I am back, finally went to an agnostic AA meeting

[HuskyPup]

Hello, it's been almost a year since I poked my nose in here, maybe some of you remember me from here, and also SMART, and hopefully my brain is still functioning well enough to remember some of you…some of the names seem awfully familiar!

Well, I had a kind of nervous breakdown last week, I have been diagnosed with agitated depression, and it seems kinda accurate.

My TMJ issues still are a struggle, as are general dental issues, falling wages, rising prices and the ability to afford basic care.

I finally went to an Agnostic AA meeting, and it was OK If you know me, you will know how long I considered it, but was too scared to go, so please do not faint!)...they didn't seem to dwell on the steps word for word like many of my online talks about AA, and seemed to think that doing them in my own way was OK. There was one lady there who was kinda creepy and glassy eyed and pulled me aside, and said I had to go to more traditional meetings, but afterwards, others said just do this one, and you can still do just fine, so I just took her with a grain of salt.

I mainly want to just have live people to talk to...I may be leaving a lot of the rest, so to speak, but plan to take the positive and work with that.

Right now, instead of making a list of my character defects, I am making a list of what is good about me, what is special. I struggle with self esteem, and making a list of defects seems counterproductive, at least right now, maybe later. I've dwelt on my 'defects' my whole life in my poetry, in therapy, trying to sleep at night...enough of that!

Anyway, so 3 days now...was in this pattern of drinking way too much about 2 times a week, then the nest day, saying oh, no, what have I done?

So I am back, and hope to find some support, I could really use it now.


Also, I have been working with a modified version of the 12 steps, called The Spiral Steps, as it seems better for agnostics/atheists.

Spiral Steps


1.We admitted that we had a problem and made the decision to reclaim our lives.
2. We came to believe that there was hope for healing, health and balance.
3. We now honor our connection with the divine, as we understand it, and we accept the process of change.
4. We make a searching, fearless and honest inventory of our behavior and beliefs. We consider their effect on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves and their impact on our relations with others.
5. We admit to ourselves and to another human being what is both healthy and unhealthy in our lives and we make a daily commitment to heal ourselves in body, mind and spirit.
6. We are willing to seek our Highest Good and to grow both spiritually and emotionally.
7. We let go of dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors and we consciously welcome joy, love and peace into our lives.
8. We make a list of all beings we have harmed, including ourselves, and we become willing to make amends to them all.
9. We work to restore balance in our lives. We make direct amends to others wherever possible and we value and care for ourselves.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and promptly acknowledge both our mistakes and our achievements whenever they occur.
11. We continue to grow in compassion, strength and understanding. We learn to celebrate our lives and our connection to all living things.
12. Having had a spiritual and emotional awakening, we work to help others along the path and we practice these principles in all our affairs.
13. We seek to find our calling and to develop the will and the wisdom to follow it.


Well the agnostic AA group I went to was pretty cool with this…I guess if not, well, nobody says they have to like it, I can still do my best to improve, and be polite, listen, and refuse to get in arguments. I mean, nobody can make me argue, now that I consider it What worked for others is fine, what works for me is fine, too, we all have the same goal: to stop drinking.

Peace be with everyone, and hope to find some more support in this virtual world

[Dee74]

Welcome back
Hope this approach can work for you, HP

D

[HuskyPup]

Thanks Dee! I think I remember you from SMART, if my brain is still good!

I just hope nobody faints over me going to a meeting, finally, after all my past resistance

[Dee74]

lol.

D

[HuskyPup]

Well, if anyone wants to tank about these steps, and how they are having/had difficulty with the god/higher power aspects of AA, and found an alternate path, I would love to talk. I do NOT want to get in fights with folks who say I must follow the steps as written, so please, I ask you not to bring that to my thread. I want to discuss workable alternatives for atheists, not squabble...

In any event, I feel a bit better again today, and more hopeful.

I was thinking about step 3 here, and what I see as divine..and I would have to say art, music and literature, creating things like that, experiencing them. To me, that is a huge aspect if the divine, creativity.

Another one, is pleasure, pleasure of the senses, of eating, the body, and of sex. That, to me, is also divine.

So I have been pondering what the divine means to me, today, and how it is more important than drinking.

[Zencat]

Hi HuskyPup good to see you again.

Having live world support in my recovery maintenance is very helpful for me. I glad you finally did go to an AA meeting, even if its agnostic or specifically because it was agnostic. No matter, its good to meet people that have found ways to get and remain sober.

For me and the purpose of finding a HP/G*d with regards to working the 12-Steps, I chose the AA group as my HP. I understand my HP as Helping People.

I now think the divine and people are one in the same. As with everything under and beyond the sun is of the divine. The good with the bad, the yin and yang, its an expression of the ultimate reality...existence. I simply do my best to follow a path that helps me with; what I will do to remain healthy, as with what I will not do that which will make or keep me sick.

As for HP understandings in general, developing the wisdom to recognize what is helpful and what is not is very important in my life. Then having a working understand in how they work to help me along the road to better health makes for a beneficial practice of action too. Thus making knowing and doing as one.

One of my golden rules is: If it works, do it. If it doesn't work, stop it.

[johnclavin]

Hi HuskyPup,

I would combine your step 11 and 13.
When I work on rewriting the steps I try to keep it as close as possible to the original function and intent of the Bill W 12 steps.
You have done a really good job there. Keep going to meetings. In all AA meetings you will hear the the human element of what the 12 steps are about.

[HuskyPup]

Hi Zen, Good to see you again!

Hi John, yeah, I think 12 ans 13 could be one. I think they did that just out of pagan origins, to add a touch of humor, given the superstitions about the #13.

Well, I have long had therapists and contact with the steps, so looked at #6 last night...( and, to an extent, 4)

AA has it like this: We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Spiral Steps has it like this: We are willing to seek our Highest Good and to grow both spiritual and emotionally.

I didn’t much like the negative ring of ‘character defects’. All my life, I have beat myself over my shortcomings, my defects, and what is wrong with me, and it has does almost nothing but hold be back. It leads me to want to sabotage myself, and leads to cravings. Plus, I do not believe any outside ‘higher’ entity but my own connection with my self and the connection to the vast impartial nature or the natural world and the universe will change this. I have a rather Tao outlook: That any higher power is impartial.

Anyeay, I decided to first look at the positive:

Things that are good about me:

-Witty, humorous
-Analytical, questioning
-Observant
-Curious, made happy by feelings of wonder
-Intelligent
-Intense
-Empathetic/Supportive
-Sensually aware; sexually expressive/imaginative
-Kind

Then, I went on to things I would like to change. But I do not see these as ‘defects of character’, but negative patterns that have formed, more as in REBT that sometimes impede the things I have listed above:

-pessimistic
-self-doubting
-anxious
-angry, at times
-Give up too easily on projects
-loneliness, that feeling of always being the outsider.


It felt good to make this list, because it lets me have a picture of what I do have going for me, and starts the gears turning of how to build a bridge from those things holding me back, to the more positive. Of course, the negative will never just all go away; we will all feel angry and lonely at times. But the goal here is not to let them be controlling, and that is what I am working on here.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read and listen to all this,

H. Pup

[Bamboozle]

Hello, Husky.

[Boleo]

Originally Posted by HuskyPup

Well, if anyone wants to tank about these steps, and how they are having/had difficulty with the god/higher power aspects of AA, and found an alternate path, I would love to talk.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...her-power.html (The Process is a Higher Power)

[HuskyPup]

Hi Bamboozle, Hi Boleo, nice to meet you!

A lot of this has revolved around me honing my Tao-like beliefs, and not letting things get to me: there is a sense that on one hand, though everything is interconnected, the universe is impartial: there is nothing to say it should or should not help this person or hurt that one, injustice and justice will arise, wars and peace will come in alternating succession, and there I am, through it all. To me, I think the concept of a HP is letting go, and realizing I am just one small part of the whole, but a part that has the power not to drink, and to shape my destiny as best I can.

I hope that makes some sense, it is an atheistic spiritualism, you might say.

[Boleo]

Originally Posted by HuskyPup

A lot of this has revolved around me honing my Tao-like beliefs...

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ative-god.html (Alternative to God)

[HuskyPup]

Thanks, you could sat this is more or less what I strive for. I have been reading and re-reading Chuang Tzu, though there are some other early Chinese Philosophers I also like, such as Mo Tzu. And I like aspects of Jainism, an atheistic religion, featuring reincarnation, but with no gods, goddesses or creation myth. I tend to combine things. But a cross between Taoism and an an earthly, sensual paganism that celebrates the beauty of taste, touch, smell, sight, sound, sexual pleasure and earthly sensations most characterize my spiritual side.

[Boleo]

Originally Posted by HuskyPup

I tend to combine things. But a cross between Taoism and an an earthly, sensual paganism that celebrates the beauty of taste, touch, smell, sight, sound, sexual pleasure and earthly sensations most characterize my spiritual side.

Are you aware that Zen is derived from Chán Buddhism which is a hybrid of Taoism with Mahāyāna Buddhism?

