Even More Recovery Readings and Meditations - February

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February 13

Step by Step

Today, understand that not reaching back into yesterday and bringing the emotional baggage of regret, shame and grief into today is easier said than done, Instead come to terms by pledging once again to the program. If I can remember that most of the emotional wounds I bear today were bred on the battleground of active alcoholism, I ask for the wisdom not to deepen those wounds by way of a slip or relapse. As for dealing with any hurts from past losses, regrets and anything else bad, I must first forgive myself for my role in bringing on those injuries, and I must believe that my strongest amend is not to take the action that set it off – drink. Today, I confess that ignoring the mistakes of my past condemns me to repeat them, and my recovery may well hinge on staying in a program of recovery – and starting the process of forgiving myself. And our common journey continues. Step by step. – Chris M.

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~ EASY DOES IT ~ (A Book of Daily 12 Step Meditations) ~

SERENITY

Give me, kind Heaven, a private station ~ a mind serene for contemplation.

~ Alexander Pope ~

Serenity must be a permanent state of mind, not a temporary experience. We know that some degree of serenity must be present before acceptance is possible. Acceptance is an ongoing act required for any success in a recovery program. Therefore, it is obvious that we can’t afford to settle for merely feeling at peace.

Peace of mind is a mood we can create for ourselves only. Peace leaves as an attitude changes. Serenity is a life-time possession because it is not only with us but also within us. It cannot be taken away.

Serenity is positive. It is not a placid or negative state of being. It is a positive force for good.

Today, I’ll remember serenity comes and lasts when I stay tuned to God’s will and the principles of the Program.

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~ WISDOM TO KNOW ~ (More Daily Meditations For Men) ~

I’m more like I am now than I ever was before.

~ Anonymous ~

We are becoming more ourselves. That is our true calling. If we grow wiser and stronger with life experience, we learn to know ourselves and we find the confidence and courage to fulfill our best self. We walk a path that is sometimes very difficult and complicated. Weighing the choices before us, we seldom have a clear, unequivocal answer. But as we know ourselves better and as we gain confidence, we gradually fulfill our true nature.

A story in the Talmud describes a man at the end of his life who fears that he will be judged by God for not living a life like Moses. The rabbi replies that God will not judge him for not being Moses, but for not being himself.

Today I will allow myself to be more like I am than I ever did before.

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~ A WOMAN’S SPIRIT ~ (More Meditations For Women) ~

Our inner journey is a transformative process. It involves becoming who we already are in essence and letting go of the phony in favor of the authentic self.

~ Mary Norton Gordon ~

Wearing the right face for every occasion was a goal many of us strived to master in years past. Quite likely we succeeded too. We were accomplished at reading the faces of others, discerning who we needed to be in order to please them. Our worth seemed dependent on pleasing them.

Recovery doesn’t mean we stop pleasing others. Learning to love others unconditionally, thus inspiring joy in them, is a benefit of recovery. But pleasing ourselves is of utmost importance too, and we can feel good about ourselves only if we are living honest lives. That means wearing the face that matches who we really are inside.

Our lives become less confusing as we learn to 11*veal our true selves. When we stop trying to be the person we think others want us to be, we will find more time to simply love them for the person they are, and to love ourselves too.

I will please others simply by loving them as they are today. I can be honest and loving just being me.

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~ TODAY I WILL DO ONE THING ~ (Daily Readings for Awareness and Hope) ~

I want to deal with my painful emotions

I feel alone, lost, and afraid. Again. Once again I find myself thinking about escaping from my sadness and anger by getting high. Yet I would only plunge myself into more guilt, shame, and remorse. Instead of producing relief, it would produce a lapse.

I don’t want to do this again. It hurts too much and helps too little. But the good news is that I am slowly, truly, learning that using drugs and alcohol doesn’t prevent emotions, it only postpones them. It keeps me from facing them and then adds a new layer of painful emotions. I am looking forward to change.

When I need to release pain, I will try writing about it, drawing it, or talking about it with a friend, sponsor, or therapist.

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~ BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT ~ (Inspiration and Support for Recovery) ~

Humility is like your underwear; it shouldn’t show.

