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-five 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.

Thursday, 25 February 2021

A handy prayer...

EssentialsOfRecovery

RANDOM BIG BOOK ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS #essentialsofrec #Quotes #BigBook

Shelly S. - AA Speakers - "Redemption through 12-Step Alcoholism Recovery" #essentialsofrec #Speakers #AA #Recovery

Daily Reflections #essentialsofrec #Failure #Humility

THE CHALLENGE OF FAILURE

In God’s economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a
lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.

AS BILL SEES IT, p. 31

How thankful I am today, to know that all my past failures were
necessary for me to be where I am now. Through much pain came
experience and, in suffering, I became obedient. When I sought God,
as I understand Him, He shared His treasured gifts. Through
experience and obedience, growth started, followed by gratitude.

Yes, then came peace of mind — living in and sharing sobriety.

Just For Today #essentialsofrec #Hope #Dispair

Hope

“Gradually as we become more God-centered than self centered, our despair turns to hope.”

Basic Text, p.92

As using addicts, despair was our relentless companion. It colored our every waking moment. Despair was born of our experience in active addiction: No matter what measures we tried to make our lives better, we slid ever deeper into misery. Attempts we made to control our lives frequently met with failure. In a sense, our First Step admission of powerlessness was an acknowledgment of despair.

Steps Two and Three lead us gradually out of that despair and into new hope, the companion of the recovering addict. Having accepted that so many of our efforts to change have failed, we come to believe that there is a Power greater than ourselves. We believe this Power can – and will – help us. We practice the Second and Third Steps as an affirmation of our hope for a better life, turning to this Power for guidance. As we come to rely more and more on a Higher Power for the management of our day – to – day life, the despair arising from our long experiment with self-sufficiency disappears.

Just for today: I will reaffirm my Third Step decision. I know that, with a Higher Power in my life, there is hope.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day #essentialsofrec #Power #Atheism

As Bill Sees It #essentialsofrec #Criticism #Anger #Recovery

Facing Criticism, p. 56

Sometimes, we register surprise, shock, and anger when people find
fault with A.A. We are apt to be disturbed to such an extent that we
cannot benefit by constructive criticism.

This sort of resentment makes no friends and achieves no constructive purpose. Certainly, this is an area in which we can improve.

<< << << >> >> >>

It is evident that the harmony, security, and future effectiveness of
A.A. will depend largely upon our maintenance of a thoroughly
nonaggressive and pacific attitude in all our public relations. This is
an exciting assignment, because in our drinking days we were prone
to anger, hostility, rebellion, and aggression. And, even though we
are now sober, the old patterns of behavior are to a degree still with
us, always threatening to explode on any good excuse.

But we now know this, and therefore I feel confident that in the
conduct of our public affairs we shall always find the grace to exert
restraint.

1. Grapevine, July 1965
2. Twelve Concepts, p. 68

Walk In Dry Places #essentialsofrec #Gossip #Motives

Malicious Gossip

Honest Motives

“Without really knowing what was happening, I said something bad today about a person I secretly resented. When it occurred to me that my remark could come back to hurt me, I had a moment of panic,” an AA member said. “With little reflection, however, I realized that the more serious problem was the dishonesty that caused me to belittle somebody behind hie back!”
We are growing up when we come to see that gossip feeds on our own insecurity and self-deception. When we are unwilling to part company with gossip, we devise subtle ways to keep it in our lives. We can gossip by steering the conversation to a topic that is likely to bring revealing comments. We also gossip by reveling in lurid accounts of others’ sins and failings. We should even ask ourselves if we are gossiping when we “discuss” another member who is not living up to our ideas of true Twelve Step standards. This is often prefaced by the remark, “I don’t want to take Joe’s inventory, but…..”
We cannot live freely and happily if we practice gossip in any form. The practice may be hidden, but it leaves us with guilt, fear, and shame. We cannot gossip and be completely trustworthy and reliable.

I will truly mind my own business today. Forgiving myself for past excursions into gossip, I will say nothing about others behind their backs. If somebody has gossip to share, I will politely move to another topic.

