We must allow God to teach us how to meditate

We must allow God to teach us how to meditate, through the very meditation practice itself.

At least three great religious traditions value doing nothing in meditation.

What exactly is meditation? The AA literature seems to offer at least two responses to this 

question. The Big Book, in its treatment of Step 11 – contrary to what most people believe –

gives no real answer. Indeed, the Big Book assumes that we are actually meditating long before 

we get to the Eleventh Step. If you look at page 69, you will see that the Big Book recommends 

using meditation to determine how to handle specific matters involving sex: “In meditation, we 

ask God what we should do ....” But a careful reading of the paragraph suggests that the 

recovering alcoholic is already using meditation for issues other than these. The previous 

sentence reads, “We treat sex as we would any other problem.” The implication, then, is that we 

are already routinely practicing meditation as a means of asking God what we should do at least 

as early as our working of Step 4

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