DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
SPIRITUAL HEALTH
When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 64
It is very difficult for me to come to terms with my spiritual illness because of my great pride, disguised by my material successes and my intellectual power. Intelligence is not incompatible with humility, provided I place humility first. To seek prestige and wealth is the ultimate goal for many in the modern world. To be fashionable and to seem better than I really am is a spiritual illness.
To recognize and to admit my weaknesses is the beginning of good spiritual health. It is a sign of spiritual health to be able to ask God every day to enlighten me, to recognize His will, and to have the strength to execute it. My spiritual health is excellent when I realize that the better I get, the more I discover how much help I need from others.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
The Twelfth Step of A.A., working with others, can be subdivided into five parts, five words beginning with the letter C; confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance. The first thing in trying to help other alcoholics is to get their confidence. We do this by telling them our own experiences with drinking, so that they see that we know what we're talking about. if we share our experiences frankly, they will know that we are sincerely trying to help them. They will realize that they're not alone and that others have had experiences as bad or worse than theirs. This gives them confidence that they can be helped. Do I care enough about other alcoholics to get their confidence?
Meditation for the Day
I fail not so much when tragedy happens as I did before the happening, by all the little things I might have done, but did not do. I must prepare for the future by doing the right thing at the right time now. If a thing should be done, I should deal with that thing today and get it righted with God before I allow myself to undertake any new duty. I should look upon myself as performing God's errands and then coming back to Him to tell Him in quiet communion that the message has been delivered or the task done.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may seek no credit for the results of what I do. I pray that I may leave the outcome of my actions to God.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Amends and sponsors
Page 149
"We want to be free of our guilt, but we don't wish to do so at the expense of anyone else."
Basic Text, p. 40
Let's face it: Most of us left trails of destruction in our wakes and harmed anyone who got in our way. Some of the people we hurt most in our addiction were the people we loved most. In an effort to purge ourselves of the guilt we feel for what we've done, we may be tempted to share with our loved ones, in gruesome detail, things that are better left unsaid. Such disclosures could do much harm and may do little good.
The Ninth Step is not about easing our guilty consciences; it's about taking responsibility for the wrongs we've done. In working our Eighth and Ninth Steps, we should seek the guidance of our sponsor and amend our wrongs in a manner that won't cause us to owe more amends. We are not just seeking freedom from remorse-we are seeking freedom from our defects. We never again want to inflict harm on our loved ones. One way to insure that we do not is by working the Ninth Step responsibly, checking our motives, and discussing with our sponsor the particular amends we plan to make before we make them.
Just for Today: I wish to accept responsibility for my actions. Before making any amends, I will talk with my sponsor.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"As soon as I take action I see a whole different set of opportunities"
New But West Group in NYC
We can choose to do, or not to do. Aristotle
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
"He who knows others is wise, he who knows himself is enlightened."
- Lao Tzu
When we fall on the ground it hurts us, but we also need to rely on the ground to get back up.
-Kathleen McDonald, How to Meditate
Always recognize the dreamlike qualities of life and reduce attachment and aversion. Practice good-heartedness toward all beings. Be loving and compassionate, no matter what others do to you. What they will do will not matter so much when you see it as a dream. The trick is to have positive intention during the dream. This is the essential point. This is true spirituality.
Chakdud Tulku Rinpoche (thanks Gary C.)
Native American
"Without a sacred center, no one knows right from wrong."
---- Thomas Yellowtail, CROW
In the center of the circle is where the powers reside. These powers are called love, principle, justice, spiritual knowledge, life, forgiveness and truth. All these powers reside in the very center of the human being. We access these powers by being still, quieting the mind. If we get confused, emotionally upset, feel resentment, anger, or fear, the best thing we can do is pray to the Great Spirit and ask Him to remove the anger and resentment. By asking Him to remove these obstacles, we are automatically positioned in the sacred center. Only in this way do we know right from wrong.
Great Spirit, allow me this day to live in the sacred center.
Keep It Simple
The present will not long endure. --- Pindar
At certain moments, our best friend is time. Time is a gift given us. Time helps us heal. We need to know that when things are tough, these times will pass, and peace will return. Our Higher Power can be like a parent who comforts a child when there's a storm outside. The parent gently reminds the child the sun will shine again.
Tough times come and go. There will be times when life is ugly and very painful. We can't be happy all the time. Remember, our Higher Power is always there. We must have faith in this. A saying often heard in the program is, "This too shall pass."
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, remind me that things will get better. Even if they get worst for a while, they will get better. Let this be my prayer in hard times.
Action for the Day: Today, I'll list times in my life when I thought I couldn't go on. I'll remember the pain, but I'll also remember how time was my friend.
Big Book
Chapter 6 Into Action (pg 75)
When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste not time. We have a written inventory and we are prepared for a long talk. We explain to our partner what we are about to do and why we have to do it. He should realize that we are engaged upon a life-and-death errand. Most people approached in this way will be glad to help; they will be honored by our confidence.
