Daily Reflections
October 3
SERENITY AFTER THE STORM
Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.’s can agree with him.
-TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p p. 93-94
When on the roller coaster of emotional turmoil, I remember that growth is often painful. My evolution in the A.A. program has taught me that I must experience the inner change, however painful, that eventually guides me from selfishness to selflessness. If I am to have serenity, I must STEP my way past emotional turmoil and its subsequent hangover, and be grateful for continuing spiritual progress.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
October 3
A.A. Thought For The Day
How do I talk with new prospects? Am I always trying to dominate the conversation? Do I lay down the law and tell prospects what they will have to do? Do I judge them privately and feel that they have small chance of making the program? Do I belittle them to myself? Or am I willing to bare my soul so as to get them talking about themselves? And, then, am I willing to be a good listener, not interrupting, but hearing them out to the end? Do I feel deeply that they are my brothers or my sisters? Will I do all I can to help them along the path to sobriety?
Meditation For The Day
“The work of righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness shall be quietness and assurance forever.” Only when the soul attains this calm, can there be true spiritual work done, and mind and soul and body be strong to conquer and bear all things. Peace is the result of righteousness. There is no peace in wrong doing, but if we live the way God wants us to live, quietness and assurance follow. Assurance is that calmness born of a deep certainty of God’s strength available to us and in His power to love and guard us from all harm and wrong doing.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may attain a state of true calmness. I pray that I may live in quietness and peace.
Walk In Dry Places
October 3
Proving Ourselves
Self-esteem
Long after a bitter failure, some of us still cling to the hope that we can erase the defeat in some spectacular way. One dream is to “prove ourselves” to those who scorned us or put us down.
This never really works, even when we do become winners at some later time. For one thing, we may be proving ourselves to people who never will like us. If we are striving to show others that we can succeed, we are still dancing to their tune. We are accepting their idea of what success should be.
Many of us failed simply because we were alcoholics and could do no better. We might have destroyed opportunities that will never rise again. But by finding sobriety, we may already have proved ourselves to those who really count in our lives. Including ourselves.
I can prove today that the Twelve Step program works and that a loving Higher Power is present in my life.
Keep It Simple
October 3
That which is called firmness in a king is called stubbornness in a donkey.
—Lord Erskine
“Rigid” is a fancy word for “stubborn.” We act this way because of our fear. When we’re afraid, we hang on to what we’re used to doing. Our illness had us so scared, we were afraid of the new ideas and new people. The only thing that didn’t scare us was using alcohol or other drugs.
We also were stubborn when anyone tried to help us. We thought we knew what was best. How silly our stubborn actions made us look! How lonely they kept us.
But our stubborn behavior can teach us about our fears. We need to be aware our stubbornness. Then we’ll be able to find out what we’re afraid of—and do something about it.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me know when I’m stubborn.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll work at accepting my stubbornness. I will use it to learn what I am afraid of today.
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
–E. B. White
Love your enemies. It will drive them nuts.
–Eleanor Doan
“A keen sense of humor helps us to overlook the unbecoming, understand the unconventional, tolerate the unpleasant, overcome the unexpected, and outlast the unbearable.”
–Billy Graham
“We’re still not where we’re going, but we’re not where we were.”
–Natasha Jasefowitz
“Behavioral researcher Shad Helmstetter, in his book “Choice,” says, ‘When we meet someone who seems to have a good attitude about everything, that really isn’t the case. The person simply has made a lot of independent choices to have a good attitude about many individual things.” Remember, a positive outlook is a choice – and the decision is yours.”
–Neil Eskelin
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
October 3
FREEDOM
“Freedom is not enough. ”
– Lyndon B. Johnson
The gift of freedom requires the acknowledgment of the benefactor, God. To experience freedom without realizing its source is to miss the point; freedom requires responsibility.
When I was drinking, I demanded freedom without responsibility and I suffered. I created in freedom my own horror stories. I hurt others because I did not respect in them what I demanded for myself and slowly, ever so slowly, freedom slipped away.
Today I believe that my spiritual program reinforces my responsibility for my life. God has created me with free will and I need to respect this gift in others. If I do not respect others, I will never receive it. Dignity is a two way street.
Thank You for the freedom to experience myself in my treatment of my neighbor.
Daily Inspiration
October 3
Be like a star and make your best even better. Lord, source of my joy, if I am shining I will brighten the day for both myself and those around me.
There is a time for everything. Take time to pray, to sing, to laugh, to work and to touch the hearts of others. Lord, help me be aware that today will never return so that I will not misuse my time or waste it unwisely.
Elder’s Meditation of the Day
October 3
“Spiritual Values are an Attitude.”
