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 July 2023
The Twelve Steps provide a precise formula for sobriety and a road to mental, emotional, and spiritual health. They give directions for lives of expanded joy and usefulness. They also point up the need for continuing work in the Steps for my own recovery and continuing work with other alcoholics to pass on what I’ve been given at no charge. If we work with another alcoholic, a spiritual transaction takes place, and we both benefit. If, on the other hand, we’re paid for this, it becomes a monetary transaction, and the spiritual component is destroyed.
Paul Martin, on Tradition Eight
02 July 2023
We are 100% responsible for our 50% of any relationship.
Jim W
03 July 2023
Perfection will not be found this side of the grave. Your business is to trust in God. You must depend on nothing but God. Trust in God and you stand secure ... The very fact that you are not what you want to be proves that there are some high and noble thoughts in you that could not come by nature. You were content with yourself some six weeks ago, were you not? And the fact that you are discontent now proves that God has put a new life into you, which makes you seek after a higher and better element in which to breathe. When you become what you want to be on earth, then despair.
Charles H. Spurgeon
04 July 2023
The first false belief: You cannot be happy without the things that you are attached to and that you consider so precious. This is false. There is not a single moment in your life when you do not have everything that you need to be happy. Think about that for a minute. The reason you are unhappy is that you are focusing on what you do not have rather than on what you have right now.
Anthony de Mello, Stop Fixing Yourself (p. 20)
05 July 2023
Mrs Munt soon recovered. She possessed to a remarkable degree the power of distorting the past, and before many days were over she had forgotten the part played by her own imprudence in the catastrophe.
E. M. Forster, Howards End
06 July 2023
Another false belief: Happiness will come if you manage to change the situation you are in and the people around you. It’s not true. You stupidly squander so much energy trying to rearrange the world. If changing the world is your vocation in life, go right ahead and change it, but do not harbour the illusion that it will make you happy. What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. Might as well search for an eagle’s nest on the bed of an ocean—a search for happiness in the world outside you will be just as successful. If it is happiness that you seek, you can stop wasting your energy trying to cure your baldness, building up an attractive body, or changing your residence, your job, your community, your lifestyle, or even your personality. Do you realise that you could change every one of these things—you could have the finest looks, the most charming personality, and the most pleasant of surroundings—and still be unhappy? Deep down, you know this is true. But still you waste your effort and energy trying to get what you know cannot make you happy.
Anthony de Mello, Stop Fixing Yourself (p. 21)
07 July 2023
Peter turned at once to Lucy. “I apologise for not believing you,” he said. “I’m sorry. Will you shake hands?” “Of course,” said Lucy, and did.
C. S. Lewis, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
08 July 2023
YOUR CHOICE
Many of us choose to live in darkness with our eyes closed, our ears stuffed, our fists tightly closed grasping nothing. We had a closed mind focused on self, our emotions fed with yesterday’s self-centred fears. We abused our physical bodies and used others selfishly as objects. We looked to people, places and things for our worth, meaning and purpose. We went for spiritual junk food because we were so hungry. We tried to control others and ourselves with guilt and punishment. All of that was living apart from our three spiritual gifts.
Jim W.
09 July 2023
The ego makes illusions. Truth undoes its evil dreams by shining them away. Truth never makes attack. It merely is. And by its presence is the mind recalled from fantasies, awaking to the real. Forgiveness bids this presence enter in, and take its rightful place within the mind. Without forgiveness is the mind in chains, believing in its own futility. Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance.
Lesson 332, A Course In Miracles
10 July 2023
LET’S SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
We have failed many times, but we are not failures. We have been foolish, but we are not fools. We have done many bad things, but we are not evil. We have been punished and made to feel guilty and have done the same to others, but now we seek correction for others and ourselves. We have withheld and withdrawn our love and our Spiritual Gifts, and this caused us to believe that others, even God, were doing the same to us.
Jim W.
11 July 2023
Truth must enter into the soul, penetrate and saturate it, or else it is of no value. Doctrines held as a matter of creed are like bread in the hand, which ministers no nourishment to the frame; but doctrine accepted by the heart is as food digested, which, by assimilation, sustains and builds up the body. In us, truth must be a living force, an active energy, an indwelling reality, a part of the woof and warp of our being. If it be in us, we cannot henceforth part with it.
