Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
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, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 October 2020
Here is a mistake that most people make in their relationships with others. They try to build a steady nesting place in the ever-moving stream of life. Think of someone whose love you desire. Do you want to be important to this person, to be especial and make a difference to his/her life? Do you want this person to care for you and be concerned about you in a special way? If you do, open your eyes and see that you are foolishly inviting others to reserve you for themselves, to restrict your freedom for their benefit, to control your behavior, your growth and development so that it will suit their interest. It is as if the other person said to you, “If you want to be especial to me then you must meet my conditions. Because the moment you cease to live up to my expectations, you will cease to be especial.” You wanted to be especial to someone, didn’t you? So you must pay a price in lost freedom. You must dance to the other person’s tune just as you demand that other persons dance to yours if they want to be especial to you. Pause now to ask yourself if it is worth paying so much for so little.
Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: Nowhere to Go
02 October 2020
Imagine you say to this person whose special love you want, “Leave me free to be myself, to think my thoughts, to indulge my taste, to follow my inclination, to behave in ways that I decide are to my liking.” The moment you say those words you will understand that you are asking for the impossible. To ask to be especial to someone means essentially to be bound to the task of making yourself pleasing to this person. And therefore to lose your freedom. Take all the time you need to realize this. Maybe now you are ready to say, “I’d rather have my freedom than your love.” If you could either have company in prison or walk the earth in freedom all alone, which would you choose? Now say to this person, “I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, follow your inclinations, behave in any way that you decide is to your liking.”
Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: Nowhere to Go
03 October 2020
Now say to this person, “I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, follow your inclinations, behave in any way that you decide is to your liking.” The moment you say that you will observe one of two things: Either your heart will resist those words and you will be exposed for the clinger and exploiter that you are; so now is the time to examine your false belief that without this person you cannot live or cannot be happy. Or your heart will pronounce the words sincerely and in that very instant all control, manipulation, exploitation, possessiveness, jealousy will drop. “I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.”
Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: Nowhere to Go
04 October 2020
“I leave you free to be yourself: to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways that you decide are to your liking.” And you will notice something else: The person automatically ceases to be especial and important to you. And he/she becomes important the way a sunset or a symphony is lovely in itself, the way a tree is especial in itself and not for the fruit or the shade that it can offer you. Your beloved will then belong not to you but to everyone or to no one like the sunrise and the tree. Test it by saying those words again: “I leave you free to be yourself …” In saying those words you have set yourself free. You are now ready to love. For when you cling, what you offer the other is not love but a chain by which both you and your beloved are bound. Love can only exist in freedom. The true lover seeks the good of his beloved which requires especially the liberation of the beloved from the lover.
Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: Nowhere to Go
05 October 2020
‘I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.’
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
06 October 2020
There is hope when you’re willing to get sober someone else’s way.
Tom W
07 October 2020
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The Fellowship of the Ring , J. R. R. Tolkein
08 October 2020
Within us all there is a sacred place where the one who is greater exists; it can only be accessed when we make our great journey within self. For if you seek the Great Spirit within and start to have a relationship with it, all will be revealed to you in this outer world. You cannot see and feel the sacred all around you if you do not first seek and find the sacred within you. Enlightenment can come only when you find and feel that sacred place within you, and that can only be the connection to the Great Spirit in our surroundings. Oneness is not the connection to everything you see with your eyes, but it is the connection to the Great Spirit and the universe that dwells within us all. The most important journey any of us can make is the inner journey of self to find the Great Mystery that will reveal that we are all related, and that everything in the hoop, and the hoop itself is sacred. This picture is an example of finding that sacred place within.
Joseph White Eagle
09 October 2020
Whenever you have an investment in helping somebody, that’s different from helping someone. Whenever you have an investment, a need, to help somebody, you’re thumbing your nose in [God’s] face and saying, ‘You don’t help this person. You don’t know how to help this person; I do.’ And what you want to do is have the person whom you’re helping confirm that. God wouldn’t help you ... and all these other people in your life wouldn’t help you. I will help you. That makes me better than everyone else ... including God. That’s the bottom line. We want to prove God is wrong.
Time: Friend or Foe? Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
10 October 2020
‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’ Well, if you keep that line uppermost in your mind as you go through your day, you’re a perfect Course in Miracles teacher and student. Be kind. Everyone is the same. Everyone is dealing with the same awful ego, trying to cope with this enormity of guilt, an immensity of fear. And all the pain that is intrinsic to someone who thinks he or she is separate from love. Everyone is the same, which means you want to learn the lesson of letting your heart go out to everyone without exception: the good people and the bad people.
The Mindless, Madness of Miscreation , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
11 October 2020
When you finally let go of your grievances and let go of your stubborn insistence that you’re right, things become very easy. What makes it difficult is the resistance. When you let go of the resistance, what’s easy is that the natural state that has already been is now allowed to come back into awareness. Then everything is easy. A relationship which had been a real problem all of a sudden becomes very easy and free. This doesn’t mean necessarily that the other person shares in the peace that you now feel, but for you, everything has changed. And all that has really changed is you have let go of your resistance, which means you’re now recognising you don’t have to do this on your own.
The Metaphysics of Time, Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
12 October 2020
Know that man is moulded by his actions; his heart and thoughts are constantly drawn after the actions which he is involved in, whether for good or for bad. This is true even with regard to a thoroughly wicked person who thinks sinful thoughts all day. If such a person’s spirit will be aroused and he will turn his energy and efforts towards the diligent study of Torah and performance of mitzvot, even not for the sake of Heaven, his heart will quickly become inclined towards good and eventually he will act for the sake of Heaven. Through his deeds, his evil inclination will die, for one’s heart is drawn after one’s actions.
Passover: its Laws, Observances, and Significance
13 October 2020
The line I quoted yesterday from the manual says, remember you never get angry at a fact. You only get angry at an interpretation of the fact (M-17.4:1-2), and perception is interpretation. The fact is you just hit me in the mouth. That’s a perceptual fact of the perceptual universe. But how I take it comes from a decision I make. Do I look at your hitting me through the eyes of the ego, which means I take it personally? Or do I see it through the eyes of the Holy Spirit that says this has nothing to do with me?
Now, maybe my body is hurt and my jaw is bleeding but what does that have to do with me? If someone insults you and says something unkind, you take it personally or you don’t take it personally. If you take it personally then that’s something you have to look at. That’s the ego. If you don’t take it personally it’s nothing. There’s no problem then.
Looking with Jesus: “The Practice of Forgiveness” , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
14 October 2020
Thank God I’m not suffering from what’s not happening any more!
Kurt Z
15 October 2020
Lakota Instructions for Living
Friend do it this way – that is,
whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can
with both your heart and mind.
And if you do it that way,
the Power Of The Universe
will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in Unity.
When one sits in the Hoop Of The People,
one must be responsible because
All of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honor of one is the honor of all.
And whatever we do affects everything in the universe.
If you do it that way – that is,
if you truly join your heart and mind
as One – whatever you ask for,
that’s the Way It’s Going To Be.
Passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman
16 October 2020
A good rule of thumb to get in touch with that block to the awareness of love’s presence, is believing that someone or something else is responsible for my not being peaceful. That’s the block - very, very simple. All you have to do is just watch how quickly you will throw the peace of God away from you. You’ll give it to a driver on the freeway. You’ll give it to a waitress or a waiter in a restaurant. You’ll give it to somebody at work or someone in your family or to a public figure.
Watch how quickly you will let the peace of God in you go. And you will attribute its going to what someone else has done or someone else has said. That’s all you have to do. That’s the only requirement to practice this course. That’s what it means to ask the Holy Spirit for help. That’s what it means to forgive. It simply means, don’t escape the responsibility for why you are not at peace.
The Gift of Idols . Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
17 October 2020
Telling the truth to yourself is Integrity. Telling the truth to others is Honesty. Telling the truth with no fear or intimidation is Bravery. Being free from falsehood is Purity! You cannot enjoy true love in a relationship if you don’t add honest flavours to it.
Massai Chais
18 October 2020
(M-16.11:9-10) All through his training, every day and every hour, and even every minute and second, must God’s teachers learn to recognize the forms of magic and perceive their meaninglessness.
That is our challenge. That is what he is asking us to do. That is the assignment our teacher gives us. Every day, every hour, every minute, every second we should go through our day and our life trying to tease out and discern the differences between magic and miracle and see how quickly we fall back into magic believing something external will make me happy. And even as we choose the external things to make us happy or more comfortable, etc., at least we can be aware of what we are doing. And be aware that we are part of a much larger thought system, a thought system that made up this entire universe, but there is no hierarchy of illusions. The thought that made up the universe is the same thought that is giving me a headache.
Living “A Course in Miracles” , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
19 October 2020
What the Course helps you understand is that the reason I’ve given you the power to take the peace of God away from me, is because I want to be seen as the innocent victim. So then what’s helpful to help you really get deeper into what goes on with your ego is to recognize the tremendous investment we all have in what the Course refers to as putting on the “face of innocence.” (T-31.V.2.6) So here I am driving home after this wonderful workshop, and I’m feeling so wonderful, so filled with the love of God, and then somebody cuts me off on the freeway. And I’m furious. I really think the reason I’m furious and not at peace is because of the way this person drove.
All I have to know is that that’s not true, because that opens up the door. Then what will quickly follow from that is I will realize that the reason I’m upset is because something at this workshop upset me. And rather than look at that, I would much rather say the problem is not going on inside of me; the problem is the way this person is driving. Now that’s a very simple, straight-forward example that most people can identify with, especially in California. But it holds for all circumstances.
The Gift of Idols . Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
20 October 2020
Inspirational quotes and motivational sayings have an amazing ability to change the way we feel about life. This is why I find them so interesting and crucial on our paths to success.
So what’s their secret?
You see, the way you think and feel about yourself, including your beliefs and expectations about what is possible for you, determines everything that happens to you.
When you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life, sometimes instantly. Just as positive words can make someone smile or a well -timed humorous quote can make someone laugh, our thoughts react to the world in real time.
You have complete control over only one thing in the universe, your thinking, and that’s where motivational quotes come in!
Massai Cheis
21 October 2020
‘Prayer is the best answer to all of the trials that face us, because without prayer, even if we succeed in accomplishing some great goal in the eyes of men, we have failed in our sacred responsibilities, and thus we have failed in what is truly important.’
Thomas Yellowtail, Crow
What are our sacred responsibilities? One is to be of maximum service to the Creator, and two is to serve the people. In a way, it’s like the Great Spirit is the employer and we are the employees. We live each day, do what we do, accomplish our goals, face our difficulties, overcome them all to the Glory of the Creator. We do these things to make Him proud! Even if we work for a company, agency or tribe, they are not really our employer; the Creator is our employer. Working for the Creator is better than working for a human being, because each night we can talk to the Creator and ask Him, ‘Well, how did I do today?’ He answers back each night, ‘I’m proud of you, my child; sleep well, and in the morning I’ll give you a new set of growing experiences.’
Great Spirit, today, let me work for you. You will be my new boss.
