Step 11 Prayer and Meditation – Big Book Twelve Step Workshop – Part 2 of 4 – Herb

Well, good evening. My name is Herb. I'm an alcoholic. Welcome. So glad that I'm seeing all of you return. Please join me in prayer for an open mind and an open heart. I'm going to put that up on the screen in case you don't have it. I'll use my PowerPoints tonight. God, please set aside everything that I think I know about myself, my brokenness, my spiritual path and you for an open mind and a new experience with myself, my brokenness, my spiritual path and especially you. Please join me in the serenity prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things that I can and wisdom to know the difference. I mentioned in my orientation that there are several areas in the big book that suggest setting aside having an open mind letting go of our prejudice. Two of them that I've already made mention of on page 58 and 27. you may have made a note of that it's worthy to go and find it and make sure that you see it and understand it i read them out then i'm not going to read them out again this one happens to be on page 42. it meant i would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out the window that was not easy we looked at a deep look at spiritual awakening last week the very beginning of step 12 having had a spiritual awakening that's the promise of the 12-step process that's the purpose of the twelve-step process that is the mission statement that is the value proposition all of those things and I wanted everybody to be really clear why we're doing this oh sure we come to it from suffering of some kind usually some form of addiction and the promise is that you will be freed from that not until you finish the ninth step if you want confirmation of that take a look at pages 84 and 85. we'll take a deep dive into it next week when we do step 10. it says we're placed in a position of neutrality here the grace of that but here the promise of that we're placed in a position of neutrality with regard to our addiction but then he says we're not cured we have a daily reprieve that's a promise we have a daily retrieve but it means that we have to do the work on a daily basis steps 10 11 and 12 bill calls our way of living our way of living that's the program of living steps 1 through 9 the program of recovery steps 10, 11, and 12 the program of living the program of managing our life the program of taking personal responsibility for our life we looked at step 12 spiritual awakening but there's a couple other parts there i'm not going to look at those i changed my mind actually today on those i changed the schedule if you have the schedule and you're looking at it we were going to looks at um principles and sponsorship but that's not the way i proceeded last week i gave you the assignment on step 11 prayer and meditation I want to take a look at principles and sponsorship at the end of looking at steps 12, 11, and 10. And then we'll take a Look at Sponsorship and Principles. Just to be clear with people who might be following the schedule and wondering what happened to those topics. I'm not overlooking them they're too important. that freedom assumes that we have a relationship with power because that's what this is all about spiritual awakening spiritual doesn't mean anything in the sense of a religious experience or a religious tradition or a practice at all nothing spiritual means quite the opposite actually it means relationship from my standpoint a relationship with reality with the capital r whatever that means to you and we'll be looking at that later on we'll talk a little bit about it tonight because it's the underbelly the assumption of the foundation of steps 11 prayer meditation step 11 the purpose of the steps is to find power the purpose of the steps are not about addiction the purpose of the steps is not about our life those are byproducts of finding power when you find power, you get free of addiction. When you find power, you're able to navigate life smoothly, actually, in the flow to become conscious. The thing that makes us specifically human is that we are conscious. And what I mean by that is a gorilla is conscious, but they're not conscious that they're conscious. We have a mind that can self reflect, we can stand outside ourselves, we can transcend ourselves. We can look at ourselves and evaluate ourselves. And we can learn from our mistakes in a very conscious way and make free decisions. That's the other component that makes us specifically human uniquely. When I get to step one, I'll elaborate more on that the model of what a human being is because it's so critical that's the way step one is built it's built especially for dealing with the addiction of the body and the addiction of the mind and the spiritual malady of the will but those are also really important concepts here in step 11. i'm going to do by my standards a fairly superficial review of step 11 tonight it will be sufficient to give you an idea as to what it is in the big book and what the practice means and what my experience is with it i did a three-hour workshop i think it was three it could have been four our workshop on october 24th that would be on youtube um similar to this a zoom workshop with powerpoints and if you have an interest in a deeper dive into to the entire genre of intentional consciousness. That's my term for it, prayer, meditation, contemplation, centering prayer, transcendental meditation, mindfulness. You might wanna look that up. But this will be sufficient for step 11 because it was the exposure and the experience that I had in 1988. i was four years sober and the man i engaged to be a step guy took me through the steps and when we got to step 10 the big book says we entered the world of the spirit and were not cured and we have a daily reprieve and he unpacked for me step 10. i'll do that next week that's the assignment but i'll talk about that toward the end of my talk today and then he unpacked for