Problems with Higher Power
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Motown
Posts: 122
Problems with Higher Power
First of all, I miss you guys!!! :ghug3 I’ve been so busy with practice starting this week, going to my meetings, it feels like I’ve hardly sat down in a week! It's all good, though. I'm happy with me for a change!
But this has been nagging me. I can't get this Higher Power. I need your wisdom!
In my Al-Anon program, we've been talking about steps 2 & 3, basically, the Higher Power stuff. I am having a very difficult time with the concept of a “higher power”. I could write pages and pages about my internal battle with it. In a nutshell, my outlook on it is “maybe there is, maybe there’s not, but I won’t believe it till I see it”. So very cynical and skeptical. I was raised with some religion, even went to church and private school off and on. So maybe I feel guilty that I don't believe???
Has anyone ever struggled with this as I am? What happened that ended your struggle?
But this has been nagging me. I can't get this Higher Power. I need your wisdom!
In my Al-Anon program, we've been talking about steps 2 & 3, basically, the Higher Power stuff. I am having a very difficult time with the concept of a “higher power”. I could write pages and pages about my internal battle with it. In a nutshell, my outlook on it is “maybe there is, maybe there’s not, but I won’t believe it till I see it”. So very cynical and skeptical. I was raised with some religion, even went to church and private school off and on. So maybe I feel guilty that I don't believe???
Has anyone ever struggled with this as I am? What happened that ended your struggle?
Follow Directions!
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Fredericksburg, Va.
Posts: 9,730
juju do you beleive you are the ultimate power?
Do you beleive that there is something more powerful then you or your alcoholic?
Are you willing to beleive?
Next time there is a clear night sky, go by yourself with a blanket into a field, lay on that blanket and gaze into infinity and feel........ just feel, ask your self if all that you see just happened?
Keep in mind that your HP is what you are willing to beleive in, no name or face is needed, no religion, just a simple beleif or willingness to believe there is something with more power then you or your alcoholic.
My HP I refer to as God out of simplicity, there is no need for me to try and tell you about him and why he is of my understanding. Just like there is no need for you to explain what you have come to understand to be your HP.
It say: Notice there is nothing there that says we need a FULL understanding, just what we do understand.
Have you ever said in a dire time of need "God help me!".... Guess what, that proves that you do beleive in an HP, deep down below the logical you is a knowledge of a HP that you do understand, because you would not call on him/her if you didn't.
I have heard more then one person share that prayer led them to finding their HP. Simply praying to what ever on a regular basis for some reason led to results that they could not understand even though initially they had no faith in an HP or to prayer.
Do you beleive that there is something more powerful then you or your alcoholic?
Are you willing to beleive?
Next time there is a clear night sky, go by yourself with a blanket into a field, lay on that blanket and gaze into infinity and feel........ just feel, ask your self if all that you see just happened?
Keep in mind that your HP is what you are willing to beleive in, no name or face is needed, no religion, just a simple beleif or willingness to believe there is something with more power then you or your alcoholic.
My HP I refer to as God out of simplicity, there is no need for me to try and tell you about him and why he is of my understanding. Just like there is no need for you to explain what you have come to understand to be your HP.
It say:
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Have you ever said in a dire time of need "God help me!".... Guess what, that proves that you do beleive in an HP, deep down below the logical you is a knowledge of a HP that you do understand, because you would not call on him/her if you didn't.
I have heard more then one person share that prayer led them to finding their HP. Simply praying to what ever on a regular basis for some reason led to results that they could not understand even though initially they had no faith in an HP or to prayer.
Member
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Chicago IL
Posts: 184
Do you beleive that there is something more powerful then you or your alcoholic?
Are you willing to beleive?
Are you willing to beleive?
Keep in mind that your HP is what you are willing to beleive in, no name or face is needed, no religion, just a simple beleif or willingness to believe there is something with more power then you or your alcoholic.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Starting over all over again
Posts: 4,426
The way the "HP thing" works for me is that _before_ recovery I thought I could solve all the problems I faced.
All I had to do was work at it hard enough, read enough books, get disciplined enough, and love _her_ enough (my ex, that is) and everything would work out my way. In that belief was the underlying assumption that _I_ knew what was right for my ex, my alcoholic parents, my alcoholic relatives, and pretty much anybody whom I thought could use a little improvement in their lives.
I didn't realize it, but I had placed _me_ as the person who knew what was best for _them_. Basically, I believed I was the only adult and everybody else was a hopeless child that needed my kind wisdom. I had deluded myself into thinking that I was _their_ HP.
