This episode will be the end, or last, episode of the six basic assumptions. As a reminder the sixth assumption is:
6. Those who have been “changed” must “change others”.
There are couple of words in this assumption that are a little surprising, and that would never be found in the 12-step program that we have today. The first word of course, is “changed”. Although we do not see this word in the modern 12-step program, it is indicated, especially in step number three, as well as step number 12. Step number three says that we make a decision, and the indication is that after making that decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, we become “changed”. You’ll notice that I enclose the word “changed” in quotation marks, the same way I treat the word “yes” as the answer to our Spirit as it asks us to turn our will and our lives over to God. Of course, the other place that we indicate are “change”, is the 12th step, where we stay, “Having had a spiritual experience…” This would certainly indicate some sort of change on our part. We now say spiritual “awakening”, which was mostly changed because those who oversee this 12-step program wanted to make sure that those working the program did not feel they needed to have an actual physical experience.
The other word is the word must. There really are no musts in the 12-step program. One of the reasons the program seems to work well, is a psychological aspect of not being told what to do. Most of us seem to arrive at the 12-step program with a problem with what is generally referred to as our “ego.” It may be underinflated or overinflated. Either way it is a problem. This thing we call ego is really the sum total of our personality and how it is learn to cope with life in a way that protects us, even though that protection may be harmful in the long run. So, we leave this entire program, and its instrumentation as a suggested way of coping with life in general, and our spi[i]ritual lives, in particular.
As a note, this will be the end of this year’s episodes about the 12-step program, as well as things surrounding it. Next week’s episode, episode number 52, will be a sort of Christmas message, (apologies to those of you who are not Christian). Hopefully, you will listen anyway because I try to make it a message for all human beings.
