Why the Word Entirely Is Key to Step 6 – Don H.

Chapter 37. You mean entirely, mostly. After some time, Brian began to feel differently about his AA experience. For the first time, after completing Step 5 with Willie, he felt that the program wasn't just changing him. It was becoming his identity. He was realizing how ingrained this outlook on life had to be for him to truly change. But it came with rewards. Somehow sharing the worst of his life with Willie had taken the sting out of it. He had held on to the crap for all those years, trying to bury things that refused to lay down. He now understood how right Rob had been when he told him that sunlight is the best disinfectant. He still ached when he thought about his past. He was not fixed by any means. But he no longer hated himself for it. The only thing that changed about any of it was his point of view. But somehow, that had changed everything. Brian was looking for Rob. He found him in the tomato patch on his hands and knees. What happened, Rob? Did you lose a contact? Rob shook his head and responded without even looking back at Brian. You say that every time you come over here. It was mildly amusing the first hundred times, but it isn't aging well. Brian didn't care. He thought it was funny, and he was in a good mood. I don't understand why you're always down on your knees, back there weeding. You've a hole within arm's reach, but I never see you using it. Rob turned to face Brian. Without getting up, he sat in the little gully between the rows of tomato plants and his elbows resting on his knees. That's the first intelligent air to pass between your lips for several days now. It's also an excellent jumping-off point for us to discuss Step 6. Oh, shit. Brian thought he might get a break after the last two steps. But Rob wasn't going to give him time to catch his breath before plowing into the next one. Jeez, Rob. I'm still licking my wounds from step five. What's the rush? Do you know what step six says, Brian? I'll dictate. We're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, yeah, he replied. I have heard it read in every meeting. What do I need to do? Are we writing again? Nope, no writing on this one. Rob plowed on. Step six is both quick and dirty. It is also a lifelong commitment and it requires only two things. You must make a decision and you must be entirely ready. Short and sweet, baby. Brian was suspicious. Rob was never this jovial when discussing what he wanted him to do unless there was some form of discomfort involved. Sounds simple enough. What's the catch? Here's the thing, Brian. Step six is quite simple, but it isn't all that easy. The catch is that one word entirely. I don't understand. What do I need to do and why is it such a big deal? Since we are in the garden, I'll share an analogy and then we'll go into details. Rob stood up and grabbed the hoe. He walked over to a row that hadn't been tended to that day. The reason the hoe is always close at hand when you get here is because I've already used it. The hoe is a great tool for weeding. You can cover a lot of territory quickly and remove big weeds from between the rows without taking a lot time or busting your back in the process. But not all weeds are between the rose. Those are just the big obvious ones. The smaller peskier ones are within the rows. They grow right under the tomato vines. If I go in there with a hoe and start mucking about, I will damage the roots of the tomato plant. If I'm dumb enough and impatient enough, I may also remove these young marigolds by accident. When I get near the desirable plants, I need to switch to the scalpel. I go on close and meticulously, removing only the little weeds without damaging the plant. Are you with me so far? I get the hoe and the scalper thing, but how does that relate to step six? Rob gestured to the unfinished row of weeds. See those big weeds with the flower heads on them? They represent the large, glaring character defects that you pulled out by the roots using step four and five. Those steps are the equivalent of hitting the obvious easy ones with the hoe. They are your rage, resentment, fear, and screwed-up sex relations. You have to get there and dig deep to pull them out by their roots before they flower. They are so destructive that if you allow them to grow unchecked, they will reproduce and generate other secondary weeds all over your psyche. Resentment spawns negativity toward others, even strangers against whom you have no resentment. Fear is a breeding ground for self-pity, low self-esteem, and so on. These afflictions are dangerous, but they are also obvious and quite common. They are so obviously destructive to us that it's easy to see how getting rid of them will benefit us overall. Rob crouched down and reached under the nearest tomato plant. He found a small vine-like weed that had wrapped itself around the main stem of the tomato. He took a moment to slowly unwind it, and then he pulled it out of the ground, exposing a very long single root that had extended several inches under the topsoil. You see this little fellow, Brian? He looks innocent enough. He's just a tiny little finger of a weed making its living clinging to the tomato plant." It's hard to see at first, but it looks just like a part of the tomato unless you peer carefully down around the stem. Then it becomes clear that it is something that shouldn't be there. Every garden has these guys, and every person has minor character defects. Here is the interesting part about this little weed. It doesn't need to flower to spread. While it's busy climbing up the plant toward the sun, it is also putting down this long root. At some point, this root will break or