admin
09-29-2008, 05:59 PM
Wisdom for Today
One room I spent too much time in during my addiction was the bathroom. Many times I found that I had too much to drink, or I had used too much of one of the drugs I secured. Then it was off to worship the porcelain god. The gut wrenching and the smell should have been enough to convince me that I should quit. Over and over I promised myself, “Never again!” But then it would start all over again. The mornings after were never any fun.
In recovery I now spend time in different rooms, the rooms where I am in fellowship with other recovering friends. The only time my gut hurts there is when I laugh so hard my sides hurt, and tears are rolling down my face. I guess that sometimes it is good to hurt like that. What’s even better -- I can remember what was so funny the night before. Have the mornings after changed with recovery?
Meditations of the Heart
Early in recovery I felt like I was walking in darkness. I had no idea where the road would lead. But after a time on this path, I began to see a new light. Hope and faith in God brought brightness into my days. At first I didn’t really understand where the light was coming from. But it was there for me nonetheless. As I got further into my recovery and began to help the newcomer, I saw the blinders they had on. That is when I realized that God’s light had always been there for me; but in recovery God had been kind enough to remove the blinders from my eyes. Does a new light shine for you?
Petitions to my Higher Power
God,
Today I know that Your light is there for me even on the days that seem dark and overcast. Even when my problems seem most troubling, Your light shines. I know that as long as I follow the steps, Your light cannot disappear from my eyes again. Give me the strength today to humbly follow the Twelve Steps and stay in Your light.
Amen.
-----
NA Just For Today
Being Ourselves
"Our real value is in being ourselves."
Basic Text, p.101
Over and over, we have tried to live up to the expectations of those around us. We may have been raised believing that we were okay if we earned good grades in school, cleaned our rooms, or dressed a certain way. Always wanting to belong and be loved, many of us spent a lot of time trying to fit in - yet we never quite seemed to measure up.
Now, in recovery, we are accepted as we are. Our real value to others is in being ourselves. As we work the steps, we learn to accept ourselves just as we are. Once this happens, we gain the freedom to become who we want to be.
We each have many good qualities we can share with others. Our experiences, honestly shared, help others find the level of identification they need to begin their recovery. We discover that we all have special gifts to offer those around us.
Just for today: My experience in recovery is the greatest gift I can give another addict. I will share myself honestly with others.
pg. 284
-----
September 30 - Daily Feast
Careless words and controversial thought can hang on the invisible like dust clouds and clog thinking and comprehension like the webs of cobbies. Personal space should be kept as clean as the plate you eat off of - and you should never open the door to heedless opinion. The atmosphere swarms with spoken words - and most are hostile and hardened by experience. If each of us could see with the naked eye our own personal words, even without the multitudes that belong to others, we would be appalled. The computer shows what is preserved on the Internet, but think what people verbally send into the ethers - and every word frozen in time.
~ Black Hawk is a true Indian. He feels for his wife and children, his friends....they will suffer. He laments their fate. ~
BLACK HAWK - SAC, Circa 1800
'A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II' by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
Elder's Meditation of the Day - September 30
"Don't be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts."
--Don Talayesva, HOPI
Human beings function from choice. We can choose to stuff things, or we can choose to let go of things. If we choose to stuff things, then we will feel a heaviness, or sorrow, self pity or fear. Sometimes we feel the need to cry. Sometimes we are taught it is not okay to cry. The creator designed the human being to cry. Crying is a release. This release allows us to let go of thoughts that are not helping us so we can open to new thoughts that will help. Crying is natural for women and men.
Grandfather, if I need to cry, let me realize it's a natural process and help me to let go.
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
"THINK on THESE THINGS"
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler
The longest face and the saddest cry Always seem to come with the question why. Why did you take what belonged to me?
It has always been mine, or can't you see That you have no rights, no right to claim,
And you did just that, you're to blame For all my unhappiness, all of my tears.
