Letting go of self with Step Eleven

Addictive Eaters Anonymous 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 it out. 

A member of Addictive Eaters Anonymous spoke to other AEA members about their experience of living the Twelve Steps. This blog is Part One of the edited transcript of one member's interview on Step Eleven. All the readings referred to come from Step Eleven in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous book.

Step Eleven talks about what to do if you are overtaken by stress or unhappiness, when things happen in life, and we become out of balance.  It talks about the channel being choked up with anger, fear, frustration, or misunderstanding. And we need to return to the surest help of all, our search for God's will, not our own, in a moment of stress. What is the key to getting from that place full of self and back to being that clear channel?

I would say the key is in two words:  “letting go”.  If you like, you can add letting go and letting God, but that is what I am doing when I am “letting go”. I have had a lot of experience of trying to do that, because the channel has often been choked up, by the sort of things you mentioned. This constant letting go is something I have only persevered with in recent times. The Big Book talks about pausing, so I pause and breathe. If I remember to pause and breathe, then all will be well. It brings me back to the present and right this moment, all is well. I suppose it may sound simplistic, but it works. I think that sobriety is really all about letting go. It is a constant, every day. Remembering to let go in all situations.

Step 11 talks about finding wisdom beyond our usual capability and increasingly finding a peace of mind, which can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances. Have you found that it takes more to knock you off that place of “all is well”? Do you find you're more able to have that sense of being okay, even when circumstances around you are difficult?

It is a constant thing. It is not like when I'm doing my prayers in the morning, I pause, breathe, and feel all is well, and then all is well for the rest of the day. I often need to pause and breathe, many times during the day. The things of life knock me off my perch, and I have to come back to my breathing. That is why I said earlier that, for me, sobriety is really about constantly letting go. It's not just letting go once, and then that's it. It's coming back and needing to let go again and again. It is a constant process of letting go.

Is it not just letting go of difficulties but letting go of good things as well?

Absolutely. If I come back to just right now, all is well, and that includes all the things around me, whatever they are. All is well, regardless of what is going on, good and bad. All is well. And I'm always being looked after.

Is this your conscious contact with God that you're describing? And is that God working through you in the all-is-well moments?

Yes, I think so. It is like, with the pausing and breathing, I'm clearing that channel to God and helping to get myself out of the way. So I've got a closer connection to God and can be more useful to other people, which is what sobriety is all about.

Step 11 talks here how “… his affairs have taken remarkable and unexpected turns for the better as he tried to improve his conscious contact with God. He will also report that out of every season of grief or suffering, when the hand of God seemed heavy, or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered. And finally, inescapably, the conviction came that God does move in mysterious ways His wonders to perform” (Pg. 105). 

What comes to mind when I hear you read this is that all things work together for good. I had a lot of horrendous years of eating and of misery. But today, that is my greatest strength. And it is through all that eating and all that hell that I went through, that I came into this fellowship, found this programme and conscious contact with my Higher power, and that I have the life that I have today. It is all due to that. So my experience, in the disease and in sobriety too, is my greatest strength. It has all helped to bring me to the place where I am today. And I believe all through that time, my Higher Power was looking after me. The disease was a massive block to the channel between myself and my Higher Power, but I believe my Higher Power was still taking care of me. However, I could not form a connection with a Higher Power while I was still eating and living in the disease.

Step 11 talks about one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. “We no longer live in a hostile world, no longer lost and frightened and purposeless” (Pg. 105).  

For me, that sense of belonging comes a lot through meditation. When I was eating, I was always separate from the world. It was always the world over there, me over here, and how do I join the world? When I came into the fellowship and abandoned myself to the programme, then it was all about the members of the fellowship, but I had difficulty with everyone else because they didn't get me like the people in AEA got me. But now, it is all one, my life is all one. I don't have to be in meetings to feel like I belong. I have a sense of belonging in the world. There are a whole lot of things going on in the world that are upsetting that I have to let go of. I can't dwell on those things. I have to hand those over to God, like I have to hand over my own life to God. And life happens. I've had difficult things happen in my life in sobriety. But I'm being looked after, even during the difficult things, maybe especially during them. I don't have to wait for the difficult things to pass, and then maybe I'll be looked after. I've been looked after all the way through. For me, being in this fellowship has been a massive part of that. I have found my people here. And in finding I belong here, it has helped me feel a sense of belonging in the world around me.