Session 6 Review & Overview
Once more, we’re going to begin with a brief review of our sessions up until now.
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, in Session 3, 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.
Session 4 covered Steps 6 and 7. 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, there is one more set of relationships yet to be healed: our relationships with our fellow human beings. That was the purpose of Session 5. Step 8 gave us a chance to review and take stock of the people and organizations and institutions we’ve harmed, and to decide if, when, and how to make amends to them. Step 9 gives us guidance as to how to make amends to those we’ve harmed and what to expect from our efforts.
With the completion of Step 9, our interconnections with God and the Universe, with ourselves, and with others are well on their way to being healed. Nothing now stands in the way of our continued spiritual growth. Today, in our last session, Session 6, we’ll be going over a set of principles that will enable us to maintain our spiritual health.
Step 10 will be focusing on our interrelationships with others. These are the relationships that are under constant challenge from daily living, so we’ll be facing an ongoing need not only to minimize our messes going forward but also to clean them up right away before they get the chance to fester and become more serious. Step 10 is all about keeping our character flaws in check.
We remain powerless over people, places, and things. All that stands between us and descending once more into unmanageability is our conscious contact with God. Step 11 sets out a plan of action that we can use not only to maintain but to deepen our interconnection with God, the source of the power to continue to heal us and keep us spiritually growing.
The final chapter of our program for living a spiritual life involves maintaining our interconnection with ourselves, past, present, and future. Step 12 is all about defining for ourselves what personal integrity looks like. Although Step 12 is outward-facing, its impact is felt in our own growing and expanding sense of self-esteem.
If you’re ready to proceed, we can kick off today’s session with a discussion of the tenth step.