Your Journey to your HP

Old 07-07-2014, 07:59 AM
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Your Journey to your HP

On this rainy morning I am wondering how it is we all come to find our HP (or not) in so many varied ways.

I think this is something that RAH & I have very different experiences & struggles with. Not so much in our actual beliefs, more in our individual conviction in our spirituality. I have a firm sense of my spirituality & what it means TO ME, but he is still without an absolute definition of WHAT he actually believes in & I find that, idk...... fascinating? surprising? I'm not sure - it's not a judgment, I'm not trying to get all over his side of the street.... it actually breaks my heart a bit because I think a lot of his struggles could be so much easier if he would get back to this core piece & work outward from there.

(And certainly, in my Codiest moments, it scares me to think that without that piece in place it could mean he's white-knuckling more than either of us realize & it could make his recovery so much longer & more arduous than it has to be... nevermind the potential for relapse skyrockets IMO. I don't dwell on those thoughts though - these are the things that I have the very LEAST control over. More than anything it hurts to watch him struggle when I know he could probably at least have a bit more peace at times.)

Thinking about it this morning made me wonder how everyone else's experiences are likely as/more varied. So for all you heavy thinkers who feel like sharing on this Monday morning, I wonder:



Did you grow up with a strong influence of religion or spirituality from within your FOO?

If so, did you find that the way you were raised in your spirituality continued to serve you into adulthood (& especially in your recovery); where you continued to believe & find faith & comfort in the same ideals? Did that continued conviction come from just "always" believing or did you re-examine the ideals of what you were raised with & judge them to still be relatable & suitable to your life?

Or did you, at some point in your adulthood, examine the dogma you were raised with & find that either parts or the whole no longer provided you spiritual comfort?

If so, did recovery bring you to this Spiritual Quest/Awakening or is it something that you sought out for yourself previously to & independent of your recovery needs?

Or maybe you do not & never have identified with a HP at all?

A

I find this stuff really fascinating - there is no wrong answer... there is no single, right way - just the right way for you.
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Old 07-07-2014, 08:30 AM
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I have been all over the place with this. I was raised in my FOO with a strong but not overpowering religious upbringing. My parents sent us to parochial school until the 8th grade, we then went through confirmation classes, testing, and were confirmed into our faith at the end of the 8th grade. I feel this is where my faith stemmed and I got the most knowledge.

In college I wanted to be my own person so to speak, while I still had faith I tried various other churches, etc. My sister did this also. My parents were supportive of this and would come with us if we asked. I feel that really helped us, knowing we were not doing something behind their back.

I had various things happen that kept me close to my HP. When I had my first DD who is now 14 I came around again and realized how important it was to me to have her grow up knowing about her HP. I sent her to parochial school because I felt that was important in learning. At 7th grade switched her to public due to some bullying issues. She was recently confirmed and has a strong faith, although there are things in organized religion that upset her so I feel she will try other churches as I did, and I am fine with that.

My little DD who is 8 still goes to parochial school and it's a very good thing for her at this time also.

I think it is our responsibility and duty to our children to teach them while helping them explore.

I rely on my HP to get me through all sorts of things. I attend Celebrate Recovery because I like that aspect mixed into my own healing. All of these things bring me closer to my HP and I feel very sad for those who don't have that relationship.
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Old 07-07-2014, 08:43 AM
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Did you grow up with a strong influence of religion or spirituality from within your FOO?
I grew up in the church pews, more thanks to my grandparents than my parents (who were churchgoers only at Christmastime). I was in Sunday School and Wednesday church group from the age of 3. God was in my life from the moment I was born -- and before that.

If so, did you find that the way you were raised in your spirituality continued to serve you into adulthood (& especially in your recovery); where you continued to believe & find faith & comfort in the same ideals? Did that continued conviction come from just "always" believing or did you re-examine the ideals of what you were raised with & judge them to still be relatable & suitable to your life?
Or did you, at some point in your adulthood, examine the dogma you were raised with & find that either parts or the whole no longer provided you spiritual comfort?
If so, did recovery bring you to this Spiritual Quest/Awakening or is it something that you sought out for yourself previously to & independent of your recovery needs?
I think -- and this is a general statement but I do believe it's true -- that even if you are raised in a faith, there comes a time where you are faced with exactly what you mention, having to make the faith your own and determine whether you really believe this enough to put your life on the line for it, or whether it's something that's just a comfortable inherited quilt that reminds you of grandma.

For me, that point came when I was about 16. I spent a summer reading the Bible and praying and basically asking God to show me that all of this was real. And I determined it was.

If anything, I wavered in my faith during my last few years with AXH. I had long arguments with God, asking "How can you let me suffer through this when I've been such a good wife, such a supportive wife, been everything I thought you were asking me to be?" It wasn't until after I left that I realized that what I thought was virtue was really the opposite: I was trying to be so good that God couldn't but make AXH stop drinking. I was feeling superior to women who left their alcoholic husbands -- I was stronger and more godly and wasn't ever going to do that.

