DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
A RIDDLE THAT WORKS
It may be possible to find explanations of spiritual experiences such as ours, but I have often tried to explain my own and have succeeded only in giving the story of it. I know the feeling it gave me and the results it has brought, but I realize I may never fully understand its deeper why and how.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 313
I had a profound spiritual experience during an open A.A. meeting, which led me to blurt out, "I'm an alcoholic!" I have not had a drink since that day. I can tell you the words I heard just prior to my admission, and how those words affected me, but as to why it happened, I do not know. I believe a Power greater than myself chose me to recover, yet I do not know why. I try not to worry or wonder about what I do not know; instead, I trust that if I continue to work the Steps, practice in the A.A. principles in my life, and share my story, I will be guided lovingly toward a deep and mature spirituality in which more will be revealed to me. For the time being, it is a gift for me to trust God, work the Steps and help others.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
"When we saw our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and we were willing to set these matters straight. We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We asked God to remove our fears and we commenced to outgrow fear. Many of us needed an overhauling in regard to sex. We came to believe that sex powers were God-given and therefore good, if used properly. Sex is never to be used lightly or selfishly, nor is it to be despised or loathed. If sex is troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others, and so take our minds off ourselves." Am I facing my sex problems in the proper way?
Meditation for the Day
Cling to the belief that all things are possible with God. If this belief is truly accepted, it is the ladder upon which a human soul can climb from the lowest pit of despair to the sublimest heights of peace of mind. It is possible for God to change your way of living. When you see the change in another person through the grace of God, you cannot doubt that all things are possible in the lives of people through the strength that comes from faith in Him who rules us all.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may live expectantly. I pray that I may believe deeply that all things are possible with God.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Seeking God's will
Page 246
"We learn to be careful of praying for specific things."
Basic Text, p. 46
In our active addiction, we usually did not pray for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry it out. On the contrary, most of our prayers were for God to get us out of the mess we had made for ourselves. We expected miracles on demand. That kind of thinking and praying changes when we begin practicing the Eleventh Step. The only way out of the trouble we have made for ourselves is through surrender to a Power greater than ourselves.
In recovery, we learn acceptance. We seek knowledge in our prayers and meditation of how we are to greet the circumstances that come our way. We stop fighting, surrender our own ideas of how things should be, ask for knowledge, and listen for the answers. The answers usually won't come in a flash of white light accompanied by a drum roll. Usually, the answers will come merely with a quiet sense of assurance that our lives are on course, that a Power greater than ourselves is guiding us on our paths.
We have a choice. We can spend all our time fighting to make things come out our way, or we can surrender to God's will. Peace can be found in accepting the ebb and flow of life.
Just for Today: I will surrender my expectations, look to my Higher Power for guidance, and accept life.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
Pain
Mental and emotional difficulties
are sometimes very hard to take while we are trying
to maintain sobriety.
Yet we do see, in the long run,
that transcendence over such problems
is the real test of the AA way of living.
Pain is necessary, but misery is optional !
"If you reach out to help someone you better have something in your hand"
Pat (Buffalo Men's mtg)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
The threshold between right and wrong is pain.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Imagine All the People
Native American
"The mind's eye changes the way we judge things."
--Fools Crow, LAKOTA
"What you see is what you get." Our head has inside it a movie projector that projects out from our foreheads and shines on a screen a picture of our true thoughts. This is our reality. We can only see what we project (our beliefs). If we believe someone is a jerk, every time we see them we reflect our beliefs about what we think about that person and that is all we can see. Even if someone tells us this person is a kind, loving, caring, intelligent individual, we wouldn't be able to see it. If we change our belief about them, that person will change and so will our judgment about that person.
My Creator, let me realize the power of choice. Let me see the advantages of changing my beliefs. Today, if I am judging my brother, let me change my beliefs to acceptance. If my thoughts are of anger, let me change them to love. Let my eyes only see you in everything and every person.
Keep It Simple
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. --- Oscar Wilde
There’s a big difference between being self-centered and having self love. We’re self-centered when we think we don’t need people. We might think, “I’m more important than others.” Being self-centered ends up hurting us.
It makes us lonely. It keeps us from our Higher Power. Addiction is about being self-centered.
Recovery and the Twelve Steps are about self-love. If we love ourselves, we say, “We’re all equal and in need of each other.” Self-love includes having good relationships.
It includes trusting that they we’ll do what is best, with the help of our Higher Power. We must believe in ourselves to trust others.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me love myself as You love me. Help me take good care of myself.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list three things I like about myself. I’ll talk with a friend and share these things. I’ll ask my friend what he or she likes about me.
