The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
My HP is a nebulous of the universe's positive energy. When I do my meditation/prayer, I go to that thing that is greater than anything I can imagine and ask for guidance. Sometimes I call that HP God, for the sake of simplicity. Sometimes I call that HP the universe. Sometimes I just call it Higher Power.
I've heard it explained that your HP can be the collective consciousness/collective support of the Al-Anon group. And your HP can change and grow. What works now may change as your program grows and as your conscious contact grows.
Step 2 says "Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity." All I had to do was believe that there was something, anything, that was greater, bigger than me.
When I struggled with Step 2, someone suggested I write down my different thoughts about my HP--explore and experiment with many of the different versions.
-- Edited by Very Very Tired on Friday 20th of April 2012 05:07:45 PM
Well I've been coming to meetings for the past couple of weeks now and the thing I find hardest to understand is how to connect with a higher power being agnostic. I know it's not a religious program and I know that my higher power can be a bookcase if I want it to be, but I find it kind of hard to do the 12 steps if my higher power is an object or a person rather than a higher being. For instance, how do I relate seeking wisdom from an object or turn my life over to it? I just can't seem to make that part of alanon/naranon make sense to me. I've still gotten a lot of coping skills an wisdom from the meetings but I've been told that I can't fulfill and recover my life completely without doing those steps. So I am asking you all, how do I make that part work for me considering my religious beliefs?
There was a topic like this on page 2 if you know how to search at the bottom of the site, it was titled "defining 'higher power'". This post had great ESH in my mind for people who are figuring out what there HP is. My idea of HP is a traditional God of the bible. But some people make their HP energy of the universe like Mother Nature. We all figure out what we can believe in and put that force in charge of what we can't control. A sponsor may be helpful for this as well. I have a good friend who did research in her native american heritage when it came time for her to find an HP. I encourage her to be true to hersself and her belief system. She believes the Earth is alive and that is her power source. I have heard many different definitions of HP and I find them all facinating. I am sending you love and support on your journey towards finding your HP!
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Sending you love and support on your journey always! BreakingFree
Al-Anon/Alateen Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 800-344-2666
" Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
"Serenity is when your body and mind are in the same place."
I've heard some say they used the group as their higher power until they were able to find one of their own, also I've heard of some using their sponsor as a temporary higher power until they found one..... Regardless of what you do, just keep coming back.
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OR
Daily Sharing/Quote from your computer http://www.batonrougealanon.org/quotesharing-linked-page.html
I understand the difficulty you're going through. I never really had a clear definition of understanding of a god or higher power either. I still don't. I'm still new to this process but what has been working for me is not trying to force anything. I don't really know what my higher power is, I'm just trusting that its there - What I've been doing is saying the serenity prayer and trusting that a HP is somewhere out there. Right now I'm trying to embrace the powerlessness of it all and am just kind of going through the motions and reciting the words. Eventually I hope the understanding will come.
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"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I? If not now, when?"
"Be happy for this moment, this moment is your life."
Try asking your Higher Power to contact you and then stop trying to figure it out and listen...with your ears and your eyes. That worked(s) for me. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
I was so agnostic when I entered the rooms. I longed for faith. I longed to be spiritual and serene. But I was so far from that. My husband and I would talk about what we were going to do when we had kids some day. I wanted to raise them with some sort of faith, in a church, even, but I was so lost.. and he was so lost, too. He was using and I did not even know it. Looking back now.. it was all a HP thing. There was no way out of that vortex we were in. We were both spiraling lower and lower in the depths of selfishness, egotism, control issues, sorrow, and fear. That was me in a nutshell. I was a narcissist yet had no self esteem at all. Does that even make sense?
Al-Anon has been a special gift. Its wrapped in bright papers, layers and layers of it. Its like a wrapped box inside another wrapped box and another wrapped box.... so on so on.. I just keep peeling off layers and layers of myself and what I can become. Now I fear death, not in a literal sense at all. I feel comfortable that one day my body will die and it will be a free-ing experience for my soul.. what I fear now is that I wasted so much time worrying and fretting about spilled coffee and red lights.. so much time anticipating what party to go to or who to disappoint. Now I fear I will die before I can learn all I want to learn here on Earth. Just another thing I have to hand over to my HP. I don't have control over when it will be my turn to die.
I entered the program very agnostic, as I stated before. I bordered atheism. Some nights I would wake up and feel like everything was just so dark, so empty. I was empty, I was hollow inside. I am not saying any of this about what YOU are like. I don't know you. I am just talking about me. So I started in al-anon because a bunch of crap hit the fan, as people say, and I discovered my husband's lies, deceit, manipulation. I did not know how I would grasp the whole HP aspect. I wanted to sit cross legged in a field of daisies and meditate.. for the outward look of it. But I couldn't do that. I thrived on others, what people thought of me, what my hair looked like. Then it happened. I hit my emotional rock bottom and ended up, on my back in the living room floor with tears filling my ear drums. I could not speak, I could not make a choice. I was a complete and utter pile of mess in the world. I felt like I had no one and nothing to turn to. There is a bumper sticker I saw twice in two days (coincidence?) just recently.. it said "You don't know that God is all you need, until God is all you have." And this was me. I did not have anything else. That term "God," man has damaged, we've added bigotry and prejudice.. So fill in God for my HP.. on the living room floor in a ball of mess. I realized that I had no one and nothing else but my HP.
I began to pray.. actual real prayers.. like prayers of hope and peace and that I can get through anything that is in His will for me. Suddenly these things started happening to me. Odd coincidences, sudden feelings with goose bumps, problems would work themselves out for me. So I started praying more and more and then I started meditating... and then it was like... wow, how did I ever get through life without this.
Looking back now, I have these bitter sweet memories about that time in my life, that time I was falling apart and my husband was at rehab, because I know that my HP knew then what I know now and he knows now what I don't know and will figure out when I am meant to know it.. He knew then that I would get through it all.. with my HP right beside me. I would grow strong in my faith and realize prayer and meditation is not about what people think of me as I sit cross legged in a field of daisies, no. Prayer is real for me now. its powerful. it does not make any sense at all yet all the sense ill ever need as a human and, for that, i have gratitude. It has humbled me.
I know where you are and its hard and its frustrating.. but whether you get it today, or next month, or ten years from now.. or never.. al-anon can still help you. Its a program with suggestions that work and you go at your own pace and pray to whatever it is that works for you. its spiritual but not mandatory... it has saved my life.... just keep coming back.
don't mind my very long comment.. I'm VEEERY passionate about this part of the program.
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Michelle!
No one can take away your peace of mind unless you let them.
