The 12 Step Witch

Made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” Step Three of Alcoholics Anonymous

 “We now honor our connection with the divine, as we understand it, and we accept the process of change.” Step Three of The Spiral Steps

 “Made a decision to align our Will and our lives to that of True Will and place the care of our lives into the hands of the God/dess as we understand Him, Her, It, or Them.” Step Three of The Twelve Steps for Pagans by Khoury

 “Made a decision to connect the powers within and without and see them as One.” Step Three by Anodea Judith

 As I mentioned in a previous post, independence is a hallmark of Pagans and Witches. We like to do things our own way, and we relish marching to the beat of our own drum. It is not easy, then, to confront this third step that tells us that surrendering our will is the way forward. For many of us, the fear that leaps into our mind is perfectly explained within the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

 “Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintain my independence. Nothing is going to turn me into a nonentity. If I keep and turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I’ll look like the hole in the doughnut.” P 36, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

 I’m so fascinated by this fear of being a nonentity because I think it speaks very deeply to the fear that the reality of interconnection and interdependence bring up in modern man and woman. To admit that we are deeply connected, on a spiritual and physical level, is to dismantle the idea of individuality itself. We’ve all heard about how we are made of stardust, and this can feel inspiring. But it also reminds us that we are not our own; that the very physical material of our bodies is borrowed and communal. it was once one thing, and it one will day be another. Many Pagans have worked hard to dismantle ontological dualism and Cartesianism (the philosophy perfected by René Descartes that the world is divided into three different areas of existence-that inhabited by physical matter, that inhabited by the mind, and that inhabited by God) and have placed enormous emphasis upon the sacredness of our bodies. Thus there is not one set of laws governing our material self and our spiritual self; the one is embodied in the other (they are the same). Thus, our whole selves dip from a common well, and if these energies can be said to belong to us in any way it can only be for a brief wink of the cosmic span of time. I breathe, but at what point can my breath be said to be my own? In those moments when it is held like a cup by the material of my lungs which is made from organic material that I am only borrowing? It feeds me and sustains me, but it is not mine. I can only dance with it.

 Making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand him, is to embrace this idea that even things as seemingly all-consuming and steady as a desire or a want is washed away in the sea of all-beings. Surrendering our will is shorthand for behaving as if things are more deeply connected than ontological dualism asserts and that there might then be a higher purpose for us than what our desires dictate. This can be very frightening. This fear that our autonomy and sovereignty will be lost is described later in the 12 and 12 as “a fear of losing something we already possessed or failing to get something we demanded.” When we work the third step, we turn directly into that fear. What would happen if we didn’t get what we wanted? What would happen if we lost something we thought we needed? If we turn into these fears having surrendered to the idea that we exist less uniquely than we thought, the fear fizzles and, according to the Big Book, “we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.”

The discussion until now has gone along spiritual terms, but what does this look like in practical application? A chief indicator of our existential fretting in active addiction is the amount of energy and time we would devote towards trying to manage people, events and outcomes so that we would get what we want or avoid losing what we had. We also tried to manage our drinking or drugging like this, trying to imbibe the correct amount, or in the correct order, so that we could get to just the right place that would provide relief from pain but also avoidance of harsh consequences. Trying to manage is a deeply existential activity. it is built on the idea that we need certain things to happen in order to be happy or comfortable, and that being happy or comfortable is the chief aim of our lives. It supposes that we, in our infinite wisdom, are the best determinants of what is best for us, and that we should not cease to struggle until we make those things a reality.

When we work Step Three, we walk away from this idea. We cease our love affair with managing people, places, things, drugs, drinking and other behaviors. This might mean that Susan stops engaging in being a people pleaser all the time because she realizes that trying to make everyone like her is really just an effort to manage her own reality. Joey might cease trying to make Mom and Dad get along and accept that they hate each other. Rebecca might work Step Three by letting go of the idea that she has to be the one to play Devil’s Advocate in her office. For me, it looked like ceasing my efforts to play the victim so that others would feel sorry for me and take it easy on me.

