The Thursday Principle: Service

The Spiritual Principle Service

The Spiritual Principle Service is behind A.A.’s Step Twelve: “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 Twelve is where we A.A.’s step away from ourselves and step up to help others. It’s where we share all that we’ve learned throughout the course of our 12 Stepping so that our fellow addicts and alcoholics can also experience the miracle of sobriety. In other words, we put our good works to service, so that our service works to the good.

Many say there is no higher calling than service. Those who have answered that call know it’s integral to long-term sobriety. Intensive introspection may have revealed our faults and foibles, but it is only through service that we achieve strength enough to surmount them.

Service is in many ways selfish. For we A.A.’s know that without it we’d never fully succeed in sobriety. But service is also unselfish, in just as many ways. For it permits the selfless concern for the well-being of others.

If “service” is the Spiritual Principle of Step Twelve, then “the joy of living” is its theme. As the 12 & 12 says, “action” is Step 12’s keyword. It’s where we “turn outward to our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress” and “experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards.” Seen fully, Step 12 is “really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it.”

We at Healing Properties and our affiliated Recovery Boot Camp not only believe in the Spiritual Principle Service, we practice it daily. And we at HP have practiced this Principle since 2002. Having had that spiritual awakening, we’ve come to realize that He helps those who help themselves, as well as others. And no matter how you perceive your Higher Power, there is indeed no higher calling than service.