This has been a great topic and so glad Starlight raised the question. It made me feel emotional also reading the various comments and gave me so much to think about. One of my own favourite mantra’s when meditating is “i surrender to the path of my journey, i accept and embrace the process”. I believe that i have a HP even if i can’t explain or describe what it is or how it works, for me its feeling or possibly intuition?
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This!! I am picking nuggets from this thread and the myriad experiences and perspectives we all have and share. The beauty of the forum. Messy as it is.
I know I get tangled in the religious aspect (recovering Catholic) when someone raises HP. I lean more toward Buddhism / energy / universe. Reading our diverse belief systems / experiences is enlightening and helpful for me.
A good thread for me to bookmark. 
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I am absolutely delighted so many people have enjoyed and got insight from this thread…i actually was really nervous about asking about this for fear of offending anyone but now im pleased my curiosity prevailed lol 
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I’m really glad you started this thread! It’s been really helpful for me. My hesitation with AA was that the idea of a HP being rooted in Christianity, but now I see it can take on so many different and personal meanings. Everyone has expressed their beliefs so eloquently it’s given me so much more hope and comfort.
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I havent read through this all, I read your op @Starlight14 . I have struggled with spirituality also. My great uncle was a pastor, he passed away years ago. But he came to me in a vison dream and told me “we teach what we teach” I was in the depths of depression after losing a childhood friend to drugs, the found him the same year floating in the river and i couldn’t shake the feeling it could have been me. My anxiety immediately subsided. It was like i woke up a new man.
I went to church, did bible study and got baptized. My thirst for religion was unquenchable. I was helping at church with construction projects, when someone asked what weekends i had my kids. My wife didnt come to church with me so people assumed i was divorced, because i went to church with my mom, and would bring my daughter. Church people arent my favorite, because of this experience.
Later on, actually just a year ago, I watched a video on tiktok lol. It explained that god is light, which gives life. God lives through every living thing. You are God, built in his image, alive. This reosnates deeply with me. God put us here, and when we return to him, to be part of his energy, he wants us to be as innocent and pure as when he put us here. Thats my belief. Spirituality is the core of my sobriety I know God doesnt want me to dwell in such places, in such negative head spaces. He has called upon me to be much more.
So to conclude I think its important not to draw a line in the sand between you and God. You are connected, one. He lives within you, and wants only the best for you.
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First off congratulations on your clean time I’m at 175 days today scared as f*** to make it to my 6 months but knowing that I will this is the first time that I’ve ever been in recovery I’ve gotten sober a few times over my 28-year history of using meth I had 12 years in at one point and jumped off the f****** deep end after my husband died he committed suicide 11/6/16… that destroyed my world and pushed what little faith I did have even further away… since then I have spiraled out of control… about a year ago a very religious friend of mine asked me to come and stay with her to help her with her kids I was hard still out in active addiction and knew I couldn’t come here like that so over the course of the next 6 months I started trying to wean myself off so that I could come here and help her because she needed me and I knew I needed her deep down… I finally showed up here one day out of the blue without even calling her spend the next two weeks on her basement floor being in hell ended up taking off in the middle of the night leaving her with my two dogs and disappeared on her… after 2 days I ended up in the psych ward and when I left there a week later they advised me I go to treatment so I signed up for intensive outpatient treatment. When I say my religious views are messed up let’s just leave it at that LOL… in treatment is the first place I heard the phrase God equals good orderly direction… then I started going to na because treatment forced me to go there I discovered a home… in the beginning that word higher power almost made me puke about 2 months in I was sitting out in the garage one day having a cigarette and I looked up the the sky and was like listen m*********** if you want me to believe in you you’re going to have to smack me upside the head somehow and I can’t say that he smacked me very hard but little s*** just started happening in my life that I was like oh that’s a god thing and I can remember the the first time I said it I about freaked out because I couldn’t believe them words came out of my mouth. And over a period of time then words kept coming out of my mouth more and more and still today at almost 6 months clean it still just shocks me when I say some of that stuff… but I guess I’m telling you all this to let you know that sometimes your higher power just finds you and everybody that’s answered this before me is right you need to figure out what works for you it might be a dog it might be the rooms yeah it could be a tree like my friend just said to me you know it doesn’t have to be God as it says in the Bible it’s a god of your understanding. I will pray for you that you figure out what that is for you and don’t forget everybody else is right to when they say that can change over time because Jesus was not my higher power when I started this journey by any means although he is now I wish you luck in your sobriety have a wonderful day
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