Imagine you are in a deep dark room, far, far underground. The smell of body odor, stale beer, urine and cigarettes is all around, but you see nothing, or perhaps only dim shapes. Notice how the sense that time has frozen? Notice how space feels like treacle, moving slowly around you?

You hear nothing but a persistent buzzing in your ears, a buzzing that cuts right through your body and makes it hard to hear the sluggish thud of your heart. You are sitting or lying down and unable to move - every movement is heavy and slow. All is still.

You take a shallow, painful, heavy breath. You let yourself go limp.

This is active addiction.

Now, you will want to move your point of view towards your feet. Let your vision flow slowly downwards to a few objects on the ground. They emerge out of the shadow like a face coming out of blue water. One by one you note them.

Notice three objects. These are your play things. These are the tools you used with, the way you used, the magical objects that took you to this dark deep place to begin with. They may be spoons or pipes, bottles or paper money. They are whatever you used to use with and by.

Around them and you is a border marked in small smooth white stones. And as you look at these objects of using, these playthings, the smooth white stones begin to emit a faint gleam.

Your attention moves from the objects of active addiction to the gleam of these stones. It is faint but entrancing. And as you examine this gleam, it brightens and become luminously gleaming bright. And you see more clearly outside the white stone circle.

Outside the circle, you see people. They do not notice you; you are in a different place to them now. They are the people you used with or around; they are your playmates. As you observe them, they do what they do when you are using. Maybe they yell and scream, or break things, or fight, or use drugs, or have sex. You watch and let them do what they do, without your involvement of any kind. 

Then notice as your playmates do their thing, they begin to slow. Golden-brown treacle descends around them like a curtain, and they become frozen in time and space. They fall still. And beyond them you see a row of gleaming smooth white stones light up.

Slowly, slowly, a second circle of small smooth white stones becomes clear. They begin to gleam and shimmer. They are brighter than the first circle, and just as entrancing. Your attention is captivated by them. They are so sweet and clean and bright. They gleam brilliantly now, and you become aware of a new set of shapes and forms beyond them.

And you see places you used in. It may be that living room full of bottles of stale urine, or that boarding house room where you detoxed, or that park where you slept. It may be your workplace toilet cubicle where you shot up in, or that nightclub where you fell unconscious at. It may be a city street in day or night. It may be your dealer’s house, or parent’s house, or stranger’s house. And as you see the play-places where you used, as you notice the place you came from, and feel the feelings this inspires in you, become aware of one final circle, beyond the things, people and places you used in and over.

Beyond the play-places you see the largest third white circle even more brilliant and gleaming than the last two. And it is empty except for a clean, polished, gleaming white elevator door.

Now, from your inner circle, looking out over your using tools, your using associates, and your using places, you can see the way out. To reach it you must walk through the three circles.

Taking a stone from the first circle, leave behind your using playthings. Leave behind the glass, the pipe, the needle, all the other tools. Feel the smooth white stone vibrate like a living thing in your hands as you step out into the second circle.

Walk past the frozen past playmates and pick up a second white stone. It is warm to the touch, isn’t it? They cannot touch you now, and you can see the way clear as you step into the third circle.

Find yourself in the circle of past places, and locate the third white stone circle within it. Pick up the third stone and walk free into the now brilliantly lit up elevator.

Notice the twelve buttons on the elevator? You may try to press the buttons from 2 to 12 but the elevator but it will not respond. Instead, press the first button. Instantly the doors swish shut and you begin to rise.

Rising speedily out of darkness, now, feeling the three warm rocks vibrating in your arms, you can begin to feel hopeful, even positive about things to come. You have escaped from the hell of active addiction, from the people, places and things that held you enslaved, and now you are on your way out.

Begin to imagine for yourself now a luxurious hotel lobby, set up just for you. Begin to imagine that the elevator doors are in a moment opening on this abundant and beautiful scene. Using your complete creative freedom, begin to imagine the doors opening on a scene of polish, light, water, fragrence, music, beauty, sweetness and light.

Remember to step out at once. You are on ground floor.

As you wonder and admire the beauty around you, begin to look for a specific object on the tables. Or maybe it is beside the golden fountains. Or perhaps it is kept safe for you at the concierge’s desk. Or perhaps someone dear is holding it for you.

Look hard for the object you seek. It is blue and square. It can save your life if you let it. And then, when you notice it, let your heart leap with hope and find yourself right up next to it.

It is the NABT, the Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text. Place the first white stone on it, now, and feel your desire to get clean wake up inside you. You want this. You want to live clean and happy. Pick up the book at take it with you.

Now, begin to see your sponsor or support person or sharing partner enjoying themselves in the lobby, talking and laughing with others as they always are. Approach them and notice the look of love and joy in their eyes as they see you coming. They are so glad you made it here!

