DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
THE DETERMINATION OF OUR FOUNDERS
A year and six months later these three had succeeded with seven more.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 159
If it had not been for the fierce determination of our founders, A.A. would have quickly faded like so many other so-called good causes. I look at the hundreds of meetings weekly in the city where I live and I know A.A. is available twenty-four hours a day. If I had had to hang on with nothing but hope and a desire not to drink, experiencing rejection wherever I went, I would have sought the easier, softer way and returned to my previous way of life.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
You can prove to yourself that life is basically and fundamentally an inner attitude. Just try to remember what troubled you most a week ago. You probably will find it difficult to remember. Why then should you unduly worry or fret over the problems that arise today? Your attitude toward them can be changed by putting yourself and your problems in God's hands and trusting Him to see that everything will turn out all right, provided you are trying to do the right thing. Your changed mental attitude toward your problems relieves you of their burden and you can face them without fear. Has my mental attitude changed?
Meditation for the Day
You cannot see the future. It's a blessing that you cannot. You could not bear to know all the future. That is why God only reveals it to you day by day. The first step each day is to lay your will before God as an offering, ready for God to do what is best for you. Be sure that, if you trust God, what He does for you will be for the best. The second step is to be confident that God is powerful enough to do anything He wills, and that no miracle in human lives is impossible with Him. Then leave the future to God.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may gladly leave my future in God's hands. I pray that I may be confident that good things will happen, as long as I am on the right path.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Group conscience
Page 186
"Working with others is only the beginning of service work."
Basic Text, p. 59
Service work calls for a selfless devotion to carrying the message to the still-suffering addict. But our attitude of service cannot stop there. Service also requires that we look at ourselves and our motives. Our efforts at service make us highly visible to the fellowship. In NA, it is easy to become a "big fish in a little pond." Our controlling attitude can easily drive away the newcomer.
Group conscience is one of the most important principles in service. It is vital to remember that the group conscience is what counts, not just our individual beliefs and desires. We lend our thoughts and beliefs to the development of a group conscience. Then when that conscience arises, we accept its guidance. The key is working with others, not against them. If we remember that we strive together to develop a collective conscience, we will see that all sides have equal merit. When all the discussions are over, all sides will come back together to carry a unified message.
It is often tempting to think that we know what is best for the group. If we remember that it doesn't matter if we get our way, then it is easier to allow service to be the vehicle it is intended to be - a way to carry the message to the addict who still suffers.
Just for Today: I will take part in the development of group conscience. I will remember that the world won't end just because I don't get my way. I will think about our primary purpose in all my service efforts. I will reach out to a newcomer.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
When there is no wind, row — Portuguese proverb (thanks John G.)
"When I got sober, the Gates of Heaven did not open and let me in; the gates of hell opened and let me out. I never have to go back. Thank God!"
I used to wake up in the morning and so "Oh God!" Now I wake up and say "Thank God!"
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Paradox of the Essenceless Self by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
But how, if the individual of the individual is pure, empty awareness, can a conventional self and a moving mind exist at all? Here is an example based on experiences we all have: when we dream, an entire world manifests in which we can have any kind of experience. During the dream we are identified with one subject, but there are other beings, apparently separate from us, having their own experiences and seeming as real as the self we take ourselves to be. There is also an apparent material world: the floors hold us up, our body has sensations, we can eat and touch.
When we wake, we realize that the dream was only a projection of our mind. It took place in our mind and was made of energy of our mind. But we were lost in it, reacting to the mind created images as if they were real and outside of ourselves. Our mind is able to create a dream and to identify with one being that it places in the dream, while disidentifying with others. We can even identify with subjects that are far different than we are in our life.
As ordinary beings, we are in the same way, identified, right now with a conventional self that is also a projection of mind. We relate to apparent objects and entities that are further mind projections. The base of existence (Kunzhi) has the capacity to manifest everything that exists, even being that become distracted from their true nature, just as our mind can project beings that are apparently separate from us in a dream. When we wake, the dream that is our conventional self dissolves into pure emptiness and luminous clarity.
Native American
"Whenever you take anything from the earth, remember to leave an offering."
--Joe Coyhis, STOCKBRIDGE-MUNSEE
We need to look at nature and its inhabitants as our brothers and sisters. Whenever we pick plants or herbs, we should leave an offering of tobacco. We should talk to the plants and ask their permission to use them. The plants will feel honored to be of service for each of them knows they are here to serve. Each of them knows they carry a special medicine and this medicine is about continuing the cycle of life. We need always to be grateful to our brothers and sisters.
