November 11th Step Assignment

11th Step -“We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

Step working Guide Pg. 107

Introduction

Step 11 says we already have a conscious contact with the God of our understanding, and the task before us now is to improve that contact.

Our Own Spiritual Path

The Eleventh Step allows us the opportunity to find our own spiritual path or further refine our path if we’ve already embarked on one. The steps we take toward finding or refining our path, and the way we walk down it, will depend to a large degree on the culture in which we live, previous experiences with spirituality and what best suits our spiritual nature.

Our spirituality has been developing since we first came to NA. We are constantly changing, and so is our spirituality. New territory, new people, and new situations have their effect on us and our spirituality needs to respond.

Living Clean Journey Continues Pg. 227 {Lifelong Practice of Surrender) other

Our understanding of surrender may change over time, but our need for it does not. In the beginning surrender might be about not using drugs. As time goes by, we start to see other ways our addiction plays out in our lives. We become willing to surrender other behaviors, sometimes one by one. We come to understand that using whatever we are using is just a symptom of our problem, which is spiritual in nature. Gradually we start to let go of the things that drive us to act, denial, anger, resentment, need to be right, feelings of superiority or inferiority, shame, remorse, and fear.

1. How has your spirituality in recovery responded to the new territories, new people, and new situations when addiction was the driving force?

2. How does humility apply to your recovery when listening for God to give you the power to carry out His will?

Prayer and Meditation:

Having entered this phase of our spiritual program through practicing the previous ten steps, most of welcome the exercise of prayer and meditation. The purpose of the Eleventh Step is to increase our awareness of that Power and to improve our ability to use it as a source of strength in our lives. BT Pg. 43

We may have a basic understanding of what prayer and meditation are, prayer being the times we talk to a Higher Power and meditation the times we listen for a Higher Power’s answers. IWHW pg 109.

Prayer helps us to let go of our fear and distrust and to live in faith. We don’t have to understand it for it to work. We open the door to a faith deep within that allows us to meet adversity with serenity. Active listening is a form of meditation. Some the most important messages were delivered through some unlikely people. When we can quiet our minds, we can better hear the answers we need. LC pg. 73-74

Prayer is talking to our Higher Power, not always in the form of actual speech. We work on developing a form of prayer that felt right to us in the 2nd step, We may find by now that we’ve further refined our approach to prayer to fit our spiritual growth. How often should we Pray? Many of us traditionally pray in the beginning of our day then again before retiring at night. Many of us try to incorporate prayer throughout our day. It is good practice to pray regularly. SWG pg 110.

There are many different ways we can go about meditating, but its usual goal is to quiet the mind so that we gain understanding and knowledge from our Higher Power. SWG pg 110.

When we say mediation is the most practical science in the world today, it is the individual broadening and deepening of this experience. We addict know how important change is to the rest of our lives. Changing ourselves changes the rest of the world. A little mediation for most people is enough to power the rest of our lives. What if by taking out a little more time for mediation would increase and cleanse the rest of our lives. Our dreams, our potentials to achieve and accept expand as we grow spiritually. When we sit, relax physically, breathe and focus, we unleash the Powers that live inside us. Meditations open the inner self in order to obtain a higher spiritual nature. There is no specific way to pray and meditate. It is only important that you find what works best for your spiritual growth. (Baby Blue)

1. Do you have a prayer or meditation ritual/practice? Share the experience.

2. How has the practice of prayer- (asking God for direction) and mediation -listening for His response) assisted you in learning to identify the difference between God’s will and self-will?

Conscious Contact with God and God's Will:

Confucius says wisdom is learned by three methods:

a. Reflection, which is the noblest b. Imitation, which is the easiest, c. Experience, which is the bitterest.

What to do when you don't know what to do? Sometimes, this is the question that comes to us before embarking on the 11th step. The 11th step has taken us from addiction to peace, it has moved us from a place of pain, despair and loneliness to wholeness and love, from confusion to Clarity, from a place of being the victim to owning our power, from the now to reality… walking confidently through the darkness by listening.

This is simply by surrendering and asking only for God's Will and THE POWER to carry it out!!!!! The answer is God knows the moment when we don’t know but when we first come to the Program, we usually express a lot of things which seem to be important wants and needs.

As we grow spiritually and find out about a Power greater than ourselves, we begin to realize that as long as our spiritual needs are truly met, our living problems are reduced to a point of comfort. When we forget where our real strength lies, we quickly become subject to the same patterns of thinking and action that got us to the Program in the first place.

We eventually redefine our beliefs and understanding to the point where we see that our greatest need is for knowledge of God's will for us and the strength to carry that out. We are able to set aside some of our personal preference, if necessary, to do this because we learn that God's will consists of the very things we care most about. God's will for us becomes our own true will for ourselves. This happens in an intuitive manner which cannot be adequately explained in words.BT pg.46

We say that regardless of the presence or absence of material success in our lives we can be content. We can be happy and fulfilled with or without money with or without a partner with or without approval of other will be gone to see that God will for our sister ability to live with dignity to love ourselves and others to laugh and the find great joy and Beauty in our surroundings IWH&W pg. 112

1. How do you gauge the line from where you started and where you are going?

2. What are those circumstances that prevented you from hearing and believing God’s Will?

3. How have you been Disobedience with carrying out God’s Will?

Power to Carry It Out:

When praying for the power to carry out God's will we probably won't know exactly what we need however we trust that the need will be provided the power to carry there are many different qualities we may need to carry out a higher power wheel humility is sense of compassion honesty Integrity or ability to preserve and the patience to wait for results over it. Page 113 Step working guide

We know that whatever the day brings, God has given us everything we need for our spiritual well-being. It is all right for us to admit powerlessness, because God is powerful enough to help us stay clean and to enjoy spiritual progress. God is helping us to get our house in order.

We become willing to let other people be what they are without having to pass judgment on them. The urgency to take care of things isn't there anymore. We couldn't comprehend acceptance in the beginning-now we can.BT pg.48

1. How have the 11th step changed your perception of life?

2. Does understanding of His will and His power comes together? How or why not?

Spiritual Principles:

SWG- Spiritual Principles

We have learned through the previous steps that this program is not always about what we know but how we choose to live. The spiritual principles of commitment, humility, courage, and faith in Step 11 will challenge us to grow and mature in recovery. This 11th step commitment will start the process of drawing us closer to God or subconsciously start our separation from the program. Our outdated and immature belief systems will defend themselves against this new commitment. We will be faced with a choice to dive into the program further or return to our familiar ways of living. Spiritual complacency can cause us to be just as miserable clean as the day we stopped using! We know that honest sharing is the antidote to disease thinking, and we begin to see that living Step 11 is the antidote from our self-made prisons. These spiritual principles build a base that can sustain unlimited spiritual growth, but it will require our participation.

Questions:

1. How have your character defects prevented a conscious contact with the God of your understanding?

2. How can we tell when it is time to recommit to the Eleventh Step?