split. When it does, the piece that broke off won't die. It will create another weed just like the original. It doesn't need a flower to procreate, but it will eventually flower if I leave it long enough. Just about the time we hit midsummer and the air and soil are dry, aphids will attack the tomato plant, looking for moisture. If left unchecked, they will overwhelm and kill not just this tomato, but every other tomato in the row. They will generate clouds of aphids every time you walk through here. But the flower on the weed attracts hoverflies. They like to feed on it and lay their eggs in it. When hoverfly larvae hatch, they climb up the tomato plant and eat the aphIDS. This is how nature maintains its balance. If the weeds get out of control, a whack of them will climb the tomato plan and suck all the nutrients out of the soil around its roots while choking off its water supply. They will weaken it and perhaps kill it. So they have to go before too many of them get established and harm the tomato. But they are smart. They cling close to the tomato, making them annoying to remove. Use the hoe and they are easier to remove, but I will no doubt wreck the tomato I have to get down in there and take them out one at a time when I have the chance. Rob stood up again. You and I come into AA with glaring defects of character. We use step 4 and 5 to remove them before they can do any more damage. But what about the smaller ones? They are like this little clinging vine. When kept in balance, they are relatively harmless and, in fact, they may serve a valuable purpose. But let them grow and procreate out of control and they start to kill their host. Your more minor defects of character are often extreme manifestations of some of your more admirable character traits. For example, as is dictated in AAs 12 and 12, The desire for sex and procreation is good for the species. It ensures the survival of the human race. If we did not have a sex drive, we might spend all our time watching football and going fishing. Sure, it's fun, but it hardly ensures our survival. So we have this drive to reproduce, and it's a very healthy and positive thing. But desiring more and more sex than is healthy for us or our relationships with those we love takes that positive survival trait and turns it into a debilitating character defect. It can ruin our marriages and our health, allow a minor defect to grow out of control, and it'll become a debilitating character defect This is why the word entirely is so key to the sixth step. Rob paused and Brian considered what he had said. Either your explanations are getting clearer or I'm getting smarter. But believe it or not, I follow all of that. Rob beamed. Brian, you aren't getting smarter, but the fog is beginning to lift. You maintain a state of quasi-inebriation for a couple of decades. You can't pour that many chemicals into your bloodstream without significantly compromising your brain's higher functions. You weren't stupid when you got here. You were compromised. Several months of healthier living has begun to reverse the worst of the brain fog. Brian asked, If the defects are extreme versions of the good qualities, why do you stop? Getting rid of the defects makes sense. Keeping the virtuous stuff also makes sense, but there has to be a balance in there somewhere. How do you know when you've hit it? You don't, said Rob. That is the beauty of the sixth and seventh steps. It isn't entirely up to you. Remember, in this step, you are only being asked to become ready to have God remove your defects of character. You're not actively removing them yourself. Think about your drinking. You tried to quit before, right? How did that work out for you when operating on your own unaided will? Not so hot, right?" Then you got involved in AA. First, you stopped drinking because you had a gun to your head. Then you began to trust that the people in the room were sincerely trying to help you. At some point, you began trusting God that the compulsion to drink would be lifted. As long as you continue to live this lifestyle, God will continue to do for you what you could not do for yourself. You only get in trouble when you take back your will and figure you're smarter than God and all of us. Unlike every other white knuckle attempt you made to put the plug in the jug, this time is different. You aren't struggling on a momentary basis with an unhealthy obsession with alcohol. Now you simply don't drink because you simply didn't drink. You also don't think because God has lifted this defective character from you. It's time for you to trust that God can do the same for your other less glaring shortcomings. Okay, got it, Brian replied. Now what? You're in luck, Brian. There is no specific ritual to perform on this one. The sixth step is covered in under seven pages in the 12 and 12. It's literally only one paragraph in the big book. This is why I told you at the beginning of this conversation that step six is simple but not easy. It is simple that it is not complicated, but it is Not Easy because it will be a pursuit in which you will engage for the rest of your sobriety. Willingness is the key. If you are entirely willing to have God remove your defects of character, then you have done step six. The problem that we all tend to share is that we only think we are willing. We're more than happy to turn our will over to God when it's convenient. But when the wheels come off the wagon and our day turns to crap, we like to take it right back. Think of this, Brian. When someone insults you and gets right up in your grill, foaming at the mouth, your natural response has always been to attack, right? Yeah, that's right. Why the hell wouldn't