DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
ACCEPTANCE
We admitted we couldn't lick alcohol with our own remaining resources, and so we accepted the further fact that dependence upon a Higher Power (if only our A.A. group) could do this hitherto impossible job. The moment we were able to accept these facts fully, our release from the alcohol compulsion had begun.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 109
Freedom came to me only with my acceptance that I could turn my will and my life over to the care of my Higher Power, whom I call God. Serenity seeped into the chaos of my life when I accepted that what I was going through was life, and that God would help me through my difficulties―and much more, as well. Since then, He has helped me through all my difficulties! When I accept situations as they are, not as I wish them to be, then I can begin to grow and have serenity and peace of mind.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
Let us continue with Steps Two, Three, and Eleven. We must turn to a Higher Power for help, because we are helpless ourselves. When we put our drink problem in God's hands and leave it there, we have made the most important decision of our lives. >From then on, we trust God for the strength to keep sober. This takes us off the center of the universe and allows us to transfer our problems to a Power outside ourselves. By prayer and meditation, we seek to improve our conscious contact with God. We try to live each day the way we believe God wants us to live. Am I trusting God for the strength to stay sober?
Meditation for the Day
"These things have I spoken unto you, that your joy may be full." Even a partial realization of the spiritual life brings much joy. You feel at home in the world when you are in touch with the Divine Spirit of the universe. Spiritual experience brings a definite satisfaction. Search for the real meaning of life by following spiritual laws. God wants you to have spiritual success and He intends that you have it. If you live your life as much as possible according to spiritual laws, you can expect your share of joy and peace, satisfaction and success.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I will find happiness in doing the right thing. I pray that I will find satisfaction in obeying spiritual laws.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Fellowship
"In NA, our joys are multiplied by sharing good days; our sorrows are lessened by sharing the bad. For the first time in our lives, we don't have to experience anything alone."
IP No.16, "For the Newcomer"
When we practice using the steps and the other tools of our program to work through our hardships, we become able to take pleasure in the joys of living clean. But our joys pass all too quickly if we don't share them with others, while hardships borne alone may be long in passing. In the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, we often multiply our joys and divide our burdens by sharing them with one another.
We addicts experience pleasures in recovery that, sometimes, only another addict can appreciate. Fellow members understand when we tell them of the pride we take today in fulfilling commitments, the warmth we feel in mending damaged relationships, the relief we experience in not having to use drugs to make it through the day. When we share these experiences with recovering addicts and they respond with similar stories, our joy is multiplied. The same principle applies to the challenges we encounter as recovering addicts. By sharing our challenges and allowing other NA members to share their strength with us, our load is lightened.
The fellowship we have in Narcotics Anonymous is precious. Sharing together, we enhance the joys and diminish the burdens of life in recovery.
Just for today: I will share my joys and my burdens with other recovering addicts. I will also share in theirs. I am grateful for the strong bonds of fellowship in Narcotics Anonymous.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
--Dale Carnegie
Alcohol 'ism' ISM: 'I Sponsor Myself'
"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. "
–Zig Ziglar (thanks Stan F.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
If you keep thinking "That man has abused me," holding it as a much-cherished grievance, your anger will never be allayed. If you can put down that fury-inducing thought, your anger will lessen. Fury will never end fury, it will just ricochet on and on. Only putting it down will end such an abysmal state.
-Sunnata Vagga
Native American
"I am building myself. There are many roots. I plant, I pick, I prune. I consume."
--Wendy Rose, HOPI/MIWOK
The most sacred thing on this Mother Earth is life. My life on this earth is governed by God's laws, principles and spiritual values. These things are my roots. Let me see Your gifts of growing and becoming a spiritual warrior. Make my strength based on values - spiritual values; on principles and laws, the laws of God that really run the universe. We need to realize the seeds we plant in the spring will be what shows up in our summer season of growth and will be the fruits that we will harvest in our fall season. We really have a lot to do with what shows up in our lives.
Great Spirit, let my seed that I plant today be based on values that will make You pleased with my selection.
Keep It Simple
When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned. Alcoholics Anonymous
We can’t control the present by looking into the future. We can only look back at the past. The past can teach us how to get more out of the present. But the past is to be learned from, not to be judged.
As we look back, we see the troubles caused by addiction. But we also see recovery. We see how our lives are better. We see our Higher Power’s work in our lives. If we honestly look at our past, we learn.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me learn from the past. With Your help, I’ll stop judging my past, just as I wouldn’t judge those who have gone before me.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll remember my life before I got sober. Do I still hang on to attitudes or behaviors that might make me start to use alcohol and other drugs again?
TWELVE STEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Seven (pgs 75-76)
Then, in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets. We heard story after story of how humility had brought strength out of weakness. In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.
During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God. And this was true whether we had been believers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now the words “Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works” began to carry bright promise and meaning.
We saw we needn’t always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”
As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.’s inquire once more just what our deeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows. We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives. We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands. The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.
The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
Big Book
"In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk,
feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry,
depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning
we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was
insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now
see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead or casually,
there was little serious or effective thought during the period of
premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, More About Alcoholism, pg. 37~