Week 22: Steps 10 + 11

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admitted it.

Considerations:
Do I believe I need to continue to take my inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as I go along? 

Do I believe I have entered the world of the Spirit? The ability to go to that place within me and bring out God in all my activities?

Do I remember that deep down inside every man woman and child is the fundamental idea of God?

And I have now been given the practice and the power to bring that out into the world as God’s agent?

Do I believe that I should continue this practice for lifetime?

Do I believe I need to continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear? Do I know the four things to do if they crop up? 

Do I believe I have begun to sense the flow of his spirit in me? And to some extent I have become God-Conscious?  Has my intuition returned and have a come to rely upon it? 

Do I believe my new attitude towards eating has been given unto me as a gift without any thought or effort on my part? Do I believe it just is there and that is the miracle of it? Do I believe this is my experience and this is how I react to eating so long as I keep in fit spiritual condition?

Do I believe I must go further and that means more action?

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Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understood Him, praying only for God‘s will for me and the power to carry it out. 

Considerations:
Do I understand the definition of prayer in this instance is asking God and that meditation is allowing God to direct my thinking?

Can I see why I shouldn’t be shy on this matter of prayer? And am I using it constantly?

Can I see the importance of meditation in addition to prayer?

When I retire at night am I familiar with the many questions the book asks me that help me constructively rreview my day? P. 86 PP1

On awakening am I considering my plans for the day and asking God to direct my thinking?

What conditions must I be under in order for me to apply my mental faculties with assurance?

Do I understand that when the book tells me I don’t struggle, it means I don’t worry about an answer?  I trust it will come. P.86 P2 

Can I see that on page 87 the book tells me to rely on divine influence...Not sponsors, meetings or steps. I may not always be aware of what God’s will is but I’m usually aware of what his will isn’t and that is a great place to start. He likely wouldn’t have me spend my days in worry, resentment and fear ( this blocks me from being of service). He would likely have me be kind, honest and patient to others.

Can I see on page 87, PP3 how the three concepts of a relationship with God originally described in the third step decision, have now become a way of life?

Father-Child: Belief that I will trust that God will always provide what I need.

Director-Agent: Belief that God will direct my life. 

Principal-Agent: Belief that I will represent what God would have me be

A suggested practice for beginning 10 and 11 is shown on page 91 of your BBA workbook. It has a daily, evening, and morning suggestion.   

You can also find worksheets for Step 10 and 11 on www.bbaintheuk.com on the Materials page. 

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Melissa speaks on Step 10 and 11. In this recording you’ll find a 30 min Recap of the journey we’ve taken on 1-9 followed by a reading and discussion of steps 10 and 11. 

In step one we learned about the threefold parts of our problem: the physical allergy, the mental obsession in the spiritual malady. We came to realize we were powerless over the trifecta of this addiction.  

In step two we came to believe a power could exist that would do for us what we could not do for ourselves. We learned that prayer is practical because it is effective. It works.

In step three we made a decision to forever stop running the show, and to cease fighting anything or anyone, realizing our efforts to get other people to do, say, think, and choose what we want in life have never been effective (nor lead to a sense of ease and comfort in our own lives). 

In step four we took a fearless and moral inventory of how we try to exert our will and our own lives and other peoples lives, to no avail.  We see how her behaviors and characteristics of who we really are, deep inside. That we try to play God or make other people our God. 

Specifically in column four of resentment inventory we looked at how we try to manipulate others when they don’t do as we wish.  We began to see the root of all of our problems is fear (and delusion) and that it’s running our lives.  We then, upon closer examination, could see that fear drove a delusion which caused us to adopt certain attitudes, which caused us to take certain actions, which created harm to others or allowed us to place ourselves in a position to be harmed. Our problems were of our own making. This was the good news. For no one else had to change in order for ME to live a sane and happy life of usefulness and abstinence. It was me who needed to change, but how?

We begin to understand how our problems were not out there in the world, but inside of me. And the manifestation of this uncomfortability inside of me, bubbles up outside of me and creates wreckage in the world and onto God’s children around me. We began to to admit to our innermost solves that this was a futile way of living.

In the fifth step we admitted to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, the things we were powerless to stop or remove...the things that only God could remove, if he were sought.  

We saw plainly what was objectionable about the way we were living, that we could do no better on our own power, and admitted we were ready for God to make us whole again; we expressed our desire to be the man or woman God would have us be, to finally become unblocked by his all-reaching power. 

We asked God to recreate our lives. We told him we were ready for him to have all of me, good and bad.  We prayed for him to remove every single defect of character that stood in the way of our usefulness to him and my fellows.  We asked for his strength as we go out in the world to do his bidding, his will ( not mine) be done...and to clean up the wreckage and debris and set things right, where we can.  We made a list of people we had harmed in step eight, and in step nine we sought to make amends to them ALL. 

Having completed our amends, the book explains the effortless lifting that God does of our desire to pick up an act out with food. The book advises us if we are having anything less than a deep and spiritual experience at this point, we are having a middle of the road solution. The book encourages us to search diligently within ourselves to see if we have skipped any of these vital steps described so far in the book. Have we made ALL our amends in the way described in the book? Where have we tried to make mortar without sand?  How do we measure up to the way of living described in the circle and the triangle today? 

The first 100 men and women of the Big Book advise us that while taking Steps 1-9 has been a great journey, we must go further, still.  

Now at steps 10 and 11 we study the daily spiritual practice we will maintain for a lifetime.  To keep our lives free of the wreckage we worked so hard to clean up, to stay in the lightness of being that only a god-reliant way of living gives us, this practice, the attitudes and the thoughts described in steps 10 and 11 must go with us *constantly*.  For we are not cured of our addiction, we merely receive a daily reprieve - our desire to eat compulsively is simply suppressed - based on our fit spiritual condition each day. 

We are reminded that while the wreckage we found in our inventory was an external manifestation of an internal problem, that the opposite paradox can also be found; that deep down inside every man woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. And we can manifest Gods beautiful work through us externally as well. We are his agents, he is our director. Steps 10 and 11 guide us carefully and specifically how to practice this daily way of living and being. 

We food addicts are undisciplined so we let God discipline us in the way we have outlined here.