In this post, watch a FREE Video to show you how to meditate with Qi Gong. Discover Step 11 to Immortality where you improve your conscious contact with the Greater Power of your understanding. Get stronger and more in control. Include immortality in who you are and bring it to the world!
What Is Prayer and Meditation?
“Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a Greater Power, as we understood this Power, praying only for knowledge of this Power’s intent for us and the ability to carry that out.”
I’ve heard that prayer is asking and meditation is listening. This might be a good definition for many, but for me, the asking part is a problem. In my practice, prayer is not so much about asking, as it is being: being who we are, being ourselves.
Joining and Belonging
I see prayer and meditation being closely related, as a quiet joining with the deeper parts of ourselves, where we listen to who we really are and ask where we fit with the world.
The Power of Quiet
Most of all, meditation and prayer require quiet of some type, a quiet that you allow into your life and day.
Things may not be quiet around you, at work, home or play … but seek a quiet state of mind where you’re not trying to solve a problem, where you aren’t in opposition to your life or the way your day is going.
Help for Meditation
This four minute guided meditation may help you. It contains a simple exercise you can use any time or place for powerful results.
As you meditate and pray, stop your fight and opposition to the world. Release yourself into the calm and depth of your soul.
Prayer and mediation are self-guided journeys into ease and repose — where fighting stops, where we no longer oppose anything or anyone.
To pray and meditate, let go of what you think you want or should have in life.
Let go of who you imagine you are, or who you think you should be.
Get quiet, calm and relax your will. Discard all intent; simply know and seek yourself as you are.
Conscious Contact with a Greater Power
First, what is a Greater Power?
A Greater Power may sound like God, and may be, if that’s right for you.
I’m a product of a home and childhood where God was talked about in a warm and friendly way, as a benevolent Being or Consciousness who cared for my life, as a perfect loving soul watching over me.
My Greater Power was not punishing — but instructing, caring, providing and protecting.
Benevolent Presence
I liked this definition, for me. I felt the presence of God in my life, all around me and everywhere, especially in church. I experienced a greater power I call God and sill do.
Today, my attempt in prayer and meditation is to unify and find sameness with this Benevolent Consciousness.
In prayer and meditation, when I am balanced and at peace: I experience my consciousness as one-and-the-same with this Greater Being. We are in union, fully, yet distinct and separate individuals.
However, my Greater Power may not be for you … at all, or in any way. That’s Ok and poses no problem. As an atheist or agnostic, this approach can work for you.
Any Greater Power will do, as long as that Power is chosen and defined by you, freely; as long as this Power makes sense to you in some way or fashion. This Greater Power is yours.
This is not about religion, dogma or beliefs — simply try the 12 Step approach, and see if it works for you over time, with practice.
An atheist I knew described her Greater Power as a larger strength within her she had not before known. Words are not important. What we do and what we pursue is the point and how we create.
Immortality and a wonderful life are the consequence of actions performed.
I suggest we all have a gleaming and perfect soul, or core, that can physically express. The 12 Steps to Immortality helps that happen.
A Greater Power in Our Brain
I have a scientific background, so I speculate a Greater Power may simply be some part of our brain, or a way of using our brain that includes a Greater Reality, a Greater Place within ourselves and in the world … a more inclusive way of being.
Simply know there is a greater possibility for you, a greater way of life and being you can have.
Know you can access the Eternal Essence of yourself that you may have been ignoring. Through prayer and meditation, this the deeper part of you may emerge.
Let this deeper part of you give to you and guide you to a better life.
Further Inventory
The path to a Greater Power, of any definition, is conscience and self-awareness … a striving and yearning for something better.
Something better — much better — will happen to you, will come and radically transform your life, if you seek it and practice a way of becoming more yourself with conscience and goodwill.
The Power of Self-Reflection
What specifically can we do to develop conscience, a sense of our deep self?
What can we do to know what’s right to do, think and say in our lives? A regular inventory gives us this information by developing conscience within us and a strong sense of who we are.
An inventory, as in Steps 4 and 10, is a form of self-reflection, looking at ourselves: how we think, feel and act.
As we self-reflect and look at ourselves, we bring our deeper and more powerful human abilities to life. We activate our Greater Being, our greater self and larger consciousness.
We experience our Immortal Core.
[Related: Step 4, Part One & Part Two]
[Related: Step 10]
A Daily Review
The 12 Steps to Immortality are modeled after the widely used 12 Steps, found in the Big Book of AA. The Big Book, in turn, modeled it’s 12 steps from another group using a step by step approach to spiritual growth.
For the purposes of Step 11 to Immortality, we borrow directly from the 12 Steps of AA literature, in our technique for self reflection.
In Step 11, we further refine our approach to inventory, which grows our consciousness and deeper abilities.
