“Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.” (Page 67)

“Most of us think we know what our problem is; but do we really? One way to discover its real nature is to write it out in detail. Putting it into words on paper, where we can look at it and correct it as our attitudes change, can be most helpful in making us see it clearly.” (ODAT, 14 April)

Once I put everything on paper, I realise that the totality of the list of grievances does not explain why I am aggrieved.

Forgiveness is based chiefly on the realisation that, ‘no, not that’. The ‘that’ is not the reason.

Behind everything is a disquiet, a barely perceptible wrongness of things, whose elusiveness is so alarming in its unknowability that it’s easier to create present enemies. A real monster is less frightening than an unseen force.

What does one do with the unseen force? Sit squarely in reality and say, ‘come at me’. There is nothing there. It has absolutely nothing on one.

Sometimes a situation gets messed up and complicated, and a simple Step Ten (page 84) or Step Eleven (Page 86) is not cutting it. Adopting the Step Four instructions on pages 63 to 67 works.

Here’s a summary of those pages.

Make a list of every person, institution (i.e. organisation), or principle (i.e. idea) that bothers me in the situation.

Then write, for each one, a bullet-pointed list of ‘causes’, i.e. the thing the person or the institution did. Each cause should be five to ten words or so. With principles, there’s no cause to write: the principle itself suffices. It should be concrete, clear, simple. Facts.

Then tick-box which of the seven areas of self is affected (pride—what they think of me, self-esteem—what I think of me, personal and sex relations—the interactions between others and me, pocketbooks—finances, security—needs, ambitions—wants). Use initials (e.g. P, SE) for speed.

Now run through the bottom of page 65 to the top of 67 and apply those pages to these people, institutions, or principles.

Then forgive them. Use the page 67 prayer. Instead of saying that they’re ‘sick’ (which has different connotations in modern English), say, ‘they can’t see’, ‘they’re going through a lot’, ‘they are having a hard time’, ‘they struggle with life’, or something similarly understanding, but without being patronising or looking down on them.

When you’re done forgiving them, answer the following questions:

(1) Mistakes—where my thinking / behaviour is wrong

(2) Selfishness—where I put myself first and shouldn’t have

(3) Dishonesty—lies, scheming, self-deception

(4) Self-seeking—what I am after

(5) Fear—what I’m frightened of

(6) Blame—where I set the ball rolling or made it worse

(7) Faults—main character defects at play

(8) Wrongs—harms.

Then share with someone.

Then make amends.

Then ask God how to look at the situation instead and what to do instead.

“to practice these principles in all our affairs” (Page 59, Big Book)

How do I address a difficulty? Practise these principles in all my affairs! How? I start with inventory.

Resentments

1. Name

2. Cause

3. Affects my (personal relations, sex relations, pride, self-esteem, pocketbooks, security, ambitions, fear)

Then let go and forgive.

Moral inventory

4. Mistakes

5. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened?

6. Where were we to blame?

7. Faults [= defects]

8. Wrongs [= harms]

Fears

9. List them

Then let go and trust God.

Sex (if relevant)

10. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate?

11. Whom had we hurt?

12. Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness?

13. Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead?

It’s not as hard as one thinks.

“It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.” (Page 66, Big Book)

The first time through the Steps, one can be entirely excused for having a plethora of resentments, because, after all, one has never been shown how not to have them.

Sometimes a couple of goes through the Steps are necessary to really learn the lessons.

The programme proper starts on page 63. By page 67, a universal, comprehensive, and effective solution to resentment has been provided. In Steps Ten and Eleven, resentment is then prevented from gaining a foothold.

A reminder of the solution—accept everything as it is, treat others with pity, patience, and tolerance, and seek only to do God’s will. Not complicated. No exceptions.

A similar story can be told with fear: once we’ve got the method on page 68 of eliminating fear, the job is simply to implement that and keep it up.

It’s quite right that one does inventory over time, but it should be recalled that the getting-rid-of-resentment bit of Step Four is not actually part of the moral inventory: resentment is the defensive shield that must be eliminated before the inventory proper can be done.

My inventories therefore focus almost entirely on attitude and behaviour and do not involve endless elaborate lists of resentments. The moral inventory might note that I have been resentful and fearful, but the ‘mental content’ of such resentments and fears is irrelevant, except to note the area of my life in which I have not been trusting God and have developed a dependence on something material. Resentment and fear, of course, are but two of scores of defects, no more important in themselves than fawning, competitiveness, or prodigality, to name but three at random. The only point in going through resentments and fears systematically the first few times through the Steps is to learn the lessons of their absurdity, futility, and vanity—in both senses of the latter word.

When, on approaching a quarterly or periodic inventory, I have discovered significant resentment and fear, something must have gone very badly wrong. I had not learned the lessons properly in the first place or there had been a deliberate rejection of the programme and its ideas in one or more areas of my life. Rather than endless writing—or in fact any writing beyond the single words ‘resentment’ and ‘fear’—the advice received was quite rightly to proceed immediately to the God-based solutions on pages 67 and 68 to resentment and fear, respectively (surrender, forgiveness, and trust) and systematically banish such thinking, starting right then and there. Immediately, the resentment and fear started to lift.

For a while, until I got the hang of this, year after year, I would brandish great lists of resentments, bragging of quite how many I had discovered. I was proud of myself, thinking I was being a Very Good Boy and doing a Very Good Job. In fact, I was making something of an exhibition of myself.

The drinker, coming too, might find himself surrounded by milk bottles full of cigarette butts and worse, but if someone five years sober finds such items in his rooms, he has perhaps been living like a drunk. Just so with resentment and fear. I was living like a drunk at fifteen years, from an emotional point of view.

Such childish pursuits had to be gotten rid of and then kept at bay, not gradually stored up for each round of lavish and self-indulgent self-examination.

I’ve learned to pull myself up short at the firstly inkling of resentment and fear and God-squash them. Termites. Cockroaches. Step on them. And to have the grace to look very slightly ashamed if I’m caught indulging them.

“Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.” (Page 64, Big Book)

What we find in Step Four is not us: it is what is blocking us from God. Our defects of character are not what we are but are what we’re not. That’s why we don’t need to counterbalance them with assets to make ourselves feel better. They’re no more who we are than our defects are who we are.

Defects are defective beliefs, thinking, and behaviour. They’re garments. They’re not the body, the substance of the person.

Why can’t we just ‘stop being selfish’?

I become attached to the beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, and start to think, erroneously, they’re me, my identity, the essence of who I am.

This is part of the answer as to why selfishness, once embedded, has such a foothold.

It is also in the nature of selfishness to protect itself. Like a parasite, it incentivises the host through rewards and punishments to refrain from expelling it.

To have selfishness removed, I need to detach from it, or the pain of the removal will cause me to resist the divine removal process.

Detachment is achieved partly through the observation that takes place in Steps Four through Nine.

The observer is not the observed. In becoming the observer, I stop being the observed.

I then see the horror of selfishness for what it is, and selfishness’s wiles have no further hold over me.

The detachment process complete, the removal can take place without great pain to the host.

Good inventory is:

Accurate (true to the facts)

Clear (makes immediate sense)

Coherent (hangs together logically)

Concrete (no jargon, no imagery, not abstract)

Concise (short as possible, free of repetition)

Consistent (one part with another)

Thorough (covers everything)

Specific (not general)

Acronym: ACTS

Once it's written, check it's all of these.

Some of George Orwell’s principles on how to write well:

• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use ... a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

These are very helpful for inventory, e.g.

“Mrs Jones. She’s a nut—she snubbed me. She committed her husband for drinking. He’s my friend. She’s a gossip.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

When I follow these principles, the inventory is quick, easy, and clear.

"A negative thought is any thought of failure, disappointment, or trouble; any thought of criticism, or spite, or jealousy, or condemnation of others, or self-condemnation; any thought of sickness or accident; or, in short, any kind of limitation. In practice you will never have any trouble in knowing whether a given thought is positive or negative. Even if your brain tries to deceive you, your heart will whisper the truth." (Emmet Fox)

Any negative thought can form the basis for an entry in a resentment inventory.

Sometimes people say they have few resentments.

If resentment is defined as the generation of a negative reaction in response to something, then the above assertion is untrue.

There are hundreds a day.

The etymology of resentment is not about feeling again but feeling strongly in response to something.

The re is the re of rebound rather than reupholster.

To rebound is to bounce off. To resent is to feel off.

“We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.” (Chapter 5, ibid.)

Writing a detailed Step Four and getting input on the detail during the process rewires my mind. There is simply not time to cover the detail adequately in a single Step Five conversation.

I proceeded from my first Step Five relieved but with my world of perception and interpretation largely intact.

On the other hand, in a single Step Five conversation, a broad overview helps right-size the past and me, hence the relief.

This is why I practise and advocate both a sponsor’s close involvement in the Step Four writing process and running through a summary in Step Five with a few trusted AA friends.

In this way, both rewiring and right-sizing can be achieved.

“So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Sometimes people say, “I’m doing inventory on [insert name]”. Of course, one isn’t. One is doing inventory on oneself.

So why does one have to write about other people at start of the Step Four?

If the kitchen is a mess, yet one has been commanded to go in and cook a meal, one must clear the kitchen: the resentment must be cleared first in order that one can write sober and sound inventory.

This resentment inventory, apparently about others, reveals one’s own values, beliefs, and attitudes and, if one investigates further, the ego’s cherished gameplan, partly concealed as it is below the surface, like the coils of a sea monster.

When I’m doing in inventory on Sally or Cheryl, I’m really doing inventory on me. 

Sometimes, with our busy modern lives, with the demands of home, work, and community, we simply don’t have time to do a full moral inventory, yet problems are piling up, and we know something major needs to change.

This is where InstaFour comes in. InstaFour has a number of highly nutritious ingredients, namely the defects that will appear on the Step Four of any respectable person, whether alcoholic, addict, or Al-Anon. Crack open a can of InstaFour, today, and you’ll have a full awareness of the major shortcomings that are eating your lunch and causing all of the fear, resentment, depression, exhaustion, and interpersonal conflict in your life.

Ingredients: Self-reliance, defiance, personal ambition, attention-seeking, obstinacy, vanity, touchiness, self-absorption, self-pity, gloom, thrill-seeking, comfort-seeking, sloth, selfishness, self-justification, and pettiness.

Note that InstaFour will not take the place of a full Step Four but can be very satisfying for those in-between times.

