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

You better believe I choked on this one.

At the time that I first attempted step two, I was an atheist with a touch of armchair LaVeyanism. Step two made me furious! A power greater than me? Get the fuck out! I remember throwing the “12 by 12″ on the ground after reading the chapter on step two. 

I should pause here and acknowledge that many atheists do successfully work step two without having to believe in God. Some of them say “G.O.D.” just stands for “group of drunks” and use the 12 Step fellowship and program itself as a living, breathing higher power. That’s fine! 

But if you’re a theistic Luciferian of my type, step two is actually a little trickier than it might be even for an actual atheist. 

Imagine: here you are, at the bottom of the pit, where we left you at the end of step one. Your entire life is a shambles from your addiction. And now, insult to injury! You’re being asked to believe in a power greater than yourself. 

For a believer in apotheosis, that’s gonna be hard. 

If you’re like me, you don’t see Lucifer himself as a power to be placed above you. You are focused on developing your own Godhood. You are understandably wary of believing in, much less “submitting” to, anything “greater” than yourself. 

AA literature actually holds the key to this dilemma, believe it or not. In one of the books, the phrase “unsuspected inner resource” appears as a description of Higher Power.

Orthodox AA Big Book thumpers will insist that your higher power can’t be you. And in a way, they are right. The you who used drugs to the edge of oblivion can’t be trusted right now. The addict in you, which is currently still running your conscious mind, doesn’t have solutions at the moment. 

Remember that when you are first working Step Two, there’s a high likelihood that you’re still dopesick or otherwise in physical withdrawal from your addiction of choice. It’s taking everything you have not to relapse. The addict in you is still in control, and knows only one solution to everything– to use. 

Addict self or addict brain is an amazing thing in its own way. I’ve compared it to Gollum vs. Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings, or to those face-grabbing things in Half Life that latch onto your head and take control of your brain. Addict self has a million convincing arguments and rationalizations and seemingly Really Great Ideas that all end up at the same place– using. 

Addict self can be irrational too, though. Sometimes you just find yourself walking to the liquor store and, try as you might to stop and turn around, somehow you just can’t, and before you know it, that forty is in your hand, and then in your belly. It’s a little like stereotypical demon possession, to be honest. Especially when I was self-harming, it sometimes felt like the hands that were hurting me belonged to someone else and I couldn’t stop them, even though, of course, those hands were my own. 

Addict self is a motherfucker. It’s very powerful and strong. I knew one dude whose nickname for it was Mike Tyson. You’re not gonna win a fight with Mike Tyson all on your own. He’s gonna clobber you. 

But here’s the deal. You have another self. A higher self. Your inner God– that “unsuspected inner resource.” And it can and will restore you to sanity. I know because it worked for me and now I have almost five and a half years clean and sober!

Here’s the thing about your Inner God– you need to treat it just like any other God. You can’t assume that every thought that runs through your head, every idea you have, comes straight from your Higher Self. Most of those thoughts don’t come from Higher Self, they come from your thinky talky conscious brain, which right now is preoccupied with thoughts of addiction and is–oh, that’s right–basically insane at the moment. 

You definitely have a Godphone to your Higher Self, but as with any other God, you have to practice discernment. 

You can pray to your Higher Self. You can hear it through meditation. You can make offerings or an altar to It. But the most important way to connect with Higher Self in a 12 step context is to work ALL of the steps, which are, as I said in my first post, arguably a path of transformative magic. 

In return, your Higher Self can, and will, give you all the emotional resources and strength you need to keep you from using, deal with the shambles that is your life, and slowly but surely return you to sanity.

And what about Lucifer? Well, he’s there for you too. In early recovery, he might even be inclined to do a bit more hand-holding and babying of you than is usual for him. He will help you locate and communicate with your inner Divinity. That’s why he’s here for us, after all. Just like in Eden, he wants you to eat the metaphorical fruit of knowledge and become Godlike. 

So get this: right now, the fruit of knowledge is the rest of the 12 Steps. And not only will working them, ALL of them, free you of addiction– they will also help you along the path to Apotheosis. They will help close the gap between thinky-talky addict brain and Higher Self. 

People who have been in AA a long time talk about God speaking and acting through them. They mean different things when they say God, but are talking about pretty much the same things when they speak of channeling It in this way. They are talking about those moments when you unexpectedly somehow know the right thing to say to help another person, or those moments when a drink or a drug is literally put RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU (hello, Lucifer, are you testing us with temptation?) and you are somehow able to turn it down and walk away. 

It’s a bit like when addict self used to take control, only instead of finding ourselves automatically walking to the liquor store or dialing our dealers, we find ourselves automatically walking to an AA meeting or dialing our sponsors. 

That’s some shit that we as addicts don’t know how to do on our own– mainly, how to not use, and after that, how to cope with emotions. But Lucifer and your Higher Self have got you. They are actually much stronger than your addiction. 

You can lean on that strength, the strength within you, the strength of your own true self– and not be ashamed. While you’re learning how to do that, you can also lean on Lucifer, and you can lean on your 12 Step Sponsor (do you have a sponsor at this point? You’d better get one!) and you can lean on pretty much every single person you know from meetings! All of them are there to help you do what you can’t do on your own, and that’s stay clean and heal from addiction.

I’d say you’re ready for the third step now.