From Today’s Daily Reflections;
. . . we then look at Step Six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 76)
Steps Four and Five were difficult, but worthwhile. Now I was stuck on Step Six and , in despair, I picked up the Big Book and read this passage. I was outside, praying for willingness, when I raised my eyes and saw a huge bird rising in the sky. I watched it suddenly give itself up to the powerful air current of the mountains. Swept along, swooping and soaring, the bird did things seemingly impossible for mortal birds to do. It was an inspiring example of a fellow creature “letting go” to a power greater than itself. I realized that if the bird “took back his will” and tried to fly with less trust, on its power alone, it would spoil it apparent free flight. That insight granted me the willingness to pray the Seventh Step prayer.
It’s not easy to know God’s will in each circumstance. I must search out and be ready for the currents, and that’s where prayer and meditation help! Because I am, of myself, nothing, I ask God to grant me the knowledge of His will and the power and courage to carry it out – today.
END OF QUOTE
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What if I replaced the words alcohol and liquor with “our short-comings” in the following quote from the Big Book on pages 84 to 85?
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even [our short-comings] . For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in [our short-comings]. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward [our short-comings ] has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality – safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
There is a qualifier in the 12 & 12, page 65;
” This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was. A few of them may be, but with most of them we shall have to be content with patient improvement. The words “entirely ready” underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn. “
I suspect that if we have the willingness of removal in Step Six and petition the Higher Power in Step Seven, that our short-comings or character defects will be removed unless there is something else to learn from them. The fact that I have to ask for their removal shows that I have a powerlessness over them and need help from God. I should not respond to what I perceive to be a persistent failing with self castigation or isolated ego driven will power. It is an opportunity to enter an invisible classroom, to practice listening and learning to the God in us and in others.
I am entirely ready to have my character defects removed, either by miraculous intervention or by a classroom process. Sometimes the bird glides and other times it has to flap those wings, but it always has to trust in the wind it cannot see.
Daily Reprieve 
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