Daily Reflections
March 18
REAL INDEPENDENCE
The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are.
–TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 36
I start with a little willingness to trust God and He causes that willingness to grow. The more willingness I have, the more trust I gain, and the more trust I gain, the more willingness I have. My dependence on God grows as my trust in Him grows. Before I became willing, I depended on myself for all my needs and I was restricted by my incompleteness. Through my willingness to depend upon my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, all my needs are provided for by Someone Who knows me better than I know myself – even the needs I may not realize, as well as the ones yet to come, bring me to be myself and to help me fill the need in someone else that only I am meant to fill. There never will be another exactly like me. And that is real independence.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
March 18
A.A. Thought For The Day
When alcoholics first come into A.A. and we face the fact that we must spend the rest of our life without liquor, it often seems like an impossibility for us. So A.A. tells us to forget about the future and take it one day at a time. All we really have is now. We have no past time and no future time. As the saying goes: “Yesterday is gone, forget it; tomorrow never comes, don’t worry; today is here, get busy.” All we have is the present. The past is gone forever and the future never comes. When tomorrow gets here, it will be today. Am I living one day at a time?
Meditation For The Day
Persistence is necessary if you are to advance in spiritual things. By persistent prayer, persistent firm and simple trust, you achieve the treasures of the spirit. By persistent practice, you can eventually obtain joy, peace, assurance, security, health, happiness and serenity. Nothing is too great, in the spiritual realm, for you to obtain, if you persistently prepare yourself for it.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may persistently carry out my spiritual exercises every day. I pray that I may strive for peace and serenity.
Walk in Dry Places
March 18
Should everybody like me?
Personal Relations.
In AA discussions, the term “people-pleasers” doesn’t fare very well. When people say they are people-pleasers, they’re acknowledging that it’s also a problem
It’s a problem because it reflects a desire to have everybody’s acceptance and approval…… to be universally liked. But from what we know about human relationships, this is not possible. No matter how hard we work to be pleasant and likable, some people may still detest us for reasons we cannot understand. When that happens, we should not blame ourselves or step up our efforts to them and to avoid giving offense in any way, while accepting the fact that they do not like us.
If our own behavior is mature and reasonable, even the people who don’t like us will at least respect us. That may be the best we can hope for , and it is certainly far better than shameless people pleasing. In the end, people-pleasers don’t please anybody and, as a famous comedian notes about himself, they “get no respect.”
I’ll try hard to be pleasant and cordial to everyone I meet today. If some people do not respond in the same way. I’ll accept this without feeling hurt or betrayed.
Keep It Simple
March 18
Money cost too much.
—Ross MacDonald
Many people are poor and really need money to live better. But we’re in trouble if we think money will solve all our problems. If money solved all problems, all rich people would be happy.
Consider this: A man talks about his shortcomings in a Twelve Step meeting. He says his main shortcoming is to think being happy means having enough money. But then he says that he has over a million dollars! This man is lucky—not because he has money, but because he knows greed is a shortcoming. He knows he has a spiritual problem. He doesn’t need money; he needs faith in a Higher Power.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to really believe I’ll be given what I need. This will free me to get on with life.
Today, God, help me know I am being guided into what’s good about life, especially when I feel confused and without direction. Help me trust enough to wait until my mind and vision are clear and consistent. Help me know that clarity will come.
–Melody Beattie“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.”
— DisraeliI am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
— Louisa May AlcottWe can be whole persons, even if we are not physically healthy.
–Bonnie Marie TincherI am always willing to learn, however I do not always like to be taught.
–Winston ChurchillFaith and Love mixed with Works is so important for a person to not lose Hope.
–Sprintin
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
March 18
HUMOR
“Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic impression thereof … The essence of humor is human kindliness.”
— Stephen Leacock
Humor for me is a key to balance. In the joke I am able to release some tension or frustration and cope with my disease of alcoholism. When I drank, I did not have a genuine sense of humor — rather it was sarcasm, cruel “put-downs” or insane expressions of my manic personality. My fun was created at the expense of others. It was a form of violence. It kept people away from me and created a loneliness in my life.
Today I seek to use humor as an expression of acceptance, tolerance, understanding and forgiveness. Humor is an aspect of my spiritual program. In humor I experience God.
Give me the gift of humor that reflects the dignity and hope for us all.
Daily Inspiration
March 18
When God answers prayer, He gives us the right answer. Lord, my greatest strength comes when I trust in You.
Have the strength to do what is right regardless of the consequences. Lord, show me Your way so that I may walk in Your truth.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
March 18
“The sacred fire used to heat the rocks represents the eternal fire that burns at the center of the universe.”
–Dr. A.C. Ross (Ehanamani), LAKOTA
Our Sweat Lodge represents the womb of Mother Earth. This is the place of forgiveness. The altar is the place where the Grandfathers are heated. The Sweat Lodge and the altar represent the whole story of the universe. The Sweat Lodge and the ceremonies are sacred. The Great Spirit gave these things to us to help us. He taught us to do the ceremonies in harmony with Mother Earth. We need to know and understand these things.
Great Spirit, let me understand harmony.
Journey to the Heart
March 18
Heart Connections
I went into the office at the lodge where I stayed in Sedona. I turned in my room key, then pulled out my camera and took a picture of Marianne. We had only known each other for eight days, but I felt deeply connected to her. We had been through a series of experiences that would probably stay with me for life. They had changed my life.
When we hugged and said good-bye, I told her not to cry– but she did anyway. So did I. “Call me whenever you want,” she said. “I’ll be there for you.” I knew what she meant. She didn’t mean for me to call her on the phone, although that was okay,too. She meant call her in my heart, call her to me in spirit.
For a long time, our connections to people and places may have come from someplace other than our hearts. We may have been connected out of need, fear, unfinished business, or simply the unwillingness to leave– to know there was any other way to be connected. Or we may not have even felt particularly connected to the people around us.
Now is a different time. It is time now to let your connections come from your heart. Open up. Listen. Does someone have something to say, maybe only a sentence or two, that’s just what you need to hear? As you’re going through your day, does someone come to mind, someone you think about getting in touch with?
Don’t shrug off the things you know and sense. Be open to your inner voice. Do what it leads you to do. Love isn’t bound by time or space when our connections come from our heart.
Today’s Gift
March 18
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? Did He who made the Lamb make thee?
—William Blake
Is there a lamb and a tiger inside us? Is there any commandment, written on the sky or a stone tablet, denying us our perfect right to be both tiger and lamb? The tiger, beast made of fire and night, shows its teeth when it blazes with love; the lamb, orphan wrapped in soft blanket of cloud, weeps to receive that same love. So we give and take, are strong and weak, guilty and innocent, wrong and right. So we are balanced, even when we seem to be in conflict.
When we learn to accept all the things we can be, we will be able to love all the ways the world outside us can be.
What conflict is helping me grow today?
Touchstones Meditation For Men
March 18
Oh, that one could learn to learn in time!
—Enrique Solari
A mark of genuine change, after the pleasure of newfound growth, may be the regret a man feels that he didn’t learn sooner. When we learn something new, we see how it could have made our life better at an earlier time. We regret being stubborn, immature, or impulsive. Now we see our mistakes in a new light and it hurts. This is one of the pains of change. Some people turn away from growth because they refuse to tolerate the pain of honest hindsight.
We need to face these regrets, but not indulge in them. We take a bow to the past and move on to live in the only place we can – the present. We can acknowledge our guilt and remorse and then turn them over to the care of God. We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it. Healthy recovery means an ever lighter load of regrets. Getting stuck in guilt over past deeds only repeats our mistakes by failing to use our learning today.
May I acknowledge and let go of my grief’s and regrets so I can attend to life here and now.
Daily TAO
March 18
FATE
Dispel time
And you will
Dispel fate.
Fate is the force that interferes with our lives, wrecking things at the worst moments. Yet what we call fate is nothing more than the consequence of our own actions. Each time we act, we generate a chain of events that is tied to us completely. The faster we run from these links, the faster they follow us. They cannot be severed; our every act binds us further.
The operative element here is time. The events of the past are the curse. Beginning followers of Tao learn to manipulate past, present, and future. They learn how circumstances operate and seek to take advantage of that. More advanced followers of Tao eschew this process of manipulation. They obliterate all regard to past, present, and future as definitions in order to negate the concept of fate.
In order to attain a state of being where there is no past to weigh upon the present and no future to be determined, followers of Tao must reach a profound merging with Tao. The follower then acts no differently than Tao would. There is no fate to oppose them, for they are existence, they are causality, they are Tao itself.
Daily Zen
March 18
In the Mountains
Common birds
Love to chatter
Where men live quiet lives.
Peaceful clouds
Seem jealous
When the moon is bright.
In the world,
The ten thousand affairs
Are not my affairs.
My only shame,
It’s autumn,
And I have no poem.
– Szu K’ung-t’u (837-908)