Nora

“But for six, seven and eight, I’ve always felt it extremely helpful to study the Twelve and Twelve. Right off the bat, we find out about forgiveness. This becomes the lead way of approaching this particular chore, the slides where we harm people. Without forgiveness, we look at these and conclude that it’s partially their fault. I know I acted terribly, but they made me do it! If they didn’t do that, I never would have dumped all the beer all over their living room! We’re transferring responsibility for our own actions to other people, which was our specialty before we got to AA. Bill suggests that as we take the fourth step, we also look more closely at harm and forgiveness. We go back as far as we can think, to when we were children, because not only do we want to go make the amends, we want to change the slide so that we don’t do it anymore. That allows us to have an entirely different view up there in the future. Forgiveness is almost like a magic spot remover; just the act itself starts letting light through these various incidences, because it takes a lot of the anger that we have over the event and reduces it.”
― Sandy Beach, Steps and Stories: History, Steps, and Spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous Change Your Perspective, Change Your Mind, Change Your World