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 April 2022
Certainly you should discuss everything with a friend; but, before you do so, discuss in your mind the person themself. After friendship is formed you must trust, but, before that, you must judge.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
02 April 2022
I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
03 April 2022
You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself, but, seeing that certain matters do arise on which convention decrees silence, the things you should share with your friend are all your worries and deliberations.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
04 April 2022
There is, we have to admit, a line of demarcation between God’s part in us and the enemy’s region. But it is, we hope, a fighting line; not a frontier fixed by agreement.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
05 April 2022
In recovery, I’ve become almost fearless. I’m still afraid of heights and failure, of course, but my fears don’t control me. When I can’t sleep, I don’t think it’s because I’m afraid of dying; it’s more that I’m afraid that lack of sleep may make me too cranky to help people.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
06 April 2022
Some people’s fear of being deceived has taught other people to deceive them; by their suspiciousness, they give them the right to do the wrong thing by them.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
07 April 2022
This is something that recovering gambling addicts taught me. They speak of “the dream world of the gambling addict”. These gamblers can’t stop focusing on the big win that will finally make all their dreams come true, and thus make the rest of us stop criticizing them for their gambling. Gamblers are like a lot of people: They don’t want to be loved as much as they want to be proved right. Of course, their dream never comes true, because the house always wins.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
08 April 2022
There are certain people who tell any person they meet things that should be confided only to friends, unburdening themselves of whatever it is on their minds into any ear they please. Others, again, are shy of confiding in their closest friends, and would not even let thmselves, if they could help it, into the secrets they keep hidden deep down inside themselves. We should do neither. Trusting everyone is as much a fault as trusting no one (though I should call the first the worthier and the second the safer behaviour).
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
09 April 2022
So do not let anyone—no spiritual director, no teacher, no family member, no priest even, though we love and revere our priests—ever tell you that you are not allowed to approach [the Higher Power] exactly as you are, how you are, with every thought, every obsession, every fear, no matter how chaotic, angry, petty, lame, despairing, profane, or crazy.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
10 April 2022
It took me a while to understand and to deploy the gifts I was given at birth. It’s not always easy to tell the difference between a feature and a bug. In Al-Anon, Steps 4 and 5 are about traits, which may be defects, but may also be assets if you look at them and use them in the right way.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
11 April 2022
A delight in bustling about is not industry—it is only the restless energy of a hunted mind.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
12 April 2022
Heavenly Father, help me believe that I am loved in spite of my ongoing incompetence, littleness, and brokenness. Help me remember that our brokenness is why you came. Help me not be afraid to come close to you, in any way, at any minute of the day or night.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
13 April 2022
Comedy often involves a clown doing the same foolish thing over and over and never learning anything from the disastrous results, a kind of mechanical movement like a puppet’s or a toon’s. What happens in recovery is that the puppet becomes a real boy or girl again, and begins to do different, more rewarding things. Toons never age: Bart Simpson is still a bratty boy, thirty years later. Recovering people have re-entered time, and can grow and change, a process that was halted when the addiction took over.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
14 April 2022
The state of mind that looks on all activity as tiresome is not true repose, but a spineless inertia.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
15 April 2022
St Augustine observed that Satan can’t create anything new; he can only destroy or pervert goodness. So the first drink was a faux religious experience. It hooked into my longing for God—which is to say for connection, transcendence, unity, harmony, and love—and corrupted it.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
16 April 2022
What do you do if you feel powerless and thoroughly dislike the way things are going in your life? This is a paraphrase of Step One, which says that we are powerless and our lives are unmanageable. Well, eleven steps follow this one, so there are things you can do to change this reality.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
17 April 2022
Let me give you, though, this one piece of advice: refrain from following the example of those whose craving is for attention, not their own improvement, by doing certain things which are calculated to give rise to comment on your appearance or way of living generally.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
18 April 2022
Still, I’m always afraid that if I turn my will and my life over to God, he’ll take away my health insurance. Do something to “build my character.” Third-degree burns, maybe, or paralysis.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
19 April 2022
The whole first year I was alcohol-free, I told myself that whatever I was feeling on a given day was what one feels in one’s first year off the sauce, and that I only had to endure it for that day. One balmy summer day I went to bed at 7 p.m., because I couldn’t bear another minute of that day, so I declared it over.
Jim Harbaugh, S.J.
20 April 2022
Let me share with you the day’s small find (which today is something that I noticed in the Stoic writer Hecato). Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope,’ he says, ‘and you will cease to fear.’
