Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP SEVEN

Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we
saw failure and misery transformed by humility into price-
less assets. We heard story after story of how humility had
brought strength out of weakness. In every case, pain had
been the price of admission into a new life. But this ad-
mission price had purchased more than we expected. It
brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered
to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and de-
sire humility more than ever.

During this process of learning more about humility, the
most profound result of all was the change in our attitude
toward God. And this was true whether we had been be-
lievers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that
the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to
be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we
would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and
then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought
ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude.
Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of
His help. But now the words "Of myself I am nothing, the
Father doeth the works" began to carry bright promise and
meaning.

We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten
into humility. It could come quite as much from our volun-
tary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering.
A great turning point in our lives came when we sought
for humility as something we really wanted, rather than
as something we must have. It marked the time when we
could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven:
"Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."