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.
—Step 11 of the Twelve Steps
“Be still, and know that I am God.”
—Psalm 46:10
“You must put aside your old self which has been corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution.”
—Ephesians 4:22–23
“In the morning, long before dawn, he got up, left the house, and went off to a lonely place to pray.”
—Mark 1:35
Let me tell you something very important, and something that Step 11 was able to recognize quite well. The word prayer, which Bill Wilson rightly juxtaposes with the word meditation, is a code word for an entirely different way of processing life. When you “pray,” you are supposed to take off one “thinking cap” and put on another “thinking cap” that will move you from an egocentric perspective to a soul-centric perspective. Although it is not really “thinking” at all, but what Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell calls the genius of “thinking without thinking.”
I call the first perspective “the calculating mind,” and I call the second perspective “the contemplative mind.”1 These are two entirely different types of software, and since the first one is almost totally and always in control, and has become your only operative hardware, you have to be carefully taught how to pray, which is exactly what the disciples asked of Jesus, “Lord, teach us how to pray” (Luke 11:1). If you do not learn how to pray, and change “your mind...by a spiritual revolution,” as Ephesians says above, you will try to process the big five human issues (love, death, suffering, God, and infinity) with utterly inadequate software. It won’t get you very far.
Because we have not been teaching people how to switch this receiver station, we are producing a lot of neurotic and angry behavior as people cannot deal with these central issues. One has to go through some initial withdrawal pains to switch processors, and this is why prayer takes some initial “work” to learn how to do that. Once Western people can get rid of any prejudices against Buddhism, they must be honest enough to admit that true Buddhists tend to be much more disciplined and honest about this switching of “thinking caps.”
The first mind sees everything through the lens of its own private needs and hurts, angers, and memories. It is too small a lens to see truthfully or wisely or deeply. I am sure you know that most people do not see things as they are, they see things as they are! Take that as a given. So most spiritual traditions and religions taught prayer in some form; but at its truest, it was always an alternative processing system. For many, if not most, Christian believers, however, it became a pious practice or exercise that you carried out with the same old mind and from your usual self-centered position. This practice was supposed to “please” God somehow. God needed us to talk to Him or Her, I guess. Prayer was something you did when you otherwise felt helpless, but it was not actually a positive widening of your lens for a better picture, which is the whole point.Being Willing to Let God Change You
In what is commonly called prayer, you and your hurts, needs, and perspectives are still the central reference point, but now you have decided to invite a Major Power in to help you with your already determined solution. God can help you get what you want, which is still a self-centered desire, instead of God’s much better role—which is to help you know what you really desire (Luke 11:13; Matthew 7:11). It always takes a bit of time to widen the lens, and therefore the screen, of life. One goes through serious withdrawal pains for a while until the screen is widened to a high-definition screen. It is work to learn how to pray, largely the work of emptying the mind and filling the heart. That is all of prayer in one concise and truthful phrase!
At early-stage praying, there has usually been no real “renouncing” of the small and passing self (Mark 8:34), so it is not yet the infinite prayer of the Great Body of Christ, but the very finite prayer of a small “body” that is trying to win, succeed, and take control—with a little help from a Friend. God cannot directly answer such prayers, because frankly, they are usually for the wrong thing and from the wrong self, although we do not know that yet.
In short, prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us, or as Step 11 says, “praying only for the knowledge of his will.” Jesus goes so far as to say that true prayer is always answered (Matthew 7:7–11). Now we all know that is not factually true—unless he is talking about prayer in the sense that I am trying to describe it. If you are able to switch minds to the mind of Christ, your prayer has already been answered! That new mind knows, understands, accepts, and sees correctly, widely, and wisely. Its prayers are always answered because they are, in fact, the prayers of God too.
