But darkness has gifts for us—different gifts than we get from light. Darkness changes how we see things. In the dark we see less, but we pay better attention. As we let go of our fears and let our eyes adjust to the dark, we find that we can see more than we first thought.
In recovery, we rebel against our disease because we have love for ourselves and for something greater that needs fighting for. Each day we fight for the freedom to stay close to our Higher Power, friends, and family.
It’s mainly a quiet battle. It’s fought daily. We fight and win by acting in a spiritual way. We fight and win every time we help a friend, go to a meeting, or read about how to improve our lives.
We move slowly but always forward. Rushing will only tire us out. Our battle will go on for life. We are quiet fighters, but we’re strong, for we do not fight alone. And we know what waits for us if we lose.
There is no healing without forgiveness. I love the peace I feel with forgiveness.
~Helen Casey
The program is helping us understand that when we feel resentful or angry, we are hindering our own recovery as well as our Higher Power’s plan for us. We cannot receive God’s full message if we are trapped by our hateful feelings.
Why would we want to continue our agitation toward someone else, particularly when it means we can feel no peace? The answer lies in our struggle to be “right” in every situation. Being right rather than peaceful remains too important to us.
*The Set Aside Prayer:pages 47 and 48(This prayer comes from the Chapter to the Agnostic, primarily)
"Dear God please help me to set aside everything I think I know about [people. place or thing] so I may have an open mind and a new experience. Please help me to see the truth about [people. place or thing]. AMEN." 
His parents put in a phone by his bed and friends called every day. He'd never much liked talking on the phone, but he felt better when they called. He wrote letters and got replies, and was surprised at what fun it was. Usually, he didn't have time to write letters.
He learned to play chess and began to enjoy reading. His days were slower and quieter than he'd been used to, but he learned a month really isn't a very long time. When spring came, he was running again, a little more joyfully than before.
When we can learn to accept our troubles, we find, like the boy, that they are just packages in which new growth and discoveries are wrapped.
If something unexpected slows me down today, what joys might I find at the slower pace?
Regardless of how we understand a Power greater than ourselves, prayer is an important part of our lives. Relating to a Higher Power leads us out of our egotism into a conscious relationship with powers far beyond ourselves.
How do we pray? We can use words to state what’s on our mind. We can say them silently or out loud. We can quiet our mind and simply enter into the peace of God, opening our mind to receive
The
chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p.
76
When I feel
uncomfortable, irritated, or depressed, I look for fear. This "evil and
corroding thread" is the root of my distress: Fear of failure; fear of others'
opinions; fear of harm, and many other fears. I have found a Higher Power, who
does not want me to live in fear and, as a result, the experience of A.A. in my
life is freedom and joy.
I am no longer willing to live with the multitude of
character defects that characterized my life while I was drinking. Step Seven is
my vehicle to freedom from these defects. I pray for help in identifying the
fear underneath the defect, and then I ask God to relieve me of that fear. This
method works for me without fail and is one of the great miracles of my life in
Alcoholics Anonymous.
~Elizabeth Farrell
Many of us didn’t feel alcoholism or addiction was a gift when we first got into recovery. We felt shame or perhaps anger that we couldn’t drink or use like other women. Alcohol or other drugs made us feel less self-conscious and more courageous. Accepting that we couldn’t handle these substances meant feeling the fear of many situations, perhaps for the first time.
But most of us have come to appreciate the rewards of sobriety. When we were using, our lack of consistent values caused us to stumble many times. Now we have the Steps
You can prove to yourself that life is basically and fundamentally an inner attitude. Just try to remember what troubled you most a week ago. You probably will find it difficult to remember. Why then should you unduly worry or fret over the problems that arise today? Your attitude toward them can be changed by putting yourself and your problems in God's hands and trusting Him to see that everything will turn out all right, provided you are trying to do the right thing. Your changed mental attitude toward your problems relieves you of their burden and you can face them without fear. Has my mental attitude changed?
Meditation for the Day
You cannot see the future. It's a blessing that you cannot. You could not bear to know all the future.
Somewhere along the line, as we become more involved in the program, we reach a sharp awareness of the growth value of honesty and candor. When this happens, one of the first things we’re able to admit is that our past behavior has been far from sane or even reasonable. As soon as we can make this admission—without shame or embarrassment—we find still another dimension of freedom. In my gradual recovery, am I expectant that life will become ever richer and ever more serene?
Every one of us living a sober life has made a major change. It wasn’t easy – and it won’t be the last change we’ll ever need to make.
If you are considering another change that will enhance your life, here are ways to embrace it:
During our addictive years, it was a common practice to work things backward. We were known to eat our dessert before our main meal, to celebrate before we won, to assume the outcome before the event.
