SOMETIMES, SELF-WILL AND EFFORT ARE JUST NOT ENOUGH

In 12 step recovery programmes this is step 2.  In Alcoholics Anonymous the full text reads;

We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. ~ The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

For many people trying to recover from an addiction to alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, gambling, shoplifting…, this is where it all falls apart.  One may have been dry and clean for a while, (although cigarettes and candy will have taken the place of the primary addiction), but here we begin to flirt with the idea of God.

Addicts and people under great stress have poor memories, they will have forgotten that when they were at their nadir they will have said something like; ‘Please God, get me out of this one…’  In any event, in the quotation given above where does it say God?  It doesn’t, it says; a Power greater than ourselves.  Addiction is self-will writ large; egotism, egomania, narcissism, conceit, and vanity are all part of the psychology of an addict.  Addicts and the otherwise mentally ill believe they are the most important person in the Cosmos ~ that belief has to be smashed.

Addiction, stress, anxiety, depression, bi-polar disorder, anorexia, binge eating disorder, psychotic disorders, exhibitionism…, (the list could go on and on), all produce a state of desperation.  A state where the sufferer is willing to do almost anything to escape from the see-saw of euphoria and misery that they endure.  Anything, except believe that there is more in this Cosmos than themselves ~ addiction and self-absorption go together like ham and eggs.

Trust me on this, one does not have to believe in the God of our childhood, or the God of our parents, or the God of whatever church or religion we theoretically belong to.  Lapsed Christians, lapsed Jews,  Agnostics, atheists, sun worshipers, druids, can all come to believe that there is a power in the universe that is greater than they are.  In 12 step recovery programmes this sometimes known as ‘finding your higher power.’

I believe in a higher power and I believe in good and bad, right and wrong.  You sleep in the bed you make. ~ Leif Garrett.

Lief Garrett, singer, actor, television personality, one time drug addict, member of the Church of Scientology, often in legal difficulties.

the nothingness of infinity

So we’re in physical and mental torment of one sort or another.  In order to recover we need to give up some of our egomaniacal self-will, narcissistic denial, and the conceit that we can stop doing whatever destructive behaviour we suffer from, whenever we want to.  Whether one believes in a Deity, or not, recovery from addiction and a range of other destructive behaviours depends on faith and spirituality.  The human mind finds it much easier to believe in something, rather than believing in nothing, (although one could believe in nothingness and infinity.)

There is something about modern man and woman, particularly men and women who are suffering extreme distress, which makes it difficult for them to accept that there is anything beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or otherwise detect with one of our many other senses.  Very well, what if I quote from one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th Century?  A man so smart that 99% of the people in the world don’t even understand what he was getting at.

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical.  It is the sower of all true science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.  To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms ~ this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true spirituality, (geistigkeit). ~ Albert Einstein, The Merging of Spirit and Science.

Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science.

Quantum physics and probability theory are both pretty wedded to the fact that nothing is impossible.  People being what they are, if one gives a lot of them three choices;

1. There is definitely no God, Goddess, Higher Power, or a Power greater than me.
2. There may or may not be a Higher Power, Earth Goddess, Power of the Cosmos, et alii.
3. There is a Higher Power, Mother Goddess, Power of the Universe, Isis and Aphrodite.  I know because I have faith.

There is no possibility whatsoever that they would be able to come to a consensus of opinion.  The proof of this is in Arrow’s impossibility theorem.  Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what one believes in, as long as one believes in something that is greater than a single human being ~ that is, greater than you.  We cannot go on just existing, we need faith and spirituality in order to live ~ after all, we are broken human beings.

if you can’t believe in anything else, believe in the Power of the Cosmos

Personally, I walked the road of recovery from my disease by believing in the power of the Cosmos.  It didn’t matter what I believed in, as long as I believed that there was a Power greater than myself.  If you can’t even manage that, then believe in the fact that you want to believe in something, because that will put you on the road to spirituality and recovery from whatever syndromes you suffer from.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. ~ Carl Sagan, in Cosmos.

Carl Edward Sagan, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science populariser, researcher into extraterrestrial life.

All of human life requires faith.  Faith in gravity, in the laws of physics, in birth, love, life and death.  To recover from serious addiction, mental illness, extreme stress, also requires faith and spirituality.

Given that I am currently not only on planet weird, I am deep in the jungle on planet weird, after experiencing reincarnation into my own life, I need a hell of a lot more faith and spirituality than most.  Currently it suits me to believe in my vision of the Goddesses Isis and Aphrodite.  They are my higher powers, not yours.  You need to find your own higher power for yourself to achieve true spirituality.

for some reason my vision of Isis is confused with The Lady of the Lake