Daily Recovery Readings
May 29, 2024
Daily Reflection
TRUE TOLERANCE
“The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.“
— TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 139
I first heard the short form of the Third Tradition in the Preamble. When I came to A.A. I could not accept myself, my alcoholism, or a Higher Power. If there had been any physical, mental, moral, or religious requirements for membership, I would be dead today. Bill W. said in his tape on the Traditions that the Third Tradition is a charter for individual freedom. The most impressive thing to me was the feeling of acceptance from members who were practicing the Third Tradition by tolerating and accepting me. I feel acceptance is love and love is God’s will for us.
From the book Daily Reflections
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Big Book Quote
“When you discover a prospect for Alcoholics Anonymous, find out all you can about him. If he does not want to stop drinking, don’t waste time trying to persuade him. You may spoil a later opportunity.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others, pg. 90
24 Hours a Day – The Little Black Book
Thought for the Day
We who have learned to put our drink problem in God’s hands can help others to do so. We can be used as a connection between an alcoholic’s need and God’s supply of strength. We in Alcoholics Anonymous can be uniquely useful, just because we have the misfortune or fortune to be alcoholics ourselves. Do I want to be a uniquely useful person? Will I use my own greatest defeat and failure and sickness as a weapon to help others?
Meditation for the Day
I will try to help others. I will try not to let a day pass without reaching out an arm of love to some one. Each day I will try to do something to lift another human being out of the sea of discouragements into which he or she has fallen. My helping hand is needed to raise the helpless to courage, to strength, to faith, to health. In my own gratitude, I will turn and help other alcoholics with the burden that is pressing too heavily upon them.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may be used by God to lighten many burdens. I pray that many souls may be helped through my efforts.
The Language of Letting Go – Codependency
Powerlessness and Unmanageability
Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.
“I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren’t, don’t want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process,” said one recovering woman.
I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn’t love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.
I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me. I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy.
What I’m saying is this: I’ve spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t. It’s been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. Won’t work!
By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.
In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.
Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and I’ll allow my life to become manageable.
Touchstone – Men’s Meditation
“We cannot approach prayer as we do everything else in our push button, instant society. There are no prayer pills or enlightenment capsules.”
—Janie Gustafson
Prayer is the relationship between each man and his Higher Power. Our approach to this relationship is guided by our understanding of God. How other men and women have prayed and related to God throughout history may guide us today.
Any relationship is a process, not a momentary event with an instantaneous outcome. It builds with repeated contact and dialogue. With give and take, prayer is our honesty encountering God and our openness hearing God expressed on God’s terms. Like any relationship, prayer includes all our feelings – anger, fear, and mistrust, as well as generosity, goodwill, and gratitude. Gradually, we see the events of our lives through the wisdom and detachment our spiritual relationship provides.
I return now to my dialogue with God, asking only for knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry it out.
Elder’s Meditation
“Humility is probably the most difficult virtue to realize.”
–Thomas Yellowtail, CROW
Two definitions of humility are; one, being aware of one’s own defects of character, and two, giving credit where credit is due. This means if you do something and are successful because God gave you certain talents, give credit to God when someone tells you how well you did; this is being humble. If you are successful at something, but had help from friends, spouse, neighbors, give credit to those who helped you; this is being humble. If you have done a task and you alone accomplished it, give credit to yourself; this is being humble. Say the truth and give credit where credit is due.
Daily Horoscope – Cancer
You may currently crave more power to direct the course of your life. As assertive Mars tangles with testy Chiron in your goal-oriented 10th house, however, you could become aware that what you want comes with costs. Are you willing to hurt someone else on a personal level, if that’s what it would take? Sharing private information to get ahead in the moment will have long-term consequences. Although you might not be able to eliminate pain entirely, using common sense can reduce it.
The Wandering Enigma 