admin
10-10-2008, 08:34 PM
Wisdom for Today
Sometimes life just isn’t fair. When one problem after another seems to be piled on each other, it is easy to get frustrated, depressed or overwhelmed. It is easy to get caught up in the furious pace of trying to “fix” things or react in a way that makes you just want to give up. The road of recovery is not always an easy one. It’s easy to go to meetings and complain that the program isn’t working. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. When there are a lot of bumps and curves in the road, I can start to complain to my sponsor, or other recovering people, or friends and even God that it just isn’t fair.
Fortunately, these people who care about me remind me that no one promised that life would be fair. No one says it has to be fair. I am reminded that in difficult times I will not always experience the outcome that I want, but I will always be given the strength to deal with whatever happens. I am reminded to look at my expectations. I am reminded to ask for God’s will to be done in my life. Yes, I still need to do the footwork; but I also need to ask for help and direction. I am repeatedly amazed at what happens when I “let go and let God.” Do I still want to control life? Do I still try to manipulate to get what I want?
Meditations for the Heart
Sometimes the emotions in response to life’s struggles can get overwhelming. I can get wrapped up in sadness, self-pity, resentment and fear. When these powerful emotions rise to the surface and begin to determine how I respond to events in my life, I need to get out of my “gut” and get into my head. One of the slogans in the program is, “ Think! Think! Think!” Yes, thinking can be dangerous for addicts and alcoholics, particularly when it becomes “stinking thinking.” But this slogan reminds me to be wise. In the Serenity Prayer, we say the words, “the wisdom to know the difference.” When emotions become crazy, it is vital for my existence to think wisely. It is the only way to make decisions that are healthy. I can’t afford to let rage, or depression, or fear or self-pity make decisions for me. Do I know when and how to think wisely?
Petitions to my Higher Power
God,
As I walk through this day, keep me on the path of recovery. Help me to be wise in the decisions I face. Give me the strength I need to deal with the problems that come into my life. Give me wisdom to avoid making problems worse by reacting emotionally rather than responding intelligently.
Amen.
-----
NA Just For Today
October 11
Eyeglasses And Attitudes
"Our best thinking got us into trouble.... Recovery is an active change in our ideas and attitudes."
Basic Text p.53
In active addiction, the world probably looked like a horrible place. Using helped us tolerate the world we saw. Today, however, we understand that the world's condition wasn't really the problem. It was our ideas and attitudes about the world that made it impossible for us to find a comfortable place in it.
Our attitudes and our ideas are the eyeglasses through which we see our lives. If our "glasses" are smudged or dirty, our lives look dim. If our attitudes aren't well focused, the whole world appears distorted. To see the world clearly, we need to keep our attitudes and ideas clean, free of things like resentment, denial, self-pity, and closed-mindedness. To insure our vision of life is in focus, we have to bring our ideas in line with reality.
In addiction, our best thinking kept us from clearly seeing either the world or our part in it. Recovery serves to correct the prescriptions in our attitudinal eyewear. By stripping away our denial and replacing it with faith, self-honesty, humility, and responsibility, the steps help us see our lives in a whole new way. Then the steps help us keep our spiritual lenses clean, encouraging us to regularly examine our ideas our attitudes, and our actions.
Today, seen through the clean lenses of faith and recovery the world looks like a warm, inviting place to live.
Just for today: I will view the world and my life through the clean spiritual lenses of my program.
pg. 297
-----
October 11 - Daily Feast
Know who you are and don't worry about what other people think. Be your own best friend and resist trouble like wildfire. Be steadfast in good times and bad, tell fear to get lost and do away with doubt the way you would turn a hose on a fire. Never fall into the habit of believing you are always in the wrong. It can be a sufferer's trap, like a wastebasket that catches all the trash. Time is precious and you don't have time to stand in a hole. Make a difference now by lifting your vision of yourself. There's no such thing as bad blood when your heart is right.
~ French trappers said a great many things to our fathers, which have been planted in our hearts. ~
CHIEF JOSEPH - NEZ PERCE
'A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II' by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
Elder's Meditation of the Day - October 11
"Men and women have an equal responsibility to restore the strength of the family, which is the foundation of all cultures."
--Haida Gwaii Traditional Circle of Elders
The family is the heartbeat of strength of the culture. The grandfathers and grandmothers taught their children; they in turn had children who taught their children. If the family isn't taught the culture, then the children become adults and the adults become the grandfathers and grandmothers and the result is the culture becomes lost. This is how language is lost; this is how dances are lost; this is how knowledge is lost. We need to listen to our Elders, today, before it's too late.
