I’ve been thinking about the still, small voice that I've mentioned in previous posts. Call it our conscience, intuition, or what our literature describes as our will rightly aligned...

When I first entered recovery I was very concrete, and a little confused - a voice? Still and small? Coming out from under the influence of my drug of choice, hearing a voice wasn’t a good thing. I remember my meth cook boyfriend sitting me down one day when I was new to that world, saying, “I don’t know where you’re going with this thing, but if you stay with it, there will come a time when you may see things or hear things that aren’t really there.” As if I had a choice of where I was going with it. Once I had a taste of that stuff, there was nowhere to go but the bottom, and thank God I lived to hit it. But, he was trying to warn me, and went on to talk about the self-care I should consider, were I a rational person in charge of my addiction (i.e. sleep when I could, eat, know that if someone wanted my attention it would be obvious - that kind of thing).

I took the fore-warning about hallucinations and filed it away in the “this doesn't apply to me” box, along  with fears of losing my relationship, the belief that the crusty old pharmacist would always sell me syringes because I’d never look like the gnarled addicts I saw in line ahead of me at the store, and the firmly entrenched belief that life was too big for me to face alone or sober.

When I did start hearing voices, those subtle whispers and murmurs that made me think someone was in the next room or the basement, the memory of that warning-conversation surfaced, but was overcome by what I thought was the reality of someone on the roof or peering in through the peephole. I tried to reason with myself, all the while nailing blankets over the windows. All of them.

And then, recovery, and the instruction that my intuition was meant to guide me, not lead me astray. I discovered the big difference between self-will and Higher Power’s will, and the benefits of sitting still long enough to know what it was that I really thought and felt about a situation. Listening for the still small voice isn’t rocket science, but it does involve calming my heart and mind, no easy task - though that does come more naturally with years of practice. What I’ve found is that the still small voice isn’t even necessarily a voice. For me, it is more a knowing, a quiet sense of a direction or a decision. In retrospect, I always possessed that quiet direction, but often did my best to outrun it, or silence the inner wisdom because it usually meant taking a step outside of my  small and neatly confined comfort zone.

In Step 11 we are instructed to seek our Higher Power’s will for us, through prayer and meditation - actively listening for guidance. What I’m realizing is that prayer and meditation isn’t about the how - it doesn’t matter if you pray with your forehead on the ground, or with the sign of the cross; meditate in the lotus position, or like me, sitting in the comfortable little chair where I used to shoot dope. Prayer and meditation is about discipline, about the practice of remembering, even if just for those few moments, to clear my busy mind in order to align my will with Creator’s.

Last week I had a specific plan of how I was going to save the day for someone I care about. By stepping away from the issue at hand, we both came to the conclusion that another course was called for.  Pause. Waiting is an action. Think, think, think. All good suggestions for someone who has a history of leaping before I looked.

Back in the day when the Big Book was written, meditation wasn’t referring to the eastern practice we think of, but meant reading spiritual literature and reflecting on what it meant to us. I start and end my day with daily readers, taking a few moments in an effort to quiet the internal chatter. The still, small voice is never a shout. It's never a "NOW!" or a "hurry up." My inner knowing is just that - wisdom, born of experience and of participation in the vast recovery network. I'm grateful today, for the Steps working in my life, for recovery, for this chance to connect on a cold November afternoon.

How do you practice Step 11? How do you quiet your mind in order to notice your intuition and inner guidance?