Recovery Thoughts and Quotes 4/17

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AA Just For Today

Anonymity

From "The Three Legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous":

"The intense drive that most of us alcoholics have for money, prestige, and power then crashed into the open by way of broken anonymity at the public level. This development of the 1945-1950 period was made even more dangerous by the fact that most of the anonymity breakers meant well. … Sometimes these folks wanted to use the A.A. name publicly in order to help other good causes. Sometimes they just wanted their names and pictures in the papers—always, of course, to help A.A. … [W]e saw that the risk to A.A. would be appalling if all our power-drivers finally got loose at the public level. Scores of them were already doing it.

"So A.A. Headquarters got to work. We wrote remonstrances, kind ones, of course, to every breaker. We sent letters to nearly all press, radio, and publishing outlets, explaining why A.A.’s should not break their anonymity before the general public. Group feeling, combined with the Headquarters efforts, finally squeezed the anonymity breakers down to a mere handful within a few years. Had this tendency not been checked, the whole character of our society could have changed, and its future could have been fearfully compromised."

© 2001 AAWS, Inc.; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, pg. 209

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AA Thought for the Day
(courtesy AAOnline.net)

~ Scroll down for share ~

April 17, 2008

Fear

The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking,
one that can never be wholly completed.
When under heavy attack, acute illness,
or in other conditions of serious insecurity,
we shall all react, well or badly, as the case may be.
Only the vainglorious claim perfect freedom from fear, though their very
grandiosity is really rooted in fears they have temporarily forgotten.
- Bill W., January 1962
© 1990 The AA Grapevine, Inc., The Language Of The Heart, p. 265


Thought to Ponder . . .

Turn fear into faith.


AA-related 'Alconym' . . .

F E A R = Face Everything And Recover.

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AA 'Big Book' - Quote

But he had found God - and in finding God had found himself. - Pg. 158 - A Vision For You



"On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We
consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to
direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-
pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we
can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God
gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much
higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 86~



"It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on
our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a
subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is
a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual
condition."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 85~

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Misc. AA Literature - Quote

Learn in Quiet

In 1941, a news clipping was called to our attention by a New York member. In an obituary notice from a local paper, there appeared these words: 'God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Never had we seen so much A.A. in so few words. With amazing speed the Serenity Prayer came into general use.
.....
In meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly with the thoughts or prayers of spiritually centered people who understand, so that we may experience and learn. This is the state of being that so often discovers and deepens a conscious contact with God.

1. A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 196
2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, PP. 100-101

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12 x 12 Quote

"Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged that a
separation may be necessary. But those cases are the unusual ones. The
alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured, and now fully
understanding how much he himself did to damage her and his children,
nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities with a
willingness to repair what he can and to accept what he can't. He
persistently tries all of AA's Twelve Steps in his home, often with
fine results. At this point he firmly but lovingly commences to
behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And above all he is
finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a way of life for
him." (Twelve and Twelve, Step Twelve, pg. 119)

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Rationalization

"We 'constructively criticized' someone who needed it,
when our real motive was to win a useless argument.
We were depressed and complained we felt bad,
when in fact we were mainly asking for
sympathy and attention.
This odd trait of mind and emotion,
this perverse wish to hide a bad motive
underneath a good one,
permeates human affairs from top to bottom.
Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws
is the essence of character-building
and good living."
Bill W., Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 94-5

Thought to Consider . . .

A victim is a spectator in his life.

*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
FEAR
Face Everything And Recover!