The problem with this behavior is that it takes no account of reality. Things move from beginning to end. The alphabet reads from A to Z. This seems so simple, but it can be tricky for people who are used to taking shortcuts. Our program is best utilized by starting with Step One
There is a positive aspect to boundary setting. We learn to listen to ourselves and identify what hurts us and what we don’t like. But we also learn to identify what feels good.
When we are willing to take some risks and begin actively doing so, we will enhance the quality of our life. What do we like? What feels good? What brings us pleasure? Whose company do we enjoy? What helps us to feel good in the morning? What’s a real treat in our life? What are the small, daily activities that make us feel nurtured and cared for?
Our fears lock us up if we let them. They can prevent us from tasting adventure, from experiencing new wonders. We are often terrified of unknowns and fret about what might happen if we try something new. We worry if new people will like us—if we'll fit in.
It is natural to be cautious about the unknown, and anything new is just that. But we can keep our caution from becoming fear by taking action, with the faith that we never encounter anything we can't handle in some way.
Unknowns are merely joys we haven't met. We hold the keys to our own cages and can free ourselves when we use our courage and inner strength to overcome our fears.
What new joy can I discover beneath my fear today?
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. Many times—yesterday, last week, today, and even tomorrow—we'll come face-to-face with a seemingly intolerable situation. The compulsion to change the situation, to demand that another person change the situation, is great. What a hard lesson it is to learn we can change only ourselves! The hidden gift in this lesson is that as our activities change, often the intolerable situations do, too.
Acceptance, after a time, smooths all the ripples that discourage us. And it softens us. It nurtures wisdom. It attracts joy and love from others. Ironically, we often try to force changes that we think will "loosen" love and lessen struggle. Acceptance can do what our willpower could never accomplish.
We learn that prayer is only a wish away. When we wished for recovery more than anything in the world, we found it. Thus our wishes became our prayers. It was that simple.
We discover in recovery that prayer is best when it is a conversation with a Higher Power. It isn’t just a one-way speech where we tell God what we expect to have happen.
"I
was also able to realize that this bonfire of resentment and rage was
beckoning me to pick up a drink and plunge in to my death. Then I
realized that I had to separate my sobriety from everything else that
was going on in my life. No matter what happened or didn't happen, I
couldn't drink. In fact, none of these things that I was going through
had anything to do with my sobriety; the tides of life flow endlessly
for better or worse, both good and bad, and I cannot allow my
sobriety to become dependent on these ups and downs of living. Sobriety
must live a life of its own."
Our
spiritual and emotional growth in A.A. does not depend so deeply upon
success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. If you will bear
this in mind, I think that your slip will have the effect of kicking you
upstairs, instead of down.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 184
In
keeping with the pain and adversity which our founders
encountered and overcame in establishing A.A., Bill W. sent us a clear
message: a relapse can provide a positive experience toward abstinence
and a lifetime of recovery.
Lifting our self-esteem is not a particularly easy task for most of us. It's probable that again and again our confidence wavered before we sought help from the program. It's also probable that our confidence still wanes on occasion. The old fears don't disappear without effort.
Life is full of wonderful gifts. Recovery is life’s greatest gift to us. If we’re not excited about being sober, we need to check on ourselves. Are we keeping something secret? Is there a sadness we need to talk about? Are we stuffing anger? These things eat away at our excitement for life.
Many addicts never get the gift of recovery. Those of us in recovery are special. We’ve been given a new life. There will be hard times. But the joy of getting a second chance will be stronger. Am I grateful that I’ve been given recovery?
So many of us suffer from despair. Yet we don’t realize that despair is purely the absence of faith. As long as we’re willing to turn to a Higher Power for help in our difficulties, we cannot despair. When we’re troubled and can’t see a way out, it’s only because we imagine that all solutions depend on us. The program teaches us to let go of overwhelming problems and let God handle them for us.
A tree’s roots seek water and minerals. Though the roots can’t be easily seen, they are there. The life of the tree depends on them. The stronger a tree’s roots, the higher a tree can grow.
We need to set deep roots into the soil of recovery. The soil of recovery is made up of the Twelve Steps, fellowship, and service to others. We’ll have to get through storms and high winds in our return to health.
Twelve Step programs expose us to ideas that seem foreign. It takes time to embrace a new value system we can live by every day. Absorbing and using these principles for every decision and action removes the worry from our lives.
Changing how we’ve thought and acted doesn’t happen overnight. Changing one thing at a time is enough at first. Perhaps we’ll give up our feeling of hopelessness. The Second Step tells us that God can free us from our insanity, our hopelessness. All we need do is ask for help, and hope will come. Maybe we decide the urge to take over someone else’s life must end.
