When I stepped into the After Nine meeting I had nowhere else to go.

I'd been clean and sober in another program for almost thirteen years, and although that is a great accomplishment, I couldn't go on any longer. I was broken: I had hit a bottom far worse than any that I'd hit in my active disease.

That Saturday morning at 10 a.m. in the After Nine meeting was the end and the beginning. I heard everything that I needed to hear and then some. There were many people that had much more clean time then me and that was very comforting, even though I cried (I never cry in meetings). How did these people know... and when did they add three more Steps: 10, 11 and 12?

I had been in recovery for eighteen and a half years before I was introduced to After Nine. I had considered myself a "hard worker" in recovery, and for many years I was very interested in becoming a counselor. I had been dissatisfied with my career for as long as I could remember, and I felt that if I could find the job that I was born to do, then I would be happy.

Some years ago now, I was experiencing much fear and anxiety about work. I started going to more AA meetings and ran into someone that I had not seen in years. He told me that he had started meditating two years before and really benefited from it. Though I didn't actually start meditating, I read a book that he recommended. And then about a month after this I met with someone for career advice who turned out to be from After Nine, and he too suggested that I might want to meditate. He said that if I would try it for six months, I still might not know what I wanted to do for a living but it probably wouldn't matter so much to me. This turned out be exactly right.

I began with five minutes a day, and generally felt a little more peaceful after these meditation sessions. I started going to After Nine on a regular basis and began meeting people in the group. I had to give myself permission to experiment with meditation and I found when I did this it was always helpful. I eventually began to let go of having to do it right.

I was very impressed with the meetings. These people were really committed to nurturing their spirituality, and I was drawn to that, even though I felt like an outsider for a while. I had always been fairly shy but I had learned enough in recovery to know I had to take some risks if I wanted to get somewhere, so I made myself go out with group members for meals after the meetings. Eventually I started making some new friends, which I am very thankful for.

All in all, After Nine has been one of the very best things that has ever happened to me. After some time, that deep feeling of toxic shame seemed to be leaving me. I found that I was spending more time in the present, and the anxiety I had been struggling with, mostly around work, was dissipating. I began to feel more self-acceptance, which had been a chief goal of mine all through recovery. I was feeling more peace of mind. Actually, the way I looked at myself had begun to change significantly. I used to get my feelings hurt very easily, and took many things much too seriously. I found that I was more able to take things less personally and to detach more quickly from painful feelings -- usually those involving my judging myself harshly.

"God resides at the intersection of Here and Now."

We hear that a lot in After Nine meetings, but surprisingly rarely in other Twelve Step groups. And yet, it seems to be key to living life in general, and living in recovery in particular.

When I started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings, I expected to "peel the onion" of my character defects in order to find my true self. If only I could strip away the dysfunction and remembered pain, I would be freed from the false self I'd generated to cope with a baffling and loveless childhood. Somehow, I would arrive at wholeness and never suffer from those hurts again.

Doing that Step One through Nine work for the first time, feeling that pain again, and coming to terms with my childhood experiences was necessary for me to heal. But continually sifting through the detritus of my childhood was not helping me live in the moment; instead, constantly linking today's hurts and fears with old perceptions and wrongs served only to keep me caught, trapped in a constant hash and rehash of the past.

In After Nine, which I visited once I'd completed my ACA Ninth Step, I found a focus on living today, in the here and now. I discovered that I have no problems that aren't provoked by an expectation or a fear from long ago; I have no problems, at least not here, and not now. The Gordian knot of my egoistic self is cut each time I meditate, each time I "wake up" to the present. So for me, the last three steps are reminders of how to live: Not in some super-spiritual pursuit of perfection that armors me against all pain and tribulation, but in the simple act of trying to live in this moment. And this moment. And this moment.

I have been attending After Nine meetings for about five months. A friend from another 12-Step meeting told me about it, so I decided to go, because I was looking for someone to connect with.

After one or two meetings, I asked an After Nine member to meet me for dinner -- I was hurting and wanted to talk to someone. During the meal, I told this person my life history. When I was finished he turned to me, looked me in the eyes, and thanked me for sharing with him. He didn't judge me or have sympathy for me -- he just thanked me! Then he started talking about the last three Steps -- mostly about Steps 10 and 11. He asked me if I meditated and suggested that I give it a try.

So off I went .... I started meditating about ten minutes a day and soon "graduated" to twenty minutes a day. I began praying for knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out. I prayed the same for others in my life. I began attending the local After Nine Saturday morning silent meditation group, and then another meditation group on Sundays.

I cannot honestly tell anyone my life is better since I started doing all the things described above. My life is definitely different. I am working Steps 10 thru 12 on a regular basis. I especially like working Step 10 on a daily basis -- that is, throughout the day. Being in the moment is what I strive for every day. Since I have been praying and meditating, urges I was struggling with have diminished. I have begun to question why I do certain things and what I am getting out of those things. I have experienced moments where I realized that everything is okay just the way it is. I don't complain as much and have come to accept my life -- just the way it is, right now.

Meditation is not some fabulous panacea that makes me feel better all the time. If anything, it has taught me how noisy my mind is and how preoccupied I am about things I have no control over. Sometimes when I meditate I may cry, or talk to God. At other times, I just sit there and stare at a candle flame for twenty minutes, trying not to have any judgments about anything, including the flame. If I am able to focus on my breathing, I consider myself lucky. I realize meditation is a process that is changing the more I do it.