I? He started it, Brian snapped back. Rob looked down his nose at him. Look at you, a merely suggested part of a scenario, and you have already filled in the blanks. You blamed him for starting it. You got your blood pressure up into a fight-or-flight mode. Brian wasn't sure what just happened or how it related to Step 6, but he felt vaguely embarrassed for having walked right into it. Rob was 100% correct. His fists were clenched, his body was heating up, and he was feeling angry. And there wasn't even a threat around him at the moment. Brian, survival is a healthy instinct put into us by God to keep us alive. Sometimes in a real threat scenario, we must fight or flee. But engaging in a brawl over a perceived slight is not the survival mechanism. Popping a vein in your forehead because I even suggested a perceived slight is the furthest thing from a healthy instant. From this point forward, the health of your sobriety will become contingent upon your spiritual condition. In essence, it is a head game where the greatest distance you will ever need to cross is the six inches between your ears. Get your head on straight. Maintain a good quality of spirituality and you will go further in your sobriety and your life than you ever imagined you could. Surrender to your character defects and we will be seeing a lot more of shimmy and a lot less of Brian going forward. Rob paused for breath before plowing on. The key to success in AA's first five steps is honesty. It is clear-eyed, rigorous, unflinching honesty. Then add to that the secret sauce of step six, willingness. By the time you reach step six self-honesty is given. It is your price of admission. Now you add in the willingness to turn over all your character defects big and small to God. You started by taking the hoe to the big weeds in steps four and five. Now it's time to get down on your knees and become entirely ready to have God help you remove all the smaller weeds in the row as well. The first sentence about step 6 in the 12 and 12 states that this is the step that separates the men from the boys. Why do you think it says that? I don't know, he answered. Is it because it's hard? Good answer. Maintaining the utmost degree of willingness is exceptionally hard. Think about it. You have the great character trait of being hilariously funny. Everybody likes hanging out with you when you are on, but it can become a bit too much when you add a little sandpaper and get sarcastic. When you get so sarcastic that people don't want to be around you, it's easy to ask God to remove this defective character because it's causing you pain from losing friends. So God removes the worst of it, and you are a good boy for a while. But what if you never get so bad that people leave? You may be able to tell that some of them are uncomfortable with your behavior, but the ones who aren't on the receiving end think it's hilarious. You can tell you're popular with some people, but only at the expense of others. You have to ask yourself, is this amount of sarcasm a good thing or a character defect? Would you still be willing to have God remove the source of pain you are causing a few and risk losing the audience of the many? Now it's not so easy. Maybe you decide you want to keep a little of it, or maybe you decide those people are just too thin-skinned or that they have it coming. In such cases, you are not practicing step six. Let's say you wise up and decide, no, I don't want to hurt a few people to be popular with the many, so you have God do his thing. That's also great, so you cease randomly applying your dynamic sarcasm to an easy target. But occasionally when you are feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, you lash out at somebody like a wounded badger just because they have the misfortune of lining up in your crosshairs. It only happens once in a while, and you know what triggers it, but it still happens sometimes, and when it does, somebody's feelings get hurt. It might even be somebody you despise. Does that mean they deserve it? At this point, you say to yourself, This Step 6 stuff has gone far enough. I don't want to get rid of this defective character. I enjoy being able to zing the jerks I don' like. Once again, you have now turned your back definitively on step six. Remember the secret sauce to step six is willingness, and the active ingredient is to be entirely ready. Brian absorbed this information for a few moments before reacting. Okay, I've got this now, I think. The big weeds are easy because they cause me pain. The little weeds are harder because I may derive some perverse joy at the expense of others. Then the tiniest weeds are the ones I think are more trouble than they are worth to remove. But I need to remain diligent, to weed out everything by turning it over to God and becoming entirely willing to have Him completely remove them. In other words, this is a lifelong process. Two steps forward, one step back, and I need do it every day. Is that about it? Hot damn, Brian. That is just about bang on. Brian smiled. I was bound to get one right eventually. But I have one more question. What about the marigolds? How do they fit into this? Good question, Brian The marigold serve a couple of purposes. First, they are pretty which doesn't hurt. But second, if there is one thing hoverflies and ladybugs like to lay eggs on it is marigol flowers. Once you get done ripping out the weeds and your character defects are under control, you need to fill in the hole with something useful. Being of value to others is the best backfill AA ever invented. In that regard, the way the Marigolds add value is that they represent Step 12, but that is a much larger topic for another day.