First, some pretty cool comments on the previous posts. Somebody must have clicked in from MySobrietySpace.com. I set up a profile there. My first sponsor also sent me an email about Job, and I took the liberty of posting it here as a comment on that post.
Had lunch with a sponsee today, and he’s been on the 3rd Step. My sponsor had told me that it’s important at this point to have some workable image of a Higher Power, no matter how small, so we can have some idea of what we’re turning things over to. Something you can wrap your head around, as he said. Lots of folks use the group, or a more classic notion of God, whatever.
My first take on this, about eight years ago, was that God was the little voice in my head trying to get me to do the right thing. I heard it very clearly in the later years of smoking pot, when even as I lifted the pipe to my face, I’d hear “Don’t do it! You don’t like it! You’ll regret it!” And that voice was always right. Sometimes after I smoked I would immediately hate the feeling and wish I had listened to that voice.
My notion of a Higher Power has changed over the years, but at first my notion of the Third Step was simply following that voice, wherever it came from (“tuning in God’s station” was another way I thought of it).
So today this sponsee came up with another one: He knows there’s electricity, even though you can’t see it or really understand how it works, but stuff works with electricity, which is omnipresent, even in our bodies. So, for him, if God is like electricity, then the program is like the plug you stick in the wall. That action (willingness, faith) allows God to go to work in your life. I thought that was pretty good.
Then we went off into a long, rambling conversation about religion and particle physics and Buddhism — just the kind of massively intellectual conversation we both enjoy and which adds up to absolutely nothing. But it sure was fun.
Sometimes our sponcees does come up with some good stuff to munch on for thought.
I used to think and brag about this statement. I will die with LSD under my tongue, a joint in my mouth, whiskey in one hand, and do coke lines with the other. It is hard for some to believe but I had those same conversations with God you had.
God would say, dude, you need to quit doing this stuff. I would say, yeah I know, but I just dont seem to want to quit. After the conversation I would tell my two buddies about it. Of course they would say, yeah man, you need to get some help. While they were laughing.
I too would do my thing mostly by myself. I think it was because I really didn’t want to share.
In my years of coming to know this God more intimately, I started to really make the time to seek Him. I do know that the 12 Steps and even the 12 Traditions are His will for me to be in. But hey, I am a very good addict, I want more and more of a good thing. I have had to do this deal on a slow pace tho. Slower than the step work. Because I have found that on God I can OD too. And begin to think I know something, but I dont.
What I have found over time to be the most favorable move I have made in this regard is this; come to know God’s son. You see, in my search to know God, I find that He requires me to know His son.
What is a bummer is, His son gets rejected and those who reject His son, well lets just say, they do not get to really know God and His real love for us. They only know a glimpse of what He has instore for us. People call it religion. Sure it can be if that is your bag. It is not mine. I ritually am not ritual, religious. I am a believer that practices my love for Him. I can never out love Him, I can never out reward Him, I can never out forgive Him either.
I have found this fact to be true. God makes the most insignificant, very significant. Just what do you think the mere feed trough that Jesus laid in as a child would be worth if it was on the Antique Road Show? How much more do you think God has made my worth to Him?
This old self that is so very insignificant in peoples eyes? Even in my own eyes? But if I were not to accept His son, well I know my value would change significantly.