[bluidkiti]

May 29

Daily Reflections

TRUE TOLERANCE

The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 139

I first heard the short form of the Third Tradition in the Preamble.
When I came to A.A. I could not accept myself, my alcoholism, or a
Higher Power. If there had been any physical, mental, moral, or
religious requirements for membership, I would be dead today. Bill W.
said in his tape on the Traditions that the Third Tradition is a charter
for individual freedom. The most impressive thing to me was the
feeling of acceptance from members who were practicing the Third
Tradition by tolerating and accepting me. I feel acceptance is love and
love is God's will for us.

************************************************** *********

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

We who have learned to put our drink problem in God's hands can
help others to do so. We can be used as a connection between an
alcoholic's need and God's supply of strength. We in Alcoholics
Anonymous can be uniquely useful, just because we have the
misfortune or fortune to be alcoholics ourselves. Do I want to be a
uniquely useful person? Will I use my own greatest defeat and failure
and sickness as a weapon to help others?

Meditation For The Day

I will try to help others. I will try not to let a day pass without reaching
out an arm of love to someone. Each day I will try to do something to
lift another human being out of the sea of discouragement into which
he or she has fallen. My helping hand is needed to raise the helpless to
courage, to strength, to faith, to health. In my own gratitude, I will
turn and help other alcoholics with the burden that is pressing too
heavily upon them.

Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may be used by God to lighten many burdens. I pray that
many souls may be helped through my efforts.

************************************************** *********

As Bill Sees It

More than Comfort, p. 148

When I am feeling depressed, I repeat to myself statements such as
these: "Pain is the touchstone of progress." . . . "Fear no evil." . . .
"This, too, will pass." . . . "This experience can be turned to benefit."

These fragments of prayer bring far more than mere comfort. They
keep me on the track of right acceptance; they break up my
compulsive themes of guilt, depression, rebellion, and pride; and
sometimes they endow me with the courage to change the things I
can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

************************************************** *********

Walk in Dry Places

Guarding against disguised hostility
Fairness.
One of the pitfalls in continued recovery is the tendency to become self-righteous and judgmental. Sometimes this fuses into a hostility directed toward newcomers or chronic "slippers". Now and then, we've seen grumpy older members demanding that those who slip get honest.
While we may be right in concluding that a person is not showing honesty, we have NO RIGHT to denounce or expose anyone in a group setting. Far from helping the person, we may be showing off. If there is hostility in our words or manner, the other person will certainly sense it.
The best group setting for good recovery is always one that expresses warmth, acceptance, and understanding. There are few, if any, times when a verbal assault can be justified. Before we lash out at another person's lack of honesty, we must take an honest look at our own motives and feelings.
I'll face the day with a feeling of goodwill and acceptance in my dealings with every person I meet. If I attend a meeting, I'll show the same warmth and acceptance toward every person there.

************************************************** *********

Keep It Simple

The more one judges the less on love.---Balzac
At times we need to make judgments about people's behavior. We stand back and look at how their lives affect our sobriety. We have to do this to choose people whose relationships will be good for us. We have to do this before we trust someone in business. We should take a good look at the others person before we fall in love. But we decide to trust or love someone, we have to stop judging.
When we love someone, we don't stand back. We move in close. We give them all our love can offer. We don't just think and judge. We feel. We are on their side. We look for the good in them. We don't pick them apart. We love the whole person.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to judge a little and love a lot. Help me accept the people I love, faults and all. Help me love them better.
Action for the Day: Today, I'll catch myself when I start to judge others. I will accept them as they are.

************************************************** *********

Each Day a New Beginning

Women sometimes gossip when they want to get close to people. --Joan Gilbertson
Feeling alone and lonely heightens our fears of inadequacy. In our alienation from others, paranoia grips us. We yearn to feel connection with someone, and gossip about another someone can draw two lonely people close. We are bonded.
We need a sense of belonging, every one of us: belonging to the neighborhood; belonging to the staff where we work; belonging to the group we call friends. Knowing that we do belong fosters the inner warmth that accompanies security, well-being. And our fears are melted.
The program's Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Steps guarantee that we'll feel the closeness we long for when we work them. Self-revelation strengthens our ties to the people we long to connect with Gossip loses its appeal when we know we share a closeness already. Mingling our vulnerabilities secures our closeness.
We need to be attentive to our judgments of others, be they verbalized in gossip or only savored in silence. These judgments act as barometers of our own self-image. Our security in knowing we belong, that we are one, relieves us of the need to judge others unfairly.
Loneliness pushes me to behavior that even compounds the loneliness. Real closeness will come when I talk about myself rather than someone else.

************************************************** *********

Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition

Chapter 6 - INTO ACTION

The inconsistency is made worse by the things he does on his sprees. Coming to his sense, he is revolted at certain episodes he vaguely remembers. These memories are a nightmare. He trembles to think someone might have observed him. As far as he can, he pushes these memories far inside himself. He hopes they will never see the light of day. He is under constant fear and tension--that makes for more drinking.

p. 73

************************************************** *********

Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition Stories

The Missing Link

He looked at everything as the course of his unhappiness---except alcohol.

When I entered Alcoholics Anonymous, I had done some damage physically, had a bouquet of mental quirks, and was spiritually bankrupt. I knew I was powerless over alcohol and that I needed to be openminded toward what people suggested for recovery. However, when it came to spirituality, I fought it nearly every step of the way. Although raised in an ethnic and religious Jewish household, I was agnostic and very resistant to anyone and anything that I perceived to be imposing religious beliefs. To my surprise, Alcoholics Anonymous suggested something different.

p. 287

************************************************** *********

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Three - "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

Let's examine for a moment this idea of dependence at the level of everyday living. In this area it is startling to discover how dependent we really are, and how unconscious of that dependence. Every modern house has electric wiring carrying power and light to its interior. We are delighted with this dependence; our main hope is that nothing will ever cut off the supply of current. By so accepting our dependence upon this marvel of science, we find ourselves more independent personally. Not only are we more independent, we are even more comfortable and secure. Power flows just where it is needed. Silently and surely, electricity, that strange energy so few people understand, meets our simplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too. Ask the polio sufferer confined to an iron lung who depends with complete trust upon a motor to keep the breath of life in him.

p. 36

************************************************** *********

"Good friends are good for your health."
--Irwin Sarason

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you."
--Elbert Hubbard

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into
enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order,
confusion to clarity. . . . Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings
peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
--Melody Beattie

Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: "We got
through another night."
--Enid Bagnold

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
--Kahlil Gibran

No matter where our journey takes us, God walks with us.

************************************************** *********

Father Leo's Daily Meditation

SELF

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in
the stars, but in ourselves that
we are underlings."
--William Shakespeare

My addiction to alcohol led me away from "self": today in my sobriety
I am beginning to understand me. For years I blamed others for my
misfortunes but today I see that I was the enemy in my life. It was a
"cop-out" to blame God, family, job or life for my alcoholism - I
needed to take responsibility for "self".

Part of my recovery program today involves me not looking "outside"
for answers but looking within. The answer is not in the stars, not in
fate - but rather in the destiny I create by the decisions I make today.
I, and I alone, forge my future.

O Lord, let me create a life that is pleasing in Your sight.

************************************************** *********

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the
LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that
spreadeth out her roots by the river.
Jeremiah 17:8

"The LORD is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knows those who trust in Him."
Nahum 1:7

The LORD said, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."
Isaiah 43:2

************************************************** *********

Daily Inspiration

Sometimes we spend our time demanding that the present moment be different than it is instead of facing the situation and dealing with it. Lord, strengthen my faith because through You I will have enough power to overcome any obstacles.

Take heart in the beauty of your life because God loves, helps, fights and wins. Lord, I will never fear because nothing can triumph over Your Will.

************************************************** *********

NA Just For Today

Carry Me

"We believe that our Higher Power will take care of us"
Basic Text, p. 55

We all have times when it seems as though our lives are falling apart. There are days, or even weeks, when it seems that everything that can go wrong is going wrong. Whether it's the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, or the end of a relationship, we doubt that we'll survive the changes taking place in our lives.

It's during the times when the world is crashing down around our ears that we find our greatest faith in a loving Higher Power. No human being could relieve our suffering; we know that only God's care can provide the comfort we seek. We feel broken but we go on, knowing that our lives will be repaired.

As we progress in our recovery and our faith in our Higher Power grows, we are sure to greet the difficult times with a sense of hope, despite the pain we may be in. We need not despair, for we know that our Higher Power's care will carry us through when we can't walk on our own.

Just for today: I will rely on God's care through the painful times, knowing that my Higher Power will always be there.

************************************************** *********

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
The only people who never fail are those who never try. --Ilka Chase
A boy once asked his grandfather how he had become so happy and successful in his life. "Right decisions," replied his grandfather. The boy thought for a while and then asked a second question, "But how do you learn to make right decisions?" The grandfather answered quickly with a twinkle in his eye, "Wrong decisions!"
We, too, will learn from our "wrong decisions," our mistakes. Whenever we try anything, there is always the possibility of failure. We must learn to not let this keep us from trying. When we are willing to try, we have already conquered our fear. We can grow no matter what the outcome is.
What failure have I turned into success?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
We cannot approach prayer as we do everything else in our push button, instant society. There are no prayer pills or enlightenment capsules. --Janie Gustafson
Prayer is the relationship between each man and his Higher Power. Our approach to this relationship is guided by our understanding of God. How other men and women have prayed and related to God throughout history may guide us today.
Any relationship is a process, not a momentary event with an instantaneous outcome. It builds with repeated contact and dialogue. With give and take, prayer is our honesty encountering God and our openness hearing God expressed on God's terms. Like any relationship, prayer includes all our feelings - anger, fear, and mistrust, as well as generosity, goodwill, and gratitude. Gradually, we see the events of our lives through the wisdom and detachment our spiritual relationship provides.
I return now to my dialogue with God, asking only for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it out.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Women sometimes gossip when they want to get close to people. --Joan Gilbertson
Feeling alone and lonely heightens our fears of inadequacy. In our alienation from others, paranoia grips us. We yearn to feel connection with someone, and gossip about another someone can draw two lonely people close. We are bonded.
We need a sense of belonging, every one of us: belonging to the neighborhood; belonging to the staff where we work; belonging to the group we call friends. Knowing that we do belong fosters the inner warmth that accompanies security, well-being. And our fears are melted.
The program's Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Steps guarantee that we'll feel the closeness we long for when we work them. Self-revelation strengthens our ties to the people we long to connect with Gossip loses its appeal when we know we share a closeness already. Mingling our vulnerabilities secures our closeness.
We need to be attentive to our judgments of others, be they verbalized in gossip or only savored in silence. These judgments act as barometers of our own self-image. Our security in knowing we belong, that we are one, relieves us of the need to judge others unfairly.
Loneliness pushes me to behavior that even compounds the loneliness. Real closeness will come when I talk about myself rather than someone else.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Powerlessness and Unmanageability
Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.
I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren't, don't want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process, said one recovering woman.
I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn't love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.
I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me.
I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy. What Im saying is this: I've spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn't. Its been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. Wont work!
By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.
In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.
Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and Ill allow my life to become manageable.


Today I will be gentle with myself as I meditate and look within. I will look at my inner self lovingly and without judgement as I find the blocks that have kept me stuck. --Ruth Fishel

**************************************************

Journey to the Heart

Let the Past Slip Away

Gently, lovingly, leave past moments behind.

You can’t lose love. You don’t need to hang on so tightly. If the lesson has been learned, if it is time to move on, let the past slip away. Come into the present moment. Discover all that’s there for you. Clinging to the lessons, people, and feelings from yesterday will keep you tired, confused, and afraid.

Shed the tears that need to be shed. Feeling your grief will help you bring about your transformation.

