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 2024
The penalty in AA for not completing the inventory is usually drinking! The reward for writing inventory is freedom from the bondage of the past and the discovery of my greatest talent in life: my ability to share from the richness of my alcoholic experience with the alcoholic is still suffering.
Dennis F, Step Four
02 July 2024
Prayer is our entrance into the Unseen World. It is by prayer we can call upon the powers and laws of the Great Spirit. The Spirit World has powers and laws that are different from those of the Physical World. The spiritual laws allow healing to take place; they allow forgiveness to occur; they cause miracles to happen; they cause hate to disappear; they heal broken relationships; they guide every moment of our lives; they allow us to love even when it’s hard. Prayer allows us access to the Spirit World.
Don L. Coyhis, Meditations with Native American Elders
03 July 2024
God desires that we bear much good fruit (see John 15:1–5). That can only occur if we are people who live life “on purpose”. Each day, we should prayerfully think through what we would like to accomplish that day and then purpose to do it.
Joyce Meyer
04 July 2024
I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.
Lewis, C. S., The Weight of Glory
05 July 2024
[Aslan:] But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!
C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
06 July 2024
We’re not afraid of death, we’re not afraid of pain, we’re not afraid of guilt. We’re not afraid of all the things we believe. We’re really afraid of the Love of God. That’s what terrifies us.
Kenneth Wapnick, Special Relationships Part Two
07 July 2024
The Elders say everything has a purpose and everything has a will. We should never interfere with purpose or the will of everything. Every plant, creature, animal, insect, and human being has a purpose to be here on the Earth. Each person has a special medicine to contribute for the good of all things: a special talent, a special gift. These medicines are to help others or to help make us healthy. What is your special medicine?
Don L. Coyhis, Meditations with Native American Elders, adapted
08 July 2024
Practitioners sometimes endure long periods when their practice appears to have no effect on what seem to be particularly stubborn obstacles, and as a result assume their practice is not working. But they are wrong. With hindsight, they come to realise that the “obstacle” they so desperately wanted to eradicate was actually the best thing that ever happened them. This kind of turnaround is quite common, and with experience practitioners begin to appreciate that “bad” circumstances create a far more fertile ground for practice than “good” ones.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Not for Happiness: A Guide to the So-Called Preliminary Practices
09 July 2024
When I became painfully aware of certain of my defects, I was called to surrender and work Steps Six and Seven immediately. God heard my prayer and removed me from the bondage of the defects so that I had a choice to do them or not, as I now know I have a choice to drink or not. It is good to heed the call for change as soon as we hear God’s voice. It shortens our suffering on the way to surrender of our defects.
Dennis F, Step Four
10 July 2024
People are their own deceivers, their own bad counsel, the makers of their own stupidity, lying to and fooling themselves.
Padmasambhava, Advice from the Lotus-Born
11 July 2024
I now affirm that there is nothing in me that can doubt this Presence or limit the Power of Good in my life. There is nothing in me that can separate me from the Love of God, and I accept the joy of living in the very midst of It. The Divine Presence leads me on the pathway of peace. It directs my thoughts, my words, and my actions into constructive channels of self-expression. It unites me with others in love, in kindness, and in consideration.
Ernest Holmes, 365 Science of Mind
12 July 2024
We must be aware of how limited our senses are; eyes, ears, touch, smell, taste. These senses help us to function in the Seen World. What we see is interpreted by our minds and put inside our belief system, and this can become our reality. But there also exists an Unseen World. In this world we experience connectedness; we experience the mystery; and we experience another whole point of view. If we pay attention to both the Unseen World and the Seen World, our belief systems will print in our mind a new and wonderful reality. We will see and know we are a part of everything.
Don L. Coyhis, Meditations with Native American Elders
13 July 2024
And the longer and more beautifully the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said,” Narnia, awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl.
C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
14 July 2024
My foes will become nothing.
My friends will become nothing.
I, too, will become nothing.
Likewise, all will become nothing.
Just like a dream experience,
Whatever things I enjoy
Will become a memory.
Whatever has passed will not be seen again.
Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva
15 July 2024
Worry and fear can alter our perceptions until we lose all sense of reality, twisting neutral situations into nightmares. Because most worry focuses on the future, if we can learn to stay in the present, living one day or one moment at a time, we take positive steps toward warding off the effects of fear.
Courage to Change—One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II
16 July 2024
‘Slips’ are not the fault of AA. I have heard patients complain when brought in for another ‘drying out’ that AA failed them. The truth, of course, is that they failed AA. But this mental manoeuvring to transfer the blame is obviously another indication of fallacious thinking. It is another symptom of the disease.
Dr Silkworth
17 July 2024
First, the Fourth Step is the only step that Alcoholics Anonymous tells us when we are to begin it. It is started as soon as the Third Step decision is taken. I waited a month and paid the price. The desire to drink returned. Secondly, I put off writing inventory until I would become ‘more sober’ and thus more fit to write it. I misused the saying ‘let go and let God.’ ‘Let go’ refers to results not actions.
Dennis F, Step Four
18 July 2024
Compassion and generosity must be accompanied by detachment. Expecting something in return for them is like doing business. If the owner of a restaurant is all smiles with his customers, it is not because he loves them but because he wants to increase his turnover. When we love and help others, it should not be because we find a particular individual likable but because we see that all beings, whether we think of them as friends or enemies, want to be happy and have the right to happiness.
14th Dalai Lama, On the Path to Enlightenment: Heart Advice from the Great Tibetan Masters
19 July 2024
In the past, many of us tried to anticipate all possible disastrous outcomes so that we would be prepared to protect ourselves. But today, our programme, our fellowship, and a Higher Power allow us to view this self-protectiveness more objectively. When we anticipate doom, we lose touch with what is happening now and see the world as a threatening place against which we must be on constant alert.
Courage to Change—One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II
20 July 2024
“You live and you die. We will all die,” I said to Golde. “A carpenter lives, and in the end he still dies. And how is any man different from a carpenter?”
Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman
21 July 2024
This is the time when I must especially surrender with enthusiasm. When God wants my undivided attention, he speaks to me through financial problems, relationship problems, or he puts me flat in a sickbed. The lesson is always the same: to learn dependence on a Higher Power rather than on money, property and prestige or people, places, and things!
Dennis F, Step Four
22 July 2024
Most of our fears will never come to pass, and if they do, foreknowledge probably won’t make us any better prepared. But as we grow in faith, self-esteem, and trust in our Higher Power, we become capable of doing for ourselves what our anticipations could never achieve—taking appropriate action in any situation.
Courage to Change—One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II
23 July 2024
A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
24 July 2024
“First,” he explains, “let’s remember the cause. The AA who ‘slips’ has not accepted the AA programme in its entirety. He has a reservation, or reservations. He’s tried to make a compromise. Frequently, of course, he will say he doesn’t know why he reverted to a drink. He means that sincerely and, as a matter of fact, he may not be aware of any reason. But if his thoughts can be probed deeply enough a reason can usually be found in the form of a reservation.”
Dr Silkworth
25 July 2024
The depression I have in a dry drunk stems from my separation with God. I start blaming Him for my situation rather than praising Him for the growth experience I am going through. The only way out of a depression or a dry drunk is to make an amend to God. The strongest amends are made on my knees looking into a mirror.
Dennis F, Step Four
26 July 2024
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott
27 July 2024
It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
28 July 2024
Follow me
I am meek & lowly of heart
As that is the only way to escape
The Misers’ net & the Gluttons’ trap.
William Blake
29 July 2024
Through writing inventory, we offer to God all our life, including every painful situation. We hold nothing back. Through a Fifth Step (‘Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs’), God will transform our guilt for past events into experience: he will transform our lack of power in dealing with today’s situations into strength; he will transform our fear of the future (impending doom) into hope. What was once the shameful alcoholic past will become instead our experience, strength, and hope to share with another sick and suffering alcoholic. The past will only come to mind when I remember a useful incident to help the newcomer identify with us. We will stop living with 90% of our energies devoted to the past; instead, we will be living in the ‘now’.
Dennis F, Step Four
30 July 2024
I would walk with all those who walk. I would not stand still to watch the procession passing by.
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
31 July 2024
The preventative [of slips], therefore, is acceptance of the AA programme and AA principles without any reservations. This brings us to what I call the moral issue and to what I have always believed from the first to be the essence of AA. Why does this moral issue and belief in a power greater than oneself appear to be the essential principle of AA? First, an important comparison is found in the fact that all other plans involving psychoanalysis, will power, restraint and other ingenious ideas have failed in 95 per cent of the cases. A second is that all movements of reform minus a moral issue have passed into oblivion.