me step 11. it was pretty amazing i think i mentioned i'm not sure i mentioned because i mentioned it often in many different settings that i studied to be a catholic priest at one time for seven years i was in the seminary being trained to be a monk and a priest i was a religious i had the vows of poverty chastity and obedience and what i didn't know at the time that i signed up when i went in it was silent seven years of silence well you do a lot of meditation in that you get a lot of training in that and you get a lot of time to do it and a lot of books to read and a lot of assignments and a a lot of classes. It still boggles my mind that when I left after seven years of training and seven years or silence and seven years practice, I hung up my black robe and I didn't meditate again for another 25 years because I didn t know what I was doing. I didn s know how to do it. I didn d know the value of it. I put on meditation like I put on the black robe it came from the outside not from the inside and when i took off the black robe i gave up the meditation because they went together as far as i was concerned that's what monks do i left because i was doing things that monks don't do that's a story for another day but be that as it may this man said to me take a look at pages 85 to 88 in the big book if you have your big book it might help you if you don't it won't be a major interference as long as you're listening and maybe making some notes so step 11 says sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood god praying only for knowledge of god's will for us and the power to carry that out that's a mouthful and i'm going to unpack it phrase by phrase sought it's a very active invitation step 11. sure it's about prayer meditation but very active look at the word sought and i knew i was a seeker i just didn't realize i wasn't a finder until i finished these steps through step 12 and then i realized i was a find her i had a spiritual awakening i'm not a white light experience not a feeling of any type of elation or ecstasy no no no but i realized I had been changed sought through prayer meditation we're going to take a look at what does that mean but then the step 11 tells us what the purpose is of step 11 it's not to feel good it's not to have a better life it's to improve my conscious contact with God there it is i say it every morning i have a meditation practice in the morning every morning i say to set aside prayer i say the third step prayer not to take the third step but to renew my commitment to alignment my word for the third step turning to be in alignment with the flow of the power more. And then I repeat out to myself the exact step 11, because I want to remind myself why I'm here. I want to be very intentional. I want to be very conscious. This is not just a robot routine action like it was in the monastery. This an active act of bringing my awareness to the presence of God for lots of purposes and I'll talk about that in a minute. To improve my conscious contact, to broaden and deepen my conscious content, my consciousness, my intentional consciousness. Now of course it says god as we understood god a phrase that was introduced in the manuscript because of the agnostics and the atheists in the group the people that resisted organized religion or traditional religious concepts and it's wonderful that that phrase is in there it's the silver bullet of the spirituality of the 12-step program because you don't have to believe anything that's a dogma or given to you by anybody else but we take some actions that will give us an awareness of and a practice of believing in something that we've created for ourselves the concept we don't create god that would be silly we create our concept and there are two things that we pray for prayer is when we're talking prayers when we're in intimate conversation with a person or without reality that we're establishing a friendship with a relationship with an intimacy with prayer is not about words it's about intention but the intention here and i i love to repeat this at the end at the uh at any occasion i can to remind people of what we're doing in terms of improving our consciousness this. Knowledge of God's will for me, I need to know better. And then the power to carry that out, I needed to do better. I don't know better on my own. That was clear at age 48 when I was doing this work four years sober for the very first time. Although I was four years sober i was still doing the things that i had done when i was drinking i had no internal guidance internal compass internal principles or guide rails expediency was my only motivation so i began to learn to what to do better and then because of the balance of the steps i I began to learn how to do better. But I had to get the knowledge first, and then I had to have the power to do it. Most of us know that, and that's the whole essence of unmanageability, isn't it? Most of use don't know better. We just don't do better." Some of us don't do better unconsciously. Most of us don' t do better consciously. That's what guilt and shame is all about. It's a powerful, powerful set of words that Bill put together. So this man had me, his first instruction were the first instruction I gave you, and I hope you've done it. You look up the word meditation in the dictionary. You've heard it in meetings, I'm sure. Prayer is when you're talking to God. Meditation is when you're listening to God, and it's actually simple. It seems simplistic, but quite frankly, it's the simplicity of deep wisdom. Prayer is When I'm Talking, but it's not about the words. It's about the conversation. It's About the Intention. What's your intention? Unfortunately, a religious practice becomes robotic because we pray words that are given to us by somebody else and we pray them as if there's a magic formula and we become brain dead. I mean, that's why I try as consciously as possible to pray the serenity prayer. It's a fabulous soul penetrating