SLAA Step 7 Questions

HUMBLY ASKED GOD TO REMOVE OUR SHORTCOMINGS

9. Read AS BILL SEES IT. 22, 6I, 75. How has working the twelve steps helped me work through fear?

22

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear -- primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands.

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For all its usual destructiveness, we have found that fear can be the starting point for better things. Fear can be a steppingstone to prudence and to a decent respect for others. It can point the path to justice, as well as to hate. And the more we have of respect and justice, the more we shall begin to find love which can suffer much, and yet be freely given. So fear need not always be destructive, because the lessons of its consequences can lead us to positive values.

61

Fear somehow touched about every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But did not we often set the ball rolling ourselves?

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The problem of resolving fear has two aspects. We shall have to try for all the freedom from fear that is possible for us to attain. Then we shall need to find both the courage and the grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain.

75

When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were the victims of unreasonable fears. And these were fears which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.

But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values, for ourselves and for others.

Fear and Pain.  Such strong but mistaken and misunderstood motivators in my life.  Anxiety, that is, fear, has been a constant in my life and underlies my alcohol use.

It's really hard to understand and relate the complex warping of my life that avoidance of fear and pain have caused.  So many people I admire I'd call "fearless" - they don't seem to have this crippling self doubt and questioning that I have.  And self-centered fear... how this hits the nail on the head, because it's not just fear, it's a myopic, cross-eyed sense of imminent self-destruction, of penury, of being robbed, of being abandoned and left for dead, and that all this selfishness seems to be constructed to fight back that fear, all these things must be hoarded and consumed and used in order to inflate and construct a hard self to weather the world

10. Do you truly understand humility? Read Step 7 in the AA ‘12 x 12’. Discuss and reflect on how humility has affected your life.

Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

I love this step. It's the simplest and most direct of the steps.  I wish they were all this simple.  When I read the steps through when I'm lucky enough to get to read How It Works at meetings, this step always causes a slight catch for me.  It's the emotionally loaded of all the steps for me.

Humility has been a key part of understanding the workings of my disfuntional emotional structures: I'm so childish and selfish and prideful.  As I am able to return to humility and simplicity and gratitude, so clarity returns to me.  Humility is acceptance of one's self with proper perspective.

I know that "turning it over" is a key underpinning of our philosophy, and its about surrender - but clearly when you acknowledge the truth of sayings like "God will steer if we row the boat" - and that "faith without works is dead" then clearly there is an act of will involved in sobriety - however, it's not the act of will to control our disease or our lives, I accept that for me, this level of control is impossible, it's simply the act of will to surrender, to keep surrendering, and to take the actions required to maintain a solid spiritual contact.

I'm sorry to bring cosmology into this but there's a whiff of the old patriarchal god in some of this language that not only turns me off, but which I find to be spiritually incorrect.  Also I had a very controlling father.

And I say this because rather than say "hand it over" I want to say "connect with God".  God is not outside of me, God acts through me, if I make myself open to that power in my life.  The removal of shortcomings comes about not by an action of God, but by the constant and applied pressure over years of you keeping yourself in a spiritual condition for God to inform your actions.  

11. Read from AS BILL SEES IT, Page 139 ‘Basis of all Humility’, and page 212, "Faith and Action". Discuss and reflect on the act of:

(a) Humbly asking God to remove defects

(b) Having faith that is vital, accompanied by self-sacrifice and unselfish, constructive

action.

139 Basis of All Humility

For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible.

This was true even when we believed that God existed. We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question.

That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.

212 Faith and Action

Your prospect's religious education and training may be far superior to yours. In that case, he is going to wonder how you can add anything to what he already knows.

But he will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well. He may be an example of the truth that faith alone is insufficient. To be vital, faith must be accompanied by self sacrifice and unselfish, constructive action.

Admit that he probably knows more about religion than you do, but remind him that, however deep his faith and knowledge, these qualities could not have served him well, or he would not be asking your help.

