It may be so long since we've done our Step 4 that we misremember it. We may now think that -- when we listed the people we were resentful at and then filled in the rest of the columns -- we were trying to determine why we felt the way we did when these events occurred in our lives. Indeed, wasn't one of the columns called "The cause"?

Well, yes, it was. Here's one example: I'm resentful at Mrs. Jones. The cause: She snubbed me. But all that Step 4 suggests is that we find the immediate cause of the resentment -- and then determine what the underlying fear is.

Completely absent from the AA Big Book is any attempt to find some ultimate reason for my resentments and fears. We'll look in vain for any recommendation that we probe into the dim and distant past in the hope of determining the defining event that made us the way we are.

These misguided attempts to understand why we are the way we are turn out to be the biggest barrier to doing Step 10 on a continuous basis. Step 10 is about now. It's perfectly legitimate to ask in Step 10 how we feel now. But the moment we follow that feeling with some sort of pseudo-therapeutic attempt to understand why we feel that way, we're no longer in now. Instead, we're wallowing around in the past, convinced that if only we can determine what happened all those years ago to make us angry, vulnerable or whatever, we can be well.

We never do find out why we drank, drugged, over-ate, gambled, or whatever our addiction may be. And the first nine Steps work perfectly well without that knowledge. A spiritual, as opposed to a therapeutic, approach to my other problems will work just as well, as long as we accept that "knowing why" is rarely, if ever, a part of spiritual recovery.