curtain rending prayer if you're conscious of what it is you're saying. Prayer is not about words. It's about intention. Meditation is listening, and that sounds cool. Listening to what? Listening with what? Those are the key questions that I didn't even know enough to ask at the time. So I looked up the word meditation in a dictionary. My Webster's Dictionary, and I have two or three. I have one from 1900, I have one from 1935, and I have a current dictionary because I want to know the flavor of the words at the different cultures that Bill was exposed to. He was growing up and educated in the 1900s, early 1900s. He wrote the big book in 1939 so he was using the current definitions of words as they were understood in the late 30s but then i like to see how words change and so i look at a current dictionary my current dictionary was pretty much what the other dictionaries had said it said directed thinking it was startling to me to read the simple definition that was so contrary to my approach to meditation i had been in a monastery where they did contemplation they called it meditation i had been exposed in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s to the eastern philosophies and teachers tibet and china and japan and india and what they did they called meditation what i've discovered is it's not meditation what they do from the east and what i did in the monastery. It's called contemplation. Prayer is when I'm talking to God, meditation is when I'm listening to God and contemplation is when i'm in the presence of God for the mere purpose of being in the Presence. Contemplation comes from the Latin word templare, temple space, the house of god the sanctuary the tabernacle the synagogue the chapel the cathedral the house of god contemplare is to be in the temple space in the presence of the divine wherever you are me i'm the tabarnacle of the divine it's not poetic it's quite mystical because i see it as the fourth dimensional reality as does bill and you'll see that in step two he asks the question at the beginning of chapter four where and how are we going to find this power on page 45 and then 10 pages later on page 55 he answers the question he answers it twice he wants to really make the point he doesn't want to be redundant he wants us to emphasize it you're going to find this power if you search diligently if you research fearlessly if you think honestly deep down inside of you and that's the only place that you'll find this reality we saw it a little bit captured if you remember the phrase in the spiritual awakening last week the crossover page from page 567 to 568 unsuspected inner resource saying the same thing unsuspect that I didn't know that I would find God deep inside myself inner deep inside my soul the soul of my soul, the breath of my breath, the life of my life. Again, I'm being a little poetic there. But I believe it's existential meaning that it's an attempt at describing the reality of my belief system anyway. Unsuspected didn't know it was their inner didn't notice inside of me resource, a power that is in me that isn't me, but that is available to me. That's an early introduction to step two or some different facets of it, but it's the basic assumption, of course, of step 11. Step two and three are the assumptions of step eleven. Step two is a decision about God. Step three is the decision for a relationship with that that we call God. Whatever that is for us. Steps four through nine and 10 actually are clearing out the obstacles to that relationship in us so that in step 11, we have the conscious contact and on a daily basis, we improve that conscious contact. stuff is really simple and straightforward as he says on page 14 at the top simple but not easy in bill's story on page 13 at the end of the book page 14at the top, simple but not easy. One of my favorite phrases so I have it memorized. Simple but not easy. A price has to be paid. It means the destruction of self centeredness. That's the spiritual malady, that's the unmanageability. That is the deflation of the ego at depth that happens as we apply and journey through steps four through nine, and continue in step 10. The deflation of the Ego at Depth. And then he goes on in that very paragraph We must turn in all things to the father of light who presides over us all. See that turning, that's step three. That's the commitment to turn. The turning itself takes place in steps four through nine and is confirmed on a daily basis in step 10. Turning to be in alignment with power. We must return to the Father of Light who preside over us. We must come to the Lord and we must turn to the light of God. We must go to the Holy Spirit and we need to turn in everything to the father of life who presiders over us all you see it's the light in us that dispels the darkness in us like the dimmer switch analogy the brighter the light the less the darkness and at some point in the light becoming brighter the addiction is dissipated and removed placed in a position of neutrality but the dimmer switch is on a greased axle and it's hardwired to go backwards if I don't lean into it our way of living 10 11 and 12. I have a daily reprieve I'm not cured of my unmanageability I'm Not Cured of My Spiritual Malady I'm NOT Cured Of Myself Will Run Riot it. These terms will have so much more resonance after we do step one, and then steps two and three. So I looked up the word in a dictionary. Meditation. Bill says we begin with an evening view what an odd thing from my ocd approach to everything i'm very organized in detail not compulsively but it could happen why wouldn't bill start with the morning i don't know that would be logical from my standpoint the sun rises and we have morning noon happens and the day vanishes and the evening the sun sets and we have evening that's would be the norm but bill starts in the evening and it must have been intentional i actually don't know why but i think that it's so that we can evaluate the