Can You Work a 3rd Step Without Praying the 3rd Step Prayer?

Given that it's March, I've been hearing lots of sharing on the 3rd Step and it's brought back a lot of memories of when I was relatively new in AA and starting hearing talk about the 3rd step. What bothered me about the talk was that while I had finally found a safe place in which to accept my alcoholism and begin learning a new way of life, all the talk about God as others saw God troubled me a lot.

In fact, the more I heard people, including my first sponsor talk about the 3rd step as though that step necessarily involved the act of me getting down on my knees with my sponsor and saying with him the "3rd step prayer" the more I started to think that this wasn't such a safe place as I had thought and hoped. In fact, I began to wonder whether or not I was going to be able to stay in this organization due to the fact that I couldn't "pretend" to believe in a God as others were portraying God. That is, a God who expected or wanted me to kneel, a God who had a "will" for me to do this or that and not to do that or this, a God who expected or wanted "offerings" or anything else from me, a God who wanted me to do something like this prayer even though it violated every fiber of my being, a God whose role in life involved in "taking away" somethings (i.e., difficulties) and not other things, a God who was defined by having "Power" over all things and who got involved in all the details of life.

When I read the Big Book, I simply didn't see a commandment that I had to kneel (it's not mentioned) or even that I had to pray a prayer at all (sure, it's suggested....but, as far as I can tell, that's not a commandment). Although, to be honest, even if the book had written this as a commandment, I wouldn't have done it. I couldn't have done it without being dishonest and to me the clear message of recovery that I found in the book and in AA was that honesty with one's self had a huge amount to do with one's ability to stay sober and to find a fulfilling and meaningful way of life without chemical enhancement or support.

For me, my 3rd step didn't involve prayer or even God as I do understand God (more more accurately, God as I misunderstand God!). It had to do with the higher power that I'd discovered in my 2nd step and that higher power wasn't really God. It was the "Truth" of who I was, an alcoholic. I came to believe that a power greater than myself, that is Truth (the truth of who I am: alcoholic). And that the path leading to greater and greater awareness of who I am was leading me to nothing less than a more "sane" and more human life.

The 3rd step just carried that understanding a little farther, coincidentally, one step further...to the understanding that I didn't need to "be God" any more and that I could let go of that horrible burden. I could let go. I could just be me. Ahhhh.

As a great AAer in Sacramento says, "We're already alright!" I think that sentiment is the principle I learned in my 3rd step. Once that sunk in, I was finally ready to begin looking deeper into who I was without fear and begin seeing myself more compassionately and with more understanding and less condemnation, build, shame and hatred.

Take care!

Mike L.