Great Spirit, teach me the culture so I can teach the children.
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
'THINK on THESE THINGS'
by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
In those moments when we quietly sit with mind centered on the fact that God is only good, and that no situation devious or twisted in appearance, has any power except that which we give it by dwelling on how terrible it is - then, there is hope.
If we can become quiet enough in our own minds to know God is good, it will produce one of those times of sweet serenity that settles like an invisible veil between us and our troubles. In those moments of growth and faith will come peace that passes all understanding.
It is good to live an active life, but some of life's most productive moments are not when the mind and body are hurled through hectic hours at a furious pace. Life offers many tender and beautiful times that demand nothing and give only a quiet calm that will never come in pill form.
Contrary to the belief in any power except God's, there is a happy medium. It does not come simply by demanding, and there are times when it can be touched on only so briefly. But even in our sore travails there is a time when life finds balance and we live in harmony with God's laws.
-----
Daily Relationship Reading
In most new relationships, sex often plays a big part of the time together. The passion is new, and the joys of discovering each other, and being close seem to grow each day. Eventually, however, real life seems to begin intruding, and sex dwindles off to become an infrequent and smaller part of the relationship.
If this has happened with me and my SO, we may be discovering that we're still strangers in many ways. Worse, without the "safety" of sex, the time that we do spend together may show up more of our imperfections, and anxiety over not meeting our partner's needs or having them meet our own. But what are my partner's needs? And even more, what are my own?
Chances are, the passion of good sex has made it easier to postpone looking at both of these questions. Instead of bemoaning the decrease of sex in our relationship, maybe I can welcome the change as an opportunity to get to know my SO better, and share more of who I am inside.
I can also use the change to explore intimacy through non-sexual caressing and touching, reinforcing the safety my partner feels with me.
Just for Today
Today, I'll explore just one new thing I cn do with my SO that doesn't rely on sex. The less pressure my SO feels to take care of my sexual pleasure, the more easily they'll be able to get in touch with all the wonderful feelings their body offers them. The same will hold true for my feelings.
He who binds himself to a joy, Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity's sunrise. - William Blake
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Feeling Deprived
If I allow myself to feel deprived, sooner or later I will overeat or react with negative emotions. I am a human being, a child of God with the same rights as all of His other children. I have needs and preferences, which, if denied and repressed, will surface in a destructive way.
If those around me are eating a special meal and I eat leftovers, which I do not particularly like, I will feel deprived. I may become bad tempered and I may overeat later to compensate. I do not need to have what others are eating, if it is not on my food plan, but my meal should be pleasing to me. I do not need to have and do what everyone else has and does, but I can recognize my desires and preferences and satisfy them when doing so does not injure anyone else.
By overeating, I deprived myself of good health, peace of mind, self-respect, and an attractive appearance. By abstaining, I am making amends to myself for the deprivation. By working the program, I am learning how to satisfy my legitimate needs.
I trust You to supply my needs.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
A musician must make music; an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. --Abraham Maslow
The same is true of a seamstress, carpenter, homemaker, lawyer, or mechanic. The question is, Who and what am I? What must I do to be at peace with myself? What can I be, for that is what I must be?
A lucky few of us find the answers to these questions fairly early in life, and we work to develop into the people we can be and must be. We do that by looking at our deepest desires, and ask what would bring fulfillment for us. We ask what we would enjoy doing most, what we believe we have the ability to be really good at. What is it that sometimes burns within us to be expressed or done? The answers to what we can be, what we must be, come from within, through asking ourselves these questions.
What kind of a person am I capable of being?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. --Susan Sontag
In recovery, we grow in many ways and become more comfortable with the many subtle colors in our personalities. We have a greater range of all human qualities available to us now. We are more light and playful at times and more serious at others. We can cuddle up like a dependent child, or we can be the one who is responsible under pressure. We can be tough and virile, and we can be soft and gentle. One musical tone playing in harmony with another makes a song more beautiful. Because we have made peace within ourselves, our masculinity is not threatened.
As we discover many new feelings and reactions, it is natural to wonder if they are normal. When we talk with others about the ways we have changed, we learn they have similar feelings. As we become more at peace with ourselves, the various sides of our personalities complement each other, and we appreciate the harmony within us and in our friends.
