Will power! That’s all you need. Determination. Discipline.
Ah, if the road to recovery were only that easy
anyone recovering from addiction, anyone seeking the divine in their
daily lives knows recovery and re-finding God is more about surrender than struggle, more about
journey than destination, more about making progress than achieving perfection.
Our puny will power is no match for what God really wants for us.
For most of us, finding God and surrendering to God’s will is about reclaiming the truest parts of
ourselves—a humbling journey that often drops us to our knees. And, according to many great
teachers, down on our knees is a good place to start a spiritual journey.
One of these teachers is Benedict of Nursia, a monk who lived in the fifth century and who
developed “rules” for living a day-to-day spirituality with others. These rules contain 12 Steps
of Humility, which parallel Bill W’s 12 Steps in AA.
Benedict (like Bill W) realized we must understand our dependence on God before being
restored to sanity. “We are like a child on its mother’s lap,” Benedict writes, “cut off from
nourishment, helpless, left without the resources we need to grow in the spirit of God.”
Stephen Lander—who grew up in the Episcopal Church, drifted away, studied many of the
spiritual traditions, became a therapist, returned to his Episcopal roots and was ordained a priest
??? years ago—believes Benedict’s 12 Steps in Humility reinforce the 12 Steps of AA and
restate the same life-changing principles in new ways.
“Both are steps to freedom,” Lander says, “freedom from self-centeredness and freedom from
looking outside ourselves for what we think we need to be happy. They help us connect with our
divinity. They show us how to befriend our true selves and to tap into our own inner resources.”
One inner resource, he says, is our sense of humility. “As we progress on a spiritual path, we
come to distrust the idea that our will power can make things happen,” Lander explains.
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