When we practice Step 11 constantly and begin to make meditation a habit, even if we are meditating for only a few minutes each day, we are setting ourselves up for continuing encounters with our ego, which will do anything to stop us.

A friend in AA many years ago said:

I have to remember that I am walking around, even in recovery, with a brain that wants to kill me .... All my defects of character have been living there for a long time; they're very comfortable, and they don't want to move out. So the moment I start on any practice that is going to result in their eviction, they will try every trick in the book to get me to stop ....

When we engage in meditation, we can be fairly sure that our ego will try and thwart us. And it can do this in all kinds of ways. When we first try to meditate, our ego uses every distraction it can conceive of; and when we follow those distractions, as we inevitably will, our ego says, There you are, you see, you can't meditate - you're one of those unlucky people that just can't do it. Or we start to wonder if we're really making any progess - that's a sure sign of our ego talking. After all, what is progress supposed to be, supposed to look like, supposed to attain? Only our ego would think of meditation in terms of achievement.

And so it goes on. No matter how long we've been meditating, our ego will come along and try and spoil the show. One thing will make it scuttle away, though, and that is turning the focus of our meditation upon the ego itself. Away it runs, to hide for at least a little while.