Do you have a hidden agenda underlying your Step 11 meditation practice?

Of course you do. We all do. In the early days, it's usually the goal to meditate successfully, whatever that's supposed to mean. All our agendas appear to spring from our enlightened selves, and all of them come in fact from our ego. The desire to meditate successfully is one of the more pernicious tricks of the ego. More people in Program stop meditating because of "failure" than for any other reason.

Another classic agenda is that meditation should "feel right." A moment's reflection will allow us to see that this is another absurd goal. Since we've never meditated before in our lives, is it likely that doing so is going to "feel right" until we've been meditating for a long time? And in addition to that, we're all addicts. We're addicted to feeling right. No wonder we try and force our meditation to feel right -- for years it's been the only thing we've valued.

Then come the more mature agendas. Meditation, we think when we've been doing it for some time, should bring us "peace." What we really mean by "peace," of course, is "comfort." We don't mean the peace that comes from effort -- we mean the peace that comes from doing nothing in particular, the summer-afternoon-in-a-hammock sort of peace. True peace doesn't come from comfort. True peace is the result of struggle, of persistence, of commitment, of resolve to follow the daily practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12 no matter what. The desire for comfort always comes from the ego, and the practice of meditation will, sooner or later, expel that desire.