DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
A THANKFUL HEART
I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 37
My sponsor told me that I should be a grateful alcoholic and always have "an attitude of gratitude"— that gratitude was the basic ingredient of humility, that humility was the basic ingredient of anonymity and that "anonymity was the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities." As a result of this guidance, I start every morning on my knees, thanking God for three things: I'm alive, I'm sober, and I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Then I try to live an "attitude of gratitude" and thoroughly enjoy another twenty-four hours of the A.A. way of life. A.A. is not something I joined; it's something I live.
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 came to our first A.A. meeting, we looked up at the wall at the end of the room and saw the sign: "But for the grace of God." We knew right then and there that we would have to call on the grace of God in order to get sober and get over our soul sickness. We heard speakers tell how they had come to depend on a Power greater than themselves. That made sense to us and we made up our minds to try it. Am I depending on the grace of God to help me stay sober?
Meditation for the Day
Share your love, your joy, your happiness, your time, your food, your money gladly with all. Give out all the love you can with a glad, free heart and hand. Do all you can for others and back will come countless stores of blessings. Sharing draws others to you. Take all who come as sent by God and give them a royal welcome. You may never see the results of your sharing. Today they may not need you, but tomorrow may bring results from the sharing you did today.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may make each visitor desire to return. I pray that I may never make anyone feel repulsed or unwanted.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
A new influence
Page 56
"Personality change was what we really needed. Change from self-destructive patterns of life became necessary."
Basic Text, p. 15
In early life, most of us were capable of joy and wonder, of giving and receiving unconditional love. When we started using, we introduced an influence into our lives that slowly drove us away from those things. The further we were pushed down the path of addiction, the further we withdrew from joy, wonder, and love.
That journey was not taken overnight. But however long it took, we arrived at the doors of NA with more than just a drug problem. The influence of addiction had warped our whole pattern of living beyond recognition.
The Twelve Steps work miracles, it's true, but not many of them are worked overnight. Our disease slowly influenced our spiritual development for the worse. Recovery introduces a new influence to our lives, a source of fellowship and spiritual strength slowly impelling us into new, healthy patterns of living.
This change, of course, doesn't "just happen." But if we cooperate with the new influence NA has brought to our lives, over time we will experience the personality change we call recovery. The Twelve Steps provide us with a program for the kind of cooperation required to restore joy, wonder, and love to our lives.
Just for Today: I will cooperate with the new influence of fellowship and spiritual strength NA has introduced to my life, I will work the next step in my program.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
When I come to the edge of all the light
I know, and am about to step off into the
darkness of the unknown, FAITH is knowing
one of two things will happen ...
Either there will be something solid to
stand on or I will be taught how to fly.
~Edward Teller
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
~Havelock Ellis
Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.
- Bob Marley
“Help not asked for is interference." (thanks Robert I.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Whatever happiness is in the world has arisen from a wish for the welfare
of others; whatever misery there is has arisen from indulging selfishness.
-Buddhist Proverb
Native American
"But each of us must find out for himself or herself what their gift is, so that they can use it in their life."
--Jimmy Jackson, OJIBWAY
The old people say, everyone has a song to sing. This song is the reason we are on this earth. When we are doing what we came on this earth to do, we know true happiness. How will we know our song? Pray. Ask the Great Mystery, "What is it you want me to do during my stay on earth?" Ask. He will tell you. He will even help you develop yourself to accomplish His mission.
Great Spirit, help me find my song and let me sing it.
Keep It Simple
Failure is impossible. --- Susan B. Anthony
Failure is an attitude. Having an attitude of failure can't help us. It can only hurt us. If we're not careful, it can grow into a way of life. So, when we feel like failures, we better look at our attitudes.
An attitude of failure often comes from making mistakes. But we can learn to see our mistakes as lessons. This turns mistakes into gains, not failures. Sometimes, we try to do things that just can't be done.
When we act like we know everything, we're going to fail. if we try to act like God, we're going to fail.
We can't control others. We can't know everything. We're not God. We're human. If we act human, we've already won.
Prayer for the Day: Higher power, help me to learn from my attitudes. Whatever the outcome, help me learn.
Action for the Day: Facing our past "failures" is the first step to learning from them. I'll talk to my sponsor about a past "failure" and the good that came from it.
Big Book
"Cessation of drinking is but the first step away from a highly
strained, abnormal condition."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg. 122~
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5th Step July AA Grapevine 1970 (thanks Ronny H.)