~ Anonymous ~

Humility is knowing there are forces outside ourselves, like the grace of God, and family and friends, who have helped shape our lives. There is no humility without gratitude.

It’s always nice to be with humble people because no matter how talented or experienced or successful they are, they will treat us with dignity and respect and be genuinely interested in us. Humble people appreciate themselves and other people, and know the value of others’ experiences and wisdom. We know who the humble people are, not because they’ve told us about their humility, but because we can see it in the way they live their lives. In time, we can become more like them.

Today let me practice humility, and in doing so attain the wisdom and peace it brings.

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~ MORNING LIGHT ~ (Meditations to Begin Your Day) ~

God gave us life. What are we willing to give him in return?

~ Oral Lee Brown ~

Think of those people who only call when they need something, rarely if ever give a gift, say they are too busy to offer assistance, or focus solely on themselves in conversations. You would consider such people to be selfish, and you might, over time, distance yourself from them.

Now think about your relationship with your Higher Power. How frequently do you connect with your Higher Power? Do you pray only when you need something? Do you think and speak only of yourself in your prayers?

Just as there is a balance of give and take between two people in a healthy relationship, so should there be a healthy give and take between you and your Higher Power. Ask what assistance your Higher Power needs so that this loving presence can be felt by those around you. Open your heart and fill it with love and compassion, even for those you may not like. And set aside time to assist others who are less fortunate, so that they may understand that God considers the needs of all.

Today I offer assistance to my Higher Power. In my prayers, I will ask of what service I can be so that my usefulness on earth can benefit those around me.

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~ NIGHT LIGHT ~ (A Book Of Nighttime Meditations) ~

Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed the passage with you?

~ Walt Whitman ~

Wouldn’t it be grand if we could have everything our way! We’d have people at our beck and call. We’d never have to take responsibility for ourselves, never have to struggle for anything, never be refused any wish or want.

But how would we mature? Learning involves gains based on the effort we expend. We learned early that we couldn’t listen to a music box unless we wound it. We learned we couldn’t get good grades unless we studied. And now we’ve learned we can’t change our behaviors without working the program.

If we can’t see the results of the energy we put into things, then our motivation, determination, and confidence can’t grow. Some things will come easily, some won’t. But the things we work on now will mean the most in the end.

I am not afraid to put energy into something I really want. I need to do this for my self-esteem.

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~ DAY BY DAY ~ (Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts) ~

Solving problems

If we start the morning feeling hopeless, our day doesn’t stand a chance. But if we ask our Higher Power for help in the morning and then accept the help throughout the day, we won’t have to solve any problems alone.

We will see that problems can be resolved, and we are responsible only for our efforts. Do I leave the solutions to God?

Higher Power, grant me the strength to ask for help and simply to do my part well.

Today I will work on three problems and leave the solutions to God.
The problems are

God help me to stay clean and sober today!

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~ IF YOU WANT WHAT WE HAVE ~ (Sponsorship Meditations) ~

The business of being human among other humans is holy business.

~ CATHERINE MADSEN ~

Newcomer

I keep hearing that this isn’t a religious program. So why is the word “God” everywhere? It’s in the Steps, and I hear people use it when they share in meetings. When they say “HP,” doesn’t it mean the same thing? And then there’s all this prayer and “spiritual awakening” stuff. How can you say it isn’t religious?

Sponsor

There is a big difference between the religious and the spiritual. This is a spiritual program. When I see in Step Twelve the words “having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,” I think, not of a voice from the mountaintop, but of the ways my spirit has come alive—how I’ve become capable of living in the here and now, connected to my fellow human beings, conscious of so much I used to miss out on.

The program makes suggestions, not rules. There are no priests or rabbis, no prescribed beliefs, no blasphemies, no excommunication. “God as we understood Him” and “Higher Power” are terms meant to allow each of us his or her own understanding of the energy that sustains us. This program is not about what we believe, but about what actions we take—how we stay away from addictive substances, how we help others to stay on the path of recovery.

Today, I know that many things other than my own will are sustaining me.
I don’t have to be in charge of my own recovery.

