Originally Posted by
Mark75 
Thanx for your open and honest post.
Pretending there is a God and praying to Him is an excellent way to start! You're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. This leaves you open to a real and meaningful experience with a higher power of YOUR understanding.
I guess I see it as praying to the part of me that I know is in there, who is good and does the right thing. To ask for strength and keep focused so that the part of me that is bad, who wants to run away and act immature etc., doesn't take over. I would believe in a god if I could but I just think this is all there is. So I want to live a good life and be good to myself and others. So I am praying for that. To myself, if that makes sense. It helps to voice my fears, doubts, concerns, requests of life/"the universe", to think about what I need to do so that there is the best chance of that happening, and then to realize it's out of my control and in fate's hands, so, why worry about it anymore? That all I can do is act, not worry. That is what helped me the most the last time I went to AA so I am going to do it again. And I'm going to start going to this universalist unitarian "church" I like, that follows kind of the similar belief system that I just tried to write down here. To meet people who think similarly to me and can support me in living according to my values and principles instead of giving over to the dark side of me that leads me to unhappiness.
I have really weird thoughts so I apologize if I'm not making sense. I was raised in a very religious and controlling environment that I totally rebelled against and rejected, so to me it's amazing that I have even tried to or wanted to be believe in a God or wanted any spirituality at all. I have been trying to find out what it means for me, independent of how I was raised. For me it is more of a secular humanist veiwpoint, and I like a lot that Buddhism has to offer although I don't believe in any of the supernatural stuff.