Read Colleen Harrison's first article, "Are You Suffering from Spiritual Dyslexia?" about steps one through three here.
Last month, we began a review of the twelve true principles upon which the Twelve Step program that originated with Alcoholics Anonymous is based. We covered Steps (principles) One through Three, then. This month we will be addressing the next two steps. They are usually referred to as the "Inventory Steps," because they involve doing an "honest and thorough inventory of our past."
These steps as they originally appeared in the AA "Big Book," are
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
In Book of Mormon precepts these steps could be paraphrased in these words:
4.) Made a searching and fearless written inventory of our past in order to thoroughly examine ourselves as to our pride and other weaknesses, with the intent of recognizing our own carnal state and our need for Christ's Atonement. (Alma 15:17; Mosiah 4:2; Jacob 4:6-7; Ether 12:27)
5.) Honestly shared this inventory with God and with another person thus demonstrating the sincerity of our repentance, and our willingness to give away all our sins that we might know Him. (Mosiah 26:29; Alma 22:18)
Turning the Hearts of the Children to the Fathers for the Purpose of Healing
Looking back at our past to acknowledge the good, face the painful and come to honest peace with our whole life up until now–peace enough that we can share it with God and another human being– is a natural and necessary continuation of the first three steps. Taking Steps Four and Five confirms and sustains the faith that comes as a desire to change and the belief we can change expressed in Steps One and Two. Taking Steps Four and Five is acting out the decision made in Step Three to turn our life over to the care of God.
Second, you're a hero–and maybe even more than a hero–according to the following quote from Carlfred Broderick, "I Have a Question," Ensign, Aug. 1986, 38:
My experience in various church callings and in my profession as a family therapist has convinced me that God actively intervenes in some destructive lineages, assigning a valiant spirit to break the chain of destructiveness in such families. Although these children may suffer innocently as victims of violence, neglect, and exploitation, through the grace of God some find the strength to "metabolize" the poison within themselves, refusing to pass it on to future generations. Before them were generations of destructive pain; after them the line flows clear and pure. Their children and children's children will call them blessed.
In suffering innocently that others might not suffer, such persons, in some degree, become as "saviors on Mount Zion" by helping to bring salvation to a lineage.
By facing and acknowledging our own weaknesses, we can be almost certain we are facing and acknowledging the same tendencies our parents and progenitors struggled with in one manifestation or another. The miracle of one individual embracing the "mighty change" through working the steps and accepting the redeeming power of the atonement of Jesus Christ is that it creates change in an entire family line–in our children and our descendants as well as our parents and our ancestors. So, let's gird up our loins and rise to the challenge of Steps Four and Five!
That process best begins by taking a minute to review and "strap on" the spiritual "armor" available to us in Steps One through Three. In these steps we have already begun to face some pretty humbling truths about life and our relationship to it. We can't control it. We can't make it go the way we want it to go.
In Step Three we decided to turn our will and our lives over to God and practice trusting that, somehow, everything that happens, happens for a benevolent purpose when seen from His perspective. Most of us long to find this place of peace with God and His will, but we are confused about how to go about it, and we are either terrified to look into our past or we are in such denial about it that we minimize it and brush it off as not worth remembering. Some of us just plain don't have memories. Whatever our feelings, the unavoidable fact is that the path to the depths of healing, to the depths of peace we so desperately need and want is through the depths of humility that Steps Four and Five represent.
"We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.
Once we have taken [Steps Four and Five], withholding nothing, [we will find these results, obtain these blessings]:
- We will be delighted
- we will be able to look everyone else in the eye
- we can be alone at perfect peace and ease (the opposite condition from dis-ease)
- our fears will fall from us
- we begin to feel the nearness of our Creator.
What glorious promises come with taking the Fourth and Fifth Steps!Now, let us consider each of these steps on its own for a moment.
Step Four: Looking for More than Symptom
As I mentioned, most people stand on the threshold of Step Four staring into the foggy and often intentionally forgotten depths of their past with either one or the other of two standard reactions. They are either thinking, "A fearless and thorough inventory? How can you expect me to look at my past like that? Obviously, you have no idea how many sad and foolish things I've done and spent my life trying to outlive. Obviously, you have no idea how much sorrow, pain, loss, loneliness, misunderstanding, regret, and resentment I have buried in my past. I can't imagine dredging all that up. I can barely live with it repressed. Facing it head-on would kill me, or at least push me off the 'deep end.' I thought this program promised God would restore me to sanity, not require me to give up what little I've worked so hard to maintain."
If this is your reaction, let me reassure you that Step Four was terrifying for most of us until we worked it. Can I reassure you that we are still alive and intact mentally, emotionally and spiritually? In fact, for the most part, we are healthier in every way than we were when we carried such burdens. We had come to realize that our "acting out" of our additive behaviors were just a symptom:
"Our [addictive behavior] was but a symptom. . . . we had to get down to causes and conditions. . . . Therefore we started a personal inventory. . . . we searched out flaws in our make-up that [contributed] to our [hard times.]" (AA Big Book, p. 64.)
One Way We Turn Our Lives over to God—Doing a Fearless Inventory
We have discovered that false sanity is no more helpful to us than reverse pride (thinking we are too far gone for the Lord's mercy to include us).
Let me reassure you again, that the fourth step will begin to answer the question that comes so often with Step Three, "But how do I turn my will and life over to God?" As we do the fourth step we begin to realize that not only do the first three steps stand for "I can't; the Lord can; so I'll let Him," but they also cover these truths about our past: "I never could, God always could, and in fact He already has." As we work through Step Four, we begin to realize that during even the hardest times–even in our most lost and fallen moments, we were still participating in God's benevolent plan for the progress and growth of all His children.
