52 Weeks of Conscious Contact – Introduction

“What’s the name of that place?” I asked my friend. “I can’t think of the name of it, but I know you know what I’m talking about.”

“What place?”

“It’s that place you get to when you’re taking care of yourself and trusting God—when everything is all right, even the hard, painful stuff. But it’s more than taking care of yourself. That’s cold. The place I’m talking about is warmer than that. A place where you’re not childish, but where you’re innocent—like a child. The world comes alive for you. It’s a magical place,” I said.

“Maybe that’s the name of it,” she said. “A magical place.”

“Nope, that’s too hokey,” I said. “It’s more than that. Maybe it’s what some people call the Kingdom of Heaven?”

“Don’t some people call it Nirvana?” she asked. “No. Too many people think you don’t go there until after you die.”

“I didn’t even know about it when I first started taking care of myself,” I said. “I found it later, years later, but I know other people know about it too.”

Although we never agreed on the name of that place, this is a book about finding it. This book is less a meditation book, and more a book about acquiring and practicing simple life values that will help us get there.

The impetus for this book came from Alcoholic Anonymous’s Step Eleven: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

Conscious contact is that place many of us have known, but it can be elusive. Sustaining conscious contact seems to require a curious balance between working hard and letting go.

Each week we’ll look at one idea, or value, drawn from the well of religions and recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. Then we’ll explore ways of consciously putting that value into practice throughout the week.

You could read the entire weekly section on one day, apply the ideas throughout the week, and review your progress at week’s end. Or, if you prefer daily readings, you could read one of each week’s seven sections: a value, an application, a challenge, an inventory focus, an action, a gratitude focus, and, finally, a prayer.

You could progress through the year following the course of the book. Or you could find the weekly topic that applies to a current situation and work on that.

This book is for people who want to do more than let life happen to them.

It’s for recovering drug addicts; alcoholics; codependents; people not addicted to anything; people in grief; people just a little on the obsessive side; people who attend church, temple, or synagogue; and people who don’t.

This book is for all of us who thought we could skim lightly over the surface of life—who then discovered that’s not what we wanted after all. The gifts are below the surface. Have fun uncovering them.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

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