Seeking Through Prayer And Meditation, Part I

It reads as follows from the "Alcoholics Anonymous" book, also known as the Big Book: "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."

Many of us would laugh in the AA meetings when someone assigned to read this portion of Step 11 in the AA program would say "medication" instead of  "meditation!"

Well, I'm still clean and sober after all these years. But it wasn't always that way. For years, I medicated the problem and didn't have much of a conscious contact with a Higher Power.

Being unconscious most of the time prevented that necessary connection to my Higher Power. Ah, but being in my euphoria I thought I was meditating on God. Yes, I was "high" but what I was meditating on was usually self-centered and not the knowledge of His will for me.

So, the more I stay clean and sober, the more of His will is revealed to me. And it's usually a matter of choices and intuitively knowing which choice to make. The answer comes after praying and meditating about a specific thing.

And it's not as complicated as it sounds. "God, help me," was the prayer from day one. I wanted Him to take over my life and be in the driver's seat.

From the book again: "We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it. It would be easy to be vague about this matter. Yet, we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions." 

The next paragraph talks about retiring at night and constructively reviewing the day.

Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time, or were we thinking of what we could do for others?