Inventories, a necessary causal agent in my spiritual chain.
Things happen as a result of causes and conditions. Combined they make causal chains.
Making a peanut butter sandwich is the end result of a causal chain. It requires a series of events and actions. Conditions such as, there is bread in the bread box, there is peanut butter in the refrigerator. Causes or actions such as getting the bread out of the bread box, getting the butter out of the refrigerator and the peanut butter out of the cupboard.
The conditions and causes are necessary for success, creation of a peanut butter sandwich. Each and all of the causes and conditions are necessary. Miss one and you don’t have a peanut butter sandwich.
Our Program is a process, a chain of causation. There are necessary actions and necessary conditions.
Hitting bottom is a necessary condition before recovery. Coming to believe that my thinking is not sane and that I am not God, is a necessary condition.
Step 3 is a necessary action. We turn our will and our life over the care of God. Step 4 is a necessary action in the causal chain. As Bill says, “Our Step 3 process of turning our will and our life over has little permanent effect unless we commence a vigorous house cleaning.”
In making a peanut butter sandwich, we need two conditions, bread in the box and peanut butter at hand. We need two actions or causes, removing two slices of bread and applying the peanut butter. Miss any one of the four elements of the causal chain, and you don’t have a sandwich.
In our Program, miss either condition of Step 1 and Step 2 or either of the actions of Step 3 or Step 4, and you don’t have recovery.
In my story, inventories were the missing part. In my pre-Program spiritual life, I had hit bottom, turned to God, committed my life to God, and then stopped. I missed the ultimate cause or action, and the spiritual experience did not stick.
In the 12 x 12, Bill W writes about Step 2 and contrasts the AA spiritual experience to the spiritual experience that many of us had experienced before we came to the Program. On page 32 he states:
“…we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was we really hadn’t cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves…”
With this clear statement, he connects the dots between spiritual growth and inventories. Inventories are a necessary condition of spiritual growth. He continues:
“…nor made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly.”
We can see that inventories are a necessary cause or action to long-term recovery and spiritual growth.
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