“On awakening” (Page 86, Big Book)

“When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday’s and sometimes today’s excesses of negative emotion—anger, fear, jealousy, and the like.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 88)

When I wake up in a bad mood, I’ve been tempted to conclude ‘I have a bad programme’ or ‘the programme does not work’, on the basis that, if the programme did work, I’d wake up like Snow White every morning, glad to be alive.

There are lots of reasons why a person can wake up in a bad mood.

There are the cited hangovers of yesterday’s mental self-indulgences. There’s then the overnight processing of all of the incoming data from the previous day, bad or fitful sleep, physical ailments, heat, cold, hay fever, infections, bad dreams, kicking, snorting, snoring, or the getting up of the person next to you. None of these are a function of having a good programme or a bad programme.

It’s easy to take the mood on awakening also as an augur of the day ahead. This is untrue. If it implies information, it implies information only about the past, not about the future.

Ideally it is dispelled by getting into one’s Step Eleven practices or, if that’s too much, getting into the day and getting in contact with present reality.

In other words, open the window and let out the mood. Certainly don’t analyse it. 

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking” (Page 86, Big Book)

Does God talk to me in Step Eleven?

To come at the role of God in Step Eleven, let’s look at the bigger context of Step Eleven.

What I am asked to do in Step Eleven is think. That’s the ‘meditation bit’, which, in 1939, did not denote transcendental meditation but deliberate, directed thought.

How do I know? According to the Book itself, I’m to ask God to direct my thinking.

There might be an inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision, but these are also categories of thought, elements of a thought process, or nodes in the thought process. They’re not a substitute for thought. I’m not asking God to think for me and present me with the results, like cook who has made the dinner and had the footman bring it up. One conceit is that I am going to receive direct revelations from God, on a silver platter. Occasionally, perhaps, but this is not the rule.

I’m not a high priest. I don’t have a special relationship with God. I do not have a secret door to the secrets of the universe.

99.9% of what I need for the day, I actually know already: it is a matter of retrieving knowledge, experience, and understanding and bringing them to bear on the situation at hand to generate the right attitudes and actions of the day. God is the guider of this. God does seem to cause me to make connections between this and that, to apply particular observations in unexpected ways, but the raw material is already there. God’s helping me select from the warehouse rather than dropping down fresh pearls from heaven.

After I had taken the Steps, which, in the Big Book, on pages 67 and 68, gave me full and final solutions to all resentment and fear forever, I would still ‘have’ resentments and fears and brandish them as unsolved, unsolvable, knotty problems, gammy legs, war wounds, the inevitable curse of fallen man. The truth is, the answer was there already. Drop the charges and the resentment goes; drop the demands and the fear goes. ‘Thy will be done!’ is not a complicated idea: it means ‘my will not be done’; it means renunciation. I did not need therapy, shadow work, or the clairvoyance. I needed to drop my petulance and drop my entitlement. God gave me the answer in 1939.

Another conceit is that, if I write, God will write through my pen, so I had better not edit it. It’s rare that the inspiration, intuitive thought, or decision should be applied immediately, without further consideration, without articulation with other inspirations, intuitive thoughts or decisions, without consultation, without adaptation to the circumstances. When I have a good idea, I usually sit on it for a while. When there is a decision to make, three to six months is my usual timeframe.

“Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The best way to live is to rely simply on God providing one of these three, each step of the way.

Until the building is built, scaffolding is required to keep it up.

That means following rules, systems, procedures, and others’ advice, for a while.

But at some point that has to stop.

“Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Page 86, Big Book)

“I know that many of my decisions could have been more wisely made if I had been more receptive to His guidance.” (ODAT, 1 May)

I cannot ask for God’s guidance too much.

I can ask too little.

Asking is the way out of guilt:

If I ask and act accordingly, I’m off a double hook.

The first hook: reliance on self.

The second hook: selfish action.

When I ask, what God does usually, however, is tell me to think for myself.

It’s then my job to do so, not feverishly but in accordance with the principles of the programme.

Do I have to have a sacred space, a comfortable location, somewhere separate, somewhere pleasant, somewhere reserved to do my daily prayer and meditation?

No. God is available everywhere. On the cancer ward. In the trenches. And on the bus. Also, we are not after an aesthetic or sentimental experience but conscious contact.

Do I have to adopt a particular posture?

No. Just as when you are talking to Sally, she can hear you and you can hear her even if you’re standing on your head or reaching for a spanner. You know how to sit or stand. However you sit or stand, that will do. You don’t need to worry about your spine or your neck or how open or shut your eyes are.

Do I have to do special breathing? Do I have to breathe out fear and breathe in love?

No. Ordinary breathing is fine. The same breathing as when you’re doing maths, cooking the dinner, or talking to Clive. If you could breathe out fear and breathe in love, you wouldn’t need the steps. Fear and love are in your mind, not your lungs or the room you are in. You don’t solve illusions with illusions. You don’t need to be cute, reverential, or solemn. The relationship with God is a business relationship, not a religious relationship.

Do you need to pray at the same time or for the same amount of time each day?

No. If you find that convenient or effective, then so be it. But you’re doing it that way because it’s convenient or effective, not because there is a magic in the timing or duration. This is not a ritual. God’s presence cannot be scheduled, limited to a duration, or stretched to a duration.

Should you ask big questions, like why you can’t get rid of a character defect, or whether God can do something about your loneliness or unhappiness, or what the point of life is, or why you can’t feel God in your life?

Probably not. As soon as you define the question in this way, you’re painting God into a corner. Even in sponsorship, most questions to a sponsor are badly framed. The job of the sponsor is often to challenge the premises behind the question. In Step Eleven we find out what God wants us to do today and how He wants us to do it. If answers to big questions come, great, but that’s usually in only a fragmentary way and long after the event. Meanwhile God’s waiting to give you His orders for the day. Best stick to those. If you have a pressing trouble, maybe pop that in the mix, but guidance from God on reframing or rewiring tends to be drip-fed over the days and weeks following the initial enquiry. If you need to be rewired, don’t expect it to happen in the slot allotted.

When I listen for the voice of God, do I need to imagine God using terms of endearment in either direction?

No. This is firstly a different type of relationship than any relationship in which terms of endearment are used. Using that language creates that association, which can be unfortunate. God is not a cuddly toy, and we’re not His. Secondly, cosying-up is presumptuous: we all know what it’s like when someone acts like they are closer to us than they really are. Thirdly, it has nothing to do with the business at hand: knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Should I write things down?

If you get a specific idea of a thing to do today or a notion about timing, prioritisation, and manner, and you are liable to forget, sure. But there is no need to write down verbatim the thoughts that come to mind. This isn’t a séance or automatic writing. We’re not Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. We’re not Helen Schucman ‘scribing’ ‘A Course In Miracles’. We’re certainly not doing ‘daily pages’ or journalling. We’re ordinary people. Plumbers and typists. Bakers and programmers. And if we really are artists, we might be more concerned with choosing the right acrylic paints or turning a good phrase in a screenplay than tapping the secrets of the universe. Even art is 99% technique and drudge. We are not channelling a spirit through a medium. We are not listening in to a wiretap. If you must write, think a little before you write, so what you write is coherent. There is no magic in the initial thought. There is no purity in the initial thought. The initial thought is often banal, nonsense, or mud. Worse, it is often spiritual claptrap: some rosy platitude or cryptic saying. It is not to be put on a pedestal. Use your intelligence to take what comes and produce sense from it.

What if nothing comes?

Let nothing come. That means you’re not supposed to know anything now. Don’t force it. You might contact a voice other than God’s. And certainly don’t start to do spontaneous writing, imagining what God might say. If God doesn’t deign to speak to you, don’t speak for Him. This is conceit and fancy. And dangerous to boot.

Do I need to check what comes against the four absolutes of the Oxford Group?

Only if you’re a fully paid-up member of the Oxford Group, which is unlikely. The absolutes did not make their way into AA literature as part of the programme, and for good reason. Instead, test what comes against the principles contains in the steps, traditions, and concepts. AA does not need to be improved.

Do I need to share the content with someone else?

If there is something you’re unsure about, sure, check it out. If you want to share it, by all means. But don’t proceed on the basis that God told you special messages meant for someone else, or vice versa. God isn’t tricky or sly. There isn’t a secret trail to the truth. We’re not in the middle of the ‘Da Vinci Code’.

Does this mean pages 86 to 88 are enough?

Yes. Boring but true.

“It has often been suggested that we adopt a favorite maxim or quotation to repeat when we want to tide ourselves over a difficult time.” (ODAT, 17 April)

Set prayers are useful:

- To instil new, good ideas

- To overwrite old, bad ones

- To block unhelpful narratives

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Page 86, Big Book)

I heard someone say, “I didn't have time for meditation this morning. I was too busy considering what I have to do today and how I was going to handle everything.”

Ironically, this is precisely what the meditation is supposed to be.

When I meditate in the morning and the evening, I can get it wrong either by not doing it at all, or by altering it, or by doing too much.

Here’s an example of doing precisely the right amount, not too little, not too much, and without variation.

“When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid?” (Page 86)

The Book suggests that I ask myself whether I was resentful. To do this, I review the day. Review > re-view > see again. I think through the day and see whether I was resentful. If so, the answer is ‘yes’. No analysis. I then move on to ‘selfish’, in the same way. No pencil or paper. No perfunctory sharing or sending.

Noting the ‘yeses’, I then ask God for corrective measures. The wrong is touched upon; the solution is asked for. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just that.

We meditate in the evening, too.

“When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.”  (Page 86, Big Book)

Thus, meditation is a constructive review, punctuated with two prayers, and constrained by one caution. It is consideration and thought.

Here’s the morning element (from pages 86 to 88 of the Big Book):

Content / subject matter:

- “On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.”

[In other words, meditation, in the programme, is thinking and considering. It is not posture, breathing, focusing on the body, or detachment from thought. The meditation is punctuated by prayers. Religious devotion and spiritual reading also fall under the heading of meditation.]

Topping, tailing, and trouble-shooting:

- “Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.”

- “… we may face indecision … Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle.”

- “We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.”

- “We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.”

Bolt-on activities:

- “… we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation.”

- “If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also.”

- “If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.”

- “There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.”

During the day:

- “As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day ‘Thy will be done.’”

From elsewhere in the book:

- “In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter.” (Page 69)

- “So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.” (Page 83)

- “Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.” (Page 164)

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.” (Page 98, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Unless I do not know where I am, I cannot plot a course to where I am going.

The self-examination falls into a few categories:

- In the moment

- Daily

- When a major problem arises

- Quarterly or half-yearly, as routine maintenance

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The passage simply asks me to do these things. It does not stipulate that I be free of negative emotion or resistance. It does not even say I have to mean it.

If I could say these prayers free of negative emotion and resistance, if I could say these prayers and mean it, I would not have to say these prayers.

The saying of it actually overcomes the negative emotion and resistance, it actually induces me to mean it.

Perhaps not entirely and perhaps not straight away.

But progress is in the right direction.

But more than that:

If I submit a tax return, it is submitted, and tax will fall due. The system does not care what I think or feel, only what I do.

When I say the prayer, the prayer is heard and acted upon. God fulfils His side of the bargain.

“This day and every day, I will place myself and my life in the hands of God, secure in the knowledge that He will not fail me, if I, too, do my part.” (ODAT, 29 February)

This is the essence of Step Three:

Rather than deciding what to do, I ask God what to do and do that.

I need not worry, because God’s already solved every problem.

God will do for me what I cannot do for myself.

But God will not do for me what I can do for myself.

“3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Page 59, Big Book)

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. … In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Page 86 Big Book)

One cannot make decisions, except to choose the decision-provider.

When I make decisions without God, I’m not making the decision at all: I’m asking the ego what to do, it tells me, and that’s the decision.

How does structural change take place in accordance with Step Eleven?

Not by making structural changes: rather, by asking God, daily, what to do today. Even changing career, moving house, getting married are not single decisions but chains of small decisions take on a specific days.

And such decisions are not made but asked for.

That means I need not lift my head above the parapet of the day: it is always sufficient to ‘keep it in the day’, and, when a decision must be made today that involves speculation about future events or circumstances, I perform such speculation only as is necessary for the purpose of today’s decision.

I then ask, and what do I get? Inspiration, an intuitive thought, a decision.

Where does wanting come in?

God’s will usually manifests as wanting. For me to be happy doing God’s will consistently, my wanting needs to be brought in line. There’s only so long one can act against one’s emotions without an incident.

So, the normal situation is for God’s will to manifest as wanting, but I cannot infer in the other direction: since the ego’s will also manifests as wanting, I cannot infer from wanting to do something that it is from God. It might equally come from the ego.

Instead, I can test against habit (what is habitually God’s will?), experience, principle, injunction, authority, knowledge, reason, reality, and other testbeds.

The thing I do not do is consult my feeling, because that is uninformative.

“To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. But we must go further and that means more action.” (Page 85, Big Book)

The above comes from the section on Step Eleven, namely prayer and meditation. This means that Step Eleven is a set of actions. I am the active taker of Step Eleven. I do not just sit there. The instructions are active, not passive, except in those elements when I wait to receive. The actions are there to enable me to receive.

“Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that ‘Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.’” (Just For Today Card)

When one wakes up in the morning, one might find oneself in quite a grump, either because one is physically tired or net yet fully awake or because one has acquired the habit of adopting a combination of gloom about ‘reality’ and dread about ‘the future’ as the opening sally of the day.

Whatever the reason, this has to be stopped. If one accepts this baseline and then tries to track back from there to some semblance of normality and happiness, the journey is long and arduous, and one’s own initial commitment to unhappiness puts up sturdy resistance.

God does not seem particularly interested in helping those who have decided that they do not like His universe and what goes on in it. ‘Please yourself’ is the courteous extension of liberty to adopt whatever view one wishes.

However, if one makes the decision that the world is marvellous and the future is securely in God’s hands, the full weight of God seems to come in to support it.

One has to want this. One has to want this more than wants one’s historical, hysterical, and habitual position of put-upon cynicism, the brave, bitter little smile, the plaintive insistence on the inevitability of misery.

