Session 4 Review & Overview
Let’s see where we are today.
Once again, in our first session, we began by discussing spirituality in general. We said that spirituality is a universal sense of interconnection with the Transcendent—that is God and the Universe—humanity, and our own destiny.
In the second half of that session, at Step 1, we considered the signs of unmanageability, and how they were caused by self-reliance and the illusion of control. We determined that the only way out of the disastrous trap of unmanageability was to admit that we are powerless to control our destinies.
In our second session, we looked for ways to find the Power that we need outside of ourselves, especially in our Higher Power, which we’re calling God. Then, we examined the differences between belief in God, which is faith, and trust in God, which is hope, when we made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to God.
At this point, we have re-established a connection to God. In order to rebuild our connection with ourselves—that is, to restore our self-esteem, we needed to take inventory of our faults and failings in Step 4. First, we did a fearless and thorough moral inventory of ourselves, and what areas of our lives—our security instincts and our social instincts—we had affected. Then, we performed an analysis to determine our part in these failings, whom we had hurt, and what character flaws had contributed to our wrong actions. Finally, in Step 5, we cleaned house by admitting the results of our inventory and analysis to ourselves, to God, and to another trusted human being.
We have come a long way toward reestablishing the interconnection between our past and future selves, but the character flaws that were the causes of past failings are still present and active. These are the areas of our personalities that need healing in order for us to live a healthy spiritual life.
In Step 6, we’ll be examining what we’ve found out about ourselves, then coming to a better understanding of where they came from and looking at the attitude we’re going to need to foster in order to treat these wounds.
Finally, using Step 7, we will apply the power of our restored relationship with God to these wounded areas to heal our brokenheartedness, freeing us to better fulfill our potential and become the people we want to be and were always meant to be.
Here are links to access the Sixth Step Inventory form. Once again, it’s available in printable (.pdf) format or fillable Excel (.xlsx) format:
You should download or print out the Sixth Step Inventory (you should only need one copy).