When we practice our Step 11 meditation, most of us start with focusing on the breath. Firstly, it's basic to most meditation practices around the world. Secondly, it's simple. We all breathe, and focusing on the breath is about as easy as it comes.

Or at least it would be, if it weren't for our tendency to complicate things.

The thing that seems to be the most difficult to do is to focus on this in-breath and this out-breath. We can do this for two or three breaths. And then our attention starts to wander -- not very far initially, perhaps; possibly just as far as the matter of breathing in general. But we can't be aware of the breath we've just taken, or the breath we're about to take, or breathing in general. We can only be aware of this breath, this in-breath and this out-breath.

So we bring our attention back to the breath, always remembering not to beat ourselves up for letting our awareness wander, and recalling that -- in the moment that we are aware that our attention has wandered -- we're as aware as a person can be. Back to this in-breath and this out-breath.

After we have been doing this for some time -- perhaps minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months -- we start to understand what happens when we focus on this breath. Time begins to disappear. Meditation becomes clearer as a discipline. If all we have to do is to be aware of this in-breath and this out-breath, then meditation is indeed simple ... until our attention wanders once more ....