Well, perhaps not all, part were my fears. And I suppose if I think I can also say That if I've lost anything, it's really the way That I treated the things that used to be mine. I saw clouds on the days where there was really sunshine, I turned often to darkness instead of the light. I saw all of the wrong, but never the right, And in all honesty I suppose I must say If I've lost anything, I gave it away.
-----
Daily Relationship Reading
Many of us have a difficult time accepting compliments. When my SO tells me I look beautiful or handsome, or calls me smart or talented, I often have a mixture of feelings. I like it, yet feel somehow undeserving at the same time.
Compliments may also be a double edged sword. I may look terrific to my SO when I'm dressed to kill and have spent time enhancing my appearance, but some mornings I feel like King Kong.
When I treat my assets as gifts however, I can take a different and often more joyful approach to compliments. A talent such as music, for instance, can give me joy by sharing it, just like sharing a birthday present. If someone enjoys having it shared with them, that automatically makes it "good enough".
The same with my appearance. If it gives someone joy by sharing it, great! When I realize that I have many gifts to offer my SO, simply by being myself, I no longer need to be afraid of meeting invisible standards of near perfection.
Just for Today
Today I'll think about how I'm special in my own way, and how much of what I have has been a gift to me from God, or whatever source it has come from. I can't share roses if the gifts I've been given are carnations. I can share what I have with my SO, and know that is special enough.
The giver is only a channel for the gifts he has received from God. He cannot hoard or withhold them without blocking the channel. - Al-Anon
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Perspective
When our vision was clouded by self-will, our perspective was narrow and subjective. We saw people and events only as they fostered or frustrated our egotistical concerns. The world was a frightening place, since we thought that our welfare was entirely dependent on our own efforts.
Coming to believe in a Higher Power gives us a new, broader perspective. We learn the security of trusting eternal values and moral principles. When we pray only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out, we begin to see ourselves as serving rather than surviving. Particular acts may or may not be successful from our point of view, but we can move on in confidence, knowing that our past, present, and future is in His hands.
The new perspective, which comes to us as we work the OA program, enables us to accept defeats as well as successes and irritations as well as satisfactions. All experience is for our growth and development.
Create in us a new perspective.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
The house, the stars, the desert--what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible. --Antoine de Saint Exupery
What makes our home special? Is it the shape of it, or whether or not we have carpeting? Probably not.
More likely, what makes us love a place is how we feel when we are there. Home is the familiarity of pleasant smells, activities, and special people.
And when we are caught by the beauty of the stars, isn't it something that happens inside us--the breathtaking feeling of joy that is so hard to describe? The beauty of a day or a special person in our lives cannot be captured, but it can fill and warm our hearts.
Can I measure beauty today by what I feel inside?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. --William Blake
We seek the answer. Sometimes we think we have found a central truth and later learn that beneath it is another truth. Or what seemed so crucial as a guiding principle for our lives last year is still true but not as crucial. It is like trying to take a snapshot of a changing world while the camera itself is changing.
Some of us in our hunger for security grab for "absolute" truths, which are not absolute. We must continue forever to be eager learners. In stepping across a stream from one floating log to another, we must resist the temptation to become overcommitted to staying in an especially secure looking place, or we will never reach the opposite shore. Even the Twelve Steps of this program are given to us as a "suggested" program of recovery. It is a program that works because it takes us out of our rigid ways. We are continually made new. That is the vitality of the spiritual life.
God, help me to be open to new opinions - to things I had never thought of on my own.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? --Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
We choose the lives we lead. We choose sadness or happiness; success for failure; dread or excited anticipation. Whether or not we are conscious of our choices, we are making them every moment.
Accepting full responsibility for our actions is one of the requirements of maturity. Not always the easiest thing to do, but necessary to our further development. An unexpected benefit of accepting our responsibility is that it heightens our awareness of personal power. Our well being is within our power. Happiness is within our power. Our attitude about any condition, present or future, is within our power, if we take it.
Life is "doing unto us" only what we allow. And it will favor us with whatever we choose. If we look for excitement, we'll find it. We can search out the positive in any experience. All situations present seeds of new understanding, if we are open to them. Our responses to the events around us determine whatever meaning life offers. We are in control of our outlook. And our outlook decides our future.
