With the challenges to be faced with “life on Life’s terms”.  It is inevitable that individuals may get rebellious in relation to accepting flaws or defects.  Rebellion is a character defect that spoils us.  The important thing is not to lose faith when we become rebellious.  In Transactional Analysis it is seen as part of the child ego state and a reaction to the environment.  The idea of being in adapted child and rebellious child sounds so different and apart.  However, both are a reaction to the environment and expectational others.  If one adapts for to long it is likely that this will inevitably switch to rebellion.  This is important as it relates to the essence of Step 6.  We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.  This means a great deal is required emotionally and spiritually if one really wants recovery from addiction and script.  The message of step 6 is NOT We are entirely ready to adapt to have God remove all these defects of character.  Remember that god will not do for us what we can and should do for ourselves.  Again its emotional maturity and wanting this process of change.  If we adapt we are reinforcing further counter-productive survival strategies that will eventually fall down and we then have more defects and more resentment. To heal we need script change and re-decision from a heartfelt place and not adapting to something which we will later rebel against just like we did in childhood.  The indifference or intolerance that rebellion can bring out in us has to be overcome by spiritual effort and an open heart.  With this and looking at our defects we can invite script change from a healthy place even if there is a huge pull to go back to old ways.  This gives us the resilience to have painful feelings but to not action them.  If we are aware of defects we can offer opposite behaviours, thoughts and feelings as a way of doing something different from our painful life script which has potential to send us back to using.  For example, if we use manipulative games to look good we can choose to be honest, candid and non-controlling which will get our needs met anyway.  This is because people who live this way are seen in a positive and trustworthy light which builds confidence and self esteem.  If we are self defeating we can put action into our lives which are self-fulfilling , no matter how small we see these actions its important that we give ourselves positives for this change in our life script. If we are suspicious and withdraw from others perhaps we could accept people with their flaws which could dilute our fear.  Then we have a chance to become outgoing and trust in the spirit of life and not look for people to trip up.  If they do they do, that’s their script and they don,t have to be part of ours so “set boundaries”.  Generally the opportunities are endless, exciting and one can get healthy stimulation for productive life script changes, which includes working the opposites of the defects of character.

So you are open and  entirely ready. looked at defects of character.  This is only the beginning of a life long process where many challenges are faced.  The questions I would invite individuals to ask themselves to reinforce their readiness or belief that they are.

1- Can you see challenges and difficult experiences as a potential for personal development?  This has no grade either as some can hold much pain and even be tragic as again “this is life on lifes terms”.

2- Can you be open to look at how you may “act out” emotionally as this can provide rich data to learn from.  Acting out is how we behaviourally or verbally action our emotional internal process because what is going on is difficult to deal with.  Some examples are “cheating to save face or “dirty and lack of personal hygiene because of self emotional loathing.  To be arrogant because of being jealous of someone’s happiness. To be mean, hostile or unfair because of a lack of satisfaction in ones own life.  In other words are you up for looking at what is really going on when any acting out takes place.  This can give great insight into ones scripty processes and why we do the things we do.

I see step 6 as also being open to learning and accepting of life with all its anxieties, challenges and hurt.  “To live with life on life’s terms”.  Often we have developed defects of character because we struggle to do this.  Therefore, may be aggressive because we are really scared or apathetic or narrow-minded because we want to avoid pain.  There are so many different defects of character because of fear.  Is that not why people are tense, suspicious, withdrawn or defensive?  To protect themselves from not having enough love , do individuals not have the tendency to overfeed with selfishness, gluttony , greed and judgement?   If individuals do not know how to fit in or belong do they not get self important, wordy, isolate, gossipy and exaggerate?  If individuals cannot be themselves do they not compensate with strategies of vanity, fantasy, perfectionism and pretentious grandiosity and superiority?  Its endless and its about life strategies to cover what emotional pain, residue, confusion or avoidance one has.  Being open and accepting is knowing this and that all human beings have flaws.  Its the nature of the “animal” we are.  However, the dysfunctional ways of acting, feeling and thinking cause further pain rather then reduce it which is what we were aiming for in the first place.  In other words what we do has not worked.  Therefore being open to something different is paramount to step 6.,

