By taking responsibility for my actions and being willing to clean up my past, I can experience the release from guilt. I also release those associations I have held in judgment and blame. 

You've made numerous mistakes, you've hurt a lot of people, and you've been selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and afraid.

Now you have to make amends to those you have hurt. Now you have to take responsibility. Now you have to face your past, face your fears, your guilt and humility. You are terrified of the response you may receive. All the negative scenarios come to mind. You may be scolded, lectured, perhaps physically attacked. There may be legal issues involved. Your amend will be denied, you will be embarrassed and humiliated.

You go back and forth in your mind, the fear paralyzes you, or you rationalize and justify why you really don't need to make the amend. You procrastinate, avoid, or simply deny having to make the amend.

By taking responsibility for my actions and being willing to clean up my past, I can experience the release from guilt. I also release those associations I have held in judgment and blame. In this I discover that what I thought my brother did to me never happened. I experience forgiveness. I realize I made a mistake, and that my brother is not guilty and neither am I.

By stepping through fear, I find my release and freedom on the other side. I discover that the fear and guilt are nothing. I escape the imprisonment of my mind and experience joy. Since my brother is myself, I release him as well. When I am healed, I am not healed alone.

My experience of the Ninth Step has demonstrated that I can change my mind. By taking responsibility (and asking for help), I restore my power. The power of decision. I decide not to stay in fear, not to hold onto judgment, anger or guilt. I bring the dark unforgiving thoughts to the light and realize they are nothing and that they hold only the power that I give them. I do not have to stay in hell and bind my brother with me. I simply extend the light through forgiveness, through love, which is my reality.

Step Nine showed me that when I drop my defenses, I am not weak and vulnerable to attack, but open to let the miracle occur. It does not matter if the amend appears to be accepted or not, it is the willingness to make the amend that counts.

Do not let fear keep you from the experience. The Ninth Step is where the promises of the 12 Step Program come to be realized, but you must do the work. It requires action. It requires an action of mind to do what ever it takes.

If it is physically impossible to make a direct amend, write a letter, make a phone call, just do what you need to do and don't forget to ask for help. You will be amazed how circumstances will occur that will enable you to make contact with those people you need to make an amend to, if you are truly willing.

As it states in the promises, “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.” It is indeed a phase of development of a new way of thinking and an ever-expanding experience of God and our sinlessness. I am so grateful to have been given these incredible tools to use in my program of recovery.

Again, it doesn't matter if the amend is accepted, but in nine times out of ten, the reaction will be positive. Years of war will vanish in a moment. An enemy will become a friend. “The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.”