STEP ELEVEN

"We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."

The first ten steps have set the stage for us to improve our conscious contact with the God of our understanding. They give us the foundation to achieve our long-sought positive goals. Having entered into this phase of our spiritual program through practicing our previous ten steps, most of us find that we can welcome the exercise of prayer and meditation. We have found that our spiritual condition is the basis for a successful recovery that offers unlimited growth.

Many of us really begin to appreciate the fact that we have been clean for awhile when we get to the Eleventh Step. In the Eleventh Step, the life we've been practicing begins to take on a deeper meaning. By the surrender of our control, we gain a far greater power.

The nature of our belief will determine the manner of our prayers and meditations. We need only to make sure we have a system of belief which works to provide for our needs. Results count in recovery. As has been noted elsewhere, our prayers seemed to work as soon as we entered the Program of Narcotics Anonymous and surrendered to our disease. The conscious contact described in this step is the direct result of living these steps. We use this step to improve and maintain our spiritual condition.

When we first came into the Program, we received help from some Power greater than ourselves. This was set in motion by our surrendering to the Program. The purpose of the Eleventh Step is to increase our awareness of that Power and to improve our ability to use it as a source of strength in our new lives.

The more we improve our conscious contact with our God through prayer and meditation, the easier it is to say, "Your will, not mine, be done". We can ask for God's help when we need it and our lives get better. The experiences some people talk about in regard to meditation no more apply to us than do their individual religious beliefs. Ours is a spiritual, not religious, program. By the time we get to the Eleventh Step, the factors that could cause problems have usually been dealt with by the actions we have taken in the preceding steps. Our deepest longings and images of the kind of people we would like to be are but fleeting glimpses of God's will for us. Often our outlooks are so limited we can only see our immediate wants and needs.

It is easy to slip back into our old ways. We have to learn to maintain our new lives on a spiritually sound basis to insure our continued growth and recovery. God will not force His goodness on us, but we will receive it if we ask. We usually feel the difference at the time and see the change in our lives later. When we finally get our own selfish motives out of the way, we begin to find a peace we never imagined. Enforced morality lacks the power that comes to us when we choose to live a spiritually-oriented life. Most of us pray when we are hurting. We learn that if we pray regularly we won't be hurting as often, or as intensely.

Outside of Narcotics Anonymous, there are any number of different groups practicing meditation, but nearly all of them are connected with a particular religion or philosophy. An endorsement of any one of these methods would be a violation of our Traditions and a restriction on individuals' freedom to have a God of their own understanding. Meditation allows us to develop spiritually in our own way. Some of the things that didn't work for us before might work today. We take a fresh look each day with an open mind. We now know that if we pray to do God's will, we will receive what is really best for us, regardless of what we think. This knowledge is based on our belief and experience as recovering addicts.

Prayer is communicating our concerns to a Power greater than ourselves. Sometimes when we pray, a remarkable thing happens; we find the means, the ways and the energies to perform tasks far beyond our capacities. We grasp the limitless strength provided for us through our daily prayer and surrender so long as we keep faith and renew it.

For some, prayer is asking for God's help, and meditation is listening for God's answer. We learn to be careful of praying for specific things. We pray that God will show us His will and that He will help us carry that out. In some cases He makes His will so obvious to us that we have little difficulty seeing it. In others, our egos are so self-centered that we won't accept God's will for us without another struggle and surrender. If we pray for God to remove any distracting influences, the quality of our prayers usually improves and we feel the difference. Prayer takes practice and it may be well to remind ourselves that skilled people were not born with their skills. It took lots of effort on their part to develop them. Through prayer we seek conscious contact with our God. In meditation we achieve this contact and the Eleventh Step helps us to maintain it.

We may have been exposed to and practiced many religious and meditative disciplines before coming to Narcotics Anonymous. Some of us were devastated and completely confused by these practices, and we were sure that it was God's will for us to use drugs to reach "higher consciousness". Many of us find ourselves in very strange states as a result of these practices. We never suspected the damaging effects of our addiction as the root of the difficulty and pursued to the end whatever path offered hope.

