DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
"OUR SIDE OF THE STREET"
We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, pp. 77-78
I made amends to my dad soon after I quit drinking. My words fell on deaf ears since I had blamed him for my troubles. Several months later I made amends to my dad again. This time I wrote a letter in which I did not blame him nor mention his faults. It worked, and at last I understood! My side of the street is all that I'm responsible for and --- thanks to God and A.A. --- it's clean for today.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
Another of the mottoes of A.A. is "Easy Does It." This means that we just go along in A.A. doing the best we can and not getting steamed up over problems that arise in A.A. or outside of it. We alcoholics are emotional people and we have gone to excess in almost everything we have done. We have not been moderate in many things. We have not known how to relax. Faith in a Higher Power can help us to learn to take it easy. We are not running the world. I am only one among many. We are resolved to live normal, regular lives. From our A.A. experience we learn that "easy does it." Have I Learned to take it easy?
Meditation for the Day
"The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms." Sheltering arms express the loving protection of God's spirit. Human beings, in their troubles and difficulties, need nothing so much as a refuge, a place to relax where they can lay down their burdens and get relief from cares. Say to yourself: "God is my refuge." Say it until its truth sinks into your very soul. Say it until you know it and are sure of it. Nothing can seriously upset you or make you afraid, if God is truly your refuge.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may go each day to God as a refuge until fear goes and peace and security come. I pray that I may feel deeply secure in the Haven of His spirit.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Resentment and forgiveness
Page 261
"Where there has been wrong, the program teaches us the spirit of forgiveness. "
Basic Text, p.12
In NA, we begin to interact with the world around us. We no longer live in isolation. But freedom from isolation has its price: The more we interact with people, the more often we'll find someone stepping on our toes. And such are the circumstances in which resentments are often born.
Resentments, justified or not, are dangerous to our ongoing recovery. The longer we harbor resentments, the more bitter they become, eventually poisoning us. To stay clean, we must find the capacity to let go of our resentments, the capacity to forgive. We first develop this capacity in working Steps Eight and Nine, and we keep it alive by regularly taking the Tenth Step.
Sometimes when we are unwilling to forgive, it helps to remember that we, too, may someday require another person's forgiveness. Haven't we all, at one time or another, done something that we deeply regretted? And aren't we healed in some measure when others accept our sincere amends?
An attitude of forgiveness is a little easier to develop when we remember that we are all doing the very best we can. And someday we, too, will need forgiveness.
Just for Today: I will let go of my resentments. Today, if I am wronged, I will practice forgiveness, knowing that I need forgiveness myself.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"Each morning when I open my eyes I say to
myself: I, not events, have the power to make
me happy or unhappy today. I can choose
which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow
hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today,
and I'm going to be happy in it."
--Groucho Marx
Expectations = premeditated resentments
Emotional Pain
(Excerpted From The AA Grapevine February 1987
My understanding of emotional pain today is that it is caused by unfulfilled expectations.
Not the expectations I think others may have of me, but the expectations I have of myself and others.
Another person's expectations of me will not cause me to experience emotional pain.
I will not hurt because I am unable to meet someone else's expectations of me; I will hurt if I am unable to meet my own expectations of myself in my efforts to please others.
If others don't act or react the way I would like them to, I can't blame them. I have to look at me. What had I been expecting?
Unfulfilled expectations are only shattered dreams, and what are dreams but images of realities?
Images in our minds of how we would like our realities to be or to become.
We encounter problems when the images in our own minds do not coincide with the images in the minds of those we are close to, or those to whom we would like to be close.
Their images usually do not agree with our own, and in many instances do not even include us.
(thanks Jim C.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
Not thinking about anything is zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the Buddha...Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
-Bodhidharma
Native American
"Education is the new weapon of Indian people."
--Eddie Box, SOUTHERN UTE
People have the ability to adapt. In these modern times we must get educated so the people don't lose. We need lawyers, doctors, nurses, foresters, scientists, educators, carpenters, welders. These skills are needed to help the people. While we are learning, we need to remember to keep the culture, learn the dances, sing the songs, learn the language and maintain the Red Road for future generations.
Great Spirit, let my education never lack the meaning and value of spirituality.
Keep It Simple
A liar needs a good memory. --- Quintilian
Many of us wasted a lot of energy trying to keep track of whom we had told what. For example, we’d tell our boss one story and our family another. Then we’d work hard to make sure they never met.
How wonderful to be done with that way of life! We now have a life based on honestly. We can now be ourselves where we go.
Our program tell us that to get sober, we must live a life of strict honesty. Honesty is our rule to get and stay sober. Life is much more simple this way. We can relax and think of the happy details of life.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to live honestly. Being honest brings me closer to You. Help me become closer to You.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll read the first three pages of Chapter Five in Alcoholics Anonymous. Here, I’ll learn why honesty is so important to my recovery.
TWELVE STEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Four (pgs 51-53)
The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.
Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.
But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.
Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with. Because our surface record hasn’t looked too bad, we have frequently been abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these selfsame defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they have finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.
Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal. It will be the first tangible evidence of our complete willingness to move forward.
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Big Book
"...the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception,
will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self
knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to
smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us
out of bitter experience."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, More About Alcoholism, pg. 39~
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