Charles H. Spurgeon
12 July 2023
FEARLESS AND THOROUGH
We’re sure you have heard something like this: ‘If I had known I was going to be around this long, I would have paid heed to the statement from Chapter Five of the Big Book, page 58, “we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the start. Some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”’ If our problem is not healed at the level of conditions and causes (our personal ‘reality’), then we are likely to exchange one problem for another or go back to our old problem. More important, we will miss a way of life that can be so fulfilling.
Our programme is so powerful but we cannot know this until we experience its results in our daily living. Those of us who have experienced the abundance of life in all areas may say something like this, ‘If I had it to do over, I would ask more of God, more of the programme, and more of myself sooner.’
Jim W.
13 July 2023
Anger obliterates your helpfulness, obscures the peace of God, and is a sure sign that your thinking is guided by the ego.
Circle of Atonement, A Course In Miracles Glossary
14 July 2023
A REMINDER
When I can’t make a conscious contact with my Higher Power, one of the things I find helpful is this: I remind myself that the food I ate today is being changed into flesh and bones, thoughts and energy, and all kinds of things. If I had all the money in the world and every kind of resource, including the best brain, I could not reproduce what is going on in the least of us. Yet we have the illusion that we are without recourse to heal our dilemma. If we will do the best we can to chip away everything that is not related to our Three Spiritual Gifts, we will be given all that we need for the moment.
Jim W.
[The three spiritual gifts: Power, Love, Heart's Desire.]
15 July 2023
Attack thoughts: Thoughts of anger. The source of our entire perception of the world. We entertain attack thoughts, then project them onto the world, and then interpret the world as wanting to take vengeance on us for our attack on it.
Circle of Atonement, A Course In Miracles Glossary
16 July 2023
GIFT OF DENIAL
Denial can be a special gift of grace. Denial does not ask us to address anything until we have the tools. When we have the tools, it breaks down. When that happens, the denial turns to dishonesty, if we try to avoid it. Then, it demands our attention.
Jim W.
17 July 2023
In projection, we try to throw an idea out of our mind onto a supposedly external world. This makes the idea appear to be outside us, rather than inside. Being outside, the idea now appears to be objectively real; not our own effect, but an independent cause with power over us. In this way, the pain we gave ourselves now seems given to us by others. Projection thus masks the very law it applies: that it is our own thoughts that cause our perceptions and experience.
Circle of Atonement, A Course In Miracles Glossary
18 July 2023
Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Isaiah 43:18-19
19 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- If you don’t want to slip, stay away from slippery places.
Jim W.
20 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- He who lies down with puppies will get up with fleas.
Jim W.
21 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- ‘One cannot teach an old dog new tricks.’ The good news is this: we’re not old dogs; nor is our programme a bag of tricks.
Jim W.
22 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, we would all have a merry Christmas.
Jim W.
23 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- The mind that made us sick will not make us well alone and unaided.
Jim W.
24 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- It is not the passing of time that changes things but what takes place during the passing of time.
Jim W.
25 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- Trading one addiction for another is like changing seats on a sinking ship.
Jim W.
26 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- To say I am an alcoholic and also a drug addict is like saying I am from San Antonio and also from Texas.
Jim W.
27 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- A trap to watch out for: talking in AA bumper stickers and oversimplifying the programme.
Jim W.
28 July 2023
USEFUL CORNY SAYINGS
- What we need is more backbone and fewer wishbones.
Jim W.
29 July 2023
“Ooh!” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
C. S. Lewis, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
30 July 2023
You need to develop an “attitude of gratitude”. This doesn’t mean you should live with your heads in the clouds and pretend nothing negative exists. It simply means you make it your goal in life to be as positive as possible. Go to bed tonight pondering everything you have to be thankful for. Do the same first thing tomorrow morning. Thank God for everything—a convenient parking place; the fact you can walk, see, or hear; your children. Don’t become discouraged with yourself when you fall short, and don’t quit. Keep at it until you have developed new habits.
Joyce Meyer
31 July 2023
“Well, for one thing,” said Peter, “if it was real why doesn’t everyone find this country every time they go to the wardrobe? I mean, there was nothing there when we looked; even Lucy didn’t pretend there was.” “What has that to do with it?” said the Professor. “Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time.” “Are they?” said the Professor; and Peter did not know quite what to say.
C. S. Lewis, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
01 August 2023
Everybody in the group is working the Steps. If a new person comes into the group and attends regularly, he starts working them, too. He doesn’t know any differently. He very quickly figures out that “How It Works” means that this is how it works.
Paul Martin, Working the Steps in a Group
02 August 2023
And now of course you want to know what had happened to Edmund. He had eaten his share of the dinner, but he hadn’t really enjoyed it because he was thinking all the time about Turkish Delight—and there’s nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food.
C. S. Lewis, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
03 August 2023
Doesn’t it get repetitious with the same people talking about the same Steps month after month and year after year? Well, it probably would if we worked each Step only once. However, every member in the group is working and reworking all the Steps. As a result, we speak from fresh experiences each time we go through them. We don’t talk about the Fourth Steps we wrote years ago. We discuss inventories written recently and Fifth Steps we took not long ago. The same holds true for every Step. This creates an atmosphere that stimulates each of us to continue work in the programme. The group is far more than a place to go and ventilate our feelings merely to find symptom relief. In our experience, conditions such as depression, anxiety, fear, boredom, hostility, and apathy are just symptoms, and they will disappear through persistent work with all the Steps. The answer, then, is not to concern ourselves with the symptoms, but to work and rework the Steps so that they may remove the causes. Then the depression, fear, boredom, or other symptom will disappear, too. We’ve seen this happen consistently.
Paul Martin, Working the Steps in a Group
04 August 2023
If you want to get over a problem, stop talking about it. Your mind affects your mouth, and your mouth affects your mind. It’s difficult to stop talking about a situation until you stop thinking about it.
Joyce Meyer
05 August 2023
Learn not to ask yourself how you feel about things, but instead ask yourself if doing or not doing something is right for you. You may know that you need to do something, but you don’t feel like doing it at all. You can wish you felt like it, but as we discussed already, wishing does no good. You must live by principle, and simply choose to do what you know is right.
Joyce Meyer
06 August 2023
I wonder how many millions of people think, ‘I just don’t feel the way I once did about my husband or wife. I wish I still felt excited about our marriage—that the romantic feelings would come back.’ Just a reminder: wishing does no good; only action changes things. If you don’t feel you are getting anything out of your marriage, perhaps you are not putting enough into it.
Joyce Meyer
07 August 2023
So if you feel that you are defeated and have lost confidence in your ability to win, sit down, take a piece of paper and make a list, not of the factors that are against you, but of those that are for you. If you or I think constantly of the forces that seem to be against us, we will build them up into a power far beyond that which is justified. They will assume a formidable strength they do not actually possess. But if, on the contrary, you mentally visualise and affirm and reaffirm your assets and keep your thoughts on them, emphasising them to the fullest extent, you will rise out of any difficulty, regardless of what it may be. Your inner powers will reassert themselves and, with the help of God, lift you from defeat to victory.
Norman Vincent Peale
08 August 2023
‘You’re doing too much AA. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ they said.
I replied: ‘But I’ve only got one egg.’
Patri
09 August 2023
One of the most powerful concepts, one which is a sure cure for lack of confidence, is the thought that God is actually with you and helping you. This is one of the simplest teachings in religion, namely that Almighty God will be your companion, will stand by you, help you, and see you through. No other idea is so powerful in developing self-confidence as this simple belief when practised. To practise it, simply affirm “God is with me; God is helping me; God is guiding me.” Spend several minutes each day visualising His presence. Then practise believing that affirmation. Go about your business on the assumption that what you have affirmed and visualised is true. Affirm it, visualise, and believe it, and it will actualise itself. The release of power which this procedure stimulates will astonish you.
Norman Vincent Peale
10 August 2023
Most people I would try to make amends to, with some notable exceptions, would say ‘No, no … you’re OK, you were always a good fellow—you weren’t that bad’, all that baloney. Somebody else’s benevolent manner and kindness does not translate to me cleaning out my soul. All that says is I’ve got some nice friends. At times, I’ve almost had to hold people by the lapels and say, ‘listen to me. Listen. To. Me!