 From those examples above you might have gotten the secret about Step Three. This is a Step about responding in a different way we don’t get what we want or lose something we had. In this way, this is an alchemical step. We are turning dross into gold. Turning dross, or base metals, into gold was just one of the many aspirations of the alchemists. This is the alchemy we perform when we work Step 3. We take the dross of life- all the things and people that didn’t turn out or act the way we wanted them to- and we turn our experience of them into gold by showing up in that situation in a fresh new way. What fresh new ways are possible? It could be an attitude of acceptance. It might be a focus on service (i.e. how can I make myself of use to others in this situation?). Gratitude is a very powerful attitude to show up with in the face of something disappointing or difficult. These are just some examples; there are many options. “Okay,” some of you might be saying at this point. “That makes sense, but why does ‘God’ with a capital G have to be involved with this? Now that I have a new understanding about my unmanageability and powerlessness from Step 1, why can’t I just begin to behave in a different way?” I welcome you to try, but I offer this wisdom from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

 “If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could wish these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly. Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.” P 44, Alcoholics Anonymous

 What does that mean, exactly? Logistically, it means we plug ourselves in so the current can flow from this power to ourselves. That can look very different to different people within different traditions. Some people might begin spending more time contemplating in nature. Others may take up a serious meditation practice, or engage in regular devotional work. You could begin to engage in trance work, or ecstatic dance, or simply praying. Probably we need to find a way to incorporate some service work into our lives, and take up a gratitude practice. These simple actions can have the effect of radically shifting our perspectives so that we can do what was discussed above-showing up in fresh new ways to challenging situations.

 The Third Step, when understood and activated in your life, actually puts you into a very “Pagan” mindset. This is a world in which you are not the center of the Universe. Your needs and wants are not more or less important than those of your neighbor. You are neither queen or victim. You are part of a vast web, and you hold a responsibility to other beings in that web. You are willing to work with what shows up and flow with the energies present, not demanding that reality reshape itself to your preferences. As you encounter difficult people and situations, you hold a sense that there is a sacredness and a usefulness immanent in all things, and that possibility lurks behind every corner. I see this as in keeping with the life-affirming, interconnected conception of divine immanence that many people identifying as Pagan share. I believe this is a very holy and sacred way to live our lives, and in ceasing to struggle with the world I have actually had the freedom to be more myself as I actually am: an expression of energies in a unique configuration for a moment in time.

 As always I look forward to what you think. What do you think about the Third Step? How do you work with it in your tradition? In what ways does the traditional wording create tension for you, and how do you resolve that-or not?

 Coffee’s on!

Step Two- We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

The First Step leaves us in a terrible position.  We are utterly beyond human assistance. Our lives are unmanageable no matter what we do.  We will never be able to control our drinking.  Certainly this is a stance of hopelessness.

Many alcoholics or addicts will say “I worked the First Step long before I came into the program.”  This means that they spent many years well aware of the hopelessness of their situations while still in active addiction. This was my experience as well.  I was in terrible pain, and knew my lifestyle was unbearable and untenable, but I could not envision a way to live that did not include alcohol and drugs to numb the anxiety and panic that swelled up to swallow me whenever I was sober.  I had to stop, but how?

The second step is the “how” in “how am I possibly going to do this?”  The key was that I wasn’t going to do it-I was going to rely on a power greater than myself to do it.  I had been trying to envision my escape from addiction as propelled by my own human will and power.  Things changed only after a divine source became involved.

This is what happened to me; I was young, a college student.  I had spent a summer hitting bottom, a summer I had intended to spend getting myself dried up and cleaned up before heading back to school.  It was now late August and all my well intentioned plans had failed to come to fruition, forgotten in one lost night after another.  I was confronted, not unfairly, by my mother with the fact that I was going back to school in just a week and that I hadn’t done any of the things I said I was going to do.  Angrily, I screamed at her and then rushed out of the house, intending to drive to my apartment to get drunk, to forget my feelings of shame and panic in the ease that pours from the bottle.

But the Great Spirit did not let me.  Something about that time was different.  Was it just that I was finally desperate enough?  Halfway down the street, I stopped my car and wailed like a lost child.  “Help me help me help me help me,” I sobbed.  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

The Great Spirit put my hands on the wheel, and instead of driving me back to my apartment, it had me drive to a place that had always been very sacred to me.  There, I lay in the cool sand of a dark beach and, gazing at the stars above me, I cast a circle around me for the first time in a long time.  I asked Hir to help me not drink.  I lay there and cried and was soothed by the crashing waves. That night I fell asleep without drinking.

The next day, the anxiety and shame remained, but I was able, suddenly, to keep from a drink.  And the next day, and the next.  And so on.  Suddenly something that had been impossible for me was possible.  I could stare into oblivion, at the wasteland that had become my life, and not drink.  Nights yawned before me and I felt full of fear but still, I did not drink.  I did not understand how this was possible, but it was. And I have not felt the need to take another drink for over ten years.

