DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
REDOUBLING OUR EFFORTS
To a degree, he has already done this when taking moral
inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to
redouble his efforts to see how many people he had hurt,
and in what ways.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS , p. 77
As I continue to grow in sobriety, I become more aware
of myself as a person of worth. In the process, I am
better able to see others as persons, and with this comes
the realization that these were people whom I had hurt in
my drinking days. I didn't just lie, I lied about Tom. I
didn't just cheat, I cheated Joe. What were seemingly
impersonal acts, were really personal affronts, because
it was people - people of worth - whom I had harmed. I
need to do something about the people I have hurt so that
I may enjoy a peaceful sobriety.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
"The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We who have found this solution to our alcoholic problem, who are properly armed with the facts about ourselves, can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic. We who are making the approach to new prospects have had the same difficulty they have had. We obviously know what we are talking about. Our whole deportment shouts at new prospects that we are people with a real answer." Am I a person with the real answer to the alcoholic problems of others?
Meditation for the Day
For straying from the right way there is no cure except to keep so close to the thought of God that nothing, no other interest, can seriously come between you and God. Sure of that, you can stay on God's side. Knowing the way, nothing can prevent your staying in the way and nothing can cause you to seriously stray from it. God has promised peace if you stay close to Him, but not leisure. You still have to carry on in the world. He has promised heart-rest and comfort, but not pleasure in the ordinary sense. Peace and comfort bring real inward happiness.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may keep my feet on the way. I pray that I may stay on God's side.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Regular prayer and meditation
Page 232
"Most of us pray when we are hurting. We learn that if we pray regularly, we won't be hurting as often or as intensely."
Basic Text, p. 45
Regular prayer and meditation are two more key elements in our new pattern of living. Our active addiction was more than just a bad habit waiting to be broken by force of will. Our addiction was a negative, draining dependence that stole all our positive energy. That dependence was so total, it prevented us from developing any kind of reliance on a Higher Power.
From the very beginning of our recovery, our Higher Power has been the force that's brought us freedom. First, it relieved us of our compulsion to keep taking drugs, even when we knew they were killing us. Then, it gave us freedom from the more deeply ingrained aspects of our disease. Our Higher Power gave us the direction, the strength, and the courage to inventory ourselves; to admit out loud to another person what our lives had been like, perhaps for the first time; to begin seeking release from the chronic defects of character underlying our troubles; and, at last, to make amends for the wrongs we'd done.
That first contact with a Higher Power, and that first freedom, has grown into a life full of freedom. We maintain that freedom by maintaining and improving our conscious contact with our Higher Power through regular prayer and meditation.
Just for Today: I will make a commitment to include regular prayer and meditation in my new pattern of living.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
We teach best what we most need to learn.
~~Richard Bach
Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.
~~Peter McWilliams
This too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone but it WILL pass
Being an alcoholic is similar to being pregnant.........
Perpetual morning sickness
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
In the unthinkable, inscrutable, ordinary nature of reality there is no difference between freedom and bondage. No matter what arises, when you perceive your original nature, the joy arises automatically--and what joy!
-Shabkar, "The Flight Of The Garuda"
Native American
"Nature is the storehouse of potential life of future generations and is sacred."
--Audrey Shenandoah, ONONDAGA
We need to honor and respect our Mother Earth. She is the source of all life. The sun shines life to the earth, then the earth produces life in all forms and in a balanced way. Everything is here to serve everything else. If we interrupt the flow in any way, we leave nothing for the future generations. Before every decision is made, we should ask, and answer, a final question, "If we do this, what will be the effects on the seventh generation? What will we cause our children to live with?" We need to have respect and love for all things and for all people. We need to do this for ourselves and for all the children still unborn.
My Creator, let me look at nature today and let me have the highest respect for all the things I see. All the two legged, the four legged, the winged ones, the plants, the water, the air, the Mother Earth. Let me have respect for myself.
