Session 5 Review & Overview
As usual, let’s begin with a brief review of our sessions up until now.
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 and 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.
In Step 6, we examined what we’ve found out about ourselves, then came to a better understanding of where they came from and looked at the attitude we’re going to need to foster in order to heal these wounds. Finally, using Step 7, we applied 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.
With Step 7, our relationships with God and ourselves–past, present, and future—have been healed. However, one more set of relationships is yet to be healed: our relationships with our fellow human beings. We’ll do this using Step 8 and Step 9.
In Step 8, we’ll be reviewing our Resentments and Fears Analyses from Step 4. We’ll be focusing on Column 2 titled, “Whom did I hurt?” in order to create an amends list. For various reasons, not all the people or institutions that appear in your Analyses will transfer.
In Step 9, we’ll be using our newly created list of people we have harmed, and, whenever possible, making direct amends to them. As you will learn, Step 9 can take a considerable amount of time to complete.
From here, you can download or print the 8th Step Inventory Sheets: