Seeking To Improve Conscious Contact with My Higher Power.

Two weeks ago, upon the urging of a program friend, I went to the non-denominational church she attends, and was delighted to discover that the female pastor sounds just like 12-Step in her talks. She's also wonderfully funny, and today I was in fits of laughter, while also having tears in my eyes as she spoke.

She talked about how if we will take the first step onto a new journey, if we will show our willingness with just that one step, our Higher Power will carry us forward a great distance. Sometimes a door opens, we step through it, then immediately change our mind and turn, wanting to go back through the door, but it's now closed, and we have no choice but to stay stuck on the sill, or step forward into the unknown.

I was thinking of the decision I made to leave my marriage after 17 years, and how afraid I was to strike out on my own. I moved back here, to the city I have loved since first coming here at the age of 21 - 34 years ago. I had been living elsewhere for 16 years, yet I wasn't back a day before I felt that I had come home. This is my home, this small city on the ocean. I'm living within a ten-minute walk to the seawall, and when I go down to the sea, I feel enormous gratitude that I made that decision to come home.

In not quite 9 months I have made a life for myself down here which is so much more than I ever imagined possible in a short time. I have friends who light up at the sight of me, I have a suuny bright apartment with a glorious view of the city's largest park, a mere 3 blocks away, room to garden on the rooftop patio, meetings where I am appreciated and loved, and best of all, peace of mind.

During the last years of my marriage, I didn't realise how living with an angry alcoholic was destroying my ability to feel good about myself. It wasn't until I took the first step the pastor spoke of this morning, and was carried to this place, this moment, that I understand more fully just what I was giving up each day that I stayed with someone who was so detrimental to my spiritual well-being.

I met a program friend at church this morning, and we were joking after the service, that sometimes it doesn't feel like being carried along, so much as it feels like being snatched up by a vacuum cleaner. But if we can trust the process, and trust our Higher Power, we will arrive in a peaceful place again.

Yesterday, on my way back from the library, I stopped into the Cathedral one block up the street from my place, and was thrilled to discover that the organist was practising - oh, what a glorious sound! I love big church organs, and this one is enormous, and I sat for 15 or so minutes in a church empty of anyone but me and two other people transfixed by music. What a gift.

Emotional Support.

Where do you get yours? In speaking to my new sponsor iu this city, I replied that my emotional support comes from my Higher Power. That knowledge is what made it possible for me to risk a massive change in my life.

I have been being looked after since long before I knew I needed any care.

Divine Intervention

This weekend I had an experience which was profoundly disturbing, yet deeply indicative of the reality that when I seek to "improve my conscious contact with my Higher Power"  amazing things will take place. I apologise for sounding so mystical, but I can't write about it here, because I don't want to invade the privacy of the friend involved - suffice it to say that listening to my Higher Power brings about hard, painful work and incredibly meaningful change.

More Will Be Revealed.

It's a cliche to say that people reveal the depths of their character during painful times, or times of crisis. My spouse has revealed himself to me with the death of my friend, and I'm having some difficulty accepting it. I couldn't understand why this was, until this morning, when I realised that this was the smashing of my last illusion about him. That illusion has carried me through difficult learning experiences, and been of comfort to me when I was struggling, but it was an illusion, nothing more.

He has always been precisely who he is, it is I who have made him into someone else in my thinking.

A friend jokes that she hates realisations because they always bring change, and she can't go back to her previous state of "not-knowing." I've known and felt that there was a change coming for me, and I've been spending more of my time in working 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 and the power to carry that out."

I've been seeking that inward silent peace, and achieving it for longer periods, but the unexpected result inherent in that peace, is a clearer understanding. This may come to me as a slow dawning, or I may be granted an understanding which feels like a sharp slap to the face -  it stings. This one is a stinger, I'm afraid, and I can't say I like it much, but I don't have to, I have only to accept. To rub the side of my face, and while trying to soothe the sting, thank my Higher Power for having granted it to me. Mostly, I've only been able to be grateful for the painful slapping realisations in retrospect, but I'm making the effort to get there much sooner, and be grateful while the pain is still present.

Conscious Contact

Step 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.

I have, at various times in my recovery, been trudging through the darkness of my disbelief/slogging through my Higher Power's will for me/acting as if to get me through. In the early years, I had to listen to the oldtimers and choose to keep going when I couldn't see a way forward, because not only did I believe what they told me with such conviction, but it was also demonstrated in their calm serenity.

This is a "continuing action" Step - I need to practise this on a daily basis, if I want to keep the lines open, my head clear, and my joy fresh.

I used to think that I had to have a set ritual to talk to my Higher Power. Now, I understand that just as:

"...there are no "musts" in Al-Anon.."

...there are no requirements or barriers to my conscious contact with my Higher Power. I can reach out when I'm out walking beside the ocean with my dogs, and I can reach out just as effectively, standing with both hands in a sink full of hot water and suds, doing dishes.

My Higher Power is always there, close to me, accessible. I am the one who steps away. That's why this Step is necessary - to remind me that: "God is a gentleman - he doesn't go where he's not invited." I have found this to be entirely true, in my life. I am the one who must open the door to self and issue the invitation - my Higher Power isn't going to barge in unasked. When I've been feeling contrary and willful, wanting to do it "my way" - that's just what I've been allowed to do, and I've rarely found the result to be quite the perfection I'd conjured up in my stubborn imaginings.