The first 6 steps taught me that.
What I realize now is that _I_ am not that smart. I am not smart enough to figure out how to manipulate another person into becoming the kind of person I want them to be. In fact, considering how my own life turned out before recovery, I'm not smart enough to figure out how to make _me_ into the kind of person I wanted to be. However, I am not completely stupid. I did find a way to slowly help myself become the kind of person I never was, a person who gives others the dignity of making their lives any way the choose to.
The second 6 steps is how I become that person.
I don't need to see the HP, or have any proof. I have seen abundant proof already that _I_ am _not_ anybody's HP. Not even my own. I totally understand that today. Once I stop controlling and directing everybody else's life, and allow my own to unfold on it's own, everything works out the way it's supposed to be. The _less_ I interfere, the better things go.
Clearly, _something_ out there is keeping things under control, and it's obviously not me cuz every time I tried it got worse. Today I believe that there _is_ a HP, and it's _not_ me. That's it. That is all I believe and that's all I have needed to believe to get these 12 steps to work for me.
Mike
All I had to do was work at it hard enough, read enough books, get disciplined enough, and love _her_ enough (my ex, that is) and everything would work out my way. In that belief was the underlying assumption that _I_ knew what was right for my ex, my alcoholic parents, my alcoholic relatives, and pretty much anybody whom I thought could use a little improvement in their lives.
I didn't realize it, but I had placed _me_ as the person who knew what was best for _them_. Basically, I believed I was the only adult and everybody else was a hopeless child that needed my kind wisdom. I had deluded myself into thinking that I was _their_ HP.
The first 6 steps taught me that.
What I realize now is that _I_ am not that smart. I am not smart enough to figure out how to manipulate another person into becoming the kind of person I want them to be. In fact, considering how my own life turned out before recovery, I'm not smart enough to figure out how to make _me_ into the kind of person I wanted to be. However, I am not completely stupid. I did find a way to slowly help myself become the kind of person I never was, a person who gives others the dignity of making their lives any way the choose to.
The second 6 steps is how I become that person.
I don't need to see the HP, or have any proof. I have seen abundant proof already that _I_ am _not_ anybody's HP. Not even my own. I totally understand that today. Once I stop controlling and directing everybody else's life, and allow my own to unfold on it's own, everything works out the way it's supposed to be. The _less_ I interfere, the better things go.
Clearly, _something_ out there is keeping things under control, and it's obviously not me cuz every time I tried it got worse. Today I believe that there _is_ a HP, and it's _not_ me. That's it. That is all I believe and that's all I have needed to believe to get these 12 steps to work for me.
Mike
Looking for the silver lining
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: South Florida
Posts: 243
I, too, have had doubts. I think at one time or another most people have gotten HP charlie horse, and don't know what to think. For me, I found it wasn't so much that I didn't believe in a HP than I didn't believe in the concept of a higher power that "they" taught me. I was brought up by a Roman Catholic mother and my Paternal Grandparents are Southern Baptists...WHOA! I certainly do not knock organized religion because it works from many. However, in my case, I felt that it put God in a box. Too many rules and too many consequences for breaking them. Once I let the guilt go that I didn't believe in THAT concept of God then it freed me to develop who or what I thought the HP is. On another personal note, I actually found it a little frightening to admit to myself that I didn't believe what I was taught about God. This held me back until I stepped outside of the fear.
Keep kicking it around....it will come to you eventually...The HP has infinite patience. Blessings and best to you! :praying
Keep kicking it around....it will come to you eventually...The HP has infinite patience. Blessings and best to you! :praying
Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Upstate New York
Posts: 1,636
Awhile ago, I heard a speaker, Nando Parrado, who was a survivor of the infamous 1973 Andes Mountains crash. After his talk, someone in the audience asked him how it was possible that he could believe in God after what he had seen and gone through after that crash and how could he explain why God would allow something like that to happen. Parrado said, so calmly and simply: "I would have no use whatsoever for a God Whom I could understand."
I know that, for me, "getting" the fact that anything that I as a human being with a human intellect could actually understand could not possibly be Higher Power / God / Goddess / The Source / The Force / The Energy of the Universe / The Divine / whatever-you-want-to-call-IT was a major epiphany. For me, this was one of those things where being so smart actually caused me to be really stupid -- to assume that, if there was a HP, then I would obviously understand IT and IT's plans for, not only me, but pretty much the rest of the world as well.
