and adversely impacting their current life. At the end of the session, we contact the higher self or totality of consciousness, which contains the experiences of every life the person has lived. It knows why you are here and what you were supposed to accomplish. From my perspective, this is the higher power each of us should be attempting to get in touch with because it knows exactly what you are supposed to be doing and learning.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
This statement is a critical concept in aligning your life to the path you intended before you incarnated. The statement implies a surrendering of will to a higher power, but it is much simpler than that. The surest way to tell if you are following your path is by how easy it manifests and what the results are. Suppose you are clawing your way up the corporate ladder to financial gain. You are making great money and have all the things society equates with success, but you are miserable doing it, your family life is suffering, and divorce is looming. This is the life you created, and you feel trapped in the choices you have made. You can keep your hands firmly upon the rudder of life and continue to force your way into the wind, or you can let go and let the wind and current shift your course back to the intended path. The wind and current are being generated by your higher self and fighting these forces always manifests as discomfort. Being in the flow is effortless and manifests as joy and happiness in your life. Being happy and joyful is the intended experience and when we use them as signposts, we can be sure we are on the right path.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
This is something we should all be doing, all the time. With age comes wisdom, or at least it should if we are continually reassessing and realigning our moral compass. I think everyone can look back and identify instances where they should have responded differently or made different choices. If you are never looking backward for mistakes, you will not self-correct and those same mistakes will keep appearing until you finally address them. Personally, I want to be the best version of myself that I can be and that requires continuous assessment and correction.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Again, this is something everyone should be doing on a regular basis. You should do this during contemplative states, whether that is meditation, prayer, or another form of internal reflection. This self-assessment of our personality and the way it manifests is an important step toward balance and spiritual maturity. This step does not ask for external validation, but instead places the burden upon the individual. As we reflect in this manner, we compare the way we have treated ourselves and the way we have treated others to our own standards of moral and ethical behavior. When we do this with a critical eye, we find instances where our moral compass might have been out of calibration and we can correct it. Life is a multitude of experiences. New experiences present new challenges and if we are performing regular self-assessments our moral compass will always be calibrated and ready for what comes next.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings.
I’m going to condense six and seven because they all fall within the purview of aligning to your higher self and your intended life path. It does not matter what name you give the external guidance, all that matters is that you have reached a place in life where you are requesting assistance. Our ability to make free-will decisions -good and bad ones- is what makes all of us unique facets within the universal consciousness. As previously stated, you can decide to remain in the dark dead end alley, or you can ask your spiritual GPS for the guidance that leads you back to your path. As soon as you ask with heartfelt sincerity, assistance will be provided. The key is that you have to ask and be ready to incorporate the answers that come.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Let’s combine eight, nine, and ten since they address the same concept, an accounting of our moral compass with regard to interactions between self and other selves. I use the terms self and other selves because it clearly defines the nature of individualized consciousness. Regardless of the type of human vehicle we are currently driving, the composition of our consciousness is identical. As our sphere of consciousness matures, we increase in energetic potential. At a point in the process, the energy within the consciousness begins to extend beyond the barrier membrane. It is here that we begin to feel the energy of others and start to understand our true nature. Our interaction with other selves is the main lesson of being incarnated on earth. The way we treat others creates an energetic in consciousness that acts like a magnetic attractant. If you are kind and loving to those you interact with, you will draw this energy toward you and your life will reflect it. Conversely, if you are hateful and self-serving in your dealings with others you will find the same happening to you with increasing frequency because you are attracting it to you. The moment you shift this energy, in this case attempting to repair the damage, you begin to change the energy you are transmitting. If you can do that through personal interaction that’s great, but the key component is the inward acknowledging and the shifting of your intentions using free-will. Like step four, continual introspection is required so that any lapses can be identified and corrected before they become engrained habits.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand the concept of a higher power.
I modified eleven and twelve slightly to apply beyond the original scope intended by the author because these twelve tenets are core concepts of a spiritual and rewarding life. We exist within a conscious universe who has created the beauty of individualized self-awareness that we all enjoy. I want to repeat that one part, “We exist within it”. While there are reductive energetics in play that allow galaxies and planets to create their own constructs, the universe is conscious and aware of all that occurs within it. It does not matter what your concept of a higher power is, or what name you assign it. If you are consciously aligning to love, hope, and unity, I assure you the universe is listening. Meditation and prayer engage a portion of your consciousness that responds much like a muscle in your body. The more you use it, the stronger it gets and the easier the task becomes.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to share this message with others and incorporate these principals into all our affairs.
The application of this last step is implemented using personal discernment. A profound spiritual awakening is extremely personal and affects each person differently. Depending upon the level of awakening, you may want to shout your revelations from the rooftop, or you may begin to question the fabric of your reality. In either case or anywhere in between, dialog with others is a critical component of understanding and evolving. Soliciting external viewpoints and sharing council is the main reason individualized consciousness was created in the first place. The people we surround ourselves with and call friends will be those who resonate with the energy we are transmitting. As you share your message of awakening and your energy continues to shift, old friends unwilling to move with you will fall away. New friends who share your energy and perspective will appear along your journey of self-improvement. This is the ascending energetic path every consciousness is following. We are responsible for the path of this lifetime, but the journey began many lifetimes before this one and does not have a destination. We all must calibrate our moral compass and move forward in genuine compassion for ourselves and those we interact with. This single intention will place you firmly within the guard rails of your intended path.
In service to all,
Todd R Deviney
The first Book: