Daily Recovery Readings
January 26, 2020
Daily Reflection
RIGOROUS HONESTY
Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect — unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.
— TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 24
I am an alcoholic. If I drink I will die. My, what power, energy, and emotion this simple statement generates in me! But it’s really all I need to know for today. Am I willing to stay alive today? Am I willing to stay sober today? Am I willing to ask for help and am I willing to be a help to another suffering alcoholic today? Have I discovered the fatal nature of my situation? What must I do, today, to stay sober?
Big Book Quote
“The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.”
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 83~
24 Hours a Day – The Little Black Book
Thought for the Day
As we became alcoholics, the bad effects of drinking came more and more to outweigh the good effects. But the strange part of it is that, no matter what drinking did to us, loss of our health, our jobs, our money, and our homes, we still stuck to it and depended on it. Our dependence on drinking became an obsession. In A.A., we find a new outlook on life. We learn how to change from alcoholic thinking to sober thinking. And we find out that we can no longer depend on drinking for anything. We depend on a Higher Power instead. Have I entirely given up that dependence on drinking?
Meditation for the Day
I will try to keep my life calm and unruffled. This is my great task, to find peace and acquire serenity. I must not harbor disturbing thoughts. No matter what fears, worries, and resentments I may have, I must try to think of constructive things, until calmness comes. Only when I am calm can I act as a channel for God’s spirit.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may build up instead of tearing down. I pray that I may be constructive and not destructive.
The Language of Letting Go – Codependency
Off The Hook
We can learn not to get hooked into unhealthy, self-defeating behaviors in relationships – behaviors such as caretaking, controlling, discounting ourselves, and believing lies.
We can learn to watch for and identify hooks, and choose not to allow ourselves to be hooked.
Often, people do things consciously or without thinking that pulls us into a series of our self-defeating behaviors we call codependency. More often than not, these hooks can be almost deliberate, and the results predictable.
Someone may stand before us and hint or sigh about a problem, knowing or hoping that hint or sigh will hook us into taking care of him or her. That is manipulation.
When people stand around us and hint and sigh about something, then coyly say, “Oh, never mind, that’s not for you to worry about,” that’s a game. We need to recognize it. We’re about to get sucked in, if we allow that to happen.
We can learn to insist that people ask us directly for what they want and need.
What are the words, the signs, the looks, the hints, and the cues that hook us into a predictable and often self-defeating behavior?
What makes you feel sympathy? Guilt? Responsible for another?
Our strong point is that we care so much. Our weak point is that we often underestimate the people with whom we’re dealing. They know what they’re doing. It is time we give up our naive assumption that people don’t follow agendas of their own in their best interest, and not necessarily in ours.
We also want to check ourselves out. Do we give out hooks, looks, hints, hoping to hook another? We need to insist that we behave in a direct and honest manner with others, instead of expecting them to rescue us.
If someone wants something from us, insist that the person ask us directly for it. Require the same from us. If someone baits the hook, we don’t have to bite it.
Today, I will be aware of the hooks that snag me into the caretaking acts that leave me feeling victimized. I will ignore the hints, looks, and words that hook me, and wait for the directness and honesty others, and I deserve.
Touchstone – Men’s Meditation
Within every man there is the reflection of a woman, and within every woman there is the reflection of a man. Within every man and woman there is also the reflection of an old man and an old woman, a little boy and a little girl.
— Hyemeyohsts Storm
This Cheyenne teaching reminds us of our connections – inside ourselves and with other people. Reading this passage, we are seeing it partly with the eyes of that small child who first learned to read. And perhaps, looking in the mirror today, we can see the traces of the old men we are becoming. We have been close to our mothers or sisters or lovers and have found parts of ourselves in them. By gently welcoming the children we once were, the old men we will be, the part of us that has a woman’s outlook, we become wiser, stronger, and more spiritual.
We don’t need to be frightened or disrespectful of the parts of ourselves that don’t feel 100 percent virile. We can have virility and many other sides too. Such awareness creates peace with ourselves.
I will notice the reflection of small children in old faces, old people in children’s faces, and men and women in each other.
Elder’s Meditation
“All life is a circle.”
–Rolling Thunder, CHEROKEE
The atom is a circle, orbits are circles, the earth, moon, and sun are circles. The seasons are circles. The cycle of life is a circle: baby, youth, adult, elder. The sun gives life to the earth who feeds life to the trees whose seeds fall to the earth to grow new trees. We need to practice seeing the cycles that the Great Spirit gave us because this will help us more in our understanding of how things operate. We need to respect these cycles and live in harmony with them.
Great Spirit, let me grow in knowledge of the circle.
Daily Horoscope – Cancer
Give your mind and spirit license to roam with no rules or regulations today. You may go wherever you wish without the restriction of your physical being. You can travel via any form of media of your choice and be at a marvelous destination in a matter of minutes. Or you could lose yourself in mindful meditation, artistic expression, or quiet reflection. Freeing yourself to explore inner realms sets a precedent for your body to be as adventurous, too, when the timing is right. Lighten your emotional load. James Russell Lowell wrote, “A wise man travels to discover himself.”
The Wandering Enigma 