Sometimes, I rush at step work and do an imperfect job (to say the least), either ignoring or overriding instructions, suppressing possible avenues of investigation, cutting corners under the guise of ‘keeping it simple’, wanting at all costs the process to be over, but with the belief I have actually completed the mission. I will justify this on the grounds that I am keen, committed to the programme, and the good student sitting at the front of the bus.

The truth of the situation is that I am performing the task in question in order to avoid the task in question. I do not want to look. I do not want to sit with the discomfort of seeing my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour (and the consequences thereof in my life and in that of others) in a stark light. I do not want to sit with confusion or uncertainty. I do not want to be trepidatious of all of the dark areas lying beyond immediate sight.

The two ways of avoiding the process are to avoid the process altogether or to give the appearance of keenness whilst refusing to really look and see and satisfying myself with pat, rote, borrowed, glib, self-abasing, self-indulgent, bloodless, analytical, historical, or wordy answers or observations, all of which are different ways of avoiding calling the spade the spade.

The solution is to sit with the material until it settles down, ensuring that it is not only concise and punchy but also complete, accurate, and entirely honest. Only once my eyes have completely accustomed themselves to the dark can I be sure that I am really seeing everything in the room.

Progress is measured not by how quickly I ‘get through the Steps’ or how many boxes I can tick or how many paragraphs I can read or how many third columns I can write but by the fundamental change in how I think that flows from these exercises. A month spent on one inventory item, if that changes how I think, is worth more than a month spent on one hundred inventory items that leaves me completely unchanged in my approach to belief, thought, and action.

Sometimes I have a cast around and discover I ‘have no resentments’. That may be the case, in the sense of grinding grievances that are preoccupying me.

That’s not the point, though. The magnitude of the error in one’s thinking is not measured by the magnitude of the resultant emotion. The point of the resentment inventory, sure, is to get rid of resentment. But the great side benefit of the resentment inventory is its ability to reveal pathways from the surface (emotion) to the underlying defects of belief and thinking, which are the source of all one’s problems.

To quote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on the subject of Step Eight:

“Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things which were superficially wrong with us, to see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we have found, will pay—and pay handsomely.”

To quote something else:

“There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.”

Unless one has a Christlike equanimity to all phenomena crossing the mental screen (which I have not), unless one has genuinely eliminated all emotion (which I have not: and this would not even be desirable), there is always plenty of material to work with.

How does one arrive at a good list of names?

Well, I start by understanding that I am feeling things all day, unless I am presently drugged, dissociated, deluded, dishonest, or dead. There are no neutral thoughts:

“Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.”

All day long, little feelings, as well as big ones, are flickering across the screen. The strength of the tremor, as it is felt, has got nothing to do with the size of the earthquake or the tectonic plates moving below the earth’s surface: distance from the epicentre is the key parameter in determining the strength of the tremor. Feelings. What feelings am I actually having? And what are the phenomena (people, institutions, principles, groups, categories, thoughts, ideas) triggering them?

Any negative feeling. Any negative judgement. Any flicker of the arrow on the dial.

Here’s the exercise I use:

I watch the emotions. I watch out for:

• Any negative emotion
• Any negative judgement
• Any fear
• Any aversion
• Any exasperation
• Any disappointment
• Any incredulity
• Any blank dread
• Any sour resignation

... and increase the list to include one’s own personal list of go-to negative conditions.

Whenever such a feeling arises, I immediately write down the person and the thing they said or did, or the institution or organisation and what it said or did, or the principle (idea, concept, ideological position) that irked.

No matter that the smarmy little super-ego, so spiritual, swiftly swoops into rationalise or spiritualise away the emotion. Let’s catch the blighter before it’s stamped out, expelled, or pushed down. Pin it. Then, by all means, say a little prayer and return to being nice.

I can always benefit from a resentment inventory. It does not need to take long, with some practice, and the rewards are immense.

Sometimes people can't find anything to write about in the first column of the resentment inventory.

This may well because there are few, if any, people they resent very gravely.

That's not the point, though. The magnitude of the error in one's thinking is not measured by the magnitude of the resultant emotion. The point of the resentment inventory, sure, is to get rid of resentment. But the great side benefit of the resentment inventory is its ability to reveal pathways from the surface (emotion) to the underlying defects of belief and thinking, which are the source of all one's problems.

To quote Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on the subject of Step Eight:

Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism, no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can deepen our insight. We can go far beyond those things which were superficially wrong with us, to see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole pattern of our lives. Thoroughness, we have found, will pay—and pay handsomely.

A short list suggests an avoidance of this examination. The absence of grave resentment is irrelevant.

To quote something else:

3 There are no small upsets. 4 They are all equally disturbing to my peace of mind.

To write a good resentment inventory therefore, a good twenty names should be easy to come up, regardless of one's spiritual condition. For someone in need of doing the Steps, a good fifty to two hundred is usual. From that, sure, whittle down a selection for close examination. But the evidence is lying all around, ready for the picking.

Unless one has acquired a Christlike equanimity to all phenomena crossing the mental screen, unless one has genuinely eliminated all emotion, there is always plenty of material to work with.

How does one arrive at a good list of names?

Well, start by understanding that one is feeling things all day, unless one is drugged, dissociated, deluded, dishonest, or dead inside. There are no neutral thoughts:

W-pI.16.3. Besides your recognizing that thoughts are never idle, salvation requires that you also recognize that every thought you have brings either peace or war; either love or fear. 2 A neutral result is impossible because a neutral thought is impossible. 3 There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive, but equally unreal. 4 We will practice this idea in many forms before you really understand it.

All day long, little feelings, as well as big ones, are flickering across the screen. The strength of the tremor, as it is felt, has got nothing to do with the size of the earthquake or the tectonic plates moving below the earth's surface: distance from the epicentre is the key parameter in determining the strength of the tremor. Feelings, feelings, feelings. What are they? And what are the phenomena (people, institutions, principles, groups, categories, thoughts, ideas) triggering them?

Any negative feeling. Any negative judgement. Any flicker of the arrow on the dial.

A while ago, I decided to see if I could come with 20 names on the hoof, with no warning, in the middle of a perfectly normal day, at a time in my life when I was feeling generally very good and had no significant problems, and how long it would take. I looked back over the previous 24 hours, and it took around 5 minutes to come up with 20 names of people, institutions, principles, etc., that had caused a flicker of the dial. And when I wrote out some inventory, just for the sake of it, I found out a lot about the current condition of my belief system.

Here's an exercise for anyone struggling with column 1:

Watch the emotions. Watch out for:

• Any negative emotion
• Any negative judgement
• Any fear
• Any aversion
• Any exasperation
• Any disappointment
• Any incredulity
• Any blank dread
• Any sour resignation

... and increase the list to include one's own personal list of go-to negative conditions.

Whenever such a feeling arises, immediately write down the person and the thing they said or did, or the institution or organisation and what it said or did, or the principle (idea, concept, ideological position) that irked.

Try this for 14 days.

No matter that the smarmy little super-ego, so spiritual, swiftly swoops into rationalise or spiritualise away the emotion. Let's catch the blighter before it's stamped out. Pin it. Then, by all means, say a little prayer and return to being nice.

See how many names you come up with then.

Sometimes, character defects are described as coping mechanisms that no longer work. Apparently a merciful neutralisation of condemnation of others and self, this actually deletes the domain of morality altogether. There is no such thing as selfishness, malice, or bullying: the violent are merely not coping terribly well; those that deliberately plot for the downfall of others—lying, distorting, extorting, and manipulating for selfish or retributive ends—are only defending themselves because they are wounded ('hurt people hurt people'), and so on.

Tosh. There is such a thing as right and wrong, and that is the precise content of the moral (not psychological) inventory of Step Four:

"When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight." (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The inventory of course has psychological elements, but it must be not be reduced to a forensic tracking of beliefs, thinking, and behaviour back to origins lying outside the individual (the childhood influences), stripping the individual of moral agency and responsibility. This renders the individual a mere puppet of the past, a broken piece of software, a tree bent and contorted by decades of cold, northerly winds, an algorithm, less than human, actually not a human at all: a cipher.

This rendering is not a mere theoretical possibility. One encounters it constantly. I had a conversation recently with an adult (who had been an adult for a very long time) who said that he was not able to be honest because of 'abandonment trauma' (NB he had not been left in a wicker basket by the side of the road as a child or anything remotely as dramatic as that): a pure denial of moral responsibility (for honesty, in sane adults of sound mind, is a question of moral choice, not capability), with the blame placed squarely on an overdramatised incident from decades ago.

One could respond: there are behaviours that appear to have little or no moral import and could be cast as psychological coping or defence mechanisms, for instance excessive focus on academic success to gain favour or forefend condemnation, but even these are moral in substance: there's the self-centred preoccupation with the perceptions of others, which is pride, there's reliance on self not God, there's the abandonment of activities in favour of God or others in order to pursue those selfish ends. Whilst the assessment of moral behaviour in children is tempered by the fact that they are not yet fully formed on any level, hence the usual lenience exercised towards children who have committed crimes, this does not render the behaviour in question, or the motivations behind it, amoral, that is to say beyond the bounds of morality, a mere behavioural maladjustment. Children can indeed be 'naughty' and not just 'misunderstood'.

Now, a distinction must be made between the person and the behaviour. The person is ultimately innocent, holy, etc. It is the ego that has them held hostage and has them believing that the ego's goals are their own. But that does not detract firstly from the moral horror of what the ego is capable of nor from the agency the person is morally responsible to reassert. The failure to do is a moral failing, but that moral failing, which can be grave, does not infect the substance of the person, does not lend the person their character.

In this way, I can retain my full moral faculties whilst exercising forgiveness of the person, really a refusal to condemn the person for the behaviour or see them as anything less than a child of God. The person (the other, and I myself) retains the capability for godliness on earth.

"We cannot recognise in ourselves the faults we criticise in others." (ODAT, 5 September)

This is why I have to get rid of resentment before I get round to the self-examination part of inventory.

Inventory is not about resentment.

Inventory is what I do once resentment is eliminated.

The system must be flushed.

For years, I've been 'expanding' the third column of the resentment inventory (the bit where we say what is affected: pride, self-esteem, personal relations, etc.) with supplementary questions, to really maximise the benefit and learn how it's my Little Plans and Designs in the seven areas of self that are the root cause of my resentments.

As an alternative to asking those questions at that point, it's possible, of course, to simply state which areas are affected at this point, and to leave the investigation of what is behind those seven areas of self (what I'm after: self-seeking; what I'm avoiding: fear) until the page 67 questions, on self-seeking and fear.

