Marcus aka Gregory Maidman
2 min readJul 3, 2023

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It's not steps for spiritual wisdom it's that spiritual wisdom formed the steps and the steps lead to spiritual/ personal growth and potentially to spiritual awakening. You've probably heard of shadow work, popularized by Jung, who coincidentally wrote an essay found in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Similar to shadow work, Step 4 of every 12-step program is to conduct a fearless and searching moral inventory and thereby discover our own roles in our resentment-creating conflicts. Many just look to identify their defects but I believe it's just as important to identify one's positive traits as well. Step 5 is to discuss the results with another, which can help flesh out the matters and see if more self-examination is warranted. Steps 8 and 9 are to make a list of people we have harmed and whenever possible, make amends. Step 10 is to continue to take personal inventory and when wrong, promptly admit it. I discuss these and step 12 as well in the second half of my essay, Spirituality Redefined. If you or anyone else want a more complete answer and an understanding of the processes of working these steps, perhaps you'll read it. https://medium.com/illumination/spirituality-redefined-ff45cb53eaf2

PS: There is a concept of spiritual intelligence. An author and philosopher, Danah Zohar, lists 12 principles of spiritual intelligence. I learned of these two years ago reading a Medium essay by jules-Miz Mindful, https://medium.com/illumination/when-mindfulness-becomes-a-spiritual-homecoming-fc238eab570

Self-awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value and what deeply motivates me. [steps 4 and 10 are much about self-awareness]

· Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment.

· Being vision- and value-led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs and living accordingly. [I don’t discuss the steps that mention God as thus many turn away, but the end of the description of Step 2 in the 12 and 12 says “living in right relation to God can restore us to sanity — to me, that simply means living a moral and ethical life]

· Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging.

· Compassion: Having the quality of “feeling-with” and deep empathy.

· Celebration of diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them.

· Field independence: Standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions.

· Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world.

· Tendency to ask fundamental “Why?” questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them.

· Ability to reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture or wider context. [there are aspects of step 4 here]

· Positive use of adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering. [all the steps I mentioned involve this]

· Sense of vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back [Step 12 includes this]

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Marcus aka Gregory Maidman
Marcus aka Gregory Maidman

Written by Marcus aka Gregory Maidman

Living 17,043rd human life. I am Marcus (universal name) or you may call me Greg; a deep thinker; an explorer of ideas and the mind.

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