DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
LEST WE BECOME COMPLACENT
It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 85
When I am in pain it is easy to stay close to the friends I have found in the program. Relief from that pain is provided in the solutions contained in A.A.'s Twelve Steps. But when I am feeling good and things are going well, I can become complacent. To put it simply, I become lazy and turn into the problem instead of the solution. I need to get into action, to take stock: where am I and where am I going? A daily inventory will tell me what I must change to regain spiritual balance. Admitting what I find within myself, to God and to another human being, keeps me honest and humble.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
A.A. will lose some of its effectiveness if I do not do my share. Where am I failing? Are there some things I do not feel like doing? Am I held back by self-consciousness or fear? Self-consciousness is a form of pride. It is a fear that something may happen to you. What happens to you is not very important. The impression you make on others does not depend so much on the kind of a job you do as on your sincerity and honesty of purpose. Am I holding back because I am afraid of not making a good impression?
Meditation for the Day
Look to God for the true power that will make you effective. See no other wholly dependable supply of strength. That is the secret of a truly effective life. And you, in your turn, will be used to help many others find effectiveness. Whatever spiritual help you need, whatever spiritual help you desire for others, look to God. Seek that God's will be done in your life and seek that your will conforms to His. Failures come from depending too much on your own strength.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may feel that nothing good is too much for me if I look to God for help. I pray that I may be effective through His guidance.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Not Just A Motivation For Growth
"We learn that pain can be a motivating factor in recovery."
Basic Text p.29
"Pain - who needs it!" we think whenever we're in it. We see no good purpose for pain. It seems to be a pointless exercise in suffering. If someone happens to mention spiritual growth to us while we're in pain, we most likely snort in disgust and walk away, thinking we've never encountered a more insensitive person.
But what if human beings didn't feel pain-either physical or emotional? Sound like an ideal world? Not really. If we weren't capable of feeling physical pain, we wouldn't know when to blink foreign particles out of our eyes; we wouldn't know when to stop exercising; we wouldn't even know when to roll over in our sleep. We would simply abuse ourselves for lack of a natural warning system.
The same holds true for emotional pain. How would we have known that our lives had become unmanageable if we hadn't been in pain? Just like physical pain, emotional pain lets us know when to stop doing something that hurts.
But pain is not only a motivating factor. Emotional pain provides a basis for comparison when we are joyful. We couldn't appreciate joy without knowing pain.
Just for today: I will accept pain as a necessary part of life. I know that to whatever level I can feel pain, I can also feel joy.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
When the pain of inaction becomes greater than the fear of action you're
going to do something.
"Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them is the true measure of our thanksgiving."
-- W.T. Purkiser
You’re NUTS
You’re Not Using The Steps
(thanks Vince T. for passing on this from Ness from Riverview, FL)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
One day as I was meditating, I saw a rusty gutter, and I suddenly felt sad and sorry that it was going bad and rusty. I experienced that life was impermanent. I learned Dharma from that gutter.
-Mae Chi Boonliang, "Women's Buddhism, Buddhism's Women"
Native American
"So don't be afraid. What we left behind, leave it back there. Try to do some good. Let's try to take a step, try to think something good."
--Wallace Black Elk, LAKOTA
Every day is a new day. Sometimes we make mistakes. We do not need to carry these mistakes along with us. Take the lessons and leave the mistakes behind. Look forward to today. Today we can do something good. Today we can have good thoughts. Today we can think kind, uplifting thoughts about ourselves. Today I will think good about ...
My Creator, today I ask You to direct my thoughts.
Keep It Simple
Continued to take personal inventory . . . First half of Step Ten
Step Ten tells us to keep looking at who we are. We ask ourselves, “Is what I’m doing okay?”
If it is, then we take pride in the way we acting. If not, we change our behavior. Step Ten keeps us in the right direction.
Throughout time, wise persons have told us to get to know ourselves. Step Ten helps us do this.
We become our own best friend. A true friend tells us when we’re doing right and when we’re messing up. Step Ten is our teacher. Even when we want to pretend we don’t know right from wrong, Step Ten reminds us that we do know. Step Ten is our daily reminder that we now have values---good values.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, Step Ten is a lot of work. Keep me working. Help me form a habit. Let this habit be called “Step Ten.”
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll continue to take a personal inventory. I will list what is good about me today and what I don’t like.
TWELVESTEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Eleven (pgs 98-101)
As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this prayer several times very slowly, savoring every word and trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea. It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend says. For in meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly with the thoughts of someone who knows, so that we may experience and learn.
As though lying upon a sunlit beach, let us relax and breathe deeply of the spiritual atmosphere with which the grace of this prayer surrounds us. Let us become willing to partake and be strengthened and lifted up by the sheer spiritual power, beauty, and love of which these magnificent words are the carriers. Let us look now upon the sea and ponder what its mystery is; and let us lift our eyes to the far horizon, beyond which we shall seek all those wonders still unseen.
“Shucks!” says somebody. “This is nonsense. It isn’t practical.
When such thoughts break in, we might recall, a little ruefully, how much store we used to set by imagination as it tried to create reality out of bottles. Yes, we reveled in that sort of thinking, didn’t we? And though sober nowadays, don’t we often try to do much the same thing? Perhaps our trouble was not that we used our imagination. Perhaps the real trouble was our almost total inability to point imagination toward the right objectives. There’s nothing the matter with constructive imagination; all sound achievement rests upon it. After all, no man can build a house until he first envisions a plan for it. Well, meditation is like that, too; it helps to envision our spiritual objective before we try to move toward it. So let’s get back to that sunlit beach—or to the plains or to the mountains, if you prefer.
When, by such simple devices, we have placed ourselves in a mood in which we can focus undisturbed on constructive imagination, we might proceed like this:
Once more we read our prayer, and again try to see what its inner essence is. We’ll think now about the man who first uttered the prayer. First of all, he wanted to become a “channel.” Then he asked for the grace to bring love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being he could.
Next came the expression of an aspiration and a hope for himself. He hoped, God willing, that he might be able to find some of these treasures, too. This he would try to do by what he called self-forgetting. What did he mean by “self-forgetting,” and how did he propose to accomplish that? He thought it better to give comfort than to receive it; better to understand than to be understood; better to forgive than to be forgiven.
This much could be a fragment of what is called meditation, perhaps our very first attempt at a mood, a flier into the realm of spirit, if you like. It ought to be followed by a good look at where we stand now, and a further look at what might happen in our lives were we able to move closer to the ideal we have been trying to glimpse. Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way. But its object is always the same: to improve our conscious contact with God, with His grace, wisdom, and love. And let’s always remember that meditation is in reality intensely practical. One of its first fruits is emotional balance. With it we can broaden and deepen the channel between ourselves and God as we understand Him.
Big Book
"God alone can judge our sex situation. Counsel with persons is often
desirable, but we let God be the final judge. We realize that some
people are as fanatical about sex as others are loose. We avoid
hysterical thinking or advice."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 69~
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