There are now folders of worksheets that incorporate this. If you want to wait until page 67 to ask these questions (which is more in line with the actual Big Book), then you might find these useful:

HTML versions

Markdown versions

PDF versions

My first Al-Anon meeting was in September 1995. I've tried to 'do the Steps in Al-Anon' but have always ended up going back to the AA materials for the actual mechanics of the Steps, including on the problems Al-Anon addresses.

There's a specific Al-Anon workbook on Step Four, called Blueprint for Progress, which I find overly specific and extremely laborious, but without bringing clarity in any systematic way.

Paths to Recovery contains a set of questions on each Step but does not provide a systematic template for Step Four, and many of the questions presented for each Step I find self-indulgent, woolly, opaque in how they're supposed to be answered, and unclear in purpose and relevance to the step in question.

The steps are to be taken, not analysed or pondered in the abstract. Their result is experience, not verbiage, or journaling pages.

For the Fourth Step, I actually use the materials developed in the fellowship that codified the Steps,  AA, written by the person who codified them, Bill Wilson. Clear, simple, and comprehensive. Since the Step Four is essentially a mirror, when I, as an Al-Anon, look in that mirror, I see myself: the Al-Anon. It's a moral inventory, not an alcoholic inventory, and such inventories are by their nature universal and usable by anyone to good effect.

The materials of AA are not Conference-Approved Literature in Al-Anon, so I don't mention the above in Al-Anon meetings per se, although I will do so one to one (and obviously here as well).

The general advice is get a sponsor to take one through the steps. They're not something to do on one's own. 

Sometimes people suggest that, in Step Four, we are to spend as much time listing assets as defects. It's a lovely idea, but so is baking a cake or taking a dog for a walk. Being nice doesn't make it part of a Step.

Let's look at the context:

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Note that, in Step Five, we're conveying the exact nature of our wrongs (not our rights). Steps Six and Seven are concerned, respectively, with defects of character and shortcomings, not with virtues. Steps Eight and Nine are about harms to others and amends for those harms, not good deeds. Even when we get to Step Ten, we're to admit when we're wrong, not when we're right.

It's clear that writing about assets in Step Four serves no purpose within the scope of the Steps.

People might feel a bit bad about their defects. This is quite right. The conscience causes pain on apprehension of wrongdoing (whether in thought, word, or deed, thought being the most important, because it forms the only basis there is for word and deed). The pain prompts the person to do something about it. There's no need to take the pain away artificially by relativising the wrongs. Instead, seek to change the beliefs, thinking, and behaviour that are the root cause, with God's help.

THE BASICS

In the second column of the Step Four resentment inventory, I write about what someone did that I object to. Here’s a good example:

Name: [agency worker]

Charges:

• Did not send purchase order
• Requested early delivery
• Did not acknowledge reply
• Did not acknowledge delivery
• Underpaid me

Note that none of these charges are more than five words. The total is eighteen words (less than the nineteen-word maximum in the examples in the Big Book).

PRESENTATION

A good way of presenting the second column is set out below. Background should be included only if necessary.

Name: ...

Background:

• ...
• ...
• ...

Charges:

• ...
• ...
• ...

TIPS

• Stick to people wherever possible
• At a pinch write about institutions
• When tempted to write about principles, try and come at the issue with a people example
• The background should be sufficient to understand the charge(s)
• But it should contain the minimum possible information to do so
• Background is certainly necessary where the charge is an action that is normally pleasant or neutral, so the reader understands why this pleasant or neutral action is eliciting outrage or offence
• Use dashed points for multiple elements of the background
• Do not repeat the charge in the background
• Separate each charge as a different item
• Use dashed points for multiple charges
• Do not compound the charges: if you have used ‘and’ you have probably compounded
• Do not compound charges with additional conditions (e.g., beginning with ‘despite’ or ‘whilst’: such background material should be relegated to the background or dropped)
• Do not add the consequences: just state the actions; there’s room for the consequences later
• If it’s very wordy, simplify it
• Don’t get wrapped up in detail: go for the essence
• If an outsider would not understand the detail without extensive briefing, maybe drop it altogether and write about something else

An exception

Normally, we write what the chap(ess) did or what they said. Sometimes, that produces an excessively complex result that would be comprehensible only to someone else who was embedded in that situation and au fait with the politics, the set-up, the history, etc. Sometimes, we are insinuating what someone might mean behind what they say, but an outsider simply will not make the same leap that we are making without being led along the forest trail.

How to deal with this: leap over the detail to the substance but retain the link to the real world in parentheses.

For example:

• Implemented unfair procedures (e.g. [a short phrase to signal the example])
• Insinuated he was management material ([actual words said])
• Thinks he is entitled to my time ([actual act or words said])

The first of these generalises complex events.
The second of these leaps over the words to the message.
The third of these represents my speculation based on their words or actions.

This enables the reader to get to the nub of the resentment without losing the breadcrumb trail to the ‘real world’. When these situations are examined later on in the process, the legitimacy of the generalisation, the validity of the insinuation, and the plausibility of the speculation will be challenged. For the work to proceed without presenting as a valid premise what might be a wild fancy, we need both elements: the essence of the charge plus the words, event, or situation that formed the basis for the charge.

This option should be used as a last resort, however. Some writers of the Step will be tempted to present all charges in this way, thus unnecessarily complicating the inventory and bogging down the process.

Remember, the inventory is an opportunity to take a few examples of one’s grievances to unpack and dissolve them. Which we choose is neither here nor there in itself, as we will be forgiving everyone for everything anyway (which is a spiritual not an intellectual act), and everyone has many more grievances than there is time to write about, so we are always being selective. It is usually possible, therefore, to restrict the writing in Step Four (on twenty people, with a maximum of five charges per person, producing a cap of 100 grievances, which is plenty as a corpus of worked examples) to simple, straightforward situations. Simple cases best illustrate the law, and simple grievances best illustrate the anatomy of resentment, which is really what we are after.

This exception should therefore be applied only exceptionally, and, if the resentments against a particular person are too elusive or manifold to capture simply, maybe pick someone else and write about them.

AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT NOT TO DO

Have a look at my five charges above. For a laugh, let us look at what the wrong way to write about these might be:

Name: [agency worker]

Background:

• Sent me a piece of work with a short deadline that turned out to be more extensive than anticipated

Charges:

• Asked me to proceed with the job without sending the purchase order, which meant that the price was not finally agreed
• Sent me a message asking if a job that was already subject to a tight deadline could be delivered even earlier
• When I politely replied saying that was not possible because the job was much bigger and taking longer, he did not reply
• When I delivered the job early, he did not even acknowledge the receipt of the delivery
• When I asked for the purchase order to reflect the actual rather than the anticipated work, he said that it would reflect the original offer

Why must we be thorough?

The surgeon, in cleaning out a wound, removes all foreign bodies.

Foreign bodies cause pathological reactions in the body.

The defects and unmade amends are foreign bodies.

They do not belong.

That's why we feel bad about them.

We're having diseased reactions to what does not belong.

'Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the levelling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation.' (Big Book)

'Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.' (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

For anyone discovering in their Step Four that they have many demands that have not been met.

 

I heard a speaker recently who was very good, had clearly worked the programme, and had taken the trouble to come a long way to share his story with us, which effort I recognise as a wonderful demonstration of the programme.

'Mistakes': How am I seeing this wrong? How should I see this instead? What did I do I shouldn't have done? What did I fail to do I should have done?

'Selfishness': Where did I (unreasonably) put myself ahead of others?

'Dishonesty': What lies did I tell? What did I fail to disclose that I should have? How did I misrepresent? How was I underhanded? How did I deceive myself?

'Self-seeking': What was I after?

'Fear': What was I scared of losing or not getting?

'Blame': Where did I cause trouble or make things worse?

Arrogance; avarice; contempt; cowardice; cruelty; disobedience; distrust; domination; envy; gluttony; impenitence; indifference; jealousy; lack of discipline; lust; malice; over-ambition; over-sensitiveness; presumption; pride; prudery; pugnacity; retaliation; sentimentality; shame (hurt pride); sloth; snobbery; timidity; vanity; violation of confidence; wastefulness.

'Wrongs': What did I do that harmed others?

Step Four is a personal moral inventory, in short an inventory of where my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour are wrong.  

However, the first few exercises involve examining resentment: what other people have done and how it has affected me. This has nothing to do with where I am wrong. it is simply recording my emotional upset, the apparent tripwires, and where the arrows are landing. There is then some consideration of the nature of resentment, its futility and fatality, followed by some spiritual exercises (page 67) to eliminate resentment. Then and only then am I in a position to commence the inventory itself, starting with: 'Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.'  

It is from that point onwards that I am actually writing the inventory: the exercises up to that point are clearing my mind and restoring my spirit, raising me to a higher level from where I can actually perform the inventory in a detached, fact-finding way.

Arguably, the material for Step Five starts on page 67: Step Five is about the exact nature of my wrongs, and nothing in the three columns of the resentment inventory clarifies those.

7. trans. To feel oneself injured or insulted by (some act or conduct on the part of another); to show that one is displeased or angry at (some wrong, injury, etc. sustained).

resentful

angry

hurt

threatened

sore

burned up

grudge

injuries

a sense of being interfered with

When the text uses the word 'resentment', take that to include any of these emotional states or responses. The negative feeling need not relate to past events only. The 're-feel' explanation is not entirely harmless in an AA context, as I've heard the argument voiced that it's normal or healthy to react in very strong ways to the events of day-to-day life and that all we need to inventory is 're-felt' emotions, i.e. resentment at past injuries and so on. This is to miss a great chunk of what separates us from God and can actually cause the bulk of our difficulties in everyday life: how we're reacting unhelpfully to people and situations around us in real time.

So, you write a Step Four, you discover you're upset not because of how people behave but because they're not behaving in accordance with your script. Fine. Drop the demands, and you're home, right?

Wrong. Yes, you have to drop the demands, but you can't retreat into a hole. You can't let people steal your phone off the restaurant table, punch you in the face, not pay you what they owe you, or get away with all sorts of other things. So, how do you retain a sense of right and wrong, of what it is legitimate to seek and what it is legitimate to avoid, without blowing a gasket or popping a rivet like Victor Meldrew every five minutes?

The answer has two parts.

Firstly, clean out the ego demands and leave yourself only with the legitimate blueprints.

Ego demands: I want to be richer than everyone! I want everything to be under my complete control! I want everyone to like me the whole time!

Drop 'em.

Then you're left with legitimate blueprints.

