Daily Reflections
September 28
LOVE WITHOUT STRINGS
Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.
-ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 89
Sponsorship held two surprises for me. First, that my sponsees cared about me. What I had thought was gratitude was more like love. They wanted me to be happy, to grow and remain sober. Knowing how they felt kept me from drinking more than once. Second, I discovered that I was able to love someone else responsibly, with respectful and genuine concern for that person’s growth. Before that time, I had thought that my ability to care sincerely about another’s well-being had atrophied from lack of use. To learn that I can love, without greed or anxiety, has been one of the deepest gifts the program has given. Gratitude for that gift has kept me sober many times.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
September 28
A.A. Thought For The Day
For the past two months we have been studying passages and steps from the Big Book. Now why not read the book itself again? It is essential that the A.A. program become part of us. We must have its essentials at our finger tips. We cannot study the big book too much or too often. The more we read it and study it, the better equipped we are to think A.A., act A.A., and live A.A. We cannot know too much about the program. The chances are that we will never know enough. But we can make as much of it our own as possible. How much of the Big Book have I thoroughly mastered?
Meditation For The Day
We need to accept the difficulties and disciplines of life so as to fully share the common life of other people. Many things that we must accept in life are not to be taken so much as being necessary for us personally, as to be experienced in order that we may share in the sufferings and problems of humanity. We need sympathy and understanding. We must share many of the experiences of life, in order to understand and sympathize with others. Unless we have been through the same experiences, we cannot understand other people or their makeup well enough to be able to help them.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may accept everything that comes my way as part of life. I pray that I may make use of it in helping my fellow men.
Walk In Dry Places
September 28
The Role of self-sufficiency
Success
When AA was first launched, the ideal of the self made person was often exalted. Certain outstanding individuals seem to have achieved amazing success entirely by their own efforts. In the drive to be such a self made person, AA co-founder Bill W. was swept away in a torrent of alcoholic grandeur.
We know today that there’s no such thing as a self-made person. We all need each other, and at various times we would have been lost without assistance that was generously and freely given. Everyone has had such assistance at one time or another. WE are not entirely self-sufficient.
The true role of self-sufficiency is to use our talent and opportunities wisely and beneficially in cooperation with others. Our own success in whatever we do will be enhanced as we continue to acknowledge our need for others.
Throughout the day, there will be many times when I need the help of others, and many times when others will need my help. I will give and receive help gratefully.
Keep It Simple
September 28
Honesty is the backbone of our recovery program. Honesty opens us up. It breaks down the walls we had built around our secret world. Those walls made a prison for us. But all of that is now changed. We are free.
Honesty has made us wise. We aren’t sneaking drinks anymore. We don’t have a stash to protect.
People who didn’t trust us now depend on our honesty. People who worked hard to avoid us, now seek us out. Self-honesty is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You are truth. I pray that I may not turn away from truth. I will not lie. My life depends on honesty.
Action For the Day: For twenty or thirty minutes, I will think about how learning to be honest has changed my life.
The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope.
–Daniel BerriganUntil you value yourself, you won’t value your time.
Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
–M. Scott Peck“This above all; to thine own self be true.”
–William ShakespeareThe most important things in life aren’t things.
H = Help others develop their potential. The possibilities and rewards are endless.
E = Enlist people to help you. Having a support system improves your ability to get the results you want.
A = Action keeps you moving forward. Do a little bit every day and eventually you’ll get to your goal.
R = Reach deep inside to find your strength. It’s there if you are willing to be courageous.
T = Trust the process. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It takes time to reap the benefits.
–Carol GegnerLet there be more joy and laughter in your living.
–Eileen Caddy
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
September 28
MISTAKES
“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.”
– William Saroyan
Today I am able to learn from my mistakes because I can see that they really were mistakes! I was trying to play the game of life without a full deck. My big mistake in life was trying to drink alcohol like a non-alcoholic. I couldn’t do it.
