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ELEVENTH STEP

 

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge

of His will for us and the power

to carry that out.”

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(Firsts part taken from AA book)

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PRAYER and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God. It is not surprising that we sometimes have a tendency to belittle prayer and meditation, considering them as things that are not really necessary. For some of our newcomers, as well as for the old-time agnostics who tenaciously continue to regard the A.A. group as their higher power, the powerful effectiveness of prayer may seem unconvincing or totally unacceptable, despite all the logic and the amount of experience that attests to it.

Those of us who once shared these feelings can understand and comprehend them. We remember very well that something that, from the depths of our being, continued to rebel against the idea of submitting to any God. Furthermore, many of us used a very compelling logic that “proved” that no God existed. How could all the accidents, illnesses, cruelties, and injustices of the world be explained? How could all those unhappy lives that were the direct consequence of an unfortunate birth or the uncontrollable vicissitudes of circumstances be explained? We were convinced that, in such a capricious world, justice could not exist and, therefore, neither could God. Sometimes, we resorted to other tactics. “Okay,” we would say to ourselves, “it's likely that the chicken came before the egg.” Undoubtedly, the universe had some kind of “first cause,” the God of the Atom, perhaps, oscillating between cold and heat. But there was no evidence of the existence of any God who knew human beings or was interested in humanity. We resisted trying meditation and prayer as stubbornly as the scientist who refuses to conduct an experiment for fear that its results will refute his favorite theory.

Of course, we ended up doing the experiment and, when we got unexpected results, we changed our minds; in fact, we changed our convictions. Thus we became firmly convinced of the effectiveness of meditation and prayer. And we have discovered that the same can happen to anyone who tries it. It has been rightly said,

“almost the only ones who mock prayer are those who have never prayed with sufficient assiduity.”

For those of us who have become accustomed to using prayer regularly, trying to get by without praying would seem as foolish as depriving ourselves of air, food, or sunlight. And for the same reason. When we deprive ourselves of air, food, or sunlight, the body suffers. And in the same way, when we refuse to pray and meditate, we deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vital and necessary support. Just as the body can fail in its functions for lack of food, so too can the soul fail. We all have need of the light of God's reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere of His grace. The realities of A.A. life confirm this eternal truth in an astonishing way. There is a direct chain between self-examination, meditation, and prayer.

 

Each of these practices by itself can bring great relief and great benefits. But when they are intertwined and interrelated in a logical way, the result is a firm foundation for all of life. We may, from time to time, be granted a glimpse of that perfect reality which is the kingdom of God. And we will have the comfort and assurance that our individual destiny in that kingdom will be secured as long as we try, however faltering our steps, to know and do the will of our Creator.

As we have already seen, we use self-examination to illuminate the dark side of our nature with new vision, action, and grace. It is a step we took toward cultivating that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help. But it is only a single step. We will want to go further. We will want the good that is in all of us, even in the worst of us, to grow and flourish. We will certainly need fresh air and plenty of food. But above all, we will want sunlight; little can grow in the dark. Meditation is our step into the sun. How, then, are we to meditate. 

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