Now I have found help which will never let me down. It will always love and support me if I search for it, making me more and more conscious of God's part in everything I think, say and do as I become aware of the miracles in my life that spring from that nearness to my Higher Power. 

It was an absolute miracle for me that conscious contact with God is possible. It must imply that I am aware of God's communication with me, and can feel His guidance and help and direct and immediate communication. I always wanted that conscious contact with God. I wanted to hear God talk to me like the channel mediums did that I admired so much.

I learned over time that God's guidance comes to me in different ways. Through an impulse or intuition, something that feels right. Or somebody comes up to me and gives me the answer I was asking for. I just have to give everything to God and the answers will come.
   
When I give everything to God I am not obsessed with problems in my head anymore and can go about my business. I can stop obsessing with things that bother me because there is a Higher Power that takes care of me now.

Meditation was an essential part of my daily life before I came to the 12 Steps. I was on a spiritual path for many years. I was spiritual and thought I knew God and how to meditate. But I had no relationship with God, and it was very abstract and impersonal. It was an energy and I tried to dissolve into it.

When I started working the 12 Steps, I learned to talk to that presence and share and listen. That was the time when I learned about praying. I was not raised with any religious practice. My parents were atheists and never went to church. So prayer was a new discovery for me. I thought people only pray in life-threatening situations or if a loved one dies.

I think that I never prayed before in my whole life, except in the moment when I hit bottom and asked whatever there is out there to help me because I was ready to kill myself.

I have a friend now I can turn to in any given situation. To develop this relationship with my Higher Power I have to give it time and thought to grow and increase, like with any other relationship that I want to be satisfying. I especially want to receive guidance, nourishment and support, to make myself available, and to receive help.

I know that He only gives - love, grace, wisdom. I pray now: “Let me be filled with God instead of substances." The support I used to get through using substances let me down as soon as the level dropped and made me feel even lonelier and emptier than before. Now I have found help which will never let me down. It will always love and support me if I search for it, making me more and more conscious of God's part in everything I think, say and do as I become aware of the miracles in my life that spring from that nearness to my Higher Power.

Having given my life and will over to the care of God, it was essential to find out what God's will for me would be. Prayer and meditation are the mediums to connect with that Higher Power. That was a big adventure for me.

It was something new for me to turn to my Higher Power in any given situation and ask for guidance, because there were still areas in my life that I thought I could deal with myself. I am learning to develop an automatic impulse to first ask for help and then to go into action, knowing that in the past my own decisions have got me into trouble. I don't want to act out of my own little self-will anymore.

We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.  -Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous