A daily Eleven Step practice has changed my life and my recovery. I believe this daily practice has enhanced every single one of the Twelve Steps in my life. I was oblivious to most of what I was thinking my whole life, but now that I meditate daily, for forty-five minutes, I am always aware of what I am thinking, which is the key to the progress of my recovery because everything makes me reflect.
I tell anyone if you want to see how truly powerless you are try to do what I do on a daily basis: single pointed concentration meditation. I try to keep one thought in my head for forty-five minutes every day: I am. I am, is the only thing I truly know, everything else is inference suspect to doubt, and when I first started this practice seven years ago, I would come to without even being able to focus on those words at all with my ADHD. This practice has been the only treatment for my ADHD that has ever worked for me. I can read pages off a book today without my mind wondering all over the place because of it. When I first started, I was amazed with how powerless I was over both the thoughts that rose in my mind and how they made me feel, which it is nothing but what we feel about what we think that controls our actions. I tell anyone when they first start: ask yourself if you have any control over the thoughts that rise in your mind and how you feel about them, or “does nothing, absolutely nothing, happen in Gods world by mistake?”
If anyone is truly struggling with God, I tell them to look within, and a daily Eleven Step of any kind will help someone look within. I hated God when I got to recovery, but I made the words “I don’t know” my higher power, which is what Bill tells us to just be willing to say in We Agnostics. I don’t know can honestly answer every question except “I am,” and God has all the answers.
If anyone wants to do a true searching and fearless moral inventory, I tell them to sit in silence and just watch were your mind takes you. Everything that controls you will be shown to you. Your character defect will be revealed to you because you will always be aware of all that you are thinking. It is because I mediate so much everything about my behavior is reflected to me in the actions I take and even the ones I need to make amends for.
As it says in Step ten: “it is a spiritual axiom that no matter what the cause, if I am disturbed the problem is me,” and before I meditated daily, I was oblivious when I was disturbed because I was never aware of what I was thinking. Before I meditated daily, I found my biggest problem with doing “the next right thing” was I never aware of my true motivations.
As I stated above everything makes me reflect, which makes me so grateful I have this daily practice. A daily Eleventh Step has solved so many of my problems and allows me to continue to grow in a positive manner and carry the message to the next sufferer that crosses my path, so yes, every single Step is enhanced by Step Eleven.