“Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps” — these are the opening words of Step 12 of the 12 Steps. The creators of the Steps believed that working the previous eleven Steps would lead people to experience a spiritual awakening, encouraging them to share what they had learned with others. So, bottom line: what is a spiritual awakening, and why does it lie at the heart of working the Steps? I have been reflecting on this phrase for over thirty years in a 12 Step group, and I would like to share what has come to me.

There are two important words here: spiritual and awakening. I will seek to describe what each has come to mean to me. Hopefully, my reflections will help you consider what they mean to you and how they have impacted your recovery and your work with the Steps. Let’s take them in order — spiritual first, then awakening.

Spiritual has different meanings for different people. For some, spirituality is connected to a particular religion or faith community. Over the years, in keeping with the Steps’ reference to a God of our understanding, I have come to see spirituality as each person’s search for meaning and purpose in life. Viktor Frankl explored this idea powerfully in his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning, written from his experiences as a survivor of Auschwitz. He concluded that the people who survived were those who had something they wanted to do after their release — Frankl himself wanted to write a book.

Searching for meaning and purpose strikes me as being at the very heart of a person’s spirituality.

Searching for meaning and purpose strikes me as being at the very heart of a person’s spirituality. What gives a person meaning and purpose can also change as life changes. My own view of spirituality shifted after I joined a 12 Step group over thirty years ago and began working the Steps. One change was recognizing that I needed to share with others the areas where I felt powerless, as well as those aspects of my life that seemed unmanageable. Keeping these things to myself only deepened my shame. There was also the realization that I needed a community of like-minded people who would support me, and who were open to my supporting them.

Those realizations helped me understand how working the Steps could lead to an awakening. Of course, an awakening is most commonly associated with waking from sleep. As I reflected on that image, it struck me that being mired in our addictions — whatever they may be — is very much like being asleep. Addiction means reacting to triggers without thinking: having a drink because one is available, continuing to eat long past fullness, viewing pornography, or engaging in any number of compulsive behaviors that pull us away from how we truly want to live.

Once again, we need supportive people, a recovery group and/or a sponsor, to help us stay focused on what we want to do, as well as what we don’t want to do. Being accountable to another person is one of the most powerful ways to stay awake and remain awake. Another helpful image is the difference between sleepwalking through life and walking through it wide awake and fully present.

My hope for you, then, is that amid all the invitations to sleepwalk through life by living addictively, you choose to stay awake and continually refocus on what gives meaning and purpose to your life. Recovery is not a destination but an ongoing practice, and staying awake and alert is at the very heart of it.

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Mark T. Scannell, an avid 12 Stepper, has been working the 12 Steps for over 30 years and has come to see them as foundational for a healthy and sane life. He has authored a book on the 12 Steps: Affirm and Nurture: A New Look at the 12 Steps.