The Eleventh Step

Posted on October 26, 2026, tagged as

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

At a simple level we can think of praying as talking with God (or with our higher power if that is a better fit), and of meditation as listening to God. Or maybe it is not so simple. I think the most necessary condition for meditation is quietude. For many of us, myself included, it is not an easy task to get quiet and remain so for any considerable period of time. All the authorities who are well-practiced in meditation have us start by sitting quietly in a comfortable position. It is important to understand that not only the mind, but also the body has to settle down. In my case, after sitting for several seconds, less than a minute, I get shpilkes. My Jewish friends will know this term. It means “pins” in Yiddish. The English equivalent phrase is “sitting on pins and needles.” My feet start to tap. I shift around. I itch and scratch. In order to achieve a quiet state, I must rely on my breathing, a standard meditative method of quieting the body and the mind. I take a normal breath, let it out, and then wait a few seconds before I inhale again. To be clear, I am not holding my breath. I am simply paying attention to how quiet I have become before it is time to take the next breath, which will come naturally. During this interval in which I am neither inhaling nor exhaling, I try to feel my body as quiet and relaxed. As I meditate, I try not to engage my brain in thought. Of course, my brain has shpilkes as well. In order to not think about anything else, I try to think about my breathing, and especially how quiet my body feels as I inhale, exhale, and grow quiet inside. There is no way I know of to stop unwanted thoughts from intruding, but by breathing and becoming physically quiet, we can let them go. It is a fact that it is difficult or maybe even impossible to think about more than one thing at a time.

The eleventh step limits what we can pray for to the knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. Unless this is interpreted extremely broadly, this instruction doesn’t help me that much. Asking God for something, anything, is not generally how I pray. I believe for myself that God is more interested in who I am in the moment than what I am doing. I have heard it said that we are human beings, not human doings. For people with addictions the twelve step programs teach that it is God who removes the obsession and the compulsions. Different people might understand this differently, but at a minimum of asking, we ask to be sober today. We can certainly pray for the welfare of our loved ones and others. We do understand that on our heroic journey of life, we cannot succeed on our own. My best understanding for myself is that what God wills is a relationship with me. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, we are encouraged to seek God. I have found it extremely meaningful to have read several theologists, philosophers, and poets who believe that the initial act of seeking comes from the higher power. As Rumi, the twelfth century Persian poet wrote, “That which you seek is seeking you.”  When I think that God is reaching out to me in love, it is an indescribable feeling, and it allows me to love God in return. Of course, I want all my friends and loved ones to be healthy and happy, and I can pray for this as well. World peace wouldn’t be bad either. One’s prayer life is developed over time, according to what feels right to each person. Certainly, asking for God’s will along these lines can only be helpful as we seek and hopefully find our own way. My wish for you all is that you find much happiness and comfort through your prayer and meditation.