Discovering Your Understanding of Your Higher Power
Yesterday at my f2f meeting we discussed step 2. So the subject of God as we understand him came up. This has never been an easy topic for me. One member shared that when he got sober he claimed to be an atheist but he was so angry at God that he wasn’t an atheist because if he was that angry at God he had to believe in him so…. not an atheist. I never claimed to be an atheist but when I walked in I thought God wanted me dead. That was my best thinking drunk. Hard to ask for things from a power that I didn’t think want me alive.
So at first I was told to borrow my new AA friends’ Gods. They told me their HP loved me and wanted good things for me and would keep me sober just for today. They said it didn’t matter what I believed about HP at that moment because their HP worked, they were proof of that. It was a start.
They taught me to pray, when I said I couldn’t remember to do it in the mornings they told me to put my shoes under the bed and when I got up in the morning when I went to get my shoes from under the bed ask HP to keep me sober that day, and when I went to put my shoes under the bed at night thank HP for keeping me sober that day. I did it because I trusted them more than me at that time.
Over the years I have struggled to define what I believed HP to be for myself. I have searched and read many things, but I also made sure that I kept an open mind and continued to work the rest of the steps to the best of my ability.
I have tried on many religions over the years and learn about what others believed asking myself if that fit what I believed to be true about my HP. I have let go of many old ideas, including that God wanted me dead, although there are still days when it’s hard for me to believe that HP wants good things for me and that is when I go to the HP with skin, the fellowship of AA, to remind me that HP does want good things for me today if I surrender my will (definition in dictionary: used to express desire, choice, willingness, consent).
Since no step can be worked with anything like perfection, this journey is a process that continues. This is all a spiritual journey. Ask me on any given day what I believe my HP to be and it will change from day to day. So the question is not what I believe so much as what am I doing to define my HP that day.
So how are you currently discovering your understanding of your higher power. What are you doing to define HP in your life today?