“10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” (Page 59, Big Book)

Steps Ten and Eleven both involves elements of prayer, meditation, contemplation, reflection, and inventory. Page 59 notwithstanding, they don’t divide neatly along the lines of inventory (Ten) and the others (Eleven), though inventory is a major element of Ten, and the others, major elements of Eleven. Rather, they divide down the lines of uptime and downtime. Step Ten is for whilst I’m motoring along. Step Eleven is for when I’m stopped, at the head and tail of the day, before and after the motoring, and, when pausing, when I’ve stopped at a motorway service station.

“I pray that I may start each new day with a clean blackboard and write upon it only what is good for me.” (ODAT, 17 December)

The evening review clears the past day down to nothing.

The morning request to God to direct my thinking sets me on the right path.

When I’m upset I’m invariably activating a past event that should have been ironed and shelved.

“But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Morbid, from the Latin for disease.

Good advice generally:

- No negative thoughts about the future

- No negative thoughts about the past

- No negative thoughts about anything else.

What does that leave?

Usefulness.

Boring.

Quite!

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Overnight, my ego elopes me to Vegas to marry the unholy triplets of self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives. I need daily, matinal divorce from my polygamous affections.

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Page 86, Big Book)

You can wake up at any time, not just in the morning.

“Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? … But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.” (Page 86, Big Book)

The Book asks us whether we were these things but does not enquiry further or ask for such items to be elaborated upon in triplicate. These are not to be detailed and gone over again. Step Eleven at night is not an invitation to fish in the bin for every used tissue one blew one’s nose into and threw away in order to examine it, peering, sniffing, and calling others over to look at it and marvel. After all, these questions have already been dealt with during the day in Step Ten. Once is enough.

The job of the Step Eleven review is to take the trash out and identify measures to make myself less susceptible to colds.

“We consider our plans for the day.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Having asked God to direct my thinking, I do this, namely consider the day and its plans. This means casting the light around the situation, the circumstances, anything within sight, to devise what to do today and how to do it.

Imagine the rotating light of the lighthouse.

This should be a relaxed affair.

Slow, unhurried, systematic.

If pressed for time, one really can simply make a list and be done with it.

But there is a value in letting thoughts arise and be dealt with by God, reframed, redirected, repackaged, and reused as the raw material for actions and ideals.

This should not be rushed. One’s done when one is done.

“But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Worry, remorse, and morbid reflection are problems not only during the Step Eleven review but generally. They are to be avoided.

What are the antidotes?

Rather than worry, trust God and ask God what to do.

Rather than remorse, clear up the mess then get on with being useful.

Rather than morbid reflection, reflect that God’s in charge and everything is fine.

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.” (Page 86, Big Book)

Self-pity: upset that I have not got my way.

Self-seeking motives: wanting to get my own way.

Dishonest motives: concealing the fact I want to get my own way.

All three are about my way.

Divorce implies I was married.

Each day I remarry my own way.

Each morning I must be divorced anew.

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.” (Chapter Six, Big Book)

I was at a meeting recently where they read out part of the Step Eleven from the Big Book, encouraging direct communication with God. They did this by way of introduction to a ten-minute meditation we were going to engage in. They then added their own reading on how to meditate, which was not from the Big Book. They encouraged us to adopt a specific posture, and they told us how to breathe. They told us not to engage in our thoughts, to let them pass by, and to come back to the breath and the body.

These are opposite sets of instructions. God is in the metaphysical realm, not in my toes, spine, or breath or in the room, just to the left, by the boiler. God is to be found through the mind, not by exiting the mind. Mindlessness is not mindfulness. Real mindfulness is about remaining in the mind, and thinking consciously, deliberately, carefully, and concentratedly on deserving matters in order to communicate to God through words and through listening to how God replies through inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision.

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day ‘Thy will be done.’” (Page 87, Big Book)

I find it useful also to ask God for the right thought or action when calm or certain.

“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

In Step Eleven, I ask God for what to think, say, and do today. That’s it. If I don’t hear straight away, I get on with the tasks at hand. If circumstances permit and warrant, I read or listen to spiritual materials and ask for God to speak through those. He does.

The most insidious form of materialism is seeking spiritual experiences for their sensory or emotional impact.

It is the most insidious because it claims to have treasures in heaven as its aim but is really about treasures on earth.

Per the Twelve and Twelve, one should be sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of one’s own Creator.

This is the heavenly treasure, which is of value in itself, regardless of what it brings me, and regardless of how I experience it.

The purpose of AA’s meditation (pages 86 to 88) is:

- To maintain an awareness of how I am still operating on ego

- To establish a set of corrective measures, a set of ideals to work towards

- To come up with a list of work to do today, for God.

If I’m meditating properly, I should be chastened and, frankly, a little daunted in the face of the work of the day, both work to eliminate defects and cultivate virtues and the actual practical challenges of the day.

If I am not daunted, I’m lacking in ambition: God’s will is always more than I can handle. If I can handle it on my own, I do not need God. To need God necessarily means having a to-do list that is more than I can handle.

God want my cooperation, not my autonomy.

I used to do mindlessness meditation: trying to get into the body and away from the thoughts, discounting thoughts, ignoring them, letting them pass by.

This actually ran counter to the meditation that AA suggests, which, in the mornings, starts with:

- THINK about the twenty-four hours ahead

- CONSIDER plans for the day.

Think and considering. I’m supposed to actively engage my thinking, actively consider all of the aspects of the last 24 hours and the next 24 hours, Janus-headed, short-term, laser-like focus.

To do this, as the Book itself says, I must relax and take it easy, and not struggle. So relaxation is a prerequisite, not an outcome. The outcome is a set of breathtaking challenges for the day, the fruits of which may not be visible in my life or in my lifetime. The measure of the success of meditation is not whether or not I achieve peace or enlightenment but whether or not I act well and fruitfully today, and even that can be judged ultimately only by God.

This is what laying up treasures in heaven looks like for me.

MEDITATION ACTIVITIES X 4

• Think about the twenty-four hours ahead
• Consider plans for the day
• Relax and take it easy
• Pause when agitated or doubtful

THINGS TO AVOID (X 4)

• Struggling
• Making a request for oneself only
• Praying for selfish ends
• Arranging life to suit oneself

PRAYERS (X 6)

• God, please direct my thinking
• God, please divorce my thinking from self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives
• God, please show me all through the day when my next step is to be
• God, please give me whatever I need to take care of problems
• God, please free me from self-will
• God, help me with […] so [others / …] will be helped

PRAYERS AND DECLARATIONS AT TIMES OF DOUBT AND AGITATION (X 4)

• God, please give me inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision
• God, give me the right thought or action
• I am no longer running the show
• Thy Will Be Done

OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES (X 6)

• Join others in morning meditation
• Attend to morning religious devotion
• Select, memorise, and say set prayers
• Obtain reading suggestions from religious sources
• Read such materials
• Use what religions offer

Here is the Step Eleven from the Big Book:

Green = do

Red = don't

Blue = promises

Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. But we must go further and that means more action.

Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn’t be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it. It would be easy to be vague about this matter. Yet, we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions.

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.

On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.

We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.

If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing. There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.

It works—it really does.

We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.

“Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God. … As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this prayer several times very slowly, savouring every word and trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea. It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend says. For in meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly with the thoughts of someone who knows, so that we may experience and learn.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Meditation means personalising [religious principles], taking the abstract ideas, making them your own, and then coming away with an emotional takeaway that informs your behavioural choices. So: intellect, emotion, behaviour.” (Rabbi Shais Taub)

Now for some contemporary definitions of meditation:

“Meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration” and “[w]e define meditation … as a stylized mental technique … repetitively practiced for the purpose of attaining a subjective experience that is frequently described as very restful, silent, and of heightened alertness, often characterized as blissful.” “The aim of zazen is just sitting, that is, suspending all judgmental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them.” (Wikipedia)

These descriptions do not mention God or God’s will but refer to self-regulation of the body and mind, subjective experience, restfulness, silence, bliss. These are perhaps good things in themselves, and one might profitably adopt such practices if one is suited to them, but they are the opposite of the Step Eleven meditation. They lack any notion of seeking God’s will or relationship with God. They focus away from content and active engagement with it towards non-engagement and detachment. They are not about anything except the thought processes of thinker, in other words their focus is self.

Let’s look back at Step Eleven:

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

The purpose: conscious contact with God, knowledge of God’s will for us, the power to carry it out.

Reading the remainder of the passage from page 86 onwards of the Big Book:

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. … we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision … Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.”

Thus, meditation (per Step Eleven) is about:

• Redirection away from self
• Redirection towards God
• Receiving guidance from God
• External, worldly content: what to do today
• Active engagement with content
• Actively managed thought about that content

This is not about detachment but active engagement.

I have found mental poise and balance through AA’s suggest meditation.

I tried practices consistent with contemporary notions of meditation, and I found them ineffective.

The reason for this was twofold:

Firstly, being alone with my thoughts, separate from others, from content, from the world, from God, undirected by anyone but myself, unfocused on a specific objective, detached from the external reality, and simply attempting to be present to myself to observe and learn about myself was torture. It increased my anxiety exponentially. I became more preoccupied with self. I was extremely unwell, and sometimes today can be extremely unwell, and the last thing I need under those conditions is introspection or severing my ties to the nuts and bolts of everyday reality.

Secondly, in thinking I had ticked the Step Eleven meditation box, I did not do AA’s suggestion meditation. I was not improving my conscious contact with God, I was not seeking God’s will or the power to carry that out, except through prayer (one side of the mechanism), and, in the absence of direction from God, I was living based on my ideas and my instincts.

The combination was a recipe for disaster.

I do sometimes employ calming forms of meditation (perhaps better termed contemplation), but now I always use content to focus on (Psalms are a great place to start). However, this is in addition to not instead of AA’s suggested meditation.

I use a spreadsheet, which helps a lot for filling in.

I cover the past day, looking at (a) my material condition and (b) my internal, spiritual condition. The page 67 questions cover external situations that have broken down or where my behaviour is wrong or less than ideal. The resentment / fear / upset section covers my internal, spiritual condition. Any emotional disturbance counts, anything but peace.

I fill this in daily, in the morning. If something major happens during the day, I sometimes write it down, to clear it out of my mind.

My mind and conscience must remain clear at all times if I am to remain in conscious contact with God. I do not tolerate persistent disturbance, and, if my behaviour is bad, I face it. It may take a long time to correct both, but one has to start somewhere.

Page 67 questions

First column: Area

Here are the areas in my life (in alphabetical order):

Community—Exercise—Family—Food—Friends—God—Home—Meetings—Money—Office—Others in recovery—Projects—Service—Sex—Society—Spiritual practice—Sponsees—Spouse—Work

Here and throughout, I use the dropdown list function (right click, K) to access listed items. In this column, I input the relevant area or enter a couple of words to specify the situation or incident, as appropriate.

The list of areas is in any case useful so I can run through them to identify incidents where I behaved anything less than ideally. This ensure a comprehensive result.

Second column: Category

Mistakes—Selfishness—Dishonesty—Self-seeking—Fear—Blame—Faults—Wrongs

Pick one. Refer to fourth step materials for more details on what these all mean.

Third column: Detail

I limit myself to 120 characters. Column width: 40 points, 3 lines.

Here, I write precisely where I was wrong (thought, word, or deed)

Fourth column: Corrective measures

I limit myself to 40 characters. Column width: 40 points. Maximum corrective measures: 3.

Here, I ask God for corrective measures and write down what comes.

If possible, I reuse an existing corrective measure.

Example

Resentment / fear / upset of any other sort

First column: Name

This is the material-world object or trigger: person, entity, etc.

Second column: Cause

I limit myself to 120 characters. Column width: 40 points, 3 lines.

Third column: This affects my (see pages 64 to 65 of the Big Book)

Pick from:

PR SR S A PB P SE

[Personal Relations, Sex Relations, Security, Ambitions, Pocketbooks, Pride, Self-Esteem]

Pick one or more. Refer to fourth step materials for more details on what these all mean.

Fourth column: Three corrective measures

I limit myself to 40 characters. Column width: 40 points. Maximum corrective measures: 3.

Here, I ask God for corrective measures and write down what comes.

If possible, I reuse an existing corrective measure.

Example

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

To consider plans presupposes one has them. My job is to plan what can and should be planned but to leave open what cannot or should not be planned. The morning consideration of the plans for the day should be a last-minute final review, not a thinking-through-from-scratch. An orderly life, an orderly structure, routines, and being on top of my obligations, over the short and long term, is precisely what frees me up for spontaneity, responsiveness, and, most importantly, focusing on God’s will rather than firefighting.

A life being unmanageable (Step One) is undesirable. A manageable life is desirable. My life absolutely can and should be managed, but that management is under the direction of God.

Emotions come and go. General baseline mood fluctuates.

A terrible habit in recovery is to ask oneself, first thing in the morning, 'How I am doing?', with the question concerning one's affect, namely emotion and mood.

Don't do this. Get up and running with the morning routine, with the morning Step Eleven activities, and get on with the day. Step Eleven will sort out the emotions relating to the last and next twenty-four hours. General mood of the day is not amenable to my influence. It is literally unfathomable. General baseline mood, over time, is dealt with through the reapplication of the first nine Steps.

I give any emotions and moods to God directly to deal with. I do not deal with them myself. I do not process them. They're not cheese. I note particularly prominent ones but without dwelling and then move on. There is quite literally nothing to see.

If in doubt, pray more, meditate more, and nap.

Sometimes I find myself wildly off track.

Here's a simple way to get back on track.

Firstly, list troublesome areas, e.g.

• Sleep
• Diet
• Exercise
• Work
• Spending
• Savings / investments / pension scheme
• Tradition Seven (earning more than spending)
• Being a sponsee
• Being a sponsor

Others might include:

• Marriage
• Sexual 'impurity' (= acting out)
• Housework
• Service at meetings
• Other service
• Relationships with colleagues
• Relationships with friends
• Relationships with parents
• Relationships with children
• Hobbies

God's will is usually no great mystery. Ask God, area by area:

Give me up three to five things to start doing / stop doing / do differently.

