Meetings and meditation reinforce each other

The entire AA program is about personal transformation.  Soon after we enter the fellowship we realize that stopping drinking will never be enough; we have to become new people.  Going through the Steps gives us the solid framework for the transformation, but the transformation, the rewiring of our persons, only comes when it is hammered in through the repetition of meetings and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Steps.  Our trips through the Steps with our sponsors, at retreats, or in AWOLs tell us how we should view the world and behave, but that only becomes an ingrained part of us through repetition.  Spirituality has to become a habit and then grow into just how we are.

I think there is a special synergy between meetings and the 11th Step.  In meetings people have a safe place filled with loving companions in suffering where they can talk about their pain, openly examine their past and present behavior and how they can do better.  Meetings are places of healing but the healing takes time and repetition.  Ideally AAs adjust their meeting schedules to match their pain, salving the wounds as often as they need it.

The 11th Step is similar.  In meditation we experience our fears, anger, love, hatred, faith and lack of faith, all in a safe environment where we are seeking union with a loving, accepting, embracing and comforting Higher Power, whether we see it as a personal God, as the Universe, as Tao, whatever.  We know we are warm and safe and that gives us the openness to leave our rutted old roads and change direction into gentler, more loving ways.  But again, it only works with repetition.  In the case of the 11th Step I don't think we should be adjusting our pace to match our current or anticipated pain.  I think meditation requires a constant, preferably at least daily repetition.  Our goal is once again to go beyond new habits to a new way of being.

So I think the repetition of meetings and meditation reinforce each other.  We bring the changes and discoveries we find in meetings to our meditation and the changes and discoveries we find in meditation to our meetings.  Meetings and meditation work together to help us unite with our Higher Powers and grow spiritually.