Patcha

Daily Reflections

ATTRACTION, NOT PROMOTION

Through many painful experiences, we think we have arrived at what that policy ought to be. It is the opposite in many ways of usual promotional practice. We found that we had to rely upon the principle of attraction rather than promotion.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 180-81

While I was drinking I reacted with anger, self-pity and defiance against anyone who wanted to change me. All I wanted then was to be accepted by another human simply as I was and, curiously, that is what I found in A.A. I became the custodian of this concept of attraction, which is the principle of our Fellowship's public relations. It is by attraction that I can best reach the alcoholic who still suffers. I thank God for having given me the attraction of a well-planned and established program of Steps and Traditions. Through humility and the support of my fellow sober members, I have been able to practice the A.A. way of life through attraction, not promotion.

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

The A.A. way is the way of sobriety. A.A. is known everywhere as a method that has been successful with alcoholics. Doctors, psychiatrists and clergymen have had some success. Some men and women have got sober all by themselves. We believe that A.A. is the most successful and happiest way to sobriety. And yet A.A. is not wholly successful. Some are unable to achieve sobriety and some slip back into alcoholism after they have had some measure of sobriety. Am I deeply grateful to have found A.A.?

Meditation For The Day

Gratitude to God is the theme of Thanksgiving Day. The pilgrims gathered to give thanks to God for their harvest, which was pitifully small. When we look around us at all the things we have today, how can we help being grateful to God? Our families, our homes, our friends, our A.A. fellowship; all these things are free gifts of God to us. "But for the grace of God," we would not have them.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may be very grateful today. I pray that I may not forget where I might be but for the grace of God.

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As Bill Sees It

To Grow Up, p. 330

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for complete approval, utter security, and perfect romance--urges quite appropriate to age seventeen--prove to be an impossible way of life at forty-seven or fifty-seven. Since A.A. began, I've taken huge wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually.

<< << << >> >> >>

As we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes toward instinctual drives need to undergo drastic revisions. Our demands for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power all have to be tempered and redirected.

We learn that the full satisfaction of these demands cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives. We cannot place the cart before the horse, or we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment. But when we are willing to place spiritual growth first--then and only then do we have a real chance to grow in healthy awareness and mature love.

1. Grapevine, January 1958
2. 12 & 12, p. 114

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Walk In Dry Places

Spaces in Togetherness: Friendship

One of the beautiful aspects of AA is the bonding that develops among members. We truly do achieve a closeness with some people that is unlike anything we ever had before. The danger in such friendships is that we may become too close in some ways. Without realizing it, we may be making too many demands on others' time. This can become suffocating to them and eventually detrimental to the friendship. In such situations, we need to remember the words of Kahlil Gibran; "Let there be spaces in your togetherness." However, close we feel to others, we must allow them their space. We should also remember to respect others' privacy as well as their anonymity. AA should give us close friendships, but not to the point of suffocation.

I'll remember today not to overstep my boundaries in any friendship. There must be spaces in our togetherness.

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Keep It Simple

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.---Bernard Malamud

Sobriety is freedom. With this freedom, we have a responsibility to help other addicts who still suffer. The program tells us this in Step Twelve. We do this by telling our stories and offering hope. We must be ready to care, to give ourselves. This is what spirituality is about. When we help others, we prepare the road for those who enter the program after us.

Tradition Five of the Twelve Traditions says, “Each group has but one primary purpose---to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” It means we get better by helping others.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me create more freedom. Bring me to where I’m needed. Help me carry the message well.

Action for the Day: Today, I’ll think of ways I can help the addict who still suffers. Then I’ll chose one way I can be of help. I’ll talk with my sponsor about it, and I’ll follow through with my plan.

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Each Day a New Beginning

The idea of God is different in every person. The joy of my recovery was to find God within me. --Angela L. Wozniak

The program promises peace. Day by day, step by step, we move closer to it. Each time we clearly are touched by someone else, and each time we touch another, carries us closer to a realization of God's presence, in others, in ourselves, in all experiences. The search for God is over, just as soon as we realize the Spirit is as close as our thoughts, our breath.

Coming to believe in a greater power brings such relief to us in our daily struggles. And on occasion we still fight for control to be all-powerful ourselves, only to realize that the barriers we confront are of our own making. We are on easy street, just as soon as we choose to let God be our guide in all decisions, large and small.

The program's greatest gift to us is relief from anxiety, the anxiety that so often turned us to booze, or pills, or candy. Relief is felt every time we let go of the problem that's entrapped us and wait for the comfort and guidance God guarantees.

God's help is mine just as quickly as I fully avail myself of it. I will let go of today's problems.

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Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition

Chapter 8 - TO WIVES

At first, some of us did not believe we needed this help. We thought, on the whole, we were pretty good women, capable of being nicer if our husbands stopped drinking. But it was a silly idea that we were too good to need God. Now we try to put spiritual principles to work in every department of our lives. When we do that, we find it solves our problems too; the ensuing lack of fear, worry and hurt feelings is a wonderful thing. We urge you to try our program, for nothing will be so helpful to your husband as the radically changed attitude toward him which God will show you how to have. Go along with your husband if you possibly can. - p. 116-117

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Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition Stories

LISTENING TO THE WIND - It took an "angel" to introduce this Native American woman to A.A. and recovery.

"Where would you be without them?" she asked. "What are the alternatives? You got any better ideas for yourself? How many Indians do you know who are going to help you sober up?" At the time, I couldn't think of any. I surrendered behind the tears of no answers and decided to do it their way. I found the Power greater than myself to be the magic above the heads of the people in the meetings. I chose to call that magic Great Spirit. - p. 467

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Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Five - "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

All of A.A.'s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. But scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one. p. 55

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AA 'Big Book' - Quote

There is the type of man who is unwilling to admit that he cannot take a drink. He plans various ways of drinking. He changes his brand or his environment. There is the type who always believes that after being entirely free from alcohol for a period of time he can take a drink without danger. There is the manic-depressive type, who is, perhaps, the least understood by his friends, and about whom a whole chapter could be written.

Then there are types entirely normal in every respect except in the effect alcohol has upon them. They are often able, intelligent, friendly people. - Pg. xxx - 4th. Edition - The Doctor's Opinion
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Warriors Anonymous Practice of the Day-
BB pg- 567-568-
Ch- Appendice II, Spiritual Experience:

Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the “educational variety” because they develop slowly over a period of time. Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline. With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.

Tom: My sponsor said, when we just stop drinking and come into AA, many amazing things begin to happen: we get straight with the law, start taking care of ourselves, get a vehicle, maybe a license, clean clothes and maybe some money in our pocket. All of that, is like putting a suit on a pig, because nothing has changed on the inside.

Sobriety is an inside job and we work on our insides by following the directions of the Steps , out of the BB with our sponsors. For Alcoholics and addicts of the Hopeless Variety, it is the only way.

Today I pray that I Remember that I am sober today only by the Grace of my God, which I found through the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.