I have only to seek to improve my conscious contact, and I will feel it. But I must seek. Standing back from the closed door wailing about my loneliness doesn't work, I have to swallow my pride, climb down from my victim/martyr plinth, wrestle the door open, and humbly ask for what it is that I need. I have only to ask, and I will find comfort.

Asking For Guidance.

Recently,  I was seated at a meeting, with my legs crossed at the knee, and leaned over to grab my purse from under my chair. For one heart-stopping second, I felt myself going over - and because of my position, I'd have landed on my head. I'm not sure if I flung one arm backwards, and that changed my centre of gravity, but whatever the reason, I managed to regain my balance, and sat up, feeling slightly shaken, as one does after a close call of this type.

I learned a good lesson from that near-miss; when seated on a chair without arms, don't try to lean sideways with my legs crossed at the knee.

Today I learned another good lesson. Must be my week for them.

 I took the dogs out today, to my favourite park, which runs along the coastline. The path runs along the cliff beside the sea, for part of the time, and through tall trees and heavy bush the rest of the trail. It's peaceful, and secluded. We've seen eagles, herons, otters, and sea lions. on various visits.

I was walking along, enjoying the sunshine, and the brisk tangy sea air, while part of my mind was involved in thinking thinking thinking, getting ever more dispirited and irritated (and yes, "unreasonable without knowing it," some of that, too.) I decided to wrest my mind back to the moment, and recalled what my new sponsor had said to me earlier in the week: "Don't forget to pray for guidance."

I had forgotten. Completely. I was, in that moment, aware that I haven't been practising Step Eleven enough lately - "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." Hence my disordered brain, and being right back at Step One.
Again.
And again and again and again.
Sheesh. I am a slow learner.

I began to pray for guidance, and received it in the first moment of asking. Clearly. No fuzziness, no vagueness, no way I could make that into something else, it was whacked down upon the table in my mind, with a certain ... emphasis.

When I got home, I called a friend I've made since moving here - I love talking program to her, because she makes me laugh so hard while she is roasting my toes at the fire.

True to form, a few minutes into our conversation, and she zeroed in on my discontent, asking sardonic questions which had me doubled over laughing. We are a lot alike, this friend and I - that similarity lets us read each other easily - and she won't hesitate to speak her mind.  She mentioned something that I really liked, which she had heard at a meeting:

"When I'm angry, I'm being self-absorbed."

I like that. I can't say I've ever looked at it like that, but I can already tell I'm going to find it helpful, just by the way it resonated with me, when she said it.

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."

It was a long and perilous journey for me, to arrive not at a place from which I could meet my Higher Power, because He was always right there with me, but a place from which I could recognise my need for a connection with God. As long as I was bound and determined to achieve my own ends by my own means, I was consigned to a constant low-level misery, which ran in the background of my life like the hum of an appliance - so familiar, so "normal," that most times, it escaped my notice.

During times of stress, that sound would swell to a roar which drowned out all my attempts to muffle or silence it. Then,  life would settle back into the rut, and the misery would once again diminish to an almost-unheard level. I had no concept of how to deal with it, how to eradicate it, or even, most times, that it was there at all.

It was through working the Twelve Steps that I became aware of my hunger for a deeper meaning, and a spiritual life. I thought God could only be accessed through organised religion, with which I had no patience, having had a rather severe form rammed down my throat as a small child, with a side order of abuse.

My first sponsor suggested I try talking to God as I would to a close and valued friend. (I've written elsewhere on this blog about the evolution of my prayers.) I began in profound doubt, but was willing to try anything, so was willing to "act as if."

My spiritual awakening was instant and irrevocable. Once I believed, there was no going back to my original state. Which isn't to say I haven't railed and cursed at my Higher Power when His will runs directly counter to my own, or when those I love have been taken from me. But I know He hears me, understands me, forgives me, and loves me. I know that once I'm finished with my arguments or protestations, and I accept that this is His will, that I can then pray for "the power to carry that out." and it too, will be given to me. We aren't asked to carry that out alone, we are told that we have a source of strength and power with us always, just waiting to be accessed.

From As We Understood, page 200:

"When we turn to God, we find He has been facing us all the time."

Step Eleven.

"Sought through prayer and meditation to increase 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."

In my early days in Al-Anon, this Step filled me with dread. My only experience with faith had been through the organised religion of my childhood. My memories of those 2 hours on Sunday mornings were of tedious monotony. I loathed church.

Because of this, I was very resistant to the spiritual aspects of program. I didn't believe in a Higher Power. I will always be grateful to the wisdom of 12-step; I was allowed to relax into "as we understood Him" and not feel as if I was always fighting off someone else's beliefs being foisted upon me. I could take what I liked and leave the rest.

I came to spirituality after I'd been in Al-Anon for quite a while. I prayed in desperation, to a Being I wasn't so sure I believed in, and my prayer was answered with a warm sense of peace which washed down over me like a wave, sweeping all of my pain, fears and worries away, leaving me serene.

(This didn't last, of course, since I gathered them all up a short while later, and commenced once again to carry them, bent under their weight, and complaining about the load.)

I had been permitted to arrive at my first spiritual awakening at my own speed, with no-one behind me shoving, directing or enforcing. No rules about what I had to say, no laws about where I could seek. Just a suggestion that I'd be better off if I took my ego out of the equation: "....praying only for the knowledge of His will for us..."

Al-Anon allows each of us, the space and time, to find our own way to God.