22 October 2020
Stay out of business that’s not yours, which is everything.
The Neutral World , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
23 October 2020
The Talmud (Taanit 25a) relates that Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, who was exceedingly poor, once fell ill and required bleeding, a common medical treatment in ancient times. Following the procedure he wished to strengthen himself by taking nourishment, but he was so poor that all he had was a garlic peel. He ate the garlic peel and fell into a faint, during which he had a vision of the Divine Presence (Shechinah) . He inquired of the Shechinah how long he was to be subjected to such grinding poverty, and was answered: “Elazar, my son, do you wish that I destroy the universe and reconstruct it, so that you can perhaps be created in a time favorable to prosperity?”
24 October 2020
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
The old eagle looked up in awe. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,’ said his neighbour. ‘He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth we’re chickens.’ So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
Anthony de Mello
25 October 2020
The key thing with the ego and any aspect of the ego such as pain: is that it has no power. The only power the ego has is the power our mind gives it. And that’s the ego’s fear of the mind, which is our fear of the mind. The ego thought system itself, and any aspect of it, including the whole universe, has no power. It’s nothing. Its power comes in our belief in it. So, to just let it be, which means you’re not engaging it, then you’re taking away from it the source of its existence. Then it just kind of evanesces. The Course says it disappears back into the nothingness from which it came (W-pI.107.1:6).
Make No Illusion Friend: Our Two Friends , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
26 October 2020
There’s a famous story about the lion who came upon a flock of sheep and to his amazement found a lion among the sheep. It was a lion who had been brought up by the sheep ever since he was a cub. It would bleat like a sheep and run around like a sheep. The lion went straight for him, and when the sheep lion stood in front of the real one, he trembled in every limb. And the lion said to him, ‘What are you doing among the sheep?’ And the sheep-lion said, ‘I am a sheep.’ And the lion said, ‘Oh no you’re not. You’re coming with me.’ So he took the sheep-lion to a pool and said, ‘Look!’ And when the sheep-lion looked at his reflection in the water, he let out a mighty roar, and in that moment he was transformed. He was never the same again.
Anthony de Mello
27 October 2020
A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. ‘Spare some change?’ mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. ‘I have nothing to give you,’ said the stranger. Then he asked: ‘What’s that you are sitting on?’ ‘Nothing,’ replied the beggar. ‘Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.’ ‘Ever looked inside?’ asked the stranger. ‘No,’ said the beggar. ‘What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.’ ‘Have a look inside,’ insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold.
I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.
Eckhart Tolle
28 October 2020
We actually think we’re hearing voices. We think we’re seeing things. We think we’re smelling things. We think we’re touching things. We think we’re tasting things. Bodies can’t touch. They can’t feel. They can’t smell. They can’t see. They can’t hear. They can’t think. They don’t get sick. They don’t get well. They’re not born. They don’t die. They don’t study A Course in Miracles. They don’t do anything. The body is a lifeless piece of wood. It’s nothing. It’s all occurring in the mind.
The Metaphysics of Time, Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
29 October 2020
There have been so many powerful realizations of the presence of God and the within-ness of prayer in the writings of poets, saints, and mystics, down through the ages, that one wonders how we could have failed to grasp it—holding tenaciously to the anthropomorphic concept of God sitting “up there” on a billowy cloud, with a long white beard and a big black book. Significant are the lines of Wordsworth:
…a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
The Universe is Calling , Eric Butterworth
30 October 2020
In his Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin says that we come to a place where there is no one to bow down to and worship, not even within ourselves. And as we get a greater perception of our relation to the universe, there is no one to pray to…only a universal flow to get into, a spiritual energy to pray from. And the role of prayer is the projection by our words and feelings of this divine flow, this powerful spiritual energy, that goes forth to accomplish that for which it is sent.
The Universe is Calling , Eric Butterworth
31 October 2020
Whatever knowledge and expertise you have that helps you solve problems ,whether you do it as a therapist or you do it as a computer person, it’s just an excuse for you to reinforce what you are learning and to teach what you are learning. And that’s the help. You teach it just by being peaceful and defenseless. But the minute you find yourself getting frustrated or angry or guilty, then you know you’ve made the world real again. Remember that’s the big mistake. We make the error real.
Question: And when we do that we just smile at ourselves and…
When you do that you just smile at yourself and say, “Oops, I did it again.” It’s the “Oops” principle. “Oops. I did it again.”
The Unhealed Healer , Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
01 November 2020
... The evil within him kills out his Divine identity, and he is left in an empty place, bereft of guidance and inspiration. What should he do? The Torah writes that he should lift his eyes up to G‑d and say: “My hands did not shed this blood! This web of sins in which I am entrapped is not my fault. After all, it is You, G‑d, who brought my soul down from its lofty abode in heaven and into the material world. It is truly Your fault! Therefore, I can ask You to atone for my sin.”
Good old Jewish chutzpah !
This may seem like the ultimate cop-out of responsibility. It’s all G‑d’s fault! Let Him take the blame. But listen closely to the implication of these words. The sinner is saying, “This is not who I really am. I am a wholesome and spiritual being. This nasty course that I’m on—it’s not the real me. The real me, my soul, is brazenly shouting out to G‑d and saying, ‘You must allow me to reconnect with You!’”
Rochel Holzkenner
02 November 2020
15 For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. 16 If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. 17 Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
Romans, Chapter 7
03 November 2020
God is not in you in the same sense that a raisin is in a bun. That is not unity. God is in you as the ocean is in a wave. The wave is nothing more nor less than the ocean expressing as a wave.
