The Bookshop

When we start our day, we have a wealth of meditation books to help lead our focus to faith, strength, and hope. Throughout each day, we have pamphlets and books to enrich our minds and expand our understanding of the disease that affects our lives. We learn we are not alone in our struggles and triumphs; there are many before us, many now, and many to come who will ask the same questions, have the same struggles, find the same hope.

Our literature is written by those who, through the help of their Higher Power, can communicate their feelings and thoughts.

Surrender

Surrender is more than simply understanding that I can’t run the show my way anymore. Understanding that I am an addict and an alcoholic and that my way doesn’t work does not produce change. Insight, knowledge and understanding do nothing if I don’t change my behavior. Surrender is something I must do behaviorally. Simply saying I give up is not enough. I must become willing, open and honest in my surrender to a Higher Power.

What this means is that I constantly must seek out advice and suggestions from others in the program and then evaluate each of the ideas I receive. I must ask myself, “What would God want me to do?” I must become willing to let go and follow the suggestions I get.

Love

We love to be loved; we love to be held; we love to be caressed. A show of appreciation we love too. And we love to know we've been heard. The friends, the spouses, the children in our lives want the same from us. Like a garden that needs water, sun, weeding to nurture the growth, so does love need attending to. To become whole and healthy women, we need tender nurturing. And we also need to give away what we get. Those we nurture will bless our growth.

Letting Go of What We Want

In recovery, we learn that it is important to identify what we want and need. Where does this concept leave us? With a large but clearly identified package of currently unmet wants and needs. We've taken the risk to stop denying and to start accepting what we want and need. The problem is, the want or need hangs there, unmet.

This can be a frustrating, painful, annoying, and sometimes obsession-producing place to be.

After identifying our needs, there is a next step in getting our wants and needs met. This step is one of the spiritual ironies of recovery. The next step is letting go of our wants and needs after we have taken painstaking steps to identify them.

We let them go, we give them up - on a mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical level. Sometimes, this means we need to give up. It is not always easy to get to this place, but this is usually where we need to go.

One day at a time

Thought for the Day

This leaves only one day-today. Anyone can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the burden of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives us mad. It is the remorse or bitterness for something, which happened yesterday, or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time. Am I living one day at a time?

Meditation for the Day

Change and growth

The rewards of our new life are apparent to us because of how we feel, and apparent to others by what they can see. Many of us had reached our bottom point, and we felt there was no risk in trying a program of recovery. Yet, we still had some distorted security in our harmful ways of relating to others or in our addictions. Letting go was an experiment. This program gives us guidelines for experimenting with our life for growth, and we continue growing everyday. Some of our benefits are increased confidence and self respect, more intimacy with our partner, better friendships, and better physical health. We feel these changes in ourselves, and we see them in the other men and women in this program.
Today, I am grateful for the rewards in my life from this experiment in recovery.

From Touchstones

Have Some Fun

Have some fun. Loosen up a bit. Enjoy life!

We do not have to be so somber and serious. We do not have to be so reflective, so critical, so bound up within the rigid parameters and ourselves others, and often ourselves, have placed around us.

This is life, not a funeral service. Have some fun with it. Enter into it. Participate. Experiment. Take a risk. Be spontaneous. Do not always be so concerned about doing it right, doing the appropriate thing.

Do not always be so concerned about what others will think or say. What they think and say are their issues not ours. Do not be so afraid of making a mistake. Do not be so fearful and proper. Do not inhibit yourself so much.

Face Everything

Thought for the Day
There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days, which should be kept from fear and apprehension. One of these days is yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed. We cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone beyond recall. Do I still worry about what happened yesterday?

Meditation for the Day

THOSE WHO STILL SUFFER

Let us resist the proud assumption that since God has enabled us to do well in one area we are destined to be a channel of saving grace for everybody.
A.A. COMES OF AGE, p. 232

A.A. groups exist to help alcoholics achieve sobriety. Large or small, firmly established or brand-new, speaker, discussion or study group has but one reason for being: to carry the message to the still-suffering alcoholic.

Trouble

"There was a time when we ignored trouble, hoping it would go away. Or, in fear and depression, we ran from it, but found it was still with us. Often, full of unreason, bitterness, and blame, we fought back. These mistaken attitudes, powered by alcohol, guaranteed our destruction, unless they were altered . . . Then came A.A. Surprisingly, we found that our troubles could, under God's grace, be converted into unimaginable blessings." Bill W., Letter, 1966 1967 AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 110

Thought to Consider . . .
The peaks and valleys of my life have become gentle rolling hills.

