There are three things that bother me with this phrase frequently heard in Twelve Step meetings:
It’s simply not true
It drains the unique significance out of a very important term for addiction
It masks the real work that we need to be doing with people, places and things
Acceptance often becomes the topic for a Discussion meeting in Twelve Step recovery groups.
While not expressly included in the Steps themselves, acceptance is seen as an important tool in recovery.
Click Play to Watch Gregg’s Video About the Importance of Acceptance in Twelve Step Recovery:
In the beginning of a meditation practice, we get some pretty big insights to the nature of the constantly thinking mind.
Four things you may immediately observe:
How many thoughts there are
How repetitive they are
How strong the pull is to take you into the full narrative of the thought
How the pull always takes you away from the present to the past or future
Meditation practice typically begins with some form of concentration practice to develop focused attention, or “one-pointedness.”
For a simple concentration practice, place your awareness on one thing, such as:
Something outside – candle flame, a mandala, a sound, a mantra
Something inside – mental image, mental mantra, sensation of breath
And then attempt to keep the awareness on that one thing.
“My sponsor told me to put my keys under the bed before going to sleep, and then in the morning when I’m down on my knees getting them to say a prayer to God to keep me away from a drink today.”
After hearing this story repeated numerous times in meetings, I began to wonder why I never seemed to hear more detailed stories of prayer in Step meetings or speaker or discussion meetings. “We shouldn’t be shy on this matter of prayer,” the Big Book says – but it seemed that perhaps we were.
You found your way to the shelf at the bookstore containing books on meditation. You hadn’t thought there would be so many! Picking a few interesting looking ones, you start thumbing through them and quickly realize they are not all saying the same thing. In fact, sometimes they seem to blatantly contradict each other. Now what?
If you continue with the books, you will come to realize that there are different forms or methods of meditation. The techniques and even the seeming goals may be different. In sorting through the books and teachings on meditation, I have found it helpful to get a larger perspective to provide a context for all the different practices.
All forms of meditation that I have studied seem to fall into three overall categories, based on what they are doing with thought in the mind. The forms are not so much inconsistent as they are just different. They are not lower or higher or better or worse. They are just different practices that all lead the practitioner from the normal outward focus of life to an inwardness of awareness.
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