Sometimes the words Higher Power are used as a name for God. The phrase was popularized within Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s. Today, it’s also used by other 12-Step programs and beyond.
Whatever your beliefs are, aren’t there times when you need a little higher power? A little more physical energy, a little more motivation? More inspiration, or a little more love? And sometimes, a lot more!
I believe it is vitally important for anyone to know how to access higher power. There are times when we are discouraged, frustrated and depleted. When we have run out of good ideas for what to do next. In times like that, it is important to access energy from somewhere so that our life can continue in a good direction.
I still remember when I first began to run track at 12 years old. It was an experience of accessing higher power.
One evening, three of us from the track team got the idea that we could run from my house to Compo Beach, four and a half miles each way.
I’d never run that far before! My friend, Bob Kelly, urged us on and set the pace. And there we were, flying by the houses, trees, and all the musty scents of an early-summer evening along the Saugatuck River.
My mother had driven me down that road to the beach so many times in all the years of my childhood. Now I was going under my own steam—no car, no bike. I was running! I was free!
I had never worked my body like that before. My stride lengthened as I went, my lungs heaved. But it felt effortless. Every in-breath fueled the run. I was sucking in the life force of the Connecticut summer and it was entering my body, carrying me forward.
As we sprinted over the last patch of asphalt and onto the sand, the moon shone over the rocky point while the stars of the summer night kept watch over Long Island Sound.
I had opened to a higher power. Every outbreath was followed by the oxygen I was deeply taking in. With every pumping motion of my thighs I was taking in a new-found exhilaration and inspiration.
I’ve learned that I am accessing higher power when I am relating to what is larger than me—a context that is larger than my immediate human experience. I am accessing higher power when I put myself in position to receive inspiration and energy from that larger context, like breathing in the air of a Connecticut summer night.
No one really knows intellectually where higher power comes from. Sure, you could call it God or Allah or the Tao. You could trace it back to the Big Bang or the forces of evolution. But no intellectual idea is capable of capturing the reality of where the very source of life comes from.
And still, even though the source of higher power is mystical, we can call upon it and it comes. If we can let go of our attempts to control the world, we can accept that our entire human life is held within a reality that we don’t really understand very well, but which has its own rhythm and pattern, intelligence and power. Not only can we see all that at work around us, we can access it. We can be a part of it. It can fuel us and inspire us.
I observe that people can make religion and spirituality so complex. So often, in various religious organizations and spiritual paths, there is so much that is of human concoction that gets in the way of accessing higher power. I believe we all need to access our primal spirituality —the spirituality that we were born with; the built-in spirituality that is intrinsic to how we are made.
When we do, it not only fuels our human engine. It ennobles us. We have the opportunity to experience ourselves as a being who is not separate from the very source of the higher power that is behind everything.
The path of my life is to access primal spirituality for myself and to assist others to do the same. And then to share that experience—to know a connection to the mystical source of higher power with friends, and let it come into the human world in which we live.
This is what my book, Becoming a Sun: Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence for a Happy and Fulfilling Life, is all about. And of course, the workshop based on the book is about the same thing. So is this blog!
I believe that as any person embraces their connection to higher power, they create a door into that experience for anyone else to walk through. And the more people who walk through that door, the bigger it gets.
i like the simplicity you express regarding the access to higher power. simple!
Thank you, David!
I can imagine that anyone who reads this can touch in to this inner truth and calling. I am so pleased to be sharing this path with you. Love, Jeannie
Dear David
I experience primal spirituality every time I push my limit on all planes of my life, physical, mental, spiritual. The fuel to free myself from my limits is love for every things that come my way, weather I am inspire to do so or life offer me a new challenge to help me grow.Thank you for sharing with us your beautiful spirit, inspiring us to transcend our limits.
One with You,
Michel
Yes there all kinds of moments in Life and to connect into the higher power is a mistery ….lets say its good that there is a ministery where….. I am …..and we are reminded of that higher power.
But important too is to find my way to connect with the higher power and also to connect with You and All Thanks
This is the way forward; the portal to what needs to be brought forth and manifest on Earth;it is available. It is not earthbound; it is cosmic and universal. There is a longing on the planet and in the human heart for this conscious expression to come forth.
Thank you David!
Thank you David. I agree with what you say.
Tanya K
David, I love the image of a portal which becomes larger as more enter. Thank you, for your thought. Spiritual water in a time of drought.
This morning as I was waking up to the sound of birds outside, even before the sun had come up, in my hypnagogic state I remembered once coming up with a theory of everything. I was studying at Adelaide University as a mature age student (32/33 years old) and I attended a free lunchtime talk given by a very famous British Physicist and author (Paul someone …) who was lecturering at the university at the time. He said that no-one had yet come up with a viable Theory of Everything. In what I judged at the time to be a moment of unbelievable hubris, I instantly came up with ‘my’ theory of everything. Three words …. Everything… Is … Light. Not being a renowned physicist myself I resisted the temptation to share my theory with those gathered there. (A psychiatrist once diagnosed me as being inherently shy …). But this morning, before reading this blog, I remembered that day and my theory. So how could I possibly explain my theory? Scientists know about the electro-magnetic spectrum and the range of light waves extending far beyond the small spectrum of ‘visible’ light in our physical, measurable world. Humans have learnt to use some of these waves to send television or radio signals and use some for medical purposes (X-rays) or wifi which is just another form of radio frequencies – but all these wave frequencies already existed long before they were ever ‘discovered’, named and put to some use. But our measuring instruments can only detect so much. Surey there are frequencies of light energy that we as a species haven’t even conceived of yet let alone learned to harness (think dark matter). And just as a radio receiver or a TV or computer can ‘receive’ intelligent (not always) transmissions via certain waves of light impregnated with a signal that can show up as a sound or image or both, maybe we are designed to pick up signals and receive transmissions from THAT higher power and intelligence. From now on I’m tuning in to THAT. Come in THAT. I want to read you loud and clear.