How My Higher Power Expanded

When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous I was wary of the whole Higher Power thing. I’d spent a great deal of my drunken time (and some of my sober time) mocking and criticizing those who believed in God. I remember being at an open discussion meeting talking about Step Two. I was sharing how I couldn’t get past this whole God thing. One of the people at the meeting came up to me afterwards and said something I’ll never forget, “it’s came to believe, not believe right away”. Those words allowed me to realize I just had to be willing to open my mind to the fact that there might be some sort of Higher Power out there. I soon realized that alcohol and the other substances I had been using were man made yet they had become my Master – my Higher Power, if you will. If something so insignificant could cause me to give it all my money, be put above family, friends and work than there had to be something greater than that and therefore greater than myself.

My first Higher Power was Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Not any individual person as we are all human and fallible. However, the Fellowship was made up of a group of positive people giving off positive energy which I could grasp on to. They wanted nothing from me but for me to get well. As I went through my Steps and started to concentrate on my Step 11 my higher power expanded into what Carl Jung (friend of AA) called the Collective Unconscious. I feel that we, humans, animals, plants, etc., are all connected in the universe. There is even scientific evidence of this. I also expanded my conscious contact with my Higher Power by getting into Toltec Spirituality by reading The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz and then several other books he and his son, of the same name, have written.

Just before I celebrated five years of sobriety my father passed away. I had been living with him for a couple years prior to recovery and then the whole time, once I joined AA. I respected my father, Mort, immensely. He was a man of integrity. Following the death of my dad whenever I came to a fork in the road, where I was unsure of the right thing to do, I would ask myself, “what would Mort do (WWMD)?” This helped me to pause and make, what I felt, was the right decision in trying to practice the principles of AA in all my affairs. I began asking what WWMD more often and often. So much so that I feel that the spirit of my father has become an integral part of my ever changing Higher Power and my conscious contact with it.

Dave the Dude