Even More Recovery Readings and Meditations - December

[bluidkiti]

December 14

Step by Step

Today, and hopefully every subsequent 24 Hours, I will include discipline in my recovery. Let me reach back into my yesterdays to learn from my mistakes as a drinking alcoholic and temper potential flareups of those mistakes with the discipline not to act or react as I did then. While I cannot undo the damage or hurt of my mistakes then, I can prevent them from happening again by applying the discipline of changing myself. With discipline, I may reach the point where it is second-nature and something I don’t have to consciously exert. This, in effect, is one of the spiritual awakenings or experiences promised in the 12 Steps. With discipline, grant me patience, logic over emotion, selflessness and kindness in place of intentional harm. Today, I begin to work consciously not to redo what I did wrong yesterday. Today, I expect progress from myself and not from the outside. And our common journey continues. Step by step. – Chris M.

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~ A YEAR OF MIRACLES ~ (Meditations Written by Members of Nicotine Anonymous) ~

Never give up, for that is just the place and time the tide will turn.

~ HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ~

I read the Bible for strength, hope and encouragement. Exodus 14:14 says, “The Lord shall fight for you and you shall hold your place.” This is so great for me because cigarettes were a sedative. When I know someone cares this much it is very soothing.

I now have eight months without nicotine. It is so rewarding. I did not feel real well yet, but I hiked for two miles with a group knowing oxygenating my blood would be beneficial. It was a great hiking party. I would not have done that as a smoker.

Today, I will take time to enjoy healthy activities.

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~ EASY DOES IT ~ (A Book of Daily 12 Step Meditations) ~

SPADE WORK

Count your garden by the flowers, not by the leaves that fall

~ Dixie Willson ~

Stories we hear as lessons should be shared with friends so they too can benefit from them. One such tale is about a young woman seeking spiritual growth.

When told, “You weren’t promised a rose garden,” she replied, “No, but I appreciate the garden I’ve been given. I know I’ll never enjoy lovely roses unless I personally spend much time weeding, hoeing, mulching, fertilizing, watering, spraying, and pruning. Only after working in my garden can I pause to smell the roses. And if I am unwilling to risk getting stuck by thorns, I’ll never have the joy of gathering beautiful flowers to give to those I love.”

Life is like a garden. Enjoyment of it depends on how well I do the spade work. Many an old-timer reminds me “pray for potatoes but pick up a hoe.”

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~ WISDOM TO KNOW ~ (More Daily Meditations For Men) ~

Man is the only kind of varmint who sets his own trap, baits it, and then steps in it.

~ John Steinbeck ~

It’s a universal truth that we often reap the results of our own bad choices. We are drawn to substances and behaviors that seem so pleasurable at first, but lead us far astray from the kind of man we want to be. Our bad choices may be self-indulgent escapes from the challenges of life. Ultimately the escape becomes the trap. We are in the company of millions of would-be escapers, but some of us did a bigger job of it than others.

Life as a spiritual path means that we learn from our mistakes and we get better at facing our challenges head-on. There is no need to berate ourselves for being human. When we learn from our experience, it isn’t a total loss, and we grow deeper.

Today I am grateful for what I have already learned, and I will keep an open mind to continue to learn from my mistakes.

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~ A WOMAN’S SPIRIT ~ (More Meditations For Women) ~

To let go is to wander often into dark, unknown, scary places. The darkness fades as we stretch out our hand and feel the touch, the grasp, of another.

~ Margo Casey ~

It’s not surprising that we fear letting go. We spent years trying to control other people and circumstances. And just because we generally failed at our attempts doesn’t mean that we understood why. Most of us have continued to think, “Maybe this time . . .” How lucky we are to have this program as a daily guide. We are getting the message. Some of us may take longer hearing it, but all of us will learn that letting go is possible. Every time we do so successfully, we ensure that we will let go even more quickly the next time.

Besides the serenity that comes when we let go, we feel the soft touch of our Higher Power, who has been awaiting our reach for help. Letting go gives us not only peace but also the spiritual connection that will help us let go more quickly the next time.

I can let go of any problem that troubles me today. God will be there to take my burden and my hand.