For instance:

It's OK to want to work with clients who pay me and are reasonably effective, efficient, and harmonious in their collaboration with me.

It's OK to want a pleasant physical environment at home.

It's OK to want relationship with people who are interesting, emotionally mature, boundaried, and placid.

It's OK to want contractors to do a good job.

It's OK to want your broadband to work.

So how do you want those things (and work for their attainment) without getting upset every time something goes wrong?

By pretending you're a credit controller.

I've run finance departments before.

The credit controller reviews the company's debtors, the people who owe the company money, and tracks payments. There is an objective: Customers should pay on time! The situation is monitored, and if they don't, then a process is activated to remind and then pressurise customers to pay. Eventually you sue them, and if necessary enforce the debts. It's not personal. It's not your money. You're just here to do a job. You go home satisfied at the end of the day because you've performed your role well and kept the processes ticking along nicely. Maybe there are no difficult customers. Maybe most are difficult. Maybe it varies. But you're always fine, because you have no skin in the game.

The job is to treat your life like this. You go to God and ask for God's blueprints. What does God want me to do?

For example I run the home for the family. I monitor all sorts of different parameters. I engage suppliers and contractors. I look out for things that go wrong and seek to fix them. But I'm doing it on God's account not mine. I've got a vision of perfection for how things could be, and seek to work towards that, but I'm content simply with discharging my duties well. If projects go well, great. If they don't, great. It's fine. I have no skin in the game. Because ultimately the only thing that matters is my spirit and my relationship with God: am I being a hollow channel for God to work through me?

So I still get to have a blueprints, except they're God's blueprints, and I still get to monitor reality, matching it against those blueprints (albeit not obsessively any more), except I'm detached because my identity, purpose, and security are not tied up in them. So whatever happens is fine by me.

A demand is a preference with an emotional charge. If I want a fiorentina pizza but they have only a four seasons, and I'm fine with the four seasons, it's a preference. If I'm upset, it's a demand.

Why we drop demands is covered elsewhere. In brief, they're the set-up for resentment and fear.

How do you drop demands (in the sense of a preference with an emotional charge)?

Unreal demands are easy to see through. Wishing the moon were full of cheese or the walls were full of gold is clearly lunatic. There are many things that are wished for that simply are not so.

Unreasonable demands are relatively easy to see through. Wishing for a life of unending leisure is unrealistic and morally dubious, and unending leisure will in any case fail to yield happiness.

'Reasonable' demands are harder.

Let's take one:

For example, my client should pay on time. This is incontrovertibly true. We have a contract, and that is what the client should do.

However, just because the client should pay on time does not mean he will. Legally, we can require him to pay on time. Psychologically, demanding him to is unrealistic. Some people just will not. That's a fact. It's more realistic, therefore, to say that we prefer people to pay on time but recognise that they will not always do so.

This does not mean that we do not take action to bring about timely payment (being careful who we contract with, negotiating and drawing up a contract, sending an invoice on time, sending a reminder on time, suing if necessary). But none of that requires emotional involvement. Setting terms, boundaries, etc. can be done with complete emotional neutrality.

We prefer the client to pay on time, but this preference is not furnished with an emotional charge which results in us being upset if he does not. The preference is also not furnished with an expectation that the preference will be met, so that, if it is not, we are not surprised. To summarise, a preference is a neutral recognition that things might be better a particular way, but without an emotional charge attached to whether they are, and without the unquestioning assumption they will be that way.

When are preferences legitimate?

Some preferences concern doing God's will effectively, efficiently, and harmoniously. These are always legitimate. E.g. we prefer the sponsee to be cooperative, the boss to give clear instructions, the colleague to be pleasant.

Some preferences are personal matters of taste. E.g. fiorentina pizzas.

Some preferences are personal matters of temperament. E.g. being super organised or being super flexible.

Some preferences concern comfort and thrills. E.g. having a nice sofa or bungee-jumping.

Some preferences concern keeping ourselves healthy. E.g. enough sleep, healthy food.

The preferences to be cautious about are those chiefly focused on ego goals: sex, money, power, prestige, and appearance. These easily convert to demands, tend to be addictive, and contribute little to profound happiness.

I have found it is best to treat these latter categories as bonuses dispensed by the Higher Power at the Higher Power's pleasure. It's safe to let them go, as they'll be delivered in some measure as a result of right living.

To sum up:

Drop ego demands.

It's OK to have legitimate preferences.

It's OK to take action to bring about their attainment.

On pages 65–67, the Big Book describes how to get rid of resentment. In the process, it sets out the motivations. What are they?

Quotation	Notes
The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us ...	The implication is maybe that, if we change, we will not be wronged. This can be understood two ways: (1) if we change, our lives change around us, as we are co-creators of our lives (2) even when other people do behave badly, if our wiring is different, they are no longer wronging us: we acquire a defensive shield against the perception of wrong. Remember: it is the seven areas of self which are affected, not us (see page 65), and it is only our attachment to those seven areas of self that cause us to be wronged along with our areas of self.
... and we stayed sore.	If the resentful attitude and thinking persist, our resentful feelings will persist. The feelings come from the thinking and the attitude.
But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got.	If we do not get rid of resentment, things are going to get worse. This means both practically and emotionally.
Our moments of triumph were short-lived.	The gratifying moment of being 'right' is a short-lived triumph indeed. 'Rightness' can concern resentment or fear. Whenever I'm resentful or fearful, I'm actually wrong, not right.
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility ...	Note the word only: resentment leads to nothing but futility and unhappiness. Resentment is pointless: my mental attacks do not achieve anything: they do not stop bad things from happening ...
... and unhappiness.	... but they do make me unhappy.
To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.	We are literally wasting our time. If we're wasting our time, we're wasting our lives.
But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.	This presents the direct link between resentment and death. Resentment comes from trying to sit on God's throne, judging everything in the world as good and evil (rather than sitting in the position of neutrality Step Ten asks us to occupy), and we can't connect to God if we're trying to sit in God's seat. Thus cut off from the only source of direction and power, we seek power from a lower source: alcohol. The protective power of God is not available to hold us back, because we have re-enthroned ourselves. We become our own higher powers. Once we drink (or act out), we might not stop. The death is both figurative and literal: an existence devoid of life or the end of physical existence.
We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us.	If I'm upset, whatever I'm upset at is in control of my emotions. If I'm not in control of my emotions, and my emotions drive my behaviour, whatever I'm upset at is in control of my life. This is also embarrassing.

When other people do things wrong, they're committing errors; they're not committing sins. Sins call for retribution and punishment (mentally or externally). Errors call for clear-up and correction. Errors are neutral. Maybe it's up to me to clear them up and correct them. Maybe not. But that's a tactical question, not a moral one. These principles apply also to my own errors. If the puppy poops on the kitchen floor, you clear it up and train the puppy. You don't get angry at the puppy or punish the puppy. That wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't help. It's the same when anyone behaves badly. Their programming is wrong. Usually we can't change people's programming, but we can accept and work round it. If it can't be worked round, they'll have to go and play elsewhere, or we'll have to go and play elsewhere. If even those aren't possible, we'll just have to accept that error just exists: it's a function of the natural world, and we're part of the natural world. Things disintegrate. People get things wrong. It's not good; it's not bad; it just is.

• Pride is putting self in the place of God as the center and objective of our life, or of some department thereof. It is the refusal to recognize our status as creatures [i.e. that which has been created by God], dependent on God for our existence, and placed by him in a specific relationship to the rest of his creation.
• Dependence on self rather than on God, with the consequent neglect of the means of grace—sacraments and prayer.
• Failure to recognize our job as a divine vocation, or to offer our work to God. Unwillingness to surrender to and abide in Christ, to let him act in and through us. Failure to offer to God regularly in intercession the persons or causes that have, or should enlist our interest and support.
• Distrust. Refusal to recognize God’s wisdom, providence and love. Worry, anxiety, misgivings, scrupulosity, or perfectionism. Attempts to discern or control the future by spiritualism, astrology, fortune telling or the like. Magic or superstition. Over-sensitiveness. Expectation that others will dislike, reject or mistreat us; over-readiness so to interpret their attitude, or quickness to take offense. Unfounded suspicions. Timidity in accepting responsibility, or cowardice in facing difficulty or suffering. Surrender to feelings of depression, gloom, pessimism, discouragement, self-pity, or fear of death, instead of fighting to be brave, cheerful and hopeful.
• Rejection of God’s known will in favour of our own interests or pleasures.
• Refusal to learn God’s nature or will as revealed in Scripture, expounded in instructions or expert advice, or discernible through prayer, meditation or the reading of religious books. Absorption in our own affairs, leaving little time, energy or interest for the things of God.
• Impenitence. Refusal to search out and face up to our sins, or to confess and admit them before God. Disregard of our sins or pretence that we are better than we are. Self-justification or discounting our sins as insignificant, natural or inevitable. Self-righteous comparison of ourselves with others.
• Shame (hurt pride), sorrow for ourselves because our sins make us less respectable than we like to think we are, or because we fear punishment or injury to our reputation, rather than sorrow for what sin is in the eyes of God. Refusal to admit we were in the wrong or to apologize.
• Vanity. Crediting to ourselves rather than to God our talents, abilities, insights, accomplishments, good works. Refusal to admit indebtedness to others, or adequately to express gratitude for their help. Hypocrisy. Pretence to virtues we do not possess. False humility. Harsh judgments on others for faults we excuse in ourselves.
• Arrogance. Insisting that others conform to our wishes, recognize our leadership, accept our own estimate of our worth. Being overbearing, argumentative, opinionated, obstinate.
• Anger is open rebellion against God or our fellow creatures. Its purpose and desire is to eliminate any obstacle to our self-seeking, to retaliate against any threat to our security, to avenge any insult or injury to our person.
• Resentment. Refusal to discern, accept or fulfil God’s vocation. Dissatisfaction with the talents, abilities or opportunities he has given us. Unwillingness to face up to difficulties or sacrifices. Unjustified rebellion or complaint at the circumstances of our lives. Escape from reality or the attempt to force our will upon it. Transference to God, to our parents, to society, or to other individuals of the blame for our maladjustment; hatred of God, or antisocial behaviour. Cynicism. Annoyance at the contrariness of things; profanity or grumbling.
• Pugnacity. Attack upon another in anger. Murder in deed or desire. Combativeness or nursing of grudges. Injury to another by striking, cursing or insulting him; or by damaging his reputation or property. Quarrelsomeness, bickering, contradiction, nagging, rudeness, or snubbing.
• Retaliation. Vengeance for wrongs real or imagined, or the plotting thereof. Harsh or excessive punishment. Hostility, sullenness or rash judgment. Refusal to forgive, or to offer or accept reconciliation. Unwillingness to love, to do good to, or to pray for enemies. Boycotting or ostracizing another for selfish reasons. Spoiling others’ pleasure by uncooperativeness or disdain, because we have not got our way, or because we feel out of sorts or superior.
• Malice. Ill-will, false accusations, slander, backbiting. Reading false motives into others’ behaviour. Initiation, collection or retailing of gossip. Arousing, fostering or organizing antagonism against others. Unnecessary criticism, even when true. Deliberate annoyance of others, teasing or bullying.

