DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
SERENITY AFTER THE STORM
Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with him. . .
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 93-94
When on the roller coaster of emotional turmoil, I remember that growth is often painful. My evolution in the A.A. program has taught me that I must experience the inner change, however painful, that eventually guides me from selfishness to selflessness. If I am to have serenity, I must STEP my way past emotional turmoil and its subsequent hangover, and be grateful for continuing spiritual progress.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
How do I talk with new prospects? Am I always trying to dominate the conversation? Do I lay down the law and tell prospects what they will have to do? Do I judge them privately and feel that they have small chance of making the program? Do I belittle them to myself? Or am I willing to bare my soul so as to get them talking about themselves? And, then, am I willing to be a good listener, not interrupting, but hearing them out to the end? Do I feel deeply that they are my brothers or my sisters? Will I do all I can to help them along the path to sobriety?
Meditation for the Day
"The work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness shall be quietness and assurance forever." Only when the soul attains this calm can there be true spiritual work done, and mind, soul, and body are strong to conquer and bear all things. Peace is the result of righteousness. There is no peace in wrongdoing, but if we live the way God wants us to live, quietness and assurance follow. Assurance is that calmness born of a deep certainty of God's strength available to us and in His power to love and guard us from all harm and wrongdoing.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may attain a state of true calmness. I pray that I may live in quietness and peace.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Losing Self-Will
"Our egos, once so large and dominant, now take a back seat because we are in harmony with a loving God. We find that we lead richer, happier, and much fuller lives when we lose self-will."
Basic Text p.101
Addiction and self-will go hand in hand. The unmanageability that we admitted to in Step One was as much a product of our self-will as it was of our chronic drug abuse. And today, living on self-will can make our lives just as unmanageable as they were when we were using. When our ideas, our desires, our demands take first place in our lives, we find ourselves in constant conflict with everyone and everything around us.
Self-will reflects our reliance on ego. The only thing that will free us from self-will and the conflict it generates in our lives is to break our reliance on ego, coming to rely instead on the guidance and power offered us by a loving God.
We are taught to consult spiritual principles, not our selfish desires, in making our decisions. We are taught to seek guidance from a Higher Power, one with a larger vision of things than our own. In doing this, we find our lives meshing more and more easily with the order of things around us. No longer do we exclude ourselves from the flow of life; we become a part of it, and discover the fullness of what recovery has to offer.
Just for today: I seek freedom from ego and the conflicts generated by self-will. I will try to improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding, seeking the guidance and power I need to live in harmony with my world.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"Taint't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes."
--Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1896
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Storms make trees take deeper roots
~ Dolly Parton
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Walking the spiritual path is a very subtle process; it is not something to jump into naively. There are numerous sidetracks which lead to a distorted, ego-centered version of spirituality; we can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.
-Chogyam Trungpa, "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism"
Native American
"Spiritual Values are an Attitude."
--Leonard George, Chief Councilor
Attitude is a direction which we follow. If you have a positive attitude, it means you will lean towards a positive direction. If you have a negative attitude, it means you will lean away from the Spirit. Therefore, if we lean toward spiritual values, then our actions will become significant and important. If we lean away from spiritual values, our actions will become insignificant or unimportant. For example, if we value love, we will lean towards it; we will prefer to express and embrace it.
Great Spirit, teach me the significance of spiritual values.
Keep It Simple
That which is called firmness in a king is called stubbornness in a donkey. --- Lord Erskine
“Rigid” is a fancy word for “stubborn.” We act this way because of our fears. When we’re afraid, we hang on to what we’re used to doing. Our illness had us so scared, we were afraid of the new ideas and new people. The only thing that didn’t scare us was using alcohol or other drugs.
We also were stubborn when anyone tried to help us. We thought we knew what was best. How silly our stubborn actions made us look! How lonely they kept us.
But our stubborn behavior can teach us about our fears. We need to be aware our stubbornness. Then we’ll be able to find out what we’re afraid of---and do something about it.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me know when I’m stubborn.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll work at accepting my stubbornness. I will use it to learn what I am afraid of today.
TWELVESTEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Eleven (pgs 103-104)
This can be done, but it has hazards. We have seen A.A.’s ask with much earnestness and faith for God’s explicit guidance on matters ranging all the way from a shattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minor personal fault, like tardiness. Quite often, however, the thoughts that seem to come from God are not answers at all. They prove to be well-intentioned unconscious rationalizations. The A.A., or indeed any man, who tries to run his life rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand of God for replies, is a particularly disconcerting individual. To any questioning or criticism of his actions he instantly proffers his reliance upon prayer for guidance in all matters great or small. He may have forgotten the possibility that his own wishful thinking and the human tendency to rationalize have distorted his so-called guidance. With the best of intentions, he tends to force his own will into all sorts of situations and problems with the comfortable assurance that he is acting under God’s specific direction. Under such an illusion, he can of course create great havoc without in the least intending it.
We also fall into another similar temptation. We form ideas as to what we think God’s will is for other people. We say to ourselves, “This one ought to be cured of his fatal malady,” or “That one ought to be relieved of his emotional pain,” and we pray for these specific things. Such prayers, of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they are based upon a supposition that we know God’s will for the person for whom we pray. This means that side by side with an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount of presumption and conceit in us. It is A.A.’s experience that particularly in these cases we ought to pray that God’s will, whatever it is, be done or others as well as for ourselves.
In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and experience. All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances.
We discover that we do receive guidance for our lives to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give it to us on order and on our terms. Almost any experienced A.A. will tell how his affairs have taken remarkable and unexpected turns for the better as he tried to improve his conscious contact with God. He will also report that out of every season of grief or suffering, when the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered, and that finally, inescapably, the conviction came that God does “move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”
All this should be very encouraging news for those who recoil from prayer because they don’t believe in it, or because they feel themselves cut off from God’s help and direction. All of us, without exception, pass through times when we can pray only with the greatest exertion of will. Occasionally we go even further than this. We are seized with a rebellion so sickening that we simply won’t pray. When these things happen we should not think too ill of ourselves. We should simply resume prayer as soon as we can, doing what we know to be good for us.
Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no longer live in a completely hostile world. We are no longer lost and frightened and purposeless. The moment we catch even a glimpse of God’s will, the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life, we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the seeming evidence to the contrary that surrounds us in purely human affairs. We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.
Big Book
"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!"
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, To Wives, pg. 114
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