DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
TAKING ACTION
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us --- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. they will always materialize if we work for them.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 84
One of the most important things A.A. has given me, in addition to freedom from booze, is the ability to take "right action." It says the promises will always materialize if I work for them. Fantasizing about them, debating them, preaching about them, and faking them just don't work. I'll remain a miserable, rationalizing dry drunk. By taking action and working the Twelve Steps in all my affairs, I'll have a life beyond my wildest dreams.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
If alcoholism were just a physical allergy, like asthma or hay fever, it would be easy for us, by taking a skin test with alcohol, to find out whether or not we're alcoholics. But alcoholism is not just a physical allergy. It's also a mental allergy or obsession. After we've become alcoholics, we can still tolerate alcohol physically for quite a while, although we suffer a little more after each binge and each time it takes a little longer to get over the hangovers. Do I realize that since I have become an alcoholic, I cannot tolerate alcohol mentally at all?
Meditation for the Day
The world doesn't need super men or women, but supernatural people. People who will turn the self out of their lives and let Divine Power work through them. Let inspiration take the place of aspiration. Seek to grow spiritually, rather than to acquire fame and riches. Our chief ambition should be to be used by God. The Divine Force is sufficient for all the spiritual work in the world. God only needs the instruments for His use. His instruments can remake the world.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may be an instrument of the Divine Power. I pray that I may do my share in remaking the world.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
An awakening of the spirit
Page 47
"The last thing we expected was an awakening of the spirit."
Basic Text, p. 49
Few of us came to our first Narcotics Anonymous meeting aching to take a personal inventory or believing that a spiritual void existed in our souls. We had no inkling that we were about to embark on a journey which would awaken our sleeping spirits.
Like a loud alarm clock, the First Step brings us to semi-consciousness-although at this point, we may not be sure whether we want to climb out of bed or maybe sleep for just five more minutes. The gentle hand shaking our shoulders as we apply the Second and Third Steps causes us to stand up, stretch, and yawn. We need to wipe the sleep from our eyes to write the Fourth Step and share our Fifth. But as we work the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Steps, we begin noticing a spring in our step and the start of a smile on our lips. Our spirits sing in the shower as we take the Tenth and Eleventh Steps. And then we practice the Twelfth, leaving the house in search of others to awaken.
We don't have to spend the rest of our lives in a spiritual coma. We may not like to get up in the morning but, once out of bed, we're almost always glad we did.
Just for Today: To awaken my sleepy spirit, I will use the Twelve Steps
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence.
Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be."
--Robert Fulghum, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It
"Acceptance is not a judgment or sentencing. In acceptance, we recognize and accept the larger scope of life. This means to simply be with how it feels in this moment. Set aside the mind stories, judgments, criticisms and everything else.
Simply feel. And accept.
Acceptance brings a spaciousness that alleviates tension. And thus, a sense of humor and self-humility goes even further.
Acceptance doesn’t wait for the right circumstance in the future, nor does it belabor past events and traumas.
Acceptance is not self-denigrating. It is simply a quiet balance of observation and awareness, though the tasks and challenges of life still need tending to, the burden is set aside for this moment."
~~ Keith Artisan
The ego can easily learn "words" to say. It's the "action" that speaks louder than "words" day to day.
"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (thanks Vince T.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on sorrow. If you delight in existence, you will become a guide to those who need you, revealing the path to many.
-Sutra Piñata
Native American
"One of the essential characteristics we need to learn as men was to be gentle, and to be gentle means to be serene, to enter meditation or a prayerful state in the morning and evening."
--Larry P. Aitken, CHIPPEWA
The most important talk we can do during any day, is to start the day with prayer and meditation. We need to ask the Creator to be in our lives. We ask Him to direct our thinking. We ask Him for the courage and the power to be gentle. In the morning quiet time, we make our request for guidance using our spiritual tools. We pray for the people and we pray for ourselves. In the evening we thank the Creator for the day, for the lessons and for the opportunity to be of service to others. Then we go to sleep.
Great Spirit, today, show me the power of being gentle.
Keep It Simple
Easy Does It. --- Twelve Steps slogan
We are people who push ourselves to hard. We try to be perfect. Well, we need to lighten up. Easy Does It.
We need to slow down our pace. Why? Because our program teaches us to give up trying to be perfect.
We begin to love ourselves for who we are. We are enough. Over and over we hear this as we live the Steps. It's the message of God's love. Our Higher Power want us to live at a pace that's not fast and hard, so we always know we're loved. Remember, we've turned our life over to the care of God. And our life is a wonderful gift. As recovering people, we may know better than others.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, teach me to live at Your pace, not mine. Help me keep in mind that life isn't a race. It's a spiritual journey. Walk with me.
Action for the Day: Today, I'll take two hours just to relax and do loving things for myself. I'll take time to count my blessings.
Big Book
"There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching,
the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the
process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it
really worked in others..."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, There Is A Solution, pg. 25~
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Editorial: On the 12th Step
Grapevine -- October 1945
"Having had a spiritual experience as the result of those steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."
Very few of us know the exact hour and date we had our spiritual experience, and some of us are not conscious of ever having had one at all. However, our changed personalities and perspectives are definite proof that "something" happened to us somewhere along the line as those who knew us "when" will attest.
A.A.s refer to the 12th Step as "working with others," and this means we try to help the other person work out his or her problem. From our vast fund of knowledge on the subject, gained from our own actual experiences and often under similar conditions, we are peculiarly qualified to exercise that sympathetic understanding that only another alcoholic can have and which is so important in talking to a person who, like ourselves, is allergic to alcohol. This is the crux of the success obtained by groups throughout the country. This A.A. program, which is responsible for our own sobriety, and for giving us a new lease on life, was handed to us on a silver platter and without monetary cost. It is our bounden duty, therefore, to pass it on in the same manner to those who want it. It was not intended for us to keep to ourselves.
We are admonished to, "Go ye and spread the gospel," and Webster defines gospel as: "Any doctrine concerning human welfare that is agitated as of great importance." Surely, to us alcoholics it is of the utmost importance. We carry out the 12th Step when we share our gift by telling others of the help we have found, by lending encouragement to those who find the way difficult, by making calls when requested to, and by attending meetings to show to the sensitive newcomer that he or she is not alone.
Sobriety, however, is not enough and length of sobriety is not so important as quality of sobriety. The A.A. program is a design for living normal, happy lives, and it is necessary that we practice the principles of tolerance, patience, unselfishness, humility, and that we curb our all too human desire to criticize and bear resentment.
It is sometimes discouraging to talk to a person who does not immediately respond to our "pearls of wisdom," but right there is where we exercise patience and realize that once the seed has been sown, John Barleycorn is our best salesman. Two years ago O.L. was called upon in New York City and after three or four meetings considered himself "cured," and in no further need of association with the A.A. group. Last week I was called to a hospital here in Atlanta, to interview a patient who turned out to be my old friend O.L. who had sense enough to scream for A.A. and was now "ready" for the entire program. None of us can let our defenses down, for unless we keep everlastingly at it we are doomed.
Persons thank us for showing them the way, and relatives are inclined to credit one or another of us with the recovery of their loved one. It is then that we realize that "Of myself I am nothing" --and we thank the Power greater than ourselves for making us an instrument of His ways.
T. B.
Atlanta, Georgia
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