This day is mine, fully, to delight in--or to dread. The decision is always mine.
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Not a Victim
You are not a victim.
How deeply ingrained our self-image as a victim can be! How habitual our feelings of misery and helplessness! Victimization can be like a gray cloak that surrounds us, both attracting that which will victimize us and causing us to generate the feelings of victimization.
Victimization can be so habitual that we may feel victimized even by the good things that happen to us!
Got a new car? Yes, we sigh, but it doesn't run as well as I expected, and after all, it cost so much. . . .
You've got such a nice family! Yes, we sigh, but there are problems. And we've had such hard times. . ..
Well, your career certainly is going well! Ah, we sigh, but there is such a price to pay for success. All that extra paperwork. . . .
I have learned that, if we set our mind to it, we have an incredible, almost awesome ability to find misery in any situation, even the most wonderful of circumstances.
Shoulders bent, head down, we shuffle through life taking our blows.
Be done with it. Take off the gray cloak of despair, negativity, and victimization. Hurl it; let it blow away in the wind.
We are not victims. We may have been victimized. We may have allowed ourselves to be victimized. We may have sought out, created, or re created situations that victimized us. But we are not victims.
We can stand in our power. We do not have to allow ourselves to be victimized. We do not have to let others victimize us. We do not have to seek out misery in either the most miserable or the best situations.
We are free to stand in the glow of self-responsibility.
Set a boundary! Deal with the anger! Tell someone no, or stop that! Walk away from a relationship! Ask for what you need! Make choices and take responsibility for them. Explore options. Give yourself what you need! Stand up straight, head up, and claim your power. Claim responsibility for yourself!
And learn to enjoy what's good.
Today, I will refuse to think, talk, speak, or act like a victim. Instead, I will joyfully claim responsibility for myself and focus on what's good and right in my life.
I am one of the miracles of this universe and I am connected to everything that was ever created. I can pick up the phone or sit in quiet meditation, choosing to make a contact with a friend or with my Higher Power or with both. Today I know that I am never alone. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!
One room I spent too much time in during my addiction was the bathroom. Many times I found that I had too much to drink, or I had used too much of one of the drugs I secured. Then it was off to worship the porcelain god. The gut wrenching and the smell should have been enough to convince me that I should quit. Over and over I promised myself, “Never again!” But then it would start all over again. The mornings after were never any fun.
In recovery I now spend time in different rooms, the rooms where I am in fellowship with other recovering friends. The only time my gut hurts there is when I laugh so hard my sides hurt, and tears are rolling down my face. I guess that sometimes it is good to hurt like that. What’s even better -- I can remember what was so funny the night before. Have the mornings after changed with recovery?
Meditations of the Heart
Early in recovery I felt like I was walking in darkness. I had no idea where the road would lead. But after a time on this path, I began to see a new light. Hope and faith in God brought brightness into my days. At first I didn’t really understand where the light was coming from. But it was there for me nonetheless. As I got further into my recovery and began to help the newcomer, I saw the blinders they had on. That is when I realized that God’s light had always been there for me; but in recovery God had been kind enough to remove the blinders from my eyes. Does a new light shine for you?
Petitions to my Higher Power
God,
Today I know that Your light is there for me even on the days that seem dark and overcast. Even when my problems seem most troubling, Your light shines. I know that as long as I follow the steps, Your light cannot disappear from my eyes again. Give me the strength today to humbly follow the Twelve Steps and stay in Your light.
Amen.
-----
NA Just For Today
Being Ourselves
"Our real value is in being ourselves."
Basic Text, p.101
Over and over, we have tried to live up to the expectations of those around us. We may have been raised believing that we were okay if we earned good grades in school, cleaned our rooms, or dressed a certain way. Always wanting to belong and be loved, many of us spent a lot of time trying to fit in - yet we never quite seemed to measure up.
Now, in recovery, we are accepted as we are. Our real value to others is in being ourselves. As we work the steps, we learn to accept ourselves just as we are. Once this happens, we gain the freedom to become who we want to be.
