~*~A.A. Thoughts For The Day~*~
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Defiance
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"
'As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding
characteristic
of many an alcoholic. .
. When we encountered AA, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed.
At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling
Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy
Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance. In AA we saw the
fruits of this belief:
men and women spared
from alcohol's final catastrophe.' "
1952AAWS, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 31
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Thought to Consider . . .
God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.
*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
B
I G B O O K = Believing In God Beats Our Old
Knowledge
*~*~*~*~*^Just For Today!^*~*~*~*~*
The
Paradoxes
From:
"The Professor and the Paradox"
1. We SURRENDER TO
WIN. On the
face of it, surrendering certainly does not seem like winning.
But it is in A.A.. Only after we have come to the end
of our rope, hit a stone wall in some aspect of our lives beyond which we can
go no further; only when we hit "bottom" in despair and surrender,
can we accomplish sobriety which we could never accomplish before. We must, and
we do, surrender in order to win.
2. We GIVE AWAY TO
KEEP. That
seems absurd and untrue. How can you keep anything if you give it away? But in
order to keep whatever it is we get in A.A., we must go about giving it away to
others, for no fees or rewards of any kind. When we cannot afford to give away
what we have received so freely in A.A., we had better get ready for our next
"drunk." It will happen every time. We've got to continue to give it
away in order to keep it.
3. We SUFFER TO GET
WELL. There
is no way to escape the terrible suffering of remorse and regret and
shame and embarrassment which starts us on the road to getting well from our
affliction. There is no new way to shake out a hangover. It's painful. And for us, necessarily so. I told this to a friend of mine
as he sat weaving to and fro on the side of the bed, in terrible shape, about
to die for some paraldehyde. I said, "Lost John" - that's his
nickname - "Lost John, you know you're going to have to do a certain
amount of shaking sooner or later." "Well," he said, "for
God's sake let's make it later!" We suffer to get well.
4. We DIE TO LIVE.
That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being
"born again" or "losing one's life to find it". When we work
at our Twelve Steps, the old life of guzzling and fuzzy thinking, and all that
goes with it, gradually dies, and we acquire a different and a better way of life. As our
shortcomings are removed, one life of us dies, and another life of us lives. We
in A.A. die to live.
2003, AAWS, Inc., Experience, Strength & Hope, pages
155-156
*~*~*~*~*^Daily Reflections^*~*~*~*~*
DIDN'T WE HURT ANYBODY?
Some
of us, though, tripped over a very different snag. We clung to the claim that
when drinking we never hurt anybody but ourselves.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 79
This
Step seemed so simple. I identified several people whom I had harmed, but they
were no longer available. Still, I was uneasy about the Step and avoided conversations
dealing with it. In time I learned to investigate those Steps and areas of my
life which made me uncomfortable. My search revealed my parents who had been
deeply hurt by my isolation from them; my employer, who worried about my
absences, my memory lapses, my temper; and the friends I had shunned, without
explanation. As I faced the reality of the harm I had done, Step Eight took on
new meaning. I am no longer uncomfortable and I feel clean and light.
Copyright 1990 ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.
*~*~*~*~*^As Bill Sees It^*~*~*~*~*
Is Sobriety Enough?
The
alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others.
Hearts are broken. Sweet
relationships are dead. Affections have been
uprooted. Selfish and
inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil.
We feel a man is
unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. He is like
the farmer who came up
out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To
his wife, he remarked,
"Don't see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain't
it
grand the wind stopped blowin'?"
<<<>>>
We ask ourselves what we
mean when we say that we have "harmed" other people. What kinds of
"harm" do people do one another, anyway? To define the word
"harm" in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts
in
collision, which cause
physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to
those about us.
1. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 82 - 2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, p. 80
*~*~*~*~*^ Big Book Quote ^*~*~*~*~*
"To get over drinking will require a transformation of
thought and
attitude. We all had to
place recovery above everything, for without
recovery we would have
lost both home and business."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th
Edition, To Employers, pg. 143~
*~*~*~*^Twenty Four Hours A Day^*~*~*~*
A.A. Thought for the Day
"Once
an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Commencing to drink after
a period of sobriety, we
are in a short time as bad as ever. If we
have admitted we are
alcoholics, we must have no reservations of any
kind,
nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to
alcohol. What sort of thinking dominates an
alcoholic who repeats
time after time the
desperate experiment of the first drink?
Parallel with sound
reasoning, there inevitably runs some insanely
trivial excuse for
taking the first drink. There is little thought
of what the terrific
consequences may be." Have I given up all
excuses for taking a
drink?
Meditation for the Day
"Where two or three
are banded together, I will be there in the
midst of them."
When God finds two or three people in union, who
only want His will to be
done, who want only to serve Him, He has
a plan that can be
revealed to them. The grace of God can come to
people who are together
in one place with one accord. A union like
this is miracle-working.
God is able to use such people. Only good
can come through such
consecrated people, brought together in
unified groups for a
single purpose and of a single mind.
Prayer
for the Day
I pray that I may be
part of a unified group.
I pray that I may contribute my share to its consecrated purpose.