Daily Reflections
August 22
SEEKING EMOTIONAL STABILITY, p.243
When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care.
—12 & 12, p.116
All my life I depended on people for my emotional needs and security, but today I cannot live that way anymore. By the grace of God, I have admitted my powerlessness over people, places and things. I had been a real “people addict”; wherever I went there had to be someone who would pay some kind of attention to me. It was the kind of attitude that could only get worse, because the more I depended on others and demanded attention, the less I received. I have given up believing that any human power can relieve me of that empty feeling. Although I remain a fragile human being who needs to work A.A.’s Steps to keep this particular principle before my personality, it is only a loving God who can give me inner peace and emotional stability.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
August 22
A.A. Thought For The Day
“Those who do not recover are people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover, if they have the capacity to be honest.” Am I completely honest with myself and with other people?
Meditation For The Day
You can make use of your mistakes, failures, losses, and sufferings. It is not what happens to you so much as what use you make of it. Take your sufferings, difficulties, and hardships and make use of them to help some unfortunate soul who is faced with the same troubles. Then something good will come out of your suffering and the world will be a better place because of it. The good you do each day will live on, after the trouble and distress have gone, after the difficulty and the pain have passed away.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may make good use of my mistakes and failures. I pray that some good may result from my painful experiences.
As Bill Sees It
August 22
Everyday Living, p. 233
The A.A. emphasis on personal inventory is heavy because a great many of us have never really acquired the habit of accurate self-appraisal.
Once this heavy practice has become a habit, it will prove so interesting and profitable that the time it takes won’t be missed. For these minutes and often hours spent in self-examination are bound to make all the other hours of our day better and happier. At length, our inventories become a necessity of everyday living, rather than something unusual or set apart.
12 & 12, pp. 89-90
Walk In Dry Places
August 22
Whose experience is important?
Sharing.
In the Twelve Step movement, we often feature outstanding speakers at large anniversary meetings. In some ways, this makes celebrities of them….. their personal stories seem to be deemed more important that those of others. We should accept such large meetings for what they are: Part entertainment, part socialization, and part celebration. The real work of our fellowship, however, lies in ordinary, continuous activity in the groups.
The most important experience to be shared is not the dramatic or humorous account heard at the large meeting. What really works to keep us sober is the experience we share with each other. This can survive long after the powerful speech is forgotten.
I’ll remember today that I can find help and growth in talking with different people I meet at regular meetings.
Keep It Simple
August 22
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what we doesn’t want to hear.
—Dick Cavett
We want only to hear good things. That we’re nice people. That our loved ones are healthy.
That we did a good job. We don’t want to hear that anyone is angry with us, or that we made a mistake. We don’t want to hear about illness or troubles.
But life isn’t just happy news. Bad things happen. We can’t change that. As we live our recovery program, we learn to handle the addiction. We choose the path of life. We need to know all the news, good, and bad. Then we can deal with life as it really is.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me listen—even when I don’t want to. Gently help me deal with both the good and bad. All the help I need is mine for the asking.
Action for the Day: I will ask my sponsor and three friends to tell me about my blind spots.
Each Day Is A New Beginning
August 22
We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep.
—Sue Atchley Ebaugh
Harboring parts of our inner selves, fearing what others would think if they knew, creates the barriers that keep us separate, feeling different, certain of our inadequacies.
Secrets are burdens, and they weigh heavily on us, so heavily. Carrying secrets makes impossible the attainment of serenity – that which we strive for daily. Abstinence alone is not enough. It must come first, but it’s not enough by itself. It can’t guarantee that we’ll find the serenity we seek.
This program of recovery offers self-assurance, happiness, spiritual well-being, but there’s work to be done. Many steps to be taken. And one of these is total self-disclosure. It’s risky, it’s humbling, and it’s necessary.
When we tell others who we really are, it opens the door for them to share likewise. And when they do, we become bonded. We accept their imperfections and love them for them. And they love us for ours. Our struggles to be perfect, our self-denigration because we aren’t, only exaggerates even more the secrets that keep us sick.
Our tarnished selves are lovable; secrets are great equalizers when shared. We need to feel our oneness, our sameness with other women.
Opportunities to share my secrets will present themselves today. I will be courageous.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
August 22
Step Twelve – “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.”
Upon entering A.A., these attitudes were sharply reversed, often going much too far in the opposite direction. The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic. There simply wouldn’t be time, we thought, to rebuild our shattered fortunes. How could we ever take care of those awful debts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and set something by for old age? Financial importance was no longer our principal aim; we now clamored for material security. Even when we were well reestablished in our business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us. This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again. Complete financial security we must have–or else. We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.’s who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that.
pp. 120-121
“Ask a question and you’re a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you’re a fool for the rest of your life.”
—Chinese Proverb
“Giving is the highest expression of our power.”
—Vivian Greene
“What lies before us and what lies behind us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Holding resentment is like eating poison and then waiting for the other person to keel over.” –Unknown “Would you rather be right, or happy?”
