Daily Reflections
August 9
“ … OF ALL PERSONS WE HAD HARMED”
“ … and became willing to make amends to them all.”
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 77
One of the key words in the Eighth Step is the word all. I am not free to select a few names for the list and to disregard others. It is a list of all persons I have harmed. I can see immediately that this Step entails forgiveness because if I’m not willing to forgive someone, there is little chance I will place his name on the list. Before I placed the first name on my list, I said a little prayer: “I forgive anyone and everyone who has ever harmed me at any time and under any circumstances.” It is well for me to contemplate a small, but very significant, two-letter word every time the Lord’s Prayer is said. The word is as. I ask, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In this case, as means, “in the same manner.” I am asking to be forgiven in the same manner that I forgive others. As I say this portion of the prayer, if I am harboring hatred or resentment, I am inviting more resentment, when I should be calling on the spirit of forgiveness.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
August 9
A.A. Thought For The Day
“We have an allergy to alcohol. The action of alcohol on chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy. We allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. We cannot be reconciled to a life without alcohol, unless we can experience an entire psychic change. Once this psychic change has occurred, we who seemed doomed, we who had so many problems that we despaired of ever solving them, find ourselves able to control our desire for alcohol.” Have I had a psychic change?
Meditation For The Day
Ask God in daily prayer to give you the strength to change. When you ask God to change you, you must at the same time fully trust Him. If you do not fully trust Him, God may answer your prayer as a rescuer does that of a drowning person who is putting up too much of a struggle. The rescuer must first render the person still more helpless, until he or she is wholly at the rescuer’s mercy. just so must we be wholly at God’s mercy before we can be rescued.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may be daily willing to be changed. I pray that I may put myself wholly at the mercy of God.
Walk In Dry Places
August 9
Confidence In the next phase.
Assurance
“God has carried me this far. I will not be let down now.” These are brave words of recovering people who find themselves facing new doubts and fears.
There’s nothing unrealistic about this attitude. Those of us in 12 Step programs and beneficiaries of a miraculous chain of events that brought our movement into being. Our responsibility is to continue carrying the message by proving how the program works.
It’s our success in dealing with life’s problems that eventually attracts others to our fellowship. The best proof of how our spiritual program works is showing how our Higher Power continues to solve problems in our lives.
We don’t always know what the next phase in our lies will bring. We can only know that with God, all sorts of wonderful things continue to be possible.
Though I can’t see around the corner, I’ll know today that my Higher Power will guide me smoothly and safely through the next phase.
Keep It Simple
August 9
—Latin proverb
At times, staying sober will be easy; at other times, it will be hard. But we must do what is needed to stay sober. Having a hard week? Go to extra meetings. Feeling alone? Call a friend and ask if you can get together. Feel like drinking? Go to a safe place until the urge passes.
We have no choice. We must row when there’s no wind. If not, we’ll fall back into our addiction.
If we work hard, we’ll stay sober. Plus we’ll grow as spiritual people. Hard times test us and make better people. But this will only happen if we keep our Higher Power and our program close to our heart.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me remember that I grow during hard times. I pray that I’ll accept and use what You’ve given me each day.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list five things I learned from my program in hard times.
–William J. H. Boetcker
–Dale Carnegie
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
August 9
ACCEPTANCE
– Albert Schweitzer
Today I accept people. Even the people with who I do not agree, I accept. My freedom is dependent upon my attitude towards others. My respect is rooted in the respect I give to others. God is to be found in my neighbor!
Nowhere is this more true for me as a religious person than in my attitude to people of other creeds — and those who have none! The spiritual life that unites me to God and the world requires not only acceptance of “difference” but my personal need for it.
But more than this; even those who hurt, abuse and destroy need to be accepted from within my spiritual self — because something of their life exists in mine. In this accepting love is the daily healing of my disease.
May my acceptance of the tyrant lead to the forgiveness of the self.
One More Day
August 9
– Malcolm X
Those of us who have a chronic illness often feel a lot of anger, but we can choose how to deal with the anger. If we insist on denying it, we may isolate ourselves and be numbed by an unbearable sadness. Or we might lash out at the people we love.
A sounder choice for us is to acknowledge our anger — and our right to be angry. We don’t deserve illness. Or pain. When we allow ourselves these honest reactions, we are freer to move toward acceptance — and action. When we accept our limitations — no matter how unfair they are — we then can decide where and how and when we will make needed changes in our lives.
My anger can lead me toward growth if I use it in the right ways.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
August 9
“Praying to seek a vision, to seek truth is always right. Truth builds upon itself – as the true mark of a warrior who conducts himself/herself accordingly – so that its beauty may shine in the faces of our children.”
–Barney Bush, SHAWNEE
We move toward and become like that which we think about. What we think about creates our vision. If our thoughts are wise and good, then our vision becomes strong and truthful. If our thoughts are junk, then our vision becomes contaminated. It’s important to be aware of what we are thinking about. As I live my vision, my children watch and live their lives the same way. We need to live the walk of the Warrior. We need to walk in beauty and respect.
Oh Great Spirit, give me a vision for today. Let me see truth. Let me walk in beauty. Let my heart guide me in truth. The law says the truth shall set you free. Let me be free today.
Touchstones Meditations For Men
August 9
We must embrace the absurd and go beyond everything we have ever known.
—Janie Gustafson
We have stepped beyond the limits of our former life and accepted the possibility of the unknown. Many of us have always tried to be rational, to trust only what we could understand or reason through. That attempt served the part of us that lusted for control and power, but it kept us from unknown possibilities and dreams.
When we decide to be less controlling, we begin to believe in possibilities we didn’t allow before. That is how we let God influence our lives. Perhaps we don’t see a reasonable way to a more satisfying job, but we can be open to surprising possibilities. We may see nothing we can do to overcome our compulsions, but we pray for God to remove our shortcomings in God’s way, and already we have a new attitude.
God, give me the courage to step into the unknown, the absurd, and experience the awakening of my spirit.
Daily TAO
August 9
Non-duality
Don’t contemplate
As mere activity.
Be void contemplating void.
Once one understands that the ultimate nature of this existence is void, one understands that to be void is the only true mode of meditation. Notice that void is not the object of meditation – to pair meditator and object creates a dualistic relationship between self and environment that leads one astray.
In meditation we are searching for unity. We need something that takes us out of the normal dualistic modes that are the origins of all our difficulties. Therefore, the only true meditation is one that does not put us into a relationship of viewer and object. Any object, no matter how holy, still reinforces the illusion there is a reality outside ourselves. What we are trying to gain is the true interior view: There is no difference between our inner and outer realities.
The ultimate meditation is the realization we ourselves are empty of distinctions, our sense of identity is only the result of dualistic clinging. Along with that we should understand there is really nothing to contemplate, nothing to think about.
Daily Zen
August 9
It comes in and out before your eyes,
Responding to phenomena, following emotions.
When it is carefree, without obstruction,
All endeavors are successful.
When you realize original mind,
The mind sees Buddha.
This mind is Buddha;
This Buddha is mind.
– Master Fu (497-569)