Keep it simple. Keep it basic.

E.g.

Diet

• Eat three meals a day
• Stay off sugar
• Each meal: 50% vegetables

Being a sponsor

• Return texts / message / calls within 24 hours
• Pause before answering the phone
• Pray for patience, tolerance, kindness, and love during calls
• Don't be frightened to challenge
• Encourage

The daily plan

Each day, follow pages 86 to 88 of the Big Book. Write out a plan for the day (including timings, where relevant, and the tasks to be accomplished). Maybe split between 'vital', 'necessary', and 'if there is time'.

Each day, review the seven days ahead, as well, to give yourself a heads-up about what's heading your way and to make sure you're on track with targets, deadlines, and generally staying on top of things.

Maybe do the plan the night before so you can hit the ground running in the morning.

Maybe run the plan past someone else.

Incorporate the objectives from the troublesome areas above to turn them from pipedreams into reality.

Ask God for direction and strength every step of the way.

So-called two-way prayer has become a fashionable practice in AA. The notion that we can pray and God can answer is not new. Actually, the fact that God hears prayers and answers them is well-established even in very orthodox circles, e.g.:

Next, faith is needed, not only the general belief that God is capable of answering prayer or that it is a powerful means of obtaining His favor, but also the implicit trust in God‘s fidelity to His promise to hear a prayer in some particular instance. (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Closer to home, in AA, the Big Book also implies that God responds:

We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.

Note, however, that it does not say God gives us the right answers directly in verbal form. The channel could be anything, though the source be God. I will come back to this later.

However, there are dangers, and caution is to be observed.

Let's take the very name: two-way prayer. A two-way road is a road with identical lanes going in opposite directions. Yet God is not praying to us. We're praying to God. And God is answering. But the answer is not a prayer. It is an answer. Prayer plus answer would be more appropriate.

Secondly, the name implies a symmetry, like in a chat with a friend. But we're really talking about a very small, flawed person and an infinite Power, in some people's conception the creature and the Creator of the creature and of everything else. The notion of symmetry must be set aside. As someone once said to a shop assistant in Prada who was being sniffy: You and I are here for very different reasons. 

To pick up the point from earlier, if God does answer, He may or may not answer in the session itself. The notion of sitting down at a set time to pray is very good. To extend this into a sort of summoning of God to attend our 'session' is presumptuous, as though we're going to needle God into answering specific questions or giving specific advice, as though he's there to do us a favour if we say the right incantation. God was there all along. God will be there all along. If God wants to convey inspirations, intuitive thoughts, and decisions, He has all day, every day, to do so. Like Aslan in the Narnia books, God is not tame. If He has not already given direction, why not? What is blocking me from hearing His voice?

Expecting an instant answer, in a form that can be verbalised, contains two false presuppositions. Sometimes answers come much later, and answers are often non-verbal. We suddenly realise, sometimes months later, we have been taken down a different path, and, in retrospect, it becomes clear that an old prayer has been answered.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the process is listening out for answers in the moment: words will almost certainly come into the mind. But are the words from God? If not from God, from whom or what? From one's own physical brain? From one's memory? What exactly might one have summoned? There are potentially more alarming answers to this question. The devilish can come in the most pious and innocuous of forms, and rationalisation can paper over the cracks of almost any shattered pathway. The risk of listening out for voices is that one might really start to hear them.

Lastly, choosing the session time, again, puts the individual in the driving seat. There is a purpose. There is an agenda. This I don't like to be my approach to prayer.

Here are some examples of what I do:

• I have the notion of praying in accordance with the schedule of a particular faith (which one does not matter to the reader: but there is the sense that I am doing what is suggested to me by those more spiritually advanced: I'm setting no agenda; I'm fulfilling an obligation).
• I start a session of prayer not with personal invocations but with standard, set prayers. This has the merit of reliance on tradition for the appropriateness of the prayers and establishes a context of humility in the face of those who have gone before.
• I pack my praying with standard prayers of praise, supplication, and thanks. They are mostly impersonal.
• I do ask personal things, in accordance with the instructions on page 86 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous and those other passages that suggest prayer, and I do ask specifically what to do.
• The personal things I ask centre mostly on recognising where I am wrong and what God would like me to do instead, which chiefly involves retrieving elements of God's already-revealed will from memory.
• I do not hang around long for an answer. Almost everything comes in its own time and way. It unfolds slowly. I tend to get on with my day and let God answer when He sees fit.
• If something comes directly, I test against spiritual principles and, if remotely questionable, with someone I trust spiritually.
• But in general I establish, through my prayer life, a generalised relationship of subservience to God in the hope that, as I go through my day, all I do is in line with God's will, that thinking and acting right becomes habitual and automatic.
• This last point avoids the danger or remaining in charge but calling in God as a specialist consultant.
• Instead: I give my day to God, and ask what to do, and almost invariably everything is ordinary and entirely expected. There is no specialness: only service.

Each morning I remind myself to stop and ask for God’s direction when fear and confusion overwhelm me during my day. I ... pray for His direction and His will in my life. There must be a reason I am going through this place. I can remind myself that I am not alone—God is with me. The outcome is up to Him; I just look for His direction. The fear and anxiety subside in time when I ask God to show me His will. (Discovering Choices, page 208)

I've found a good system is this:

1. Make a list of all of the things I think are problems. I am very specific: the actual, literal fact or circumstance of my that is generating the problem, not my interpretation, analysis, or abstraction.

2. I say to God, 'What do you want me to do about this, if anything? What do you want me to start doing, stop doing, or do differently?'

3. I write down the answer.

4. If nothing comes, that means I'm not due an answer right now. I needn't feel guilty that I am apparently doing nothing about the 'problem' or that I do not know what to do. My job is to ask; God's job is to answer; if He hasn't answered, that's His problem, not mine.

5. If something radical, unusual, or interfering comes to mind, I check it out with someone.

6. In any case, the job is now done: the problem is no longer my business, until the next appointed time of prayer.

7. My focus then becomes the implementation of the answer.

The same as when it's not:

01. 'God, direct my thinking, divorce it from self-pity, dishonest, and  self-seeking motives'

02. What should I do in the next twenty-four hours?

03. 'God, give me inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision'

04. Relax, take it easy, don't struggle

05. 'God, show me what to do, through the day, and give me the resources to do it'

06. 'God, free me from self-will'

07. 'God, help me with X so I can help others'

08. Join others in morning meditation

09. Perform morning religious devotion / recite memorised set prayers

10. Read a spiritual or religious book / apply its ideas

11. 'What should I do about ...?'

12. 'What can I do for others who are suffering?'

Petitionary prayer is effective at bringing down wisdom from above ('uncommon sense').

At the very least, even if there were no one listening to the prayers (_quod non_), when praying, I am not thinking my own thoughts about the matter in question.

The human approach to matters is to put on one's thinking cap. This is really the dunce's cap. To think without first asking God to direct my thinking is to look for my keys without turning the light on, whilst wearing thick oven gloves that dull the sense of touch.

How often have I thought about something and made it worse?

Instead, I've learned to go to God like an idiot child and just ask.

Twelve concrete instructions of Step Eleven and how they match up to the Twelve Steps

1.     On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.	Step One—let’s start at the very beginning, right here, right now; rather than managing our lives, we show up each day asking only for the tasks of the day.
2.     Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.	Step Two—restoration from the insanity of self-pity, dishonesty, and self-seeking.
3.     [Indecision] Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle.	Step Three—seeking God’s will; relaxing into God being in charge.
4.     … conclude … with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.	Step Four—next right action—the opposite of everything that was on our Step Four.
5.     We ask especially for freedom from self-will and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.	Step Five—the archway to freedom: the switch from taking and receiving to giving.
6.     If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation.	Step Six—giving up our own thinking in favour of God’s thoughts; raising our thinking to a higher plane.
7.     If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also.	Step Seven—surrender to a way of life not of our own devising and not of the world’s devising: of God’s devising.
8.     If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.	Step Eight—spiritual principles not the principles of self: when we’re living inside our prayers, we are at our most harmless to others.
9.     There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.	Step Nine—learning how to act right in the world from people with a proven track record on how to act right.
10. As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.”	Step Ten—staying on track through the day and effecting necessary course corrections.
11. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter.	Step Eleven—going straight to God with problems.
12. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.	Step Twelve—the substance of our lives: helping others.

 ... tool can be found here.

It's a spreadsheet with a couple of tabs. In one, you input your Step Eleven Review. The second isolates the corrective measures for printing or copying into another app, for ease of reference throughout the day.

You'll need to enable the macros when opening the spreadsheet.

 Instructions:

• Fill this out daily
• If a question turns up a zero answer, delete the question from the review so the output contains only actual content
• If a question turns up more than one problem, copy and paste the mini-template below the question for each problem identified

‘Story’ means e.g. what I’m resentful about
‘Wrong’ means ‘Where I was wrong’
‘CM’ means ‘Corrective measure’

1. Was I resentful (dwelling on a present or past negative thing)?

Story:
Wrong:
CM:

2. Was I selfish (unreasonably putting myself ahead of others)?

What I did:
What I should have done instead:

3. Was I dishonest (unreasonably lying, concealing, distorting, self-deceiving, or scheming)?

What I did:
What I should have done instead:

4. Was I afraid (dwelling on a speculated or future negative thing)?

Story:
Wrong:
CM:

5. Do I owe an apology?

Name:
Apologise for:

6. Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with another person at once?

Topic:
To be discussed with:

7. Was I kind and loving toward all?

Who I wasn’t kind and loving to:
What I can do differently over the next day:

8. What could I have done better?

Three improvements over the next day:
-
-
-

9. Was I thinking of myself most of the time or was I thinking of what I could do for others, of what I could pack into the stream of life (note this is asking about my thought life, not my activities)?

People, problems, or areas of life to mentally quarantine:
-
-
-

What to substitute into my thought life (e.g. things to read, watch, listen to, consider, or do):
-
-
-

10. Any corrective measures other than what is set out above:

-
-
-

 

Basics

When we retire at night (or in the late afternoon), we constructively review our day.

1. Was I resentful (dwelling on a present or past negative thing)?
2. Was I selfish (unreasonably putting myself ahead of others)?
3. Was I dishonest (unreasonably lying, concealing, distorting, self-deceiving, or scheming)?
4. Was I afraid (dwelling on a speculated or future negative thing)?
5. Do I owe an apology?
6. Have I kept something to myself which should be discussed with another person at once?
7. Was I kind and loving toward all?
8. What could I have done better?
9. Was I thinking of myself most of the time or was I thinking of what I could do for others, of what I could pack into the stream of life (note this is asking about my thought life, not my activities)?

Format for sending through a Step Eleven review to someone else

If you’ve been asked to send through your review to someone, here’s a good format:

Take each question and copy it into a message. Then answer it.

Use a separate message for each question and answer combination. This way, the recipient can swipe and reply easily.

If the negative issue is minor, add this line:

Corrective Measure(s): [enter the corrective measure(s)]

If multiple issues arise in response to a question (e.g. three fears, four resentments), write one message per answer (i.e. per fear).

If a question elicits multiple answers, e.g. multiple things I could do better, use dashed points:

• Like this
• And this

For major or persistent issues or issues where the attitude, thinking, or situation needs to be unpacked and reframed, write:

The Story (a brief presentation of the facts):

Where I Am Wrong (belief, attitude, action):

Corrective Measure(s) (belief, attitude, action):

If there are multiple points, use dashed points:

• Like this
• And this

Use line spacing to make the material more readable to your reader.

In WhatsApp, use formatting (e.g. emboldening or italics) to help structure and clarify points.

Thoughtful layout and formatting forces the writer to really think about what they’re saying and produces a visually impactful result that benefits the writer as much as the reader.

Example:

1. Was I resentful (dwelling on a present or past negative thing)?

The Story: Agency passed on vague and unsubstantiated criticism of my work from a reviewer.

Where I Am Wrong (belief, attitude, action):

• The agency is merely incompetent, not mean.
• The reviewer is likely sincere not malicious.
• This is unlikely to affect workflow or income.
• The situation is trivial.
• I am touchy.
• I should not have responded straight away.
• I should not have written extensive and elaborate answers.

Corrective Measure(s) (belief, attitude, action):

• Push back against such criticism and ask for concrete material.
• Respond substantively only if such material is provided.
• If criticism is valid, take it on the chin.
• Keep necessary defensive responses brief.
• Do not engage in any extensive back and forth.
• If lessons can be learned to improve my work, implement them.
• Thank people for feedback.
• Lean towards more agreeable and professional agencies.
• Deal with such matters promptly then forget about them.

Step Eleven involves two chief elements:

Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid?

- Resentful at colleague for unnecessarily disagreeing with me.

- CM: Overlook the interaction. Get on with job. Think and speak kindly about her. Don't leak in her presence or in email.

- Afraid of economic downturn.

- CM: Tighten belt. Buy only what is necessary. Be grateful. Trust the economy to right itself.

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? ... But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, ...

Sometimes, in the morning, a person's 'head' (i.e. thinking) is operating at a low level. The mind is essentially in a state of siege and panic. The world is summarily scanned for threats and sources of offence, and the mind appears to be reacting to these but is really projecting its own rage and anxiety onto these. The source of this rage and anxiety? The usual problem: the sense of separation from God promotes a sense that something 'wrong' has happened (= sin), for which 'one' is responsible (in true acknowledgement of the power of the mind), and this automatically generates guilt and fear. This is the ego's baseline state. There are two options here: the doomed approach is to attempt to analyse the darkness to convert it into light. If you have ever tried to achieve vision by simply staring at and trying to discern the dark objects, you'll know how little that achieves. The job instead is to switch on the light or open the curtains. The ego's defence then runs: But you're in denial! You're just pretending that things are OK! Once you turn the light on, or open the curtains, you realise it's just a room. Nothing more. The darkness is gone as though it never existed, and the forms seen in the darkness bear little resemblance to those forms when seen in light.