"Some scholars have argued that Chán developed from the interaction between Mahāyāna Buddhism and Taoism"

Zen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Eddiebuckle]

Originally Posted by HuskyPup

1.We admitted that we had a problem and made the decision to reclaim our lives.
2. We came to believe that there was hope for healing, health and balance.
3. We now honor our connection with the divine, as we understand it, and we accept the process of change.
4. We make a searching, fearless and honest inventory of our behavior and beliefs. We consider their effect on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual selves and their impact on our relations with others.
5. We admit to ourselves and to another human being what is both healthy and unhealthy in our lives and we make a daily commitment to heal ourselves in body, mind and spirit.
6. We are willing to seek our Highest Good and to grow both spiritually and emotionally.
7. We let go of dysfunctional thoughts and behaviors and we consciously welcome joy, love and peace into our lives.
8. We make a list of all beings we have harmed, including ourselves, and we become willing to make amends to them all.
9. We work to restore balance in our lives. We make direct amends to others wherever possible and we value and care for ourselves.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and promptly acknowledge both our mistakes and our achievements whenever they occur.
11. We continue to grow in compassion, strength and understanding. We learn to celebrate our lives and our connection to all living things.
12. Having had a spiritual and emotional awakening, we work to help others along the path and we practice these principles in all our affairs.
13. We seek to find our calling and to develop the will and the wisdom to follow it.

Husky,

I am in a "traditional" AA group and I like your steps. To me, recovery is about truth in self, relationships, and interacting with the wider world. This is your recovery, your calling, your truth. Anything that works and is loving and truthful, I say spread the word and more power to you.

Good luck!
Edd

[HuskyPup]

Thanks. I think these steps respect the ideas of the 'original' 12, and mean no disrespect...I just found them better for me, personally, to actually start working on, and help me with the higher-power aspect that I had struggled with.

[HuskyPup]

Well, on my list from the other day, I decided to get busy: to stop procrastinating on things that bring me anxiety (bills I actually do have the $ to pay, but don’t), and also to set aside time to write, and set small goals/projects to complete, to help get back to part of what I consider divine: the creative, artistic and expressive. I find that not drinking has helped to free up the time and energy to work towards these goals.

[ananda]

Husky,

I so related to not paying bills you have the money to pay and not doing projects! Where I find the AA steps helpful in this is in looking each evening at how FEAR kept me from steping outside of my ego self and doing the next indicated thing. Understanding the FEAR is actually making the anxiety and concequences worse.

How my mind works is very very much CRAZY!!!!! LOL...step 2

I am convinced of certain negatives, and I interpret everything in my life to support the negatives. FEAR takes over my life and it becomes a self fufilling profecy. I'm not talking about using "positive" thinking...it's about seperating myself from the judgement of the information as positive or negative...things are how they are and my perceptions can be pretty off base to reinforce what I have decided already is....

I guess I'm saying what I think and what I do become somewhat seperated...I think that I'll run out of money or never finish a project...what I do is pay the bills and start the project...

Not sure that makes since, but thats what I thought of after reading your post.

[Boleo]

Originally Posted by ananda

...I'm not talking about using "positive" thinking...it's about seperating myself from the judgement of the information as positive or negative...things are how they are and my perceptions can be pretty off base to reinforce what I have decided already is....

"Detachment is the most noble of all virtues."
- Meister Eckhart

[HuskyPup]

Hi Ananda, Hi Boleo! Yeah, fear and a lack of money have been big obstacles. This week, I have made a lot of progress, though, in putting to rest some festering issues that were causing a lot of anxiety I would then try and drown out with drink.

I paid the phone/internet bill, before it got cut off.

I paid the electric bill on time.

I had my car fixed, bad starter.

I went to the dentist, for fear of an abscess tooth...turns out it was something stuck in the gum, along with my TMJ/grinding. Still some issues to work out with the TMJ, but better than needing a root canal/extraction.

Like an idiot, I let my car insurance lapse...so I called the MVA, my insurance agent, and today spent 3 hours in resolving the mess...I have to file a few papers, still, but that paranoia will soon be gone.

Then, I am pretty much beyond broke, but the other bills from my more distant past can be dealt with more slowly/steadily. I mean, I still have a lot of loose ends to tie up, but feel I am in a better position to start addressing them all.

Today, I realized that I drank not just to have fun, but to drown out my fears and worries, only to have it create even worse fears and worries, and decided I am going to meet these things head on, to the best of my ability, without drinking.

Thank you for the encouragement, everyone, it has helped fuel my strength.

I'm looking forward, too, to my Friday agnostic AA meeting, this time, I want to talk a little, was quiet before. I also see my therapist tomorrow, and will have a lot to say!

Hope all are well,

much peace,

H. Pup