Dr Silkworth
01 August 2024
Whatever may be the opinions one professes in the matter of philosophy—whether one is a spiritualist or a scientific materialist—one should recognise the reciprocal influence which the moral and physical exert upon each other. Alcoholism is a mental and physical issue. Physically a man has developed an illness. He cannot use alcohol in moderation, at least not for a period of enduring length. If the alcoholic starts to drink, he sooner or later develops the phenomenon of craving. Mentally this same alcoholic develops an obsessive type of thinking which, in itself a neurosis, offers an unfavourable prognosis through former plans of treatment. Physically, science does not know why a man cannot drink in moderation. But through moral psychology—a new interpretation of an old idea—AA has been able to solve his former mental obsession. It is the vital principle of AA, without which AA would have failed even as other forms of treatment have failed.
Dr Silkworth
02 August 2024
Alcohol did not surrender me. It softened me up so that the programme of AA, the first nine Steps, and inventory in particular could surrender me.
Dennis F, Step Four
03 August 2024
To be sure, AA offers a number of highly useful tools or props. Its group therapy is very effective. I have seen countless demonstrations of how well your ‘24-hour-plan’ operates. The principle of working with other alcoholics has a sound psychological basis. All of these features of the programme are extremely important. But, in my opinion, the key principle which makes AA work where other plans have proved inadequate is the way of life it proposes based upon the belief of the individual in a Power greater than himself and faith that this Power is all-sufficient to destroy the obsession which possessed him and was destroying him mentally and physically.
Dr Silkworth
04 August 2024
We’re all more than the sum of our parts, Data. You’ll have to be more than the sum of your programming.
Beverly Crusher, Picard
05 August 2024
An AA member had an eight o’clock reservation at a downtown restaurant. It was nearly eight, and he couldn’t find a single parking spot. He circled around the block with no luck. Finally, he called out “God, please help me find a parking space!”
Still no luck.
“God, if you give me a parking spot, I’ll go to more meetings.”
No spot.
“God, if you give me a parking spot, I’ll pray every day.”
No spot.
“God, if you give me a parking spot, I’ll turn my will and life over to you”
All of a sudden, right in front of the restaurant, a car pulled out, leaving a large parking space. Eagerly, the man manoeuvred into it, while calling out, “Never mind, God, I found one!”
Anonymous
06 August 2024
I call an inventory ‘immoral’ when it includes only the first two items, the Story and What I Did Wrong. If I stop at my character defects, I become mired in them and obsessed with guilt and my own immorality. I stop with the problem and not the solution. Instead, include the third part of the inventory form, ‘What would God expect me to do instead?’ It is the solution I need to follow the next time a similar situation happens in my life. Inventory situations recur in life. I repeat the experience until I learn the lesson.
Dennis F, Step Four
07 August 2024
During the course of their discussion, Shlomo confessed to something most personal: “You see all of my success, all of my wealth, all of my power? I cannot enjoy it. I constantly hear the words of Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin ringing in my head. ‘Young man, young man, what will be if indeed there is a G‑d in this world?!’”
Yossy Gordon
08 August 2024
Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?
Sayings of the ‘Jewish Buddha’
09 August 2024
If you bark at all the dogs, you’ll never get to the park.
Anonymous
10 August 2024
An inventory need not be long to be searching. Mine was long but could have been shorter (I bless my sponsor’s patience). Three sentences per item are all it takes. Frequently, the story part of the inventory is too long and is filled with other people’s inventory. If I avoid this, I make quicker progress: I now feel that, if it takes me more than one sentence to describe ‘the story’, I am expressing my ego.
Dennis F, Step Four
11 August 2024
Wherever you go, there you are ... Your luggage is another story.
Sayings of the Jewish Buddha
12 August 2024
If at first you don’t succeed, try following the actual instructions this time.
Anonymous
13 August 2024
It’s so important that you really look with open eyes at what goes on inside of you and not put any responsibility or blame on anything that’s external. That’s really the ticket home. That’s what practising this course means. You don’t give anyone or anything in this world power to deter you from what your goal is. And if you are deterred, it’s not because of something outside you. It’ll be because you became afraid again. That’s the meaning of asking Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help.
Kenneth Wapnick, On Death and Dying: Ending, Continuing, or Awakening?
14 August 2024
Inventory writing is not a diary or a letter to God or reflective writing. It is an example of what I did wrong and what I should do next time. I do not regard writings as inventory if they don’t contain these elements, no matter how worthwhile the writing might otherwise be.
Dennis F, Step Four
15 August 2024
Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?
