We humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings
At Step 6 we realized we were ready for this, at step 7 we humbly ask The Absolute to remove our shortcomings. We seem to have issue asking for anything. The PDF opens with this statement:
Since this Step is 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.
So the reason is pride. We've always blamed our parents for not responding adequately to our expression of need. Perhaps that is the root of it all, we learn and eventually identify as independent because we learn nothing will help us but ourselves.
Without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.
After much wrangling with addiction we must admit this is true. There is no power within ourselves that can overcome the grasp which we have befallen to.
Much of the everyday talk we hear, and a great deal of what we read, highlights man's pride in his own achievements.
Yes, humility is underrated as much as pride is overrated in contemporary society.
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, men will have shaped their own destiny.
The person who has satisfied their basic instincts will observe more sophisticated needs arise with the same intensity of basic instincts. You will thirst and hunger for status, self-realization, power, or whatever higher need.
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 wanted.
Nod.
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.
Yes, we seem to be running on a satisfaction treadmill. We are only very briefly content with what we have accomplished.
We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.
No, we have thought about it, but we don't have a good model for putting it into practice. On second thought, we have very good models in Christ, Buddha, Lao Tze, Socrates and many other saints and prophets of whom we are ignorant about. These are the most humble beings who have walked the face of this earth.
We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As long as we place 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.
We agree, but how do we know God's will?
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.
Sigh, if only we weren't so obstinate.
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.
The journey has just begun. We must pursue humility.
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.
There's serenity in humility because you don't expect much of yourself.
We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was sort of a bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we could still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate.
Indeed, we only call God in moments of despair.
A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcoming".
We smoke/drink to feel grandiose. Oomph that rings true. We've been brought to the doorstep of humility. We shall cross it.
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.
We lack confidence. Will humility bring confidence? Logically so, because we won't expect anything from ourselves. But it won't be a grandiose confidence. It will be a humble, quiet confidence. We can only pray not to become proud of our humility.