Emotional Balance

STEP ELEVEN

"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."

Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God.

            We A.A.'s are active folks, enjoying the satisfaction of dealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time in our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic who comes along. So it isn't surprising that we often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really necessary. To be sure, we feel it is something that might help us to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of clergymen, from which we may give hope to get a secondhand benefit. Or perhaps we don't believe in these things at all.

TWELVE STEPS

AND

TWELVE TRADITIONS

(p.96)

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The two sentences that caught my attention in this chapter are the first one and the one at the end of page 101 that proclaims: "One of its first fruits (of meditation [sic]) is emotional balance."

 An excuse often cited in AA meetings, "I say a short prayer asking God to keep me sober today when I rise but I'm too busy and don't have time for navel gazing."

Taking note of this, I'm tempted to add a smug mental note, ".. and it shows too."

 I am, however, less than amused because these statements are often more than admissions. These are proud assertions made by the same folks who careen through the program accompanied by the attitudes and pomposity found so repulsive to most of us. The implication is that those of us who spend the time meditation takes are not as busy... as productive and are perhaps too pious.

By the time I got to AA and was still wet behind the ears, I was taken off-course by every wisp of an emotional breeze or tempest tossed and nearly capsized by the sometimes major upheavals of the early weeks and months of sobriety, I came to understand right away that I needed desperately to do more than a knee-dip to God if I were to center myself to do more than to just survive. I realized that if I were to survive at all I had to respect what is that I am up against regarding alcoholism… the odds are not in my favor. Why then would I not employ some discipline to my advantage?

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