                                               AACRONYMS 

                                      W I L L I N G
                             When I Live Life, I Need God

Accept My Humanness

From: "A Nourishing Ingredient

"How often do I focus on my problems and frustrations? When I am having a 'good day' these same problems shrink in importance and my preoccupation with them dwindles. Wouldn't it be better if I could find a key to unlock the 'magic' of my 'good days' for use on the woes of my 'bad days'?

I already have the solution! Instead of trying to run away from my pain and wish my problems away, I can pray for humility! Humility will heal the pain.

As we grow more comfortable with Step Three

To live fully and creatively, to contribute what is only ours to give, requires that we be receptive, wholly, to the reverberations of each present moment. Even anticipation of what may transpire next can prejudice our minds, our level of awareness. Preconceptions cloud our senses. They prevent the actual situation from being fully realized. And it is only in the now, as sensed moment by moment, that we find our cues to proceed along the path chosen for us.

Owning Our Power

Don't you see? We do not have to be so victimized by life, by people, by situations, by work, by our friends, by our love relationships, by our family, by our feelings, our thoughts, our circumstances, and ourselves.

We are not victims. We do not have to be victims. That is the whole point!

Yes, admitting and accepting powerlessness is important. But that is the first step, an introduction to this business of recovery. Later, comes owning our power. Changing what we can. This is as important as admitting and accepting powerlessness. And there is so much we can change.

We can own our power, wherever we are, wherever we go, whomever we are with. We do not have to stand there with our hands tied, groveling helplessly, submitting to whatever comes along. There are things we can do. We can speak up. Solve the problem. Use the problem to motivate ourselves to do something good for ourselves.

AA and God

Thought for the Day
We are living on borrowed time. We are living today because of A.A. and the grace of God. And what there is left of our lives we owe to A.A. and to God. We should make the best use we can of our borrowed time and in some small measure pay back for that part of our lives which we wasted before we came into A.A. Our lives from now on are not our own. We hold them in trust for God and A.A. And we must do all we can to forward the great movement that has given us a new lease on life. Am I holding my life in trust for A.A.?

Meditation for the Day

Living according to principles

If we live according to spiritual principles, we will know harmony in our lives. If we ignore these principles, our harmony will be destroyed.
Fortunately, the principles are constant. Once we recognize our mistakes, our task is to once again apply the principles we learned and harmony will return.

Am I living according to spiritual principles?

Higher Power, help me to be aware of and live according to principles.

How I relate to my inner self-influences

Hateful attitudes toward others, resistance to someone's suggestions, jealousy over another woman's attractiveness or particular abilities are equally strong indications of the health of our spiritual programs. Our security rests with God. When that relationship is nurtured, the rewards will be many and satisfactions great.

Our inner selves may need pampering and praise. They have suffered the abuse of neglect for many years, no doubt. In many instances we have chided ourselves, perhaps shamed ourselves.

Learning to Trust Again

Many of us have trust issues.

Some of us tried long and hard to trust untrustworthy people. Over and again, we believed lies and promises never to be kept. Some of us tried to trust people for the impossible; for instance, trusting a practicing alcoholic not to drink again.

Some of us trusted our Higher Power inappropriately. We trusted God to make other people do what we wanted, then felt betrayed when that didn't work out.

Some of us were taught that life couldn't be trusted, that we had to control and manipulate our way through.

Most of us were taught, inappropriately, that we couldn't trust ourselves.

Members

Thought for the Day

One of finest things about A.A. is the diversity of its membership. We come from all walks and stations of life. All types and classes of people are represented in an A.A. group. Being different from each other in certain ways, we can each make a different contribution to the whole. Some of us are weak in one respect, but strong in another. A.A. can use the strong points of all its members and can disregard their weaknesses. A.A. is strong, not only because we all have the same problem, but also because of the diversified talents of its members. Each person can contribute part. Do I recognize the good points of all my group's members?

Meditation for the Day

Thankful

I wake each morning with the thrill of expectation and the joy of being truly alive. And I'm thankful for this day.
  —Angela L. Wozniak

Being open to the day's offering, all of it, and looking for the positive experiences therein, becomes habit only after a firm commitment and dedicated practice. Today is special for each of us.