One major aim of prayer, meditation, and contemplation is to raise consciousness to a higher level, without being distracted by the emanations of the lower level and without being tempted to remain at the lower level to somehow 'clear up' what is going on there. Apparently, the ego can never be gotten rid of completely (although I concede the possibility of dormancy or conversion into an entity that works to the good, more on which another day, perhaps), but it can be transcended, left behind, one day at a time. It would be pointless to try to retrain the ego to look without fear on you or on the world. Its whole being is predicated on separation, and sin, guilt, and fear are corollaries of that. It cannot be retrained, so do not try. Much ill-advised inventory consists in attempting to remain at the ego level but to reconstruct it to be less painful or more productive but without challenging its underlying premise. This underlying premise—that we are separate beings—is false, and so all propositions that flow from this premise are also false. So transcendence is the only option, and prayer—understood as residing in higher truths—is the only means. This means that saying set prayers or contemplating higher spiritual texts (avoiding 'lower' ones, those which borrow from higher realms but are chiefly concentrated on material application or remain rooted in separation-consciousness) is infinitely more useful in the preparatory stages of a prayer session than free-form prayer, which can easily descend into talking to oneself and become circular, self-reinforcing chatter.

From the higher plane, right action (serving God) is self-evident, as is truth. This truth cannot be arrived at by journeying (i.e. logical progression from below to above). There is no line of communication between the two realms. Trying to find such a line buries a person deeper in spiritual error. When a person is reading and becoming absorbed in prayers, the ego will first of all object that this is a form of denial and delusion (which is dealt with above) and will then object that this is a waste of time because it is not constructive. This is not only crafty (because it is using the desire of the higher self, to be useful to God, to confound the higher self's very purpose) but also an example of upside-down thinking: it is ego-prompted activities that are not constructive, as time-consuming, elaborate, and worldly as they may appear to be, and it is prayer which is the single most constructive activity, enabling, as it does, access to the only two commodities worth having: knowledge of God's will for me today and the power to carry that out today. The higher up the skyscraper you go, the more these resources are available. Prayer is the lift (= the elevator). Prayer requires little effort in itself. It is, as it were, our natural state. It merely requires remaining in the lift and not alighting at an intermediate floor (i.e. giving in to distraction). Practically, this means continually drawing oneself back to the prayer whatever temptations arise. When knowledge of God's will for you today plus a surge of energy become available, you know it has worked. Until that has happened, keep praying.

1. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid?
2. Do we owe an apology?
3. Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?
4. Were we kind and loving toward all?
5. What could we have done better?
6. Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?
7. Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?

1. On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.
2. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.
3. In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.
4. We relax and take it easy.
5. We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.
6. We ask especially for freedom from self-will.
7. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.
8. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
9. There are many helpful books also. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
10. So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.
11. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come, if we want it.
12. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.

I measure the effectiveness with which I have implemented Step Three in my life by looking at my actions in the Step Eleven review: am I maximising the use of the 16 waking hours every day in the service of God, with some time to take the necessary actions to keep the show on the road and to enjoy the ride, as well?

If the answer is yes, and I am indeed fitting myself to be of maximum service, then great!

If not, the problem always lies somewhere in Steps One or Two.

Step One problem: I believe I'm an alcoholic but do not need a full-blown, ongoing spiritual experience to stay sober, i.e. I can adulterate the above attitude and approach to life with admixtures of sloth and purely selfish pursuits; I believe I can have my cake and eat it; I don't believe that the only two options are a spiritual experience or a potentially unstoppable return to active addiction; I believe that half measures will available me just about enough, thank you very much.

Step Two problem: there's no point in throwing myself fully into a wide-eyed trust of God and deployment of my time in His service because it won't work: I have special problems that God cannot solve, because I'm different; God is not omnipotent; in fact, my emotional or practical difficulties stem from beliefs, thinking, and behaviour that God cannot change, because God is actually less powerful than me, maybe five foot two tall, and certainly not as smart as me. So if anyone presents me with an alternative way of believing, thinking, and behaving, which will solve my problem, I'm not going to trust them, because I'm smarter not just than them but than the aggregate of people in AA and people on a spiritual path, and indeed God: I'm not going to give up my beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, because I'm literally the smartest person I know and refuse to give any of these up because I'm right.

The answer in both cases is facing reality: go to AA long enough, and pay attention enough, and you'll soon discover that alcoholism is a patient, nasty disease, and that half measures do eventually avail nothing; go to AA long enough, and pay enough attention, and you'll soon discover that God is a patient, benevolent God, and that full measures do eventually avail everything.

I find that mixing up the precise format of the Step Eleven nightly review helps to stop it going stale.

Here's a super simple format, which also produces the basis for a good discussion with a sponsor.

... we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 86)

The virtues to shoot for are (a) gratitude (the antidote to self-pity) (b) straightforwardness (the antidote to dishonesty: not being tricksy, manipulative, or deceitful) and (c) giving.

When my mindset combines these three, my thinking can be trusted. If not, it can't.

Here's a way of doing the page 86 review without it becoming morbid.

Who am I practising forgiveness towards by saying, 'I withdraw all judgement from this person/situation. He/she/it is exactly the way he/she/it is meant to be. I bless [name of the person] as I bless myself'?

Where will I prioritise other people's interests or do something for others in the next twenty-four hours?

What am I placing in God's hands by saying, 'God, I trust you will resolve this problem for me better than I can solve it myself. Please show me if any right action is needed from me'?

What do I need to come clean on?

Do I need to apologise to anyone?

Is there something that needs to be discussed with a sponsor or another long-term sober person (provide details)?

Who will I reach out to over the next twenty-four hours?

What constructive things can I do over the next twenty-four hours?

What topics am I banned from thinking about, and what will I focus my attention on instead?

What's my spiritual motto or quotation of the day?

· Step Ten: monitoring one’s own thinking and behaviour in real time and redirecting both outwards to service and contributing to the world whenever resentment, fear, selfishness, and dishonesty strike.

· Step Eleven: checking in with God in the morning to plan how to serve God that day, and checking in with God in the evening to debrief.

Beware of spiritual dissipation: using five different meditation books in the morning but not applying any of them properly, systematically, or consistently, or constantly jumping between different faiths, disciplines, or worldviews.

This approach is sometimes more about a quick fix than anything: finding a little titbit that lifts your mood then going back to what you were doing.

Real spiritual change requires consistent and systematic practice.

Check this out:

What is a spiritual experience?

Pick a path and follow it properly. Give it three to six months, and then see if it is starting to 'do the trick'.

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day.

Question: ‘The review suggests that we should not drift into morbid reflection, etc., but the review has no room for congratulating yourself. It is just a ‘where I did go wrong?’ review. There’s no ‘I was proud of myself because’ section. So, if I have had a trouble-free day, I have to scan the day hard to find a problem; that can’t be good for a person, right?’

Answer:

The review looks as though it is purely negative. However, If I ask myself the question: ‘where was I resentful?’, and the answer is, ‘I wasn’t’, then that is a good thing. Or even if there were just a few moments of disturbance but otherwise the day was resentment-free, again, that is a good thing. Resentment or lack of it is a good metric for mental state. The answer therefore lies somewhere on the scale from ‘wholly good’ to ‘wholly bad’. In the same way that a doctor’s examination is looking out, listening out, and feeling for abnormalities and be brief and dull when the patient is well, a review following a good day will end up being almost blank, whilst a review following a bad day will have a lot more content.

If you go down the inventory and you don’t come up with anything major, then you’ve got a wholly positive outcome. This is a cause for joy and gratitude.

The injunction against morbid reflection is an injunction precisely against insisting on scanning the day with a desperate desire to find something wrong. If the day was trouble-free, stop there.

The underlying purpose of the review is to find what went wrong so that we can make tomorrow better (and happier). To refrain from doing it on grounds that it makes one feel bad would effectively be to say, ‘I would rather keep making the same mistakes. I don’t want to be happier than I am.’ The point is to find what is wrong so that we can be even more effective and happy the next day. Finding fault, as it were, is not aimed at bringing us down but lifting us higher.

Lots of things are like this. When you have your car MOTd, the mechanics don’t spare you their findings in case you’ll be upset. You’re glad for everything they spot, and you certainly don’t take anything personally. Similarly a doctor’s examination.

If a person feels attacked by doing the inventory, there’s a misunderstanding. The inventory is not an index of your worth; it is not there to ask ‘am I a good person?’ The desire to congratulate oneself suggests that there is a deficit the individual wants to make up for through good deeds. Reading between the lines, the individual seems to be taking it badly if he finds something wrong.

Never forget: we are individually of infinite worth because we exist. Nothing we do can add to that; nothing we do can detract from that. Whether or not we think and act right is an entirely separate question (and comes under the heading of ‘integrity’ rather than ‘worth’). If one needs worth to be reinforced, that’s fine, but go straight to God for that; do not seek to discern worth in the inventory, or you’ll be kicked in the teeth whenever you do something wrong. Anything one tries to get a sense of worth from other than being a child of God will work when it works but destroy you when it doesn’t. The moral or spiritual realm is the domain in which this is most amplified. Self-congratulation for behaving well is a set-up for despondency when we behave badly.

It has to be recalled that what we’re finding, when we find something wrong, are signs of spiritual sickness (or ignorance, which really comes under the same heading). If we find something wrong, it is because we did not know what God’s will for us was or because we knew but did not have the power to carry it out. To find something wrong is not, therefore, to find something wrong with us but to determine that we were in a state of ignorance or powerlessness, in which case the answer is more knowledge or power.

One should never beat oneself up for something one finds. The Step Eleven review is performed in God’s presence, and therefore with knowledge of God’s care. Finding something bad in a review may be a cause for sorrow for not for self-flagellation: by definition we were driven. Finding something good, however, should absolutely be a cause for celebration (and the absence of bad is good). The celebration is not self-congratulation, however, because we were not the cause of it. We did not develop the moral law we have abided by. We did not conjure the knowledge of God’s will for us: it was given; we did not conjure the strength to do the right thing: it, too, was given. Finding that the day was good is a cause for gratitude that the programme works or, at a higher level, seeking God’s will works, because, on performing a review in His presence, we discover that we have been given all the strength and direction we need.

Incidentally, if we have behaved morally (which is invariably in our ultimate best interests), it would be odd to seek a medal for doing so, as the fact the action in question is right and that right action serves us as well as anyone else should be enough. People outside AA often find it odd that people in AA do congratulate themselves for doing what healthy people do automatically.

When you read news reports of people who have acted heroically, the so-called hero will often reject praise, saying, ‘I did it automatically; I did it because it was right; I didn’t think about it.’ I think that reflects a real spiritual truth.

A further point is purely theological: good and bad are not warring sides, in my view, with good sometimes winning and bad sometimes winning. Bad can exist only in the context of good. Faults in computer programs can exist only if there is a computer program; they have no independent existence. It is the same morally: we are essentially in a benign universe, but one with flaws—sometimes grave ones. The job is to eliminate the flaws. The design of the inventory (probably intuitively) mirrors this moral design of the universe.

There is a place for the recognition that God is working wonders in our lives, which is why the review cannot be seen in isolation. It is one part of a big package. The review is the bit where, in God’s presence and in God’s care, we dare look at what went wrong. Casting the mind back to Step Three, our whole lives are demonstrations to others of what is going well: when we share in meetings or with newcomers, that is the point at which we catalogue the good, not to bolster ourselves (which is a soul-souring activity) but to give hope to others.

Finally, it has to be remembered that, if our self-image needs bolstering, it should never be done with reference to achievement, whether practical or moral. Rather, remember this: we are innocent and we are perfect, as are others; our thinking and consequently behaviour may need adjusting, but we are not our thinking or behaviour, and identifying with either will cement them in place because we will wish to defend them. We are no more our thinking than the words written on a Word document on the screen of the computer are the computer or say something about the worth of the computer.

Approach the review with the attitude that you are loved by God because you are innocent and perfect, and the process becomes a wholly positive one.

1. God, please direct my thinking.
2. God, please divorce my thinking from self-pity, self-seeking, and dishonest motives.
3. When considering plans for the day: God, please show me what to do today and how to do it.
4. When considering plans for the day: God, please show me how to apply the corrective measures from last night.
5. When indecisive: God, please give me inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision.
6. God, please show me throughout the day what my next step is to be.
7. God, please give me whatever I need to take care of problems.
8. God, please free me from self-will.
9. God, please help me show patience, tolerance, kindness, and love.
10. God, please show me how I can help the person who is still suffering.
11. When agitated or doubtful: God, please show me the right thought or action.
12. When agitated or doubtful: God, Your will be done (I am no longer running the show).

A nightly Step Eleven review can easily degenerate into unfocused discourse about one's day.

Here's a slightly tighter format:

What was I resentful about?
Where was my attitude wrong?
What should my attitude be?

What was I frightened of?
Where was my attitude wrong?
What should my attitude be?

Where was I selfish?
What should I have done instead?
What can I do to make it right?

As Step Eleven indicates, the sole purpose of prayer and meditation is to seek knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that out.

The key word: sole. One might become enlightened or experience altered states as a result, but this is a by-product, not the purpose. A lot of meditation, as discussed in AA, is about learning breathing or other techniques adopted from Eastern religions. The local Buddhist centre is usually teeming with AAs learning how to meditate.

This is, of course, meditation, according to the modern dictionary definition of it. It is not strictly Step Eleven, however, although it may support it immensely, in the same way that making tea at a meeting is the practice of Step Twelve per se but does help make Step Twelve work possible.

Here's Dr Bob's take:

'Prayer, of course, was an important part of Dr Bob's faith. According to Paul S., "Dr Bob's morning devotion consisted of a short prayer, a 20-minute study of a familiar verse from the Bible, and a quiet period of waiting for directions as to where he, that day, should find use for his talent. Having heard, he would religiously go about his Father's business, as he put it." ' (Dr Bob and the Good Oldtimers, p. 314)

I have never had great success with corrective measures involving not doing something. The best ones are where I cultivate a different positive attitude, thought pattern, or action.

According to page 85, we can exercise our will along the line of God's will, and that is where empowerment lies. We do not ask for God to reinforce our strength not to act on self-will, because that implies the solution to self-will is not the Step Seven removal thereof but the exercise of restraint, which always entails tension, as the self-will remains.

