Big Book Anon Workshop: Step 10

Step Ten instructions: part I

This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.

• The Big Book sets out three types of personal inventory:
• The spot-check inventory described here on page 84
• The night-time meditation inventory described on page 86
• The Step Four instructions described on pages 63 et seqq.
• To continue to take personal inventory therefore means to adopt one of these
• Escalate through these:
• Try a spot-check
• If that doesn't work, review tonight
• If that doesn't work, consider writing
• Don't wait to set things right
• By completing the Step Nine amends, we have cleared up the past
• We want to keep things clear

We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past.

• Note the past tense: when we take Step Three, we immediately start Step Four
• Thus, we start 'this way of living' as soon as we start Step Four
• ... in other words, when we take Step Three
• That means that Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve kick in once we have taken Step Three ...
• ... not only once we've completed Step Nine

We have entered the world of the Spirit.

• We're not animals or 'ten-dollar bags of chemicals' (i.e. physical bodies)
• We're spirit channelling through physical form
• We're now connected to God
• Our identity and purpose and therefore our security reside in God

Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.

• The point of life is to get what is going on ...
• I.e. to understand something of the higher realities ...
• ... and how we block ourselves from those by believing in the ultimate reality of the material
• ... and to be useful
• It's not to:
• Get what we want
• Be happy
• Although these might come as by-products

This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime.

• Buckle up
• Get used to the fact that a person does not stay in the world of the Spirit automatically
• There are such things as thermals ...
• ... but birds still need to flap a lot

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.

• This is the first instruction
• We are to watch our thoughts (as they proceed in real time) and our behaviour (as it proceeds in real time)
• These four cover all defects of thought and behaviour

When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.

• The response should be immediate
• Consider the operation to be akin to adjusting the steering wheel of a car
• Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear are like the rumble strips on the side of the road
• They're the sign something has gone wrong in our belief, thinking, or behaviour

We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.

• Discuss the situation with another person
• In order to confess major wrongs
• For identification of the right course of action, where such is unclear
• Don't spend all day on the phone to people about inventory
• Make amends now

Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.

• Turn our thoughts
• That means stopping thinking about the bad thing
• And starting thinking about something else
• As usual, for anons, thinking about helping others must be in a healthy not a pathological way
• This is not a recipe for obsessing about fixing, changing, and controlling
• Sometimes the person we can help is ourselves
• Sometimes the best way we can help is to be a demonstration of:
• Focusing on the next right action
• Minding our own business mentally and materially

Love and tolerance of others is our code.

• Love:
• Adopting a benevolent attitude towards others
• Adopting a maximally charitable view of their faults
• Doing what we can to help
• But don't go crazy: don't do for them what they can and should do for themselves
• Tolerance:
• Don't attempt to fix, change, or control
• Don't demand that others be anything other than they are

Step Ten Promises

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

• This means what it says
• Stop fighting
• Stand for good causes
• Not against anything or anyone
• Leave others to do that
• The world requires people to work for good in different ways
• Maybe fighters are needed by the world
• But the Big Book suggests to me that that is not my path

• We don't tackle problems (in ourselves or others) by tackling problems through sheer force
• We don't fight someone else's alcoholism
• We don't fight our own anonism
• We turn everything over to God ...
• ... and do the next right thing
• And alcohol gets conquered ...
• ... but not by us: by God
• This is true for all problems
• Problems are solved not at the level on which they obtain ...
• ... but by rising to a higher level
• Action may be necessary on our parts
• But that action must be guided by God

• Sanity for alcoholics is not drinking even when you 'want' to
• Sanity for anons:
• Accepting what we can't and shouldn't change
• Changing what we can and should

Step Ten instructions: part II

It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.

• If you clean your house on Monday, it's already dirty by Tuesday
• That does not mean you did not clean it properly on Monday
• We're back at square one every day
• We have to start where we wake up each morning and find our way back to God
• If we take actions to keep spiritually fit today ...
• ... we won't end up 'back in the drink'
• If we don't take such actions ...
• ... we will end up back in the drink

Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities. “How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.” These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.

• This represents a further set of practical instructions
• We seek the vision of God's will
• We seek this in relation to all activities
• We seek to serve God
• We seek not to serve self
• We strive to fill our minds with such thoughts
• We strive to empty our minds of other thoughts
• We need steel-like will to do this
• There is nothing wrong with willpower
• The problem is pointing willpower in the wrong direction
• We pointed it at fixing, changing, and controlling others and ourselves
• We must now point it at:
• Keep our head in the sky with God
• Keeping our hands doing the work given us to do