Ester Nicholson – Soul Recovery
ESTER: I actually think that we never are truly certain of our ability to change in the beginning stages of recovery. We just have to start. Maybe it’s the starting that’s most important. If we’re searching for certainty, it’s not going to happen. Maybe that’s why some people have to “hit rock bottom” before they decide to save their life. For me, the moment I absolutely knew I had changed and was safe in my sobriety was the first day I ever experimented with meditation. I had such a deep spiritual experience, and—for the first time—actually felt my oneness with God. I knew, beyond all doubt, that I was safe and that I would never be the same again.
OMTimes: You grew up the daughter of a Baptist minister, but it was the studies with Michael Beckwith that were instrumental in your spiritual reconnection with the Divine. How did you see your relationship with God changing?
ESTER: Like many of us, I grew up with an “old model” view of what God was—which was a judgmental, withholding and angry God. Rev Michael opened my experience of God up to a wider sense of what the Divine represented intellectually and in my own life. It was no longer up in the sky waiting for me to screw up. It was the source of all good, creativity, brilliance, peace, power and compassion. The Spirit of God became an experience of oneness, of unconditional love and wholeness.
OMTimes: You hit a wall with the AA 12-Step Program and broke through that wall when you combined the traditional 12 Steps with metaphysical principles, creating a new Path to Healing. How did you come to this realization?