Today, I am grateful for the richness and variety within myself.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Be still and listen to the stillness within. --Darlene Larson Jenks
No answer eludes us if we turn to the source of all answers--the stillness within. Prayer accompanied by meditation will always provide the answers we need for the situations facing us. The answers we want are not guaranteed, however. We must trust that we will be directed to take the right steps. Our well being is assured if we let go of the control and turn our wills over to the care of God, our messenger within.
How comforting to know that all answers are as close as our quiet moments. God never chooses to keep them from us. We simply fail to quiet our thoughts long enough to heed them. Our minds race, obsessively, all too often. We jump from one scenario to another, one fear to another, and one emotion to another. And each time our thoughts capture a new focus; we push the answer we seek further into the background.
The process is simple, if I want to follow it. The answers await me if I truly want them. I need only sit quietly and ask God to offer the guidance I need. And then I will sit quietly some more.
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Recovery
How easy it is to blame our problems on others. "Look at what he's doing." . . . "Look how long I've waited." . . . "Why doesn't she call?" . . . "If only he'd change then I'd be happy." . . .
Often, our accusations are justified. We probably are feeling hurt and frustrated. In those moments, we may begin to believe that the solution to our pain and frustration is getting the other person to do what we want, or having the outcome we desire. But these self-defeating illusions put the power and control of our life in other people's hands. We call this codependency.
The solution to our pain and frustration, however valid is to acknowledge our own feelings. We feel the anger, the grief; then we let go of the feelings and find peace - within ourselves. We know our happiness isn't controlled by another person, even though we may have convinced ourselves it is. We call this acceptance.
Then we decide that although we'd like our situation to be different, maybe our life is happening this way for a reason. Maybe there is a higher purpose and plan in play, one that's better than we could have orchestrated. We call this faith.
Then we decide what we need to do, what is within our power to do to take care of ourselves. That's called recovery.
It's easy to point our finger at another, but it's more rewarding to gently point it at ourselves.
Today, I will live with my pain and frustration by dealing with my own feelings.
Today I know it's okay to place myself first sometimes. Today I'm doing something very special for myself. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!
Sometimes life just isn’t fair. When one problem after another seems to be piled on each other, it is easy to get frustrated, depressed or overwhelmed. It is easy to get caught up in the furious pace of trying to “fix” things or react in a way that makes you just want to give up. The road of recovery is not always an easy one. It’s easy to go to meetings and complain that the program isn’t working. This has happened to me on more than one occasion. When there are a lot of bumps and curves in the road, I can start to complain to my sponsor, or other recovering people, or friends and even God that it just isn’t fair.
Fortunately, these people who care about me remind me that no one promised that life would be fair. No one says it has to be fair. I am reminded that in difficult times I will not always experience the outcome that I want, but I will always be given the strength to deal with whatever happens. I am reminded to look at my expectations. I am reminded to ask for God’s will to be done in my life. Yes, I still need to do the footwork; but I also need to ask for help and direction. I am repeatedly amazed at what happens when I “let go and let God.” Do I still want to control life? Do I still try to manipulate to get what I want?
Meditations for the Heart
Sometimes the emotions in response to life’s struggles can get overwhelming. I can get wrapped up in sadness, self-pity, resentment and fear. When these powerful emotions rise to the surface and begin to determine how I respond to events in my life, I need to get out of my “gut” and get into my head. One of the slogans in the program is, “ Think! Think! Think!” Yes, thinking can be dangerous for addicts and alcoholics, particularly when it becomes “stinking thinking.” But this slogan reminds me to be wise. In the Serenity Prayer, we say the words, “the wisdom to know the difference.” When emotions become crazy, it is vital for my existence to think wisely. It is the only way to make decisions that are healthy. I can’t afford to let rage, or depression, or fear or self-pity make decisions for me. Do I know when and how to think wisely?
Petitions to my Higher Power
God,
As I walk through this day, keep me on the path of recovery. Help me to be wise in the decisions I face. Give me the strength I need to deal with the problems that come into my life. Give me wisdom to avoid making problems worse by reacting emotionally rather than responding intelligently.
Amen.
-----
NA Just For Today
October 11
Eyeglasses And Attitudes
"Our best thinking got us into trouble.... Recovery is an active change in our ideas and attitudes."
