STEP SEVEN
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
|
Essay Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous I will be sharing my experience, understanding and what I have found works for me. Step 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. We talked about the definition of humility in step five, but I want to review it here. AA 12 and 12 p. 58 "humility--a word often misunderstood. To those who have made progress in A.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be." p.59, "Though now recognized, our defects were still there. Something had to be done about them. And we soon found that we could not wish or will them away by ourselves." p.70 AA 12 and 12 "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. Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency." p.72 AA 12 and 12 "Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living. This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced another bad result. For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible. This was true even when we believed that God existed. We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As long as 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." My sponsor shared with me that her working faith allowed her to know what God’s will for her was. What happens, the way something turned out, was His will for her. She said that when she did not accept God’s will for her and fought it, when she placed self reliance first and believed she knew better than God, it was impossible for her to be humble or to get humility. When she determined what she should do and how she should do it, when she insisted on discipline and self control, when she insisted that the responsibility, the recovery was up to her, where did God come in? She told me that she recognized that praying "God give me the power to do it my way" is not humility. For someone like me who had spent a lifetime cultivating control and relying on self, these words were hard to grasp. I could not fathom how to make sense of all the ill in the world and in my life. Did this mean I was to lie down and take whatever came my way without a fight? I grew up fighting. At this point we can see that pesky self reliance from the first three steps is coming up again...."As long as we placed self reliance first....." I heard a man tell his experience with this and he said that he had realized that he needed to stop telling God what to do and how to do it. He shared that he can’t keep relying on himself to know what is good for him, but rather that he remembers that when he came into the program and looked at himself in the mirror, and at 250 pounds, thought he could stand to lose 5 or 10 pounds! He also said that when he reached 150 pounds, he looked in the same mirror, and still thought that if he could only lose another 5 or 10 pounds, everything will be fine! He did not see himself as fat or as thin. He could not trust his own perceptions. I have heard it said again and again that we have an illness of perception. How true it is! I could not trust what I saw in the mirror. With such tangible evidence that he did not know what was good for himself, how could he presume to tell God what was good for him? He could not rely on himself and never could! We could never depend on ourselves. We could never rely on ourselves and we could never control ourselves before. There is no reason to think that we can do it now. Being in program does not magically change us into something we never were. Step 7 humbly asks HIM to remove our shortcomings. It is NOT a question of our removing our own shortcomings, or of asking Him to give us the power, the ability, to remove our own shortcomings, or even of asking Him to help us remove our shortcomings, but of actually allowing Him to do it for us, of actually allowing Him to do for us what we could never do for ourselves! I always thought the responsibility for dealing with my defects rested squarely on my shoulders. I thought I needed to be responsible for taking the actions to remove my shortcomings. But the step clearly says, "Humbly asked Him....HIM, not me. I asked God with humility to remove my defects of character. My sponsor gave me an analogy that put it all into perspective for me. She said that if I went into a restaurant and humbly asked the waiter to bring me a meal that would be prepared by the chef, and then jumped up, ran into the kitchen, prepared the meal myself, and brought it to the table, then I had not humbly asked anyone anything. Step seven allows us to see that the responsibility for removing our shortcomings rests on Gods shoulders instead of ours. It may not be easy to let go of the old idea that we are responsible for removing our character defects. This belief inevitably results in painful feelings of failure when we do not succeed. But we try to give up these old ideas. p.74 AA 12 and 12 "We are obliged to choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do so. These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival. But when we have taken a square look at some of these defects, have discussed them with another, and have become willing to have them removed, our thinking about humility commences to have a wider meaning. By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression, or anxiety--in other words, to all of us--this newfound peace is a priceless gift. Something new indeed has been added. Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity." Bargaining does not work in prayer. Telling God to do it my way does not work. I got frustrated. Trying to control the things I had proven time and again that I could not control, powered by my unreasonable expectations, threw me into unworkable situations and I could only fail! The Acceptance story in the 4th edition big book or in the earlier editions it is entitled Doctor Alcoholic Addict, talks all about acceptance and how it is the key to serenity. I like to start the quote for this story on 448 rather than 449 in the 3rd edition....a bit earlier where Dr Earle says, "Okay, God. It is true that I - of all people, strange as it may seem, and even though I didn’t give my permission - really, really am an alcoholic of sorts. And it’s all right with me. Now what am I going to do about it? When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away. From that moment on, I have not had a single compulsion to drink. And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." When he began living in the answer the problem went away. I have repeated this over and over and over in my recovery and it always works, every single time. When we begin to accept and live in acceptance the problem goes away. In the third edition BB on p. 449 "When I complain about me or about you, I am complaining about God’s handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God. For years, I was sure that the worst thing that could happen to a nice guy like me would be that I would turn out to be an alcoholic. Today, I find it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. This process I don’t know what’s good for me. And if I don’t know what’s good for me, then I don’t know what’s good or bad for you or for anyone." AA 12 and 12 p. 75 "We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now the words "Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works" began to carry bright promise and meaning. We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have." There is a distinct difference for me between turning to God only in emergencies and praying, "God, I really do not want to coe, please help me." AND "God, I trust your power and I would really rather not coe now. I trust that you are in charge and will not let me hurt myself. Thy will, not mine be done." My energy needs to go into accepting what God’s will is for me rather than fighting. I can see that my feelings are simply that, my feelings, my perception, not fact. This is a great story. There are two men on a mountain side. It starts to rain and jumps up and down and curses God because it is raining on his picnic. The other man starts jumping up and down and shouting hallelujah because it is raining on his crops. Same rain, same mountain, different perspectives, different needs, which did not make either man right or wrong. When I look at the results of trusting God there is absolutely no question in my mind that step seven works and that it is much saner to believe than not to believe. When my boys died I read this step over and over and over. It helped when nothing else would. "Still goaded by sheer necessity, we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character flaws that made problem drinkers of us in the first place, flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into alcoholism once again. We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but in some instances this will appear to be an impossible job from which we recoil. And we cling with a passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing to our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much. How can we possibly summon the resolution and the willingness to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions and desires? But again we are driven on by the inescapable conclusion which we draw from A.A. experience, that we surely must try with a will, or else fall by the wayside. At this stage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and coercion to do the right thing. We are obliged to choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do so. These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival. But when we have taken a square look at some of these defects, have discussed them with another, and have become willing to have them removed, our thinking about humility commences to have a wider meaning. By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression, or anxiety--in other words, to all of us--this newfound peace is a priceless gift. Something new indeed has been added. Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity. This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing. 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. Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us. Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets. We heard story after story of how humility had brought strength out of weakness. In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever." p.76 AA 12 and 12 "We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God." By expecting God to remove natural instinctive drives, by expecting ourselves to be perfect at doing something we’re powerless to do, by expecting people to be there for us when they have no obligation to be (our sponsors, the meetings, etc) we’re making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others and upon God. Asking him to remover an instinctual drive is an unreasonable demand. Asking God to give us a hand, a little help now and then to do our will, is an unreasonable demand. p. 76 AA 12 and 12 "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear--primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands. The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone." BB p. 76 "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." This is known as the 7th step prayer. Please notice two very important things in this prayer. The first is that it says, I am willing that you should now have all of me, good and bad. We do not have to be perfect! We ask him to accept us, both the good and the bad. The second thing to note is that it says, "I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character..." Please notice something that is very important. There is no exclamation point. There is no period. There is not even a comma. The request is qualified: "...which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows." If a character defect does not stand in the way of our usefulness to God and our fellows, we’re still going to have it. We’re not even asking to have it removed in its entirety. That would be an unreasonable demand of God. We need to trust that we’re going to have the self destructive extreme removed to the extent that He chooses. Asking for more is selfish. It is sometimes a natural instinct to be afraid. Someone would be insane to not be afraid of jumping out of an airplane without a parachute or running on to an expressway in rush hour. These fears are normal instincts for self preservation. It is also natural to get angry or resentful. These can be understandable reactions when somebody does something to hurt us. We can have a whole range of emotions that are natural and instinctive. It is when we get SO angry or SO resentful or SO afraid that we hurt ourselves or others, that we hinder our usefulness to God and our fellows. It is only the self destructive extremes of all our character defects that we find objectionable that we are asking God to remove in this step. We are human. In the BB on p 84 "Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them." This is part of the 10th step. It tells us that these defects will crop up. We’re always going to have them. But as the result of this program we finally can allow ourselves to feel, because we know our emotions are not going to be carried to a destructive extreme. As long as we work the entire program, as long as we continue on the path by implementing out 10th, 11th and 12th steps, we will never self destruct again. That is what the program promises. I never will drink or coe again as long as I keep in fit spiritual condition. If I had a table with some coffee cup rings on it I could sand it and refinish it to get those rings out. However, I could sand until my fingers were bloody and never get the grain out or get the knots out. That is only in God’s realm to do. For me to try is neither humble or sane given the circumstances. AA 12 and 12 p. 108 "Then in step seven, we humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings such as He could or would under the conditions of the day we asked." This step like all the others is asking for us to make a change in attitude going from saying, NO Never to, Yes or Maybe! AA 12 and 12 p. 76 "The Seventh 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 and 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. If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have." "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." Please read steps 8 in the AA and OA 12 and 12 and the BB p. 76 -84 to step 10. QUESTIONS:
|
 Step Six |
 Index |
 Step Eight |
WTS Home
The Twelve Steps
Recovery Home
© Copyright 2008 THE RECOVERY GROUP All rights reserved