Out of the Dark

"Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help. Yet it is only a step. We will want to go further. We will want the good that is in us all, even in the worst of us, to flower and to grow. But first of all we shall want sunlight; nothing much can grow in the dark. Meditation is our step out into the sun."

Turn away from what's troubling us

Sometimes we need to turn away from what's troubling us. Turn it over, says the Third Step. hanging onto a situation for which no solution is immediately apparent, only exaggerates the situation. It is often said the solution to any problem lies within it. However, turning the problem over and over in our minds keeps our attention on the outer appearance, not the inner solution.

Rest, meditation, quiet attention to other matters, other persons, opens the way for God to reveal the solution. Every problem can be resolved. And no answer is ever withheld for long. We need to be open to it, though.

OVERCOMING LONELINESS

Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong. AS BILL SEES IT, p. 90

The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for He cannot reach me when I am in turmoil.

There is no right way to pray

Prayer is not a requirement of Twelve Step programs. ( AA, Al-Anon)  In fact, the program has no requirements. It has only suggestions that if followed will change how we see our experiences. This, in turn, mysteriously changes our very experiences. One suggestion is that we seek, through prayer and meditation, to know God and God's will for us.

The idea of prayer scares some of us initially. It seems religious. However, we learn from other people, if we're open to their words, that the program is not religious but spiritual. This means that we can expect help from a Power who wants to safeguard our lives. All we have to do is let that Power in, using any method that feels comfortable.

I CANNOT CHANGE THE WIND

My first sponsor told me there were two things to say about prayer and meditation: first, I had to start and second, I had to continue. When I came to A.A. my spiritual life was bankrupt; if I considered God at all, He was to be called upon only when my self-will was incapable of a task or when overwhelming fears had eroded my ego.

Today I am grateful for a new life, one in which my prayers are those of thanksgiving. My prayer time is more for listening than for talking. I know today that if I cannot change the wind, I can adjust my sail. I know the difference between superstition and spirituality. I know there is a graceful way of being right, and many ways to be wrong.
Copyright 1990
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.

The Step That Keeps Us Growing

"Sometimes, when friends tell us how well we are doing, we know better inside. We know we aren't doing well enough. We still can't handle life, as life is. There must be a serious flaw somewhere in our spiritual practice and development. What, then, is it?
 
 The chances are better than even that we shall locate our trouble in our misunderstanding or neglect of A.A.'s Step Eleven - prayer, meditation, and the guidance of God. The other Steps can keep most of us sober and somehow functioning. But Step Eleven can keep us growing, if we try hard and work at it continually."

AS BILL SEES IT
GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1958

Let us continue with Steps

A.A. Thought for the Day

Let us continue with Steps Two, Three, and Eleven. We must turn to a Higher Power for help, because we are helpless ourselves. When we put our drink problem in God's hands and leave it there, we have made the most important decision of our lives. From then on, we trust God for the strength to keep sober. This takes us off the center of the universe and allows us to transfer our problems to a Power outside ourselves. By prayer and meditation, we seek to improve our conscious contact with God. We try to live each day the way we believe God wants us to live. Am I trusting God for the strength to stay sober?

Meditation for the Day

The Good in Step Ten

 It does not suggest that we ignore what is right in our life. It says we continue to take a personal inventory and keep a focus on ourselves.

When we take an inventory, we will want to look for many things. We can search out feelings that need our attention. We can look for low self-esteem creeping back in. We can look for old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. We can look for mistakes that need correcting.

But a critical part of our inventory can focus on what we're doing right and on all that is good around us.

Part of our codependency is an obsessive focus on what's wrong and what we might be doing wrong - real or imagined. In recovery we're learning to focus on what's right.

Prayer and Meditation

Thought for the Day

"We cannot get along without prayer and meditation. On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when we start the day with prayer and meditation. We conclude this period of meditation with a prayer that we will be shown through the day what our next step is to be. The basis of all our prayers is: Thy will be done in me and through me today." Am I sincere in my desire to do God's will today?

Meditation for the Day

Big Book

Thought for the Day

For awhile, we are going back to the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and pick out passages here and there, so that they may become fixed in our minds, a little at a time, day by day, as we go along. There is no substitute for reading the Big Book. It is our "bible." We should study it thoroughly and make it a part of ourselves. We should not try to change any of it. Within its covers is the full exposition of the A.A. program. There is no substitute for it. We should study it often. Have I studied the Big Book faithfully?

Meditation for the Day

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.

Step 11

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.

No Boundaries

"Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, of width or height or depth. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way.

Finding Our Own Truth

We must each discover our own truth.

It does not help us if those we love find their truth. They cannot give it to us. It does not help if someone we love knows a particular truth in our life. We must discover our truth for ourselves.

We must each discover and stand in our own light.

We often need to struggle, fail, and be confused and frustrated. That's how we break through our struggle; that's how we learn what is true and right for ourselves.

We can share information with others. Others can tell us what may predictably happen if we pursue a particular course. But it will not mean anything until we integrate the message and it becomes our truth, our discovery, and our knowledge.

Limits On Prayer?

Keep me out of it

Step Eleven says "praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." Does that mean that there is only one kind of prayer I should do to draw closer to my Higher Power?

I doubt it.

It seems to me that this "will and power" prayer is a terrific tool to improve our conscious contact with the God of our understanding -- after all, that seems to be the objective of Step Eleven -- but I don't think it was ever intended to be the only prayer in my life.

Getting started takes some time

Getting started takes some time

Joining a new spiritual community is always confusing and disturbing at the beginning. If the path is familiar, it's not new.

Everyone feels as if they have come in in the middle of the movie.

For me, the whole idea of a spiritual path was a major change. At first I didn't get it and I didn't want it. I kept coming back though, because at the end of each experience I felt better than at the beginning.

Sudden obstacles

In the face of an obstacle, which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.
  —Simone de Beauvoir

Sudden obstacles, barriers in the way of our progress, doors that unexpectedly close, may confuse, frustrate, and even depress us. The knowledge that we seldom understand just what is best for us comes slowly. And we generally fight it, even after we've begun to understand. Fortunately, the better path will keep drawing us to it.

We may wonder why a door seems to have closed. Our paths are confounded only when our steps have gone astray. Doors do not close unless a new direction is called for. We must learn to trust that no obstacle is without its purpose, however baffling it may seem.

Our lives are purposeful

For is it not true that human progress is but a mighty growing pattern woven together by the tenuous single threads united in a common effort?
  —Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek)

We each are spinning our individual threads, lending texture, color, pattern, to the "big design" that is serving us all. Person by person our actions, our thoughts, our values complement those of our sisters, those of the entire human race. We are heading toward the same destination, all of us, and our paths run parallel on occasion, intersect periodically, and veer off in singleness of purpose when inspiration calls us.

Death-Coming to grips with urgency

Coming to grips with urgency

I stumbled at Step Six and fell flat on Step Seven. I had to go back and do stuff that would help me find the "humility" needed in Seven to be "entirely ready" in Six.

One of things that happened during my remedial period was finding this snappy jingle:

I know I'm going to die.

I know not the hour of my death.

What shall I do today?

These three lines are about as extreme a condensation of my spiritual path as words can make.

Challenges

All we are asked to bear we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.
  —Elizabeth Goudge

There is no problem too difficult to handle with all the help available to us. Let's not be overwhelmed. The program tells us to "Let go and let God," to turn it over. And that's where the solution lies.

Our challenges, the stumbling blocks in our way, beckon us toward the spiritual working-out of the problem which moves us closer toward being the women we are meant to be.