“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out…”
Step 11 is the longest in wording of all the steps, yet I find it’s message short and sweet. I’ll sum it up in three simple phrases…
“Spend time with God. Learn God’s will. Then ask for strength to follow it.”
It has been quite difficult in my life since getting sober to spend much time by myself with God. For a long time, I thought watching TV or going to a movie alone qualified, except in both of those cases, it didn’t. My focus and interest during those things was not on being with God so much as it was on experiencing something visually stimulating. Frankly, I hated the idea of being alone as most of my childhood life was that way. The bottom line was that I was afraid to face that part of me again. Ironically following the 12 steps slowly led me back there to facing that fear and it’s the 11th Step, that has become the strongest catalyst to helping me overcome it.
Step Eleven deals with two different elements, prayer and meditation.
Prayer is simply the act of talking with God. So often I’ve made prayer a complicated action. I thought it had to be big words and filled with eloquence. I believed there was a special format on how to communicate with God. For the longest time, my image of God was one of a figure sitting on a throne where I had to bow before it and speak with Shakespearean prose just to be heard. Following these steps in all of the recovery programs led me to the same conclusions. God is not way up there. God is not way out there. God is not beyond my reach. God is right here in front of me and all around me, all the time and I can carry on a conversation with God in any given moment like I was talking to a best friend. Because truthfully, God is my closest friend. The simplest prayer I have ever said to God is just three words.
“Please help me.”
That prayer has come in handy lately when my pain is at its greatest or when I’m feeling tempted to go back to old toxic behaviors. On the other side of the coin, I have said prayers that are much longer and more complex such as the following.
“God, I want nothing more in my life than to find your will for me and follow it. Please take from me all of my self-will and guide me away from all the addictions and obsessions that have kept me apart from you. Steer me instead towards all the things that are filled with Your love and light.”
The reality is that any time I want to talk with God, I simply start by saying “God…” and start talking. In doing so, I’m praying. Many in the recovery rooms say that prayer has to be on the knees with heads bowed. While that is one way of praying, prayer can be done anytime, anywhere, and in so many more ways. It can be done when walking, when running, when singing, when dancing, or even when sitting. There is no right way or wrong way to pray. Anyone who says so is continuing to manifest that illusion. But as important as it is to talk to God, it’s just as important to listen to God and that is done through meditation.
Meditation is simply the act of listening to God. Most of the people I have met in the recovery rooms struggle with this because it can involve being still and in silence. For anyone recovering from any addiction, being still and in silence can seem next to impossible. I attribute this to how the brain of an addiction prone person is like an untamed puppy. This puppy wanders from one thing to the next, sniffing this, and sniffing that, barking here, and barking there. The brain is no different, especially for someone just coming into recovery from their addictions. Practicing meditation can help with that, but it takes time and effort, and most importantly, patience.
For a recovering addict of anything, patience can be hard to come by. When active in any addiction, there is never any patience. The only goal is to get high off of something as quick as possible. The opposite holds true in recovery. The goal is to distance oneself from seeking those highs and to become more balanced in life with its natural ebbs and flows. Meditating helps with this as well.
For some odd reason though, when people are told to try meditation, they picture Buddhist monks sitting for hours on end in silence or they tell themselves there is no way they can sit still for any length of time. But yet, most never try. Meditation can be as simple as sitting still on the side of a bed for 5 minutes and just focusing on breathing. And if that’s too difficult, one doesn’t even have to be completely still. Meditation can be as straightforward as taking a walk along the ocean and becoming aware of everything being experienced from the sound of the surf or the feel of the sand below the feet. The key is to be silent in whatever form attempted.
I started with just five minutes of sitting in silence when I began practicing meditation. During those first attempts, I wanted to give up before I started. I didn’t want to sit with myself in silence nor try to hear any inner guidance from God that may arise. My mind had a fit and gave me all the reasons of why it was stupid. Thankfully I never gave up with it. Over the years, I have done everything from being on silent meditation retreats to teaching it to others. In every case, like I do everyday now for 35 minutes, I sit in silence, initially focus on my breathing, and wait for God to speak to me. I have come to believe that God is always speaking to each and every one of us all the time in a way that we can all understand individually. The problem is that we’re often too busy in our brains or in our actions in life to hear what’s being said. While prayer helps all of us convey what’s on our minds and hearts to God, practicing meditation is like putting on a hearing aid to listen to God’s responses to those prayers.
The 11th Step takes both meditation and prayer to help to develop that closer relationship with God. It is essential to a person’s recovery from any addiction but it takes time. It takes practice. And it most definitely takes patience. Talk to God anytime and anywhere and you’re praying. Go find some silence and listen to God and you’re meditating. It’s that simple.
Pray for God’s will and meditate to learn what it is. When it comes, pray for God to gain strength to follow that path and meditate to receive it. By doing this everyday, eventually you’ll see you’re receiving it and you’ll forget you’re even doing the eleventh step as it becomes your way of life.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