It is only by withdrawing my faith in the ego's plan for my salvation, which is where all of my failed attitudes, thinking, and behaviour have come from, and the placing of my faith in God's plan for my salvation that I can be at rest in God. And from that flows all the energy I need to act right.

What did I do today that I should not have done?

What should I have done instead?

What did I not do today that I should have done?

What worked?

What did not work?

Is there anything in my relations with other people today which I feel guilty about?

Where has my thought life been today?

What am I going to try to focus my attention on tomorrow?

What am I going to do differently tomorrow?

What the Book says	My experience
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.	I have to trust that if I pray for my thinking to be directed, it will be, or at least it will be more likely that my thinking is actually inspired by God. The three things my thinking must be divorced from: ·           Self-pity—upset because things haven't gone my way. ·           Self-seeking motives—wanting things to go my way. ·           Dishonest motives—secretly wanting things to go my way. Essentially, I need to drop my way and ask for God's way instead. I do this, because my way tends to involve getting enough money, sex, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and looks to fill a gap in me that is there only in my perception. That is why they do not work—they cannot fill the gap, because the gap is not there. I have seen sufficiently, now, that the chase is painful, the frustration of failure in painful, and, after a moment's satisfaction, success is disillusioning and disappointing. I would rather be quiet and serve, which is why I practice Step Eleven. This gives me all that my plan promised—but never consistently delivered. Once my thinking is straightened out, I plan the day. It is important to remember that God's will is nothing fancy or abstract—it's a list of things to do and an attitude to take towards all such things. As for God's will as regards my mind: my thoughts must be in the here and now (unless I am legitimately planning for the future or analysing the past solely to work out what to do differently in the future), for it is only there God may be found. In brief, Step Eleven requires that I generate a plan for the day.
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.	This means what it says. It took years in recovery to discover I do not have to work anything out; I need only ask, namely for three things: inspiration (spirit), an intuitive thought (mind), or a decision (action). Spirit comes first—the spirit must be one that embodies the Step Three decision: staying close to God and performing His work well (i.e. serving God by serving others, which means helping the rest of God's kids get their heart's desire). We relax and take it easy—these are instructions. I am enjoined not to be tense and fretful, not to rush, not to impose unnatural stresses, artificial timetables, and unnecessary goals on myself. If I struggle, again, I ask; in fact, I need only ever ask; a demand is never necessary, and the application of muscle will not bring about the needed result. If I am given peace it is because I have decided I want peace—which is my inheritance—above all else. If it is truly wanted, it is instantly given, because it is already there. The miracle only is that the block to sight is removed, and the peace that is always with me and available to me becomes manifest. If I am not at peace, I am in illusion. I cannot strip myself of illusions easily but I can realise I do not want what I have and want to see the world a different way. When I decide I want to relax, I can ask myself: is anything bad happening right now? There never is. If I think it is bad, I must ask whether it is really happening and whether it is really bad. What is happening right now? The shuffling of the neighbours across the floor, the distant drone of traffic … and me sitting in silence. That is what is happening. Even physical pain can be bearable if I remove my judgement from it. So: relax.
What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.	For me to do wrong I must decide to do wrong. Whom do I decide with? God speaking through those around me whose lives are functioning smoothly and happily? Or fear, guilt, and anger? I cannot decide alone: whatever I decide with will ultimately dictate the results. I check out major decisions and even a number of minor ones with others—people I trust: people who rely on God and who are cheerful, practical, and non-hysterical. If I am disturbed it is likely I have made the decision with the wrong counsel (fear, guilt, or anger: not trust in God) or have sought counsel from two sources: both God and fear; and am now confused. I need merely remember I answered the wrong question ('how do I remove the fear or guilt?' 'How do I avenge the anger?')—I must forget the question and ask instead: God, what would you have me do? How I can serve You today?
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.	Meditation—in the language of the Big Book—means concentrated thought, specifically about what happened over the previous 24 hours and what needs correcting, and about what I am going to do over the next 24 hours. I can take only one action at a time. I need know for sure only what the next action is. Does that not make life simpler? I stick to praying for three things: power, direction, and the good of all. What is good for me is good for you. What is good for you is good for me. What is bad for you is bad for me. What is bad for you me is bad for you. Appearances in this regard may deceive, and elements of good or bad may be delayed for a long time. Sometimes doing what is right will cause immediate pain, but that can be the cost of long-term benefit. Recovery can be painful; relief is always instant. But relief is sometimes the enemy of recovery. Praying for the good of all is always, therefore, the safest bet.
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing. There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.	If I am to grow spiritually for the rest of my life, I need the direction of those who have gone before me. I would be a fool to disregard such people, particularly since they took the trouble to write down their discoveries and experience. Books I have found particularly useful: One Day At A Time In Al-Anon Anthony de Mello—The Way To Love, Awareness, the Song of the Bird, and Walking on Water (plus other works) Anything by Rabbis Lionel Blue and Jonathan Magonet Writings of Bill Johnson Writings of Joyce Meyer Writings of Paul Coutinho Writings of Rabbi Harold S. Kushner Writings of C. S. Lewis The teachings of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, compiled by Tzvi Freeman Anything by Charlotte Joko Beck Anything by Andrew Murray Anything by Emmet Fox A Course In Miracles The sermons of Charles H. Spurgeon Hazelden: 'In God's Care' Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber 365 Tao The life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, by herself I am sure the list will grow over time.
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day 'Thy will be done.' We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.	Two things to watch for: agitation and doubt. Two things to ask for: thought or action = direction and power = sat. nav. and fuel. Whose will? God's will: then relax, because you'll be happier with God's will than that of your ego (and agitation and doubt are both signs that the ego is muscling in). Regarding efficiency: I should not be able to get done in my life what gets done. I will not list everything here, in part because in any case the achievement is God's, not mine; save to say, my schedule and the result do not add up, in purely human terms. And that is the problem: the wasted years of my earlier life (wasted first through drinking and then through my energy being haemorrhaged by fretting) were purely in human terms. Relaxing into God's power has released an energy I did not know was within me and presumably, therefore, is within everyone.
It works—it really does.	Quite.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.	Human discipline never works—at least, not for long. My discipline never works—at least, not for long. Submission to God—like diving into a swimming pool or down a water slide—will discipline me better than I can myself. And submission to God is infinite: you never touch the bottom. There is always infinity ahead, whatever is added to behind; infinity plus one is still infinity.

There are many approaches to Step Eleven. Here is one.

(1) The review

Page 86 of the Big Book suggests a daily review.

If we are going to grow spiritually, we need to work out what is going wrong in our attitudes, thoughts, and actions and go to God for power and direction in changing these.

The review is the first and indispensable element in this process.

The following provide some helpful materials:

https://first164.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/step-11-review.html

https://first164.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-get-most-out-of-step-eleven.html

Another benefit of the review is that it cleans out the soul and leaves us with a fresh slate for the next day, provided we surrender what went wrong to God and refuse to continue to carry it around like smelly garbage. Talking to someone spiritually centred and light-hearted usually helps with this.

(2) Raising consciousness

The Big Book suggests we ask God to direct our thinking in various ways. See page 86.

From the vantage point of a raised consciousness, we will see our everyday lives with greater perspective, and the remaining part of the Step will be far more effective if we are calm, jovial, and thoughtful, not neurotically mired in morbid detail.

Some people find formal meditation techniques helpful, e.g. those informed by Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Others adopt Christian contemplative methods, e.g. lectio divina (https://first164.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/meditation-aaaaaargh-do-i-really-have.html)

More simply, one can watch videos of spiritual teachers on the Internet, listen to audio tapes of AA speakers, or read AA, Al-Anon, spiritual, or religious literature.

Even more simply, one can go for a walk with the dog, sit looking out of the window at some trees, listen to some quiet, contemplative music, look at a candle, or sit concentrating on breathing or physical sensations.

Some people might quietly talk to God.

Some people read poetry.

Some people run or lift.

These may seem unconventional methods of raising one's consciousness, but nature doesn't worry about convention: what works, works.

Some people become tense and neurotic trying to apply Buddhist meditation techniques but connect easily and simply to God when running, swimming, or going for a walk.

Whatever the method applied, it is important not to allow thoughts to dwell in or fuss over the mundane detail of life: gently and persistently bring thoughts back the present and remember what your aim is here—to be lifted up.

You know what you are trying has worked if, after a while, you feel more detached from everyday worries and gripes and more connected with the worlds around and above you.

(3) Envisioning the day

Now that the mental garbage of the previous 24 hours has been discarded and mind has been raised to a higher level, above the self-pity of what has not gone our way and the self-seeking of what we would like to go our way, the job is to envision the day ahead, considering the attitude to adopt, the actions to take, and the thoughts to carry with us. This comes under the heading of 'knowledge of God's will'.

Put mostly simply, the day must be planned. There are activities that keep our show on the road (eating, exercise, resting, keeping ourselves on the beam spiritually); there are obligations that must be fulfilled; and there is the spare time that can be used for fun and for developing ourselves in other ways.

Most structural problems in people's lives will ultimately boil down to bad planning for the day. If necessary action is not being taken, day by day, it is likely because it is not being scheduled, day by day. Anything that is being avoided is likely to be generating a feeling of aversion. Such actions will never be taken spontaneously, so the crux of the solution lies in the daily plan.

Typical problems in people's daily planning:

· Not having one—if you do not have a plan, you're likely to be led by will and emotion, not principle and reason, unless you're very evolved.

· Having a vague one, which means necessary actions are repeatedly left undone—a vague plan is often a fig-leaf for an underlying desire to be led by will and emotion.

· No fun activities. In the past, I've been depressed not because of some terrible, deep-seated emotional scar but because I was leading a drab, wretched, depressing life. The universe offers endless opportunities to develop interests and skills. I have been encouraged since early sobriety consciously to engage in the world around me positively, enthusiastically, and with curiosity.

· Overfilling the day—resulting in a sense of guilt or panic.

· Under-filling the day—resulting in inertia, indecision, and malaise.

This link may help: https://first164.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/planning-for-day.html.

What the Book says	My experience
When we retire at night, …	I am often too tired to do a constructive review at night and will sometimes pick a different time, e.g. immediately after the end of the working day or early in the morning. It does not matter when during the day I do the review, as long as I do it. The advantage of doing the review in the evening or at night is that I often sleep better and wake up 'cleared' of yesterday's garbage.
… we constructively review our day.	Note: this is a constructive review of the day, not a constructive review of my whole life. Also, this is constructive, not destructive. The aim is not to pull myself down but to clear the junk out of the way so that I can build something better with God's help tomorrow.
Were we resentful,	This is not carte blanche to let rip about everyone and everything. If I have been resentful, I have been at fault. I may or may not mention, here, the object of the resentment. This part of the inventory, though, is about where I am wrong, not where others are wrong. If I am resentful, I have demands or expectations. What have my demands or expectations been? What is the truth of the situation? What should my attitude have been? When I started to become resentful, what actions did I take—practically and mentally—to rid myself of this 'number one offender? Did I wallow or did I immediately turn to God and spiritual ideas or literature to fill my mind with so that I would not be overcome or weighed down with the resentment?
… selfish, …	Where did I take action that favoured me over others? What should I have done instead?
… dishonest …	Where did I hide a bad motive under a good one? Where did I lie where I should have told the truth?
or afraid?	If I am afraid, I have an attachment to something in the world, and the world is constantly in flux, so anything I have in the world could be taken away and anything I want in the world could be withheld. What is my attachment? What am I not trusting? To make this constructive: how, instead, could I trust God? That even if I lose my job, God will find me a way to be useful and to be provided for in this world? That even if I lose this person or that person, God will provide enough people to supply me with opportunities to love and serve be loved and helped in return?
Do we owe an apology?	This is straightforward. If I have an outstanding apology, it must be made as soon as practicable once the review has been completed.
Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?	Here, I will make a note of what needs to be discussed, of whom I will discuss it with, and when I will discuss it.
Were we kind and loving toward all?	In response to this question, I cast my mind back over the day and examine thought, word, and deed.
What could we have done better?	This is straightforward. We usually know the answer to this.
Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?	This question, it should be noted, is not about whether we were packing lots into the stream of life but about whether we were thinking about that or whether we were thinking about ourselves. Was I concentrating about input or output? What I am doing or what others are doing? Action or results? Giving or getting? We can have a life full of good activity but still be obsessed with how much we are achieving or what we are getting out of all of the activity. It is easy, when we are busy being constructive, to fail to spot selfish motives underlying it all.
But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.	Beating ourselves up or exaggerating how bad we have been does no good: the purpose of this review is to clear away the rubbish, not become transfixed by it.
After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness …	This is a simple prayer. 'God, please forgive me.' Footnote: God has forgiven us already, but it is a good practice to express that willingness to be forgiven, because this prepares us for what is next—it underlines our recognition that there is room for growth.
… and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.	This is the most underused part of the review. Many reviews contain long litanies of resentments and gloomy reflections about life in general, then stop. Corrective measures fall into two categories: Corrective measures of thought; Corrective measures of action. Regarding thought, it is will to consider what activities or people we found 'triggering' and identify what attitude we should take instead; to consider, when resentment or fear strike, how we are going to use the tools of programme to banish them immediately; to consider what the focus of our thought must be throughout the day to come. Regarding action, this is the starting point of our plan for the next day: what tasks have been left undone and need to be started, continued, or completed? How are we going to prioritise? What are we going to do differently tomorrow? How are we going to use our time more constructively? How will we respond practically to anticipated trying situations or people? God has got us well (or better) not so we can have a lovely time and bask in our own glory but so we can be constructive and useful and make the most of the skills and potential God has given us and the opportunities surrounding us in the world. If we do that, we will have a lovely time, but that is a by-product, not the primary aim. It should be remembered that the purpose of the review—as with everything else in the programme—is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to others, and it is with this in mind that we should approach it.

"Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives." (Alcoholics Anonymous, 86:2)

"The Way does not require cultivation—just don't pollute it.