components of tomorrow morning's meditation is there anything i didn't clean up today that i need to take care of tomorrow so he sets us up for the morning practice he says we think about the 24 hours ahead and we consider our plans for the day back to the definition of meditation directed thinking in the big book bill says upon awakening we ask god to direct our thinking you see bill knew what the definition of meditation was bill had been trained in the oxford group the octra group was a group of christians first century christianity was that was their purpose of trying to recreate what was it like at the time of jesus when these jews were thrown out of the synagogue for following jesus they met in people's homes and they read the scripture the only scripture that was available before the christian scriptures were written they read the hebrew scriptures either together or by themselves and they read them to get guidance and they sat and they reflected on those scriptures and then they shared their reflections and their conclusions with their family or with one another if they were together in a group that was the Oxford group trying to recreate that first century Christianity meeting in people's homes praying and then reading and then meditating and then sharing does that sound familiar sounds like an AA meeting to me sounds like a 12-step fellowship meeting to be exactly those that's our roots now bill separated from the oxford group in 1937 because they didn't like alcoholics and they wanted him to focus on the christian message rather than the recovery message and bill said no i i have a different destiny thank you so much for getting me sober and i'm going to go on my way dr bob who had been a member of the oxer group two and a half years before he ever met Bill, left the Oxford Group when the big book was published in April of 1939. But both of them had a deep regard and a deep respect for the Oxford group because they had the six steps that gave them the spiritual awakening, that gave him the freedom from alcohol and then gave them freedom from unmanageability, gave them a spiritual way of living. back to the definition of meditation directed thinking the big book says upon awakening we ask god to direct our thinking this man had me outline it that's what's here on in a short version on the powerpoint i outlined what's in pages 85 to 88 after reading and highlighting it the first part is an inventory in the evening it's got a few questions it's not all negative some of it's positive it's Not All About Liability some of its about what are your plans to contribute tonight or tomorrow how did you do in in contributing so it's not it's a step of evolution beyond step four although it's A Repetition of Step Four it's a step beyond step 10 but it's a repetition of step 10 there's three inventories indicated in the steps step 4 the mother of all inventories that deep dive uncovering the exact nature of our wrongs and then step 10 the spot check inventory which we'll talk about next week when I'm disturbed there's something wrong with me on the spot I take care of it and then the 11 step inventory, which we do at night. There's no time frame, whether it's a minute or an hour, there's no particular process to it. It's really up to each of us to develop this kind of a consciousness practice. I consider it like the image of a radar sweep. I kind of sweep my day. How did it go? Did I violate any of my own understanding of spiritual principles in terms of my thinking, my attitude or my behavior? I don't ask all of those questions in the book I did at one time early on. But now much more spontaneous with it, radar sleep. But the morning practice is my favorite practice. I've probably done more workshops and more recordings. And more work and more writing in the area of meditation than I've done in any other area in the broad genre of spirituality and certainly of the steps. We asked God to direct our thinking. That's the instruction in the big book, the dictionary said, meditation is directed thinking. This man said to me, Herb, it's a prayer. Anytime the book suggests that you talk to God, that's a prior. It's a code in the big book. We ask God to direct our thinking. It goes like this, Herbs. God, please direct my thinking. I laughed. I hope you are. it's i mean the simplicity of it was underwhelming but then he said something that's not in the big book what's in the Big Book it says think about the 24 hours a day consider your plans they're on the screen there those are the two keywords think about The 24 Hours A Day Consider Your Plans it doesn't tell you what that means the man asked me to make up my own definitions of what those two terms meant so i did think about the 24 hours a day okay that's about my day planner my activities what am i going to do today and i do a radar sweep in my imagination i don't look at my day planner although sometimes i actually do i have it with me at the time i do my morning meditation as well as a yellow pad and a pen when I do my meditation. Because if in fact, I get some guidance that I want to remember, I make a little note so that I don't have to try to remember it and then distract myself from my meditation practice. think about the 24 hours ahead is about my activity my doing for the day my schedule is there anything on my schedule of activities that outside of the principles of spirituality and my relationship with reality as i understand it you know it's pretty fast because usually i'm pretty clean consider your plans for the day. Okay, I made up a definition of that. What is that? Who am I going to be today? If think about the 24 hours ahead is what am I going to do? Perhaps consider your plants for the days. Who am I going to be? And you'll hear me regularly talk about being insensitive and inconsiderate. It's my Achilles heel. I'm an efficiency nut and I don't consider other people's feelings sometimes. I am much better than I used to be, but I'm not as good as