Mark Houston Recovery

Drug and Alcohol Recovery Step 11: Seek Answers from Our True SELF

In each of the 12 months of the year, we talk in detail about the corresponding step in the 12-Step Program. This month, we’ll talk about step 11: seeking to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him through prayer and meditation.

Our experiences from birth have preprogrammed us to react to situations in preprogrammed ways. By step 11 of the 12 step program, we already understand that when we commanded our lives by our own self will that we only create chaos for ourselves.

As addicts, we have an illness of the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. It is critical that we continuously practice exercises that will divorce our pure Thought-Life from our Self Will.

When we operate from our Thought-Life as opposed to our self will, we being to create a life that is in line with the life that our true SELF desires.

Unlearning how to react from our preprogrammed state of self will and learning how to tap into our thought process requires that we develop a process to consistently tap into our Thought-Life.

Developing a Process to Tap Into Our True SELF for Guidance

In Step 11, we learn that this process of tapping into our own Thought-Life is a daily routine of prayer and meditation. So that we don’t lose our way, we must connect and strengthen our thought-life by taking the following actions on a daily basis:

• Upon awakening, turn our thoughts directly to the God of our understanding
• Ask for freedom from our self-willed thoughts
• Invite the new Power to direct and guide our thinking throughout the day
• Engage in a 20-30 minute period of meditation
• Write down any thoughts or details that come to mind directly following meditation

Step 11 Wisdom from Mark’s Book: A Twelve-Step Journey to Self Transformation

In the book co-written by Mark Houston and Floyd Henderson titled A Twelve Step Journey to Self Transformation, Mark and Floyd explore each step of the 12 Step Process as experienced by Floyd as he was mentored by Mark through his journey of Spiritual Awakening and Addiction Recovery.

In the Chapter devoted to Step 11, Mark reminds Floyd:

Your brain is not your mind. It is simply a tool, just as your leg or your arm is a tool. Be conscious of your thought-life. That is how you’ve touched The Great Reality that you now live in. If you don’t like the reality in which you live, don’t blame anyone or anything else, for it is you that creates that reality.

If you or someone you know is suffering from alcohol addiction, please contact the Mark Houston Recovery Center, a Texas drug and alcohol recovery center committed to helping men reclaim their lives from addiction.

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