INTRO: Tenth Step

By the time that a person arrives at the tenth step, the past should be behind him or her.  The first steps helped me to unpack the baggage that I brought with me into AA.  By confronting the past, I conquered fear.  By recognizing how I contributed to the problems that I brought with me into the program, I let go of resentments on which I had fixated previously, and by virtue of these actions, suddenly, there was space in my life for serenity, which alluded me when I was drinking.

The first time that I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, I was sifting through 40 years of anger, disappointments and frustration.  The fourth step, at least in theory, is daunting, but once that step has been taken, and one has set the record straight with one's self, the God of one's understanding and one's neighbors, then one may live freely in the present without looking over one's shoulder.

One of the first big thoughts that I had upon after entering the program was that, "One of biggest threats to my sobriety is my inability to stay in the present."  Every time that I thought about the past, I was afraid of the consequences that I may face, and every time I thought about the future, I became anxious about whether or not I would be able to live the life that I thought that I wanted to live.

The tenth step is about living in the present.  If one does a fourth step every day, which is essentially what the tenth step asks the alcoholic to do, then one's emotional baggage is not able to accumulate and is less likely to express itself in destructive or self-destructive ways.  I think of the tenth step as taking out the trash, and I recognize that one's home smells best when the trash is disposed daily.

I wish that I were disciplined enough to do a thorough tenth step every day.  I am making process toward this goal, but honestly, I am not yet there, even though I have noticed that I feel better in proportion to how frequently I take tenth steps.  I have experimented with different formats from written to spoken ones.  I journaled for a while using the columns laid out in The Big Book, but I did not feel like the events of everyday life were drastic or dramatic enough as the highs and lows of 20 years of active alcoholism.  

The format that works best for me now is based on the Serenity Prayer, which is prayed near the beginning of almost every AA meeting that I have ever attended: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  Serenity comes by practicing wisdom, and I practice wisdom by looking at my life since the last tenth step and discerning which situations call for acceptance (the things that I cannot change), which ones call for courage (the things that I can, in fact, change) and how I will live in accordance with this understanding.  

Often the anxiety that I experience in my life is a direct result of trying to place a situation in the wrong column, and forcing situations into the wrong column aggravates, or are further evidence of, alcoholic thoughts and behaviors (i.e., character flaws), the only appropriate response to which is to change my thoughts and behaviors and to ask the God of my understanding to change me.

Amends eventually became instinctive.  One does not have to wait until he or she has been through some formal evaluation to recognize when he or she has offended, insulted or otherwise wronged another person, and in my experience, as one becomes more experienced making apologizes, fewer apologies are necessary, because the filter between one's thoughts and actions gets thicker and thicker.

The tenth step is about being centered in the practice that has brought one to this place in his or her sobriety.  This practice is not without challenges, especially from within, and yet it is effective for today, which, in my experience, is the only place for an alcoholic to be, because this is the only place where serenity resides.       

INTRO: Seventh Step

The wisdom that other alcoholics share at meetings is essential to recovery.  In the beginning of my AA experience, I was desperate, which, among other things, meant that, for the first time in a long time, I was at a place in which I was willing to listen.  Almost all of my adult life, I thought that I deserved more than I had, and yet by the time that I crawled into AA, hoping against hope for a better life, I recognized that I did not know everything, and I wondered if what I did know would help me to feel good about myself and the mark that I was making in, and on, the world.

To quote another alcoholic, who spoke eloquently in one of the first meetings that I attended, "I felt like a piece of shit in the center of the universe."  I felt badly about myself and judged myself by standards that would not allow these feelings to change, and yet I craved the spotlight and believed that if people really knew me, they would be able to find something amazing in me that I could not, or would not, find in myself.

I was humiliated when I came into AA, and the distinction between humiliation and humility may be helpful here.  Humiliation is not just feeling like a piece of shit; it is knowing that others share one's low opinion of one's self and fixating on this knowledge.  Being handcuffed, bailed out of jail and appearing before a judge confirmed that I was not better than anybody else.  The law that applied to people that I dismissed as less sophisticated than me also applied to me, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not any better at obeying the law than I was at moderating my drinking.  Something had to change.  I had to ask for help.

Humility, which is one of the objectives of the seventh step, enables a person to be comfortable in his or her own skin without having to set himself or herself apart as better than the rivals that he or she manufactures out of thin air.  Being set apart leads to feelings of loneliness.  Humility allows one to be part of a group without establishing a place in the hierarchy.

A humble person is comfortable on stage and working behind the scenes.  He or she finds value in everything that he or she does and in the world around him or her and is fulfilled by whatever it is he or she is doing.  A humble person is not weighed down by guilt or shame.  This person is open-minded and opened-hearted enough to accept whatever the God of his or her understanding gives to him.

The action called for the seventh step is to "humbly ask God to remove his (or her) shortcomings."  This step assumes that the person in recovery is increasingly comfortable with the God to whom he or she was introduced step three and that this person is no longer in denial about the guilt, pride, shame, arrogance and fear that led to the consequences that led him or her into the program.  The trust that one places in another person in step six is extended to God in step seven.

In my experience, one's faith in himself or herself grows in proportion to his or her faith in God and in other human beings and vice versa.  This faith is made possible through self-awareness, the beginning of which is the searching and fearless moral inventory in step four.  For me, saying what I had to say to the God of my understanding was not as difficult as saying what I had to say to another person, because the God of my understanding was with me in the past, is with me now and will be with me in the future.  Plus, I did not worry about the God of my understanding saying anything to anybody about what I confided in this God.

Obviously, I was only beginning to trust again, and yet by this stage in recovery, it seemed as if life was beginning again, which signaled a drastic change in my thoughts and feelings.  I was not as anxious as I used to be.  When I came into AA, it seemed as if life was crashing around me, but suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, though I am sure that it was by virtue of the steps, I started believing that something beautiful could be built from the wreckage of the past.