Thoughts on Recovery – No. 49 – Steps 6-7-10- Entering the Kingdom – The World of the Spirit

Sandy Beach was one of the messengers sent by God to help me down the path toward a relationship with God.. I dedicate this thought to him and his ideas he presented on this step.
He gave many powerful talks on these steps. He starts one of them with the following story.
Would you like to enter the kingdom of God? The door is wide open and it has been wide open the whole time. But when you get to the door there is someone there who says I am sorry you can’t bring any of your kingdom in here. That is why so many people never get there. So what is my kingdom? It is all my ideas, opinions, my causes, my plans, my resentments, my fears, my judgments, my past, what makes up me. Unfortunately only non-entities get to go in. The kingdom is filled with non-entities. That is why it is so pleasant there. The only presence you feel there is God’s! It is not being interfered with my ego.
I see the kingdom of God as being in the present moment with him. The now is the only place that I can exist with him. Do I exist in harmony or disharmony with him? I am the only one that can separate myself from God. How do I do that? I separate by being self centered and practicing my character defects in the moment. How I react to life each moment will be determined by which kingdom I am in. If I am practicing intolerance in the moment I can’t be tolerant. I can’t practice love and hate at the same time. What I bring into each moment will determine what I do and how I will feel.
My goal each day is to stay close to God and follow his will for me accessing his power to carry that out. I use steps 6 and 7 to correct me in the moment back to God and react to life as he would have me. It has become a way of life. I don’t claim to practice it perfectly but whenever I am starting to get disturbed I know there is something wrong with me. I am practicing a character defect. I try to pause right away and ask God to change the way I am seeing the situation and remove the character defect at once. Then I act as if it is removed and practice the opposite character trait that comes from being connected to God.
Steps 6-7 are the steps of change. They are for me to be practiced all the time every moment. The longer I do this I find I stop almost automatically when I start to get disturbed and try not to be separated for very long. They call this staying on the beam. Do an experiment. Try to practice this step and see the result. As your see an improvement in how you feel when you do it you will want to continue to do it and the results keep getting better and better. There is no limit to the benefits of steps 6 and 7.
I believe we have a choice in AA. Are meetings and just being sober enough for you or do you want more? Do you want to be a different person? Reacting differently? Free of fear and resentment? Not harming other people? Steps 6-7 are the steps that change us into a different person. I am responsible for how I feel today. I cant blame it on anyone or anything anymore. God will not do for me what I can do for myself. Only I can be willing to stop practicing my character defects. Then with his power I can be the person he created. Try it! This step does work but only if I work it!