The Universe is Calling , Eric Butterworth
04 November 2020
An example of this phenomenon of becoming what we observe occurs while watching a movie in a theater. Even though intellectually we understand that there is really nothing on the screen except the projection of a film from a projector that is behind us, our experience nonetheless is that we are actually observing something on the screen that is real, for we feel the same emotions as if something were actually happening to us. We experience horror, fear, guilt, happiness, joy, or sadness, and can begin weeping or laughing as if something were really occurring. Thus, for all intents and purposes from the psychological point of view, something is happening on the screen.
Wapnick, Kenneth. A Vast Illusion: Time According to ‘A Course in Miracles’
05 November 2020
Suppose we are out on a lake and it’s a bit foggy—not too foggy, but a bit foggy—and we’re rowing along in our little boat having a good time. And then, all of a sudden, coming out of the fog, there’s this other rowboat and it’s heading right at us. And…crash! Well, for a second we’re really angry—what is that fool doing? I just painted my boat! And here he comes—crash!—right into it. And then suddenly we notice that the rowboat is empty. What happens to our anger? Well, the anger collapses…I’ll just have to paint my boat again, that’s all. But if that rowboat that hit ours had another person in it, how would we react? You know what would happen! Now our encounters with life, with other people, with events, are like being bumped by an empty rowboat. But we don’t experience life that way. We experience it as though there are people in that other rowboat and we’re really getting clobbered by them. What am I talking about when I say that all of life is an encounter, a collision with an empty rowboat? What’s that all about?
Beck, Charlotte J.. Everyday Zen (Plus) (pp. 54-55)
06 November 2020
Another example of psychological identification is our responding to what we read in the newspaper or watch on the television news. If we respond in terms of happiness, joy, anger, or fear, it could only be because psychologically we are identifying with the event. Otherwise, the situation or person would have no effect on us. Hence, we are only seeing ourselves, or better, a projection of ourselves, in that particular situation: we are watching, not being.
Wapnick, Kenneth. A Vast Illusion: Time According to ‘A Course in Miracles’
07 November 2020
Do not follow the majority, follow the truth.
Master Ali Ibn Abi Talib
08 November 2020
To whom [do we] pray?
Can He be described? Does He have a name?
No, there is no description with which to imagine Him, no name with which to grasp Him. Even the pronoun “Him” discloses too much to be true—as though He were something that is here or not here, hidden or revealed. As though He were only light.
But He is not light. He is the source of light. At the source of all light, there is no hiddenness or revelation, no being or non-being.
There is only “You.” Here, now, known to all beings in Your unknowableness.
As Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch wrote:
You: that all know of You.
You: that all put their trust only in You.
You: that all plead only to You.
You: that no creation nor emanation knows who and what You are.
And so we pray to You alone, for You alone, the Unknowable, are known to all.
Chabad
09 November 2020
‘Al-Anon does not promise to save marriages, but it does offer sanity. If you do want the marriage, they told me, then accept the fact that you will not get healthy behaviour from a sick person or logical statements from an illogical person. This includes me too.’
10 November 2020
‘I was also reminded that we do not accept the unacceptable, and what is unacceptable varies from person to person. What I could not live with for five minutes, others could perhaps tolerate with good grace and vice versa.’
‘They said to look at the possibility that I might be accepting sick behaviour. Do I seek out suffering and abuse?’
11 November 2020
Handling objectionable people. 1.
‘Build an invisible shield between you and him, a shield of love. Use it when the abuse begins, and the words will hit it and roll off without touching you. Visualise it keenly; make it vividly real in your mind.’
... In All Our Affairs (Making Crises Work For You): Page 78-79
12 November 2020
Handling objectionable people. 2.
‘Remember that he is only one or two years old in AA, that he is much like a real baby of that age who slaps out at people who are holding him. We don’t slap back. We just hold the baby off far enough that he can’t hit us.’
... In All Our Affairs (Making Crises Work For You): Page 78-79
13 November 2020
Handling objectionable people. 3.
‘When he is holding forth with these torrents of vicious words, they told me picture him saying these things out the window of a mental hospital. Would they hurt then? No, I thought, because I would know he was sick and that they weren’t aimed at me personally. Members suggested that I mentally draw a window around him whenever this started and detach myself as if he were really hospitalised. It worked amazingly!’
... In All Our Affairs (Making Crises Work For You): Page 78-79
14 November 2020
Full version of the Serenity Prayer
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as [the Master] did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Reinhold Niebuhr
15 November 2020
Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions—in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing.
Epictetus
16 November 2020
At the head of all understanding is realising what is and what cannot be, and the consoling of what is not in our power to change.