As far as Step 12 is concerned, I have never worked with others much, I suspect because God knew what he was doing! However, I attend After Nine meetings regularly and enjoy hearing people share about how they work the last three Steps; and I do my best to share about my own experience of working them. There is no doubt that I have had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps and I do what I can to practice the principles of the Twelve Steps in all my activities.

I had been working the Steps as hard as I could for a couple of years when I was invited to attend a "meditation" meeting in a friend's apartment. I remember very little about the evening or the other attendees. I know I did not feel like I "belonged" -- I was probably afraid of the unknown. I didn't go back.

After another year, I had completed as much as I could of the first nine Steps. Unfortunately I had misread and misunderstood pages 84 through 88 of the AA Big Book. I sincerely believed that the suggestions for reviewing one's day upon retiring, and planning one's day upon awakening, were the correct way to do Step 10 -- I did not recognize them as an introduction to Step 11 meditation. Looking back, I see that my insecurities, combined with my mainstream religious background, made me suspicious of the mystic Eastern religious aspects of meditation. I believed "proper" meditation would require sitting in the correct posture on the correct mat, rug, or cushion, holding my hands in just a certain way, and repeating correct phrases or humming in a certain manner whilst emptying my mind. No, thank you very much!

I was reasonably sober and happy for decades without giving much further thought to meditation. I had finally developed a prayer life in which I stopped giving God instructions and reverted to merely asking Him to bless those on my prayer list. After many years in program and nearly twenty years of a new marriage, I had a marvelous spiritual awakening during which I learned to step aside and get out of God's way. I cutely reworded the Third Step for my own life to say: "I made a decision to turn my will and my wife over to the care of God as I understand Him." She really appreciates that! I didn't realize at the time what a great introduction that was to the process of releasing people, places, and things in the meditation process.

I remember the time and place of my first experiences with sex and alcohol, my introduction to AA, my repeated surrender to some other 12-step programs, accomplishment of the first 9 steps in AA, and significant spiritual awakenings. But I do not remember when I heard about and began attending the After Nine meetings.

I do know approximately, because three important things happened to me around the same time. First, I attended a workshop on Steps 10 and 11. Second, a small group at my church began to study a particular monastic rule in detail. Seven times a day there is a call to prayer when the monks assemble for prayer and meditation, and their rule of life is well balanced with time for study, work, prayer and meditation, rest, and exercise. (That's when I reintroduced a regular exercise routine into my life.) And third, I was given a book called The Way of a Pilgrim: The Jesus Prayer Journey. By following the recommendations of this book -- simply to repeat the words "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me" over and over -- I learned the real meaning of "prayer without ceasing."

My first memorable experience with repetition of this prayer was one morning during a 12 mile drive to an AA meeting. I experienced euphoria similar to the chemical high induced by my first drink of alcohol. As I had already learned from others, this is a perfectly acceptable approach to working Steps 10 and 11. And it does not require wearing special garments, and sitting in a certain posture on an appropriate prayer rug, with the correct background music or chants.

By listening at After Nine meetings and reading daily Step 10, 11, and 12 meditations on the Internet, I have learned of several other prayer and meditation techniques. I use some of them at various times of inspiration, but seem to return to the Jesus Prayer in times of greatest blessings or needs. I even integrate my prayer and meditation time with physical exercise -- since I really don't like to exercise, this seems to make the time pass much more rapidly.

After some time in recovery, AA meetings had become for me a big ego contest. My main concerns had become how brilliant I was going to sound when I spoke, and how many people would come up to me afterwards and thank me for bringing much-needed wisdom into their life. One result was that I rarely heard anyone else in the meetings -- it's hard to hear over the loud noise of your own ego fantasies. If someone else's sharing intruded upon that fantasy world in the form of a difference of opinion or -- even worse -- more laughs and words of affirmation than I was getting, I became angry, fearful and judgmental.

The man who was to become my husband had begun attending After Nine meetings. One reason he seemed to be excited about them was the presence there of other people with a substantial amount of sobriety who were saying with a collective voice, "I don't know," instead of "I have been here for a very long time and therefore I know everything."

Despite the fact that this sound completely foreign to me, I too started going to After Nine. It brought huge revelations and caused me to question many ideas I had held as absolute truth during my time in AA.

An important realization was that my opinions were just a part of me, not who I was; so I could allow others to have their opinions without being at war with them. I also came to see that my way was merely a way, not necessarily the way. And After Nine also opened me up to the other part of the Eleventh Step that I had never truly explored: meditation. It had not previously dawned on me that if I wanted to hear from God, maybe I ought not to talk all the time.

I was having a conversation with a friend last night about compassion. True compassion can never arise from thoughts such as, "Oh man, I'm so grateful I don't have to suffer through that!" or from attempts to prove that other people's painful experiences could never happen to me because I'm so different from them. I began to see that real compassion is the realization that the other person is me.

It took me too many years to get to After Nine -- too many years of sitting in meetings thinking that I knew it all, too many years of believing that what Program offers is some sort of compromise between my will and God's will. After Nine has taught me that there is no such compromise. My life is to be lived on God's terms and God's terms alone. Recovery offers no guarantee of an easy existence in which I reach my life's goals merely because I'm sober.

I've been going to After Nine for about three years now. I think it's pretty funny that people in other 12-Step programs believe that After Nine is some sort of "advanced course" in recovery. From my own experience, it's the exact opposite. After Nine showed me that all the struggling I used to do in AA and CA is quite pointless. After Nine didn't really teach me what to do. It taught me what not to do -- that the business of life is far simpler than I believed for most of my recovery.