These next twenty-four hours will be unlike all others. And we are not the persons we were, even as recently as yesterday. Looking forward to all of the day's events, with the knowledge that we are in the care of our higher power, in every detail, frees us to make the most of everything that happens.

Being Is Enough

We are not always clear about what we are experiencing, or why.

In the midst of grief, transition, transformation, learning, healing, or discipline - it's difficult to have perspective.

That's because we have not learned the lesson yet. We are in the midst of it. The gift of clarity has not yet arrived.

Our need to control can manifest itself as a need to know exactly what's going on. We cannot always know.

Overdependence on Others

Dependency (on another human being) is the inability to experience wholeness or to function adequately without the certainty that one is being actively cared for by another.
  —M. Scott Peck

No matter what we may think, overdependence on another can be very unloving because it drains others of any chance for personal growth. Those of us who have been dependent on other people are so busy acquiring love that we ourselves have no energy left to truly give love. It's as if we're starving and scrambling for every little bit of love we can find, with no thought to offering it to others. No wonder they often quickly get tired of us.

Faith

Thought for the Day

If we feel the need of saying something to put another member on the right track, we should try to say it with understanding and sympathy, not with a critical attitude. We should keep everything out in the open and aboveboard. The A.A. program is wonderful, but we must really follow it. We must all pull together or we'll all be sunk. We enjoy the privilege of being associated with A.A. and we are entitled to all its benefits. But gossip and criticism are not tolerance, and tolerance is an A.A. principle that is absolutely necessary to group unity. Am I truly tolerant of all my group's members?

Meditation for the Day

Leave it in Gods hands

A.A. Thought for the Day

Just try to remember what troubled us most a week ago. We probably will find it difficult to remember. Why then should we unduly worry or fret over the problems that arise today? Our attitudes toward them can be changed by putting ourselves and our problems in God's hands and trusting that everything will turn out all right, provided we are trying to do the right thing. Has my mental attitude changed?

Meditation for the Day

Surrender

We had to surrender to a power greater than ourselves to get to where we are today. And each day, we have to turn to that power for strength and guidance. For us, resistance means struggle - struggle with others as well as an internal struggle.

Serenity isn't compatible with struggle. We cannot control forces outside of ourselves. We cannot control the actions of our family or our co-workers. We can control our responses to them. And when we choose to surrender our attempts to control, we will find peace and serenity.

Trusting

Trust takes time. If you don't invest it, then you don't get it.
  —Anonymous

Trusting other human beings is like planting a garden. First we must choose where to plant - is the soil healthy, is it open to sunlight? We would not plant seeds on rocks that are hard and un-giving. In the same way, we need to choose friends who are trustworthy, who are like rich soil open to planting and sunlight.

Changes

Thought for the Day

Gossip about or criticism of personalities has no place in an A.A. clubroom. Every man in A.A. is a brother and every woman is a sister, as long as he or she is a member of A.A. We ought not to gossip about the relationships of any man or woman in the group. And if we say about another member, "I think she or he is taking a few drinks on the side," it's the worst thing we could do to that person. If a woman or a man is not living up to A.A. principles or has a slip, it's up to her or him to stand up in a meeting and say so. If they don't do that, they are only hurting themselves. Do I talk about other members behind their backs?

Meditation for the Day

Attitudes and Limitation

To a large extent, the way we think determines who we are and what happens to us.

We cannot harbor poisonous thoughts without their effects visibly showing in our lives. If we dwell on our inadequacy and ineffectiveness, for example, circumstances will prove us correct because we will invite self-defeating events to us.

Coping

Before getting into this recovery program, many of us didn't cope with life's distractions except with the help of our addiction. We had no sense of wholeness and were constantly bouncing from one crisis to another. We may still feel pulled. The crises may still trip us up. But we have a center now that we are beginning to understand and rely upon. That center is our spiritual selves.

Slowing down, going within to our center, listening to the message therein, unravels our problem, smooths the waves of the storm.

Love, in Words and Actions

Many of us have confused notions about what it means to be loved and cared about.

Many of us were loved and cared for by people who had discrepancies between what they said and did.

We may have had a mother or father who said, "I love you" to us, and then abandoned or neglected us, giving us confused ideas about love. Thus that pattern feels like love - the only love we knew.

