In our October and November Group Conscience we have been discussing how this group might explore meditation. As you may know, this is not a new topic for an AA Group to consider and we may benefit from what others have done.
This link is an example of a resource that is attempting to advance meditation resources for AA Groups. It contains a suggested format along with listings and links to virtual AA meditation meetings now available. Some of our group members have begun to attend these (or other) AA meditation meetings as a way to experience and more deeply understand how (and if) we could approach this with GUGOGS.
My own experience with an AA 11th step meditation meeting used the 11th step prayer as the basis for the meeting’s meditation. This was a weekly meeting that used a single verse from the prayer such as ‘make me a channel of thy peace’ (and proceeded each week with the subsequent verse) as the basis for a 10 minute meditation (or maybe it was less). This meditation was then followed by sharing from the group. This format would be similar to our normal format except that rather than reading for perhaps 10 minutes we would meditate for the time normally devoted to reading. There are lots and lots of different approaches possible and very interested in gaining your thoughts and insights.
My hope is that we can begin to share ideas about what we may want to do and explore using the comments section of this post. Your comments can help us make more progress in our group conscience discussions that will be continuing in December. You can add your comments by simply scrolling down this page to the comment section. If you prefer not to identify yourself, simply show your name as ‘Anonymous’. Also feel free to say that you are not in favor of the group doing anything regarding meditation if that’s your feedback. No agenda here; just wanted to make sure we continue to explore what has come up in our Group Conscience. If you have links to other sites you think would be helpful , include those links in your comments. I can eventually summarize the comments into another post that we can further discuss in our December Group Conscience.
Bruce
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Interesting topic. Over the years I have found there are times of spiritual distress that are hard to put a finger on with the usual 4th step tool. Can’t really define the problem/issue. When that happens I read the St Francis prayer, slowly, concentrating on each verse. One phrase will seem to ring a bell, to jump out at me. Then I put that into my morning prayer as a request to help me with that.
It can also be useful to simply introduce this prayer as the topic of a meeting. It is astonishing how many people – some who claim many years of recovery – claim to have never heard it, or read it once and never went back and this really got them focused.
I have checked the follow box on this post, hopefully this will work better than the last time. I am interested in how this format works out for your group. In these times, when all the authorities are seeking to drive the world down the path of living lives of fear, substantial topics really focus our meetings.
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I like the idea of meditation and think this would help us extend our A.A. practice. It is an area we can grow into. I think it is cool for all of us to be on this journey of discovery together.
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