Tom I. at the Texas State Conference on amends
11 August 2023
Another effective technique in developing a peaceful mind is the daily practice of silence. Everyone should insist upon not less than a quarter of an hour of absolute quiet every twenty-four hours. Go alone into the quietest place available to you and sit or lie down for fifteen minutes and practice the art of silence. Do not talk to anyone. Do not write. Do not read. Think as little as possible. Throw your mind into neutral. Conceive of your mind as quiescent, inactive. This will not be easy at first because thoughts are stirring up your mind, but practice will increase your effectiveness. Conceive of your mind as the surface of a body of water and see how nearly quiet you can make it, so that there is not a ripple. When you have attained a quiescent state, then begin to listen for the deeper sounds of harmony and beauty and of God that are to be found in the essence of silence.
Norman Vincent Peale
12 August 2023
Meditation:
The act of meditating; close or continued thought; the turning or revolving of a subject in the mind; serious contemplation; reflection; musing.
1913 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary
13 August 2023
I have only three enemies. The one most easily influenced for the better is the British nation. My second enemy, the Indian people, is more difficult. But my hardest opponent is a man named Gandhi. With him I seem to have very little influence.
Ghandi
14 August 2023
I’m a great believer in the arrogance of alcoholism; if you see an alcoholic lying in the gutter, if his eyes are open, you can bet he’s got a plan. He’s thinking.
Bill C.
15 August 2023
I didn’t come into AA to save my soul; I came into AA to save my ass. It was a couple of years before I realised they were connected.
Ernest Kurtz
16 August 2023
Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should rejoin its friend, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
17 August 2023
His definition of military incompetence included ‘being inflexible and unimaginative, having a complete disregard for the human sacrifice being made, having a mind closed to unpalatable information, obstinate persistence in a given task despite strong contrary evidence and the suppression or distortion of “news from the front line” usually rationalised as being good for morale or necessary for security’
Of the British military psychologist Norman Frank Dixon
18 August 2023
He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centred ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.
Thomas Merton
19 August 2023
From the Marty Mann test for alcoholism
The Test: Select any time at all for instituting it. Now is the best time. For the next six months at least decide that you will stick to a certain number of drinks a day, that number to be not less than one and not more than three. If you are not a daily drinker, then the test should be the stated number of drinks from one to three, on those days when you do drink. Some heavy drinkers confine their drinking to weekends, but still worry about the amount they consume then. Whatever number you choose must not be exceeded under any circumstances whatever, and this includes weddings, births, funerals, occasions of sudden death and disaster, unexpected or long-awaited inheritance, promotion, or other happy events, reunions or meetings with old friends or good customers, or just sheer boredom. There must also be no special occasions on which you feel justified in adding to your quota of the stated number of drinks, such as a severe emotional upset, or the appointment to close the biggest deal of your career, or the audition you’ve been waiting for all your life, or the meeting with someone who is crucial to your future and of whom you are terrified. Absolutely no exceptions, or the test has been failed.
20 August 2023
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more.
A. A. Milne
21 August 2023
... and your case is similar but different. And it’s that difference that will kill you. Trying to hold out some claim to unique alcoholic ground is a sure way to not succeed. And each of us feels we have a tremendously unique background.
Sandy B.
22 August 2023
Commentary on ACIM Lesson 170
Part I
We fear because we believe, somewhere deep in our hearts, that we have attacked and deserve punishment for our attack. We sense within ourselves a belief that ‘to hurt another brings [us] freedom’. This belief lies behind every attack we attribute to self-defence. No matter how hard we try to justify our attacks, something in us knows that our intent is to hurt the other person, because we believe that hurting them will somehow free us from something. In a nutshell, we believe that we are inherently cruel.
Circle of Atonement
23 August 2023
Commentary on ACIM Lesson 170
Part II
Ultimately, all our defences are defences against God. Buried deep in our psyche is our conviction that the universe is out to get us. Most of our lives, if we look at them with honesty, are spent in buttressing our fortifications against ‘things’ that seem to threaten us.
The Course calls on us to lay down our defences as the only way of discovering that the threat is unreal. God is not angry. The universe is not out to get us. If God appears to us to be separate from us, only the walls we have erected make it seem so. We are the victims only of our own defences.
