Hi everyone. I hope all is well. I'm hoping someone can help me. I hear people in AA meetings talk about how they meditate in the morning and evening. I've tried looking online but am still confused. What type of meditation is common with AA? I know everyone has a different higher power and mine is God. I don't know if that makes any difference. Can someone please point me in the right direction? If there are any mp3's or podcasts I could listen to would be great. Thank you very much. :)
Listening to any sort of waterfall, meditation tapes are helpful, japanese flutes etc, go to any eastern philosophy, self help, spiritual store and there will be a wide selection, the links to the book above helped me more then I can say, meditation has innumerable health benefits, when living our lives our autonomous nervous systems are constantly triggered, our "fight or flight" response, yet we neither fight nor flee, leading us to internalize these feelings, adrenaline etc into our systems and we call it "stress" which lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, anxiety attacks, the list is endless, it's like every time something happens we put air in our tires until one day the tires pop, the ride is super bumpy, we are hypervigilant and hypersensitive, and we don't even know, because it's our "normal" when we meditate it's like we let the air out of our tires, our heart rate goes down, our blood pressure drops, and it helps with mental -and- physical health
we also learn how to "allow" thoughts to pass through our mind without attaching to them, since we can't "shut off" our mind, we learn to let the thoughts go by like the New York Stock Exchange, and the thoughts only "harm" us if we take them down and nurture them, we learn to ignore our "old tapes" that keep playing in our mind, by recognizing them, oh it's you, rather then listening the the stories in our mind, we learn to watch them go by harmlessly
I think it's the most neglected but one of the most important disciplines in the program
1. Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Deeply relax all your muscles, beginning at your feet and progressing up to your face. Keep them relaxed.
4. Breathe through your nose. Become aware of your breathing. As you breathe out, say the word, "one"*, silently to yourself. For example, breathe in ... out, "one",- in .. out, "one", etc. Breathe easily and naturally.
5. Continue for 10 to 20 minutes. You may open your eyes to check the time, but do not use an alarm. When you finish, sit quietly for several minutes, at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened. Do not stand up for a few minutes.
6. Do not worry about whether you are successful in achieving a deep level of relaxation. Maintain a passive attitude and permit relaxation to occur at its own pace. When distracting thoughts occur, try to ignore them by not dwelling upon them and return to repeating "one."
With practice, the response should come with little effort. Practice the technique once or twice daily, but not within two hours after any meal, since the digestive processes seem to interfere with the elicitation of the Relaxation Response.
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Hi Nicky, I just came back from a holiday in Australia, and in the good town of Woy Woy I found this little shop called the Ngostic Hemporium. I asked the folks there what Gnostic meant and the told me "knowledge through experience" which describes my journey in spirituality to a tee. Anyway, this little shop had loads of meditation material, there must be similar shops somewhere in your part of the world. Meditation is not my strong point because one of my character defects is Sloth (faint hearted in matters that are morally or spiritually difficult) but I have heard it said that prayer is asking for guidance and meditiation is listening for the answer.
There may also be 11 step meditation groups you can go to. We have one here which I attended just a couple of weeks ago and I have to say it was a great experience. Meditating with others, I find, seems easier than on you own, at least for a start. I have also noticed there are some people around the fellowship who seem to have a real gift in this area, perhaps you can talk to one of them.
I have met others like me who don't have much luck with formal meditation sessions. We seem to have an ongoing conversation with our HP right through the day, constantly asking Him to remove stupid thoughts, to send us the right thought or action, to help us with decisions and we seem to get through OK. One thing is for sure, the early AA's thought meditation of vital importance, and they new a thing or two about recovery. They used to emphasise step work, Big Book study and meditation in the early days. Meetings as we know them came along a bit later.
I suppose there is no right or wrong way of meditating. The important thing is that we are willing to try and do God's will. It is in the trying that we succeed. Best of luck, MikeH.
Fyne Spirit wrote:I suppose there is no right or wrong way of meditating.
Good post Fyne, you hit things I left out
There is correct and incorrect ways to meditate as it were, but the correct methods are many, as in infinite, in addition to the "disciplined methods" like staring in a candle, guided meditation, chanting mantras etc there is also playing music, listening to music, just walking, running, driving in the country, when you realize you have been driving for an hour and dont remember any of it, sitting in an easy chair with your eyes closed, taking a particularly significant line for a spiritual book or prayer and chewing on it for 15-20 minutes while sitting with your eyes closed etc, sitting on the beach listening to the waves, hiking on trails in the country, so many ways, but there are -measurable- benefits from doing something that is effective
if it lowers your blood pressure and heartrate and re-aligns your mind to be in tune with God's will it's "correct" I think
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Thanks...for the topic. What is prayer and what is meditation? Very Good question. Prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening for God's reply. That's how I would respond to your inquiry.
Lets face it, We all struggle through various trials and tribulations in life, causing us to question many things including the divinity of a higher power.
Waiting for further instructions from anyone, though, is hard for us to handle, especially if it involves waiting on our higher power. However, we must before we respond hastily to any situation big and small. And that's where Meditation comes in.
It not only provides us with the privilege of knowing God personally, but it also gives us the ability to respond harmoniously to his divine calling. Meditation, not only provokes but also establishes God's divine guidance for our lives and can awaken our senses to a new level of consciousness, far beyond the scope of AA. Call it, a gradual increase of spiritual awareness that can bring about a conversion of faith for many years to come.
That's my interpretation of the 11th step Nicky. I hope this helps...
~God bless~
-- Edited by Mr_David on Monday 22nd of August 2011 03:44:55 AM
Aloha Nicky. Great post and I hope more of the membership responds because that is one way we learn. Part of my journey has been thru organized religion and the practice of a certain sect or belief and I learned the basic discription of meditation there of which I was never that good at practicing..."a sustained focus on a spiritual truth over a defined period of time". Wallah and then was never good at it as in the practice I use to put myself to sleep LOL. I used to be better at a sustained focus on a certain label of booze and arrive at the same result only it would take me longer.
Then I get into recovery; first thru the doors of the Al-Anon Family Groups which is for the family, friends and associates of alcoholics (family and the women I choose to marry) and find myself with some pretty awesome sponsorship one of which got me to look at meditation practice. We talked and I gave him the above definition of mine. He asked me if I thought that I could meditate for 24/7 and I thought he was deaf and daft which I'm sure he read right off. He clarified for me that perhaps if I found a spiritual truth simple enough to focus on I would be able to do it and gave me two weeks to find one. I assumed that he was helping me with something he already was able to do and I was curious so I did the homework and two weeks later reported to him that I agreed with him that it could be done and I had already found the spiritual truth to do it with. In fact when I found the truth the meditation started and hasn't stopped yet. The spiritual truth? "God Is". No matter what is going on in my life now I have been able to hold that focus and awareness ever since I was brought to it. I'm doing it right now in fact. Try it. Keep coming back.
LOOK AT MY POST "WHY I DO NOT DRINK" THAT IS MY MEDICINE AND MEDITATION.I AM NEW HERE TO AND PROBABLY LIKE EVRYTHING ELSE I WILL BECOME ADDICTED TO IT...BUT THAT IS A NICE ADDICTION! GODBLESS XOXOXO
When first learning to meditate, the guided meditations really helped me. The Australian Meditation Society has MP3s you can download for free: http://download.meditation.org.au/guidedmeditations.asp
