DayTrader

I'm well aware that the way it's written in the book that we're asked to make a choice one way or the other in the 2nd step Proposition.

It's an either/or question and answer. It seems like this time through step 2 choosing "everything" as I've always chosen in the past is a lie. Kinda like I've been kidding myself (delusion) into thinking I actually chose everything just because I said I did.

The other option is, of course, to choose "nothing" and that is starting to make a little more sense in some areas but then not sense, or not enough sense in a lot of other areas.

I'm contemplating making up a 3rd option... choosing both. That is the one that seems to make the most sense to me at this point. The other thing is it doesn't seem like I can make any of the choices without there being at least SOME fear involved - yet we're challenged to make our decision fearlessly.

If you've worked the 2nd step and have some experience taking both sides of of the coin Bill offers, (or maybe making choice #1 for a while then changing to choice #2) please share your history with it.



Thanks

Gottalife

I came at this step with no belief, took it, and went on still without any belief. I didn't know if God was everything or nothing, too deep a question for me at the time.

It seems step one defines the problem, step two suggests a possible solution. I came to believe lots of things would work for me in the past, none ever did. Having no other options I was willing to believe in the possibility that the same power that worked for the other members could work for me too.

So my step two was really around this question:

"We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?" As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built."

I answered yes I am willing and went on my way (to the next step). It wasn't until step five that I had an experience that established my belief so in a sense, that was where I completed my step two. I had come to believe, based in experience, that God is everything.

The consciousness of my belief came over a period of time as the result of working the steps. If I had sat on step two, going no further until I could convince myself to believe, then if I was still alive, I suspect I would have remained a drunken agnostic. I had to make some effort to clear the way to find God.

DayTrader

Same for me re the 2nd step question.

With a number or years under my belt, I keep looking for more - not necessarily in a "I need more to be OK sort of deal" but more in a "I wonder what more to God there could be that I've been in denial of or delusional about."

There can be as much or as little to the seeking that we're challenged to do as one would like and I'm enjoying looking for and into the multitudes of principles behind and encompassed in each of the steps.

Tommyh

first time thru the steps ,I set aside what I thought I believe and started from scratch.I asked whatever or whoever might be out there to keep me sober.I said thanks late in the day.It started working.

Last time thru the steps,I made the one time decision God is everything and that put a good attitude in my head going forward thru the steps and in life.

I gave God,as I understand Him my will and life,I can`t take it back,I do ,at certain times, try to take over the managing of my life and it don`t go well.Back to God.....To me it is a growing process,this Faith in the HP
but for me to think He is just there to help me stay sober and I`ll do the rest is insane to me,who am I fooling? me that's who

Db1105

I just trusted the Group of Drunks. Doesn’t matter what it is, none of the 2,000+ religions on earth make any Spence to me. I just know it’s not me. Good orderly Direction via The Big Book or AA.

tomsteve

same experience here. my old thought was that there was too much goin on in the world for whatever God was out there to help me so i had to help myself.
that led me to desperation, on my knees, begging for help from whatever God was out there.
of all the things ive complicated in my life, i didnt complicate that. god is.im not. i let Him.

DayTrader

When I was new.......when I started AA......my first time through the steps i...... for me that was 12+ years ago. Thankfully I've grown quite a lot since then and what I did then would be far from sufficient for my spiritual health now. Many of my beliefs have completely changed, most have grown and been altered slightly, and many of my practices have changed over the years.

I see I misstated what I was asking for... anyone have any current experience with the 2nd step choice?

snitch

I don't know if this is what you are looking for but I will share my experience.

When I was a young child up to the ages of probably about 10 to 12, possibly younger, I believed in a Christian God. I would say my prayers every night. I believed.

When I was drinking I do not remember believing in anything. I lived to drink. I had no morals, I was selfish. God? Pah! Alcohol was my God.

When I tried getting sober and was asked to believe in a Power Greater than me, I reacted along the lines of what TomSteve described. I was like, why will God help me? A stupid, worthless drunk, when there is so much suffering in the world and people who need help more than me. Little children for example. The only time I would pray was to ask God to not let me wake up in the morning. I always did.

Until 15 months ago, when I was so, so desperate. I couldn't stop drinking. Nothing was working and it was getting worse. I prayed to God. My old Christian God but I didn't really know what I was praying to. I was just in so much pain. Neither dead nor alive, existing in a hellish limbo. Death seemed a way better option than how I was living but I realises I didnt want to die!! . I wanted to get sober and live. 2 nights of hideous withdrawals. the first night I prayed for God to let me live, and to get sober. The 2nd night I prayed to God that if it was my time to die I was ok with that but please wait until my daughter is with her daddy and not let her wake up next to her dead mummy.

I survived and I got myself to AA. When I did step 2 my belief in a Higher Power was already there. It was easy for me to believe in a Power Greater than me. I was just a pimple on this rock we call Earth. But what is that Power? I don't really know. I call it God. My childlike belief of a man in white robes with a long beard sitting on a fluffy cloud still comes to me although deep down I don't really believe that is true. For me God is Good, Kind, Tolerant, Patient, Forgiving, Comforting, Beautiful. I believe because I couldn't stop drinking. Until I really put all my trust into this Power. It was certainly not my will. My will will take me to the nearest pub/bar and get drunk.

Putting my trust into this Power (God) with ALL my affairs is something different and I really have to work on that on a daily basis. God is everything or else he is nothing. This is so true. I gave my greatest problem to God and I haven't had a drink since so I have to trust God with all my other matters and through daily prayer, AA meetings, talking to my sponsor, I am doing that.

