For two years now I have struggled against the idea of God, against the word God, against the proofs of God and His love that I hear people talk about all the time, and I have struggled against them to the point that in order to give myself some peace of mind I simply dismissed the question entirely and have considered myself to be an atheist. Atheism as an ideology and being an atheist inside a 12 step program is a dicey proposition. One must be very careful what one says at meeting level so as not to belittle the pious and in so doing dismiss the foundation of the very program that, though my convictions run against it, gave me back my life. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’m mostly okay now. Most of the time it feels almost like none of it ever happened; like my life in addiction was a bad dream. Looking back it is almost incomprehensible to me how far I had fallen, how much I suffered, how much effort and pain it took to get through to the other side. It seems like an almost impossible feat, particularly in light of the fact that the real insanity that gripped me before has never really returned.
I have moments of it. One shouldn’t think I don’t. I am as susceptible as any addict or alcoholic to be visited by the “strange mental twist” that is the nature of addiction. When I catch myself thinking, “When I retire in Italy I am definitely drinking wine,” I also find myself thinking, “It’s a good thing you’re on your way to a meeting.” When I find myself thinking, as I often do, that there is no such thing as God; that believing in “God” is as ridiculous as believing is Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a magical kitten that lives in a tea-pot on the dark side of the moon, I also find myself thinking that not believing in those things should not keep me from having faith that there is in fact a “Great Reality” beyond my understanding, which has helped me stay sober and which I experience at times as “a new life, a new freedom, and a new happiness.” Again then I find the desire and the willingness to stay on this path. Read the rest of this entry »
“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous, page 58
Some of us have tried to hold on to them without even knowing that is what we’re doing, until it bites us.
I was thinking about my conversation with Chris Lawford a couple of years ago. The last question he asked was, “What does God look like?” He asked all of us the same set of questions and you can discern that from a close reading of the chapters in “Moments of Clarity”, and he has included the answers to that question from a few of the people he interviewed. I remember Susan Cheever’s being particularly moving, though at the moment I can’t remember what it was. Mine was not included, which killed me because I thought I had been so clever.
In the first place, I thought the question was kind of obtuse. How, really, can one know what God looks like? We can’t even agree on a definition of God, let alone agree on God’s existence, so how would I know what God looks like. And that is what I said. I said, “I don’t know, but when it is my time to go I hope He holds me in his arms and whispers something funny.”
It is a good thing it was not included, actually, because it is not even an original line. I stole it from William Finn; a line from the song “You’ve Got to Die Sometime” from Falsettoland. (None of my material is original. Go ahead and check. That’s not entirely true. I did coin the term Googlyize, meaning to glue googly eyes on to something, but I digress.)
The thing is, at that time and though I wasn’t even conscious of it, I was still in the grips of an old idea about what God is, and though intellectually I professed something more abstract, my spiritual experience in the early parts of my recovery had never been inconsistent with the ideas of God which I had been given as a child. I was taught to believe in God at approximately the same time I was taught about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and he was given a personality and a face, the same way those other fairy tales had. (When my parents told me the truth about the Easter Bunny I proudly walked into class the following Monday and announced to everyone that, “My daddy is the Easter Bunny!”)
I guess this incredibly painful four month experience in letting go of that old idea, and the amazing relief I have at the moment having come through that and feeling again a spiritual wholeness, has me curious about what other old ideas I may be hanging on to that are standing in the way of my growth.
I suspect they will make themselves known when the time is right.
I bought a book the other day, right after I vomited my insanity here; Mindfulness in Plain English. And I’m encouraged because I finally found a definition of ‘faith’ that I can work with. No GrandWizardMagicalSantaClaus required. What a relief. I have some nice, plainly written instructions to make a beginning, and then there are retreats, with advanced instructors.
Reading the course application, I wonder if I could even do it at this point, but I believe I could get there.
I am also considering getting rid of my television and limiting my internet time just to help reduce the amount of noise in my head. My sense is that television interferes with my ability to think clearly and hinders my growth.
I’m headed to Atlanta, ID with my sponsor tomorrow afternoon to enjoy 3 days in the mountains without indoor plumbing, electricity, paved roads or telephones.
I appreciate all the feedback I got from my last post. Looking back I can see that this is really an issue that I’ve held on to for decades. The appearance of an old friend from when I lived in Sweden reminded me that there was a time even then that I was desperate for there to be something I could have real faith in, and being surrounded by a religion that made no sense to me at all.
