Daily Reflections
January 11
THE 100% STEP
“Only Step One, where we made the 100% admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection.”
—TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 68
Long before I was able to obtain sobriety in A.A., I knew without a doubt that alcohol was killing me, yet even with this knowledge, I was unable to stop drinking. So, when faced with Step One, I found it easy to admit that I lacked the power to not drink. But was my life unmanageable? Never! Five months after coming into A.A., I was drinking again and wondered why.
Later on, back in A.A. and smarting from my wounds, I learned that Step One is the only Step that can be taken 100%. And that the only way to take it 100% is to take 100% of the Step. That was many 24 hours ago, and I haven’t had to take Step One again.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
January 11
A.A. Thought For The Day
When we were drinking, most of us never thought of helping others. We liked to buy drinks for people, because that made us feel like bigshots. But we only used others for our own pleasure. To really go out and try to help somebody who needed help never occurred to us. To us, helping others looked like a sucker’s game. But when we came into A.A., we began to try to help others. And we found out that helping others made us happy and also helped us to stay sober. Have I learned that there is happiness in helping others?
Meditation For The Day
I will pray only for strength and that God’s will be done. I will use God’s unlimited store of strength for my needs. I will seek God’s will for me. I will strive for consciousness of God’s presence, for He is the light of the world. I have become a pilgrim, who needs only marching orders and strength and guidance for this day.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may seek God’s guidance day by day. I pray that I may strive to abide in God’s presence.
Walk In Dry Places
January 11
BEING DOWN
Overcoming Depression
It would be difficult to find a group of people more subject to mood swings than alcoholics. While we were drinking, most of us were not perceptive enough to realize most of us were not perceptive enough to realize that our moods rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern. We did not mind being “up,” but it distressed us greatly when we were “down.” Alcohol was the “upper” most of us took when we were depressed.
In sobriety, there is usually no chemical “upper” that’s safe to take for any of our down moods. Some of us have been helped by vitamins or by inspirational reading. But most of us simply have to RIDE OUT our down moods, doing the best we can until things are on the upswing again. In spite of being down, we do not have to drink.
Whatever the causes of mood swings, we can live with them, and we do not need any mood-altering drugs to see us through a down period. Our depression will pass, and we might even notice its hold lessening as we continue to grow in sobriety.
I will accept my feelings today, and I will not be disturbed if my mood seems somewhat low. This, too, will pass away.
Keep It Simple
January 11
“If there is a harder way of doing something, someone will find it.”
—Ralph E. Ross
When we used alcohol or other drugs, we did most things the hard way. We could turn a simple task into a day-long project. We could turn a simple problem into an argument. We were creative giants in doing things the hard way! we need to change this. We deserve easier lives. It’s okay to take the smooth road .
In our program, we have slogans for this: Keep It Simple, Let Go and Let God, First Things First, and Easy Does It. These slogans remind us that it’s okay to live with as little trouble as possible.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, show me how to live a simple life. I don’t have to do everything the hard way if I listen better to You.
Action for the Day: I’ll list three or four things I do that makes my life harder than it needs to be. I’ll share them with a friend.
“Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson“All I need to know I learned from my cat.”
—Suzy Becker“Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
—Kahlil Gibran“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”
—Henry Drummond
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
January 11
PHILOSOPHY
“To teach men how to live without certainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing philosophy can do.”
—Bertrand Russell
I suppose the “Twelve Steps” are a practical philosophy of how to live positively with the disease of alcoholism: (a) Don’t drink. (b) Find a God in your life that is understandable. (c) Begin to make positive choices in attitudes and behaviors. (d) Let “never forget” be an essential part of the message.
The miracle of this philosophy is that it reaches out to so many who suffer with addictive compulsions and teaches us how to live with being imperfect. I believe the Twelve Steps are the answer to “The Fall” of man—we are going home to God.
Let me see beyond the logic to Your loving energy.
Daily Inspiration
January 11
Look beyond a person’s faults so that you can see the real person. Lord, may I learn to focus on the goodness that is in each person and love them because all are your children.
The moment of absolute certainty over decisions made never arrives, so make your decision and move on. Lord, grant me wisdom and confidence in making my choices and the ability to recognize when new decisions need to be made.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
January 11
“Race and language makes no difference; the barriers are gone when persons can come together on high spiritual levels.”
—Rolling Thunder, CHEROKEE
Not only are race and language barriers overcome by spirituality, but all things are overcome by spirituality. Inside every human being is the spirit. When we see people, we can choose to look at their outside or we can choose to look at their inside. Spirituality resides inside of others, we must be able to look at our own inside. If we see spirituality inside ourselves, we will see spirituality inside others. The saying is, “what you sees is what you gets.”
My Creator, let me see all my brothers and sisters through the spiritual eye.
Today’s Gift
January 11
Letting Go of Guilt
“There’s a good trick that people in dysfunctional relationships use,” said one recovering woman. “The other person does something inappropriate or wrong, then stands there until you feel guilty and end up apologizing.”
It’s imperative that we stop feeling so guilty.
Much of the time, the things we feel guilty about are not our issues. Another person behaves inappropriately or in some way violates our boundaries. We challenge the behavior, and the person gets angry and defensive. Then we feel guilty.
Guilt can prevent us from setting the boundaries that would be in our best interests, and in other people’s best interests. Guilt can stop us from taking healthy care of ourselves.
We don’t have to let others count on the fact that we’ll always feel guilty. We don’t have to allow ourselves to be controlled by guilt—earned or unearned! We can break through the barrier of guilt that holds us back from self care. Push. Push harder. We are not at fault, crazy, or wrong. We have a right to set boundaries and to insist on appropriate treatment. We can separate another’s issues from our issues, and let the person experience the consequences of his or her own behavior, including guilt. We can trust ourselves to know when our boundaries are being violated.
Today, I will let go of my big and little guilty feelings. Light and love are on my side.
Touchstones Meditation For Men
January 11
“All truth is an achievement. If you would have truth at its full value, go win it.”
—Munger
Truth can seem so elusive. Yet, at times it is so simple and obvious. In entering this program, many of us thought of ourselves as honest men. Some of us couldn’t bear the anguish of our dishonesty. As we repeatedly face ourselves, take our personal inventories, and hold ourselves accountable, we realize we have all grown in our honesty. What seemed honest before now looks like half-truth. It was the best we could do at the time. Our perception of truth has deepened by the grace of God and as a result of our hard work.
Truth is won when we have the courage to feel the pain of knowing it. Some of our pain has been the grief of realizing what we missed or lost in our insanity. Some has been the anguish of facing the harm we caused the ones we love, and some in admitting honestly how we ourselves were hurt.
Truth does make me free. The richness in my life is a generous reward for courage.
Daily TAO
January 11
HEALING
Fire cools.
Water seeks its own level.
No matter how extreme a situation is, it will change. It cannot continue forever. Thus, a great forest fire is always destined to burn itself out; a turbulent sea will become calmer. Natural events balance themselves out by seeking their opposites, and this process of balance is at the heart of all healing.
This process takes time. If an event is not great, the balancing required is slight. If it is momentous, then it may take days, years, even lifetimes for things to return to an even keel. Actually, without these slight imbalances, there could be no movement in life. It is being off balance that keeps life changing. Total centering, total balance would only be stasis. All life is continual destruction and healing, over and over again.