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~ TODAY I WILL DO ONE THING ~ (Daily Readings for Awareness and Hope) ~

I want to show my gratitude

When I was experiencing strong symptoms of my emotional illness and using street drugs every day, I was angry at the world for my problems and angry at myself because I couldn’t fix them. I felt grateful only when I could get high and find some relief from pain.

These days, it’s different. I feel deeply grateful to my helpers and my program because I’m abstinent and my psychiatric symptoms are in check. I feel acceptance, strength, and much good will. I want to give back to others with a dual disorder some of what I’ve recently received. I want to help carry the message of hope and recovery.

I will do two acts of kindness today: one for a stranger and one for myself

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~ BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT ~ (Inspiration and Support for Recovery) ~

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

~ Bertrand Russell ~

During active addiction, we rarely felt content. Quite the contrary, we lived in constant turmoil. We had no models for a quiet mind, much less a quiet life, and so we lived with a constant noise in our heads, like static on the radio.

In recovery we learn again and again that our old ways of coping no longer work. They make too much noise, and we don’t tolerate the noise as well as we used to.

Now, we welcome quiet. We seek out quiet places, calm people, and serenity in our daily activities. We also find that we enjoy a calmer life and no longer need the quick pace of excitement all the time. We enjoy our daily communing with our Higher Power, and appreciate our quiet time in the morning and evening.

Today help me quiet my mind. Help me seek serenity one day at a time.

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~ MORNING LIGHT ~ (Meditations to Begin Your Day) ~

Realize you are licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to God.

~ Ebby Thacher ~

On December 14,1934, Bill Wilson was at Towns Hospital, a detox center located in Manhattan. He had been there three times before. Each time, he resumed drinking once he was released.

While he was at the clinic, Ebby Thacher, one of his old drinking pals, paid him a visit. Thacher had given up liquor and replaced it with religion. As he spoke with his friend, Thacher advised him to give up drinking for good. “Realize you are licked,” he advised him. “Admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to God.”

The story of Wilson’s recovery from addiction recounts that later that evening, while suffering through intense withdrawal, Wilson cried out that he was willing to try anything. He asked God to show himself. At that, Wilson reportedly saw a vision and felt he was being released from the hold of addiction. Upon his discharge from the clinic, he began attending Oxford Group meetings, a Christian fellowship. There he met surgeon Robert Smith, who was a heavy drinker. Smith, who later became known as Dr. Bob, gave up drinking on June 10,1935, and, with Wilson, founded Alcoholics Anonymous.

Today I celebrate the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and the help they have given to me.

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~ NIGHT LIGHT ~ (A Book Of Nighttime Meditations) ~

In the old days, if a person missed the stagecoach he was content to wait a day or two for the next one. Nowadays, we feel frustrated if we miss one section of a revolving door.

~ Modern Maturity ~

Many things today can take place overnight. We can cook a turkey dinner, mail a package several states away, or travel to another continent in a matter of hours. Because the world moves at such a fast pace, it’s only natural that we absorb some of that frenetic activity into our own lives.

We become accustomed to wanting change to hap-pen right away. When we share that at a meeting others may laugh, but it’s because they, too, have had the same feelings. It’s not unusual to want miracles with the blink of an eye.

But just because the outer world is at a frantic pace doesn’t mean we, too, have to operate at such a pace. When all the world is a raging stream, we can have a small peaceful stream of serenity flowing within us.

Tonight I can learn patience that things will happen in my time, not the time of the world. Everyone moves at his or her own pace, and I need to move at mine.

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~ DAY BY DAY ~ (Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts) ~

Giving it away

We can’t give away what we don’t possess. We can’t teach others to live what we don’t live. Before we tell others about the joys of a chemical-free existence, we must live that chemical-free existence. We must be spiritual.

Our Higher Power guides us to the people we need to carry the message to.

Do I give it away every day?

Higher Power, I pray that I may be a channel of your blessing to others.

Today I will give it away to

God help me to stay clean and sober today!

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~ IF YOU WANT WHAT WE HAVE ~ (Sponsorship Meditations) ~

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask, but when we are challenged to become what we can be.

~ ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL ~

Newcomer

So many things continue to be frustrating for me. I’ve been working so hard at my recovery, but my Higher Power doesn’t seem to want to reward me.

Sponsor

Trust in a Higher Power includes trust that our lives in recovery are unfolding over a long period of time and that, though we can’t always foresee where our journey is taking us, we’re on the right path. Our work in recovery includes the work of learning patience, gratitude, and trust.

Should we turn our backs on a Higher Power simply because we haven’t been given some material thing, some recognition from others, or a relationship we’ve been fantasizing about? Or because our Higher Power’s timetable differs from our own? The true dimensions of our recovery are not always visible to us. If we’re feeling frustrated about our progress, it helps us see things in perspective when we remember how far we’ve come in the relatively short time since we walked into our first meeting. Surely our recovery will continue to take us far beyond what we can imagine today, just as it’s already taken us beyond what we imagined a year ago.

Today, I remember that I’m a work in progress.

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~ THE EYE OPENER ~

Our greatest enemy was alcohol and we have learned how to protect ourselves against it, but we are in constant danger from some of our well meaning friends. They constantly tell us how wonderful we are in that we have cut out our drinking and, unfortunately, we sometimes believe them to the point where our heads begin to swell.

At that very moment, that very necessary ingredient of sobriety, HUMILITY, goes out the window and sobriety frequently accompanies it.

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~ WALK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG BOOK ~ (Official & Unofficial Sloganeering From the 12 Step Programs) ~

1) Working with Others: A good exercise for the heart is to bend down and help another up.

2) STANDARD ACRONYMS: WWBBD: What would Bill and Bob do?

3) Al-Anon: It’s not your business to keep their secret.

by Shelly Marshall

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~ The 12 STEP PRAYER BOOK ~ (A Collection of Favorite 12 Step Prayers and Inspirational Readings) ~

Power of Choice
<>Dear God, I pray for Your help
in making the right choices.
I am, at any given moment of my life in recovery,
the sum total of the choices I make.
I pray for Your guidance in choosing between
positive and negative,
humility and arrogance,
gratitude and self-centeredness;
And if at times my choices prove wrong,
help me to learn from those experiences.

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~ AROUND THE YEAR WITH EMMET FOX ~ (A Book of Daily Readings) ~

IS THAT YOUR HAT?

Why has not your prayer been answered? Perhaps it has. Strangely enough, it often happens that we receive an answer to our prayer and do not recognize it. Some of us have had demonstrations in our possession for weeks or months and have not known it. This mistake is caused by outlining. We have unconsciously decided that the demonstration must take a particular form, and because that form does not appear, we think we have failed. Actually we probably have an even better demonstration than we expected, but for the moment we are blind to it.

If a boy prayed for a man’s hat (because he thought it would look well on him or make him grown up) he would not get it; since divine Wisdom knows that he could not wear it. He would get a good hat of the sort that would be useful to him. We often pray for things for which we are not really prepared; but if we pray scientifically this will not matter, since Creative Intelligence will send us the thing that we really need.

Seek God for His own sake, for the joy of being with Him, and demonstrations will take care of themselves.

I will be glad in the Lord (Psalm 104:34).

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~ A DEEP BREATH OF LIFE ~ (365 Daily Inspirations for Heart-Centered Living) ~

Soul Required

It’s all about soul.

~ from the song, “All About Soul, ” by Billy Joel ~

In a parable, Jesus told:

The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, “What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. (Luke 12:17-21)

While a traditional reading of this parable might interpret “your soul is required” as passing from this world, there is a practical lesson here for enrichment of daily living. At any given moment, our soul is required. We must bring forth the riches of our spirit to be fully present and alive in our relationships, career, and spiritual path. If we become preoccupied with material pursuits, worldly worries, or self-protection, we dampen the light of our soul, and miss the true joy of living.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. Do not cover your light with a basket.” The light is our true nature. The basket is the mountain of distractions we generate when we invest our energy in building a kingdom on earth (the outer world) instead of heaven, the true inner life.

At every moment, our soul is required—not for death, but for greater life.

I want to live in the kingdom today. Help me remember that my only true joy is in spiritual aliveness.

Clothed in majesty, I walk in the glory of my spiritual identity.