Solomon Ibn Gabirol
17 November 2020
Upon awakening this morning, I asked our Father for inspiration in choosing my mental ‘Pay Forward’ gift; ‘The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is.’ (Alfred Tonnellé). If my personal ‘reality’ mind tells me one thing, but I am acting out in a different way, which is right? Understanding that my actions reflect what I really believe, now what? If I don’t like what I am experiencing, I can choose to return to our Father within and seek His Will and His Love. Alcoholics Anonymous gives us the tools we need to open our habits of thoughts and feelings storehouse within, own it, surrender it and let our Father have His Way. If we are blaming people, places, or things outside of ourselves for our experience or explaining how we feel by referring to these things, we are blocking off the Loving, Healing Power of our Father within. Alcoholics Anonymous will awaken us and teach us Who the Real Artist Is. We will intuitively know Who is Speaking and that Good News is a gift well worth paying forward. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
18 November 2020
I am reminded that our Father has a need for our physical body and world. Our physical world is our workplace, our school, and our playground. Our physical body is the vehicle in which our Father expresses His Will, His Love. ‘Made in Heaven’ is stamped on our heart with intuitive information about our Maker. These earthy vehicles come in every conceivable type, shape, and size, with a wide range of power trains, and a generous colour selection, and yet we are all unique. Although this physical body is self-perpetuating, self-renewing organism, it is still subject to our Maker’s Recall. Using the correct fuel and keeping our vehicles serviced and clean is our responsibility. We suggest that you use only authorised parts and service (Spiritual Principles) the best as you can. For your parts and service needs, call the AA Hotline for directions to an authorised Alcoholics Anonymous Spiritual Service Centre. When the intended purpose for your Divine Designed physical vehicle is done, it will be taken to the Heavenly Recycling Centre. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
19 November 2020
My worst enemy is fear. A very wise Being suggested that we are to love our enemy. What once seemed impossible for me is no longer, now I have received the promise of intuitively knowing how to follow His suggestion. When I embrace my fear, instead of stuffing it or letting it run wild, my fear changes its nature. Embracing is an expression of love. As I embrace my fear I realise it is an illusion or it is a real problem calling for a solution or acceptance. That simple embrace drains most of the negative emotion out of the event. Then I can return to our Father for the solution and for the healing. Positive and negative emotions are part of our Divine Guidance System, showing us what works and what does not. Let us turn within to our Father asking Him for whatever it takes to do His Will, His Love, and then let’s do it. As we receive our Father’s compassionate love and tender mercy let us ‘Pay Forward’ the gift to others, silently or openly.
Al Kohallek
20 November 2020
‘We give but little when we give of our possessions; it is when we give of ourselves that we truly give.’ When I reached Alcoholics Anonymous I was a taker and demander; I knew nothing about giving. When I awakened, I realised those AA members who had what I wanted most were self-givers. If I was to have a life and be joyous, happy, and free, I had to learn to give of myself, first as an AA ‘duty’; then I come to love it. As my sharing of the Programme was changing, so was my love. I am so deeply grateful to our Father for giving us Alcoholics Anonymous, for those who live it, freely sharing it. I am so grateful that I was given the ‘secret handshake’: giving of myself. Our Programme takes us from a useless, harmful, self-centred, meaningless, worthless path to a loving way of life that makes a difference daily, as we give of ourselves. All we need to do to experience our Father’s Love and His Will is give some of what He gave us. The size of our gift matters not; we only need to give of ourselves and that is more than enough. Let us ‘Pay Forward’ now by giving of ourselves to whomever we are with. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
21 November 2020
Having a hard time?
Go back through the ABCs (p. 60)
Is it because you do not believe God will, because you do not believe God can, because you still believe a human power can, or because you still believe that that human power is you and that you are not genuinely powerless: that you can still manage your own life?
Until you have come to believe in the hopeless and futility of life as you have been living it, nothing will shift.
Perhaps you’re still getting an emotional high off being miserable.
Are you still trying to manage your own misery?
Some questions:
Regarding the pain: “Have you had enough yet, or are you still thirsty for more?”
Regarding the solution you’ve applied so far: “So, how’s that been working out for ya’?”
When you can’t put any drug, any rush of the drama, between you and you, you might surrender.
PS You may also still be attached to your personal reality filter—your old ideas you were raised to believe—and you cannot see anything for what it really is because of the filter.
Anonymous, from correspondence
22 November 2020
There are three sides to the AA triangle: mind, body, spirit.
Where are you in each of these different areas?
Would your actions show that you are recovered?
If someone listened with their eyes, would they see that you are recovered?
What matters is not so much what you’re doing in the meeting: it’s what you’re doing in the other 23 hours of the day: that’s what matters.
Anonymous, from correspondence
23 November 2020
We were created not to be alone.
We were created to be unified.
Alcoholism is the disease of isolation.
We always felt lonely, different, weird, unique.
We didn’t want to trust anyone with the truth.
We have to forgive instead of being locked inside with self-righteous smugness, chasing our tail, and being right.
We are supposed to pray for those who offend us, and ask Him who He would have us be.
What He would have us do flows automatically from that.
We have to get out there and practise these principles in all our affairs.
Our job is to fit ourselves to being of maximum service.
Most of the time that involves keeping our mouths shut.
God gets the credit.
That’s the cost to the ego.
Anonymous, from correspondence
24 November 2020
Fellowship: That’s what keeps AA from being academic.
We’re not out to get a thesis in alconomics.
Identification, inspiration, transformation.
If you strike a middle C in a piano store, all of the other middle Cs will vibrate.
We speak each other’s language.
Anonymous, from correspondence
25 November 2020
We put our trust in God not others. We get hurt only by our faulty decisions of who to put our trust in. So no one ever lets us down ... instead we let ourselves down by deciding wrongly who to put that much trust in. Everyone is 100% trustworthy to a point. Our job is to learn what that finite point is with each person. The only 100% infinite trust we place is in God. We surrender to spiritual principles and to the Almighty rather than the half-mighty self. God is everything or else God is nothing.
Anonymous, from correspondence
26 November 2020
God is a Divine Economist. Anything sincerely done for good never goes without payment. But that payment may not be direct or obvious immediately. If you’re looking for payback, you’ll never see it. This is selfishness. Trust the Overriding Principle, even when the world is shovelling back in your direction in response to your love and giving: there is indeed a reward.
Do not stop loving and giving. The gift of love is loving; the gift of giving is giving.
Do it for God, to God, for His kids. God will always pay you back in spades.
