There is a higher power within yourself. It is called your higher self, and you can talk to it and question it just to some people do God. You know all. It’s your ego that gets in the way. This works for me anyway
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I really enjoyed reading this, thank you for sharing these thoughts. I have been reading some books and listening to podcasts about Buddhism, and doing some meditation for the first time in my life. Just opening up to some different ideas and rolling it all up as part of my recovery package experience.
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I am pretty sure that developing a regular meditation practice was a big part of what helped me get sober. I don’t do it as regularly any more but I dip in every now and then. I am trying to build up my yoga practice again which can be very meditative as well as being good for fitness etc.
It is interesting, I feel like since I’ve been hanging around here and learning about different people’s experiences of different recovery programmes I am much more open to the spiritual side of life. I am not religous and I don’t believe in the soul in a way that suggests life after death or anything like that. But I do think we can do things that are good for our soul which I suppose I would take to mean as wellbeing. And I think having a connection to ourselves, to each other and to whatever else is out there is all part of that.
What podcasts about Buddhism have you found? I always try and look for them but then get lost searching and never know which ones to choose!
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That is kind of where I am too. There is an app I found called Plum Village which has a lot of Buddhist meditations and information. I like a podcast called The Secular Buddhist and there is another one called A Cup of Tao I listen to sometimes. 
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When I first read that chapter I almost threw my phone across the room and said FUCK AA!! But then I just accepted that the book was written like 100 years ago and atheism was essentially unheard of. So I just made the decision to not take it so literally. I don’t take the bible literally so why should I take The Big Book. It’s a GUIDE.
Then I went to a few meetings where we discusses the whole higher power topic and I realised that very few of my AA companions actually have that Judeo Christian God as their Higher Power. Most of us have some form of “mother nature” or “the universe” or such as their higher power. Many also use the whole “Group of Drunks” etc etc. Others just seem to go with the flow…they say “God” but it’s just not something that they’ve defined…it is just something/anything bigger than themselves.
Me? My higher power is something like an undefined “the universe” that I refer to as God. LOL I gotta take a little from A and a little from B and make something altogether different.
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I know when I first read it I interpretted it as “don’t worry if you don’t believe in God, but when you start seeing all the great stuff you get from this program you will believe”. And that pissed me off. BUT…as I’ve been working this program I am realizing that what it actually says is precisely what you describe. It is just a hard read for someone desperate for help, looking for a program, and that has no interest in God being a part of it.
But there is also a bit in the 12 and 12 book (I forget which step it is…probably step 2) that talks about having the open mind. A lot of people think that “God people” are closed minded…but it is actually the “not God people” that are often the most closed minded. We just need to keep ourselves open to the possibility that the program might help us and not get so hung up on the details.
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That’s my take too. Basically yeah yeah you’re atheist NOW but just you wait lol
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Well I believed in laws. Like if I make bad choices I eventually will suffer the qonsequences. That kind of law. I also believed everything was an opposit to something else. I had already faced a force stronger then myself - Drugs. And I found that this force wasnt really looking out for me. But the law dictated that there was an opposit force equally strong out there - I just had to find it.
Naw drugs was just a symptom and as it turned out what I now believe is that only on this plane of existance do we experience duality, and what was actually causing the symptom wasnt an opposit at all but a lack of love. I am still searching and still finding peices of my higher power as I go and I love it
I hope you find yours 
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There’s an atheist old timer in my Sunday morning meet. He always shares that his sponsor early on suggested he pray. He said he doesn’t believe in god. Sponsor says that’s cool, just pray to something bigger than you. Guy says no, that there is no god. Sponsor says then to pray for the willingness to believe in something bigger than himself. Guy say that won’t work. Sponsor says then pray for the willingness to get the willingness to pray. Lol.
Who knows how long this back and forth went.
Anyways, the guy is still an atheist. And he’s still sober. And he prays to his higher power for help.
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Yes. I pray. I even say “God” when I pray. I don’t really believe that a “God” will actually do anything for me. I think of the prayers as a mantra…something to burn that message into my own brain so I’ll always know what it is that I need to do to get through the moment. Prayer is good.
I should say that I’m not an atheist. I’m an agnostic. I’m always open to the idea that there is a God…but I don’t know for sure so I live my life as if there weren’t one.
I pray to a nameless, formless energy.
I pray to whatever gets astrophysicists out of bed in the morning. I pray to coincidences and inexplicable harmonies that arise from chaos. I pray to the source of my intuition. I pray to the imaginary foot, that rests on the accelerator, that is pushing our universe faster and faster apart.
Also, today’s daily Stoic directly relates to this:
“The soul of a man harms itself, first and foremost, when it becomes (as far as it can) a separate growth, a sort of tumour on the universe; because to resent anything that happens is to separate oneself in revolt from Nature, which holds in collective embrace the particular natures of all other things” — Marcus Aurelius
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Really enjoyed this thread. Was a bit dejected that I’ve no concept of a higher power… but can accept that I don’t necessarily need to be able to define it in any logical format. It’s just… a higher power.
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Hahaha. OMG you’re adorable
Don’t see myself as spiritual… but I do believe in people… most are good and want others to be happy. Like the beauty of nature… even in the creepy stuff. I’ve enough things to imagine as higher power… Was at step AA meeting earlier… Step 2 … about HP. Lol. Walked out happy so who cares if I don’t get it.
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I think the answer turned out to be 42. Yeah point and shrug… then work on the little problems don’t make you dizzy.
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Thank you, Douglas Adams.
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I do plan on wearing my Skeptics guide to the universe tee shirt to a meeting some day… Just for fun.
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These feelings of you thinking "I’m going to get sober, alcohol is poison, I’m not going to pick up the bottle again- that is your higher power. The demon is what has led you to drinking in the past
I don’t go to AA, but whenever it references higher power, can you reframe it as the good in yourself? The part of you that wants you to succeed and pull you out of these terrible debilitating habits youve formed?
Just throwing some ideas out there, hopefully it helps even if it opens you up to a different way of viewing things. Good luck with everything!!
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