Gifts From God – Step 11 Communication (Part 1)

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A quick reminder of my version of step eleven: “I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.”

Step eleven is the second of the three maintenance steps. I see step eleven as having four main parts, and that is how we’ll look at this step in this, and the next three episodes. In this part, part one, I would like to speak about what prayer and meditation mean to me. These episodes, rather than being about the steps themselves, have to do with the gifts that we received from God in conjunction with the steps. I have assigned to this particular step, the gift of communication.

This step has prompted me to reconsider exactly what it is I think about prayer. Of course, I learned a lot about prayer as a Catholic, but most of the prayers were memorized words that I usually recited without thinking much about their content. I eventually let go of that form of prayer as I felt that my prayers should be a reflection of those things I was thinking and wanted to say to God. Eventually, as my idea of my relationship with God changed, I decided that for me, prayer and meditation did not involve my active participation at all. If you believe, as I do, that God is all-powerful, always present, and all knowing, well, I what I think that He doesn’t already know everything I am about to say! So my communication with God has become a one-way communication as God, (or my Spirit), sends influencing knowledge my way, and my job is to listen and, through my Spirit, try to interpret what is being said to me. I believe this is still communication, but maybe I should call it one-way communication on a spiritual level. In any event, I am certainly looking forward to these next four episodes.