On October 8 2008, around 5 in the afternoon, my best canine friend, who had been a member of our family for 16 years, laid his tired body down one last time. I made sure he was comfy and went back in the house. Five minutes later he was 21 grams lighter.
I remember puzzling over this. How was he not alive? What had happened to his spark, to the energy that moved through him? I believe in the conservation of matter and energy and that neither can be created or destroyed, only transformed. So where was his life energy? I thought of it as “soul”, because that’s the word I know that best describes it.
There is a stand of trees about 60 yards by 20 on the back edge of my property. I had the image in my mind of a band of light moving over those trees. We buried his body there the next morning. I still miss him so that it makes me cry.
I was 18 months sober when he passed beyond our sight and hearing. Knowing that his energy had returned to the Source ended any debate I might have been having about the existence of a personally caring deity. There is the Source, and it is up to me to find a way to communicate my energy with it and allow it to feed and shape my soul. It is beyond logic and as such is unknowable. But undeniably it IS and I AM. I journey to it sometimes in meditation or prayer or during times of tremendously strong emotion.
I think we all think about higher power and God more than we need to. Ultimately all you need to do is bring yourself down a few notches and admit that you can’t do this by yourself. Ourselves is what got us into trouble, now is the time to put your life into the hands of something else. Maybe it is a traditional judeo-Christian God, maybe it is Mother Nature, maybe it is just the rooms if AA “Group of Drunks”. You just need to let go of control and let something else guide you. And quite honestly I don’t think you need to even define what that something else is.
This is why I’m not sure I want to look into AA.
My path is a struggle thru all of that. Not sure I can put myself into a group centered on already having a belief.
I’m more of a goddess…old gods… Gaia…animal spirits kind of witch. But I’m also way into science. So my struggle may make AA too daunting.
Do you believe that you were possibly your own worst enemy regarding your drinking or using,if so and you also believe a group of other people who have beat it can help you to beat it then that is all you need. Like @VSue just said, this stuff is seriously over thought. But if you still feel it’s not for you that’s fine, it’s your decision I’m in no way trying to be funny
So if you are in to the old Gods you are probably a lot further along when it comes to having a HP than most people when they get to AA. However, the 12 steps help you with your conception of a higher power. You don’t need a higher power when you get there. Most of us didn’t.
Still rolling with my Higher Power being the consensus of Wise Women in my life combined with a growing understanding of Community as a spiritual guiding principle. It makes things easy- when any two of my sponsor, therapist, mom, supervisor, or career mentor (all women) suggest or outright tell me to do something, I get right on it! It’s usually things I dont want to do that benefit me greatly in the end. Like be more assertive, sleep more regularly, talk to my partner about something.
