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In taking the Fourth Step, we opened to feelings we had previously shut out, facing ghosts that lurked just beyond awareness. In this Fifth Step, we come out of the closet. Until we accept the person who did all the things on our inventory as worthy and lovable, we cannot break free of the past.
Guilt and shame arise from a sense of unworthiness. At the core of everything we have denied is our denial of Love. Facing ourselves honestly is a beginning, but we cannot feel free of guilt as long as we have anything to hide.
Regardless of how thorough we have been in our inventories, as long as we hang onto our guilty secrets, we cannot experience ourselves as free.
We are only as sick as our secrets.
AA
Confessing one’s shortcomings is an ancient practice for releasing guilt. Healing our lives is our responsibility. Disclosing our guilty secrets heals our lives. We must do this for ourselves, but we cannot do it by ourselves. Sharing how we have blocked Love strengthens ourselves.
Only the mind sees giving and receiving as separate acts. In truth, they are different aspects of the same act. The Fifth Step is a powerful instrument of restoration for the one who tells and the one who listens. When hidden within us, guilt creates a barrier to intimacy. Through honest and heartfelt sharing, the barrier comes down.
The person with whom we share our inventories participates with us in this sacred act of healing. We look for a person with qualities of centeredness, compassion, and integrity; someone with whom we can be honest without fear of judgment; someone who will maintain confidentiality, and, above all, someone who knows how to listen. In short, we want someone we can trust.
We may choose to do our self-disclosure with a member of the clergy or a therapist. There is also much to be said for choosing someone who is not a professional listener, but someone who, like ourselves, is involved in the process of Self-exploration. We might choose someone from our Benestrophe group. Such a choice insures a partner familiar with the principles of Benestrophe who understands the purpose of our disclosure.
To my mind the beginning of the answer to almost every question of our society is relationship with others who are searching for Truth.
Jacob Needleman
In most cases, we should not take our Fifth Step with a spouse or close friend who may be personally affected by portions of our disclosure. By choosing someone who has not been involved in our lives, we free ourselves of concerns about protecting the anonymity of third parties who might figure in our disclosures.
If we do not belong to Benestrophe, we might choose to take our Fifth Step with someone who has done this work in the context of A.A. or another Twelve-Step program. Perhaps we belong to a church or some other group where people are involved in personal growth. Perhaps we attend a therapy group or yoga class. Maybe we have a spiritual teacher or a friend with whom we discuss spiritual things. Perhaps there is someone we met at a seminar with whom we had a strong connection and who would be delighted to make themselves available to us. The important thing is not to turn the challenge of finding an appropriate partner into an excuse for not taking the Step. When we commit absolutely to taking this Step, we create the means with which to do it.
Many of us have lost touch with the value of ritual in our lives. Typically, rituals that we do still honor- weddings, bar mitzvah’s, confirmations, graduations-are little more than preludes to the party that follows, their high points often the clothes worn or the gifts received, rather than the ritual itself. The transformational experience that was the original purpose of all ritual usually eludes us.
The Truth about this process is that we get out of it what we put into it. If we view the Fifth Step as an obligatory effort, we will get a less rewarding experience than if we view it as a spiritual cleansing, a sacred offering of our guilt into the fire of Life. It is appropriate to ritualize this process because it represents a shift in experience.
By placing our disclosure in a ceremonial context, we establish it firmly in our experience as a rite of passage. We can create a sacred space. We can begin with a meditation, a prayer, or an invocation. We can prepare ourselves with a fruit fast or a ritual bath. When we are done, we can burn the notes used in the Step in a ritual fire or bury them in the earth. We can present our partner with a gift to symbolize the bond that this sharing represents.
Ritual is the fiber that makes the cable of the bridge that will take you to the other shore.
Dhyani Ywahoo
Our ability to ritualize is limited only by our imagination. These things have meaning only inasmuch as we invest them with meaning. Attention to this detail serves to draw us deeper into the experience. We can make use of all of these suggestions or none of them. We can come up with our own unique ways to make the moment meaningful. Regardless of how, or if, we choose to ritualize it, the Fifth Step is about showing our shadow side, to a fellow human being.
It is important to have a space that insures uninterrupted privacy, and at the same time, allows us to have a sense of spaciousness. We want to be clear and well-rested. We want to schedule our Fifth Step at a time when we do not have some engagement to rush off to once we’re done. We may want to unplug the phone.
As we begin, we want to focus on the Heart. Although we may bring a copy of our written inventory so we don’t leave anything out, we should not simply read from it. To get maximum benefit from this experience, we want to be as present as possible. What we are doing here is not the same as reciting a litany of our shortcomings. What we are doing here is a sacred ritual.
As we share the many ways in which we have denied Love, emotional energy cannot help but move. Any number of feelings may arise in the course of our disclosure, but if we have prepared ourselves well for this Step, we will come to feel a tremendous sense of relief as we release guilt that had been buried deep within us. By going slowly and allowing feelings to express, the energy moves, and we move along with it.
Do the thing you fear the most, and the death of fear is certain.
Dale Carnegie
The point of this Step is inner cleansing through the sharing of memories that defined who we thought we were. Although we may be tempted to omit, slant, or dramatize information, our commitment is to telling the Truth. Anything consciously left out contracts into a ball of guilt within us, robbing us of the Freedom and joy that come with taking off our masks. So, we exclude nothing.
