STEP SIX
Were entirely ready to have God
remove all these defects of character.
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Essay Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous Step 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. There are a couple of reasons I rely on the literature so much. I do not want to convince you of anything. My experience has been that if you read the literature you will reach the same conclusions that I have reached. I want to endorse your conclusions rather than convince you of mine. This is the 12 step program, not the Lanaya Baker program! I also find it difficult to take direction and counsel from anyone, still! And I find the literature to be very non-threatening. It rings true to me and resonates through my soul. It fits. And if you are like me it is easier to take this from the pioneers than anyone else! With that said, if you have not been able to keep up with the reading, please do so at your next opportunity. In the AA 12 and 12 on p. 63 "Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can--and will, under certain conditions--remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member." My sponsor had reminded me that this was a spiritual program, not a diet and calories club or a therapy program, but rather a design for living that was spiritual in nature. If I look at step six in that light it becomes easier to understand. It is not asking me to remove my own character defects. It is asking me to be ready to have God remove them. AA 12 and 12, p.63 "But when I became willing to clean house and then asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted right out of me." From Language of the Heart p. 239 Bill W., June 1958, "Sometimes I've failed to share my defects with the right people; at other times, I've confessed their defects, rather than my own; and at still other times, my confession of defects has been more in the nature of loud complaints about my circumstances and my problems. Nevertheless, I think I've usually been able to make a fairly thorough and searching job of finding and admitting my personal defects. . .Long ago I was lucky enough to see that I'd have to keep up my self-analysis or else blow my top completely." AA 12 and 12, p.64 "So in a very complete and literal way, all A.A.'s have "become entirely ready" to have God remove the mania for alcohol from their lives. And God has proceeded to do exactly that." So what about those of us who are not free of our self destructive behaviors? They haven’t been lifted out of us the way they say the drive to drink was lifted from them? My sponsor told me that I might have been trying to work the wrong program. She said that some will attempt to work a program that is too general. We had tried to control the self destructive extremes of our behavior by controlling the normal, necessary, non-destructive parts as well. Anything that didn’t fit our ideal of how we should behave, we called sick and self destructive, whether it actually was or not. She was so right and hit the nail on the head with me! She went on and said there were those who seemed to work a program that might have been better named Drinkers Anonymous. They tried to control everything they drank in order to control the drinking of excessive amounts of alcohol. Still other had tried to work a program better called Food Anonymous or Eaters Anonymous. They made the attempt to equate food with alcohol. And there were others, she said, who tried to equate the normal range of emotions that are felt or the normal chances that are taken in the course of living a normal life, with the suicidal urge to drink large amounts of alcohol. She said these things do not equate. That was my experience as well. AA 12 and 12 p. 64 "When men and women pour so much alcohol into themselves that they destroy their lives, they commit a most unnatural act. Defying their instinctive desire for self-preservation, they seem bent upon self-destruction. They work against their own deepest instinct. As they are humbled by the terrific beating administered by alcohol, the grace of God can enter them and expel their obsession. Here their powerful instinct to live can cooperate fully with their Creator's desire to give them new life. For nature and God alike abhor suicide. But most of our other difficulties don't fall under such a category at all. Every normal person wants, for example, to eat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fellows. And he wishes to be reasonably safe and secure as he tries to attain these things. Indeed, God made him that way. He did not design man to destroy himself by alcohol, but He did give man instincts to help him to stay alive." Drinking is a normal natural instinctive drive. Eating is a normal, natural, instinctive drive. Feelings are natural and instinctive. It is natural to take chances as a part of living a normal life. AA 12 and 12 p.65 "It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives. So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives." My sponsor told me that our program works on the self-destructive extremes. She said when we pour so much of anything into ourselves we are, in effect, committing suicide. When we carry any natural instinctive behavior to a destructive extreme, we are, in effect, committing suicide. This rang so true with me! She said that the program does not remove our natural instinctive drives to drink, eat, feel, or take normal chances. But that it does work on the suicidal, self destructive urge to take these natural drives to insane extremes. This is a very important distinction; the distinction between reacting sanely and normally, and reacting insanely and abnormally! I had been spending my time trying to squelch all of my feelings in an attempt to control self destructive fear and a driven need for security! She was telling me that I no longer had to do that! The failure to make the distinction here causes some people to claim that for those in programs other than AA, where they can put the cork in the bottle and walk away, they have a harder program because they have to deal with their compulsion everyday. She said that in her experience that was a rationalization. It was a harder program only if it is a harder program for God! Wow, I