Excuses

We can spend hours thinking of reasons that we want or need or intend to take a drink.
Or we can spend the same time listing reasons that drinking is not good for us and abstaining is more healthful, and listing things we can do instead of drinking.
Each of us makes that choice in his or her own way.

Spirituality

Spirituality is an awakening -- or is it all the loose ends woven together into a mellow fabric?
It's understanding -- or is it all the knowledge one need ever know?
It's freedom -- if you consider fear slavery.
It's confidence -- or is it the belief that a higher power will see you through any storm or gale? . . . It's peace of mind in the face of adversity.
It's a keen and sharpened desire for survival.

Suggestions

I remember my sponsor's answer when I told him that the Steps were "suggested."
He replied that they are "suggested" in the same way that, if you were to jump out of an airplane with a parachute, it is "suggested" that you pull the ripcord to save your life.
He pointed out that it was "suggested" I practice the Twelve Steps, if I wanted to save my life.

- Daily Reflections, p. 344

Guilt is insidious and counterproductive.

Guilt is insidious and counterproductive.
You are a perfect child of God.
It shines through in your sobriety.
I see it, and so do others.
Make yourself see it.
Past liabilities can be turned around and become our strongest points.
No need to feel guilt; simply get rid of the thing you feel guilty about.
A wonderful way to do this is to reverse your shortcomings by reaching out to another drunk. It works.

- The Best of the Grapevine [Vol. 1], p. 86

Guilt is in the past;
worry is the future.
Both are manifestations of ego.

Life

Look not on life as a person would watch a play on the stage.
Rather look upon it as a student who is learning at college.
It is not a passing show; it is not a place of amusement in which to fool our life away.
It is a place for study, in which every sorrow, every heartbreak brings a precious lesson.
It is a place in which to learn by one's own suffering, by the study of the suffering of others; to learn from the people who have been kind to us as well as from the people who have been unkind.
It is a place in which all experiences, be they disappointments, struggles, and pains, or joys, pleasures, and comforts, contribute to the understanding of what life is, and the realization what it is.

-- Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Encouragement

Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it."  Do not be discouraged.  No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints.  The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.  The principles we have set down are guides to progress.  We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60

If

Alcoholism respects no ifs. It does not go away, not for a week, for a day, or even for an hour, leaving us nonalcoholic and able to drink again on some special occasion or for some extraordinary reason -- not even if it is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, or if a big sorrow hits us, or if it rains in Spain or the stars fall on Alabama.  Alcoholism is for us unconditional, with no dispensations available at any price.

- Living Sober

Spiritual Life

The spiritual life is
first of all a life.

It [the spiritual life] is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. Like all life, it grows sick and dies when it is uprooted from its proper element.
Grace is engrafted on our nature and the while man is sanctified by the presence and action of the Holy Spirit.
The spiritual life is not, therefore, a life entirely uprooted from man's condition and transplanted into the realm of the angels.
We live as spiritual men when we live as men seeking God.
If we are to become spiritual, we must remain men.

--Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Searching

Our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(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

God enters us through our wounds.

Glum?

But we aren't a glum lot. If newcomers could see no joy or fun in our existence, they wouldn't want it.  We absolutely insist on enjoying life. . . We think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness.

-- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 132

Take time to laugh -- it is the music of the soul.

Happiness Is Not A Matter Of Intensity

One who is content with what he has, and who accepts the fact that he inevitably misses very much in life, is far better off than one who has much more but who worries about all he may be missing.
For we cannot make the best of what we are, if our hearts are always divided between what we are and what we are not.

-- Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

-- Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island

Growth

All I have to do is grow at a pace natural to me -- and that is all I have a right to expect of others.
If I can remember these truths, then love -- real love, as opposed to drunken sentimentality -- is finally within reach.
It is not stupid to accept myself and others complete with our imperfections.
It would be stupid not to.

Remove the worry from your mind

Remove the anger from your heart

Give a lot

Expect little

Keep it simple.

Staying Sober

Somewhat to our surprise, staying sober turns out not to be not the grim, wet-blanket experience we had expected!
While we were drinking, a life without alcohol seemed like no life at all.
But for most members of AA, living sober is really living --
a joyous experience. We much prefer it to the troubles we had with drinking.

-- Living Sober, preface

B E S T = Been Enjoying Sobriety Today?

Humility

On his desk, Dr. Bob had a plaque defining humility:
"Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble.  It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.  It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble." [attributed to Andrew Murray, South African Missionary, 1828-1917]

~ Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, p. 222

Humility is attentive patience.

P A U S E = Patience And Understanding Succeed Every time.

Humility

In AA, we looked and listened.
Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets.
We heard story after story of how humility had brought strength out of weakness.
In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life.

CHANGE = Choosing Humility Allows New Gifts and Energy.

Inner Paradise

But the monks of the Middle Ages, and the clerics too, believed that the inner paradise was the ultimate groud of freedom in man's heart. To find it one had to travel, as Augustine had said, not with steps, but with yearnings. ...Paradise is simply the person, the self, but the radical self in its uninhibited freedom. 
-- Thomas Merton, Love and Living.

True freedom is openness, availability, the capacity for the gift.

The Power of Prayer

Evening Prayer

Someone has said that if Christians really understood the full extent of the power we have available through prayer, we might be speechless.

Did you know that during WWII there was an advisor to Churchill who organized a group of people who dropped what they were doing every day at a prescribed hour for one minute to collectively pray for the safety of England, its people and peace?

There is now a group of people organizing the same thing here in America .
If you would like to participate: Every evening at 9:00 PM Eastern Time (8:00 PM Central) (7:00 PM Mountain) (6:00 PM Pacific), stop whatever you are doing and spend one minute praying for the safety of the United States, our troops, our citizens, and for a return to a Godly nation.
If you know anyone else who would like to participate, please pass this along.
Our prayers are the most powerful asset we have.

Balance

AA has accomplished so many things in my life today.
It has given me my sanity and an all-around sense of balance.
I have found that the process of discovering who I am begins with knowing who I really don't want to be. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 456-7

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Higher Power

Remember that we deal with alcohol -- cunning, baffling, powerful!
Without help it is too much for us.
But there is One who has all power -- that One is God.
May you find Him now!

- Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 58-9

The power within me is far greater than any fear before me.

G O D = Good Orderly Direction.