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12-step methods : The 12 Steps: A historic and analytic explanation
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 Message 14 of 15 in Discussion 
From: MSN NicknameChrismac682  in response to Message 13Sent: 9/6/2008 11:04 PM

Step 11 of the 12 steps

 

I stay tuned inside, in touch with a broader sense of who I really am, and a deeper sense of what I really want.


Original wording (AA):
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power as we understood our Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of our Higher Power's will for us and the power to carry that out.


In a nutshell

This Step is about being able to continue "doing the right thing".

It's about going beyond the tight boundaries of your habits and knee-jerk reactions. "The right thing" is not just that what takes you out of a tight spot. Doing the right thing gives you the sense that what you’re doing is in harmony with the order of all things.

Suppose you're getting angry at somebody and laying a lot of blame on them at a time when you can get away with it. It may feel good at the moment - it lets you get off steam. But it certainly isn't something that makes you feel especially in harmony with your higher sense of self. Nor is it an action that you're especially proud of yourself for.

This is not a watertight definition of "doing the right thing" - it has a lot of holes. There are ways to improve on it. On the other hand, there is some merit to this lack of precision: This Step is about intuitively feeling what's right, as opposed to analyzing it with your logical mind.

What is implicit in this Step -- as in the whole Proactive Twelve Steps approach -- is that you are inherently good. All we have to do is let yourself connect with what is good within yourself -- whether you call it God, a Higher Power, or anything else.

Meditation

Within this context, meditation is a good way to be in conscious contact with your true Nature, your Life Force, your own inherent goodness.

You can experiment with various forms of meditation -- some techniques may work better for you than others.

The test of what works is that you start to feel how you get to trust your intuition more and more. You see yourself doing the right thing.

What it's about is finding a sense of peace, a sense of space. It's the opposite: of feeling agitation, of rushing around. The opposite of feeling "I can't bear this".



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     re: The 12 Steps: A historic and analytic explanation 1 MSN NicknameChrismac682  9/6/2008 11:06 PM