Child’s Pose
In AA they talk about a spiritual awakening at the end of the steps. The reward at the finish line. Something that arrives after sufficient work has been done.
That hasn’t been my experience.
For a long time my relationship with God was intellectual. Turning my will over was more like showing my ID. An academic handshake. I knew the language. I could locate myself on the map. What I couldn’t do was put the map down.
In November 2019 something shifted. I tried to pray on my knees but it hurt, so I shifted to child’s pose and I begged. Not performed begging. Actual begging. I know not. Show me. Please.
That was Step One. The admission that I couldn’t think my way there. That the handshake wasn’t working. That I was genuinely, finally, powerless over my own understanding.
But it was also Step Two. The begging assumed something was listening. You don’t beg into a void. The act of asking was already a form of trust I didn’t know I had.
And it was Step Three. I had turned. Not toward a concept. Toward something I couldn’t manage or verify or contain.
One through three didn’t happen in sequence. They happened in child’s pose, in about thirty seconds, in a single breath that went: I can’t. Something can. Okay.
The awakening wasn't a destination. It arrived before I knew I was looking.
Writing Table Manor turned out to work the same way. I didn’t plan it. I couldn’t have. It moved through the same territory the steps do. Honesty about what had broken me, the willingness to look at it without flinching, the searching inventory of memory and belief and illness and grace, the making of amends on the page, the showing up in silence to see what was there. Courage. Surrender. Repair. Presence. Love. Not in order. All at once. The way the steps actually work when you stop treating them like a checklist.
The steps, for me, are less a staircase and more of a field. You’re always in all of them simultaneously.
What came at the end of Table Manor wasn’t a conclusion. It was a question I finally let myself answer. Who was God to me?
You are the way, the truth, Light.
You are one, a father and son,
a two in drag as Mother.You are eternal, limitless,
of all energy,
all glory,
all suffering,
every singularity.Through you, there is no death.
I think. That’s what I think today. It may be mid-transformation or pre-discernment. Either way, my death, my life, my soul is yours. You are my love forever.
That understanding continues to unfold. Pete Holmes describes a lesson he learned from AC/DC’s road manager: God is the blanket we throw over the mystery to give it shape.
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Step Four is Step One applied to your history. You look at where you’ve been powerless and what it cost you. Step Five is Step Two extended into relationship. You trust another person to hold what you’ve found without flinching. Step Six is Step Three deepened. Not just a decision to turn but a readiness to actually let go. Step Seven is Step Three again, quieter, on your knees. Asking instead of deciding. Step Eight is Step Four turned outward. The inventory now has names. Step Nine is Step Five turned outward. The admission now has action. Step Ten is Step One with more practice. Step Eleven is Step Two with more trust. Step Twelve is Step Three expressed outward toward other people.
The steps don't end. They deepen. You don't complete them. You inhabit them.
I’m only now—after over twenty years—working them again. But I already know, the awakening isn’t at the finish line. It was in child’s pose.
