“Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process.” (Page 64, Big Book)
A commercial inventory: go into the stockroom and count what’s there. Identify unsaleable goods.
I do superficial inventory. ‘Superficial’, of course, means on the surface. On the surface, I feel resentment or fear. Why? Because I haven’t got my own way. That’s on the surface. I then look at my attitudes, thinking, and behaviour, and discern character defects. These are all detectable simply by looking. They’re there on the surface. There are lots of lists of character defects in circulation. Since that work has been done, all one needs to do is pick from the list and find the examples.
I’ve never done anything deep in AA, and I wouldn’t know how. Fortunately, I don’t need to!