November 22 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 11 Daily Meditation Alcoholics Anonymous Today's Daily Reflections: "rocks and hard places, and being stuck in between can be painful…" Stuck between a rock and a hard place, when we know what we ought to do for ourselves, can be very painful when self-will and self-obsession make us angry and resentful at our situation. And often we can share our anger and resentment by judging other people stuck between a rock and a hard place, and place our own scenarios on their situations. We are very capable of stunting our own personal growth by trying to resolve situations the old way. And we are very capable of stunting the personal growth of other people by getting in their way, we need let them go and let them make their own learning experiences…
Video For Today:
A friend of mine still in the malady is about to relocate. And they are resolved that London is not the place for them. And I know from my own experience that moving to another place when we are still in the malady might simply be what is called a geographical relocation and still the problem remains wherever we are. Can I try dissuade them? Should I try? Is this relocation the right idea? Another person's spiritual journey is their journey, the best I can do is share what I did and how it impacted on me. So many desires to look right, and feel right. So we can mend our insides… Recovery is an inside job, wherever we are. We are still there in the moment and coping as best we can just in the day…
Daily reflections gives me a starting point of the day, self-awareness: how am I feeling, how is my thinking impacted by my feelings and what are the actions I need to take? Reminding myself of step one, and how it helps me keep my side of the Street clean, step two, the insanity of trying to live life the old way. And step three, let go and let other people enjoy their spiritual experience, even when it feels good, bad and ugly. All in the same day. Coping with reality as it is, life on life's terms in the moment…
The hard place, we have come from. A hard place where life was difficult, all the old feelings, or not having feelings at all, our thinking distorted, and at extremes, which caused us to behave in extreme ways. And our actions were very questionable. And then the rock: the new life, where we learn how to behave differently, we begin to understand our feelings more clearly, and we see the possibilities in our new life as well as our limitations because we have to develop new actions and ways to adapt to life. We all have a rock and a hard place. So if I concentrate on what needs to be changed in me, where my shortcomings are, namely: courage to change, faith in the new possibilities and trying new activities, my life is full today. A fellowship to support me, to love me enough so I may find the confidence to be myself and keep on learning and experiencing spiritual growth in the imperfectly perfect moment of now…
I keep on learning every day what it is like to be a friend, to love people and to experience the love they give me. It still feels awkward sometimes, learning the boundaries. And how easy it is to see my own difficulties in what other people are trying to do. We do mirror each other, we see the strengths, we see the opportunities, we see the threats and risks and we also see our weaknesses. When we are able to use all our senses and they work for us, we can start to see the hard place, we have come from, and all the old stuff, and we can see the rock, which is equally hard, because we have to work at living a new life. We can be crushed in between the old life so familiar, and the new life which feels extremely difficult sometimes. Better in my case to keep on working toward the new life which is one day long, in the morning I am a newcomer, by mid-day, I am a middle timer. And at the end of the day, I am an old timer with some gratitude, knowing a little bit more about who I am becoming one day at a time…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Holding our face up to the light, or when we hold our face in our hands in the dark, both experiences are just as they may be right now. Happy or horrible, horribly unhappy, or tragically funny, this is life in the moment. We can cope with help and support in fellowship and outside fellowship. Enough fear to be alert, enough faith to keep on going sober today…
Beautiful day, my sister in town and we spent the morning together. A friend in fellowship drops in and meets her! We sit and chat, my sister leaves and then another wonderful conversation about life. We agree life is one day long, and whatever happens today, if we cope with it, understand unconditional love, we can go to bed happy enough. And if we don’t wake up tomorrow, we have missed nothing!
November 23 2010 ~ Life on life's terms? Why was it so difficult to stop my alcoholic drinking? Drink had become the reward when life was good, the way to oblivion when life was so hard I could not cope. Alcoholics Anonymous offered the solution to my problem, unbearable in early days to give up my best friend which was killing me slowly daily...
November 23 2010 ~ Suggestions from happy people and sad people who had stopped their drinking made me suspicious. My refusal to accept my alcoholism in early days, my paranoia, and my rejection of the solution took a while. I look back but don't stare at the horror. Sober and with help I can cope one day at a time...
