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The following are some 'thoughts in progress' on the question of a Higher Power. They are not fully developed by any means. In fact, they are not even completely consistent. But they represent a direction my thoughts are going these days and as such I would love to hear people's reactions.
A friend and I have been sponsoring each other for a while and right now we are working on his Third Step. After going through the Second Step with him and preparing for the Third, I started thinking about the question of Higher Power in general. We all know that Bill, Bob, and the rest of the early members of AA came out of a culture that really only knew one type of spirituality: the theistic tradition of the Abrahamic religions. In these religions, which of course include the Christian spirituality AA grew out of, the answer to the questions "What is the foundation of and force guiding reality?" and "How do I learn what to do?" are the same: God. Reading We Agnostics, I think it is clear that the Big Book follows this tradition and merges a metaphysical question about the origin and guiding power of reality with an ethical question about how we should lead our lives. I get a very strong feeling from the Big Book and the 12 + 12 that the alternative Higher Powers mentioned, like the AA group, are viewed as temporary stopping places on the way to Abrahamic theism, which is considered synonymous with a fully developed spirituality.
However, if I get it right, in some non-Abrahamic spiritual paths, such as Buddhism, the metaphysical and the ethical questions are relatively independent, which is why the Dalai Lama can say that Buddhism is non-theistic in the sense that the question of God is irrelevant. What matters is the ethical question of how we should live. Buddhists make statements about reality (the 4 Noble Truths and the law of karma, for example) but I think the Western obsession with the question of why there is something rather than nothing is viewed as a bit silly. There is something, now let's deal with it.
I know I was stuck for years in the idea that my Higher Power should be a personal God and if it was not going to be a personality it had to be a force of some kind. No matter what, it had to be a Supreme Being and I struggled with finding one I could sincerely acknowledge. But why does it have to be a Supreme Being? Why not make the 12 Steps, my spiritual path, my Higher Power? I try to guide my will (my intentions) and my life (my actions) by the Steps. They are what I turn to in crisis. Prayer in this context is a statement of my aspirations, my commitment, my hope... Taking the Steps as my Higher Power meets what I consider the ultimate test: when, at 3 o'clock some morning I awaken to the reality that a serious illness, a financial disaster, or some other catastrophe has occurred, this is something I can turn to. I should mention that when I hear people tell newcomers that they can take a doorknob or a lightbulb as their Higher Power, I cringe because it would take one heck of a doorknob to pass that ultimate test.
Taking the Steps as my Higher Power does not exclude a sense of the sacred, or even the use of the word "God". In fact, I think the path of the 12 Steps clearly demands a sense of the sacred. Personally, when I use the word "God" I am pretty much with Stuart Kauffman who in Reinventing the Sacred says "One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures."
I hope I will be writing more about this as I think it through.
The concept of what God means to me is one of the largest hurdles I have ever encountered in my life. Partially because my brain is wired in a way that I will never feel satisfied until I settle on what it means to me, and yet am afraid that if I ever do settle on what God means to me I have just made God so small that he can fit in my little brain finally.
ReplyDeleteThere is one description of God that has rang true with me for a long time mostly because of its purposeful vagueness and universality. It has been credited to many people; Pascal, Joseph Campbell and Alain de Lille among them:
"God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
I like it so much because it encompasses God's omnipresence without defining God.
Brian's comment that the "the AA group, are viewed as temporary stopping places on the way to Abrahamic theism, which is considered synonymous with a fully developed spirituality." is spot on from my understanding of the readings as well. This made is so that early on in my sobriety I spent more time on Step 2 than any Step because I needed to define that God before I could "decide" to turn my will and life over to it.
That being said, years later I tried to do just that, define it. I am going to unarchive it and before I even read it back to myself I will post it here and read it online in order to see where I stand in relation to this which was written a few years ago.
Let's start with the name I have already chosen to use: "God"
ReplyDeleteWhy use the word "God" which, depending on the the company or context it is used in, produces aversion in ways that no other word can. If that's the case, why use it in a treatise such as this one?
First off, in order to discuss a topic I need to somehow name that topic. As it is my own beliefs I am recording, I am the one who must ultimately be comfortable with the name I choose to call "It". And it is my own belief that if I were able to find a name that would satisfy all people - fundamentalists, atheists, agnostics, poly-theists, etc - than my abilities would be legendary to the point of revolutionary.
So, why "God"? It seems to me that in order look at something with an open mind, one must first overcome one's own barriers. In my own growth I found that the one word that I was prejudice of more than any other was the word "God". In order for me to discover what such a concept meant to me it was necessary for me to removed anythings that blocked me from seeing it as boundless in meaning.
With that in mind, once I overcame my own aversion to the term, I found it to be the most practical for my own use. By using the term "God" I was able to avoid any misunderstanding of topic in question. The word itself is used as a sub-description when trying to clarify ones meaning when someone tries to describe their concept of a power greater than themselves. Buddhists describe their faith as not having a personal "god". Muslims label of "Allah" essentially means "The God", the one and only. Even those who's beliefs focus on a god of female form will use a feminine of that term "Goddess".
So in this way I found that the word "God" said what I wanted it to say without having to come up with another term to fit it. Now it goes without saying that this name is not ideal for everyone, and that I stand a chance of prejudicing someone or upsetting them by use of this word alone. However, I feel it is important that I don't set out to upset someone by using this term. If it rolls off the tongue in the course of normal conversation that is one thing, if I do it to purposely make someone uncomfortable, that is another. I also feel that if I am talking to a person and sense that they might not be comfortable with my use of that term, I may alter my terminology in order to get my point across without any undue tension. Ultimately it is my belief that I need to be comfortable with. I should not feel the need to alter my terminology in order to make others feel comfortable so that if by doing so, I then make myself uncomfortable in the process.
The word is powerful which is one reason I think it should be used - a position I most certainly did not have for my first few years of sobriety. The word expresses a spirit of reverence and surrender, which are essential attitudes toward one's Higher Power as well as the spirit that what you are talking about is ultimate and fundamental. I've been told that Mircea Eliade once said that when you speak of someone or something you can either bless or curse. I believe that, but I also believe there is a third option: you can worship. The word God does that.
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