–Leonard George, Chief Councilor
Attitude is a direction which we follow. If you have a positive attitude, it means you will lean towards a positive direction. If you have a negative attitude, it means you will lean away from the Spirit. Therefore, if we lean toward spiritual values, then our actions will become significant and important. If we lean away from spiritual values, our actions will become insignificant or unimportant. For example, if we value love, we will lean towards it; we will prefer to express and embrace it.
Great Spirit, teach me the significance of spiritual values.
Today’s Gift
October 3
How easy the breath that kills a flame,
How hard to kindle that light again.
Cold words kill and kind words kindle,
By words withheld a dream may dwindle.
—Joan Walsh Anglund
How we treat the people we live with affects the happiness of our family. Just as a breath can blow out a flame, a mean remark can cast a shadow across a brother or sister’s heart. People of all ages have left dreams behind because no one encouraged them. They are like candles snuffed out.
On the other hand, if we see a friend or family member feeling good about something they have done, we can learn to be happy for them. If we notice their excitement and encourage them with kind and sincere words, it will help their candle burn brighter. Sharing the happiness of others will make our own candles burn brighter, and it always feels good when we receive kind words ourselves.
In what ways can I bring light and warmth with my words today?
The Language Of Letting Go
October 3
Getting Through the Discomfort
Surrender to the pain. Then learn to surrender to the good. It’s there and more is on the way.
–Beyond Codependency
Our goal in recovery is to make us feel comfortable, peaceful, and content. Happy. We want to be at peace with our environment and ourselves. Sometimes, to do that, we need to be willing to face, feel, and get through discomfort.
I am not talking here about being addicted to misery and pain. I am not talking about creating unnecessary pain. I’m talking about the legitimate discomfort we sometimes need to feel as we heal.
When we have surgery, the pain hurts most the day after the operation. When we do the kind of work we are facing in recovery, we are doing an emotional, mental, and spiritual surgery on ourselves. We’re removing parts of us that are infected and inflamed.
Sometimes the process hurts. We are strong enough to survive discomfort and temporary feelings of emotional pain. Once we are willing to face and feel our discomfort and pain, we are almost to the point of release.
Today, I am willing to face my discomfort, trusting that healing and release are on the other side. Help me, God; be open to feeling whatever I need to feel to be healed and healthy. While I am doing this, I will trust I am cared for and protected by my friends, my Higher Power, the Universe, and myself.
Touchstones Meditation For Men
October 3
You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone…. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will understand what he says.
—Shunryu Suzuki
A man who is mistrustful and self-centered has difficulty listening to someone else. Perhaps a woman we are close to wants to be understood by us. But we do not hear her on her own terms because we are so intensely involved with our own shame. So we react to our feelings of guilt rather than really hearing what she wants to say about her experience. Or we may be so worried about who has control that we fail to receive the information we are being given. Then we respond with “Yes, but…”
True learning comes – like true intimacy – when we have an open mind. As we detach ourselves, separate from our own ego, we hear the other person better and grow more intimate.
May I learn to set aside my own self-centeredness. Today, I will grow more if I set my ego aside when others are talking to me.
Daily TAO
October 3
MOON
Silver disk: Let me call you goddess –
You, with your mirrored face.
Tonight, of all nights, your shape is perfect,
Your presence sublime.
You know it too. You appear before the sun has even set,
Glorious without your cloak of night,
Gazing down in supreme splendor,
To make this dusty world pastoral.
Tonight is the harvest moon. The queen of night is at her most perfect roundness, closer to us than at any other time of the year. She glows silver in an indigo sky.
People celebrate this night for many reasons. For some, it is the time to enjoy the view of the moon, and they toast it with sweets, wine, and tea. For others, it is a time of relaxation and thanksgiving for the harvest.
The Moon Festival is a woman’s festival, their time to worship. The harvest moon symbolizes the ascendancy of cool darkness over the bright heat of summer. This reminds us of equality in the cosmos : light and dark, male and female, heat and frost, hard and soft — all these things are part of an overall equilibrium.
If you are a woman, then tonight is your night for worship and celebration. If you are a man, then it is a night to step aside and give your wives, mothers, and sisters their privacy. But for all, we can be thankful for the riches of autumn and begin our preparations for the coming frost.
Daily Zen
October 3
Evening meditation, enfolded in mountains,
All thoughts of the world of people dissolve.
Quietly sitting on my cattail cushion
Alone, I face the empty window.
Incense burns away, as the dark night deepens,
And my robe is a single fold, as white dew thickens
Rising from deep meditation, I stroll in the garden,
And the moon is already above the highest peak.
– Ryokan