All of the Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural inclinations and desires; they puncture, squeeze, and finally deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than the Fifth, which suggests that we admit to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our …
How does the Gamblers Anonymous Program work? newcomers sometimes ask. The two answers I most often hear are very well and slowly. I’m appreciative of both answers, facetious as they may first sound, because my self-analyzing tends to be faulty. Sometimes I’ve failed to share my defects with the right people; other times, I’ve confessed their defects, rather than my own; at …
As compulsive gamblers, self-delusion was intricately woven through almost all of what we thought and did. We became experts at convincing ourselves, when necessary, that black was white, that wrong was right, or even that day was night. Now that we’re in the Gamblers Anonymous Program, our need for self-delusion is fading. If I’m fooling …
The Fourth Step suggests we make a searching and fearless moral and financial inventory—not an immoral inventory of ourselves. The Steps are guidelines to recovery, not whipping posts for self-flagellation. Taking my inventory doesn’t mean concentrating on my shortcomings until all the good is hidden from view. By the same token, recognizing the good need …
Inventory-taking isn’t always done in red ink. It’s a rare day when we haven’t done something right. As I uncover and face my shortcomings, my many good qualities will be revealed to me also, reminding me that they have the same reality as my faults. Even when we’ve tried hard and failed, for instance, we …
It’s often said that you can’t tell a book by its cover. For many of us, our covers or surface records haven’t looked all that bad; it seemed at first, that making an inventory would be a breeze. As we proceeded, we were dismayed to discover that our covers were relatively blemish-free only because we’d deeply buried our defects beneath layers …
Step Four enables me to see myself as I really am—my characteristics, motives, attitudes, and behaviors. I’m taught in Gamblers Anonymous to search out my mistakes resolutely. Where, for example, had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? I’m taught, also, that my deeply rooted habit of self-justification may tempt me to explain away each fault as …
The Gamblers Anonymous Program’s Fourth Step suggests that we make a searching and fearless moral and financial inventory of ourselves. For some of us, no challenge seems more formidable; there’s nothing more difficult than facing ourselves as we really are. We flee from one wrongdoing after another as they catch up with us, forever making …
Someone once inquired of a Zen master, How do you maintain such serenity and peace? He replied, I never leave my place of meditation. Although he meditated early in the morning, for the rest of the day he carried the peace of those moments with him. Being quiet, slowing down, is one of the most difficult tasks facing most …
When I dwell on piddling things that annoy me—and they sprout resentments that grow bigger and bigger like weeds—I forget how I could be stretching my world and broadening my outlook. For me, that’s an ideal way to shrink troubles down to their real size. When somebody or something is causing me trouble, I should …