Step Six - Key Questions Step Seven - The Basic Ingredient

 Having completed Steps One through Five, there are some fundamental recovery questions in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that must be answered before we can move on.
                               
             1) Have we omitted anything?
             2) Is our work solid so far?
             3) Are the stones properly in place?
             4) Have we skipped on the cement put into the foundation?
                                                                   5) Have we tried to make motor without sand?

          If we can answer these questions in the affirmative, then we have completed the first five steps in such a way that we have acquired the humility necessary to be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
          The Big Book of AA states "if we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six.  We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable.  Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable?  Can God now take them all, every one?  If we can answer in the affirmative we have then completed Step Six.

                 The Seventh Step of Alcoholics Anonymous is "humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."  In the Step Book it states "this lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives produced another bad result, for just as long as we convinced ourselves that we could live by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a higher power impossible.  This was true even though we believed God existed.  As long as we placed self reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a higher power was impossible.  THE BASIC INGREDIENT of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing."
                 I have learned through experience that belief in God is not enough, that we must trust in God in every area of our lives, even as our every day life unfolds.  The purpose of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is to bring us from a thought process propelled by our human desires to a thought process propelled by the will of God.  In the will of God our defects that exist in our human nature cannot possibly be manifested in our behavior.  And it is only through true humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, that that can occur.  We can free ourselves from the bondage of self, we can trust in God in all things and, if so, we are protected from the disease of Alcoholism.

Written by Armand