Walk straight up to them, and speaking from the heart or saying nothing at all, give them the second smooth white gleaming stone. And as you give it to them, feel your desire to connect with another, your longing for laughter, meaning, attention, love, energy, and aliveness, feel all that long-lost humanity wake up inside you. They hug you and with words or without words, lead you gently away from the crowd of happy people. You and them walk together, glad and peaceful, across the lobby to an empty conference room.

The room is ordinary, even simple. But your sponsor instructs you to place your stones in the center of the room, and you do, and immediately you feel lighter.

Then your sponsor asks you to help put out chairs in a circle, and set up a table. Your sponsor puts up banners on the side of the room of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions. Your sponsor produces a kettle and puts on coffee and tea for you and the others, and then you look around and see that the room is filling up with happy, healthy, smilling people.

Notice how clear and bright their eyes are. Notice how pink their cheeks are from laughing recently. These are your fellowship.

And as you look at these handsome people, so happy and peaceful, and feel a part of them, begin to notice the desire to be happy and peaceful too. Notice that desire waking up in you, and feel it so keenly that you cannot help but want to join them and sit with them, and feel welcomed by them and accepted completely. 

Feel free to sit in the circle. Your sponsor brings you a cup of warm beverage, just how you like it, and you sit and listen to the others speak. And what you hear touches you. Because, no matter THEY say, the message YOU hear from them is something like this:

Welcome to the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous!

You are in the right place to recover, at the right time to recover, with the right people to recover!

All you need, all you need right now, in order to recover is a desire to do so. And you have that desire.

You are safe, and all is well. All is well, and so long as you keep coming back to this place in yourself of desire to be well and the happiness of being with others, all will be well.

You are very precious to us. Welcome!

You hear and feel and see these words inside yourself, and you return to an even fuller wakefulness than before with the lovely feeling of desire inside your stomach, feeling grounded and peaceful and ready for more.

In whatever way you return to wakefulness, now, allow yourself to.

Thank you and God bless!

There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that if you want a spiritual awakening through the 12 Steps, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop you from taking the actions that the steps indicate. The bad news is that you are unlikely to take the actions without the support of at least one other person.

Many sponsors and many sponsees slow the awakening down. Many recovering people say that the steps become a way of life, which can be an excuse to stop any awakening dead in its tracks.

There are many ways of slowing down or stopping the step work. Many people slow down when they are acting out in another area and aren’t willing to talk about it yet. Many people slow down because they are in emotional pain and imagine they need time to “process” it. What they need, generally speaking, is step work to resolve it.

The common places people stop step work altogether are at step three (by not making a decision to turn the will and life over - that is, unwillingness), at step four (by not being willing to see things in a new way - aka close-mindedness) and at step nine (by not being willing to consider setting straight their problems with other humans - a basic dishonesty considering the harm we have done others and self).

Commonly in step workshops the audience will decrease in size after Steps 3, 4, and 9, and this is considered by presenters a sign that things are working. The failure of willingness at step 9, open-mindedness and step 4, and honesty and courage at step 3 is palpable and fairly universal with step work. I believe by letting people know up front about the obstacles, they can take responsibility for their own recovery and determine to be different.

A sponsor can overcome all these problems, usually with ease. Having been through the process, we can often explain things in a new way and make sense of them. The trick is putting yourself in their way so they know when you need help. Some suggestions that have helped:

- Get into the habit of ringing your sponsor when things are okay.

- Get into the habit of ringing your sponsor when things are bag or in crisis.

- Get into the habit of ringing others, not just your sponsor, who have worked all twelve steps and are happy.

If you are known you can be helped. It’s that simple.

I said before that nobody can stop you from taking the actions of the steps. No-one can stop you from an awakening of the spirit. No-one can stop you from getting inspired. But you can stop yourself, easily: you only to avoid the actions of the twelve steps. You can avoid the actions of the steps this by feeling an emotional process, thinking about theories, or keeping up appearances of pride and prestige. Or you can take the damn actions and get free.

What is the action of the first step?

The actions of step one are two-fold. The first action of step one is: stop the addictive pattern. Stop drinking, drugging, sexing, gossiping, gambling. Whatever your addiction is, stop.

The second action of step one is the awakening action. The second act of step one is to walk in pain. Share it, talk about it, feel it. Live in it. Move through it. Let go into it.

Pain is not suffering. It will not kill you. And the pain of step one is the first sign of awakening. It is a sign you are alive. It is the body and emotion beginning to wake up. It must be experienced out in step one. Experiencing the inevitable pain of existence is the exact action of step one.

Step one can be so hard for many people to take a second time after they have relapsed. It is easy to suffer pain when you are told that you will experience inspiration and joy and wholeness and connection at the end of the process. But if you have taken the action of step one, suffering pain for weeks or sometimes even years, and not had a spiritual awakening, it is more difficult to believe you can get freedom the second time you take step one.

The opposite experience is also true: it will be discovered that by embracing a new experience of step one, you can find incredible growth, joy and freedom in all areas of life. For example, if I have worked the steps on drug addiction and got free of that, I can decide to work the steps on food and fitness. I can accept the pain of healthy food, the craving for junk food, and the pain of exercise and new habits, and by embracing that pain I can have a new experience of step one. Any time I want rapid and dynamic growth and change in my life, I must become aware of and willing to experience the pain of a new step one experience.

