My first true freedom is the freedom not to have to take a drink today. If I truly want it, I will work the Twelve Steps and the happiness of this freedom will come to me through the Steps–sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Other freedoms will follow, and inventorying them is a new happiness. I had a new freedom today, the freedom to be me. I have the freedom to be the best me I have ever been.
Twenty–Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought For The Day
We’re in A.A. for two main reasons: to keep sober ourselves and to help others to keep sober. It’s a well known fact that helping others is a big part of keeping sober yourself. It’s also been proved that it’s very hard to keep sober all by yourself. A lot of people have tried it and failed. They come to a few A.A. meetings and then stay sober alone for a few months, but usually they eventually get drunk. Do I know that I can’t stay sober successfully alone?
Meditation For The Day
Look by faith into that place beyond space or time where God dwells and whence you came and to which you shall eventually return. “Look unto Him and be saved.” To look beyond material things is within the power of everyone’s imagination. Faith’s look saves you from despair. Faith’s look saves you from worry and care. Faith’s look brings a peace beyond all understanding. Faith’s look brings you all the strength you need. Faith’s look gives you a new and vital power and a wonderful peace and serenity.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may have faith’s look. I pray that by faith I may look beyond the now to eternal life.
As Bill Sees It
Two Roads for the Oldtimer
The founders of many groups ultimately divide into two classes known in A.A. slang as “Elder statesmen ” and “Bleeding deacons.” The elder statesman sees the wisdom of the group’s decision to run itself and holds no resentment over his reduced status. His judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound; he is willing to sit quietly on the side lines patiently awaiting developments.
The bleeding deacon is just as surely convinced that the group cannot get along without him. He constantly connives for re–election to office and continues to be consumed with self–pity. Nearly every oldtimer in our Society has gone through this process in some degree. Happily, most of them survive and live to become elder statesmen. They become the real and permanent leadership of A.A.
Walk in Dry Places
No Limits on our Higher power
The Spiritual Way
One ancient saying claims that “With God, all things are possible.” That’s quite a statement, one we may claim to believe without living as though we do. What it really means is that God exists outside the conditions and restrictions that make our own lives so limited. The more we can move into conscious contact with God, the more freedom and power we will experience. It might be said that all real human progress is the same order. Every advancement in science really reveals more information about God and the universe. We are always discovering new possibilities for humankind as we stretch the frontiers of knowledge. Our most serious lag is in learning to understand ourselves and each other. It is humbling to realize that the ideas we’re using in Twelve Step programs have been around for centuries. Faced with impossible problems, we must remember that God can solve these problems if only we ask. I’ll follow today the old idea of working as if everything depended on me and believing as if everything depended on God.
Keep It Simple
You cannot plan the future by the past.–Edmund Burke
We got tried of how we were living. We honestly looked at our life. We saw that alcohol and other drugs controlled our life. We met others who understood us. And we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could help us. We turned our will and our life over to this Power. In so doing, we learned that life doesn’t take place in the past or in the future. We find our program in the present.
Prayer for the Day: I pray that I’ll leave the past in the past. I pray that I’ll walk into each moment with my Higher Power.
Action for the Day: The only time we revisit the past is when we tell our story. Today, I’ll tell my story to someone. I’ll tell what really happened. I’ll tell what life is like now.
Self–esteem is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.–Alex F. Osborn There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.–Chinese Proverb
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing; that’s why we recommend it daily.”–Zig Ziglar
“No matter what you have done to this moment, you get 24 brand–new hours to spend every single day.”–Brian Tracy
“Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.”–Dorothy Sarnoff
God says that each of us is worth loving.
Father Leo’s Daily Meditation
Faith
“Faith has need of the whole truth.”–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Faith is a journey that ends in God. Our understanding of imperfection teaches us to look beyond ourselves into the truth that is yet to be revealed. Our daily attitude adjustments bring us, step by step, to that truth and freedom that awaits us in the future.
Sufficient today to know that we are not God and nobody has all the answers. The hardest part of being a human being is accepting the limitations of our lives. Things happen without our involvement. We need not be there for existence to happen; there is life beyond me! God holds the world together, not me. Truth is in me but also beyond me. In this sense my faith is enriched by others, and at some point in the future we will all become ONE in truth. As I look to the future I see the Oneness of tomorrow.
Daily Inspiration
If you are stressed, you are probably makings things more important than they really are. Lord, I pray for clarity of thought and calmness of spirit because I know that when my heart grows weary, You send me peace. Joy does not depend on your circumstances, but rather on your triumph over your circumstances. Lord, my joy comes from within where Your spirit fills my soul and You bless me with Your strength.
Contributed By: Shreerang Karkare
