A Spiritual Principle A Day / Daily Meditation

Motivation
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10 NOVEMBER

Our Foundation of Goodwill

When Good will supports and motivates both the individual and the Fellowship, we are fully whole and wholly free.

—Basic Text, “Our Symbol”

Before coming to NA, we were chiefly motivated by selfishness with a reckless, feverish focus on finding ways and means to get more drugs. A desire to stop using brings us to the rooms; it may be desperate or minimal, inspired by a nudge from the judge, our parents, our conscience, or the consequences of continuing to use. We had little use for integrity when we got here. And goodwill? Never heard of it.

And yet, recovery is available to us all. We start learning to serve when we have precious little time clean. As our journey continues, service becomes a staple of our program. We come to understand the meaning of integrity as we serve with other recovering addicts. We learn about goodwill by watching their walk. We explore how integrity fits into our new lifestyle and begin to examine our motives on a deeper level.

Sometimes the driving force behind our initial interest in participating in a service committee or taking a commitment is motivated by our desire to look good or our need for the validation of others. We may be doing the right thing, but we may not be doing it for the right reason. It’s a start.

The seeds of goodwill are planted as we continue to serve. We greet newcomers at our home group, help fill literature orders at a local service committee, or attend the regional service committee for the first time as we develop our relationship with service. We continue showing up and find that why we stay committed is different from what brought us to that commitment in the first place. Freedom springs from the newfound passion when we find our niche in service. When we serve from a place of selflessness and goodwill, we tend to find fulfillment and gratification in our efforts, in and out of NA.

The foundation of our program is rooted in goodwill. As we continue to give of our time and effort with more principled intentions, our understanding of generosity broadens, and our personal freedom grows proportionally.

I will bring a spirit of generosity and service to my NA community, my family, my work, or my neighborhood today. With goodwill as my motivation and freedom as my goal, I will wholly commit.

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11 NOVEMBER

Willing to Explore New Directions

With self‐acceptance comes a willingness to creatively explore new directions.

—Living Clean, Chapter 4, “Wellness and Health”

Our willingness to stay clean triggers willingness to improve our lives. In turn, we’re able to look at ourselves with greater clarity and a realness we never imagined possible. Our minds become open to an awareness of our shortcomings and our limitations. We humbly evaluate and acknowledge our assets. Acceptance of where we are right now creates a willingness to move forward. And like everything in recovery—and in life—we won’t experience self‐acceptance perfectly. Rather, it’s something we strive for daily.

In recovery, accepting ourselves doesn’t mean we accept our conditions. Instead, we can pursue new goals that better mirror the self we have come to accept. Many of us who find some stability in NA also find the willingness to create new opportunities for ourselves or take ones that are offered to us. We now know that we don’t have to be held back or be victimized by our past. We follow through on a long‐held dream, rent our own place for the first time, enroll in or finish college, or start a family.

We also can be led by a deep‐seated knowing, or what one member called “divine dissatisfaction.” A motivating, self‐affirming voice tells us it’s time to move on from the relationship that we’ve used all the arrows in our quiver to save. It tells us to move on from a job that’s no longer fulfilling us, to move to a new city, to just move our lives in some significant way. We learn to trust our instincts.

Our self‐acceptance helps us to be willing to make mistakes—and then be willing to forgive ourselves and learn from them. We find ourselves often being more flexible, knowing that we’ll be okay no matter what, more resilient and responsible, less of a perfectionist. If one endeavor doesn’t work, we’re willing to feel the pain of failure and then seek an alternative strategy to reach our goal.

I am determined to accept who I am and who I’m becoming today. With those arrows in my quiver, I’m willing to point my life in a new direction and take aim.

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Beatufical

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GODs Time Never Ours

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12 NOVEMBER

Removing Barriers to Inclusiveness

We start to look more carefully at what makes a meeting feel safe and welcoming.

—Living Clean, Chapter 4, “Disability”

We know the struggles of addiction firsthand, the danger and degradation. We remember what it was like to walk into our first meeting—to feel that initial spark of hope. We pray for the addict who still suffers, and we feel for them because we’ve been there. Our empathy helps us see our meetings, meeting places, and all of the social interactions surrounding them through others’ eyes.

We genuinely want every addict seeking recovery to feel safe and welcome when they walk through the doors. When we’re on our spiritual A‐game, empathy guides our choices and ensures that we are inclusive. It’s easy to get lazy, however. We neglect the proper consideration of others’ needs. We may even justify our complacency and squash new ideas with the classic: “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

Experience has a way of nudging out such smugness. When a home‐group member comes to need a wheelchair, it highlights the necessity of an accessible meeting place. When a hard‐of‐hearing member explains the importance of visual cues in communication, we follow their lead. We change the room setup with attention to lighting, acoustics, and sight lines. When new members come from outside the dominant culture, we go out of our way to welcome them. If diversity challenges us personally, perhaps we need to examine our reservations about the NA message. We recommit to the proposal that any addict can find recovery in NA. Empathy, generosity, and inclusiveness guide us toward a new perspective on helping addicts find a safe and welcoming place to surrender.

As the First Tradition suggests, we put our common welfare first. We plan for needs that haven’t yet surfaced. We remove barriers to participation—physical, perceptual, or cultural—and do what’s in our power to make NA truly available to us all.

I will look at my home group with fresh eyes and imagine how someone different from me might experience it. What can I do to make first‐time attendees feel safer and more welcome?

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13 NOVEMBER

Balance Through Meditation

Emotional balance is one of the first results of meditation, and our experience bears this out.

—Basic Text, Chapter 4, “Step Eleven”

Life can be an emotional roller coaster. Before we found recovery, we could exit the ride by getting high. With that option off the table—just for today—it’s up to us to find ways to handle life’s ups and downs, twists and turns. “If I’m going to ride this roller coaster called life,” a member shared, “I want to be one of those screaming, giggling fools in the front car. They are truly in the moment.”

We learn the usefulness of living in today in early recovery. One oldtimer put it bluntly: “If you’ve got one foot in the past and one in the future, you’re pissing all over today.” Truly being in the moment is some next‐level stuff, and few of us have regular access to an actual roller coaster to practice that mindset.

Fortunately, we have an Eleventh Step that encourages us to give prayer and meditation a try. Practicing some form of meditation can help us to let our feelings come and go like waves on the beach. Practice pays off, and it becomes easier to roll with the punches when we’re a little less attached to our emotions.

We learn to be fully feeling human beings and to be all right with that. More often than not, we can be attentive to our emotional lives and not want to check out. One member shared, “Finding even a minute or two to slow down and breathe can drastically improve my emotional well‐being.” As we weave meditation into our recovery repertoire, emotional balance feels increasingly attainable.

I will remind myself that the balance I have experienced in my recovery is a result of my emotional well‐being. I will sustain this state of being by meditating today.

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15 NOVEMBER

Love for the Sake of Our Growth

The love we share in NA means we care enough to save each other’s lives.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Two, “Spiritual Principles”

Attending meetings lets us see the myriad ways in which members practice the spiritual principle of love. We observe the pre‐meeting rituals with warm welcomes all around. We recognize the love and trust it takes for us to share our pain, our breakthroughs, and our misadventures or to offer loving support by listening, nodding, and passing tissues.

After the meeting, we may catch a glimpse of a small group of two or three members who have stepped away from the crowd for a private conversation. Some of us have been pulled into such a discussion only to discover that our behavior was the topic. This may not have struck us as loving at the time.

As one member shared, “A couple of home‐group members ‘suggested’ that I get to the meeting on time if I wanted to hug all my friends before I took a seat. I was a bit embarrassed, but learned to enter a bit more discreetly when I’m late.” With hindsight, we can see the loving action members like these take to protect the atmosphere of recovery in our meetings and teach newer members how to behave. Love isn’t always gentle.

Sometimes we show love by saying, “We love you, but not your behavior.”

Another addict shared, “Love is not simply an emotion; it’s also an action.” The action of love is the effort we choose to put into how we carry the message of NA. We share our recovery to save another addict’s life, and it’s one of the most loving actions we can take. It may not be convenient or easy, but the work is well worth it when we see a fellow addict grow into a productive member of society and pass the NA message on to other suffering addicts. This is the work of love.

I will share the lessons I was taught when I first came around. Today I will pass along the love that saved my life.

