By Anon.
Having done a thorough Step 8 when I first got sober and worked the steps (At least to the best of my ability at the time, which my Sponsor anointed with his solemn approval), I had that experience in the spiritual tool kit I was filling up for the days to follow. Step 10 of course kept me on track as sober days became years, so I thought of Step 8 more as a memory, or in the abstract at meetings, something to hone for use with a sponsee down the road.
However, when the challenges of life on life’s terms hit like a tsunami, abstract thinking, memories, or my idea of what’s good for you, were washed away in the torrent of the “storm” confronted. As instructed, I sought to determine what Step(s) applied to the circumstances at hand. My sponsor, that thorough I want “what he has” kind of guy, of course reminded me that Step 4, the Step to which I was pointed to assist on the arc of life which I was trudging, required a searching and fearless moral inventory. With earnestness he added that failure to fully perform Step 4 lead many guys with more days than I back to the bottle. This was not an attractive alternative at all.
With my new 4th Step inventory completed, I moved through the admissions trice and took the book down from the shelf, which itself had yielded unexpected and marvelous results. To this HP I was now experiencing in a new and wondrous way, I was able to ask that my defects be removed. With all I could muster, I was even willing to make this request straight from my heart and with complete abandon, as rigorous honesty now demands my witness. But the Big Book seems to never let AAers rest on their laurels, its authors knew a drunk like me was in trouble if I did. Instead I was called to more action.
Now I had to make a list of “All Persons We Had Harmed.” Since that “ancient history” had been done and my recent episodes “promptly admitted,” as the effect of now requesting my defects be removed sank in, I had to ask – Whom had I harmed by the expression of these defects this time?
The answer was unexpected, as it was “Me.” Here I was, Making a List, and the first name on it was mine. My sponsor assured me this was not a hidden manifestation of ego, but rather an honest appraisal of the results of my inventory. For while I had developed resentments towards those on my inventory, thanks to my HP and my fellow AAers, I had not acted out upon those resentments. But I sure let them eat me alive. While I had not taken actions which I regretted or which called for an amend to another, I waxed profusely and profanely in the privacy of my own mind.
I riddled my HP with questions, demanded He conjure up favorable responses to my plightsand, perhaps the saddest of all, denied myself the reality, and worse, my willingness to accept, He had all of these circumstances under control. I forgot I was in His care, an actor on His stage, a worker amongst workers in His field. As this realization was made exact during my Step 5, the reflections suggested by Step 6 revealed it was my shortcomings, my inability to trust my HP, which required attention and change; which demanded I ask them to be removed. To change, I needed to be willing and then humbly ask for the help needed. In that reflection I also saw whom I had “hurt” in the expression of this shortcoming, who needed to be on my Eighth Step List – Me.
Into “the mirror” which my sponsor “held” to assist my perception, I looked at me. I could now see and begin to appreciate just how destructive my thinking and the patterns created had been on me, why I owed “me” an amend. I may not have lashed out at another [thank goodness] as I had fretted with my issues, but I sure beat myself to a pulp. I did not like the circumstances, but I found I had begun to accept them as they were. Whether mine was to be a tragedy or a comedy, only my Director knew. But as my play of life unfolded, my lines now came more freely for I had through this Step 8 begun my living amend to “Me.”