Step Four is like walking through a dark forest. The path is well-lit and unambiguous. Simply proceed and you'll be fine. You're perfectly safe on the path.

However: do not leave the path and wander into the woods.

Don't even stop and gaze, or eyes in the woods will start staring back at you.

Tips for the second column of the resentment inventory in Step Four:

• Keep it concrete: What did they say or do? What did they not say or not do?
• No abstract characterisations, no poetry, no creativity.
• No speculation, interpretation, generalisation, extrapolation, distortion, or exaggeration.
• Maximum of five resentments per person.
• Maximum of twenty people.
• If you insist on putting yourself, God, the ego, the universe, Western Civilisation, etc. on the list, put them last.

The Big Book Step Four resentment inventory asks us to identify precisely what it is that others do that bothers us, and then to examine the area of self that is affected.

A close examination of the results will usually reveal that one has built up a substantial narrative about what happened that bears little resemblance to what actually happened. Also, much of how it supposedly affects the areas of self stems from overblown fiction.

Here are seven mental pests to uncover in this process, and to eliminate from one's thinking:

• Distortion
• Exaggeration
• Unreasonable generalisation
• Unreasonable interpretation
• Unreasonable speculation
• Unreasonable extrapolation
• Personalisation

The ego is invisible.

In some films, there is an invisible entity. The invisible entity is shown by throwing dust over the whole scene, and the shape of the invisible entity shows up, in outline. If you like Star Trek, you'll discover that the tachyon detection grid works in a similar way to reveal cloaked Romulan warships (http://www.starshipexcelsior.com/union_rpg/unitsdefenses/system.html).

When I examine why I'm upset, I invariably find that I'm upset because I have a demand or an expectation. The sum total of the demands and the expectations is the plan for the universe devised by my ego. It is only by examining upset that the ego's global plan can be gradually revealed, and then dropped or redirected.

Step Four is supposed to be a complete moral inventory.

The instructions as they stand in the Big Book will catch most defects (defective beliefs, thoughts, and actions), but there is a gap.

The questions that elicit the defects are chiefly those in the 'fourth column' (the questions in the middle of page 67) and those in the sex inventory (on page 69). However, if an area of one's life does not trigger substantial resentment and does not involve sex, defects can be missed because there is no question that elicits them.

To remedy this, take the page 67 questions, which according to the Book should be applied to the items on the resentment list, and apply them to the following areas (in as far as they are not covered elsewhere in the inventory):

(1) Work and study
(2) Community and society
(3) Religion and God
(4) Money.

This can then act as the basis for a wholesale redesign of these areas under God's guidance.

Instruction 4—Bridge passage

When we were finished, we considered it carefully. The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. (65–66)

To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. As in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived. (66:0)

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harbouring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. (66:1)

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be dubious luxury of normal men, but for the alcoholics, these things are poison.

We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrongdoings of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, ‘This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.’ (66:2–4)

·         What might be motivating them

·         Have I ever had similar motivations?

·         Am I not like them?

‘This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.’ (67:0)

‘This may be a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.’

‘This man is as he is. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.’

We avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn’t treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. (67:1)

God, have me avoid retaliation or argument, including in my mind. Have me be helpful. If I cannot be helpful, show me how to take a kindly and tolerant view of this person.

'So we had to get down to causes and conditions.'
'In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper.'
'Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty.'
'If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.'
'it was Dr. Bob’s afternoon off—he had me to the office and we spent three or four hours formally going through the Six-Step program as it was at that time.' ('Alcoholics Anonymous')

It is clear from reports of the early days of AA that what was to become the fourth step inventory was a swift and targeted affair. That is how I do inventory. There is no indication that the resentment inventory be exhaustive, only that it be thorough. The word 'all' does not start to crop up until steps six and eight. What I have discovered in my own inventories is that I do not have 1000 resentments; I have between 5 and 20 that repeat over and over, a theme with many variations.

To recover swiftly from alcoholism, a fourth step that takes a year or a fifth step that takes a month of Sundays is counter-productive and misses the point, which is to find the causes and conditions. My inventories have shown me that I have a small and in fact finite number of causes and conditions. Having discovered those, I needn't repeat myself endlessly. Similar, the fifth step is interested in the exact nature of my wrongs, not every wrong I have ever committed. Sure, I might want to share some of the juicier examples of my theft, verbal viciousness, and cowardice, but recounting the gory details of every one advances me spiritually not one jot.

Excessively long step fours are usually tied up in describing other people's wrongs, and the fact that one's own expectations, demands, fears, judgements, and selfish behaviour are identical from situation to situation is entirely missed. Far from elucidating the problem, overlong confessions tend to obscure the wood for the trees.

Here's an analogy: if you have something stuck to your spectacles, everything will look blurred. It takes just a few examples of items that look blurred to identify the cause: the much glued to the lens. Once the cause has been identified, a thousand more examples reveal no new information.

Similarly, a doctor does not test all of your blood, because a sample is sufficient to find the cause.

The only caveat is that secrets are more like cancerous growths: all must be removed for the cancer not to grow further and metastasize, so anything weighing on my mind must be conveyed, albeit swiftly, in a fifth step.

To sum up, my fourth steps have been honest and thorough, and I have not found it necessary to write hundreds of thousands of words or take more than a couple of hours for a step five. The underlying truth has invariably turned out to be very simple.

The cognitive stage:

The prayer stage:

The action stage:

In the third column of the resentment inventory, we discover that we are unhappy because various people and circumstances are affecting the seven areas of self. Many people stop there.

Virtues 

Flaws 

To anyone who believes in the single fourth step, let's look at this:

"Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step Four. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke."

I do hope none of you run businesses. Perhaps you might take over a business and do a full inventory of the stock when you acquire the business. Great!

But do you never do a full stock take again?

Would you trust a business that hadn't done a full stock take since 1983 or 1994 but had simple done the daily rounds of the stock room, looking for the most obviously obsolescent stock, as it appears on the surface?

Just like a business needs to periodically stand back and do a full inventory, not just of its stock, but of every aspect of the business, most people in recovery will need to do the same.

I have sponsored a LOT of people who believed, before they asked me to sponsor them, they would never need to do another fourth step, yet who discover their lives absolute train wrecks after 5, 10, or 15 years of sobriety, just trying to muddle through with the last three steps, without having a deep and comprehensive look at their lives.

Interestingly, a disturbing proportion of the first 100 died drunk, I am reliably informed, so perhaps we might want to avoid mimicking their experience with LONG-TERM sobriety, as effective as their initial experience was. Bill W.'s own experience is ample testament to this: it took a long time before he relented and reworked the steps with Father Dowling, again as I am reliably informed.

A few people do succeed without ever systematically reviewing their entire life as a coherent, comprehensive exercise. These are a minority, in my experience.

One of the major reasons that, when you look round an AA room, there are few people over 20 years sober, yet that same room was full of enthusiastic, grateful, sober alcoholics 20 years ago (I've observed this first hand!) is the phenomenon of the ego regrowing. Without periodic major soul surgery ... good luck, frankly.

I have experienced doing the semi-annual or annual housecleanings described in the 12 x 12, which are effectively a rerun of Step Four, in contrast to the daily or spot-check inventories also described in the same work. I have also experienced not doing them. The difference is like day and night.

What is interesting also is that the proponents of the 'one Step Four-only' approach have usually never experienced rerunning the exercise on a periodic basis.

It's best to ask people who have experienced both approaches to AA which one is more effective.

This entry has been discontinued, because the contents are being updated here, along with all other programme-related documents:

Question: but surely it is normal to have ambition?

Aspiration is fine, as long as it is focused on the contribution we will attempt to make, not on the outcome.

As soon as the outcome is the focus, we're set up for unhappiness. If we want to be happy, we have to be indifferent to outcome.

There is also the problem of apparently noble aspirations (e.g. career success) concealing egoic desires.

Have a long-term plan. Great!
Break it down into individual actions. Great!

But then "be" in the actions.

Whenever our minds are other than here, except for necessary and fruitful planning, we have to ask "why?" The chances are, we're then in an egoic fantasy.

The Step Three requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Step Four elaborates upon this.

It gives worked examples of what happens when you go through life with self-centred wishes and ambitions and plans and designs and demands.

The question is: are you happy?

If not, question every belief you hold and be willing to let go of any life-long conception (page 42).

The merits of any particular idea in isolation are irrelevant. It is its role in a structure, a way of living, that makes you inevitably unhappy that must be examined to form the basis of whether the idea be accepted or rejected.

The alternative?

Ask God only for direction. Be pleased at whatever the task appointed is. Chop wood. Carry water. Cook the dinner. Clean your ears. Run a corporation. Win a prize. Make the bed. All the same. All for God. Not for you.

Anything I do for me turns sour. Anything I do for others comes with a price tag. Anything I do for God is endlessly fulfilling.
The holy instant in which everyday tasks transcend their apparent insignificance is eternally available.

But only once the grip of the ego has been released. How? We see through it. That is all.

From Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

"As to our grandiose behavior, we insisted that we had been possessed of nothing but a high and legitimate ambition to win the battle of life.
...
We have seen that we were prodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a life business of winning fame, money, and what we thought was leadership. So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin marked "Fear." We simply had to be number one people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities. In fitful successes we boasted of greater feats to be done; in defeat we were bitter. If we didn't have much of any worldly success we became depressed and cowed. Then people said we were of the "inferior" type. But now we see ourselves as chips off the same old block. At heart we had all been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we had sat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulness or had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond our depth and ability. The result was the same—all of us had nearly perished in a sea of alcohol.
But today, in well-matured A.A.'s, these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction. We no longer strive to dominate or rule those about us in order to gain self-importance. We no longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted service to family, friends, business, or community we attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service. True leadership, we find, depends upon able example and not upon vain displays of power or glory.
Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God's sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God's scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God."

