Hi, I’m Hamish and welcome to another reflection from the WCCM Young Insight Timer channel. Here we share teachings from John Main, Laurence Freeman and the Christian contemplative tradition. Over the next 10 weeks, I’m going to read chapters from Grace at Work. The Healing Power of Meditation – a series of talks given by Laurence Freeman in 2019.
Grace At Work
The first chapter is called ‘Grace at work’ and here Laurence Freeman talks about the 12-step program for recovering from addiction, developed by Alcoholics Anonymous or AA back in the 1930s. The 11th step of the 12 step process calls us through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will to us and the power to carry that out. But first, a small quote from the beginning of the series of talks:
Chapter one: Grace at Work
by Laurence Freeman
To find meditation in one’s life is a grace. It’s something unexpected and finding in an unexpected moment in an unexpected way. Something that changes the world for you. It has been a real grace for me to come into contact with the 12 step program. I think this is the most important spiritual movement of the last century.
Through the meditation community that’s grown up over the last 30 years, I’ve come to meet some wonderful recovering alcoholics who have found in meditation, a way of putting the 11-step into practice and really understanding what that means.
I’ve always felt that in the right moment in their life, the alcoholic understands the meaning of meditation better than most people. It’s a hard one – understanding to hit bottom maybe more than once to get to that point. But with it comes an insight, it can be a destructive disease. It can be a fatal disease. It can destroy your life, destroy your relationship. But it also has the possibility of leading to a remarkable breakthrough. I suppose what the whole Alcoholics Anonymous or AA movement, the fellowship is all about is maximizing the potential of this disease, of this addiction to lead to that enlightenment. There’s a potential in it. The program is a remarkable construction that helps, has helped people to use that potentially destructive set of circumstances in their life and potentially destructive disease to lead to a spiritual growth. Actually to lead to a deep integration and fullness of life.
The times I’ve been to AA groups the word I would use is ‘Grace’, the feeling of Grace at work.
What I’ve always found at these meetings is that there’s no small talk, there’s friendliness and intimacy, honesty but the normal divisions or barriers or suspicions that we have about each other and the social filters that we communicate through normally are not there. By being there, they are admitting and confessing and opening to themselves and to others the fact that there has been no small talk means that people can get down to important issues. People in these groups are telling my story and as they tell my story, I think they are sharing a mystery, my story, mystery, there’s only one letter between the two and they’re telling my story as if they are discovering the mystery and each time they tell it, they are adding something to it or they are understanding it more deeply.
What is the meaning of my story? What is the mystery of my story? Now? That sounds a little egocentric. And I think there is quite a lot of egocentricity in the program. By the very nature of it, there has to be, there has to be a concentration on self. I don’t think that it is actually egocentricity. I think it is more a transformation of the ego. It’s a healing of the ego, but there’s a lot of ego there. It’s me, isn’t it?
There is nothing wrong with that, provided there is a transformation going on. There’s nothing worse than getting stuck in oneself. And that, of course, is exactly what addiction is: getting stuck, getting into a repetitive cycle and you end up hating yourself. You just hear your own voice and you get stuck in your own patterns of behavior. So telling my story opens one to a mystery that is mysterious.
It’s something that I cannot put my finger on. I cannot explain fully, rationally. I can experience it, but I can’t control it, even.
What I’d like to do is share with you an understanding of meditation that might just resonate with you. Really the most important way to learn about meditation is to just do it, practice it together.
I think in a 12-step program, one is on learning a habit, a deeply ingrained physically and chemically conditioned habit with very complicated and strong psychological and physiological forms and patterns. So what is breaking out of that? Breaking a habit in learning meditation? One is learning to put on a good habit. There are difficulties on both sides. There are different kinds of difficulties: giving up drinking or taking up meditation.
Both are difficult, both require strength, more strength than we have, just in our own eager resources. So we have to open up to a higher power and we have to open to community. We have to open to others. You call it fellowship in the meditation world. I would call it community. Meditation seems to me to be, in that sense, a Grace. Something that is a gift, something that is genuinely free. It doesn’t cost anything. And there is no bargaining about meditation. To find meditation in one’s life is a grace. It’s something unexpected and finding in an unexpected moment, in an unexpected way, something that might just change the world for you. It changes patterns that we, for some reason or another, because of our own mistakes or because of bad luck or a combination of the two, have gotten into. It breaks these patterns.
Thank you for listening to the first chapter of Grace at Work. The Healing Power of Meditation by Laurence Freeman. My name is Hamish and I look forward to seeing you next time on the audio channel. Peace be with you all.
Grace at Work on MedioMedia
If you’re interested in reading the entire book, you can find it on WCCM Medio Media here.
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