Keep It Simple #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Honesty

Honesty is the backbone of our recovery program. Honesty opens us up. It breaks down the walls we had built around our secret world. Those walls made a prison for us. But all of that is now changed. We are free.

Honesty has made us wise. We aren’t sneaking drinks anymore. We don’t have a stash to protect.

People who didn’t trust us now depend on our honesty. People who worked hard to avoid us, now seek us out. Self-honesty is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You are truth. I pray that I may not turn away from truth. I will not lie. My life depends on honesty.

Action For the Day: For twenty or thirty minutes, I will think about how learning to be honest has changed my life.

Father Leo’s Daily Meditation #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Failure

MISTAKES

“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.”

– William Saroyan

Today I am able to learn from my mistakes because I can see that they really were mistakes! I was trying to play the game of life without a full deck. My big mistake in life was trying to drink alcohol like a non-alcoholic. I couldn’t do it.

Drugs do not think; they react. They always work, and for me they worked against me. Most of my failures in life stemmed from a fundamental misconception — alcoholics cannot drink like non-alcoholics! This I now accept. And in a strange way that is difficult to explain, I am a stronger person for having lived through my alcoholism. God has become more real, the world is more comprehensible, my life is more understandable because of the pain.

If a part of “goodness” is knowing that you are not perfect, then on a daily basis I am becoming a good person.

God, who has created a world in which there is pain and failure, help me to accept both as vehicles to wisdom.

A Day At A Time #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Kindness

Reflection For The Day

Now that we’re free from our addictions, living life one day at a time, we can begin to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love. We can show kindness where we had shown none; we can take the time and initiative to be thoughtful, considerate and compassionate. Even with the people we dislike, we can at least try to be courteous, at times literally going out of our way to understand and help them. Just For Today, will I try to understand rather than be understood, being courteous and respectful to all people with whom I’m in contact?

Today I Pray

May I never forget my old sponge-like self, who soaked up every drop of affection and attention my family or friends could give me, until they were sapped dry. May I learn to be a giver, rather than a constant taker. May I practice offering interest, kindness, consideration and compassion until sensitivity to others becomes second nature for me.

Today I Will Remember

Giving is part of being.

One Day At A Time #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Isolation

Others

“Those who have learned by experience what physical and emotional pain and anguish mean are a community all over the world…One and all, they know the longing to be free from pain.”

–Albert Schweitzer

Whether we isolate or are on the go constantly, whether we’re in the disease or out of it, whether we’ve found all the Promises or we haven’t, we are bonded for a lifetime by the disease of our addiction.

I was alone until I found other compulsive eaters. Yes, I had a family and friends and relatives and doctors and church and careers, but I was emotionally alone with this intricate, enigmatic, hellhole of a disease. The moment I met and connected with other compulsive eaters, my “real” life began.

One Day at a Time . . .

I share what I have learned with those who haven’t. I give what I have to give, and I get so much more.

~ Mari

Elder’s Meditation of the Day #essentialsofrec #Lakota #Elders

“Love is something that you can leave behind you when you die. It’s that powerful.”

–John (Fire) Lame Deer, ROSEBUD LAKOTA
The Old Ones say, love is all anyone needs. Love doesn’t go away nor can love be divided. Once you commit an act of love, you’ll find it continues. Love is like setting up dominos one behind the other. Once you hit the first domino, it will touch the second one which will touch the third one and so on. Every love act or love thought has an affect on each person as well as touching the whole world. If you live a life filled with love, the results will affect your friends, relatives and other people, even after you go to the other side. So… Love.

My Creator, let me love. Let me put into action the love dominos.

A WOMAN’S SPIRIT #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Wisdom

No one can tell you which choices to make. We can only show you by good example.
~ Jan Pishok

We are attracted to men and women who share their wisdom and their hope freely, to people whose behavior reflects thoughtfulness of others. We recognize the love that radiates from some people as they enter a room or speak to others. We are nil creating examples for others in every move we make.