WHAT TO DO WITH THE RESULT

What areas of my life have I not turned over (fully) to God?	Why am I afraid to turn these areas over (fully) to God? Fear of	What would God have me be?
1. Work	1.Not being good enough	1.   Trusting, diligent, hard-working, accepting of myself, unselfconscious
	2.   Being sacked	2.   Trusting, open to change, flexible, accepting, unselfconscious
	3.   Not having enough money to live	3.   Grateful for what I have, trusting, accepting
2. Relationship with my partner	4.   My temper	4.   Patient, kind, tolerant, thinking before acting, unprejudiced, flexible
	5.   Rejection	5.   Accepting, trusting, selfless, self-forgetting
	6.   Not getting enough sex	6.   Giving, generous, accepting
3. Relationship with my sponsee	7.   The sponsee not doing what I want him to do	7.   Patient, non-controlling, loving, thoughtful
	8.   The sponsee drinking	8.   Patient, loving, accepting, trusting
	9.   Me failing as a sponsor	9.   Humble about my defects, open to the advice of others, accepting of myself
4. Relationship with my neighbour	10. Noise, being kept awake at night	10. Accepting, thoughtful, patient, understanding
	11. Confrontation	11. Patient, friendly, even-tempered

Step 11 morning meditation

Step 10 watching/"when agitated or doubtful"

Step 11 evening review

There is a widespread belief in AA that our character defects are our main obstacle.

The impatience, intolerance, lack of compassion, judgement, obstinacy, argumentativeness, and domination, and the thousand other manifestations of self in my thought and action are indeed problematical.

But these are the branches of the problem, not the root.

The root is selfishness and self-centredness (62:1, 'Alcoholics Anonymous').

What is the anatomy of the selfishness and self-centredness?

"If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values." (64:1)

This element of the inventory process—an examination of my values—has provided me with answers.

Whatever my resentment (= my disturbance at the gap between reality as I perceive it and my ideal as I have conjured it), my self-esteem is affected. I have never, in fact, resented anything or anyone without this being the case.

Page 65 suggests I consider the first three columns of the resentment inventory carefully. I do this as part of the inventory process itself. When I identify self-esteem as being affected, I ask myself these six questions:

How would I like to be?

How do I think I am doing against that ideal?

What liabilities in you remind me of my own?

What assets in you remind me of my own?

What liabilities in you reflect my assets?

What assets in you are in competition with mine?

These six questions reveal my values.

Let us say my value is this: "having a good recovery". Nothing wrong with valuing good recovery, surely? As soon as my self-esteem is attached to that, however, I am in trouble. Firstly, I have to define what good recovery is, and I have to use some metric to measure it. And, as I hear frequently in AA, the quality of my relationships, the ability to hold down a job, orderliness of my life, doing what I said I was going to do when I said I was going to do it, spiritual insight, and many other indicators are used to measure and therefore judge a person's recovery.

Let us look at how this applies to the six questions above:

How would I like to be?

Well, all of the above 'qualities' would be nice. Then I'd have 'good recovery', wouldn't I?

How do I think I am doing against that ideal?

Oh. Well, on a good day, a seven out of ten, perhaps. On a bad day, we are down into the minuses. And, on observing my falling short, I will push this observation out of sight and out of mind, because, when I snap at someone, or take ten hours to do five hours' work, or forget an appointment, or find myself thinking extremely unseemly thoughts, my stock value plummets, and I cannot stand my so-called 'low self-worth'.

Already, having these 'values' is boomeranging back at me.

And we have not even got on to examining how it affects my relationships with others.

What liabilities in you remind me of my own?

Oh, oh, oh. Now we are in trouble. So I value 'good recovery', but discover, say, my judgements and negative opinions tarnishing my image of myself as someone with said 'good recovery'. I push down that awareness, and loathe being presented with a mirror of myself in you, when you are guilty of displaying the very liabilities I am denying in myself. So I will separate myself from anyone who mirrors my dark side.

What assets in you remind me of my own?

So, let us say I value myself for sponsoring a bunch of people. My ego is not going to be happy if you are doing the same. You are competition. Trouble is with any asset—if you have it, the market value is cut in half. If everyone has it, it is worthless to the ego, which requires distinction for self-definition. If everyone in the choir harmonises, no one hears your voice. And the ego hates that.

What liabilities in you reflect my assets?

Let us say I value myself for going to a whole bunch of meetings. If you do not, my ego will look down on you (obviously, because you 'do not "value" your recovery the way I do') or secretly fear your ability (apparently) to get away with it. Whatever value I attach my self-worth to, I actually need you to display the inverse, to be afflicted with the mirror-image liability. Sight is of no value to the ego in the land of the sighted. In the land of the blind, the sighted man is king. And the ego, once more, is happy. It is quite grotesque, this—it is impossible for me to value myself for anything good without simultaneously denigrating and looking down on whoever does not display that asset, and, what is more, my ego needs you to remain in deficit to maintain its elevated position.

What assets in you reflect my liabilities?

This is the probably the easiest 'ouch' to see. If I am troubled by my own failures to live the principles of the programme, I am going to be jealous and hostile towards anyone sailing through AA without, apparently, touching the sides. What I value has become the stick to beat myself with, and a source of separation between me and anyone who embodies that value.

To sum up: whatever I value I will set as an unreachable goal—unreachable, at least, on a consistent basis and at a price I am willing to pay. And I will use this value to separate myself from you, whether or not I have that asset, and whether or not you have that asset.

There is only one answer. And that can be found on page 28: "all of us, whatever our race, creed, or colour, are the children of a living Creator". I am of intrinsic, inherent, and infinite value merely through my existence. And that goes for you, too, sunshine. Nothing I can do can detract from or elevate me above that value. And there is no measure accompanying it. It is innate and eternal.

There is no room for judgement of any kind in the programme. There is no room for guilt. There is no room for remorse. There is no room for measurement, assessment, evaluation, and the ascribing of values to anything or anyone. There is only the question of what works and what does not work.

I need concern myself only with what efforts I make to stay in conscious contact with God, and, when my behaviour demonstrates, through my failure to live up to the principle of 'performing His work well' due to the resurgence of self in some department of my life, all I need to do is renew my resolve to ask God to draw me closer to Him.

To the extent that I pull away from God, to that very extent will ego take over and drive my thinking and action. The problem is always separation from God. The answer is always drawing closer to God.

And my value—and yours—is always infinite.

"In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry." (64:3)

I fall within the category of 'people'.

"Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. As in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived." (66:0)

It is clear that the writers of the Book equate remorse—disturbance at what we see in ourselves—with resentment—disturbance at what we see in others. To examine one kind of disturbance but not another would be illogical. Thoroughness is paramount.

I have also sponsored people—and been people—who are so locked inside themselves that the resentment is largely turned inwards, not outwards—the outer world barely exists and is not receiving the blame—the awareness is only of internal conflict, and an examination only of those rare moments when the external world looms into view would not beat a path to the underlying conditions.

(I should say, at this point, that the matter of making amends to oneself in Step Nine is radically different—both because the instructions are quite different and because the aim is to repair the relationships with those around us and fit ourselves to be of maximum service to them. But that is for another posting.)

Why it is reasonable to examine resentment against oneself?

When I am resentful, it is because one of the seven areas of self is hurt or threatened:

(1) Pride (what I think you think about me)

(2) Self-esteem (what I think of myself)

(3) Personal relations (the script I give you)

(4) Sex relations (the script I give you inside the sexual arena—a subset of 'personal relations')

(5) Ambitions (what I want in order to be happy and satisfied (p. 61:1))

(6) Security (what I need to be OK)

(7) Pocketbooks (money and what it means to me).

Page 64:0 says 'we had to get down to causes and conditions'. Page 65 sets out examples of the first three columns of a resentment inventory. The 'cause' in the second column of the resentment inventory (the ostensible trigger for the resentment—resentment being understood here to be any disturbance due to a gap between my perception of reality and my ideal) leads me to the 'condition' in the third column of the resentment inventory—the area or areas of self that are affected. It is the third column that matters, not the second. It is the underlying condition, not the trigger, that counts. It is the landmine that is the problem, not who happens to step on it. Were I to look only at landmines you step on, I would never identify the landmines only I am stepping on.

Some examples:

When I was about fifteen years sober, I found myself in almost constant conflict. Sure, a fair amount of resentment was directed outwards. There were whole slews of individuals and groups of people at the mere mention of whom I would erupt into a squawking diatribe. However, my primary conflict was now internal. Largely, I was no longer blaming others. But I was certainly blaming myself.

My ego had set up a whole list of stage characters it wanted—or needed—me to play for it to be happy and satisfied. Whether I was happy and satisfied was largely secondary—it had to put a little sugar in my bowl, in the form of a little puff of pleasure when my status was somehow highlighted or elevated—but even protracted disconsolation and dejection on my part would not shake its resolve. I had to be tip-top in my profession, the ne plus ultra boyfriend, the sensational sponsor; whatever the domain of my life, I had given myself a spectacular job description. Any one job description would have been too much for one person, but my ego had given me at least a dozen. The thing to remember about the ego—it cannot actually do any of the work—all it can do is give orders, and I am the one who has to put the footwork in. Rather like with God, 'Who has no hands but yours'. It will then constantly monitor compliance with these job descriptions and punish me or others if I fall short.

Under 'pride' and 'self-esteem' I look at those job descriptions—as perceived by you and me. Under 'ambitions', 'security', and 'pocketbooks' I find out what Scoobie snacks the ego is promising me if I fulfil those job descriptions. And under 'personal relations' and 'sex relations' I look how my ego thinks the world should treat me based on these job descriptions.

When I am in trouble, my problem is that I am serving self—the ego—rather than God. The point of Step Four is to lay bare the anatomy of that relationship with my ego. In seeing it for what it is, in observing the demands it is making of me and the trouble my attempt to fulfil those demands gets me into, I become totally willing in Step Six to have God take me off ego's payroll and sign me up with Him, and the last five Steps provide the framework for enacting that change in management.

Two of the lessons I learn from Step Four are:

(1) My ego's demands can never fully be fulfilled.

(2) Even to the extent that they are fulfilled, I am never happy.

The problem, therefore, is this third column—the set of demands based on an image of myself enthroned at the centre of the universe as the superlative—Godlike—character in all regards.

When that image collides with reality, I am disturbed.

Now, what, in my perception, causes that image to collide with reality is totally irrelevant.