It appears then that it is in my nature to yearn for an understanding of or knowledge of something that I can only understand or know through my own experience. Faith that makes sense to me isn’t belief in something because it is written in some book. It is belief in something because I have observed it within myself. If I’m going to have a relationship with that I have a great deal of observing within myself to do.
A.
Atheist.
Two and a half years sober and I find myself so fucked off about the conception of god that I got sober with that I can’t live joyfully. In all likelihood I just haven’t given myself enough time to heal or something but at the moment it seems like the “power” that got me sober was an episode of magical thinking from which I have been medically released.
I’m two months out of surgery and I’m still in so much pain that I think I need to go back to the doctor. I’ve tried taking a friend’s Neurontin and it had no effect on the pain.
If there is no god then I must have had the power to get sober all along. I must not have known how to access or use that power but it must have always been there.
My sponsor suggested that I go to as many meetings in a row as I am able to until I believe again and I’ve been doing that – 2 or 3 meetings a day. All I really hear is some really soft thinking and bad logic.
Oddly, none of that means that I think that AA doesn’t work. It obviously worked for me, and I don’t think that not believing in god anymore should be too much of a hindrance. There are all kinds of higher powers I believe in. One of those is that groups can accomplish more than individuals.
I’m just tired of feeling like I’m supposed to believe in god to stay sober and tired of trying to make the magical thinking return.
(I just watched a TV commercial where the governor of Idaho said that meth “leaves a tattoo on your brain.” Seriously. )
My mom, God bless her, my mom saves wine corks. She saves them in white plastic grocery bags and she takes them with her whenever she goes up to her cabin. Should the weather be poor up at the cabin, she’ll crack open another bottle, bust out the hot glue gun, and set about to completely uhpolster the walls of the downstairs bathroom with wine corks. The last time I was up there, two years ago, she was nearly done. I suspect that next she’ll try her hand at siding the pump house with them.
I wrote a post over at the Second Road the other day about the hurdles we face in finding the Higher Power of 12 step programs. The idea for the post came from a conversation I had with a friend a few nights ago wherein he told me that the only ‘God’ he was willing to believe in, when he got to AA, was what he called “The God of Unintended Consequences”. The conversation was interesting enough to me that I immediately started researching the 2nd step observations of the early AAs and the neurobiology of belief.
I garnered some great knowledge in this, and I gained some really useful clarity about the roles of honesty, open mindedness, and willingness in having an effective spiritual experience. I understood, as I never had before, why it had been so important for me to cling to the alternate names of God we use; Higher Power, Creator, and Spirit of the Universe. Read the rest of this entry »
“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure; having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
Timothy 2;19
If the meeting I was at last night was the first AA meeting I had ever been to, I am quite sure I would have ran out the back door and never returned. Perhaps I should lower my expectations since I live deep in the heart of Jesusland. It is one of the essential parts of any real 12 step program that we don’t shove some particular idea of “Higher Power” down the throats of newcomers. It is absolutely essential that we guide them toward a personal relationship with that power by taking a path that begins right where they are.
That’s why, well that along with the fact that I am a contrary, sarcastic, vicious, deeply egotistical mo-fo, when I hear people in meetings talk about the only real Higher Power being Jesus Christ, it is almost all I can do not to start talking about, “My Higher Power, whom I choose to call Lucifer,.” I’m afraid I’m not really that much better than I was when I was actively using. Some defects are only slightly diminished.
Here’s the thing. If you’re a Christian you know that the crime of heresy Jesus was executed for was the heresy of teaching that one’s relationship with God is personal. It didn’t require High Priests. Nobody needed to stand between you and God. So if you’re a Christian and you attend 12 step meetings, for God’s sake (seriously) leave Jesus at the door. He doesn’t mind.
I may end up being a Christian yet, but I’m pretty turned off by it every time someone brings up His name in an AA meeting, particularly when it comes with a warning about how other people in the room are selling false prophets. I got sober and I got sober without Jesus, thank you very much. I got sober believing that Jesus didn’t die for my sins but so that Mel Gibson could become a billionaire. I’ve been sober a few months and never even had the compulsion to place a name on God or feel like I needed an agent or broker to reach Him.
When I was new my prejudice was so powerful that if anyone had told me that I had to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour in order to get sober I would simply have said thank you, I’d rather be high. Ciao. Remember, that in AA, God expresses Himself in our group conscience, and for over 70 years that expression has told us that it is a God of our own understanding. So to all the freaks in Jesusland, Jesus says shut the fuck up. You’re killing alcoholics.
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