Step Four
Made a searching nod fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
According to the Big Book the Third Step is to be followed “at once” by Step Four.
So just start doing some work on it slowly. Here are some reading suggestions that you can begin with:
1. Pages in the Big Book (63-71)
2. Twelve and Twelve (pages 42-54)
3. Any other Daily Readings on Step Four that you may have.
Understanding the Fourth Step
The Fourth Step brings us to a specific course of action that the AA Big Book describes as “vigorous”. It is a “personal house-cleaning which many of us have never attempted”. This Step strengthens our Third Step decision and helps us carry it out. The Big Book tells us, unless we make a “strenuous effort to face, and be rid of, the things in ourselves which have been blocking us,” we will not be able to turn our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.
The Fourth Step is necessary to continue
the progress we have made in the first three steps.
We prepare an inventory of who we are, identifying the characteristics we want to keep and those we want to change.
We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness that our defects have caused others and ourselves. Our goal is to root out the causes of our living problems so that we can do something about them. We try and take an action that will restore us to sanity. The restoration, however, depends on our willingness to look at ourselves realistically and to endure the pain associated with facing what we have become. The fantasy of some “easier, softer way” that will allow us to avoid that pain has kept us from completing this Step and maintaining our recovery.
Our addictions were but a symptom.
The purpose of the Fourth Step is to identify our character defects. The Big Book suggests that our inventory be written. Writing forces us to see in ‘black-and-white” what is really there. Our inventory is moral because it concerns our behavior. It leads us through a lifetime of actions that have caused pain for us and others and about which we feel shame and guilt. The purpose of this search is not humiliation and punishment, however, but freedom!!!
Our inventory entitles us to settle the past.
Keep your Fourth Step inventory hidden in a very safe place.
In recovery we have learned that the question is not, “Do I want to do this?” but “Do I need to do this?” It doesn’t matter whether or not we want to do the Fourth Step. Real Life requires us to do a number of things we would rather not do. The Fourth Step may be one of them. A twelve Step saying that helps is “Do the next right thing.” After the Third Step, the Fourth Step is the next right thing. Part of Recovery is learning to do those things that are good for us whether we want to do them or not. This is an opportunity to “walk the talk”.
Just pray daily for the willingness and courage to complete the step.
Once you have started this inventory, also start thinking of the person you would like to do your Fifth Step with.
Make sure that your written inventory is safely hidden.
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