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Dr. Bob did not need me for his spiritual instruction. He had already had more of that than I. What he did need, when we first met, was the deflation at depth and the understanding that only one drunk can give to another. What I needed was the humility of self-forgetfulness and the kinship with another human being of my own kind.

humbly asking god to remove defects

vital faith, self-sacrifice, unselfish constructive action

Operating from a place of true humility is immensely empowering.  I think that sounds ironic, but only from the bottom can you truly look up.  Once you leave behind selfishness, you've lost the expectations, entitlement, worry and regret that make up a sad set of empty boxes that limit so many people's lives, and clutter their view of life in a way that obscures god.

And this is what I tried to say with my answer to the last question: the acts which keep your spiritual horizon clear for contact with god: a vital faith, humility, self-sacrifice, gratitude, *are* in fact God's will.  The act of reaching for God is all God wants from us.  The journey is the destination.  The process is the deliverable.

Got does not remove your defects, you relinquish them as you grow closer to God.

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12. The mental hygiene and spiritual housecleaning we have started in our inventories and continued in Step Five reach their climax in Step Seven. Read pages 48, 103, 136, 196, 281, 327 in AS BILL SEES IT. Are you ready to fully subject your will to God? Do you wish to surrender to Him all your moral imperfections?

48 Live Serenely

When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday's and sometimes today's excesses of negative emotions -- anger, fear, jealousy, and the like.

If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn't mean we need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an admission and correction of errors -- now.

103 Principles Before Expediency

Most of us thought good character was desirable. Obviously, good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.

Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.

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How to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result, and so into easy, happy, and good living, is the problem of life itself.

136 Giving Up Defects

Looking at those defects we are unwilling to give up, we ought to erase the hard and fast lines that we have drawn. Perhaps in some cases we shall say, "This I cannot give up yet...." But we should not say to ourselves, "This O will never give up!"

The moment we say, "No, never!" our minds close against the grace of God. Such rebellion my be fatal. Instead, we should abandon limited objectives and begin to move towards God's will for us.

 

196 Antidote for Fear

When our failings generate fear, we then have soul-sickness. This sickness, in turn, generates still 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 at 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.

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As faith grows, so does inner security. The vast underlying fear of nothingness commences to subside. We of A.A. find that our basic antidote for fear is a spiritual awakening.

281 Ourselves as Individuals

There is only one sure test of all spiritual experiences: "By their fruits, ye shall know them."

This is why I think we should question no one's transformation -- whether it be sudden or gradual. Nor should we demand anyone's special type for ourselves, because experience suggests that we are apt to receive whatever may be the most useful for our own needs.

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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.

There's a continuum from Step 3 to Step 7 - made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to God - then asking God to remove the defects of character

Emotional hangovers - maybe i've been on an anxiety bender this last week or so.

I used to think that good character was just an opinion and that morality was a moveable feast.  I now implicitly understand that there is a single way of behaviour that clears the decks for a connection to God.

Choice of giving up defects: if you take your eyes off yourself and lift them to God, there is only the beatitude of drawing close to God

Fear of loss and emptiness - that you can fill the void instead dive into the void, there is God

Subject your will - if that means focus all my energies on moving toward God - then yes.

There is no other answer for me.

This is my path, but I will not tread it perfectly.

13. What has there "never been enough of” for you?

This is a great question, and a deep one.  It goes way back.

Security, love, money, sex.  Food and alcohol actually pretty easy to get... not sure yet about the complexities of my food issues.  Alcohol is only available at certain times of the day and from certain places - and you can be assured that during active alcoholism I went to great lengths to assure my supply was secure.

But strictly, it's the model or mode of "perceived scarcity" that underlies many of my behaviours, even when the supply of these things was not in question.  And as every marketer knows, percieved scarcity plays directly into percieved value and importance.  

Around love and sex, the scarcity was mostly a bolster to my flagging self-esteem.

Around security and money, more a distrust of my ability to make my way in the world, and a distrust of others as well.  Additionally with money, my desires far outpaced my earnings potential, and I continue to make unwise spending and saving decisions to this day.

14. How do you make, or how can you make honesty, tolerance and true love of man and God the daily basis of living?

As we work through these Step 7 questions I keep thinking of Thomas à Kempis and his "Imitation of Christ".  As much as I'm not a Christian, as I pursue my spiritual path and become accustomed to its rise and fall, I do understand the notion of a Buddha or Christ, as someone who was somehow capable of remaining in Grace.  And what a model that is for behaviour and aspiration.

