A Spiritual Principle A Day / Daily Meditation

Motivation
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20 OCTOBER

Anonymity as Our Spiritual Foundation

Our spiritual foundation is not a question of whether we know each other’s last names; it’s that we accept each other regardless of who we are and what we have done.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Twelve, Opening Essay

What’s in a name? Well, “Anonymous” is half of ours. In not using our last names, we end up sharing the same one: “Addict.” But practicing anonymity doesn’t end with a last initial. A principle can’t be that simple—not when it’s a word that’s so hard to pronounce. Go ahead, try it: Anonymity See? The struggle is real for so many of us!

Because anonymity is, according to our Twelfth Tradition, the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, understanding what it means and how to practice it is essential to our ability to work with, relate to, and love each other, unconditionally. Our spiritual foundation is “the very rock we’re all standing on,” a member wrote. “But any rock can be pounded into sand by relentless forces. A slight here, a direct insult or backhanded compliment there, and on and on.”

Anonymity ensures equity among us, and we can’t have unity without it. None of us is too bad or too good for NA. We don’t merely tolerate each other’s differences and ignore our difficult pasts. Instead, we honor and embrace the people we are today. We do our damnedest to rise above personality differences and having‐a‐bad‐day reactions. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, roll up our sleeves in unity, and get to work.

Acceptance doesn’t mean we endorse each other’s every action. There’s space for all of us at the NA table, but we must hold ourselves and each other accountable. Anonymity requires that we all have equal access to the message. So when a member’s behavior prevents that from happening or otherwise interrupts the atmosphere of recovery, we need to be clear: “You are welcome. Your behavior is not.” We can’t expect ourselves to practice the unconditional love aspect of anonymity perfectly, but we can’t let that stop us from ensuring that every addict who comes to our group has access to a message of recovery, no matter who they are or what they have done or perhaps will do.

Today I aim to give my fellow addicts the benefit of the doubt. Practicing anonymity means I have faith that we can all grow, personalities and pasts aside. It also means I’ll get better at pronouncing it over time!

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21 OCTOBER

Optimism and That Storied Glass of Water

Just for today my thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without the use of drugs.

—Basic Text, Chapter 9: Just for Today—Living the Program

People often talk about pessimism and optimism in terms of seeing the glass as being “half empty” or “half full.” As addicts, many of us think about it more in terms like, “What’s in the glass, though? Is it any good? When can I get more?” or “Do you have more than I do? Let me have some of yours.” No matter how many glasses we have or how full they are, we addicts tend to always be concerned with where the next one is coming from and/or what the people around us have in theirs. We often forget that before recovery we either didn’t have a glass at all or couldn’t keep one, full or not.

We hear “Just for Today” read so often that we may forget how revolutionary the shift in thinking it proposes is for us. Instead of focusing on what’s next or what’s going on around us, we are called to focus on ourselves, right here and right now. The principles of optimism and hope often seem to be forward‐looking, directing our attention to what is yet to come. However, as anyone who has ever been assigned to do a gratitude list can tell you, focusing on what is going well for us in the present moment can dramatically change our outlook on our lives.

When we focus on our recovery, on living and enjoying life without the use of drugs, our fears and anxieties tend to melt away. We become less concerned with matters like when our glass is going to get refilled. If we look into the glasses of those around us, it’s to see whether we can share what we have with them. Focusing on our glass—our recovery—gives us optimism by reminding us that we will be okay, no matter what.

Being in recovery means I no longer have to wonder whether the glass is half empty or half full. Not only do I have what I need, I have enough to share. I no longer need to compare with others.

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I’ve heard this in a meeting. “Enough is a feast”. It warms my heart to remember it.

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22 OCTOBER

Finding Humility in Unity

We learn when it’s important to stand for principles, and when it’s best to step aside in the name of unity, knowing that a loving God is ultimately in charge.

