spryte

Hi,

I am struggling with Step 2. I don't believe in God, and I don't not believe in God. I've given several religions consideration (before I stopped drinking).

I'm considering the whole notion of my own concept of a Higher Power, but I balk because I think that's selfish and conceited. What on earth can I see or feel or conceive that has not been seen or felt or conceived by people of faith before me?

Isn't it conceited to invent my own God just so I can get sober? Aren't ego and conceit qualities that I should be turning away from, not nurturing?

Any thoughts here would be appreciated

spryte

CarolD

While not exatly answering your concerns....
you might find this thread interesting

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ve-issues.html

Stereosteveo

What I did:

Sponsor suggested I get a new God as I wasn't conducting business with the one I brought in with me.

1. Wrote down who/what I would like God to be. (just adjectives really)
2. Worked the steps and revealed myself to Him, and he revealed Himself to me.

(I left out part 1a, where I spent a year doing nothing, trying to figure out God. That didn't produce any results.)

I like this saying "There is a God and I'm not it" (Then work the steps)
At no point in the 12-steps does it ask us to figure out who/what God is.

I know, all easier said than done right? Been there.

Ananda

it does say we have to find a god/hp of our understanding...and that it has to be something that make's sense to us...

I'm not quite to step 2 yet, but it is on my mind...

I can't make up a conception of god...as taht word has a specific meaning to me .....

But I can look for an HP that makes sense to me....so thats where I will probably start....

yeahgr8

Nope it clearly states in the Big Book "we mean your own conception of God"

freya

"There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word........Place yourself in the middle of the stream of Knowledge and Power that flows into your life, then, without effort, you will be compelled to wisdom and perfect contentment."

This is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation that appears in the January 30 daily reading in Courage to Change. For me, it explains perfectly "the path" I had and still have to follow in order to have and be connected with a "God of my understanding." So, for me, it was/is not at all about "making something up." Actually, I agree that that idea is, not just arrogant, but dangerous and very, very silly.

I guess I see it kinda like this -- and please remember that anything I say here or anywhere else on this topic is, at it's very best, just a poor and extremely limited metaphor for HP and for my experience, thus far, with/of HP --

God is HUGE...

...HUGE in every possible, in every imaginable and even unimaginable sense...

...way "huger" than all the brain power and intuition and feeling of all the human beings, who live and have ever lived and who ever will live, to grasp.

If we strive to the best of our ability to be open and wiling and work to identify and give-up all the things we carry that block us from God, we are given a chance to live in and "see" as much of HP as we can handle and need to see from our own little, extremely limited, teeny-tiny perspective. And that's awesome and truly is all we need.

So, for me, the deal is really that I have to constantly work to put myself in the middle of the stream of knowledge and wisdom that God has for me and that I need to be in in order to best walk the path that most closely aligns my will with God's will.

A couple of other things: 1) for me this has absolutely nothing to do with religion; and 2) I find it more conducive to my being in right-relationship with HP for me to always be cognizant of the fact that "God as I understand Him" is, in actual lived experience, "God as I do not understand Him." It's very, very dangerous -- and has had disastrous consequences for me in the past -- to even begin to think that anything I might understand might possibly qualify as "God."

This thread is also good:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-thoughts.html

...and try to relax about this. LOL! Not an easy thing to do, but, for me, searching too obsessively for my HP has always been a sure way of pushing Him/Her/It away. Turning it over and working and waiting patiently can be a first leap of faith...and taking leaps of faith seems to be, for some reason I, of course, cannot explain, an excellent strategy for truly developing faith.

freya

BTW, I believe that, as far as Step 2 goes, all you actually have to do is to be willing to believe. Don't get too far ahead of yourself here, because that can get scary and intimidating.

intention

Hi Spryte,

Sorry to hear you are struggling with Step 2. This Step does not need to be worked, it can be done instantly when you understand what it means and you have willingness (result of working step 1).

You are trying to figure out what/who God is but as Stereostevo says, at no point in the 12 Steps does it ask you to do that.





Let's assume Step 2 says -

Came to believe that the latest movie out is worth spending my time and money on to make me feel good


At which stage do you agree with the above statement?