One of the first principles we learned about recovery was that this is a program of “attraction rather than promotion.” Though we may not have understood the meaning initially, we now appreciate how valuable that principle is. None of us like to be told what to do. Even when we ask for advice, we seldom really want it. But we can willingly follow the example someone sets, particularly 11 the outcome was successful. Let’s learn from the good example of others. Let’s be good examples as well

I am someone’s example for healthy behavior today. I won’t steer anyone wrong.

© 1994 by Hazelden Foundation

Daily Tao / 56 – Muteness #essentialsofrec #Recovery #Tao #Taoism #Zen

The more you dwell in the spirit,
The farther you are from common ways.
If you want to speak of Tao’s wonders,
Few will listen.

If you spend a long period of time in study and self-cultivation, you will enter Tao. By doing so, you also enter a world of extraordinary perceptions. You experience unimaginable things, receive thoughts and learning as if from nowhere, perceive things that could be classified as prescient. Yet if you try to communicate what you experience, there is no one to understand you, no one who will believe you. The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society. You may see the truth, but you will find that people would rather listen to politicians, performers, and charlatans.

If you are known as a follower of Tao, people may seek you out, but they are seldom the ones who will truly understand Tao. They are people who would exploit Tao as a crutch. To speak to them of the wonders you have seen is often to engage in a futile bout of miscommunication. That is why it is said that those who know do not speak.

Why not simply stay quiet? Enjoy Tao as you will. Let others think you are dumb. Inside yourself, you will know the joy of Tao’s mysteries. If you met someone who can profit by your experience, you should share. But if you are merely a wanderer in a crowd of strangers, it is wisdom to be silent.

Daily Zen #essentialsofrec #Zen #Buddhism

Calming the Mind

Too much knowledge
Leads to overactivity;
Better to calm the mind.
The more you consider,
The greater the loss;
Better to unify the mind.

– Shih Wang Ming (6th c)

Around the Year With Emmet Fox #essentialsofrec #Joy #Recovery

REGISTER JOY

The principal revelation of Jesus Christ teachings is the omnipresence and availability of God, and the bleief that God not only transcends His universe but is everywhere immanent in it - that He indwells in it.

If you really believe in the existence of God you should be happy and cheerful. God has all power, and God is good; so life must be good too.

Meet the world with a smile. You owe this to God, to your fellows, and above all, to yourself. If you go about with a face like an east wind, what can you possibly expect to attract from the world? We all know people who carry a fixed, frozen, mirthless, almost professional, smile. Such a smile is just a permanent wave in the face.

Smile, even if it takes a little effort, and keep it up until it becomes spontaneous, as it will. In the graphic language of Hollywood, register joy, and hold it!

For ye shall go out with joy... (Isiah 55:12).

FIFTEEN POINTS BY EMMET FOX #essentialsofrec #Recovery

I Am Really In Truth:

If - I always look for the best in each person, situation and thing.

If - I resolutely turn my back on the past, good or bad and live only in the present & future

If - I forgive everybody without exception, no matter what he may have done; and if I then forgive MYSELF whole-heartedly.

If - I regard my job as sacred and do my day's work to the best of my ability (whether I like it or not).

If - I take every means to demonstrate a healthy body and harmonious surroundings for myself.

If - I endeavor to make my life of as much service to others as possible, without interfering or fussing.

If - I take every opportunity wisely to spread the knowledge of Truth to others.

If - I rigidly refrain from personal criticism, and neither speak nor listen to gossip.

If - I devote at least a quarter of an hour a day to prayer and meditation.

If - I read at least seven verses of the Bible everyday.

If - I specifically claim spiritual understanding of myself every day.

If - I train myself to give the first thought on waking to God.

If - I speak the Word for the whole world every day, say at noon.

If - I PRACTICE, the Golden Rule of Jesus instead of merely admiring it. He said, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." The important point about the Golden Rule is that I am to practice it whether the other fellow does so or not.

If - above all, I understand that whatever I see is but a picture which can be changed for the better by Scientific Prayer.

If you want to demonstrate ask yourself once a week how far you are observing these points in your life. Emmet Fox