[We] 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.
The “wordiest” of the Twelve Steps, it is also—like Step Ten—a continuation of something already underway: “we sought…to improve.”
[We] Sought….
“Sought” is past tense of seek. Although it has similar meaning, seek implies more than attempt, or try, (“try” being the word choice for Step Twelve). To seek anything carries the implication that the thing sought requires a search, hunt, or quest; that the thing “sought” is not immediately near in space, or time.
[We] Sought through prayer and meditation….
Sought is not an action so well defined as swam, or jumped. Sought may involve no physical activity at all: “He sought the answer in his head,” is a proper and intelligible use of to seek, but describes no physical action. “He sought the source of the Nile,” on the other hand, describes thousand mile journeys and decades of harsh travel for someone, like Dr. Livingstone, I presume.
The prepositional phrase “through prayer and meditation” modifies the verb “sought,” and helps to clarify the activity; “through” is used prepositionally, in this case—rather than as adverb or adjective—with its definition “by means of.”
In the culture from which the Twelve Steps spring, 20th century America, “prayer” is a commonly understood and simple activity, “meditation” is not.
Any petition or address to God or gods, spoken or unspoken—especially one repeated word for word in a liturgy—is considered “prayer.” Native speakers will use this term for communication with a Deity or deities within their own belief system, as well as to describe the similar communication of others who lie well outside the speakers’ system of belief. “They were praying to their god.”
“Meditation” is a term which underwent some semantic change, narrowing its perceived definition a bit through the course of the twentieth century in America. Prior to the generation of Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob, it can be surmised that “meditation,” as a word in common parlance, had no affiliation with religions outside the Judaeo-Christian milieu. Virtually no Buddhism or “Eastern mysticism” was enveloped by mainstream culture prior to the twentieth century; America remained, unarguably, a Christian country by demography well beyond the end of the Second Great Awakening.
As late as 1948, 91% of Americans self-identified as Christians, 4% Jewish, and 0% any other religion.
–Gallup Poll
Nonetheless, the stirrings of an awakening to “exotic religions” and their validity was underway before 1900. Christianity’s puritanical grip was weakened by the Awakenings and further shaken just after them by the advent of Spiritualism.
Spiritualism gave popularity and misplaced credulity to seances, trance-mediums, Ouija boards, and the like. That popularity was at its peak by the beginning of the 1900s, and although it fell swiftly through the debunking efforts of celebrity magician Harry Houdini and others, Spiritualism demonstrated that mainstream culture was prepared to believe in more than just “that ol’ time religion” of the (Protestant) Great Awakenings. Books like My Journey to Lhasa by Spiritualist-turned-Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel, published in 1927, allowed the entry of Eastern religious traditions into the vacuum of disappearing Spiritualism.
Word began to reach mainstream American culture, ripe for new religious thought, that a whole, other world awaited their discovery. And that word could travel faster and farther every day of the twentieth century with the new electric media: radio, motion pictures, recorded sound; by mid-century, television and video; near the century’s conclusion the “world wide web” and the internet’s countless devices.
The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 is estimated to have entertained at least 26 million visitors, equivalent then to over 40% of America’s entire population. At the Fair a meeting was convened, lasting over two weeks, calling itself the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Historians see this as the first major interfaith gathering in the United States, and the world. It was here that a door opened in America to Eastern religious thought, primarily courtesy of Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk who became a media sensation and toured the United States for several years after, establishing the presence of Hinduism in mainstream American culture, and a foundation for its further penetration into the American psyche 70 years later.
In 1963, The Science Of Being and Art Of Living was published. Its author, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was the Swami Vivekananda for a new generation. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, most Americans would perceive “meditation” as akin, or equivalent, to transcendental meditation, a practice brought to mainstream culture through the unprecedented popularity of this Indian author. Beyond the crest and fade of that popularity, “meditation,” became inextricably linked in vernacular to transcendental meditation, or similar practice with origins in India.
Even in common speech, “meditation,” by the end of the twentieth century in America, no longer had the traditional meaning of contemplation, cogitation, or rumination which the century started with. Meditation, for Americans coming of age after the advent of transcendental meditation, ostensibly meant quite the opposite of the earlier definition; in this new regard, meditation now seemed…an “emptying of the mind.” In any case, meditation certainly took on more of the characteristic of “devout religious contemplation or spiritual introspection,” and less of simply focused thought.
“[We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve….”
Here is the thing sought: “to improve.” Like “prayer,” this is a word with little or no semantic shift through the twentieth century, easily understood as to make better, to enhance, to increase value/productivity.