I still not know what this Power is but I know it is Greater than me and when I hand my will and my life over things really are good and maybe that is all I need to know?

DayTrader

When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or
He isn’t. What was our choice to be?

sugarbear1

step 2 didn't mean much to me until I got through step 7

Tommyh

here,we call that the second step proposition

CousinA

I tapped an unsuspected inner resource. Some people call it a god. I don't.

Whatever gets you through the night.

-a

fini

yes. the unsuspected inner resource. my saving grace.

Grungehead

Like others have mentioned, when I first worked step 2 all I could muster was the willingness to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. With each step that belief grew, and when I said my 7th step prayer, that was the moment I felt I had a spiritual experience of sorts.

When I read the 10th step promises with my sponsor after making several of what I felt were my most "urgent" amends (making amends being a big part of why I avoided working the steps for 23 years), I knew that my HP, who I chose to call God, was everything.

SoberCAH

When I first got sober and worked the steps with my sponsor, I thought that there was probably a God out there.

Our parish priest came to visit me in the treatment center and I asked him how he believed or knew that God existed.

He told me that "the fact that there are places like this for people like you is a good place to start."

I have never forgotten that advice.

He turned and exited the door which locked behind him keeping me under lock and key.

I thought that his life was a lot better than mine at the moment and that he must know a lot about God that I didn't.

So I accepted that there was a God for purposes of Step 2. Incidentally, my sponsor and I went to the same church.

Like Grungehead, the more I worked the Steps and tried to learn and do God's will for me each day, the more I came to believe that there is a God.

After a pretty good while, I ultimately came to know that there is a God.

That knowledge is borne of God's actions in my life, especially in my recovery (but also when I was a feral drunk for many years).

That is my adult journey of faith through the AA program.

It doesn't include the basic beliefs I accepted as a boy based on what the nuns taught me. These turned out to be the foundations of faith for me, but I forgot all about them for years, of course.

Nor does it include the benefits I derived from my fairly intense efforts to learn more about God and to develop a relationship with God after I had been sober for a pretty good while.

DayTrader

same here.

I figured if I asked about the "choice made in the proposition" I'd get even more blank stares then I did by asking what choice was made in the second step choice (seeing how Bill used the word CHOICE I figured it would make it easier to find).

Gottalife

In the first few days and weeks I took two different approaches which seemed to be suggested. One was group of drunks. My initial reasoning was that they could stay sober and I could not, so they had more power than me. I soon learned that many in that group, the ones I related to most, were like me, with temporary sobriety and no solution. They did encourage me to stick around
however, just by the fact that they were so like me, and they were there. Now, when I look back at some of the crazy advice I got from my group of drunks, it is clear they were not an adequate substitute for a real God.

Good Orderly Direction. This sounded good, but only if you know what a good orderly direction is. I didn't, and made that discovery through some really big mistakes as i tried to play God and decode what my good orderly direction would be. I based the whole theory on the idea that part of the reason I was able to find my way to AA was that I knew the difference between right and wrong. All my life I had been doing the wrong thing, so I set out to do what was right.......and that turned out to be wrong as well! The subtle unconscious influence of self permeated every thought and deed. It turns out there was little I could do about that without God's help.

August252015

I hope my answer hits on your question DT....

I always believed in God. I was raised in a traditional Methodist family, all positive experiences, and quite educated in it. I challenged my knowledge with classes like World Religions in HS and Judaism and Christianity in Conflict in college (interestingly, I was the only Christian in the class).

The way I describe my choice in 2 is that it wasn't so much a choice TO believe, it was a coming back to God- and figuring out what that meant sober. Or, in other words, God never left me- I wandered miles and miles (and miles) away from Him.

The way I learned it, willingness is the real key in step 2 and I had that. 3 was also pretty straightforward - at the time. As I have gone along, what I'd describe as my spirituality- vs religion-based mentality and beliefs- have evolved through teachings of folks like Fr Richard Rohr, who is possibly the most impactful on my religious, spiritual, moral and practical worldview - nondual thinking, love, the message that the foundation of all wisdom traditions is love...

I still study and do traditional meditations and readings- but I read the BB way more than the other BB It is my spiritual reference when all else fails- bc I can't do this myself and it tells me that all over the place.

ColoradoRocky

Just for the record, none of this was part of Bill Wilson and the other founders' Alcoholics Anonymous. There were six steps and the second addressed the need to get honest with oneself. The six steps worked great for Bill and all of the original old-timers.

It wasn't until later when Bill decided to incorporate the evangelical Christian parts of the Oxford Group that religion came into the picture.

What's my point? Alcoholics are no different from anybody else.

To be healthy, we need to take care of our physical well-being, especially at first when we might be suffering from the physical effects of drinking; we need to keep our minds active and challenged; and, if we are inclined toward Christianity/religion like some of the original members of AA, we need to practice our faith.

Anyone who has a problem with Christianity or religion can substitute a "higher power," which is a phrase inserted into the steps by a couple of wise and sober AA atheists, Jim Burwell and his friend Hank, who foresaw problems with making Alcohollics Anonymous an evangelical arm of the Oxford Group.

Or you don't have to be a believer at all and you can work the steps. (Like one of the old-timers said, "Skip the God stuff.") And for the record (!): AA saved my life.

Just don't drink, and take care of yourself!