Then say your good-byes. Be glad you had the experience you did. Be gratefu for all you’ve learned about yourself, about love. Then gently move into today.

Stop believing in loss. Start believing in life. Let the past slip away. Come gently into now.

**************************************************

More language of letting go

Say when it’s time to seek shelter

There’s a saying that a boat may be safe when it’s in harbor, but that isn’t what boats were made for. But let’s not forget the value of safe harbors either. A wise sailor knows the limits of each boat and will seek shelter if the weather becomes more than it can bear.

Seeking out new experiences, meeting new people, living life to its fullest is one of the best reasons for being alive. The purpose of recovering from addictions and learning to take care of ourselves isn’t to keep us stuck perpetually in therapy. It’s to free us to live our lives. But we need to be aware of our limits. And there is no reason to put yourself into a situation of unnecessary risk.

Only you can be the judge of that in your life. We each have different levels of freedom and similar but unique needs. A strong ocean liner can weather much stronger storms than a small powerboat. You may be able to withstand more or less pressure than someone else. Push your limits occasionally; that’s how we grow and change. But know what those limits are, and be willing to seek shelter when the storms come.

You are not alone. Whether through meditation or prayer; secular or religious support groups. Twelve Step or self-help meetings, a harbor exists in which you can ride out the storms and remain strong to sail the exciting waters of life another day.

Do you know where your harbors are? Lives are meant to be lived, so live yours as fully as you can. But remember that you cannot live fully when you’re recovering from storm damage. Be bold, but be safe.

God, help me be aware during times of stress that a safe harbor exists.

Activity: List your safe harbors. Examples of this might be friendships that are completely safe and supportive, support groups, prayer, meditation, and places of worship. How often do you need to connect with these harbors to keep yourself in good shape? Be aware that when you go through periods of stress and distress– and these times appear frequently in our lives– you might need to seek extra shelter to keep yourself safe from the storm.

**************************************************

Opening the Door
Fighting Against Our Gifts by Madisyn Taylor

To stop fighting your natural gifts listen to your internal voice and respond to the knocking universe at the door.

As human beings we often have a tendency to fight against using our natural gifts. Many stories of success start with an individual who is ignoring the call of his or her inborn abilities. There are many possible reasons for this resistance, from fear that the calling will be too difficult to a disbelief in the very work one is being asked to do. We may feel too small, too distracted by other people’s ideas about what we should do, or too uninformed. Whatever the case, the resistance to actualizing ourselves has very concrete consequences, and many of us have been called out of hiding by an illness or a twist of fate that unequivocally dismantled our resistance. In other the words, the universe knocks, and if we don’t answer it knocks louder.

For example, if you are meant to be a psychic or a medium, and you aren’t using that gift, you may get headaches. If you are meant to be a healer and are trying to be a lawyer, you may have trouble getting or keeping a job. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still be a lawyer, but perhaps integrating your gifts into your work is what is calling you. On the other hand, you may simply feel an underlying anxiety that you are not on the right path, doing the right thing. Pay attention to this feeling, and ask for guidance from the universe, being open to all its communications, from subtle internal yearnings to powerful dreams. As you begin to risk opening the door to your natural gifts, your life situation may shift in a powerful way. However, you may find that small steps in the right direction, such as taking a class or setting aside one night a week to paint or write, is enough for now.

The first step on the journey to our calling in life is to listen to our internal voices and respond to the knocking universe at the door. As we do, the symptoms and anxieties that have haunted us will fade into the background, replaced by opportunities, both big and small, to open the door to what we are truly here to do. Published with permission from Daily OM

**************************************************

A Day At A Time

Reflection For The Day

When we fist reached The Program and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense of belonging was exhilarating. We felt that the problem of isolation had been solved. We soon discovered, however, that while we weren’t alone any more, in a social sense, we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apartness. Until we had talked with complete candor of our conflicts, and had listened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn’t belong. Step Five was the answer. Have I found through the Fifth step the beginning of true kinship with my fellows and God?

