Essentials Of Recovery

Created to carry the message of recovery to all addicts. Whether the addiction is alcohol, drugs, food or any other addiction the program of recovery is the same. I am a recovering alcoholic of over twenty-seven years, a day at a time of course and I believe my primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve recovery. Remember seven days without a meeting makes one weak. Sign up to get emails.This Blog is NOT IN ANY WAY affiliated to either A.A. or N.A. Help to stop drinking.

Wednesday, 18 May 2022

Random Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous

Chuck B. - A.A. Recovery Speaker

Daily Reflections #essentialsofrecovery

FREEDOM TO BE ME

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development,
we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are
going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p 83

My first true freedom is the freedom not to have to take
a drink today. If I truly want it, I will work the Twelve
Steps and the happiness of this freedom will come to me
through the Steps – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
Other freedoms will follow, and inventorying them is a
new happiness. I had a new freedom today, the freedom to
be me. I have the freedom to be the best me I have ever
been.

Just For Today #essentialsofrecovery

Friends And Amends—Keeping It Simple

“We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

Step Nine

In every relationship, we don’t always handle things the way we would have hoped. But friendships don’t have to end when we make mistakes; instead, we can make amends. If we are sincerely willing to accept the responsibilities involved in friendship and make the amends we owe, those friendships can become stronger and richer than ever.

Making amends is simple. We approach the person we have harmed and say, “I was wrong.” Sometimes we avoid getting to the point, evading an admission of our own part in the affair. But that frustrates the intent of the Ninth Step. To make effective amends, we have to keep it simple: we admit our part, and leave it at that.

There will be times when our friends won’t accept our amends. Perhaps they need time to process what has happened. If that is the case, we must give them that time. After all, we were the ones in the wrong, not them. We have done our part; the rest is out of our hands.

Just for today: I want to be a responsible friend. I will strive to keep it simple when making amends.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day #essentialsofrecovery

A.A. Thought For The Day

We’re in A.A. for two main reasons: to keep sober ourselves

and to help others to keep sober. It’s a well known fact

that helping others is a big part of keeping sober yourself.

It’s also been proved that it’s very hard to keep sober all

by yourself. A lot of people have tried it and failed. They

come to a few A.A. meetings and then stay sober alone for a

few months, but usually they eventually get drunk. Do I know

that I can’t stay sober successfully alone?

Meditation For The Day

Look by faith into that place beyond space or time where God

dwells and whence you came and to which you shall eventually

return. “Look unto Him and be saved.” To look beyond material

things is within the power of everyone’s imagination. Faith’s

look saves you from despair. Faith’s look saves you from worry

and care. Faith’s look brings a peace beyond all understanding.

Faith’s look brings you all the strength you need. Faith’s look

gives you a new and vital power and a wonderful peace and

serenity.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may have faith’s look. I pray that by faith I

may look beyond the now to eternal life.

As Bill Sees It #essentialsofrecovery

Two Roads for the Oldtimer, p. 138

The founders of many groups ultimately divide into two classes

known in A.A. slang as “elder statesmen” and “bleeding deacons.”

The elder statesman sees the wisdom of the group’s decision to run

itself and holds no resentment over his reduced status. His judgment,

fortified by considerable experience, is sound; he is willing to sit

quietly on the side lines patiently awaiting developments.

The bleeding deacon is just as surely convinced that the group cannot

get along without him. He constantly connives for re-election to

office and continues to be consumed with self-pity. Nearly every

oldtimer in our Society has gone through this process in some degree.

Happily, most of them survive and live to become elder statesmen.

They become the real and permanent leadership of A.A.

12 & 12, p. 135

Walk in Dry Places #essentialsofrecovery

No Limits on our Higher power

The Spiritual Way

One ancient saying claims that “with God, all things are possible.” That’s quite a statement, one we may claim to believe without living as though we do.

What it really mens is that God exists outside the conditions and restrictions that make our own lives so limited. The more we can move into conscious contact with God, the more freedom and power we will experience.

It might be said that all real human progress is the same order. Every advancement in science really reveals more information about God and the universe. We are always discovering new possibilites for humankind as we stretch the frontiers of knowledge.

Our most serious lag is in learning to understand ourselves and each other. It is humbling to realize taht the ideas we’re using in Twelve Step programs have been around for centuries. Fced with impossible problmes, we must remember that God can solve these problmes if only we ask.

I’ll follow today the old idea of working as if everything depended on me and believing as if everything depended on God.

Keep It Simple #essentialsofrecovery

You cannot plan the future by the past.—Edmund Burke

We got tried of how we were living. We honestly looked at our life. We saw that alcohol and other drugs controlled our life. We met others who understood us. And we came to believe that a Power

greater than ourselves could help us. We turned our will and our life over to this Power. In so doing, we learned that life doesn’t take place in the past or in the future. We find our program in the present.

Prayer for the Day: I pray that I’ll leave the past in the past.

I pray that I’ll walk into each moment with my Higher Power.

Action for the Day: The only time we revisit the past is when we tell our story. Today, I’ll tell my story to someone. I’ll tell what really happened. I’ll tell what life is like now.

Father Leo’s Daily Meditation #essentialsofrecovery

FAITH

“Faith has need of the whole truth.”

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Faith is a journey that ends in God. Our understanding of imperfection
teaches us to look beyond ourselves into the truth that is yet to be
revealed. Our daily attitude adjustments bring us, step by step, to that
truth and freedom that awaits us in the future.