We each have many good qualities we can share with others. Our experiences, honestly shared, help others find the level of identification they need to begin their recovery. We discover that we all have special gifts to offer those around us.
Just for today: My experience in recovery is the greatest gift I can give another addict. I will share myself honestly with others.
pg. 284
-----
September 30 - Daily Feast
Careless words and controversial thought can hang on the invisible like dust clouds and clog thinking and comprehension like the webs of cobbies. Personal space should be kept as clean as the plate you eat off of - and you should never open the door to heedless opinion. The atmosphere swarms with spoken words - and most are hostile and hardened by experience. If each of us could see with the naked eye our own personal words, even without the multitudes that belong to others, we would be appalled. The computer shows what is preserved on the Internet, but think what people verbally send into the ethers - and every word frozen in time.
~ Black Hawk is a true Indian. He feels for his wife and children, his friends....they will suffer. He laments their fate. ~
BLACK HAWK - SAC, Circa 1800
'A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II' by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
Elder's Meditation of the Day - September 30
"Don't be afraid to cry. It will free your mind of sorrowful thoughts."
--Don Talayesva, HOPI
Human beings function from choice. We can choose to stuff things, or we can choose to let go of things. If we choose to stuff things, then we will feel a heaviness, or sorrow, self pity or fear. Sometimes we feel the need to cry. Sometimes we are taught it is not okay to cry. The creator designed the human being to cry. Crying is a release. This release allows us to let go of thoughts that are not helping us so we can open to new thoughts that will help. Crying is natural for women and men.
Grandfather, if I need to cry, let me realize it's a natural process and help me to let go.
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
"THINK on THESE THINGS"
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler
The longest face and the saddest cry Always seem to come with the question why. Why did you take what belonged to me?
It has always been mine, or can't you see That you have no rights, no right to claim,
And you did just that, you're to blame For all my unhappiness, all of my tears.
Well, perhaps not all, part were my fears. And I suppose if I think I can also say That if I've lost anything, it's really the way That I treated the things that used to be mine. I saw clouds on the days where there was really sunshine, I turned often to darkness instead of the light. I saw all of the wrong, but never the right, And in all honesty I suppose I must say If I've lost anything, I gave it away.
-----
Daily Relationship Reading
Many of us have a difficult time accepting compliments. When my SO tells me I look beautiful or handsome, or calls me smart or talented, I often have a mixture of feelings. I like it, yet feel somehow undeserving at the same time.
Compliments may also be a double edged sword. I may look terrific to my SO when I'm dressed to kill and have spent time enhancing my appearance, but some mornings I feel like King Kong.
When I treat my assets as gifts however, I can take a different and often more joyful approach to compliments. A talent such as music, for instance, can give me joy by sharing it, just like sharing a birthday present. If someone enjoys having it shared with them, that automatically makes it "good enough".
The same with my appearance. If it gives someone joy by sharing it, great! When I realize that I have many gifts to offer my SO, simply by being myself, I no longer need to be afraid of meeting invisible standards of near perfection.
Just for Today
Today I'll think about how I'm special in my own way, and how much of what I have has been a gift to me from God, or whatever source it has come from. I can't share roses if the gifts I've been given are carnations. I can share what I have with my SO, and know that is special enough.
The giver is only a channel for the gifts he has received from God. He cannot hoard or withhold them without blocking the channel. - Al-Anon
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Perspective
When our vision was clouded by self-will, our perspective was narrow and subjective. We saw people and events only as they fostered or frustrated our egotistical concerns. The world was a frightening place, since we thought that our welfare was entirely dependent on our own efforts.
Coming to believe in a Higher Power gives us a new, broader perspective. We learn the security of trusting eternal values and moral principles. When we pray only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out, we begin to see ourselves as serving rather than surviving. Particular acts may or may not be successful from our point of view, but we can move on in confidence, knowing that our past, present, and future is in His hands.
The new perspective, which comes to us as we work the OA program, enables us to accept defeats as well as successes and irritations as well as satisfactions. All experience is for our growth and development.
