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, 5 August 2021

APOLOGIES SITE WAS DOWN

STEPHEN T. - Recovery Speaker

Daily Dose OF Emmet Fox

Daily Reflections

LISTENING DEEPLY, p.226

How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.

-TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 37

If I accept and act upon the advice of those who have made the program work for themselves, I have a chance to outgrow the limits of the past. Some problems will shrink to nothingness, while others may require patient, well-thought-out action. Listening deeply when others share can develop intuition in handling problems which arise unexpectedly. It is usually best for me to avoid impetuous action. Attending a meeting or calling a fellow A.A. member will usually reduce tension enough to bring relief to a desperate sufferer like me. Sharing problems at meetings with other alcoholics to whom I can relate, or privately with my sponsor, can change aspects of the positions in which I find myself. Character defects are identified and I begin to see how they work against me. When I put my faith in the spiritual power of the program, when I trust others to teach me what I need to do to have a better life, I find that I can trust myself to do what is necessary.

Just for today

The shape of our thoughts

“By shaping our thoughts with spiritual ideals, we are freed to become who we want to be.”

Basic Text, p. 105

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Addiction shaped our thoughts in its own way. Whatever their shape may once have been, they became misshapen once our disease took full sway over our lives. Our obsession with drugs and self molded our moods, our actions, and the very shape of our lives.

Each of the spiritual ideals of our program serves to straighten out one or another of the kinks in our thinking that developed in our active addiction. Denial is counteracted by admission, secretiveness by honesty, isolation by fellowship, and despair by faith in a loving Higher Power. The spiritual ideals we find in recovery are restoring the shape of our thoughts and our lives to their natural condition.

And what is that “natural condition”? It is the condition we truly seek for ourselves, a reflection of our highest dreams. How do we know this? Because our thoughts are being shaped in recovery by the spiritual ideals we find in our developing relationship with the God we’ve come to understand in NA.

No longer does addiction shape our thoughts. Today, our lives are being shaped by our recovery and our Higher Power.

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Just for today: I will allow spiritual ideals to shape my thoughts. In that design, I will find the shape of my own Higher Power.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

We in A.A. are offering a spiritual program. The fundamental basis of A.A. is belief in some Power greater than ourselves. This belief takes us off the center of the universe and allows us to transfer our problems to some power outside of ourselves. We turn to this Power for the strength we need to get sober and stay sober. We put our drink problem in God’s hands and leave it there. We stop trying to run our own life and seek to let God run it for us. Do I do my best to give spiritual help?

Meditation For The Day

God is your healer and your strength. You do not have to ask Him to come to you. He is always with you in spirit. At your moment of need He is there to help you. Could you know God’s love and His desire to help you, you would know that He needs no pleading for help. Your need is God’s opportunity. You must learn to rely on God’s strength whenever you need it. Whenever you feel inadequate to any situation, you should realize that the feeling of inadequacy is disloyalty to God. Just say to yourself: I know that God is with me and will help me to think and say and do the right thing.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may never feel inadequate to any situation. I pray that I may be buoyed up by the feeling that God is with me.

As Bill Sees It

Hope Born > From Hopelessness, p. 217

Letter to Dr. Carl Jung:

“Most conversion experiences, whatever their variety, do have a common denominator of ego collapse at depth. The individual faces an impossible dilemma.

“In my case the dilemma had been created by my compulsive drinking, and the deep feeling of hopelessness had been vastly deepened by my doctor. It was deepened still more by my alcoholic friend when he acquainted me with your verdict of hopelessness respecting Rowland H.

“In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision of a society of alcoholics. If each sufferer were to carry the news of the scientific hopelessness of alcoholism to each new prospect, he might be able to lay every newcomer wide open to a transforming spiritual experience. This concept proved to be the foundation of such success as A.A. has since achieved.”

Grapevine, January 1963

Walk In Dry Places

Can We Fix Other People’s Problems?
Problem Solving

In Twelve Step work, we never run out of people who face serious problems. We’re often tempted to use our own expertise and resources to fix these problems for others.

This can be a mistake. It is always risky to undertake such assignments without a great deal of thought and understanding. Such attempts to fix others usually deal only with symptoms rather than causes.

Unless another person is totally helpless, the best course is to share experiences and knowledge with others, but to leave the problem solving to them. We should not encourage anyone to become dependent on us, nor should we set ourselves up as godlike individuals who have all the answers. We actually may be showing off instead of helping, and we may also be robbing others of the self-confidence and growth that come from fixing their own problems.

I’ll share my experiences and hope today, while refraining from trying to fix people. I don’t have answers for everybody, and it’s wrong to believe I do.

Keep It Simple

You’re only human, you’re suppose to make mistakes.

—Billy Joel

Listen to the kind voice inside. Listen to the voice that tells you you’re good enough. Listen to the voice that tells you it’s okay to make mistakes—you’ll learn from them. Listen to the voice that tells you to go to your meeting even though it’s cold outside and you’re tired. Listen and let this voice become more and more clear. Listen, and welcome it in your heart. Talk with the voice.

Ask it questions and seek it out when you need a friend. This voice is your Higher Power. Listen as your Higher Power speaks to you. Listen as your Higher Power tells you what a great person you are.

Prayer for the Day: I pray to the gentle, loving voice that lives in me. Higher Power, You’ve always been kind to me. You’ve always loved me. Help me to remember You’re always there—inside me.

