wpainterw

Higher Power: Election Years
AA folks say that they turn it all over to a Higher Power. And that can be anyone or anything. Some even mention a "doorknob" although I have never run across anyone who had actually selected one. And even if they did that I'd be a little surprised if they had much success with it.
Now would you like to share with me your thoughts about whether, if a Higher Power can be anything, is it O.K. to have the Government as your Higher Power? Or the President? Despite what you choose is that going to be the case anyway? Do we just go with the flow? "Something that we cannot change"? When I walk into a voting machine do I just "turn it all over"?

W.

Dee74

Not sure if you haven;t got your tongue in cheek here Bill...

but no, politics and politicians are far too fallible for me to consider them as any Higher Power, especially these days.

I have an infallible higher power ... but I try not to talk too much religion... or politics

D

Forward12

From everything I've read and heard from speakers, your higher power can be anything you choose it to be.

oldsoul112249

My higher power isn't the false power people, places, things had over me anymore. I know that much. What's left is that I'm discovering a new higher power that was always there but never trusted or drawn upon.

wpainterw

This, I believe, is especially true. And maybe I was thinking the same thing in a little different way. In the early stages of recovery I found that I did have to admit I'd made a mess of it trying to do it on my own, even with the help of a counselor or doctor. I needed help from other recovering alcoholics. This became my higher power, others in the group who didn't try to "tell" me what to do but who listened to me and, if they wished, told me what had worked for them.
As time went on I began to discover what I might call the real "me". Or if you are religious the soul which had seemed to dwindle away because of alcohol. I began to pick up where I had left off so many years earlier, to mature, to make up for the lost years. And as I did that I realized that in that interim my AV had really been my "Higher Power" and that now my real self, my soul, had come back. I often feel though as if I were guided by someone, something which I cannot define. And I have come to admire what Lao Tzu said 2500 years ago that that something, which he called the Tao, is there but no one can really write it, speak it. For it is beyond knowledge.
So as recovery went on I began to find my higher power developing or, if you will, beginning to grow, to bloom again within myself but I also became increasingly conscious of help from a source which loves me and which I had grown to love, which I did not and still do not fully understand but who understands me.

Bill

wpainterw

I clap heartily at your observations. Indeed, often I have looked to you as a sort of "higher power.". My tongue was indeed in my cheek and, literally speaking it has remained there from my birth (two cheeks actually). But one thing I found in AA, a program which I have had some issues with but which helped me in many ways, was that the rooms seemed filled with laughter, with folks who did make a wisecrack now and then, or even a controversial innuendo. There seemed to be a lot of happiness there. And people dealt with very serious problems in a sort of cognitive, upbeat, cheerful and sometimes humorous way. I liked that and it helped me.
It is completely obvious that we cannot recover from substance abuse by turning ourselves over to any government or politician. The suggestion that we might do so cannot be taken seriously.

Bill

Dee74

I'm fallible too Bill - but I'm a lot better than I would have been 10 years ago...



D

wpainterw

That's very reassuring D. ("Sorry, there's that Massachusetts wise guy teasing Dee again!")

Bill (I promise to behave!)

uncorked

I don't do AA, but I sorta look at the Universe as a higher power....though I believe in God as well.

saoutchik

I sometimes use my grandaughters in the way one might use a higher power - an auxilliary to my own efforts. I cannot lay my whole recovery on them though