Anonymous, from correspondence
27 November 2020
There is another dimension to the evolutionary process. It is that the higher levels of progress, development, and evolution that entities move towards and eventually attain are already involved in their being. Just as a tree emerges of a seed in which all of its existence is mostly predetermined, so too there is an involved capacity to bring about the next stage or phase of its being. When the lowest life forms emerged from unanimated matter, that matter already had within it an involved capacity to develop into an animated life form. Likewise, if I wish to become more intuitively spiritual—a higher formation of mentality—that capacity is already there involved as potential in my current mental framework. It is there in the seed of my being as potential.
Thus, not only is there one universal process of creation that moves from stages of vision to organization to manifestation, i.e. through a movement of higher consciousness, but the stages we can evolve to are already there embedded in our being as potentiality. This is the case because in the creation of the cosmos from a Divine Source, those very planes of being were there before the universe even existed, and in creation were then embedded in the forms that emerged, including us. I.e., a plane of Mind existed before the universe came to be and higher life forms developed a mind with the capacity to think.
Unattributed
28 November 2020
Can’t seem to meet the right person? Might be because you have never introduced the people you’re meeting to the right person! Try being the right person, instead. If you want someone who is great, you have to be great yourself.
In all relationships, ask how you can serve God, not what you can get out of the other person.
Relationships are not 50/50. Sometimes they’re 99/1, with you giving the 99. If you stick at 50, they’re often be a gap. Therefore, always give everything. Stick with it.
Whoever is brought into your life, there is a part of them that only you can heal, and vice versa.
People want relationships without intimacy or vulnerability. That’s never going to work!
Anonymous, from correspondence
29 November 2020
God’s answers to prayers:
Yes.
No.
Not yet.
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
The mystics would say that everything is an exact answer to a specific prayer.
Anonymous, from correspondence
30 November 2020
Sympathy vs empathy
You see someone throwing up over the side of a ship. Sympathy is standing next to them and vomiting with them. Empathy is understanding how it feels and giving them a seasickness pill.
Share what we have.
Anonymous, from correspondence
01 December 2020
I don’t have the time and energy to waste on anything.
I don’t want to fight the fights I can’t win.
I don’t want to get involved in things I can’t solve.
I can’t change the past.
Tom W
02 December 2020
I can’t change you.
I can’t change your points of view.
And I can’t change your prejudices.
And I can’t change your instincts.
Save your breath.
Tom W
03 December 2020
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
04 December 2020
By referring to us as His “children,” G‑d let it be known that He would never sever His relationship with us, and that we can never sever our relationship with Him – just as parents can never sever themselves from their children, and children can never sever themselves from their parents. The relationship between parents and their children is so essential, so strong, that no matter how seriously it may be tested, in the final analysis it will always overcome any behavior that might seem to threaten it.
It is therefore pointless to try to hide or flee from this relationship, and senseless to think that it can ever be forfeited. G‑d’s love for us is infinitely stronger than anything we may have done to weaken it.
Daily Wisdom (Chabad)
05 December 2020
‘I shall never own anything of value,’ she said. ‘Things of value are death to peace of mind.’
Unexplained Laughter , Alice Thomas Ellis
06 December 2020
I greet The Indwelling Solution Within Us.
Today’s “Pay Forward” gift is Love Is The Solution. THE GOLDEN GATE (From Power Through Constructive Thinking by Emmet Fox). God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him. Love is by far the most important thing of all. It is the Golden Gate of Paradise. Pray for the understanding of love, and meditate upon it daily. It casts out all fear. It is the fulfilling of the law. It covers a multitude of sins. Love is absolutely invincible. There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will throw down; no sin that enough love will not redeem. It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake; a sufficient realisation of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world. Life is a reflex of mental states. Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you, and it will hit back at you and hurt you. If you bless any situation, it has no power to hurt you—if you sincerely bless it. Thy Love Thy Will Be done.
Al Kohallek
07 December 2020
My task tonight is more difficult than it would first appear, because — as those of you who are members of A.A. already know — there is no official interpretation which I can blithely pass along to you. There is no “party line,” no official body of dogma or doctrine to which the members subscribe, no creed that we recite. Even if the surviving co-founder of A.A. himself were standing before you tonight, he could tell you only how it all appears to him. I personally consider this absence of orthodoxy one of A.A.’s strongest and most therapeutic principles.
A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous
08 December 2020
Be a Lamp
“The human soul is a divine lamp.” (Proverbs 20:27)
The act of lighting the Chanukah menorah contains the entire purpose of every human being.
Because every human soul entered this world for one reason alone: To be a lamp. To bring light wherever there is darkness.
When you give people faith in themselves, in their future, in the sanctity of their own souls, you have not only brought them light—you have made them into human lamps.
You have given them their purpose.
Tzvi Freeman
09 December 2020
... any alcoholic on any given day at any given time can find someone in A.A. who will in all good faith agree with what he has already decided to do. Conversely, on any given day at any given time, the same alcoholic can find someone in A. A. who in all good faith will disagree with what he has already decided to do. Thus, sooner or later, the recovering alcoholic in A.A. is literally forced to think for himself. Sooner or later, he finds himself akin to the turtle, that lowly creature who makes progress only when his neck is stuck out. The formless flexibility of A.A.’s principles as interpreted by their different adherents finally pushes our alcoholic into a stance where he must use only himself as a frame of reference for his actions, and this in turn means he must be willing to accept the consequences of those actions. In my book, that is the definition of emotional maturity.
