Step 7 Removal of Shortcomings

"3) Or do steppers constantly develop new shortcomings as a result of doing the 12 steps and going to meetings, and have to constantly take inventory and admit they are wrong? Steppism is therefore ANTIspiritual (not religious) and actually creates shortcomings and therefore spiritual diseases"

Yes, garbage in/garbage out, as they say. If you teach people who very likely have spent most of their adult lives drunk or high, and likely don't know themselves without a buzz, and tell them they are inherently liars, cheats and thieves, well, that's what they will become. We've heard from the significant others who this happened to. The alcoholics/addicts were good decent people who just had a problem with an addiction. Add steppism and they just go nuts and start behaving like mini-bills, not caring what they do.

Yes, I kind of did balk. But then again, she was taking the blame for having been molested as a child, so I wasn't too surprised. I find that in AA, you're responsible for anything that ever happened to you, and there are plenty of quotes to back that up, which we discussed last night. You must find your part in it. No, I didn't take blame for everything that had ever happened to me. That sponsor didn't last long at all. Maybe a week. I later got a sponsor who was a really good person, and she didn't put that kind of shit on me. Of course, she never seemed to believe in the process that much.

Garbage in/garbage out. When you tell people who don't know themselves too well that they are scumbags, of course that's the way they are going to act. That's just Psych 101. While I do believe in introspection, the big book is very specific in assuming the traits alcoholics supposedly share. It's simply not true, just a projection of wilson. Understanding that his writings were more of a reflection of who he was, than who I am was a huge relief to me. I could finally quit thinking of myself in a way that was unrealistic. It was a freedom I hadn't known since before I started drinking destructively. It's good to know science backs that up. There's no such thing as an alcoholic personality. I don't believe that any inventory that negates a person's good aspects is beneficial in any way. It's just self-defeating.

Realize that change inside and outside of AA is slow to come - we cannot even truly see the wheels moving. We are living in a time when yesterday's methods are coming under close scrutiny and found to be deficient, even damaging. But there is no real oasis to run to besides the confidence that we are all right the way we were made.

We are culpable for those things we actually did have a part in. It's our responsibility to carry that message, with or without the AA flag, to whomever is in a formative state. But a child is not responsible for being used and abused and raped and tortured. We are not responsible for every bad thing that has happened to us. Conversely, I don't believe we can take full credit for every good thing that comes our way. I do believe in serendipity without the cloud of superstition that some people attach to it. I had a series of sponsors that didn't fit, and then I found the one I could zip through the steps with. It's interesting to me that she eventually married a Buddhist and has assumed the Buddhist way of life. It makes sense to me, because she's intelligent and articulate and soulful. The smallness of AA does not fit every big mindset or disposition. I did my time and then I left. It surprises me how many people attach "AA whore" to me here when what I write about sometimes even flies in the face of AA. Mine is a multi-modal philosophy, still under construction at age 63.

Of course Bill Wilson's writings were a reflection of who he was - how else could or should it have been? It was not a meta-analysis, and it was over 70 years ago. I wouldn't want an orthopedic surgeon to make an incision on my spine for surgery while standing in front of a 70-year-old orthopedic medical book on a metal stand. Orthopedics is somewhat like mathematics; there's a tremendous lot of fixed information that will be good till the end of time. But some of it is in flux, and I would want the surgeon to be current on his book-learnin', to be state of the art in all the latest techniques so he could fix my problem without causing new problems and I wouldn't have to think about a bad back again. And yet, the same surgeon who did my lumbar surgery did my brother's cervical surgery, and my brother has had nothing but problems, recurring pain, numbness, reduction of physical range of motion with his arm. Best of intentions, not the greatest outcome. There are no guarantees. This is why we need to look out for each other. I hate seeing people assume leadership roles in any capacity when they are clearly unqualified. It's surgery with a bad outcome. And I found, too, that when I left AA, not many people were listening; the lion's share of them were talking, talking, talking in treatmentese, which sounded like shit to me.

I'm all for freedom, and I don't much mind how anyone gets there. But I don't see how anyone who is dead set against learning something new is ever going to find it. And I see a lot of DeadSetAgainstIt people on this forum. I recommend that they explore and investigate the beauty of The Grey Area. That's where the freedom is.