History has taught one primary lesson. It is that the need for an examination of conscience has been found as one of the most critical dynamics for human maturation.

“People of the world don't look at themselves, and so they blame one another”. (Mevlana Rumi, from Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance.)

Three Perspectives

In the self-help arena, it is called “making a searching and fearless moral inventory.” In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 4th Step describes and the 10th step reinforces the need to take a personal inventory on a continual basis. It is an effort to find the truth, to search out the flaws in one’s makeup, to find out self-defeating characteristics, and to take an honest stock of oneself. For example, is one an angry person or perhaps carrying unreasonable resentments? According to A.A. only by taking a personal inventory and writing it down, can one see the futility and fatality of these characteristics, and come to realize their terrible destructiveness to self and others.