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.”
By this point, we have established contact with a higher power and He has removed certain glaring defect from our character; defects that not too very long ago made it impossible for us to coexist with our fellow human beings. The creator of all things has drawn near to us and we have been transformed. Of course, this initial transformation—some describe it as a “pink cloud”—requires spiritual growth to maintain. We must evolve into the creatures that our Power would have us be. It is, very often, unclear to us what exactly we are to become. In essence, we are asked to discern what the Creator of the cosmos has planned for each of us. This is no small task. But the, how do we go about it then?
The easy answer is that we maintain contact with God through the conduits of prayer and meditation. These are perhaps the most direct pathways to that power which has rendered us sober. The actual practice of prayer and meditation is quite another thing. Because we alcoholics like to over-complicate even the simplest of tasks; the First 100 have laid out a map
for us to follow. While we may be tempted into over-stepping our spirituality by embracing all manner of current novelty in prayer, there is no substitute for what actually works. The Twelve Steps are based on what works. Therefore, we go into action…
It is no more than an hour or so after that first meeting that we, as newcomers, are exposed to the power of prayer. The Serenity Prayer is a powerful invocation of the Great Spirit as well as an admonition for us to be humble before Him. Prayers are petitions and prayer lifts our hearts in thanksgiving. They are the human spirit’s song to the Creator in times of
happiness and in times of sorrow. Prayer is our calling out to the only Power that can make us whole again.
Meditation, on the other hand, is a different aspect of our multi-faceted spirituality. While in prayer we ask God to reveal His will for us that day, it is in meditation
that we derive what exactly that may be. It is in meditation we try to listen for God’s often very subtle communications.
