Daily Recovery Readings - October

[bluidkiti]

October 3

Daily Reflections

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

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.

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

As Bill Sees It

Going It Alone, p. 274

Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. How many times
have we heard well-intentioned people claim the guidance of God
when it was plain that they were mistaken? Lacking both practice
and humility, they deluded themselves and were so able to justify
the most arrant nonsense on the ground that this was what God had
told them.

People of very high spiritual development almost always insist on
checking with friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel
they have received from God. Surely, then, a novice ought not lay
himself open to the chance of making foolish, perhaps tragic,
blunders. While the comment or advice of others may not be
infallible, it is likely to be far more specific than any direct guidance
we may receive while we are still inexperienced in establishing
contact with a Power greater than ourselves.

12 & 12, p. 60

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

Walk In Dry Places

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

That which is called firmness I 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.

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

Each Day a New Beginning

Ambiguity means admitting more than one response to a situation and
allowing yourself to be aware of those contradictory responses. You may
want something and fear it at the same time. You may find it both beautiful
and ugly. --Tristine Rainer
Flexibility is a goal worth the striving. It eases our relations with others,
and it stretches our realm of awareness. Letting go of rigid adherence to
what our perceptions were yesterday assures us of heightened understanding
of life's variables and lessons.
Being torn between two decisions, feeling ambivalent about them, need not
create consternation, though it often does. Hopefully, it will encourage us to
pray for direction, and then to be responsive to the guidance. And we must
keep in mind that no decision is ever wrong. It may lead us astray for a time,
but it will also introduce us to uncharted territories, which offer many
opportunities for flexibility.
Contradictory responses, our own and also ours in relations with others,
keep us on our toes, lend an element of excitement to our lives, and push
us to think creatively about our perceptions. Growth and change are guaranteed.
I will be in tune with myself today. I will let my perceptions guide me.

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

Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition

Chapter 5 - HOW IT WORKS

Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it--then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

p. 58

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

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Twelve - "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. And these things which they have in common are not too hard to understand. When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, he has made himself ready to receive it.

pp. 106-107

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

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

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.

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

Look to the Lord and his strength; seek His face always.
Psalm 105:4

Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.
Psalm 126:5-6

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

Daily Inspiration

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.