True prayer is always about getting the “who” right. Who is doing the praying? You or God in you? Little you or the Christ Consciousness? The contemplative mind prays from a different sense of Who–I–am. It rests, and abides in the Great I AM, and draws its life from the Larger Vine (John 15:4–5), the Deeper Well (John 4:10–14). Paul puts it this way: “You are hidden with Christ in God. When Christ is revealed—and he is your life—you too will be revealed in all your glory within him” (Colossians 3:3–4). It does not get any better than that, and you are now personally in on the deal. Basically prayer is an exercise in divine participation—you opting in and God always there!
So you see why it is so important to “pray,” that is, to change your “thinking cap,” because it largely has to do with how your mind processes things, and then the heart and body will normally come along. The mind is the normal control tower, so it must be educated first. Even rational-emotive therapy has come to recognize this is true. Most practices of meditation and contemplation have to do with some concrete practices to recognize and to relativize the obsessive nature of the human mind. The small mind cannot deal with Bigness and Newness, which God always is! Even most addiction counselors recognize that many addicts are “all or nothing thinkers.” I call this dualistic thinking, and is the normal labeling, rational mind that is good for things like science, math, and turning left or right. But it is at a complete loss with the big five of God, death, suffering, love, and infinity.
But do not think I am trying to give a mere secular or psychological meaning to prayer. Not at all. Why would I waste your time? Jesus himself gives very similar advice when he says things like, “When you pray, go to your inner room, and shut the door.” Knowing there was no such thing as an “inner room” in a Jewish one-room house, they would have known that he was talking about the inner self, what we would now called the unconscious, your personal inner room, as it were. This is also indicated by his double use of the word secret as both a place where the truth is waiting unawares and a place hidden to most of us—in which God “dwells” and from which God “blesses” (Matthew 6:6).
Shortly after this, Jesus also says, “When you pray, do not babble on like the pagans do,” which is pointing to something other than mere verbal prayer. I would call it the prayer of quiet. In fact, the very fact that the disciples have to ask him for a verbal prayer could well make the case that he had not taught them one! Groups usually had their public, group prayer to define their identities, much like the Serenity Prayer of A.A. Jesus’ disciples said, “John the Baptist taught his disciples a prayer, we want one too” (Luke 11:1), and one could conclude that what we call the Our Father was in part a concession, probably a good one, to that understandable social need of ours.
But let’s be honest, Jesus himself goes into silence, into nature, and usually alone when he prays. (Check it out in Luke 3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 28–29, 11:1, and 22:41.) It is rather amazing we have not noted this. With our emphasis on Sunday social prayer and liturgical prayer and prayer meetings, this might again be an example of selective and preferential memory. Since the thirteenth century, no one has been teaching us what to do with our minds when we were alone, at least in any systematic way.2 So Sunday morning singing, reading, and recitation of group prayers took over, even though they were much less evident in the life of Jesus.
It is the prayer of quiet and self-surrender that will best allow us to follow Step 11, which Bill W must have recognized by also using the word meditation when that word was not common in Christian circles at all at that time. And he was right, because only contemplative prayer or meditation invades, touches, and heals the unconscious! This is where all the garbage lies—but also where God hides and reveals “in that secret place” (Matthew 6:6). “Do you not know,” Jesus says, “the kingdom of God is within you!” (Luke 17:21).
Most other forms of prayer have too many external forms and too much social payoff and thus keep us in the calculative mind. I know this from years in religious community and parishes where we have public prayers every day, and yet many people’s motivations and goals still mirror the larger world. So Jesus wisely says, “When you pray, don’t imitate those who love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogue or at street corners for people to see them. They have already received their reward” (Matthew 6:5). Again, it is amazing this had so little effect on Christian forms of prayer. I guess we thought standing up in synagogues was bad, but standing up in churches was good?
For most of two chapters in Matthew (6 and 7), Jesus warns us against the unconscious social payoffs in all public encounters: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, clothing, money, class systems, social judgments, and possessions. These all keep people from going to any deep level and facing their real issues. We must admit that Christian cultures have not been appreciably different than others in these regards. Maybe we could say lex orandi est lex vivendi, “how you pray determines how you finally live.” How you first live inside is how you will deal with things outside. If prayer itself is largely an external performance of any kind, there is simply no inner life to keep us honest and real and grounded.
