Like so much of Program, the permission we are given when we first arrive to define God in our own way is a necessary step on the road of recovery. Many of us have been damaged spiritually by well-meaning but harmful attempts on the part of others to tell us what God is like, what we should believe, and what will happen to us if we don't believe the way we're supposed to. For many of us, early years in Program will be largely a process of undoing this damage and learning to depend on a Power greater than ourselves that we call "God as we understand God." One of the most effective exercises on the road to losing the God that harms us and finding the one that loves us is to take a piece of paper and divide it into two. On the left side we write down what we're afraid God is like. On the right side we write down what it is that we'd like God to be. The third part of the exercise is simply to cross out everything on the left side, and write across the top of the right side something like "What My God is Like." Some of us who have done this exercise keep it for many years.

Steps 10, 11 and 12 invite us a little further along the journey of discovering God as we understand God. In fact, Step 11 specifically suggests conscious contact with God. By this time, we've hopefully passed being frightened of what God might be. And therefore we're ready to make a significant move -- from determining what, who, and where God is and then going and looking for God there, to seeking God on God's terms, with a completely open mind.

Written here like this, it sounds simple. But many of us have found it the most intimidating aspect of Step 11. To be prepared to accept that our beliefs about God may be inadequate, even inaccurate, can be extremely threatening -- so much so that many of us never make that concession, for we dare not. We would rather live with the beliefs that our experience whispers to us are untrue, than tread the path of not-knowing which is at the heart of Step 11.