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
21 April 2022
Sometimes we have a part in creating our suffering; sometimes it’s imposed on us. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. No one asks to have alcoholism, but at the same time, I came to see later, I was responsible for everything I’d done under its aegis.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
22 April 2022
Hope and fear are bound up with one another, unconnected as they may seem. Widely different though they are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to, fear keeping pace with hope. Nor does their moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
23 April 2022
The essence of prayer consists in doing what most of us have never done before and that no human being does unless we are utterly, completely out of ideas—and that is to acknowledge defeat and ask for help.
Heather King, Holy Desperation
24 April 2022
The near enemy of equanimity is indifference or callousness. We may appear serene if we say, I’m not attached. It doesn’t matter what happens anyway, because it’s all transitory. We feel a certain peaceful relief because we withdraw from experience and from the energies of life. But indifference is based on fear. True equanimity is not a withdrawal; it is a balanced engagement with all aspects of life. It is opening to the whole of life with composure and ease of mind, accepting the beautiful and terrifying nature of all things. Equanimity embraces the loved and the unloved, the agreeable and the disagreeable, the pleasure and pain. It eliminates clinging and aversion.
Jack Kornfield
25 April 2022
Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and, once they have escaped them, worry no more. We, however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
26 April 2022
“Drinking never made me happy—but it made me feel like I was going to be happy in fifteen minutes.”
Heather King, Holy Desperation
27 April 2022
“The good news is God loves you. The bad news is he loves everyone else, too.”
Heather King, Holy Desperation
28 April 2022
A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear, while foresight brings it on permanently. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
29 April 2022
Because all phenomena appear to exist in their own right, all of our ordinary perceptions are mistaken. Only when emptiness is directly realised during completely focused meditation is there no false appearance. At that time, the dualism of subject and object has vanished, as has the appearance of multiplicity; only emptiness appears. After you rise from that meditation, once again living beings and objects falsely appear to exist in and of themselves, but through the power of having realised emptiness, you will recognize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Through meditation you have identified both the false mode of appearance and the false mode of apprehension.
14th Dalai Lama
30 April 2022
I once asked him how I’d know if I was making spiritual progress. He thought for a minute. “If crazy people aren’t afraid to come up and talk to you,” he replied, “that’s a pretty good sign.”
Heather King, Holy Desperation
01 May 2022
‘I shall show you,’ said Hecato, ‘a love formula compounded without drug or herb or witch’s spell. It is this: if you wish to be loved, love.’
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
02 May 2022
What do people think spiritual development is? It’s not lights and trumpets. It’s very simple. It’s right here and now. People have this idea that Enlightenment and realization is something in the distance—a very fantastic and magnificent happening which will transform everything once and for always. But it’s not like that at all. It’s something which is sometimes so simple you hardly see it. It’s right here in front of us, so close we don’t notice it. And it’s something which can happen at any moment. And the moment we see it, there it is. It’s been there all the time, but we’ve had our inner eye closed. When the moments of awareness all link up—then we become a Buddha.
Tenzin Palmo
03 May 2022
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, incompetence, carelessness, or chance.
Anonymous
04 May 2022
What is my object in making a friend? To have someone to be able to die for, someone I may follow into exile, someone for whose life I may put myself up as security and pay the price as well. The thing you describe is not friendship but a business deal, looking to the likely consequences, with advantage as its goal.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
05 May 2022
Tout le monde se plaint de sa mémoire, et personne ne se plaint de son jugement.
Everyone complains of his memory, and nobody complains of his judgement.
François de La Rochefoucauld
06 May 2022
If you want it, you can’t have it. If you don’t want it, you might get it.
Cahuenga B
07 May 2022
The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is home-grown, wholly self-developed. Once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself, it is on the way to being dominated by fortune.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
08 May 2022
Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux d’autrui.
We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
François de La Rochefoucauld
09 May 2022
‘All my possessions,’ he said, ‘are with me’, meaning by this the qualities of a just, a good, and an enlightened character, and indeed the very fact of not regarding as valuable anything that is capable of being taken away.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
10 May 2022
An elder was teaching his grandchildren about life.
He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me; it is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, competition, superiority, and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person too.”
They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Grandpa simply replied, “The one you feed”.
11 May 2022
You know the story about the two wolves?
Well:
Inside you are two possums.
They are scared of each other.
You have anxiety.
