Basic to Freedom

THE DISCUSSION was on Step Four. One of the members stated she didn't write anything down and there were many things she just didn't care to bring out. Others showed a strange reluctance to be bold about the Step, insisting that we needed to examine our assets more than our defects. I recalled the portion of AA Comes of Age devoted to the development of the Twelve Steps. Bill notes that there had been a procedure comprising six steps, and the second was: "We made a moral inventory of our defects or sins." Now, that tells us in nice, simple, straight language what the early AAs had been doing before the Twelve Steps emerged in written form.