Steps ten, 11 and 12 of the 12 steps are known as the maintenance steps. The first nine stepsprepared addicts to get to this point in recovery. Now the time has come to maintain this spiritual condition and keep the addiction at bay.
Step ten: Continue to take personal Inventory and when we wrong, promptly admitted it
Step ten builds off of steps eight and nine. The personal inventory is referring to the eighth step’s list of amends, only now that the addict has cleaned his side of the street, he only has to do this on a daily basis. This is in order to maintain a clear conscience and a fit spiritual condition. At the end of the day, he takes a look at his behavior for that 24-hour period. He looks at where he was resentful, angry, dishonest, afraid or thinking about things that he shouldn’t have been. Then, the next day he makes corrective action to make things right again. This is a short version of steps four through nine and it is a preventative measure to make sure the addict doesn’t slip back into a pattern of old behavior.
Step eleven: Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for his will for us and the power to carry that out
Step 11 builds off of steps two and three and strengthens the addict’s connection with his Higher Power. The most basic way to strengthen the relationship between the addict and his Higher Power is through prayer and meditation. Taking a few minutes every morning and night to thank Him for another day free from addiction is a small way to pay Him back for all that recovery has done for the addict. Anyone in recovery knows that left to their own devices, they would not have succeeded. A Higher Power is the reason that any addict achieves sobriety, and without strengthening the relationship, just like any other relationship, that bond will fade. Doing God’s will is another way to build the bond, for it is through acting the way a Higher Power believes one should act that God sees that the addict has changed. This spiritual maintenance should happen on a daily basis, however the addict sees fit.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to addicts and practice these principles in all our affairs
Step 12 is all about service and paying it forward. Now that a spiritual awakening has occurred in the life of the addict (and that is a promised result if the steps have been worked thoroughly), his job is to carry the message to other addicts and practice the principles of the program in his daily life. Service work, sponsorship and speaking at meetings are three ways to do service. The principles that are being referred to are honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, faith, humility, along with other good-natured qualities that become developed or enhanced as a result of these steps. After seeing how the program has changed his life, his job now is to help others the way he was helped. This step is what keeps the program alive.
Source:
"The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" AA World Services; December 2009
Kathleen Odenthal - Kathleen Odenthal began her writing career in 2010 with Demand Media Studios, writing as a contributor for eHow. After that, she branched ...