What is pollution? As long as you have a fluctuating mind fabricating artificialities and contrivances, all of this is pollution.

If you want to understand the Way directly, the normal mind is the Way.

What I mean by the normal mind is the mind without artificiality, without subjective judgements, without grasping or rejection." (Zen Master Mazu)

(my emphasis)

"We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives." (86, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')

These three items are broader in scope than they appear to be at first sight.

Turned into instructions, they can become:

Do not regret that anything is other than it is.
Do not imagine that anything is other than it is.
Do not wish that anything be other than it is.

Do not overlay the universe with (a) alternative, self-centered plans that have been thwarted in the past or whose fulfilment is to be sought in the future or (b) opinions, judgements, interpretations, beliefs, etc.

Or, simpler: what was, was; what is, is; what will be, will be.

Only then, say: "God, what shall we do today?"

"Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably they got drunk." (72:2, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')
"Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?" (86:1)

"He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back.
He thought they was old friends. ...
... When the papers were lost
rich with pals' secrets, he thought he had the knack
of ruin. Their paths crossed
and once they crossed in jail; they crossed in bed;
and over an unsigned letter their eyes met,
and in an Asian city
directionless & lurchy at two & three,
or trembling to a telephone's fresh threat, ...
But he noted now that: they were not old friends.
He did not know this one.
This one was a stranger, come to make amends
for all the imposters, and to make it stick."

You will learn the full meaning of "Love thy neighbour as thyself." (153:0)

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." (Mary Oliver)

"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things" (Mary Oliver)

• Do I have a sponsor who practises the Twelve-Step programme of recovery set out in Alcoholics Anonymous ('Big Book')?
• Is my sponsor taking me through the first nine Steps?
• Which Step am I on? Which part of that Step am I on? What action am I taking today on that Step?
• If I am blocked, is that because I am unclear what to do next, or is the problem lack of willingness?
• How soon can I call my sponsor to discuss what action to take to remove the block?

• Am I practising Step Ten today, throughout the day (see below)?
• Did I carry out the 'when we retire at night' Step Eleven exercise last night (see below)?
• Did I carry out the 'on awakening' Step Eleven exercise this morning (see below)?
• Am I pausing when agitated or doubtful (see below)?
• Am I making and taking every opportunity to give away everything I have learned and been shown in AA to those who are newer or struggling more than me?
• Is there any area where I am not practising Steps Ten to Twelve?

• Am I going to meetings of a fellowship(s) where people have the same addiction(s) as me?
• At those meetings, do people talk as much or more about this solution as they do about the common problem?
• Am I joining in before, during, and after these meetings?
• In between meetings listed in the meetings directory, do I spend time on the phone and in person sharing experience on the solution to our common problem?
• Do I have fellowship with people who are newer, people who are peers, and people with more experience?

• Do I perform group-level service ('unity commitments')?
• Do I perform service which involves carrying the message (sponsorship, helping newcomers understand the basics of the programme, public information/health liaison work, etc.)?
• Do I apply this principle in all my affairs: "Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it," (102:0) and follow through with practical action?

• We continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, as we go through the day.
• When (not 'if') these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. Note there is no analysis. Do not seek to 'understand' as a method of 'processing' these. Understanding comes automatically from this process. Note that we ask God at once, not at the end of the day.
• We discuss them with someone immediately. Apply this if you are so deeply involved in your own drama you cannot function. Otherwise, get on with being helpful wherever you are.
• We make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.
• Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Take whatever action suggests itself on the basis of this.
• When disturbed, we ask God to show us how to be loving and tolerant. We use love and tolerance as our yardsticks for making decisions and treating others.

• Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Pick the top one of each and resolve to discuss with a sponsor or friend the next morning.
• Do we owe an apology? Make a list of people to apologise or make amends to the next day, where applicable.
• Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Make a list of such matters and whom they will be discussed with.
• Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better?
• Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?
• Be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.
• Ask God's forgiveness (and know that it will be totally given).
• Inquire (of God) what corrective measures should be taken. Keep it simple (a couple will do). Check them out with someone with more experience in the programme if you are new to this or unsure.

• We ask God to direct our thinking.
• We ask God especially that our thinking be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.
• We consider our plans for the day. If we have none, we ask God to show us how to be useful and draw up plans.
• We consider how the corrective measures from the night before can be applied.
• We ask that God show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindness, and love (83:2).
• We ask God to show us how we can help anyone who is suffering from alcoholism (164:2).
• If we face indecision: we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought, or decision. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle.
• We pray some set prayers that emphasize the principles of AA.
• We read some spiritual literature and ask God to show us how we can apply it to our day.
• Finally, we pray that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.

• We ask God for the right thought or action.
• We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show.
• We say to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done."

• Do I want to be free of this anger, resentment, etc?
• Do I want to continue being dominated by the actions of others or my own failings?
• I realise that the person who I think has harmed me is spiritually sick—driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity—just like me. The harm—real or fancied—is not personal. It is an expression of their self-centredness, just like my harm to others.
• I ask God to help me see things from their point of view (the 'entirely different angle') and to show them tolerance, pity, and patience.
• I pray this prayer: "This is/may be a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done." Note that I am the one who needs saving, not him.
• I avoid retaliation or argument (including mentally).
• I ask God to show me how to take a kindly and tolerant view of the person.
• When thoughts of the resentment reoccur, I bless the delinquent briefly and get on with my day.

• I realise I am scared because I think I will not gain something or lose something I need to be happy or satisfied. Self-reliance has failed me.
• I realise that God can provide whatever I need if I stay close to Him and perform His work well.
• I make the decision to trust infinite God rather than my finite self.
• I make the decision to let Him demonstrate through me what He can do.
• I ask Him to remove my fear and direct my attention to what He would have me be, both in relation to the situation in which the fear is arising, and right here, right now, in the situation I am actually in.

"When we retire at night we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken." (87:1, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')

For a very long time, I took Step Ten to be nightly written inventory (plus an occasional 'spot-check' and a periodic reworking of Step Four) and Step Eleven to be prayer plus an attempt to follow Eastern practices to achieve an altered state of consciousness or to blank my mind of all thought. In other words, I had been basing my understanding on a combination of what I happened to hear at meetings and Hollywood depictions of meditation.

It struck me as odd, therefore, that the first paragraph in the Big Book that examines the subject of prayer and meditation in detail focuses on self-examination. This looked like an error, as though Step Ten had leaked into Step Eleven.

I have been granted a different understanding of this now, however.

Step Ten, when practised as set out on pages 84 and 85, is about developing consciousness of my relationship with God and the world around me as I go through the day. It is about taking the insight from Step Four—the deep understanding of the failure of self-will plus self-propulsion as a basis of living, i.e. the Step Three requirement—and applying it in the moment, asking God to bring me back to the line of His will for me whenever I spot myself straying. No analysis. No fretting. No extended introspection.

This part of Step Eleven is about retiring—standing back—from the day and examining how well I have been practising Step Ten. This self-examination paragraph falls within a 1930s definition, pre-Hollywood, non-Buddhist concept of meditation—directed, guided thought in the presence of God.

Step Ten requires no writing. It requires no analysis. It requires watching, asking, and turning. It requires amends and, sometimes, discussion.

This Step Eleven review I sometimes write down. More often than not, today, I do not.

What is key, however, for me, is that I do not treat this as an analytical exercise. My mind is not to be in charge of this process. My mind is split. Part of my mind resides with God. Another part is in league with my ego, forming little plans and designs and on concealing these plans and designs from the part of me that resides with God. God must be in charge of this process. I do not seek to analyse myself. I ask God to show me what needs to be shown. And I wait in silence until what needs to be shown is indeed shown.

There is no great mystery to the ten questions. I try to cast the net very widely, however. With 'resentment' I ask to be shown any disturbance on my part because my perception of the world does not match my ideal for the world. With 'fear' I ask to be shown any disturbance on my part because my perception of the future does not match my ideal for the future.

Vital to this process, however, is space.

If I do not allow space into the process, I will simply use the Step Eleven review to rehash all of the things I spotted during the day. This is pointless. What is far more important is to allow enough silence for God to show me what I would otherwise be suppressing. Time and time again I have discovered that leaving ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of silence will allow a memory to float to the surface that would otherwise have sunk to the bottom of my consciousness. The junk in the upper part of my mind is not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise is to bring out the secrets, the thoughts that frighten me so much that I want to push them out of sight. When I look back at the biggest disasters of my recovery, the behaviour that has most harmed other people, the starting point was a thought—a self-seeking desire, usually—which I pushed down and kept secret. Once a thought is labelled 'out of bounds' to the programme, once I have decided to handle a particular area of my life myself, once I allow a secondary, selfish motive to piggy-back sound, otherwise selfless activity, I'm in serious trouble.

This principle applies throughout my AA experience. The one secret I hold from my sponsor will be what kills me. The one secret I hold from myself will split me in two. And the lower self, where the secret resides, is the perfect culturing medium. One day, once the secret has multiplied and fomented, it turns into designs, plans, and actions.

As inspiration turns into intuitive thought and into decisions, secret selfish desires will do likewise.

And this is why the Step Eleven meditation requires God as my guide and the silence that draws out secrets from within my consciousness.

Once the secrets are drawn out, I ask for forgiveness, a return to wholeness, and a return to God's will for me. I am reintegrated and become one, again, because there is no corner hidden from Him.

These secrets are also what form the basis for the corrective measures and the plan for the coming day, the focus of where I am to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear in Step Ten.

The three elements—the Step Eleven plan for the day, the Step Ten monitoring, and the Step Eleven review—thus become a triangle of activities that keep me whole and sane and living fully inside the triangle of the three legacies and thus the circle of wholeness and sanity that is the aim of this programme.

When I was new, I used to pray for a sober day. And that's kinda where the praying stopped. This prayer (coupled with a 'thank you' at night) I saw as simply one of many things I did during the day, e.g. calling newcomers or washing cups at a meeting, essentially to keep MYSELF sober so I could get on with the business of living MY life. Like paying my insurance premiums or brushing my teeth. Not really the focus of my day, but necessary at some low level. Or perhaps like a talisman or a superstition.

This relegates God to a box that needs to be ticked, and His role to that of 'little helper'.

I am sober ALREADY because of God. The conversation I imagine going something like this:

Me: "God, please keep me sober."

God: "Erm . . . I got you sober without your knowledge or even consent or permission, just to see if you would make a better hash of things sober than you did drunk, because I've got this amazing mission for you, and you're, like, totally missing the mark. There's a YOU-shaped hole in the world, and you need to get out there and fill it, Buddy. Listen, I've got Jennifer on the other line, and she's asking for some really specific direction. Gotta go to it. Later."

[Sadly, I'm not listening, because, now I've said my prayers, I'm back to MY little plans and designs.]

Me [several hours later]: "God, thank you for keeping me sober."

Me [next morning]: "God, please keep me sober."

God: "You're clearly not listening. Look, I "drew you out of many waters"—do you not even read Psalm 18? Jeez. I wonder why I wrote it, sometimes—and now you're lying on the beach worried about whether or not you're going to tumble back into said waters. Why don't you start asking me what do with the 24 hours a day you've been given back? The whole 'sober' thing's a total given. Got it?"

Me: "God, thank you for keeping me sober."

Me: "God, please keep me sober."

God: "This is getting embarrassing. I guess I'll just have to wait for the tide to come in . . ."

[Tide comes in, I panic, I can feel the waters lap at my ankles, and I check out the top of page 63. Change in tack:]

Me: "God, I'm totally screwed, I have no idea how to live on the beach, here; all of my old plans and designs which seemed to get me through when I was splashing around in the water just don't work now I'm on dry land. I'm going to stay close to you all day; just give me the next indicated action. Show me how I can do YOUR work, because mine is totally sucking."

God: "Now we're in business . . ."

God will tell you all that you need to know. He will not always tell you all that you want to know. These are a few simple suggestions for people who are willing to make an experiment. You can discover for yourself the most important and practical thing any human being can ever learn—how to be in touch with God. All that is needed is the willingness to try it honestly. Every person who has done this consistently and sincerely has found that it really works.

Before you begin, look over these fundamental points. They are true and are based on the experience of thousands of people.

1. God is alive. He always has been, and He always will be.

2. God knows everything.

3. God can do anything.

4. God can be everywhere—all at the same time. (These are the important differences between God and us human beings.)

5. God is invisible—we cannot see Him or touch Him—but God is here. He is with you now. He is beside you. He surrounds you. He fills the room or the whole place where you are right now. He is in you now. He is in your heart.

6. God cares very much for you. He is interested in you. He has a plan for your life. He has an answer for every need and problem you face.

8. God will help you do anything that He asks you to do.

9. Anyone can be in touch with God, anywhere and at any time, if conditions are obeyed.

These are the conditions:

– To be quiet and still

– To listen

– To be honest about every thought that comes

– To test the thoughts to be sure that they come from God

– To obey.

So, with these basic elements as a background, here are specific suggestions on how to listen to God:

1. Take time

Find some place and time where you can be alone, quiet, and undisturbed. Most people have found that the early morning is the best time. Have with you some paper and a pen or a pencil.

2. Relax

Sit in a comfortable position. Consciously relax all your muscles. Be loose. There is no hurry. There needs to be no strain during these minutes. God cannot get through to us if we are tense and anxious about later responsibilities.

3. Tune in

Open your heart to God. Either silently or aloud, just say to God in a natural way that you would like to find out His plan for your life—you want His answer to the problem or situation that you are facing just now. Be definite and specific in your request.

4. Listen

Just be still, quiet, relaxed, and open. Let your mind go loose. Let God do the talking. Thoughts, ideas, and impressions will begin to come into your mind and heart. Be alert and aware and open to every one.

5. Write!

Here is the important key to the whole process. Write down everything that comes into your mind. Everything. Writing is simply a means of recording so that you can remember later. Do not sort out or edit your thoughts at this point.

Do not say to yourself:

– "This thought is not important!

– This is just an ordinary thought!

– This cannot be guidance!

– This is not nice!

– This cannot be from God!

– This is just me thinking!" (etc.)

