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Many Twelve Step members hold Drop the Rock groups at members' homes. They meet one night a week over a specified number of weeks, usually eight. As I do in my ...
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Drop the Rock Removing Character Defects Steps Six and Seven
Second Edition
Bill P. Todd W. Sara S.
Contents Preface Introduction
Step Six Step Seven
Serenity Prayer Sanskrit Proverb Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi Set Aside Prayer
The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous “Drop the Rock” Talk by Sandy B. Character Defects/Shortcomings—Program Principles Notes
Preface It has been more than twelve years since the first edition of Drop the Rock was published. During that time, I’ve presented the book in seminars, retreats, and talks ranging in length from one to twelve hours. The positive response to Drop the Rock is more than I ever expected; I have especially enjoyed hearing that many sponsors give a copy of the book to their sponsees after listening to their Fifth Step.
Many Twelve Step members hold Drop the Rock groups at members’ homes. They meet one night a week over a specified number of weeks, usually eight. As I do in my longer seminars, the group leader preassigns the personal stories in the book to individuals. When that story is reached in the sequence of the book, the assigned member usually reads the story and comments on how he or she identifies with the character’s story.
The new material in this second edition has been added as a result of comments received from individuals who have read the first edition and knowledge I have obtained throughout my recovery journey, which has now moved into its twenty-sixth year. When I first joined AA, I thought the Big Book’s program of action was saying a thousand things. I slowly began to understand that it is saying a few simple things a thousand times.
During the early 1980s I worked in the archives at AA Headquarters in New York and one of the most asked questions was, “What is the difference between character defects and shortcomings?” The answer is that there is no difference. Bill W. and the other authors of the Big Book didn’t want to use the same word in both Steps. The same approach is used in this book—“character defects” is used interchangeably with “shortcomings.”
Nell Wing, Bill W.’s longtime secretary and the first archivist at AA, and I found the original Mary “Drop the Rock” story (which begins the introduction of this book) in an old intergroup newsletter. On occasion, this book gets confused with the famous 1976 AA convention talk by Sandy B. called “Drop the Rock.” Although Sandy’s dropping the rock image is only three minutes of a fifty-minute talk, it has become legendary. Thanks, Sandy, for letting us include your “Drop the Rock” parable in this edition.
Thank you to all those who have contributed to the production of this second edition as we remember that “we will always be students in the Program, we remain teachable and open to new opportunities, and we open our minds to accept and our hearts to understand.”
Bill P. September 2004
Mike shares his experience with dropping the rock: Before its discussion of Step Four, the Big Book says, “Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” A thorough inventory reveals those causes and conditions; the Fifth Step allows us to share them with God and another human being, and so remove the inner pain they have caused in our past lives.
After finishing my Fifth Step, I discarded the inventory but kept a single page that listed my major character defects. That list would come in handy later.
The first time I read Step Six, I thought it meant I had to arrive at some angelic state of mind in which I would become—and forever remain—“entirely ready” to have God remove all my defects. (I had forgotten that AA promises “spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.”)
Twelve and Twelve set me right. It calls Step Six “AA’s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime job.” To me, that means Step Six is not a onetime matter; it stretches over a lifetime of recovery. Even that “best possible attitude” is always just a beginning.
One morning, while I was at Hazelden’s Fellowship Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, I awoke very early and knew it was time to make that beginning. I took out the list of defects, read it over, and asked myself two questions: Why are you holding on to these things? and What did these things ever do for you? (I may choose to hold on to them for fear of letting go, but holding on to them for years and years led me into alcoholism.) So I got on my knees and recited the Big Book’s Step Seven prayer, which asks God’s help in replacing our willfulness with His will for us. The Twelve and Twelve calls that replacement a “basic ingredient of all humility.”
I went to Hazelden for treatment because I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I believe we get active with Step Six when we get sick and tired of being sick—sick and tired of the character defects of which alcoholism is a symptom, sick and tired of their effect, not on our past, but on our present lives.
In this ongoing process, the Program is asking us to go where none of us has ever been before—into lives of lessened fear, diminished anger, fewer resentments, and genuine self-esteem instead of self-pity. There is a price, however: the willingness to challenge and change patterns of thought, speech, and behavior that may have gone unchallenged for ten, twenty, thirty years or more.
These stories from Mary and Mike are good illustrations for a better understanding of working the Sixth and Seventh Steps. The first five Steps have supplied the foundation for recovery. The next two Steps begin the active, day-to-day solution, removing what blocks us from our usefulness to other people and to our Higher Power, and especially (and ultimately) what blocks us from ourselves.
