Step Six

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

The more I involve myself with the Steps, the deeper I understand that each one is a practice, not a finite event. It is the practice that whets against the edges of insight, honing it. As insight grows sharper, it is able to cut deeper into ignorance and open space for more profound humility and a deeper peace. But first, I must practice. 

Part of removing ignorance is removing denial. 

denial |diˈnīəl|, from Apple dictionary:

noun

the action of declaring something to be untrue: she shook her head in denial .

• the refusal of something requested or desired: the denial of insurance to people with certain medical conditions.

• a statement that something is not true: official denials | his denial that he was having an affair.

• Psychology failure to acknowledge an unacceptable truth or emotion or to admit it into consciousness, used as a defense mechanism: you're living in denial .

• short for self-denial.

• disavowal of a person as one's leader.

Denial, as it applies to our lives as humans on this planet, is essentially the disavowal or failure to acknowledge some truth that appears unacceptable to either our psyche or to social norms. Denial has a strong presence in most alcoholics because we need it in order to go on hurting ourselves and others in order to continue consuming vast quantities of the substance that is killing us. In the most blunt example, we are in denial of our own disease until we decide that we are in recovery and we need help.

Yet there are multiple layers of denial, and they grow subtler and subtler in turn. I cannot ask for any character defect to be removed if I don’t do the work of recognizing it; to see my character defects, I need to release denial, and to do this I must cultivate humility. With humility I can see things as they truly are, and how shame and guilt have been blocking me from the abundant reality that I inherently understand to be my birthright.

I have learned that I mustn’t turn my back on shame and guilt. I need to feel these things, and all the rage, pain, fear and sadness that accompany them—but I need to feel this without judgment of myself or others. At first this seems like an impossible task; we may be trying to do this while we are still severely wounded. Whatever emotions come up, they need to be accepted, not pushed away or denied further. This is a challenge for me, because when I was younger some emotions, particularly anger, were unacceptable. This creates a lasting impression on my psyche, and it is sometimes difficult to convince myself that feeling my anger is safe and in fact very helpful. Feeling these things releases them.

I used to drink, I can see now, as a way of not feeling, when in fact the feelings I feared would have been the easiest path to freedom. There’s no way of realizing this other than by experiencing it, and as with other elements of recovery, I am often only able to experience it when driven by suffering.  

This step sounds so bloody absolute, though—do I really have to be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character? I sense attachment rearing its sticky head immediately. This is why non-attachment is so important in this step. I can only be open to solving my problems if I am open to change, and in Step Six I am repeatedly given the opportunity to let go of ineffective, low-level and limiting beliefs, perceptions and practices. 

Again, this tricky notion of letting go. I can’t count the number of times I ‘let go’ of my anger, often right before losing my temper. What does letting go entail, then? I believe it involves unconditional self-acceptance and the courage to FEEL whatever comes up. By feeling something I am vibrating it, and when it vibrates, it moves, and if it’s moving, it can be released. But nothing is going to move if I don’t trust myself or have compassion for myself. This has been a very important learning point for me. So my job is to feel whatever comes up, remain equanimous, and have compassion for myself. Otherwise I am bound to revisit the same old cycle of thoughts, attitudes, and behaviours that keep me on the merry-go-round of problem-reaction-problem.

Stop reacting. Feel. Let time pass. Breathe. Trust the process. 

Part of this process leads me to take a closer look at my thoughts and beliefs; I need to determine which ones are borne of true insight based on my own objective analysis of my life experiences. The answer: almost none. 

Most of the thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes I had been carrying were borrowed from parents, teachers, media, and the norms of society at large. These were not actually my beliefs, but habit patterns engrained in me through training and practice. Habits become pervasive; they define, both in the mental and physical realm, most of our thoughts, words and actions.

In habits, we’re stuck. 

Thus, I need to unpack my habits, which I have done in Steps Four and Five, in order to have at least a superficial awareness of what isn’t serving me and what needs letting go of. 

This non-attachment, this letting go—particularly of deeply engrained habits—can make me feel as if I’m coming unhinged, without any point of reference. It may also involve the re-experiencing of old grief, fear or trauma, as many of our character defects can be in place as survival tools. The truth that we need to experience ourselves is that these old tools can’t work in recovery and become cumbersome and self-limiting. 

It is crucial that I gain some insight in Step Four in order to see how the elements I share in my Step Five are still exerting active power in my life. I need to bring my awareness into the present moment, and to do this, I may require some emotional releasing in order to achieve truly effective self-scrutiny. Anger may come up. Resistance may raise its toothy head. A tsunami of ear and guilt may wash through me.  

I must not ignore these things or turn away from them. They have a right to be felt. It is my job to feel them. If I need to release, I must release in safe ways. Maybe I find a small hilltop and I scream to the heavens from it. Or I could spend a weekend watching tear-jerkers and bawl my eyes out. Maybe I join a punk band. Perhaps I dance like Napoleon Dynamite until I drop. Whatever safe way to release comes up naturally—and often for me this is by expressing some kind of sound, intelligible or not—I have to trust that at some point, a point known as ignition, the body will intuitively know what it needs to do to release. I have learned that I should follow it, no matter how silly it seems to convention.  

Convention even slips into the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which states that “no matter how far we have progressed, desires will always be found which oppose the grace of God.” I’d like to meet the person who thinks he is in charge of deciding what opposed the grace of God for me, personally. Nobody lives in my body with my chemistry and with my connections and experiences; therefore, nobody has the ability to understand an appropriate moral code for me, much less impose one. 

The other issue I take with “conventional wisdom” is the perseverance of the harmful themes, the most notable example being that sex is somehow dirty or sinful. AA literature asks us “how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds?” This question presumes love is a precursor to, and thus divorced from, any expression of the body. It also assumes there is a conventional understanding of and abhorrence for what is commonly considered to be ‘lust’. One woman’s lust may be another woman’s passion. One man’s perception of lust may be another man’s source of creativity and inspiration. We are so quick to judge others, as well as ourselves. More than one great thinker has determined that most of the problems of the West, including addictions, come from sexual repression. This is a valid consideration in Step Six because it is vital to me that I understand if my actions are truly harmful to myself or another, or if they simply lie outside the acceptable (read: harmful) conventions of my Judeo-Christian upbringing. This is a key part of stepping into my own freedom and guided by Divine intention.

Understandably, it is often easier to list our character defects than to willingly release them. The blockage to change is almost always fear, and one of the deepest fears we can carry in recovery is that it is not safe to feel what is present. Once we release old fear, doubt, denial, ignorance, we are truly ready to allow our will to naturally align with Divine will. Form this point forward, we will rarely forget that we are never alone.