Drugs do not think; they react. They always work, and for me they worked against me. Most of my failures in life stemmed from a fundamental misconception — alcoholics cannot drink like non-alcoholics! This I now accept. And in a strange way that is difficult to explain, I am a stronger person for having lived through my alcoholism. God has become more real, the world is more comprehensible, my life is more understandable because of the pain.
If a part of “goodness” is knowing that you are not perfect, then on a daily basis I am becoming a good person.
God, who has created a world in which there is pain and failure, help me to accept both as vehicles to wisdom.
Daily Inspiration
September 28
Allowing yourself to be less than perfect allows you to accomplish great things in small ways. Lord, may I remove the pressure I overwhelming place on myself and do what I can when I can.
When one door shuts, immediately begin looking for the others that are opening. Lord, thank You for Your unceasing care and generosity.
A Day At A Time
September 28
Reflection For The Day
Now that we’re free from our addictions, living life one day at a time, we can begin to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love. We can show kindness where we had shown none; we can take the time and initiative to be thoughtful, considerate and compassionate. Even with the people we dislike, we can at least try to be courteous, at times literally going out of our way to understand and help them. Just For Today, will I try to understand rather than be understood, being courteous and respectful to all people with whom I’m in contact?
Today I Pray
May I never forget my old sponge-like self, who soaked up every drop of affection and attention my family or friends could give me, until they were sapped dry. May I learn to be a giver, rather than a constant taker. May I practice offering interest, kindness, consideration and compassion until sensitivity to others becomes second nature for me.
Today I Will Remember
Giving is part of being.
One More Day
September 28
A positive, responsible person does not forget the past harm which may have been done because of earlier ignorance, thoughtlessness, or emotional limitations.
– Lewis F. Presnall
We’ve learned to or give those who we felt had done harm to us. Our pain diminished over time, and we were able to let go of our bad feelings.
We are much less accepting of our own errors. Years later we may continue to mercilessly judge ourselves for past mistakes. We can forgive ourselves by offering ourselves the same understanding we have offered those we love. As we move to a new, gentler way of looking at ourselves, we can accept the mistakes we’ve made in the past and even understand them in context of where we were at the time.
I can remember past mistakes I have made, but I will be gentle with myself when I see how far I have come.
One Day At A Time
September 28
Others
“Those who have learned by experience what physical and emotional pain and anguish mean are a community all over the world…One and all, they know the longing to be free from pain.”
–Albert Schweitzer
Whether we isolate or are on the go constantly, whether we’re in the disease or out of it, whether we’ve found all the Promises or we haven’t, we are bonded for a lifetime by the disease of our addiction.
I was alone until I found other compulsive eaters. Yes, I had a family and friends and relatives and doctors and church and careers, but I was emotionally alone with this intricate, enigmatic, hellhole of a disease. The moment I met and connected with other compulsive eaters, my “real” life began.
One Day at a Time …
I share what I have learned with those who haven’t. I give what I have to give, and I get so much more.
~ Mari
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
September 28
“Love is something that you can leave behind you when you die. It’s that powerful.”
–John (Fire) Lame Deer, ROSEBUD LAKOTA
The Old Ones say, love is all anyone needs. Love doesn’t go away nor can love be divided. Once you commit an act of love, you’ll find it continues. Love is like setting up dominoes one behind the other. Once you hit the first domino, it will touch the second one which will touch the third one and so on. Every love act or love thought has an affect on each person as well as touching the whole world. If you live a life filled with love, the results will affect your friends, relatives and other people, even after you go to the other side. So… Love.
My Creator, let me love. Let me put into action the love dominoes.
Journey to the Heart
September 28
Forgiveness Will Complete the Process
“Do visit Bryce canyon,” a man advised. “But do it later, after you’ve driven through the other parts of Utah. It’s like the icing on the cake.” So it is with forgiveness. It’s the icing on the cake.
Forgiveness is a simple word, but a difficult, complicated process. Forgiveness is also essential if we want to find happiness and joy.