Before this had happened, I had stood on the shore of sickness, desperate to get to the other side to reclaim something approaching a human life.  But in-between had been this raging river of doubt and fear.  I had been delivered across that river, with no effort upon my part other than simple asking.  It wasn’t that everything was perfect on the other side.  But things were possible there that had not been possible before.  Had I been insane before? It’s a loaded word, to be sure.  We’ve all heard the maxim that to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the definition of insanity.  Well, we had certainly drank and drank again, expecting that this time, finally, we would be able to drink without consequence.  Each time, we had been shown to be wrong, yet we tried again.   Or perhaps we knew our drinking was hopeless, but we were so in its grips that we kept at it.  That was its own kind of insanity.

As I did in my last post, I’d like to take a look at what some of the versions of the 12 Steps that have been rewritten for a pagan perspective have to say about the second step.

We came to believe that there was hope for healing, health and balance. The Spiral Steps

Came to believe we could realign the power within and the power without such that each served to enhance the other. Anodea Judith, A Pagan Approach to the 12 Step programs

We can see that these rewritten steps have greatly changed the entire concept of the step.  In the original second step is an acceptance of the fact that while we, with our own human power, cannot solve this problem, a power greater than ourselves can and will do so.  What was once an acknowledgement of the need to look to sacred or divine places for our solution has turned into the idea that somehow the very same human powers that were not enough before will now start being enough.  For me, this does not provide the necessary transformative agent that is required for the propulsion into amended behaviors.  *

As in step one, I understand the desire to excise some of the concepts inherent in the Second Step from these rewritten versions.  First and foremost, there is the issue of “A Power Greater than Myself.”  Many Witches do not hold with an image of a sentient God or Goddess figure that is positioned higher or more superior, and they might resent the idea that suddenly they are being asked to come to believe in this figure that they are supposed to go beg for sanity from. That can seem like way too much like old ideologies that many of us left behind in the past.  I share this concern.  This is why I understand the word “greater” not to mean higher or superior, but larger. I do not personally resonate with the concept of deity, but I experience the Universe as having a Divine nature, of which I am but a small part, and alignment with the raw power of this Divine Nature enables me to pursue right living (or, obtain sanity). One of my sponsees sees her Higher Power as her best self, a sort of  Platonic ideal that encourages and inspires her.  Or maybe you aren’t convinced that your idea of deity or divinity is necessarily so concerned with humanity and our needs.  What about land spirits, or ancestors, archetypes, thought forms?  If you are a classic hard polytheist most likely you already believe in a deity that has the power to restore sanity, and you will know the proper devotions and practices along those lines.  Maybe your concept of a higher power can as simple as that sacred feeling you get when you sit in Nature and the sense of reverence it inspires in you.  If all else fails, just go with what old-timers like to snark; “There is a higher power, and it isn’t YOU.”

The authors of the Twelve Steps believed that “the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God.  This applies, to, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book.  Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. ”   Do I expect that the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous would have understood Witchcraft or Pagan spirituality?  No.  But I steadfastly believe that the steps as they were originally written were done so in a way that can accommodate all manner of belief or spiritual practices.

There is much room for creativity, and we have every freedom to construct the “”power greater than ourselves” that makes sense to us.  We should remember that when we share our experiences in the rooms to share generally so that as many people as possible can relate.  If someone else does choose to share more specifically, and uses language that makes us feel marginalized, we have to ask “Is this really about me?”  We need to examine our own attachment to labels and definitions and if we can be open to constructing a new understanding of these words.

Why do I think it is important that we all follow the same steps as they were originally written?  I believe that one of the most harmful character defects found in almost every alcoholic or addict is the belief that their individuality is so pronounced that they are separated from the human condition to a degree that the tools other alcoholics and addicts use to recover cannot possibly work for them.  This is such a grand excuse for not going to meetings, not finding a sponsor, and not working any steps at all.   We call this being “terminally unique”, as in, you are so different from everyone else that it might just kill you.  No doubt, Witches have a unique spirituality.  But is it so pronounced that what works for millions of others will not work for them?  Is it so acute that the generous language of the Twelve Steps cannot accommodate these beliefs and practices?  My inclination is to doubt it.

* This is just my opinion.  Your mileage may vary.  Share below!

I have a new post on my blog at Witches and Pagans.

It is about the latest epic drama to engulf the Pagan blogosphere.

Love and Tolerance of Others is Our Code

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.

-The First Step of Alcoholics Anonymous

It is remarkable how easily outsiders misunderstand the concept of powerlessness within Twelve Step Recovery. A simple moment spent Googling will bring up page after page of anti-AA rhetoric accusing Bill W (one of AA’s founders) of having created an entire organization that teaches learned helplessness. Many Twelve Step detractors will say that this concept of powerlessness allows the addict to shrug off any responsibility for the things she has done.