One cannot improve something which doesn’t exist, although, one may create a component or process that didn’t previously exist which becomes part of—and improves—an already existing item or process.
[We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact….
Here is the thing improved: “our conscious contact.”
Similarly to Step Ten, where something to be “continued” had not been previously mentioned in exactly the given terms, here something is improved which has not been mentioned at all. It is not mentioned subsequently, either. Neither “conscious” nor “contact” is mentioned outside this Step; there is, however, a further descriptive phrase regarding “contact:”
[We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him….
This exact appellation, “God as we understood Him,” including the same italics, has been used in Step Three (q.v.). “God” is also mentioned in Steps Five, Six, and by reference, Seven, but nowhere else is found the italicized “as we understood Him.” Step Three has no other precise reference to this Step.
By definition of improve, Step Eleven posits that “conscious contact with God as we understood Him,” commenced prior to this Step. It isn’t clear if this contact has been continuous or sporadic, or happened more than once; all that’s certain, by this phrase, is that a contact has previously existed, and that it’s subject to improvement.
“Conscious” is not a common descriptive for “contact,” in any case. “Conscious,” the adjective, is often to simply differentiate from unconscious and would normally arise in informal conversation around a person’s medical condition.
“She’s in the hospital, now, and she’s conscious.”
More commonly, conscious is used to connote deliberate, purposeful—often used with effort, act or a similar verb. It is often now a compound word, describing focused or acute awareness of something: eco-conscious, safety-conscious, body-conscious. The juxtaposition with “contact” is neither common nor idiomatic, but peculiar.
By context, the meaning of contact as a noun is less concerned with the act of touching—meeting, junction, or union—as might be applied to surfaces or points of objects, but more concerned with association—relationship, connection, or communication.
Commonly, when contact is used as a noun, as it often is, it refers to an individual, i.e., “an acquaintance, colleague, or relative through whom a person can gain access to information, favors, influential people, and the like.”
“Do you have a contact at that company?”
“Sure, I’ll reach out to my contact over there.”
Perhaps the next most common form, not regarding objects, is idiomatic:
“Are you still in contact with our old friend?”
In the most likely context, “conscious contact” is shorthand for deliberate, purposeful relationship or communication “with God as we understood Him.”
[We] Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for….
A period could be placed after “Him,” and the sentence would be complete. It is not.
When words are not used casually, when they are written, edited, rewritten and subject to scrutiny before they’re released, the reader can be assured that the author(s) is trying to convey a particular message, while not conveying a different one. In a book, there’s no room for clarification through question and answer, as in a live conversation or correspondence. Pains must be taken to “get it right the first time.”
Furthermore, these 200 words of the Program are meant to convey vital instructions to be carried out. The necessary information to complete the task successfully must be primafacie: clear on its face. Telling someone to mix together flour, milk, butter, baking powder, and put it in the oven doesn’t convey the information necessary to make biscuits.
This Step could be as terse as, “We sought to improve our contact with God.” Evidently, the authors were convinced this doesn’t convey the information necessary, or might convey the wrong information. For instance, the sentence might be further reduced by one small word and still seemingly carry the same message: “We sought to improve contact with God.”
But whose contact? Are “we” seeking to improve the contact of someone or something else with God, other than “we, ourselves”? With the addition of the possessive pronoun “our,” we are clearly not; we are seeking to improve our own contact with God.
So, it’s clear what is to be sought; much of this Step concerns itself with how: how to seek to improve. That how is important enough to be stated first and last. Immediately after “sought” is the first how: “through prayer and meditation.” The second how comes in this final phrase, beginning with “praying only for….”
Grammarians would identify this final phrase as participial, a group of words together modifying a noun, in this instance “we.” Rather than take that view, since the overall scheme here is a set of instructions, it’s more fruitful to consider this phrase as a modifier of action, not people.
In the final analysis, these twelve lines of the Program allegedly describe the actions taken by people who stopped drinking alcohol after the point when stopping seemed impossible to them. These actions are proffered as a working hypothesis of sorts: repeat the steps of this experiment, and the result will be the same. Who the people are is not made relevant to the experiment, other than they all suffer from the same, or intensely similar, disorder.
The action or activity—praying—further described in this phrase is immediately, and drastically limited: “praying only for….”