Anonymous
12 May 2022
If your parents are still alive, and they ask, ‘is everything OK?’, they don’t actually want to know the answer. They just want to hear, ‘everything is OK’. Took me years to figure that one out.
Anonymous
13 May 2022
‘Any man,’ he says, ‘who does not think that what he has is more than ample is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world.’
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
14 May 2022
I cannot change the past; I cannot change the truth; I cannot change you.
Anonymous
15 May 2022
Here are some ways in which people unconsciously try to emphasize their [ego]. If you are alert enough, you may be able to detect some of these unconscious patterns within yourself: demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don’t get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illness, or making a scene, giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say using other people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers […] taking things personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental complaining; wanting to be seen, or appear important.
Eckhard Tolle
16 May 2022
Not happy is the person who believes themself not so.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
17 May 2022
‘God could and would if he were sought’. Not ‘found’.
Anonymous
18 May 2022
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain
19 May 2022
What difference does it make, after all, what your position is in life if you dislike it yourself?
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
20 May 2022
If you have trouble turning everything over, try turning over now.
Anonymous
21 May 2022
If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the bigger one first.
Mark Twain
22 May 2022
Only the wise man is content with what is his. All foolishness suffers the burden of dissatisfaction with itself.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
23 May 2022
He had only one vanity: he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
Mark Twain, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg
24 May 2022
The only things I can change: my attitudes; my thinking; my behaviour.
Anonymous
25 May 2022
What sort of life do you think is mean by ‘the life of folly’? Our own life, precipitated by blind desire into activities that are likely to bring us harm and will certainly never bring us satisfaction—if they could ever satisfy us, they would have done so by now—never thinking how pleasant it is to ask for nothing, how splendid it is to be complete and be independent of fortune.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
26 May 2022
The first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging.
Quoted by Steven Pinker
27 May 2022
Oh, God; protect me from myself.
Anonymous
28 May 2022
... say goodbye at last to those deceptive prizes more precious to those who hope for them than to those who have won them. If there were anything substantial in them, they would sooner or later bring a sense of fullness; as it is, they simply aggravate the thirst of those who swallow them.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
29 May 2022
… but the delight and pride of Aulë is in the deed of making, and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work.
Tolkien, The Silmarillion
30 May 2022
Why should I demand from fortune that she should give me this and that rather than demand from myself that I should not ask for them?
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
31 May 2022
In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For 13 days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition, such as was never before heard of in this region, was made manifest. At the beginning of the 14th day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of, and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings.
Francis Bacon
01 June 2022
... diviser chacune des difficultés que j’examinerais, en autant de parcelles qu’il se pourroit, et qu’il seroit requis pour les mieux résoudre.
Divide each difficulty I examine into as many individual elements as possible and as required in order to resolve them more effectively.
Descartes
02 June 2022
You may be able to resist turning toward the source of a loud and offensive comment at a crowded party, but even if your head does not move, your attention is initially directed to it, at least for a while. However, attention can be moved away from an unwanted focus, primarily by focusing intently on another target.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow
03 June 2022
Surrender first; then think.
Anonymous
04 June 2022
If you disagree with me, you don’t have to tell me.
Anonymous
05 June 202
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, …
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
06 June 2022
Sometimes, when something’s broken, I fix it, and I fix it, until it’s really broken.
Anonymous
07 June 2022
The first commandment of God is, ‘let there be light!’
Anonymous
08 June 2022
Father: What a beautiful tree it is. This tree’s been here, oh, since before anyone can remember. You know, a long time ago, men and trees were the best of friends.
My Neighbour Totoro
09 June 2022
“Why me?” moans Billy Pilgrim when he is abducted by aliens. “That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr Pilgrim,” the aliens respond. “Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything?” Only the naïve ask “Why?” Those who see reality more clearly don’t bother.
Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
10 June 2022
Pause before you speak. But remember you don’t necessarily need to say anything at all.
Anonymous
11 June 2022
They are not going to become perkier or less anxious just because you give them one more inspiring talk. It has not worked for the last thirty years. It’s not going to start working now. Accept the things you cannot change. E.g. the way other people perceive things. A lot of people do not change, even with the right words.
Anonymous
12 June 2022
Let us remember that our knowledge of the world begins not with matter but with perceptions. I know for sure that my pain exists, my “green” exists, and my “sweet” exists … everything else is a theory. Later we find out that our perceptions obey some laws, which can be most conveniently formulated if we assume that there is some underlying reality beyond our perceptions. This model of material world obeying laws of physics is so successful that soon we forget about our starting point and say that matter is the only reality, and perceptions are only helpful for its description.