Circle of Atonement
24 August 2023
Commentary on ACIM Lesson 170
Part III
If we assess our ‘god’ of fear and defence honestly, we have to see that it is made of stone. It has no life; it cannot save us. Fear begets fear; attack begets attack. The wars of the world testify to this endlessly. Hurting others never makes us safe; it only adds to the cycle of fear and attack.
Circle of Atonement
25 August 2023
I can think of things that have happened that are so hurtful that I could just go to my room and sit there. But when these thoughts come to my mind, and you could just drop when they do, I stop it, and I go to a certain chair in my house, and I kick back and I talk to God. And I say ‘I don’t want to be that way’ and I am not going to walk around with a long face and be unhappy. That is just a waste of time. And when you get yourself out of it, jump up and say ‘Yay!’ and put some music on and dance. Dance by myself, I do.
Doris Day
26 August 2023
Your friends don’t care whether you’ve cleaned the house before they show up. But you’ll be uncomfortable. If you don’t clean house in a Step Eleven review, you won’t be comfortable letting God into your house in prayer and meditation, even though God loves you all the more because of your defects.
Sheldon F.
27 August 2023
The reason we examine our relationships is to determine whether (a) you’re having a bad day (in which case I forgive you) or (b) I’m having a bad day (in which case I make amends).
Sheldon F.
28 August 2023
God is not an employment agency, a real estate broker, or a pimp. God does not care where I work, where I live, or who I sleep with. God cares about how I treat these people in all of these relationships.
Sheldon F.
29 August 2023
A man in a hot air balloon realised that he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted another man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, ‘Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.’
The man below replied, ‘You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north and between 59 and 60 degrees west.’
‘You must be a sponsor,’ said the balloonist. ‘I am,’ replied the man, ‘how did you know?’
‘Well,’ answered the balloonist, ‘everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.’
The man below responded, ‘You must be a sponsee!’
‘I am,’ replied the balloonist, ‘but how did you know?’
‘Well,’ said the man, ‘you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect other people to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.’
Anonymous
30 August 2023
Les: I don’t know how long you’re here for, Gloria, but for every negative, hurtful, poisonous thing you say to me, I’ll try and say something positive to you.
Gloria: Because you think you’re better than me?
Les: No, because I live a wonderful life in the sunshine with a job I like and friends I cherish and a devoted son I adore, and it only seems fair to try and give some of the love back.
Benidorm
31 August 2023
People ask when the penny is going to drop. The thing is, you have to put the penny in the slot in the first place, if you want the little man to start dancing.
Anonymous AA member in Glasgow
01 September 2023
WHOSE JOB IS IT?
What we can do is our responsibility. How do we know if we can or cannot? We try. Everything else is God’s responsibility.
Jim W.
02 September 2023
JUST ONE TIME?
The more active we are in the programme, the sooner our denial breaks down. No matter how honest we were with our first set of Steps, we were able to see only a little. More will be revealed. Each time we work the Steps the better we get at it, so return to the Well as needed.
Jim W.
03 September 2023
Gloria: That’s my late husband [pointing to the very much alive, cross-dressing Les], so how do you think I feel?
Noreen: I don’t know how you feel. You certainly sound pretty angry to me. I reckon if what you do makes you happy, and isn’t hurting anyone else, go for it.
Gloria [sarcastically]: Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all go through life with rose-tinted spectacles like you.
Noreen: Yeah. Yes, it would.
Benidorm
04 September 2023
PRACTISING THESE PRINCIPLES IN ALL OUR AFFAIRS
‘To practise these principles in all our affairs’ as our Step Twelve suggests, we will be dealing with a lot of different areas in our lives. Something with many parts makes that something complex, but it does not have to be complicated. This Step work will help us identify many of our parts, not as apart from the whole, but included in our whole being. To over-simplify is to be under the illusion, as many of us are, that all we need to do is stop drinking (or stop something), and all would be well.
Jim W.