So, for me, it was really, really helpful to first accept that fact that I was never going to know or understand or be able to "get" HP the way I know and understand most things -- with my rational mind -- and that, in fact, anything that I could know in that way was, by definition, not going to be anywhere near adequate to be a HP of any kind.
So then the question became, if I can't know HP the way that I know other things, how am I going to try to get as much sense of / connection with It as I am humanly capable of achieving??? I have to admit that the (apparently) never-ending quest for the answer to that question has really taken me out of my comfort zone. (This would be what is commonly referred to as my "spiritual journey.") The truth is that I am, in general, very aware of and relatively used to exercising and trusting my mind, my body and my feelings -- but my spirit was something to which I had never really given much serious attention. And, what I am finding is that there are ways to develop my spirit -- and therewith my sense of HP and of my connection to HP -- just as there was ways to develop my other faculties and that the more I try different spiritual practices, find the ones that seem to work for me, and practice that ones that work for me on a regular basis that more I "know" HP -- not in a rational way or in a way that I can explain or prove or that will ever, no matter how long I continue to develop my spiritual practice, come anywhere near to being total and complete, but in way that, nonetheless, gives me amazing peace and strength and a sense that, in some very fundamental way, everything is OK.
Now, for me, the hardest part about this was getting started and that was the place that, for me, faith really came in because I had to trust that doing certain things -- things that I, at the time, often thought/felt were silly, or hokey, or "beneath" me and that I couldn't begin to see how they were ever possibly going to get me anywhere -- might actually "work" in some spiritual way / on some spiritual plain of which I just happened to be totally ignorant. Once those things actually started to work for me even a little and I started to sense where they were taking me, "faith" wasn't even an issue anymore...So, for me, it really was a "fake it, 'til you make it" kinda thing. I listened to what other people were doing, I read stuff, I talked to people whose progress I admired and then I just chose things that fall somewhere under the very broad definition of "prayer and meditation" and started trying the ones to which I felt drawn in some way......and somehow, it worked...and it worked in a way that has made it now the number 1 priority of my life because it is so incredibly liberating and empowering (Great paradox there: the way that acceptance of powerlessness and surrender to a HP leads to the most extreme empowerment and freedom -- the subject of another thread perhaps?)
Anyway, I've written more details about the things that seem to work for me spiritually, so here are some links before this becomes a dissertation:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...o-my-life.html
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...spiritual.html
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post1713855
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post1731250
To end, I'll try to paraphrase something one of my favorite AA speakers (and a man whose program and connection to God is just friggin' amazing), Scott L, from Nashville, Tenn. says:
"God is not lost, so He doesn't need to be found. In our "search" for Him, what we find is ourselves."
Good luck and don't quit before the miracle happens for you!
freya
I know that, for me, "getting" the fact that anything that I as a human being with a human intellect could actually understand could not possibly be Higher Power / God / Goddess / The Source / The Force / The Energy of the Universe / The Divine / whatever-you-want-to-call-IT was a major epiphany. For me, this was one of those things where being so smart actually caused me to be really stupid -- to assume that, if there was a HP, then I would obviously understand IT and IT's plans for, not only me, but pretty much the rest of the world as well.
So, for me, it was really, really helpful to first accept that fact that I was never going to know or understand or be able to "get" HP the way I know and understand most things -- with my rational mind -- and that, in fact, anything that I could know in that way was, by definition, not going to be anywhere near adequate to be a HP of any kind.
So then the question became, if I can't know HP the way that I know other things, how am I going to try to get as much sense of / connection with It as I am humanly capable of achieving??? I have to admit that the (apparently) never-ending quest for the answer to that question has really taken me out of my comfort zone. (This would be what is commonly referred to as my "spiritual journey.") The truth is that I am, in general, very aware of and relatively used to exercising and trusting my mind, my body and my feelings -- but my spirit was something to which I had never really given much serious attention. And, what I am finding is that there are ways to develop my spirit -- and therewith my sense of HP and of my connection to HP -- just as there was ways to develop my other faculties and that the more I try different spiritual practices, find the ones that seem to work for me, and practice that ones that work for me on a regular basis that more I "know" HP -- not in a rational way or in a way that I can explain or prove or that will ever, no matter how long I continue to develop my spiritual practice, come anywhere near to being total and complete, but in way that, nonetheless, gives me amazing peace and strength and a sense that, in some very fundamental way, everything is OK.