Do a Life Review? What's the Point? Why Not Just "Drive On"?
Then, on the other hand, you may be having the alternative reaction: "Do a life-review? What's the point in that? Sure, there were a few painful moments, but isn't that just the way life is for all of us. I just want to fix myself here and now and drive on. Driving on–not looking back, that's what feels 'right' for me. I don't have anything to inventory . . . do I?" Social science research as well as personal experience has shown that those who minimize or reject their pasts are actually hurting as much as those who can't stop thinking about the past. It has been demonstrated that those who have genuinely healthy attitudes about their life can remember it and talk about it and acknowledge the negative and positive experiences and relationships they've had. Step Four is the doorway to that sense of resolution and integrity about our life experiences.
This review of our experiences, feelings and lessons is really only between each one of us and the Lord, at this point. Step Four is not about sharing with anyone else. Taking this step is like stepping into a sound-proof booth with just the Lord who loves us unconditionally and whose mercy can satisfy justice. In fact, doing a Step Four prayerfully, asking the Lord to reveal His perspective to us on our lives is a lot like the life-review part of a "near death experience." A person who has this type of experience is often overwhelmed with tenderness and empathy from God even as the worst moments are reviewed.
A fourth step is an amazing revelation of God's love and mercy far more than His judgment. It is the living experience of His own testimony in John 12:47: "I came not to judge . . . but to save . . ." In fact, when we finish our first fourth step, most of us have learned to appreciate this process that turns sorrowful choices into well internalized lessons.
"As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable." (AA 12&12, p. 50.)
That is the power of Step Four, its gift to us. It helps us to see the patterns of our past "doings," but even more importantly, it reveals the patterns of our past beliefs. We begin to see that we did what we did because we believed what we believed. Those beliefs were often based on fear and distrust, anger and pain. And while we can't turn the clock back and change our past choices and actions, we can change our beliefs and that will change our present and future lives.
Alma 32:27 promises us that beliefs can be changed, if we have only a desire to believe differently. But doing so involves the process Alma outlined: first we have to desire to change; then believe that we can; then exercise faith in Christ and take action. And the result of the process? We will be changed and we will know that Christ is there for each of us individually.
Step Five: Being Stripped of Pride by "Coming Clean"
It has been said that the Twelve Steps "all ask us to go contrary to our natural desire" (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 55). If that is so then they are exactly the prescription for putting off the natural man and ceasing to be an enemy to God. (See Mosiah 3:19.) On the same page in the "Twelve and Twelve," it says that every step deflates our ego, and that Step Five is probably the one that does so the most. Why? Because it strips us of pride. (See Alma 5:28 "Behold, are ye stripped of pride? . . . if ye are not ye are not prepared to meet God.")
Humility is the essence of Step Five, as much or more than any other step, even Step Four. Our humility is not complete until we are willing to let someone else, besides God, know us thoroughly and honestly. Here our goal is to "leave no stone unturned," no unexposed place where the Liar and Spoiler (Satan) can hide. We want all the "cancer" out. It might help to think of Step Four as an MRI or ultrasound and Step Five as radiation or chemotherapy.
The spiritual reality is that just recognizing our character weaknesses and the unrighteous actions they have led us to take or even acknowledging those things privately to God is not enough. This is one of those places where the principle of "as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25) really applies. Until we are willing to bear our witness to another person of the exact nature of our need for Christ's atonement, we are still avoiding bearing that witness to Him and to our own hearts that we are ready to come to peace with our past, to forgive it and let it be. A feeling of innocence with nothing to keep hidden restores our mental and emotional well-being like nothing else.
In Twelve Step programs there is a saying that puts this truth plainly: "We're only as sick as we are secret." Why?
The restoration of truth about us all as eternal beings, given through the Prophet Joseph Smith, explains why perfectly.
Namely, the soul -- the mind of man -- the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? . . . The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal with God himself. . . . There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal [co-eternal] with our Father in heaven. . . . Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 351-354.)
D&C 93:29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.
We cannot be mentally and emotionally whole and healed as long as we keep anything secret because we are beings of the light of truth. Any hidden thing of darkness, kept secret within us, brings us spiritual dis-ease (lack of peace.). We toss and turn in our pain, unable to find rest to our souls. We are truly like the princess in the story of "The Princess and the Pea," but instead of mattresses we pile layers and layers of compulsive/addictive behaviors between us and the dark truths we are trying to protect ourselves from, trying desperately to pretend they never happened. But it doesn't work. We are of royal birth, spiritually, and our sensitivity to sin is that of a celestial being who has fallen into a thorn bed of lies– false beliefs about ourselves, about God, and about life that have caused us soul-deep pain. Step Five provides the path to wholeness and recovery of our former innocence.
So what are the mechanics of taking a Step Five? After we have made a "fearless written inventory" in Step Four, listing both the mistakes we've made against others and the mistakes others have made against us (in other words inventorying our shame on the one hand and our resentment on the other), then we make an appointment with a Twelve Step sponsor, a trusted friend, or possibly with our bishop. If there is anything on our inventory that needs confession to a bishop we take care of these things as soon as we can.
Ask for at least an hour of your bishop's or friend's time (or maybe both). You're worth it. Take your written inventory. Read it all. Get it out. Clean house. Warn the person with whom you're sharing that some of your inventory may seem silly and trivial, but you are just trying to search out everything you feel either guilty and ashamed about or angry and resentful for, even if it is just a childhood incident that still lingers in your memory. Explain that you want to do so with absolute honesty, leaving no stone unturned. Tell him or her that you want to be free of any excuse for guilt or resentment because you have come to realize that it is those things that are blocking your ability to receive the Spirit fully and to wholeheartedly feel the cleansing power of the Savior's atonement.