—Living Clean, Chapter 1, “Why We Stay”

We encounter different points of view in recovery and NA service. We may all be on the same path, working toward a common goal, but we’re ultimately in different places along that road. For example, some of us take years to get through the Steps, while others work one Step per month. Some groups vote and others make decisions by consensus. Guided by our mentors, we take up an approach that works. It’s only natural to believe that we’re going about things the right way. From there, it’s a short leap to believing that ours is the only right way, and that’s a slippery slope to self‐righteousness.

Accepting that members hold various perspectives and apply the tools of the program differently helps us understand the difference between unity and uniformity. There is, after all, more than one way to eat an apple. We learn to choose our battles and let go of our need to be right all the time. A wise sponsor once said, “Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?”

Knowing when to stand firm and when to bend is a sign of maturity in recovery. We learn to trust the process, and this takes away the burden of having to be right all the time. We come to rely on the good or God we find in NA. We bring unity to our groups and our relationships by allowing others—and ourselves—to be wrong, steering clear of self‐ righteousness, and holding firm to our beliefs.

When I feel contrary and stubborn, I can take a deep breath, let go of self‐ righteousness, and step aside. In quiet surrender, I will seek humility and understanding in the name of unity.

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I love that, thank you for sharing. :sparkles:

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23 OCTOBER

Expressing Our Autonomy with Integrity

Autonomy allows us to express who we are with integrity and to carry a message: the truth of our own experience, in our own way.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Four, Opening Reflection

The autonomy spoken of in Tradition Four has a strong appeal to many of us in NA. We are people who tend to put a pretty high value on self‐determination. In active addiction, insistence on doing things our way often led to poor results, usually because “our way” had a lot to do with self‐centeredness, rather than integrity. In recovery, autonomy becomes an asset rather than a liability—as our Basic Text puts it, “Our real value is in being ourselves.”

It’s the second half of Tradition Four that keeps us on track: “except in matters affecting other groups or NA as a whole.” For NA groups, this means we think about our role as part of the Fellowship, not just what our own group wants. As individual recovering addicts, we balance our right to do as we please with our responsibilities to those around us: family, friends, the Fellowship, and society. One way we begin to learn that balance is in how we share in meetings.

“As a newcomer, my sharing was super‐aggressive and put some people on edge,” a member wrote. “My justification was ‘Hey, this is who I am!’ After a while, I tried to mimic the way others shared, but it wasn’t my own voice, and it always came out wrong.

Eventually, I got comfortable being me while also thinking about the feelings of those around me. I finally started to connect.”

If any group of people can sniff out a fake, it’s addicts. Authenticity is a message that lasts, whether it comes in the form of a riveting performance or an understated, soft‐spoken share. Whether we’re trying to reach a still‐suffering addict or save our own life, we try to strike the right balance between autonomy and responsibility, freedom and self‐control, self‐determination and connection.

Being autonomous doesn’t mean disregarding those around me. I will practice balancing personal freedom with social responsibility.

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24 OCTOBER

Conscience and Step Ten

We need to stay in tune with the voice of our conscience and listen to what it’s telling us. When we get a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right, we should pay attention to it.

—It Works, Step Ten

Thanks to the NA program, our days of justifying our own bad behavior are mostly behind us. Sure, we still make mistakes, sometimes big ones, but we’re quicker to clean up our messes. Instead of doubling down or making excuses when we lash out or self‐destruct, we let our missteps remind us that we remain acutely human and in need of regular spiritual maintenance.

“That’s the thing about being in recovery, innit?” a member shared. “I’m aware of myself and the world around me. When I screw up, I can’t pretend that everything’s hunky‐dory— though sometimes I still try.” A short memory can seem like an appealing proxy for a clear conscience. It’s not. Too often this leads us to reach for new distractions to help us forget. Fortunately—though it may sometimes seem otherwise—we can’t un‐know what we know about ourselves. We recognize our part in all of our difficulties and can spot our shortcomings even as they appear in new disguises. Try as we might to shut down and soldier on, we’ve developed a conscience.