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16 NOVEMBER

Resilience Keeps Us Coming Back

It’s never too late to start over, reconnect with the fellowship, work steps, have a spiritual awakening, and find a new way to live.

—Living Clean, Preface

For many of us in active addiction, starting over from scratch was practically a lifestyle choice. Things got tough, we owed back rent, our relationships or jobs got in the way of our drug use—and we were gone! We got a new place, a new job, and someone new to put up with our crap. Some of us carried that behavior into NA. Instead of staying clean through snags in early recovery, we’d press the reset button and clear the board. Day One again.

We’d change road dogs, sponsors, and home groups. This wasn’t the healthiest or most spiritual way to be resilient, but that was our strategy to survive and bounce back from conflict and hardship. Still, we kept coming back.

When we get some time in NA, starting over might look very different. Many of us will hit major low points in our lives, but when we stay close to NA, we can immediately turn to Step One—not Day One¾when our life becomes unmanageable.

Others of us accumulate years of cleantime and are so busy being functional that we don’t realize how isolated we are from NA. We haven’t relapsed, but our recovery has all but flatlined. “I woke up today and realized that it was my 25th cleantime anniversary, and I don’t even remember the last time I marked the occasion,” a member shared. “I came today because I didn’t even know I was miserable. I thought, Maybe I should use so that I could come back to meetings. Though I’m embarrassed about how long it’s been, I’m grateful my next thought was, Just go to a meeting and start over.”

How do we come back when we haven’t really left? Instead of pulling the plug on our program, we can jump‐start it. We may feel some regret at taking NA for granted, but we are back—and can keep coming back.

It doesn’t matter when we start over or why; it only matters that we do.

How close am I to the Fellowship today? I will remember that I can push the recovery reset button anytime but don’t have to throw a grenade in order to start fresh.

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18 NOVEMBER

Unity, Our Practical Foundation

With unity as our practical foundation, we find that our relationship with one another is more important than any issue that may arise to divide us.

—It Works, Tradition One, “Applying spiritual principles”

Addicts tend to be creative and bright, with brains chock full of . . . endless opinions. We are passionate and often have a strong sense of justice . . . the flip side of which can be profound self‐righteousness. Lots of us are charismatic individuals blessed with considerable leadership qualities . . . who can be manipulative, giving others the smack‐ down with our encyclopedic knowledge of the Traditions. We are curious sorts who ask a million questions . . . about issues addressed in the subcommittee chair’s report that we didn’t read. We can be wonderfully flexible in weighing all the options about an issue . . . and change our minds and alliances many times in a single discussion. We can be calm, deep listeners who reserve offering opinions until all the facts are in . . . and then passive‐ aggressively subvert the group’s conscience.

All of these personalities (and many more) are charged with ensuring that NA remains steadfast in its purpose to support the newcomer by carrying a message of recovery. Conflicts arise at group business meetings, during learning days, when planning a regional convention, and in NA World Services. Putting the principle of unity before personalities can be a challenge in practice. But it’s our commitment to each other and to our shared purpose—the very essence of unity—that helps us grow as individuals and strengthens the Fellowship of NA.

At the end of the day, it’s our relationships with each other that get us through personal upheaval, financial peril, professional concerns—through every aspect of our lives. We strive to safeguard those relationships, especially when we can’t agree on whether or not it’s cool to buy cakes with the Seventh Tradition cash.

Instead of obsessing about our differences of opinion, I will focus on strengthening relationships with other members. I will seek opportunities to give or receive support from another addict.

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21 NOVEMBER

Discernment and Group Conscience

We trust—and we use good sense. Living in fellowship with other addicts, we learn discernment.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Two, Opening Reflection

The spiritual principle of discernment—exercising good judgment—is central to practicing Tradition Two. In our personal recovery, we work on developing a guiding conscience in our own decision making that helps us decipher what’s healthy for us and what isn’t. Many of us have described that conscience as a voice in our head that tells us right from wrong. Many others say it’s our loving Higher Power working in our lives.

