Zencat

My past religious upbringing in the Southern Baptist Church had a huge impact on my early days of recovery. In early adulthood I resented how religion was taught to me. The church used scare tactics to convert me to Christianity. As I was able to leave the church I not only abandoned the church I rejected God and every possible manifestation of God.

So then when I first entered recovery I was eventually given a BB. As I read it I was alarmed. All the references to God/HP had taken me back to my childhood and the angry God of my youth. I had a hard time seeing past my anger against religion. To me anything resembling God was something that I ever wanted to know about again. But the idea of having a HP of my own understanding interest me.

For a long time I wanted to explore Buddhism. Recovery seemed like the place to do that. I went to the library and looked up some Buddhist stuff. I also came across atheist literature, learned about mythology and discovered secularism. I found my HP, so long that it remained secular in nature. That understanding I could work with.

Eventual I could feel connected to the world around me as with my inner-self. I call myself a secular spiritual person. I have a reverence for nature and feel a great wonder for the universe. I preference the word spiritual with secular because I have no need for supernatural beliefs. I like to use a scientific understand of the world around me. Although in the scientific world there are a lot of unknowns. I can work around that because I love a good mystery.