Instead of waiting for a 3:00 am wake‐up call from our conscience, Step Ten offers us a way to stay clear and current. We get into—and sometimes, get back to—the habit of regular reflection, taking the time to stay in tune with the internal gauge of our conscience. We examine our behavior with empathy, asking ourselves, “Have I treated others as I would like to be treated?” We tell ourselves the truth, taking note of when we’ve responded admirably and where we need to work out a better approach for next time. Cultivating a conscience is a by‐product of this practice, and living a conscience‐guided life is worth the effort.

I will live according to my conscience today, taking time to develop it further as I reflect on my mistakes and enjoy the good that comes from living by my values.

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25 OCTOBER

Cultivating Curiosity

We keep learning and growing, finding ways to live and to use our experience to help others. No matter how long we have been clean, there is still more for us to learn and more for us to share.

—Living Clean, Chapter 7, “Love”

Active addiction shrinks our worlds, and our curiosity often withers from inactivity. For many of us, that first exposure to NA wakes up a dormant sense of wonder. We may be somewhat puzzled by what we observe at our first encounters with the Fellowship, but we find it pretty compelling. As one member put it, “Looking back now, I could tell that you all had experienced the agony of addiction and then found a way to live clean and still be yourselves.” Curiosity about how NA makes that possible is one of the factors that keeps us coming back.

Without the constant numbing of drug use, our curiosity is reinvigorated. It may seem like a minor player given all the changes we experience, especially early on, but it’s also a consistent, reverberating background to our awakening. In retrospect, we can see how that curiosity nudged us onto this new road of discovery. As we make our way down this road, again and again, curiosity helps us find the necessary courage to ask for help and learn from others.

The NA message starts with abstinence and ends with “find a new way to live.” The meaning of this final phrase evolves just as we do. It applies to every stage of our growth and change as we place one foot in front of the other on the path of recovery. We get older, yes, and that beats the alternative. We meet each phase of life head‐on, curious to see where our journey will take us and how our assets and abilities can lead us to serve in new ways. “Even as she was dying, she was teaching us how to live,” one member shared about her beloved sponsor.

The road narrows as we become less inclined to follow the dead ends of our old escape mechanisms. But a leaner road opens up to a world of genuinely nourishing practices and healthy connections. We follow our curiosity along interesting back streets and we’re set free to find a new way of life that fits our current chapter.

I will cultivate a curious and open mindset and keep on discovering what I need to navigate each phase of this new way of life.

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I have read this entire thread And I must say I am very impressed In the deep and knowledge of the state And welfare of myself. It just goes to show that Wisdom is power not knowledge For wisdom is knowledge applied tried true and tested.

There’s an old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink it. The desire and willingness to concede to one’s intermost self that we were truly powerless Over this way of life and that our lives were manageable is the very essence Of the foundation of the triumphant arch from whence we walk through freedom.

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I am grateful you took the time to read it.

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26 OCTOBER

The Impact of Consistency

. . . a group needs the consistent commitment of its members to show up and take part in its meetings. Upon that commitment rests the group’s stability; without it, no group can survive long.

—It Works, Tradition Seven

Consistency is a key part of the messages we first receive in NA. Keep coming back. 90 meetings in 90 days. Meeting makers make it. It’s suggested that we find a home group— and become a home‐group member, not merely visit it. We’re encouraged to get a service commitment there—and to show up for that commitment.

When we lack consistency in our groups, when we’re not kept informed by our service body reps, when we don’t provide the human or financial resources needed to carry out our requests, our groups and services aren’t as strong. NA suffers as a result, and we miss potential opportunities to help newcomers.

The direct impact of our consistency may occur beyond the walls of a meeting. Many of us live in densely populated areas with plenty of groups to participate in. Many other NA communities are limited: only a few meetings—sometimes days and considerable distance apart—and perhaps too few members to fill service positions. Many groups thrive for decades, never dark for any reason; others burn bright, then falter; others struggle to stay afloat week by week. At times, it’s a real misfortune to lose a group. Other times, a loss blooms into a new opportunity.