Some of us may have been cared for by people who provided for our needs and said they loved us, but simultaneously abused or mistreated us. That, then, becomes our idea of love.

What's right with me today?

There was once a mother who felt rejected when her children grew up and needed to separate from her. She felt hurt when they pushed her away and no longer wanted all the love and caring that she wanted to give them. She thought, What's wrong with me?

Encouraged by her friends, she began to ask herself another question: What's right with me?

Removing all the blocks

Thought for the Day

The new life of sobriety we are learning to live in A.A. is slowly growing on us and we are beginning to get some of that deep peace of mind and serenity that we never thought were possible. At first we may have doubted that this could happen to us, but after any considerable length of time in A.A., looking at the happy faces around us, we know that somehow it is happening to us. In fact, it cannot help happening to anyone who takes the A.A. program seriously day by day. Can I see my own happiness reflected in the faces of others?

Meditation for the Day

Changing destructive habits

People grow accustomed to habits even when they are self-destructive. We who have sought the help of Twelve Step programs were often caught in patterns of behavior that injured us or other people. We want help to change these habits or we wouldn't be here now.

We learn at our first meeting that Twelve Step programs are both for the present day and for a lifetime. We are comforted and surprised by that. The comfort is in knowing help will always be available to us.

Learn and change

We may think that forgetting the past is essential for growth and peace of mind. It’s a tempting idea: we’ll start over again, we think, fresh and new. But if we lose that old pain, we’ll also lose all that we learned. We may repeat our mistakes, or make even worse ones next time. Dwelling on the past is equally dangerous. We began recovery to build a better life.

To find and maintain our balance, each area of our lives needs attention. A healthy mind in a healthy body is free to find God. And, with God’s help, we can learn to recognize and forgive our past mistakes, while we keep the remarkable lessons we learned from life.

Taking responsibility for ourselves

All our lives we may have looked for someone to take care of us. This may have begun with our parents, then continued when we formed relationships. We may have found life was easier when someone else took responsibility for our finances, obligations, and emotional health. Whenever someone left us, we may have quickly latched onto someone new so we didn’t have to feel the burden of taking responsibility.

The program teaches us that we are the only ones who can take care of us. After entering the program we may feel like we're suddenly stripped bare, vulnerable to the whole world of responsibility:

IF YOU WANT WHAT WE HAVE

Newcomer

I sat through a meeting today in anger. It started when I walked in and saw who was up there speaking—someone I know and don’t trust. She did everything her way and I didn’t hear much program, at least as I know it. I feel ashamed of having that reaction, especially at this point in recovery, but that’s how I felt.

Sponsor

Thanks for your honesty. Most of us in recovery have strong feelings of resistance at one time or another. I’ve certainly experienced the kind you’re talking about. Sometimes we all want what we want when we want it.

Easy Way Out

I saw a news story about a woman named Elsa who had been held hostage by an escaped criminal. Robert, a man fleeing from the police, broke into Elsa's country home and held her captive at gunpoint while a large SWAT team surrounded her home with an arsenal of firearms. Fortunately, Elsa was a psychologist, and she applied her listening skills to her interactions with this man. Over the two days that Robert occupied her home, Elsa did her best not to panic, and invited him to speak of the pain in his life. Quickly, she recognized that he was like a frightened beast trying to escape from his own wounds.

Honor the past and enhance the future

To use the past without being controlled by it - that is our responsibility to history. Because the past is irrecoverably vanished, it's sometimes tempting to forget it or to falsify it. But being true to ourselves means being true to our history.

Past cruelties can remain powerful in our lives - yet to take possession of our history means to free ourselves of bondage to past events. Nothing can ever change them.

Insisting on the Best

We deserve the best life and love has to offer, but we are each faced with the challenge of learning to identify what that means in our life. We must each come to grips with our own understanding of what we believe we deserve, what we want, and whether we are receiving it.

There is only one place to start, and that is right where we are, in our current circumstances. The place we begin is with us.

What hurts? What makes us angry? What are we whining and complaining about? Are we discounting how much a particular behavior is hurting us? Are we making excuses for the other person, telling ourselves we're "too demanding"?

A MEASURE OF HUMILITY

In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.         

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 75

It was painful to give up trying to control my life, even though success eluded me, and when life got too rough, I drank to escape.