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AA Daily Reflections ~ "ONLY TWO SINS: there are only two sins; the first is to interfere with the growth of another human being, and the second is to interfere with one's own growth. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
Happiness is such an elusive state. How often do my "prayers" for others involve "hidden" prayers for my own agenda? How often is my search for happiness a boulder in the path of growth for another, or even myself? Seeking growth through humility and acceptance brings things that appear to be anything but good, wholesome and vital. Yet in looking back, I can see that pain, struggles and setbacks have all contributed eventually to serenity through growth in the program. I ask my Higher Power to help me not cause another's lack of growth today... or my own."
"HOLD YOUR FACE TO THE LIGHT” NOVEMBER 23 Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even though for the moment you do not see. AS BILL SEES IT, p. 3
One Sunday in October, during my morning meditation, I glanced out the window at the ash tree in our front yard. At once I was overwhelmed by its magnificent, golden colour! As I stared in awe at God’s work of art, the leaves began to fall and, within minutes, the branches were bare. Sadness came over me as I thought of the winter months ahead, but just as I was reflecting on autumn’s annual process, God’s message came through. Like the trees, stripped of their leaves in the fall, sprout new blossoms in the spring, I had my compulsive, selfish ways removed by God in order for me to blossom into a sober, joyful member of A.A. Thank you, God, for the changing seasons and for my ever-changing life."
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November 22 2007
DonInLondon - ‘Day In the Life’ Raining Heavy Yet Light Hearted. Progress is not about being right, its about understanding how to live truth and change, modify and move with the times.
Much To Do
Seems and feels like there is much to do. Two meetings today, yet again. When I get the feeling lots may be going wrong I go to meetings and make sure I try and keep to a routine. My routine is simply and often about making sure I deal with everything suggested with regard to recovery, to chronic ailment management, fatigue and much that many really don’t get to know about.
Misinterpretation
A big word for big issues often. And in this modern world in this country I do get to hear how businesses are doing from others in my fellowship and people who work in business organisations.
And of course in our family and friends relationships, we think we might agree and still misunderstandings keep us locked into all manner of misnomers.
Someone wrote they had fitted in a situation the other day, I took it to mean they had some physical fit, when in fact they were saying they just fitted in nicely with what was happening.
And again tonight a little bit of misunderstanding around organisations came to the fore. Listening and sharing we got there in the end, and there was no place for disagreement at all. Funny we feel we are in a place of understanding and we are not. Good that we kept going long enough to understand and find common ground. In this world it can be rare and we end up at cross purposes.
Safe Passage
Safety of information has become a really big issue in the last day or so, where 25 million records went missing for people reliant on help for child care and social benefits. Not a good thing for a government to have to own up to. Especially as it was at a time when our new Prime minister, Gordon Brown was in charge of affairs back then. A calamity.
As Brown emerges as a faltering type, his integrity wanes badly. And maybe rightly.
Matters Recovery
Two excellent meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, where I get to understand reality so often. All about family and growing up, people being reunited and people still in dark conflict with everything. What I learn is we all have bad times in our history, and the recovery for each of us has deep challenges which make us learn life all over again.
No Guarantees
In modern life we seem to look for long term safety and stability. The UK is teetering on the brink of many social questions and financial ones too. With American Financial markets coming unstuck, the worst is yet to come.
AA Guarantees
In my fellowship of AA, people work a day at a time, realise that life is not so secure, and can be good or bad as the day offers. With a clear head and clarity to focus our living in the day, we often do better than we ever did with a drink inside us. Soberly we can handle much that used to baffle and cause us endless concerns. The guarantee from AA? Is simply to endeavour, do our best and accept how things turn out, without resort to trying to fix or manipulate, or go for a drink. We learn clarity, that is the as far as maybe it can be.
Absolute Truth
There are no cast iron copper bottomed guarantees where life may lead. Indeed we learn how truth helps, that we can misunderstand, believe and have faith and yet still that is not going to make the world turn to our whim and determined efforts of security.
The gift of sobriety, is clarity, knowing boundaries and being a part of living. Included we can be mostly, and often excluded too, we learn to live life as is
A day only, and as best we can.
Sober, we can show up for life, one day at a time.
A Call to Arms - Plastic Armour
I was sharing last night about how it was in my childhood years. Playing came top of course, and always we had games like, Cowboys and Indians, Bows and Arrows. Some of the time these games and playtimes were more dangerous as we utilised real bows and arrows and real guns and air rifles. Some kids had access because where we lived people had these weapons close to hand.
We all played and often we made up games. We have armour of course for some games, plastic armour I recall. A bit of a metaphor for much of life. Plastic Armour not really good enough to stop the sharp barbs of real arrows and gun pellets and the odd 22 round.