05 September 2023
Our physical organs (and this cannot be too often repeated) are animal forces, which will quite naturally obey a man who is prepared to command them. They are there to serve him, not to enslave him. But the ego is so lazy that it makes him quite glad to abdicate this power in return for the secret satisfaction of pitying his own sufferings, or attracting attention to his pathetic case. Most of our pathological conditions are aggravated by this unconfessed indulgence. The same applies to our personal dramas and daily worries; we should have the courage to admit that they feed largely on the pity of others, and on our own. In most cases, what would be left of them if we passed them over in total silence?
Isha De Lubicz
06 September 2023
WINNERS AND LOSERS
We hear in meetings ‘stick with the winners’. Who are these winners? The winners are those who are living the solution. Who are the losers? The losers are those who are still getting ready for the programme (practising their illness). We could say, therefore, that winners and losers are the same person at different points in the process. A very sad fact is that most of those losers never make the cut. Since you are here, I would suggest that you stay and forgo any further preparatory work.
Jim W.
07 September 2023
This silence, this moment, every moment, if it’s genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There’s nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, ‘Be more silent.’ Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
Rumi
08 September 2023
CHANGING
Many of us could only see our own little reflection in that limited mirror of our personal ‘reality’, hearing only the hum of our own little voice as that ‘reality’. If we are tired of seeing our own little reflection and hearing the hum of our little voice, then where do we go from here? Our little personal ‘reality’ must change. But how? That is what this workbook is all about.
Jim W.
09 September 2023
There are so many problems created by life itself that dilute our happiness that it is indeed foolish to distil further unhappiness within your own mind. How foolish to manufacture personal unhappiness to add to all the other difficulties over which you have little or no control!
Norman Vincent Peale
10 September 2023
POWER: 1st Spiritual Gift
‘Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a Power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.’ (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 45) The main object of this workbook is to be in concert with that. Working the first eleven Steps will assure us of having a personality change, a shift in our perception sufficient to cause a spiritual awakening. Step Twelve opens with: ‘Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps …’ This spiritual awakening, this gift, is the first of our three primary goals of this workbook.
Jim W.
11 September 2023
LOVE: 2nd Spiritual Gift
One of the most common human needs is love. The second part of Step Twelve is ‘… we tried to carry this message…’ This is sharing; this is love. We give but little when we give of our possessions; it is when we give of ourselves that we truly give. In the act of giving, ‘passing it on’, what we have received, we realise that giving and receiving are the same. In fact, the only way we can become a master receiver is to share with others everything we want for ourselves. We can love because our deepest nature is love. The messenger is the message.
Jim W.
12 September 2023
HEART’S DESIRE: 3rd Spiritual Gift
Awakening to the individual self we were created to be with purpose and meaning, in other words, to consciously live our heart’s desire, God’s Will for each individual. The third part of Step Twelve is: ‘…and to practise these principles in all our affairs.’ The only way we can fully realise who we are is to share what we currently are as the result of this process. When we are God-centred even for a moment we will have all the power and wisdom we need. In that moment we will be told, shown what to do, say, think, and feel in a way we can currently hear, understand, and follow.
Jim W.
13 September 2023
A: My thinking is off, but at least my behaviour is OK.
B: That’s all very well. But sometimes the thoughts leak out through the cracks.
14 September 2023
When you are called upon to perform some task or undertake some responsibility that seems too great for you, realize that you are one with God and the task will become "our business" instead of "my business."
Emmet Fox
15 September 2023
Work by rehearsing everything that you know about God. God is Wisdom, Truth, inconceivable Love. God is present everywhere; has infinite power; knows everything. It matters not how well you may think you understand these things; go over them repeatedly. The rule is to think about God, and if you are thinking about your difficulty you are not thinking about God. To be continually glancing over your shoulder in order to see how matters are progressing is fatal, because that is thinking of the trouble, and you must think of God, and of nothing else. Your object is to drive the thought of the difficulty right out of your consciousness, for a few moments at least, substituting for it the thought of God. If you can become so absorbed in this consideration of the spiritual world that you really forget for a while all about the trouble concerning which you began to pray, you will presently find that your trouble falls into new perspective, new relationships, so that it is no longer a difficulty.
Emmet Fox
16 September 2023
Lord, often have I thought to myself, I will sin but this one sin more, and then I will repent of it, and of all the rest of my sins together. So foolish was I, and ignorant. As if I should be more able to pay my debts when I owe more: or as if I should say, I will wound my friend once again, and then I will lovingly shake hands with him—but what if my friend will not shake hands with me?