Create in us a new perspective.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
The house, the stars, the desert--what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible. --Antoine de Saint Exupery
What makes our home special? Is it the shape of it, or whether or not we have carpeting? Probably not.
More likely, what makes us love a place is how we feel when we are there. Home is the familiarity of pleasant smells, activities, and special people.
And when we are caught by the beauty of the stars, isn't it something that happens inside us--the breathtaking feeling of joy that is so hard to describe? The beauty of a day or a special person in our lives cannot be captured, but it can fill and warm our hearts.
Can I measure beauty today by what I feel inside?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. --William Blake
We seek the answer. Sometimes we think we have found a central truth and later learn that beneath it is another truth. Or what seemed so crucial as a guiding principle for our lives last year is still true but not as crucial. It is like trying to take a snapshot of a changing world while the camera itself is changing.
Some of us in our hunger for security grab for "absolute" truths, which are not absolute. We must continue forever to be eager learners. In stepping across a stream from one floating log to another, we must resist the temptation to become overcommitted to staying in an especially secure looking place, or we will never reach the opposite shore. Even the Twelve Steps of this program are given to us as a "suggested" program of recovery. It is a program that works because it takes us out of our rigid ways. We are continually made new. That is the vitality of the spiritual life.
God, help me to be open to new opinions - to things I had never thought of on my own.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? --Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
We choose the lives we lead. We choose sadness or happiness; success for failure; dread or excited anticipation. Whether or not we are conscious of our choices, we are making them every moment.
Accepting full responsibility for our actions is one of the requirements of maturity. Not always the easiest thing to do, but necessary to our further development. An unexpected benefit of accepting our responsibility is that it heightens our awareness of personal power. Our well being is within our power. Happiness is within our power. Our attitude about any condition, present or future, is within our power, if we take it.
Life is "doing unto us" only what we allow. And it will favor us with whatever we choose. If we look for excitement, we'll find it. We can search out the positive in any experience. All situations present seeds of new understanding, if we are open to them. Our responses to the events around us determine whatever meaning life offers. We are in control of our outlook. And our outlook decides our future.
This day is mine, fully, to delight in--or to dread. The decision is always mine.
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Not a Victim
You are not a victim.
How deeply ingrained our self-image as a victim can be! How habitual our feelings of misery and helplessness! Victimization can be like a gray cloak that surrounds us, both attracting that which will victimize us and causing us to generate the feelings of victimization.
Victimization can be so habitual that we may feel victimized even by the good things that happen to us!
Got a new car? Yes, we sigh, but it doesn't run as well as I expected, and after all, it cost so much. . . .
You've got such a nice family! Yes, we sigh, but there are problems. And we've had such hard times. . ..
Well, your career certainly is going well! Ah, we sigh, but there is such a price to pay for success. All that extra paperwork. . . .
I have learned that, if we set our mind to it, we have an incredible, almost awesome ability to find misery in any situation, even the most wonderful of circumstances.
Shoulders bent, head down, we shuffle through life taking our blows.
Be done with it. Take off the gray cloak of despair, negativity, and victimization. Hurl it; let it blow away in the wind.
We are not victims. We may have been victimized. We may have allowed ourselves to be victimized. We may have sought out, created, or re created situations that victimized us. But we are not victims.
We can stand in our power. We do not have to allow ourselves to be victimized. We do not have to let others victimize us. We do not have to seek out misery in either the most miserable or the best situations.
We are free to stand in the glow of self-responsibility.
Set a boundary! Deal with the anger! Tell someone no, or stop that! Walk away from a relationship! Ask for what you need! Make choices and take responsibility for them. Explore options. Give yourself what you need! Stand up straight, head up, and claim your power. Claim responsibility for yourself!
And learn to enjoy what's good.
Today, I will refuse to think, talk, speak, or act like a victim. Instead, I will joyfully claim responsibility for myself and focus on what's good and right in my life.
I am one of the miracles of this universe and I am connected to everything that was ever created. I can pick up the phone or sit in quiet meditation, choosing to make a contact with a friend or with my Higher Power or with both. Today I know that I am never alone. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!