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
SOME AA members, in particular those of us with only a few months of sobriety, who may be seriously investigating the Twelve Steps for the first time, are especially reluctant or fearful to take the Fifth Step--to admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I sympathize fully. But the year 1968, my first full calendar year of sober living in AA, can well be characterized as "My Year of Taking Step Five"; and I would like to pass along the fears and reservations, then actions and experiences, and subsequently freedom, self-knowledge, and joy that have accompanied my own efforts. As we continually try to practice in the program, I am not telling anyone else what to do; I am describing what I did.
I did not rush into the Fifth Step or, for that matter, into any Step other than the First. For the beginning six or seven months, through the end of 1967 and into early 1968, I concentrated on learning how not to take the first drink today by going to a meeting a day, sometimes more, and by talking over coffee with others who had come in about when I did, as well as with many who had several years of sobriety.
In my fourth month, I happened to get a sponsor who had not had a drink for four years and had done considerable work on the Steps. I was beginning to want to increase the depth of my sobriety by learning what the Steps had to offer. In the following three months, with some gentle but insistent encouragement from my sponsor and with continuing attendance at Step meetings, I began to feel comfortable with Steps Two and Three, and I took two Step Four inventories in writing, the first with my sponsor, the second alone.
The point is not the timing as I outline it here; it is that I was feeling ready to do some Step work and felt comfortable in trying to make progress. Some AA members whose sobriety today is just as good as or better than mine have not taken the Steps in One-through-Twelve order, but have jumped around to different Steps as they felt called upon to do so; in fact, I did some Twelfth Step work on occasion before beginning to involve myself in Steps Two through Eleven. Each of us takes the program as it suits him.
It was very important for me to have worked on a moral inventory (some people prefer the term self-survey) before venturing into the Fifth Step. I had built a foundation by doing some in-depth thinking and writing about my wrongs and defects of character, so that when my sponsor asked me, in February 1968, whether I felt ready to make a beginning effort with the Fifth Step, I had no good reason to object.
That beginning effort did not produce what the Fifth Step had been cracked up to, in terms of release and freedom from guilt. I felt good after spending several hours one evening with my sponsor, but I was not the least bit elated. The fact is, as I later was to learn, that I did not really take the Fifth Step that night; I only threw out a few misdemeanors or "bones" in a rather general way. For example, I admitted that I had been "bad to my wife" and was sorry for it, now that she no longer was my wife. And I pointed out, in a rather condescending way, that I had treated several women poorly before marriage by offering them a promise of deep adventure (with or without sex) and then reneging and doing nothing, leaving them and myself frustrated.
But it was a beginning. I saw that no horrors descended upon me when I tried, however inexplicitly and shallowly, to admit wrongs. To the contrary, I did experience a small piece of joy and release, and I was encouraged to go further when the moment seemed right.
My second Fifth Step experience, a month later, was in listening with another AA member to a third man go to far greater depths than I had plumbed. The three of us were awake through one entire night in the exercise, and I found myself joining in with some of my own wrongs, the remembrance of which was triggered by the admissions of the other two men. I had gained further confidence.
Then a movement got under way among a dozen New York members to begin a weekly Tenth Step group; as preparation for this work, they planned to attend what was then known as a forty-hour Fifth Step marathon. Would I like to join this effort?
My answer was an immediate yes, but probably for a number of wrong reasons, as well as for one right reason. One of the mainsprings of my affirmative answer was a long-held fantasy that I was a born leader. The marathon concept was then relatively new in AA, and I wanted to be in the pioneering forefront. (You're looking at one aspect of a prime defect of mine: towering personal pride!) Not to apply the hair shirt too closely, however, I did have at the same time a sincere desire to "really" take the Fifth Step, to get my garbage out into the cans and have it carted away.
Over the first April weekend in 1968, when I was nine months sober (remember that timing is not important and that feelings are), I attended that Fifth Step exercise, but not without excruciating fears just preceding it. On the day before, for example, I was on my way to lead a beginners meeting, and the very strong thought filled my mind: All I have to do is take one drink tonight, tell the others about it, and I will be excused from the ordeal! This was the last of the defenses I threw up against the idea--quite appalling to me at the time--of baring my soul before, not just one other person, but a dozen people, and not males only, but a mixed group. I cannot fully explain my almost overwhelming anxiety during the weeks and days preceding the experience. All I could do, and I did it fervently, was cling to a faith that the Fifth Step was in the program for a reason, that it had worked for others, that I had not been hurt, but rather helped, by my two previous skirmishes with it, and that God would see me through if I did my best.
I am not writing either to praise or to malign the marathon concept. I am talking about my Fifth Step work. But let me make a few remarks that I consider important.