Write down everything that passes through your mind.

– Names of people

– Things to do

– Things to say

– Things that are wrong and need to be made right.

Write down everything:

– Good thoughts—bad thoughts

– Comfortable thoughts—uncomfortable thoughts

– Holy thoughts—unholy thoughts

– Sensible thoughts—crazy thoughts.

Be Honest! Write down everything—a thought comes quickly, and it escapes even more quickly unless it is captured and put down.

6. Test

When the flow of thoughts slows down, stop. Take a good look at what you have written. Not every thought we have comes from God, so we need to test our thoughts. Here is where the written record helps us to be able to look at them.

– Are these thoughts completely honest, pure, unselfish, and loving?

– Are these thoughts in line with our duties?

– Are these thoughts in line with our understanding of the teachings found in our spiritual literature?

7. Check

When you are in doubt and when it is important, what does another person who is living two-way prayer think about this thought or action? More light comes in through two windows than one. Someone else who also wants God's plan for our lives may help us to see more clearly.

Talk over together what you have written. Many people do this. They tell each other what guidance has come. This is the secret of unity. There are always three sides to every question—your side, my side, and the right side. Guidance shows us which is the right side—not who is right, but what is right.

8. Obey

Carry out the thoughts that have come. You will only be sure of guidance as you go through with it. A rudder will not guide a boat until the boat is moving. As you obey, very often the results convince you that you are on the right track.

9. Blocks?

What if I do not seem to get any definite thoughts? God's guidance is as freely available as the air we breathe. If I am not receiving thoughts when I listen, the fault is not God's.

Usually it is because there is something I will not do:

– Something wrong in my life that I will not face and make right

– A habit or indulgence I will not give up

– A person I will not forgive

– A wrong relationship in my life I will not give up

– A restitution I will not make

– Something God has already told me to do that I will not obey.

Check these points and be honest. Then try listening again.

10. Mistakes

Suppose I make a mistake and do something in the name of God that is not right? Of course we make mistakes. We are humans with many faults. However, God will always honour our sincerity.

He will work around and through every honest mistake we make. He will help us make it right. But remember this—sometimes when we do obey God, someone else may not like it or agree with it. So when there is opposition, it does not always mean you have made a mistake. It can mean that the other person does not want to know or to do what is right. Suppose I fail to do something that I have been told, and the opportunity to do it passes? There is only one thing to do. Put it right with God. Tell Him you are sorry. Ask Him to forgive you, then accept His forgiveness and begin again. God is our Father—He is not an impersonal calculator. He understands us far better than we do.

11. Results

We never know what swimming is like until we get down into the water and try. We will never know what this is like until we sincerely try it. Every person who has tried this honestly finds that a wisdom, not their own, comes into their minds and that Power greater than human power begins to operate in their lives. It is an endless adventure. There is a way of life, for everyone, everywhere. Anyone can be in touch with the living God, anywhere, anytime, if we fulfil His conditions.

When man listens, God speaks.

When man obeys, God acts.

This is the law of Prayer: God's plan for this world goes forward through the lives of ordinary people who are willing to be governed by Him.

John E. Batterson

'Oh that I were as in months past' (Job 29:2)

'. . . they look upon the days which they have passed in communing with the Lord as being the sweetest and the best they have ever known, but as to the present, it is clad in a sable garb of gloom and dreariness. They complain that . . . they have not present peace of mind. . . The causes of this mournful state of things are manifold. It may arise through a comparative neglect of prayer. . . Or it may be the result of idolatry. The heart has been occupied with something else, more than with God; the affection have been set on the things of earth, instead of the things of heaven. . . Or the cause may be found in self-confidence and self-righteousness.' (Charles Spurgeon)

'I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.' (14:1, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')

'Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well.' (63:1)

I will on occasion discover myself dejected because the thrill, or the glow, or the ease and comfort of a life centred in trying to do God's work in AA has dissipated somewhat or outright disappeared and been replaced by an unease, a tiredness, a lack of trust in God's providence, and a sense that 'nothing will ever be the same again'. You know, that familiar alcoholic doom—distorted AND exaggerated, of course? (108:1)

(1) Neglect of prayer

How much quiet time did I have this morning? Less than an hour? 'nuff said, really. A lifetime of twisted, self-centred thinking surrounded by people doing just the same is not going to be overturned by uttering a few 'vain repetitions, as the heathen do' (cf. Matthew 6:7) culled from the Book. I need to spend time using my own voice and my own language to communicate with God from the heart: tell him what is going on; ask for the strength; ask for the guidance. I do not need to work out precisely what I need: He knows already; I do not need to work out ~how~ He is going to achieve what He will achieve in my life and in the lives of those around me (cf. Matthew 6:8). I need also to fill my thoughts with those who have experienced God, to supplant my own thinking. Books are vital as a way of listening to and for God. I cannot make up my own vision and structural understanding of how to build a relationship with God. I need to be shown the way. I have to go to God with an open heart and empty hands, no 'plan B', no fingers crossed behind my back, no doubt about the goodness of God's plan for me.

(2) Idolatry

This does not, of course, mean the literal worship of statues of God but the placement of anything in my heart as the centre and main objective of my life other than God. This 'worship of other things' (55:2) will immediately obscure the idea of God. If I want to know what I have placed above God, all I need to do is look at what my thoughts centre on. The exercise of jotting down every half-hour the dominant thinking of the previous half-hour and examining this at the end of the day will tell me what I am focused on—and therefore worshipping. Typically, if I am troubled, there will be something I believe I need for happiness and satisfaction that is out of reach or slipping from my grasp. The simple question, 'what do I want that I am not getting?' will immediately reveal the source of the problem. The term 'idolater' literally means a slave to an idol. Whatever is the centre and main objective of my life (or my day) I will be a slave to. I get to be either a servant of God (and reap the rewards—'He provided what we needed . . .') or a slave my idols ('sold under sin'—Romans 7:14). What I want that I am not getting may not necessarily be a bad thing in itself—it could be the health or welfare of someone I love—but placing this as a demand on the universe entraps me and blocks me from God; my focus is taken off God and concentrated on my mental interference usually in something I cannot directly influence, or at least can influence only partially, imperfectly, and with far from satisfactory results.

(3) Self-confidence and self-righteousness

Here, the idol I am worshipping is me. The usual sign that this is operative is the sense that others are wrong. Others, of course, can be wrong only if I am right. Criticism of others necessarily implies my placement of myself in the position of righteousness. And that is to deny that everything good in my life has flowed from God, and, consequently to deny God. Little surprise I feel cold in my lofty abode of judgement, then. One answer here is to look at the results: if I am so 'right', why do I feel so 'wrong'?

In the Book of Jonah, the city of Nineveh repents after being warned by Jonah of its sin, and God justifies his ready forgiveness, by comparing Nineveh to a plant given to Jonah for shade, which is then destroyed by God:

'But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die." But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" '

I trust that if I return to God with empty hands, no excuses, contrition, and an open heart, I will be received back instantly. That has been my experience.

"I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be witholden from thee . . . I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhore myself, and repent in dust and ashes . . . And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had had before." (Job 42:10)

When I was new in AA, I was told to pray, in the morning, for a sober day. I did, sporadically, and stayed sober, both on the days I thus prayed and on the days I did not. I no longer pray for a sober day, however.

"We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control." (30:3, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')

I do not believe that whether I stay sober depends on whether or not I ask for a sober day. This would mean that God is hovering over the Big Red Button of Relapse, closely monitoring my prayers for the right formula, rewarding compliance and punishing failure. If this were true, God would not be God; God would be my puppet; I pull the strings, and God obeys; I pray in the right way, submit the right petition, God keeps me sober; I do not, God does not.

I know, today, I have no control over whether or not I stay sober, and I certainly cannot bargain with or manipulate God into doing my will—staying sober—even if I am certain that that is God's will, too.

And there is the crux—if I am sober today, it is because God has already shamelessly pulled rank and decided I am not to drink. If I wake up sober, without relapsing the night before, I have already been kept safe, with or without my knowledge, with or without my permission, with or without my acknowledgement.

Either God has all power or He does not; either God is everything or God is nothing; God either is, or He isn't. (cf. 53:2).

My job (pardon the pun) is to wake up to what already is—not to hang around for the miracle to happen but to acknowledge the miracle that has already taken place. I spent years unable to get through the day without getting slaughtered on alcohol. And yet, for 16 years and 11 months, I have not drunk.

To ask God to keep me sober would be to deny the miracle that has already been wrought. It is done. This is the seeing. It would be like a person who has been shipwrecked and who has been washed up on shore praying to be saved from the shipwreck or to remain on the shore.

Anyone shipwrecked and washed up on shore needs to get away from the ocean as fast as possible, or a rogue wave will catch him and wash him back out to sea. I cannot petition God directly to prevent that from happening; what I can do is ask God to give me the grace to take actions that will take me further inland into His country, into real safety. I need to ask, but the power and direction will come from Him.

The abhorrence of self is not the self-abasement of inferiority to other men—that 'low self-worth' has always had much more to do with recognition of my failure to achieve or maintain a superior status over others. No, the abhorrence of self that needs to be fostered is the abhorrence of the ocean in which I was shipwrecked, the waves of ego which determined my course, the winds of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity that my ship was forced to submit to and which ultimately brought my downfall. For a time, all went well, but the elemental forces of the ego will always destroy me. And this I started to realise when I was on the shore: the two-fold admission of my own failure at life plus the miracle of restoration by a power greater than myself.

In the past, I have missed the point: I thought my sobriety was an end in itself. Of course, anything that benefits me, I will see as an end in itself! If I concede that God struck me sober, I have to ask 'why?' In the land on which I am shipwrecked, there is work to do. God's country extends endlessly, and He has no hands but ours. It was never about me; it was never about the ocean and the shipwreck; it was always about the work that needed to be done by me, through me, in the country inhabited by His kids.

I do indeed thank God for getting me sober in the first place and showering me with grace on a daily basis since then.

The question, when I rise in the morning, is not whether God will keep me sober but what God wants me to do NOW I am sober.

I do not even say, on a routine, daily basis, grand dramatic prayers asking God to take my life, to take all that is good and bad in me and transform it (Steps Three and Seven). To me, these are reserved for pivotal points, for junctions, for the moments of true surrender—which usually follow a re-enactment of the whole self-will-run-riot escapade followed by a further shipwreck and miraculous rescue. I will also share in others' praying of these prayers at their pivotal moments.

If God really is my employer, I would feel a little foolish turning up at work every day, grandly declaring my allegiance, my commitment to God in that capacity. Whilst I am obsequiously bowing and scraping, offering the great gift of my whole life—I'm the type of alcoholic who relishes the dramatic—I imagine God with a long to-do list, wondering, patiently, when I am going to be done, so we can get down to business and He can give me my chores today, starting with washing a few cups and emptying the bins.

A great danger for me is to decide that, now I have accomplished the florid daily gesture of turning my life over to God (as though, the last time I did that, he did not take it), I can get on with the day, doing precisely what I had already planned to do before I prayed my theatrical Thee–Thou prayer, as though this great offering absolves me of any responsibility for the detail. After all, I've done so well to turn over my whole, life; the detail will take care of itself!

I need to pray not for sobriety itself but for the knowledge and power to do something with it. I need to pray, once I have been saved, for the salvation of others and for knowledge of my role—if any—as an instrument of God in that salvation. I need to pray for inspiration (in my spirit), an intuitive thought (in my mind), or a decision (a commitment to action) (cf. 86:3) concerning each specific matter (69:3).

In practice, this is almost invariably banal, humdrum, and at times frustrating (because I pray and sometimes nothing comes—at least, then and there). It is also humbling, because without Him I am lost, even—perhaps especially—in the detail.
But it is through asking for—and receiving—specific guidance in tiny daily matters that I have been granted freedom, happiness, and plenty.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. (p. 58, 'Alcoholics Anonymous)

On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. (86:2)

There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one's priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer. (87:2)

We never apologize to anyone for depending upon our Creator. . . We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. (68:3)

Most people I know trot off to the local Buddhist centre for the meditation bit. I, personally, have benefitted from various Buddhist practices (which I am not going to discuss here).

My principal problem is lack of power (45:1–2), and God, to put it bluntly, is the source of my power. I need a relationship with God, and I need it now. Very alcoholic, I know, but that is what I am. God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him (46:2). I have to trust that they meant what they said when they wrote that. Prayer I started to get the hang of early in AA, but meditation—as a means of seeking God's will for me and the power to carry that out—was a different matter. Mindfulness, awareness, breathing exercises, and other techniques have been sensational. But they did not help me develop a relationship with God as I understand him (which is not to say they do not help other people do precisely that—I am speaking solely of my own experience).

I suspect my failure successfully to use Buddhist techniques to develop a relationship with God may lie largely in my own inadequacy. I suspect a further significant problem has been trying to marry a concept of a loving God as father who will look after me if I stay close to Him and perform His work well (63:1) with techniques that arise out of a tradition where God—in this sense—is not such a big topic, to say the least. But I'm going to shut up about Buddhism, now, because, relatively speaking, I know squat.

Back to my experience: I have needed to develop meditation techniques that (a) fit in with what has worked for me in terms of a concept of a Higher Power (as indicated above: father/child, director/actor, cf. 62:3) (b) suit my alcoholic mind (which is busy-busy-busy) and (c) allow me to fulfil the precepts of the AA programme without huge amounts of cross-adaptation from one culture to another.

To this end, here is a meditation technique that really works for me.

To put it simply:

I take a passage of spiritual (or religious) literature—some piece of AA literature, some 'page-a-day' spiritual book, some piece of spiritual writing, a prayer book, the Bible, some other religious text, whatever. As long as it emphasizes the principles of the programme (87:2).

I read it slowly, line by line, assimilating the meaning into my being.

I wait for a line to go 'ping' and strike a chord, as being of relevance to me, my life in general, or a particular situation.

I memorise the line, and repeat it over and over, whispering or silently, entering as deeply as possible into the meaning and returning to the line every time I get distracted.

As I enter the meaning, eventually, the words start to evaporate and appear superfluous, and I end up with just the idea, on which I am fully concentrated.