I will be. So usually it's, oh, I was inconsiderated yesterday. I think I'll try to focus on being considerate today. I was unkind yesterday. Today I'll attempt to be more kind today. Yesterday I was distracted in a frivolous way. Today, I'll try to be mindful. So it's usually a commitment to correct the character defect du jour. In step 10, and we'll see it next week, Bill says, watch for resentment and fear and dishonesty and selfishness the four things we looked at in step four watch for them when they crop up he doesn't say if we're human beings and we never transcend our humanity there's always some fine sandpaper that we can apply to smooth out the bumps in our personality but here's something that's not in the big book that cracked it open for me four years sober having spent seven years in a monastery I did not know what meditation was or how to do it I'm beginning to learn the way that this man is helping me unpack the big book by understanding the words and outlining it the way I'm talking about it with you, but this, what I'm about to say, was the key that unlocked the door, that opened the door and I haven't had a problem with meditation since. Sounds ominous because it is. Think about the 24 hours ahead. Consider your plans for the day and listen. meditation is directed thinking listen to your thinking as the possible answer to your prayer God please direct my thinking I begin to think and consider and in the very thinking and consider I'm assuming that there's a possibility that my very thoughts are the gift of an answer to my prayer my thoughts and my feelings and my awareness and my sensations and my imagination and my memory whatever i'm conscious of i try to be very conscious of is this just my ego rising up again or is in fact this some people call it the wee small voice last year I did a little more research on that word which you see it in books and you hear it meetings and it sounds really cool the wee small voice but I'd never seen it from the translation I'd Never Seen It From The Original Aramaic I Don't Read Aramaics But I Went Back to a translation that was more credible and what it says is the phrase is not the wee small voice it's the tiny whispering sound now that might sound way too subtle and not much different but from my standpoint it's not subtle and it's very different tiny whispering sound that's why we stay still that's why we try to contain our thinking direct our thinking that's what we try to improve our consciousness about our consciousness here in California were plagued especially in the last several years with uh brush fires mountain fires hill fires they get raging and out of control and they destroy people and property fire in a in a free form like that in the hills is destructive but fire in my fireplace was quite warming tonight fire in my stove the heat of the stove is quite effective been cooking my meals the difference is one is out of control and one is contained our thinking and feelings out of is probably what got us here our thinking and our emotions contained will keep us here that's the purpose of meditation to contain our thinking to contain our emotions so that i'm managing my thinking i am managing my emotions my thinking and my emotions are not managing me you see i have free will the two things that make us specifically human is that we have a mind that thinks and a will that decides and takes free actions voluntary actions you'll see in step one that there are many many many thoughts and actions that are not free compulsion obsession addiction self will run riot we'll look deeply at all of those human aspects of the sources of our trouble? I asked you that question in the beginning. You've got an answer right now, but you'll have a much deeper answer by the time we finish the first step and then a much cheaper answer by the end of the day. By the time you finish your fourth step as to the source of your suffering. Mostly what we see are the symptoms of our suffering, the products of our sufferings. And we don't deal with the source, we deal withthe symptoms and therefore we continue to suffer. On page 86, Bill Wilson says, if we have the proper attitude and work at it, it will work. If we have a proper attitude, we're here to improve our consciousness. our conscious contact and work at it he doesn't use the word but most of the teachers of any tradition in meditation talk about a practice as human beings we need to practice to get competent at doing something if we were a toddler attempting to learn how to ride a bike we got a small little two-wheeler with training wheels and if one of the parents was very patient and the training wheels worked and we had a lot of diligence and fortitude eventually we learned how to write with the training wills and then they took the training mills off and then as we grew so did the size of the bike. It's the same with going to the gym, isn't it? It's the same as learning a musical instrument. If you have any talent, you have a good teacher and you practice, you'll get better. You go from chopsticks to Chopin. Not my experience. I have no musical talent at all. A practice. My spiritual director says all people on a spiritual path have a spiritual practice this is a four-line mantra all people on a Spiritual Path have a Spiritual Practice and they practice their practice and they're faithful to their practice and then their practice is faithful to them That's our journey. Steps one through nine get us to an effective relationship with power. Steps 1-9 are the rocket launch Bill talks about. In step one, we get into the rocket. our job to get aboard but once we get on board the rocket takes us to where the rock is going to go we have some levers in there we have Some ability to manage and steer but the rockets gonna take us where it's going to take us and where it is going take us in orbit around the light in orbit around the light steps one through nine are a three-stage launch one through three our