Month: April 2013

“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

“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it…”

Reaching the 10th Step is a big milestone in a person’s step work. This is mainly due to the amount of work it takes to get to this point in the recovery process.

By the time I reached my 10th Step the first time, I had a notebook filled with over 100 pages of resentments, turnarounds, sex inventory, and amends. At least a half a dozen of those amends had been completed. I was more determined then ever to stay sober and follow some path of 12 step recovery. Yet my self will was still at war with God’s will. I just couldn’t seem to let go of some of my old ways of living. I was having a hard time stopping some of my old toxic behaviors. I was struggling to fully let go of several unhealthy friendships. And I was fighting myself on trying to break old bad habits that led me to addictions in the first place. This is why the 10th Step was and still is a great tool for people like me.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith never intended when they wrote the steps for anyone to be perfect in their lives after making it through the first nine of them. Their hope was that a person would be feeling much lighter and more determined to stay clean from whatever their addictions were by that point in the steps. They realized, like so many of us do at this juncture, that there were still character defects within them. They also realized, like so many of us do by the time we reach this step, that there still were components of self will being acted upon and creating problems in their lives. Hence the purpose of the 10th Step came to fruition. This step brings about the ability to inventory those problems that still happen for the recovering person and provide a healing path for each of them.

Some take their own personal inventory every night before going to bed. Some may take it at the end of the week. Some may do it at the end of the month. Some have even learned how to take their own inventory in the moment. There is no wrong way to do this step. The work in it is simply to look at any resentments that may creep up and do a 4th Step turnaround on them to see where their part was in creating the resentment. The other part of the work on this step is to identify after doing the turnaround, whether they created any more harm or pain for others and if they did, they know an amends is in order.

This may sound a lot more complex then it really has to be. A good example of its simplicity could be something similar to the following. Sometimes when I am speaking and get heated in the moment, I may make a hurtful comment towards someone else. The first part of a 10th Step would be to look at why I got heated in the first place. In other words, why did I get resentful and lash out?  By writing it down just like I would have in a typical 4th Step,  I can identify my part in the resentment by turning it around on me. After making that realization, I would make my amends to that person by telling them exactly where I was selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, or afraid and end it with a sincere apology.

In the past year I have made great strides in my life to get closer to God. In doing so, I have had to take a lot less inventory on myself day to day. I find that I am making a lot less problems for myself or for others in my life anymore. The best part about this step for me today though is that when a character defect within me arises and I cop a resentment towards someone and possibly hurt them in the process, I’m able to do an inventory in my heart pretty quickly seeing where I was in the wrong, and find myself promptly making an amends.

Resentments are spiritual poison. They prevent me from getting closer to God. Any time I harm anyone also sits within me terribly today and keeps me separate from that I most desire, which is a closer relationship to my Higher Power. The 10th Step is the vaccine to that poison and one that is readily available for me to take everyday so that I can keep my relationship growing closer to God each and every day.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others…”

There’s a line in all 12 step recovery programs which I often hear and believe applies to this step. “Are you willing to go to any lengths to maintain your recovery?” Making amends isn’t an easy task. On the whole list of the 12 steps, the 9th Step might just be considered the hardest to undertake. It directly relates to just how willing someone is to maintain their recovery as the work in this step will have them facing their past and all the pain, harm, and damage they’ve caused others.

By the time a person in recovery makes it to this step, they should have already begun to see the damage they caused others through their own selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and fear based behaviors. They should have already begun to be aware of the havoc their actions created from their addiction based world. There should be no doubt in their minds how much their addictions had control of them and how great the consequences came from living in each of them.

When I arrived at the 9th Step for the first time, I was more than aware of how much the chaos in my world came from my own doing. I was even more aware of how much living in my addictions created an endless stream of people I owed amends to. But I was most aware of how fearful I was to go back to all of those people or institutions and make restitution for what I had done because of living in the disease of all my addictions.

There were friends that I had used for my own sexual advantage, places I had stolen products from, gossip I had spread which hurt certain others, lies that I had told which damaged loved ones, relationships I had come in between and broken apart, promises that I had made and never kept, and so on and so forth. A list of names and places sat in front of me from my 8th Step showing me this. I knew that I owed each of them an amends that wasn’t going to be as easy as offering only an apology. I also knew that if I skipped over this crucial step, I most likely would slowly unravel at the seams and eventually go back to living in my addictions creating only a longer amends list to one day tackle.

Making an amends means a lot more than just showing up to where I caused harm and telling someone I was a sick person in an addiction and saying I’m sorry. It means being honest from a truly humble place and telling someone how I had been selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, and afraid. It means describing in detail each of those elements to where I had caused them harm or damage. It means allowing for that person to tell me how much pain I caused them, giving them the opportunity to let it out with me just listening. And the most important part comes at the end of each amends where I ask for their forgiveness and what they need to move beyond the damage I caused them. This is why I had so much fear and why so many others have the same when tackling a 9th Step.

Every one of those amends brought out fear for me before attempting to tackle them. Unfortunately, the path of every amends is different. In some cases, I made the amends and all was forgiven with a big hug. In other cases, I was told all was forgiven long before and that I hadn’t even needed to make an amends. There were cases where I was told before I even started that they didn’t want to hear the amends and to leave them alone. In those cases, I had to accept that they weren’t ready to forgive me and all I could do was give myself credit that I had been willing to try. There were even cases where I couldn’t make the amends because I had no idea where the people were and all I could do was put it in God’s hands to hopefully one day be placed in their path. I know of other cases where people have faced being screamed and yelled at. I know of even other cases where people are told they will never be forgiven for what they’ve done. Thankfully I did not have to deal with either of those situations nor did I have to deal with any outstanding warrants, or police matters. I know of people who have run from the law that turned themselves in when getting honest on their 9th Step. There have been people who have even gone back to places or people they stole great sums of money from during this step’s work. Thankfully I didn’t have to do that either. What I did have to face though was many people who had seen me tear apart their lives and cause great emotional and mental suffering. I watched many cry and sob because of my amends. I realized I had broken many hearts and torn apart many lives.

As this step says, there are times though that we can’t make amends because it might injure them or others more. In my case, there were people I had been sexual with outside of their marriages or partners, of which their other halves weren’t aware of. To make an amends to them or their family would have caused greater harm and instead I had to practice a living amends which meant never again doing those behaviors.

This step really does take a lot of willingness to complete it. It involves facing all those dark corners that have been avoided for years. It involves seeing and listening to other’s anger and rage without saying anything back. It involves being humble to those once thought were never to be faced again. But most importantly for me, it involves praying diligently to God before each of them asking for strength to complete it. And it involves praying just as diligently afterward, thanking God for having given me the strength to walk through all that fear. After all, it is because of my closer relationship to God that has made me become willing to go to any lengths to maintain my recovery and do any of these amends in the first place. Because of it, I am finding much more inner peace today.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson