Daily Reflections
November 22
ONLY TWO SINS
” … there are only two sins; the first is to interfere with the growth of another human being, and the second is to interfere with one’s own growth.”
-ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 542
Happiness is such an elusive state. How often do my “prayers” for others involve “hidden” prayers for my own agenda? How often is my search for happiness a boulder in the path of growth for another, or even myself? Seeking growth through humility and acceptance brings things that appear to be anything but good, wholesome and vital. Yet in looking back, I can see that pain, struggles and setbacks have all contributed eventually to serenity through growth in the program. I ask my Higher Power to help me not cause another’s lack of growth today—or my own.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
November 22
A.A. Thought For The Day
I have gotten rid of most of my boredom. One of the hardest things that a new member of A.A. has to understand is how he can stay sober and not be bored. Drinking was always the answer to all kinds of boring people and boring situations. But once you have taken up the interest of A.A., once you have given it your time and enthusiasm, boredom should not be a problem to you. A new life opens up before you that can be always interesting. Sobriety should give you so many new interests in life that you shouldn’t have time to be bored. Have I got rid of the fear of being bored?
Meditation For The Day
“If I have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” Charity means to care enough about your fellow man to really want to do something for him. A smile, a word of encouragement, a word of love, goes winged on its way, simple enough it may seem, while the mighty words of an orator fall on deaf ears. Use up the odd moments of your day in trying to do some little thing to cheer up your fellow man. Boredom comes from thinking too much about yourself.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that my day may be brightened by some little act of charity. I pray that I may try today to overcome the self-centeredness that makes me bored.
Walk In Dry Places
November 22
Too smart to stay sober
Humility
“I’ve never seen anybody who’s too dumb to stay sober. But I’ve met a few people who were too smart.” These wise words by an older member sum up what we sometimes see … people who feel turned off by the program because it seems too simple and involves so many people of ordinary education and backgrounds.
Alcoholism is much like other diseases in the way it strikes all people. Diabetes, for example, victimizes people of all intelligence and education levels. We could never believe that being smart would give us an advantage in dealing with such an illness.
In the same way, the very smart person, has no edge over others in gaining sobriety. In fact, pride in such gifts can be a stumbling block. It can be a barrier to the simple acceptance and surrender needed for success in the 12 Step Program.
We do have many very smart people in AA. They are also wise enough to know that nobody can outsmart John Barleycorn.
We can feel grateful for mental abilities and education that help us get along in the world. Our sobriety, however, is a separate type of gift that we did not create.
Keep It Simple
November 22
“We are healed of a suffering only be experiencing it in full.”
—Marcel Proust
We must never forget our past. We need to remember the power that our illness has over us. Why? So we can remember how our recovery began. So we can remember we’re not cured. So we can tell our stories.
We must remember how we acted. Why? So we don’t act and think like addicts. Most of us had a poor relationships with friends, family, and ourselves. We need to remember how lonely we felt. That way, we’ll make recovery grow stronger One Day at a Time.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me always remember how my illness almost destroyed me. Help me face the pain of these memories.
Action for the Day: I will talk about my past life with those who support my recovery. I will tell them what it is that I must remember about my past.
“A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.”
—Cited in The Best of BITS & PIECES“We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.”
—Stevie Wonder“Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.”
—Les Brown“It is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.”
—Mother Teresa“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
—Marcel Proust“Gratitude is the heart’s memory.”
—French proverb
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
November 22
OBESITY
“Obesity is really widespread.”
—Joseph O. Kern II
To be fat is to be lost. It is a self-imposed isolation that keeps people sad. The fat is the result of an addiction to a series of chemicals in food that society finds acceptable; the disease of bulimia is widespread.
But it can be changed. People can and do get well from a compulsion around food by surrendering to the reality of their compulsion. The people-pleasing must be seen. The mask must be removed. The pain in the family must be talked about. Feelings that have been buried behind the food for years should be expressed. Feelings are to be felt!
We need not remain fat, and recovery begins when we begin to have hope; we begin to love ourselves; we begin to believe in ourselves.
O Lord, You hear the prayer of all Your children help me to hear my prayers, too!
Daily Inspiration
November 22
Make it your goal to be someone that you would like to spend the rest of your life with. Lord, help me approach my day interested in everything that happens so that my life will truly be an adventure.
Through the power of God within me, I am stronger than any of my circumstances. Lord, I seek, I knock and I ask and You are always there and ready to give me the miracles that I need.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
November 22
“It’s the most precious thing … to know absolutely where you belong. There’s a whole emotional wrapping-around-of-you here. You see the same rock, tree, road, clouds, sun—you develop a nice kind of intimacy with the world around you. To be intimate is to grow, to learn … is absolutely fulfilling. Intimacy, that’s my magic word for why I live here.”
-Tessie Maranjo, SANTA CLARA PUEBLO
Every human being, to be mentally healthy, must have the feeling of belonging. When we have a sense of belonging we can be intimate. We can feel. We can connect. If we cannot develop this feeling of belonging, then we will feel lost of disconnected. To be disconnected from life is like walking around during the day not knowing the Sun exists. To have the feelings of intimacy is warm, glowy, joyful, loving, and connected. The feeling this Elder is talking about is available to everyone.
Great Spirit, let me be intimate.
Journey to the Heart
November 22
Open Up to Who You Are
Stop criticizing yourself. Stop telling yourself everything you think, feel, want and do is wrong. Or at least not quite right. You’ve been holding back, censoring yourself for too long. Your creativity, your intuition, the voice of your soul is the very voice you’ve been silencing.
For many reasons, we learn to criticize and censor ourselves. We may have grown up with people who stifled our inner voice, our wisdom, our knowledge of truth. Our sense of the truth may have caused them to feel uneasy. So they told us to hush. It met their needs to keep us quiet. So we learned to hush ourselves. It was how we survived.
No longer do we need to meet other people’s needs, not that way. We don’t have to be afraid of ourselves or what we will find if we look inside. We don’t need to run from ourselves. We don’t need to hide or hush ourselves. We are creative, loving, purposeful beings.
It’s time to open up to yourself, to your grandest dreams and aspirations, your real inclinations and desires, your wisdom and knowledge about what is true and what is real. Open up to who you are. Listen to yourself. Express yourself. Enjoy who you are, and you will find others enjoying you,too.
Today’s Gift
November 22
“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.”
—Martha Washington
We all have friends who seem happy even though they run into lots of bad luck. And we all know other people who seem grumpy all the time. Nothing makes them very happy. It’s puzzling, but some people have decided, maybe without even knowing it, that life is fun and should be enjoyed. No bit of bad luck has to make us miserable unless we let it.
A broken bike, a lost math assignment, a rained-out picnic are things that might make us miserable. But, we can decide they won’t. Feeling happy can be a habit—just like brushing teeth before bedtime.
Will I stop and think today before I let things make me unhappy?
Touchstones Meditations For Men
November 22
“Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.”
—Bernard Malamud
It is useful for us to reflect on our heroes for a time. Who do we greatly admire? Are they men or women? Are they closely involved in our lives, or are they distant and beyond our ability to reach on a personal level? Can we feel hopeful and open enough about life to have heroes?
Our heroes inspire us to find the new edges of our growth. We see in another man or woman the qualities and values we admire. We find our own best parts, perhaps partly hidden or undeveloped, in the people we hold as heroes. For example, if we admire a television personality, we can learn about our own values by asking what we admire in him or her. If we admire a friend, we may see a trait we hold dear in ourselves. As we grow and change, our heroes are replaced by others who fit our maturing values.
As I think about people I admire, I learn about myself from them.
Daily TAO
November 22
MYSTICISM
All mystical traditions are one.
They are the seed of all religions.
Tao. Zen. Tantra. Yoga. Kabbalah. Sufi. Mystic Christianity. Shamanism. And so many more secretly treasured by their adherents. These all share the same mystical sense of communion with the divine. Meditation is not something peculiar to one culture.
All cultures know a mystical core that emphasizes continuing refinement, meditation, and unification with the greater cosmos. I call that greater order Tao. They call it by different names. What does it matter what people call it? When they discovered what was holy, they uttered different sounds according to their history and culture, but they all discovered the same thing. There is only one divine source in life.