Step 10

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

1. Primary principle(s): confession, constructiveness, integrity, willingness, open-mindedness, persistence, perseverance
2. Other principles: courage, helpfulness, honesty, humility, self-sacrifice, tolerance, surrender, discipline, self-disclosure, restraint, expediency, immediacy

Readings:

• Big Book pp. 84-85
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions pp. 88-95
• “10th Step” - November, 1979 AA Grapevine
• “Garden Hose Sobriety” - October, 2006 AA Grapevine
• “Step Ten:up Close And Personal:Spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical inventories” - October, 2007 AA Grapevine

I love that Step 10 has some of the most explicit instructions in the Big Book. It suggest that we continue to watch for “…selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear…” and “…when these crop up…” (it doesn’t say “if” these crop up - they know those things will crop up for all of us), it gives us clear, direct instruction using completely unambiguous time frames (like “immediately”, and “at once”).

I once had a sponsor who had a very strict, proscribed method for doing the 10th step.  He nagged and cajoled me toward doing this step in his way until I’d reached the ultimate surrender - I decided I had to find a new sponsor.

I was “shopping” for who my next sponsor was to be for a number of weeks when, out of the blue, I had this incredible thought: “Why don’t you try doing a 10th step in the way your sponsor suggests for a while?”  It was such an incredible revelation to me, I couldn’t understand why when I presented it to others they laughed.  Probably like you are now…

Anyway, it started one of the most incredible experiences  I’ve had in recovery.  On a daily basis I did exactly what our Big Book suggests, exactly as my sponsor proscribed.  It was amazing.

Years later, when that sponsor fired me, I felt an amazing freedom and have never since been without a sponsor who I am accountable to.  I am more accountable to a sponsor today than I was in my first years of sobriety.

And, on a good day, the several 10th steps I do keep me clear with God, also.