In other essays, I have written about precision in perception in a 5th Step or Confessional and Conversation process. This process has allowed me to see the exact nature of my defects. With repeated inventories and Confession and Conversation about the exact nature of the issues, there is a deepening and clarification of defects that has resulted from my inventory habits. Let me share my evolving experience with inventories and the Confessional and Conversation process that can follow.
My first inventory was a 4th step inventory, a moral inventory. Moral means rights and wrongs. So, I focused on anecdotes and examples of harms and wrongs, appropriate for a moral inventory. It was good and yielded the first of many insights about my character that I had denied, or perhaps not seen.
Later inventories were 10th step inventories, which started as daily reviews and spot checks during the day. Then, as I read more, I integrated regular inventories into my life. Bill writes that businesses that don’t do regular inventories often go bankrupt. Businesses that I am familiar with do an annual inventory at least, so I began a habit of annual inventories, taken each year on my AA birthday.
These annual inventories, which I conceived to be a 10th step process, were personal inventories rather than moral inventories. They were not limited to harms and wrongs as my original 4th step inventories had been. They included harms and wrongs, but they also included the broader canvas of people, institutions, and principles that were making me angry, irritating me, or just on my mind. I often use the expression “things that just put me off.”
I found myself back at the language Bill W. uses in the 4th step instructions, with his “grudge list” of people, institutions, and principles. These instructions were, as I came to see, not limited to harms and wrongs, it was a very broad list indeed. Over the years, I have learned to respect the 4th step 4 column system. Working one column at a time, I have found, time and time again, that patterns and lessons are effectively revealed.
So in the end, I have a fusion of the 10th step and the 4th step. Inventories of harms and wrongs, personal foibles, quirks, and issues. A regular 10th step inventory following the 4th step model.
But the inventory by itself is not the final answer. It is only one shoe that has dropped, the other must follow to be of use.
My first inventories, step 4 inventories were followed by step 5. Later inventories were followed by the Confessional and Conversational Step as well. Admission to another human being came to mean more than saying I am sorry to someone. I engaged in a Confession and Conversation step after the inventory was completed. With the back and forth with a good 5th Stepper, who I came to call my spiritual coach, I began to see themes and principles in the anecdotes about the people, institutions and principles in my inventory, the principles and themes of the defects of character. The root causes of the defects that lay deep in my soul and psyche. We could tease out the words that precisely described the defects.
In my early inventories and post-inventory conversations with a spiritual advisor, we could see the gross shape of the defects. With time and repeated inventories, I can see the defects more clearly and see that there were deeper levels to explore.
Let me share a fictional example to show this point.
Shoplifting is not a problem that I have had. But it provides a great example of what I have experienced in many areas of my life.
Imagine you are working with a sponsee’s first inventory, he admits to 300 episodes of shoplifting. The first ‘exact nature of the defect’ is that ‘he is a kleptomaniac.’
Years later you are still working with him and in his annual inventory, the same 300 episodes come up again.
“Why?” he says, “I have dealt with these already. I have even made amends and repaid the stores and apologized to the police”.
Even though it is puzzling, you keep them on the list.
Then when he gets to the fourth column, his mistakes, he starts using the phrase “I felt entitled to take the stuff.” When he sits with you and reviews these 300 episodes, you both realize he is not just a kleptomaniac. When shoplifting, he felt a deep sense of entitlement. He was entitled to have those things. Entitlement was the new deeper understanding of the defect.
Entitlement – Selfish Behaviour.
Years later, at another annual inventory when the shoplifting stories come to mind, he groans and complains, but then when he hits the fourth column, (what was his mistake?) he learns – the more in-depth and more exact nature of the defect – not only did he feel entitled to take the goods off the shelf without paying – his self-centered ego is so massive that he was able to rewrite reality, and the products that he shoplifted were, in fact, his all along. He was just taking what was his.
My experience is just like that. The same stories arise, and more exact lessons can be learned. Stories from my business life, my sex life, my sports life, my life.
I see more clearly the deeper and underlying ‘exact nature’ of the wrongs. The principles and themes that tie all the stories together.
Identified, the defects can be removed. Like the used car salesman says, a car well bought is half sold. A defect well identified is half removed.
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