HR Ep 10 - Humility & Steps 5-7

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Show Notes

When I started this podcast one of the things I wanted to do was to chronicle my journey so that others just starting out could benefit from my experience, which admittedly started at Zero

When Anybody asks me How I am doing this I answer them all the say way.

Go to meetings
Get a sponsor
Work the steps

And for me, that is the order.

I started going to meetings right out of treatment
It took me a few meetings before I found my sponsor
Not long after that we started working the steps.

Over the past few weeks, we have been meeting, working the steps, and I am now starting Step 8

Step 4 – Podcast
Today 5-7
Only 1 mentions alcohol

On Sunday I attended a new Big Book meeting, my first, and the reading was The Man who mastered Fear.

I then went to Church and the topic was Build a great defense to offence

Cannot be offended it you see it coming.
Being offended is like a trap. Don’t get stuck in it. Step over it.
Week begore Judging others – Don’t make assumptions.
Don’t be offended – Never take things personally.

What is the common denominator? Humility

Best time to plant an oak tree… 15 years ago. Second best? Today.

All of this ties to Steps 5-7

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of Character
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings

Today I am going to pick up at Steps 5-7
I’m going to start with a quick recap of the steps.
- I know most people listening are either very familiar with them, or can easily look them up online, so as I go through them I’m going to add the Spiritual Principle of each, which people may be less familiar with
- 12 Steps for Concrete Thinkers
- The Secular 12 Steps
- Agnostic AA 12 Steps
Only the 1^st step mentions alcohol or addiction
- More evidence of this being an Exclusive Club which everyone could benefit from.

Each of the 12 steps contains a Spiritual Principle

Honesty
Hope
Faith
Courage
Integrity
Willingness
Humility
Compassion
Justice
Perseverance
Spiritual Awareness
Service

Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Key phrase – To another human being
All Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires… They will deflate our egos
Few Steps can be harder to take than Five, but scarcely any Step is more necessary to long-term sobriety and peach of mind than this one.
AA has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems and the character defects which cause or aggravate them.
- We have to talk to somebody about them.
So intense is our fear and reluctance to do this, that many people at first try to bypass Step Five.
- We search for an easier softer way
  - Which usually consists of the general and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were sometimes bad actors. Then we add dramatic descriptions of that part of our behavior, which our friends probably know about anyhow.
    - But of the things that really bother and burn us we say nothing
  - Few things have caused us more trouble than holding back on Step 5
    - Some people are unable to stay sober
    - Others relapse periodically until they REALLY clean house
    - Oldtimers, sober for years, often pay dearly for skimping on this Step
      - Suffer Irritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression
      - They discovered that relief never came by confessing the sins of another. Everybody had to confess his own.
  - It seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our destructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.
  - What are we likely to receive from Step 5… we shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolation we’ve always had.
    - Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness
    - When we found AA, and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand (our Tribe) the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting
      - We thought the isolation problem had been solved
        Maybe in a social way, but we still suffered emotionally
  - Another great dividend of confiding in another human being – Humility
  - Our first practical move toward humility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. No defect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is.
  - It was most evident that a solitary self-appraisal, and the admission of our defects based on that along, wouldn’t be nearly enough
    - Why can’t God tell us where we are astray? Why don’t we make our admissions to Him directly? Why do we need to bring anyone else into this?
  - Answer is twofold.
    - Somehow, being alone with God doesn’t seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God.
    - What comes to us alone may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that we can get his direct feedback on our situation.
      - While the feedback of others may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be far more specific that any direct guidance we may receive while we are still so inexperienced in establishing contact with God.
  - Next problem is in whom we are able to confide. Someone:
    - Experienced
    - Sober
    - Been able to surmount other serious difficulties, perhaps like our own
    - Can be our sponsor, clergy, doctor, or compete stranger…
  - Many say that it was during this step that they first felt God, or if already someone of faith gave them a tighter bond than ever before.

Step 6 – We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of Character

The often-disputed question of whether God can, and will, under certain conditions, remove defects of character will be answered promptly and affirmatively by almost any AA Member. To him, this proposition will be no theory at all: it will just be about the largest fact in his life.
- In my mind I was a lost cause. My own will power just couldn’t work on alcohol. Change of scene, best efforts of family, friends, doctors got no place with alcohol. I simply couldn’t stop drinking.
- When I became willing to clean house and ask God for help my obsession with alcohol became manageable.
In a very literal way, all members of AA have become entirely ready to have God remove the obsession with alcohol from our lives and God has proceeded to do exactly that.
So why then shouldn’t we be able to achieve by the same means a perfect release from every other form of defect?
- When we pour so much alcohol into ourselves that we destroy our lives, we commit a most unnatural act. Defying our instinct for self-preservation. We instead seem hell bent on self-destruction.
- God did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, be he did give man instincts to help him to stay alive.
- Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires, it isn’t strange that we often let these far exceed their intended purpose
- When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfaction or pleasures than are due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, our sins.
  - If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions, but in no case does He render us white as snow.
  - He only asks that we try our best to make progress in the building of character
So, Step 6… is AA’s way of stating we only need to do our best in order to make a beginning on this lifetime journey. This does not mean that we can expect our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was.
No matter how far we have progressed, desires will always be found which oppose the grace of God.
- Pride, Greed, Anger, Lust, Gluttony Envy, Sloth
We must recognize we exult in some of our defects. We really love them
What separates the boys from them Men is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God
Many will ask “How can we accept the entire implications of Step six? That is perfection.
Only Step one, where we made 100% admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with perfection
The remaining 11 state perfect ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress
Step 6 is difficult, but not at all impossible. The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and we DO OUR BEST.
Key word “entirely ready” But we must become entirely ready to Do our best.

Step 7 – Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings – Humility

Since this step so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.
The attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of the Twelve Steps
- For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.
Humility, as a word and as a an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world
- Much of the everyday talk we hear and a great deal of what we read, highlights man’s pride in his own achievements
- Certainly, no alcoholic wants to deprecate material achievement
- Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object in life.
- We are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics
- When we seemed to be succeeding we drank to dream even greater dreams
- When we were frustrated we drank to oblivion
- Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted
Our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility
WE lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of life.
Whenever we had to chose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was true happiness.
WE placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God’s will, was missing.
Every alcoholic is told, and soon realizes for himself, that his humble admission of powerlessness over alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its paralyzing grip.
Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was always our solution.
Then in A.A. we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility.
- In every case pain had been the price of admission.
- Pain brought us a measure of humility, which we soon discovered was the healer of pain. We began to fear pain less and desire humility more.
A great turning point in our lives came when we sought humility as something we really wanted, rather than something we must have.
- “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings”
The Sevenths Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others, toward God.
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. IT is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

HR Ep 10 – Humility & Steps 5-7

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