To summarize then:

- The actions of step one are two-fold: to stop using, and to start facing the pain of living clean.

- The actions of step one becomes easier to complete when we learn about the goal - the inspiration, joy, and awakening of step twelve.

- The actions of step one become easier when we accept the obstacles to the goal. The obstacles are:

1, the unwillingness to take step three,

2. the close-mindedness to take step four, and

3. the dishonesty and lack of courage to take step nine.

- The actions of the 12 steps are unlikely to be taken unless you have someone to support and encourage you.

- By accepting responsibility for the goal and by acknowledging these obstacles, you are empowered to fully surrender to the program of recovery.

Unmanageability is a tool. Through the work there are various points to which we return. Our condition of unmanageability is one of those points.

It doesn’t matter what you call unmanageability. Buddha called it dukkha. If you say it out loud - “CA CA” - you will hear what he’s talking about crap. Jesus called it “missing the mark”. We translate the word as “sin” but it means more ignorance than anything else. Krishna and Socrates both simply call it ignorance. It doesn’t matter what you call it; what matters is how you respond creatively to it in your living actions.

Things don’t happen TO you; they happen FOR you.

The payoff of being a victim is you get to feel resentment; the payoff of being grateful is you get to grow.

And we grow through unmanageability, by unmanageability, in unmanageability.

That is a promise.

Sponsorship, sponsoring, being a sponsee or sponsoree - these are value-laden terms. The definition of the words alone is debatable. The nature of the relationship is also much discussed.

The aim of these talks is to seek the heart in words - the meaning. The method we will now use to seek the heart of recovery will come in great use now, later on, and always.

This method was used by the first addicts who recovered. It had no name. It was so simple and effective it didn’t seem to need one. But it works so well that it ought to have a name, so let’s call it The Trusty Dictionary Method.

Here’s how it works. Purchase a Trusty Dictionary. I recommend Websters, the Oxford English Dictionary - secondhand ones are great. Open it up on your desk.  Keep it open all the time to one side of the desk; this book will bring you great peace and freedom. It deserves to remain open.

First look up “sponsor”. Look at where the word comes from and what it originally means. Look for the root of the word at the end of the entry.

Your Trusty Dictionary will tell you, as it tells me, that “sponsor” comes from the the Latin for promise. What other words come from the same ? Look up “respond”. Look up “responsibility”. Look up “respondent”.  Read the meanings given for each. Compare: How are they the same words? How are they different.

This is the power of the Trusty Dictionary Method. You no longer have to rely on unproven authorities (like myself) to find meaning. You can find it yourself, by looking for yourself. And the bonus is, you get the self-esteem of doing it yourself!

If you have done the exercise, you have “responded” to my suggestion. I have not “told” you to do anything. I have suggested what was suggested to me, and you have tried it and found out if it works or not for yourself.

This is the subtle key, in my opinion, for sponsorship. We suggest. We try new things. We find what works.

It is not me telling you what you need to do to recover. It is me suggesting what worked for me and others in our recoveries. See the difference?

One final note on sponsorship. There are many suggestions made. Some work, and some do not. But the idea is to give them a red hot go. Treat them like scientific experiments if you are skeptical.

What have you got to lose? 

Instructions:

The spirit is born out of acceptance.

Compassion comes from letting go of pain.

First, then, locate the source of the pain.

Live in that world for a long time.

Step One: we admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.

Were we ready to admit that we could not, under any means, change a thing about our condition? The answer to this question lies in how much pain you are willing to face and accept.

What is the difference between a bad night and a rock bottom experience? The difference is desire for change.

Desire indicates potential. Why do people change? People change when they are willing to pay the price of change. What is the price of change? The price of change is desire.

Want to change forever? Easy: become willing to desire that change deeper, longer, and more than you desired the original condition. For example:

You have sickness. You become willing to change that condition. You face realities ruthlessly and ask for help relentless. You learn and take charge of what you can. You do you very best. But what is happening underneath all that is that you want to be healthy more than you want anything else, and you’re willing to do anything to win it. That kind of desire eventually succeeds. That kind of desire is called surrender in spiritual circles, but it really means a desire, a hunger, a thirst of the spirit for awakening. In surrender is the seed of awakening, it’s said, because only full awakening to aliveness will satisfy the desire of the surrendered person.

Let’s return to our instructions:

The spirit is born out of acceptance.

Compassion comes from letting go of pain.

First, then, locate the source of the pain.

Live in that world for a long time.

The first two lines are for contemplating, for the mind to chew over for a while. The second two lines are two actions. Find the source of your pain and live there. Why? Because that’s where the spirit’s born. The precise nature of these actions are, 1 feel that pain without anything in the way, and 2 act in service to others by finding someone else to share it with.