TWELVE STEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step One (pgs 22-23)
It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression. To the doubters we could say, “Perhaps you’re not an alcoholic after all. Why don’t you try some more controlled drinking, bearing in mind meanwhile what we have told you about alcoholism?” This attitude brought immediate and practical results. It was then discovered that when one alcoholic had planted in the mind of another the true nature of his malady, that person could never be the same again. Following every spree, he would say to himself, “Maybe those A.A.’s were right….” After a few such experiences, often years before the onset of extreme difficulties, he would return to us convinced.
He had hit bottom as truly as any of us. John Barleycorn himself had become our best advocate.
Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.’s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect—unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.
Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A., and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation. Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be. We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us.
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A Date With Destiny? by Bill W.
AA Grapevine October 1944
Somebody once said, "As much as you may grow, as many recoveries as there may be, I think the eventual by-products of A.A. will be greater than A.A. itself."
Everywhere now, we hear such remarks. They come from all kinds of people. Doctors think of applying our methods to other neurotics; clergymen wonder if our humble example may not vitalize their congregations; businessmen find we make good personnel managers--they glimpse a new industrial democracy; educators see power in our non-controversial way of presenting the truth; and our friends wistfully say, "We wish we were alcoholics--we need A.A. too."
Why these stirrings? They must all mean, I am sure, that we have suddenly become much more than recovered alcoholics, A.A. members only. Society has begun to hope that we are going to utilize, in every walk of life, that miraculous experience of our returning, almost overnight, from the fearsome land of Nowhere.
Yes, we are again citizens of the world. It is a distraught world, very tired, very uncertain. It has worshipped its own self-sufficiency--and that has failed. We A.A.s are a people who once did that very thing. That philosophy failed us, too. So perhaps, here and there, our example of recovery can help. As individuals, we have a responsibility, may be a double responsibility. It may be that we have a date with destiny.
An example: Not long ago Dr. E. M. Jellinek, of Yale University, came to us. He said, "Yale, as you know, is sponsoring a program of public education on alcoholism, entirely non-controversial in character. We need the cooperation of many A.A.s. To proceed on any educational project concerning alcoholism without the goodwill, experience and help of A.A. members would be unthinkable."
So, when the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism was formed, an A.A. member was made its executive director: Marty M., one of our oldest and finest. In this issue, she tells The Grapevine of her new work. As a member of A.A., she is just as much interested in us as before--A.A. is still her avocation. But as an officer of the Yale-sponsored National Committee, she is also interested in educating the general public on alcoholism. Her A.A. training has wonderfully fitted her for this post in a different field. Public education on alcoholism is to be her vocation.
Could an A.A. do such a job? At first, Marty herself wondered. She asked her A.A. friends, "Will I be regarded as a professional?" Her friends replied, "Had you come to us, Marty, proposing to be a therapist, to sell straight A.A. to alcoholics at so much a customer, we should certainly have branded that as professionalism. So would everybody else.
"But the National Committee for Education on Alcoholism is quite another matter. You will be taking your natural abilities and A.A. experience into a very different field. We don't see how that can affect your amateur status with us. Suppose you were to become a social worker, a personnel officer, the manager of a state farm for alcoholics, or even a minister of the Gospel? Who could possibly say those activities would make you a professional A.A.? No one, of course."
They went on, "Yet we do hope that A.A. as a whole will never deviate from its sole purpose of helping other alcoholics. As an organization, we should express no opinions save on the recovery of problem drinkers. That very sound national policy has kept us out of much useless trouble already, and will surely forestall untold complications in the future.
"Though A.A. as a whole," they continued, "should never have but one objective, we believe just as strongly that for the individual there should be no limitations whatever, except his own conscience. He should have the complete right to choose his own opinions and outside activities. If these are good, A.A.s everywhere will approve. Just so, Marty, do we think it will be in your case. While Yale is your actual sponsor, we feel sure that you are going to have the warm personal support of thousands of A.A.s wherever you go. We shall all be thinking how much better a break this new generation of potential alcoholic kids will have because of your work, how much it might have meant to us had our own mothers and fathers really understood alcoholism." Personally I feel that Marty's friends have advised her wisely; that they have clearly distinguished between the limited scope of "A.A. as a whole" and the broad horizon of the individual A.A. acting on his own responsibility; that they have probably drawn a correct line between what we would regard as professional and amateur.
Bill W
AA Co-Founder, Bill W., October 1944
"A Date With Destiny"
The Language of the Heart
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