Energy, Plain and Simple

I first set foot in an OA meeting eleven years ago, but until lately, I had been unable to attain long-term recovery. Why? I couldn’t find a Power greater than myself. Lack of a Higher Power kept me sick much longer than necessary. I made desperate attempts, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to believe anything outside myself could help me. But I finally began considering an idea about the energy that transforms matter. Its existence can’t be denied. It is in everything, even me, controlling what happens in my body: where cells go, when they are created, when they die. This power controls seasons, gravity, and weather. It is much bigger than I am. It causes life to exist in all things. Nothing is separate from this energy.

Maybe my Higher Power is just me recognizing this power within myself and allowing it to do what it is supposed to do without my getting in the way. What if I took my thinking brain out of the equation and let nature do what nature intended? I don’t think nature’s plan is for me to be overweight and unhealthy. Being that way makes no sense; it decreases my chance of survival.

I have to come up with something I can grasp without finding it ridiculous.

I don’t know how prayer works. Maybe it’s a matter of stating my intentions and getting out of the way. The power that makes my heart beat is not spiritual to me; it’s just energy, plain and simple. I’m not praying with the expectation that some higher being is going to help me out. I’m just replacing a thought with a new thought. Instead of thinking, “I want food,” I’m thinking, “I need help with this.” With time, the new thoughts become habit and the old thoughts disappear. Call it prayer, call it positive thinking, call it whatever—it works.

I have no choice anymore because the alternative looks grim. So I will state my needs and intentions out loud today, and I will let go of the foolish notion that I have any control over this disease. That’s all I can do, but it’s something. I just have to take a leap off the cliff and have faith that I won’t go splat. Experience tells me that something will catch me.

I know something exists within me and every other living thing, and this something is much bigger than I am; it cannot be defined or explained. This concept makes enough sense to me to accept it. What choice have I got? So here I go, leaping now.

— Rosie M.