Being agnostic I struggled with step 3 for a bit, but this old timer at a meeting shared and made finding mine so simplistic. Sometimes certain aspects of A.A., in my opinion, seem antiquated, but the wisdom of some of the old timers is why I "keep coming back."
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If I may ask, what did he share. It seems alot of people have that problem.
YESSS! I used to get so hung up on certain words and phrases in AA (God, powerless, turn my will and my life over, prayer, meditation, insanity, power greater than myself, Him, conscious contact, defects of character etc). I took everything so literal, and overthought it all. Bottom line was it was all so unattainable to me. There was no way I could do the steps. Just the God word alone was enough to make me feel like this program wasn’t going to work for me.
This time around it all just closed clicked for me. I admit that my self will and ego get me into trouble. I want what I want when I want it. I also discovered that I have a conscious that does know right from wrong. I just chose to do what I want and try and ignore my conscious because I want what I want and nothing is going to stop me. Alcohol and drugs helped shut out my conscious. So, for me my conscious is this connection to this power greater than myself. To me, myself is my self will and ego… which is what I have a very hard time keeping in check. I need to tap into the power of my consciousness, which knows what truly is right and wrong, to help guide me and keep me from submitting to my self will. With time, step work, therapy, and lots of practice, I’m slowly rewiring my self will to align more with my consciousness. Without a daily program to reinforce all of this, I have found that my self will slowly gets stronger. The negative thoughts inside my head grow louder. I become more irritable, restless, and discontent. I begin to feel the need to “escape”. This is why today I practice a daily program of recovery. For me, it’s the only way to insure long term sobriety.
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It was more or less "make your higher power the thing that helps keep all the people in this room sober, because it's obviously working for a lot of us. You don't have to name it."
I'm paraphrasing but when he said it it was like I had an epiphany.
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I love this. I often run into folks who are agnostic, and it seems like they are almost militant in their agnosticism. By that I mean that to be agnostic means by definition that you acknowledge there is something you don't know out there, or in short "I don't know what to believe. "
The people I am thinking of as militant, are the ones who are unsure and refuse to investigate. They don't know and are gonna keep it that way.
The reasons I like this post are
1 it shows you are open to growth and change, and 2 it tells others a simple way to think about the question of a higher power.
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That issue had me steer away from AA more than a few times. What helped was a good home group that exercised caution when ever a meeting started getting religious and a friend who suggested that I use the word GOD as a term of convenience, this allowed me to start saying god without association to the god I was taught of in catholic school as a child.
My higher power is the universe, I found a HP that I logically knew was there but is beyond my total comprehension, I also like the fact that I am a part of my god but seemingly insignificant at the same time.
Great thread, I've posted similar sentiments but this thread really sums up a lot for many.
Contempt prior to investigation will ruin the best of us. And no one ever said how long the investigation will take as long as we're willing to acknowledge there is a solution and that's all I need for today.