The prompter is a person who prompts; specifically one who cues performers when they forget their lines. Other speakers use Tele-Prompters, which enables the speaker to read their speech from a screen.
In the Depressed Anonymous program of recovery, we find ourselves listening to a spiritual Prompter — an inner voice, a Higher Power, providing us with a brand new line of thinking. An action oriented prompt, where we come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves nudging us to change the way we think and behave.
But who is this Prompter? What is its name? And why am I hearing it’s voice now. I am hearing it now because I am ready to hear it. Fair enough? I have surrendered. Once beat down by my addictions, I now no longer follow the cues which produced for me a life of negative moods and behaviors. I told the God of my understanding that I’ve had it! No more beating myself up with blame and negative thinking. Negative thinking produced those painful moods spiraling me down into feelings of hopelessness and depression. I had the feeling that all my efforts at finding hope were futile.
The Prompter which I have been listening to in the inner depths of my soul has been leading me towards serenity and filling me with a powerful meaning for my life. After having been introduced to the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps I continued to listen to the Prompter in the quiet of those daily moments of meditation and prayer.
It was my decision to put my life on a brand new trajectory of wellness and healing. I had a spiritual awakening, ever so gradually. I just knew it was the Prompter itself who was placing a new life script into my heart.
Each and every day of my life I pray, I quiet the chatter in my mind, and draw near to the God of my understanding. When we draw near to God, God draws near to us. What you seek, seeks you.
I believe that my daily conscious contact with God in prayer and meditation I am able to discover that we are no longer dependent on our will but on God’s will for us. And just as Bill W tells us in Alcoholics Anonymous that when we are faced with the indecision about something, we then ask God for inspiration and we let go of struggling for an answer. He tells us that you will be surprised at how the right answers will come after we have practiced this way of living. It also comes to pass that our hunches are more right than wrong. We also pause throughout the day when we are fearful, puzzled or anxious. We pray to the Higher Power for which direction to take. I like the suggestion the best when AA says,” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions. We become more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves..” (Depressed Anonymous, Page 101). We all know that our new life script which the Prompter has provided us gives our life direction and meaning.
Depressed Anonymous shares with us Meister Eckart’s thoughts on that Vital Spiritual Experience which comes to each of us when we surrender our lives and wills to the God of our understanding.
“This work (birth), when it is perfect, will be due solely to God’s action while you have been passive. If you really forsake your own knowledge and will, then surely and gladly God will enter with his knowledge shining clearly. Where God achieves self-consciousness, your own knowledge is of no use, nor has it standing. Do not imagine that your own intelligence may rise to it, so that you may know God. Indeed when God divinely enlightens you, no natural light is required to bring that about. This natural light must in fact be completely extinguished before God will shine in with his light, bringing back with God all that you have forsaken and a thousand times more, together with a new form to contain it all.” (Depressed Anonymous, Page 161).
“Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understand God to be.
SOURCE: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. Page 101, 161.