—A Course in Miracles
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden, where the flowers are all dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
—Oscar Wilde
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
August 22
INDIFFERENCE
“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures in not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. That’s the essence of inhumanity.”
—George Bernard Shaw
For years I was indifferent to family and friends. And the tragedy was that because of my alcoholism I did not know it! For too long I was unaware of my disease and its multiple implications.
Today I am not indifferent. Spirituality teaches me that I am not a spectator but a participant. I am involved in my life and, ultimately, in the lives of others. Today I seek to practice the principles of sobriety in every area of my life. I not only seek to be sober on a daily basis, but I also seek to be honest, open and tolerant with other people.
The spiritual goal of sobriety and abstinence has placed me at the center of the universe and I know today that I make a difference to my fellow man.
Remove from me all attitudes of indifference and apathy. Make me a worthy steward in Your vineyard.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
August 22
“When life is too good, we think too highly of ourselves and our blessings. Then we decide we are the wisest and the favored ones, and we don’t think we need Wakan-Tanka and the Helpers anymore.”
—Fools Crow, LAKOTA
It is sometimes easy to get off track when times are good. We start to take the credit and start to think we are in control. We start to think we are smart. Then we quit praying or pray only with lip service. We say the words but don’t mean them.
Sometimes our head is our greatest enemy. We start acting like a foolish child. We must develop the discipline to be humble during the good times. We need to remember how honorable it is each day to come into the presence of the Creator. How happy we should be to talk to the Grandfathers, to have the choice to start each day on the Sacred Spot – our place of communion with the Great Spirit.
Oh Great Spirit, first let me thank You for the honor of talking to You today. To have the insight of Your love, that only You can love me when I don’t deserve to be loved. Let me be reminded to talk to You all day long.
One Day At A Time
August 22, 2011
PREPARING
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
—John Wooden
Every morning I make a decision. I decide to prepare for a day of recovery, or I decide to not prepare for a day of recovery. It comes as no surprise that on the days I prepare I do better.
I have to take responsibility for my decisions, even my indecision. If I do nothing to help myself today, I have no one to blame but myself. If nothing else, I can take five minutes in the morning to invite my Higher Power into my life.
One day at a time …
I will prepare for a good day today. I will take responsibility for my recovery.
~ Q
Today’s Gift
August 22
… sparrow, your message is clear: it is not too late for my singing.
—Tess Gallagher
There was once a mother who loved to hang the laundry out on the clothesline in the backyard. Her baby crawled through the sheets and towels that almost touched the grass. The baby didn’t talk yet, so nobody knew what she was thinking.
Ten years later, the baby, twelve years old, told her that her happiest memory of childhood was playing in her “playhouse” of laundry on the line. She remembered thinking that her mother hung the sheets out there just so she could play in the grass and wind and sun!
How wonderful to be living in a world where we can accidentally make people happy! This knowledge is a miraculous gift, and can give us reason to do every task well and with love, because it may be remembered for a lifetime by someone near to us.
What happy memory do I have of childhood?
Touchstones Meditations For Men
August 22
The irony of your present eating habits is that while you fear missing a meal, you aren’t fully aware of the meals you do eat.
—Dan Millman
Many of us have had problems with eating. Some of us eat compulsively. We may have become overly focused on diet or abused ourselves by mindlessly indulging in unhealthy eating. We all grow by becoming more aware of our relationship to food. Our spiritual life is nourished by fully experiencing all our sensations concerning food.
We can begin with awareness of our empty stomachs and take pleasure in feeling hungry. We can give time to eating and use a meal as a time for relationships. Taking pleasure in the preparation of healthy food, making it look attractive, smelling the aromas, tasting the flavors, and enjoying the fullness and renewed energy after eating are all ways of growing spiritually as we become healthier in our use of food.
Today, I will take pleasure as I eat. I will make room in my life for healthy nourishment of body and spirit.
Daily TAO
August 22
Spider
Mind in the center
Radiates to eight legs,
Creating a supreme web
To sift Tao.
A spider is a perfect creature of Tao. Its body is an elegant expression of its mind; It spins beautiful threads, and its legs are exactly suited to create and walk its web. From its center, a spider radiates its world out with a spare economy.
A Spider’s posture in regard to Tao is to set up a pattern. Its mind determines this pattern. It realizes the flow of Tao and does nothing to interfere with it. It simply creates its pattern and waits for Tao to bring it sustenance. That which comes to it, it accepts. That which does not come to it is not its concern.
Once its web is established, a spider does not think of expanding unnaturally. It does not make war upon its neighbors, it does not go for adventures in other countries, it does not try to fly to the moon, it does not build factories, it does not try to enslave others, it does not try to be intellectual. It is simply who it is and is content with that.
Daily Zen
August 22
The water of the mind, how clear it is!
Gazing at it, the boundaries are invisible.
But as soon as even a slight thought arises,
Ten thousand images crowd it.
Attach to them and they become real,
Be carried by them, and it will be difficult to return.
How painful to see a person trapped
In the ten-fold delusions.
—Ryokan (1758-1831)