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12-23-2008, 06:27 PM
NA Just For Today
December 24
The Group
"The Twelfth Step of our personal program also says that we carry the message to the addict who still suffers.... The group is the most powerful vehicle we have for carrying the message."
Basic Text pg. 65
When we first come to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, we meet recovering addicts. We know they are addicts because they talk about the same experiences and feelings we've had. We know they are recovering because of their serenity - they've got something we want. We feel hope when other addicts share their recovery with us in NA meetings.
The atmosphere of recovery attracts us to the meetings. That atmosphere is created when group members make a commitment to work together. We try to enhance the atmosphere of recovery by helping set up for meetings, greeting newcomers, and talking with other addicts after the meeting. These demonstrations of our commitment make our meetings attractive and help our groups share their recovery.
Sharing experience in meetings is one way in which we help one another, and it's often the foundation for our sense of belonging. We identify with other addicts, so we trust their message of hope. Many of us would not have stayed in Narcotics Anonymous without that sense of belonging and hope. When we share at group meetings, we support our personal recovery while helping others.
Just for today: I will reach out to another addict in my group and share my recovery.
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Thinking Straight
Before we found this program, we did a great deal of thinking in circles. Since we did not know how to stop eating compulsively, we spent a lot of time thinking up reasons for our behavior, making plans for change, and rationalizing another day's failure to eat normally. Our thinking often wandered away into fantasy, spinning dreams of when we would be thin and on top of things. Since we had to have reasons for our inability to make the dreams materialize, we blamed our failure on the people around us. "If they were only more loving, considerate, capable, exciting, smarter..."
Such circular thinking got us nowhere. The more we fantasized, the more we ate, and the more we ate, the more we withdrew from reality.
When our minds are not muddled by too much food, our thinking is clarified. The Twelve Steps put us on the road to responsible action, rather than irresponsible rationalization. Accepting the fact that we have a disease keeps us in the world of reality instead of a fantasyland.
With Your truth, keep my thinking straight.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
He is Father. Even more, God is Mother, who does not want to harm us.
--Pope John Paul I
God is many things to different people. Some call God "Father," others "Mother," still others "Higher Power," "Inner Light," "Deeper Self," and "Supreme Being."
It doesn't matter what name we use. No one name is ever fully adequate, and each of us has our own private way of trying to understand that which we can't ever understand fully. We give God names which attempt to express what God means to us personally, what God does for us as individuals, and how we see ourselves in relation to God.
Could it also be true that other people can't be labelled and put into one box? Doing so limits them to one particular way of being understood, and it limits the ways we can get to know them. If we are all made in God's image, then we all deserve the freedom to be seen differently by different people.
How does God look to me today?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
Celebration is a forgetting in order to remember. A forgetting of ego, of problems, of difficulties. A letting go. --Matthew Fox
A holiday presents us men with an opportunity to practice the letting go of this program. This is a special day to set aside our work and our routines, to put our problems and burdens on the shelf. Let us join with others who are also letting go on this day and celebrate. Maybe we can learn from them how they do it.
We may have been too compulsive on past holidays to celebrate. Or perhaps our holidays are clouded with painful memories. We might miss loved ones or we may recall disappointments or the chaos of earlier holidays. There is no need for perfection in our celebration. We can have some tension, or pain, and yet set it aside as we join with others for a special day.
Today, I will set my ego aside and let go of the usual things in my life in order to reach out to others and participate in celebration.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Follow your dream . .
if you stumble, don't stop
and lose sight of your goal,
press on to the top.
For only on top
Can we see the whole view . . .
--Amanda Bradley
Today, we can, each of us, look back on our lives and get a glimmering of why something happened and how it fit into the larger mosaic of our lives. And this will continue to be true for us. We have stumbled. We will stumble. And we learn about ourselves, about what makes us stumble and about the methods of picking ourselves up.
Life is a process, a learning process that needs those stumbles to increase our awareness of the steps we need to take to find our dream at the top. None of us could realize the part our stumbling played in the past. But now we see. When we fall, we need to trust that, as before, our falls are "up," not down.
I will see the whole view in time. I see part of it daily. My mosaic is right and good and needs my stumbles.
You are reading from the book The Language Of Letting Go.
Getting Through the Holidays
For some, the sights, signs, and smells of the holidays bring joy and a warm feeling. But, while others are joyously diving into the season, some of us are dipping into conflict, guilt, and a sense of loss.
We read articles on how to enjoy the holidays, we read about the Christmas blues, but many of us still can't figure out how to get through the holiday season. We may not know what a joyous holiday would look and feel like.
Many of us are torn between what we want to do on the holiday, and what we feel we have to do. We may feel guilty because we don't want to be with our families. We may feel a sense of loss because we don't have the kind of family to be with that we want. Many of us, year after year, walk into the same dining room on the same holiday, expecting this year to be different. Then we leave, year after year, feeling let down, disappointed, and confused by it all.
Many of us have old, painful memories triggered by the holidays.
Many of us feel a great deal of relief when the holiday is ended.
One of the greatest gifts of recovery is learning that we are not alone. There are probably as many of us in conflict during the holidays than there are those who feel at peace. We're learning, through trial and error, how to take care of ourselves a little better each holiday season.
Our first recovery task during the holidays is to accept ourselves, our situation, and our feelings about our situation. We accept our guilt, anger, and sense of loss. It's all okay.
There is no right or perfect way to handle the holidays. Our strength can be found in doing the best we can, one year at a time.
This holiday season, I will give myself permission to take care of myself.
Today I am willing to be increasingly aware of my spiritual life. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!