Once that happens, I talk to God about the idea and let the words flow out of me, however they come, with no censorship. I might talk to God about how the idea relates to my life or a particular situation; I might let out thoughts or feelings; I might confess; I might laugh; I might cry; I might petition; I might beg; I might apologise; I might give thanks; I might complain and bitch. But whatever I say, I say knowing I am in God's presence, and He accepts me as I am. When the conversation dries up, I listen for a bit, then loop back to the beginning of the exercise and carry on reading.

Why this is good for me:

(1) It uses my busy mind to build my relationship with God. The aim is not to de-busy my mind, but to work with it and lift it above its current plane onto a higher plane (86:2). This means even newcomers can use it, too! And, some days, I might as well be a newcomer. CRAY-ZEE.

(2) As I am, in any case, asking God to direct my thinking (86:2), I am implementing that by filling my brain with the thoughts and words of those far wiser than me and assimilating those into my being before I let my own mind loose on the material. Much more effective for me than simply observing, as if as a bystander, the craziness of my mind with increasing objectivity (which is a mindfulness technique I sometimes employ alongside the AA programme to calm myself before meditation or when stressed). The latter is great, but, in my first ten years, every time I was left alone with my own brain and told just to observe the thoughts like clouds passing I wanted to shoot myself. True fact. Might as well give me a bottle of vodka. I could not stand it. SUBSTITUTION (152:2) is the name of the game.

(3) It can provide a link between (a) the situations I am bringing to God—the plans for the day/the twenty-four hours ahead (86:2), (b) other people's wisdom ('being quick to see where religious people are right' (87:2)), and (c) inspiration, intuitive thoughts, and decisions from God (86:2).

(4) It can be practised for a few minutes or even a few hours without excessive exhaustion. It also prevents me from lapsing into trances, falling asleep, or just becoming plain kooky through abstraction from the 'real world'. Being brought back to words on the page, letting out what comes up inside my mind, and yielding that up to God keep it majorly real.

(5) It provides lots of nice variation as I get to pick the material I use, and, ¡boy! do I choose diverse material.

(6) Looking at my daily circumstances or past or prospective situations through the lens of written spiritual/religious material and combining that with two-way conversation with God and a touch of the mindfulness technique of repeating and concentrating on a particular word, phrase, or line is the best combo I have encountered in seventeen years for changing my attitude to the past, present, and future and converting that attitude into an action plan that approximates as closely as I can possibly get to my idea of what God's will is for me. Sorry about the long sentence. See? Busy mind! And Step Ten is right there to clean up the inevitable messes (absurd ideas and actions—87:0) that sometimes ensue from my presumption.

I do not know about any other alcoholic, but I need the loving hand of God in my life at all times. I need techniques that put me straight in touch with God. I need conscious contact, or I'm toast. I need God on speed-dial. And this technique has provided it to me.

If this works for you, hoorah! If it does not, too bad!

By the way, if you're wondering where it came from, it's said to be from Saint Benedict, and has been used for centuries. If you want to find out more about it, Google lectio divina.

A useful list for Step Four, Step Six, Step Seven, and the Step Eleven nightly review:

PRIDE is putting self in the place of God as the centre and objective of our life, or of some department thereof. It is the refusal to recognize our status as creatures, dependent on God for our existence, and placed by him in a specific relationship to the rest of his creation.

Irreverence. Deliberate neglect of the worship of God every Sunday in his Church, or being content with a perfunctory participation in it. Disregard of other Holy Days or of additional opportunities for giving God honour. Failure to thank God or to express our gratitude adequately.

Disrespect for God or holy things by deliberately treating them, in thought, word or deed, in a profane, contemptuous or over-familiar manner. Use of holy things for personal advantage, or the attempt to bribe or placate God by religious practices or promises.

Sentimentality. Being satisfied with pious feelings and beautiful ceremonies without striving to obey God's will.

Presumption. Dependence on self rather than on God, with the consequent neglect of the means of grace -- sacraments and prayer. Dispensation of ourselves from ordinary duties on the grounds that we are superior persons. Satisfaction or complacency over our spiritual achievements. Refusal to avoid, when possible, immediate occasions of temptation. Preference for our own ideas, customs, schemes or techniques. Foolish optimism.

Failure to recognize our job as a divine vocation or to offer our work to God. Unwillingness to surrender to and abide in Christ, to let him act in and through us. Failure to offer to God regularly in intercession the persons or causes that have, or should enlist our interest and support.

Distrust. Refusal to recognize God's wisdom, providence and love. Worry, anxiety, misgivings, scrupulosity, or perfectionism. Attempts to discern or control the future by spiritualism, astrology, fortune-telling or the like. Magic or superstition.

Over-sensitiveness. Expectation that others will dislike, reject or mistreat us; over-readiness so to interpret their attitude, or quickness to take offense. Unfounded suspicions.

Timidity in accepting responsibility, or cowardice in facing difficulty or suffering. Surrender to feelings of depression, gloom, pessimism, discouragement, self-pity, or fear of death, instead of fighting to be brave, cheerful and hopeful.

Disobedience. Rejection of God's known will in favour of our own interests or pleasures. Disobedience of the legitimate (and therefore divinely ordained) laws, regulations or authority of the Church, state, husband, parents, teachers, etc.; or slow and reluctant obedience. Failure when in authority to fulfil responsibilities or to consider the best interests of those under us.

Refusal to learn God's nature or will as revealed in Scripture, expounded in instructions or expert advice, or discernible through prayer, meditation or the reading of religious books. Absorption in our own affairs, leaving little time, energy or interest for the things of God.

Violation of confidence. Breaking of legitimate promises or contracts. Irresponsibility. Treachery. Unnecessary disappointment of another, or the causing of shame or anxiety to those who love us.

Impenitence. Refusal to search out and face up to our sins, or to confess and admit them before God. Disregard of our sins or pretence that we are better than we are. Self-justification or discounting our sins as insignificant, natural or inevitable. Self-righteous comparison of ourselves with others.

Refusal to accept just punishment or to make due reparation when possible. Deceit or lying to escape the consequences of our sins, or allowing another to suffer the blame for our faults. Overcompensation or attempts at self-reform or self-vengeance, to avoid surrender to God in humble penitence.

Shame (hurt pride), sorrow for ourselves because our sins make us less respectable than we like to think we are, or because we fear punishment or injury to our reputation, rather than sorrow for what sin is in the eyes of God. Refusal to admit we were in the wrong or to apologize. Refusal to accept forgiveness from God or others. Doubt that God can forgive our sins, or failure to use the means of getting assurance of his forgiveness when we need it. Unwillingness to forgive ourselves.

Vanity. Crediting to ourselves rather than to God our talents, abilities, insights, accomplishments, good works. Refusal to admit indebtedness to others, or adequately to express gratitude for their help. Hypocrisy. Pretence to virtues we do not possess. False humility. Harsh judgments on others for the faults we excuse in ourselves.

Boasting, exaggeration, drawing attention to ourselves by talking too much, by claiming ability, wisdom, experience or influence that we do not have, or by eccentric or ostentatious behaviour. Undue concern over, or expenditure of time, money or energy on looks, dress, surroundings, etc., in order to impress others; or deliberate slovenliness for the same purpose. Seeking, desiring or relishing flattery or compliments.

Arrogance. Insisting that others conform to our wishes, recognize our leadership, accept our own estimate of our worth. Being overbearing, argumentative, opinionated, obstinate.

Snobbery. Pride over race, family, position, personality, education, skill, achievements, or possessions.

ANGER is open rebellion against God or our fellow creatures. Its purpose and desire is to eliminate any obstacle to our self-seeking, to retaliate against any threat to our security, to avenge any insult or injury to our person.

Resentment. Refusal to discern, accept or fulfil God's vocation. Dissatisfaction with the talents, abilities or opportunities he has given us. Unwillingness to face up to difficulties or sacrifices. Unjustified rebellion or complaint at the circumstances of our lives. Escape from reality or the attempt to force our will upon it. Transference to God, to our parents, to society, or to other individuals of the blame for our maladjustment; hatred of God or antisocial behaviour. Cynicism. Annoyance at the contrariness of things: profanity or grumbling.

Pugnacity. Attack upon another in anger. Murder in deed or desire. Combativeness or nursing of grudges. Injury to another by striking, cursing or insulting him; or by damaging his reputation or property. Quarrelsomeness, bickering, contradiction, nagging, rudeness, or snubbing.

Retaliation. Vengeance for wrongs real or imagined, or the plotting thereof. Hostility, sullenness or rash judgment. Refusal to forgive or to offer or accept reconciliation. Unwillingness to love, to do good to, or to pray for enemies. Boycotting or ostracizing another for selfish reasons. Spoiling others' pleasure by uncooperativeness or disdain, because we have not got our way, or because we feel out of sorts or superior.

ENVY is the dissatisfaction with our place in God's order of creation, manifested in begrudging his gifts and vocation to others.

Jealousy. Offense at the talents, success or good fortune of others. Selfish or unnecessary rivalry or competition. Pleasure at others' difficulties or distress. Belittling others.

Malice. Ill-will, false accusations, slander, backbiting. Reading false motives into others' behaviour. Initiation, collection or retailing gossip. Arousing, fostering or organizing antagonism against others. Unnecessary criticism, even when true. Deliberate annoyance of others, teasing or bullying.

Contempt. Scorn of another's virtue, ability, shortcomings, or failings. Prejudice against those we consider inferior, or who consider us inferior, or who seem to threaten our security or position. Ridicule of persons, institutions or ideals.

COVETOUSNESS is the refusal to respect the integrity of other creatures, expressed in the inordinate accumulation of material things; in the use of other persons for our personal advantage; or in the quest for status, power or security at their expense.

Inordinate Ambition. Pursuit of status, power, influence, reputation, or possessions at the expense of the moral law, or other obligations, or of the rights of others. Ruthless or unfair competition. Putting self or family first. Conformity to standards we recognize as wrong or inadequate in order to get ahead. Intrigue or conspiracy for self-advancement.

Domination. Seeking to use or possess others. Overprotection of children; refusal to correct or punish lest we lose their affection; insistence that they conform to our ideal for them contrary to their own vocation. Imposing our will on others by force, guile, whining, or refusal to cooperate. Over-readiness to advise or command; abuse of authority. Patronizing, pauperizing, putting others under a debt of gratitude, or considering ourselves ill-used when others' affection or compliance is not for sale.

Respect for persons, favouritism, partiality, flattery, fawning, or bribery to win support or affection. Refusal to uphold the truth to fulfil duties, to perform good acts, or to defend those wrongfully attacked, because we fear criticism or ridicule, or because we seek to gain the favour or approval or others. Leading, tempting or encouraging others to sin.

Avarice. Inordinate pursuit of wealth or material things. Theft, dishonesty, misrepresentation, or sharing of stolen goods. Cheating in business, taxes, school or games. Making worldly success the goal of our life or the standard for judging others.

Prodigality. Waste of natural resources or personal possessions. Extravagance or living beyond our income, to impress others or to maintain status. Failure to pay debts. Gambling more than we can afford to lose, or to win unearned profits. Unnecessary borrowing or carelessness with others' money. Expenditure on self of what is needed for the welfare of others.

Penuriousness. Undue protection of wealth or security. Selfish insistence on vested interests or on claimed rights. Refusal to support or help those who have a claim on us. Sponging on others. Stinginess. Failure to give due proportion of our income to Church and charity, or of our time and energy to good works. Failure to pay pledges promised to the Church or charities, when able to do so.

GLUTTONY is the overindulgence of natural appetites for food and drink, and by extension the inordinate quest for pleasure or comfort.

Intemperance. Overindulgence in food, drink, smoking, or other physical pleasures. Fastidiousness, fussiness, demanding excessively high standards, or dilettantism. Condemnation of some material things or pleasures as evil in themselves, attempting to prohibit their use rather than their abuse.

Lack of Discipline. Negligence in keeping the days of fasting or abstinence, or failure to use other needed means of self-discipline. Neglect of bodily health -- not getting sufficient rest, recreation, exercise, or wholesome nourishment. Failure to use or to cooperate with available medical care when ill. Use of sickness as a means of escape from responsibilities.

LUST is the misuse of sex for personal gratification, debasing it from the holy purpose for which God has given it to us.

Unchastity. Violation of the Church's marriage laws. Lack of consideration for one's partner in the use of the marital relationship. Refusal to fulfil the purpose of Holy Matrimony in the bringing forth and giving adequate care to children, or to take our full share in responsibilities or work involved. Unfaithfulness to one's spouse. Sexual indulgence outside of matrimony, in thought or act, alone or with others.

Immodesty. Stimulation of sexual desire in others by word, dress or action; or in oneself by reading, pictures, or fantasies. Collecting or recounting dirty stories.

Prudery. Fear of sex or condemnation of it as evil in itself. Refusal to seek adequate sexual instruction or the attempt to prevent others from obtaining it. Stimulation of excessive and harmful curiosity by undue secrecy. Repression of sex.

Cruelty. Deliberate infliction of pain, mental or physical. Tormenting of animals.

SLOTH is the refusal to respond to our opportunities for growth, service or sacrifice.

Laziness. Indolence in performing spiritual, mental or physical duties, or neglect of family, business or social obligations or courtesies. Procrastination of disliked tasks. Busyness or triviality to avoid more important commitments. Devotion of excessive time to rest, recreations, amusement, television, light reading or the like. Waste of employer's time, or shoddy or inadequate work.

Indifference. Unconcern over injustice to others, especially that caused by currently accepted social standards; or unmindfulness of the suffering of the world. Failure to become adequately informed on both sides of contemporary issues or on the Christian principles involved. Neglect of duties to state or community. Failure to provide adequately for, or to treat justly those in our employ.

Ignoring of needy, lonely or unpopular persons in our own or the parish family, or in the neighbourhood; or unwillingness to minister to them. Insufficient attention to the religious and other needs of our family. Failure to fulfil our obligation of Christian missionary witness, or to take a full and informal part in the effort to make the Church's unity and holiness a manifest reality on earth.