Linde, A.. Universe, Life, Consciousness
13 June 2022
Let the rushing train pass by. Get off the tracks.
Anonymous
14 June 2022
I commonly tell them, “You know that God that you don’t want anything to do with? I don’t want anything to do with that God either. The reference to the God you just used—I don’t believe in that God either. I don’t believe in the God you don’t believe in. We’re together on that. I’m right with you on that.”
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
15 June 2022
The whitewashed walls; the little pews where well-known figures entered with a subdued rustling, and where first one well-known voice and then another, pitched in a peculiar key of petition, uttered phrases at once occult and familiar, like the amulet worn on the heart; the pulpit where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed to and fro, and handled the book in a long accustomed manner; the very pauses between the couplets of the hymn, as it was given out, and the recurrent swell of voices in song: these things had been the channel of divine influences to Marner—they were the fostering home of his religious emotions—they were Christianity and God’s kingdom upon earth. A weaver who finds hard words in his hymn-book knows nothing of abstractions; as the little child knows nothing of parental love, but only knows one face and one lap towards which it stretches its arms for refuge and nurture.
George Eliot, Silas Marner
16 June 2022
What would a normal person do in a circumstance like this? What would a grown-up do in a circumstance like this? What would someone who trusted God do in a circumstance like this?
Anonymous
17 June 2022
Don’t look for God. Look first for faith in some people who you identify with and who have a little sense and who you like. And then go from there, and they’ll let you know that they don’t get God either and that they’re in on something that has to do with a Power greater than themselves and that gives them some light and encouragement. In other words, don’t look for God, look for other people’s experience of God. There are some people who say, “I have a God” and you think, rightly, “Well, I don’t want to have anything to do with that God.” If they’re crazy or cruel, for example, not a good sign. Don’t join that group.
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
18 June 2022
God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away.
Meister Eckhart
19 June 2022
Keep it simple. Do not fly off in all directions.
Anonymous
20 June 2022
To simplify, we have to say ‘no’ to some things.
Anonymous
21 June 2022
I used to think I was open-minded because I’d invite the cabdriver upstairs. No, no, that’s not open-mindedness. That’s promiscuity. That’s looseness. The open-mindedness, honesty, and willingness required in our quest for God seem to involve an imagination that’s willing to catch fire: a capacity to be moved, to be touched, to have a sense of humor about ourselves; a taste for the wild-card surprise; and a profound awareness of our vulnerability, brokenness, and need.
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
22 June 2022
I had a friend who was so clever he would clever himself into doing really stupid things.
Anonymous
23 June 2022
Be grateful you do not have a loudspeaker attached to your brain. Then realise you do: it’s called your big, fat mouth.
Anonymous
24 June 2022
Some of us have a deeply misguided desire to be saved through excellence. We want to be spontaneous yet profound, highly intelligent yet down-to-earth, well-balanced yet passionate, dignified but self-deprecating. We want to be physically fit, good-looking, calm in the face of tragedy, suave in the face of heartbreak, and to have really, really good skin. Through the Incarnational mystery of being broken open by our fellow alcoholics and addicts, we forget about all that. We become what we really wanted to be all along: we become human. We realize the real point of sobriety is to get in good enough shape to help another alcoholic.
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
25 June 2022
There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak now not of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country. . . . It would profit us little to study this second-hand religious life.
William James
26 June 2022
Each year of recovery gives us one more second of response time.
Anonymous
27 June 2022
I began to see that the purpose of a relationship with God, of prayer, wasn’t to “be good.” It was to help out.
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
28 June 2022
The introduction of ‘something else’ violates our mode of thought and the convenience of its habitual operations. A ‘something else’ disturbs minds that mistake comfortable thinking with clarity of thought.
James Hillman: The Soul’s Code.
29 June 2022
If something’s been a problem for a really long time, it’s not a problem, it’s a fact.
Anonymous
30 June 2022
My understanding of a mystic isn’t someone who sits around daydreaming all day, though I’m a huge champion of daydreaming. I also pay my bills, change my oil, and meet my deadlines. Mysticism is not antithetical to reality. Mysticism underlies reality. A mystic is someone who sees, and who is constantly on the lookout for, the reality behind this one. And the reality behind this one is love.
King, Heather. Holy Desperation: Praying as If Your Life Depends on It
Comments
Post a Comment