"This Was Step Four"

Step we are on: Four

Page: 64

Chapter: 5 "How It Works"

Subject: Inventory, morality

• What did we have to determine?

So we had to get down to causes and conditions.

 Not what caused us to drink, to create defects, but the causes and conditions of our bondage to self, blocking us off from God.

• What did we start?   Two sentences

Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory. This was Step Four.

Moral – pertaining to man’s conception of what is right and just, ethical; discriminating between right and wrong. Capable of being influenced by a sense of right. ~ The Winston Simplified Dictionary – 1938

          

• What happens to a business that fails to take a proper inventory?

A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke.

           Regular – 1. According to some established rule, order or custom – conducted in a proper manner.
~ The Winston Simplified Dictionary – 1938

Today some people see the word "regular" with regard to a Step 4 written inventory and take it to mean "repetitive."  There is a "business" allegory in the narrative and they know that businesses keep their inventories annually - so there is a stretch to make that connection too.

(Why not stretch it even further and "hire" a third party inventory auditing service to come in facilitate the alcoholic's Step 4 "annual" inventory?)

This unfortunate twist of words becomes a justification for the need of never-ending, multiple Fourth Steps. But it becomes just another POP-AA procedure, precipitated by an ongoing self-centered lifestyle, "un-removed" defects and continuous harms made to others.

This is not what the co-authors are here proposing.

“Regular” in 1938 does not mean recurring or annual and the co-authors did not engage in or propose multiple, written Fourth Steps.They recoverED and the character defects named in this book were removed.

And they remain "removed" for as long as the individual continues to improve conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. (Step 11)  If they don't, then they go on living a defect-run life, suppressing anger, becoming sick and miserable from emotion-induced conditions.

There is no number of 4th Step inventories that can keep up with that for a whole lifetime. Premature death becomes imminent.

This popular reinvention of Big Book text has created an under-corp of inventory-worshiping, Step 4 addicted groups, and individuals - not to mention some very unattractive cult-like movements within the fellowship.

• What is a commercial inventory?

Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process.

• What is the purpose of an inventory?

It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade

Stock in trade – marketable articles, the goods which a merchant wished to sell; hence the accomplishments of possessions which a man can turn into money. ~ The Winston Simplified Dictionary – 1938

Tomorrow

• What is the main object of an inventory?
• If the owner is to be successful, what is it he must not do?
• What do we do?
• How do we take stock of ourselves?
• What are we looking for?

Peace and  Love,

Danny S – RLRA

Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://stepelevencomesalive.blogspot.com/