In quiet moments of meditation, God's will can become evident to us. Quieting the mind through meditation brings an inner peace which brings us into contact with the God within. A basic premise of meditation is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain conscious contact unless our mind is still. The usual, never-ending succession of thoughts has to cease for progress to be made. So our preliminary practice is aimed at stilling the mind, and letting the thoughts that arise die a natural death. We leave our thoughts behind, as the meditation part of the Eleventh Step becomes a reality for us.

Emotional balance is one of the first results of meditation, and our experience bears this out.

Some of us have come into the Program broken, and hung around for awhile, only to find God or salvation in one kind of religious cult or another. It is easy to float back out the door on a cloud of religious zeal and forget we are addicts with an incurable disease.

It is said that for meditation to be of value, the results must show in our daily lives, and this is implicit in the Eleventh Step:"... His will for us and the power to carry it out". For those of us who do not pray, meditation is our only way of working this step.

We find ourselves praying because it brings us peace and restores our confidence and courage. It helps us to live a life free of fear and distrust. When we remove our own selfish motives and pray for guidance, we find feelings of peace and serenity that we never knew before. We begin to experience an awareness and an empathy with other people that was not possible before.

As we seek our personal contact with God, we begin to open up like a flower in the sun. We begin to see that God's love has been here all the time, just waiting for us to accept it. We can put in the footwork and accept what's being freely given to us on a daily basis. We find relying on God becomes more comfortable for us.

When we first come to the Program, we usually express a lot of things which seem to be important wants and needs. As we grow spiritually and find out about a Power greater than ourselves, we begin to realize that as long as our spiritual needs are truly met, our living problems are reduced to a point of comfort. When we forget where our real strength lies, we quickly become subject to the same patterns of thinking and action that got us to the Program in the first place. We eventually redefine our beliefs and understanding to the point where we see that our greatest need is for knowledge of God's will for us and the strength to carry that out. We are able to set aside some of our personal preference, if necessary, to do this because we learn that God's will consists of the very things we care most about. God's will for us becomes our own true will for ourselves. This happens in an intuitive manner which cannot be adequately explained in words.

We become willing to let other people be what they are without having to pass judgment on them. The urgency to take care of things isn't there anymore. We couldn't comprehend acceptance in the beginning-now we can.

We know that whatever the day brings, God has given us everything we need for our spiritual well-being. It is all right for us to admit powerlessness because God is powerful enough to help us stay clean and enjoy spiritual progress. God is helping us get our house in order.

We begin to see more and more clearly what is happening, and through constant contact with our Higher Power, the answers we are looking for come to us and we gain the ability to do what we once could not. We respect the beliefs of others. We encourage you to seek strength and guidance according to your belief.

We are thankful for this step because we begin to get what is best for us. The way we have sometimes prayed for our wants often got us into the trap of having to live with them once we got them. We could pray and get something, then have to pray for its removal because we couldn't handle it.

Hopefully, having learned the power of prayer and the responsibility prayer brings with it, we can use the Eleventh Step as a guideline for our daily Program.

We begin to pray only for God's will for us. This way we are getting only what we are capable of handling. We are able to respond to it and handle it because God helps us prepare for it. Some of us simply use our words to give thanks for God's grace.

In an attitude of surrender and humility, we approach this step again and again to receive the gift of knowledge and strength from the God of our understanding. The Tenth Step clears the errors of the present so we may work this step. Without this step, it is unlikely that we could ever experience a spiritual awakening, be able to practice spiritual principles in our lives, or carry a sufficient message to attract others to recovery. There is a spiritual principle of giving away what we have been given in Narcotics Anonymous in order to keep it. By helping others to stay clean, we enjoy the benefit of the spiritual wealth we have found. We must give freely and gratefully that which has been freely and gratefully given to us.



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