We Are Lovable

Do you ever find yourself thinking: How could anyone possibly love me? For many of us, this is a deeply ingrained belief that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Thinking we are unlovable can sabotage our relationships with co-workers, friends, family members, and other loved ones. This belief can cause us to choose, or stay in, relationships that are less than we deserve because we don't believe we deserve better. We may become desperate and cling as if a particular person was our last chance at love. We may become defensive and push people away. We may withdraw or constantly overreact.

Peace of mind and Serenity

Thought for the Day

One of the best things about the A.A. program is the peace of mind and serenity that it can bring us. In our drinking days, we had no peace of mind or serenity. We had the exact opposite, a kind of turmoil and that "quiet desperation" we knew so well. The turmoil of our drinking days was caused partly by our physical suffering, the terrible hangovers, the cold sweats, the shakes and the jitters. But it was caused even more by our mental suffering, the loneliness, the feeling of inferiority, the lying, and the remorse that every alcoholic understands. Have I achieved more peace of mind?

Meditation for the Day

24-hour courage

Reflection for the Day

Now that I know I can't use bottled courage, I seek and pray for 24-hour courage to change the things I can. Obviously, this isn't the kind of courage that will make me a strong and brave person for life, able to handle any and all situations courageously. Rather, what I need is a persistent and intelligent courage, continuing each day into the next one - but doing today only what can be done today and avoiding all fear and worry with regard to the final result. What does courage mean to me today?

Today I Pray

GIVING UP CENTER STAGE

For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all . . . Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 70

Why do I balk at the word "humility"? I am not humbling myself toward other people, but toward God, as I understand Him. Humility means "to show submissive respect," and by being humble I realize I am not the center of the universe. When I was drinking, I was consumed by pride and self-centeredness.

Anger

"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about 'justifiable' anger? If somebody cheats us, aren't we entitled to be mad? Can't we be properly angry with self-righteous folk?

Faith

Thought for the Day

We in Alcoholics Anonymous do not try to chart the path for the human soul or try to lay out a blueprint of the working of faith, as one might plan a charity drive. We do tell the newcomer that we have renewed our faith in a Higher Power. In the telling, our faith is further renewed. We believe that faith is always close at hand, waiting for those who will listen to the heartbeat of the spirit. We believe there is a force for good in the universe and that if we link up with this force, we are carried onward to a new life. Am I in this stream of goodness?

Meditation for the Day

Fears

Two of the problems common to men in this program are fear and lack of trust. Many of us have unconsciously enlarged our fears and returned to them again and again. Do we dwell excessively on fears? Are we too fearful about our health? Money? Jobs? Love? Jealousy? The future? What other people think?

Many of us are victims of our fears and anxieties. Fears in moderation are healthy signals to us. But we need to learn to be more trusting. We can simply open ourselves to the possibility that things will turn out well.

Feeling inferior

We are competent women. We made a wise choice for ourselves when we decided to recover. Each day that we continue working this program our Spirits are strengthened. And our gifts will multiply.

Feeling inferior can become a habit. Being passive and feeling inferior go hand-in-hand, and they prepare us for becoming dependent on alcohol, pills, food, and people. We didn't understand, instinctively, that we are just who we're meant to be. We grew up believing we were not smart enough, not pretty enough, not capable enough. We grew up too distant from the source of our real strength.

Ending Relationships

It takes courage and honesty to end a relationship - with friends, loved ones, or a work relationship.

Sometimes, it may appear easier to let the relationship die from lack of attention rather than risk ending it. Sometimes, it may appear easier to let the other person take responsibility for ending the relationship.

We may be tempted to take a passive approach. Instead of saying how we feel, what we want or don't want, or what we intend to do, we may begin sabotaging the relationship, hoping to force the other person to do the difficult work.

Those are ways to end relationships, but they are not the cleanest or the easiest ways.

Miracles

Thought for the Day

We in Alcoholics Anonymous do not enter into theological discussions, but in carrying our message we attempt to explain the simple "how" of the spiritual life. How faith in a Higher Power can help you to overcome loneliness, fear, and anxiety. How it can help you get along with other people. How it can make it possible for you to rise above pain, sorrow, and despondency. How it can help you to overcome your desires for the things that destroy. Have I reached a simple, effective faith?

Meditation for the Day

Attitude

"Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A. showed results, prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A. that had the closed mind, it was me. The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can't say upon what occasion, or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could."
1952 AAWS
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 27