Blog entry for:

hope to stay clean, a day at a time. before i get rolling, i have to say i am not a **GOD** kind of guy and have very little love for organized religion and the way most of the adherents of those religions walk through life. my attitudes are not too dissimilar to some of the ones i hear from the perpetual newcomers about hypocrisy and their self-righteous and arrogant judgementalness. i will leave it at that, but i may wander into that field a bit as i expound on the HIGHER POWER theme. if one is offended by what may be seen as disparaging one or more of the major religions, one may be better severed, to quit reading this now and call one's sponsor or spiritual mentor.
this set of steps has helped me clear out and sort out how and what i see my HIGHER POWER as these days. as a result i can say GOD, when speaking of my spiritual path without cringing as i see IT as part of the whole and that whole would be incomplete without IT. this process on thew whole, has been a painful and long drawn out process that at times has connected me to others in the fellowship as well as threatened to send me running for something different, yes there was a time not so long ago where i almost became a tourist in the fellowship that provide me the means to live in a different manner. working this topic to death has given me a level of insight that i never thought i needed, as i was quite certain that when i came in, GOD was not for me, organized religion was for the weak and feeble and i was going to get along just fine without the “holy mumbo-jumbo.” the journey from derision of all things sacred to one of respect has helped me clarify what i believe and certainly how i practice a daily 11TH STEP. i am quite certain that within the walls of those organized religions, that there are quite a few spiritual adherents, who ACTUALLY walk what they believe, just as most of my peers, here the fellowship do. it is my biases and prejudices that prevent me from seeing the good within those walls but never ever missing the bad. i, however, am digressing, and this is not supposed to be a treatise on the failings of organized religion, but rather a snapshot of how i see GOD today and what my “coming to believe” process looks like right now.
at the start of this step cycle i thought i had reconciled myself to having a spiritual path that just was unconventional and defied s simple explanation. i had no “elevator pitch,” that could summarize my belief system, but was comfortably ensconced in the using the terms that my peers so freely throw around. at the end of this cycle, i have a very clear spiritual path that leaves me more than a little bit out of the mainstream of my fellowship. that is certainly okay as well, and even though i jokingly call myself a “godless heathen,” i certainly do have FAITH that the POWER that fuels my recovery is there for me, probably in ways i do not yet recognize and will be made clearer as time goes by and i “feel” through this brave new spiritual world i have entered. the interesting part will be bringing my vision to the men i sponsor, not so they end up in the same bucket, but rather i can guide them through their journey to finding their own.i am quite certain that addiction might be called a “lower power,” for all sorts of reason. in active addiction i very rarely took the higher road. as i do not see addiction as separate from me, myself and i, the whole lower power concept than becomes i am my own lower power and my exercise of self-will is a manifestation of that power within my life. allowing something else, call it GOD, HIGHER POWER or as i prefer, the POWER that fuels my recovery, to act in my life is a step forward, nay a leap forward into the uncharted territory of what cannot be rationally explained, and making that leap has always been the most difficult part of this program for me. the “coming to believe” than is all about letting go of what i think i know and allowing myself to see something different, even if it is hiding in plain sight and has been forever. i do not need a congregation or a spiritual leader to find that path. the threat or promise of where i end up after i shuffle off this mortal coil is irrelevant in my decions-making process and i am certainly not walking around worrying about my karmic score. when all that is stripped away, i GET to do the next right thing, just because it is the next right thing and my journey to realizing that,has just begun.

∞ DT ∞