DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
EXACTLY ALIKE
Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 89
A man came to the meeting drunk, interrupted the speakers, stood up and took his shirt off, staggered loudly back and forth for coffee, demanded to talk, and eventually called the group's secretary an unquotable name and walked out. I was glad he was there—once again I saw what he had been like. But I also saw what I still am, and what I still could be. I don't have to be drunk to want to be the exception and the center of attention. I have often felt abused and responded abusively when I was simply being treated as a garden variety human being. The more the man tried to insist he was different, the more I realized that he and I were exactly alike.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
Having got this far, shall we pause and ask ourselves some searching questions? We need to check up on ourselves periodically. Just how good an A.A. am I? Am I attending meetings regularly? Am I doing my share to carry the load? When there is something to be done, do I volunteer? Do I speak at meetings when asked, no matter how nervous I am? Do I accept each opportunity to do twelfth-step work as a challenge? Do I give freely of my time and money? Am I trying to spread A.A. wherever I go? Is my daily life a demonstration of A.A. principles? Am I a good A.A.?
Meditation for the Day
How do I get strength to be effective and to accept responsibility? By asking the Higher Power for the strength I need each day. It has been proved in countless lives that for every day I live, the necessary power shall be given me. I must face each challenge that comes to me during the day, sure that God will give me the strength to face it. For every task that is given me, there is also given me all the power necessary for the performance of that task. I do not need to hold back.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may accept every task as a challenge. I know I cannot wholly fail if God is with me.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
Just For Today
"When we stop living in the here and now, our problems become magnified unreasonably."
Basic Text, p.96
"Just for today" - it's a comforting thought. If we try to live in the past, we may find ourselves torn by painful, disquieting memories. The lessons of our using are not the teachers we seek for recovery. Living in tomorrow means moving in with fear.
We cannot see the shape of the secret future, and uncertainty brings worry. Our lives look overwhelming when we lose the focus of today.
Living in the moment offers freedom. In this moment, we know that we are safe. We are not using, and we have everything we need. What's more, life is happening in the here and now. The past is gone and the future has yet to arrive; our worrying won't change any of it. Today, we can enjoy our recovery, this very minute.
Just for today: I will stay in the here and now. Today - this moment - I am free.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
~Abraham Lincoln
"From what we get, we can make a living;
what we give, however, makes a life. "
--Arthur Ashe
“There is no respect for others without humility in one’s self.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel (thanks Stan F.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
The pleasure and joy that arise in dependence on the eye: this is the gratification in the eye. That the eye is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change: this is the danger in the eye. The removal and abandonment of desire and lust from the eye: this is the escape from the eye.
- Buddha, "The Connected Discourses of the Buddha"
Native American
"So I prayed, but I had to pray from my heart. All of my concentration and thoughts went from my head to my heart. All of my senses - hearing, smell, taste, and feeling - were connected to my heart."
--Wallace Black Elk, LAKOTA
The heart is the gateway to the Unseen World, to the Spirit World. It takes real concentration to do this. To connect to our own heart is also a mental state. It starts in the head and transitions to the heart. This mental state is our inner stillness. Be still and know. This place of the heart is very joyous and peaceful. It is this place that we become one with God, our Creator.
Great Spirit, teach me to be a heart warrior.
Keep It Simple
Al didn’t smile for forty years. You’ve got to admire a man like that.
From the TV show, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”
Remember how we used to live? We were always trying to cover up some lie or mistake.
We were all like Al. Our energy was going into our illness, not into living.
Gratitude is the key word in the program. Gratitude is being thankful for the getting to know our Higher Power. Remember what it was like to not smile for all those years?
Recovery has given us back our smiles. What a relief! We can relax and enjoy our new life.
Prayer for the Day: I pray that I’ll always remember what is was like when I was using. I pray that I’ll not take my recovery for granted. I prayer for gratitude.
Action For the Day: I will list all the things the program and recovery have given me. I will smile about them today.
TWELVESTEPS
and
TWELVE TRADITIONS
Step Eleven (pgs 95-97)
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
PRAYER and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God.
We A.A.’s are active folk, enjoying the satisfactions of dealing with the realities of life, usually for the first time in our lives, and strenuously trying to help the next alcoholic who comes along. So it isn’t surprising that we often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really necessary. To be sure, we feel it is something that might help us to meet an occasional emergency, but at first many of us are apt to regard it as a somewhat mysterious skill of clergymen, from which we may hope to get a secondhand benefit. Or perhaps we don’t believe in these things at all.
To certain newcomers and to those one-time agnostics who still cling to the A.A. group as their higher power, claims for the power of prayer may, despite all the logic and experience in proof of it, still be unconvincing or quite objectionable. Those of us who once felt this way can certainly understand and sympathize. We well remember how something deep inside us kept rebelling against the idea of bowing before any God. Many of us had strong logic, too, which “proved” there was no God whatever. What about all the accidents, sickness, cruelty, and injustice in the world? What about all those unhappy lives which were the direct result of unfortunate birth and uncontrollable circumstances? Surely there could be no justice in this scheme of things, and therefore no God at all.
Sometimes we took a slightly different tack. Sure, we said to ourselves, the hen probably did come before the egg. No doubt the universe had a “first cause” of some sort, the God of the Atom, maybe, hot and cold by turns. But certainly there wasn’t any evidence of a God who knew or cared about human beings. We liked A.A. all right, and were quick to say that it had done miracles. But we recoiled from meditation and prayer as obstinately as the scientist who refused to perform a certain experiment lest it prove his pet theory wrong. Of course we finally did experiment, and when unexpected results followed, we felt different; in fact we knew different; and so we were sold on meditation and prayer. And that, we have found, can happen to anybody who tries. It has been well said that “almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.
Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God’s reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere of His grace. To an amazing extent the facts of A.A. life confirm this ageless truth.
Big Book
"Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity
from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others, pg. 89~
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