Conscious Contact with God

(The following is a post from one our our group members.)

Recently in our local in-person meeting we read the Step Eleven chapter in the AA book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Step 11 is all about prayer and meditation: "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 following quote is from what we read in that chapter (p. 97-98). This was a section that really stood out to me. 

...We liked [S.A.] all right, and were quick to say that it had done miracles. But we recoiled from meditation and prayer as obstinately as the scientist who refused to perform a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong. Of course we finally did experiment, and when unexpected results followed, we felt different; in fact we knew different; and so we were sold on meditation and prayer. And that, we have found, can happen to anybody who tries. It has been well said that “almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.”

Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God’s reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere of His grace. To an amazing extent the facts of A.A. life confirm this ageless truth.

When I started to work the Steps of the program, I was practicing a minimal form of "conscious contact with God". That was pretty much limited to my panicked prayers of surrender of lust to God. I'm not saying that was terribly bad. On the contrary, for me that was absolutely necessary if I was going actually to stay sober. And I'd say that God was very gracious to me through those early days when my prayers were quite utilitarian, begging God to handle my lust, but not really interested in "an unshakable foundation for life." (p. 98) I was still trying to limit what I would let God control, preferring in so many situations to hold onto the control, no matter that my control was an illusion and often resulted in a bad outcome.

I am always encouraged when I remember that other AA literature reminds me that "we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection." Growth in my conscious contact with God is being made. I now enjoy spending more and more time in conscious contact with God in prayer and meditation. I have found that what starts out as something I feel I should do can become something I want to do if I simply make a commitment and then stick with it. Seems those old-timers in AA actually did know a thing or two.

"God, grant..."

(The following is a personal post from one of our group members.)

I really love the concept  of (and experience of) "God, grant..." in our 12 Step recovery program. It shows up in so many forms. I need something God has, and I'm requesting him to give me what I need.

The Serenity Prayer starts out "God, grant...." It then goes on to ask God to give me what I need, but what I don't naturally have in myself. If I already had it, I wouldn't need to ask for it. That's why most of us are praying. We are seeking something from God that we need, including seeking God himself, which actually is our greatest need. 

The ancient root word for "pray" means "ask earnestly, beg, or entreat," That should be what I am doing when I pray, and my inner attitude should align with my earnest request.

I'm thinking about the Third Step Prayer as suggested in the Alcoholics Anonymous book. In that prayer, I ask God to "take away my difficulties,"  and then go on to say "that victory over them may bear witness to Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life." In my early days of going to SA meetings, I was looking for God to take away just enough of my difficulties so that I would be able to handle the rest in my own power. I still wanted to be in charge of my own life, so I only wanted a little boost. I didn't pay attention to the first part of the Third Step Prayer where I would say "God, I offer myself to Thee--to build with me and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will." And I definitely wasn't approaching God with the bedrock acceptance that I was indeed "powerless over lust". I wanted the power to wield as I saw fit. I wanted the victory to be mine, not his.  Apparently God wasn't interested in that arrangement, hence my many, many years of defeat and slavery to lust. 

It takes humility to "ask earnestly, beg, or entreat" God (or anyone else). I often hear "I'll do it myself" from the lips of little children, and it's sometimes quite amusing to watch what happens next. But for me, the "fun and games" had long-since ended, and the results of years of pride and failure wasn't funny at all. I needed to have a change of heart, to develop a willingness to ask for help and be willing to align my behavior and attitudes with whatever God was willing to grant.  

Thank God that he actually wants me to "succeed". I needed saving. I needed a Power greater than myself that could and would do for me what I couldn't do myself. And I needed the humility to "ask earnestly, beg, and entreat" God to do all of that. And he has. 

Am I willing to go to any length?

(The following is a personal post from one of our members.)

I found myself fully confronted with this question back when I started working the Steps in earnest with a sponsor. Up until that time, I had been willing to settle for periodic "lengths" of sobriety. Because I'm an addict and quite insane when I'm lusting, I had figured that was good enough. Proving I could make progress in my fight against lust meant I would stay in the addiction a lot longer than I would have if I had just admitted from the start that I couldn't do this.

So having failed yet again after a really good stretch of sobriety, I was smacked in the face once again with the reality that I was truly hopeless if left to my own ideas and effort, and I didn't know what to do about that. It must be that enough "enlightened self-interest" kicked in, and I finally went looking for a sponsor who could tell me what to do. That was the first good choice I made in the process of becoming "willing to go to any length".