Creator, I thank you for the opportunity of life.
Keep It Simple
The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form. --- Stanley J. Randall
Trying to be perfect get us into trouble. Trying to be perfect means we're trying to control things.
We may be trying to cover up something. Maybe we aren't facing our pain. Maybe we've hurt someone and we need to make amends.
We need to practice being human. Humans aren't perfect. In Steps Six and Seven, we face our human limits and our shortcomings. We then start the lifelong job of letting them go. To accept our human limits leads us to our Higher Power. We see how we need a guide in life. Our Higher Power makes a perfect guide.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me accept that I can't be perfect. Help me be a good human being.
Action for the Day: Today, I'll list my shortcoming. I'll talk with a friend about them. I'll ask my friend to tell me what my good qualities are.
Big Book
Chapter 8 To Wives (pg 113 & top 114)
If he is enthusiastic your cooperation will mean a great deal. If he is lukewarm or thinks he is not an alcoholic, we suggest you leave him alone. Avoid urging him to follow our program. The seed has been planted in his mind. He knows that thousands of men, much like himself, have recovered. But don’t remind him of this after he has been drinking, for he may be angry. Sooner or later, you are likely to find him reading the book once more. Wait until repeated stumbling convinces him he must act, for the more you hurry him the longer his recovery may be delayed.
If you have a number three husband, you may be in luck. Being certain he wants to stop, you can go to him with this volume as joyfully as though you had struck oil. He may not share your enthusiasm, but he is practically sure to read the book and he may go for the program at once. If he does not, you will probably not have long to wait. Again, you should not crowd him. Let him decide for himself.
Cheerfully see him through more sprees. Talk about his condition or this book only when he raises the issue. In some cases it may be better to let someone outside the family urge action without arousing hostility. If your husband is otherwise a normal individual, your chances are good at this stage.
You would suppose that men in the fourth classification would be quite hopeless, but that is not so. Many of Alcoholics Anonymous were like that. Everybody had given them up. Defeat seemed certain. Yet often such men had spectacular and powerful recoveries. There are exceptions. Some men have been so impaired by alcohol that they cannot stop. Sometimes there are cases where alcoholism is complicated by other disorders. A good doctor or psychiatrist can tell you whether these complications are serious. In any event, try to have your husband read this book. His reaction may be one of enthusiasm. If he is already committed to an institution, but can convince you and your doctor that he means business, give him a chance to try our method, unless the doctor thinks his mental condition too abnormal or dangerous. We make this recommendation with some confidence. For years we have been working with alcoholics committed to institutions. Since this book was first published, A.A. has released thousands of alcoholics from asylums and hospitals of every kind. The majority have never returned. The power of God goes deep!
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Like a Frog in a Frying Pan
From The AA Grapevine -- January 1978
A psychological experiment of relevance to those of us who wait until things get too hot
I DID NOT come to AA to learn about a Higher Power. I did not even come to AA to stay sober. I came to AA to save my life. After I got to AA, I accepted what you people were telling me: that the way for an alcoholic to stay alive is not to take a drink a day at a time. And then I knew that if I was not to drink, I would need help. I am powerless over alcohol.
When I had been sober about a year, I was talking about alcoholism one evening with my older daughter. I told her that I had been unable to stop drinking. She replied, "But you did stop!" I was at a loss to explain myself until I remembered the story of the frog in the frying pan. It is a classic story of a psychological experiment that has a lot of meaning for me.
In the experiment, a healthy frog is placed in a shallow frying pan filled with water, and the frying pan is put on the stove. The heat under the frying pan is turned on and gradually increased--so gradually that the frog can't tell the difference from one moment to the next. The frog is completely unencumbered and is free to jump out at any time he chooses. He does not. He is boiled to death. One can almost imagine that even the frog realizes at the last moment--panic-stricken and in terror, as his neurons finally scream to awaken his instinct to escape--that he has waited too long. It is too late.
The psychological point of the experiment is to demonstrate the concept of the Just Noticeable Difference, or JND, which is the threshold below which an organism cannot make sensory discriminations, though the sensations reaching it may be unpleasant or even signs of danger. I used the story in my conversation with my daughter as an analogy to the situation of the alcoholic--at least, of this alcoholic. I drew three conclusions.
