Thoughts about HP in 12 step programs

I wrote this in a secular meeting where the query was posed as to how people dealt with the concept of a male God in 12 step literature 

I do not believe in a male God.  I do not believe that God is a “person,” capable of having gender.  

This does not mean that I don’t believe in God.  It’s just that I think the true name and nature of God are unknowable.

When I read program literature that calls God “he,” I translate it mentally to “it,” and think “this is how the author experiences HP.  They are doing the best they can to describe their experience.”  Their understanding is incomplete.  That is true of all humans.  All of our understandings are incomplete.

I am not certain as to whether the spiritual experiences I have had, which have led to 17 years of abstinence, are actually due to an external God, or due to an interesting neurological phenomenon that merely feels like an external God.  I do not feel that I need to know that. I do not believe that God is governed by binary true/false logic or human reasoning.

The people who write program literature, like all religious writers, are fallible. Their expressions of how this program works are limited by their understanding, which is necessarily incomplete.

It may be that scientific research will one day uncover the neurological basis for the spiritual experience.  I hope so, because then, perhaps, it might be reproduced artificially.  This might be of great benefit to people who do not easily have spiritual experiences.

Or it may be that these spiritual experiences are really inexplicable miracles that come from a mysterious external source that is God — or some other external source. 

The OA 12 & 12 invites us to leave the debating club and just work the program in light of our own desperate search for recovery.  I have heard this expressed in the saying “utilize don’t analyze. “ 

This reminds me somewhat of the process of using Zen koans.  Many of these koans are statements that make no sense, like “listen to the sound of a rock growing.” Rocks do not make a sound that humans can hear.  They do not, so far as we know, grow.  Yet, if one does focus on listening to the sound of a rock growing, one may experience an altered mental state, a spiritual experience — at least I do — and this is the sort of mental state that fosters abstinence for me. 

The Zen practitioners also have a “utilize don’t analyze” approach.  If a student feels stuck in analysis, he or she can ask the master to beat them to stamp it out — as it is not conducive to the desired result.

Many people seem as stuck in logic and reasoning as others seem stuck in a rigid, intolerant view of religion.  I reject both approaches.  

In a Zen koan like approach, I could say something like "God does/does not exist."  I feel that the apparent contradiction here is a limitation in human reasoning and the statement as written is not a pair of alternatives but co-existent realities.