1) Film critic writes raving review
2) Partner said film is the best they have ever seen
3) 5 friends all tell you film is amazing
4) 50 people here on SR tell you is fantastic, not to be missed
5) Pay out money for ticket, spend two hours of your time, laugh and cry, leave feeling great and only then finally believe that everything in 1,2,3 & 4 was true.





My guess is that you may believe at stage 1 enough to pay your money and spend your time seeing the movie. If you are a bit cynical it may be at 2 or 3 that you come to believe. If you are a really cynical person I would guess by 4 you would be believe the statement.

All Step 2 says is "Come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity"

I love the way that Joe McQ simply describes this in this book The Steps We Took

Willingness - Step 1
Belief - Step 2
Decision - Step 3
Action - Steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Results - Steps 10, 11
Faith - Step 12


".....we said we can believe in Step 2, decide in Step 3 and act in Steps 4, 5,6,7,8 and 9, we will get the Promises in Step 9 and the results in Step 10, and the results of prayer and meditation in Steps 11.
Now we know. We are people who have faith."

In other words, we get our faith at Step 12 as opposed to belief at Step 2.

Back to your original question, I don't think you are being conceited. I think you are trying to find God or know God at Step 2.

Lets go back to the movies and assume the statement says -

"Know that the latest movie out was worth spending my time and money on to make me feel good"

At which stage do you say the statment to be true?

It is highly likely that you would say at stage 5 when you had actually spent the time and money (took action) and laughed and cried at it (experienced results of action).

Can you see the difference in believing in God and knowing God?

When you do get to Step 12 and know God and have faith after seeing the results you will have a clearer idea of your concept of God, although this may evolve as you continue with spiritual growth.

Pinkcuda

Thre way I see it is that you're either Gnostic or Agnostic. My belief is that everyone who comes to AA is an Agnostic because they are looking for a Spiritual Awakening that they haven't had yet.
Also, you don't need to believe in anything right now. The step goes as such
"Came to believe that a Higher Power could restore me to sanity.
It doesn't say "Came to believe in a Higher Power and that Higher Power could restore me to sanity. Is just suggest you come to believe that some Higher Power could.
You don't need to know any specifics about this HP at this time. Just believe.

Ananda

I have a question...

ok HOW do you come to believe???

See if someone held a gun to my head and said that wall is blue (when it was pink)...I would tell him I believed the wall was blue...but it wouldn't be true...even if my eyes were closed I wouldn't really necesssarily believe him

So...Step one does put the gun to My head...but saying that I believe when in fact I don't????

So HOW did people find this belief that an HP or god would restore them to sanity when everything they have expereinced to date is that the power won't do that???

Not trying to fuz...truley just trying to understand.

Eroica

Ananda..you're right. We can't help what we believe. Our belief or lack of belief in God is just one way we interpret the world. I really think anyone who believes in a Higher Power is delusional or brainwashed... I'm not trying to be rude and I feel guilty writing that, but how can I not think that? If someone told you they believe in trolls you would think the same thing. There's no rational explanation for God.

If God was all powerful and huge, then why didn't he give the Haitians a sign that he was about to kill 150,000 of them? That isn't powerful.. That's a weak and sociopathic Higher Power. Humans came to the Haitians aid, not God. Everything I've done in my life has been a result of my own choices or chance, not God.

But if I invent a human-like God, then he isn't perfect anymore, but human. No "God" is satisfying to me. We can only apply human characterisics to God-and the God of monotheism is petty, violent, and vindictive.

getr345

As one who does not believe in Gods, I think the work around here for a genuine belief in a Higher Power can be found in the Universe itself. The Universe is demonstrably a higher power than you or I, and you and I are a part of that Universe (we are a product of it, perhaps even the universe becoming self-aware through us) but if you need some more specifics think about planetary formation, gravity, stars, black holes and all the incredible powers that clearly exist in the universe and which can be seen as higher than the individual self. Good luck.

Boleo

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ative-god.html

Ago

step two was simple for me

Came (to AA)
Came to (woke up)
Came to believe

came to believe what?

that a power greater then myself...wait...wait...what power?

aren't I attending AA meetings? AA is a power greater then myself, both the fellowship and "The Program" are powers greater then myself, and both have helped millions of alcoholics recover, OK, so what can AA do for me?

Restore me to sanity

Can I come to believe AA can help me? can restore me to sanity?

