August 23rd

DAILY PONDERABLES

Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

Daily Reflections

BRINGING THE MESSAGE HOME

Can we bring the same spirit of love and tolerance into our sometimes deranged family lives that we bring to our A.A. group.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 111-12

My family members suffer from the effects of my disease. Loving and accepting them as they are---just as I love and accept A.A. members---fosters a return of love, tolerance and harmony to my life. Using common courtesy and respecting others' personal boundaries are necessary practices for all areas of my life.

From the book Daily Reflections

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

"We who have accepted the A.A. principles have been faced with the necessity for a thorough personal housecleaning. We must face and be rid of the things in ourselves which have been blocking us. We therefore take a personal inventory. We take stock honestly. We search out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Resentment is the number one offender. Life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. If we are to live, we must be free of anger." Am I free of resentment and anger?

Meditation for the Day

Keep in mind the goal you are striving for, the good life you are trying to attain. Do not let little things divert you from the path. Do not be overcome by the small trials and vexations of each day. Try to see the purpose and plan to which all is leading. If, when climbing a mountain, you keep your eyes on each stony or difficult place, how weary is your climb. But if you think of each step as leading to the summit of achievement from which a glorious landscape will open out before you, then your climb will be endurable and you will achieve your goal.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may realize that life without a goal is futile. I pray that I may find the good life worth striving for.

From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day

NA - Just for Today

Decision-making

Page 245

"Before we got clean, most of our actions were guided by impulse. Today, we are not locked into this type of thinking."

Basic Text, p. 90

Life is a series of decisions, actions, and consequences. When we were using, our decisions were usually driven by our disease, resulting in self-destructive actions and dire consequences. We came to see decision making as a rigged game, one we should play as little as possible.

Given that, many of us have great difficulty learning to make decisions in recovery. Slowly, by working the Twelve Steps, we gain practice in making healthy decisions, ones that give positive results. Where our disease once affected our will and our lives, we ask our Higher Power to care for us. We inventory our values and our actions, check our findings with someone we trust, and ask the God of our understanding to remove our shortcomings. In working the steps we gain freedom from the influence of our disease, and we learn principles of decision making that can guide us in all our affairs.

Today, our decisions and their consequences need not be influenced by our disease. Our faith gives us the courage and direction to make good decisions and the strength to act on them. The result of that kind of decision making is a life worth living.

Just for Today: I will use the principles of the Twelve Steps to make healthy decisions. I will ask my Higher Power for the strength to act on those decisions.

From the book Just for Today

Thought for Today

"We don't decide what hurts other people." - Rev. Joe Green

It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Secrets...

We're only as sick, as the secrets we keep…

Abandon the burden you bare.

Into our spirit our secrets will seep...

Deep in the bowels of our soul they will lair.

Surrender your shame,

be purged of the pain,

of the secrets that still taunt you...

Begone of the blame,

rise to reclaim...

Freedom from the ghosts of the past, that still haunt you.

Dispose of all your dark and deepest,

your soul is where your secret lies...

It is unwise to harbor secrets,

for secrets tend to turn to lies.

Do not carry to the grave,

the secrets you hold deep…

Don't let yourself become a slave,

to the secrets that you keep.

Do you have a secret, that you need to tell?

Is there something lurking at the bottom of your well?

Do you hold a secret, that tears you up inside?

Are you fettered by fear that festers, from secrets that you hide?

Obsessed and oppressed,

by secrets we're hiding...

Secrets we've suppressed,

are emotions we're denying.

Restless, irritable, and discontented, are the fruits our secrets reap...

We're only as sick, as the secrets we keep.

Gordon R

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

"Everyone is looking for happiness and avoiding suffering. This is the purpose of philosophy, the basis of all religion and the drive to create indoor plumbing."

~Domo Geshe Rinpoche

Native American

"They also learned, and perhaps this was the most important thing, how to look at things through the eyes of the Higher Powers."

--Fools Crow, LAKOTA

Our eyes can only see our beliefs. Our beliefs cause us to make assumptions, draw conclusions and cause confusion. Our five senses are very limiting. The Creator has a way of allowing us to see or know in the spiritual world. This is called the Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense is like a radar system; our personal radar system. It will help us "see" opportunities and help us avoid disaster. This Sixth Sense is controlled by God. We must learn to listen to it. We must learn to trust it. We must learn to act on it even if our head says differently. We must learn to look at things through the eyes of God.

My Creator, guide me today. If my eyes cause confusion, let me close them and see through Your eyes. If my ears hear confusion, let me listen to my heart. Let me let You guide me.

Keep It Simple

Where there is no vision, a people perish. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Working our program teaches us to see things more clearly. We learn to look at who we really are. At first, we’re scared to see ourselves. But it turns out okay, even though were not perfect.

We also begin to see others more clearly. We see good in people we don’t like. And we see faults in people we thought we’re prefect. But we don’t judge people anymore. Nobody is perfect. Just as our program friends accept us as we are, we learn to accept others.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, sometimes I don’t like what I see. Help me to believe Your way will for me. Help me have a vision.

Action for the Day: I will use my new way of seeing thing to avoid trouble today.

TWELVE STEPS

and

TWELVE TRADITIONS

Step One(pgs 19-22)

Step One

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”

WHO cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.

No other kind of bankruptcy is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete.

But upon entering A.A. we soon take quite another view of this absolute humiliation. We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbles himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious. Of real happiness he will find none at all. Proved beyond doubt by an immense experience, this is one of the facts of A.A. life.

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.

When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will. Relentlessly deepening our dilemma, our sponsors pointed out our increasing sensitivity to alcohol—an allergy, they called it. The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process. Few indeed were those who, so assailed, had ever won through in single-handed combat. It was a statistical fact that alcoholics almost never recovered on their own resources. And this had been true, apparently, ever since man had first crushed grapes.

In A.A.’s pioneering time, none “but the most desperate cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth. Even these “last-gaspers” often had difficulty in realizing how hopeless they actually were. But a few did, and when these laid hold of A.A. principles with all the fervor with which the drowning seize life preservers, they almost invariably got well. That is why the first edition of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous,” published when our membership was small, dealt with low-bottom cases only. Many less desperate alcoholics tried A.A., but did not succeed because they could not make the admission of hopelessness.

It is a tremendous satisfaction to record that in the following years this changed. Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. As this trend grew, they were joined by young people who were scarcely more than potential alcoholics. They were spared that last ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone through. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step?