Nice.

I was the same way. My mom converted to a religion to a different religion when she married my dad. They tried to get me involved and from the time I was a child I just couldn't get it. When I got older I searched for something to believe in. A friend of mine practiced Wicca so I gave that a go, but even that was too structured. So I decided to be pagan. Basically worshipping nature. Feeling at piece sitting and looking at nature.

When I got to AA, I had a notion that they talked of God because I knew people in the passed who had made their higher power a band or something when they were knew. I didn't say the Lord's Prayer in the beginning until I really listened to the words and saw that it can be a program prayer too. Now I say it sometimes and sometimes I don't.

I was so desparate to stay sober that I threw myself into the first step but was pretty scared of the God steps. Then one day after a meeting I was telling a friend how I had gotten to AA (over a piture of beer, I said to my friend that we should quit drinking and go to AA, and we did the next day and I haven't drank since). I said to my friend after this meeting, "I don't know what put that thought in my head, I guess it was God." I was shocked that I had said that. In the second and third steps I began to start to become willing to believe in a higher power. My sponsor for my second step, had me call 5 women and find out what their idea of a higher power was. The point was for me to see that it was a higher power of my understanding. The point was for me to see that no one was going to shove anything down my throat.

I have a STRONG aversion to being told what to do. I think that's why I could never find a religion. I didn't want to be TOLD what my beliefs were. I think if they had done that at my first meeting, I wouldn't have been back.

In 'We Agnostics' in the bigbook, it says the purpose of the book and the steps is so that I can find a power greater than myself that I can turn it all over to. Having that power in my life makes things SO much more simple. When I'm at a loss, I can turn it over and ask for guidence, and then as long as I do the next right thing, I'm on the right path - for me.

I honestly do not define my higher power. I too call my higher power God and I capitalize it because that power saved my life. Do I think my higher power is an all knowing being? That is not my belief. Some days I think my higher power is just my good conscience, the part of me that keeps me on the right track. Some days I think my higher power "speaks" to me through my good conscience and most days I feel I hear my higher power in my thoughs, the people around me, in meetings, here at PC.

I've quit trying to understand God. All I know is that if I'm willing to believe in SOMETHING, no matter what it is, that my life runs more smoothly.

When others in meetings or my friends or what have you say, "I believe in this God or that God" I have no aversion. Its when people tell me which one is the right one that I get upset and walk away.

That is what I absolutely love in AA. Everything is a suggestion. No one tells me what I can and cannot do, what I can or cannot believe. As long as I work the steps to the best of my ability and follow the traditions, I have a design for living that works. And really for me, its the design for living that I see in just about any spiritual belief system I've ever learned about.

To thine own self be true, be kind to others, clean up anger, give back. How simple yet not always so easy for a control freak like myself. So my higher power or God or HP keeps me from trying to control the show, from being the director. As long as I keep it on my side of the street, and don't tell others what to do, I find myself quite happy.

I could go on....but I'll pose more questions down the thread lol!