I use the definition of insanity I used as a paramedic

A danger to myself or others, am I a danger to myself or others?

as an alcoholic that is easy to answer

so, for me step 2 is as simple as Can AA help restore me to sanity?

Welp, it's worked for others, maybe I'll keep coming back and see if it will work for me

Step 2 done

I crossed the "God" bridge at step 3, where it said the word God in it, I did it like this:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...-three-aa.html

the as you understand God I spoke about in this thread there are about four posts in this thread where I discuss a "God as you understand him" from a scientific and agnostic viewpoint

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...stand-him.html

step 2 is easy

step 3 is easy, all you do is "make a decision"

steps 4-9 teach you how to work step 3

intention

No-one is saying God is all powerful and huge.

All we are talking about is a power greater than ourselves.

or.......

Am I the greatest power that there is?

If yes, then you cannot believe in a power greater than yourself.

If no, then you do believe in a power greater than yourself.

intention

Because many, many people told me that a power greater than themselves restored them to sanity.

They would be lying and you would have absolute proof that they were lying because you had seen the wall so you can't compare like for like.


Step 1 is about willingness. Have you really done Step 1?

Step 1 - I can't
Step 2 - He can
Step 3 - I'll let him

If you really believe you can't at Step 1, and you really know that just going back to drinking is not the answer, surely you can open your mind to believe that 'he can'


So are you saying you have already worked the 12 Steps as per the BB and you know from that experience that a higher power cannot restore you to sanity?

keithj

I can tell you how I did it, which is how it's suggested in the Big Book. I came into AA as a staunch atheist who thought the idea of a 'loving creator' was a crutch for weak minded people. I get you there, Ananda. The logical argument laid out in the BB didn't jive for me. This thing is beyond logic. Do I believe that there are 'things' beyond logic? Apparently so.

I followed the directions precisely, starting with the bare minimum requirement. 'Do I know believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a power greater than myself?' The book assures me that upon that simple conerstone of willingness to believe, a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.

So, there I am, hopeless and desperate. Step 1 has pushed me to this place. I have to make a choice. Am I willing to believe?

Am I willing to believe that although the wall in front of me appears to all my senses to be pink, is it possible that I am wrong? All these people around me are claiming it's blue, and they are saying a blue has worked wonders for them.

OK. The gun's to my head by Step 1. I truly believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as I'm living it (pg 25). I see this idea working for others. Maybe I'm wrong about the wall color. Maybe I can set aside what I believe or what my senses tell me, and be willing to believe it's blue. Not just say it because of the gun, but really willing to believe I might just be delusional.

I set aside what logic and my senses and my beliefs told me and became willing to believe. And then I worked the rest of the Steps and I couldn't convince myself there wasn't a power.

And it's been a wonderfully effective spiritual structure built from that.

spryte

Thanks all, for taking the time to share your approach and experience with this.

I have gleaned something from every post here (and the linked threads).

I'm still not really sure how I'm going to approach this, but I feel comforted that I'm not soulless for not clicking with this right away. I'm going to try meditation on a regular basis and keep an open mind.

Again,

Ago

This is just me, and Keith if I understood his post correctly, well....and every sponsee I have ever worked with, but in my experience we didn't wait to believe in "God" and then work step three, we worked step three, then four through twelve, and that's where we found God.
All I needed was to be willing to believe and turn my will and my life over to the care of this thing I didn't understand then work the steps

Doing step 11 before 1-10 didn't help me

Even Bill writes in We Agnostics:

So if no one can adequately define or comprehend that power, which we can't, and we don't have to consider anyone else's conception, it's pretty simple.

He goes on to explain himself to the best of his ability using Western Based Christianity as the "vehicle language" in We Agnostics, but the moment I set aside my antipathy and bigotry against Christianity and just let myself be open to the concepts he's he is discussing, it got very simple to understand.

For a long time I would substitute Her when I saw the word Him, and "The Thing" when I saw the word God.

I understand "The Thing", I can wrap my mind around it, as time went on I just started calling "The Thing" God, My God is not a he, that's cool, my God is not a her or an it either, because I can't "define" God, which is why I use that word....God, otherwise known as "The Great Reality"

Also in the appendix about spiritual awakenings it describes a spiritual awakening as a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from Alcoholism, and our more religious members call it "God Consciousness"

That means our less religious members simply call it "a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from Alcoholism"

Aight, I can do that, I can do this like this in order to get a personality change.