We bring this awareness into our groups and try to practice it there, in fellowship with each other. Discernment is group conscience in action; using it requires some common sense, experience, and, hopefully, clarity about what’s our opinion, what’s factual, and what’s actually important. Some of our groups develop trust and a collective conscience over time, but we need to stay open‐minded as our membership evolves. To sustain our practice of Tradition Two, we need unity, faith, goodwill, and even more trust.

Speaking of trust, discernment helps us choose our trusted servants and guides us in our efforts to be trustworthy as we serve. We create guidelines that outline preferred qualities for particular roles in our groups. These may aid the process but aren’t the whole of it.

Other circumstances that aren’t on paper and still meet our need to serve the greater good may play a role in our decisions. We listen to our fellow members offer qualifications for a position, learn about each other’s capacity for effective leadership, and then use discernment, expressed through our group conscience, to match talent to task.

As trusted servants, we’re trusted to serve the needs of our group and NA as a whole, rather than our own egos, individual opinions, and desired outcomes. To keep our leaders in check, we are each other’s eyes and ears, shining light on one another’s blind spots and turning up the volume when we aren’t listening carefully.

I am committed to serving the greater good. I aim to do so by exercising good judgment, inviting my own conscience to contribute to the group’s, and letting go of the outcome.

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22 NOVEMBER

Facing Life with Courage

We find the courage to follow our heart, to listen to the voice within, to create, to commit, to explore, and to live.

—Living Clean, Chapter 3, “Creative Action of the Spirit”

It takes courage to give this NA way of life a try. Whether it’s for the first or the fourteenth time, walking through the doors to our first meeting—or first meeting back—takes real determination. And that’s just the beginning. Once we stop using, and our obsession fades, the challenges of living life on life’s terms will call on us to be courageous again and again.

Lucky for us, the NA way gives us the gumption to persevere despite life’s difficulties. We forge lasting friendships, learn from our fellow travelers, and find in them enough courage to transcend the challenges of each day. NA literature can be a source of strength and courage, too. We each find our own understanding between the lines and in the tough questions we ask ourselves. As we contemplate and apply the collective wisdom found in NA literature, we are emboldened to be more fully ourselves, drawing strength from our Higher Power.

With a firm foundation in recovery, we can move through the world with courage and confidence, though sometimes we decline opportunities to do so. “My ‘fear goggles’ kept my focus on the potential for failure or rejection,” a member shared. “I was afraid to start or end relationships, to express my feelings, to come out. I was unwilling to be fully myself and paid a price for my lack of courage. In my effort to avoid pain, I’d also sidestepped chances to find real joy.” That’s no way to live.

The example of others and our faith in a Higher Power inspire us to live courageously, despite a lack of certainty. Life is a risky business, and things won’t always work out in our favor. As one addict put it, “I’m not God’s little honey bunny, and the answers to my prayers aren’t always ‘yes.’ But even when things don’t go my way, I still walk with courage. It helps to know that you folks will pick me up if I stumble.” We dare to dream—to try and fail and try again.

If I don’t risk anything, I risk everything. I will muster the courage necessary to take a leap of faith today, big or small.

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1 DECEMBER

Unconditional Love and Sponsorship

I think that the most valuable lesson sponsorship gives me is the opportunity to practice unconditional love. It deepens my appreciation for what has been given to me.

—Sponsorship, Chapter 1, “The Twelfth Step in action”

It takes a lot of courage to ask someone to be your sponsor. It takes even more courage to be a sponsor, and more patience with ourselves and our sponsees as well. Whether we admit it or not, some of us avoid newcomers because we see ourselves in them. We know we drive ourselves nuts, so how can we deal with more than one of us? Also, what happens if we mess them up worse? And years later, when we have time and a reasonable amount of experience, someone we respect asks for our guidance through the Steps. Those feelings of fear resurface. What if I’m not good enough?

Our sponsor’s steadfast support plays a huge role in our recovery, especially when we are the knuckleheads we can sometimes be. At times, we are also aware that our sponsor is just another human being—an addict with character defects like ours, who can offend us or come up short. The mutual love, respect, and acceptance that flow back and forth within that relationship are instructive in our decision to sponsor others.

“Yes, of course, I’m so honored you asked.” And we won’t do it perfectly. For some of us, even with experience, our patience might wear thin when a sponsee doesn’t take our suggestions. We have to confront our powerlessness when someone we sponsor relapses or acts out. There are times when our own lives are unmanageable and we have to dig deep to be able to show our sponsees the unconditional love they need.

