The Tenth Step of AA is not about taking inventory once a day. It's about our inventory taking us throughout the day. The tenth step is about constantly seeking deeper experiences in the moment. The tenth step is about constantly seeking deeper experiences in the moment.
The tenth step is vitally important to the continuing awareness that is needed to help the addict grow find center and balance in their life.
As we practice this, we begin to see ourselves as if from above, watching ourselves engaged in the human experience. We watch ourselves make the mistakes that all humans make, with the detachment that comes from looking at ourselves from an entirely different angle, detached from ego.
Tools For Tenth Step Mastery
- Continue this path of spirituality in recovery constantly. When we have no choice, we must continue vigorously throughout our lifetime, in each and every moment.
- Watch - not wait - for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.
- Ask immediately for God to remove them.
- Discuss instances of selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear, with someone immediately. By using conscious action to surrender to the present moment and overcome egotistical thinking.
- Amends is something we must make quickly when we have harmed anyone.
- Turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Spiritually, emotionally, and mentally, turn your thought life away from your selfishness. Love and tolerance of others is our code.
- Cease to fight anything or anyone. We must stop fighting with ourselves and other. Only the ego desires to fight everyone and everything to prove its existence and worth. Giving the ego what it desires results in a conscious separation from God, others, and Self.
- Position yourself in a mindset of neutrality. Only the ego demands black or white answers. Taking non-neutral and un-natural stances drive and force our egos to defend its position. When we defend, we shut ourselves off from the "sunlight of the Spirit."
- Vision of God's Will is something we must remain open to during all of our daily activities. We must ask ourselves in every situation, "What is the highest good?" We must watch, listen, and not struggle for the answer. Given time, the right answers come.
- Will power. This tenth step process is designed to gain Power and to get Real Purpose so that Will can now be used the way it was intended to - to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.
Mark Houston is the President of the The Mark Houston Recovery Center www.markhoustonrecovery.com, a drug rehab in Texas that offers a 90-day program for males designed around the principals of the traditional 12 steps to recovery.