Step 11 - 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 that out.

If we are to seek for an improvement in our conscious contact with God as we understand him, through prayer and meditation, we need to understand prayer and meditation. Prayer and meditation can take on many forms, from a pre-set time to the casual reflection on a matter. Meditating on a thought can also be a long process, considering viewpoints, actions or thoughts over a period of time. these thoughts can very well evolve as we consider them, and take on new meanings and implications as we go ahead with our lives.

If we are to seek through prayer and meditation to improve our contact with God, it reasons that we may not have contact with God to begin with, or very poor contact, or may not even realize that the contact exists. We are after all hoping to improve our contact.

Also note that we are seeking a limited thing...knowelge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Is it possible that we seek this knowledge and never find it. Is this something we can never find, and will always be there for us to seek. An ongoing exercise in growth, an experience (or a task) that may never be completed.

We need to realize that the step does not state that if we fail to improve our contact with God we have failed. The idea is to try to improve our contact. It is a journey of growth, and we may not ever reach the end of the journey. Is the object of this step to exercise our thoughts and abilities?

The phrase of "God as we understand Him", enables those of us with differing concepts, and beliefs to have a common ground. It is not the typical Judeo-Christian view of God that we must accept. Nor is it any other pre-conceived notion of God that we are expected to follow.

It is God as we understand him. Our own personal vision of God, even if we are not totally sure of ourselves, a non-complete or somewhat vague understanding is acceptable, as long as we are able to use this understanding as a focal point for our thoughts, prayers, and meditation. If we are comfortable with our understanding (even if it is not rock solid) then we are able to work towards improving it.

Note also that we only seek knowledge of his will (the knowledge of its existence), and the power to carry it out. Not for Him to accomplish these matters for us. This is for us to do. We cannot expect these things to be accomplished if we do not work at them.

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