When we've spent several years in Program, most of us get to the point where we think we know a few things. We know who or what God is. We know we're supposed to behave ourselves. We know we're supposed to work with other people. And we know -- or we hope -- that if we keep doing what we've been doing, we'll get rid of those character defects one fine day.

There is only one problem with all this stuff we think we know. And that is that it doesn't actually work for us. We don't mess with our addiction any more, that's true; but there's that on-going low-grade unhappiness, that feeling of being stuck. What can we do about it?

Steps 10, 11 and 12 have several things to teach us.

First, we have no real idea who or what God is. To discover that is precisely the purpose of Step 11. It follows that if we work Step 11 on the assumption that we know what God is, it's not likely to get us very far.

Second, we are incapable of solving our life's problems because those problems have been carefully created by us. They don't really exist -- we've invented them. The specific aim of the moment-by-moment practice of Step 10, therefore, is not to solve these "problems" that don't actually exist, but to ensure we don't create them to begin with.

Third, we can scarcely practice "these principles" in all our affairs unless we're working Steps 10 and 11 more or less constantly.

That's the stark choice that confronts us. Do our program our way, or do it the way Program says to do it. Hopefully, our lives are making us sufficiently unhappy that we've decided on the latter.