The Higher Power

Not everyone has a great relationship with the word God or anything to do with mainstream religious practice.  While it’s true that people in large groups are capable of profound stupidity and strange mob mentality, the reality is that something really important happens when you relax your sense of self and acknowledge something larger than you.  You can call it God or Universal Love and Connection or the John Lennon Supernova, but whatever you do don’t discount the reality of something miraculous.

There’s a reason that most 12 step programs involve connecting with some concept of God or the Divine.  It’s effective.  At some point in the process of recovering from addiction and the traumas associated with it, a person has to be willing to surrender some part of himself.  This surrender is certainly not to the substance and the addiction.  Rather, it’s a surrender of control.  This is a psychological tool and you can think of it as just that if you prefer, but the tool and methods often lead to intense spiritual insight that many describe as a religious conversion of some sort.

Essentially what we’re talking about is the point at which you acknowledge and accept that you are a piece of the puzzle.  Your physical body is an evolved mammal creature with complex emotional and chemical needs like fear and love and acceptance.  Your animal self is what holds onto trauma and expresses it through the subconscious outlet of drugs or risky behavior.

When you realize that you can’t fight the beast with a beast’s mind, you come to the understanding that you must acknowledge a large circle of awareness.  Your family and friends are a larger circle than just you.  Likewise, the whole of humanity is a larger circle than just your immediate family.  And the Universe and all things in it is even larger.  These concentric circles of awareness are like a stepping stone to the Big One, which is described as a harmonious balance where all things are interrelated and saw as One.

This thinking is a masterful tool for helping a person break free from the habits and patterns of the individual self in favor of higher ideals and connections.  You don’t have to throw yourself at the feet of a priest or statue but you must find a way to look inside yourself for the part of you that’s connected to more than just the monkey brain giving you all this addiction trouble.

How do you connect with the higher power?