Willingness and Step 6

Any Lengths:  Willingness & Step 6

This month’s focus is the spiritual principle of willingness.  Step 6 asks us to be “entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character” – the fears, resentments, insecurities, self-seeking and so on – that we uncovered in taking our inventories.

There is a saying in OA that captures the idea of willingness: “OA is not for those who need it, only for those who want it.”  But what does it mean to want to change?  To be willing to change?  To be ready to change?  Willingness comes down to the state of being prepared to do something; readiness.

We learn in OA that we have a fatal disease.   We learn too that recovery is possible: “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it — then you are ready to take certain steps” [Big Book, p.58].

With Step 1, we have started to practice open-mindedness in setting aside our notions that we can “control” addiction, our compulsions and the unmanageable lives that result.  We become open to new ways of thinking about powerlessness and strength in Steps 2 and 3.  In Steps 4 and 5, we practice honesty:  first with ourselves and then with our sponsor or another trusted human being.  We lay our lives bare because we want to change.  “Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are the essentials of recovery, but they are indispensable,” the Big Book reminds us in the Appendix titled ‘The Spiritual Experience.’ 

When it comes to addiction, recovery is a decision, not a negotiation. Past experience tells us that we don’t negotiate with this disease, we either recover from it or we don’t.  Do you ask yourself, “I’ll have to see what I am willing to do for my recovery today?”  This may be why your abstinence is not where you’d like it to be.

As we move to Step 6, we ask ourselves:  Is our work solid so far?  Are the stones properly in place?  Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation?  Have we tried to make mortar without sand?  [Big Book, pp.75-76].  Lawrie C talks about how his first sponsor made him go back to revise and add to his inventory more than once when Lawrie equivocated on the answers to these questions! [www.oabigbook.info].  But once we can answer these questions to our satisfaction, we are truly at Step 6. 

Then, our willingness is significantly tested:  it’s time to let go of old ways that do not serve us or our fellows.  On page 76, the Big Book asks, “Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all — every one?” In other words, do we want to keep holding on to a few things? A resentment against someone who wronged us deeply? Justified anger? A comfortable old way of looking at the world that we think keeps us safe from its ups and downs? The way we talk to others? The way we listen (or don’t listen)? Aggressive driving? The need to be right? The need to control? All or nothing? The idea that we can rely on ourselves? Eating compulsively to quash our feelings?

These and a hundred-thousand other worn-out ideas and ways of conducting ourselves in the world have to go. Otherwise we will eat compulsively again. Think of our lives like a damaged ship. We wouldn’t go back to sea having repaired the boat save for one little hole in the hull. Even if the hole was tiny, eventually enough water would stream in that we would sink. It is the same with our recovery.

We are in the business of giving ourselves to our Higher Power so that we can be fully repaired—by God—and sent back into the world to help others. If we deceive ourselves into hanging onto just a couple little things, then, like the ocean filling the ship, our ego will find that weak point and fill our souls back up with the very kind of junk we’d just disclosed about ourselves in Step 5. The stuff that makes us want to eat compulsively.

As addicts, we have this uncanny knack for hanging onto behaviours that have proven again and again to cause us pain and suffering. Step 6 is about getting honest on this account and being willing to change.  It is about finally getting ourselves fully and unquestionably ready to abandon the stuff that doesn’t work in our lives. And because we are probably the worst judges of what does and doesn’t work in our lives, we have to give it all away to our Higher Power, the good and the bad. That’s how we avoid even the potential for hanging onto to something objectionable that can lead us back to eating again.

It’s OK if we aren’t yet willing. We just need to understand that we will not receive the gifts of this program until we are.  If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.  We may focus our prayers on those who frustrate us, for example.  We ask for others in our prayers and, in doing so, become willing to change ourselves. 

Sometimes people share in meetings that their willingness has left them.  That may be.  But they can get it back.  Willingness is not a Muse that comes and goes at whim.  We need not wait for Divine Inspiration to recover from compulsive eating.  If you have been trying to give up the old ways and have condemned yourself for your failure to do so, simply be willing to learn how the old ways may be replaced with ways of peace.  [And then do those things!]  If you are willing to be abstinent, even ‘failure’ may be used as a teaching device. If you are willing to be abstinent, you ask for guidance from your Higher Power, your sponsor, from whatever source will help you.  When you are willing, there is acceptance… and then there is learning followed by action.  And this willingness starts within you.  You can be your own catalyst, reaching out for willingness through your Higher Power and the OA Fellowship.  No magic pixie dust or fairy godmother is required.

Steps 6 and 7 get only a very few sentences in the Big Book, but they are the turning point in our recovery. Up until then, we’ve been dealing with our problems. Once we get through step 7, we restart our lives in the solution. But for step six, the good news is that we are only becoming perfectly willing, not perfectly able. It turns out that giving away our character defects is a lifelong process, and one that brings us closer and closer to God. So, in step 6, we have simply to tell ourselves, that, yes, this is something I’m signing up for.  I am willing to change.

We have to go all-in with God or we go nowhere and stay stuck.  This is the crucial turning point in the Steps. If we say yes, and proceed through Step 7, amends are not optional. Prayer is not optional. Sponsoring is not optional. Compulsive eating is not an option. OA is not optional.  We go to any lengths.

è  Want more? There’s the World Service Podcast on Step 6 - https://oa.org/podcasts/step-six-june-14-2015/  or Step 6 Writing and Action List - http://oahow.squarespace.com/2-questions-topics/Step%206%20Q%20%20Action%20Suggestions.doc  Y

-Jennifer S, North Vancouver, with grateful acknowledgment of concepts in the Step 6 blog posts at seacoastoa.org (Portsmouth, NH).