Like life we have emotional armour, sometimes solid and dependable, yet the reality of today allows me to feel every sharp dig, every shot made. And today I feel both the dig and wound as it is, not so big it can roll me off the tightrope of sobriety, big enough to impact, to be felt and still repair and make good.
Armour
Armed with a sober head it feels like today, what I might have defended for decades is laid open to scrutiny and to challenge. I don’t feel the rise of ego when challenged, that brittle overcoat so easy to mistake for toughness. These days the toughness is not to stop the challenge but to let in the new information and deal, change modify or assert what I know.
Its not about right or wrong anymore…
Indeed the changing world forever moving along. If we hold fast to positions and opinion and stoically defend what has obviously changed, we will feel pain and loss.
Its about learning and growing and understanding as many points of view which help resolve and find a particular truth of today.
A few days ago, I heard one or two complain the Alcoholics Anonymous has changed from the good old days. It certainly has, as the world changes and the people change, then we need change too. Old notions need not be thrown away, and still we need not hark back to olden days, for they are truly gone.
Leadership and society
At the moment the leadership of civilised societies is in a major shift. The old ways don’t work, the new ways are hardly any better, yet the revolution of man keeps on happening no matter what.
Good For a Day
Sobriety and life, lived in the moment. If a person gets this subtle understanding, what has passed by is the past.
Leadership in AA
There are no leaders, and when the assertion is made about wise old timers who really understand, the leadership of AA is the movement itself, its principles and values and traditions.
Human Nature
It is human nature to define right and wrong. We can do this for ourselves and not for anyone else, or we take others power and choices away. An old timer from the other day asserted their leadership influenced and made good what others had undone. Ego lives free and unfettered in every breath when we have no confidence in this ever changing world. And that is the road to perdition. Where hell is at our heels rather than new beginnings and redemption.
Flow
Go with the flow and understand change where it is necessary. Leaders don’t stop challenge and change, they lead and make it good.
Clarity and Boundaries
Clarity in expression, openness and willing offer every human an opportunity to keep on the path of living in solutions and not trapped in problems made by fallible and flawed desires to adhere to old and redundant outlooks.
22nd November 2006
Take Care
When people say hello they say goodbye and “take care.” Take care? What do we take care of? These days I know more about taking care of myself, more than ever in my life. What do I take care about. Living just one day.
Choice
I have choices today because I am leaving my old life behind and moving along just one day at a time. Choices in my life have been limited by my fears and my bravery. Now I make choices with courage and fortitude.
Fear needs bravery, bravery needs fear. Fortitude and courage comes from our faith in ourselves and our humanity. Humanity, is faith that we can do the right thing. Doing the right thing requires objectivity and understanding, and of course good conscience.
Fellowship
Makes life and living possible just one day at a time and making a bridge back to living in the normal world, whatever we understand as normal.
Documentary
On the TV tonight is a documentary about alcoholism. And the problem with this documentary is still for the person who is not an alcoholic, and the maker of the documentary, they do not really appear to understand this disease of the mind and body.
Disease
Addiction and alcohol and drugs. Take away choice, take away freedom to choose sobriety, take away will and take away all our dignity. The cause of it, the reason why we get in such a state is because of life experience. Life experience can be the cause, as much as genetics and as much as anything we may choose to understand as our cause.
The effect
The effect and the return to being sane and functioning takes a long time, is a constant struggle and a constant daily process. Addicts often learn to live very full lives without their chosen addiction. How? By whatever means are possible.
Ways and means
The way and means to a return to a full life, well there are many ways. When we get over our causes and get out of denials, and get out of grief.
Broken Hearts
People do die from broken hearts, mending a broken heart is beyond our ability on our own. Often death is our best option as addiction takes us where it will. Death is preferable to grief most often for those sensitive to life and traumas.
Broken People
It is as hard to mend broken people as it is hard to watch them die in their grief. There is never a right or wrong in these matters. One thing is absolute and a certainty, untreated addiction kills, treated and on-going recovery, a misunderstood process and very difficult path for any person in recovery.
People Mending
Needs greater research and greater understanding, maybe this is my path to sharing and giving back to this world, by my presence as a recovering alcoholic, by my ability to share as I do the way out of hell and back to ordinary living. Ordinary living, which indeed is life with all its ups and downs, lived openly and honestly and with help and support. I became part of AA simply because it was a way to continue recovery and whilst there is no cure, this is a disease where we may be in recovery, we are never able to be recovered. AA is a fellowship which keeps me on track and living on a daily basis, with a bit of courage and fortitude I continue on, as life offers and lived as real as can be.
