THE PROMISES
What the Book says will happen
Most people in AA know "the Promises" — a new freedom and a new happiness. Fewer know where they sit: halfway through making amends, in Step Nine. And right after them, in Step Ten, comes a second set almost nobody quotes.
They are not a reward for being good. They describe what many of us found happening once we did the work — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
The Ninth Step Promises
They come in the middle of Step Nine, while we are making amends.
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They will be fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
THE NINTH STEP PROMISES · BIG BOOK, PP. 83–84
Work Step Nine: making amends →The Tenth Step Promises
They follow straight on, in Step Ten — about alcohol itself, once we keep up the daily inventory.
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality — safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
THE TENTH STEP PROMISES · BIG BOOK, PP. 84–85
Work Step Ten: the daily inventory →