DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
THE IDEA OF FAITH
Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 47
The idea of faith is very large chunk to swallow when fear, doubt and anger abound in or around me. Sometimes the idea of doing something different, something that I am not accustomed to doing, can eventually become an act of faith if I do it regularly, and without debating whether it's the right thing to do. When a bad day comes along and everything is going wrong, a meeting or a talk with another drunk often distracts me just enough to persuade me that everything is not quite as impossible, as overwhelming as I had thought. In the same way, going to a meeting or talking to a fellow alcoholic are acts of faith; I believe I'm arresting my disease. These are ways I slowly move toward faith in a Higher Power.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
In A.A. we must surrender, give up, admit that we're helpless. We surrender our lives to God and ask Him for help. When He knows that we're ready, He gives us by His grace the free gift of sobriety. And we can't take any credit for having stopped drinking, because we didn't do it by our own willpower. There's no place for pride or boasting. We can only be grateful to God for doing for us what we could never do for ourselves. Do I believe that God has made me a free gift of the strength to stay sober?
Meditation for the Day
I must work for God, with God, and through God's help. By helping to bring about a true fellowship of human beings, I am working for God. I am also working with God because this is the way God works, and He is with me when I am doing such work. I cannot do good work, however, without God's help. In the final analysis, it is through the grace of God that any real change in human personality takes place. I have to rely on God's power, and anything I accomplish is through His help.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may work for God and with God. I pray that I may be used to change human personalities through God's help.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Rationalizing away our recovery
Page 68
"As a result of the Twelve Steps, I'm not able to hold on to old ways of deceiving myself."
We all rationalize. Sometimes we know we are rationalizing, admit we are rationalizing, yet continue to behave according to our rationalizations! Recovery can become very painful when we decide that, for one reason or another, the simple principles of the program don't apply to us.
With the help of our sponsor and others in NA, we can begin to look at the excuses we use for our behavior. Do we find that some principles just don't apply to us? Do we believe that we know more than everyone else in Narcotics Anonymous, even those who have been clean for many years? What makes us think that we're so special?
There is no doubt, we can successfully rationalize our way through part of our recovery. But, eventually, we must squarely face the truth and start acting accordingly. The principles in the Twelve Steps guide us to a new life in recovery. There is little room for rationalization there.
Just for Today: I cannot work the steps and also continue deceiving myself. I will examine my thinking for rationalizations, reveal them to my sponsor, and be rid of them.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
Turn It Over
I got down on my knees for the first time in thirty years.
The prayer I said was simple.
It went something like this:
"God, for eighteen years
I have been unable to handle this problem.
Please let me turn it over to you."
Immediately a great feeling of peace descended upon me,
intermingled with a feeling of being suffused
with a quiet strength.
I lay down on the bed and slept like a child.
An hour later I awoke to a new world.
Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed.
c. 2001 AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 251
With permission, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought to Ponder . . .
Trying to pray is praying.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
P U S H = Pray Until Something Happens.
If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.
~ H. G. Wells
We are not all "Getting Older"......
We are one day closer to meeting God. (thanks Stu K.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
If your mind becomes firm like a rock
And no longer shakes
In a world where everything is shaking,
Your mind will be your greatest friend
And suffering will not come your way.
-Theragatha
Native American
"And there are Four Corners of the Earth that we talk about, the Four Colors of people, and the Four Winds. You see the winds-they are spirits."
--Grandfather William Commanda, ALGONQUIN
The Elders teach us about the four directions. If we learn about direction, we also learn about attention, about focus, and about power. Each direction has spiritual power. In the morning, go outside, face the east and get still; then, listen to your thoughts. After you have done this for a while, turn and face the west. Get quiet once again and listen to your thoughts. Did your thinking change when you changed direction?
Great Spirit, teach me the power of the four directions
Keep It Simple
When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
Remember how we tried to make others think we were not in trouble? We walked and talked like addicts. We acted like addicts. Most everyone knew the truth but us. We were like ducks pretending to be eagles.
We see ourselves as we really are. But sometimes we can't see ourselves that way. This is normal.
That's why we need others to help us see what we can't. We were addicts. We are now recovering addicts. We need friends, sponsors, and family members to tell us when we may be acting like addicts again. It may save our lives.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, give my friends and family members the strength to tell me when I'm acting like an addict.
Action for the Day: I'll go to people whom I trust and ask them to tell me when I'm acting like an addict.
Big Book - Readings
THE DOCTOR'S OPINION (pg. xiii & top of xiv)
WE OF Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan of recovery described in this book. Convincing testimony must surely come from medical men who have had experience with the sufferings of our members and have witnessed our return to health. A well-known doctor, chief physician at a nationally prominent hospital specializing in alcoholic and drug addiction, gave Alcoholics Anonymous this letter:
To Whom It May Concern:
I have specialized in the treatment if alcoholism for many years.
In late 1934 I attended a patient who, though he had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity, was an alcoholic of a type I had come to regard as hopeless.
In the course of his third treatment he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery. As part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. This man and over one hundred others appear to have recovered.
I personally know scores of cases who were of the type with whom other methods had failed completely.
These facts appear to be of extreme medical importance; because of the extraordinary possibilities of rapid growth inherent in this group they may mark a new epoch in the annals of alcoholism. These men may well have a remedy for thousands of such situations.
You may rely absolutely on anything they say about themselves.
Very truly yours,
William D. Silkworth, M.D.
Patient
Cunning, baffling, powerful, that’s what the Big Book states
When it talks about alcohol and how it dominates
The way we think, the way we act when firmly in its grip
We have to be obedient, surrender to its whip
A meeting that I go to starts at seven in the morning
Someone reads “How It Works” each day, it really can get boring
But there’s a member who attends and adds a single statement
When those three words are read out loud, he adds in the word patient
Although that word is not there when we read page fifty-eight
It certainly rings true to us, it helps to keep us straight
It matters not how long it’s been since we had our last drink
That demon alcohol is biding time until we blink
A fellow that I know related just how he had slipped
He’d been dry for some twenty months, felt he was well equipped
To take a swig then put it down, he thought he’d passed the test
He did not drink for two more months, then patient came to fest
Until that time, he had been doing what had been suggested
He called his sponsor frequently and did what he requested
He even tried to meditate and say a prayer or two
But day by day his routine shrank, old thoughts began to stew
Though he had not been drinking in those months after the slip
The memory of it haunted him, it wanted him to trip
Then came the day it fell apart, those feeling did accrue
He almost drank himself to death on the month twenty-two
A vicious cycle had begun, would last over a year
He’d sober up for a few weeks and then bring out the beer
He went to meeting as before, was filled with true remorse
But that was all he did, he was just auditing the course
He stopped using his phone to call a sponsor or a friend
When he was in the wrong, he just could not make an amend
He seldom prayed or meditated, he found that very tough
Because he went to meetings, he thought that would be enough
The patient side of this disease had waited for some time
But it could tell the time to strike was nearly at its prime
He wouldn’t take his sponsor’s calls, began to isolate
The voice inside his head said “what the hell”, capitulate
The lesson for us all is this disease is very patient
Content to lie there dormant, waiting in our memory’s basement
Just waiting for the chance to climb the stairs and take control
And bring us to our knees and watch our misery unfold
But we’ve learned there’s a way to keep this enemy at bay
By practicing the AA Steps and do it every day
For when we don’t, we probably are heading for a slip
Patiently it guarantees a painful, dreadful trip
Larry R.
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