Sometimes we make mistakes. But just as in the relationship with our own sponsor, we make it work because we need each other to stay clean. Or, we can’t make it work.

Sometimes going our separate ways is itself an act of love.

Today I will give back some of the unconditional love I received—to a sponsee, my sponsor, or any addict who needs it.

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Going to drop this again for anyone who wants to get this reading delivered to their email daily. I am not reliable. :laughing:

https://m.na.org/?ID=subscribe

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2 DECEMBER

Accepting Reality

The fantasy world that we lived in during active addiction fades as we begin to see and accept life as it is.

—IP #10, Working Step Four in Narcotics Anonymous, “General guidelines”

It took a lot of effort to create the alternate reality we lived in for so long. We invested in false perceptions and delusions about our lives and went to great lengths to maintain them. We became isolated from everyone and everything outside our self‐made prisons.

As one addict put it, “My world had become so small. To live with that fact, I convinced myself that nothing outside my little sphere was relevant.” In truth, we were only kidding ourselves. Denial and dishonesty protected us from seeing the harm we were causing. Once we raised the curtain of self‐deception, we recognized the lies we’d been telling ourselves.

In Step One, we discovered many truths, but seeing the truth doesn’t always lead to instant acceptance. It takes time to accept our addiction and life the way it really is. As one member said, “I was a legend in my own mind, and I didn’t want to let that go.”

By working Steps Four and Five, we identify the exact nature of our wrongs—as well as what’s exactly right with us. And as we stay clean, the fantasy world fades, and we see ourselves and our lives more clearly. As we let go of the make‐believe world we created, our real world expands. We don’t have to cover up the shame and guilt created in active addiction with more “plausible but untrue reasons for our behavior.” Reality becomes a relief.

I will be honest with myself and practice living in the moment. I’ll let go of my unrealistic fantasies and delusions so I can gratefully accept all that this life has to offer today.

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4 DECEMBER

Vulnerability Builds Bonds

Honest self‐assessment is essential to recovery, but it is only possible if we are vulnerable enough to let someone in.

—Living Clean, Chapter 6, “Anonymity”

Practicing vulnerability runs counter to our “terminally hip and fatally cool” self‐image. Our instincts still tell us to hide any hint of frailty for fear that others will take advantage of us. It takes a conscious decision to drop the defenses that once kept us safe. We choose to share our pain with others, taking risks in defiance of diseased thinking and deeply rooted behavior.

Our willingness to trust the process increases over time. We may confide some of our darkest secrets to new friends in recovery even before we write an inventory. We notice that practicing vulnerability brings us closer to others.

Although legend has it that a member once shared their inventory with a taxi driver, we’d be hard‐pressed to find someone who unloaded their Fifth Step on someone besides their sponsor. By the time we get to Step Five, we’ve grown to rely on our sponsor for good guidance and have learned to trust that what we share will be held in confidence. Perhaps most importantly, our sponsors don’t judge us or condemn our behavior—we do enough of that ourselves. Rather, sponsors try to help us work through our shame and embarrassment and move into acceptance.

We reflect on how we’ve opened up over time and realize the benefits of practicing vulnerability. Experience emboldens us to meet our fears head‐on. We’re free to be real and raw and vulnerable in meetings. We come to realize the walls we built to keep us safe kept us imprisoned. We aspire to build our relationships on a foundation of trust, honesty, and openness.

When we share from our hearts, others meet us there. Our sponsees, friends, and partners open up to us, and the value of vulnerability is reinforced. Experience confirms that we can feel vulnerable without shutting down. As one addict put it, “Vulnerability is like a super‐ strength adhesive. It bonds us together like nothing else.”

I will have the courage to be vulnerable today. I will share my true thoughts and feelings, letting those who love me know all of me.

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6 DECEMBER

Understanding without Conditions

Sometimes we come face‐to‐face with life’s most difficult circumstances. Our relationships with our sponsor and sponsees can offer the support and understanding we need to keep moving forward.