First, the behavior of the alcoholic is insane, as is that of the frog, even on the instinctual level of self-preservation. I have attended meetings at which the Second Step is debated and criticized and alcoholic behavior is defended as, well, perhaps not prudent, but certainly not insane. Using hot water isn't insane, either, unless you're being boiled to death in it.
My second conclusion is that there is nothing persuasive to me in the argument that an alcoholic is genetically predisposed to his condition. How did the frog get in the frying pan? He found himself there. If anything, I think an alcoholic has to be a superior specimen, at least physically. It takes the constitution of a horse for the body to withstand the extreme physical abuse we heap upon ourselves for years. Of course, many don't make it. Those of us in AA are indeed survivors.
Third, I had to have help to get out of my own frying pan of boiling water that is alcoholism. I could not do it on my own, and did not. It took a miracle. The story of how I was taken out is not mysterious; it is ordinary. So is the story of how I stay sober a day at a time in AA. That does not make it any less miraculous. You see, it happened to me. For every person reading this article, there are a dozen, perhaps two dozen, to whom that miracle did not happen, or who rejected it. Can you imagine how a conversation with the frog might go when things are beginning to get warm?
AA: "Hey there. It looks to me like you're getting in trouble with your life."
Frog: "I'm okay. I'm better off than a lot of those frogs who get caught in traps or stuck with needles or cut up for study. Things are getting hot, but I can handle it."
AA: "You don't have to wait until things get worse, you know. That water is going to keep getting hotter. There is a way out."
Frog: "Don't bug me. I'm not like the rest of those frogs who got in trouble. I'm different--really a little superior to the likes of you. When I need your help, I'll let you know. Now buzz off."
I fought as long as I could to keep drinking. I was one hundred percent convinced that I could not live without alcohol. I had reached the place of the alcoholic Bill W. describes on page 152 of the Big Book: ". . .unable to imagine a life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end."
I was nearing that point when I was taken out of the frying pan by friends, AA, love, and a Higher Power. I believe I would now have six months to live--if the clock was running. The thing that would start it running is my taking a drink--which I might do if I ever think I can take over full control of my own life.
Superior people, just as we can imagine superior frogs, like to think they're in control. They analyze, intellectualize, and demand proof. If they aren't naturally skeptical, they are taught to be. I had my skepticism nurtured and refined through twenty years of the finest education, enough for a Ph.D. at an illustrious private midwestern university. But if I'm so smart, I ought to learn from minds greater than my own.
Prove God? No way, in the accepted scientific method of classical physics. Indeed, Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher who founded existentialism, thought he had proved that there is no proof of God (a very philosophical thing to do). His immortal legacy is the statement that "faith is a leap into the unknown."
William James, whose book The Varieties of Religious Experience is cited by Bill W. on page 28 of the Big Book, wrote in 1901 that "God is real since His effects are real." James was not only a distinguished psychologist but also a founder of the philosophical school of pragmatism. The proposition of this school is that no belief can be considered true unless it makes a difference in real life.
When I first took the Third Step, I waited for proof--some sign--that God had received my will and my life. And I waited and I waited. Then it occurred to me that the Third Step is not a prescription for God's behavior. As far as I can tell, God is doing quite well. The sun rises in the morning; the seasons change; and there is love in the world. The purpose of the Third Step is to tell me what to do. How defiantly contemptuous of me to demand proof of the existence of God. I'm the one in trouble!
I think it is not coincidence that many people see in God the force of love. The two are equally improbable and unprovable. To those demanding their own form of proof of God, I suggest that they demand also proof of beauty, of truth, of love. "What?" they say. "But truth and beauty and love are all around us. They do not need to be proved." And so with God. "God is real since His effects are real."
The razor-keen mind will rejoin that the occurrence of tragedy and accidents disproves God. To be sure, malice, greed, and misfortune do exist in the world--you and I have experienced them. But disprove God? Disprove love? Read William James. The improbable, unprovable miracle is still there. I can even conceive of an imperfect God, striving for perfection.
I cannot close without reference to the towering intellectual giant of our century, and very likely the most spiritual, Albert Einstein. In that dazzling survey of human accomplishment, The Ascent of Man, of Man, Jacob Bronowski writes that Einstein was fond of talking about God. He quotes Einstein as saying, "God does not play at dice. God is not malicious." Bronowski goes on to say, "Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his life showed, and his work, is that when the answers are simple, too, then you hear God thinking." AA is to me the sound of God thinking.
Thank you for my life.
J. S.
Pebble Beach, California
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