The Twelve Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous: Step Eleven

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

The Twelve Steps are a spiritual experience.

Through the steps, I have realized that all humans are spiritual beings. I must accept, love, and nurture my spiritual self as much as I accept, love, and nurture my physical, emotional, intellectual, and social self.

I am coming to realize that unless I actively nurture my spiritual self, all the other parts of myself will suffer. To take care of myself, I must attend to all my needs, including my spiritual needs. By attending to my spiritual needs, I go a long way toward attending to all my other needs. This is a paradox of recovery.

As a spiritual being, then, I have sought spiritual nurturing and sustenance from a Higher Power, a Spiritual Being I choose to call God. For me, this Spiritual Being is and is not the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.

For most of my life, I did not know God as a Spiritual Being. I only knew God as a product of my religious upbringing and training. I only knew a God that was someone else's interpretation of God. Mine was a second-hand god that fit the Sunday-school descriptions of a stern old man on a throne in the sky, zapping sinners with thunder and requiring all followers to become rule-bound, shame-bound, religious zombies. I didn't think God took any real personal interest in me, other than to make sure I was living "by the book" no matter what kind of living hell that might create in my life.

But by God's grace, I came to know God as a Spiritual Person. I came to realize that God was always intensely interested in me. God was always helping me. God has a plan especially for my life. I came to know God as an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing FRIEND. Someone who loved me and longed for me to love myself as much.

I came to know God as a Spiritual Friend through prayer and meditation. I started out with the Judeo-Christian concept of God I knew, and gradually opened my mind and my eyes to discovering more about God. The more I discovered about God, the more I discovered about myself. To know God is to know myself better, because God created me. The better I know God, the better I know myself and God's will for my life.

I discovered that my entire life is a prayer. I don't have to be in a church building to pray. I don't have to be on my knees to pray. My every waking moment, my every action, my every word is a prayer—a humble offering to God of my will in favor of God's will.

Every day is a meditation to God, because I discovered that God is always present. God is a Spiritual Being and I am a Spiritual Being. God is inside me, outside me, all around me. God is me and i am God, because I am part of God's creation. God's essence has been imparted into me, because I am of God—I am an expression of God's creative power—unique, valuable, and worthwhile. I am an integral part of God's masterpiece in the making.

What is true of me is true of every single human being.

Yes, this is God as I understand God. Yes, this is me, as I understand myself at this moment in time.

The process of my knowing God is a conscious process. That is, knowing God is a deliberate choice and action in which I engage. Previously, my knowledge of God had been unconscious, second-hand knowledge. Now, I have direct contact with God, direct experience of being with God, first-hand intimacy with God. Through the steps, I have learned to walk with God.

What do I pray about? I pray exclusively about God's will for my life.

Little by little, God is making His will known to me. I consciously surrender my will to God's and in so doing, make room in my life for God to reveal more of Himself and more of His will. For me, God's will is that I humbly defer to God's way, God's will, God's power, God's direction, and God's wisdom.

God's will is also that I freely admit God's control of my life.

God's will for me is as infinite as God. I am certain I have only seen one small piece of the whole puzzle. But God's will for me is to trust God. God's will for me is serenity and happiness and peace. God's will for me is wonderful, extraordinary, beautiful, and amazing.

I no longer worry about figuring out how to carry out God's will. God will carry out God's will through me, in God's time, by God's power, for God's glory. God's will for me is that I become a channel through which God's will is done, on earth, as it is in Heaven.

next: The Twelve Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous Step Twelve