Keep It Simple
There are times we must grab God's hand and walk forward. --- Anonymous
Sometimes we struggle with being part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution.
Inside we know this, but somehow we can't Let Go and Let God.
To let go takes faith that the outcome will be okay. When we have faith, we know our Higher Power believes in us and will guide us. When we have faith, we believe in ourselves.
When we let go, we let go of our need to always be right. Letting go first takes place on the inside. Letting go allows us to change how we view what's happening. Often, all we really need is this change of attitude. This is the beauty of faith: it allows us to see the same thing in different Ways.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, permit me to let go. Let me see that believing in You must also mean believing in myself.
Action for the Day: I will review my life since entering the Twelve Step program. I will work at seeing what good partners my Higher Power and I make.
Big Book
Chapter 11 A Vision For You (pg 158 & top 159)
Next day found the prospect more receptive. He had been thinking it over. "Maybe you’re right," he said. "God ought to be able to do anything." Then he added, "He sure didn’t do much for me when I was trying to fight this booze racket alone."
On the third day the lawyer gave his life to the care and direction of his Creator, and said he was perfectly willing to do anything necessary. His wife came, scarcely daring to be hopeful, though she thought she saw something different about her husband already. He had begun to have a spiritual experience.
That afternoon he put on his clothes and walked from the hospital a free man. He entered a political campaign, making speeches, frequenting men’s gathering places of all sorts, often staying up all night. He lost the race by only a narrow margin. But he had found God-and in finding God had found himself.
That was in June, 1935. He never drank again. He too, has become a respected and useful member of his community. He has helped other men recover, and is a power in the church from which he was long absent.
So, you see, there were three alcoholics in that town, who now felt they had to give to others what they had found, or be sunk. After several failures to find others, a fourth turned up. He came through an acquaintance who had heard the good news. He proved to be a devil-may-care young fellow whose parents could not make out whether he wanted to stop drinking or not. They were deeply religious people, much shocked by their son’s refusal to have anything to do with the church. He suffered horribly from his sprees, but it seemed as if nothing could be done for him. He consented, however, to go to the hospital, where he occupied the very room recently vacated by the lawyer.
Gratitude
AA Grapevine September 1979
How do you manage to feel grateful when you're feeling terrible?
THE OTHER NIGHT at our AA meeting, Frank asked a question, and a dozen hands went up. He said, "How do you manage to feel grateful when you're feeling terrible? I can't do it."
George, who has had a stroke, said, "I'm paralyzed in one arm. Soon after I came into AA, I broke the other arm. All I could move was my pinkie. I was grateful that I was sober and that I would recover the use of my broken arm. I'm more grateful for this program every day, for the love and friendship I find here, for my spiritual progress, such as it is--just for being alive!"
Tom said, "I use what I call gratitude-generators. Right at the moment, I have no job, and my wife is divorcing me. But I can generate gratitude by counting my blessings. I'm sober. I'm not crazy anymore. I have a place to live. I'm job-hunting, and I'm praying for the right job. I was sick and crazy and unemployable. I had a mountain of debts. Every morning, I thank God for my good and ask Him to let me live this day according to His plan."
I raised my hand and said that I was like Frank. When I have felt depressed, I haven't been able to list my blessings and raise my spirits. "This bit about 'I cried because I had no shoes till I saw a man with no feet' has never worked for me. It's taken time, psychiatry, and a low-blood-sugar diet to get me over my bad depressions."
Then somebody said, "Don't wait till you're depressed to practice gratitude. And that's just it. Gratitude has to be practiced.
I was surprised that I had not thought of this before. I had assumed that some people just found it easy to be grateful. Where had I been all this time? Of course, I had thanked people in and out of AA who helped me over the years. I had been vaguely thankful that I was sober, alive, happy, and free. But now, I realized that I had not been appreciative enough.