The Fifth Step is a powerful experience for both people involved, as we learn when it is our turn to listen to another. The invitation to take part in someone’s self- disclosure is an honor that we should not take lightly. As a participant in another’s rite of passage, we may also choose to ritualize the experience. We have a responsibility to come to the session as centered and balanced as possible, having set aside our own issues and concerns so that we may give our partner undivided attention and acceptance. The important point to remember is that this slice of time is for the person who is disclosing. As much as we might like to jump in with our own experience or opinion, we refrain from doing so.
When taking the Fifth Step, we are involved with our own feelings and may not be aware that the process can hold as much challenge for the one who receives as the one who shares. When we listen to another’s Fifth-Step revelations, we may be tempted to sympathize, give advice, comfort, or inject our opinion. This is not our role.
There is tremendous power in the simple act of listening with the Heart. Strange as it may seem, being truly heard is an uncommon experience for many of us. To be completely present with another is a gift which the Heart receives. Being fully present is all that is required.
While we withhold advice and judgment during another person’s disclosure, we can, through gesture and encouragement, facilitate the flow of expression. This is a mutual experience, and entering into the ritual space will put us, as listeners, in touch with our depths. We can trust our intuition to guide our responses and communication of acceptance and Love with a minimum of intrusion.
We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can fly only by embracing each other.
Luciano de Crescenzo
We prepare ourselves to be comfortable with silences, as well as with tears or other emotional expressions. We should be receptive to the needs of the person disclosing as regards prayers or other ritual elements, even though these specifics may not be part of our own spiritual path. We may want to get an idea of how the process will be handled before coming to the session. Matters such as allergies to incense, time considerations, or anything else that could be a potential distraction or inconvenience should be communicated and worked out in advance.
When someone selects us to listen to their Fifth Step disclosure, they are honoring us with their most painful memories. Everything shared in the Fifth Step process is held in absolute confidence. Even the fact that this process has taken place is not ours to disclose without permission.
Genuine intimacy can only be created in a climate where two individuals are willing to be real with one another.
John Amodeo & Kris Wentworth
There may have been several people who could have served as the receptive partner in this process and these people might feel hurt at not being chosen. Even if the discloser seems to be open with others about the proceedings, that does not free us from our pledge of confidentiality.
The process of taking inventory and then making our disclosure is transformative. Although we may still have faults, make mistakes, and face challenges, we do not finish this process the same as we began. This cleansing process frees us from emotional baggage that we have long carried with us. Our participation in the Twelve-Step process of Benestrophe eases our journey home to Unity, Freedom and Bliss.
A mind stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Taking the Fifth Step is a process that the ego views as unthinkable, as something damaging and threatening. Afterwards, we are strengthened by our demonstration of courage. The process helps us realize how the human condition bonds us with one another, how our secrets are not as horrible or unique as we had imagined, and how our minds use guilt and shame to magnify our mistakes and hold us captive to fear. Once we become accepted unmasked, we gain a perspective from which we never fully retreat. Regardless of the judgments we face in the course of Life, we know at a deeper level than before that our mistakes do not define who we are. The experience of assisting another with their Fifth-Step process and Loving them as he or she works through it adds a dimension to that relationship.
Whether or not we recognize it in any given moment, unconditional Love is what Life is all about. What we reject in ourselves and others is the product of ego, not of Self. When we confront the mind’s illusion by being honest and taking responsibility for our lives, the Truth about ourselves becomes visible. Sharing this with another person allows us to come out of hiding and live honestly. As we embrace honesty in thought and action, we choose inner peace.
To find God within you, you must go through the portal of self-acceptance.
Emmanuel
As we work these Steps, we see the important role honesty plays in our ability to be in the moment. Whereas once we would have gone to any Length to defend ourselves, we are now able to accept what is. Accepting ourselves, we are more able to accept Life. No longer needing to deny our mistakes, they become valuable feedback. Likewise, when others criticize us, we are able to use their comments for our growth.
Honesty creates a shift in our lives. As we come into the present moment more fully, long-standing patterns dissolve. As the guilt and shame that kept us in the past or future is released, we find we are increasingly ready to make whatever changes are necessary to manifest health, joy, and abundance.
Admitting what we have done is only half of the equation; the other half is our willingness to take appropriate action. Step Five supplies us with the vehicle to direct that action. In this Step, we bring to completion the process we started in Step Four. We express our unconditional Love through the action of making amends. In this sense, Step Five opens our Hearts to see the Reality of a world that is not burdened by the pain of separation, a world that knows Unity, Freedom, and Bliss.
The Fifth Step brings all our relationships, past and future, into the present moment. It creates the space for every aspect of our lives to exist in harmony and balance, free of any encumbrances that may have weighed us down at some other time. Step Five frees us to move forward without baggage from the past. After we have taken Step Five, we find it easier to relax and be in the moment.
Share about how you felt after taking Step Five.
We are only as sick as our secrets. Share about the impact that dumping your garbage has had on your aliveness.
Talk about the benefits of sharing.
What surprised you the most about your experience with Step Five?
What did Step Five teach you about listening?
Share about an experience that taught you the value of confidentiality.
What aspect of revealing your secrets have you found to be pleasurable?
What was the most supportive thing your partner did to support you in taking Step Five?
Talk about the importance of paying attention to your intuition when listening to others.
What would you like to share with those who have not yet taken this Step?
Describe a time in your life when you revealed something to someone and the results of doing so were other than what you expected.
Share about a situation you’ve experienced where it was better for you to keep quiet.
Share about how taking the Fifth Step has changed your life.
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