relationship with power off the ground steps four through seven a relationship with ourself steps eight and nine and i would throw in ten at this point in this conversation in this context our relationship with others but then we're in orbit around the light now if you saw hidden figures the movie this is where i came up with this metaphor it made so much sense to me in terms of the parallel with the step process and bill's comment about a rocket launch into the fourth dimension. Once we're in orbit, we can't stay in orbit if we don't do something. We need to move the levers, we need to remove the energy, we need to manage and manipulate the controls so that we stay in orbit. Steps 1011 and 12 are the steps on a daily basis that are the levers of the controls and the energy that keep us in orbit around the light being in the orbit around the light we build a shield a spiritual shield that protects us from our addiction and protects us from our unmanageability we stay free of our addiction as long as we're in relationship to power we stay in relationship power to the extent that we remove the obstacles to that relationship in step 10 we foster that relationship by improving our consciousness in step 11 continuing to remove the obstacles in the evening inventory and in step 12 we're guided by principles see these are the guidelines the guard rails that tell us how to think and how to feel and how do we behave, these principles that come from inside of us, not from outside of us. That's the biggest difference. When I took off my black robe, I gave up my meditation and I began doing things that even civilized human beings developed and mature human beings don't do. Part of that due to the addiction and just part of that due to my own personality. But it had all come from the outside, family rules and social norms and cultural values. None of it was mine, even my religious tradition. I put it on like I put the black robe on when i took the black robe off i didn't have any religious traditions of any consequence but when i finished this step work at the end of 1988 i was organically changed on the inside i was given principles from that are mine from the inside i was given a tool that allowed me to understand what meditation was the practice and that i could in fact improve my consciousness and improve my conscious contact on a daily basis i did it out of pure faith in the first year I had an outline it's in the way of life document pages 44 to 51 many people use it as a script if you don't have a practice many people use that outline that I have because it includes the prayers and some direction and some reflections and some questions to prime the pump to take to establish the practice and the exercises and then they become more virtuoso after they've established the basic routines the basic thoughts the basic words the basic practice I started with five minutes I built it to 15 minutes that was my goal after about three months i was at 15 minutes and i continued doing that for about a year but after about six months i'm just getting really bored because i was doing the routine you see i got back into the monk mode and i was reading the script and i Was reading the prayers but i wasn't giving it much mindfulness much consciousness i was following quote the rules and despite the fact that had a spiritual awakening, I was still somewhat asleep in this area. And I went to a man who understands spirituality and meditation. He himself had been a monk, was at that time a clinical psychologist, and knew nothing about the 12-step program. I laid out to him the 12 steps as i understood them at that time step one the powerlessness and the balance of the steps to seek power and step 11 to continue to foster your relationship with power i mean i spent 45 minutes giving him a more detailed description of that but he he was really bright and really intuitive and really spiritual and he really understood what i was talking about and at the end of the 30 or 45 minutes he said herb herb i get it i get it you have a book you have a commitment you've worked the steps you're at step 11 you've outlined it you understand it you have a practice you have a chair you have a gong you have a candle you have all the accoutrements that a meditator would have the right pillow etc etc and you sit there because it's a task for you to accomplish meditation it's a task, for you, to become spiritual and he was quite dramatic and I said well okay he said I want you to get it I want you to get it because you've had the experience you're awake now and you really want to practice this practice of consciousness think this thought you're as powerless over your spiritual life as you are over alcohol having no power at all he said again think this thought you are as powerless over your prayer and meditation as you are over alcohol having no power at all sit in the presence of power humbled by your powerlessness and grateful for the ability to be aware of that. That's when he gave me that mantra, all people on a spiritual path have a spiritual practice, then they practice their practice. And when they practice their practice, when they're faithful to their practice their practices faithful to them. Instead, you're responsible for the effort, Herb, and the results are none of your business. Well, that was so contrary to my whole nature. That was so contrary to my corporate training and success in the business world. My boss had on his desk, don't confuse effort with results. It was just the opposite. My kids still quote me because that's how I raised them. He said, you're responsible for the effort and the results are none of your business. Don't judge your meditation, don't evaluate your meditation. There's only two mistakes that you can make he said. This is just so powerful because it's so simple there's only two mistakes that you can make one not show up to leave early if you've committed to five minutes set your timer you're a working guy you don't