DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
A NECESSARY PRUNING
. . . we know that the pains of drinking had to come before sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 94
I love spending time in my garden feeding and pruning my beautiful flowers. One day, as I was busily snipping away, a neighbor stopped by. She commented, "Oh! You plants are so beautiful, it seem so much a shames to cut them back." I replied, "I know how you feel, but the excess must be removed so they can grow stronger and healthier." Later I thought that perhaps my plants feel pain, but God and I know it's part of the plan and I've seen the results. I was quickly reminded of my precious A.A. program and how we all grow through the pain. I ask God to prune me when it's time, so I can grow.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
Am I critical of other members of A.A. or of new prospects? Do I ever say about other members: "I don't think they're sincere, I think they're bluffing, or I think they're taking a few drinks on the quiet?" Do I realize that my doubtful and skeptical attitude is hurting those members, if only in my attitude toward them, which they cannot help sensing? Do I say about new prospects: "They'll never make the program," or do I say: "They'll only last a few months"? If I take this attitude, I am unconsciously hurting those prospects' chances. Is my attitude always constructive and never destructive?
Meditation for the Day
To be attracted toward God and a better life, you must be spirit-guided. There is wonderful illumination of thought given to those who are spirit-guided. To those who are material-guided, there is nothing in God or a finer life to appeal to them or to attract them. But to those who are spirit-guided there is strength and peace and calm to be found in communion with an Unseen Lord. To those who believe in this God they cannot see but whose power they can feel, life has a meaning and purpose. They are children of the Unseen Lord, and all human beings are their brothers and sisters.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may be spirit-guided. I pray that I may feel God's presence and power in my life.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Thirty-Day Wonder
"When we first begin to enjoy relief from our addiction, we run the risk of assuming control of our lives again. We forget the agony and pain that we have known."
Basic Text p.48
Many of us have been "thirty-day wonders." We were desperate and dying when we showed up at our first NA meeting. We identified with the addicts we met there and the message they shared. With their support, we were finally able to stop using and catch a free breath. For the first time in a long, long time, we felt at home. Overnight, our lives were transformed; we walked, talked, ate, drank, slept, and dreamed Narcotics Anonymous.
Then, Narcotics Anonymous lost its novelty. Meetings that had been a thrill became monotonous. Our wonderful NA friends became bores; their uplifting NA talk, drivel. When our former friends called, inviting us back for some of the old fun, we kissed our recovery goodbye.
Sooner or later, we made our way back to the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous. Nothing had changed out there, we'd discovered - not us, not our friends, not the drugs, not anything. If anything, it had gotten worse than ever. True, NA meetings may not be a laugh riot, and our NA friends may not be spiritual giants. But there's a power in the meetings, a common bond among the members, a life to the program that we cant do without. Today, our recovery is more than just a fad - it's a way of life. We're going to practice living our program like our lives depend on it, because they do.
Just for today: I'm no "thirty-day wonder." The NA way is my way of life, and I'm here for the duration.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
" As long as I can get my resentments out of the way God will teach me something new today. "
Learn to be ...what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace
all that you are not.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel
If gratitude's an open store
where all my wages spent,
And hearts aligned in perfect time
to let God's glory in,
Then heaven appears here and now
no matter where you are,
Cause in the end the love you spend
is all you'll ever own.
Angie M.
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Let us rise up and be thankful,
for if we didn’t learn a lot today,
at least we learned a little,
and if we didn’t learn a little,
at least we didn’t get sick,
and if we got sick,
at least we didn’t die;
so, let us be thankful.
-The Buddha
Native American
"Search for the truth. Indian values teach the holistic approach to the use of technology for mankind's good."
--Al Qoyawayma, HOPI
The Great Spirit had given us certain values to live by. If we learn to think in harmony with these values such as respect, love, patience, tolerance, commitment, trust, etc., we cannot get off track. No matter what we do, we will always be in harmony. For example, if we are respectful, then we will respect the earth, our children, our women, our men and ourselves. Indian values help us walk under the guidance of the Great Spirit.
My Creator, today I search for the truth, Your truth. Please let me see it.
Keep It Simple
Your three best doctors are faith, time, and patience. --- From a fortune cookie
Only a short time ago, we were very sick. Getting sober made us so much better. At first, when we stopped drinking and using other drugs, we thought we were fixed. Then we began to see that we were not all that well.
No doctor can fix us. To get well, we need to keep living by the Twelve Steps and the slogans of our program. We need to keep on trusting that our Higher Power will heal us. One Day at a Time, day after day, we get stronger and happier. And it never has to stop. Each day, we know ourselves a little better.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You are my best doctor. Help me remember that.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll do what the “doctor” suggests. I will talk with my sponsor about Step Ten today.
TWELVESTEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Twelve (pgs 105-108)
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
THE joy of living is the theme of A.A.’s Twelfth Step, and action is its key word. Here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety. When the Twelfth Step is seen in its full implication, it is really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it.
Our Twelfth Step also says that as a result of practicing all the Steps, we have each found something called a spiritual awakening. To new A.A.’s, this often seems like a very dubious and improbable state of affairs. “What do you mean when you talk about a ‘spiritual awakening’?” they ask.
Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. And these things which they have in common are not too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, he has made himself ready to receive it.
A.A.’s manner of making ready to receive this gift lies in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program. So let’s consider briefly what we have been trying to do up to this point:
Step One showed us an amazing paradox: We found that we were totally unable to be rid of the alcohol obsession until we first admitted that we were powerless over it. In Step Two we saw that since we could not restore ourselves to sanity, some Higher Power must necessarily do so if we were to survive. Consequently, in Step Three we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. For the time being, we who were atheist or agnostic discovered that our own group, or A.A. as a whole, would suffice as a higher power. Beginning with Step Four, we commenced to search out the things in ourselves which had brought us to physical, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory. Looking at Step Five, we decided that an inventory, taken alone, wouldn’t be enough. We knew we would have to quit the deadly business of living alone with our conflicts, and in honesty confide these to God and another human being. At Step Six, many of us balked—for the practical reason that we did not wish to have all our defects of character removed, because we still loved some of them too much. Yet we knew we had to make a settlement with the fundamental principle of Step Six. So we decided that while we still had some flaws of character that we could not yet relinquish, we ought nevertheless to quit our stubborn, rebellious hanging on to them. We said to ourselves, “This I cannot do today, perhaps, but I can stop crying out ‘No, never!’” Then, in Step Seven, we humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings such as He could or would under the conditions of the day we asked. In Step Eight, we continued our house-cleaning, for we saw that we were not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with people and situations in the world in which we lived. We had to begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we had harmed and became willing to set things right. We followed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to those concerned, except when it would injure them or other people. By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis for daily living, and we keenly realized that we would need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly. In Step Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us to sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace of mind in a sorely troubled world, then such a Higher Power was worth knowing better, by as direct contact as possible. The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found, did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle, there now was a river which led to sure power and safe guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to understand Him.
Big Book
"Now we go out to our fellows and repair the damage done in the
past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out
of our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves. If we
haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. Remember it was
agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over
alcohol."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg.76~
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