09/03

DAILY PONDERABLES

Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

Daily Reflections

BUILDING A NEW LIFE

We feel a man is unthinking when he says sobriety is enough.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 82

When I reflect on Step Nine, I see that physical sobriety must be enough for me. I need to remember the hopelessness I felt before I found sobriety, and how I was willing to go to any lengths for it. Physical sobriety is not enough for those around me, however, since I must see that God's gift is used to build a new life for my family and loved ones. Just as importantly, I must be available to help others who want the A.A. way of life.

I ask God to help me share the gift of sobriety so that its benefits may be shown to those I know and love.

From the book Daily Reflections

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

"Offer new prospects friendship and fellowship. Tell them that if they want to get well you will do anything to help. Burn the idea into the consciousness of new prospects that they can get well, regardless of anyone else. Job or no job, spouse or no spouse, they cannot stop drinking as long as they place dependence on other people ahead of dependence on God. Let no alcoholic say they cannot recover unless they have their family back. This just isn't so. Their recovery is not dependent upon other people. It is dependent on their own relationship to God." Can I recognize all excuses made by a prospect?

Meditation for the Day

The spiritual life depends upon the Unseen. To live the spiritual life, you must believe in the Unseen. Try not to lose the consciousness of God's spirit in you and in others. As a child in its mother's arms, stay sheltered in the understanding and love of God. God will relieve you of the weight of worry and care, misery and depression, want and woe, faintness and heartache, if you will let Him. Lift up your eyes from earth's troubles and view the glory of the unseen God. Each day try to see more good in people, more of the Unseen in the seen.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may rest and abide in the presence of the unseen God. I pray that I may leave my burdens in His care.

From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day

NA - Just for Today

Humility expressed by anonymity

Page 257

"Humility is a by-product that allows us to grow and develop in an atmosphere of freedom and removes the fear of becoming known by our employers, families, or friends as addicts. "

Basic Text, pp.75-76

Many of us may not have understood the idea that "anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions." We wondered how this could be. What does anonymity have to do with our spiritual life?

The answer is, plenty! By guarding and cherishing our anonymity, we earn spiritual rewards beyond comprehension. There is great virtue in doing something nice for someone and not telling anyone about it. By the same token, resisting the impulse to proudly announce our membership in NA to the world-in effect, asking everyone to acknowledge how wonderful we are-makes us value our recovery all the more.

Recovery is a gift that we've received from a Power greater than ourselves. Boasting about our recovery, as if it were our own doing, leads to prideful feelings and grandiosity. But keeping our anonymity leads to humility and feelings of gratitude. Recovery is its own reward; public acclaim can't make it any more valuable than it already is.

Just for Today: Recovery is its own reward; I don't need to have mine approved of publicly. I will maintain and cherish my anonymity.

From the book Just for Today

Thought for Today

"If you judge people, you have no

time to love them."

~Mother Teresa

An Amazing Analogy

Before the age of digital cameras there were cameras that used film. When the film had been used it was called negatives. We had to take it somewhere so it could be put in a solution and developed into pictures in living color.

We alcoholics and addicts are very similar to that film

Before we come into the program we are like “negatives”.

The program is the “solution” we steep ourselves in so we can “develop” into sober, happy, productive people able to see the full color of life and living.

(thanks Carli F.)

Bottom

Bottle in my left hand,

shovel in my right...

I'm digging perilous pit.

I've dug in so deep,

I don't see the light...

Maybe it's time that I quit?

Alone I sit in this piteous pit,

a decision I was to make...

Do I climb out from under,

or be buried in it?

How much more of this can I take?

A pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization...

There's only but a few paths to follow.

I've been given the gift of desperation...

Admitting defeat's hard to swallow.

I asked for His care and protection, soon a ladder appeared...

12 simple steps to make my connection,

it was time I faced all I feared.

I climbed the steps from this now propitious pit,

bottle and shovel I dropped...

You'll know when it's time when your bottom is hit,

the moment the digging has stopped.

Gordon R.

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

Skillful speech not only means that we pay attention to the words we speak and to their tone but also requires that our words reflect compassion and concern for others and that they help and heal, rather than wound and destroy.

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness"

Native American

"Once you have achieved this oneness, when you talk, God talks; when you act, God acts."

--Chuck Ross, LAKOTA

In my innermost self, I know this to be true. I know of this oneness. The more I am free of doubt, jealousy, judgment, selfishness, anger, the closer I am to this oneness. When I am right with the Creator, nothing can touch me. When I am right with the Creator I always say the right things. When I am right with the Creator, my thoughts are always good. When I am right with the Creator, my actions are always good.

Great Spirit, remove from me those things that block me from You. Allow me this day to experience the oneness.

Keep It Simple

You will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. . .

--- Alcoholics Anonymous

As we work the Steps, we fix our broken life. Many things in our new life have been painful. Our addiction to alcohol or drugs made it all worse. But if things hadn’t gotten so bad we might not have gotten into recovery.

We have changed so much! We have learned so much about life, our Higher Power, and ourselves in order to fix our lives. We can’t act like nothing in the past matters. It does matter, because it brought us to this new life. And is better already!

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me face my past and heal the wounds---my wounds and others’ wounds.

Action for the Day : Today, I’ll three things I’m ashamed of. How can I make amends for them when I work Step Nine? I will call my sponsor if I need help.

TWELVE STEPS

and

TWELVE TRADITIONS

Step Four (pgs 43-45)

We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows.

These people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.

But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar. Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves—two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an individual’s desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.

Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vainglory—that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite. We will be offended at A.A.’s suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety—first, last, and all the time—is the only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?

We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people—people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they’d treat us better, we’d be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable—that our resentments are the “right kind.” We aren’t the guilty ones. They are!