To forgive too soon, before we’ve felt all we needed to feel along the way, is incomplete. Forgiveness based on denial won’t work. And not to forgive, after we’ve felt our emotions– our anger, rage, pain, and betrayal– will harden our hearts and keep us closed. We’ll have loose ends to tie up, an unfinished connection to our past. We’ll have unfinished business with others, even though we may not see them, speak to them, or consciously think about them any longer. We won’t be free, and neither will they.
Sometimes we need to seek forgiveness because we’ve tried everything else and nothing works to bring us back to peace. Sometimes forgiveness finds us, unexpectedly transforming our hearts, softening us, opening us, and renewing our hearts and our relationships.
Sometimes forgiveness surprises us because it’s the last thing we thought we would need to feel whole again. Forgiveness is often the completion of the process. It’s the icing on the cake.
Today’s Gift
September 28
One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts, tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
—George Sand
“We always go get a hot fudge sundae after the school choir concert,” the girl said. Her parents laughed because their daughter said always, and they had only gone to a school choir concert once. Then the parents realized that the girl really had a great idea.
“Yes,” the mother said, “we always get a sundae because we like to make up new traditions. We’ll have to be sure and do it tonight so we don’t let the tradition fall apart before it even gets started!”
They all laughed together and started debating which restaurant had the best hot fudge sundae.
We all need to have special traditions with our families. We need celebrations that have nothing to do with official holidays. Family holidays can mean so much more to us sometimes because they celebrate our shared experiences in life and become the source of happy memories for a lifetime.
What tradition can I start today?
Touchstones Meditations For Men
September 28
Life itself is the proper binge.
—Julia Child
The Twelve Steps are a suggested program of recovery, not a cure. We can follow them and live a healed life, but we never develop immunity to our addictions and codependency. We remain vulnerable to slips, binges, and a return to old behaviors. If that has happened to us, our first need is to find a way back to the program. A slip may speak the blatant truth we avoided before. A man’s complete honesty following a slip has sometimes been the way to renewed knowledge of his powerlessness. There is no value in feeling more shame and self-hate in the aftermath of a slip. We need to accept we are incomplete and imperfect human beings. Recovery will come, not from shame, but from honestly accepting our powerlessness and the help we need.
The promise of recovery in this program, a healed life, is just as available after a slip as it ever was. It takes absolute commitment, a willingness to face the pain and hardship. Then we are freed again to engage fully in the joy and the awe of life.
I ask that my compulsions and my weaknesses be lifted from me. I’m not able to cure myself, but I pray for help.
Daily TAO
September 28
COMMITMENT
Maiden plucks folk tune on steel strings,
Crickets chant like monks.
I’ve walked into autumnal contentment,
Yet a young boy seeks guidance.
One my be quire far along on the path, but if one meets a beginner who sincerely seeks guidance, then one should help without reservation. If such a beginner were to come to you, what would you say? This is what I said to someone today :
“The time of beginning is one of the most precious times of all. It can be very exciting and full of wonderful growth. The first thing to do is to make up your mind that you are going to go the distance.
“When I first began, I made a lifelong commitment. I determined that I would learn from my teacher for at least seven years. Now, it has been much longer than that, but the essential element is still the same: commitment.
“But commitment needs something else in order to be perpetuated. It needs discipline. This is the perseverance to keep on when things are tough. Adversity is life’s way of testing and perfecting a person. Without that, we would never develop character.
“Rice suffers when it is milled. Jade must suffer when it is polished. But what emerges is something special. If you want to be special too, then you have to be able to stick to things even when they are difficult.”
Commitment and discipline — these are two of the most precious words for those who would seek Tao.
Daily Zen
September 28
Calming the Mind
Too much knowledge
Leads to over-activity;
Better to calm the mind.
The more you consider,
The greater the loss;
Better to unify the mind.
– Shih Wang Ming (6th c)