I am posting a series of blogs on my favourite Program activity, Inventories. I love them and never tire of them. The benefits are clear and well worth the effort involved. And the more I do, the easier it gets.
Part 1: Spiritual Maintenance
Part 2: Moral versus Personal
Part 3: Writing the Name
Part 4: Special Names
Part 5: Just the facts, ma’am
Part 6: How were you affected?
Part 7: What was my role?
Part 8: The Confessional Conversation
Step Four is a moral inventory, and Step Ten is a personal inventory. An exciting choice of adjectives, moral to personal, moving from Step Four to Step Ten.
Now I don’t want to make too much of this distinction between the adjectives moral and personal. A careful reading of the Big Book and 12 x 12 shows that Bill Wilson did not consider the use of different words to be significant in regard to inventories.
But we should not ignore the differences that can, on reflection, be seen. My experience suggests that there is something to learn by paying attention to the moral in Step Four and the personal in Step Ten.
My early Step Four inventories were moral. Where had I harmed someone? Where had I done something requiring restitution? Where had I been right and where had I been wrong? These are questions framed as – issues of right and wrong, harms and damages.
Later, with Step Ten inventories, I moved from moral to personal. Here is my story.
When I established an annual inventory habit, I followed the classic four-column method Bill Wilson outlined in Step Four in the Big Book. My early grudge lists were people I had harmed. But after the first couple of years, and re-reading with greater care the instructions in the Big Book, I found myself developing a different type of grudge list. This new type of grudge list began to more closely follow the guidelines that he outlined in the four-column Step Four instructions. To quote: “Who made me angry? What burned me up?” I expanded the questions to include relations that were off-putting, I realized that while I was listing relationships that reflected rights and wrongs, damages and harms, I was also listing relationships that left a bad taste, were bothersome, relationships that were on my mind
As I transitioned from a Step Four inventory to a Step Ten
inventory, with the shift from moral to personal, the scope of the grudge list
expanded. It has become a comprehensive listing of personal, not merely moral,
shortcomings.
Related posts
From Frank Amos and his report to John Rockefeller in 1938
Forgiveness: A Spiritual Virtue and Practical Tool
