"And I'm trying to get down
 To the heart of the matter
 But my will gets weak
 And my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it's about -
 Forgiveness,
 Forgiveness -
 Even if, even if
 You don't love me anymore..."
                    -- Don Henley

No, I don't usually quote ex-Eagles in these pages, but this one seems appropriate.

I was in a meeting the other day - an "As Bill Sees It" topic - and they read an excerpt from some of Bill's writings that said (paraphrasing) that, if we're going to go around asking for forgiveness (I assume in Step Nine) that we'd better start out by forgiving those we were angry at - including ourselves.

Bill, Bill, Billy-Bill Bill - sometimes I think that you shoulda stopped when you hit page 165 : )

I don't doubt that forgiveness is important - although the only place that I can find it in the first 164 pages (at least, in a quick mental skimming) is on page 86, where we ask God's forgiveness in our evening 11th Step. But I'm not sure that

a) I need to actually work on forgiving others, or
b) I have any business forgiving myself.

The first part is simple - if I'm angry at somebody (as a steady-state thing) then I have a resentment. If I have a resentment, then I'm supposed to do the work in Step Four. If I do that work, then I will do the fourth column(even if this is a shortened discussion in Step 10, the same principles apply). If I've done the fourth column, then I've seen my part(s) in this situation and/or in the generation of the resentment, and so I'm no longer angry at whoever I listed in the first column. If I am still angry, I have more fourth column work to do, because I haven't really found my part yet.

(N.B. - this does not mean that I'm not capable of generating more anger about it later, even if I have found my part - because if I haven't done 6, 7 8 and 9, it's a pretty sure bet that I'm hanging on to something).

So I won't be getting high-and-mighty and forgiving anybody - I'll be asking for forgiveness, but the wind will be out of my sails.

And this business of forgiving myself - speaking as a person coming from a Christian background, I have no business doing that, either. If I can really forgive myself, then what is God for?

So I don't think that it's by accident that there aren't any "forgiveness" instructions in the Big Book - because it ain't my job. My forgiveness happens as a result of my own inventory.