*Turning It Over: a Third Step Guide for Recovering People*

Well, just goes to show you never know where the light's going to come blasting from...

Why on earth would I even have opened a book for 'recovering people' this morning? Substances have never been my thing; I verge on being a Goody Twoshoes in my abstemiousness. And the whole 'Higher Power' thing has always been like grit in my mind-- a persistent irritation.

But then I read this: " We are told in our Twelve Step program that if we are not to succumb to our old habits, our personalities must undergo change; there must be spiritual growth. And we are told that if we are to make spiritual progress, we must be willing to relinquish our will. We are told that those who have been successful in distancing themselves from their old habits have made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to a Higher Power.

Some of us have trouble dealing with any concept of a supreme being. But we are also assured that we needn't feel out of place or be discouraged, for everyone who comes to this program can at least believe that the people in our recovery group are trying to help us.

When I arrived, I was confused, frightened, and defensive. But I found I could make a decision, however grudgingly, to subordinate my will to that of the group. If so many of these people had succeeded together in overcoming their compulsions, it seemed to me that a collective wisdom was at work, a concentration of experience that even someone as brilliant as I could make use of.

Later on I heard an agnostic speaker at one of our meetings say that he had to learn acceptance: 'Acceptance, for instance, of the reality that some people believe in a supernatural power and some either don't or don't know if they do. But what has saved my life is a very real human power called sharing.'

I could buy that. I was learning to share too. Not just criticize. And as I did share, I sensed something bigger than myself, maybe something even bigger than the group.

As I saw unexplainable changes taking place in my friends and sensed odd shifts of attitude in myself, I began to wonder. I decided we weren't quite the same people anymore and my world wasn't the same either. Eventually I found myself, along with my program friends, giving credit to a force beyond my control.

As time went on and my confidence grew, so did my dependence on this Higher Power, call it what we may-- our Creator, our inner guide, our conscience, intuition, the power of love, the power of sharing, or the personal God that we individually understand.

Old-timers in recovery helped me to see that it was to my advantage to relinquish my will to this Higher Power. My own bullheadedness could only cause me trouble, they said, and my ego was out to get me..."

-- the underlining indicates where the understanding started to kick in, that maybe making a fetish about avoiding 'God talk' is a costly habit for me: that I'd be better served to see the commonalities between my attempts to align myself with my intuition and what others-- less contentious about their Christian upbringing than I am-- mean by 'surrendering to God.'

Nice! It can be hard to get out of the verbal/belief webs we wove ourselves in earlier in life in order to protect our intelligence and integrity from possibly aggressive attempts by others to subvert it, to impress some beliefs or language onto us that never resonated or connected for us. Then later in life it's so easy to assume we know what someone else means when using that "problematic" language, when in fact we may have an interesting conversation or eye opening a-ha right around the corner we can recoil instead with aversion towards the way another person or book is framing an insightful noticing in language...

I remember towards the end of her life my Mum started developing these sudden fascination/appreciations for things that were way outside her cultural frame of reference as an old hippy, goddess-worshipping herbal medicine making buddhist. She became fascinated by rap, and then stunningly by nascar, suddenly awakening an appreciation for those brave young men driving fast protected by a loving Jesus. Totally inspiring to watch, and made me really re-think my own prejudices!

WOW! Nascar, huh?

Nascar. She started to really appreciate how they always thanked Jesus when they won the race. Pretty big step for someone who walked out of Catholic school at ten or eleven because the nuns said her father and grandfather were going to hell for saying "damn it" and "jesus christ!" LOL