05/03

DAILY PONDERABLES

Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

Daily Reflections

CLEANING HOUSE

Somehow, being alone with God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 60

It wasn't unusual for me to talk to God, and myself, about my character defects. But to sit down, face to face, and openly discuss these intimacies with another person was much more difficult. I recognized in the experience, however, a similar relief to the one I experienced when I first admitted I was an alcoholic. I began to appreciate the spiritual significance of the program and that this Step was just an introduction to what was yet to come in the remaining seven Steps.

From the book Daily Reflections

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

A.A. teaches us to take it easy. We learn how to relax and to stop worrying about the past or the future, to give up our resentments and hates and tempers, to stop being critical of people, and to try to help them instead. That's what "Easy Does It" means. So in the time that's left to me to live, I'm going to try to take it easy, to relax and not to worry, to try to be helpful to others, and to trust God. For what's left of my life, is my motto going to be "Easy Does It"?

Meditation for the Day

I must overcome myself before I can truly forgive other people for injuries done to me. The self in me cannot forgive injuries. The very thought of wrongs means that my self is in the foreground. Since the self cannot forgive, I must overcome my selfishness. I must cease trying to forgive those who fretted and wronged me. it is a mistake for me even to think about these injuries. I must aim at overcoming myself in my daily life and then I will find there is nothing in me that remembers injury, because the only thing injured, my selfishness, is gone.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may hold no resentments. I pray that my mind may be washed clean of all past hates and fears.

From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day

NA - Just for Today

Sharing our gratitude

Page 129

"My gratitude speaks when I care and when I share with others the NA way."

Gratitude Prayer

The longer we stay clean, the more we experience feelings of gratitude for our recovery. These feelings of gratitude aren't limited to particular gifts like new friends or the ability to be employed. More frequently, they arise from the overall sense of joy we feel in our new lives. These feelings are enhanced by our certainty of the course our lives would have taken if it weren't for the miracle we've experienced in Narcotics Anonymous.

These feelings are so all-encompassing, so wondrous, and sometimes so overwhelming that we often can't find words for them. We sometimes openly weep with happiness while sharing in a meeting, yet we grope for words to express what we are feeling. We want so badly to convey to newcomers the gratitude we feel, but it seems that our language lacks the superlatives to describe it.

When we share with tears in our eyes, when we choke up and can't talk at all-these are the times when our gratitude speaks most clearly. We share our gratitude directly from our hearts; with their hearts, others hear and understand. Our gratitude speaks eloquently, though our words may not.

Just for Today: My gratitude has a voice of its own; when it speaks, the heart understands. Today, I will share my gratitude with others, whether I can find the words or not.

From the book Just for Today

Thought for Today

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

~Alexander Graham Bell

I sought my soul,

But my soul I could not see.

I sought my God,

But my God eluded me.

I sought my brother,

And I found all three.

~ William Blake

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.

-- Jim Rohn (thanks Bill C.)

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

"We tend to have a very selfish, impure motivation. We want to get the teachings for our own sakes and this is not respected in terms of spiritual development. We need to have at least a motivation to help others as a result of the practice or listening to the teachings. Even if that motivation is not there right away, we need to work on the teachings from that time and eventually be able to benefit beings. This must be the true motivation."

Native American

"But I have learned a lot from trees: sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit."

--Walking Buffalo, STONEY

Nature is the greatest teacher on the Earth. Nature produces many different plants, animals, trees, rocks, birds, insects and weather patterns. Nature designed all these various things to grow and multiply while at the same time live in harmony with each other. We can learn a lot of we observe and study Nature's system of harmony and balance. Today, go sit on a rock and quietly observe and ask to be shown the lessons.

Great Spirit, Nature is my teacher. Today, let me be the student.

Keep It Simple

When I have listened to my mistakes, I have grown. --- Hugh Prather

Everyone makes mistakes. We all know that. So why is it so hard to admit our own? We seem to think we have to be prefect. We have a hard time looking at our mistakes. But our mistakes can be very good teachers. Our Twelve Step program helps us learn and grow from our mistakes. In Step Four, half of our work is to think of our mistakes. In step Five, we admit our mistakes to God, ourselves, and another person. We learn, we grow and become whole. All by coming to know our mistakes The gift of recovery is not being free from mistakes. Instead, we do the Steps to claim our mistakes and talk about them. We find the gift of recovery when we learn from our mistakes.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to see my mistakes as changes to get to know myself better.

Action for the Day: Today Ill talk to a friend about what my mistakes taught me. Today I'll feel less shame.

Big Book

Chapter 4 We Agnostics (pg 53 & top 54)

Logic is great stuff. We like it. We still like it. It is not by chance we were given the power to reason, to examine the evidence of our sense, and to draw conclusions. That is one of man's magnificent attributes. We agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to reasonable approach and interpretation. Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, "We don't know."

When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crises we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn't. What was our choice to be?

Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn't duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands had stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support.

That was natural, but let us think a little more closely. Without knowing it, had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our own reasoning? did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time!