Step Seven Discussion...

[jlo34]

At my 12&12 table this morning; we read and discussed the 7th step. I've read this step several times before...but today....today it hit me different. It hit me how powerfully it speaks of God. I usually have a highlighter with me for the study groups and prior to today; I hadn't highlighted this step (at all!). Today, I went crazy highlighting and the passages were just slapping me in the face, left and right. I just wanted to share with you all a few of the things that struck me so powerfully, it about knocked me out of my chair.

p. 71 "...For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.

In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living. Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life."

p. 72 "This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced another bad result. 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.

For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility. It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair."

p. 73 "So it is that we first see humility as a necessity. But this is the barest beginning. To get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole life-time geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once."

p. 74 "This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing. Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was always our solution. Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us."

p. 75 "We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility." Let me repeat that... "We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility." Ouch, that one hurt.... "...It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: 'Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.'"

p. 76 "...We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centerred 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. The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone."
================================
The ones on pages 75-76 are the ones that really struck me. This entire chapter is excellent. I picked out the highlights that are most meaningful to me right now (despite my cute little 3 year old distraction (HA HA)!!).

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centerred 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.
This is pretty powerful, atleast to me it is. I never could have dreamed that I am as fearful as I am. I did an experiment a few months ago...I did a quickie "fear inventory". Couldn't believe how many things I do fear. Many of which - I just keep to myself. I have been trying to consciously be aware of when I get angry, mad, sad, hurt...usually has to do with fear that I will lose something/someone or I won't get what I want. Yep, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly... (seems pretty dog-goned S-L-O-W to me most of the time!!!).

"We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility." About that whole bludgeoning part....that explains why I wait until it hurts so dog-gone bad before I do something about it....hmmmmm.

Anyway, any more discussion...your favorite passages...identify...relate with...feel free to add them!!!
Jen

[Peter]

Nothing to add really Jen, except to say that I know that sense of "awakening" when suddenly another piece falls into place....it,s as if after all these years I can finally nod my head and say..."yes, I understand now...."

[Sheryl85]

Dear Jen,

You discovered something that I did a few years ago. Someone keeps going into my (AA) books and writing new things for me to discover! That must be it, because surely that was never there the last time I read that passage. Seriously, I know exactly what you mean. I go back and read again areas that for some reason I had overlooked in the past. Maybe it’s because we’ve matured and it means much more to us at this time in our sobriety. It could be something else that I’ll touch on in a minute.

When I studied step seven I started to realize that the old personality has to die before the new personality can emerge. When I ask God to remove those defects of character, I am letting him take the “old” away so that it can be replaced by the good elements of my new personality. The past few steps have enabled me to catalog what the bad or defective elements were so that I can know what wasn’t working in my life. And most of the time I find it has to do with what you were talking about… that fear factor. For me it was usually due to something I was doing trying to offset the fact that I didn’t get my way. (I was resentfully because I didn’t get my way. I was angry because I didn’t get my way. I was lustful because I didn’t get my way. I was envious because I didn’t get my way. Me, Me, Me, I, I, I!) I have to humble myself before my God and admit I have been a selfish and self-centered person and I need His help to change. I need Him to help me realize that true happiness comes to those people who do His will and who do for others … like the prayer says, “grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive…” When I seek to be of benefit to others I find that I am the most content with life. In step twelve, which we are studying right now in our step study, it talks about this same thing and how even the simple things like our jobs take on a whole new meaning and satisfaction if we look at it as an opportunity to be helpful to others instead of just a means of making money.

You are doing something very important for your program and here is the point I was getting at earlier.The reason why you feel you are seeing these things for the first time is because you are studying the literature and not just reading it. There IS a difference between the two. When I read it, I gain information. When I study it, I gain enlightenment.

Just a thought...

[findingout]

Good stuff Jen

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centerred 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.

I am thinking this morning that my real unsatisfied demand, my real fear, was that life was passing me by and that there was something pretty basic that I was missing. Other people I knew, some with more material things and some with less, just seemed to know something I didn't and I could never figure out what the heck it was. For me, that something turned out to be serenity. I never had it. There was the false serenity that came from the bottle but that only lasted as long as I was drunk and it wasn't even serenity, it was not caring.

I'm also thinking that a large external source of my unsatisfied demands is our culture's relentless focus on "What's new?" instead of "What's good?" and my willingness to play along with that game. As long as I allowed myself to be distracted by the latest shiny toy, the latest fad, the latest crisis, the latest weather, the latest whatever, I could temporarily ignore the hollowness I felt inside. But that hollowness never went away, it was just drowned out by the noise and when things got quiet, usually when I was alone, the size of that emptiness was overwhelming. So I tried to fill it with alcohol and in the end I ran out of hours in the day to drink and the emptiness only got bigger.

I just don't feel that way today. The steps and all the other things that I have been doing to stay sober have filled in that emptiness in a way that alcohol never could.

One Love, One Heart,
Tony

[Five]

Originally Posted by findingout

Good stuff Jen



I am thinking this morning that my real unsatisfied demand, my real fear, was that life was passing me by and that there was something pretty basic that I was missing. Other people I knew, some with more material things and some with less, just seemed to know something I didn't and I could never figure out what the heck it was. For me, that something turned out to be serenity. I never had it. There was the false serenity that came from the bottle but that only lasted as long as I was drunk and it wasn't even serenity, it was not caring.

I'm also thinking that a large external source of my unsatisfied demands is our culture's relentless focus on "What's new?" instead of "What's good?" and my willingness to play along with that game. As long as I allowed myself to be distracted by the latest shiny toy, the latest fad, the latest crisis, the latest weather, the latest whatever, I could temporarily ignore the hollowness I felt inside. But that hollowness never went away, it was just drowned out by the noise and when things got quiet, usually when I was alone, the size of that emptiness was overwhelming. So I tried to fill it with alcohol and in the end I ran out of hours in the day to drink and the emptiness only got bigger.

I just don't feel that way today. The steps and all the other things that I have been doing to stay sober have filled in that emptiness in a way that alcohol never could.

One Love, One Heart,
Tony

Lovely prose Finding Out - so crisp and clear and full of sense. Thanks.

[requiredfield]

Originally Posted by findingout

I'm also thinking that a large external source of my unsatisfied demands is our culture's relentless focus on "What's new?" instead of "What's good?" and my willingness to play along with that game.

Wow....that's amazing. And something I NEVER thought of before. At times when people ask me what's new... My response is always "Same old", and until now it never dawned on me how empty and ungrateful I start to feel after speaking those very words... It snaps me right back into my old way of negative thinking....

Hopefully, now that I know... next time someone asks me that I'll rephrase that question to myself as "What's good".

Thanks