Finding a Higher Power Part 2

Once I was able to get past the initial fact that I not only needed a higher power, but I needed to surrender to it, I did the first thing I could think of:  I went to church.

I was raised Catholic but stopped going to church when I went to college.  This happened to coincide with a big wave of scandals and a huge payment of damages to the victims of sexual abuse by priests.  But what rocked my faith the most was the fact that the priest of the mass I regularly attended was one of the people on the news for molesting small boys.  This is the man I received communion from; the man I gave confessions to.

It started out first that my faith in the Church was shaken, and then my faith in Christianity as I began to learn more of the history of the Church and the bible.  I'd always had difficulty relating to Jesus.  Not that I didn't respect his teachings, but I'd just never been able to reach a point of believing in him as my "Lord and Savior." 

So now, here I was more than a decade later trying to get back to a point of faith.  I sat in mass and found myself fighting not to roll my eyes.  I felt out of place and uncomfortable there.  I tried staying late to sit in silence in the church and pray, but I still felt like an interloper.  I didn't give up immediately.  I kept going to mass, sometimes taking my young son with me.  But the feeling that I was a fraud kept plaguing me.

So I went to my sponsor and asked for help.  She told me that if I didn't like the Catholic God, then I should just make my own Higher Power. 

In a meeting, I once heard a man share how he found his own Higher Power.  His sponsor told him to take a piece of notebook paper and fold it in half length-wise (i.e. like a hot dog).  One one side, he was to write all the things he hated about organized religion and the religious beliefs of others.  On the other side he was to write down all the good things, and the things he'd want in his own higher power.  Once this was completed, his sponsor told him to rip the sheet in half down that dividing line.  Here were the applicants for the job of his Higher Power. Now he could throw out the ass-hole he didn't like and hire the one he did.

So I started my research.  I looked into theologians like former Dominican priest Matthew Fox, Judaism, eastern religions, I even spent a good deal of time looking into paganism.  In fact, one of the most helpful books I read was Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religion by River and Joyce Higginbotham.  That book described various faith systems, ways people look at religion, and even talks about scientific findings that could support the basis of an earth-based faith.  But most importantly it taught me ways to meditate and pray that were deeply meaningful to me.

It was almost a four month process of research, meditation, and reflection that led me to the point where I now had a Higher Power with capital letters.  I was able to look back on the way that program had changed my life, and how I had changed as a result of program.  These were things I had never been able to achieve on my own.  Finally I knew I had found the belief that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.  I had at last taken the second step.

Finding a Higher Power, Part 1

When I came into program I didn't have a higher power let alone a Higher Power with capital letters.  It isn't to say I didn't believe in God.  Being an atheist involves a certain measure of faith.  While it is impossible to concretely prove the existence of a Higher Power, it is also impossible to concretely disprove the existence of some Higher Power.  So the act of being an atheist is as much an act of faith as the belief that Christ is the Son of God or that Buddha obtained enlightenment.  And faith was something I was fresh out of.  So I was indifferent to the notion that there was a deity out there, but one thing I was most certain of was that any deity that might exist most certainly wasn't interested in me.

So I needed some sort of starting point.  I have met people who have chosen non-deity Higher Powers, such as mathematics (no matter how much you dislike the outcome, 2+2 does not equal 5), the laws of physics (gravity is a cruel taskmaster. . .),  mother nature (not much you can do if good ol' mother nature decides to drop a tornado on your head at lunch time), the door knob (this seems to be the classic example I hear in meetings, so for a few months I told the door knob on a regular basis what a shit job it was doing running the universe), the ceiling ("I am powerless over whether that ceiling decides to collapse and crush me"), their sponsor (if you have made them your "boss" then you have placed them as a "Higher Power" over you - although this one is a sticky one long term), the people in the OA rooms (this was the route I went with once I stopped thinking that the requirement for a higher power was stupid),  a celebrity (I've heard people go with Chuck Norris' beard, Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds' moustache, and other such silliness - but guess what: it worked for them), time (you can't stop it and you can't control it), and the universe (we can all agree that the universe exists).

I have heard two things in meetings that have stuck with me.  One person who struggled with active atheism was told by his sponsor, "Can you believe that I believe in a Higher Power?"  That was a starting point. 

The other thing I heard was:  "All I need to know about God is that I'm not Him."

In my experience with program there are two stages of the Higher Power proposition.  The first is accepting that you are not calling the shots for the universe.  There is some force outside of your control deciding that Joe down the street is going to have a heart attack next week, or that there is going to be an earthquake next month, or that you're going to suddenly have the worst food poisoning of your life the day you have a big interview.

The second part of the proposition is learning to trust that somehow things are going to work out for the best.  All you need to do is do the footwork (i.e. if you want a promotion then work hard and show up on time, if you want a college degree then enroll and go to your classes, if you don't want food poisoning then don't eat the leftovers growing mold in your fridge, etc.) and let The Great Whatever do the rest. 

This second proposition is much harder to reach.  It involves not only the understanding that you aren't in control of the world, but surrendering to whatever is. And us addicts hate surrendering anything.  It is the difference between deciding to sky dive and actually jumping out of the plane.  In my experience you can't force this part - it just comes with time.

But for today, you don't need to be at that second part of the proposition.  All you need to do today is reach the point where you know that "I'm not Him/Her."  And that isn't a hard point to reach.  On an intellectual level, most of us know that we didn't create the universe.  (Those that don't know this have much bigger troubles than compulsive overeating.)

But the most important thing about finding a Higher Power is understanding that it really doesn't matter if that Higher Power actually exists.  What matters is that you act as if you believe one does.  My sponsor once shared in a meeting that she didn't know if there really was a Higher Power out there.  But even if there was nothing - well, nothing was sure doing a better job running her life than she did.