Not many things would send fear through us if we remembered to rely on our Higher Power at all times. Yet we try to handle circumstances ourselves first. It’s often only when we finally feel hopeless that we turn to our Higher Power for the help that awaited us all along.
We make our lives much more difficult than they need to be. Let’s quit thinking through our problems alone, no matter how foolish they seem. Let’s quit trying to handle tough people alone.
Most of us awaken spiritually very slowly. Looking back on our more dangerous times and our miraculous survival helps us to believe that at least something like a guardian angel must have never been far away. And yet, much of the time many of us still struggle with the day-to-day turmoil of our recovery, trying to manage outcomes that are not ours to manage.
We complicate most events by our need to control what is clearly up to God to control. When we let go the outcome is generally to our satisfaction.
By submitting to God, we are
released from the power of liquor. It has no more hold on us. We are also
released from the things that were holding us down: pride, selfishness, and
fear. And we are free to grow into a new life, which is so much better than the
old life that there's no comparison. This release gives us serenity and peace
with the world. Have I been released from the power of alcohol?
Meditation for the Day
We know God by spiritual vision. We
feel that He is beside us. We feel His presence. Contact with God is not made by
the senses. Spirit-consciousness replaces sight. Since we cannot see God, we
have to perceive Him by spiritual perception.
Seeing something from another person’s point of view is an important spiritual awakening. That moment of understanding is a gift. We didn’t expect it, but suddenly it’s there. Our world grows larger because our view of that person changes. That, in turn, deepens our awareness and can deepen the relationship itself. Having others take the risk of sharing themselves is precious because it shows that we have proven worthy of their trust.
It’s a good feeling to sense the immediate connection that comes with understanding someone in a new way.
Alcoholism was a lonely business, even though we were surrounded
by people who loved us . . . We were trying to find emotional security
either by dominating or by being dependent upon others . . . We still
vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy sort of domination or
dependence.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 252
When I did my personal inventory I found that I had
unhealthy relationships with most people in my life - my friends and family,
for example. I always felt isolated and lonely. I drank to dull
emotional pain.
It was through staying sober, having a good sponsor and
working the Twelve Steps that I was able to build up my low self-esteem.
First the Twelve Steps taught me to become my own best friend, and then, when I
was able to love myself, I could reach out and love others.
Anger doesn’t necessarily vanish just because we’ve come out or entered recovery. Our best selves would like to be generous to the employer who overlooks us for a promotion, to the old friend who tells us we could change if we’d just set our minds to it, and to the family that asks, “Where did we go wrong?” We’re sick of our old conflicts and resentments, but our anger and sense of injury keep overwhelming our desire to let go.
We need to find safe ways to acknowledge anger and to release the pain it may be covering. A trusted sponsor, a Twelve Step recovery meeting, or a therapist can hear us without denying or condemning our emotions. When we recognize, accept, and express our anger without judging it, we’ll be surprised at the mental and spiritual space we’ve created for new feelings.
Today, I don’t have to act out my anger. I acknowledge it and let it pass through me.
The AA program is one of submission, release, and action. When we’re drinking, we’re submitting to a power greater than ourselves—liquor. Our own wills are no use against the power of liquor. One drink and we’re sunk. In AA we stop submitting to the power of liquor. Instead, we submit to a Power, also greater than ourselves, which we call God. Have I submitted myself to my Higher Power?
Ceaseless activity is not God’s plan for your life. Times of withdrawal for renewed strength are always necessary. Wait for the faintest tremor of fear and stop all work, everything, and rest before God until you are strong again. Deal in the same way with all tired feelings. Then you need rest of body and renewal of spirit-force. Saint Paul said: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” This does not mean that you are to do all things and then rely on God to find strength. It means that you are to do the things you believe
~W. B. Yeats
Once we begin our recovery, we have an instant bond with others in recovery; they seem to understand us pretty well even if they haven’t known us very long. This is because we have a lot in common. We have the same disease. When we hear other addicts tell their stories, we know what they have gone through because it is a lot like what we have gone through.
The disease does similar things to us all. Yet each of us is unique and different, like the branches of a tree.
Sometimes we want to hurt others. Maybe it’s because we are feeling inadequate and jealous: We don’t want them to get ahead of us, so we try to deflate their happiness. Maybe it’s because they are not living up to our expectations. Or maybe it’s because they continue using alcohol and other drugs, ignoring our pleas to stop. We may have dozens of reasons for wanting to inflict cruelty on others, but none is justified.