There are way too many home‐group scenarios to describe here, but one thing we know is true: It takes reliable and committed NA members to turn and keep the lights on at any meeting, service committee, or NA event. And it’s no exaggeration to say that being consistent saves addicts’ lives, including our own. To carry the message of recovery and to conduct necessary NA business, we need to show up with our time, funds, skills, and willingness. We take on tasks of all sizes and shapes, and, in the spirit of rotation, we mentor others to step up.

What can I do to keep my home group more stable? How can I help others become more involved and consistent in their contributions to home‐group stability? Where do I need to step aside in the spirit of rotation so that others can grow from consistent service to our NA community?

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I knew an old timer who liked to say, “The road becomes narrower and deeper.”

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I feel this already.
:heart:

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27 OCTOBER

Accepting All of Me

We make peace with ourselves—with all we have gained, and lost, and learned, and become.

—Living Clean, Chapter 1, “A Vision of Hope”

WHO AM I?

As clichéd and psychobabbling as that question may seem, many of us will identify with having asked it—and having not known the answer. Or, more to the point, we didn’t want to know.

In active addiction, many of us could have answered the question like this: “Anyone you want me to be, baby.”

And right after getting clean, “Nobody!” might have been the most accurate response, considering the shame we were feeling and how invisible we wanted to be in meetings.

Denial had kept us from accepting the truth of our actions and their impact on ourselves and the people who love us. Many of us paid the price for this lack of self‐awareness with the loss of relationships, careers, assets, even our freedom.

The recovery process allows us to start contemplating our true identities, and it takes all the honesty we can conjure up, along with a healthy dose of courage and humility. We learn to accept that we’ve caused pain and injury, have done damage to ourselves and others while on our destructive paths. We also learn to accept that we aren’t the sum total of those actions.

Recovery affords us the opportunity to use the hardships we’ve endured to help others. We divulge our deep personal struggles—those from our past and those that will inevitably arise while clean—in order to deepen our relationships with other addicts. In doing so, we show our fellow addicts that we can stay clean—no matter what.

Today I strive to accept who I am, what it took to get here, and where I am now. My past does not own me. Instead, I will use it as a tool to help others.

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28 OCTOBER

Freedom, Wherever We Are

The ability to grow spiritually enables us to find freedom, even within the walls of a cell. Our greatest freedom is not outside ourselves but within.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Five, Opening Essay

Many addicts first hear our message of hope while incarcerated, often thanks to the hard work of our H&I trusted servants. One member shared, “When I got out, I heard someone share about a ‘self‐made prison,’ and I was mad at first. They didn’t know what it was like to be on the inside. But the more I came to meetings and heard addicts share about the disease, I realized that we had more in common than I thought. Just being out didn’t mean I was free . . . yet.”

Freedom comes in many forms. The ability to come and go freely as we wish, a right denied when or if we are incarcerated, is just one of those forms. We can experience mental, emotional, and spiritual freedom wherever we go—or wherever we stay. One member wrote, “I thought freedom meant doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, as long as I stayed clean. But I felt trapped by my impulses. I found it impossible to say no to myself, even when my behavior had consequences. When I told my sponsor I wanted to stop but didn’t know how, they told me to sit with the impulse and see if I could learn something from it. I sat with it and didn’t act on it, and I learned that I could survive the feeling. The feeling passed, and I felt light. I felt free.”

The most obvious freedom we gain in recovery is physical—we gain freedom from our compulsive use of drugs. That physical freedom, that changed behavior, has a corresponding inner component—the peace of mind that comes with no longer being trapped in obsession and self‐centeredness. We are free to think of something other than where our next fix is coming from. We are free to feel something other than despair. We are free.

Wherever I am, whatever is going on around me, I will seek inner freedom by letting thoughts and feelings come and go without disturbing my peace, without throwing me off balance.

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29 OCTOBER

Integrity Through Personal Responsibility

Everyone makes mistakes; promptly admitting when we are wrong shows integrity and responsibility for our actions.