Jesus himself “went off by himself” (Mark 1:35) to pray, which takes a lot more courage, choice, and trust than mere attendance at a service. I am sure he participated in appropriate temple and synagogue services, although it is hardly mentioned in the Gospels. It does say he read and taught in the synagogue, which is a bit different than prayer (see, e.g., Luke 4:16, 31–32). Perhaps we can see the limitations of an overemphasis on social prayer better in other world religions; many do it more regularly and rigorously than Christians do, but can also remain at very low levels of real change of behavior. Perhaps this is revealed in the first demon encounter in Luke’s and Mark’s Gospel—it is in the synagogue itself! (Mark 1:23–24). Yes, there is such a thing as addiction to religion, and there has been much written about it in recent years that is quite helpful.3 Religion can also be its own kind of demon. What better place to hide?
Social prayer can hold the group together, but it does not necessarily heal the heart or soul of the group—often the opposite, as it unites them against a common foe or heresy. On TV recently I saw Muslim men coming directly from pious prayer in the mosque to hatefully waving their fists against their enemies. I know too many Christian clergy who have celebrated liturgies much of their lives and are still infantile, spiritually speaking. You do too. “It is what comes out of a person that makes him or her unclean. For it is within, from people’s hearts (their word for the unconscious) that evil intentions emerge and make a person unclean” (Mark 7:21), so we must have a form of prayer that changes us from the inside. Intentionality and real motivation are not some new psychological self-help idea. Jesus called it “the inside of cup and dish” as opposed to our preoccupation with “the outside of cup and dish” (Matthew 23:25–26). Jesus tried to move history toward interiority whenever possible, and it has been a long slog.
Conscious Contact With God
The Twelve Step Program was quite ahead of its time in recognizing that we need forms of prayer and meditation that would lead us to “conscious contact with God,” beyond mere repetition of correct titles and names and formulas, which religions fight about (“God as we understand God.”). Such a Step 11 can lead us to real inner “knowledge of his will for us” (instead of just external commandments for all), and for the “power to carry it out” (actual inner empowerment and new motivation from a deeper Source). How can anyone say the Twelve Steps are not deeply inspired?
The fruits of prayer and meditation are so evident that the only way I got into Folsom and San Quentin prisons was to teach Step 11. The local authorities said that this new quiet prayer seemed to actually “change people,” even people on death row or in for life. For years, I was a part of “competing” church services at the local Albuquerque jail, where each group divided over externals of worship style, denominational histories, and vocabulary. When we did contemplative or “centering prayer” together, however, most of those divisions meant nothing, even who was leading the service was unimportant. There was no room for fighting over clergy, gender, or ordination; only competence and authenticity mattered.4
Let me end this chapter with a fine quote from Thomas Merton who said: “The will of God is not a ‘fate’ to which we must submit, but a creative act in our life that produces something absolutely new, something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation consists not solely in conforming to external laws, but in opening our wills to this mutually creative act.”5
It is such divine synergy, people’s willingness to creatively work with the hand that life and sin and circumstance and God have dealt them that is our deepest life of prayer and devotion. This is “doing the will of God”! We are still afraid and unfamiliar with such calm inner authority, the “law written our hearts” promised by Jeremiah (31:33), until we set out on an actual journey of “prayer and meditation.” Until then, religion is largely externals and formulas, about which we fight or divide. I hope this chapter sends you on such a journey of “conscious contact,” where there is nothing to fight about and only much to enjoy.
People’s willingness to find God in their own struggle with life—and let it change them—is their deepest and truest obedience to God’s eternal will. We must admit this is what all of us do anyway, as “God comes to us disguised as our life”! Remember, always remember, that the heartfelt desire to do the will of God is, in fact, the truest will of God. At that point, God has won, and the ego has lost, and your prayer has already been answered.
Let’s sum up the importance of an alternative mind in this fine message from an unknown source:
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.