Sayings of the Jewish Buddha
16 August 2024
As long as we hold onto our resentment, we can never forgive others, and our lack of forgiveness hurts no one but ourselves. To heal from our pain, there’s no other alternative but to let go of our anger and forgive others. Forgiving simply means that we stop tying up our life’s energy in being angry at a person. It does not mean saying their behaviour was acceptable. We can still deem certain behaviour to be wrong, injurious, or inappropriate. Forgiving also doesn’t mean being naïve, letting others manipulate us, or ignoring problems.
Thubten Chodron
17 August 2024
So I stay near the door, Part I
I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world—
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men.
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it ...
So I stay near the door.
Sam Shoemaker
18 August 2024
So I stay near the door, Part II
The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door—the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch—the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man’s own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter—
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it—live because they have found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him ...
So I stay near the door.
Sam Shoemaker
19 August 2024
So I stay near the door, Part III
Go in, great saints, go all the way in—
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics—
In a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening ...
So I stay near the door.
Sam Shoemaker
20 August 2024
So I stay near the door, Part IV
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving—preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them, too,
I stay near the door.
Sam Shoemaker
21 August 2024
So I stay near the door, Part V
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old, accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there too.
Where? Outside the door—
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But—more important for me—
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch,
So I shall stay by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
‘I had rather be a door-keeper ...’ [1]
So I stay near the door.
Sam Shoemaker
[1] Psalm 84:10
22 August 2024
It was through a fifth step (and pitches I gave) that I began to understand the lessons I had to learn before I became a candidate for sobriety. Through a fifth step I finally understood the reality of my life when I was drinking.
‘What I used to be like’ is not described in a drunkalogue; it is described best in the reasons for my spiritual disobedience that led to my alcoholism. (‘His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.’) (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 174).
Dennis F, Step Five
23 August 2024
I have discovered that patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
24 August 2024
With the Creator in our lives, we are everything. Without the Creator, we are nothing. When the Creator is in our life, suddenly the impossible becomes possible. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. Things we thought could never happen start to happen. Talents we never know we had, start to blossom. Resources appear. Help arrives to give us guidance and direction. We become happy. We have peace of mind and confidence.
Don L. Coyhis
25 August 2024
After I gave up trying to stop drinking through willpower. I tried to control my drinking through my intelligence and the minds of the best shrinks I could hire. (‘The idea that somehow he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.’ Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30)
Whenever I controlled my drinking, I never enjoyed it, and I only enjoyed it when I did not control it.
If you had told me then that intuitive thinking after having had a spiritual awakening was the answer, and not my intelligence, I would have said that I don’t know what you were talking about.
Dennis F, Step Five
26 August 2024
Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
Sayings of the Jewish Buddha
27 August 2024
When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
28 August 2024
The final lesson I had to learn before I could become sober was to seek my sobriety from a Higher Power rather than happiness based on intimate relationships. (‘(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. (c) That God could and would if he were sought.’ Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60)
I had become obsessed with the idea that if I had the right intimate relationship I would not want to drink alcoholically.
Through my alcoholism I had lost the ability to love and was in the basement of my disease pursuing the insatiable satisfaction of my lust.
If you had told me that no human power could relieve my alcoholism but only a Higher Power could rescue me, I would have said that I don’t know what you were talking about. I learned this lesson the only way I could, ‘defeat through drinking.’ I had gone through all the human relationships I could: family, buddies, girlfriends, shrinks, teachers—there was no one left.
Dennis F, Step Five
29 August 2024
In the holy instant there are no needs. There’s nothing to impose on the relationship or the situation, nothing that demands that you do something, that the other person do something. Once there’s neediness, then the game starts. Every relationship is governed by the tyranny of needs. I need you to be a certain way, you need me to be a certain way, and if we can work this out together we’ll both fool each other and we’ll call it love.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Self-Accused: Freedom from Guilt
30 August 2024
If I negate the power of my mind to choose against love, there is no way I can ever choose for it. One can easily say that the whole purpose of this course is for Jesus to convince us of the power of our minds to choose. If I give power to you to make me happy, to give me pleasure, to make me sad, to make me angry, to make me depressed, if I give you power to do that to me, I am saying I am mindless. It’s not only that my mind is powerless. I don’t have a mind, because I’m not the one who chose against peace. You took it from me. And what I have conveniently forgotten is I handed it to you. I said, “Please, take this. Please take this power and abuse me. Victimise me. Suffocate me. Squelch me. Misunderstand me. Be insensitive to me. Be unkind to me, please, please. Please betray me. Here’s my best friend, go out and betray me.”
