How to find a God of your understanding. The best and clearest thing in print, say newcomers to the twelve-step program and the old-timers too.
Author Glenn Chesnut has spent a number of years talking with old-timers in the twelve-step program, as well as reading the writings and listening to tape recordings of early figures from the 1940s, 50s and 60s in the upper Midwest. In The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program he explains how men and women who join Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and other twelve-step groups discover a higher power of their own understanding in real practice. What did the old-timers actually do? He discusses how those who were atheists, or were bitterly hostile towards all organized religion, found practical starting points which would put them on the path towards a spirituality of their own devising. He talks about how they learned to pray effectively, and how they learned to self-monitor their own spiritual growth, so that they could continue to make progress towards ever-greater peace, serenity, and a deep feeling of satisfaction with life and of being in harmony with the universe.