To take a couple of examples:

If I have two ego-based images of myself, successful businessman and fit athlete, and I pour more time into my business, the fit athlete in me is angry because I am 'letting myself go physically'. If I pour more time into sport, the successful businessman is angry because I am letting my business 'slide into mediocrity'. The reality with which my ego-based images collide is the reality that I cannot, as one person, simultaneously fulfil all of my ego's demands. The conflict is entirely within, not without. The route to this is not resentment with external factors but incrimination of and recrimination against myself.

If a sponsee I have become fond of drinks again, this will affect my false image of myself as the sponsor-as-source-of-healing. Whether I blame the sponsee for not working the Steps hard enough or myself for not carrying the message effectively enough is quite beside the point. My problem lies in the third column, not the second. The problem lies in mind-made images of self conjured by my ego, not in the perception of reality with which that image collides.

And therein lies the condition that needs to be laid bare in Step Four.

So, yes, I do appear on my resentment list.

A useful list for Step Four, Step Six, Step Seven, and the Step Eleven nightly review:

PRIDE is putting self in the place of God as the centre and objective of our life, or of some department thereof. It is the refusal to recognize our status as creatures, dependent on God for our existence, and placed by him in a specific relationship to the rest of his creation.

Irreverence. Deliberate neglect of the worship of God every Sunday in his Church, or being content with a perfunctory participation in it. Disregard of other Holy Days or of additional opportunities for giving God honour. Failure to thank God or to express our gratitude adequately.

Disrespect for God or holy things by deliberately treating them, in thought, word or deed, in a profane, contemptuous or over-familiar manner. Use of holy things for personal advantage, or the attempt to bribe or placate God by religious practices or promises.

Sentimentality. Being satisfied with pious feelings and beautiful ceremonies without striving to obey God's will.

Presumption. Dependence on self rather than on God, with the consequent neglect of the means of grace -- sacraments and prayer. Dispensation of ourselves from ordinary duties on the grounds that we are superior persons. Satisfaction or complacency over our spiritual achievements. Refusal to avoid, when possible, immediate occasions of temptation. Preference for our own ideas, customs, schemes or techniques. Foolish optimism.

Failure to recognize our job as a divine vocation or to offer our work to God. Unwillingness to surrender to and abide in Christ, to let him act in and through us. Failure to offer to God regularly in intercession the persons or causes that have, or should enlist our interest and support.

Distrust. Refusal to recognize God's wisdom, providence and love. Worry, anxiety, misgivings, scrupulosity, or perfectionism. Attempts to discern or control the future by spiritualism, astrology, fortune-telling or the like. Magic or superstition.

Over-sensitiveness. Expectation that others will dislike, reject or mistreat us; over-readiness so to interpret their attitude, or quickness to take offense. Unfounded suspicions.

Timidity in accepting responsibility, or cowardice in facing difficulty or suffering. Surrender to feelings of depression, gloom, pessimism, discouragement, self-pity, or fear of death, instead of fighting to be brave, cheerful and hopeful.

Disobedience. Rejection of God's known will in favour of our own interests or pleasures. Disobedience of the legitimate (and therefore divinely ordained) laws, regulations or authority of the Church, state, husband, parents, teachers, etc.; or slow and reluctant obedience. Failure when in authority to fulfil responsibilities or to consider the best interests of those under us.

Refusal to learn God's nature or will as revealed in Scripture, expounded in instructions or expert advice, or discernible through prayer, meditation or the reading of religious books. Absorption in our own affairs, leaving little time, energy or interest for the things of God.

Violation of confidence. Breaking of legitimate promises or contracts. Irresponsibility. Treachery. Unnecessary disappointment of another, or the causing of shame or anxiety to those who love us.

Impenitence. Refusal to search out and face up to our sins, or to confess and admit them before God. Disregard of our sins or pretence that we are better than we are. Self-justification or discounting our sins as insignificant, natural or inevitable. Self-righteous comparison of ourselves with others.

Refusal to accept just punishment or to make due reparation when possible. Deceit or lying to escape the consequences of our sins, or allowing another to suffer the blame for our faults. Overcompensation or attempts at self-reform or self-vengeance, to avoid surrender to God in humble penitence.

Shame (hurt pride), sorrow for ourselves because our sins make us less respectable than we like to think we are, or because we fear punishment or injury to our reputation, rather than sorrow for what sin is in the eyes of God. Refusal to admit we were in the wrong or to apologize. Refusal to accept forgiveness from God or others. Doubt that God can forgive our sins, or failure to use the means of getting assurance of his forgiveness when we need it. Unwillingness to forgive ourselves.

Vanity. Crediting to ourselves rather than to God our talents, abilities, insights, accomplishments, good works. Refusal to admit indebtedness to others, or adequately to express gratitude for their help. Hypocrisy. Pretence to virtues we do not possess. False humility. Harsh judgments on others for the faults we excuse in ourselves.

Boasting, exaggeration, drawing attention to ourselves by talking too much, by claiming ability, wisdom, experience or influence that we do not have, or by eccentric or ostentatious behaviour. Undue concern over, or expenditure of time, money or energy on looks, dress, surroundings, etc., in order to impress others; or deliberate slovenliness for the same purpose. Seeking, desiring or relishing flattery or compliments.

Arrogance. Insisting that others conform to our wishes, recognize our leadership, accept our own estimate of our worth. Being overbearing, argumentative, opinionated, obstinate.

Snobbery. Pride over race, family, position, personality, education, skill, achievements, or possessions.

ANGER is open rebellion against God or our fellow creatures. Its purpose and desire is to eliminate any obstacle to our self-seeking, to retaliate against any threat to our security, to avenge any insult or injury to our person.

Resentment. Refusal to discern, accept or fulfil God's vocation. Dissatisfaction with the talents, abilities or opportunities he has given us. Unwillingness to face up to difficulties or sacrifices. Unjustified rebellion or complaint at the circumstances of our lives. Escape from reality or the attempt to force our will upon it. Transference to God, to our parents, to society, or to other individuals of the blame for our maladjustment; hatred of God or antisocial behaviour. Cynicism. Annoyance at the contrariness of things: profanity or grumbling.

Pugnacity. Attack upon another in anger. Murder in deed or desire. Combativeness or nursing of grudges. Injury to another by striking, cursing or insulting him; or by damaging his reputation or property. Quarrelsomeness, bickering, contradiction, nagging, rudeness, or snubbing.

Retaliation. Vengeance for wrongs real or imagined, or the plotting thereof. Hostility, sullenness or rash judgment. Refusal to forgive or to offer or accept reconciliation. Unwillingness to love, to do good to, or to pray for enemies. Boycotting or ostracizing another for selfish reasons. Spoiling others' pleasure by uncooperativeness or disdain, because we have not got our way, or because we feel out of sorts or superior.

ENVY is the dissatisfaction with our place in God's order of creation, manifested in begrudging his gifts and vocation to others.

Jealousy. Offense at the talents, success or good fortune of others. Selfish or unnecessary rivalry or competition. Pleasure at others' difficulties or distress. Belittling others.

Malice. Ill-will, false accusations, slander, backbiting. Reading false motives into others' behaviour. Initiation, collection or retailing gossip. Arousing, fostering or organizing antagonism against others. Unnecessary criticism, even when true. Deliberate annoyance of others, teasing or bullying.

Contempt. Scorn of another's virtue, ability, shortcomings, or failings. Prejudice against those we consider inferior, or who consider us inferior, or who seem to threaten our security or position. Ridicule of persons, institutions or ideals.

COVETOUSNESS is the refusal to respect the integrity of other creatures, expressed in the inordinate accumulation of material things; in the use of other persons for our personal advantage; or in the quest for status, power or security at their expense.

Inordinate Ambition. Pursuit of status, power, influence, reputation, or possessions at the expense of the moral law, or other obligations, or of the rights of others. Ruthless or unfair competition. Putting self or family first. Conformity to standards we recognize as wrong or inadequate in order to get ahead. Intrigue or conspiracy for self-advancement.

Domination. Seeking to use or possess others. Overprotection of children; refusal to correct or punish lest we lose their affection; insistence that they conform to our ideal for them contrary to their own vocation. Imposing our will on others by force, guile, whining, or refusal to cooperate. Over-readiness to advise or command; abuse of authority. Patronizing, pauperizing, putting others under a debt of gratitude, or considering ourselves ill-used when others' affection or compliance is not for sale.

Respect for persons, favouritism, partiality, flattery, fawning, or bribery to win support or affection. Refusal to uphold the truth to fulfil duties, to perform good acts, or to defend those wrongfully attacked, because we fear criticism or ridicule, or because we seek to gain the favour or approval or others. Leading, tempting or encouraging others to sin.

Avarice. Inordinate pursuit of wealth or material things. Theft, dishonesty, misrepresentation, or sharing of stolen goods. Cheating in business, taxes, school or games. Making worldly success the goal of our life or the standard for judging others.

Prodigality. Waste of natural resources or personal possessions. Extravagance or living beyond our income, to impress others or to maintain status. Failure to pay debts. Gambling more than we can afford to lose, or to win unearned profits. Unnecessary borrowing or carelessness with others' money. Expenditure on self of what is needed for the welfare of others.

Penuriousness. Undue protection of wealth or security. Selfish insistence on vested interests or on claimed rights. Refusal to support or help those who have a claim on us. Sponging on others. Stinginess. Failure to give due proportion of our income to Church and charity, or of our time and energy to good works. Failure to pay pledges promised to the Church or charities, when able to do so.

GLUTTONY is the overindulgence of natural appetites for food and drink, and by extension the inordinate quest for pleasure or comfort.

Intemperance. Overindulgence in food, drink, smoking, or other physical pleasures. Fastidiousness, fussiness, demanding excessively high standards, or dilettantism. Condemnation of some material things or pleasures as evil in themselves, attempting to prohibit their use rather than their abuse.

Lack of Discipline. Negligence in keeping the days of fasting or abstinence, or failure to use other needed means of self-discipline. Neglect of bodily health -- not getting sufficient rest, recreation, exercise, or wholesome nourishment. Failure to use or to cooperate with available medical care when ill. Use of sickness as a means of escape from responsibilities.

LUST is the misuse of sex for personal gratification, debasing it from the holy purpose for which God has given it to us.

Unchastity. Violation of the Church's marriage laws. Lack of consideration for one's partner in the use of the marital relationship. Refusal to fulfil the purpose of Holy Matrimony in the bringing forth and giving adequate care to children, or to take our full share in responsibilities or work involved. Unfaithfulness to one's spouse. Sexual indulgence outside of matrimony, in thought or act, alone or with others.