Sufficient today to know that we are not God and nobody has all the
answers. The hardest part of being a human being is accepting the
limitations of our lives. Things happen without our involvement. We
need not be there for existence to happen; there is life beyond me! God
holds the world together, not me. Truth is in me but also beyond me. In
this sense my faith is enriched by others, and at some point in the
future we will all become ONE in truth.

As I look to the future I see the Oneness of tomorrow.

A Day At A Time #essentialsofrecovery

Reflection For The Day

I considered myself a “loner” in the days when I was actively addicted. Although I was often with other people — saw them, heard them, touched them–most of my important dialogues were with my inner self. I was certain that nobody else would ever understand. Considering my former opinion of myself, it’s likely that I didn’t want anybody to understand. I smiled through gritted teeth even as I was dying on the inside. Have my insides begun to match my outside since I’ve been in The Program?

Today I Pray

May my physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual selves become one, a while person again. I thank my Higher Power for showing me how to match my outside to my inside, to laugh when I feel like laughing, to cry when I feel sad, to recognize my own anger or fear or guilt. I pray for wholeness.

Today I Will Remember

I am becoming whole.

One Day At A Time #essentialsofrecovery

STEP ELEVEN

“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight
awhile on boughs too slight,feels them give way beneath her,
and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings. ”

Victor Hugo

Step eleven tells us to seek “through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” For me, that is a daily, some times, minute by minute task. As a food addict and compulsive overeater I face temptation daily and need to be in fit spiritual condition to resist. I do this by making a daily conscious contact with the God of my understanding. Then I am connected when I need the fox hole prayers like, “Help me!” or “I’m in trouble!”

Step eleven for me is a spiritual discipline to be practiced daily. I do not do that perfectly, but I aspire to connect daily with my God. As I connect I pray for His will for my life and the power to carry that out. It is easy to get selfish with my prayers and step eleven helps me with this. There are certain things that I know are His will, such as attending meetings, talking to my sponsor, using the tools and staying connected to my God. If I am unsure, I pray for God’s will and leave the rest to Him.

One Day at a Time . . .

I will maintain a fit spiritual condition by connecting with the God of my understanding.

~ Carolyn

Elder’s Meditation of the Day #essentialsofrecovery

“…Grandmother the Earth. That power is here all the time. It is continuous, and nobody controls it.”

–Wallace Black Elk, LAKOTA

There are certain powers that the human being has no choice but to obey. We cannot negotiate or barter with this power. Our choice is either to conform or to live out of harmony. Whatever our choice, it will be the end result in our lives that we notice. So it is with the powers of the Earth which produce life. The Earth has the life force power. If anyone plants a seed, the seed will grow. The Earth treats everyone equally. The human cannot interfere, only obey. We should all show great respect for the Earth and Her powers.

Great Spirit, today, let me honor and respect the power of the Grandmother, the Earth.

Today’s Gift. #essentialsofrecovery

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

–Thomas Fuller

We have all seen adventure movies in which the heroes or villains are caught on a bridge that collapses. As they fall to whatever lies below, they are perhaps able to climb to one side or the other. But for the time being, their ability to cross between the two sides is gone.
When we have been hurt by people in our lives, or when we have hurt others, mutual forgiveness is needed in order to rebuild the trust between us. It is very much like rebuilding a bridge–one piece at a time. We take cautious steps at first–testing the safety and strength of our bridge.
When two people have become separated by loss or anger, it is forgiveness that can rebuild the bridge between them. Forgiveness needs time and so does the rebuilding of trust.
Can I begin to rebuild a friendship today?

The Eye Opener #essentialsofrecovery

Think back to those days when we would creep off to our dens where we were holed up, and there like animals try to satisfy our appetites alone – so horribly alone. Just drinking, drink after drink, and dying slowly of despair. If we had a friend in the world, we didn’t know it. We just wanted to drink and die alone.

It was people who brought us out of this pit, people of marvelous sympathy and understanding and now, joining hands with these people, we have learned the joy of living – not alone but with, and a part of a community, of people.

Hazelden Foundation

DAILY TAO – Scholasticism #essentialsofrecovery

Ocean inside a skull-cup,
Seeking the universal code in letters.
The mind is like a flower on icy water:
An eye within the petals.

The intellect is one of the thorniest problems for a spiritual aspirant. One cannot do without it — indeed, it is essential — and yet one cannot allow it to remain totally dominant. The intellect must be fully developed before it is brought to a point of neutrality. Unless this is done, it will act as a block, and there will not be any ultimate spiritual success.

Scholarship is thus an important first step. Education is a means of gaining access to the conventional world, of satisfying our curiosity, and of avoiding superstitious tendencies. There can be no talk of delving into philosophical mysteries if one has not even satisfied one’s curiosity about nature, civilization, mathematics, and language. But once mental cultivation is achieved, one must focus increasingly on a part of the mind that is far beyond the scholarly.

The intellect uses discrimination, categorization, and dualistic distinctions in highly sophisticated ways. By contrast, spiritual contemplation involves no discrimination, no categorization, and no dualism, so it has very little need for scholasticism. It is pure action that requires the totality of our inner beings. It needs pure involvement, no mere study. The proper use of the intellect is to give it free play, develop it to an extraordinary degree, and yet to leave it behind when spiritual action is required. A sage knows how to balance and combine both.

DAILY ZEN #essentialsofrecovery

The happiness we seek, a genuine lasting peace and happiness, can be attained only through the purification of our minds. This is possible if we cut the root cause of all suffering and misery—our fundamental ignorance.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The World of Tibetan Buddhism

Walk In Dry Places

Wednesday, 18 May 2022