Action for the Day: I will take time from my busy day to listen and talk with the loving voice that lives inside me.

Father Leo’s Daily Meditation

THOUGHT

“Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.”

– Blaise Pascal

I think that human beings are very imitative creatures; we imitate clothes, hair styles, mannerisms and lifestyles. A man’s mind will be influenced by what he listens to and what he reads. And what we think is very important to sobriety.

Today I make an effort to examine my thinking and check it out with a sponsor or in a support group. I know that my dignity in sobriety is connected not only with what I do but also with my attitudes and thoughts — when my thinking begins to go crazy, I know I am in a dangerous place and I need to talk. God created me with the ability to think, therefore, I need to safeguard the information I put in my mind.

Let me learn to develop morality of mind.

A Day at a Time

Reflection for the Day

Among the important things we learn in The Program is to be good to ourselves. For so many of us, though, this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. Some of us relish our suffering so much that we balloon each happening to enormous proportions in the reliving and telling. Self-pitiers are drawn to martyrdom as if by a powerful magnet – until the joys of serenity and contentment come to them through The Program and Twelve Steps.

Am I gradually learning to be good to myself?

Today I Pray

May I learn to forgive myself. I have asked – and received – forgiveness from God and from others, so why is it so hard to forgive myself? Why do I still magnify my suffering? Why do I go on licking my emotional wounds? May I follow God’s forgiving example, get on with The Program and learn to be good to myself.

Today I Will Remember

Martyrdom; martyr dumb.

Hazelden Foundation

One Day At A Time

PAIN

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”

–Kahlil Gibran

There was much to be unhappy about in my childhood. There was also a lot of unhappiness in my adult life. Until I found The Recovery Group online, that unhappiness was the driving force in my life. That force robbed me of the ability to see and enjoy the many wonderful things that I had experienced. I wore a cloak of sadness, bitterness and resentment ~ I had been short-changed. It was the old glass-half-empty, glass-half-full story….poor me.

Being able to share the pain and unhappiness I have known has freed me from the power it had over me. Clearing away the wreckage is enabling me to see my part in some of the unhappiness I’ve known. It has enabled me to see more clearly that there is so much for which I can be grateful. It has enabled me to see that I truly AM the person of value which I had represented myself to be towards others. I am integrating that person into the “unacceptable” being I carried within. I have seen others here endure challenge, pain and hardships with so much grace. I have learned that pain is, indeed, inevitable. I have the choice whether to dwell on the pain morbidly, or to instead focus on the joy of this day.

One day at a time …
I will live in the joy of this day and I will strive to share this wonderful gift of self-acceptance to others in program.

~ Karen A.

Elder’s Meditation of the Day

“It is a paradox in the contemporary world that in our desire for peace we must willingly give ourselves to struggle.”

–Linda Hogan, CHICKASAW

The Grandfathers have taught us about sacrifice.
We have been taught to pray for the people in a pitiful way.
Struggle and conflict is neither good nor bad, it just is.
Everything that grows experiences conflict.
When the deer is born it is through conflict.
When the seed first grows, it is through conflict.
Conflict precedes clarity.
Everything has the seasons of growth.
Recognize – acknowledge – forgive and change.
All of these things are done through conflict.

Great Spirit, give me the courage today to see that struggle and conflict are here to teach me lessons that are a gift from you.

Today's Gift

Self-Acceptance and Self-Knowledge

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

Courage to change the things I can

And wisdom to know the difference.

This well-known prayer expresses some key guidelines to our philosophy of living. One group member explained it this way:

“For me, the things I cannot change are other people, places, and circumstances. The only things I can change are my attitudes, reactions and action toward the people, places and circumstances in my life.

“The wisdom to know the difference, well, that’s a hard one. I don’t always know what I can and cannot change until I try changing it. Wisdom comes by trial and error. The more experience I have, the more understanding, knowledge, and wisdom I have.”

Today I will accept that much of my wisdom can only come through my daily experiences. I need to expect to make some mistakes in my attitudes, actions, and judgment of what I can and cannot change. I will learn to be patient with myself and others as I gain more understanding from my mistakes.

From the book:

The Reflecting Pond by Liane Cordes

The Eye Opener

In our drinking days, when we were called upon to face a problem, we would sidestep it, tunnel under it, jump over it or run away from it. It never occurred to us to face it and to walk through it.

It is remarkable how cowardly a trouble is when face to face with a person who is ready and willing to take him on. Try it.

Hazelden Foundation

Daily Tao / 217 - RUNAWAY

They call her useless
And yet push for achievement.
"I want a baby."
They bicker between themselves,
And reproach her for being distant.
"My friends have so much fun."
They dwell on money,
And indenture her to loyalty.
"I can't stand this every day."
She is innocent.
They have ambitions.

There was a girl who was both a good student and a good athlete. Her family did not find that to be enough. They pushed her to spend all her time studying or practicing for her next sport competition. Finally, she could stand it no further. She ran away.

Her family was firmly convinced that it was a kidnapping.

In so many families, a girl is told how useless she is. Is it any wonder that she gets pregnant? A boy is told how lazy he is. Is it any wonder that he rebels as an act of individuality?

When parents demand without understanding, they thwart development. Forcing children to fulfill parental ambitions destroys individuality. Before parents blame their children, they should first look to how their daughters and sons were raised.

Daily Zen

If there is no other, there can be no I. If there is no I, there will be none to make distinctions - Chuang Tzu