Basic Text p.53
In active addiction, the world probably looked like a horrible place. Using helped us tolerate the world we saw. Today, however, we understand that the world's condition wasn't really the problem. It was our ideas and attitudes about the world that made it impossible for us to find a comfortable place in it.
Our attitudes and our ideas are the eyeglasses through which we see our lives. If our "glasses" are smudged or dirty, our lives look dim. If our attitudes aren't well focused, the whole world appears distorted. To see the world clearly, we need to keep our attitudes and ideas clean, free of things like resentment, denial, self-pity, and closed-mindedness. To insure our vision of life is in focus, we have to bring our ideas in line with reality.
In addiction, our best thinking kept us from clearly seeing either the world or our part in it. Recovery serves to correct the prescriptions in our attitudinal eyewear. By stripping away our denial and replacing it with faith, self-honesty, humility, and responsibility, the steps help us see our lives in a whole new way. Then the steps help us keep our spiritual lenses clean, encouraging us to regularly examine our ideas our attitudes, and our actions.
Today, seen through the clean lenses of faith and recovery the world looks like a warm, inviting place to live.
Just for today: I will view the world and my life through the clean spiritual lenses of my program.
pg. 297
-----
October 11 - Daily Feast
Know who you are and don't worry about what other people think. Be your own best friend and resist trouble like wildfire. Be steadfast in good times and bad, tell fear to get lost and do away with doubt the way you would turn a hose on a fire. Never fall into the habit of believing you are always in the wrong. It can be a sufferer's trap, like a wastebasket that catches all the trash. Time is precious and you don't have time to stand in a hole. Make a difference now by lifting your vision of yourself. There's no such thing as bad blood when your heart is right.
~ French trappers said a great many things to our fathers, which have been planted in our hearts. ~
CHIEF JOSEPH - NEZ PERCE
'A Cherokee Feast of Days, Volume II' by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
Elder's Meditation of the Day - October 11
"Men and women have an equal responsibility to restore the strength of the family, which is the foundation of all cultures."
--Haida Gwaii Traditional Circle of Elders
The family is the heartbeat of strength of the culture. The grandfathers and grandmothers taught their children; they in turn had children who taught their children. If the family isn't taught the culture, then the children become adults and the adults become the grandfathers and grandmothers and the result is the culture becomes lost. This is how language is lost; this is how dances are lost; this is how knowledge is lost. We need to listen to our Elders, today, before it's too late.
Great Spirit, teach me the culture so I can teach the children.
*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*<<<=-=>>>*
'THINK on THESE THINGS'
by Joyce Sequichie Hifler
In those moments when we quietly sit with mind centered on the fact that God is only good, and that no situation devious or twisted in appearance, has any power except that which we give it by dwelling on how terrible it is - then, there is hope.
If we can become quiet enough in our own minds to know God is good, it will produce one of those times of sweet serenity that settles like an invisible veil between us and our troubles. In those moments of growth and faith will come peace that passes all understanding.
It is good to live an active life, but some of life's most productive moments are not when the mind and body are hurled through hectic hours at a furious pace. Life offers many tender and beautiful times that demand nothing and give only a quiet calm that will never come in pill form.
Contrary to the belief in any power except God's, there is a happy medium. It does not come simply by demanding, and there are times when it can be touched on only so briefly. But even in our sore travails there is a time when life finds balance and we live in harmony with God's laws.
-----
Daily Relationship Reading
In most new relationships, sex often plays a big part of the time together. The passion is new, and the joys of discovering each other, and being close seem to grow each day. Eventually, however, real life seems to begin intruding, and sex dwindles off to become an infrequent and smaller part of the relationship.
If this has happened with me and my SO, we may be discovering that we're still strangers in many ways. Worse, without the "safety" of sex, the time that we do spend together may show up more of our imperfections, and anxiety over not meeting our partner's needs or having them meet our own. But what are my partner's needs? And even more, what are my own?
Chances are, the passion of good sex has made it easier to postpone looking at both of these questions. Instead of bemoaning the decrease of sex in our relationship, maybe I can welcome the change as an opportunity to get to know my SO better, and share more of who I am inside.
I can also use the change to explore intimacy through non-sexual caressing and touching, reinforcing the safety my partner feels with me.
Just for Today
Today, I'll explore just one new thing I cn do with my SO that doesn't rely on sex. The less pressure my SO feels to take care of my sexual pleasure, the more easily they'll be able to get in touch with all the wonderful feelings their body offers them. The same will hold true for my feelings.