The next day, I embarked on my own gratitude-generator. I wrote out a list of all the people in my entire life who've taught me something valuable or helped me in some way. I wrote a short description of my relationship with each of them and a brief character sketch. At the time of this writing, I have ninety handwritten pages, and I'm not through yet. Despite years of timidity and confusion, followed by ten years of horrible drinking and antisocial behavior, I have been blessed by so many friends that I can hardly believe it.
There was that time when I was seven years old and a cousin of my grandmother's took me for a walk in the woods. She made me stand still and observe what was going on: insects dancing in a shaft of sunlight, crawling, birds singing, leaves moving in the breeze. She gave me the gift of special awareness. I wonder whether I thanked her in any way.
Then there was the very rich and famous lady who was at a dinner party on Long Island one night when I got too drunk to drive my car. She took me home with her. The next morning, I woke up in an enormous room overlooking Long Island Sound. Breakfast was brought to me on a tray. Later, I was driven home, having written my hostess a hasty, shaky note. I wish I'd gone to see her years later after I joined AA and while she was still alive. I wish I'd told her what her kindness meant to me, especially since she never said a word about it to anyone.
As I go on writing this list, I remember more and more people to whom I am indebted. And I realize I'll never remember them all. During thirty-four years of sobriety, I've heard a thousand wonderful things that have helped me to stay sober. I wish I could thank everybody--the people who've made great talks, the people who've said something meaningful in closed meetings. Of those I do remember, many are no longer on earth.
My two sponsors, Marty and Chase, are still here, thank God. They are both good friends of mine, and I see a lot of them. I am so lucky to have such sponsors, both gifted with inexhaustible patience and wisdom. Marty nursed me through the worst hangover I ever had, coming off my last drunk. It was in the early days, when medical help for hangovers was not so well developed. Marty said later, "I never saw anybody so sick." She left her office to come to my aid. She sat by my bedside, holding a glass of milk and making me lick the spoon, a process that took about an hour and finally made the turmoil in my stomach subside. Over the years, she has given me well-seasoned advice from time to time, but never unless I asked for it.
Chase has held my chin above the flood countless times when I've been badly depressed. He's said to me, "You have your feet in the clouds and your head in the dismal swamp. Get up and do something. Don't think about it--just do it."
It's easier to express my gratitude to these two, since I'm associating with them. I try to do things for them from time to time. Chase has an eighty-second birthday coming up. I'm going to think up something that will please him.
Writing out this list is a revelatory experience in more ways than one. Sometimes, I've lacked the discernment to be grateful, and I see this now. It's like the story about the man who is floating on the ocean on a life raft. He's praying and praying to God, "Save me! Save me!"
Suddenly, he says, "Never mind, God. Here comes the Coast Guard."
Often in the past, my prayers for help have been answered in ways that I have not recognized as answers. Indeed, I have cursed my fate instead of thanking God. I have prayed and prayed, sometimes in desperation, but I haven't thanked Him as much as I've implored Him.
So now I have a separate list headed "What You Can Do Now." And this one is very rewarding. I have put down the names of those whom I can show my thanks to, and have written suggestions on what to do. For instance, there's a wonderful friend in Washington, D.C., who was one of my mainstays when I was living there in an impossible marriage. I was wriggling on the end of a pin, so to speak, and she got me off the pin. I had not heard from her in years. The other night, I called her up, and we had a wonderful talk.
There are friends who are no longer here. But in some cases, I can write or phone their children or widows. There's an AA friend's granddaughter, who lives out in Iowa. I have never seen her, but we correspond. In my next letter, I will describe what her grandmother meant to me.
Speaking of that relationship: I am a great-grandmother. I have already spent half a lifetime in AA. You might say to me, "Do you think you have time to get in touch with all your benefactors?" Perhaps not. But I will enjoy doing it a day at a time. And in the meantime, I seem to have generated a lot of gratitude.
F. M.
New Canaan, Connecticut
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