Step 4: Clean house to feel the sunlight of the spirit

I'm not big on housecleaning. No wonder I skipped Step 4. It's May already. It seems I lost a month. Life happened, what can I say? Even after debt, life happens. It's weird. You think, oh, yay, I finally got out of debt, now everything will be perfect. I'm here to tell you, things are just different. I don't know how it is for other compulsive debtors, but my life is far from perfect.

Still, when things are bothering me, I know what to do. Time to launch on a course of vigorous action. Time to turn over all the rocks and dead logs (my fears, my justifications, my wacky behaviors) to find out what is lurking underneath.

The idea in Step 4 is that our personal flaws are the cause of our failures. Personal flaws, character defects, indexes of maladjustments, call them what you want to. These are the things about ourselves that block us from being truly present to the will of the higher power and prevent us from enjoying the sunlight of the spirit.

So what does that mean for a compulsive debtor? Here's what I know: my recovery can't begin until I stop debting. That means, just refraining from incurring new debt doesn't mean I'm cured. It just means I'm sober enough for the process of recovery to begin. I can't sit around if I want to stay solvent. I need to take action. That's the personal housecleaning: the fearless and moral inventory.

How do I take a personal inventory? There are many ways to do it. Some people write a story of their debting behavior. Some write their life history—debting attitudes usually start long before we get our first allowance. Some of my inventories have involved listing the ways I've harmed myself as well as others. How do I owe others? Do I think others owe me? I watch for the sense of entitlement, ego, pride and its evil twin reverse pride. Those are markers to my character flaws.

In my personal inventory, I explore the causes and conditions that unsettle me. I write a list of whatever comes to mind. I don't make excuses, I don't exaggerate, I don't justify. And I try not to analyze—analysis is usually conducted in my brain, which is often trying to kill me. What usually comes up? Stories about resentment, anger, fear. Stories of how I avoided responsibilities, how I tried to avoid growing up, how I used my self-centered fear to make everything about me. Once I start looking, it's not hard to see how my fear fueled my self-centeredness, which fueled my fear, round and round in a horrible closed system of self-obsession.

Now I know that anger is the dubious luxury of so-called normal people. I can't afford to deeply resent or hate anything, not if I want to avoid making that thing my higher-power substitute. I want true independence of the spirit, which I believe is possible, if I'm willing to work for it. Step 4 isn't fun, but it's essential if I want to continue to be a "going human concern."

Thanks for listening.

—Hope

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"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous with twenty years of freedom from incurring unsecured debt (which means no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, and borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website.