Since the first time I came into contact with the program, my brain has been screwing things up for me.
That is to say, I have a lot of thoughts that interfere with my willingness to take the actions that are suggested to me. I’m still having some difficulty with this today. While nothing I’ve been asked to do is actually harmful to myself or anyone else, I find the idea of praying to be patently ridiculous. How does one pray to a god that does not exist? The whole process feels … I don’t know, just wrong. When I’m at the tables, I participate in the group prayers but I don’t feel anything special, as others clearly do. When am I supposed to feel a connection with something? Am I supposed to somehow trick myself into believing in what I’m doing? How does one do that, exactly?
These are questions that I have brought up to my sponsor, and being an atheist himself, he basically implied that I should just “act as if” (i.e: bullshit my way through it). Is this really the best solution there is for this problem? I want to do the work that makes up the core of the 12 steps, and don’t want this to get in my way. I think that’s a really reasonable expectation to have. There has to be a way to do that while still maintaining the honesty that’s so crucial to the rest of it.
Rational Serenity 