Daily Reflections & Daily Readings

[MandiH]

November 10~NA Just For Today
Fear or faith?

“No matter how far we ran, we always carried fear with us.”~Basic Text, p. 14

For many of us, fear was a constant factor in our lives before we came to Narcotics Anonymous.

We used because we were afraid to feel emotional or physical pain. Our fear of people and situations gave us a convenient excuse to use drugs. A few of us were so afraid of everything that we were unable even to leave our homes without using first.

As we stay clean, we replace our fear with a belief in the fellowship, the steps, and a Higher Power. As
this belief grows, our faith in the miracle of recovery begins to color all aspects of our lives.

We start to see ourselves differently. We realize we are spiritual beings, and we strive to live by spiritual principles.The application of spiritual principles helps eliminate fear from our lives.

By refraining from treating other people in harmful or unlawful ways, we find we needn’t fear how we will be treated in return.

As we practice love, compassion, understanding, and patience in our relationships with others, we are treated in turn with respect and consideration.

We realize these positive changes result from allowing our Higher Power to work through us. We come to believe-not to think, but to believe-that our Higher Power wants only the best for us. No matter what the circumstances, we find we can walk in faith instead of fear.

Just for Today: I no longer need to run in fear, but can walk in faith that my Higher Power has only the
best in store for me.

[MandiH]

November 11~Daily Reflections

SELF-ACCEPTANCE

We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 105

I pray for the willingness to remember that I am a child of God, a divine soul in human form, and that my most basic and urgent life-task is to accept, know, love and nurture myself. As I accept myself, I am accepting God’s will. As I know and love myself, I am knowing and loving God. As I nurture myself I am acting on God’s guidance.

I pray for the willingness to let go of my arrogant self-criticism, and to praise God by humbly accepting and caring for myself.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 11~Language Of Letting Go

Discipline

Children need discipline to feel secure; so do adults.

Discipline means understanding there are logical consequences to our behavior. Discipline means taking responsibility for our behavior and the consequences.

Discipline means learning to wait for what we want.

Discipline means being willing to work for and toward what we want.

Discipline means learning and practicing new behaviors.

Discipline means being where we need to be, when we need to be there, despite our feelings.

Discipline is the day-to-day performing of tasks, whether these be recovery behaviors or washing the dishes.

Discipline involves trusting that our goals will be reached though we cannot see them.

Discipline can be grueling. We may feel afraid, confused, uncertain. Later, we will see the purpose. But this clarity of sight usually does not come during the time of discipline. We may not even believe we’re moving forward.

But we are.

The task at hand during times of discipline is simple: listen, trust, and obey.

Higher Power, help me learn to surrender to discipline. Help me be grateful that You care enough about me to allow these times of discipline and learning in my life. Help me know that as a result of discipline and learning, something important will have been worked out in me.

[MandiH]

November 11~Keep It Simple

Have the courage to live; anyone can die.—Robert Cody

Living means facing all of life. Life is joy and sorrow.

We used to be people who wanted the joy without
the sorrow. But we can learn from hard times, maybe more than we do in easy times. Often, getting
through hard times helps us grow.

When things get tough, maybe we want to turn and run. Then, a gentle voice from within us say, “I am with you. You have friends who will help.”

If we listen, we’ll hear our Higher Power. This is what is meant by “conscious contact” in Step eleven.

As this conscious contact grows, our courage grows. And we find the strength to face hard times.

Prayer for the Day: I pray for the strength and courage to live. I pray that I’ll never have to face hard time alone again.

Action for the Day: I’ll list two examples of conscious contact” in my life.

[MandiH]

November 12~Daily Reflections

MORNING THOUGHTS

Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 164

For many years I pondered over God’s will for me, believing that perhaps a great destiny had been ordained for my life. After all, having been born into a specific faith, hadn’t I been told early that I was “chosen”? It finally occurred to me, as I considered the above passage, that God’s will for me was simply that I practice Step Twelve on a daily basis. Furthermore, I realized I should do this to the best of my ability. I soon learned that the practice aids me in keeping my life in the context of the day at hand.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 12~Language Of Letting Go

Timing

Wait until the time is right. It is self-defeating to postpone or procrastinate; it is also self-defeating to act too soon, before the time is right.