Learning the value of pausing, even for that brief moment before speaking, will bring us immediate rewards. Amends-making will be a simpler, less time-consuming task when we pause before responding to others. But more important, we will feel better about ourselves when we treat others with the respect they deserve. Every cruel word we inflict on another person will come back to us. So will every kindness. Furthermore, every time we show respect for others, we will be showered with greater respect too.
I can pause before I respond to people and remember respect is a two-way street.
The forces of chaos and forces of order are always at work in the world. While many things are being built up, many are wearing down. It is a good thing, because life would be very boring in an unchanging state. But the chaos we met in our lives was often extreme and unusually destructive. We had to recognize it and feel the pain of it before we could build a new order. Looking back, we can see that our First Step was just such an event.
All people have small chaotic events in their lives every day. If we take a moment and reflect on our present lives, we can certainly become aware of some ways in which things are in disarray. By simply letting ourselves know it in this moment, we get ready for the new order to begin.
I pray for courage and honesty to see the chaos that exists today. Help me become ready for the new order to evolve.
Prayer can change us dramatically. It can open our eyes to the intricate beauty in the things and people in our life. Prayer can help us see the people we pray for—whether friend or adversary—with greater clarity and love. Our gratitude for friends is heightened; our resentment toward adversaries lessens. Barriers mysteriously disappear when we look upon our enemies prayerfully.
The Eleventh Step suggests that prayer may be as simple as asking for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. We therefore seek God’s presence anywhere we are and in anyone we’re with. This is prayer as action, as a commitment to fully invest ourselves in life. When prayer is how we live our life, we are able to honor whatever life gives us by responding with acceptance and hope.
Today I will look upon the people and events in my life prayerfully, and be open to the riches I am afforded.
Opinions, reactions, criticisms, regrets—from morning till night, our thoughts spin the fabric of our day. We listen as if powerless as thoughts free or torment us, energize us or weigh us down. They may talk about shame, fear, and resentment—or pride, faith, and gratitude.
Instead of letting ourselves be controlled by the ceaseless voices in our heads, we remind ourselves of our options. We can sit in meditation, noticing the flow of thoughts and gently detaching from them. We can change our negative thinking, deliberately focusing on images of comfort, courage, and healing. We choose to give such positive thoughts our attention, letting them fill us with hope and serenity. We can receive help with releasing negative thoughts by talking with a trusted friend or sponsor or attending a recovery meeting.
Today,
I am nourished and supported by positive thoughts. I choose my thoughts
as I do my friends, staying with those I find uplifting.
Our active addiction took us away from a life connected to our Higher Power, family, friends, community, and spiritual principles. During our active addiction, our primary relationship was with alcohol or drugs. Addiction is an illness of mistaken relationship. We believed we could get emotional needs meet through a relationship with chemicals. We can’t.
Now, in recovery, we get back to living instead of dying. We work to heal the wounds our illness created within our families. We see trust being created. We no longer avoid police officers, for we are respectable citizens again. We regularly pray and meditate. We feel the presence of our Higher Power again in our life.
Higher Power, you gave me life for a purpose. Help me live that purpose to its fullest. When I want to avoid life, place me back in the middle of it. When I feel like I can’t go on, give me strength.
Today
I will do at least one task that I have been avoiding. I will remind
myself that avoiding tasks takes more energy than doing them.
Deciding to recover was our first step. That decision meant we did want to go beyond where we were. We did want something better for ourselves. And at times, in fleeting moments, we have been excited about who we are and our prospects for a better life.
The excitement and the inspiration come and go; they are seldom stationary. We can actively create the excitement and the inspiration. We need not wait for them to come to us. That's one of the choices we have as
It’s time for me to realize that my attitude—toward the life I’m living and the people in it—can have a tangible, measurable, and profound effect on what happens to me day by day. If I expect good, then good will surely come to me. And if I try each day to base my attitude and point of view on a sound spiritual foundation, I know it will change all the circumstances of my life for the better, too. Do I accept the fact that I have been given only a daily reprieve that is contingent on
We form habits, and then these habits begin to form us. For so long we had such self-destructive ways of being: we were self-centered, angry, and critical people, and so we behaved selfishly, angrily, and judgmentally in the world.
To stay sober we must develop new habits, new patterns of living. We must give up old hangouts, old friends, old attitudes and ideas. It seems this is the only way to form new habits—
By doing a Fourth Step, we start to see ourselves more clearly. We see how we’ve acted against ourselves. Soon, we hear a little voice inside telling us to stop before we act. “Are you sure you want to say or do that?” the little voice asks. Then we make a choice: we do something the same old way, or we try a new way.
One part of us will always want to do things the old, sick way. This is natural. But we’re getting stronger every day.