—Sponsorship, Chapter 4, “Developing and sustaining the sponsorship relationship”

Life’s realities, inevitabilities, and its bewildering tragedies often challenge our recovery. To survive such situations, we rely on our relationships with other recovering addicts. We are told: “We never have to use again. No matter what.” We see vast evidence of that truth in our experiences and through the stories of other members.

When we read a quotation like the one above and contemplate how it applies to us, it’s likely we’ll think about the people we’ve helped and who’ve helped us when we’ve had terrible things happen to us. (Yes, often they are sponsors and sponsees, but just as often they’ve been regular ol’ NA members.) Other addicts have understood and stood by us.

Many have experienced similar circumstances or can introduce us to someone in NA who has.

But what about when we’ve created those situations, when we’ve committed serious crimes that result in serious consequences, when we’ve been the victimizer instead of the one who’s been hurt? Can we stay clean through that? Are we still worthy of the support and understanding of our fellow NA members?

“No matter what.”

Though we don’t condone each other’s every action, practicing understanding is not conditional, and we are worthy of it—no matter what. Understanding means identifying with each other and helping each other through seemingly unlivable times, as well as understanding that despite our negative or harmful behaviors we are all still addicts in need of empathy. Understanding is a critical expression of our primary purpose of carrying the message to every addict—in meetings, at home, on the streets, and in jails and institutions. With that generosity of spirit—plus some forgiveness and tolerance—moving forward and healing is possible for all of us.

Just as I have been shown understanding from those in my circle during the worst of times, I will commit to showing up for others, no matter what their particular circumstances may be.

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7 DECEMBER

Keeping Our Minds Open to Learning

Staying open‐minded and teachable about our basic principles allows our understanding to deepen and mature.

—Guiding Principles, Introduction, “In This Book”

Many of us go through a phase in early recovery in which we experience what some call “Peter Pan syndrome.” Like the fictional character who refuses to grow up, some of us set out to have the happy childhood that addiction stole from us. Making up for lost time may be a natural response to the new freedom we enjoy. The laughter and fun we share with other members is a big part of what keeps us coming back at any stage of recovery. But like so many things, we can take Peter’s approach too far, refusing to act responsibly or to mature in our recovery.

As we accumulate both age and cleantime, it can be a shock to realize that new members have us in mind when they refer to “our predecessors.” A member shared, “I stick by my definition of ‘oldtimer’ as anyone who’s clean at least five years longer than me. At some point, I noticed that I fit that description for others and that they looked to me for mentorship. I felt the need to know more and do better, so I started a Traditions study to help me live up to the predecessor label.”

Also like Peter Pan, some of us might resist the idea of maturing, or we may reject the idea of pursuing a deeper understanding of our principles because we think it sounds, well, dull. Either stance might be an excuse for a closed mindset. Likewise, “This is the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t exactly invite discussion or allow for the exploration of varying perspectives.

Remaining teachable and open‐minded, on the other hand, allows us to consider different perspectives through reading, discussion, and contemplation. With our minds open to learning more about our guiding principles, we often find new applications in our lives in and out of NA, as well as for our groups and in service. A member shared, “Before I really understood them, I viewed the Traditions as a rigid set of rules. I didn’t grasp that by protecting us from our worst impulses, they create the conditions for creativity and freedom in service to NA.”

I will remain teachable, keeping my mind open to understanding our Traditions on a deeper level. As I mature in recovery, I will consider my responsibility to mentor others.

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8 DECEMBER

Autonomy for Ourselves and for Others

Allowing our partners and ourselves to experience personal autonomy means we can grow and change at our own pace . . .

—Living Clean, Chapter 5, “Romantic Relationships: the courage to trust”

Being a member of NA gives us plenty of chances to learn about relationships. For most of us, that starts with a sponsor and a home group, both of which offer lessons about autonomy. Every sponsor in NA, after all, eventually gets the opportunity to tell a sponsee, “Well, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, so . . .” Whether that comes from a place of loving acceptance or frustrated sarcasm—or a mix of both—our sponsors affirm that we are responsible for our own recovery. (And our consequences.) When we’re ready, we’ll change. And, as we often say, that might mean when we’ve had enough pain, we’ll change.