Sometimes, we panic and take action out of fear. Sometimes, we take untimely action for revenge or because we want to punish someone. We act or speak too soon as a way to control or force someone to action. Sometimes, we take action too soon to relieve feelings of discomfort or anxiety about how a situation will turn out.

An action taken too soon can be as ineffective as one taken too late. It can backfire and cause more problems than it solves. Usually, when we wait until the time is right—sometimes only a matter of minutes or hours—the discomfort dissolves, and we’re empowered to accomplish what we need to do.

In recovery, we are learning to be effective.

Our answers will come. Our guidance will come. Pray. Trust. Wait. Let go. We are being led. We are being guided.

Today, I will let go of my need to control by waiting until the time is right. When the time is right, I will take action.

[MandiH]

November 12~Walk In Dry Places

The importance of maintenance.

Fortitude

In praising their success with AA, people sometimes overlook the importance of maintenance.

AA not only helps us achieve sobriety, but it can also help us maintain our sobriety for a lifetime.

Members often touch on this matter when they admit that they were able to sober up hundreds of times, but didn’t know how to stay sober.

It is STAYING sober that makes all the difference between life and death for us.

Our tools for staying sober, for maintaining our sobriety, are the simple ones that put us back on
our feet in the first place.

We continue to admit that we’re alcoholics and need the help of fellow members and our Higher Power.

We also continue to attend meetings and to carry the message.

We remind ourselves that we’re never out of the woods permanently, no matter how much our lives improve.

I’ll take the routine steps today that are needed for the maintenance of my sobriety. Doing this will help
protect me from the terrible consequences of returning to drinking.

[MandiH]

November 13~Daily Reflections

LOOKING OUTWARD

We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no requests for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 87

As an active alcoholic, I allowed selfishness to run rampant in my life. I was so attached to my drinking and other selfish habits that people and moral principles came second. Now, when I pray for the good of others rather than my “own selfish ends,” I practice a discipline in letting go of selfish attachments, caring for my fellows and preparing for the day when I will be required to let go of all earthly attachments.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 13~Language Of Letting Go

Taking Care of Ourselves

We do not have to wait for others to come to our aid. We are not victims. We are not helpless.

Letting go of faulty thinking means we realize there are no knights on white horses, no magical grandmothers in the sky watching, waiting to rescue us.

Teachers may come our way, but they will not rescue. They will teach. People who care will come, but they will not rescue. They will care. Help will come, but help is not rescuing.

We are our own rescuers.

Our relationships will improve dramatically when we stop rescuing others and stop expecting them to rescue us.

Today, I will let go of the fears and self-doubt that block me from taking assertive action in my best interest. I can take care of myself and let others do the same for themselves.

[MandiH]

November 13~Keep It Simple

Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.—Anonymous

We addicts often learn things the hard way. In the past, we found it very hard to take advice from anyone.

It’s still hard to take advice, but it’s getting easier every day. We know now that we can’t handle
everything in life by ourselves. We’ve come to believe there is help for us. And we’re learning to ask for
help and advice.

Sometimes we don’t like the advice we get. We don’t have to use it. But if it comes from people who love
and understand us, we can try to listen. Write it down. Think about it. It may make sense another day.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, please work through people who love me. I need your advice. Help me listen to it.

Action for the Day: I will make notes to myself, writing down things that seem important. I will read
them once in a while.

[MandiH]

November 13~NA Just For Today

Not Perfect

“We are not going to be perfect. If we were perfect, we would not be human.”-Basic Text p. 30

All of us had expectations about life in recovery.

Some of us thought recovery would suddenly make us employable or able to do anything in the world we wanted to do. Or maybe we imagined perfect ease in
our interactions with others.

When we stop and think, we realize that we expected recovery would make us perfect.

We didn’t expect to continue making many mistakes. But we do. That’s not the addict side of us showing through; that’s being human.

In Narcotics Anonymous we strive for recovery, not perfection. The only promise we are given is
freedom from active addiction. Perfection is not an attainable state for human beings; it’s not a realistic
goal.
What we often seek in perfection is freedom from the discomfort of making mistakes. In return for
that freedom from discomfort, we trade our curiosity, our flexibility, and the room to grow.

We can consider the trade: Do we want to live the rest of our lives in our well-defined little world, safe
but perhaps stifled? Or do we wish to venture out into the unknown, take a risk, and reach for everything life has to offer?

Just for today: I want all that life has to offer me and all that recovery can provide. Today, I will take a
risk, try something new, and grow.

[MandiH]

November 14~Daily Reflections

INTUITION AND INSPIRATION

. . . we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 86

I invest my time in what I truly love. Step Eleven is a discipline that allows me and my Higher Power to be together, reminding me that, with God’s help, intuition and inspiration are possible. Practice of the Step brings on selflove. In a consistent attempt to improve my conscious contact with a Higher Power, I am subtly reminded of my unhealthy past, with its patterns of grandiose thinking and false feelings of omnipotence. When I ask for the power to carry out God’s will for me, I am made aware of my powerlessness. Humility and a healthy selflove are compatible, a direct result of working Step Eleven.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 14~Language Of Letting Go

Letting Our Anger Out

It’s okay to be angry, but it isn’t healthy to be resentful. Regardless of what we learned as children, no matter what we saw role-modeled, we can learn to deal with our anger in ways that are healthy for us and for those around us. We can have our angry feelings. We can connect with them, own them, feel them, express them, release them, and be done with them.

We can learn to listen to what anger is telling us about what we want and need in order to take care of ourselves.

Sometimes we can even indulge in angry feelings that aren’t justified. Feelings are just feelings; there is no morality in the feeling, only in our behavior. We can feel angry without hurting or abusing others or ourselves. We can learn to deal with anger in ways that benefit our relationships instead of ways that harm them.

If we don’t feel our angry feelings today, we will need to face them tomorrow.

Today, I will let myself feel my anger, I will express my anger appropriately, without guilt. Then I will be done with it.

[MandiH]

November 14~Keep It Simple

Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do—Mark Twain

Self-discipline is a key part of living sober life.

We need it to get to our meetings regularly. We need it to understand the Steps. We need it to work the Steps.And we get much in return.

With self-discipline, we learn to trust ourselves. We learn to do what is most loving and caring for ourselves.

What a great relief!

One of the worst parts of our illness was that we
couldn’t count on ourselves. We didn’t know what we’d do next. Self-discipline heals this part of our
illness.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You have given me much. It’s only right that I give You part of my
day. I will pray and meditate on Your wonders.

Action for the Day: I will list areas of my program where I lack self-discipline. I will share the list with
my group and sponsor, and I’ll let them know in a month how I’m doing.

[MandiH]

November 14~Each Day a New Beginning

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. --Kathleen Casey Theisen

How awesome is our power, personally, to choose our attitudes and our responses to any situation, to
every situation. We will feel only how we choose to feel, no matter the circumstance.

Happiness is as free an option as sorrow.

Perceiving our challenges as opportunities for positive growth rather than stumbling blocks in our path to success is a choice readily available.

What is inevitable–a matter over which we have no choice–is that difficult times, painful experiences will visit us.

We can, however, greet them like welcome guests, celebrating their blessings on us and the personal growth they inspire.

No circumstance demands suffering. Every circumstance has a silver lining.

In one instance you may choose to feel self-pity; in the next, gladness.

We do not always feel confident about our choices, even when we accept the responsibility for making
them.

How lucky for us that the program offers a solution! Prayer and meditation, guidance from our higher power, can help us make the right choice every time.

I will relish my freedom to choose, to feel, to act. I and only I can take it away.

[MandiH]

November 15~Daily Reflections

VITAL SUSTENANCE

Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 97

Step Eleven doesn’t have to overwhelm me. Conscious contact with God can be as simple, and as profound, as conscious contact with another human being. I can smile. I can listen. I can forgive. Every encounter with another is an opportunity for prayer, for acknowledging God’s presence within me.

Today I can bring myself a little closer to my Higher Power. The more I choose to seek the beauty of God’s work in other people, the more certain of His presence I will become.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 15~Language Of Letting Go

Benefits of Recovery

There are two benefits from recovery: we have short-term gains and long-term gains.

The short-term gains are the things we can do today that help us feel better immediately.