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~ THE EYE OPENER ~

No election is won or lost until all the votes are in. On that occasion when we felt all was lost, that we had utterly failed and despaired of help from any source, we found the doors of our Fellowship and learned the underlying causes of our failure.

It was the admission of our failure, our complete inability to manage our lives, that opened the door to the greatest blessing. Over and beyond sobriety, through happiness and peace of mind, we finally found a conscious contact with a God of our own understanding.

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~ WALK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG BOOK ~ (Official & Unofficial Sloganeering From the 12 Step Programs) ~

1) When making amends, a subtle shift occurs in our thinking. We go from thinking we were a mistake to acknowledging we made a mistake.

2) Don’t take yourself too darn seriously.

3) Success is not getting what you want; it’s knowing what you don’t need.

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~ The 12 STEP PRAYER BOOK ~ (A Collection of Favorite 12 Step Prayers and Inspirational Readings) ~

A Morning Prayer

Good morning, God. You are ushering in another day, all nice and freshly new.
Here I come again, dear Lord. Please renew me too.
Forgive the many errors that I made yesterday 
And let me come again, dear God, to walk in Your own way.
But, God, You know I cannot do it on my own.
Please take my hand and hold it tight, for I cannot walk alone.

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~ AROUND THE YEAR WITH EMMET FOX ~ (A Book of Daily Readings) ~

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us (Matthew 6:12).

This clause is the running point of the Prayer. It is the strategic key. Having told us what God is, how the universe works, how we are to do our own work, what our true nourishment or supply is, and the way in which we can obtain it, he now comes to the forgiveness of sins.

The forgiveness of sins is the central problem of life. Sin is a sense of separation from God, and is the major tragedy of human experience. It is, of course, rooted in selfishness. It is essentially an attempt to gain some suppose good to which we are not entitled in justice. It is a sense of isolated, self-regarding, personal existence, whereas the Truth of Being is the all is One. Our true selves are at One with God, undivided from Him, expressing His ideas, witnessing to His nature. Because we are all one with the great Whole of which we are spiritually a part, it follows that we are one with all men.

Evil, sin, the fall of man, in fact, is essentially the attempt to negate this Truth. We try to live apart from God. We act as though we could have plans and purposes and interests separate from him. All this, if it were true, would mean that existence is not one and harmonious, but a chaos of competition and strife. But, of course, it is not true, and therein lies the joy of life.

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~ A DEEP BREATH OF LIFE ~ (365 Daily Inspirations for Heart-Centered Living) ~

Still Good

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.

~ Bernard Baruch ~

“How’s everything going?” my friend Tori asked me as we passed in a restaurant.

“Life is good,” I answered readily.

“It sure is,” Tori agreed. “Even at its worst, life is still good.”

Even when times are tough and we can’t see our direction, life is a gift. Sometimes the hardest times are our most productive and growth producing. I visited the home of a very wealthy doctor named John in Bremerton, Washington, where he and his family lived in a magnificent mansion with a heavenly view of the Olympic Mountains. John owned several expensive automobiles, played on a world-class pool table in his den, and enjoyed many comforts and luxuries.

As I chatted with his family over dinner, John reminisced, “When we first got married, we had nothing. We lived in a tiny apartment and watched our pennies. Jan worked hard to help us get by while I was immersed in school; we really didn’t know how we were going to make it. As I look back now, that was one of the best times of our life. In a way I enjoyed that period of earnest striving more than being successful and having all this stuff. ”

Life is always good. It isn’t always comfortable, easy, or understand–able, but it is good. Sometimes the most difficult moments bring us together in ways that we would miss if we stayed isolated. When I lived in New Jersey, the only time I saw and talked to some of my neighbors was after a snowstorm, when we would help push each other’s cars out of the snow. Many families have told me that a health crisis reunited them in a way that never would have happened otherwise.

Life is good, even at its worst. Love is always present.

Thank You for all the blessings You shower on me, even when I am not aware of them. Help me to continually celebrate the goodness of the life You give.

I bless every experience, trusting that God is with me.