The biggest stumbling block I have seen to sobriety is not people drinking, but people thinking.

If I go to the Gym I don't need to understand the principals involved in why exercise works, I just need to do the work, people who go to Gyms and do nothing but discuss exercise don't get more fit, like you can't "lose weight" by osmosis, you can't get a spiritual awakening by by sitting around discussing it either.

I don't need to understand the internal combustion engine in order to drive my car, I just need earn the money to buy it, fill it with gas, turn the key and go, and if I want to keep the car running I have to perform periodic maintenance at stated intervals.

Sobriety is no different.

People who sit around and discuss why they don't believe in internal combustion engines, or want to understand internal combustion engines don't go for drives nearly as fast or as efficiently as those who just do the work, earn the money, buy their car and go.

BB1st ed

Ago

See to me the God you are discussing is someone else's concept of "God", one in which you don't believe, and that's great, I don't believe in that God either and I don't know many people that do, although there are plenty of them "God knows" (hahahaahah)

Nature has laws, strangely enough called natural laws, things like how light and matter behave, such as gravity, there are a few ways to try to explain them, such as math, another is religion. It is no accident that the ancient texts such as The Tao Te Ching in trying to explain the universe read exactly like a modern physics textbook.

In all of human history man has invented God(s) to explain the inexplicable, to know the unknowable, there have been Gods of fertility, of rain, of growing, of death, There has been Sun Gods, Gods of the night, of illness and health. We are like tiny pinpoints of consciousness existing if you will in a limitless Mansion, but we can only see through a pinpoint of light a tiny corner of one of the "rooms" at one time among the limitless possibilities and infinite rooms of this mansion.

Consider, we exist in three dimensions, if we were to take a point, and put a sphere on it and extend outwards from every direction on that sphere, after an infinite direction on each point, put another sphere and repeat the process, it would still be able to extend an infinite length, and that's just in 3 dimensions, if we add time to that equation, and picture time as a number line, with a dot labeled "now" at the zero point, and take that point outwards in three dimensions, "now" is infinite, just this single moment is infinite in space, then if we consider it going into the past into infinity, and into the future into infinity, with all of those "nows" being infinite, we live in infinity cubed to the nth degree, we can go forward or backwards in time or any direction in space, and it's infinite.

Of course we need somehow to try to explain that, to wrap our minds around it, and as our understanding of the space around us has grown our concept of "God" has gotten bigger, although bigger is a relative term, if you multiply anything by zero, you still end up with zero, and that is exactly how much we truly know about the infinite. It just happens to be a bigger zero then those who maintained the Earth was flat and the Heavens and Sun revolved around the Earth, and a God rode across the sky in a flaming Chariot which we saw as the sun.

That doesn't even consider the "micro" world, where we have particles that react to humans as if they are intelligent, particles that know that know experiments are being performed on them, particles that make no sense to "natural" laws, or even E=MC2 where the nature of time and space change according to what speed you travel, or a "macro" world, in which our planets and universes are possibly the particles and molecules of another Universe infinitely larger then this one.

No wonder we invented God, now as humans we anthropomorphized these Gods, ie gave them human qualities and attributes in order to understand them better, we gave them limits and parameters we understood. One re-occuring God is the "Alpha Male", a God is who has gone away and will be back later at an undisclosed time, usually the "end of days" often interpreted as the end of the world.

Big Book 1st ed Quote:
Desmond Morris' explanation of the source of that fundamental idea is very interesting. He notes that groups of people, and sometimes the groups are quite large, congregate regularly and display submissive responses (closing the eyes, lowering the head, clasping the hands together in a begging gesture, kneeling, kissing the ground, or even extreme prostration) that are often accompanied by wailing or chanting vocalizations. The dominant individual is usually referred to as a god. Morris traces these strange behaviors to dominant males of our far past that evolved into an all-powerful individual that could span generations. "At first sight, it is surprising that religion has been so successful, but its extreme potency is simply a measure of the strength of our fundamental biological tendency, inherited directly from our monkey and ape ancestors, to submit ourselves to an all-powerful, dominant member of the group."

