Nobody Can Teach You Conscious Contact — When You Get Quiet Enough It Just Shows Up – Karen S.

About This Speaker Tape

Karen S., sober since September 8, 1988, shares her deeply personal journey through Step 11 at the Fort Lauderdale 12 Step Group. She opens by reminding the audience that the first ten steps are not a permanent fix — without continued practice, the obsession returns. She traces how she spent her first five years sober without any concept of a higher power, faking her way through the program with a good sponsor, meetings, and service, but no Higher Power.

The heart of her talk is the story of her third husband, a man she deeply loved, who disclosed he had AIDS during a dinner meant to discuss fertility struggles. In the era when AIDS was a death sentence, she endured years of hospitals, fear, anonymous testing in Harlem every three months, family abandonment, and watching him deteriorate — all while raising two four-year-old boys and sinking into her own despair. On the eve of her fifth sobriety anniversary, after a terrible fight, he left the house, removed his wedding band, and jumped in front of a subway at West 4th Street.

In the morgue, alone with his body, Karen describes breathing in what she calls the essence of Higher Power — a moment so vivid she says she could breathe underwater. A voice told her: with great Higher Power comes great love, and with great love comes great responsibility. That experience, now 32 years old, remains her living conscious contact with a higher power. She returns to it by sitting quietly and breathing in, and it comes back every time.

She closes with practical Step 11 teaching: she prays constantly but not for other people, which she considers a tacit claim to know more than Higher Power. Instead she prays only for clarity and courage. She meditates through her relationship with water and the ocean. She uses the St. Francis Prayer's channel metaphor — a short body of water between two places, blocked by rocks we placed there through resentments and wreckage — and says her job is to remove those rocks one at a time until the water flows freely. The power returned through Step 11, she says, exists for one purpose: to be channeled into Step 12.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Karen introduces herself — 37 years sober, September 8, 1988; sets up Step 11 talk
• 2:30 The first ten steps are not a permanent fix — without practice the obsession returns
• 5:00 Step 11 is extraordinarily individual — even a great sponsor cannot help you with it
• 8:00 Five years sober without Higher Power — married for the third time, interracial family, two boys six weeks apart
• 12:00 Husband discloses AIDS diagnosis at dinner after three years trying to conceive
• 18:00 Years of hospitals, anonymous AIDS testing in Harlem every three months, family abandonment
• 24:00 Eve of her fifth anniversary — husband leaves, wedding band on the piano, police find him at West 4th Street subway
• 30:00 Alone in the morgue — breathes in the essence of Higher Power, hears the voice: with great love comes great responsibility
• 38:00 Why she does not pray for others — prays only for clarity and courage; controversial stance explained
• 45:00 St. Francis Prayer channel metaphor — removing rocks so the water flows; the power from Step 11 feeds Step 12