The numerous ways only can be used and misused give it a lattitude in common speech that can lead to its being underrated or overlooked in this wordiest of the Steps. Editors at the Random House Unabridged Dictionary offer this clarification:
“The placement of only as a modifier is more a matter of style and clarity than of grammatical rule. In a sentence like The doctor examined the children, varying the placement of only results in quite different meanings: The doctor only examined the children means that the doctor did nothing else. And The doctor examined only the children means that no one else was examined. Especially in formal writing, the placement of only immediately before what it modifies is often observed: She sold the stock only because she needed the money. However, there has long been a tendency in all varieties of speech and writing to place only before the verb (She only sold the stock because she needed the money), and such placement is rarely confusing.”
–dictionary.com
In this closing phrase, to place only before praying could mean that nothing else but praying was done—which would be in contradiction to what was just stated. Placed where it is, only means nothing else was prayed for: praying exclusively for, praying solely for….
[We] 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….
Here is the last of the masculine pronouns used to refer to “God,” in possessive form. Altogether, eight direct references to Deity are made in the Steps (not including the indirect “Power” of Step Two), and this is the last.
“Will,” the noun, is used for the second time since Step Three—another connection with that prior Step. Unlike conscious and contact, God’s will or the will of God, is not an unusual juxtaposition, especially in religious language. “Will” in this context not only carries the meaning of wish or desire, but the overtone of purpose and determination.
[We] 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.
Power is not capitalized, here, as in Step Two, so has no reference to Deity or Its attributes—at least, not by standard parameters of the language.
“To carry out” may be idiomatic, but it is also completely clear and common in its use to mean accomplish, execute, effect, having been used since the late 1500s in that way. It is acceptable parlance in the military and legal realms: a superior’s orders must be carried out, lest a court-martial ensue; a deceased’s last wishes are carried out to fulfill a legal obligation to the estate. Since these two examples are well-known outside their respective arenas, to carry out conveys some of that sense of duty which other terms lack.
The simplest form may be “the power to do that,” but those words don’t have that sense of obligation, nor the sense of completion.
Combining the whole, there are several layers of modification for the action described: sought—to seek. This is not seeking by walking with a flashlight and turning over rocks. This is not seeking by poring over maps and sailing long voyages. This is seeking by (through) praying and meditating. Furthermore, this is not praying for various things or whatever comes to mind. This is praying for something particular—and nothing else. This is praying for knowledge of the will of God, as we understand Him, and the power to carry that out, and praying for nothing else.
Taken as a whole, these are not only peculiar, but very particular directions, at pains to describe an action quite carefully.
[We] 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.
By now, reading this far down the list of twelve, it’s pretty tough sledding for the unbeliever, for anyone with deep and abiding philosophical differences with the Protestant tradition of American culture. I’m willing to bet it’s hardest for the very products of the culture, moreso than visitors or non-natives.
It certainly must seem a lie when adherents tell the unbeliever that this Program is not religious. Several courts of law in the United States have ruled that it IS a lie. God with a capital g, and the masculine pronouns referring to It, don’t belie the genesis of the Program: a thoroughly Protestant religious milieu.
Next, it must appear confusing, if not downright antithetical, when adherents permit lattitude with the Twelve Step verbage de facto, but never de jure; that is, some members of AA may talk about “another way the Step has been done” –-with which those members, themselves, may have experience—but that is not a conversation about rewording the Steps as they’ve been handed down and purveyed. Such a conversation is made with reluctance and met with resistance.
Nevertheless, forces are at work. Forces of culture, forces of history, forces now far beyond the narrow framework that formed nascent AA and the “original” Twelve Steps. What place this Program of recovery will find in history cannot be fathomed today. The entire “movement” is only a small piece of the overall social puzzle whose laws, philosophies, religions, etcetera, still cope with the conundrum: “does God exist?”
More than any religion, I suppose, the up-close-and-personal experience I’ve had with Alcoholics Anonymous made this indelible impression on me: if the God I understand fits in a box, that God isn’t big enough to save me.
Whatever conscious contact with That Thing I’ve been able to find and attempt to improve through the magic of AA’s Program has made clear and tangible to me notions which before were just fancy words. Time and again, I made judgements of other members of AA which came back to haunt me in that old familiar way: “with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” [Matt. 7:2] Whatever I accused, I later found myself guilty of the same. And if I got really out of line and set somebody up for a fall: “in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.” [Ps. 9:15]
[viz.] Kerr vs Farrey (US 7th Circuit); Warner vs Orange County Dept of Probation (US 2nd Circuit); Rauser vs Horn (US 3rd Circuit), et al. ^