The same is true in our groups. We offer one another experience, strength, and hope; the choice of whether to accept what is offered belongs to each of us as individuals. “Honestly, I was getting really tired of a home‐group member who kept sharing about the same thing all the time,” a member shared. “I got tired of being annoyed, so I just let it go and gave them space. Months later, they had a breakthrough and began to change. Today, we’re very close. I was so glad I didn’t have to wait for their breakthrough in order to feel better myself!”

The ability to keep our own pace and allow others to keep theirs is valuable in all of our relationships, including romantic ones. Whether or not our spouses or significant others are in recovery, a sign of an honest relationship is not being in 100 percent agreement on everything. It makes sense to experience discomfort in our relationships when we have differences of opinion, differing values, or different levels of willingness to practice principles. Practicing autonomy means knowing what we need to hold on to and what we need to let go of. If the answer to that isn’t obvious, we can look to our group and our sponsor for guidance.

I will practice autonomy by taking responsibility for my own life and recovery and allowing others the space to do the same.

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9 JANUARY

Participation, Service, and the Seventh Tradition

As a member of an NA group, we take part in developing a conscience about how the group will meet its responsibilities and participate in the life of the larger Fellowship.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Seven, “For Members”

Who among us hasn’t felt like a victim of our circumstances at some point? In active addiction, we may have made an art form of blaming outside forces for our problems. It’s true that some situations beyond our control cause undue hardships or difficulties, but we have choices available to us now. Recovery teaches us to actively participate in a solution, beginning with taking personal responsibility for our actions and participating in the program of NA.

We also take responsibility for the Fellowship by participating in the discussions and decisions affecting our groups and service bodies. Each of us has to determine for ourselves—in consultation with our Higher Power and our sponsor—what level of participation feels right for us. “I noticed that when I participate less and have less information,” a member recalled, “the more I think in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ When I step up my participation, I feel like it’s all ‘us.’” There’s a reason we often talk about service as part of Tradition Seven, not just the money we give. When we give our time through active participation, we are practicing a form of self‐support. According to one addict, “Recovery is not a spectator sport. We get out of it what we put into it.”

The practice of participation we learn in NA tends to show up in other areas, too. In our families, in our work—the more we participate, the more we feel that we are part of, our voices matter, and our needs are considered. We are not just victims of circumstance anymore; we actively participate in solutions.

When I passively observe life, service, and recovery, I’m short‐changing myself. Today I will show up and participate.

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10 JANUARY

Waking Up to Service

Being of loving service is living spiritually. First we take, then we give, then we share.

—Living Clean, Chapter 3, “Creative Action of the Spirit”

In Narcotics Anonymous, we arrive to find ourselves the most important person in the room. For a lot of us, that notion is terrifying, but some of us enjoy the rock‐star treatment.

We grab a white keytag and do a victory lap for thirty days in a row—including weekends. We share in every meeting until the timer goes off (every time), wondering aloud what the hell we are doing here with “all you people . . . no offense.” We dazzle our fellows with our theory of the difference between humility and humiliation. They must like what we have to say, ’cause they tell us, “Keep coming back.” We find a sponsor and bend his ear with a detailed account. “Sponse” picks us up at the recovery house and buys us a meal after the meeting. He doesn’t say much, but he’s definitely listening!

As our status as the most important person melts away and our keytag color changes to orange, Sponse suggests we listen more instead of talking so much, take meeting commitments that don’t court attention, and reach out to newcomers. We get a blue six months clean, and we ask our sponsor about doing H&I. “Good idea” is his response. We think he’s pleased about our initiative, even though he says nothing about it. Our bravado shifts. We get some high‐fives and tighter hugs from members who acknowledge how well we’re doing. That feels undeniably good, but showing up for other addicts feels even better.

Our story continues. We glow in the dark at one year and are black‐and‐gold at two. Our commitment to service deepens. We are invited to participate in our recovery, to share our experience, strength, and hope. We start to have this strange new feeling that we can’t quite put our finger on. Over dinner—on us this time—we try to articulate the feeling to our sponsor: “It’s something about being of value, maybe a little gratitude thrown in . . . ?” We struggle to find the words.

“Hmm,” says our sponsor. “Sounds like you might be waking up.”

Today I will ask, “How can I be of loving service?” I will listen to the answer and take action because this is how I want to live.

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