Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. This is about letting go and the decision to make a significant change in ones life. To want to surrender old strategies that have enabled addictive behaviours. The idea of being ready is not about change being determined as an absolute rather it underlines the fact that we want to aim at being the very best we can. That deciding this is then doing the best to learn and be willing to be open-minded in the process. When people have tried to clean up themselves by self discipline it has often resulted in being agitated, confused, in denial and worn out thus in constant emotional pain. Step 6 allows us to see why we were in emotional pain and thus became so exhausted. We cannot do the spiritual growth flying solo. Nor do the part of the spiritual growth that is Gods part. The part we do is being ready to let the controller and life changer have a spiritual connection. A faith in the controller “The higher power”. This spiritual connection allows the power to be released to flow through our lives to clean them and heal. This is about an attitude of spiritual compassion and faith, Let the higher power into our lives and uncover and remove the things that make us spiritually and emotionally sick. It is a paradox as its the doorway to active and effective change of specific lifelong habits and sins. Could it be defined as turning loose of our control-even of our healing process.
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One of the major experiences of recovery was a sense of loss. Dispite the fact that my way of being in the world caused me so much pain and discomfort and had in the end resulted in an alcoholic melt down. I had also invested much of my life with a certain mindset and giving up that attitude along with the alcohol was the struggle. The defects of character are not only gross unaccepable ones but also subtle ones that gave comfort as did alcohol in the past. Attachments to ways of thinking cannot be shrugged off. This step is really about faith or willingness (which is really the same thing). The process of recovery can hurt as much as being in active addiction. We witness others who say that it will get better and there are promises that it will. But I for one did not “feel” it was possible in the earlier days. We must make this leap of faith to be free of self obsession. If a person struggles with the idea of a higher power or God, I would say at this stage it is anything that is not you self will or Ego; because that hasn’t worked for you.