We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe.
Returning home we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour, carefully reviewing what we have done. We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know Him better. Taking this book down from our shelf we turn to the page which contains the twelve steps. Carefully reading the first five proposals we ask if we have omitted anything, for we are building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last. Is our work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand?
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How Alcoholics Anonymous Got Started
In 1931 an American business executive, Rowland Hazard, after trying all the possibilities of medicine and psychiatry in the United States, sought treatment for alcoholism with the famous psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung in Switzerland.
After a year of treatment, Rowland H. the alcoholic felt confident that his compulsion to drink had been removed. However, he found himself drunk shortly after leaving the care of Dr. Jung.
Back again in Switzerland Rowland H the, dejected and depressed, was told by Dr Jung, that his case was nearly hopeless (as with other alcoholics he had treated) and that his only hope (might be) a spiritual conversion with a religious group of his choice.
On his return to the United States , Rowland got in contact with the Oxford Group and soon sobered up.
The Oxford Group was an Evangelical Christian Fellowship founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Franklin Buchman. Buchman was a Lutheran minister who had a conversion experience in 1908 in a Chapel in Keswick , England . As a result of that experience, he founded a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which had become known as the Oxford Group by 1931.
The Oxford Group’s concepts were, total surrender of un-manageability of the problem, self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects (public confession), restitution for harm done, and working with others.
The Oxford Group was not confined to members of alcoholics only; a mixed bag of ‘troubled souls’ were also welcomed.
A chance meeting with Ebby Thacher, another chronic alcoholic who was about to be admitted to a Lunatic Asylum; Rowland H passed on the message Dr. Jung gave him: that most alcoholics were non-receptive to psychiatry and medicine; that their only possible hope was a spiritual conversion with a religious group of their choice. So now we have one alcoholic trying to help another alcoholic stay sober. Rowland H introduced Ebby T to the Oxford Group at Calvary Rescue Mission.
In keeping with Oxford Group teaching that a new convert must pass on the message to other suffering and troubled souls to preserve his own conversion experience, Ebby contacted his old friend Bill Wilson, who he knew had a drinking problem.
When Ebby visited Bill Wilson at his New York apartment, it was sometime in November 1934. Sitting at his kitchen table, Bill offered him a drink. ‘No thanks’ said Ebby , ‘I stopped drinking’. ‘I stopped drinking’ coming from Ebby seemed the strangest thing Bill had heard. Glancing over at Ebby, Bill knew that this was no “on the water-wagon stop.” Ebby was clear-eyed, focused and serene.
“What’s got into you”? Bill asked. Ebby told him "he had got religion," Bill’s heart sank. Until then, Bill had struggled with the existence of God. Much later of his meeting with Ebby, he wrote: "My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, 'Why don't you choose your own conception of God?' That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years.”
Ebby then went on to share about his meeting with Rowland H, how hopeless in most cases psychiatry and medicine was in the opinion of Dr. Jung. Next Ebby enumerated the principles he had learned from the Oxford Group. Though he thought that the good people of the Group were sometimes too aggressive, he couldn’t find fault with most of their basic teachings. In substance, the basic principles an alcoholic desiring to stop drinking should follow are:
1. He admitted that he is powerless to manage his own life.
2. He became honest with himself as never before; made an “examination of conscience.”
3. He made a rigorous confession of his personal defects and thus quit living alone with his problems.
4. He surveyed his distorted relations with other people, visiting them to make what amends he could.
5. He resolved to devote himself to helping others in need, without the usual demand for personal prestige or material gain.
6. By meditation , he sought God’s direction for his life and the help to practice these principals of conduct at all times.
Ebby explained how, practicing these simple precepts, his drinking had unaccountably stopped. Fear and isolation had left him, and he received a considerable peace of mind. Once again, one alcoholic confiding in another alcoholic; the spark that was to become Alcoholics Anonymous had been struck. When Ebby left, Bill continued to drink.
The next morning Bill Wilson arrived at Calvary Rescue Mission in a drunken state looking for Ebby. Once there, he attended his first Oxford Group meeting, where he answered the call to come to the altar and, along with other penitents, gave his life to Christ. Bill excitedly told his wife Lois about his spiritual progress, yet the next day he drank again and a few days later readmitted himself to Towns Hospital for the fourth and last time.
Bill Wilson was an alcoholic who had seen a promising career on Wall Street ruined by his drinking. He also failed to graduate from law school because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. His drinking damaged his marriage, and he was hospitalized for alcoholism at Towns Hospital four times in 1933-1934 under the care of Dr. William Silkworth.
On Bill Wilson's first stay at Towns Hospital , Dr. Silkworth explained to him his theory that alcoholism is an illness rather than a moral failure or failure of willpower. Silkworth believed that alcoholics were suffering from a mental obsession, combined with an allergy that made compulsive drinking inevitable, and to break the cycle one had to completely abstain from alcohol use. Wilson was elated to find that he suffered from an illness, and he managed to stay off alcohol for a month before he resumed drinking again.