Kenneth Wapnick, The Self-Accused: Freedom from Guilt
31 August 2024
Renunciation mind is very simple in a way: we have renunciation mind when we realise that all this is not a big deal. Somebody steps on your toe – what’s the big deal? The more we get used to this notion, the more we have renunciation mind. Renunciation somehow has this connotation of giving something up. But it is like the example of the mirage. You can’t give up the water because there is none; it is only a mirage. Moreover, you don’t have to give up a mirage, because what is the point of giving up a mirage? One need simply know that it is a mirage. Such understanding is a big renunciation. The moment you know that it is a mirage, most likely you will not even go there because you know it is fake. Or even if you do go, there is no disappointment because you already know what is there. At the very least you will only have a little disappointment.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, The Dzogchen Primer: An Anthology of Writings by Masters of the Great Perfection
01 September 2024
[The Higher Power] once said to Helen, “If you follow my will, then I’ll uphold it. And if you don’t then I’ll correct it.” You can’t lose with that. The best we can do in any circumstance, is the best we can. And that’s all he would ask of us. And if it’s a mistake, then we get lots of other opportunities. And certainly, the biggest mistake is to believe that anything we do at any given point is going to decide the whole rest of our history and the whole rest of the history of the world. Salvation doesn’t depend on a decision that you make at any given point in time. That’s just the ego’s way of trapping us and making us feel guilty and fearful. The idea is that you simply do what works best for you. You try to set aside your own investment as best you can, and ask the [Higher Power’s] help as best you can. Then, just do the best you can. Again, if it’s a mistake then you have lots of other opportunities to correct it. If it’s not a mistake, then everything will just go smoothly and you’ll know that too.
Kenneth Wapnick, Special Relationships Part Two
02 September 2024
We may set too high of a bar for ourselves when we contemplate Buddhist teachings about working for the benefit of all sentient beings. I don’t think it’s really possible to arrive at a time when you’ll be able to say to yourself that you are now accomplishing the benefit of all sentient beings. It’s more a matter of dealing with what’s directly in front of you in terms of the experiences of happiness and suffering that you—and the sentient beings you are connected with—are going through.
17th Karmapa
03 September 2024
There’s a God, and you’re not it.
Anonymous AA from Hawai’i
04 September 2024
We can hide from love. We can attack love. We can believe we’ve destroyed love. But it has no effect on love. And that’s what terrifies us. Once you have even a glimpse of that love, you can never run away again, because there’s always something in you pulling you back. And that’s what your ego hates because that’s what your ego is so afraid of. The ego of course being the part of us that likes being this person, this person that has a name. That has a history. That has a body. That has expectations. That has goals. That’s been victimised, that’s been abused, that’s been unfairly treated, that has sought pleasure in the world and believes it has found it. That’s the “you” that is so afraid. That’s the ego that is so afraid of that pull.
Kenneth Wapnick, The Self-Accused: Freedom from Guilt
05 September 2024
I think you can meet situations of suffering with an open heart and a readiness to do whatever you can to reduce the suffering of sentient beings, to free sentient beings from suffering. Or in the same way, be ready to do anything you can to further the happiness of any given sentient being that you meet and to engage in this kind of conduct with a heart of joyfulness, cheerfulness and delight. This is really the meaning of accomplishing the benefit of all sentient beings.
17th Karmapa
06 September 2024
Help the next suffering alcoholic. That will get you out of your head. Forget about your problems for a minute.
Anonymous AA member from Hawai’i.
07 September 2024
God is at home. We are in the far country.
Meister Eckhart
08 September 2024
The wise man strives to no goals, but the foolish man fetters himself.
Sengcan, Hsin-Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind
09 September 2024
Every second of this human life is more precious than skies of wish-granting jewels.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
10 September 2024
This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro, the eye
That was born in a night, to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in the beams of light.
William Blake
11 September 2024
To seek Mind with discriminating mind is the greatest of all mistakes.
Sengcan, Hsin-Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind
12 September 2024
Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. For having taken one, you will not recognise the rest for what they are. And they will follow.
A Course In Miracles, T-23.II.22
13 September 2024
An autumn leaf floating down a river doesn’t change its colour, and it doesn’t struggle with the river. It goes along with it. This has a natural effect, because the brook or the river has never carried such an autumn leaf before. It takes people off guard when you don’t react to them. You don’t fight back when they attack you, but you just remain as an autumn leaf, whatever they do. This is the gentle way of working.
