Today's Reading from Just For Today © NA World Services
September 17 Going beyond Step Five
"We may think that we have done enough by writing about our past. We
cannot afford this mistake."
Basic Text, p. 32
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Some of us aren't too keen on writing out our Fourth Step; others take
it to an obsessive extreme. To our sponsor's growing dismay, we
inventory ourselves again and again. We discover everything there is to
know about why we were the way we were. We have the idea that thinking,
writing, and talking about our past is enough. We hear none of our
sponsor's suggestions to become entirely ready to have our defects
removed or make amends for the harm we've caused. We simply write more
about those defects and delightedly share our fresh insights. Finally,
our worn-out sponsor withdraws from us in self-defense.
Extreme as this scenario may seem, many of us have found ourselves in just
such a situation. Thinking, writing, and talking about what was wrong
with us made us feel like we had it all under control. Sooner or later,
however, we realized we were stuck in our problems, the solutions nowhere
in sight. We knew that, if we wanted to live differently, we would have
to move on beyond Step Five in our program. We began to seek the
willingness to have a Higher Power remove the character defects of which
we'd become so intensely aware. We made amends for the destruction we
had caused others in acting out on those defects. Only then did we begin
to experience the freedom of an awakening spirit. Today, we're no
longer victims; we are free to move on in our recovery.
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Just for today: Although necessary, Steps Four and Five alone will not
bring about emotional and spiritual recovery. I will take them, and then
I will act on them.