While at Towns Hospital for the forth and last time after his friend Ebby had visited him, Bill experienced his "Hot Flash" spiritual conversion. While lying in bed depressed and despairing, Bill cried out: "I'll do anything! Anything at all to receive what my friend Ebby has! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!" He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity. Bill described his experience to Dr. Silkworth, who told him that this could be a transformation, an emotional upheaval or a spiritual experience.
Upon his release from the hospital on December 18, 1934, Bill Wilson moved from the Calvary Rescue Mission to the Oxford meetings at Calvary House. There Wilson socialized after the meetings with other ex-drinking Oxford Group members and became interested in learning how to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. It was during this time that Bill Wilson went on a crusadeto save alcoholics. Sources for his prospects were the Calvary Rescue Mission and Towns Hospital . Something like a religious crank he was obsessed with the idea that everybody must have a “spiritual experience” like he had. Of all the alcoholics Bill Wilson tried to help, not one stayed sober.
It was Dr. Silkworth who pointed out to Bill, he said: “Stop preaching to them. Just tell them what happened to you. Give them the medical facts, the mental obsession, combined with an allergy that made compulsive drinking inevitable.
Five months after his spiritual experience, Bill W went on a business trip to Akron -- away from home. The business venture failed. He found himself dejected and depressed standing in the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel. At one end of the lobby the hotel bar was opened. At the other end there was a telephone booth.
Suddenly the urge for a drink came upon him. He panicked! The feeling of panic assured him he still had some sanity left. He remembered that while trying to help other alcoholics ‘he’ remained sober. So he took action. He phoned a number of church ministries in that area asking to meet and speak with another drunk. As puzzling as this must have seemed to the ones answering his calls, Bill W finally struck gold. A call to Episcopal minister Rev. Walter Tunks, got him in contact with an Oxford Group member Henrietta Seiberling, a non-alcoholic, whose group had been trying for two years to help a desperate alcoholic named Dr. Bob Smith.
Dr. Bob started drinking early in life. While he was a student, Dr. Bob started drinking heavily and almost failed to graduate from medical school because of it. He opened a medical practice and married, but his drinking put his business and family life in jeopardy. For seventeen years Dr. Bob’s daily routine was to stay sober until the afternoon, get drunk, sleep, then take sedatives to calm his morning jitters. During the prohibition period, 1920—1933 Doctors were permitted to prescribe liquor for their patients. Dr Bob would pick a name from the phone book, fill out a prescription, which would get him a pint of whisky. When this was not feasible, there was always that new member of American society –the bootlegger! It seems Dr. Bob had two phobias, one was the fear of not sleeping and the other of running out of liquor. His life was a squirrel-cage existence; staying sober to earn enough money to get drunk, getting drunk to go to sleep, using sedatives to quiet the jitters, staying sober, earning money, smuggling home a bottle, hiding the bottle form his wife, who became an expert at detecting hiding places.
So Henrietta Seiberling convinced Dr. Bob to come over to her place and meet Bill. And Dr. Bob insisted the meeting be limited to fifteen minutes. At five o’clock Sunday evening Dr. Bob and his wife were at Heneritta’s house. Dr. Bob came face to face with Bill who said “ You must be awfully thirsty -- this won’t take us long.” Dr. Bob was so impressed with Bill’s knowledge of alcoholism and ability to share from his own experience, that their discussion lasted six hours. That was on Mothers Day, May 12th 1935. Dr. Bob did lapse into drinking again. He went on a binge, but quickly recovered. The day widely known as the date of Dr. Bob's last drink, June 10, 1935, is celebrated as the founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous.
A few days later, Dr. Bob had said to Bill: "If you and I are going to stay sober, we had better get busy." Dr. Bob called Akron 's City Hospital and told the nurse, a "Mrs. Hall," that he and a man from New York had a cure for alcoholism. Did she have an alcoholic customer on whom they could try it out? She replied, "Well, Doctor, I suppose you've already tried it yourself?" Then she told him of a man who had just come in with DT's, had blacked the eyes of two nurses, and was now strapped down tight. "He's a grand chap when he's sober," she added. The nurse told Dr. Bob and Bill that Bill Dotson, the patient, had been a well-known attorney in Akron and a city councilman. But he had been hospitalized eight times in the last six months. Following each release, he got drunk even before he got home.
So Dr. Bob and Bill talked to what is now known as their first "man on the bed." They told him of the serious nature of his disease, but also offered hope for a recovery. "We told him what we had done," wrote Bill, "how we got honest with ourselves as never before, how we had talked our problems out with each other in confidence, how we tried to make amends for harm done others, how we had then been miraculously released from the desire to drink as soon as we had humbly asked God, as we understood him, for guidance and protection. Bill Dotson, the “Man on the Bed, eventually sobered up, his date of sobriety was the date he entered Akron ’s City Hospital for his last detox on June 26th1935.
(thanks Ronny H.)
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