I worked all 12 steps long before the Step Working Guide came out and even before It Works: How and Why came out. We just had the Basic Text. I have It Works: How and Why back and forth quite many times, and I am familiar with the Step Working Guide, but I have not answered all the questions in that book. Somehow I have managed to stay clean for 27+ years.
Hey Don! yes I worked through the 12 steps without workbook originally and took 3 years to complete.We worked very solwly to actually instill the application of each step and not just get through them(way different than my early recovery and attendence in our parent fellowship where it is suggested to get through very rapidly.I have worked throught the steps over again and now completed step one again in the workbook .Will continue with a new Sponsor when we get to Florida in May! My sponsor also never worked the step working guide..We do a step and the same tradition together when we do them over. Also 12 concepts knowledge from working at Area service..For me I believe constant revisitation to the Steps are a real bonus to my process of recovery More is always revealed!!! Moving down May 1st now, here I come..Stay blessed.
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Our purpose is to remain clean,just for today,and to carry the message of recovery.
I shouldn't have added that piece about the workbook. It just seems to me pretty clear that many NA'ers have never formally worked the 12 steps with a sponsor. so I was wondering how many here did.
Me too, same here. I wrote Step 4 in 1995. I then did my later Steps from 1998 onwards, and completed in 2001.
My Step sponsor had told me then " I assure you, after you write this 4th Step, you will never have to do another one again" That's held true till now.
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Raman an addict clean and serene just for today in NA Worldwide ; live to love and love to live the NA Way !!!
I have worked the 12 steps with an NA sponsor, am working the 12 steps with an NA sponsor, and will be working them with an NA sponsor for the rest of my life.
The step working guide? I have little experience with that. Writing is not my thing, and have always had a mental block with writing. Though I have gone thru the first 3 steps in the guide with a sponsee...it's really really good.
Doing a daily step ten now. Well, almost every day. Heh. It'll be a while before I'm ready for eleven, but my grand-sponsor assures me my practice of meditation gives me a boost here.
I'm surprised my sponsor said to delve into ten before my amends were complete. However, I'm learning the universe brings me situations for amends to be possible, and I may *wish* to have closure and completeness but life has other plans. Someone who we'd written off entered my life again, bold, demanding attention, and in focus. It was clear I had to revisit that, and make that amend. It was scary and cathartic. By making myself so vulnerable, all that history was evaporated. My spirit is lighter now.
So I feel like I'm simultaneously in 9 and 10, with 11 beckoning like a buoy in a storm. But I'm in close work with my sponsor, and somewhat with my grand-sponsor.
A question for those who did the work long before I even considered it -- what happens when I am at the same point in the program as my sponsor? Get a new one? Grow with them -- perhaps switch roles if that's okay with her? I feel a deep gratitude for what's been shared, and think maybe even if my path is "ahead" (whatever that means) that I want to maintain that relationship to explore this spiritual life. Lord knows I don't want to get pride about accomplishments or engage in other ego-driven nonsense now. That will only pull me away from what's really working.
I guess soon I'll start thinking about paying it forward more instead of paying it back. That's in my path too, and ... what's weird for me, is that I did this as an experiment, because what I was doing kept ending up with me hating the outcome. Now I'm doing it because I am liking what I'm getting. I want what's next more than I want escape or change from this path.
