One evening after being clean for about a week, that “thing” happened. My mouth started watering, my gut was in knots like I had just taken a laxative (symptom of a drug addict in the midst of a craving), and my heart was palpitating. I was ravenous for just one more hit – one last party.

The voice of sanity was screaming in my head, “don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.” I knew that once I started, once the monster was out of the cage, no matter how badly I wanted to stop, the binge would not be over until “the monster” was done having its way with me. Maybe this time, it would finish me off once and for all. The hunger was like a red hot poker in my eyes, blinding me utterly. I knew that where I ended up was entirely out of my control.

And it was out of my control, as I headed out the door to get high...just one more time.”

“The alcoholic/addict will absolutely be unable to stop with the unaided will... We must grab onto these principles with the desperation of a dying man.” - Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous

Most of us certainly end up that way, broken, humiliated and desperate.

When I finally surrendered, the fear of going back to a life of humiliation and demoralization motivated me to finally take the 12 Steps off the wall, and apply them to my life.

I felt like a woman who had been living on death row and had won my appeal. I had been given a second chance at life, and I grabbed on to it with the desperation and intention of one who knows “this is my last chance.”

Beyond the 12 Steps

The 12 Steps worked. They propelled me into a life I had never dreamed possible. For the first time ever, I kept steady employment, was actually being a mother to my daughter, living a life of integrity and taking responsibility for my actions. I had been restored to a level of sanity never experienced before, but like Bill Wilson says, “there’s a long road of reconstruction ahead.”

Even with all the strides I had made, the wounds ran deep, and certain thought and behavior patterns were hanging on for dear life.

There came a moment in my sobriety when the desperation and fear that had driven my healing, were no longer sufficient to motivate me. As I worked the Steps and they began to mend the broken places in my life, my eyes were opened to something so much deeper than fear and desperation. I glimpsed my oneness with a profound inner power that I could feel.

Over time, I became inspired by a compelling new idea – an idea that this ‘power greater than myself’ was actually my real self. It wasn’t out there up in the sky, waiting to be convinced that I was worthy of its time and attention - as I had been raised to believe. It was within me, expressing as me.

Now this didn’t happen all at once. It took a lot of living, studying and processing to get there. But it was the first step that I took on my own that was not out of neurosis or fear. It was inspired by a vision of something infinitely better.

That vision moved me to create “12 Keys To Freedom,” a metaphysical process for recovery that honors the power and effectiveness of the 12 Steps, but expands on them to support a deeper, clearer and more spiritual understanding of the basis of recovery.

Metaphysical Recovery takes the form of surrender to an infinite power and re-defining our relationship to it, so that it lives within us as a powerful source of energy for our healing and the realization of our dreams.

It is within the context of our oneness with that power where true healing happens, sanity is restored and the crooked places in our lives are made straight. From this place, we are no longer trying to get God to do something for us, we’re now in a place of allowing it to operate through us.

The 12 Keys to Freedom are related to each of the 12 Steps - essentially as an extension of them. So it is a deepening process. Not a better process, but a way to realize our inherent wholeness at a higher level than the 12 Steps were designed to provide.

This workbook has been designed to take you through some of these processes in a 12-week program so that you can engage with this work on your own. After all, any permanent change is dependent upon practice - moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour and day-by-day.

As you take on this work, consistently and sincerely, you get to behold as “all things are made new” in your life, just as I did.

Blessings to you on this amazing journey.

I love you,

Ester

Excerpted from 12 Keys to Freedom - A Path to Metaphysical Recovery by Ester Nicholson & Ben Dowling

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