In the disease model of alcoholism and addiction, which Twelve Step recovery subscribes too, it is believed that the alcoholic or addict will never be able to regain control over their drinking or drugging. It said that upon ingesting alcohol or drugs, an allergy is set into effect that acts upon the alcoholic or addict as a tremendous craving. In addition to that, this person also suffers from a mental obsession that constantly tells them the lie that this time it will be different, that this time they will be able to pull it off and drink or drug normally or without consequence. When the first A.A.’s wrote the word “powerless”, they were saying that no addict or alcoholic would be able to circumvent either the mental obsession or physical addiction. No matter what they do, what clever tricks or management plans they come up with (and we can be quite creative!), they will never be able to drink or use without terrible consequence.

Is this a learned helplessness? Does it allow the Twelve stepper to shrug off responsibility for their actions? A reading of the 11 steps that follow should make it clear that the answer is no. It demands abstinence as the only sane reaction to the news that we cannot drink or use as other people can. The process that follows is a thorough and quite humbling experience that requires the 12 Stepper to come to terms with their worst actions and be willing to accept the consequences of their actions, even if it causes financial or legal hardship.

I see accepting my powerlessness as one of the most, strangely enough, empowering actions I have ever taken in my entire life. Before I accepted my powerlessness, I was a girl who spent years throwing herself against the wall. I was convinced that eventually, through the force of my own stubborn resentments and anger, I would somehow break through. What was I trying to break through? An endless list of things, including my own startling inability to drink like a normal person, other peoples unreasonable (so I thought) expectations of me and their resistance to my efforts to control them. I believed that if I could only manage things correctly, I would gain power over my situation, my feelings, and other people. I could somehow manage to have a normal amount of drinks or drugs and then stop. My dad would drop to his knees in sorrow for all the mistakes he had made and beg me to forgive him.

The result of these years of constantly throwing myself against the wall in this effort to exert my power? A bruised, battered body and spirit. More tragically, lost opportunities to embrace reality as it was, limitations and all. It was only when I accepted that I was powerless over certain things – my family, what other people thought of me, my drinking – that I could stop spending my time beating my body against the wall of denial and instead become engaged in those choices that WERE under my power.

It is only when I fully accept what I am powerless over that I can take my rightful place of power in the center of the pentacle and access the powers of spirit, earth, air, fire and water. At that moment, I finally understand myself in right perspective to the things that are around me. A witch cannot shape reality until she understands it. Admitting that there are things in the world, in nature, that she is powerless over is acknowledging that she is part of the tremendous web of life in which all things are connected. Humans, no matter how impressive our cognition, cannot set ourselves above or apart from the forces of nature. We are all bound by the laws of physics. We are all touched by death. To admit we are powerless over things is to claim our birthright as people of this Earth. It is to lay our heart out open and say “Yes, I am vulnerable. See how strong my heart beats”

And yet, In their efforts to rewrite the Twelve steps for a more Pagan-friendly model, many authors have written the concept of powerless out of the first step. Let’s take a look:*

“We admitted that we had a problem and made the decision to reclaim our lives.” The Spiral Steps

“We admitted that we have given our power and wills to (alcohol, drugs, food, anger, people, places, things, situations, the past – whatever you are having issues with…) and that our lives had become unmanageable.” The 12 Steps for Pagans by Khoury 

“We admitted we had a problem and that we were squandering our power. “ Anodea Judith, A Pagan Approach to the 12 Step programs

I understand the motivation for writing the word “powerless” out of the steps. Many people come to Witchcraft bearing scars from monotheistic religions were they were browbeaten into subservient and powerless relationships with their religions and their God. While the Twelve Steps were written expressly to be used by people of ANY spiritual beliefs, they were written by Christians in the 1930’s. Though the language they used was extremely inclusive for their time, it can read as alienating today. This concept of powerlessness can seem like a painful relinquishment of the sovereignty of the personal power that one reclaims when practicing Witchcraft traditions.

As discussed above, I believe that acknowledging our powerlessness is the exact opposite. I believe that for recovering addicts and alcoholics, it is the essential first step to reclaiming our true personal power that our addictions stole from us. Furthermore, it complements the worldview of the Witch by emphasizing the interconnectedness we share with all things.

Blessed be Powerlessness! Blessed be the First Step! Blessed be all recovering Witches, and blessed be all those still out there struggling.

*I have great respect for these steps and for anyone who got clean & sober working them. I am not arguing that they are bad or wrong.

Please click over to Witches and Pagans and read my new blog post on Powerlessness and the First Step!