I was reading a post yesterday and someone said that they claim no higher power. That got me thinking. What do I claim as my higher power?

I’m stumped. I came into Alcoholics Anonymous as an agnostic, and I guess I still am. I don’t have a clue. But I have looked into it.

I am an artist by trade, and in my education, I studied the great masters, Raphael, Michelangelo, Peter Paul Rubins, Dour, etc. Each one painted masterful images of God. A beautiful old man on a throne of clouds or the like. I never thought that that was an actual representation of reality. They are beautiful, but they are only artifice,

The Calvinists believe God is out to screw us for all eternity if we wander off the path only a hair. Among Christians, they are not alone in this. That can’t be right.

The Hindus have so many Gods even they aren’t sure how many. In fact, each household can have it’s own personal God. One of my favorite parts of Hinduism is an individual can claim that they are God. It seems the idea is God is a playwright, and dreamed up this entire world. But because God is a very good playwright, God forgot that it is just a play. And all of us are players in this grand play, and in that, we are nothing less than God ourselves. That one pleases me a lot. I like the sound of that. I don’t believe that the dreaming God is the be all and end all of it, but it works for me on many levels.

The Buddhists were borne out of Hinduism. They took it to the next logical level. If there are so many Gods that on one can count them, in fact we are all of us God, then the idea of identifying God is not entirely useful. Buddhists, Zen Buddhists in particular, don’t spend any time trying to understand God. The job at hand is to wake up. Like the Hindus, they believe we are asleep to our true natures, and the goal of Zen meditation and study is to wake up to it.

And this just scratches the surface of different ideas on God. So many ideas on what God might be. How is one to know?

I try not to confuse myself between the map, (any idea if what God might be) and the territory.

Just speaking for myself, my spiritual path has become very simple these days. I get up in the morning, and I try not to lie, cheat, or steal all day long. And at bedtime, if I have managed to cut way down on my lying, cheating and stealing, and I haven’t gotten drunk or stoned all day long, I tell God thank you.

It doesn’t matter to me that I don’t know to whom or to what I say thank You, it just matters that I do.

Richard