Chögyam Trungpa
14 September 2024
Suppose someone says something that angers you. Your old pathway wants to say something to punish him. But that makes us victims of our habit energy. Instead, you can breathe in and say, “Unhappiness is in me, suffering is in me, anger is in me, irritation is in me.” That is already helpful, recognising your feelings and helping you not to respond right away. So you accept that anger and irritation in you, and smile to it. With mindfulness, you look at the other person and become aware of the suffering in him or in her. He may have spoken like that to try to get relief from his suffering. He may think that speaking out like that will help him suffer less, but in fact he will suffer more.
Thich Nhat Hanh
15 September 2024
Today’s “Pay Forward” gift is—Tending To Our Father’s Business. I’ve heard it said that we are to treat everyone and everything in our experience as if we asked for it. No, treat it as if we prayed for it. Something from the Bible, which goes like this: “Before we ask our Father, He has answered.” I believe our Father does answer before we ask, because He puts the request in our hearts beforehand. I believe our Father gave each one of us a purpose to carry out, which we call His Will.
Al Kohallek
16 September 2024
“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.” He is the infinite Wisdom within us that transforms the food we eat into everything we call life. He is omnipresence and is trying to communicate through each of us twenty-four, seven, His Love and Wisdom. However, it passes through our personal “reality” filter system; His message gets watered down. If we so choose, we can practise centring our minds in His Presence at each beginning; the shift in our consciousness, by saying our Father. Let our prayers take us to a silent communication deeper than words, into a more direct union with Him. Come let us be about our Father’s Business as a junior partner.
Al Kohallek
17 September 2024
The Lord is in His temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.
Habakkuk
18 September 2024
This course will never help you if you think you’re sane—never. This is a course for the emotionally disturbed, in case you didn’t know that. As any therapist knows, you can’t help a patient who doesn’t think he or she is sick. Someone who comes to you because the court said you have to go, or the school said you have to go, or your spouse says, “I won’t stay married to you unless you get help”—these are the worst patients you could possibly have because they don’t think they have a problem. They think someone else has a problem. So then if the person stays with you your job is to convince them that they need help. That’s what Jesus has to do. He has to convince us we’re emotionally disturbed. Only then will we be motivated to choose the voice of sanity.
Kenneth Wapnick, Transformation: The Journey through Form to Formlessness
19 September 2024
“There again,” said Syme irritably, “what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be seasick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I’m hanged if I can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It’s mere vomiting. It is things going right,” he cried, “that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.”
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
20 September 2024
God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality.
A Course In Miracles, Teacher’s Manual
21 September 2024
Trusting your brothers is essential to establishing and holding up your faith in your ability to transcend doubt and lack of sure conviction in yourself. When you attack a brother, you proclaim that he is limited by what you have perceived in him. You do not look beyond his errors. Rather, they are magnified, becoming blocks to your awareness of the Self that lies beyond your own mistakes, and past his seeming sins as well as yours.
A Course In Miracles, Workbook
22 September 2024
L = Listens intently
O = Overlooks others’ defects
V = Values others’ assets
E = Enthusiastically encourages others
Anonymous
23 September 2024
Sponsee: My ass is on fire!
Sponsor: Come over and we’ll figure out why your ass is so flammable.
Anonymous
24 September 2024
Perception has a focus. It is this that gives consistency to what you see. Change but this focus, and what you behold will change accordingly. Your vision now will shift, to give support to the intent which has replaced the one you held before. Remove your focus on your brother’s sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond.
A Course In Miracles, Workbook
25 September 2024
What do you do when you’re on fire, literally? Stop, drop, and roll.
What do you do when you’re on fire in your life?
Stop = Refrain from the behaviour
Drop = Reframe by dropping the old ideas
Roll = Role ... What role would God have me play?
Anonymous
26 September 2024
I’m great at foreign languages. I’m fluent in Victimese.
Anonymous
27 September 2024
Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognise it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly, and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future. Gratitude becomes the single thought we substitute for these insane perceptions. God has cared for us, and calls us Son. Can there be more than this?
A Course In Miracles, Workbook
28 September 2024
F.E.A.R.
- Forgetting
- Everything’s
- All
- Right!
Anonymous
29 September 2024
Endast den hand som stryker ut kan skriva det rätta.
Only the hand that crosses out can write what is right.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken
30 September 2024
Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?
G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
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