There are four basic reasons we won’t be “entirely ready” to work the Sixth and Seventh Steps. The first is a conscious decision that we will never give up a specific character defect. Next, we blame our defects on others: people, situations, or institutions. Third, we rationalize. Our capacity to rationalize is unlimited. Before recovery we spent years on this one—throwing up barriers against unpleasant realities. Finally, it’s denial: we are totally unaware of our own contribution to our problems.
The order of the Twelve Steps occurs for a reason. There’s not much use in doing our amends in Steps Eight and Nine if there is no sign of our willingness to change by doing Steps Six and Seven. How many times in active addiction did we say we were sorry without the slightest intent of changing our behavior so we wouldn’t have to say we were sorry again? Working Steps Eight and Nine is hollow unless we’ve begun working the Sixth Step with humility as our guide. “The Promises” in the Big Book (pages 83 and 84) come after the discussion of Steps Eight and Nine.
Let’s look at the words of Sam Shoemaker^2 to gain some clarity on what the Sixth and Seventh Steps are asking of us. Sam was the Episcopal clergyman who ran Calvary Church and Mission where first Ebby T.^3 and then Bill W. (AA’s cofounder and primary author of the Big Book) began their recovery. Bill W. credited Shoemaker with passing on to him and the early AAs the “spiritual keys” that make up the Program and the Twelve Steps.
Shoemaker wrote about the necessity of making daily surrenders. Yes, the Sixth Step is also about surrendering, just like the Third. But Shoemaker made one point very clear: We surrender as much of ourselves to as much of God as we understand. In other words, our spiritual progress is based in direct proportion to our dropping the rock. We are very fortunate that all of our defects aren’t revealed to us all at once. Recovery works by giving us daily insight into what we can do to remove what blocks us. We need a daily awareness that our character defects are the opposite of the principles of our Program.
Shoemaker also passed on to the early AAs the idea that God reveals as much truth as you can live up to. That statement puts us directly on page 164 of the Big Book where it says, “The answers will come, if your own house is in order.” The Sixth Step helps us do that. Some have called the Sixth and Seventh Steps the “forgotten Steps” because they aren’t talked about that much. Others have called these Steps the most important. Perhaps the whole program is about Six and Seven.
By working the Sixth and Seventh Steps, we are less likely in recovery to stay stuck in old, unproductive, negative behavior patterns. We gain more understanding on how all the Steps, although ordered for a reason, need to be worked together. This prevents us from falling into the trap of understanding only just enough of the Program to make us miserable and not enough to make us happy. For example, some of us might fall into the trap of thinking the support system of the fellowship (meetings) is the entire Program of action.
The action of the Sixth and Seventh Steps culminates in dropping the rock—all the stubborn, grasping, stupid holding on to old patterns of behavior, thinking, and feeling that are harmful to our progress in recovery.
In recovery, we try to take the opposite of our character defects and shortcomings and turn them into principles. For example, we work to change fear into faith, hate into love, egoism into humility, anxiety and worry into serenity, complacency into action, denial into acceptance, jealousy into trust, fantasy into reality, selfishness into service, resentment into forgiveness, judgmentalism into tolerance, despair into hope, self-hate into self-respect, and loneliness into fellowship. Through this work, we learn to understand the principles of our program.
Such work may look like an overwhelming goal to an outsider, but those of us in recovery know that our true goal is “progress not perfection.” As the Big Book tells us, we are not destined for sainthood, and we should not be discouraged when we cannot “maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles are guides to progress.” Also, the Twelve and Twelve states: “AA’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happy and usefully whole.”
What, exactly, are these principles, and where did they come from? Over the years, a list of principles that correspond to each of the Twelve Steps has been printed in AA newsletters and on pocket cards. The origin of this list is unknown, although it is used by many Twelve Step members:
Step One Honesty Step Two Hope Step Three Faith Step Four Courage Step Five Integrity Step Six Willingness Step Seven Humility Step Eight Brotherly Love Step Nine Justice Step Ten Perseverance Step Eleven Spiritual Awareness Step Twelve Service^4
In this book, we and all those who have assisted us will attempt to take a real look at the Sixth and Seventh Steps. We must learn to take the intellectual knowledge and turn it into emotional and spiritual reality—into living—so we can continue to change and grow and be useful. To become the person we can become, we must drop the rock— all the grasping and holding on to old patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that are harmful to ourselves and to others. The focus must become “moving toward completion” rather than “away from unpleasant and uncomfortable habits and actions.”
Please join in this adventure of learning to put the Sixth and Seventh Steps into action. Through these actions, we will be able to transform our life and relationships.
