SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA: Searching and Fearless Edition
Everything you wanted to know about the Fourth Step, but were afraid to ask.
I’m grateful for a bright, cold morning. I’m grateful for the Sunday newspaper and my coffee. I’m grateful for seeing the places where I went wrong. I’m grateful for working escalators and people who stand on the right. I’m grateful to be sober today.
You perhaps have noticed that there was much written this week about the Fourth Step. This was neither accidental nor a function of the infinite monkey theorem, but actual, semi-deliberate decision-making. The Fourth Step is a pivotal, rubber-meets-the-road exercise. The entreaty in “How it Works,” about being fearless from the very beginning, and the discussion of the highly probable failure of all of the “half-measures,” I think, are directed mostly at the Fourth Step Inventory and the foundation it lays for the soon-to-follow Fifth Step list.
It is not easy to look honestly at ourselves. This is also precisely why this alcoholic drank,: I was unwilling to face my true self, much less put it out there in the real world and vouch for it’s authenticity. Instead, I built an artifice/edifice of a life that was intended to present something more palatable to the world at large. Of course, alcohol was very much an accomplice and the drinking became completely entwined with my “being.”
It’s that knot that the Fourth Step helps unravel, the searching and fearless moral inventory is intended to figure out who you really are, were and why you think you did what you did (the adage about identifying your actual side of the street is very important here). From there, this becomes a process of discovery: discovering the maybe hidden patterns that drove so much discord and chaos, the things that we were actually afraid of, the truth about the things we did.
“How it Works,” starts out by noting that the folks who don’t make it are often those who are not capable of a rigorously honest way of life. That starts with self-honesty, which is actually maybe the hardest of all of them. This is a process not an event, and for this alcoholic, repetition was definitely necessary. Speaking of repetition, here’s a complete listing of all of the obviously connected Fourth and Fifth Step writing:
Here are some earlier, collected musings on the same topic:
For us, reading and writing have been a big part of recovery and sobriety. We thought we’d start sharing some of our favorite books on the topic of recovery, addiction and general happiness and telling you how they helped us! If you have ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions or if there are some books that you’d like to chat about, well, we’d love to do that with you. 1
Now, here’s something new. You may have heard me mention something about writing your story in the style of Bill W’s: and this is where we are going to do it. If you want to write your story and share it, I’ll be happy to put it here for other folks to read. If you’d like to record yourself reading your own story (I highly, highly recommend this), I’ll put it here, too:
The “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
It’s the “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, this Tuesday evening at 7pm. We’re ready to go and hope you can join us this Tuesday! It’s 1/2 AA Meeting, 1/2 Alcoholic Book Club and 1/2 something else we haven’t figured out yet. We’ve been reading the “Stories from the Back of the Book,” and they are all so great. It’s a fun way to learn more about the Big Book and reading these stories out loud is a little like listening to the legends of AA share.
Hope you can join us!
How Can I Help Support TFLMS??
Seriously, write a book review (or we might expand into movies!) and we’ll probably put it up.