Step Two

[MajestyJo]

Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking.

The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.

This faith is for you, too.

"

This was like mirror, mirror on the wall, and yet I didn't have a lot of education and didn't do a lot of college until I came into recovery, I had read a lot, had advanced in my field and there wasn't a department in an office that I hadn't worked in so the great I am thought she knew it all.

One of my sponsors use to say, "Are you still intellectualizing? Stop it!" I wanted to know the whys and wherefore of everything. I wanted to figure it out and I was still trying to play God with my life.

Hearing a long-timer share on humilty helped me to to understand that I had to remain teachable. That I had to open my mind to other ideas and concepts and that my best thinking and ideas got me to where I was and doing the same thing over and over again, was the insanity of my disease not my intelligence.

My control was an illusion. Control doesn't work it only makes enemies and isolates the spirit and leaves me standing alone blocked from the goodness of God's blessings. I couldn't organize my life and make everything fit, I had to take down the walls, open the windows and doors and let the Spirit of God come in. It wasn't until I put the word control in place of powerless that I could truly understand how little power I had and that when I surrendered, I was empowered to help myself. There is a big difference.

I developed a faith in the program. I saw it working in the lives of others and slowly but surely, it began to infiltrate into my life and I was able to build on it in the next Step.

To be continued...