want to misstep here and you don t want to be distracted by the timing set a timer and the timer will tell you when you're done it was magical it took all the pressure off of me about thinking what time it was and I didn't want to get lost in meditation and you know all of the stuff that we do when we're novices at all of this and I said it for five minutes he said the timer will tell you when you're done you're responsible for the effort and the results are none of your business as I was leaving his office that day in 1989. He said, oh, by the way, Herb, if you want to know if your meditation is effective, after three months of a consistent practice, building it from five minutes to 20 minutes, he made the suggestion that it be a minimum of 20 minutes which I did then. i went back to the five minutes based on his new information of sitting there quite conscious and powerless and thinking my thinking and paying attention to my thinking as i had already been instructed to do and then i built it to 20 minutes he said once you've got a daily practice and you're practicing it for three months, here's how you can tell whether it's effective or not. Ask your wife how you're treating her. Pay attention to how you are driving on the freeway. Pay attention to howyou treat retail personnel in a store or at the airline because you will become a softer, kinder, more considerate human being. that's the litmus test my head will always lie to me my feelings will more regularly lie to me but my feet will never lie to me my feet my behavior tells me exactly who I am my feet my behavior tell me what I believe my feet behavior tells what my principles are and that is very confrontational my feet are my litmus test of my emotional maturity and my spiritual sobriety there's lots more i'm not going to go through um all of it here um bill says we conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be and be given whatever we need to take care of such problems that's incorporated in that script that i mentioned in the way of life document I always end my morning practice with the seven-step prayer as a commitment to the removal of the character defect du jour that I talked about earlier, but also because of the last line of that prayer. As we go out from here to do your bidding, amen. What a launching pad for the day. I'm going out from here with the invitation that I got in my meditation I sit in meditation to get guidance for the day That's the whole point of the meditation I think about the 24 hours ahead I consider my plans for the Day I then listen to my thinking and my feelings And my awareness and my consciousness And all of whatever I'm conscious of as the possible voice of God, giving me guidance for the day. And we get better as we practice. And that's what he says too. He says go to outside resources, very clear in the end of the description or suggestions on prayer and meditation. He says there's, you know, there's thousands of years of efforts by many cultures. In listening to that the following year, a teacher who became one of my consciousness teachers, Father Thomas Keating came to town and did a three-day training on a contemplative practice that he brought out of the monastery into society it was the christian catholic version of what the buddhists have been doing thousands of years before the christians were even around called contemplation he calls it centering prayer he calls it the first rung on the ladder of contemplation and as i understand it today and if you watch or listen that to that workshop that i did you'll hear this in much more detail of course but my understanding of prayer that's an action of our body talking whether it's out loud or silently and with or without words it doesn't matter but it's our movement to have communication intimate communication building this relationship this friendship and meditation is my listening to my thinking a very active process i don't try to quiet my mind that's a misnomer in meditation unless you're talking about distractions many of us have that problem of distraction and some of it's even chemical or physical in terms of add or ocd but i listen to my thinking actively listening to my thinking and my consciousness. That's the function of my mind for meditation. But contemplation is a function of my will, as I understand it. Father Thomas Keating talked about consenting to the presence, acknowledging the presence with my mind but consenting to the Presence to the energy of that presence. Sitting in that presence in the tabernacle, in the space, in the house of the divine, consenting to have the energy and the power of that, whatever it is, have its way with me. Very much like the image of the potter and the clay in one of the scripture stories. The potter is the divine Potter sitting in front of the spinning clay wheel forming some type of utensil, a lump of clay that's me on this spinning table. And I sit there in the presence of this energy, inviting it and giving it permission to have its way with me and to shape me for that day. To be a channel of light and to be a Channel of grace. Those are my thoughts about it. That's my intention. I don't, I attempt not to have thoughts in the contemplative stance. I try to sit there in the presence aware only of the presence and any awareness other than the presence I consider a distraction. And I have a mechanism to bring me back to my center. If I were to allocate time, I probably spend two or three or four minutes in prayer, five or 10 minutes in meditation, and 15 to 30 minutes in my contemplative practice. But that came up over time as I started with the five minutes built it to 10 and built it of 20 and eventually retired and was able to be a little bit more liberal with my time if you don't have a practice then you want to practice begin with one minute oh herb that's just not enough yeah it's one more minute than you're doing right now one minute not of prayer one minute not necessarily of meditation