How To Master Resentments

Step We Are On: Four

Page: 66

Chapter: 5 "How It Works"

Subject: Resentment Inventory

Read Time: 2 minutes

Good morning. We are going through the columns of the 4^th step directions. We are looking at the upsetting things in the world, those cruelties, and injustices that make us angry and control us. But we view them now quite differently than we once did. 

• What do we begin to see?

We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us

The people we hate, who control our responses also control our actions—how we behave. (And they use that power too.)

Page 66 – continued

• Does it make any difference whether or not the event that caused the resentment actually happened?   2 sentences

We began to see that the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape?

• What did we see?

We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how?

Once the alcoholic sees why he became one, how alcoholism has been the least of his issues and only a symptom of his real problem, then he can yield to the gravity of his situation, gently compelled toward accepting a new lifestyle. What moves him now is a goodly pressure.

• Can we carry out a decision to drop all our resentments and forget them through some mystical power of thought?

We could not wish them away any more than alcohol.

 So much for the power of positive thinking. New Thought? Law of Attraction? Course in Miracles? Each is totally antagonistic to the spiritual principles presented in this book. You will go mad trying to make them work together.

It is the dark nature in us that loves anger and loves to hate. It relishes languishing in bitter vitriol and self-importance—both are supernatural forces from which we all need to be saved. That liberation is not anything we can do for ourselves. It can only come from God.

• What will be our course?

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.

We learn to make allowances for those responsible for upsetting us, for rocking the boat. This becomes possible once we realize that others are not so much deserving of condemnation as they are of forgiveness, the same forgiveness we hope God gives us since we have done the same as others.

Tomorrow: What some folks call the "4th step Prayer".

Peace and  Love,

Danny S – RLRA

Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://stepelevencomesalive.blogspot.com/