So I'm not buddha, or a buddha, or a bodhisatva.  Go figure.

Part of the way I see spirituality is that there is a continuum, a spectrum, maybe a conduit between selfishness and grace.  Or perhaps journey is a better word - a journey, a path from selfishness to the utter unconditional love and serenity that is God.  As I've said before each step on this path toward God can be the relinquishment of resentment and fear, a bit of self-knowledge, the putting aside of illusions, the recognition and taking up of God's task for you on this planet.  Somebody recently shared that a sponsor had asked him if a (figurative) step he was taking was a step toward or away from his disease, but I choose to ask if it's a step toward or away from God.

I do not choose to believe that God created us in prehistoric time, although perhaps God is implicit in the fabric of the universe that quickens matter to give it love and thought, I prefer to think that God is our Source, every second of every day, and seeks to create us in every moment.

When I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God - it's the implicit acceptance of this path.  I know that I will stray, that I will backslide, that I will fail myself and God - that's fine, I'm human.  The point is that to the best of my ability, I return again and again to the path, and here Camus' Sysiphus guides me. Camus was working with existentialism with his insight that the meaning of life for poor Sysiphus was not the endless pushing of boulders up hills, but during the walk back down the mountain to get the boulder agin.  So likewise for me, I think that the most growth occurs not on the path, but on those countless journeys BACK to the path when I have strayed.  This captured with the muslim saying "astaghfirallah al azim" - in asking for forgiveness they admit they have strayed from the path and are asking Allah to help them return.

Honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God are godlike qualities that are steps, wayposts, conditions, or gates along the journey to God.

15. Do you still place self-reliance first and are you still rebellious.

I think this may be a trick question.  The putting aside of self-reliance is a life-long goal.  It's going to kick in again and again, it's how we were raised.

The calling toward god is a path, but we'll fall off the path over and over.

It's not so much rebellion as clinging to old ways.  Expectations and anxiety are still a part of my fabric of existence.

When I can, as much as I can, I try to remember to have God first.

16. How can humility give us serenity?

Humility is being right-sized, it's acceptance, it's the smallest ego one could have.  If Ego is one end of the continuum that leads to God, then the smaller we make it, the more godlike we are, and share in His serenity, peace and love.

17. How does the taking of the 7th Step aid in the reduction of Ego?

This step echoes three and six - in making the decision to turn my will and my life over, in becoming entirely ready to embrace the journey of divestment from ego toward god, and humbly asking god to remove the defects - each of these is a stance and a move away from ego.

God doesn't ACTIVELY remove defects - if we say again and again in every dealing with God that WE are the engine and the actor, God provides the wisdom and direction.  It's the process of feeding energy into the transformation and grooming and creating of something from ourselves toward the nature of God, that's how we lose ego.

18. Make a gratitude list of what God has done for you that you could not do for yourself.

I have to translate all these paternalistic judeo-christian ideas for them to make sense for me.  Like I said, I do not see God as an actor, god is a principle.  Did gravity make the apple fall from the tree?  Possibly.  But really the apple had no support.

I think what really is happening in this question is that we are trying to illustrate the difference between an ego-directed life, one this is not moving along the spectrum toward god (or moving the wrong direction), and one that is.

I am so, so grateful for:

Ability to put aside my addictions

the ability to attract Marhiza

The beginning of an ability to see past a lifetime of fear

The gift of self esteem

19. What unreasonable demands have you made upon others, yourself and God? How did self-centered fear play a part?

OMG what a question.

May I address it backwards? 

In other words, I already know that self-centered fear is the main culprit of a misguided life.

an an elucidation of unreasonable demands is its own delightful exercise in self- awareness.

It lets us know how we are not accepting. things

myself: that I be perfect, that I know all and never mess up

that i will know how to get through life and that everyone will like me

that 

that others recognise my brilliance and honor me - I could itemise but this is essentially narcissism at its core, no real need to go further.

not really any demands on God - God was a nonentity until only fairly recently - and I still do not accord him the power of action - that's me.