One is that, in my strong opinion, the taking of Step Five does not depend in any way whatever on the availability of a marathon meeting. In my case, I firmly believe that my progress with the Step was speeded up a little; I became able, far more quickly than I had imagined possible, to talk honestly to others about myself. But I do not believe that the substance of the Step, for me, was changed or improved by going at it in a group, rather than with one other individual.
Two, fifth-stepping in a group is definitely not (again, in my opinion) something to take lightly. If you feel too strong a doubt of your ability to "survive" such a meeting, or if you think that you lack sufficient faith that it can work for you, or if you have not grounded yourself, to your own satisfaction and feeling of comfort, in Steps One through Four, or if you simply feel no need, I would advise not going ahead. A few marathon participants whom I know extremely well have had subsequent difficulties (whether or not attributable to the marathon, I cannot tell, but the possibility is there). Besides, I say again that the Fifth Step can be taken, with all the meaning intended for it, as it is written: with God, ourselves, and another human being.
Three, the marathon technique, like other techniques, is a tool only. It is not some kind of magic button that will make life easy once I push it. The work has to be done inside myself; whatever tools I use are designed to help me get that work done, not to do it for me.
With these remarks in mind, we get back to the Fifth Step itself. In my third try, I learned what it is all about, for me. The program speaks of the "exact nature" of our wrongs, and I understand this now. It is no longer, as it was during my first brush with the Step, a matter of my having been "bad to my wife." It is, to take one example, my former practices during the martini hour or hours: making loving gestures to my wife, with implications of a warm night of lovemaking ahead; thinking, as the liquor spread its false grandeur throughout me, that I was the world's greatest lover; making preparations for a time of extreme bliss (and often, in the process, arousing the unfortunate lady to great expectations); then, with additional booze in my blood, becoming totally uninterested in, and often downright incapable of, any lovemaking at all.
Here is the "exact nature" of a wrong. Where does it point? To my drinking as the cause of, or excuse for, my lack of action and follow-through? Not a bit. It points to my fear--my absolute terror of sexual inadequacy, of not having what it takes to be a man. Of course, I blamed my wife for sexual frigidity, or for taking too long with the dishes, or for preferring to meet some other obligation that night. Whether or not any or all of these allegations were true, the fact remains--I now see it through taking the Fifth Step--that I was the major cause of unhappy sex relations in our marriage.
To cite another example, I frequently and in most cases with very little provocation, if any, beat my firstborn son viciously and unmercifully when he acted contrary to my wishes or did something that I judged "wrong," by whatever standards I chose to use at the time. When this happened, of course, I praised myself for being a good disciplinarian, a stern but loving father, a provider of Truth to my boy, who would thank me for it in later years. But what do these bullying beatings really spotlight? They spotlight my cowardice: my abject fear of facing myself and admitting to my own failings; my sneaking need to take out my own frustrations on a little boy who was powerless to defend himself. They also outline in clear relief another aspect of my towering personal pride, the big "I" that knows what others should do and forces them, where possible, to do my will.
I could expand this list ad nauseam, and I have. I possess a large number of defects of character, the exact nature of which I have learned through getting down to the nitty-gritty and avoiding bland generalities like "I am selfish. I am resentful. I am a glutton. I am a drunk."
What have I gotten from this work? (It has been, I assure you, hard work!) I have gotten what others have gotten: a release from my hang-ups, not from all of them, by a long shot, but from the major ones. I have gotten a sense of freedom, tranquillity, serenity, and peace within myself. I have gotten better self-knowledge--another term, as I see it, for humility. I have gotten a deeper, surer, more grateful sense of living in sobriety. And this, after all, is what AA is all about.
Do I still take the Fifth Step? Yes, I do. Many of us consider the Fifth Step a once-only exercise: Get out the garbage, and that's that. For these people, it is the Tenth Step that is a continuing means of cleaning up. I have no quarrel with this viewpoint. But repeated Fifth Step work has been necessary for me.
I joined the weekly Tenth Step group last April after the marathon and have come to rely heavily on this Step for my continuing mental comfort. But every now and then my work with the Tenth Step recalls an experience in my long-ago (what seems, to this grateful alcoholic, long-ago) drinking past; and I feel a need to unburden myself of it. A member with twenty-one years of sobriety once said, "The Fifth Step is like an onion: We keep peeling it until all the layers are torn away and we get down to the center."
Not that I have reached that center, or expect to soon. The Fifth and Tenth Steps--like the entire marvelous program of Alcoholics Anonymous--are for me a process, a journey, a continual arriving at new truths.
L. L.
Manhattan, New York
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