The Technique
At night we review our day. We ask if we’ve been:
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- Resentful
- Selfish
- Dishonest
- Afraid
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This is the 11th Step to Immortality. We ‘re using this Step to develop, access and empower our greatest good, our most powerful and inclusive selves.
We’re not Good or Bad, but Human
An inventory or self-reflection is not about being good or bad, right or wrong. As we inventory, we allow our Eternal Being to predominate and become our primary consciousness.
Self-reflection, or inventory, is simply a technique to become aware of habits and unconscious manners we’re using to defeat ourselves.
As we become aware of unwanted habits by doing inventories and self-examination, we gain control and can better direct our lives.
Your Positive Traits and Talent
As we know our bliss and self-esteem, in a pure and accurate way, we join the best of all reality and act in an eternal way
We also inventory our positive traits and ask if we fully…
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- Acknowledge Our Best
- Activate Our Best
- Use Our Best
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Everyone has talent, gifts and esteem in who they are … yet we often deny and don’t use our greatest ability.
We all can 1.) think 2.) speak and 3.) act. With these three gifts, we can make anything happen.
We can change the course of our lives; we can help someone in need.
We can change the world by an inventory of our gifts and asking ourselves — are we fully using our abilities to:
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- Help Ourselves?
- Benefit Others?
- Care for the Planet?
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Ask that you see the good in yourself. Examine the goodness you see. Take your time, and know this good that you are. Welcome it, and nurture your good to life.
Act your best into into the world. As you act, know this is the path to human immortality.
As we know our bliss and self-esteem, in a pure and accurate way, we join the best of all reality and act in an eternal way.
Inventory Your Good!
Take account of your good: the excellence that you are, the gifts you possess.
Gifts and goodwill gain strength and ability as we employ them.
Use your gifts, often and well!
A Method of Conscious Contact
Again, we are in Step 11 to Immortality. We’re improving conscious contact with the Greater Power of our understanding.
How do we do this? By prayer, meditation and self-reflection.
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- Prayer
- Meditation
- Self-reflection
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At night and throughout the day, we ask ourselves if we’ve been resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid.
You may quickly identify your thoughts with these difficult words and say, “My goodness, I have these thoughts strongly throughout my day.” Or, you may feel you have none of these troubled states in your mind. If this is the case, my suggestion is to look closer and ask yourself if your day has been perfect?
Has anyone harmed you or gotten in your way? Has traffic in your driving, to work and back, gone fully in your favor? Has everyone been considerate toward you and your needs?
Selfishness, Anger and Giving-Up
We are all impinged upon, pushed about against our will, against our best and the good of our lives.
We all react. There is fight in everyone, or false surrender … a giving up.
It’s selfish to surrender and give-up when you have much to give, and we all do.
Giving-up is a type of aggression we act out upon ourselves and our lives.
We are all frustrated to greater or lesser degree every day.
We’re all wronged or crossed somehow, or someway, by both ourselves and life.
There’s anger in most of us, unknown or obvious.
The Remedy
Do an inventory. Get straight. Stand up and be yourself … don’t deny who you are. Don’t hide from negative feelings of anger and spite.
There is small truth in life if you’re not honestly seeking yourself and acting with authentic motivation.
- Inventory and reflect on who-you-are, how you feel and think.
- Let go of what’s not serving you and helping your life.
- Act upon the good you see and want.
It’s Only Natural
By improving ourselves and getting stronger, we make a better planet and everyone gains.
As you may see, it’s natural for all-of-us to have feelings and thoughts of resentfulness, selfishness, dishonesty and fear.
As we become more adept at working Step 11, we self-examine and discover finer nuances of these defeating behaviors.
It’s important to note that self-defeating behaviors are also harmful to others and the world.
We succeed when we’re good to ourselves as well as anyone else.
Review of Step 11 to Immortality
Step 11 is taking us closer to our core of immortality and bringing this eternal essence to the surface of our lives — improving ourselves, each other and the earth.
We improve and become more effective by self-reflection that we do with inventories.
We’ve talked about inventories in Steps 4 and 10. We again look at self-inventory in Step 11.
Inventory, or self-reflection, gets us closer to a Greater Power as we understand it. Our conscious contact with our immortal nature improves.
In Step 11, we find a way of prayer and meditation that suits us, that works well for our specific needs. We quiet our minds, and let our Better Being emerge.
We honor ourselves and allow for improved consequences.
As we self-reflect: we look for resentment, selfishness, dishonesty and fear. As we look for these behaviors, we’re not judging or chastising.
Everyone has these aggressive thoughts and actions: it’s a normal function of our predator mind, our fight for survival that leads to killing and other harmful behavior.
As we get to immortality, we quell harmful instincts; we strengthen immortal qualities of greatness, good and compassion. We do not support killing, hate or harm.
Join us next week for the last of the 12 Steps to Immortality were we put all the 12 Steps into action: activating eternal physical life on earth.
Step 12: Having had an immortal awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to humanity, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
