Fellowship meetings are wonderful opportunities to hear about how to live well, how to find a process of living which helps makes the most of each day we have. So often we hear we must live in the present, this moment of now, the essence of experience. We can forget we bring every element of living and our history to the present moment.

All of our past experience, to the good. For the experiences we have make us able to process all new information and people we encounter in the present. How we are educated, what we learn from relationships, its all here with us now as we feel and think our way through this day. Our framework for making sense of our current experience has its foundations in our history. If our history is full of wonder and joy, with little to make it feel bad, we find the good in our current living. When we encounter sadness or harshness in our current experience and have nothing to remind us of it, we are like a fish out of water and unable to make sense of the change, the difference. When our experience is usually harsh and we encounter joy, we might be as a fish out of water because we don’t know how to experience joy without some suspicion something may go wrong. We have much to take account of as we make sense of the present. The past always has its role to play in our current feeling and thinking.

When I mention feeling and thinking, we are so used to feeling that we forget we do this most often first, then think about our reaction to our experience. When we are so forgetful, we fail to recognise our thinking is most often based on feelings and emotions. We are driven by feelings and emotions. We are also driven to experience what we know best, for familiarity has in it safety and connection.

Safety and connection to our history can make us keep old patterns of behaviour which can be a hindrance if our past is full of negative or detrimental experiences, we look with suspicion at everything and we look for something wrong rather than what is right with our current situation. We might feel we react to our experience with eyes and experiences which make us feel something is harmful, when in fact there is no harm, we might feel something may be wrong when we feel our situation is outside our ordinary. We need share and seek out the good and the questionable, that is what people do to accept or reject their current present moments and experience.

In our fellowship meetings, I went to two in the last twenty four hours, the first was a discussion about higher powers than ourselves, the second about what it is to be sober for over fifty years by personal choice. The first meeting and higher power: in the conventional sense, this means reference to God and his, her or its intervention in our lives. God is a broad understanding in our fellowship and much is attributed to God. From luck and happenstance, to guidance, to shaping our very existence, to limiting our choices, to broadening our choices, to relinquishing our wilful personalities from the equation of harming to that of living well. God has much to do with the understanding that there is a higher power than us which can guide us individually.

In my experience, not unlike others, higher power is a blend of knowledge and experience formed within our fellowship and tapped into by attending meetings. I believe in relation to well being from addiction the fellowship offers great experience and wisdom. We need only stay a while and hear from others how they keep well and stop themselves returning to insane behaviour of addiction to know there is a power greater than our own self will to guide us along on a daily basis and help us live more productive lives in every sense. To be well and have a grasp of reality, to listen and hear everything, and not be obsessed with our personal views and wilful destructive inclination to self harm. The higher power of our fellowship is brimming with evidence of how to combat the demons of addiction and this is why I spend time listening and associating with fellows with time served in sobriety. As really hearing it, from the horses mouth as we would say, it helps to know how to live from someone living with a killer disease, that of addiction and make a really good life in sobriety.

We had a great meeting, and some in our fellowship are agnostic, some atheist, some imbued with God and all it entails. For the concept of God is pretty unique to each and everyone who comes to believe. And this authenticity is helped by our broad understanding of higher power. In the true sense of spiritual development, there is no need to be a believer in some divine being, only a grasp that we can make good today, and be better in our choices is we show up sober and in the right frame of mind to make sense of the world we live in. the spiritual connection is seeing life as it is, real and without filters, with a sense of comprehension of all elements. God is outside the spiritual path in this sense so belief in God is not a part of spiritual development, merely a consequence for some so inclined.

As for me, I have many a higher power. Now that I realise my understanding of the world is truly limited to my experience and to my ability to process what I know and can make sense of, I get it! That there are broader and more detailed understandings I can hear and learn from. We can’t experience everything, we can listen and take on wisdom learned from others, make sense that we have expertise not only in the fellowship, but with every person who has specialised knowledge of anything. So I do have higher powers in my life about education, about health, physical and emotional, about living in England or living in Timbuktu.

For every area of my living there are higher powers. There is also me and my choices, so if I listen and hear good advice, then I can get the best of wisdom learned from others and apply it to my living as well as from my own source, my living and experience. And truthfully, for some elements of my life I do need advice and support and to listen to others. And I recognise I fell into desperate times trying to do everything right by myself, till all went to pot!

And my understand of God. Well it has to do with good conscience, nature and the Universe, about connection to truth and fundamentals, wisdom and harmony. God is as we understand he she or it. God is with love all the way and our measure to self will where hell and the demons man made dwell. For in essence we are in good conscience able to make God as we can comprehend to our wisdom and experience, our faith and inclination and good of mankind, nature and this Universe all encompassed.

I also recognise, because I have a brain, that there are many good sources of wisdom and other sources I would choose to listen to and reject. Some have wisdom based on belief and faith in things which have no basis, merely blind adherence to something or someone they revere. If it works and keeps them safe, long may it be worthy of wisdom to follow. Where it will harm me and undermine my higher powers I can reject as simply not for me.

My fellowship helps people form their own unique views on many aspects of living and works best honouring all who endeavour to maintain their path of sobriety. Tolerance is a key as is acceptance of our condition. Providing we are aware and living sober we make the best of what we have.

And we have our life experiences, certainly before we were driven mad by addiction, and we can make better sense of what we know and believe is right for us. Of course we need take on stored and understood wisdoms and better ways of living. And we can modify and learn and develop as we move along in our journey of life. There are really no rights and wrongs when we learn to live well, we simply accept the best of what we have. That’s why the fellowship gives us such strength and hope for today, merely today and we make good our personal choices.

And now to over fifty years of living in sobriety. Having spent a really good hour hearing of higher powers and God, as we understand he she or it, the proof perfect of living soberly. A friend indeed from America came to speak.

With over fifty years in our fellowship, and over eighty years old this sprightly gentleman with good grace and humility, talked of all I mention in this writing.

What struck me most in his sharing was self determined personal choices to lead a sober life with help and support and his understanding of a higher power. As one acquainted with our fellowship I was heartened when he made the connection to marriages and partnerships which help fellows make life work. And for me in my single status, this helps too, for I do rely on the wisdom of those like me and often those in partnership to help my wisdom. And I know a part of me would benefit from partnership and as they say, “ a good woman in my life”, at the same time as we are in fellowship, we get great advice from those in that situation. And who knows one day maybe, until then I have wisdom shared and learned and time to see where life takes me in that direction.

It was really great to see someone who has found a serenity in sobriety which works for them, a person who has judgment and applies it to themselves and less so to others. Someone who recognises how to make life work and how easily it can go to pot if we hamper and make little use of our wisdom and learning from others.

In essence he showed how to keep well and stay close to supportive to well fellows in our fellowship. That we need take wisdom from our fellows and reject what is unhelpful to us even when it helps others in their connection to higher power.

I get greater understanding of life when I get equal to life itself, equal in my understanding of relationships and given opportunity to tap into higher powers of wisdom and good conscience. The collective which forms our fellowship.

The rest of my day was magical, and in the true sense of good experience my meetings helped me with truth and honestly. Most of all reality of what is today, not what might be or should be. A day without self obsession, self will and no attempt to bend it my way. I am learning a day at a time to see with clarity how wonderful a day can be without the hindrance of others opinions and prejudice, without projection or intent, unspoiled and definitely worth living.