Episode 245 -- November 3, 2022

Conscious Contact: Finding Your Way Forward

For many of us in recovery, spirituality can be unfamiliar territory. If we're working the 12 Steps, by the time we arrive at Step Eleven ("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") we may have already grappled with how spirituality and a higher power works in our life. Many of us might appreciate a bit more support and guidance, especially as we make big decisions.

In her book Mindfulness and the 12 Steps: Living Recovery in the Present Moment, Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart provides this kind of help, drawing from her personal experience and an impressive range of knowledge in psychology, spirituality, and the Twelve Steps. Jacobs-Stewart offers a fresh approach to developing a spiritual path through the Buddhist practice of mindfulness or bringing one's awareness to focus on the present moment.

In this excerpt, Jacobs-Stewart shares her story of working with a spiritual advisor and how the invitation to prayer and meditation at the heart of Step Eleven helped her face a life-changing choice. When we quiet our minds and sit with our dilemmas, we open ourselves to deeper understanding of, and "conscious contact" with, the Great Reality within.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God¿as we understood [God],¿praying only for knowledge of [God's] will for us and the power to carry that out.

In Step Eleven, we find that making conscious contact with Great Reality deep down within us provides a quiet peace, quenching, at last, our restless yearnings. A practice of prayer and meditation quickly becomes something we would "no more do without ... than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine."

But what are we supposed to do during these times of prayer and meditation? The founders of the Twelve Step program tell us to "ask simply that throughout the day God place in us the best understanding of [God's] will that we can have for that day, and that we be given the grace by which we may carry it out."

During my year at Nada Monastery, I met weekly with Father Michael Winterer, my spiritual director. These one-on-one meetings, and Sundays during the community volleyball game, were the only times talking was permitted. The rest of the hours of the day we kept silence, using hand signals when communication was absolutely necessary.

Meetings with Father Michael were often the highlight of my week. He lived in one of the biggest buildings on the grounds, called Saint John of the Cross Hermitage. (Some aspects of Catholicism are omnipresent.) It had two small rooms instead of one, a loft for sleeping, and a door on the bathroom. Everything was bare inside, nothing but a giant wooden crucifix hanging on the wall. Nature could be seen through the untreated windows, an expansive terrain of red dusty desert dirt, jade juniper bushes, and prickly cacti of every shape and size. That spring desert roses bloomed yellow, pink, and orange, covering the ground like a glorious Persian carpet.

Father Michael himself was a funny-looking guy, a walking anomaly. A skinny cowboy from Utah, he usually wore baggy, faded blue jeans, a white T-shirt under a gray plaid shirt, and a beat-up black-rimmed hat. He sported a scraggly red beard and mustache and thick wire-rimmed glasses that belonged on the nose of a college professor. He always seemed to be carrying books. Only when he donned his priest stole did he look like a cleric, a misfit at that.

Father Michael was funny, kind, humble, and wise. Working alongside the rest of us like a hired ranch hand, he acted as a true servant-leader. I respected him greatly. When I was twenty-four, Father Michael was one of the few kindhearted men I had ever known. I had lingering doubts about having a cowboy for a spiritual adviser. But when he spoke, they ceased. Father Michael was a learned contemplative teacher, with fifty years of study and practice under his belt. He listened with intense, twinkling eyes, leaning forward, not missing a word.

I was approaching the end of my time in the monastery, debating whether to stay longer and wondering if I should apply to become a novice with the Nada community. I wasn't sure about joining up, particularly ambivalent about the vow of celibacy. It sounded pretty grim. Then again, I was happier at Nada than I had ever been, despite the difficulties of a life of silence without TV or movies.

I sat in the worn, red stuffed chair. Across from me, Father Michael was in a roughly hewn, creaky wooden rocker. As usual, we met at eleven o'clock on a Friday morning. He listened as I presented my dilemma, tugging at his beard in thought, rocking ever so slightly in the chair.

"I've been thinking about whether to stay or not to stay at Nada," I said. "I want to stay; I like the routine and quietude. But I want to leave too.¿Having relationships with people is the hard part, for me, about being out in the world. But I'd like to find a partner, maybe get married and belong in a family. I don't know what to do. How do I know what God's will is for me?"

He sat for a few moments, pondering the question. He wasn't going to give a rote answer. He cleared his throat and said, "I think God speaks to us through the deepest desires of our heart. We have to be still enough to hear which desires are true and which ones are just passing through. True desires are the breath of the Holy Spirit, speaking to you and moving you. Hold your question in meditation, listen to your heart of hearts, and wait. That's how you discern God's will. It's the quiet voice beneath the noise of your mind, that ¿present moment' space between your thoughts about the past or the future."

To me, his words echoed the idea from the Twelve Steps of making "conscious contact" with the Great Reality within. If we don't have a way to calm the mind, it's nearly impossible to hear the quiet, still whispers of our heart of hearts.

I sat with my dilemma, not thinking so hard. Just breathing, noticing the cacophony of my mind. Listening for my heart to stir, nudged by the Great Reality of buddha-mind. Two months later, I decided to leave Nada and rejoin the world. Still not sure it was "God's will" for me, I just did the best I could at the time. Now I realize it was a wonderful choice.

Breathing into Prayer and Meditation

Father Michael illuminated the meaning of a passage from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: "Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God." Mindfulness fosters our ability to listen to our heart of hearts, to be in the moment with what's true. We begin to notice the difference in quality and tone between the voice of our neurosis and that of our deepest longings.

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, in his book Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen says this about meditation:

"So for a period of time each day, try to sit in [meditation] without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last¿instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant. First practice smoothly exhaling, then inhaling. Calmness of mind is beyond the end of your exhalation."

About the Author:
Thérèse Jacobs-Stewart, M.A., L.P., has been a practicing psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and international consultant for more than twenty-five years. In 2004, she founded Mind Roads Meditation Center, a neighborhood practice center integrating contemplative practices from both East and West and home of the Saint Paul, Minnesota, chapter of Twelve Steps and Mindfulness meetings.

Jacobs-Stewart has studied with Tibetan Buddhist monks in Nepal and India, Carmelite contemplatives in a monastery in Arizona, and the Soto Zen community at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, San Francisco, California.

© 2010 by Thérèse Jacobs-Stewar
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