We can wake up in the morning, read for a few minutes in our meditation book, and feel lifted. We can work a Step and often notice an immediate difference in the way we feel and function. We can go to a meeting and feel refreshed, talk to a friend and feel comforted, or practice a new recovery behavior, such as dealing with our feelings or doing something good for ourselves, and feel relieved.

There are other benefits from recovery, though, that we don’t see immediately on a daily or even a monthly basis. These are the long-term gains, the larger progress we make in our life.

Over the years, we can see tremendous rewards. We can watch ourselves grow strong in faith, until we have a daily personal relationship with a Higher Power that is as real to us as a relationship with a best friend.

We can watch ourselves grow beautiful as we shed shame, guilt, resentments, self-hatred, and other negative buildups from our past.

We can watch the quality of our relationships improve with family, friends, and spouses. We find ourselves growing steadily and gradually in our capacity to be intimate and close, to give and receive.

We can watch ourselves grow in our careers, in our ability to be creative, powerful, productive people, using our gifts and talents in a way that feels good and benefits others.

We discover the joy and beauty in ourselves, others, and life.

The long-term progress is steady, but sometimes slow, happening in increments and often with much forward and backward movement. Enough days at a time of practicing recovery behaviors and piling up short-term gains leads to long-term rewards.

Today, I will be grateful for the immediate and long-term rewards of recovery. If I am new to recovery, I will have faith that I can achieve the long-term benefits. If I’ve been recovering for a while, I will pause to reflect, and be grateful for my overall progress.

[MandiH]

November 15~Walk In Dry Places

The loss of choice

Freedom

Many alcoholics are vigorous defenders of free choice.

We have to concede, however, that our choices are not always limited by the tyranny of others. Our own actions can take away from freedom of choice.

Recovering people in AA have learned that taking even one drink will result in the loss of choice, and it is not just a temporary loss of sobriety that one faces.

It’s always possible that the person who drinks again
may never recovery sobriety.

In the same way, other actions represent loss of choice in our lives. other actions represent loss of choice in our lives.

A person who cheats, for example, may learn that he or she has no choice over the unpleasant outcomes that follow.

We can protect our freedom of choice by deciding only to take actions that will strengthen such freedom in the future. At no time should we make any choices that rob us of our precious right to choose.

Every action I take today must help me keep favorable options open in the future. My right to choose was restored by AA, and I must help protect it.

[MandiH]

November 16~Daily Reflections

A DAILY REPRIEVE

What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 85

Maintaining my spiritual condition is like working out every day, planning for the marathon, swimming laps, jogging. It’s staying in good shape spiritually, and that requires prayer and meditation. The single most important way for me to improve my conscious contact with a Higher Power is to pray and meditate. I am as powerless over alcohol as I am to turn back the waves of the sea; no human force had the power to overcome my alcoholism. Now I am able to breathe the air of joy, happiness and wisdom. I have the power to love and react to events around me with the eyes of a faith in things that are not readily apparent. My daily reprieve means that, no matter how difficult or painful things appear today, I can draw on the power of the program to stay liberated from my cunning, baffling and powerful illness.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

November 16~Language Of Letting Go

The Victim Trap

The belief that life has to be hard and difficult is the belief that makes a martyr.

We can change our negative beliefs about life, and whether we have the power to stop our pain and take care of ourselves.

We aren’t helpless. We can solve our problems. We do have power—not to change or control others, but to solve the problems that are ours to solve.

Using each problem that comes our way to “prove” that life is hard and we are helpless—this is codependency. It’s the victim trap.

Life does not have to be difficult. In fact, it can be smooth. Life is good. We don’t have to “awfulize” it, or ourselves. We don’t have to live on the underside.

We do have power, more power than we know, even in the difficult times. And the difficult times don’t prove life is bad; they are part of the ups and downs of life; often, they work out for the best.

We can change our attitude; we can change ourselves; sometimes, we can change our circumstances.

Life is challenging. Sometimes, there’s more pain than we asked for; sometimes, there’s more joy than we imagined.

It’s all part of the package, and the package is good.

We are not victims of life. We can learn to remove ourselves as victims of life. By letting go of our belief that life has to be hard and difficult, we make our life much easier.

Today, God, help me let go of my belief that life is so hard, so awful, or so difficult. Help me replace that belief with a healthier, more realistic view.