
12 Step Recovery Readings
12 Step Readings – Spiritual quotes |
Feel free to post today’s and this weeks daily reading or spiritual quote in the comment section. Tuesday 3rd November through to Sunday 8th November |
12 Step Readings – Spiritual quotes |
Feel free to post today’s and this weeks daily reading or spiritual quote in the comment section. Tuesday 3rd November through to Sunday 8th November |
Macy
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought For The Day
Seventh, I can help other alcoholics. I am of some use in the world. I have a purpose in
life. I am worth something at last. My life has a direction and a meaning. All that feeling
of futility is gone. I can do something worthwhile. God has given me a new lease on life so
that I can help other alcoholics. He has let me live through all the hazards of my alcoholic
life to bring me at last to a place of real usefulness in the world. He has let me live for
this. This is my opportunity and my destiny. I am worth something! Will I give as much of
my life as I can to A.A.?
Meditation For The Day
All of us have our own battle to win, the battle between the material view of life and the
spiritual view. Something must guide our lives. Will it be wealth, pride, selfishness, greed
or will it be faith, honesty, purity, unselfishness, love and service? Each one has a choice.
We can choose good or evil. We cannot choose both. Are we going to keep striving
until we win the battle? If we win the victory, we can believe that even God in His heaven
will rejoice.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may choose the good and resist the evil. I pray that I will not be a loser in the
battle for righteousness.
Suzy :) Just for today
NA Just For Today
Living In The Present
“We want to look our past in the face, see it for what it really was, and release it so we can live today.”
Basic Text, p.28
For many of us, the past is like a bad dream. Our lives aren’t the same any more, but we still have fleeting, highly charged emotional memories of a really uncomfortable past. The guilt, fear, and anger that once dominated us may spill into our new life, complicating our efforts to change and grow.
The Twelve Steps are the formula that helps us learn to put the past in its place. Through the Fourth and Fifth Steps, we become aware that our old behavior didn’t work. We ask a Higher Power to relieve us of our shortcomings in the Sixth and Seventh Steps, and we begin to be relieved of the guilt and fear that plagued us for so many years. In the Eighth and Ninth Steps, by making amends, we demonstrate to others that our lives are changing. We are no longer controlled by the past. Once the past loses its control over us, we are free to find new ways to live, ways that reflect who we truly are.
Just for today: I don’t have to be controlled by my past. I will live this new day as the new person I am becoming.
pg. 313
Jaquie xx
October 30
Daily Reflections
LIVE AND LET LIVE
Never since it began has Alcoholics Anonymous been divided by a major controversial
issue. Nor has our Fellowship ever publicly taken sides on any question in an embattled
world. This, however, has been no earned virtue. It could almost be said that we were
born with it. . . . “So long as we don’t argue these matters privately, it’s a cinch we never
shall publicly. ”
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 176
Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don’t have to share it?
That’s the spirit of “Live and Let Live.” The Serenity Prayer reminds me, with God’s
help, to “Accept the things I cannot change.” Am I still trying to change others? When it
comes to “Courage to change the things I can,” do I remember that my opinions
are mine, and yours are yours? Am I still afraid to be me? When it comes to “Wisdom
to know the difference,” do I remember that my opinions come from my experience?
If I have a know-it-all attitude, aren’t I being deliberately controversial?
Sheila
Each Day a New Beginning
Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. –Florence Scovel Shinn
Should we make this move? Should we change jobs? Should we talk to others about our feelings? We are seldom short on prayers when we’re filled with fear and indecision. We are, however, short on answers. Our worries block them out.
No prayer ever goes unanswered. Of this we can be certain. On the other hand, the answer may not be what we’d hoped for. In fact, we may not recognize it as the answer because we are expecting something quite different. It takes willingness on our part to be free of our preconceptions–free to accept whatever answers are offered.
Our answers come unexpectedly, a chance meeting on the street, a passage in a book or newspaper, a nagging feeling within. God speaks to each of us throughout the day. Our prayers are answered, our problems find solutions, and our worries are eased, if we but attune ourselves to the messages. They are all around.
I will be attentive to all the signs from God today. Whatever answer I seek is finding its way to me.
Macy
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Step Five – “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
Yet many of us still hung back. We said, “Why can’t ‘God as we understand Him’ tell us where we are astray? If the Creator gave us our lives in the first place, then He must know in every detail where we have since gone wrong. Why don’t we make our admissions to Him directly? Why do we need to bring anyone else into this?”
p. 59
Georgie Girl xx
November 4
Daily Reflections
A DAILY DISCIPLINE
, . . when they [self-examination, meditation and prayer] are logically related and
interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 98
The last three Steps of the program invoke God’s loving discipline upon my willful nature.
If I devote just a few moments every night to a review of the highlights of my day, along
with an acknowledgment of those aspects that didn’t please me so much, I gain a personal
history of myself, one that is essential to my growth, or lack of it, and to ask in prayerful
meditation to be relieved of those continuing shortcomings that cause me pain. Meditation
and prayer also teach me the art of focusing and listening. I find that the turmoil of the day
gets tuned out as I pray for His will and guidance. The practice of asking Him to help
me in my strivings for perfection puts a new slant on the tedium of any day, because I know
there is honor in any job done well. The daily discipline of prayer and meditation will keep
me in fit spiritual condition, able to face whatever the day brings – without the thought of a
drink.
Babs
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Step Five – “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”
The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. Even when you’ve found the person, it frequently takes great resolution to approach him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place you may require all you’ve got. Happily, though, the chances are that you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your mission is carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the conversation will start easily and will soon become eager. Before long, your listener may well tell a story or two about himself which will place you even more at ease. Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquillity takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, something else of great moment is apt to occur. Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God. And even those who had faith already often become conscious of God as they never were before.
pp. 61-62
Wilbur
NA Just For Today
Exchanging Love
“…we give love because it was given so freely to us. New frontiers are open to us as we learn how to love. Love can be the flow of life energy from one person to another”
Basic Text pp. 100-101
Love given, and love received, is the essence of life itself. It is the universal common denominator, connecting us to those around us. Addiction deprived us of that connection, locking us within ourselves.
The love we find in the NA program reopens the world to us. It unlocks the cage of addiction which once imprisoned us. By receiving love from other NA members, we find out – perhaps for the first time – what love is and what it can do. We hear fellow members talk about the sharing of love, and we sense the substance it lends to their lives.
We begin to suspect that, if giving and receiving love means so much to others, maybe it can give meaning to our lives, too. We sense that we are on the verge of a great discovery, yet we also sense that we won’t fully understand the meaning of love unless we give ours away. We try it, and discover the missing connection between ourselves and the world.
Today, we realize that what they said was true: “We keep what we have only by giving it away.”
Just for today: Life is a new frontier for me, and the vehicle I will use to explore it is love. I will give freely the love I have received.
pg. 322