I also see step 6  being about letting oneself be committed to emotional maturity in being guided by a spiritual parent who has the wisdom of heart.  If we are open minded enough to look at ourselves, life and be committed to change from a cognitive place then this cultivates emotional maturity.  This in turn then allows the re-programming in certain areas of the personality and brain functioning.  This allows us to make script re-decisions about ourselves and life.    In turn this reciprocally impacts our heart and how we feel about others, life and the self.  The compassionate heart allows defences to come down and us to re-programme because we have put our self will to the side to allow spiritual contentment, belief and faith.  The writer S R  Covey wrote about living a principled life which includes the consideration of others, being accountable, not being controlling but only concentrating on what we can influence in a helpful and pro-active way.  That we develop habits that are unhealthy and that with accountability and being responsible we can re-programme and change these over time.  In other words re-programming is possible and a productive and life enhancing way to be for yourself and others. This is also about preparation and reflection which are both important ingredients for emotional maturity.  Step 6 is about preparing for a significant change in life in heart, mind and adopting the best attitude to develop the self.  Afterall. this is a lifetime job and a principled way to live .  We will not be healed immediately , rather recovery from addiction or emotional script or both will be a daily effort to evaluate, balance and adjust the healthy expression of all our needs in an appropriate way.     

For  step 6 ” to hand oneself over to the spiritual controller” one has to trust the Higher Power and therefore it has to be seen as nurturing and safe.  One of these cannot operate without the other and its a interdependent co-operation of spiritual attunement . Many people struggling with anxiety, depression, anger and addictions experience an overdeveloped sense of self critic and self devaluation.  Therefore the higher power needs to be in opposition to this and operate from a place of compassion, re-assurance, inner warmth and understanding to provide the trustworthy containment required for one to be “entirely ready” to hand over control.  The higher power is there to accept us, offer guidance and strengthen our wellbeing.  Although its a parental introject , it does not mean that it has to be a person or individual as these can be fallible and dis-appointing.  This can further reinforce ones script process as it may have being individual parent figures who set up some of the pain in the first place and thus upset us.  Therefore, its often  a spiritual parent or a connection with something beyond the self and we allow to fill us with the compassion and warmth of this connection.  Trust is a big step as its dis-trust and difficult experiences within childhood with those who were parent figures that  had the impact on our lives.  Influencing the paths taken and decisions made and if we were hurt the finding of self soothers outside the healthy comfort zone.  Its like inviting a very vulnerable child into a different frame of reference which does not hold the danger of past experiences.  It is a evolving process and sometimes the trust is questioned because of fear.  This is absolutely normal and this is why its not just a one off surrender but about being ready and willing.  To aim at evolving and learning to be the best we can through time and application and heart.

In psychotherapy terms one can see the process of being ready as trusting the newly accepted and worked on inner parent.  The previous parent may have many distorted beliefs that are harmful, negative, punitive and toxic.  Therefore, self destructive when engaging in life in a healthy and emotionally mature way.  The parent ego state which holds the internal messages one has collected from childhood can be full of slogans, commands, statements, misapprehensions, fantasies carried from generations and passed down.  With any toxic process we can react to the environment and others which effects our character.  This relates to the step 6 “defects of character” and that we all have survival flaws as a response to life and significant others.  This is part of our life script the storehouse of messages we have collected in our parent ego state.  Some of this is not trustworthy and we build strategies to survive the process.  Being entirely ready to surrender control to the higher power is about trusting that spiritual parent.  At least enough to hand ourselves over to just “being” in the world and then living life on life’s terms.  In therapy this can take time as individuals have put their trust in their internalised little professors “the parent in the child ego state” to possibly survive the parental messages or magical beliefs carried from experience.  Here the process of developing a different parental introject that is trustworthy allows the individual to let go of old strategies that are counter-productive “defects of character”.

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.