—Living Clean, Chapter 6, “Work”

Perception is a funny thing. Self‐centeredness shapes the way we experience our lives, magnifying our own wants and minimizing our responsibility and accountability. It can be like walking through a carnival funhouse filled with distorted mirrors or echo chambers— our senses deceive us. We have a hard time perceiving reality for what it is, especially when it comes to responsibility for our lives and our actions. Checking our perspective with other addicts helps.

Working the program—especially the daily inventory of Step Ten—helps us make our way through the funhouse of personal responsibility. As we come to terms with our powerlessness and unmanageability, we blame others less for the wreckage of our past. We begin taking personal responsibility. As we take inventory and ask for help letting go of our defects and shortcomings, we lose the need to make excuses for current actions and choices. We take responsibility for making past wrongs right, and we make a practice of checking our perceptions regularly. We shift our senses away from the carnival distortions and get a better perspective on ourselves and our lives. The Steps help us get better and better at being the type of people we can be proud of being.

When we make a wrong turn on our way through the funhouse and find a dead end, it doesn’t do us much good to pretend we’re not lost. We ask for direction, and we backtrack if we have to. We make mistakes because we are human; we correct them because we have integrity.

My disease distorts my view of myself and the world around me. I will use regular inventory to adjust my skewed perceptions so that I can find my way out of the madhouse of addiction.

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30 OCTOBER

Contemplating the Gift of Grace

Each day, we are faced with new challenges. And each day, through working our program of recovery, we are given the grace to meet those challenges.

—Just for Today, “Meeting the day’s challenge,” May 27

Life is beautiful—and we may experience immense joy and serenity and love and all that good stuff—but it ain’t easy. What addict will argue with that point? However, by getting and staying clean in NA, we develop the competence to deal with life on its own terms. Those “terms” refer not only to immense life‐changing events but also to daily challenges that arise in work, family, and relationships. Ideally, meeting those challenges involves acceptance of our limited power, the courage to act in spite of this, and surrendering to the result. We do this with the gift of grace.

For some of us, the challenge we experience with grace is its intangibility. We don’t really know what it is or where this gift is coming from. But maybe we don’t have to fully understand grace to receive it.

Many of us are reluctant to use “grace” in our everyday language about recovery. We may bristle at its religious undertones, given that it’s most often paired with “God,” as in “God’s grace.” What if we don’t conceive of our Higher Power as an almighty giver of gifts like grace or staying clean or life itself? Members who hold more traditional conceptions of a Higher Power may find it easier to accept the gift of grace. The rest of us may hesitate, especially if we feel ill equipped to define a gift we’re supposed to be getting and then complicate matters by obsessing about the source of this gift.

Perhaps we can look at NA itself as the source of the gift of grace because it teaches us to surrender, be humble, and act with integrity. In essence, the program shows us how to live in accordance with our values. We can achieve a state of grace by striving to do just that.

Today I will put grace into action by approaching life’s challenges with integrity and being grateful for the opportunity to do so. Even if I don’t fully understand the gift of grace, I will accept it anyway.

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31 OCTOBER

Interdependence and the Spirit of Unity

When one addict helps another, NA is there. NA isn’t one addict or the other; it’s the helping, the sharing, the spirit of unity, the feeling of hope shared between us.

—Guiding Principles, Tradition Nine, Opening Reflection

Tradition Nine begins with “NA, as such, ought never be organized.” While it’s true there are aspects of delivering the NA message that do require organization, what can never be organized is the spirit of our Fellowship. The active energy of that spirit, the flow between and among individual addicts and groups and service bodies—the “as such” part of NA—is our interdependence. We can’t organize the magic that happens when one addict supports another.

We tell our stories of how we got here, despite the odds, despite our prejudgments, despite fear. Doing so helps us and it helps others. Same with sharing our experience of how we got through illness or grief—and how we had dreams, set goals, and then achieved them—or how we didn’t get what we’d worked for and hoped for and survived that pain, too. Flawed and human, we mutually depend on each other; we’re interdependent.

