Here are what I find to be the most useful quotations from the October pages of One Day at at Time in Al-Anon:
One thing must ultimately be accepted: few of us know what we really want, and none of us knows what is best for us. That knowledge remains, in spite of all our determined resistance, in the hands of God.
This is the reason for limiting our prayers to requests for guidance, an open mind to receive it, and the fortitude to act upon it.
I will quietly defer any decisions until my contact with God has made me certain they are right for me.
And I will pray to be kept from taking any action, even a little one, that is intended to punish another.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
I know he blames me because of his painful need to unload some of his remorse on somebody else.
The prayer states first that there are elements in my life which I have no power to change; my serenity depends upon my accepting them. The more I fight them, the more they will torment me.
True, there is much room for improvement in my life, but it can come only from changing my own attitudes and actions for the better.
Men imagine they communicate their virtue … only by overt actions and words. They do not see that virtue or its opposite emits a breath at every moment.
Without realizing it, we’re looking for trouble and are ready to fasten on little things that we could easily pass over if we really wanted our own peace of mind.
Whensoever a man desires anything inordinately, he is presently disquieted within himself.
It is not our business (nor has it ever been!) to watch over him, worry about his sobriety, see that he doesn’t drink, that he goes to the right number of AA meetings.
If we continue the techniques of management and supervision that did so much to make a mess of life during the drinking days, we’re headed for trouble.
Our responsibility to the alcoholic is to let him manage his own sobriety, and to be gentle, courteous and cooperative.
“…and confuse not the business of others with your own.”
All of us need something to cling to with absolute confidence.
She plays the mother role and treats him like a child who wouldn’t know what to do without being told.
I realize now, through Al-Anon, that sobriety might have come much sooner if I had been able to stand aside and let the alcoholic suffer the consequences of his own choices.
Once upon a time there was an Enormous Thumb belonging to a woman with an Alcoholic Husband and Three Teenaged Children. The four of them lived under her thumb, so of course they couldn’t do much growing up. Often their spirits writhed under the weight; every time they tried to get out from under, they’d do something wrong and the thumb would clamp down on them again.
We may not be able to control events, but we can control our attitudes toward them.
The more I give of myself and the more generously I open my heart and my mind to others, the more growth I will experience as I deal with my problems.
I learn in Al-Anon never to measure my giving against my getting; the very giving provides my reward.
The giver is only a channel for the gifts he has received from God. He cannot hoard or withhold them without blocking the channel.
She is not yet aware that she may be making it worse by complaining, weeping and trying to outwit the alcoholic.
No matter how unbearable a person’s situation appears, I know I am not capable of judging it since I can’t possibly know all the factors involved.
It often happens that a person from whom they least expect spiritual insight will make a statement that reaches directly to the heart of the hearers, to give light and comfort and hope.
I will make no personal judgments nor criticisms, but will humbly accept the good in everything I find in the fellowship.
Meditation is the quiet and sustained application of the mind to the contemplation of a spiritual truth. Its purpose is to deflect our minds from the problems we are experiencing, to raise our thoughts above the grievances and discontent that color our thinking.
I will set aside at least five minutes, morning and night, for spiritual concentration, excluding from my mind all but one spiritual idea. I will begin and end each meditation with a conscious awareness of God.
We may even think we have overcome resentment, self-righteousness and self-pity, but if they are still there inside us, they will in some mysterious way emanate from us and deny what we try to convey by our play-acting.
Do I aggravate family problems with temper tantrums and uncontrolled words and actions? I will remind myself to Think.
We hear someone say: “He is standing in his own light.” How clearly the picture emerges of our shadowing our own happiness by mistaken thinking.
You know, all this sounds as though some of us were childishly expecting life to be entirely free of problems.
In Al-Anon this same thought is repeated in many ways that point out that we can do nothing by force or compulsion.
I will remind myself not to be too determined in my judgment and actions.
A fairly usual habit that is irrational and self-defeating is to make big troubles out of little ones.
… we fail to distinguish between what’s crucial and important, and what things we could afford to ignore and forget.
“Some folks worry and putter / Push and shove, / Hunting little molehills / To make big mountains of.”
I will select a single thought from one of the Twelve Steps, or a phrase from my Al-Anon reading, and try to apply it each day.
I will remind myself that the only vital thing is to apply what I have learned—to make it work for me in all the happenings of my daily life.
We may, at first, become too analytical and try to solve too much at once. For this frame of mind there is an almost infallible prescription: to empty our minds of all thoughts but one: today and how to use it.
If painful recollections of the past come into my mind, or frightening thoughts of the future, I will put them away. They cannot spoil today for me.
If the resolution we’re about to make is highly charged with anger, resentment or bitterness, it would be wise to hold back until the hysteria has subsided and we have taken time to consider all the factors calmly.
In a fellowship, we give of ourselves and the more we give, the more we get.
If I go out of my way to help a fellow member in trouble, and try to help him or her understand a problem and deal with it spiritually, I am actually getting more than I give, for I learn from examining my own ideas and clarifying them.
Many a solution to a difficulty of my own has come to me while I was helping someone else.
Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?
The answer is that the autonomy granted by the Fourth Tradition is limited to what is good for the fellowship as a whole.
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