Which Conception of God Should We Try to Follow?

I wrote the following to a friend recently. 

You asked me at our last meeting, who I followed.  I am not sure exactly what you meant by this and should have asked for clarification.  I should and will still ask for clarification, but first I’ll go ahead and try to articulate my spiritual foundation and guiding principles.

I first got sober/clean in 2000, and did not believe at all that 12 step fellowships might help me find a better way to live, but I did understand well that I was very quickly headed for divorce, jail, etc if I did not at least try the things that people were suggesting I do, such as 12 step fellowships.  As such, I did what was suggested, thinking it was much better to live an inwardly miserable life that outwardly was somewhat successful and preserved some hope of finding a viable answer down the road. 

I knew outward things were not going to fulfill me or be my answer though because the last year of drinking/using I had often thought about the fact that I had everything I ever wanted in life (such as a great wife, house on a lake, good job that I mostly liked, quads, snowmobiles, boat, dogs, etc) and I could not go a single day without drinking/using. 

Fortunately, it did not take too long in inpatient treatment and then 12 step fellowships to start to believe their approach might be my answer.  I thus read a lot of their literature, went to a lot of their meetings, and maybe most importantly listened to 100+ hours of the most respected people in recovery from the prior 60 years share how they had found their own conception of God that they had stumblingly followed to fulfilling lives with meaning beyond their wildest dreams. 

The latter was so important because even in 12 step fellowships where the literature says we are free to and supposed to find our own conception of God, there are strong overt and subtle pulls towards adopting more experienced peoples’ and/or various religions’ conception of God.  And when you add this to the frequent big and small failures that occur when trying to follow any type of spiritual path it becomes extremely hard to stay on a course of finding, refining, and trying to live from our own conception of God. 

I would imagine many, if not most, people would say that it is foolhardy and a recipe for harming others and ultimately failing to even try this quest of finding and refining our own conception of God.  That is completely true if not accompanied by spiritual practices beyond prayer and meditation.  However, if we are doing the very basics, such as confessing our sins to one another and doing the best we can to rectify them, along with prayer and medication; the conception of God we find and refine over time will get the Essence correct.  Just as importantly we will be experiencing God as we are finding and refining our conception, and actually this experiencing is the only way to know much of the Subject. 

So in terms of people or authors, I would say that I do not necessarily follow anyone, and at the same time I try to follow everyone.  What I mean by that is that I do not believe or even try to believe anything because someone else said it, even if I trust and believe in that person greatly or it is the bible.  However, I try to be open to experiencing and learning spiritual truths from everyone, and this seems to happen by allowing my conception to constantly be in flux and experiencing LIFE and trying to be open to inconvenient and uncomfortable truths and incorporating them into my conception just as much as any others. 

I believe these brilliant observations from pages 51 - 55 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous (written in 1939) would transform any community that embraced them into the Kingdom Jesus frequently discusses:

Page 51

This world of ours has made more material progress in the last century than in all the millenniums which went before. Almost everyone knows the reason. Students of ancient history tell us that the intellect of men in those days was equal to the best of today. Yet in ancient times material progress was painfully slow. The spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention was almost unknown. In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas…

We asked ourselves this: Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of the material?

Page 52

We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view.

Page 55

Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.

We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.

We can only clear the ground a bit. If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then, if you wish, you can join us on the Broad Highway. With this attitude you cannot fail.

While I got a lot out of my spiritual quests, I do not think I did a very good job of getting beyond “superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas” until early 2008.  From 2000-2006 I had gotten a couple doctorate degrees (in pharmacy and then law) to help me feel a little better about myself.  From 2005 through most of 2007 I was planning to go to seminary to become a pastor because it had become very clear the thing I enjoyed by far the most was interacting with others on our spiritual quests.  However, after talking to a lot of pastors, exploring all sorts of denominations, going on retreats, etc it became very clear there was no where I fit into well, and I absolutely knew I did not want to spend much, if any, time fighting for my own conception or against that of others. 

As such, I knew being aligned with a religious organization with prescribed beliefs was not my path, and in early 2008 I remember consciously deciding to try the hail mary of trying to find and follow my own conception from deep within.  This was mostly discarding old ideas and embracing more simple ideas.  Above all it was exploring all areas of my thinking and feeling (and their source within and beyond) and allowing them to come to some sort of consensus on many of the most important topics that cause problems for me as I am interacting with others and the world.  This was both a very hard and a very rewarding/meaningful time, and somewhere around mid-2010 was when I had sifted through enough to form a conception that I knew was solid enough and strong enough to live from.  And that is what I have tried to do since, when not trying to live a cushy life, which is frequent. 

When I am not trying to stay in my cushy life, I look for things today to challenge and expand my conception and ways to help others believe it is OK to find their own and live from it.  The latter is really hard because everybody fights us in almost unlimited ways when we try to do this because they need us to fit their paradigm. 

I do not look to anything outside my conception, which I experience and refine in spiritual exercises/disciplines.  A rule that I always follow though is that I always share my conception, failures, and successes with people I trust and I always make it clear they are welcome to question and express concerns.  And since these are trusted friends I very seriously consider their feedback, but I feel no obligation to follow it.  I realize I will have errors and make mistakes in my conception and attempts to live from it, but I do not think any more than those trying to follow another’s conception, and I get to experience God and improve my conception as I find, connect to, live from, error and try to rectify my errors.