We can’t ever predict when an idea that one group has will reverberate to another corner of the world where it’s picked up and used by another. We don’t have NA bosses, handing down edicts from on high; instead, our service bodies are created in response to issues that emerge. And the solutions to our problems are gleaned from the hard‐won experiences and brand‐new ideas of recovering NA members. We can’t govern our way into unity or cooperation or participation. Or love. Instead, everyone pitches in however they’re willing. We’re a growing, evolving movement. When we band together, we are a power greater than the disease of addiction. Interdependence is our collective restoration to sanity.

I will practice interdependence by relying on others and allowing them to rely on me. NA, as such, only becomes stronger with our collective empathy, our creativity, our hope, our unity. Today I will participate in all that.

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1 NOVEMBER

Acceptance Takes Practice

Acceptance is not an all‐or‐nothing event, and it doesn’t necessarily happen all at once.

—Living Clean, Chapter 1, “Growing Pains”

We talk about “practicing spiritual principles” because they take practice. That’s certainly true of acceptance. At times, the only thing we fully accept is the fact that we’re addicts. On those days, that’s good enough. We practice acceptance by not picking up. And if we don’t pick up, we won’t use.

As we grow in recovery, we start to recognize where our acceptance falls short. Sometimes we might acknowledge a problem, but not fully accept its implications, especially when a solution requires us to take responsibility and make an effort. For example, we might sense relationship trouble, but may or may not adjust how much time we spend with a partner. Some of us can’t accept, or even recognize, that we’ve been dishonest until we do a Tenth Step; the disease calls us to stop writing.

Our ability to practice acceptance sometimes wavers depending on who else is involved. We may be able to accept relapse from others, but not when it’s a family member. Maybe we can accept the blunders of newcomers but not those mistakes made by oldtimers.

We celebrate the progress we make, no matter how small: “Today I told my boss why I was really late; that was a first!” Or big: “The loss of my beloved dog opened the floodgates, allowing me to revisit the grief of other losses and come to new levels of acceptance.”

As we recover just a little more each day, practicing acceptance pays off. We experience rare and remarkable epiphanies with acceptance and recognize the path it took to get there. We can hear other members’ struggles with acceptance and think, Yep, they’re right where they’re supposed to be.

Today I’ll look at the conditions I place on acceptance and try to practice this principle more fully.

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2 NOVEMBER

Being Vigilant in the Here and Now

We must be willing to do whatever is necessary to recover.

—Basic Text, Chapter 9: Just for Today—Living the Program

“I always remind myself: Yesterday’s recovery won’t keep me clean today,” a self‐described chronic relapser shared as they celebrated a major milestone. “Vigilance—right here, right now—has been key for me,” they explained. “I learned the hard way that the real work of recovery is that I have to be willing to do whatever’s necessary. And I need to take time to be still and figure out what that is at any given moment.”

As spiritual principles go, vigilance is kind of a rock star. It’s thick with meaning, pairing watchfulness with deliberate action. We start our practice of vigilance simply by paying attention. We level up from basic abstinence to a meaningful recovery when we choose to be active in our program, self‐reflective, and flexible, fine‐tuning our approach as our personal program evolves.

In the beginning, going to lots of meetings and not taking anything between them has the desired effect; a clear head and a bit of hope make for a great start. It’s enough to keep us coming back. Listening to other members’ stories makes us want more. A member shared, “If I want more out of my program, I’ve got to put more in.” Inspired, we get a sponsor, cultivate a relationship with a Higher Power, and make steady progress through the Steps. As a result, we get more and more comfortable in our own skin.

Vigilance helps us to settle into our new way of life, applying what we’ve learned about spiritual principles in our daily affairs. We make time to reflect and fine‐tune our approach as we move through life clean. As we remain watchful, we may notice that our emotional life, our thinking, our physical selves, or spiritual condition will still get out of whack from time to time. That’s because we’re human and because things change. But life’s lessons have revealed a process for navigating through our difficulties, regaining focus, and reconnecting with ourselves, those who care about us, and a Higher Power.

I am an addict every day, but today I choose to be a recovering addict. I’m willing to do what’s necessary to care for my spiritual condition and stay watchful over my program.

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