Okay - people are bothering me to post something - and it isn't that I don't want to. In fact, I would like to start posting more. There is a lot on my mind. Namely because of speaking at meetings - besides my Wednesday meeting that I am speaking at right now over the next few weeks, and the dreaded open talk I have to give in March, I am speaking next Sat. on the 11th step - which is - "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry that out."
I take this way too seriously - speaking at meetings - I really put a lot of thought into what I say, really trying to carry the message. So, this Wednesday, I have decided to talk about steps 4 and 5 - the searching and fearless moral inventory. Mainly because the focus of the meeting is on change in sobriety with an emphasis on steps 6 and 7 (the steps related to your character defects) and how can you free yourself of your character defects without first identifying them? You can't. The way I see it, you pretty much have to do the steps in order at some point. At meeting after meeting I hear people talk about how they have been sober for years and years without doing an inventory and they express how much fear they have around doing it, so they simply avoid it. I completed my first inventory and 5th step by my second 30 day AA anniversary - for me, I could not have stayed sober for years, or even months for that matter, without getting this vital step done.
I understand the fear that people associate with an inventory though. It basically asks you to review your entire life and tell another person every last little deep dark secret that you have been keeping. I personally am all too aware of how dangerous an inventory can be. In ACOA I did two of them, the ACOA way and unsupervised (I had no sponsor to guide me). The result was that I damn near killed myself - but instead, I just drank a lot. Six months later I landed at an AA meeting, and now my entire life has changed. Anyway, the point is - an inventory done wrong can be extremely dangerous, but an inventory done the right way can be incredibly powerful and very freeing.
The problem with the ACOA inventory is that it simply asks you to list your character defects. How the hell am I supposed to know what those are? When I did the first inventory, I hated myself. I had no self-esteem and no self-respect, I had been treated terribly in relationships and I blamed myself for everything. And I, me, this person with no self-esteem, was supposed to sit there and list my own character defects? You can see why this wouldn't work. The AA inventory is done totally differently - you identify the patterns and from there the character defects and you get at the patterns by looking closely at your resentments, fears, harms to others etc. It's really clever actually and I didn't understand until I did it, why it would work. In any event - among other things, I realized that I am utterly incapable of accurate self assessment. Even on a good day, on a clear headed and really spiritual day, a really positive day, I am basically incapable of accurate self assessment.
Anyway, I feel like I was given this amazing gift when I was diagnosed with breast cancer (um, hello - I can't believe I just wrote that) - it was a chance to look at my own life from a perspective that most people don't get to see their own life from - or at least, most people don't do this until much later in life and often when it is too late. I might have said before that there is something tremendously powerful about facing your own mortality and then getting to continue to live - you get to live completely differently. You get to live the authentic life you always wanted, you get to be the person you want to be, you get to live with no regrets. That is the biggest gift I got from surviving breast cancer - the chance to live differently. I remember during the process, begging God to please just let me live so that I could experience life differently. Well, I feel like that's the chance we are all given when we come into AA. We just don't always appreciate it as such. I am not sure I would have understood this either, simply by coming into AA - it took something far more devastating for me to get this.
In a sense it is very similar though - you are facing your own mortality - alcoholism can and will kill you. You are given a chance to review your life in its entirety, to learn from it and then to live it differently. Why would someone not take this opportunity? This is not something most people ever get to do. The chance to do this is a tremendous gift - the power of which I cannot even describe to you. The catch though is that you actually have to do it - despite the fear of what you might uncover, you have to do the inventory. My life changed when I did this - my program changed, my sobriety changed and I started to change. It was the most freeing thing I've ever done. (Taking off my fake hair comes in second)!!
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