I remember upon receiving my sponsor's offer of sponsorship that I prayed to God and said, "I will do whatever he tells me, even if it kills me." Granted that I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me to do something that actually killed me, but that was the second good choice I made in the process of becoming "willing to go to any length".

As my sponsor started directing me through working the Steps, he told me that when I was ready, I should write in the front of my AA book the date and the words, "I am willing to go to any length to stay sober." That was the third good choice I made.

When he led me through Step 3, he told me that Step 3 was a commitment to work the rest of the Steps. That was the fourth good choice I made along the path of being "willing to go to any length" to connect rightly with God and others, and to be given freedom from lust and the obsessions and compulsions.

So for me the SA program of going to any length to work the Steps as a path to connect rightly with God really has worked. And I'm very confident at this point that if I stay in that path and continue to grow along spiritual lines through a life that is progressively surrendered to God, I will continue to receive God's gracious gift of sobriety, recovery and freedom.

God grant....

(The following is a personal post from one of our group members.)

I find the first two words of the Serenity Prayer to be crucial for me to focus on and never forget: "God grant." It is another example of how God does for me what I can not do for myself. I am powerless; He has all power. It's also one of the early steps in learning some much needed humility, recognizing this isn't all about me, nor is my progress of my own doing.

In our local group we pray out loud together the Serenity Prayer and the other prayers from our literature such as the Third Step Prayer, the Seventh Step Prayer, and Eleventh Step Prayer. I appreciate how in each of these prayers I am reminded that my dependence is on God.

"...Thee to build with me and do with me...."
"Relieve me...."
"Take away my difficulties...."
"...you now remove...."
"Grant me...."
"Lord, make me...."
"Lord, grant...."

Every time I hear someone refer to the 12 Step program as a "self help" program, I wonder if they really have any idea what this program is all about. When I was "helping myself", I was acting out. For me, this is a "God grant" program, because if he doesn't grant it, I'm not going to have it.

The God of my understanding

(This is a personal story from one of our members.)

One of the challenges both for me prior to starting to work the Steps of the SA program and while working Steps 1, 2 & 3 was my concept of God. I had been quite sure of what I believed about God, and, being as arrogant as I was, quite sure I was right. But the challenge came in that what I believed obviously didn't work. If it did work, then what was I still doing with this absolutely insane addiction? How could I go on "sinning" again and again if I really wanted to stop, but I couldn't? What did it say about me and my surety of who and what God was if I was still acting out in my addiction? If I and all of the other people who shared my beliefs about God were also entirely right in what we believed, then why was I trapped, in bondage, and had found no escape in the practice of my supposed faith in God? I wanted to be free. I begged to be set free. I hated who I was, and the God of my understanding apparently did nothing to change that.

If nothing was wrong with my understanding of God, then why was I showing up at SA looking for something more? Something was terribly wrong, or I wouldn't be here.

Today, things are very different. God "as I understand Him" is still very similar to the God I previously "believed in." But there are some significant differences.

One of the significant changes is that I no longer am in the practice of talking about some "hypothetical faith" that clearly doesn't really work, because it hasn't kept me sober, joyous, and free. No, instead I talk about "a faith that works." I know it works, because it works for me every day.  And I continue to learn that God is so much more than I ever imagined he would be. And that of course makes sense to me now that I have accepted that God is God and I am not, and that he is free to be what he is regardless of what I thought I knew about him.

First face-to-face meeting

(This is a personal story from one of our members.)

I recall my first face to face meeting, which was a long time ago in a place far, far away. But I still remember it quite clearly.

What surprised me when I walked into that room was that there were a few women among the more than twenty people there. I was a bit shocked and wondered to myself how it would be to talk about sexual problems in a room that included women.

Turned out that it really was no problem at all, particularly when over time (fairly quickly) I got to know those women and realized that everybody was there with the same root problem and the same potential solution. The details didn't matter at all, and in fact, the details typically just got in the road of what we needed to be talking about and doing for sobriety.

It didn't matter in the end what my or anyone else's particular attractions, struggles, perversions, or acting out behaviors actually were. The core problem was spiritual, the mis-connection with God and others. The common solution was also spiritual, connecting rightly with God and others by working the Steps under the guidance of a sponsor.

Now in my case it took me a lot more years and a lot more pain before I became willing to really surrender to that God, but that's another story.