"Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings."

	Since this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here
to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.
	Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of
A.A.'s Twelve Steps.  For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at
all.  Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious
quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming
truly happy.  Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able
to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.
	Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world.  Not
only is the idea misunderstood;  the word itself is often intensely disliked.  Many people
haven't even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.  Much of the everyday
talk we hear, and a great deal of what we read, highlights  humanity's pride in our own
achievements.  
	With great intelligence, people of science have been forcing nature to disclose its
secrets.  The immense resources now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material
blessings that many have come to believe that humanity's own millennium lies just ahead. 
Poverty will disappear, and there will be such abundance that everybody can have all the
security and personal satisfactions they desire.  The theory seems to be that once
everybody's primary instincts are satisfied, there won't be much left to quarrel about.  The
world will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on culture and character.  Solely by
their own intelligence and labor, people  will have shaped their own destiny.
	Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of A.A., wants to deprecate material
achievement.  Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to
the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life.  But we are sure
that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this
formula than alcoholics.  For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our
share of security, prestige, and romance.  When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to
dream still greater dreams.  When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. 
Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted. 
	In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had
been our lack of humility.  We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building
and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose
of living.  Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends with the
means.  Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which
we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the
final end and aim of life.
	True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good
character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied. 
With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what
we really wanted.  But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the
character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. 
Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we
would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not.  We never thought
of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of people and God the daily basis of living.
	This lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose
of our lives, produced another bad result.  For just so long as we were convinced that we
could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long
was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible.  This was true even when we believed
that God existed.  We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren
because we were still trying to play God ourselves.  As long as we placed self-reliance
first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question.  That basic
ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.
	For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful.  It was
only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility.  It
was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the
final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more
than a condition of groveling despair.  Every newcomer in Alcoholics Anonymous is told,
and they soon realize for themselves, that their humble admission of powerlessness over
alcohol is their first step toward liberation from its paralyzing grip.  
	So it is that we first see humility as a necessity.  But this is the barest beginning. 
To get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of
humility  as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for
humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time.  A whole
lifetime geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once.  Rebellion dogs
our every step at first.
	When we have finally admitted without reservation that we are powerless over
alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great sigh of relief, saying, "Well, thank God that's over! 
I'll never have to go through that again!"  Then we learn, often to our consternation, that
this is only the first milestone on the new road we are walking.  Still goaded by sheer
necessity, we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character flaws that made
problem drinkers of us in the first place, flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a
retreat into alcoholism once again.  We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but in
some instances this will appear to be an impossible job from which we recoil.  And we
cling with a passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing to our
equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much.  How can we possibly summon the
resolution and the willingness to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions and desires?
	But again we are driven on by the inescapable conclusion which we draw from
A.A. experience, that we surely must try with a will, or else fall by the wayside.  At this
stage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and coercion to do the right thing.  We
are obliged to choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do
so.  These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take them.  We may
still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do
recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.
	But when we have taken a square look at some of these defects, have discussed
them with another, and have become willing to have them removed, our thinking about
humility commences to have a wider meaning.  By this time in all probability we have
gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps.  We enjoy moments
in which there is something like real peace of mind.  To those of us who have hitherto
known only excitement, depression, or anxiety -- in other words, to all of us -- this
newfound peace is a priceless gift.  Something new indeed has been added.  Where
humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the
nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.
	This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our
outlook.  Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of
painful ego-puncturing.  Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from
pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with
the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building
through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.
	Then, in A.A., we looked and listened.  Everywhere we saw failure and misery
transformed by humility into priceless assets.  We heard story after story of how humility
had brought strength out of weakness.  In every case, pain had been the price of admission
into a new life.  But this admission price had purchased more than we expected.  It
brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.  We
began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.
	During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of
all was the change in our attitude toward God.  And this was true whether we had been
believers or unbelievers.  We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort
of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency.  The notion that we
would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate. 
Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. 
Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of God's help.  But now the words
"Of myself I am nothing, God doeth the works" began to carry bright promise and
meaning.
	We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility.  It could come
quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering.  A
great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really
wanted, rather than as something we must have.  It marked the time when we could
commence to see the full implication of Step Seven:  "Humbly asked God to remove our
shortcomings."
	As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.'s
inquire once more just what our deeper objectives are.  Each of us would like to live at
peace with ourselves and with our fellows.  We would like to be assured that the grace of
God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  We have seen that character defects
based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward
these objectives.  We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands
upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
	The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear -- primarily fear that
we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we
demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual
disturbance and frustration.  Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a
means of reducing these demands.  The difference between a demand and a simple request
is plain to anyone.
	The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us,
with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. 
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility.  It is really saying to us that we now
ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as
we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a
Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  If that degree of humility could
enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there
must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.

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