Immodesty. Stimulation of sexual desire in others by word, dress or action; or in oneself by reading, pictures, or fantasies. Collecting or recounting dirty stories.

Prudery. Fear of sex or condemnation of it as evil in itself. Refusal to seek adequate sexual instruction or the attempt to prevent others from obtaining it. Stimulation of excessive and harmful curiosity by undue secrecy. Repression of sex.

Cruelty. Deliberate infliction of pain, mental or physical. Tormenting of animals.

SLOTH is the refusal to respond to our opportunities for growth, service or sacrifice.

Laziness. Indolence in performing spiritual, mental or physical duties, or neglect of family, business or social obligations or courtesies. Procrastination of disliked tasks. Busyness or triviality to avoid more important commitments. Devotion of excessive time to rest, recreations, amusement, television, light reading or the like. Waste of employer's time, or shoddy or inadequate work.

Indifference. Unconcern over injustice to others, especially that caused by currently accepted social standards; or unmindfulness of the suffering of the world. Failure to become adequately informed on both sides of contemporary issues or on the Christian principles involved. Neglect of duties to state or community. Failure to provide adequately for, or to treat justly those in our employ.

Ignoring of needy, lonely or unpopular persons in our own or the parish family, or in the neighbourhood; or unwillingness to minister to them. Insufficient attention to the religious and other needs of our family. Failure to fulfil our obligation of Christian missionary witness, or to take a full and informal part in the effort to make the Church's unity and holiness a manifest reality on earth.

When I examine the (fancied or real) wrongdoing of others (columns 1 and 2 of the Step Four resentment inventory), I discover I am upset because it affects ME (column 3: my pride—what you think of me, my self-esteem—how I see myself, my personal and sex relations—how you treat me, and my ambitions, security, and pocketbooks—my wants and needs).

At this point in the inventory process, I'm still the victim of a cruel world that just cannot or will not follow my obviously divinely inspired script. I'm the rag doll in the mouth of the grizzly bear.

Another image: my demands are a mine field I have laid, and the world, unwittingly, tramps on through, carrying on its own business apparently regardless, and steps on mine after mine. Trouble is, I'm the one that blows up, not them. Everyone else just plods on, unsuspecting (if they are out of range) or incredulous at the explosions (if they are unfortunate enough to be in range).

"The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong." (P. 66:0)

Funny thing, the Big Book does not contradict this! It does concede that the wrongdoing may be real or fancied, but it does not suggest that our observations of the wrongdoings of others are, themselves, necessarily inaccurate. There may be part of a bigger picture that is obscured from our gaze, and p. 66:3 ("We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle") sets us down a path that expands our view of the situation sufficiently, with any luck, for us ultimately "to take a kindly and tolerant view" (p. 67:1).

In my inventory, there were, however, categorical wrongs done to me. Pretty much everyone's inventory has them.

And the pain caused by those events was real. Incidentally, if the pain was not felt at the time, it may need to be felt now. All this is good and natural as a response to painful stimuli.

However, I found myself at five, ten, fifteen years sober still smarting in my victimhood at the terrible unfairness of being born into the family I was born into, with all of the consequences that flowed from that in terms of damage as I was growing up, or, more accurately, failing to grow up.

"We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrongdoings of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol." (P. 66:3)

The real question is, 'do I want to be free'? Of course! However, I am not responsible for what was done to me, and, as p. 66:0 indicates, the world and its people are often quite (= 100%) wrong. Where on earth do I go from here?

My problem, for a long time, was adopting the whole "what is my part?" approach. Whilst you still have a part in my unhappiness, I will never be free. And, the greater your actual wrong, the greater your part, and the less free I will be. I'm screwed!

That is why I am so grateful for the following insight I was given:

Other people are 100% responsible for their actions and reactions ("... quite wrong"); I am 100% responsible for my actions and reactions.

That is why there is no such thing as 'their part' and ’my part'.

P. 67:2 tells us repeatedly:

"Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done ... we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely ... The inventory was ours, not the other man's".

Take your actions and reactions out of the picture, and I'm left just with mine. There are no 'parts' any more. If I am 100% responsible for my actions and reactions, you have no dominion over me at all.

So, now I had established that freedom was even possible, I was left with the thorny question: why was I perversely hanging on to, entertaining, nursing, and harbouring past resentments at genuine wrongs? I was clearly suffering and clearly wanted to be free. I felt completely trapped, however, and continued to blame those who had wronged me for the lifelong prison I believed myself condemned to. I did not want to be a victim (who, really, would want to be?), but I saw no way out.

"We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle" (p. 66:3).

Let us take the 'it' to be my victimhood. Flip it over, see what happens. Inextricably tied to my victimhood is a set of other roles: prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, amongst others. And these are extremely enticing. Self-righteousness rocks, for a while! Momentary satisfaction every time I garner sympathy and understanding, set out the prosecutor's case, deliver the jury's verdict, hand down the sentence, and strike back, or strike out, to punish whoever happens to be in the way.

Furthermore, victimhood means I do not need to take responsibility for my conduct, because, if my conduct flows unimpeded from my ineradicable past, from the wrongs done to me, I can just pass the blame on to the source and avoid any accountability.

To be free of victimhood—to be free of what was done to me—I have to become willing to be liberated, also, from the roles of Snow White (who is clearly responsible for nothing—she's Teflon) and her Seven Dwarves: the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the executioner, the politician, the reformer, and the minister sighing over the sins of others. They come as a package deal with victimhood.

I have found change to be possible, but only once, in Step Six, I find what I identify in me to be objectionable (p. 76). I was not responsible for the wrong done to me—for the slaps in the face and far, far worse. But, as I repeated the story back to myself time and time again over the decades, each time unwittingly embellishing, stylising, and honing, I was inflicting on myself the same slaps in the face—and far, far worse, in the form of actions taken on the basis of this narrative of myself.

This continual self-imposed re-enactment from a self-righteous vantage-point was what I ultimately had to find objectionable, although the admission of this was gruelling.

"The truth will set you free, but, first of all, it will really piss you off." (Not in the Big Book, literally, but the idea is set out on p. 25:1.)

May some dark insight really piss you off, because freedom may therefore be on its way!

First of all, a chassidic tale:

"Reb Yitzchak of Vorki had a friend who was a rabbi of repute, but a great antagonist of Reb Yitzchak's rebbe [spiritual leader], Reb Simchah Bunem of Peshischa. The friend always had hard words to say about Reb Simchah, even in the presence of Reb Yitzchak, who never answered a word. This attitude astonished Reb Yitzchak's followers, who asked him how he found it possible to hear such harsh language about his rebbe, and yet to hold his peace. "I will tell you about an incident that happened to me," replied Reb Yitzchak, "and then you will understand. I was once travelling in a certain city when a stranger approached me, looked at me for a moment, and exclaimed: 'That's him!' A second man did the same thing soon after, and then a third, and I had not the slightest notion what it was all about. Then I was approached by a deserted woman in need of a bill of divorce, an agunah, who was accompanied by a noisy little group of men, including the three who had approached me earlier. All in a chorus they showered me with curses and abuses, the gist of which was: 'You are the man who all these years has left this poor woman as an agunah!' They were so convinced that they knew who I was, that no amount of explanation on my part could convince them that I was not the irresponsible gentleman they were seeking. In the end I had to go along with them to the local rabbinical court, which accepted my evidence of identity. "Now while they were busy abusing me I was not in the slightest angry at them, because I knew that it was not at me that they were directing their complaints and their curses. They thought I was her husband, and had they known me better they would not have abused me. In a word, whatever they did, they did to someone else. "So, too, with this rabbi. When he says unpleasant things about my rebbe, Reb Simchah Bunem, I don't get excited, because I know that he talks this way only because he doesn't know my rebbe. If he knew him, he wouldn't say a thing. In a word, he talks about someone else, not about my rebbe."

Being the typically dramatic alcoholic that I am, a few knocks to my ego and I fall off my perch completely. A little bit of criticism here, a little bit of negative feedback there, and, boom, I'm crying out de profundis.

In such states, a good, old-fashioned fear inventory is helpful.

Page 68 of the book 'Alcoholics Anonymous' is where we start. "We reviewed our fears thoroughly."

So I do a stream of consciousness of what I'm scared of.

In this case, it's my own character defects. "Angry, critical, offensive, self-deluded, incorrigible." Then comes the question: "We asked ourselves why we had them." (The fears, not the defects).

You see, the thing that the fear focuses on is rarely what it's really about. It's the network of consequences, conclusions, and inferences that light up every time the fear is touched off, like forked lightning visible for a moment and then gone but burned onto the retina or a nervous system that jangles from tip to toe from an electrical shock and continues to smart for hours afterwards.

This is where the damage is done.

In this case, the fear is that my defects will impact on and influence those around me, with, naturally, devastating effect (I'm that powerful, my ego thinks). That I will bring unhappiness, discord, resentment, and disunity, on a global scale. Ha! And then what?

Find the fleeting thoughts that flash for a moment then rest in darkness, evil and corrosive (cf. p. 67:3).

Fear:

• that something inside me has irrevocably broken;
• that recovery was only ever a dream;
• that I will cease functioning and cease being useful;
• that beyond the medieval map of the Steps lie dragons, and I'm gonna be chomped;
• that there is no hope;
• that there is no God—or only a cruel, laughing, humiliating God;
• that God is nothing (cf. p. 53:2).

... and thence to the last question:
"Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?"
I have certainly been off-beam, consumed with my own opinions and judgements, about what I want from AA, about what I want AA to be or become (how grand is that?)
This is pure pride, the putting of self in the place of God as the centre and main objective of my life. And from this flows self-reliance, and listening to my own noisy authorities rather than the quiet voice of God.
And the fear that this ultimately engenders when the ego bubble bursts—that God is nothing—is precisely where this all started.
My agnosticism, when it returns, is ultimately self-created: it is the active denial of God that ultimately brings about the terror of Godlessness.
As usual, the fear inventory leads me back to the only solution available to me: that God is everything. And this really is a choice. Because living as though God is nothing is not only possible but temporarily inviting and exhilarating.
My friend Tom says, 'when you fall off your horse, get right back on it.'
Back on the horse: how can I carry the vision of God's will into all my activities? How can I best serve him? His will be done! (P. 85:1)
In communicating this and setting my plan for the rest of the day, my fears have fallen from me (p. 75:2); at once, I have commenced to outgrow fear (p. 68:3).