I’m grateful for showing my visiting friends some beautiful parts of Colorado and being reminded how lucky I am to live here. I’m grateful for my dog’s daycare place taking good care of him. I’m grateful for how my Higher Power is constantly working, whether in the foreground or background, to let me see clearly what’s in front of me and focus on the next right action. I’m grateful to allow myself to feel emotions – including negative ones – but not dwell on them in unhealthy, unsustainable ways. I’m grateful for listening to diverse perspectives and seeing how they grow my own understanding of the world. I’m grateful to feel pride about elements of my past and use that emotion to infuse positivity into my present. I’m grateful to have squeezed in my daily run despite the day being packed.

My week has been a little chaotic, but primarily in positive ways. I’ve been looking to settle my mind as a bunch of competing priorities emerge so Step 11 has naturally crept to the forefront:

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.

Prayer and meditation are two tools in AA that I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface around engaging with deeply. Importantly though I’m glad that I’ve not been hard on myself when it comes to needing to find an immediate answer. The key for me is to continue keeping an open mind. Judge less, learn more is my personal motto around Step 11.

On this front I do give myself credit, especially over the past year. Whenever I hear tidbits of what people share about their experience with prayer and meditation I log it as something to use – if not now, then store it in my memory bank for later. I don’t shut down immediately when something isn’t immediately relevant because at this stage of my sobriety I’ve collected enough evidence to know that these sleeper pearls of wisdom can swoop in at any point to restore my sanity.

In the “Twelve and Twelve” I love how they describe the evolution of my thinking here:

Perhaps our trouble was not that we used our imagination. Perhaps the real trouble was our almost total inability to point imagination toward the right objectives. There’s nothing the matter with constructive imagination; all sound achievement rests upon it. (Pg. 100)

“Point our imaginations toward the right objectives” – that’s crucial for my journey. Before I could nitpick with creative gusto around how terrible any religious rhetoric is. I do come from serious religious trauma so I had to spend time training my mind to pivot from its instinctual nature to ignore when advice on prayer and meditation is shared and instead actively listen to see what elements I could use today.

Prayer as I define it for myself can be a repetition of important phrases I’ve heard in AA that lift me up – “PAUSE – Postpone Action Until Serenity Enters”, “THINK – is what I’m doing/saying Thoughtful, Honest, Important, Necessary, Kind”, “From Pillow to Pillow”, “KISS – Keep It Simple Sean”, “Forgiveness is Love in Action”, etc.

Prayer as I define it for myself can also be repetition of actions. My daily gratitude list mad lib around “I’m grateful for ______” lulls me into a calm, reflective, and pleasant space. Even saying “I’m grateful” without finishing the sentence elicits a spiritual reaction. Making the bed in my specific way and opening the blinds for the houseplants every morning in silence is prayer in motion for me because of its recurrent nature.

Finally, prayer of late has become tied to its traditional definition too: the Serenity Prayer, which I absolutely adore, and certain ones from my religious background, the Gayatri Mantra or Shanti prayer. The last piece has been super interesting for me because I can now recite these mantras and not have the baggage of my past take over. Instead I have nostalgic associations with those Sanskrit words. I’m stilling investigating the roots of such a drastic shift. Part of it could be missing my culture, my family, and my youth now that I live in Colorado. But I think it’s deeper than that and I’m still on the path of discovery here. What I do know is that prayer in all its versions has become a bit more demystified in AA and I’m able to embrace it rather than flee. What I like as a summary of my thinking around this is again found in the “Twelve and Twelve”:

Just saying [a prayer] over and over will often enable us to clear a channel choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding, and permit us to return to the surest help of all-our search for God’s will, not our own, in the moment of stress. (Pg. 103)

Now with meditation feelings were similarly complex. It is something I would joke about doing at meetings. I’d make an excuse to fellow that because it’s something my grandfather would force us grandkids to do when we were little I don’t take mediation seriously. I associate it more with goofing around with my cousins, trying to get out of being yelled at to stay quiet. However such calcified thinking prevented me from moving forward and staying curious. Slowly but surely I no longer use that story as a reason for why I don’t explore mediation. I just do it now – or make moves to do it seriously. Meditation for me involves writing these weekly Substack posts, thinking for at least 5-10 minutes about what I’m grateful for daily and sharing it with others, not listening to anything while I take my dog out for a walk, quietly watching my mind during periods of unrest, etc. Meditation hasn’t yet morphed into me sitting on the floor, eyes closed, and pondering what life is about, but it doesn’t have to be that for me….today. I can gradually move towards such a state if I so desire. All I need to do now is to welcome moments of stillness, draw them out for a longer period when appropriate, and simply learn sans judgement from the thoughts that cross my mind.

I’ll end my little take on Step 11 with this gem from the “Twelve and Twelve” that got me in the feels:

Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no longer live in a completely hostile world. We are no longer lost and frightened and purposeless. (Pg. 105)

I don’t need to define right now what prayer and meditation are for me. I don’t need to define it ever. I simply need to keep the channels of communication open around engaging with these twin tools and let them give me that sense of belonging that alcohol ripped away from me for many years. As long as I do that, I’ll be good.

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