ET...for most of us here, I think you are going to get a response to go to AA meetings and embrace the program fully and that is how things will fall into place. All the struggling and trying to control and figure things out doesn't bring the kind of serenity that AA does if you work it. For me, a higher power has developed from going to those meetings, from seeing recovery in action, from listening to other people and my sponsor. I started to hear and see God working in the program, through the fellowship, and from there God has become more personal to me. Coming to believe is a process that takes place over time and for me, time in AA was was allowed me to get to the point of spirituality that I am at. My suggestion to you is to first hand the struggle with you alcoholism over to the program and then go from there a day at a time. Of course, you can stay sober other ways, but I only know what worked for me. Either way, hugs to you and you are making progress because you are trying and confronting some things.

Mark

Thanks Mark and Tessa:

I appreciate your quick response. I'm SERIOUS about being sober - of course. That's why I am asking these questions, I guess, and that is what has kept me from going to meetings. I'm sure I come across as naive, because I am - I understand that and accept it - otherwise, why would I be asking the questions, you know? I suppose I'm just wondering how it works, that's all. The only way to find out, as you said, is to try a meeting. Just trying to see if I can get all of my ducks in a row first (find a meeting that is women-based, or close to home, etc?).

I know that this isn't the case for me....but what happens if you have the worst of the worst raging alcoholics....and this person doesn't believe in God at all? Or was raised as agnostic? Etc?

Just trying to raise some questions. Maybe i'm just nervous.

Thanks, Mark :)

I'm going to check that out today, Dean! Thanks so much.

Hey ET, I've been there! I'd find what Dean suggested really helpful: looking at Step 2, "came to believe".

Personally, I came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity as I had literally seen the handiwork of that higher power in the rooms. There is no way that people would make up the stories of what they were like, but there was no comparison with what they were like now.

Steve

what Dods said ^^^^^^ Plenty of folks have made it through the steps using the group (or the ocean, mountains, their cat...) as a higher power, as long as it isn't you because we are trying to accept our powerless-ness. I believe that those having trouble with the 2nd and 3rd step are not done with the 1st step, ie: Powerless-

"We admitted we were powerless over alcoholthat our lives had become unmanageable."

We find out later that we are powerless over damned near everything and we struggle over it because deep down we are control addicts.   ET.  are you reading the Big Book?

here's a link to it where you can read it online free.  http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_tableofcnt.cfm

I was told it goes like this'
Step 1 we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had becomes unmanageable - for me this meant that every time I took one drink of alcohol, my ability to choose wether or not to have another did not exist. Sometimes (most times) I would drink more (and more than I wanted to) only a few times could I hold at one. And even then I was bitter, angry and resentful that I had 'controlled' my drinking. In  latter days of my active illness, I never stopped at one. I could not exercise any power over alcohol once I put it in my body. Then I could not exercise any power over alcohol, I became obsessed with having it and drinking it. My life was unmanageable and my behaviour and the consequences of that behaviour got more and more extreme. This I learned for myself from my own experience. THis I continue to have reinforced through others. I hope to God that I don't go through that again.


And now Step Two - came to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore us to sanity. It was explained to me that I could not stop drinking in any peace or with any long term success under my own efforts. Yet here I am still sober after just a few days. Did I do that unaided or was there something that was holding me up. As a lifelong atheist, I would have no truck with God as I knew about him through schoolboy religious instruction. But it remains that I personally had been completely unsuccesful in maintaining long term happy sobriety through my own efforts. Then some one reminded me that it was to be a God of my own understanding - the power of the universe, my childhood Christian God, Good Orderly Direction, Group of Drunks, whatever. Finally, some one said, 'look Bill, all you need to know is there is a God and it's not you!' And restore me to sanity - are you suggesting that I'm a nutter! Well one definition of insanity is doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result - I'd been doing that for years. Someone else suggested I research the words Sanity and Insanity. In their purest form the mean Health and Ill Health.  So a power greater than myself, which was already having an effect in my life, was helping me regain my health.

That all worked for me. All then I had to do was accept that step 2 applied to me and then it was easy to step 3

Step 3, (paraphrased) asked for that powers help. Even though I am already getting that help to keep me sober, asking for this strange power's help in all my life came pretty easy. If, for example, your Dad taught you to ride a push bike, and you liked the was he did it and you were succesful, then why not ask your Dad to teach you how to ride a motorbike or drive a car? If my mystical Higher Power was already healing me then why not ask him to help me live all parts of my life.

Well that's how it worked for me. I reckon I'm still a non denominational, irreligious, believer in a power greater than me that I have a very shaky undestanding of. I also know when I stop handing it over and run on self will, things go to sh1t pretty quick

My God (like most of them) helps me to help myself. He don't let me sit back and say it's god's will. He expects me to put the work in and then he helps out. But I put the work in and the result is in my HPs hands not mine.

Hope my experience helps.

Me personally, I would have quickly left AA if it was a religious program. Spirituality of the program I have never found in a church... which is why going to AA is vitally important to me to stay in close contact with my HP.

AA was the first time in my life where I was given permission to think outside the box when it came to God/Higher Power. It was a wonderful journey to find a Being that wasn't in any book of religion, yet It was in all books of religion...

Hi, I was also told don't worry about step 3 until I reached it.