A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous
10 December 2020
This search for perfection, for the one Perfect Answer, is the hallmark of the neurotic. Ever since Eden, man has cried out: “Give me a ritual; give me some word; give me a prayer; give me a chant; give me a cross, a relic or a string of beads; give me a mantra; give me a conundrum; give me something; give me anything, just so long as it’s a magical, mechanical formula I can touch or hold or say or do — and all will be well.” To apply this same unrealistic yardstick to A.A. is as unfair to the Fellowship as it would be, or has been, to any other human institution. True freedom lies in the realization and calm acceptance of the fact that there may very well be no perfect answer. It remains then for each man to discover and to share whatever works for him.
A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous
11 December 2020
A.A. will probably always number among its ranks those who, in their fear and their anger, would make of A.A. a kind of spiritual ghetto, a sort of co-ed monastery; where alcoholics hide and lick their wounds, coining childish and defensive words like “normsie” and “alky,” and pointing accusing fingers at the tigers “out there.” There must come a day, it seems to me, when every alcoholic, in or out of A.A., finally sits down in the presence of his enemies. When he does, he will be amazed to discover that he is attending a meeting of one — himself. The day the alcoholic in A.A. realizes that his enemy is within, that the tigers are largely creatures of his own design and lurk in his own unconscious, that is the day when for him A.A. becomes what I believe its founders meant it to be: a flight into reality.
A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous
12 December 2020
You want to pray? You want to access deep levels of spirituality? Know that if you are disconnected from a fellow, your very being is disjointed. It’s like you’re missing a limb. Since his or her soul is part of yours, you are disconnected from a piece of your own soul. When you hate another person, you are hating a piece of your very self.
Adapted from Sara Blau
13 December 2020
“Everything is laid out for you. Your path is straight ahead of you. Sometimes it’s invisible but it’s there. You may not know where it’s going, but still you have to follow that path. It’s the path to the Creator. That’s the only path there is.”
Leon Shenandoah, ONONDAGA
14 December 2020
One action is better than a thousand sighs
If a word is worth a dollar, silence is worth two
On the other hand: staying silent is a single act; but you can say many words
Sin is weakness: it’s not having the strength to do the right thing
15 December 2020
Today’s ‘Pay Forward’ gift is—Our Creator Is Love—Then So Are We. Come let us first love our Father, and then, love as many of His creatures we can. Mother Teresa’s suggestion—’Do small things with great love.’ If we do, we will become beloved lovers loving. I continue to go to AA meetings, and I share one-on-one visits often, yet somehow I feel separate. I realise giving more love, sharing me, is the answer to my illusion of separation. Love is the most potent chemotherapeutic treatment ever devised. Love is a vital ingredient in the treatment of all our human conditions. Love changes us into our true selves. Lacking the ability to give or receive love is a major factor of my alcoholism or any other addiction. Love’s treatments call for us to give up our selfishness, self-centeredness, and self-seeking. Freeing us to surrender these defects to our Father, He will transform them into enlightened self-interest. It is safe to dispense love with impunity because we cannot overdose. By our Father’s grace, we will never run out of love; there are no adverse side effects. Today I am willing to practice simple acts of love until my heart and mind are filled with a deeper love. ‘Love is the medicine for the sickness of the world; a prescription often given, too rarely taken,’ (Dr Karl Menninger). Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
16 December 2020
... immediately after Step One, which concerned the unmanageableness of life, came Step Two: We came to believe in a power greater than ourselves that could restore us to sanity. The basis of that belief was not theoretical; it was evidential. Right before us were people in whose lives were the beginnings of a spiritual transformation. You could question the interpretation of the experience, but you couldn’t question the experience itself.
Reverend Sam Shoemaker, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
17 December 2020
Today’s ‘Pay Forward’ gift is—All About Love—Part One. God, our Higher Power, is the only subject that more songs, stories, books, and poems are written and talked about than love. You would think everything that can be said has been; however, the infinite can never be exhausted. As an attribute of God, love is infinite with a great many agents, channels, and forms, but these will not or cannot add up to the infinite whole. At the human level, we could be ever-expanding. Love has been and still is the second most important and fulfilling thing in my life, yet I cannot get enough receiving or giving of it. The primary purpose for these affirmations is to share a little information that could make a difference in your experience of love. Let us remember even for an instant, this moment, to realise that we were/are created by Love, for love, to express love, the appropriate love with whomever we are drawn to. To learn more about the appropriate love to express is the purpose of this little posting. If we want the fullness of life, if we want loving, caring relationships, if we want to be joyous, happy, and free, if we want an open heart, mind, and soul, then we must be willing to give all the love we can and forgive all we can. Then we can look to our Higher Power to do the deed. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
18 December 2020
I doubt if there is anybody in this hall who really ever sought sobriety. I think we were trying to get away from drunkenness. I don’t think we should despite the negative. I have a feeling that if I ever find myself in Heaven, it will be from backing away from Hell. At this point, Heaven seems as boring as sobriety does to an alcoholic ten minutes before he quits.
Father Ed Dowling, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
19 December 2020
When one has done the best he can with intellectual reasoning, there yet comes a time for decision and for action. It may be a relatively simple decision, such as to enter fully into the experiment. I think the approach is much more like science than it is like philosophy. We don’t so much try to reason it out in abstract logic. We choose a hypothesis. We act as if it were true and see whether it works. If it doesn’t we discard it, and if it does we are free to call the experiment a success.
Reverend Sam Shoemaker, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
20 December 2020
When a plane is suffering turbulence, that does not mean it’s not flying forwards.
Everyone is always moving forwards even when they are struggling or even drinking: problems are just turbulence on the way forward.
The same with the world: everything is moving forward.
All good ultimately comes of what happens: therefore nothing is bad.