Anthropologists surmise we acquired this Alpha Male or "God" idea about the same time as we starting living in cooperative hunter gatherer groups, as many of our Primate Brethren have Alpha Males in their troops, one that gets the best of everything, covers all the females etc, but cooperation is not needed in these groups, whereas in a hunter/gatherer society cooperation is needed from other males, so we couldn't just have the one male covering all of the females, getting all of the good stuff, although wherever possible humans do revert back to that type. So as we lost the alpha male and having started to have to cooperate, we remembered this alpha male, from some undisclosed time in the past, and await his second coming.

So we build this lost Alpha Male a House, and we go communicate with him by bringing him offerings, and using primate begging gestures (identical to prayer) and we even have his disciples disciplining our children using the same ritual fornication alpha males use on juvenile males in the Primate World (spanking on the bottom anyone?) while we wait for his return, and we promise to behave in the meantime, because we know there is going to be a reckoning when he gets home.

I don't believe in that God either, but turning your back on having an open mind about anything we don't understand is simply not scientific.

Now God is as easy to prove as the square root of negative one, impossible in other words, however, with /-1 if you plug that into certain equations you can get results you wouldn't be able to find otherwise, I believe the same is true of the value "God" and "Religion", the acolytes of many religions have been able to do and see amazing things simply because of their belief and faith, and I believe it goes beyond simply being a placebo effect.

There are as many paths up the mountain as there are cultures, multiplied by an infinite number we have never even considered.

I personally believe in "Science", so what does science say about this "God" idea. Well, the history of the Universe is a history of motion. it says about 15 billion years ago it began this one of it's many lives when there was this thing called "The Big Bang" which wasn't really a bang at all, but was an expansion so big, and so fast we could never even begin to understand it, or even imagine it. From the first seconds, even the first nanoseconds, the Universe was like a rich soup that wasn't even formed in atoms yet. Then these tiny things began to come together to make atoms, which in turn made molecules. As the Universe expanded and cooled, these things came together and made stars. The first stars went through their cycles, and exploded in a shower of yet new atoms, those new atoms came together to make more stars and planets.

So none of these things, these "coming together" things, are what could truly be described as "random", the universe has a "nature" (here we are back at the beginning) which is to combine, in more and more complex ways, to keep building itself, and get more and yet even more, complex. Scientists call this tendency the "tendency towards complexity" and it is the way the universe works.

So, to continue, the universe has been getting more and more complex since time began, it does this because this is it's nature. The tendency towrds complexity has carried the universe from perfect and utter simplicity to the kind of complexity we see all around us at this present moment, to all the life we see, the plants, the micro-organisms to the macro, such as ourselves, to the Whales. The Universe is always doing this, has always done this, move from the simple to the complex.

So what is it moving towards?

It's moving towards something, it HAS to be right? or it wouldn't be doing it. It's moving towards the ultimate complexity, we may not get there, but what we are made of will, I choose to call that ultimate complexity, and the process thereof, that to me, stands outside of time, God.

So that "God" wouldn't phone the Haitians ahead of time or stop Hitler, because that "God" isn't interested in humans as such.

Sh1t happens and if you are downhill you get a mouthful describes God's laws as well as anything else I have ever seen, trick is to learn how to try not to be downhill quite so often.

So Eroica, I get it, at the end of the day you don't believe in what you consider to be somebody else's concept concept of God, right on, what about getting your own concept of an entirely new idea, one you can't comprehend nor understand, and call it God?

Seriously throw the baby out with the bathwater, step outside the box and try having your own concept, call it something different if you want

It's simple once you step outside the box and stop arguing with other peoples conceptions of God and decide to get you own.

intention

No you are definitely not the only one that this doesn't click with straight away but please listen and follow the directions from those who have taken this step.......


.....the directions you are being given are not to meditate to find your higher power. This is Step 11. As Ago says, working Step 11 before doing Steps 1 to 10 does not work.

You are not looking to find god/hp (Step 11/12) - all you need is a suspiscion, a hunch, however vague, that us who have worked the Steps are telling you something which could be true and could work for you. That's all you have to believe in to take Step 2. And once you have that belief, however vague, just follow directions and just take the plunge into Step 3.



Warning - this disease is "cunning, baffling and powerful". It will do everything, absolutely everything in its power to get you to drink again. It will have you running round and round in circles trying to find something that you shouldn't be looking for rather than listening to what people are telling you and following directions.

Take care.