Thomas Fuller
17 September 2023
Sometimes you have to go down and delve in the mud at the bottom of the pond to get the treasure, but if that’s all you do, you will make the waters very muddy.
Quoted Italian monk
18 September 2023
Prizes. They’re bad for you when you win them. And they’re sad for you when you don’t.
Ted Hughes
19 September 2023
You know why God gave you ears? So we have something to hold on to while we’re pulling the head out of your ass.
Larcine (Al-Anon speaker)
20 September 2023
All souls come from one root, all are carved from the throne of His splendour, and so they are a part of God in heaven. Let us be united on earth too, so that the branches again may be as the root.
Tales of the Hasidim
21 September 2023
It is vanity then to seek after, and to trust in, the riches that shall perish. It is vanity, too, to covet honours, and to lift up ourselves on high. It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh and be led by them, for this shall bring misery at the last. It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life. It is vanity to love that which quickly passeth away, and not to hasten where eternal joy abideth.
Thomas à Kempis
22 September 2023
The AA message is free. We don’t buy it and we don’t sell it, because money corrupts the message. We give it away in gratitude for our own recovery. That’s the forgotten meaning of Tradition Eight. We work with alcoholics for nothing because it’s our privilege to help another breathe deeply in the life of the spirit and enjoy the vigorous healing generated by our programme’s principles. It doesn’t work for money.
Paul Martin, on Tradition Eight
23 September 2023
This is a reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave …. The image there is of a group of prisoners who are chained in the interior of the cave. They cannot look behind them to the cave’s opening, where the road of commerce is found, behind which is the light and sun. Thus the only thing seen by the prisoners—all of us in the world of materiality—are the shadows of the people on the road passing by the mouth of the cave. Yet, these shadows are taken for reality. The allegory goes on to state that one of the prisoners is freed and makes his way out into the sunlight of the upper world. At first the light hurts his eyes, much as our eyes hurt when we leave a darkened movie theatre and emerge into the bright light of day. The freed man becomes accustomed to his new reality, however, and understands the difference between reality and appearance. Truth is not to be found within the cave and its shadows (the phenomenal universe) but rather can be known only in the mind that has reached beyond the body and its senses.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Journey Home: The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles
24 September 2023
Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered.
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters [Letters from a senior to a junior tempting devil]
25 September 2023
Our natural state is to be with [God], resting in peace with [God]. There is a part of us that yearns for that state of oneness. There is also a part of us, however, that wants nothing more than to preserve our individual identity and existence, no matter what the cost. This is true conflict, and one cannot go in two different directions simultaneously without feeling this conflict.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Journey Home: The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles
26 September 2023
Grace lasts as long as ignorance. Once you know what you’re doing, you have to do something about it.
Anonymous
27 September 2023
By holding on to conflict out here in the world, we do not have to deal with it in our own minds, where it remains buried. And so peace reminds us of what we most desperately wish to forget, while external conflict protects us from looking at the inner conflict with God, which the ego tells us would certainly destroy us.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Journey Home: The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles
28 September 2023
GONZALO
When every grief is entertain’d that’s offer’d,
Comes to the entertainer—
SEBASTIAN
A dollar.
GONZALO
Dolour comes to him, indeed: you
have spoken truer than you purposed.
The Tempest, Act II, Scene I
Footnote: 'dolour' means 'sorrow'; in the 15th and 16th centuries, 'dollar' was a generic word for coin or currency, i.e. the pay for the entertainer.
29 September 2023
Therefore, whenever something in the world upsets us—major or minor—we should think of this purpose and realise that the object of our distress is but a fragmentary shadow of the original thought of separation, which we were trying to reinforce so that our individual existence would be even more securely protected against the threat of our remembering to choose God’s Love instead of the special love of the ego.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Journey Home: The Obstacles to Peace in A Course in Miracles
30 September 2023
It is vital for us to obtain genuine confidence in the nature of mind and reality, grounded in understanding and reason. What we need is a sceptical curiosity and constant inquiry, a curious mind, drawn toward all possibilities; and when we cultivate that, the desire to deeply investigate naturally arises.
14th Dalai Lama
Comments
Post a Comment