“Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking” (Page 86, Big Book)
Does God talk to me in Step Eleven?
To come at the role of God in Step Eleven, let’s look at the bigger context of Step Eleven.
What I am asked to do in Step Eleven is think. That’s the ‘meditation bit’, which, in 1939, did not denote transcendental meditation but deliberate, directed thought.
How do I know? According to the Book itself, I’m to ask God to direct my thinking.
There might be an inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision, but these are also categories of thought, elements of a thought process, or nodes in the thought process. They’re not a substitute for thought. I’m not asking God to think for me and present me with the results, like cook who has made the dinner and had the footman bring it up. One conceit is that I am going to receive direct revelations from God, on a silver platter. Occasionally, perhaps, but this is not the rule.
I’m not a high priest. I don’t have a special relationship with God. I do not have a secret door to the secrets of the universe.
99.9% of what I need for the day, I actually know already: it is a matter of retrieving knowledge, experience, and understanding and bringing them to bear on the situation at hand to generate the right attitudes and actions of the day. God is the guider of this. God does seem to cause me to make connections between this and that, to apply particular observations in unexpected ways, but the raw material is already there. God’s helping me select from the warehouse rather than dropping down fresh pearls from heaven.
After I had taken the Steps, which, in the Big Book, on pages 67 and 68, gave me full and final solutions to all resentment and fear forever, I would still ‘have’ resentments and fears and brandish them as unsolved, unsolvable, knotty problems, gammy legs, war wounds, the inevitable curse of fallen man. The truth is, the answer was there already. Drop the charges and the resentment goes; drop the demands and the fear goes. ‘Thy will be done!’ is not a complicated idea: it means ‘my will not be done’; it means renunciation. I did not need therapy, shadow work, or the clairvoyance. I needed to drop my petulance and drop my entitlement. God gave me the answer in 1939.
Another conceit is that, if I write, God will write through my pen, so I had better not edit it. It’s rare that the inspiration, intuitive thought, or decision should be applied immediately, without further consideration, without articulation with other inspirations, intuitive thoughts or decisions, without consultation, without adaptation to the circumstances. When I have a good idea, I usually sit on it for a while. When there is a decision to make, three to six months is my usual timeframe.