November 22nd 2005
1963: Kennedy Shot Dead in Dallas
"The President of the United States has been assassinated by a gunman in Dallas, Texas." How do I remember this event? I was just seven years old in 1963. It was the first time I recognised how loss affected my parents and adults at the time. I could see the sadness and feel that awful presence of grief. I could not understand why an event about a person who we did not know could have such a profound impact. Time and history unfold and my maturity into the world of feelings. I saw the death of President Kennedy impacted on the whole of the world. Something had been taken away and it was never coming back.
The hopes of many were dashed as prospects for a more peaceful world diminished and the dangers of "cold war" and the ever present danger of world war and nuclear bombs led to national anxieties.
Of Kennedy we learned, a family man, a man of integrity and many capacities. And as time offered the ‘dirt’, we find our hero as human as any in his life. Not squeaky clean, and who is? How else do we learn our true nature and character, except from life itself? We cannot be taught to live, we live and learn. And those we often revere for their public life have much learning in their private affairs. And with humility, which comes from time, we learn to be forgiving of the human nature we all have and the inadequacy of nurture.
What would the impact of a live Kennedy in the White House for his term and more? We will never know. What we do know is his legacy and impact is to be experienced in all our lives. History might make him anything we wish to believe, for history is always revisionist to our outlook. I will not forget the steadfast and resolute feelings evoked in my parents that a man of great importance had been lost. And in balance, with every theory and every postulation, Kennedy was one of a handful of individuals who have shaped our world over the last near half century. There is much I admire in Kennedy, his principles stated and clear, his pragmatism, his ability to get the best from others who were striving as he, to be their best. Like any leader taken down before his time, his work incomplete, his endeavour and commitment to a better world cut short. Our loss memorialized over and over and Kennedy forever a hero and forever human.
Kennedy deserves to be remembered, all of him and every element. Like Kennedy, we are more than a public persona; we are complete, inside and out, a richer memory to humanity for all his human qualities, good at some and outstanding at others… In our history Kennedy taken too soon, arguably better than taken too late…
November 22nd 2004
The Unexpected
When I am looking for solutions, I must always be ready for surprises.
Solutions often look familiar and we seek reassurance of what we know. Our surprises I guess come from an open mind, an inquiry into the unknown. We don't know what we don't know. Who would have thought we could record events on plastic and play them back instantly? Who said we would never fly?
Are we close to fabulous science creating opportunity and understanding? Most likely, yet its most likely man will determine the agenda forevermore, unless something or someone is recognised as more important. Now what or who might that be? Our planet?
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Just For Today And Every Day, Cherish Always...
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AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections
AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
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“The method of prayer & meditation. We often hear it said in meetings that the speaker "hits his knees every morning." Not being brought up Catholic or Muslim, we envisioned that slapping of the knees might be spiritually significant in A.A. When we discovered that the act of prayer was being referred to, we asked why A.A. tells us to get on our knees to pray. We were informed that A.A. makes no such suggestion. In fact, reference to praying on the knees, in the original draft of Step 7, was explicitly removed to prevent the misconception that such a practice was suggested. Moreover, to be on one’s knees as a prior condition to prayer will prevent prayer at many opportunities during the day. If you or your sponsor think that you should be on your knees for correct prayer, then by all means do so. It might just be the best way to pray. For the content of prayer, see Step 11b that follows.” BB Bunch
November 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 10 The Now Inventory
Alcoholics Anonymous | Step Eleven Reading Video Link:
November 2012 | Video Reading How It Works:
November 2012 | Video Reading Into Action :
November 2012 | Playlist All About Step Eleven:
I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous I speak for myself. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of unique and authentic people who speak for themselves where they will to share experience, strength and hope about recovery on a daily basis. Anonymity affords sanctuary to find how to live sober and be open, honest and willing to learn life day by day. For me "truth," "love" and "wisdom" offer the best spiritual experience by living reality today. Into the fabric of recovery from alcoholism are woven the Twelve Steps and the Traditions: steps to be open, honest and willing to learn, traditions to live unity, service and recovery.
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Spiritual principles ~ Forgiveness Acceptance Surrender Faith Open-mindedness Honesty Willingness Moral-inventory Amends Humility Persistence Spiritual-growth Service
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