Anonymous
21 December 2020
... I think we should realise that our idea of God will always be lacking, always to a degree be unsatisfying. Because to understand and to comprehend God is to be equal to God. But our understanding will grow.
... There is an old German saying that applies here: “Very few of us know how much we have to know in order to know how little we know.”
Father Ed Dowling, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
22 December 2020
God ... is more eager to help us than we are to be helped. He does not trespass on man’s freedom, and we can reject Him and deny Him and ignore Him as long as we like. But when we open the door on a spiritual search with our whole lives thrown into it, we shall find Him always there ready to receive our feeblest approaches and our most selfish and childish prayers.
Reverend Sam Shoemaker, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
23 December 2020
... I think we are all agnostic. I believe there are several groups, qualitatively, in AA. There are the devout who did not seem to be able to apply their old-line religious truths. They were agnostic as to application. They are people like the priest who passed the man in the ditch before the good Samaritan helped him. A very good priest friend of mine says, “I really think that the first thing we will say when we get to Heaven is, ‘My God, it’s all true!’” I think that all of us are rusty in some phases of our application of beliefs. Then there are the sincere eighteen-carat agnostics who really have difficulty with the spiritual hurdle.
Father Ed Dowling, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
24 December 2020
Today’s ‘Pay Forward’ gift is—Love Part Two. I am totally committed to Your Will, Father, and I am assured that You are using me. Father, I believe, You are Love. I believe that we are all created in Your Image and Likeness, which means we are all love. I cannot get enough of it; in fact, I would love to know more about it. I practice a number of forms of love, and I would love to share some of what I call blue-collar love. I am a lover among lovers. I will share some of the different aspect of loves as affirmations: I practice Patience; my love is passive, waiting to begin, not in a hurry, calm, and ready to do its work when the summons comes. Love understands and therefore waits. I am Kind; my love is active. I enjoy merely doing kind things. Any kindness that I can share with any being, let me do it now in a wise and loving way. I shall not defer it nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. I share my Generosity. I am Your son, Father, and a loving brother to all. I willingly share my goods, my gifts, and my talents, with all of my heart, mind and soul, out of the abundance I am receiving, as I am directed. I pray my sharing does enrich, enlighten, and awaken those I pass it on to. Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
25 December 2020
We first lean on another human being who seems to be finding an answer, and then we lean on the Higher Power that stands behind him.
Reverend Sam Shoemaker, in Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age
26 December 2020
Today’s ‘Pay Forward’ gift is—Love Part Three. We are sharing these loves as affirmations, which we hope you choose to share as a ‘Pay Forward’ gift. I live in a conscious state of Humility as I have the gift of knowing that You, Father, are my/our only True Source. Each time I share, I put a seal upon my lips and go back into the shade, and say nothing about it. I wait for the next gift to receive and share. I am but a channel, an agent of Your Will, Father. I express Courteous love in little things, thoughtful things; with a gentle heart filled with Your loving Grace, Father, expressing love at all levels, with all beings, in conscious union with Your Will, Father. I am Unselfish out of enlightened self-interest. By giving of myself, I truly am a master receiver. I give but little when I give of my possessions. It is when I give of my-Self/self I truly give. Having asked our Higher Power for guidance, note how we experience everyday acts of love. What about making a list of your everyday Blue-Collar loves? [Note: ‘blue-collar’ here means ‘being a worker amongst workers’, etc.]
Al Kohallek
27 December 2020
Today’s ‘Pay Forward’ gift is—Love Part Four—A Lover Among Lovers. My Affirmations: I have a Good Temper—and a Good Sense of Humour. I envy no other, as I have no competition as the individual, You created me to be, Father. I do not make capital out of faults, my own or any other. I quickly seek correction; better yet, I am non-judgemental of the ‘sins’ of the physical world and ‘sins’ of the disposition, so there is no need for forgiveness. I realise the Innocence in others and myself—that Higher Self, and the Holy indwelling Presence. I encourage all to chip away all that is not their true, Higher Self. I co-create an atmosphere of love and wisdom wherever I am and whomever I am with. Our innocence is beyond the human condition, yet it is ever present. I am truly Sincere in all I do, say, think, and feel. I search after the truth and a consciousness of Your Attributes, Father (Life, Love, Truth, Reality, Wisdom, Spirit, Consciousness, Soul, Intelligence, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience), with a humble and unbiased heart, mind, and soul. I rejoice in what I find, and I freely pass it on. ‘I bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things, for love never fails.’ Thy Love, Thy Will be done.
Al Kohallek
28 December 2020
I would like to know where in Heaven’s name a bewildered and defeated person is going to go for the help he desperately needs if he doesn’t go to God for it. Of course he is concerned about himself. He can’t help it. He ought to be. He must be, if he is ever going to be made useful to other people. But later on he must also grow up and stop just using God and begin to ask God to use him . Stop asking God to do what he wants, and begin to try to find out what it is that God wants.
29 December 2020
‘You can’t blame a clown for acting like a clown. The real question is why you keep going to the circus.’
Anonymous
30 December 2020
There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. For this reason, the argument which is always forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely, the appeal to experience, is for ever invalid and vain. We give up the past to the objector, and yet we hope. He must explain this hope. We grant that human life is mean; but how did we find out that it was mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours; of this old discontent? What is the universal sense of want and ignorance, but the fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel that the natural history of man has never been written, but he is always leaving behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old, and books of metaphysics worthless? The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers and magazines of the soul. In its experiments there has always remained, in the last analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oversoul
31 December 2020
I once had a psychologist who told me that I had a thousand reasons for drinking and that all of them were true but none of them mattered.
Dennis F
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