It was humbling to me to realize that pride, not virtue, was what made me do what I was doing. But I'm veering off-track here...
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Old 07-07-2014, 06:31 PM
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I was raised very strictly in a faith which dwelt on sin, considered it appropriate for seven year olds to go to confession (I used to make up 'sins' when I couldn't think up enough) and what we experienced at school was psychological abuse. I renounced my belief in God at the age of 14 (!), and remained a rampant atheist until... until... the eclipse of 1999 in the UK.

It was an experience I found so profoundly moving that I've never been the same since - just for a few seconds I had a sensation of being in contact with the Divine. Of course, after all that, everyday life intervenes - but having experienced that, the impression remains. It was a sense of the vastness of everything, our/my own tiny place in it, how insignificant I am in the general scheme of things and, paradoxically, how important that I found significance in my own life. And that I was the only one with that power and responsibility. Again, paradoxically, it is only in recognising my own powerlessness that I really started to experience my inner strength.

At the time I was teaching in a school, and a few weeks later some other staff members were discussing some new, quite petty, policy, and getting agitated about it. One of them looked over at me and said "You don't care, do you?" and I told him he was right. He sat next to me and asked how I'd achieved this state; as it happens, he was probably the only person in the place who would understand, so I told him how I'd felt about the eclipse; I was interested that my inner shift was also visible on the outside.

Gradually I drifted back into attending church regularly; not the same one I was brought up in, by the way, and experienced the power and caring of a group gathered together to, er, gather together. At the time I'd just started attending CoDA meetings and the two meshed together perfectly.

I have my alcoholic ex-partner to thank for providing the circumstances which led me to Alanon, and I've never looked back. It wasn't the relatively short relationship (1.5 years) with him which had caused my spiritual trauma, of course, but I'd never connected my father's alcoholism and the general dysfunction of my family in quite so profound a way as when I started attending Alanon.

I was brought up to pray for specific things - things that my parents wanted. I recall my mother telling me to pray for specific things, as if reciting a shopping list to a cosmic store called God. If they didn't happen, it was because I hadn't done it right.

I pray more these days than I ever did as a child. For serenity, for knowledge of God's will and the courage to carry it out, or insight, for guidance. And it always arrives, somehow... sometimes through very unexpected channels.
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Old 07-07-2014, 10:35 PM
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I was intentionally raised without any faith. None. We celebrated all of the Christian holidays but only because they were tradition not because of anything religious.

I struggle with the concept of a higher power giving a crap about me. How can God, this infinite all powerful being care about my problems when there are starving children, babies and children with terminal diseases, people being trafficked for sex slavery, prisoners of war, etc. and then me. White girl problems in suburbia. I understand the concept of prayer but the actual act of praying feels so incredibly foreign to me. It's super awkward. Like "hey, God, it's me again. I need to ask you for MORE stuff, again. Please fix the world's problems. And thank you. By the way, thank you for all of the great, amazing, wonderful blessings that I have in life and I'm sorry that I ask you for things via prayer more than I thank you for stuff via prayer but I kind of forget to pray unless I need things or unless someone asks me to pray for them because they need things. Thanks. Again. Amen."

For me personally, I've totally stumbled around and come to my own religious understanding but I can't even really articulate what I believe. I took a religious philosophy class in college and was really intrigued by Judaism but being raised by a NPD mom I'm honestly really self conscious of wanting to pursue Judaism because it's not as popular of a religion as Christianity. Crazy, huh?

Even crazier, I actually became Catholic and did Pre Cana when my husband and I became engaged because being married in a Catholic Church was important to his parents and that made him feel pressured into making it happen. So I'm actually Catholic but I think Catholicism is soooooo against some stuff that I stand for, like why can't a woman be the Pope? And if you actually bring this stuff up with other Catholics it's like you just told them that their mom is ugly. Go along to get along.

At this point, I believe in a God. But I'm not exactly sure what my relationship with God is or what rules I believe that exactly surround God. I'm much more curious about historical stuff than the actual present day connection with a higher power. For me, meditating is a more powerful connection with something, whatever that something is, the universe I guess, than God.
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Old 10-25-2014, 11:21 AM
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Found it!!

I love to dig up past posts..

I was raised in a Christian culture, but I wasn't much of a believer.

But I've always been interested in reading about religion, spirituality, being open to things but not believing in something.

So lately, I decided to elect as my HP a force which is somehow within me (but isn't me !?!?)

Then I read a post on SR, I think it was by Rosalba (thanks 4 that by the way Ros) where she said you can think of your HP as your unconscious mind.
That made perfect sense to me, because the unconscious mind is separate from the ego (the I).
The only change I made to that definition is, my HP is the part of my subconscious mind that protects me and keeps me well (or tries to!).

Well, that's not exactly what you were asking Firesprite, but since I'm all excited about my new-found Higher Power, I thought I would share it with you all!
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Old 10-25-2014, 01:08 PM
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I'm a recovering alcoholic (23 years), work the 12 Steps and am also an agnostic. I have a higher power that changes from time to time and that's ok ... as long as my higher power isn't ME! My family celebrated secular Christianity but not the supernatural part; I've practiced Buddhism which works better spiritually. The beauty of the 12 Steps is we can decide what our HP is.
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