The essential message of step 5 is of unconditional love expressed by being listened to by a trusting other and the powerful healing of liberation that this brings.  You can be whoever you are, express all your thoughts and feelings with absolute confidence.  This will seem more real after the step of sharing with another.  After taking the risk in the first place and the world does not cave in.  After you have been heard and not judged or rejected.  You will learn how spiritually connected this step is after the process.  You do not have to be fearful that love will be taken away.  You will not be punished for your openess or honesty.  There is no price for this process of attunment, no rental fee for the time or further instalment payments if it works and you feel free and calm and relieved.  It is not about agreement or avoidance of disturbing emotions rather its about just being there and attended to.  It is the first real connected step that is about not being rejected by others and the risk of intimacy and authenticity.  It is a step that invites one to be further committed to growth, happiness and spiritual connection and what unconditional love feels like.  This love is like no other in the sense that it expands the human soul, actualizes the potential for the full possession of life on “life terms”.  Individuals who have laboured for so long under the delusion that corrections, criticism and punishments stimulate a person to grow.  We now know that this is not the case .  When we think of conditional love we think of manipulation. obey rules, getting good grades etc.  WE learn that this is the only love we can get.  Therefore the risk of step 5 can be so big because expectations are about “that which is conditional”.  B F Skinner wrote about “operant conditioning” and the idea of appropriate regards for the  manipulation of a process.  We can assign  and allow only what we have decided they should be.  The step 5 process is the opposite of this and further dilutes our operant conditioning.  Which is about expectations and conditional love and that there are always ulterior motives.  Its about  exchange , a reciprocal bargain and not a free gift.  Or if it is a gift it comes with the listener only being up for hearing what they want to.  That is why a trusted other is so significant for step 5.  Unconditional love is liberating and frees one to be authentic and real through the process of sharing.  Operant conditioning and not sharing because of risk leaves one only further still in the course of conformity which relates to programming that means we have to hide behind a false self.THINK ABOUT IT

“A male tiger and female tiger is neither more or less whether you suppose them only existing in their appropriate wilderness, or whether you suppose a thousand pairs.  But man is truly altered by the co-existence of other men:  his faculties cannot be developed in himself alone and only himself.  Therefore the human race not by a bold metaphor, but in sublime reality, approach to, and might become, one body”. S.T. Coleridge, letters, 1806.  Nothing has changed since that time, we need others and step 5 is the beginning of that sharing and not living out the isolation.  Author Sue Gerhart wrote a book about “Why Love Matters” and the significance of this is about the power of affection and how it shapes a baby,s brain.  The book is about going back to the beginning of time and seeing how our attachments impact early development  and the central nervous system. That harsh starts in life often have consequences of not developing empathy as adults.  Additionally,   Its found that positive looks are the most vital stimulus to the growth of our social brain.This is also relevant to “Trying Not to Feel” as sharing is a emotional process of soul connection.  There are links between early emotional regulation and the immune system.  This is where hiding and not sharing can have dire consequences on recovery .  This goes right back to the beginning of our lives and how we needed this for early development.  “The avoiding reaction tends to spread.  It can be carried to such a point that the individual is not only steeled against the appeal and suffering of others but he actually dreads appealing to their sympathy and may for example conceal illness for fear of making a fuss or scene”.  Ian Suttle, The origins of Love and Hate, 1935.  I further this by saying we may conceal for fear of rejection, judgement and consequences.  We have also learned that the brain is not set in stone and whatever we feed ourselves emotionally no matter what age we are has an impact.  This is why “Love Matters” all through our lives just as it did at the birth of self.

I see step 5 as a very loving step and the significance of this goes back to our emotional diet and how we feed off “the stuff of life” that is affectionate , considerate and caring.  All human beings search for “unconditional positive regard”  This is a terms Carl Rogers used when talking about what we feed off to reach a point of self actualisation.  In simple terms we look to be accepted unconditionally and therefore this is loving in itself.  The trusted person who offers their “listening” to us while we share is offering this unconditional positive regard.  They are not saying the behaviours are okay but they are not judging, they are listening to us.  This process goes so deep to our early development and the need for “attunement”. Right back in time and our early experiences of facial expressions of caregivers as infants we had the instinct to see if the parent figure “got” what we needed or did.  This is a powerful process that relates to “mirroring” and “empathic Responsiveness”.  D Stern wrote about these in his book called The Interpersonal World of the Infant”.  that the “sharing of affective states is the most pervasive and clinically germaine feature of intersubjective relatedness”.  This in simple terms means to  be instinctually  part of and give understanding to another’s experience.  Ones subjective phenomena that are experienced connects in a similar fashion by others than oneself.  Stern also wrote about “hope” being an important part of development.    “The hope is that the earliest deviation in social and intellectual functioning” and this is formed by the related processes we are involved in when young.  The significance of this step is that it offers the power of being attuned to and accepted which is a loving gift.  Therefore it has the capacity to be restorative and attend to our inner child needs.  We did not come into the world and survive in isolation and we cannot therefore do this as adults.  This is because we carry our inner child with us throughout our lives.  It has no chronological age which is a cut off.  Therefore our basic primal needs can be similar as adults but in a different format.  If we feed the needs we had back then we have less chance of turning to dysfunctional process.