I haven’t felt the urge to post here in almost a month. I have been writing, nevertheless, focused on working the Secular Twelve Steps with my sponsor. I’ve also been regularly attending peer-support meetings, getting out of my cocoon and rejoining the human race. The purpose of this post is to talk about how I work the Twelve Steps as an agnostic, and how my secular approach is simple, effective, and accessible to any who may want to explore them along with me.

It’s not uncommon for agnostics and atheists to get turned-off by the ‘God Steps’ in traditional Twelve Step programs. That’s most of the Steps, actually. Members often say “it’s a spiritual program, not religious”, but to a nonbeliever, that distinction is moot. If you’re using the word God, you’re referring to a Western monotheism.

The Secular Twelve Steps work just fine without any need for a God. You don’t have to accept anyone else’s beliefs about spirituality or whether or not there is a God, nor do you need to deny your own.

To be fair, the traditional Twelve Steps does refer to a Higher Power. Note the wording: it doesn’t say highest Power. A nonbeliever can choose to side-step the matter of the greatest power in the universe and use the recovery group or the program as a higher power. After all, isn’t addiction a power greater than oneself? It sure is for me.

The key to a secular approach is to figure out the goal of each Step, and take actions to meet its intention.

Let’s do this as an exercise, looking at the Twelve Steps of AA:

Step One: We admitted we were powerless, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

No argument here. I am powerless over my addiction, and active using was destroying my life.

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I use the program of recovery, and the collective wisdom of sober fellows as a power greater than myself.

Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.

This one is where most nonbelievers either get stuck or turn away. So, what is the goal of this Step? I think it asks me to get out of my own way! In order to recover from a hopeless state of mind and body, I need to not just recognize that my way doesn’t work–I need to stop doing it my way. To meet the intention of this Step, I commit myself without reservation to the recovery program. I commit myself to working the remaining nine Steps with a sponsor.

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

We already know the difference between right and wrong. That’s how we got into recovery in the first place. Those who don’t know the difference never even try. Working this Step simply helps us to see where we went wrong, and what we did right.

Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being that exact nature of our wrongs.

The goal of this Step is to come out of hiding in our shame and self-deceit. We find someone we trust, often our sponsor, and get that inside shit, out. We learn that we’re not alone. And we have a roadmap of how we need to change. We can do this Step without God; we just need to be honest with ourselves.

Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

The goal of these Steps is to begin to change for the better. We meet this intention by adopting new actions, such as: catching ourselves when we’re being dishonest and self-serving; restraining ourselves from doing, saying, or writing (or texting, especially texting!) something out of fear and self-interest; and, most of all, we simply make every effort to treat others with the kindness and compassion with which we would want to be treated. We can do all this ourselves, and don’t require a supernatural being to do it for us.

Step Eight: Made a list of all people we have harmed and became willing to make amends with them all.
Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

These are non-God Steps, the goal of which is to make restitution. Their intention is to help us to ‘clean-up our side of the street’. We own-up to how we went wrong with others and ask for forgiveness. The results are always amazing, not the least of which is that we forgive ourselves.

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

Another non-God Step, a daily practice of Steps Four through Nine.

Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Yeah, this one is pretty God-heavy. The goal is this Step, in my experience, is to seek that inner wisdom we ignored for so many years when we were in active addiction. With Steps Four through Nine, and daily with Step Ten, we’ve adopted a new way of living and are already experiencing the fruits of our labour. Step Eleven asks us to maintain this course by using the concrete practice of checking-in and doing so on a regular basis. Such a practice can include journaling, meditation, prayer, or whatever works for you.

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Let’s start with the term ‘spiritual awakening’. Nonbelievers like myself often substitute ‘transformation’, since we know that, through working a Twelve Step program, we have become different people than who we were before. We also know that we couldn’t have done this without the help of others. So, we happily share this program with those who want it. And we try to continue to grow as better versions of ourselves, as a lifetime practice.

I know that many balk, some even scoff, at the Twelve Steps in their traditional form, but as you can see it doesn’t take any mental gymnastics to work the Steps from a secular perspective. It simply requires the same commitment and dedication to the work from nonbelievers as demanded of believers.