In The Gateless Barrier, the author Robert Aitken quotes approvingly from the Christian mystic, Meister Eckhart:

As long as you will to do God's will, and yearn for eternity and God, you are not really poor [in spirit], for he is poor who wills nothing, knows nothing, and wants nothing.

If the essence of Step 11 is the seeking of God's will for us, then where is the sense in this statement? What possible higher attainment can there be than ascertaining God's will and being given the power to carry that out?

This is the mystery that lies at the very heart of Program. It is a journey that begins with our turning away from our addiction. It continues through the practice of the Steps from 4 to 9 -- in effect, our attempts to do Step 10 for the first time. And it concludes -- or seems to conclude -- with the ongoing practice of the last three Steps. What more can there be?

But our journey ends, not with the seeking of God's will, not with the desire to help others, not with the moment-to-moment practice of awareness, but with the dawning realization that there is nothing to seek for any more. There is no "God's will" that is somehow independent of ourselves -- there cannot be, for there is no God that is independent of or separate from ourselves. All is one, all is exactly as it should be, and there is nothing to strive for or to attain.

Most of us will not come close to this realization in this lifetime. But we may begin to sense it from afar off. Through the practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12, we may begin to see that seeking God's will is just another way of keeping ourselves apart from everyone and everything else in the cosmos. And if we don't realize it in this lifetime, a Buddhist will remind us that we probably have countless more lives to come before our awakening takes us to nirvana ....