"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory
of ourselves."
Creation gave us instincts for a
purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women
didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to
harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't
reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct,
if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society.
So these desires--for the sex relation, for material and emotional security,
and for companionship--are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.
Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence,
often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times
subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our
desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important
place in society often
tyrannize
us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble,
practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt
from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case
of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the
instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.
Step Four is our vigorous and
painstaking effort to discover what these
liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly
how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look
squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By
discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their
correction. Without a
willing
and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment
for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found
that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.
Before tackling the inventory
problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the basic problem is.
Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we think
about them. Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else. In such
a case, this imperious urge can destroy his chances for material and emotional
security as well as his standing in the community. Another may develop such an
obsession for financial security that he wants to do nothing but hoard money.
Going to the extreme, he can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies
himself both family and friends.
Nor is the quest for security always
expressed in terms of money. How frequently we see a frightened human being
determined to depend completely upon life's responsibilities with his own
resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In
time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and
afraid.
We have also seen men and women who
go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows. These
people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a
happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the
instincts, there can be no peace.
But that is not all of the danger.
Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness
follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the
way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs
riot, there is a similar uproar. Demands made upon other people for too much
attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the
protectors themselves--two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which
evoked them. When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable,
whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other
people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce
anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in
conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts,
too.
Alcoholics especially should be able
to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their
destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and
depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk
again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vain glory--that we
might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse
soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at
investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are
liable to suffer severe reactions.
If temperamentally we are on the
depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We
wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of
it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point
of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of
course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For
this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very
process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.
If, however, our natural disposition
is inclined to self righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the
opposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory. No doubt we shall
point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us
down. We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have
any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we
think it logically follows that sobriety-- first, last, and all the time--is the
only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters
will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all
along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now
that we are sober?
We also clutch at another wonderful
excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry,
are caused by the behavior of other people, people who really need a moral
inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all
right. Therefore we think ourindignationis justified and reasonable that our resentments are the right
kind. We aren't the guilty ones. They are!
At this stage of the inventory proceedings,
our sponsors come to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the carriers of
A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They comfort the melancholy one by
first showing him that his case is not strange or different, that his character
defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone else in
A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking freely and easily, and without
exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet
realistic, stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points out
that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his
liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity and encourage balance. As soon
as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than
fearfully, look at his own defects.
The sponsors of those who feel they
need no inventory are confronted with quite another problem. This is because
people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind themselves to their
liabilities. These newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help
them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light
of reason can shine.
First off, they can be told that the
majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from self-justification during
their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification was the maker of
excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and
damaging conduct. We had made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to
drink because times were hard or times were good. We had to drink because at
home we were smothered with love or got none at all. We had to drink because at
work we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink because our
nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum.
We thought "conditions"
drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that
we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we
became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves
to meet conditions, whatever they were.
But in A.A. we slowly learned that
something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and
unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we
turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and
planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the
club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were
seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless
of who or what we thought caused it.
To see how erratic emotions
victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others,
but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of
these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where
other people were concerned, we had to drop the word "blame" from our
speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin. But once
over the first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look
easier. For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another
way of saying that we were gaining in humility.
Of course the depressive and the
power-driver are personality extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole
world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply defined as the
examples given. But just as often some of us will fit more or less into both
classifications. Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making
an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are.
Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to step into them and walk with new
confidence that he is at last on the right track.
Now let's ponder the need for a list
of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To
those having religious training, such a list would set forth serious violations
of moral principles. Some others will think of this list as defects of character.
Still others will call it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite
annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all who are in
the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with
us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect
sobriety, progress, and any ability to cope with life.
To avoid falling into confusion over
the names these defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized
list of major human failings--the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust,
anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the
procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by
conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human
difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making
demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or
misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for
sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride
steps in to justify our excesses.
All these failings generate fear, a
soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character
defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us
to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry
when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions
of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for
more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with
genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate,
or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that
ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.
So when A.A. suggests a fearless
moral inventory, it must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of him
than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him back every time he tries
to look within himself. Pride says, "You need not pass this way," and
Fear says, "You dare not look!" But the testimony of A.A.'s who have
really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to
be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness to take
inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light
falls upon this foggy scene. As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is
born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is
indescribable.
These are the first fruits of Step Four.
By now the newcomer has probably
arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing
instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure
at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the
worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him;
that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built
anew on bedrock. Now willing to
commence
the search for his own defects, he will ask, "Just how do I go about this?
how do I take inventory of myself?"
Since Step Four is but the beginning
of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal
flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious. Using his best judgment
of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of
his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and
society. Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by
consideration of questions such as these:
When, and how, and in just what
instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and
me? What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil my marriage and injure my
children? Did I jeopardize my standing in the community? Just how did I react
to these situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could
extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and
thus absolve myself? How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When
denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other people?
If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for
promiscuity?
Also of importance for most
alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their behavior respecting
financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed, possessiveness,
and pride have too often done their worst. Surveying his business or employment
record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to my
drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial
instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my
confidence and fill me with conflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of
inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Or by
griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities? Did I
overvalue myself and play the big shot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition
that I double-crossed and undercut my associates? Was I extravagant? Did I
recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was repaid or not? Was I a
pinch penny, refusing to support my family properly? Did I cut corners
financially? What about the "quick money" deals, the stock market,
and the races?
Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally
find that many of these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic
housewife can also make the family financially
insecure. She can juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget,
spend her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by
irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.
But all alcoholics who have drunk
themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine
themselves ruthlessly to determine how their own personality defects have thus
demolished their security.
The most common symptoms of
emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem
from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come
from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully
all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It
should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where
instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this:
Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety,
bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I
see where I have been at fault? Did these perplexities beset me because of
selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused
by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I
cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose
the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own
conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.
Suppose that financial insecurity
constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have my
own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of
the cause, what can I do about that? If I am unable to change the present state
of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to
conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of which will come to mind
easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.
But it is from our twisted relations
with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the
most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact
that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership
with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we
insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much.
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they
are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our
insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to
our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop
hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we
redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes
acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a
friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of
society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide
underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with
any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.
Some will object to many of the
questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been
so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is
likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned
with. Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been
abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these self same
defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Whatever the
defects, they have finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.
Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword
when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write out our
questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest
appraisal. It will be the first tangible evidence of our complete willingness
to move forward.
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