He who binds himself to a joy, Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity's sunrise. - William Blake
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Feeling Deprived
If I allow myself to feel deprived, sooner or later I will overeat or react with negative emotions. I am a human being, a child of God with the same rights as all of His other children. I have needs and preferences, which, if denied and repressed, will surface in a destructive way.
If those around me are eating a special meal and I eat leftovers, which I do not particularly like, I will feel deprived. I may become bad tempered and I may overeat later to compensate. I do not need to have what others are eating, if it is not on my food plan, but my meal should be pleasing to me. I do not need to have and do what everyone else has and does, but I can recognize my desires and preferences and satisfy them when doing so does not injure anyone else.
By overeating, I deprived myself of good health, peace of mind, self-respect, and an attractive appearance. By abstaining, I am making amends to myself for the deprivation. By working the program, I am learning how to satisfy my legitimate needs.
I trust You to supply my needs.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
A musician must make music; an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. --Abraham Maslow
The same is true of a seamstress, carpenter, homemaker, lawyer, or mechanic. The question is, Who and what am I? What must I do to be at peace with myself? What can I be, for that is what I must be?
A lucky few of us find the answers to these questions fairly early in life, and we work to develop into the people we can be and must be. We do that by looking at our deepest desires, and ask what would bring fulfillment for us. We ask what we would enjoy doing most, what we believe we have the ability to be really good at. What is it that sometimes burns within us to be expressed or done? The answers to what we can be, what we must be, come from within, through asking ourselves these questions.
What kind of a person am I capable of being?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. --Susan Sontag
In recovery, we grow in many ways and become more comfortable with the many subtle colors in our personalities. We have a greater range of all human qualities available to us now. We are more light and playful at times and more serious at others. We can cuddle up like a dependent child, or we can be the one who is responsible under pressure. We can be tough and virile, and we can be soft and gentle. One musical tone playing in harmony with another makes a song more beautiful. Because we have made peace within ourselves, our masculinity is not threatened.
As we discover many new feelings and reactions, it is natural to wonder if they are normal. When we talk with others about the ways we have changed, we learn they have similar feelings. As we become more at peace with ourselves, the various sides of our personalities complement each other, and we appreciate the harmony within us and in our friends.
Today, I am grateful for the richness and variety within myself.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Be still and listen to the stillness within. --Darlene Larson Jenks
No answer eludes us if we turn to the source of all answers--the stillness within. Prayer accompanied by meditation will always provide the answers we need for the situations facing us. The answers we want are not guaranteed, however. We must trust that we will be directed to take the right steps. Our well being is assured if we let go of the control and turn our wills over to the care of God, our messenger within.
How comforting to know that all answers are as close as our quiet moments. God never chooses to keep them from us. We simply fail to quiet our thoughts long enough to heed them. Our minds race, obsessively, all too often. We jump from one scenario to another, one fear to another, and one emotion to another. And each time our thoughts capture a new focus; we push the answer we seek further into the background.
The process is simple, if I want to follow it. The answers await me if I truly want them. I need only sit quietly and ask God to offer the guidance I need. And then I will sit quietly some more.
You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.
Recovery
How easy it is to blame our problems on others. "Look at what he's doing." . . . "Look how long I've waited." . . . "Why doesn't she call?" . . . "If only he'd change then I'd be happy." . . .
Often, our accusations are justified. We probably are feeling hurt and frustrated. In those moments, we may begin to believe that the solution to our pain and frustration is getting the other person to do what we want, or having the outcome we desire. But these self-defeating illusions put the power and control of our life in other people's hands. We call this codependency.
The solution to our pain and frustration, however valid is to acknowledge our own feelings. We feel the anger, the grief; then we let go of the feelings and find peace - within ourselves. We know our happiness isn't controlled by another person, even though we may have convinced ourselves it is. We call this acceptance.
Then we decide that although we'd like our situation to be different, maybe our life is happening this way for a reason. Maybe there is a higher purpose and plan in play, one that's better than we could have orchestrated. We call this faith.
Then we decide what we need to do, what is within our power to do to take care of ourselves. That's called recovery.
It's easy to point our finger at another, but it's more rewarding to gently point it at ourselves.
Today, I will live with my pain and frustration by dealing with my own feelings.
Today I know it's okay to place myself first sometimes. Today I'm doing something very special for myself. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!