TWELVE STEPS
AND TWELVE TRADITIONS
STEP FOUR
(Continued,
p. 45)
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.
~
I
not only believed that I wasn't such a bad guy sober but that my troubles and excesses... even
those caused by my drinking... were creative assets: i.e., my poverty was part of
my chosen path; my spirituality… and I even imagined those excesses and abuses to
be a stance against bourgeois conventions and morality… I was, after all, The
Natural Man! I did have a few skeletons in my closet that were absolutely
nobody else's business because I was square with them with whatever I thought
of as God.
Before I sat
down and put pencil to paper I had to look at this aspect of my behavior and
that took a giant dose of humility that was driven, first, by the complete
defeat brought on by this disease. When I saw the insane arrogance with which I
had conducted my life and the trail of deceit, abuse of the kindness of others,
outrageous behaviors and how they affected those around me I ceded and
surrendered these to my Higher Power in the Third Step and plead to have them
revealed with clarity in the Fourth Step.
geo 4, 788
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