Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP TWELVE

direct contact as possible. The persistent use of meditation
and prayer, we found, did open the channel so that where
there had been a trickle, there now was a river which led
to sure power and safe guidance from God as we were in-
creasingly better able to understand Him.

So, practicing these Steps, we had a spiritual awaken-
ing about which finally there was no question. Looking
at those who were only beginning and still doubted them-
selves, the rest of us were able to see the change setting in.
From great numbers of such experiences, we could predict
that the doubter who still claimed that he hadn't got the
"spiritual angle," and who still considered his well-loved
A.A. group the higher power, would presently love God
and call Him by name.

Now, what about the rest of the Twelfth Step? The won-
derful energy it releases and the eager action by which it
carries our message to the next suffering alcoholic and
which finally translates the Twelve Steps into action upon
all our affairs is the payoff, the magnificent reality, of Al-
coholics Anonymous.

Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards
as he tries to help his brother alcoholic, the one who is
even blinder than he. This is indeed the kind of giving that
actually demands nothing. He does not expect his brother
sufferer to pay him, or even to love him. And then he dis-
covers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving
he has found his own reward, whether his brother has yet
received anything or not. His own character may still be
gravely defective, but he somehow knows that God has en-
abled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses that