DAILY PONDERABLES Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

Daily Reflections LETTING GO OF OUR OLD SELVES Carefully reading the first five proposals we ask if we have omitted anything, for we are building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last. . . . Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, pp. 75, 76 The Sixth Step is the last "preparation" Step. Although I have already used prayer extensively, I have made no formal request of my Higher Power in the first Six Steps. I have identified my problem, come to believe that there is a solution, made a decision to seek this solution, and have "cleaned house." I now ask: Am I willing to live a life of sobriety, of change, to let go of my old self? I must determine if I am truly ready to change. I review what I have done and become willing for God to remove all my defects of character; for in the next Step, I will tell my Creator I am willing and will ask for help. If I have been thorough in the preparation of my foundation and feel that I am willing to change, I am then ready to continue with the next Step. "If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing." Alcoholics Anonymous, up. 76 From the book Daily Reflections © Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day A.A. Thought for the Day Some things I like since becoming dry: feeling good in the morning; full use of my intelligence; joy in my work; the love and trust of my children; lack of remorse; the confidence of my friends; the prospect of a happy future; the appreciation of the beauties of nature; knowing what it is all about. I'm sure that I like these things, am I not? Meditation for the Day Molding your life means cutting and shaping your material into something good, something that can ex- press the spiritual. All material things are the clay out of which we mold something spiritual. You must first recognize the selfishness in your desires and motives, actions and words, and then mold that selfishness until it is sublimated into a spiritual weapon for good. As the work of molding proceeds, you see more and more clearly what must be done to mold your life into something better. Prayer for the Day I pray that I may mold my life into something useful and good. I pray that I may not be discouraged by the slow progress that I make. From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day © Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation

NA - Just for Today Build, don't destroy Page 162 "Our negative sense of self has been replaced by a positive concern for others." Basic Text, p. 16 Spreading gossip feeds a dark hunger in us. Sometimes we think the only way we can feel good about ourselves is to make someone else look bad by comparison. But the kind of self-esteem that can be purchased at another's expense is hollow and not worth the price. How, then, do we deal with our negative sense of self? Simple. We replace it with a positive concern for others. Rather than dwell on our low self-esteem, we turn to those around us and seek to be of service to them. This may seem to be a way of avoiding the issue, but it's not. There's nothing we can do by dwelling on our low sense of self except work ourselves into a stew of self-pity. But by replacing our self-pity with active, loving concern for others, we become the kind of people we can respect. The way to build our self-esteem is not to tear others down, but to build them up through love and positive concern. To help us with this, we can ask ourselves if we are contributing to the problem or to the solution. Today, we can choose to build instead of destroy. Just for Today: Though I may be feeling low, I don't need to tear someone down to build myself up. Today, I will replace my negative sense of self with a positive concern for others. I will build, not destroy. From the book Just for Today © Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Thought for Today You're never fully dressed without a smile! --Anon YET AND TOMORROW   I've heard their stories many times, how they lived is such a fog The cars they wrecked, the jobs they lost, the same old drunk-a-log I listen and I start to think how I have never let My life get so out of control, it hasn't happened yet   I look around and can't believe that old man by the fridge Who looks like he could preach in church, once lived under a bridge He told of how his wife had left, his world was filled with sorrow I realize I must straighten up, I'll get sober tomorrow   I never thought the time would come that I would join AA These people here are hard core drunks, I've never been that way But I'll attend and do the work and take all I can borrow And heed the words that I should fear, those words, yet and tomorrow.   It seems I took a turn somewhere, just when I can't remember I'm now part of a group where no one wants to be a member But dues are real affordable, the coffee does not suck Where else can you come get some help for only just a buck   Least I forget what brought me here, the pain and all the sorrow When I would lie and tell myself I'll stop for sure tomorrow But tomorrow it's the same old thing and I begin to sweet For all the times I told myself that I'm not that bad yet   I've never thought the time would come that I would join AA But now I've come to realize it's here that I must stay I know I've lived out on the edge where only fools would follow Remembering to keep them near, those words, yet and tomorrow   The time has come, it's time at last, I've been on my last bender Can't beat this thing all by myself, I must stop and surrender The die is cast, my time is now, it is my final hour Seek help from all my AA friends and from my Higher Power   I never thought the time would come that I would join AA How I could put the bottle down and face a brand new day My life begins to start anew, less grief and pain and sorrow And never to loose sight of two things, those words, yet and tomorrow Pray god I don't forget to learn two words, those words, yet and tomorrow   Larry R.

Buddha/Zen Thoughts A buddha is one who does not seek. In seeking this, you turn away from it. The principle is the principle of nonseeking; when you seek it, you lose it. -Pai-chang Focus on the gap between thoughts, and that is where truth lies, unencumbered by ego. Tough to do but a good exercise for deep meditation.  For it is in this space that we are truly at peace, were no outside influences disturb us.   (thanks Clardy S.)

Native American "Wakan Tanka never stops creating." --Archie Fire Lame Deer, LAKOTA The Medicine Wheel teaches about change. It says that which is created will fall apart; that which is loose, will be used to create new. In other words, everything on Earth is participating in a constant change that is being directed by an order of laws and principles which were originated by the Great Spirit. We humans are equipped with natural change abilities. We have the ability to vision; we can use imagination and imagery; we can change belief, attitude, habits and expectations. We need to know ourselves and we need to know how we work inside to enable us to change naturally. Great Spirit, teach me to change in harmony.

Keep It Simple We cannot solve life's problems except by solving them.    --- M. Scott Peck Before getting into the program, we ran from problems at all costs. As time went on, we had more problems. As our problems grew, we became afraid of life. The program---the Twelve Steps---teaches us how to face and solve our problem. We stop running and stand up to problems. That way, life's problems scare us less and less over time. In fact, life's problems help us better know our Higher Power and ourselves. We now know our Higher Power is with us every step of the way. Prayer for the Day: I pray for the courage to stand and face life's problems. I pray for the wisdom to ask my Higher Power for help. Action for the Day: Today, I'll list all problems I now have. I will talk about them with friends and with my Higher Power. I will make plans to solve them (sometimes solving problems means accepting them).

Big Book Chapter 6    Into Action (pg 87 & 88) 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. But this is not all. There is action and more action. “Faith without works is dead.” The next chapter is entirely devoted to Step Twelve. ********************************* Who Really Founded AA?  (thanks Ronny H.) By Susan Cheever 02/27/12 Did Bill W. make AA in his own image, or do others deserve equal billing? The debate over AA's origins rages on—revealing factions and fractures in the entire movement. Heaven help the writer who refers to Bill Wilson as “the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous”! The inevitable outraged protests are not just on behalf of AA’s official co-founder Dr. Bob Smith. There are at least three other ardently backed pretenders to the throne when it comes to one of the most successful experiments of the last century. To a desperate drunk trying to stay sober for a few hours, it might not matter who founded the organization that offers help. However, sobriety seems to foster a desire to argue, and many alcoholics divide themselves—typically based on personal assumptions, examined or not, about the meaning of AA, if not even larger institutions like medicine or religion—into one camp or another, self-appointed heirs of Dr. Bob’s avuncular Christianity or Bill W.’s writing and political skills or the rules and regulations of the Oxford Group. Even the date when AA began and its place of origin remain hotly debated. Virtually everyone agrees that AA started with Bill Wilson’s own drinking problem, and Bill had his last drink on December 11, 1934. Yet the official founding date of Alcoholics Anonymous is June 10, 1935, the day of Dr. Bob Smith’s last drink—a soothing warm beer handed to him by Bill W. to steady his hands for surgery. The first person to explain alcoholism to Bill Wilson, back in 1933, was Dr. William Duncan Silkworth, the medical chief of Towns Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where Bill had gone to dry out. Silkworth told his patient that he had been ill—that his alcoholism was a disease, not a failure of will power. This was news to the down-and-out salesman who, battered by the Great Depression and his own drinking, had already lost all of his own money and most of his wife’s. Alcoholism, Silkworth later explained, in a phrase that became an AA keystone, “is an obsession of the mind that condemns one to drink and an allergy of the body that condemns one to die.” AA emerged out of a perfect storm of ideas (both as new as the disease model of alcoholism and as old as Puritanism and democracy) and a handful of desperate personalities with the disease and those who cared deeply about them. Bill’s stay at Towns was not his first brush with sobriety. Before Bill Wilson got his medical enlightenment at Towns Hospital—and long before he met Dr. Bob Smith—he had joined the Oxford Group, a worldwide evangelical Christian fellowship with deep Puritan roots founded by the controversial preacher—and avid fundraiser—Dr. Frank Buchman, who appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the tagline: “Cultist Frank Buchman: God Is a Millionaire.”Sam Shoemaker, the head of Calvary Episcopal Church, in New York City, which was the US headquarters of the Oxford Group, had been able to help Bill Wilson’s childhood friend Ebby Thatcher stop drinking. When Bill ran into Ebby on the street, Ebby brought him into Calvary Church and the Oxford Group and introduced him to its tenets: 1. We admitted we were licked. 2. We got honest with ourselves. 3. We talked it over with another person. 4. We made amends to those we had harmed. 5. We tried to carry this message to others with no thought of reward. 6. We prayed to whatever God we thought there was. These sound familiar to anyone who has read the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous written by Bill Wilson a few years later. The Oxford Group meetings and principles were the means by which Wilson stayed sober for the winter months of 1934 until a failed business trip he took to Akron, Ohio. There, down to a few dollars and in terror of a relapse on an empty Saturday afternoon in a hotel bar, he made a fateful call to Akron’s Henrietta Seiberling, an Oxford Group member, looking for a drunk whom he might talk to—thereby meeting Dr. Bob, a local surgeon who was at the receiving end of an ongoing intervention by his fellow Oxford Group members. This first encounter between Bill W. and Dr. Bob was perhaps the first AA meeting. “Our talk was a completely mutual thing,” Bill recalled. “I had quit preaching. I knew that I needed this alcoholic as much as he needed me. This was it.” “Early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others, straight from the Oxford Group and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and nowhere else,” Bill Wilson wrote later in recognition of this early influence. (In 1940 Wilson, Smith and Shoemaker broke with Buchman, who had by then renamed the Oxford Group, in keeping with his growing moralistic militancy as World War II unfolded, Moral Re-Armament.) Sister Ignatia Gavin, of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Augustine, was in charge of admissions at Akron’s St. Thomas Hospital. In 1935, as Bill and Bob began to piece together what was keeping them sober, this tiny Irish immigrant in a snow-white wimple admitted an alcoholic patient under the guise of acute gastritis—making St. Thomas the first hospital in the world known to treat alcoholism as a medical condition. She gave sober men a medallion to symbolize their recovery, initiating AA's use of tokens to mark sobriety milestones; she was also the first person to understand that drunks need coffee and insisted on a coffee bar in her hospital recovery center. Together Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob realized that they needed to share their talking therapy with other drunks. Through the good offices of Sister Ignatia, they found an inexhaustible supply at St. Thomas for the next 30 years. But was AA founded in 1935 in Akron, where Bill Wilson met Bob Smith, the man who became his mentor and partner in launching a movement whose first mission was to keep each other sober? Or was it founded in New York City, where Bill Wilson first got sober and, in 1938, wrote the book Alcoholics Anonymous? Or was it founded in Vermont, where Wilson and Smith had both grown up in small towns run by populist, grass-roots democracy—a means of governance that Bill Wilson brought to AA in the Twelve Traditions? Silkworth, Shoemaker, Wilson, Smith, Gavin—each was necessary in his or her own way. AA emerged out of a perfect storm of ideas (both as new as the disease model of alcoholism and as old as Puritanism and democracy) and a handful of desperate but driven personalities with the disease and those who cared deeply about them. If not for Silkworth and the Oxford Group, Bill Wilson would not have been able to get sober. If not for Bill, Bob Smith would not have gotten sober, and if not for Bob, Bill might not have stayed sober. Without Bill, there would be no AA literature. Bill’s life as a pragmatic salesman is often cited as the ideal promotional preparation for becoming the leader of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it was only one jagged piece of a puzzle that snapped together as a social movement at the end of the 1930s—perhaps the most economically painful but politically fertile decade in American history. Now, three-quarters of a century and millions of alcoholics and addicts later, the forces represented by each of the group's co-founders continue to play out in a dynamic tension, on a national, and even global, level. For some members of AA, it is the model of alcoholism as a disease—which has been developed and detailed in recent years by neuroscience discoveries—that serves as a touchstone; for others, it's the spiritual, even religiously fundamentalist, message adapted from the Oxford Group teachings. There are AA meetings where God is called "Our Father" and AA meetings where God is always qualified by Bill W.'s original phrase—"as we understood him"—and AA meetings where God is never mentioned at all. Old-timers grumble about the erosion of the commitment to service, while newcomers have issues with such things as powerlessness and anonymity. At times, these tensions—medical vs. moral, rationalist vs. religious, diversity vs. conformity—seem to threaten certain meetings, if not the group itself, to distraction, upheaval and worse. But the founders had the foresight to extract what was essential from each different approach and combine them to enduring, even timeless, effect.