By the time I had worked steps one and two, and gone through the book with a sponsor to page 60, I was able to work step 3 with no difficulty whatsoever, although I had been a rabid anti Christian and Anti Religion person (I am not anymore by the way, life is too short worrying about what others are doing)

To me, the 12 steps are a mathematical equation that when worked bring about a "spiritual awakening" which is defined by The Big Book as "a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism"

Our more religious members call it "God Consciousness" that means our less religious members call it a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.

As was previously mentioned in this thread, we are encouraged to choose our own concept of a power greater then ourselves, as a matter of fact the entire first 164 pages of the Big Book is pretty much all about how to access that power, and as it states "The Great Reality is found within"

So why do we need a God in the steps?

Well, The Big Book states that drinking is actually not the main problem, the main problem centers in our mind, we have what's known as a blown insight circuit, or in other words, we are self centered to the point we can't see the impact of our actions, we lack the power of thinking in regards to drinking that leads one to stop putting their hands on a hot stove.

We have an obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body, we have a condition that tells us we don't have it, then convinces us to take the next one, because we can't, at some point, bring into out minds with sufficient clarity the attendent suffering that happens after we take that first drink.

So why do we need a power greater then ourself? A "God" as it were?

Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have lik ed to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help.

 

So "self" or our thinking is what defeats us, and there doesn't seem to be any way to entirely be rid of self with having a God in the Steps.

As I stated earlier I believe to me the twelve steps are a mathematical equation where if you strip away the "Christian dogma*" and when you see the "integer" "God" you plug in your own "value" for a "power greater then yourself" then work steps one through twelve, arriving at "having HAD a spiritual awakening as THE result of these steps"

Each step has conditions and promises, ie; If you do this like this you get this, which to me have never failed, when I do this like this I get this, the most famous of which are the ninth step promises, "If we are painstaking about this phase of our recovery we will know a new freedom and a new happiness etc. etc."

To me these (the steps) have proven to be as unfailing as a math equation, yes, a lot of people in Calc or algebra don't end up with the same answers as me, is math or the professor to blame or is it the result of people plugging the wrong value into an integer or getting part of the process wrong which results in an incorrect answer?

There are a LOT of ways to write A + B = C, and a LOT of ways to "arrive" at "C" as "The Conclusion", C being abstinence from alcohol, AA is by no means the only way, but, in my experience I have NEVER seen it "fail" anyone who THOROUGHLY followed it's path as is suggested.

Math isn't for everyone, and neither is AA, it's just an answer that worked "for us", but the end result for both is the same, if you do this like this, you get this.

It almost doesn't matter what that "Power" is, as long as it's "not me". Women can use the actual fact of "giving birth" or creating life" as a "higher power" as far as I am concerned, and Men can use their knocker, hell, it's been leading you around for years already, might as well admit it's a power greater then yourself and put it to good use, although you may want to choose a different concept because if you are anything like me the damn thing is nothing but trouble and doesn't always act in my best interests.

If you ask a physicist to explain something in laymans terms they will have a number of 'false starts" then finally explain they use the language they use that we as laymen find incomprehensible because thats the only way to explain it.

Unfortunately or fortunately, the language of recovery in AA is spiritual, which is slippery at best, and arouses instant "brain shut down" at worst. I watch people argue about AA simply because in many cases people don't understand the concept of their OWN concept of God, they see the word God and they lose their F'ing mind because it conjures up someone ELSE'S concept of God.

To me it's simple as hell, see the stars? see everything? see all those galaxies? see birth? see love? the curve of a perfect breast? see a puppy? a kitten? see a mothers love for her child? a sunrise?

Package all that up, call it God, no deity needed, plug it into the steps, work them and you will have a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.

Quoted from The 1st edition of "Alcoholics Anonymous"

I was able to work the steps as an Atheist/Agnostic as explained here:

http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=42763&p=3&topicID=34358076

Working The 12 steps with a sponsor that has worked the twelve steps cleared up all the questions I had that were identical to yours, it was really incredibly easy


-- Edited by AGO on Tuesday 2nd of March 2010 02:19:09 PM

Hi

I had a problem with that also when first starting out--especially when the How It Works was first read where it says "that one is God may you find him now"--so here I thought 'Oh no, not a big push on religion and all this Jesus/God stuff'.

I was raised somewhat religious also but had a bad time when I was with a Baptist Church (story all of its own for another time) and that changed how I felt about the whole bit.

I believe that there is something out there but can not put a finger on it like The Force in Star Wars.

A Higher Power is basically and can be anyone or anything that you believe in--can be Your AA Group, MIP, A Memory, A departed Loved One.

ET, a thought just occurred to me while reading this post. If we knew a general idea where you are from. Like a state. Maybe they'd be someone on this board that lives nearby that would be more than willing to pick you up & take you to your first AA meeting. Maybe after talking with us here if you met a board member face to face & went to the meeting it'd be easier to go. I have met many people on the internet personally over the years & haven't came across any serial killers yet! LOL But, seriously it's something to think about. I hope my post didn't seem too harsh. I guess I was trying to send you a jolt from here telling you that I'd like to see this work for you!! I'm in the Beckley, WV area if you are anywhere nearby & would be more than happy to pick you up for a meeting. Which I doubt you are nearby. But, thought I'd put it out there.;)

Such a great thread!


murrill wrote:

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Religion, they said, was for people who didn't want to go to hell; spirituality ws for those of us who had been there.

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Every religion starts as a cult until they kill off most of the other cults and then they become a Religion.