The practice of Step 11 is intended to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God. We can be many years into our recovery before we come to see that this is not an intellectual understanding. It's an experiential one. It comes through prayer and meditation, and since meditation is simply being aware of being in the moment, it follows that the improvement in our conscious contact is more likely to come about from our contact with the everyday than with books of philosophy or wise men.

The Buddhist religion is full of examples of people who experienced enlightenment through the mundane. One earnest character had burned all his books and sought solitude in the mountains because he knew that, despite all his learning, he still had not experienced that "conscious contact." It eventually came upon him all of a sudden, simply when he heard a stone strike a piece of bamboo.

A children's poem from the twentieth century tells of the little girl Elizabeth Ann's journey to discover "exactly how God began." She asks her nurse, and even goes to London to find an important man who can tell her the answer. At length she turns to her doll, Jennifer Jane, and asks her.

And Jane, who didn't much care for speaking,
Replied in her usual way by squeaking.

What did it mean? Well, to be quite candid,
I don't know, but Elizabeth Ann did.
Elizabeth Ann said softly, "Oh!
Thank you, Jennifer. Now I know."