Self-Will vs. God’s Will
I came into AA without a notion of God or a Higher Power. I can accept that the HP is not me, and I’m definitely willing to believe.
And I felt this viscerally when I went to my first f2f meeting last month. Holding hands with six strangers during the serenity prayer made me cry. They were there for me when I needed them, and they don’t even know me. Just like every single person here at GROW.
Something was happening. Grace? My HP?
I’m not sure how to intercept messages from my HP.
My sponsor has me reading these words from the Big Book each morning:
“In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy, we don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for awhile.”
-BB p86.
Over time I came to focus on two things:
1. The HP can speak to us through intuition. I imagine my HP is that twinge in the pit of my stomach. Unfortunately I have never paid attention to that feeling when it was telling me things I didn’t want to hear. I ignored it. Is it still there?
2. The idea of struggle. This is more concrete. How I understand the passage: When I am in self-will (not HP will), I will struggle. But I also struggle when trying to undo old poisonous habits such as lying to avoid discomfort. Surely my HP wants me to fix this, and yet I feel incredible tension and discomfort.
I love Step Three. When I learned that I cannot control people, places and things I was so relieved. I’m ready to learn how to make decisions without trying to finesse a certain outcome.
But when I found out that I was going to be asking my HP for help, I came up against this: How can I know what my HP wills?
My life was entirely run according to self-will. It’s all I know. How do I understand when I’m simply manipulating a situation and claiming act according to my HP?
How do you understand the difference between self-will and your HP? I would love to hear about how you learned to hear your HP. How was it for you?
I have learned so much from the daily GROW shares. Reading them is a gift and a privilege.
Thank you for giving me the chance to do service this week and I look forward to learning from all of you! Happy New Year!