Today I Pray

May God help me learn to share myself, my attributes and my failings, not just as I take the Fifth Step but in a continuing give-and-take process with my friends. May I cultivate an attitude of openness and honesty with others, now that I have begun to be honest with myself. May I remember who I used to be — the child in a game of hide-and-seek, who hid so well that nobody could find her/him and everyone gave up trying and went home.

Today I Will Remember

I will be open to friendships.

**************************************************

One More Day

There is a period of life when we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
– Pearl Bailey

We have a tendency to hold on to those dreams, goals, and images we had when we were young. When we accept the reality of what our lives have become — good or bad — we are finally adult.

It’s far easier to accept external realities than our deeper, more personal internal realities. Accepting that we are never going to be tall or agile or rich is simpler than admitting that we are selfish or angry or unkind. Perhaps the external things are easier because there is nothing we can do to change them, and we resist admitting to character defects because those can be changed. We may not like what we see, but if we swallow that bitter pill we are able to change.

I will ignore my fear and admit to the good and bad within me. This gives me the freedom to change.

*****************************************

One Day At A Time

HIGHER POWER
"Think not because no man sees,
such things will remain unseen."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Recently at a meeting I heard a person share that they weren't sure that the program would work for them because they did not believe in God. They were very distressed. I wanted to get out the Big Book and quote to them from page 47, "When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. This applies too, to other spiritual expressions which you find in this book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. At the start this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him."

Many of us have a problem with God in the beginning of our program. We may be atheists, agnostics, or simply have had bad experiences regarding God or His/Her people. We can choose the group, or the Higher Power of another, to be our Higher Power until we are able to begin, bit-by-bit, to define and establish a relationship with our own Higher Power. I know that when I came into the program I was very angry with God. I used the group as my Higher Power at first. Then I used my sponsor's God of her understanding as my Higher Power because He was so loving and full of grace. We had many talks about her God. This helped me greatly until I was able to reconnect to my relationship with the God of my understanding. Today I have a full, rich and intimate relationship with my God.

One day at a time...
I will be tolerant of others' conception of their Higher Power and will continue to grow in my relationship with the God of my understanding.
~ Carolyn H.

*****************************************

AA 'Big Book' - Quote

I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.

Despite the living example of my friend there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn't like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, 'WHY DON'T YOU CHOOSE YOUR OWN CONCEPTION OF GOD?' - Pgs. 11-12 - Bill's Story

Hour To Hour - Book - Quote

We often feel tremendous remorse for transgressions of the past. Today, now, we can stay clean, stay sober, stay drug free. This is the beginning. Later in our program, we will work steps to neutralize our transgressions. But right now, we must heal our bodies first.

God, as I understand You, keep me clean and sober, now.

Lesson and Life

I recognize today that I am in charge of my own learning. Life is constantly offering up circumstances that are useful in my personal growth. I can move through the situation, live it out, extract the wisdom that is in it or repeat it over and over again, exhausting myself and learning very little. The deepest and most appropriate things I need to learn in life are generally right in front of me. Life is my guru if I can use it as such. It is rich with subtle learning if I look for it. The real achievement for me today is to learn to be in my own skin, to see truth in all that surrounds me, to know that placing value and judgment is pointless and illusory -- all of life is valuable.

- Tian Dayton PhD

"Walk Softly and Carry a Big Book" - Book

Anger is not a solution.

Time for Joy - Book - Quote

Today I will be gentle with myself as I meditate and look within. I will look at my inner self lovingly and without judgement as I find the blocks that have kept me stuck.

Alkiespeak - Book - Quote

I started my next big quest to avoid being an alcoholic; My first was self-knowledge, with therapy, now I began the quest of self-will. I drank 'til I didn't want to be a drunk, I overcame my drink problem with marijuana, I was victorious over marijuana with pills, I triumphed over pills with cocaine and then I drank until I didn't want to be a drunk. I swapped addictions and I used self-will to avoid catching alcoholism. - Scott R.