Threshold

Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to im-
prove our conscious contact with God as we un-
derstood Him, praying only for knowledge of
His will for us and the power to carry that out.

What is your experience with this?

Boleo

They say that all of the steps are equally important and for a while I agreed with that premise. However, after peeling back the layers of each step and seeing them in a new light, I have found step 11 to be the most profound in depth of character and the most prolific in terms of getting results.

It took me a long time to see it, but the word "only" transforms this step from being a request FOR additional prosperity into a being surrender OF old (inferior) prosperity. When I request "only" what I ultimately need instead of what I think I need, I am in effect applying Occam's Razor to my spiritual life. I am in effect stripping away my old fallacies and misconceptions in exchange for the bare necessities that allow me to live in "The Now".

Meister Echhart once said that Spiritual Detachment was "The highest of all principles. The most noble of all virtues and the only truly unselfish motive for doing anything".

I did not have a clue as to what he meant by that statement until I started working on step 11. Another thing that I learned from working step 11 was the concept of tacit quality. Whenever I project my definitions on God or any other Higher Power, I am in effect infecting he/she/it with my own personal limitations. I am better off refraining from using any attributes when speaking of such matters. In fact, predicate adjectives are best avoided all together when addressing the quality of anything spiritual in nature. In the Spiritual realm, quality in general takes on fuzzy logic like characteristics. At best, words like that just end up placing a glass ceiling over the spiritual dimension.

Another famous Meister Eckhart quote was:

"God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction."

BradJustBrad

I am not a 12-stepper, but that is a very enlightening post, Boleo. Thanks.

jdooner

Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to im-
prove our conscious contact with God as we un-
derstood Him, praying only for knowledge of
His will for us and the power to carry that out.

I am curious why "His" is capitalized in a secular 12 step actually? Seem counterintuitive.

Threshold

sloppy work on my part. I had just copy/pasted from the original 12 steps. I didn't realize there was an actual Secular 12 step list...

so, thanks to you (tips hat!) without further ado...here is step 11 as stated in the Secular 12 steps from AAagnostica!

11. Sought through mindful inquiry and meditation to improve our spiritual awareness, seeking only for knowledge of our rightful path in life and the power to carry that out.

That makes a LOT more sense!

Threshold

I've been thinking more about Steps 10 & 11 the past two weeks. Taking a look at if, how and when I am practicing them and being more mindful of them, especially 10. doing it in a more direct and conscious way.

So this morning I was musing over how 11 has been manifesting in my life. The past year I have read a number of books on neuroscience and neurophysiology that have given me some insight in addiction, decision making, etc etc. I think that plays right into step 11. Gaining awareness, mindful inquiry.

I have also been composing haiku. Succint poems that help me distill my feelings and experiences of things, pare things down to what I am currently experiencing as essential. Tomorrow I might be in a different mode, but a haiku tells me where i am with something right NOW.

I continue to use guided meditations, gratitude lists, and visualizations which also help me take the pulse and temperature of where I am with myself, life and those around me. Sort of GPS. Awareness is the first step, then I can take that understanding and move forward.

jdooner

Wow Threshold we are so on the same wavelength right now. I read in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and it changed my entire perspective on addiction. I am reading Awareness by De Mello Now and just finished The Power of Now by Tolle.

I believe conscious awareness is key to exercising the mind and step 11 actually. I now meditate using guided meditation programs each night and try once a day but not always successful. When I don't have guidance, I fallback to yoga breathing techniques and push all thoughts out of my head.

I am practicing the Paleo diet and I find watching what I eat is in part very conscious awareness too.

Threshold

If you get a minute read this, including the replies. I'm interested what other people who are both alcoholics AND practicing awareness think about it.

Two Sips of Wine | news

Boleo

Psychological tricks&tips like this one may have helped me one or two decades before I crossed the threshold of alcohol-ISM.

However, once I crossed that line, I was no longer living in a world where 2 glasses of anything would do the job of satisfying me. There are limits to "The Power of Now". I don't dare make it my Higher Power.

"Now" I have the mind and body of an alcoholic and that makes it a whole new ballgame. Games like this are best left to "normies".

jdooner

I think it is possible to control my drinking and even limit it to a couple sips or maybe one glass while practicing this method. If fact, I might feel more comfortable at a dinner or meeting being able to do this. However, I believe that I will rationalize at some point how I have this under control and that where it gets scary.

For me the progression was clear. Beer in high school, experimented with drugs pot, hash, LSD. Beer moved to mixed drinks that led to vodka and tequila. Stopped shots bc they were too out of control. Then vodka daily and when that was not enough cocaine.

I feel lucky to step off the elevator when I did bc there is no doubt I would end up with an IV at some point chasing the high and fulfilling my hungry ghost.

I am practicing awareness and becoming mindful of how I react and feel in different situations and developing a tool box to deal with my situations but I feel this is a very slippery, albeit tantalizing attempt to rationalize conscious awareness as a way to moderate. I do not believe in moderation and I don't believe it is possible for me.

I would be lying if I said there was not a part of me that read this and thought wow it would be nice to be able to drink just one glass of wine again. I have a wine cellar with about $15K worth of wine left in it that we use for entertaining purposes. I just don't think that s ever possible though.

Threshold

I read it and sort of felt like they were saying...well, if you have enough awareness you can have sex but not get pregnant (and I'm not talking about fertility awareness) but that somehow you can gently make the egg aware to not let in any of the sperm....

It sounds so good!

I think that someone who has not crossed over into alcoholism, but maybe just drinks more than they ought because they are throwing them back out of habit or whatever...could go pretty far through awareness alone...but people like me...need to be aware that I am a body as well as a consciousness and my body is not immortal.