December 24
The Group
"The Twelfth Step of our personal program also says that we carry the message to the addict who still suffers.... The group is the most powerful vehicle we have for carrying the message."
Basic Text pg. 65
When we first come to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, we meet recovering addicts. We know they are addicts because they talk about the same experiences and feelings we've had. We know they are recovering because of their serenity - they've got something we want. We feel hope when other addicts share their recovery with us in NA meetings.
The atmosphere of recovery attracts us to the meetings. That atmosphere is created when group members make a commitment to work together. We try to enhance the atmosphere of recovery by helping set up for meetings, greeting newcomers, and talking with other addicts after the meeting. These demonstrations of our commitment make our meetings attractive and help our groups share their recovery.
Sharing experience in meetings is one way in which we help one another, and it's often the foundation for our sense of belonging. We identify with other addicts, so we trust their message of hope. Many of us would not have stayed in Narcotics Anonymous without that sense of belonging and hope. When we share at group meetings, we support our personal recovery while helping others.
Just for today: I will reach out to another addict in my group and share my recovery.
-----
You are reading from the book Food for Thought.
Thinking Straight
Before we found this program, we did a great deal of thinking in circles. Since we did not know how to stop eating compulsively, we spent a lot of time thinking up reasons for our behavior, making plans for change, and rationalizing another day's failure to eat normally. Our thinking often wandered away into fantasy, spinning dreams of when we would be thin and on top of things. Since we had to have reasons for our inability to make the dreams materialize, we blamed our failure on the people around us. "If they were only more loving, considerate, capable, exciting, smarter..."
Such circular thinking got us nowhere. The more we fantasized, the more we ate, and the more we ate, the more we withdrew from reality.
When our minds are not muddled by too much food, our thinking is clarified. The Twelve Steps put us on the road to responsible action, rather than irresponsible rationalization. Accepting the fact that we have a disease keeps us in the world of reality instead of a fantasyland.
With Your truth, keep my thinking straight.
-----
You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
He is Father. Even more, God is Mother, who does not want to harm us.
--Pope John Paul I
God is many things to different people. Some call God "Father," others "Mother," still others "Higher Power," "Inner Light," "Deeper Self," and "Supreme Being."
It doesn't matter what name we use. No one name is ever fully adequate, and each of us has our own private way of trying to understand that which we can't ever understand fully. We give God names which attempt to express what God means to us personally, what God does for us as individuals, and how we see ourselves in relation to God.
Could it also be true that other people can't be labelled and put into one box? Doing so limits them to one particular way of being understood, and it limits the ways we can get to know them. If we are all made in God's image, then we all deserve the freedom to be seen differently by different people.
How does God look to me today?
You are reading from the book Touchstones.
Celebration is a forgetting in order to remember. A forgetting of ego, of problems, of difficulties. A letting go. --Matthew Fox
A holiday presents us men with an opportunity to practice the letting go of this program. This is a special day to set aside our work and our routines, to put our problems and burdens on the shelf. Let us join with others who are also letting go on this day and celebrate. Maybe we can learn from them how they do it.
We may have been too compulsive on past holidays to celebrate. Or perhaps our holidays are clouded with painful memories. We might miss loved ones or we may recall disappointments or the chaos of earlier holidays. There is no need for perfection in our celebration. We can have some tension, or pain, and yet set it aside as we join with others for a special day.
Today, I will set my ego aside and let go of the usual things in my life in order to reach out to others and participate in celebration.
You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
Follow your dream . .
if you stumble, don't stop
and lose sight of your goal,
press on to the top.
For only on top
Can we see the whole view . . .
--Amanda Bradley
Today, we can, each of us, look back on our lives and get a glimmering of why something happened and how it fit into the larger mosaic of our lives. And this will continue to be true for us. We have stumbled. We will stumble. And we learn about ourselves, about what makes us stumble and about the methods of picking ourselves up.
Life is a process, a learning process that needs those stumbles to increase our awareness of the steps we need to take to find our dream at the top. None of us could realize the part our stumbling played in the past. But now we see. When we fall, we need to trust that, as before, our falls are "up," not down.
I will see the whole view in time. I see part of it daily. My mosaic is right and good and needs my stumbles.
You are reading from the book The Language Of Letting Go.
Getting Through the Holidays
For some, the sights, signs, and smells of the holidays bring joy and a warm feeling. But, while others are joyously diving into the season, some of us are dipping into conflict, guilt, and a sense of loss.
We read articles on how to enjoy the holidays, we read about the Christmas blues, but many of us still can't figure out how to get through the holiday season. We may not know what a joyous holiday would look and feel like.
Many of us are torn between what we want to do on the holiday, and what we feel we have to do. We may feel guilty because we don't want to be with our families. We may feel a sense of loss because we don't have the kind of family to be with that we want. Many of us, year after year, walk into the same dining room on the same holiday, expecting this year to be different. Then we leave, year after year, feeling let down, disappointed, and confused by it all.
Many of us have old, painful memories triggered by the holidays.
Many of us feel a great deal of relief when the holiday is ended.
One of the greatest gifts of recovery is learning that we are not alone. There are probably as many of us in conflict during the holidays than there are those who feel at peace. We're learning, through trial and error, how to take care of ourselves a little better each holiday season.
Our first recovery task during the holidays is to accept ourselves, our situation, and our feelings about our situation. We accept our guilt, anger, and sense of loss. It's all okay.
There is no right or perfect way to handle the holidays. Our strength can be found in doing the best we can, one year at a time.
This holiday season, I will give myself permission to take care of myself.
Today I am willing to be increasingly aware of my spiritual life. --Ruth Fishel
God help me to stay sober and clean today!