Now, for me, the hardest part about this was getting started and that was the place that, for me, faith really came in because I had to trust that doing certain things -- things that I, at the time, often thought/felt were silly, or hokey, or "beneath" me and that I couldn't begin to see how they were ever possibly going to get me anywhere -- might actually "work" in some spiritual way / on some spiritual plain of which I just happened to be totally ignorant. Once those things actually started to work for me even a little and I started to sense where they were taking me, "faith" wasn't even an issue anymore...So, for me, it really was a "fake it, 'til you make it" kinda thing. I listened to what other people were doing, I read stuff, I talked to people whose progress I admired and then I just chose things that fall somewhere under the very broad definition of "prayer and meditation" and started trying the ones to which I felt drawn in some way......and somehow, it worked...and it worked in a way that has made it now the number 1 priority of my life because it is so incredibly liberating and empowering (Great paradox there: the way that acceptance of powerlessness and surrender to a HP leads to the most extreme empowerment and freedom -- the subject of another thread perhaps?)
Anyway, I've written more details about the things that seem to work for me spiritually, so here are some links before this becomes a dissertation:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...o-my-life.html
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...spiritual.html
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post1713855
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post1731250
To end, I'll try to paraphrase something one of my favorite AA speakers (and a man whose program and connection to God is just friggin' amazing), Scott L, from Nashville, Tenn. says:
"God is not lost, so He doesn't need to be found. In our "search" for Him, what we find is ourselves."
Good luck and don't quit before the miracle happens for you!
freya
Member
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 102
Originally Posted by juju 
First of all, I miss you guys!!! :ghug3 I’ve been so busy with practice starting this week, going to my meetings, it feels like I’ve hardly sat down in a week! It's all good, though. I'm happy with me for a change!
But this has been nagging me. I can't get this Higher Power. I need your wisdom!
In my Al-Anon program, we've been talking about steps 2 & 3, basically, the Higher Power stuff. I am having a very difficult time with the concept of a “higher power”. I could write pages and pages about my internal battle with it. In a nutshell, my outlook on it is “maybe there is, maybe there’s not, but I won’t believe it till I see it”. So very cynical and skeptical. I was raised with some religion, even went to church and private school off and on. So maybe I feel guilty that I don't believe???
Has anyone ever struggled with this as I am? What happened that ended your struggle?
But this has been nagging me. I can't get this Higher Power. I need your wisdom!
In my Al-Anon program, we've been talking about steps 2 & 3, basically, the Higher Power stuff. I am having a very difficult time with the concept of a “higher power”. I could write pages and pages about my internal battle with it. In a nutshell, my outlook on it is “maybe there is, maybe there’s not, but I won’t believe it till I see it”. So very cynical and skeptical. I was raised with some religion, even went to church and private school off and on. So maybe I feel guilty that I don't believe???
Has anyone ever struggled with this as I am? What happened that ended your struggle?
Member
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: The Jungle
Posts: 5,435
What happened that ended your struggle?
Acceptance ended my struggle. Acceptance that I am not omnipresent. Acceptance that stuff happens that I do not control. Acceptance that I don't control anything other than myself (and sometimes even that is questionable). Acceptance that I am not perfect.
Once I reached the point that I could accept these things, I was able to hand things over to my HP (whatever I perceive him/she/it to be).
As you can see from the responses, HP can be anything YOU choose it to be. It does not have to coincide with others beliefs. HP can be "fate". HP can be a "natural order". So if I hand my dear son over to my HP........I am allowing his life (my son's) to unfold as it will. I am accepting his choices. Accepting....not agreeing with his choices.....just accepting.
Acceptance is not the same as agreement or condoning.
I find a great deal of peace in this thought process.
gentle hugs
Acceptance ended my struggle. Acceptance that I am not omnipresent. Acceptance that stuff happens that I do not control. Acceptance that I don't control anything other than myself (and sometimes even that is questionable). Acceptance that I am not perfect.
Once I reached the point that I could accept these things, I was able to hand things over to my HP (whatever I perceive him/she/it to be).
As you can see from the responses, HP can be anything YOU choose it to be. It does not have to coincide with others beliefs. HP can be "fate". HP can be a "natural order". So if I hand my dear son over to my HP........I am allowing his life (my son's) to unfold as it will. I am accepting his choices. Accepting....not agreeing with his choices.....just accepting.
Acceptance is not the same as agreement or condoning.
I find a great deal of peace in this thought process.
gentle hugs
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