said! She said an alcoholic does not stop drinking. If they did, they would be as dead as anyone who stopped eating. An alcoholic does not say "I can’t drink water because I used to drink scotch and water and a drink of water is going to set me up for a binge." An alcoholic does not say, "I can’t have a coke because I used to drink rum and coke." Having a non-alcoholic drink does not set an alcoholic up for a spree. Having a normal meal, feeling a normal range of emotions, or taking an every day risk, doesn’t set someone up to self destruct! Trying to equate a natural drive, which is needed to survive, with alcohol when it is used to self destruct doesn’t work. This rang very true in my head. However, equating alcoholism, with overeating or any other self destructive behavior does work. If it is self destructive it is self destructive. An alcoholic, who tried to stop the drinking of alcohol by limiting himself to three glasses of water a day, would have a slip every time he had a 4th glass, a cup of coffee, a soda and he would be fighting a natural desire to drink. A coe who attempts to control over eating by limiting everything he eats is setting themselves up for failure because they are trying to fight a natural instinctive drive to eat. Anyone who tries to use the program to eliminate a natural instinctive drive, a normal part of living, is setting themselves up to fail. When I tell God what I want Him to do, how to do it, and when to do it, I am not turning it over to HP! However, when I trust I can rely on HP and leave the outcomes in His hands, I find the same release the people who wrote the BB experienced! I do not try to control normal behaviors in an attempt to control extremes, those suicidal urges! The program works on all the extremes of all the defects of character we have: the depression, the resentment, the anger, the self centeredness, the fear...etc. If I had everything that I perceived to be a self destructive character defect removed in its entirety I would no longer be human!!! I might sometimes feel depressed and get angry. Being human that is going to happen. I might even get resentful sometimes, but these are no longer going to be carried to the self destructive extreme they once were. Being restored to sanity does not mean that I no longer have emotions, which I did believe was the goal at one point! The difference today is that I can feel without the urge to binge and self destruct! AA 12 and 12 p. 65 "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 satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins. If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation. That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves. He asks only that we try as best we know how to make progress in the building of character." AA 12 and 12 p. 65 ""So Step Six--"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character"--is A.A.'s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime job. This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was. A few of them may be, but with most of them we shall have to be content with patient improvement. The key words "entirely ready" underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn. How many of us have this degree of readiness? In an absolute sense practically nobody has it. The best we can do, with all the honesty that we can summon, is to try to have it. Even then the best of us will discover to our dismay that there is always a sticking point, a point at which we say, "No, I can't give this up yet." And we shall often tread on even more dangerous ground when we cry, "This I will never give up!"" AA 12 and 12 p. 68 "Many will at once ask, "How can we accept the entire implication of Step Six? Why--that is perfection!" This sounds like a hard question, but practically speaking, it isn't. Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection. The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals. They are goals toward which we look, and the measuring sticks by which we estimate our progress. Seen in this light, Step Six is still difficult, but not at all impossible. The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying. If we would gain any real advantage in the use of this Step on problems other than alcohol, we shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness. We shall need to raise our eyes toward perfection, and be ready to walk in that direction. It will seldom matter how haltingly we walk. The only question will be "Are we ready?" AA 12 and12 p.69 "Perhaps we shall be obliged in some cases still to say, "This I cannot give up yet...," but we should not say to ourselves, "This I will never give up!" Let's dispose of what appears to be a hazardous open end we have left. It is suggested that we ought to become entirely willing to aim toward perfection. We note that some delay, however, might be pardoned. That word, in the mind of a rationalizing alcoholic, could certainly be given a long term meaning. He could say, "How very easy! Sure, I'll head toward perfection, but I'm certainly not going to hurry any. Maybe I can postpone dealing with some of my problems indefinitely." Of course, this won't do. Such a bluffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization. At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can. The moment we say, "No, never!" our minds close against the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us." BB p.76 "We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them alleveryone? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing." QUESTIONS If it is up to HP to remove them does this mean we shouldn’t try to change our behavior until our HP changes us? Have you ever tried to control your defects, borne of natural instincts gone astray to the extreme, by controlling the natural instinct in its entirety? Which ones and how? Even after willingness for the most obvious defects to be removed there will be others that are less obvious and still other even milder forms that we like to hold on to. Where are you on this continuum with some of your character defects? Please share your experience on this vital subject. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all - every one? |
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