Step Six: Acting in Desperation
Step Six, in my opinion, is just as closely associated with Step Five as Step Four is. I say this because Step Five and Six are heavy steps. You’re looking at everything you’ve done wrong from start to finish and coming to terms with it. I spent about five hours putting down into writing what I terrible person I was and bringing up all the things I did to hurt people in active addiction. After I worked Step Five with my sponsor, he told me to go back to the halfway house I was living in for an hour of silent meditation to begin Step Six. I sat quietly for an hour reflecting on the work I completed thus far and look for any cracks in the foundation of my program. Admittedly, I didn’t understand what that meant because I didn’t want to be obsessively analyzing the program I worked up to that point. As far as I was concerned, I was staying sober, so I assumed I was doing it correctly so far.
Step Six felt like desperation because I believed my Higher Power was going to take every defect of character and remove it so I could heal. I was more than willing to let someone else take it away from me and bear the burden. As cliché, as it sounds, all the steps are there for a reason and put into the order they are on purpose. Step Six is often more of a passive-action step because it’s the spiritual principle of willingness, but it’s just as important as the others because you’re again building trust in a Higher Power to heal you. The difficult part is often allowing something you don’t fully understand, an intangible Higher Power, take control over your life.