although that would be all right but one minute of what i call intentional consciousness being aware of your consciousness for the sole purpose of listening one minute 30 days in a row it might take you 60 days or 90 days or or six months to get 30 days in a row. Because if you miss a day, you start counting again. But once you have 30 days of one minute you will have established the beginning of a habit of a practice. So as I said, prayer is an intimate conversation. Why do we do it? To form our relationship. What do you believe about God? In the 12-step program, that's your decision. What doyou believe about power? What doyou believe about consciousness? What doye believe about a meaning or a power other than yourself in the universe or nature? I sometimes just refer to it as the mystery. The mystery. Because I don't need to know that it is. i just need to believe and hope that it is and act as if it's true yep the outcome is of course conscious contact what about meditation what is it it's thinking and listening why do we do it well some people do it for physical health some people do it för psykologiska well-being but step 11 is not any of that step 11 is theology not biology or psychology it's about a relationship with theos whatever that means to you theos the god of our not understanding the purpose is to become a lantern that's It's my image of a sponsor. I'm not the light, but I'm a channel of the light. I'm the lantern. I stand by the path as a lantern, shining the light of my experience on the path that I walk so that others can walk that path and have their own experience. Bill, very astutely in the 12 and 12, gives us the value proposition that I'd like to chat about here for a minute. Because everybody believes that meditation is probably a good thing. They could probably quote studies even. And they'll say, well, you know, it's step 11. Of course, it'S really important. It's critical to my sobriety. It's pretty critical to me. It's really critical to life. Do you do it? Nope, don't have time. well obviously they don't believe what they're talking about then because if you believed it was important you would be doing it if you were not doing it and i'm sorry to be so confrontational i don't mean to be rude i do mean to wake you up if you're not doing a daily meditation it's because you don't think it's necessary or you don t believe you re powerless or there s something amiss with your belief system if you re not doing it bill tells us in the 12 and 12 as air water sunshine and food are necessary essential for our nourishment and sustenance prayer and meditation are necessary for the nourishment of sustenances of our soul do you believe it it do you believe it next week's assignment is to do the next piece of work in assignment two would be uh item number three four and five which is about step 10 primarily and it would do you well to look at not only the big book 84 and 85 in step 10 but also to look at the chapter in the 12 and 12. one of the best chapters in the twelve and twelve because because it really clarifies the tool of the 10th step and how it's used and why it's use. There's an outline in the way of life document on pages 42 and 43, there was some confusion which I created and I apologize for that in the assignments where my assignments are for more than just this workshop. And for those other workshops, I don't go as deep or I don' intend, I don''t go as deeper as I intend to go in this workshop, so I have them as a requirement listen to recordings that were made a few years ago in a weekly telephone workshop because it was at a time when I did go deep in the telephone workshop, it took about 18 months to go through the 12 step process. And so I have a lot more unpacking of the big book and the steps in that than I have been doing lately. However, in this, because of the new structure of Monday and Tuesday, it's not as essential. it still would probably be a good supplement. I've talked to many people who have used most of my resources and they say, it's still a wonderful supplement and you hear different words at different times said in different ways because that was like 10 years ago for me. So you might find that helpful. So now I'm going to go off of this. Oh, one other thing on the slide here. The consciousness practice becoming a lantern not responsible for the effort excuse me i am responsible for the effort not the results it's a journey not a destination in fact in my in my new book on meditation published by hazelton that first chapter describes in detail uh some most of the areas that i've talked about here in terms of the consciousness practices but as part of the preparation of that manuscript it came to me a meditation that the journey is the destination meditation is a journey it's not the destination this man said you're not doing your meditation to become spiritual you're doing your meditation to have a relationship with god you're not doing your meditation to become a good meditator you want to improve your meditation practice so that you're improving your conscious relationship with god i mean he completely turned my thinking around because i was so much more product rather than process oriented and this is a process not a task it's an experience not an event but it's not a feeling for us addicts feelings are a sand trap quicksand feelings are really important absolutely wonderfully important for survival and for navigating life absolutely in the spiritual life though if you chase your feelings feeling good you will chase the spirit away it just won't because it's not about feelings feelings are biochemical reaction to my perception of reality meditation is not it's not a chemical reaction there's some type of alchemic reaction of the combination of my mind and my will in connection with great god's grace and gift i call it self-realization more about that later certainly becoming a lantern but so that we can be lighting the path that's the whole point